Yesterday I went down with my wargaming club to Hamilton, for a three round 20 person 1850pt tournament. As I’m trying to go for best Harlequin in the ITC, I adapted my normal Harlequins list to fit into the Ynnari Reborn Warhost.
For those who don’t know the Ynnari have a few benefits (which are amazing on their own), but the biggest thing is Soul Burst, where whenever a unit dies, a unit I have within 7” can immediately make an activation (move, shoot, run, turboboost or charge). Because of my formation, I can activate two units for every dead unit. The rule is crazy unbalanced and makes running non-Ynnari Eldar/Dark Eldar/Harlequins pointless competitively.
My list
Ynnari Reborn Warhost 1850pts
Ssylth
Windrider Jetbikes x3 scatter laser
Harlequin Troupe x5
Ceorgorach’s Revenge
X3 Shadowseers
X2 Death Jesters
Inram’s Spectre
Troupe x8 w/Starweaver (troupe master is warlord, all death jesters and shadowseers join this unit).
Troupe x5 w/Starweaver
Troupe x5 w/Starweaver
Blades of Fate
X3 Skyweavers
Voidweaver
Game 1 was against a guy from my club I drove down with, he was running Chaos Space Marines, with Allied Chaos Daemons
Rehati War Sekt
Magnus The Nipple Horns
X3 Tzeentch Daemon Princes with spell familiar, wings Ml3
Chaos Daemons Allied Detachment
Kairos Fateweaver
10 Brimestone Horrors.
Mission was ITC Emperors will. Two Objectives in our deployment zones (emperors will), with two more objectives in no-mans land for Maelstrom.
I played against a similar army before. I know he’d be hard pressed to table me, and I could easily win Maelstrom. Primary would be harder.
I had no real way of dealing with the flying monstrous creatures, without snapfiring and hoping ones fails a grounding test.
I had first turn, my opponent castled in the far left corner, while I spread out along the middle.
First few turns
I started off well, placing two wounds on Magnus with Shuirken Cannons, but after that I didn’t do any more damage to his army. He summoned Exalted Flamers to try and get maelstrom points, but I killerd them as soon as they arrived. By t3, I had been getting 2pts a turn, and my opponent had only a handful of points.
Last few turns
He spreads his princes out to capture emperors will. I had only my ‘death star’, Solitare, Sslyth and a few random harlequins running around. Magnus drops to the ground (not sure why), and I charge him with my Deathstar and after a few rounds of combat I failed to kill him (tough guy!). I failed a critical hit and run T5 which cost me from contesting emperors will.
Game ends with my opponent claiming primary and Big Game Hunter and LineBreaker, while I Had Secondary for a 10-8 Loss.
Then we all had some Pizza! Yum!
Game 2
This mission was ITC Relic. Relic in the Middle, with an objective for maelstrom in each of our deployment zones.
Imperial Fists Sternhammer Strike Force
Battle Demi Company
Captain on bike with Primarch Wrath
3 Attack Bikes
10 man tactical sqad with grav+Gravcannon in pod
5 man squad with melta+combi-melta in pod
5 man squad in Razorback
Dreadnought in Lucius pattern drop pod
Devistator Centurions with x2 heavybolters x1 lascannon
Skyhammer Annihilation Force.
X2 5 man assault squad
X2 five man devastator squads in Drop Pods (one with 4 heavy bolters, one with 4 multi-meltas
Inquisitor detachment
Coteaz
Xenos Inquisitor with x3 servo skulls and ML1
In this game I had the second turn. I was worried about his pods coming in and shooting me up, so I deployed the Blades of Fate, Deathstar with all the characters, 5 man Troupe and Solitare. The Rest I kept in reserve. My opponent deployed inquisitors in the centurions on his objective in a ruin, captain with the attack bikes and razorback in the middle.
T1
He went first, bringing in the Grav and Dread pods. His centurions were out of LoS of my force. His bikes and razorback moved forwards. Dread killed a death Jester in his shooting phase, so with the soulburst, I charged one of his 5 man squads with the blades of Fate and the Lucious Pattern pod with my blob. In his assault phase, the blades of fate killed their target, and the pod died too.
In my turn, the blob took out his Dread (and soulburst back into cover), while the bikes killed the other 5 man squad from the drop pod and then soul-burst to shoot (and take a hull point off) the razorback.
T2
His Skyhammer comes in all around my deathstar (which was invisible and had Veil off). The meltagun squad pod comes in next to the blades of Fate.
Overall, his shooting phase saw me loose 4/5 models in the objective camping troupe, while everything else more-or less failed to hurt the death star, due to failing veil tests, invis and passing saves. He did kill another Death Jester, so I soulburst the deathstar into one of the assault squads, and the Solitaire made an impressive 11” charge into the other.
Rest of his shooting was stopped, as I was now in combat lol.
In assault, the Solitare killed no marines, but suffered 2 wounds in return. The deathstar also failed to kill more than 1 marine.
all my reserves come on, except for the ssyth. I kill off both devastator squads and drop pods that came in. Solitare continues doing nothing, troupe wins combat and bounces toward his lord.
T3-4
The game ended due to time, but I started to then spread out the table killing off the rest of his force. At the end of turn 4, I had control of the relic, and all my opponent had left on the table was the centurions (who I never really bothered to deal with).
I had primary and Secondary and all 3 tertiary objectives, while my opponent had one tertiary
19-1 win for the Harlequins.
Game 3
I looked at my Round 3 opponents army, and figured that it would be a quick win for my opponent.
Tau Empire
Combined Arms Detachment
Commander (all the fixings and markerlight drones)
Crisis suit team x3 sits with marker drones
Solo naked suit
Y’vahra Riptide
Stormsurge
Skyray
Riptide Wing
X3 Riptides
Inquisitorial Detachment
Inquisitor with x3 servo skulls
Yikes. Not good.
Mission was Crusade. 4 objectives on the table (2 in no mans land, 2 in deployment zones).
I kept nothing in reserve (yolo) My opponent set up clustered in the middle.
T1
I had the first turn. I moved everything up. Voidweaver up front to activate soulburst if it died. Transports and solitare on my right, Bikes on my left, Ssyth behind a wall on my objective.
I had sporadic shooting at one of his tides, take down a couple of wounds with rends. Then the best thing happened. Death Jesters shoot at the Drone crisis squad, persision shot out a marker drone and then the squad failed it’s ‘Death is Not Enough’ Test and ran off the table. Holy amphetamine parrot warlord and all his markerlights gone on T1.
I turbo-boosted the blades of fate into his deployment zone for Maelstrom and as a distraction.
My opponent Flew the Y’Vahra up next to my line of transports (uh oh) while the riptides dug in to ripple fire.
My deathstar was hidden with Viel, so he started with the Y’Vahra. It shot at three starweavers Wrecked two of them and killed a couple of harlequins in each squad. I then soul-burst charged the Y’vahra with the Solitare and the disembarked troupe. The riptides the Windriders and the Voidweaver, which let me get some extra soulburst shots and a turboboost into his deployment zone.
Stormsurge charged the blades of fate, who slipped through it’s grasp and hit and run away.
T2
I charged all three of his Riptides. Solitare and Troupe into one, and a jetbikes squad and 3 man troupe into the other 2. Solitare and friends kill their riptide and then soulburst into the other two.
At this point, he is forced to bring the stormsurge into combat and a slug match begins. His nova-charges power up his saves, so I find it very hard to damage him. Deathstart make it in T3 and I chew through the riptides and stormsurge over the next two turns. My opponent calls the game T4
19-0 Win for Harlequins!
At the end of the day, I place 3rd best overall (behind Ynnari Craftworld and D-99 Flierspam), which was a fantastic scoring considering how great the competition was.
I checked my ITC ranking afterwards, and I am currently the #2 ranked Harlequin player globally on the ITC and #1 in Canada, which I am surprised, and very happy about.
With my winnings, I picked up a second Windrider squad to take over as my second compulsory troops slot.
Here are some pictures of some of the other armies which were there.
Here are the Final Rankings, if anyone is curious about which armies were there, and how they placed.
Black Knight Games March ITC tournament - Best Coast Pairings