The Bane of Tabletop Standard Painters Return - The Harlequins are Back, and in Plastic.

Some miniatures are designed to be nice and easy to paint. Space Marines for example, can look good even in a very simple scheme, as can Astra Militarum. Then there are those miniatures that sit laughing at painters right the way through from beginners to those that think they are ok but can't always get what they visualise in their minds onto the miniatures. Those are the Harlequins. And Games Workshop have brought them back with a new box set and clam pack.

For £24, the new box set will allow you to make 6 Harlequins including a Troupe Master. There are 80 individual components which allows a load of variation. For example, while 2 completely masked heads in the box, there are 5 others that allows you to put one of 13 different masks on them. The number of potential combinations of weapons, torso fronts and backs... while not quite mind boggling, they would take some calculating. Enough at any rate to mean that no two Harlequins in your force should look the same.

I think that they have both gained and lost individuality with this release. The last box of Harlequins I can remember had a variety of poses with different patterns on their clothing. Here you are stuck mainly with diamonds or blanks, which could be changed up if you trust your free hand. On the other side of the coin, the last box was limited to the models in it, unless you started hacking them apart. This box has done that for you, so all you have to do is come up with a combo you haven't built before. 

The Clam Pack is none other than a Solitaire, and this dynamic looking 9 piece plastic kit will cost you £16.

Note that the only contact between the Solitaire and the base is actually just the edge of the jacket, which you just couldn't pull off with a metal or resin model in my opinion (so you might get away with resin but not without constant worry).

You can find rules for them in White Dwarf 53.