Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Has anyone tried to field a full Harlequin army with the 10e rules? I'm coming back to the hobby after many years and realized it's now possible with the current Aeldari army. From the looks of it you can just load up on Troopes (maybe in Starweavers for extra survivability/speed), with some Voidweavers for fire support, and Skyweavers to fly around and wreak havoc. Kind of plays like the old school Dark Eldar wych armies.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Is this a reasonably competitive direction compared to the current meta?

Dismal wrote:
Has anyone tried to field a full Harlequin army with the 10e rules? I'm coming back to the hobby after many years and realized it's now possible with the current Aeldari army. From the looks of it you can just load up on Troopes (maybe in Starweavers for extra survivability/speed), with some Voidweavers for fire support, and Skyweavers to fly around and wreak havoc. Kind of plays like the old school Dark Eldar wych armies.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Is this a reasonably competitive direction compared to the current meta?

None of the Harlequinn sheets are BATTLELINE (Unless you make a Troupemaster your Warlord) - by making a Troupemaster your Warlord to make Troupes BATTLELINE so you can take 6 units of them, and max out on the Starweavers - there's potential. 1 Shuriken Canon isn't that scary. 30 of them, on the other hand.... 2 Troupemasters, 6x5 Troupes, 6 Starweavers, 3x4 Skyweavers, and 3 Voidweavers is 1985.

I don't think its bad - you've got a pretty high volume of S6 -1 D2 fire (I'd estimate 90 shots, 60 rolled hits, 10 exploding 6's, 70 total hits a turn just from the Canon if you really massage the list, plus, you're going to have incredibly high movement. 4++ everywhere. Its something of a skew list - you've only got three S12 guns for Monsters and Vehicles so you'll more than likely have to use weight of fire over "optimized" target selection. It might also be a glass canon - not much high Toughness You're going to cap out at 9 T6 W6 speeder types.

Harlequin units lost a lot of their flavour and abilities in the index cards, until the codex puts them back in. Flipbelts are gone, as are a lot of the powers. The Kiss, Embrace and Caress are all merged into one statline, and no keywords.
But then, most other armies lost things, so it depends on how 'Harlequiny' you want to get, and to rely on what you have left to use.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Harlequin units lost a lot of their flavour and abilities in the index cards, until the codex puts them back in. Flipbelts are gone, as are a lot of the powers. The Kiss, Embrace and Caress are all merged into one statline, and no keywords.
But then, most other armies lost things, so it depends on how 'Harlequiny' you want to get, and to rely on what you have left to use.

To add to this, harlies are in a slightly weird place where they seem (on paper) to work better with help from non-harlies. Troupes can be surprisingly durable if you take them with Yvraine and have a footseer casting Fortune on them, for instance. Death Jesters are pretty good, but they're way better if you take the eldar enhancement that lets them automatically generate a 6 each turn. The Troupe Master has a special rule that uses Strands of Fate dice. Which means that you're sort of encouraged to have guardians or Eldrad around to generate more dice.

Also, while void/sky weavers still pack decent anti-tank, fusion pistols got left in the dust along with other melta weapons this edition. So depending entirely on bikes and squishy vehicles for AT might be a little risky. It's really tempting to get some lance weapons in there with war walkers or something.

And with a lot of our flavorful abilities and strats gone, we don't have as much ability to jump away or mitigate incoming damage. So it's tough to keep squishy clowns alive after their initial attack.

My guess is that we get a kroot-style detachment in the codex that makes the clowns a little easier to field on their own.

The replies more or less confirm my thoughts on them, although I'm surprised more people didn't focus on their combat ability? Seems like what they're best at (first turn at least). I am somewhat torn about leader slots. I can live with limited troop selection in the other areas but their existing HQ slots seem to be more of the same rather than complementary to the troops. Half of their characters are solo only and the other half really just add attacks and maybe an infernal pistol (which, as was mentioned, got nerfed in this edition). I don't mind the thematic story that a Farseer or Eldrad is working with them and leads them into battle, but it's not entirely pure. Also, I wouldn't mind Yvraine as much if she could deep strike the unit she's with, otherwise that rule seems weird for her to have.

Do folks think Wave Serpents are worth the points? Another direction I could think about is taking one or two of those for bigger troupe units to have more hitting power and more weapon selection.

You're not limited to only HARLEQUINS units by the army building rules, right?
So you can also include other units which they have in their background like Wraithlords and Vypers.

Dismal wrote:
The replies more or less confirm my thoughts on them, although I'm surprised more people didn't focus on their combat ability? Seems like what they're best at (first turn at least). I am somewhat torn about leader slots. I can live with limited troop selection in the other areas but their existing HQ slots seem to be more of the same rather than complementary to the troops. Half of their characters are solo only and the other half really just add attacks and maybe an infernal pistol (which, as was mentioned, got nerfed in this edition).

The clowns seem to punch reasonably well. Their offense isn't really on anyone's complaint list. It's more the support around that offense. Right now, you can slam them into an enemy unit and do some decent damage. But after that, they're just a t3 unit flipping coins to try and save wounds. Compare to in the past where you could move them rather far after fighting, buff their invulns on the turn they charged in, etc.

The Shadowseer "synergizes" with the troops to a fault in that she's now the only way to get the kind of mobility they should have had by default. The Troupe Master makes their offense significantly better, so he's worth it if you just need a hammer unit. As mentioned, the DJ and solitaire are both good at their jobs, but those jobs don't involve joining troupe units.

Also, I wouldn't mind Yvraine as much if she could deep strike the unit she's with, otherwise that rule seems weird for her to have.

It's very weird that she has Deepstrike in the first place. I don't know what's up with that.

Do folks think Wave Serpents are worth the points? Another direction I could think about is taking one or two of those for bigger troupe units to have more hitting power and more weapon selection.

Serpents are fine. Having Twin-Linked change to be rerolls instead of more shots has humbled them a lot, but they're still solid. Given harlies' limited access to ranged anti-tank, I'd be tempted to stick with smaller units and put them in a falcon instead. More dakka, plus the supporting fire rule makes them a little less dependent on a TM.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
You're not limited to only HARLEQUINS units by the army building rules, right?
So you can also include other units which they have in their background like Wraithlords and Vypers.

This is a good point. Some vypers and wraith lords painted up like oldschool harlie versions would look pretty at-home in a harlie army and would do a lot to give them more AT and board presence.

Wyldhunt wrote:The Shadowseer "synergizes" with the troops to a fault in that she's now the only way to get the kind of mobility they should have had by default. The Troupe Master makes their offense significantly better, so he's worth it if you just need a hammer unit. As mentioned, the DJ and solitaire are both good at their jobs, but those jobs don't involve joining troupe units.

My thought was to take a TM to get the troupes as battleline, add a Solitaire as a unit to run around and cause chaos and Shadowseers to bolster troupes. Shadowseers are 60 points each though, which seems somewhat expensive for a hero that mainly is for movement option value for one unit per turn. Then again, if I only take one the opponent knows which unit will be the faster one.

This is a good point. Some vypers and wraith lords painted up like oldschool harlie versions would look pretty at-home in a harlie army and would do a lot to give them more AT and board presence.

I hadn't really thought about that. I forgot about the masks that some folks would put on the front of the Vyper Hulls or WL heads. I could give a go at converting those to make the theme work will still having AT. I have a strong bias for thematic armies, but I also want to have a strong shot at tourneys so it's a difficult tradeoff sometimes.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


This is a good point. Some vypers and wraith lords painted up like oldschool harlie versions would look pretty at-home in a harlie army and would do a lot to give them more AT and board presence.

Back in the day, there were a lot of Harlequin Wraithlord conversions- back when the whole canopy on Harlie bikes was a mask, rather than the current big canopy/little mask version.

Those canopy sized masks were great for kitbashed Writhlords.

PenitentJake wrote:

Back in the day, there were a lot of Harlequin Wraithlord conversions- back when the whole canopy on Harlie bikes was a mask, rather than the current big canopy/little mask version.

Those canopy sized masks were great for kitbashed Writhlords.

I remember those - made good models. I might see if I could source some of those online somewhere and convert it using the new WL model. The Vyper is about the same as it used to be so it should fit easily on the nose. Looks like you can still find them on ebay.

Monoquins don't have access to additional CP and very limited access to fate dice manipulation - basically only via footslogging shadowseer, who will die very fast if the enemy brings indirect. In combination with the nerfs to strands, that makes e.g. dealing with monsters very difficult. CC is rather anaemic, Troupes without master can only tackle chaff, 5 Troupes will probaly not enough to kill 5 MEQ on the charge and will absolutely die to every small gun around - the loss of -1 to hit + -1 to wound severly reduces survivability in comparison to former editions. Dealing with monsters seems especially hard - Vehicles can be killed by haywire, but our only high-strength weapons are the prism cannons and therefore limited to 3 per army. Mass fusion pistols could help, but with the reduction of fate dice, wounding on 5 with a single reroll isn't too great, and then, it's often just D3 damage due to the abysmal short melta range.
So what's left is mobility and outscoring, which is hampered by being one of the few (the only?) battleline units with only OC 1...

The OC point is a good one. The heavy objective-based play is something I'm going to need to learn through playing more in 10e. I agree that the army will mostly be played through mobility and trying to pick my battles. If I can take on half their army with all of mine, maybe I can wipe them fast enough to take the objectives uncontested, but that's a big "if."

Honestly, it's a pretty rare day that OC makes a big difference just like it was pretty rare for objective secured to make a big difference. When playing squishy space elves, I've generally either killed most of the enemy out of the area or I haven't. If there's a melee unit left living nearby and they decide to charge my space elves on the objective, most of my space elf units are not durable enough to avoid getting wiped out anyway.

OC is more useful on marines and necrons where you're hoping to survive a round of return fire.

Harlies had their own codex up until recently and didn't/couldn't share stuff like transports. Has gw issued any statements on whether the harlies are staying in the cwe codex?

shortymcnostrill wrote:
Harlies had their own codex up until recently and didn't/couldn't share stuff like transports. Has gw issued any statements on whether the harlies are staying in the cwe codex?

Not an outright statement, but the fact that they were in the eldar codex last edition and are in the same index this edition is probably telling. Like I said, my guess is they get the kroot treatment.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Honestly, it's a pretty rare day that OC makes a big difference just like it was pretty rare for objective secured to make a big difference. When playing squishy space elves, I've generally either killed most of the enemy out of the area or I haven't. If there's a melee unit left living nearby and they decide to charge my space elves on the objective, most of my space elf units are not durable enough to avoid getting wiped out anyway.

OC is more useful on marines and necrons where you're hoping to survive a round of return fire.

That's fair. The list of durable Eldar is basically: Wraithguard...and that's it. Much of my reflection on OC is based on watching the battle reports on Warhammer+. Still need to get more models together to take a stab at actually learning by playing. Unfortunately, since Harlies are not their own army, the Combat Patrol box doesn't do me much good.

The typical 5-Clown-boatcrew has a decent chance to fail at turning an objective from meq chaff unless the get the fusion shots off, so the obsec definitely can matter - in CC alone, 5 clowns will slay 3 marines and lose 1 or 2 models in the counterattack, which will lead to a draw on OC or even loss of the objective. Thus, you basically have to spend more resources to be sure of the result.