Troupes & Core
Hey everyone! Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re well aware that our Clown overlords, the Harlequins, have arrived and are dominating the metagame. Despite the great tournament showings events are on the fence when it comes to giving the Harlequin Troupes the keyword they need: CORE. Despite there being some arguments against Troupes getting the keyword, I want to take a bit to explain why it is damaging to the game as a whole to say the Clowns only troop choice doesn’t get the keyword.
Troupes are Clearly Intended to Have Core
The most obvious point I have to address first is that Troupes lacking the keyword makes the book not function properly inherently. There are many “Core-locked” abilities such as the Troupe Master’s re-roll Aura, many of the Shadowseer’s Psychic abilities, and many other Auras given off from Relics / a Warlord Trait. The odd part of the Core debacle is which unit does have Core, which currently is just Skyweavers. Me and much of the community at large agree that the army's Fast Attack choice would be an odd selection as the only unit to be Core.
Another argument going for the Troupes is just how odd it would be if the Harlequin ruleset was the only 9th edition main Troop choice currently released without Core. All of this stacks up to create an undeniable agreement that eventually a book cleanup FAQ will be released that adds the keyword to the Troupes.
Fixing the Problem Takes Longer
The big issue I have with not allowing Troupes to be played as Core at big events is how much this can skew that data on what the problem is in balancing the armies rules. Dark & Twilight are extremely viable choices that desperately want to use Troupes as fast-moving scalpels that can trade units off of point efficiently. The problem Harlequin players run into with Troupes not being Core is that the Troupes have no survivability otherwise. Fog of Dreams would be a great asset to keeping Troupes alive against indirect, with almost no access to re-rolls the Troupe Master’s Aura would help as well.
Without access to the abilities that would make these types of melee-centric builds tick, you’re only allowing Light to exist in the metagame, which can skew what the actual issues are down the road. In my head it’s inevitable that Troupes receive Core, but as we’ve seen this fix may be a few weeks to a month away. That’s weeks of data missed that could’ve been collected about the other builds of Harlequins, which means when Games Workshop comes down on the Light Saedath & Voidweavers the metagame will look barely different in terms of Harlequins win rate & Dark Saedath will fill the void.
Then who knows, we may have to wait for another Munitorum Field Manual or Balance Dataslate before that Metagame gets adjusted.
Tabled Talk
For the next bit of news this week I wanted to share some exciting news about the Tabled Talk Podcast that the Team Ettin members release every Saturday. Just under 50% of our listenership is based in Europe/Australia so we wanted to thank our worldwide listeners first and foremost! A big thank you to everyone who is tuning in weekly and helping the content grow, this really is an awesome and mega supportive community. We’ve finally set up a Patreon where people can show support, just go to https://www.patreon.com/tabledtalkofficial to help us out there!
Lastly our episode this this Saturday is sure to be exciting as Kevin & Chad are going to discuss what a budding Competitive player can do when faced with a misbehaving or rude opponent, what to look out for in all of your games, and how to protect yourself from cheaters or “gotchya” moments. Tune into that episode at Tabledtalk40k.buzzsprout.com this Saturday at 9am!
Thanks for tuning into a pretty light article this week! Just wanted to give big props to our Tabled Talk crew & cover the oddity going on with Troupes in the tournament scene! As always you can find tons of products right here at ettingames.com, we even ship worldwide!
