40k: Playtesting the Harlequin Solitaire (Battle Report)

 Hey Folks! NoName1 here - my collecting is on brief hold at the moment, but I did manage to get my hands on the Harlequin Solitaire (with White Dwarf rules) to take him out for a spin! Care to see how he stacked up on the field?

 My list is copied above, with short-hand notes, sorry for the hand-writing...  This was a friendly 1000 pt. game against Space Wolves. I took a normal CAD detachment, but played my list as Unbound (no Objective Secured, did not re-roll Warlord Trait) because I wanted to try the Solitaire in a game.
 (Skip halfway down for the Solitaire's bit, I got distracted in writing this)

 Terrain was a little sparse, but a Farseer with the Mantle of the Laughing god doesn't worry about much. To summarize our game, it was a quick 1000 pts. My opponent is a newer player, so he took a bit of an odd list - four units of Grey Hunters with a Flamer and Frost-Axe armed Rune Priest in each, plus a small unit of Wolf Scouts, also with Flamers.
 I imagine the idea was to have a big Scoring list that could ignore Eldar Cover. Solid idea, but it lacked the ranged firepower to really handle what I brought.

 I chose not to Deep Strike the Solitaire, and have him creep up instead, hoping his small profile (especially compared to the Knight) would let him slip through into combat.

 A Wraithknight is very, very distracting, especially with almost nothing on the table that can even hurt him...
 Because of my cheese-ness of fielding a Knight against a newbie in 1000 pts., the dice gods cursed me, and although I did Seize the Initiative, I also lost *three* jetbikes to Dangerous Terrain checks first turn (yes, I rolled the 1's AND failed my armor saves three times...)

 Cool custom scouts, this guys took Psychic Shriek and the Knight's Suncannon Turn 1 and went up in a puff of smoke.

 The Night Spinner, true to form, had a stellar opening volley, dropping five Grey Hunters right off the bat - then didn't hit again for the rest of the game. Ah well.

 Bird's-eye of the table. We were playing Maelstrom with standard Deployment and Secondary Objectives.

 I just really liked this picture, move along

 Below is the main event: the SOLITAIRE!

 Just as planned (high-five, Eldrad!) the Solitaire was ignored up until he got within spitting distance. This Grey Hunter unit has one flamer and an Axe-wielding Rune Priest still (pardon the proxies), but I still felt confident the Solitaire could with this unit off the board. And since this is a test, I decided not to go easy on him.

 The Flamer could easily have made this a very short test (keep that in mind) but I made a Blitz (move D6 x Turn Number, Attacks go up to 10), and make my charge, taking only one wound from the flamer.
 The Solitaire's marvelous Initiative 10 kicked in here (although Fear was, as usual, useless), and I threw my 12 dice down:

 Thaaaat's what you don't want. That 2 up top was the Kiss of Death attack (we were playing assuming that, based on the Rules as Written, you could use the Caress and still get the one Kiss attack. That's open for debate to the point where I won't play that way from now on...)
 So, considering my dice, the first attack was atrocious. But I still managed (luckily...) to take down two marines.

 In the Wolves turn, the Grey Hunters didn't land a single hit. Throughout this game, WS 9 came into play as the Solitaires best defense: many attackers will have a very hard time hitting you at all. Against less-skilled units, the Solitaire will make a real mess.
 In the Wolves turn, the Solitaire killed with other two Grey Hunters and put a Wound on the Rune Priest. I should have stayed in combat, but I wanted to try Hit and Run, so I did it - and ran a whopping 17" away. Yikes!

 Random interlude, the Wolves didn't land a single hit - but I did get a Perils, failed Leadership, and rolled a 1. Oops...  The Wolf is just there for dramatic effect, he had nothing to do with it.

 After running that 17" away, I was in a better position to assault this unit of Wolves, and figured it was time to amp up the test! So, unable to Blitz again (shame...) I charged this larger unit, 9-strong, and weathered the Overwatch (flamer included) miraculously without a scratch.

 I felt good already, but figured this would be a short fight, and not in my favor.

 Here's the result after round 1. Again, two Wolves dead on the Charge (this time to 6's from the Caress). I also had a Precision Strike with my Kiss of Death attack and gave it to the Wolf Lord, since he was the biggest threat in the unit. My Solitaire took one wound in the process, from the Wolf Lord. The Grey Hunters scored two hits and failed to wound (sad!)
 In the following round of combat, the Solitaire killed one more Wolf, but was finally brought down by the Wolf Lord, failing that 3++ save for the final time.

 Results:

 The Solitaire had little trouble making it into combat, and survived a grand total of four rounds of combat while seriously outnumbered, and against enemies that had no trouble hurting him.
 That resilience was due in large part to his high Weapon Skill/Initiative making him hard to hit in combat, and low-profile so he was easily hidden while advancing up the field.

 The Solitaire's damage-output was also impressive. despite my atrocious rolling, he still killed a total of seven Grey Hunters and did enough wounds to Rune Priests to have killed one of them. Those Grey Hunters all had CC weapons, and the Flamer was extra points.
 Points-wise, that put the Solitaire (in this game) killing more than 50 points more than it cost to field him. Not too shabby!

 With a wider range of targets to choose from, the Solitaire could do considerably more damage, and possibly even survive the process. In the near future, I hope to stack him up against a Riptide, and see how he fares. My guess is, quite well!

 This experience also highlighted how dangerous the Solitaire could be with Farseer support. With Fortune on, he wouldn't have taken half as many wounds. And with Prescience and/or Doom, he could have dealt twice as many wounds, easily.

 Here are my preliminary painting efforts:

 The mask is lightly high-lighted with brown, washed with black ink, then gloss varnished. I was going for (and hoping to finish up) an Obsidian effect, making it look like a dark stone mask.

 I'm debating whether or not to do the Motley on his legs. The Solitaire is meant to be more somber than the other Players, so I' shelving him while I think about it.

 I'm still working on blending the cloak, but it's starting off well, I think.

 So that's it! Thoughts? Anyone else played a game with the Solitaire yet?