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So I've been playing with my harlequins off and on since they got their own codex. The models are great, the fluff is great, and their rules are genuinely interesting and fun to play with! That said, I'm finding that my own clown collection seems to get hard countered by a lot of things. Obviously shooty armies are going to give them a tough time since they're fragile and dependent upon psychic powers to stay alive, but even hordes and mechanized armies are giving me a lot of trouble. Against hordes, usually orks, I find that I can reliably win combat, but then I end up unable to hit & run because the enemy is dead and just get killed off by another nearby unit. Against mechanized enemies, I can pop transports easily enough with abundant haywire and fusion pistols and even the odd shuriken/shrieker cannon, but I generally end up exposing myself to do it, and then I don't have enough redundancy to deal with the other transports afterwards.

Basically, they hit plenty hard, but they cost a lot and seem to struggle to stay alive after killing one thing. Certain changes in the GW FAQ rough draft (such as not being able to embark on allied transports or use multiple grenades in melee when my seers join my troupes) are poised to make life just a bit harder for my clowns, but I kind of want to put them on the table more often. Any advice on how to use harlequins? Preferably as a standalone force?

You can go double Masque, with minimum troupe sizes and only a couple caresses and a haywire grenade in each squad, and everyone in starweavers. Sprinkle with Shadowseers and haywire bikes as desired.

That will give you 6 troupes, all of whom can still butcher hordes, can harm vehicles a little, and have high mobility.
Any shadowseers you add can go either telepathy or phantasmansy, as both have some great offensive and defensive powers, and can probably keep some guys alive.

I've had decent success with Cegorach's Revenge at 1500pts. Troupes have about 6 caresses, 2 embraces and 1 with a sword. One Seer per squad and Death Jesters get spread across the board and sometimes camp Objectives while the Solitaire goes for whatever I think is best which is normally something big like MC's.

Bikes I send after either large squads or small elite units.

Voidweaver goes to Objectives and might take some snapshots.

The major downside is that the Troupes live and die on psychic powers which are nowhere near as reliable as they used to be.

My motto for Harlequins; the stronger you are, the stronger they are. The weaker you are, the weaker they are.

It holds mostly true, and games where I often have the least ability to really manipulate the flow of battle are against Imperial Guard, Tyranids, and Orks! They die instantly when I hit them, leaving my extremely fragile units in the open to a strong counter-attack.

Against Orks and Imperial Guard I've found our best asset is to subject them to just SO many Leadership tests. Don't focus on destroying whole units, but rather on routing and pinning the units around what you're going to assault. Also, if you're doing too well in assault, go for multi-assaults. You'll lose Furious Charge, but if you still win combat it'll be harder for them to both break, meaning you're more safely in their lines when it comes to being shot at.

Against units in transports, you really do have to focus fire the transport dead with your vehicles so that you can charge in afterwards. Popping Chimeras full of guys is really an achilles heel of the Harlequins. If you can get a Mask of Secrets nearby, at least there's a much better chance for them to be pinned when they get out.