Quin/De synergy

Klaivex, 800 gets you all that with a couple seers. The troupes are 285 total, two starweaves 140, and 15o for the two void weavers. The ML seer with mask is 100. That's enough left over for some more Seers/jesters/solitare. They are also not empty points.

Quins seem pretty cool and would put in some heavy damage. All 3 of their weapons are good. I'm leaning towards the mini caltrops for them, but this is a complete meta call, all 3 options are good. I like most of the formations if you are willing to put in that many points. Heroes formation seems great but SUPER pricy, I'd have to check out a solitaires effect in game. Company of actors is great for the -Ld bomb, and probably the one I'd try. The only problem I'd have is when they get out of combat it may be a problem. Veil of tears is insane, but not getting it off could mean the whole unit of clowns gets eaten up really quick. For this reason I'd lean towards the options that arent mini caltrops (i cannot remember the names of these weapons...) and playing with them CAREFULLY. They might be effective but these guys will go down REAL fast with a failed veil.

The other formations have a lot of "skyweaver tax", i honestly think the unit is horrible so I wouldnt touch those. Don't even mention the voidweaver...

I don't know how much DE synergize with Quins except for the -Ld stuff. Giving us a psychic phase is cool, but it is a weak psychic phase with seers being the only psychic support. Its nice, but I wouldn't be too excited. Definitely wanna try the -Ld stuff, psychic shriek will MURDER stuff.

Overwatch still slaughters t3 5++.

I think harlies bring us a lot more synergy than just the LD stuff. I mean just simply a shadowseer with veil + whatever other powers, that -2LD Mask and a Death Jester joined to a unit - costs about the same as a combat archon. Add those two units to an assault unit, let's just use Incubi in this case since it addresses their weaknesses the most.

The Death Jester will cause pinning on a -4LD then, not to mention Veil will be protecting them until that charge (yeah veil can fail ofc, but put more dice towards it especially when it's important) The incubi then wont have to worry about being shot off the board and wont have to worry about overwatch. Obviously both of those rely on rolls in the game, but thats the same with relying on an armour save or FnP.
A unit doesnt become bad if it has a chance to fail an armour save.

But regardless of that, I think the shadowseer and death jester are the ones that bring the most synergy with our DE. Being able to give our ravagers a 4+ cover out in the open so they dont have to jink is fantastic.

Also, I don't see how overwatch slaughter's t3 5++ models? If it manages wounds then yeah they'll most likely fail. But lets say a basic 10 man tactical squad overwatches. 20 shots, hitting on 6s - thats 3 hits on average, then one of those will wound on average which is likely one dead harlequin. You could even stick that wound on the troupe master if he's in front and then you have no dead harlequins.

They at least still have a save that might save some once in a while. Against units that can overwatch at normal ballistic skill you'd obviously have a terrible time, but then I wouldn't be charging them.

I dunno, maybe I'm missing something but I've never seen overwatch (normal overwatch at BS1) slaughter a unit, maybe people just dont roll so many 6's here : /

@Caldria, you're right that slaughter is probably an overstatement, but taking even 1 or 2 casualties in over watch is a big deal for models as expensive as harlequins.

10 marines will get about 3 hits, 2 of which will wound, and you might save 1 if your lucky. That is if they don't have any templates. If you have a squad of 5 or 6 it's kinda painful to lose any before they even get to combat

Mushkilla wrote:

Overwatch still slaughters t3 5++.

Keep away from flames


Anyway, at 1500 points LD bomb doesn't work :C too expensive

Overwatch, failed charges leaving you in rapid fire range, winning combat in your turn and being left out in the open within rapids fire range, failled tears, template weapons, being t3 5++ in assault, etc. A unit if harleqins will at best kill a chaff unit and then get shot off the board. They really massively on a few crucial dice rolls (Vail, run, and charge), that if failed leaves them vulnerable and exposed. They also really on pinning and moral gimmick s that fall flat against anything with fearless.

Mushkilla wrote:

Overwatch, failed charges leaving you in rapid fire range, winning combat in your turn and being left out in the open within rapids fire range, failled tears, template weapons, being t3 5++ in assault, etc. A unit if harleqins will at best kill a chaff unit and then get shot off the board. They really massively on a few crucial dice rolls (Vail, run, and charge), that if failed leaves them vulnerable and exposed. They also really on pinning and moral gimmick s that fall flat against anything with fearless.

you need to choose well what you charge

Remember, units falling back can not fire over watch. The death jester and the masked seer can be a pretty gnarly combo.

Hannibal.Lictor wrote:

Remember, units falling back can not fire over watch. The death jester and the masked seer can be a pretty gnarly combo.

That's incorrect. Pinned units can't fire overwatch, but falling back units can fire overwatch just fine.

Mushkilla wrote:

That's incorrect. Pinned units can't fire overwatch, but falling back units can fire overwatch just fine.

This is very true. Tau would be very happy to see a squad of clowns charging into them, I didn't think about overwatch good call. Im really questioning if ANY harlequin stuff is worth it now when we have so many options that are just plain better (IMO). We still have heroes way or something?? I gotta see them play but...seems pretty grim for this faction.

Caldria wrote:

But regardless of that, I think the shadowseer and death jester are the ones that bring the most synergy with our DE. Being able to give our ravagers a 4+ cover out in the open so they dont have to jink is fantastic.

Yeah this is good, luckily the powers we want are one warp charge. Its still worrying having this all on a single shadow seer, if the opponent has some psykers this phase gets much more worrying. Not to mention casting dance on the ravager means you arent casting veil on your troupe and it means your ravagers are 18" within range of your troupe for company of actors (this isnt a horrible stretch but i'd want my ravagers further). With heroes way it becomes okay, you can sit back the seer but I'd have to see how solitaire plays to see if he is worth his cost of a RWJF or an incubi unit in a venom.

Honestly harlequins arent BAD at all, im a huge fan of their units INDIVIDUALLY, just with such restrictions in running them I'm finding it hard to justify running them.

Quote :

Honestly harlequins arent BAD at all, im a huge fan of their units INDIVIDUALLY, just with such restrictions in running them I'm finding it hard to justify running them.

Exactly my thoughts.
The Deathjester alone could be borderline broken... reminds me of the old Chaos power Siren (3.5 Codex)

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

The Deathjester alone could be borderline broken... reminds me of the old Chaos power Siren (3.5 Codex)

Siren was the 3.5 edition Chaos codex that meant nothing could shoot you. I think you are thinking of lash of submission from the 4th edition Chaos codex.

The thing is lash of submission only needed to pass a leadership test at LD10 to move a unit 2d6" in any direction (and it worked on fearless units).

The death jester on the other hand has to, hit, wound, remove a model and the target unit needs to fail a leadership test at -2 (it doesn't work on fearless units). The advantage of the death jesters power is the unit counts as falling back which means: the unit can only move 3", snap fire and can't assault if it rallies next turn (unless it has ATSKNF). So a lot less reliable than lash of submission, but potentially more potent.

I have tried tonight the Heroes Path: AMAZING! The Jester is great against all non-fearless units, the seer is a -2LD with legs (and if there's not an opponent psyker defence, he can cast 1-2 powers) and a jeaster-like with hallucinogenic Launcher. The Solitaire is a perfect pressure model.
Both of 3 can hide themeselves easy (even behind GW Trees, done tonight), and in a DE army style, you add othe 3 choice with stealth+srhoud.

I have played something like:

Lhaemean in Venom
2×5 Kabal in Venoms
2×5 Scourges with haywire
9 Reavers with caltrops and Champ
2 Ravagers with lances

DarkArtisan with Webway

Heroes Path

Scourges, Ravagers, Reavers, are all choice witch getted shooted, better with no-cover shots (serpent, divinations etc). Add the 3 clowns, they get a lot of choice for the enemy, witch works very well.

I don't like Troupes in a DE army, they don't give anything that DE already need. But this 3 guys are awesome! Great add, to me

Here is my plan for using harlequins.

I've had a really hard time finding a good place to put my HQ (Succubus) in my army. I am avoiding grotesques and incubi since they are not really available to me and they are finecast. I would love to convert some Grotesques out of something but I have so many other things to paint I just want to get stuff done. I think Harlequins might be the answer.

I'm obviously looking at the Cast of Players formation since it is small and gives a crusader bubble to all Eldar and Dark Eldar. I would have them all ride in a raider with the Succubus carrying a glaive and the armor of misery and a haywire grenade. Two things to think about here, the raider can deep strike for free by itself but spending the extra points on the Succubus to make it a webway portal raider might be worth it. If not deep striking at all, enhanced aether sails might be needed.

Now comes the real shenanigans, adding Craftworld Eldar. This configuration would have to be used primarily in friendly games since usually tournaments or serious leagues limit you to two book sources. I was looking at having either a Farseer or an Autarch join the unit. The farseer is pretty self explanatory. If he gets any of the good Telepathy powers in conjunction with the shadowseer's phantasmancy or sanctic daemonology powers, it starts getting very scary. The Autharch would suit a more deep strike focused list. His modifier to reserve rolls will be handy and he can carry a banshee mask which will pretty much guarantee that the unit strikes first in combat. This would be an allied detachment with probably a min squad of windrider jetbikes and maybe a hemlock wraithfighter for extra spookiness.

Drawbacks: This unit will be super expensive and not 100% reliable. Not only will the points cost be high (decking out the Troupe with their special weapons starts adding up) but I will have to sacrifice a fast attack slot to get the raider for them. Any close combat unit in the game that relies on getting the charge to be effective isn't going to be reliable. I know there are going to games where the spooky scary -leadership space clowns will fail to charge. If this happens my opponent will probably remove them from the table very quickly.

Thoughts?

I don't like Harlequins with Dark Eldar, nor do I think they go well together.

Folks should stop thinking about how to overload your army with multiple expensive HQs for gimmicky leadership tricks and focus on what Dark Eldar actually does well, which is shooting Poison and Lances.

HERO wrote:

Folks should stop thinking about how to overload your army with multiple expensive HQs for gimmicky leadership tricks and focus on what Dark Eldar actually does well, which is shooting Poison and Lances.

40k is a game, some people play it for fun. And some folks find that trying new synergies or a new way to play their faction is fun.

I shall call my masque "Heroes Folly," jk. DE once had some nasty CC capacity that quins have revuved.

Quote :

Folks should stop thinking about how to overload your army with multiple expensive HQs for gimmicky leadership tricks

Quins are not about that. Quins are about veil of tears and heavy assault. That is their heart.

@Hero: Path pf the Herose add something what DE missing, imho

At the risk of restating what's already been said, I think you're missing the point of Harlequins, Hero. They fill a niche that should have been filled by Wyches - that is, an elite assault unit. I still have high hopes for a Wych cult supplement at some point, but until then, Harlequins are assault units that are actually worth their points. Plus, they bring some other interesting stuff to the table in the form of Jetbike gun platforms, and pseudo-venoms. I think people are talking a lot about the leadership shenanigans because the potential is interesting, but it's certainly not THE reason to take them.

All that being said, them being good at it doesn't necessarily make assault more viable than shooting, since they'll either get shot up before they get to combat, or get shot up immediately after trouncing something in melee. It's what I like to call "The Incubi Effect". But seriously, as you said, our best assets are flooding the board with poison and lances. It's not that people are saying that Harlequins will completely revolutionize our playstyle, only that they finally give DE some good assault units, which is nice because DE are touted as being assault-y and we really don't have good tools for it (barring Grots).

I too love having a ton of lances spread across multiple platforms in my army - They're not the best anti tank weapon (and my friend and regular opponent often plays a hybrid or pure mech IG, so I know well enough how fickle the lances can be), but they're not bad at anti tank when brought in sufficient numbers, and they're fairly decent anti infantry weapons against smaller eliter units.

But I definitely think harlies give us some good synergistic options, and I'm not just talking about the leadership tricks - those are only the most obvious. But I know well enough by now that building an entire list around leadership based tricks won't get you far (I was a big proponent of the Eldar hemlock/wraith/horror/terrify lists, until I found out it just won't work nearly reliably enough - granted the leadership tricks between DE and Harlies are a lot more reliable - but still not enough imo)

That being said, Harlie's offer a lot more support for us than just the Ld based stuff. The shadowseer is a big part of this - her support powers (Veil/Dance of Shadows etc) are perfect for our army. I love my ravagers, but they are useless if not firing at full ballistic skill every turn. Dance of Shadows gives them their jink save in the open without having to jink, which is great - although that power is ofc not guaranteed so I won't say much more about that.

Veil, however, is guaranteed. Sticking a shadowseer with one of our many units that do not like to be shot at makes them very happy. Obvious choices besides a harlequin troupe themselves would be units of wyches and incubi (though wyches are crap, and incubi are too niche for my lists/playstyles - even though they are my absolute most favourite looking models in the DE range)

Sticking them with a unit of haywire scourges (yeah, I love lances, but I still feel that having our anti tank spread across different types works well, no need to spam haywire scourges though, so that once tanks are down they wont bog you down too much by having no real other targets - although I do enjoy having scourges as the haywires help me more against mech IG than another 3 lances from a ravager)

But back to my point, Veil with haywire scourges is brilliant - their game is at 24" - keep the scourges at their max range and you will generally never be shot at by anything. The power is guaranteed as it is the primaris - it is only 1 warp charge so with a ML2 Shadowseer you'll be getting 3 warp charges minimum per turn which is the ideal amount to throw at a WC1 power.

It's also not a super expensive investment that you'll be sorry if veil does not go off and you then lose the unit. I know this kinda unit will help me against the Mech IG I face a lot.

Then some smaller synergy but one I'm wanting to try out - we all know our venoms are great at anti infantry and MC hunting. But like Hero mentions - if we face heavily mechanized lists our venoms become dead weight.

Well for 5 points more, we get the starweaver - which averages the same amount of wounds against GEQ and MEQ as our venoms but with the potential of also becoming ap2. In addition the starweaver is more survivable than a venom for one turn, and the starweaver can do something our venom can't: Multi task. Against a heavily meched up list our venom is of very limited use, but the starweaver has 6 S6 shots which can help take out transports and other light vehicles, allowing our lances to focus on the bigger stuff. Also, the starweaver isn't terrible at MCs either (I plan to use both venoms and starweavers alongside my 2-3 ravagers) Also it has one extra transport slot, allowing us to do the blaster archon + blasterborn combo again if we so wish.

Sorry for the wall of text :p

I think you've got some really good points, Caldria, especially about Starweavers. I think the same can be said for Voidweavers, in that for roughly the same price you're getting an up-gunned venom. The Starweaver is great because you get +1 transport capacity, so you can stick a squad of 5 with an IC, and you get all the bonuses that you mentioned already. The Voidweaver drops the transport capacity, but gets an incredibly flexible gun and some solid firepower. A lot of people take empty venoms anyway, so the loss of transportation isn't as big of a malus as it seems initially, I think. I think the trick with voidweavers is going to be hanging them back, playing them safe, and late-game boosting them right into groups of stragglers to take advantage of the aft gun.

HERO wrote:

I don't like Harlequins with Dark Eldar, nor do I think they go well together.

Folks should stop thinking about how to overload your army with multiple expensive HQs for gimmicky leadership tricks and focus on what Dark Eldar actually does well, which is shooting Poison and Lances.

I disagree.
First of all the "good" Elites are not that expensive for what they bring and second they do bring something our lances and poison lacks: S6 shooting. Their transports are a very good addition to our venoms (and they have a capacity of 6 -.- ) while the troupes are a good CC replacement for wyches.

Shadowseer and DJ are both solid.
I do not think the CAD is worth it as it has high taxes to unlock the elite units, but some formations do look promising.

I'd agree that shadowseers and the new Harlequin "Venom" both offer a lot of utility for shooting heavy lists, which is what DE do best - well, and then there's the coven supplement, but that's a different matter. The problem is that you cannot freely choose which of these units and how many of them you want to take. Because there's no option for CAD or Allied Detachment you're stuck with the masque, giving you 3 troupes you may not want) or denying you access to the Shadowseer. Sorry, I forgot the names of the respective formations, but the way taking units is restricted, it's almost impossible to build up proper synergies with DE without wasting points on units you don't want - and money, might I add.
Add to that the fact that some of the formations are not all that well designed, for example the thing that wants you to have 3 troupes with shadowseers and jesters, which puts you over the transport limit for your Starweaver. So you need to stick the jester somewhere else, no problem. Still costs you a LOAD of points you do not have.

Sorry this is getting ranty, but as it stands I think Harlies, as much as I love them, are a cool fluffy addition to our arsenal, nothing more. Their functionality is hampered by their cost and the restrictions in unit choice too much to be really good. And as much as I like the design idea behind their rules, a T3 5++ assault unit, no matter what support or how killy (which they actually are only sort of), is not game winning in this edition.