The first thing I want to get at is the basic Harlequin Troupe, and how best to use them. While they may be fantastic in combat, especially with the right upgrades, they are crazy squishy if left unsupported. We're talking Guardsman killable here. Toughness 3 can be pretty brutal on a unit, particularly when you have to weather shooting as you come up the board, potentially a transport explosion (which will likely spell the end of a Harlequin unit inside of it) and then overwatch fire. This means you'll have to mitigate this however you can.
The first way is to take a transport. Obviously you can have Starweavers, but if you want larger squads, look to your allies, Eldar and Dark Eldar. With Dark Eldar, you can take Raiders, which are generally more durable than a Starweaver, with a larger capacity, and honestly in my opinion, the best choice. Eldar give you the Wave Serpent, which is more durable still, with 12 capacity, so you can bring along a Shadowseer and Jester, but the downside is that you can't disembark and assault from it in the same turn. Huge bummer. Its not all bad for the Wave Serpent though, as some psychic support from the Shadowseer could really give you some good defenses the turn you jump out via Invisibility, or Fog of Dreams.
The other way to try and do it is to take them in big blobs on foot. 12 Harlies with a Shadowseer. This is looking to be my preferred method at the moment, because with the right powers and a litte luck, these guys will soak a ton of firepower, even if they never see combat. Take them in a list with a Wraithknight and a Wave Serpent or two, and the opponent won't have a good option to shoot at. Do they kill the Knight and get creamed by Harlies and the Serpents? Kill the Harlequins and get pulverised? Or go for the vehicles and get assaulted into oblivion.
This leads me nicely into the next thing I'd like to talk about. Threat saturation. Harlequins are going to rely largely on threat saturation to get into combat and wreck face. To clarify, I'm talking about having so many things on the table that need to be dealt with right away, that something will make it through. This is also known as the "They can't kill us all!" strategum by imperial scholars. Again, the best way to do this is probably in using allies. There's a reason that this book is called Codex: Eldar Harlequins. If you want to run a solo act though, I think the way to go is a unit or two in Starweavers, with a big foot blob to back them up, and two big units of Zephyrglaive Skyweavers (think 5 or 6). This will give you 4 units that will be in combat turn 2, with the blob potentially getting a turn two charge, but a turn 3 almost for sure. Skyweavers will also take a good amount of firepower to kill, given some decent cover saves, and if there's lots of LoS blocking terrain on the field, you can maybe even hide before jumping out to clown punch some jerks.
The last way to use Harlequins is as a counter-attack unit. Keep them behind your shooty units, ideally out of sight, and wait. Use them as a threat so that people don't want to charge your more vulnerable things. Sort of like a chess game, where you use a pawn as bait to get a more valuable piece. It's not a particularly subtle or clever tactic, but even if they notice, the threat still remains. Do they sacrifice their unit to charge the thing, or stand there and get blown to pieces?
Finally, we'll start getting to some cool combinations using Harlequins, Eldar, and Dark Eldar.
The first one has seen the light of day... sort of. In a recent apocalypse game. The basic idea is this. Take an Eldar primary Combined Arms Detatchment, a Dark Eldar Allied Detatchment and the Cast of Players Harlequin formation. Now, we're going to need at least one Farseer, but try to get in 2, one with the Spirit Stone of Anath'lan, a Dark Eldar Archon with Webway Portal, Armour of Misery, and if you have the points, a Shadowfield, 12 Harlies with your chosen weapon upgrades (I like the Harlequin's Caress), a level 2 Shadowseer with the Mask of Secrets and the Death Jester. Keep in mind, we're looking at around 800 points here, so it's not very competitive, but bear with me. We're going to roll all 3 psykers on Telepathy, looking for at least 1 Invisibility, and as many Terrifies as we can get. So, everything goes in reserve, and hopefully will come in turn 2. With the Webway portal you will not scatter, so you'll drop in next to whatever unit(s) you want to not be a thing anymore, as close as you can. The Archon's Armour of Misery, and the Shadowseer's Mask of Secrets are now giving all units within 6" -4 to their Ld. That's huge. Now, we'll hopefully get to cast some powers. Invisibility goes up to save you from scary shooting, and hopefully we got terrify a bunch of times. Lets say we got it twice and droped down right close to 2 units. We'll cast it once on each so their Ld is at -5. Thats a MAXIMUM of Ld 5, if they had 10. Now's the fun part. Psychic shriek happens as many times as possible. For those of you who don't know, Psychic shriek is a psychic shooting attack wherein you roll 3d6 minus the target's Ld. Anything that exceeds their Ld does the difference in wounds that ignore armour and cover saves. If we get that off twice on a unit with Ld 5 (from all our debuffs) we're looking at an average of about 11 wounds. So basically, any unit that is not a vehicle is going to be erased, unless it's a big unit of something. This will likely force a morale check, which they will more then likely fail. If they don't you still have your shooting phase with your good friend the Death Jester. Hopefully they'll still have a guy or two within 6" of your Archon. If so, and you manage to kill a model (not terribly unlikely with a Shuriken Cannon against a horde) they're making a morale test on Ld 3... at best.
Expensive? Yes. Gimmicky? My GOD yes. Reliant on psychic powers to work? 100% yes! But, if it works, your opponent will throw everything he has at that unit, because if it survives, the same thing will keep happening turn after turn. There's a catch, however. The rest of your force should be made up of units that can do some anti-tank duty for you. We're talking Wave Serpents, Ravagers, Fire Prisms, that sort of stuff. You need for units to not be in their transports early, so that your Harliestar of doom has something to destroy.
Now, if you don't feel like hinging your whole army around a single unit, I have some other ideas as well, so chill out.
Eldar/Harlequin List 1500 Points
HQ:
- Farseer on Jetbike with Spirit Stone of Anath'lan - 130
Troops:
- 5 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent with Twin-Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon, and Holo
Fields -210
- 5 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent with Twin-Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon, and Holo
Fields -210
- 3 Windrider Jetbikes - 51
Fast Attack:
- 5 Warpspiders with Exarch with Fast Shot - 134
Heavy Support:
-Wraithknight with Suncannon and Scattershield, and a Scatter Laser - 300
Harlequin Formation Detatchment
Cast of Players
- 12 Players with 11x Harlequin's Caress, Troupe Master with Harlequin's Caress and Cruscendo - 301
- Death Jester - 60
- Shadowseer Mastery Level 2 with Mask of Secrets and Haywire Grenades - 105
Total: 1501
This list gives you a good mix. The Wave Serpents will provide some solid fire support, along with the Warp Spiders and Wraithknight, while the Harlequins and Wraithknight close with the enemy. The Farseer is on a Jetbike so that he can join the Harlequins and not slow them down, and he'll hopefully be getting Invisibility, while the Shadowseer rolls on Phantasmancy for Veil, Fog of Dreams, and Dance of Shadows. I took the Mask of Secrets again, because it really is fantastic, and hopefully the Death Jester will be able to benefit from it to pull some units into charge range.
Dark Eldar/ Harlequin List 2000 Points
HQ:
- Archon with Agoniser, Blaster, Haywire Grenades, Shadowfield, and Webway Portal - 180
Elites:
- 5 Trueborn with 4x Blaster and a Dracon with Haywire Grenades in a Raider with Darklance and
Nightshields - 205
Troops:
- 5 Wyches with Hekatrix with Haywire Grenades in a Venom with extra Splinter Cannon - 130
- 5 Wyches with Hekatrix with Haywire Grenades in a Venom with extra Splinter Cannon - 130
Harlequin Formation Detatchment
The Serpent's Brood
- 6 Players with 5x Harlequin's Caress and a Troupe Master with Harlequin's Caress and Haywire
Grenades - 163
- 6 Players with 5x Harlequin's Embrace and a Troupe Master with Harlequin's Embrace, Haywire
Grenades and Cruscendo - 150
- 6 Players with 5x Harlequin's Kiss and a Troupe Master with Cegorach's Rose, and Haywire
Grenades - 155
- 5 Skyweavers with 5x Zephyrglaive - 300
- 5 Skyweavers with 5x Zephyrglaive - 300
- Starweaver - 70
- Starweaver - 70
- Starweaver - 70
- Voidweaver - 75
Total: 1998
This is a very different list. It relies on lots of small fast units to get into combat and pulp what they're fighting. The Archon goes with the Trueborn and drops down to nuke a vehicle. Everything else boosts forwards as fast as possible, using as much LoS blocking terrain as possible to close the distance. Everything in this army should be jinking, except maybe the Harlequin stuff, which can use their mirage launchers. Hopefully you'll be able to get a few units into combat, and I would recommend assaulting a unit or two with multiple squads, to ensure that you won't take many attacks back, before moving on to your next target. It also would likely be worth it to take one of your Troupe Masters as your Warlord, as some of those traits are pretty good, and you'll get to re-roll thanks to the formation.
Harlequins 2000 Points
Cegorach's Revenge
Troops:
- 12 Players with 5x Harlequin's Caress, Troupe Master with Cegorach's Rose, and Haywire Grenades
- 260
- 12 Players with 5x Harlequin's Kiss, Troupe Master with Harlequin's Kiss, Cruscendo and Haywire
Grenades - 245
- 12 Players with 5x Harlequin's Kiss, Troupe Master with Harlequin's Kiss, and Haywire Grenades
- 240
Elites:
- Shadowseer Mastery Level 2, with Mask of Secrets and Haywire Grenades - 105
- Shadowseer Mastery Level 2, with the Laughing God's Eye, and Haywire Grenades - 110
- Shadowseer Mastery Level 2 - 85
- Death Jester - 60
- Death Jester - 60
- Death Jester - 60
- Solitaire - 145
Fast Attack:
- 4 Skyweaver Jetbikes with Zephyrglaives - 240
- 4 Skyweaver Jetbikes with Zephyrglaives - 240
Heavy Support:
- 2 Voidweavers - 150
Total: 2000
This list uses the Cegorach's Revenge formation, because at high points, I think it's the best way to try and play a solo Harlequin list.What we've got is 3 big foot blobs of clowns (36 in all) with a Shadowsser for each. I think what I would do, is keep the Death Jesters all by themselves. The reason for this is that if your opponent want's to kill them, they have to devote resources to killing JUST them, which really sucks to have to do (especially for a T3 model). If they decide to ignore them, then they're going to have to deal with them making their units run all over the place, especially when (if) the Mask of Secrets Shadowseer gets close. The Skyweavers will offer some melee support/distraction, and the Voidweavers can lay down a bit of support. The main weakness of this army is that there's little that can do anything to flyers, so a flying spam army will wreck you, and vehicles will be unopposed until you get to combat as well. Still, you've got decent model count, and with some psychic support, I think that the Players will be tough to deal with.
Keep in mind that I still haven't gotten a chance to do much playtesting, and so while some of this stuff may look good on paper, it may not perform as well in an actual game.
And with that, I will end this chapter. I may come back in awhile and do a part 4 after I've gotten a chance to use this book a little more, but for now I think that this is really all I have to say about Codex: Eldar Harlequins. Thanks for reading!
Great write up, thanks for the info
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