Editing Warhammer 40,000/9th 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 where they started in 8th to the point they're currently one of the best armies in the game right now. They're extremely fast, deceptively difficult to kill with proper support, and hit incredibly hard in melee, 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 while moving, and your infantry can while charging.
**With the Psychic Awakening update, a whole bunch of deepstrike shenanigans have been added, along with a myriad of other fun stuff. 
* 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 Melee 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 that can kill their way through marines with ease, or 6 relatively weaker 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).
** Even better, with the 9th Edition Craftworlds Codex, you can now throw them in their own patrol detachment without throwing anything off for a bigger detachment of Eldar/Dark Eldar, but you will lose Luck of the Laughing God.
* Oddly cheap troops and HQs, for a supposedly elite army. Filling battalions and brigades is pretty damn easy.
* Possibly the best faction for leadership bombs on single units. This just becomes even better with allied elves.
*The sheer number of tactics and synergies available give Harlequins one of the highest skill ceilings on the game, a good harlequins player can run rings around their opponent, sometimes quite literally, giving them a very satisfying playstyle. 
* Bikes are incredibly flexible and literally any loadout can be useful on them to some degree. Equip 'em for melee, and hunt down marines or set them up to shoot 'em. With haywire, your bikes are able to threaten vehicles, and also, to some degree hordes of low toughness units thanks to blast. You probably wanna stick to one setup with each unit rather than trying to mix and match though
* You can make 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 (though that may have somewhat changed with them being super strong at the start of the edition, and continuing to be so). 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. 
* Every model has access to an invuln, and also has access to high AP weaponry.
* In 9th edition, the smaller standard board size means that you've got less of a distance to cross before you can get into melee range.
* They're Clowns.
* As of 9th Edition you've been rolled back into the Craftworld Codex, though you still retain a lot of the gains made since becoming a separate codex.

===Cons===
* As a good army in the competitive scene, even moreso than the star of the codex that you're listed in, you're at risk of being labelled as that guy.
* You're incredibly fragile, even compared to other elves. Even though you've got invulns literally everywhere, your clowns are squishy T3 1 wound models meaning that even the humble lasgun is lethal to you, especially since GW decided to make that 4++ a 5++ invuln instead to try and nerf 'em competitively. 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 (kinda), but unlike other elite armies, you don't have some bullshit to fall back on like Custodes (T5) or Necrons (regen).  [[Fist_of_the_North_Star#Kenshiro|Lethality through sheer number of attacks]] and crazy mobility shenanigans are this army's gimmick, which means that you absolutely need to keep everything from getting shot at before you can close the gap and engage blender mode and kill your target before they can start throwing dice back at you.
* Miniscule selection of long-range firepower. The best you have is 36" on your Voidweaver's guns.
* 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. At the very least there are rumours of something new coming later on down the line, so... hope?
* Your models are pricey, in points and dollars. With melee upgrades on your clowns it'll bring 'em up to the same cost as Howling Banshees. Moreso if you give them pistols.
* Modifiers cap at +/-1, which probably hurts Harlequins the most of all Eldar factions in 9th. Rip Suit of Hidden Knives cheese.
* They're Clowns, and field a huge number of floating vehicles. Prepare for endless Pennywise jokes.
* Being rolled into the Craftworld codex did lose you some things, even if it was an overall net positive.
* One of, if not THE hardest armies to paint well due to the multicolored checkerboard patterns on many of their units, though you are of course free to paint them however you'd like.

===Ghost Space Clowns vs. Regular Space Clowns===
Reworked into being a named Craftworld now, the Eldar page has everything on there rules-wise for 'em and you'll need some Craftworld units to even run your clowns as these guys. Read below for further detail

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Restrictions:
*Ynnari Harlequins can no longer take Pivotal Roles, or Solitaires. While the latter aren't exactly good this edition, your Troupe Masters are losing out on some offensive potential and your Shadowseers and Death Jesters are probably the biggest losers here. Solitaires obviously don't care though.
*You lose the {{W40Kkeyword|Saedeth}} keyword. In exchange you get {{W40Kkeyword|Ynnari}} which counts as a craftworld, meaning you benefit from the craftworld attribute. This ''may'' also mean that you lose out on the buffs that Phantasmancy can give, as GW still haven't confirmed or denied it at all. Given that the Ynnari section in the codex only specifies losing the Runes of Fortune discipline it's likely these are still intended to apply to your clowns in a Ynnari detachment
*Harlequin units can only ride in Starweavers still. Not that this is a super big downside mind you, given it's business as usual. Still would've been cool to be able to stuff a 12-elf unit into a Wave Serpent and ferry them up the board safely though.

Additionally, you gain the following.
*'''Strength from Death:''' Effectively replaces your Saedeth, and by all accounts it's a pretty decent tradeoff. Fights First applies across your entire army, and if a unit's taken any casualties they can add +1 to-hit for both melee and range attacks. The benefits of the first part are clear as to why they benefit Harlequins but you've got pretty adept shooting too. This slightly encourages taking larger blobs of units as a result.

*A warlord trait, relic and stratagem - the former of which doesn't have to be taken on whatever named Ynnari character you're packing along. Throw it on a Death Jester if you really want.
**'''Warden of Souls:''' Add +1 to your warlord's Strength and Attacks whenever they’re within engagement range of an enemy unit that’s below starting strength. Additionally, they heal 1 wound in each of your command phases.
**'''The Lost Shroud''': Each time an attack is allocated to the bearer, subtract 1 from its damage characteristic, and you get +1 to your save roll if it was D1, before modification. The latter is... not good on any of your characters, given that it specifies armour saves in specific but still, this could be nice against the abundance of D2 weapons out there these days.
**'''Inevitable End (1 CP)''': This gives a unit that’s shooting or fighting +1 to wound if it targeted a unit that was below Half Strength. Situational, given it relies on a unit being below half strength, rather than directly at half but +1 to wound is hardly something to sneeze at. Again, your clowns wanna be in melee so this is a relevant buff, though they rarely have trouble slicing through things in melee as is. Still, keep it in mind for that odd situation you wanna use it.

*The Revenant psychic discipline, giving your Shadowseers access to twice as many powers. A mixed bag of some mortal wounds and buffs, which other Ynnari psykers also have access to.
#'''Gaze of Ynnead:''' Essentially a simplified Smite, this WC 6 power lets you choose the target, and deals mortal wounds based on a D6; a roll of 1 results in 1 mortal wound, 2-5 causes 1d3 mortal wounds, and a 6 results in 1d6 mortal wounds on the target. If you've got some Warlocks to also spam smite, this might be worth picking up on them. Hard pass on your Shadowseers, you can give them more important stuff from later down the list or their vanilla powers. Or don't, I'm not your mother.
#'''Storm of Whispers''' An AoE aura attack, this WC 6 power lets you roll 3d6 per enemy unit within 9" of the caster; every roll of 4+ deals a mortal wound to the unit in question. Same as above, throw it on cheaper psykers you can spam for mortal wound output.
#'''Word of the Phoenix:''' WC 6, this power allows the targeted {{W40Kkeyword|Ynnari Infantry}} or {{W40Kkeyword|Ynnari Biker}} within 6" to bring back a single model at full health, or D3 Troops. Cannot be used on Wraithguard or Wraithblades. Finally something worth using, as your Shadowseers are likely to be right up beside your troupes to buff 'em with Shield from Harm, or whatever other squishy unit that'd need protecting from literally anything being thrown its way. Coincidentally, it has the same range as Shield from Harm too.
#'''Unbind Souls''' A WC 6 debuff to any enemy unit within 18" that means any melee attack against them auto-wounds on unmodified 6s. Also very nice if you're bringing a few units of melee specialists in subfaction that benefits melee so heavily. 
#'''Shield of Ynnead''' A WC 6 power that grants one non-{{W40Kkeyword|Titanic}} Ynnari unit within 12" of the Psyker a 4++ invulnerability save. With the recent nerf to your army's invulns across the board, this can be pretty damn integral on keeping your clowns alive for longer than three seconds.
#'''Ancestor's Grace:''' This WC 7 buff grants the targeted friendly Ynnari unit within 18" a +1 to-wound roll in melee. Quite beneficial, much like Unbind Souls above for similar reasons.

Most importantly, you also gain access to the majority of the Craftworld and Dark Eldar rosters to plug holes where you need them too. Are you sad that your bikes are so fast that your Shadowseer can't keep up with them? Send a Warlock with 'em instead. Need something to stand on objectives that won't fall over to a stiff breeze? Why not grab some Wraithguard? Unlike 8th's Ynnari, this might actually be a viable option.
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