Editing Warhammer 40,000/9th Edition Tactics/Eldar Harlequins (section)

==Army Building and Tactics==

===Army Building===
If you're interested in running clowns, for the most part it's recommended to run them alongside some other form of eldar too. See the other pages for starting with these armies. If you want to run pure harlequins though, below is a decent way to get started. 

*'''3 boxes of troupes:''' These come with Troupe Masters too and are the only way to fill out a battalion. Build them with at least one of each of the special melee weapons and fusion pistols, along with one clown naked to absorb a wound from transports dying or overwatch is the most common way of setting up a squad.
*'''2-3 skyweavers:''' The bikes in 8th were typically considered one of the best units in the army, easily able to deal with vehicles and marines alike. For the most part this still holds true, being your best shooting unit based on volume of fire. Typically you'll wanna build 'em with haywire for some anti-vehicle goodness, especially with limited fusion in clown squads.
*'''2-3 starweavers:''' These are pretty much required for each unit of troupes you aren't deepstriking in, they'll get them across the board faster and once they've unloaded, you can send them off to camp on objectives for you if you don't have anything else to, or to eat overwatch for the troupes aboard.

Once you've got the basics, maybe played a few games to get a feel for just how the army runs, expand out in pretty much whatever direction you want. Sure, your options are limited but grabbing a shadowseer, a solitare and a death jester are generally good next steps and you can never go wrong with more bikes. 

====Souping====
Another option to expand, Harlequins can be brought alongside any other army <s>that has the Aeldari keyword</s> , (See bellow) this includes Craftworlds, Drukhari and Ynnari. As you've already got some blisteringly fast, expensive(ish) melee units, Craftworlds can bring in some Wraith units or grav tanks for some durability while Drukhari can get you cheap, longer range shooty units that can crap out ungodly amounts of poison with kabals. Check out the other pages and take what'll compliment your army fit your tastes. Just keep in mind that they need to be kept in separate detachments, which the clowns have a rule to allow you to take a patrol alongside another army without them losing any of their bonuses for remaining mono-faction.

Now the rule that let's you do this, Traveling players, has a major quirk, and this is so weird we will quote it directly ''A Detachment with this ability (Traveling Players) '''is ignored for any mission pack rules that require every unit in your army to have at least one Faction keyword in common'''''. Did you catch it? The bolden part is the important part. The weird thing is this: No where does it say that there must be '''Any''' keyword in common with any other detachment. The important word that makes this work is that they ignore the requirement to have a keyword in common. The fact all units have to share a keyword is why you can't normally form an Imperial Guard-Tau army since no guard unit and no Tau unit share keywords even in different detachments.

This means, Rules As Written,  You can throw a Patrol of Harlequin's alongside Craftworlds or Drukhari or Ynnari or space marine or guardsmen or even chaos marine, without messing with the other detachment's mono faction bonus! Is this rules as intended? Very Probably not but who knows, Harlequins are a weird bunch of psychic space elves and the proper wording to prevent this issue, would have been easy. It would have just be  a slight variation of the Agent of Imperium rules. Those rules are clear that you can only attach units with the Agent of Imperium to Imperium detachments which is why they don't have this issue and why you can't use put a freeblade in an ork detachment. Instead GW went with a far more expansive wording that let's you combine Harlequins with any army.

Because this is so strictly a RAW reading that may run contrary to RAI and may cause players to argue over codex readings, very much check this with your local group and or tournament advisor before you start using joint Harlequins, Grey knight armies (that one's almost fluffy actually), but RAW it does seem to work.

===Tactics===
Harlequins are a fast and deadly melee army, though are pretty squishy. You'll wanna place every unit you can out of LOS when deploying, along with a unit or two in deepstrike. These should typically be just normal clowns or bikes but if you need space to hide everything, a starweaver isn't a bad choice either. Your units are blenders and will easily wipe out just about every infantry unit in game, though they need to be supported with psychic powers and more importantly, stratagems. If playing mono-harlequins, take only one detachment and don't splurge for more relics than you need to. Your ability to stay in the game is very much determined by playing smart and making proper use of the base game mechanics to get the most out of your fragile units. This is not a good army to start with for newcomers to the game but ultimately, you do you.

Abuse the fuck out of your mobility, stay in combat or out of line of sight to avoid being shot at. Given all our units can ignore models in the move and charge phase, you can use this to wrap around the backside of units in combat, allowing you to get more units in. For the love of god make sure you're using terrain to your advantage for LOS blocking before you charge, as it can deny overwatch. Against shooting heavy armies like Tau, consider using things like the Silken Shroud stratagem to deny overwatch.

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 9E]]
[[Category: Warhammer 40000 Tactics (9E)]]
[[Category: Xenos]]
[[Category: Eldar]]
{{Warhammer_40k_Tactics}}