Harlequin Weapon Math and Exe-Wing

Hi guys,

Just a brief update, I went to an X-Wing store championship event over the weekend and had a great time, it was held by Kirton Games who normally have a store up in Crediton, Devon - However it was held at the hall where our club is normally held on a Wednesday night.

Wasn't expecting to do well at all as I haven't really played for a long time. We went to the release event for the Phantom/Defender a while back and since then I've only played twice, both times using Phantom and 2 Royal Guard.

I decided to go with what I knew though as I've played a lot with 4 x Royal Guard so put "Push The Limit" on them and took them for a ride!

Ended up coming fourth which I was really chuffed with given the lack of playtime and picked up an x-wing dice bag and a set of acrylic focus tokens.

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I've also been doing some math on the various Harlequin weapon options and thought I'd share here so that others can either:

a.) benefit from the info
b.) point out my errors

I assumed in all cases that I'd be facing MEQ type troops (WS4 // T4 // 3+ Save) and did the figures for on the charge, and subsequent combat.

Efficiency is calculated as Kills / Points, so a 10pt model with 1 kill would be 0.1, whereas if the same model cost 100pts it would be efficiency of 0.01. The higher the better.

This does not take into account additional uses such as anti vehicle (they all contribute in some way S6 attacks) or taking on other troop types, I may at some point in the future do those separately.

On the Charge:

Weapon	Kills	Efficiency
Caress	1	0.043
Kiss	.89	0.044
Embrace	1	0.50
TM with Caress	1.25	0.029
TM with Kiss	1	0.025
TM with Power Sword	1.67	0.033
TM with Storied Sword	2.22	0.037

Subsequent Combat Round:

Weapon	Kills	Efficiency
Caress	.67	0.029
Kiss	.70	0.035
Embrace	.22	0.011
TM with Caress	.89	0.022
TM with Kiss	.78	0.019
TM with Power Sword	.89	0.018
TM with Storied Sword	1.33	0.022

Conclusions:

Pretty much as expected and the Kiss seems to be the best option for most circumstances in my opinion which is great as it's the iconic Harlequin weapon. Saying that, the Caress or Embrace have more hitting power on the charge and can glance vehicles easier with the S6 auto glance on the to hit roll for Caress (Although no possibility of penetrating AV10 or AV11 which a kiss could do), and the S6 HoW hits from the Embrace. 

From a pure efficiency point of view there doesn't seem much downside to just running Kisses, but I'd probably put in 2 Kiss and 2 Caress I think in a 5 man, potentially with a plain one to soak up the first casualty if I ran them as a 6 man troupe.

For the Troupe Master I will probably run one with the Storied Sword as my Warlord, then the others will just have the Caress to keep them cheaper.

For those interested in the combined hitting power, a unit of 5 averages the following to MEQ on the charge:

Loadout	Kills
2 Kiss, 2 Caress, Storied Sword	6
2 Kiss, 2 Caress, TM with Caress	5.03

And subsequent (or they're charged)

Loadout	Kills
2 Kiss, 2 Caress, Storied Sword	4.07
2 Kiss, 2 Caress, TM with Caress	3.63

Hope that helps some people with their decision making anyway, if any of the Math is wrong, please let me know.

Rich