Thanks for the comments guys.
A summary of the list design philosophy is that Harlequins are generally better that standard Aspects, so the formations should be more expensive, but also limited in various ways (covered by their abilities, the special rules and limitations in their numbers etc).
Equally these are the “circus” of the Eldar worlds, highly skilled, but also clowns or jokers - the following rules are intentionally quirky for that reason.
The Laughing God is a double edged sword. It helps the Harlequins and hinders the opponent (some more than others), but it also indicates the focus of Harlequin effort, allowing the enemy to plan on ways to counter the strategy (like piling in reserves to swamp the Harlies, or vacating the area).
BUT, Cegorach is only available to a Harlequin Grand Masque, where there are more Harlequin formations than other Eldar.
Veil of Tears is more subtle, and does several things.
- It temporarily reduces the size of the enemy formation.
- It allows the Harlequins to exclude key enemy units
- It also provides a mechanism to answer the conundrum of how there are survivors to tell tales about the massacre by Harlequin assaults.
Providing the Shadowseer is not killed, the affected enemy units are completely excluded from the assault; they don’t fight, cannot be attacked and are immune to hackdowns (though they will be removed if the formation is destroyed by being broken twice). However the Shadowseer must be positioned carefully (usually to one side) to avoid him robbing the formation of its assault targets.
NOTE:-
As currently written, the Shadowseer affects all combats around him, including those where he is in support of a different assault. This enhances the otherwise minimal support given by Harlequin formations.
Mrdiealot wrote:
Wanted to comment of the Veil of Tears like it is in Grand Masque. As I thought, there would be situations where you don't really want to use it. Norto engaged a bunch of Praetorians (3+ armour w. inv save) and had great problems killing the last two since they were "locked" by the VoT ability. There's also the issue of what happens when a unit is engaged to a "locked" unit in CC... It's not hyper clear whether they use CC or FF in the ensuing combat. It also seems a bit strange that Harlequins don't hit guys that are paralyzed.
Units that are B-B with a ‘locked’ enemy can use their FF value to fight another target, including the Shadowseer.
If you don’t want the Shadowseer to affect the combat, merely leave him outside 15cm of the enemy.
QUESTION:- Should he have ‘scout’ to facilitate this?
(It so, the Great Harlequin would also need ‘scout’ as he becomes a Shadowseer when near Cegorach)
Quote:
I thought the Harlequin God worked pretty OK, it's not super easy to keep him going through the entire battle. Maybe that he can only be placed within LoS from a Harlequin unit? I also think the Eldar player should be forced to choose between the Avatar and Chegorath when doing the list, and not be able to use both.
The LoS constraint is unnecessary given the way it flags the Harlequin strategic intentions.
The list already forces the choice between Cegorach and the Avatar, depending on which army is leading, and which is the ‘ally’. Cegorach is only available to a Grand Masque, while the Avatar is only available to other Eldar.
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Being able to consolidate or move back into a portal seems OK to me. There's always the risk of being locked into the portal (which nearly happened to Norto). Might be worth to clarify that Harlequins don't prevent non-harlequins from using the portal as normal if the Harlequins happen to go through it first.
good spot, though I thought that was already inferred.
Did you try to ‘Hit-and-run’ out and back in again, to shoot something?
Is that too cheesy?