Codex Harlequins Rumor Roundup!

[Subs]

The entire games been broken in that sense since they said you could take an unbound army and just place anything you want on the table.

[DrBored]

The entire games been broken in that sense since they said you could take an unbound army and just place anything you want on the table.

Agreed, anyone who holds onto any pretext that the game is balanced at all needs to go cash their reality check (they'll find that it bounces).

I find it interesting that GW is slowly returning to the way things were back when they started off. They had TONS of little armies, including Harlies and Genestealer Cults and other things, all in metal, all in small forces, and then they dropped all of that when they started to move into plastic, did a whole 'culling' that got rid of all that flavor.. only to slowly start to come back to it all over again?

[Erik Setzer]

Agreed, anyone who holds onto any pretext that the game is balanced at all needs to go cash their reality check (they'll find that it bounces).

I find it interesting that GW is slowly returning to the way things were back when they started off. They had TONS of little armies, including Harlies and Genestealer Cults and other things, all in metal, all in small forces, and then they dropped all of that when they started to move into plastic, did a whole 'culling' that got rid of all that flavor.. only to slowly start to come back to it all over again?

It wasn't the move to plastic that did it. Those armies were in Rogue Trader and 40K 2nd edition, at a time when the entire game was made up of smaller armies. Space Marine Tactical Squads started at 300 points, so even in a 2000 point army, you had maybe 4 squads, a character or two, and one or two vehicles. Smaller armies were how the game worked back then.

It was a desire to sell more that pushed bigger and bigger games, with point costs plummeting even as the basic army points level stayed the same. If you build a Harlequin army, an actual full army, it's not going to be that small. If you don't pump them up with a ton of equipment, you could get 60-70 models into an army easy, and that's with a solid mix of X-weavers thrown in. Genestealer Cult and Adeptus Mechanicus will be much the same, only even more so with the GCs, because you have cheap basic troops and then you have Genestealers, which aren't that expensive.

[40kGamer]

It was a desire to sell more that pushed bigger and bigger games, with point costs plummeting even as the basic army points level stayed the same. If you build a Harlequin army, an actual full army, it's not going to be that small. If you don't pump them up with a ton of equipment, you could get 60-70 models into an army easy, and that's with a solid mix of X-weavers thrown in. Genestealer Cult and Adeptus Mechanicus will be much the same, only even more so with the GCs, because you have cheap basic troops and then you have Genestealers, which aren't that expensive.

GW's been pimping more models on the table for a long time. Still for those of us that routinely play historical games with model counts of 1000+ 40k is still a skirmish game.

[Erik Setzer]

GW's been pimping more models on the table for a long time. Still for those of us that routinely play historical games with model counts of 1000+ 40k is still a skirmish game.

Sure, but WFB is closer to those kind of games, and WFB's always been higher model count. You also move said units around in regiments, and none of those games literally has 1000+ models unless they're in the 10mm range (maybe 15mm), at which point you're also getting closer to talking Warmaster and Space Marines.

40K's gone right past tanks, though, and includes stuff that should only be seen in massive, huge battles. Not to mention jet fighters and stuff making strafing runs and all, which seems odd for the size of battles it's conveying, even at the increased size of today's battles.

[40kGamer]

Sure, but WFB is closer to those kind of games, and WFB's always been higher model count. You also move said units around in regiments, and none of those games literally has 1000+ models unless they're in the 10mm range (maybe 15mm), at which point you're also getting closer to talking Warmaster and Space Marines.

40K's gone right past tanks, though, and includes stuff that should only be seen in massive, huge battles. Not to mention jet fighters and stuff making strafing runs and all, which seems odd for the size of battles it's conveying, even at the increased size of today's battles.

You can hit 1000+ in 28mm historicals but games definitely scale up as the size decreases. By the time you hit 6mm you're looking at 5000+ for both armies on a 4x8 table.

I've always asserted that fliers and superheavies belong in Epic scale or as display models. Both simply magnify the imbalance in 40k while not adding anything particularly interesting.

On the Harlie front I was bouncing around the GW store and noticed the LE set is long gone. I wasn't sure this one would sell out all that fast but it did.

[Erik Setzer]

On the Harlie front I was bouncing around the GW store and noticed the LE set is long gone. I wasn't sure this one would sell out all that fast but it did.

They only made 900, and this is a codex people have been waiting for literally for two decades.

[Subs]

You can't really apply conventional models of escalation based on how big the combatant forces are to 40K, when a conflict covers anentire planet, like it oftern does in 40K there are going to be multiple battles of various sizes going on permanently, huge forces will face off against each other but at the same time smaller forces will be looking to flank and find weakspots and patrols will be clashing in contested area's. Things like flyers and super heavies are going to be on call permanantly and would crop up in smaller battles, i suspect a lot of the smaller battles would actually be about destroying and crippling the super heavies and such, ambushing them while they move position.

Added to which it's a bit weird to moan about flyers and such when legendary Chapter and Company Masters seem to crop every other battle . . oh look it's the Space Wolf legends, again, haven't I killed them once already?

[Eldar_Atog]

They only made 900, and this is a codex people have been waiting for literally for two decades.

Plus, it's likely this will be the only Harlequin codex we will ever see. This will probably be the only limited edition codex I will ever buy.

[Wolfshade]

It was a desire to sell more that pushed bigger and bigger games, with point costs plummeting even as the basic army points level stayed the same.

I'm not entirely convinced by this GW standard tournament sizes were 1750pts even at the end of 2nd. While certainly the guy who said, if we half the cost of models we can double the amoutn we sell, probably still rubbing his hands in glee at his acumen, there was also a desire to play larger games from the community.
One only had to look at how clunky it got combat where there were multiple attackers vs 1 defender. I remember taking my 30 man DC into CC against a blood thirster and it was a nightmare and took almost as long as the rest of the game to resolve that one combat, what with each DC having it's own weapons and special rules and applying the bonuses and calculating parries, critical hits and fumbles, it was clunky yet people tried to play larger and larger games.