One of the most asked-after Harlequin matchups is against T’au, and for good reason. The fish men are currently on top of the meta (at least jointly), and unlike Custodes, their tools don’t initially seem weak into Harlequins. Indirect fire is as great as ever, they’re not affected much by Light, and they tend towards volume of fire anyway. However, the strong defensive profiles of the Harlequins and their crazy speed and offence means the clowns have tools of their own to push the meta bogeymen off their top spot. To see who deserves to be top dog, I’m bringing my ‘Quins again to party with Owen’s new (to him) Farsight Enclaves list. Can the raw firepower of the blue menace overcome the Harlequin party train? Read on to find out…
Harlequins List
They move fast, they're tough, they kill you up close and at range... It's good stuff
Troupe Master (Foot in the Future/Player of the Light/Cegorach’s Rose,
with fusion pistol) 90
Shadowseer (Webway Dance/Veil of
Tears, The Shadow Stone, Mirror Architect) 125
Death Jester (Harvester of Torment/Favour of Cegoach/Laughing God’s Eye)
70
Solitaire 110
4*5 Troupes, each squad with 2 Fusion Guns and a Neuro Disruptor 320
5 Troupes with 2 Fusion Guns 75
5 Starweavers 400
3*3 Voidweavers 810
Total: 2000 points
This list is much more ‘traditional’ than last week’s: it’s a few support characters, all the Voidweavers and as many Fusion boats as would fit. It’s probably the fastest list in the game, it hits hard at range and in close combat, and it’s way more durable than you’d expect. If you know you’re going to face Harlequins, expect basically this list.
T’au List
Sadly, the Broadsides have Rail Rifles not the missiles, because honestly they're just better in almost every matchup. Yes, that includes the Harlequin matchup too
Farsight Enclaves Battalion
Coldstar Commander with Precision of the Hunter, Burst
Cannon, High-output Burst Cannon, Onager Gauntlet, Plasma Rifle, and
Thermoneutronic Projector 160
Crisis Commander with Exemplar of the Mont’ka, 2 Airbursting
Fragmentation Projectors, Dominator Fragmentation Launcher, Iridium battlesuit,
Puretide Engram Neurochip, Target Lock and 2 Gun Drones 186
3*10 Kroot Carnivores 180
5 Crisis Battlesuits with Plasma Rifles, 2 Flamers, Shield Generators,
1 Iridium battlesuit, an Early Warning Override, Sensory Negation Countermeasures
and 8 Shield Drones 386
3 Crisis Battlesuits with Burst Cannons, 2 Plasma Rifles,
Target Locks and DW-02 Advanced Burst Cannon 165
2* Stealth Squads with 4 Stealth Battlesuits and 2 Shield Drones
each, 1 with Homing Beacon 253
2*4 Marker Drones 80
2*3 Broadsides with Heavy Rail Rifles, Smart Missile Systems,
Velocity Trackers and 2 Shield Drones per squad 588
Total: 1998 points
This list (again, stolen from a recent tournament finalist) looks
pretty brutal, with three massive power units in the Broadsides and main Crisis
squad and three subsidiary hitters in the smaller Crisis squad and Stealth
teams. It’s also got a lot of throwaway units to screen me back, which is
always a problem. Of note, the main Crisis unit is outfitted for close range
and looks absolutely filthy when it gets there; those Flamers will easily kill
several boats a turn if I let them, so I’m going to try and not do that. As
ever for T’au, scary stuff.
Nice safe looking objectives
We were playing Secure Missing Artefacts, on a quite terrain-dense map. Both of us played very offensively with our movements of the objectives, dragging each other’s out of cover and into the open as much as possible.
Guess this won’t be a high scoring Primary for either of us then!
Stranglehold/TtL/Bring it Down v Stranglehold/TtL/Psychic Interrogation
Of note, Owen had opted for Kau’yon instead of Mont’ka.
While traditionally a bad choice, in this matchup Mont’ka’s extra early
mobility was unlikely to be necessary and the AP was totally irrelevant. Kau’yon,
on the other hand, would let him fall back from from my midgame assaults and
still shoot, as well as giving him an extremely applicable damage boost for the
rest of his army in the lategame. Neither of us were likely to commit much in
the early game, so the extra hits on sixes/fives/fours would likely affect a greater
percentage of his army than normal.
Deployment was very defensive for both of us, with Owen’s only exposed units being those with pre-game moves and the Stealth Suits in a crater that he couldn’t find space for. I had a beautiful clown castle, with perfect Mirror Architect coverage to ensure that Owen’s SMS wouldn’t be able to hit me Turn 1. With this deployment, I’d rather go second to give myself a turn of not being shot, but we’ll see what the dice gods decide.
T'au Turn 1, 31:25
Kroot and Marker Drones ready to give their lives for the Greater Good
Owen had a fairly short Turn 1, just running forward a squad of Kroot and 4 Marker Drones to lock in his Stranglehold and Tertiary points. The main excitement was his decision to dart his Stealth Squad out of their crater and back into cover, only to find them stranded just outside of safety by some poor advance rolls. He was otherwise quite defensively placed, however, so my Turn 1 wouldn’t be too exciting either.
Harlequins Turn 1, 31:34
Voidweavers dominate the key firing lane while Starweavers screen and claim objectives
On my turn I zoomed forward with my Voidweavers to pick up Owen’s exposed units, while the Starweavers manoeuvred to hold objectives and screen out the T’au reserves. The worst-case scenario was the big Flamer squad using Drop Zone Clear on the turn they came in, but thankfully Mirror Architect meant that hammer blow couldn’t fall on my main castle. With that threat avoided, I was mostly screening to stop the Burst Cannon squad dropping in 12” away from the Voidweavers and picking up a couple, as outside of 12” they weren’t much of a threat. My Shadowseer managed to stay true to form by failing his first psychic test for Psychic Interrogation, but thankfully the reroll saw him scrape in with a 4. Why is this guy so bad at casting?
Why? I know your powers are bad, but this is just a casting roll. Why are you so bad at it?
In shooting, the Voidweavers easily picked up the whole Kroot and Stealth Suit squads, while some cunning firing order saw the Tactical Drones wiped out as well.
Same picture as before, but this time with less T'au in it. A definite improvement
With all my secondaries scored and a commanding central position, I handed the turn over to Owen.
T’au Turn 2, 41:34
The main question on Owen’s turn was how much to commit. His Broadsides could all draw line of sight to boats if they popped out of cover, and he could bring in a squad of Crisis to do damage somewhere. The problem was that there was nowhere good for the Crisis to go, so Owen would either be spending them inefficiently or exposing the Broadsides without Crisis support. In the end he opted to play it safe, running out a unit of Kroot to secure Stranglehold and the Tertiary again while bringing the large Crisis Suit down in his backfield, ready to pounce next turn.
T'au playing defensive again, with some Kroot sacrificed on the altar of Stranglehold
The T’au then opened up on my To The Last units with their indirect fire. Lightning Fast Reactions successfully kept all the Voidweavers alive through the massed bombardment, but one was badly damaged.
Ironically, Owen's most
effective firepower was a volley from the sacrificial Kroot squad that
succeeded in stripping three wounds from a Starweaver. Apparently these Kroot
had scavenged some better guns than the normal Carnivores!
T'au getting just a nose in front
Harlequins Turn 2, 41:51
Brave Kroot about to face ~94 S6 shots
They die
There was little movement on my turn, as I was largely happy with my positioning and wanted to wait for Owen to commit before I left my castle. Thanks to Psychic Interrogation I was pulling ahead on Secondaries, and my more central position meant I was outscoring him on Primary as well.
The one exciting move on my turn (aside from evaporating the exposed Kroot with incredible overkill) was a lone Troupe darting onto Owen’s back objective to zero him on Primary. This ended up involving some quite careful placement, as if I went too far onto the objective I’d be Heroic Intervened by 10 Kroot, and if I charged the Kroot to pin them off the objective then the Coldstar would Heroically Intervene and melt my squad.
Even charging the Crisis Commander ended up being too risky, as his Overwatch could well have killed a couple of models and left the objective still in Owen’s hands.
Now 5 models on the point to Owen's 4, so life is good
In the end the Crisis Commander Heroically Intervened anyway to bring his Drones onto the objective, but he whiffed his attacks to leave me fully in control and Owen on 0 Primary.
Generally in a pretty good defensive position, awaiting Owen's attackT'au Turn 3, 45:51
T'au go on the offensive!
Both of us knew that this turn would likely be the decisive one. Owen had to bring in his second Crisis squad this turn, which meant he probably had to commit with his Broadsides and big Crisis squad as well. His two Commanders stayed in the backfield, the Coldstar to clear Owen’s home objective and the Crisis to exploit his indirect fire, while the Stealths used Wall of Mirrors to make a play for my back objectives on a later turn. Meanwhile the Crisis deathstar zoomed onto the central objective, ready to melt two Starweavers, while the other Crisis squad dropped down to kill whatever fell out. The Broadside squads both moved into the open, lining up a Starweaver and my damaged Voidweaver squad to pummel. The amount of firepower about to be unleashed was terrifying, and I was expecting to lose a lot.
Turns out ~55 hits with full Wound rerolls is good at killing Starweavers. Also, basically everything else
The Crisis deathball started things off by vapourising two Starweavers in a torrent of Flamer and Plasma fire, while the Coldstar obliterated my sacrificial Troupe with maximum overkill. The Broadsides managed to down a Voidweaver and Starweaver between them as well as damaging another, but the Smart Missiles of the leftmost squad failed to eliminate the Troupe that had fallen out of my leftmost Starweaver. After the Crisis Commander also failed at this, the Drop Zone Clear Crisis squad was forced to finish them off instead of obliterating the Troupe Master hiding behind them.
The T’au had basically evaporated my left flank, but the
right was still fairly untouched. Now I just had to make my counterattack hit
hard enough to matter.
Harlequins Turn 3, 40:68
I spent a long time deciding on my moves this turn, knowing
I needed to make them count. Thinking through the game state, I realised that I
had to:
-
Score Stranglehold/Psychic Interrogation/the Tertiary;
-
Kill at least one of the T’au To The Last
targets;
-
Wipe out the small Crisis squad;
-
Start chipping away at the Crisis deathball;
-
Tie up whatever big shooting units I didn’t kill
to force them to suffer a -1 to hit and lose their exploding 5’s;
-
Pick off at least one Commander.
The first of these was pretty easy, just involving some
boats shuffling around and a Troupe vaporising the Marker Drones on the
bottom-right objective. The second was much harder, with the obvious target of
the deathball in the middle being protected by a ridiculous number of Drones. I
flung a decent amount of firepower at it to start whittling it down, but had no
expectation that removing it was feasible this turn. Instead, I moved two full
Voidweaver squads to open up on the rightmost Broadsides, burning Luck dice to
force through the final hits and wipe the squad.
On the other flank, the Fusion Boat managed to obliterate
the small Crisis squad, leaving the Death Jester free to pick off a Crisis from
the central deathball. The threat of their Flamers on Overwatch meant I had to
keep my Player unit more than 6” away from them and within Mirror Architect
range, a positioning requirement that meant I failed my charge after they
activated Repulsor Impact Field. That unit being free to move and fire was
going to hurt.
Elsewhere, the Troupe Master and Solitaire both charged into Owen’s backfield to tie up the Broadsides and start hunting Commanders. A lone Fusion Boat managed to assassinate the Crisis Commander in an unexpectedly successful strafing run, before the Blitzing Solitaire eviscerated the Coldstar in a superb display of combat ability. While impressive, I’d just locked myself out of 6 Psychic Interrogation points!
The Starweaver guns down the Crisis Commander a little too efficiently
Finally, the Heroically Intervening Kroot managed to put 4 wounds onto my Troupe Master while he slaughtered Broadside Shield Drones, an annoying turn of events that meant he'd definitely die to next turn’s shooting. These Kroot are more dangerous than I’d thought!
I was quite happy with this turn, scoring a lot of points and accomplishing almost all of my key tasks. Failing to tie up the Crisis deathball meant their shooting next turn was going to hurt a lot, but if I could ride that out then I reckoned I’d be able to coast to victory.
T'au Turn 4, 49:68
Owen had three tools left with which to hit me this turn:
the Crisis deathball, the Broadsides and Kroot in the backfield, and the
Stealth Suits arriving from Strategic Reserve. The latter had been screened out
reasonably well, so they came down in the crater their friends had started the
game in, ready to wipe out my Troupe squad in a hail of pulse fire. I again threw
Luck dice at keeping this Troupe alive, and at the end of the fusillade a
single player still held the objective to score me 4 points next turn. This
squad just refuses to die!
Shadowseer -1 to wound came in clutch here
The Crisis deathball was more exciting, using Dynamic Offensive to zip across the field and blast the two Voidweavers in my backfield. The onslaught of Plasma and Flamer fire saw one Voidweaver obliterated, but more Luck rerolls saw the second boat survive on a single Wound. Rerollable 4++ saves are a fun time for all!
Another Voidweaver survives on 1 wound
The Broadsides fell back from combat with the
Troupe Master, but couldn’t move far enough to avoid the Troupe Master using Cegorach’s
Jest to tag them again when the Kroot fell back. Annoyed, they promptly obliterated
him with shooting, but the presence of a Luck reroll meant Owen had to commit
all his firepower to making sure the damned clown finally died.
Cegorach's Jest is such a hard tool to play around with Move 5 Broadsides
At the end of the turn, I spent my last two CPs to stop the final Player on the bottom right objective from fleeing. With my army rapidly being wiped off the field, I wanted every Primary point I could get.
Battle at end of T'au turn 4
Harlequins Turn 4, 44:82
I started this turn by disembarking my last two Troupes, ready for the final push against the Crisis deathball and the Kroot/Broadsides. Elsewhere, I spread out my tattered forces onto the rest of the objectives, while the Solitaire sprinted off to massacre the Stealth Suits. The Crisis Deathball, alone in my backfield, found themselves facing a Troupe and the 7 remaining Voidweavers, the firepower of which managed to clear them totally off the table.
Crisis are obliterated by massed Voidweavers
One Voidweaver fired upfield, wiping out the Stealth Suits’ Shield Drones, while the Death Jester showed his absolute mastery by killing the 6 remaining Kroot with 3 shots!
Imagine barely seeing one guy, then killing him and 5 of his friends you can't even see, all with 3 bullets. Crazy stuff
The Solitaire darted through a hail of Pulse fire to slaughter the Stealth Suits, while the Troupe managed to kill a Broadside and badly damage another, as well as tying them up yet again in combat.
T'au are effectively tabled
Turn 5
At the end of my Turn 4 the game was done, with the Harlequins in control of the field and just a single battered Broadside squad to oppose them. The Broadsides did manage to fall back and blow up a Starweaver for a final Bring It Down point, but were promptly wiped out by the remaining Voidweavers in the final turn.
Broadsides kill one final Starweaver
Voidweavers as brutally efficient as ever
With that the game was over, the battered Harlequins winning a convincing 94:40!
Post-Game Analysis
Wow, that was a bloodbath! At the end of the game I had some
battered boats, a smattering of characters and 11 Players, while the T’au had
been completely wiped out. This was definitely a game where the scoreline doesn’t
come close to reflecting how close it really was: if the massed T’au attack on Turn
3 had gone even a fraction better, I probably wouldn’t have had the models left
to push back and Owen would have rolled me off the table.
We both played a lot more cagily this game than we have in
the past, and I think it definitely contributed to the tension. By refusing to
fall for my bait, Owen forced me to sit back and let him get into Kau’yon
instead of smashing him early like I wanted to do. In the end, I think the
difference-maker was that my more aggressive positioning and better Secondaries
meant I would win if neither of us committed, which mean Owen eventually did
have to come out and play. Critically, that also meant his big alpha turn was
largely expended on killing Starweavers and Troupes, while my counterattack got
to go directly onto his expensive To The Last units. It’s no coincidence that
at the end of the game, the only large squads surviving were my Voidweavers,
and I’m quite proud of how defensively I used them to stop Owen trading into
them. Of course, the reason I could dominate the midboard was that I knew I
could take a punch from Owen then hit him back hard, with my range and mobility
advantage meaning Owen wasn’t capable of a knockout blow with his first swing. Voidweavers
and Mirror Architect are good, guys.
Board at the end of the game
In terms of lists, I'm really happy with mine: the
Voidweavers are the core of the list and they put in work every game, while the
rest of the army basically just runs disruption and scores points. I’d been
contemplating swapping a Fusion Boat or two for foot Troupes, but the extra
couple of Starweavers really showed their worth this game. I continue to be
impressed by the amount of work that 2 Fusion Pistols and a Neuro Disruptor can
get done, and I still don’t think I’d swap them out for melee upgrades in this
list. In general, Troupes only end up out of their boats when I’m trading them
for points or when the enemy shoots them out. In the first case, they’re
probably still too small a squad to kill much in combat regardless of what they’re
equipped with, and in the latter case they’re probably going to be shot to
death anyway. To my mind, it’s better to just get more value out of them while
they’re still flying around in their boats than try and make them into
dedicated combat units.
I'd also like to quickly comment on the one major difference between Mani Cheema's version of this list and mine. In his version, he has an extra Neuro Disruptor and two combat weapons on all the Troupes. In mine, I have a Solitaire. I reckon the Solitaire adds way more melee pressure than a few Kisses or Embraces seeded through could ever accomplish, and he gets so much work done every game. Cheaper Troupes and a super clown all the way for me.
Owen’s list, on the other hand, had a lot of things that
worked excellently and a few that I would have swapped out. The Crisis deathball
had to get pretty close to do its thing, and that meant that in this matchup it
couldn’t get value out of Drop Zone Clear, but once it was on the table it was
an absolute menace. An average of 55 S4 hits— rerolling failed Wound rolls
and backed by 5 Plasma shots too— is a horrendous amount of offence, and
the 8 Drones made it feel super tanky. I think I would honestly have leant into
this a bit more and taken the Stimm Injector, it seems like a better durability
upgrade than the -1 to hit in melee that it did have. After all, how often is a
squad with ten Flamers ending up in combat anyway? I also think I’d have shaved
some points throughout (probably from the Prototype Weapon Systems sprinkled
all over the place) for a few Shield Drones on the smaller Crisis squad. Once
it was on the field it basically just evaporated, and a couple of Drones would
have made them much less easy for me to deal with. On the other hand, I thought
the use of Marker Drones as slightly more expensive Kroot Hounds that could
sprinkle out some Markerlight tokens on distant enemies was a great call, and one
I might steal for future T’au lists I write.
I hope you enjoyed this slightly cagier Harlequins battle
report, with a bit more tactical play and less brutal slaughter in the early
turns. It turns out that the ‘Quins can play cagey with the best of them, and I
can really imagine a better pilot taking this list to the top of a tournament. In
fact, looking at this weekend’s tournament results, it seems the winner of the Last
of the Summer Winehammer GT took almost exactly this list, just with melee weapons
on the Troupes instead of pistols. Maybe I am wrong about my beloved Fusion
Boats after all!
They'd have certainly done a lot better at moments like this
Let me know in the comments what you thought of the report,
and especially, whether you like the small Troupe squads with Kisses and
Embraces, with Fusion Pistols and Neuro Disruptors, or with both and no Solitaire.
Until next time, may your screening always keep the Enclaves Crisis teams away!
Comments
Post a Comment