Dark Eldar: Trying out the Solitaire
Even though the Solitare is not the most cost-effective unit in the Harlequin codex, he’s by far the coolest. Let’s take a look at his stats really quick and see what he has to offer to the battle.
First thing’s first, the guy is 145 points so he’s not really cheap nor expendable. For the same amount of points, you can buy yourself 2x Starweavers which is 4 HP worth of AV10 that comes with 12 S6 Shuriken Cannon shots. That’s probably the best direct comparison because you’ll see in the list below, that’s exactly where I’m cutting points from.
The second thing to note is his beastly ass combat stats, minus the fact he’s still a T3 3W model with only a 3++ save. He’s WS9 S3/4 on the charge due to Furious Charge, I10 and 6 attacks base. Since he’s packing both Caress and Kiss, he technically has 8 attacks on the charge. Once a game, he can Blitz for 12 attacks on the charge and move D6xTurn Number worth of movement. This might not seem like much, but he can potentially move up to 24″ on Turn 4 to punch someone off an objective, or he can move 4″ because you rolled like ass. Personally, I’m not banking on the movement too much since his 12″ natural move is enough to get the job done in most cases. Most of the time, you really want to Blitz for the extra attacks since Harlequin’s Caress can do some serious work if you roll enough 6s.
For those folks that don’t know what caress and kiss does, it’s really quite simple. Caress is basically old school Rending where if you roll a 6 to Hit, you automatically wound at AP2 and against vehicles, causes a Glancing Hit. Kiss is a separate attack made by the Harlequin in which it’s automatically resolved at S6 AP2 with a chance for Instant Death on a 6 to Wound, but first you gotta hit. Overall not all that bad, but the crux of the problem here is that he’s going to be very dice dependent if he really wants to take down 2+ armor save targets. That’s why you probably shouldn’t throw him into anything too tough, especially since if the opponent rolls hot and forces enough wounds onto you, you’re going to die. I would stick to killing Lictors or making Devastator teams cry.
As for upgrades, I would keep this dude dirt cheap, either stock or running with a solo Haywire Grenade. Ideally, he never wants to engage vehicles and would rather hunt smaller prey, but occasionally you might need to force that extra hull point damage through and the Solitare can do that if he has Haywires. This brings him to an even 150, still a little expensive for what he can do on the table but I’ll take it anyway.
So how do you run him exactly? I would definitely consider the standard Masque detachment or The Heroes’ Path formation. Masque’s Rising Crescendo makes it so you can Run and Charge in the same turn, which increases the overall threat range of your assault by a significant margin (especially when you have Fleet re-rolls). The Heroes’ Path formation gives your Solitare Infiltrate (important), Stealth and Shrouded, but the downside is that you have to take the Shadowseer and Deathjester as well, essentially paying 120 tax if you only want the Solitare. You can view this as either an offensive buff for your solo assassin, or a defensive buff for more survivability. Either way, if he gets caught in the open, he’s going to die to any decent shooting so it doesn’t really matter.
I would play him very, very carefully and use him primarily as a defensive striker. Use every single line of sight blocker as you can and keep him out of sight until he’s ready to strike. Since he can ignore all forms of terrain, you really have to use that to your advantage since he’s a man-sized model and incredibly easy to hide. He also has Deep Strike so it might be worth keeping him in reserve and running out of line of sight the turn he comes down, but that’s also really risky. Play with his 22.5″ threat range under Rising Crescendo and punish anything that gets too close as a melee threat. Hopefully whatever you assault will be WS4 or under, thus needing 5s to hit your dude and drastically reduce the amount of wounds he’ll be taking in return. The less saves he has to roll the better the chances he’s going to live and fight another day.
They see my rollin’, they hatin’..
Alright, now here’s the list I plan on messing around with:
1850 pts Darkquin Duck
DE CAD*
HQ:
Llama = 10
TROOP:
5x Warriors, Blaster, Raider, Lance = 115
5x Warriors, Blaster, Raider, Lance = 115
5x Warriors, Blaster, Raider, Lance = 115
5x Warriors, Blaster, Raider, Lance = 115
FAST:
Razorwing, Lances = 140
Razorwing, Lances = 140
HEAVY:
Ravager, Lances = 125
Ravager, Lances = 125
Ravager, Lances = 125
Masque Detachment*
TROOP:
5x Troupe, Starweaver = 165
5x Troupe = 95
5x Troupe = 95
FAST:
Starweaver = 70
Starweaver = 70
ELITE:
Solitare, Haywire = 150
HEAVY:
Voidreaver, Prismatic = 80
I start off the game by throwing lances, but now I understand that my overall firepower is less because I have the Solitare in the army. No worries, I still win based on style points and I have great confidence that I’m going to caress and kiss my opponent’s army to death. Check out HERO’s Gaming Blog for more Dark Eldar and Harlequin related stuff.
Who has good Solitaire battlefield stories to share?
