Hello everyone!

This past weekend, I got in touch with a buddy of mine, and we agreed to meet up and test a fabled “Fear Test” list, that has been buzzing about since the Harlequin Codex was released. I was having a bit of an issue in constructing this list, both by what I felt was right, as well as what I had access to.

My list consisted of a Drukhari Battalion, a Craftworld Battalion, and a Harlequin Vanguard.

The Drukhari Battalion consisted of 3 squads of 3 Kabalites, 2 Archons, 3 triple Dissie Ravagers, running as Black Heart with LabCun and Writ as per standard. Also everything that could take a PGL took one, because Fear Tests!

The Harlequin Vanguard consisting of a Shadowseer, 3 Death Jesters, and 2 squads of 5 Players. This detachment is going Silent Shroud to maximize that leadership bomb, and really play off the Death Jesters. It hurt not having Curtainfall, but this was where this Masque was meant to be played

The Craftworld Battalion consisted of a Farseer, knowing Guide and Mind War. 3 squads of rangers pushing the front line and zoning out, as well as a Hemlock knowing Horrify. And the haymaker of the list: Irillyth leading a squad of 9 Shadow Spectres.

That’s right- we went Forge World for this list. Now a small caveat to this; a lot of organized play (tournaments particularly) will limit your Forge World access. Despite what opinions you hold on that topic, it’s a restriction you might encounter. My store holds the reservation of 1 FW unit per army with a PL less than 30, so “technically” I can’t bring both Irillyth and the Spectres… but this isn’t a tournament so I did whatever I wanted!

Now if you’re not familiar with Shadow Spectres or their Phoenix Lord, let me break em down for you. Spectres are basic Elves with S/T 3, one attack in close combat, and one wound each- numbing both attacks and wounds up to 2 if you take an Exarch. These guys have a 12″ move characteristic as well as the Fly Keyword, and boast a 3+ armor save. They have a natural -1 to hit against all attacks and a special ability that says:

Shadow of Death: All enemy units within 6″ of a Shadow Spectres Exarch must roll an additional dice when making Morale tests, discarding the lowest dice rolled before determining the result.

Sound familiar? It creature a bit of redundancy with the Silent Shroud Masque trait, but when you add in Irillyth, it blows that range out to 18″ which is pretty impactful. The key to the Shadow Spectres power (and the reason they’re so expensive) is their gun. It comes standard with 2 weapon profiles, the first of which is a D6 S5 AP1 1D flamer. On each model. But there’s more. The OTHER mode is an 18″ S6 AP6 Assault1 variant with a bonus:

Each hit inflicted with this weapon allows an additional attack to be made with it. As long as each following attack hits, the controlling player may keep making attacks until a total of 3 hits have been inflicted with this weapon.

Whoa. That weapon is a HOSE against virtually everything that is T6 or less. When Irillyth is around, he blows the Leadership bomb out to 18″ which is coincidentally the same range as our rifles.

Irillyth himself boasts an S/T4 statline with 6 wounds, and a 2+ WS/BS, and a slightly ungraded Prism Rifle. His “Spear of Starlight” (AWESOME name) is Assault 1 with S6, AP3, 2D with the ability to generate 4 attacks instead of 3- as well as a 24″ range.

These units were so much fun to play with, and although we weren’t particularly playing a “competitive” game, they really hosed my opponent down. Spoiler alert: don’t charge 9 flamers, especially when they’re in a list that preys in making you fail Morale tests.

My plan was simple: use the Rangers to screen and intercept the front lines, and allow my back line to hammer at the heavy hitters and things that couldn’t reliably fail morale. Move my Hemlock into the middle of the field, and out my Harlequins in mid field and have them tie things up in combat, and just be an overall nuisance. Death Jesters were to put the final touch on infantry and put that -2 on as a coup de gras, and Ravagers means to blow up anything that looked at me funny.

When you play the right opponents; this list works. Like really well. When you DON’T play those opponents, this list flounders HARD. My first game was against Ynnari using Spears, Reapers, Rangers.. the usually Ynnari cheese that we’ve come to know all too well. Seeing as the only unit he had that was more than 5 models was the shining Spears, Leadership bomb is a bust. I was able to kill things, do damage and generally “exist” but my schtick just wasn’t sticking here, and since the Reapers deleted my Hemlock T1, he never even got to shoot. In retrospect I should have probably Cloudstrike’d it to protect it- but this was a test game, not for min/max strategy. Eventually my lines began to thin and I could get close enough to his gunline bubble with his Psykers and Reapers in the back corner. We call it after T3 in favor of having time to play another game, but I’m glad it happened. It was then that I realized I need another Hemlock, and maybe 9 Spectres is overkill in favor of some more diversity.

Game 2 is against my Nurgle friend, and THIS was a match I was hoping for. Initially when I played the prototype for this list, it folded to this match up because on Morale rolls of 1, he auto passes the test AND gets models back- undoing all the work I did. This time I came prepared with units (Spectres/Irillyth) and an entire detachment (Harlequins) that nullified that rule nearly entirely. My opponent brought a bunch of Plaguebearers, a handful of Plague Toads (whatever their Codex name actually is…) and the assortment of Epidemis, and company. I’m able to take first turn, and I use my Ravagers to take out a good few of his toads, and use my Jesters, Hemlock and Spectres to move up and put hurt one his Palguebearers. By the end of T1, he had lost 3 frogs, 9 blaguebeaers and although he didn’t lose any frogs to Morale, he ended up losing and additional 4 Plaguebearers to his dice.

This match continued in a similar fashion until his backmost line finally got in range of my Elves, and he was forced to change my Spectres to gain ground. Man, 9D6 flamers can put out A LOT of wounds. His squad of 27 Plaguebearers was completely wiped by the end of the morale phase, and as quick as it started, this game was over. The toads were toast, the Plague came and went- but the writing was on the wall. Oh and also, have you ever Agents of Vect’d an Insane Bravery stratagem? Because I did today. Twice.

The keys to this specific match up was the list my opponent brought. He opted into a Green Tide style offense that involved throwing bodies at me while sacrificing shooting, and banking on a “reanimation protocol” style defense of overwhelming numbers. Unfortunately these Elves had flamers, and when he had nothing in his list that could physically hit my Hemlock, he was on the backfoot to begin with. This list was super fun though, and post flamer-charge, his morale was at a -19 including modifiers. Who does that?! Neither of us was playing a fully optimized list, and towards the end of the game I decided to throw my Farseer at his Great Unclean one and just see how Mind War worked. I ended up hitting GCU for 5 wounds thanks to dice rolls, which is pretty respectable… but he passed 3 of his Disgustingly Resilient, because of course he did.

My finally thoughts on the day remain similar to my initial thoughts, but I will admit this list is “doable”. I hold fast to my initial comments that this is not a list I would bring to a “Take All Comers” style event where you’re playing unknown opponents in an unknown meta. I still struggle to think how I’d fight through a Synapse Horde, even with Jesters and Rangers. Also we have little counterplay to heavy armor lists, or fliers. If your opponent has a handful of RWJF’s Hemlocks, Valkyries, etc, you’re gunna struggle. If they pack a list of just Russ’s, Basilisks, Hydras, etc… you’re gunna suffer.

If I were to make changes to this list, it would probably be as follows:

Add a second Hemlock. Blowing out that Mindshock aura can help a lot, and losing an entire dimension of your strategy on T1 can hurt.

Try adding Dark Creed. Even if it’s just a patrol of a Haemonc and some Wracks, or a Vanguard with Grotesques, give that a test.

Come down on Spectres. 9 was overkill and those points can go better elsewhere, especially when the Harlequins have the same special rule for free.

Expand to a Battalion of Harlequins. Better board presence, better against vehicles, and along with the Mask of Secrets, can do real damage to Morale.

Finally; find a solution for Characters, and hard counters. There is probably a non-zero number of solutions to deal with our hard counters. I imagine there’s a critical mass of snipers that can reliable kill Synapse, there’s gotta be a way to punch Guilliman and Celestine down on T1 effectively, I just need to find it within the constraints of our motif

Thank you all so much for reading if you’ve made it this far! I’ll likely be spending more time with this list in the future, but I wanna dedicate my next few postings to dissecting some of our Masques, Relics, and Traits, as well as talking about the overall winners and losers of the new Codex: Harlequins. Thank you again, and as always I look forward to all your comments and discussion!

As Always,

Batty