Editing Warhammer 40,000/8th Edition Tactics/Eldar Harlequins (section)

==Why Play Harlequins==
Because you love practical jokes, big smiles, and grisly murder, have a thing for Carnevale masks, and like laughing at your opponents when your psychedelic clown elves eat entire units in assault at the speed of light.  

Harlequins are massively improved from 7th in almost every way. They're extremely fast, surprisingly difficult to kill with proper support, and hit incredibly hard in Assault, quickly chewing through MEQs with mass high-strength, decent AP attacks. Badly positioned, they'll still quickly die to the enemy's firepower, but with proper planning you'll be laughing all the way to the circus.  Send in the clowns.
===Pros===

* Incredibly fast with a default 8" movement plus the ability to Advance and Charge, and everyone ignores terrain and models.
**With the Psychic Awakening update, a whole bunch of deepstrike shenanigans have also been added. 
* Beautiful models with a unique and cool theme that can be painted in any kind of ridiculous way without breaking fluff.
* Hit like an absolute truck in Assault with 4 attacks base for basic troops, and can also pull off close-ranged Shooting shenanigans with Fusion Pistols and Starweavers.
* Your BASIC TROOPS can have '''5''' attacks. 
** To compare, many characters have just 4, and the Golden bananas have 3 (admittedly though their thing is being hard as nails in defence, they hit at much higher strength and AP than you, ''and'' have ways of boosting their numbers of attacks. Try not to get arrogant when facing them down in melee; give 'em a chance and they will wipe your entire squad). 
* Have the '''AELDARI''' keyword, meaning you can plug the holes in their capabilities with complementary units from Dark Eldar or Craftworld Eldar (e.g.: cheap scoring Kabalites). You will, however, need to take these units in a separate detachment, per the <s>new</s> Battle Brothers rule.
* Cheap HQs and Troops you want to be taking a lot of makes it easy to fill out Battalions and Brigades for extra Command Points.
* Possibly the best faction for leadership bombs on single units.
*The sheer number of tactics and synergies available give Harlequins one of the highest skill ceilings in the game, a true harlequins player can run rings around their opponent giving them a very satisfying playstyle. 
* Haywire bikes are arguably one of the best way of dealing with vehicles for eldar, the glaives on those bikes will also typically eat through primaris marines pretty quickly too.
* You can make cool Joker quotes the whole game and laugh away if you are winning.
* You can always say that you're just doing it for the lolz if things go bad!
* Most players are not accustomed to battling against these buggers. Use that to your advantage and seriously play for keeps, laugh and clown around all day but this army is even more cutthroat than dark eldar. 
* Almost every model has access to a 4++, and also has access to high AP weaponry.
* They're Clowns.

===Cons===

* Even with improved Invulns, you're still fragile. Your clowns will fall apart under any kind of concentrated fire. If you can't hit first and hit hard, in nicer terms things will go poorly. Never mind the average armour save for infantry is 6+ (7+ on Shadowseers, god knows why) means that if their invulns are somehow negated, your clowns will fall apart even easier than guardsmen.
*In addition to the above: this is seriously the Harlequins greatest disadvantage. You pay a premium for your models, but unlike other elite armies, you don't have some bullshit to fall back on. Meaning if you don't manage to wipe out a unit on the first turn of combat, two turns of even CQC weapons are going to wipe out your unit, or cause so many casualties that they may as well have been wiped out. 
* No long ranged weaponry. The best you have is 24" on your Shuricannons.
* Small pool of units to choose from- Two HQs, one Troops, one Fast Attack, two Elites, one Heavy support, and a transport. Most Harlequin armies are going to look very similar each other in terms of units.
* Your models are pricey, in points and dollars. Less so now after CA 2019 but the dollars point still stands.
* They're Clowns.

===Ghost Space Clowns vs. Regular Space Clowns===

'''23/07/2017 FAQ''': You must have Yvraine, The Visarch or The Yncarne as your Warlord to be able to give any Aeldari units in your army the "Ynnari" keyword. Yvraine and The Yncarne are your only access to the Revenant Discipline and the same FAQ finally gave The Visarch a 4++ Invulnerable save. It's a Tax, but all three characters are in a good spot now. GW has to sell that box set I guess. Remember that you still need to to take the following units in a separate Detachment should you wish to use them: Dhrazar, Mandrakes, Urien Rakarth, Coven units and The Avatar of Khaine.

'''16/11/2017 FAQ''': Soulbursts now cannot be triggered on your opponent's turn, and only one of each particular action can be performed on your turn. Given the charge-happy nature of your Harlequins, it's hardly worth giving up your ability to advance ''and'' charge as well as the ability to fall back, shoot and charge ''again'' so you can squeeze in a maximum of one extra charge ''if'' you kill a squad on your turn. This constraint does not apply in Narrative/Open Play games, however. 

'''16/04/2018 FAQ''': You can no longer take Ynnari detachments with mixed troops due to changes to the Army of the Reborn rule. They must now be pure Craftworlds, Drukhari or Harlequins detachments only. They still don't receive a masque/craftworld/kabal etc trait, but they do now count for the purposes of unlocking stratagems, so you don't need to bring an additional "pure" detachment just for that purpose. You must also add one of the Ynnari HQs to *every* detachment you want to be Ynnari, as well as nominating one as your Warlord.

'''White Dwarf Ynnari Index/Psychic Awakening: Phoenix Rising''': The Ynnari received a massive rework, gaining their own Warlord Traits, Stratagems, Relics, fully fledged psychic discipline and Tactical Objectives. They additionally received their own version of Objective Secured (finally) and updated faction Keywords. The best news is that Strength from Death now functions more akin to a Masque Form or Craftworld Attribute, no longer disabling abilities like Rising Crescendo or Battle Focus. The bad news? The Soulburst mechanic was entirely reworked in what could be considered a ''severe'' nerf, no longer granting out of phase actions. Instead, while it triggers for all of your units across the field whenever ''any'' unit dies, all it does now is grant them the "Fight First" combat rule, giving them a +1 to-hit if they already could or just charged. This ability isn't ''terrible'' persay, as having an effective BS2+ on the charge across your entire army is nothing to scoff at considering your combat oriented playstyle. It's simply underwhelming compared to several of your vanilla options, especially since it's only active ''if'' a unit is completely wiped out where virtually every other attribute in the game is consistently active (even if they have some variable condition, like the 12" rule for Alaitoc or Raven Guard, for example).

In terms of all the new tricks and trinkets you get? It's a very mixed bag. On one hand, the Warlord Traits and a couple of the relics are actually really solid picks, ''almost'' worth considering a token Supreme Command detachment for some particularly lethal HQ choices. On the other hand, the Revenant psychic discipline only offers one or two powers genuinely worth taking and comes with the tax of locking out any access to the Phantasmancy Discipline for your Shadowseer's use (not even mentioning how all {{W40Kkeyword|Ynnari}} units can't benefit from Runes of Fate/Battle or Phantasmancy powers any longer, directly or otherwise). The stratagems and objectives are where the Ynnari fall flat on their ass. What stratagems weren't simply copy-pasted from the other aeldari factions are generally overpriced and situational at best or flat out useless otherwise. Your tactical objectives suffer similar issues as well, simply being inferior copy-pasted versions worth fewer VPs for the exact same tasks that the vanilla versions also must complete. Granted, tactical objectives aren't a concern unless you're playing Maelstrom of War, so many players may not even notice this particular issue.

So, should you have your harlies join the Ynnari? These days, definitely not fully. A small, secondary detachment is certainly a decent choice worth considering if you want to build a bit of an HQ death star, but you sacrifice far too much from the rest of your army if you commit your detachments to the Ynnari entirely. A situational +1 to hit in melee on the charge isn't worth giving up a guaranteed extra attack on the charge, or effective morale immunity when you want to go big. Between barring all named characters, several notable units (like your Solitaire) and banning the new perks and abilities granted through each faction's psychic awakening, there just isn't much the Ynnari offer that sticking with the vanilla factions can't also provide or even outperform entirely with their own inhouse selections.