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I think I was very clear in my prior posts that I think Troupes are an exceptionally good unit, and one of the best troops choices in the game. They're fantastic for all sorts of reasons.

The discussion was about killing power, however. And Troupes are not particularly good at deleting stuff in combat. They're not *bad* at it by any means, but they're not particularly good either. One of the big weaknesses of the quins Codex is that there is no actual specialist combat unit choice that *is* capable of deleting stuff in combat. So you end up with a lot of decent combat units, but none that are actually elite.


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BTW, they just let slip in the Q&A that modifiers in 9th can never be more than +1 or -1, so suit of hidden knives is now undoubtedly a big gimmick. It also a pretty big nerf to eldar generally, and especially to quins bikes and boats.

Tbh the -1/+1 isn’t a huge surprise. It’s got silly with -4/-5 out there. Personally I think -2 is prob a fair limit but we don’t know if it could get worse by your own actions too (eg. moving your heavy weapons). I think we’ll have wait and see but I definitely see -1 hit and -1 wound being central to us. We can keep our bikes at -1 hit fairly easily (even if the opponent has +1) so it will be very interesting to see how cover works, will Gloomwake be a sleeper ability? I’d hate to see our 4++ become less useful so who knows?

Edit. I agree that Suit Of Hidden Knives is prob done now as a relic. Tbh I’m fine with that as now I can take Shadowstone, Cegorach’s Lament & Curtianfall / Twilight Fang every game. Maybe Cegorach’s Rose if fighting lots of W3.

The reroll wounds part of the Rose is as good or better than the flat 3D a lot of the time. Without the Rose a Solitaire really struggles to do much of anything out there on his own. Can't reliably kill even a non-primaris space marine character with the standard 4++, which is kinda sad.

There's always the possibility of getting the solitaire to reroll wounds by positioning a TM nearby

Sure, but the solitaire is a very points-inefficient way to attack something close to the rest of your army. There are match-ups where you may end up doing that just because you have nothing better to do with him, but if my general plan was that my solitaire would get wound rerolls from a TM, I just wouldn't take him.

There’s no game ever where I’m leaving my Solitaire at home. Sorry, but just the psychological impact he can have on an enemy is worth <100 points.

It's definitely worth the points against people who don't really know how anemic he is without the relic.

Yeah, I do find most people either know little about Harlequins or are the sort that ran into a -4 to hit suit Solitaire. I tend to over-suggest his lethality.

According to the new article, it costs 3CP to take a battalion that your warlord isn't part of. Lol.

Quins back to being terrible competitively, it looks like. Mono quins don't get there because the codex just isn't remotely complete, and now you get punished harshly for taking the stuff you need to take to supplement the incomplete codex.

Yeah it looks kinda bad....

Don’t soup
Don’t tag tanks
Don’t stack hit modifiers
Don’t use your fallback ability or get punished by any large unit you were engaged with - the new strat was supposed to help us right?

The new strat is junk, I wouldn't worry about that either way.

It's everything else that looks extremely grim.

I'm guessing that going Ynnari will allow Eldar soup without the extra CP penalty.

I dunno, it's possible. But even if so, that's making your entire army junk from a competitive point of view, so it's even more counterproductive.

Ynnari will have to have a rule otherwise its just dead in the water, then pulled out and beaten to make sure it doesn't get up.

The new Strat isn’t rubbish. If your troupe, TM, solitaire is in melee with say 30 Plaguebearers, gaunts, boyz, cultists, etc. and wants to fall back and charge a tastier target (or just wants to be out of this combat, maybe to grab an objective) you’re taking on average 5 mortal wounds. That’s pretty brutal on a relatively small model count army that relies on its manoeuvrability and invulnerable saves.

So far things aren’t looking too great.

Malefic666 wrote:
The new Strat isn’t rubbish. If your troupe, TM, solitaire is in melee with say 30 Plaguebearers, gaunts, boyz, cultists, etc. and wants to fall back and charge a tastier target (or just wants to be out of this combat, maybe to grab an objective) you’re taking on average 5 mortal wounds

Don't forget they have to be in Engagement Range to do the wounds. We don't know what that range is yet, but if it stays the same as it currently is then at least lone characters should be safe from the whole unit rolling against them

Malefic666 wrote:
The new Strat isn’t rubbish. If your troupe, TM, solitaire is in melee with say 30 Plaguebearers, gaunts, boyz, cultists, etc. and wants to fall back and charge a tastier target (or just wants to be out of this combat, maybe to grab an objective) you’re taking on average 5 mortal wounds. That’s pretty brutal on a relatively small model count army that relies on its manoeuvrability and invulnerable saves.

So far things aren’t looking too great.

Eh how you plan to get 30 boyz into contact with solitaire and then have solitaire whiff everything and not kill single ork?

Just how big base solitaire is? As on 32mm base it's physically impossible to get 30 into combat with him.

Real average is more like 2-3

tneva82 wrote:


Eh how you plan to get 30 boyz into contact with solitaire and then have solitaire whiff everything and not kill single ork?

Just how big base solitaire is? As on 32mm base it's physically impossible to get 30 into combat with him.

Real average is more like 2-3

This is now too far in the *other* direction. Unless there are only 2-3 Orks left alive, it won't be 2-3. If the engagement rules stay the same as they are now, 10+ Orks should be able to do it. Just not the whole unit.

Malefic666 wrote:
The new Strat isn’t rubbish. If your troupe, TM, solitaire is in melee with say 30 Plaguebearers, gaunts, boyz, cultists, etc. and wants to fall back and charge a tastier target (or just wants to be out of this combat, maybe to grab an objective) you’re taking on average 5 mortal wounds. That’s pretty brutal on a relatively small model count army that relies on its manoeuvrability and invulnerable saves.

So far things aren’t looking too great.

If you are falling back from 30 mans you are playing poorly. My 5-6 Troupes wont be charging 30mans either, i'll make sure 15 of them die first from shooting, and if they are charging me, no matter what, 5 Troupes are going to die vs ANY horde 30man unit in the game and i left them there on purpose to be charged.

So yes the strat is bad. It only helps Hordes fight super elites that can take the hits that wants to fallback, which is very little.

How are Custodes, Marines, Quins, CWE, DE, all the "elite" armies going to use this? So you spend 1CP to deal 1 MW... cool, ok they still fellback, they still out of combat, they still have wounds left, they still going to shoot you. And at times where they WANT to fallback just to get out of combat, if you spend 1cp to kill off the last guy, well cool you kill 1 guy and wasted 1CP, but now they can shoot you anyways, or you could have just shot them with a pistol later and not use the CP.

It should have been a core rule (without the CP, just everyone got it like a OW for melee). But If fallbacks, OW, and other rules change to make it harder to use or are penalized then sure i can see it being a stratagem.

But as of right now, i'm never going to use it as a Quins player.

Wow. I never said I’d use it as a Harlequins player, all I said was it wasn’t rubbish as large units can possibly put out quite a few mortal wounds on elite units and mortal wounds hurt Harlequins because they negate our invul save.
Engagement range I assume is within 2” of a model in base to base, 20-30 is easy for Ork boyz, cultists, gaunts, etc. to do against a reasonably sized unit as most horde models are on 25mm bases and even 32mm bases should get 12-18 in this range. Of course the Harlequin unit should kill whatever horde we’re taking about but there are times we can end up consolidating into a unit to avoid shooting or find ourselves in melee unexpectedly. I’m not arguing examples in a vacuum, I’m just saying this strat could situationally be nasty against us. This is why I dislike this forum now, you have a different point of view and all of a sudden you’re ‘playing badly’. There’s loads of reasons one might want to fall back from a combat and giving specific examples is neither helpful or realistic. I’ve been in loads of positions where I needed to do something out of the ordinary to win hold more or even just hold in an ITC game.

Anyway. My opinion is it isn’t necessarily a bad strat and I’ll reserve judgement until I see all of 9th rules. Will I use it with my DG, Custodes, or Harlequins.... nope unlikely.

If your troupe is in combat with a big unit at the start of your turn and not ALREADY dead or effectively dead, something really weird happened. I mean how did that unit of 30 ork boyz get 30 models into attack range of your troupe and yet not attack it? Because if they did attack it, it'd be gone already.

There are definitely situations you can come up with where the strat would be worth using. They're just super rare and niche.

True but I’m not arguing the situational use, I’m just saying a strat that causes mortal wounds for falling back is not necessarily rubbish It’s rubbish for us sure as there aren’t many times we will fall back (but I’d argue we can’t say we never will need that option), and it’s nasty against elite armies (if and when they want to fall back which I concede is unlikely) because it bypasses invulnerable saves. Maybe the OP should’ve said, the strat is not particularly useful for us and likely to have a limited use but when it does it could be nasty?

but isnt the new follow up strat just better pretty much all the time ?

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
but isnt the new follow up strat just better pretty much all the time ?

Yes.

With new blast rules, until tomorrows daily, as of right now 5man Skyweavers and Troupes for now on lol.

The penalty for going from 5 to 10 is almost irrelevant; at most, it's 1 more shot on average, and never more than 2.

The penalty from going from 10 to 11, however, is massive. You will definitely never see a 12 man squad again.

There are going to be well over 100 blast weapons. Anything to give you even 1 less chance to hit is going to be good for us. We lose by Rate of Fire.

You'd much rather have most blast weapons shooting at troupes of 6-10 than literally anything else in the army.

I do think that the skyweavers maybe go down to 5, because 6 model is the worst possible unit size. If you can't get up to 10, it may not be worth going above 5. I think that depends mainly on how many people actually take blast weapons. I have a feeling this is going to turn out to be a big bust - the points cost of blast weapons will go up to account for the blast characteristic, and nobody is going to want to them because nobody wants to pay points to make what are mostly anti-tank weapons better at killing big units that few people are taking anyway. I think the only blast stuff people are reliably going to take is indirect fire, and very few indirect fire weapons actually get any significant benefit at all from the 6-10 size bracket with blast, so it's going to be a very minor impact.

But I certainly wouldn't decide I can't take a 10-man troupe because a couple weapons that don't want to be shooting them anyway may get an average one extra shot each. Like if somebody is silly enough to shoot at my 10-man troupe with, say, an earthshaker cannon instead of at bikes or starweavers...I am all for that. That's a trap I'll happily set. And if I come up against a big indirect list, that's going to mess up my plans bad whether I'm facing a total of 40 average indirect shots a turn against 5 man troupes or 44 average shots against 10 man troupes. The difference doesn't really change anything. But having a 10-man squad that can get double benefit from a strat - that makes a huge difference.

The threats to troupes are volume of fire weapons, not blast weapons. Hurricane bolters are point for point way, way more threatening than anything that is going to have the blast characteristic. If I see my opponent's army and it's full of blast weapons instead of volume of fire weapons...I'm rubbing my hands together, that's a good game for me, not a bad one. Whether my troupes are 5 mans or 10 mans.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The penalty for going from 5 to 10 is almost irrelevant; at most, it's 1 more shot on average, and never more than 2.

The penalty from going from 10 to 11, however, is massive. You will definitely never see a 12 man squad again.

16% increase to firepower assuming it's roll of 3 and not result of 3(and note this assumption goes flat out against warhammer community post that says blast weapons will always have minimum 3 attacks vs 6-10 models...). If it's result then it's 50% boost(d3, 1 or 2 is less than 3 so 3...). About same as if troupes would suddenly go 13 pts per model. Irrelevant change? Even more to the point as shown in WHC it's 50% increase...


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yukishiro1 wrote:
You'd much rather have most blast weapons shooting at troupes of 6-10 than literally anything else in the army.

I do think that the skyweavers maybe go down to 5, because 6 model is the worst possible unit size. If you can't get up to 10, it may not be worth going above 5. I think that depends mainly on how many people actually take blast weapons. I have a feeling this is going to turn out to be a big bust - the points cost of blast weapons will go up to account for the blast characteristic, and nobody is going to want to them because nobody wants to pay points to make what are mostly anti-tank weapons better at killing big units that few people are taking anyway. I think the only blast stuff people are reliably going to take is indirect fire, and very few indirect fire weapons actually get any significant benefit at all from the 6-10 size bracket with blast, so it's going to be a very minor impact.

Eh many of the blast weapons are already good at dealing with non-horde targets so are taken already. And funny optimism for points. GW wants you to take them so that people make damned sure they don't bring hordes.

For AT you want multi shot weapons rather than some stupid heavy 1 weapon.

So cover is still a bonus to saving throw that doesn't affect invulnerable saves... so Gloomwake is still virtually useless