Irritated by Restrictions on Including Harles

I've got a Death Masque box on the way, and I've been looking at ways of adding Harlies to my army.  I'm getting rather annoyed by how restrictive the formations are.

I particularly like the idea of attaching the named Death Jester to a unit of Warriors to have a Shrouded unit of poison spewing doom, but it appears the only way to do that is to go Unbound, run a Masque detachment which means buying more models, or using a Coherian.

The more models issue isn't huge; I can probably just trade the DW models in Death Masque for the Harlie models straight up, but it still forces a pretty heavy investment in Harlies rather than just a splash of them. I'd also really rather have one Troupe to fit the assault role, being forced to take three of them seems like it would pigeon hole me into one specific set of tactics.

What are some of the combinations people have come up with for Harlies, and how do they get around the irritating restrictions on Harlie formations?

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What are some of the combinations people have come up with for Harlies, and how do they get around the irritating restrictions on Harlie formations?

They don't. This has been a discussed issue and I think that GW has shot itself in the leg. If the Clowns had a HQ character or less restrictive formations it would be easier to pick them up (since most people run them as allies and not as a main army). This would make them much more attractive to buy, because you wouldn't have to buy a sh*tton of them to use them.

Your options are:

-Take the Masque Detachment

-Take the Coherian Host

-Go unbound

That's a word I don't use in public. *Sigh*

Ah, well. I think there's still some merit in putting in Cegorach's Jest and subbing in Death's Companions and Blades of Fate. The named Jester would still add a lot of survivability to a Cast of Players and might be worthwhile.

Ive had great success running either cast of players or heroes path for just a splash of harlies in my DE army.

But that doesn't accomplish exactly what you want

To be fair a unit of 20 warriors with two splinter cannons with a guaranteed 5+ cover save would probably be broken.

Not even close I'm afraid. Even 2+ cover would be a mildly okay unit.

Yeah, harlequins are very restricted army in terms of organization, due to, of course, the lack of HQ choice...

In my case, Harles become the primary force with the allied Purge Coterie (or less frequently, CAD or AD). When I play a DE primary force, I just use The Heroes' Path, meaning no specter.

EDIT: The Blades of Fate are awesome, but I cannot find any good reason to use both troupe compositions, i.e., The Company of the Threefold Stranger & Death's Companions.

I think Harlies were a test in truly themed codex - limiting how you take them to keep them themed to the universe. If every codex was like this I would expect less complaints but as it stands - yes they are very limited in how you can add them.

And no - a 5+ cover save in the open on T3 kabalites is so far from broken... 1 flamer and the unit is (quite literally) toast!