The Heroes Path, a New favorite for Cover

I love this Formation from Harlequins as an Ally detachment for my Coven main force

ShadowSeer The He might not be the Strongest but the powers are amazing. Some of my favorites are:

Mirror of Minds: With -1 Leadership from Coven, + his LD 10, you can Easily get off some wounds
Dance of Shadows: Give a Unit Stealth and Shrouded, How is this not a good thing with Grots/Talos
Fog of Dream: Reverse Invisibility

Death Jester With the Covens -1 LD and his -2LD for a Easy -3LD Forcing a Moral check to Run is AMAZING.

Ran 3 units of Orcs off the table, 1 per turn Ran some Space Wolves, some Tau etc.. Just so fun. And he is Cheap too.

Solitaire he is Costly but.... he is a BEAST, a 1 trick Pony if you ever seen one.

He has a once per game move/attack, he moves a D6 per turn (so turn 4 it is 4D6) and he gets 10 Attacks, +1 for Charge and +1 for Kiss (1 S6 ap2 instant Death).

He might only be S3/S4 on charge, but all his To Hit's of 6 are counted as a Wound and is ap2

He is GREAT for a Must needed Mopping up 1 unit, he is still good himself after that, but is only down to 6A base +1 for Kiss.


For about 250pts for 3 Models it really brings ALOT to the Coven and Ive been enjoying them.

The Heroes Path is my favorite addition to Covens for a Freakshow list. (Here's a link to a series about this sort of thing if you'd like to explore it more.)

The Death Jester is a hoss. The Freakish Spectacle bubbles plus his Death is Not Enough! rule can end a great number of threats before they even begin.

The Shadowseer is my favorite, though. One roll on TP (sacrifice for Psychic Shriek) and one on Phantasmancy is just brutal. Most of the Phantasmancy powers are witchfires, so you can use them even if he's mounted. And the Mirror of Minds, if you can get a -5 LD penalty going (super easy), will kill anything it successfully manifests against, with no hope for survival.

Why would you use the Kiss on the Solitaire though? His Caress seems much better, and the two are mutually exclusive.

But I agree, the Solitaire is an almighty terror on the field. If his job is showing people the fearsome power of a Chaos god, he does damn fine work!

I like to take a detachment of Codex DE if possible. Mounting each of them in a Venom makes the work they do so much more brutal. The Shadowseer and the Death Jester REALLY benefit from the added mobility. Plus it lets you bring an HQ with the Armor of Misery (for a further -2 bubble floating around!)

Remember, btw, that if you have more than one HC detachment (including each formation), their Freakish Spectacle negatives will stack! Even at lower point games, it's not uncommon for me to see six and eight wound Psychic Shrieks going off.

Yeah I have a list Im working on that is DE, Coven, Harlequins.

Jimsolo wrote:

Why would you use the Kiss on the Solitaire though?  His Caress seems much better, and the two are mutually exclusive.

There is some debate over that due to the wording of the kiss rule ("model equipped with").

I agree there is some debate, but the "kiss+caress" argument hinges on ignoring a line of text in the rulebook.

"If a model has more than one weapon, he must chose which one to attack with when it comes to strike blows--he cannot mix and match the abilities of several different melee weapons."

I really don't see how there is room for error on this rule (assuming you read the whole part, I've seen people quote only the first half). Is this one of those that originates with discrepancies between English and non-English versions of the rules?

But the wording on the Kiss isn't optional. If the model is equipped with a Kiss, one of its attacks must be a Kiss of Death attack.

So either the Solitaire chooses to use the Caress, but one of his attacks is a Kiss of Death attack anyway, because he's still equipped with it, or else he isn't allowed to use the Caress at all, because he is required to make a Kiss of Death attack.

Not really relevant to the topic so I'm deleting it. Also I've come around to believing I was wrong on interpretation.

But there is no conflict.  

Is Kiss of Death a special rule/ability of weapon A?  Yes.  

Does any rule grant a specific exception allowing you to still use the Kiss of Death ability in conjunction with the Weapon B?  No.

Therefore, no conflict occurs, and the BRB rule remains in effect.

Well I don't want to derail the thread further with something that is being discussed all over the place already so I'll move away from it.

You do realize that the Solitaire gets both the Embrace and Kiss as base weapons. He isn't adding it onto the unit but leaving it to save points instead of switching it out for one of the Enigmas of the Black Library which would make the expensive model more expensive.

I agree. My question was based on the fact that he mentioned the Kiss of Death (indicating he was using the Kiss to attack), and I was curious what his reasoning was for using the Kiss over the Caress. (Since the Caress seems like it'd usually be the preferable weapon choice.)

Then it was definitely a miss understanding on my part and what you were saying. There are times I would use the kiss over the embrace. If I had isolated a single character I think the chance of instant death would make it worth using over the embrace. It maybe situational and not the automatic go to but I would definitely use it under those odd circumstances.

Hmm. I hadn't thought about the Instant Death.

The only reason I could think of would be if you had some effect on the Solitaire that dramatically reduced his attacks. The Kiss of Death suddenly increases in value then, I'd think.

For anyone interested, and to avoid further derailing this thread, the rules debate over the Kiss/Caress can be found here although I would ask you not to necro that thread unless you have something that is going to add to the discussion.

Having Options imo is always a good thing and I just like to talk about options

The more options a Model has the more value it has (at a price that is, If the price is low and it has 2 options to me thats good). That being Said he is already the most costly Model in the Formation.

I do get more out of the other's, but for me, that price tag is justified b.c in a late game, he can WRECK one unit, if that unit is on an Object, or if I need Warlord still


And About the Kiss, I asked my Friend, he is the owner of my Local, he has down tournaments and won, he also Buys every book and army to get a feel for them (He is the store owner so it makes this easier for him) so I trust his opinions highly. He is in Favor for it being an extra attack and you get both.

He gives 2 reason for this:

1) It specially says, when this Model is equip with the kiss and Makes its attacks
2) Your not chosing to use the Kiss you chose the other and b.c the model Made an attack it gets the kiss.

(he Jokingly said and the price tag is high)

So for the purpose of this debate he allows both in his Store, but If I do tournaments I will make sure to ask an TO.

The kids is not an optional attack. It states that one of your attacks will be the kiss. The rest of his attacks are done by the embrace.

I use hero's path and find it a costly 300 for a nicely kitted...mastry level 2...everything. So I am stuck on this. Maybe at larger games.

JackKnife01 wrote:

The kids is not an optional attack. It states that one of your attacks will be the kiss. The rest of his attacks are done by the embrace.

I use hero's path and find it a costly 300 for a nicely kitted...mastry level 2...everything. So I am stuck on this. Maybe at larger games.

At my local all games are 2k-3k

If I was doing a 1750pts Tournament I wouldnt take it.

Ah the difference lol. I only have 1850 games generally.

JackKnife01 wrote:

Ah the difference lol. I only have 1850 games generally.

We used to play 1850, but then GW kept bringing out new toys and bigger ones, and we like to be able to play with all our toys

I tried it today.

(in combo with an armour of misery) against BA. We played 2 games.

I chose the Shadowseer as my warlord, to get the harlequin tactical cards. The plan was to aim for tactical VP while my 3 harlies kill and distract. And how they killed! The shadowseer was my MVP by far!

First game: I won 24-0, and wiped out his army on turn 3, before his aeroplanes and death company came. (We agreed that, fluffwise, when they arrived, there was nothing left on the field, and thus the DC believed they came to the wrong place). (I lost 1 reaver, 1 raider who tank shocked some guys in a ruin and lost its last HP to a Death or Glory, and one raider lost a HP, scratching its paint. (Paint contributes to half the armour value of raiders!)).

The second game: Although I seized the initiative,  most of my army got stomped by his DC, but I played the same tactic and won 20-5.

Nice to hear, gj!