Warhammer 40K Is Now A Game For Clowns
Let’s talk about how deadly clowns have taken over the game. Welcome your new Harlequin overlords!
Adepticon, one of the largest and most venerable 40K events has come and gone. By all accounts it was a great time, with players happy to return to some sort of normalcy after a crazy couple of years. One thing that quickly became obvious at this large event how is that 40K is now a game dominated by clowns.
No, Not The Players
Obviously I’m not talking about the players here, they remain a fine and enthusiastic group. What I mean is that the event was dominated by a rash of Clownish Elves, the deadly Harlequins, taking over. These tricksters, fresh out with a new Codex, took to the table top and dominated.
Harlequins Run This Show
The dancing elves showed up to this event as confident in their new book as Harley Quinn was after dumping Mr. J.. It was a well deserved confidence as they kicked some serious butt. The winnig list of the weekend was Zack Point’s Harlequins. But they weren’t limited to 1st place.
Harlequins took 3 of the top 4 spots over the weekend. They and mixed Aeladri armies dominated both the top 8 and top 16. Acrroding to the math wizards over on Reddit Harlequin armies had a whopping 76% win rate, which jumped to 80% if you took out mirror matches. Compared to that armies like Sisters and Guard were in the low or mid 20% win rates. Looking at 4 major events this weekend, in case you were worried Adepticon was a fluke, Harlequins had a combined 78% win rate.
The Most Broken?
For anyone trying to downplay it, this is simply put – not great. In effect what we have here is Drukhari 2.0. In fact statistically speaking I don’t think any army has ever gotten up to this high of win percentage – pretty much instantly after their codex was released. Overall this gives Harlequins the dubious distinction of likely being the most broken army in 40K history right now.
Simply put these guys are off the rails. This kind of thing is not good for the game. No army should have roughly 4 times as good a chance as winning as another army. This is not a good place for the Grimdark to be in.
Bad For Eldar
When Codex Aeldari first came out I expressed some worries about Harlequins. The main gist of it was that I was worried Eldar would get edged out of their own Codex by the fact that Harlequins seemed to do better than a lot of Craftworld units. Based on events from the past few weeks I’d say I was right here. We’ve consistently seen players either taking Harlequin detachments to get assault troops (rather than using Aspects) or more recently just playing full Harlequin armies. It’s sad to see the Craftworlds, even with tons of buffs, get pushed into obscurity by their more colorful cousins.
It’s Just The Same Army As Always
One of the most frustrating things about Harlequins doing so well is that army isn’t even anything new. The lists dominating the meta right now are effectively the same type of army that has been dominating for a while. Current Harlequin lists are built around using and abusing large numbers of Voidwavers and Starweavers. These lists run 12+ light fast vehicles, backed up with some deadly assault infantry. Once again we see a horde of small vehicles/monsters dominating.
We’ve seen Admech, Orks, Drukhari, Nids and others all take over major events with the same basic idea of an army. It almost seems like its the only good thing GW can write at this point. Those lists were really only supplanted when the next better version of that “light vehicle horde” army came out. Now it’s Harlequins turn (until maybe they get nerfed). I can only hope that when Guard come out as the last 9th Edition book I get to write an article about how Sentinel-horde lists are destroying the game. Let me dream!
Until that day, I’ll leave this game to the clowns.
Let us know what you think about the Harlequin takeover, down in the comments!
