vs Harlequins

Nothing wrong with having a beer while you're waiting in deep strike.

Last night I faced off against Harlequins, also known as the Rillietann to those who care about clown elf culture.

The Harlequins are a weird army! I know I said the same thing about my game against Genestealer Cults last week, but that doesn't make this any less true. The Harlequins are so, so fast. I'm very used to facing Craftworlds Eldar, who are also fast, but the speed with which Harlequins can travel the entire length of the board is unreal to me. Here I am praying for 9" charges out of deep strike and debating if I want to advance my Terminators so they can maybe move the same speed as a Tac Marine at the cost of shooting, and then there are Harlequins who have put everyone into bright pink jet skis and decided that they would rather be in my deployment zone than their own. When I have faced this army in the past I have done one of two things: hide everyone away and wait for him to have to travel into my killbox, or take first turn and shred everything of his that I can before he even gets a chance to move.

In this game I had neither option. Lore time!

[In the interest of keeping battle reports focused on the game, I will write up any fluff and lore in a separate post. If that interests you, click the link above!]

The exiled Wraith Seer Kynerath the Wanderer is cursed with visions of doom. She has seen a violent future in which the Masque of Fates Fool is destroyed by the Slaaneshi daemon Scy'slith the Devourer. The Grey Knights defeated this daemon millennia ago and bound it into a sacred book so that it may never reform itself in the Warp or the material plane again. We stored this book in the sepulchers of the Dead Fields on Titan, amidst thousands of other tainted relics that are constantly guarded by the most pure and potent psykers that Mankind has to offer. But according to Kynerath the Pale Wraith, the Grey Knights will fail in their containment. The only recourse that she sees is to storm Titan itself and release Scy'slith from his prison and slay him once and for all.

Look at how absolutely gorgeous this model is. My buddy Matt is incredibly talented.

Obviously there are massive stupid problems with this plan, so Grand Master Simandus will do everything in his power to stop the Harlequins from breaching the Grey Knights line.

We prepared for a game of Stronghold Assault from the core rulebook. As the defender, I am afforded two Buildings (we used Imperial Bunkers) and I am tasked with defending them at all costs. The Harlequins seek to destroy these defenses and scatter my forces. At the end of the battle we each gain a point for every unit we kill. He gets 3 points for each bunker he destroys, and I get 3 points for each bunker that stands. Pretty straightforward!

The battlefield.

For my forces I chose fun options to defend the walls of the Dead Fields of Titan. I wanted to fill out a Stronghold Defender detachment so I brought two Terminator squads as well as Simandus and my unpainted, unnamed Brother-Captain. I almost brought my two Stormhawk Interceptors because they are exceptional against all units with FLY and that is pretty much everything in the Harlequin codex, but I opted against that because I thought a ground force would be more thematic. I brought two Dreadknights and a Land Raider because I think they look cool and I completely forgot that Haywire Cannons exist.

Lots of TDA, and requisite Deimos Rusty 17.

My opponent brought an absolute fuckton of bikes and Harlequin Venoms, which are actually not called that and in fact called Starweavers because why not. He had four squads of Players (which are Troops that are called Troupes, because theatre), each of which had four Fusion Pistols. He threw these Troupes into his Starweavers, which are open topped. So those were going to hurt a lot.

He also brought a very bothersome number of characters that really made my Grey Knights wish they had requisitioned a Vindicare Assassin, but she is still on time-out from last game. He had two Troupe Masters, two Shadowseers, two Death Jesters, and one great white nightmare known as a Solitaire. The Solitaire has 8 attacks base.

Very interestingly, he also brought a Craftworlds Wraith Seer and a Wraith Lord seen in the back there. The Wraith Seer is Kynerath the Wanderer, the one who received the grim portent about the Slaaneshi daemon breaking his containment. Alongside her is her lover Lord Kaldros, who was once a Howling Banshee Exarch and now lives (dies?) on as a Wraith Lord. [Aside: I didn't capture a pic of Lord Kaldros, but he is amazing. He is a Wraith Lord done up with Banshee dreadlocks and crouching atop a pillar. It is such a cool conversion and Matt is crazy talented, which you will hear me say a lot.]

We went over Warlord Traits and Relics and whatnot and then were ready to begin. I briefly toyed with the idea of giving Simandus a Warlord Trait other than First to the Fray since most of this battle was going to be very up close and I might not need to reroll charges, but all of the other Grey Knights Warlord Traits are so bad and I couldn't bring myself to do it. Seriously, "Friendly GREY KNIGHTS units that are within 6" of your Warlord automatically pass Moral tests." Why? Why does this exist?

Piling up around the defensive lines. That Dreadknight is pretty sure he is fucked, but maybe he will slow them down.

The first turn went pretty much like I should've expected it to, but I forgot about Haywire Cannons and also just how brutally fast Harlequins are. I lost my Land Raider and a Dreadknight during his first turn.

Whoops!

The Haywire Cannons are 1d6 shots per bike, which meant 6d6 shots coming at just my Land Raider. On wound rolls of 4+, the Haywire Cannon does a straight mortal wound, and on a 6+ it deals 1d3 mortal wounds. He rolled hot and dealt 17 mortal wounds to my Land Raider. I opted to use the Armor of Contempt stratagem on the LR (which lets me ignore mortal wounds on a 5+) and promptly failed all but one save. So the Land Raider took 16 wounds and died. I debated spending a CP to reroll one of them, but it was a 1/3rd chance to succeed and a LR on 1 wound wasn't going to do much anyway. The Dreadknight on the right died in a similar manner, and the Dreadknight on the left was reduced to 3 wounds by Fusion Pistols from that Starweaver there.

On my turn I maneuvered some of my guys around, but honestly there wasn't much for us to do. All of the Harlequins were already up in our range so we just needed to charge/smite/shoot them. I got off a few smites and Hammerhand on a squad of Terminators. The Banner of Refining Flame blasted apart one of the Starweavers and scattered its contents across the surface of Titan. He placed the disgorged Troupe Master and Players behind that Starweaver on the right in the picture above. I saw this as a prime opportunity; my surviving Dreadknight (the one on the left) knew Vortex of Doom, and Matt had just placed his Warlord and elite Fusion Pistol-sporting infantry within Vortex range.

The Dreadknight was in the range of the blast himself, though. But he had 3 wounds left and I figured it was worth the risk. Vortex went off. I rolled damage for his units first and got 1 for each of them. When I rolled for my Dreadknight, he took 3 damage and died in shame. So, yeah. Cool beans.

Then there was this squad of Terminators right here. I risked overwatch and charged both Starweavers, knowing that I had Hammerhand and would be wounding them with my halberds on 3s. My intent was to wrap and destroy the first, spill out its contents, and then spend 3 CP to fight again and kill the second one. But my boys failed to even damage the first one. 4++ invulns on vehicles! It's real annoying! In an act of brazen rage, I spent 3 CP to fight again anyway, and ended up killing the first Starweaver. This dropped me to 0 CP on turn one--which was not a strong strategic choice.

Ouch.

He spent his next turn mopping up my Terminators, Paladins, and a few characters. I had one Paladin in the center of the battlefield who tanked shuriken shots from almost his entire army, but other than that people started to drop like flies. And there aren't a whole lot of us!

Those wounds are not allocated to the Solitaire, but are left over from the bunker that he just hacked apart.

This Paladin challenged his Warlord to martial combat, but Cernunnos deemed him an unworthy foe and flipped away to kill my Brotherhood Champion.

I had a few choice plays and slew his Solitaire and ultimately his Warlord, but he left my backline in ruins. On my second turn I went to deep strike Grand Master Simandus and Paladin Squad Darius, but his complete occupation of my defenses meant there was no where for Simandus to insert himself. Instead the Grand Master teleported onto the bare plains of the Dead Fields. His rage was palpable, however, and both he and his guardians made 11" charges to engage and slaughter the Shadowseer that had been smiting my troops.

In this spot a moment ago there stood an Aeldari witch.

At this point I was pretty sure that everything was lost. This mission unfortunately doesn't offer much in the way of defensive options for the person who is trying to hold the line, so a few Bright Lances and a barrage of Fusion Pistols just annihilated my bunkers. This mission is from the core rules written all the way back at the beginning of 8th, so it might just be that it wasn't quite playtested properly since they couldn't predict how destructive future codices would be.

In any case, Simandus had failed to defend the walls to the sepulcher that held the contained daemon. Nothing he did now could stop the Harlequins from releasing the monster that so many of his brothers had died to imprison. If nothing else, he would make sure that the treacherous Wraith Seer Kynerath would pay for this trespass.

Kynerath found him on the battlefield, sensing some portent of doom surrounding the Grand Master. Her giant fuck-off glaive blasted one of squad Darius into elemental ash, but Simandus stood undeterred. He would make her suffer for all the damage that her predictions had inflicted upon his sacred world.

The two traded blows for a couple turns, but neither of them fell. T8 is really tough to crack when your weapons are S4, and Simandus was rocking a 3++ invuln. The two psykers dropped each other to 3 wounds. The battle ended there with my opponent running away with the victory. The daemon Scy'slith was about to be released, and Simandus had to return to the Citadel to defend his monastery from whatever horror was about to be unleashed upon it. But he made sure to leave the Pale Wraith with a scar across her impenetrable wraithbone frame, and he swore that some day he would return to her seeking vengeance.

The game was fun, but it was decided very quick. The Harlequins' speed and destructive capabilities more than made up for their squishy T3 elf bodies and their coin flip saves. I really do enjoy playing against Matt's Harlies. Both of our armies hit like trucks when we get them where they want to be, and both of them fall apart under the slightest opposition. Our matches are always decided in two or three big blows.

One last note: the Death Jesters are very cool, but Matt says that they rarely ever do anything. They fired a couple shots at some Terminators and then snuck off to hide in some ruins. I am beginning to suspect that all snipers in any faction are just absolute garbage.