Musings on first Ynnari game

Firstly, I apologise if this is in the wrong section please feel free to move it. I didn’t put this in battle reports as this is not a battle report, rather it’s my first thoughts of Ynnari and potential Yannari tactics following my first test game with them.

Secondly, my list is in no way a competitive list, it was a test list very loosely designed to test out units to see if they would work as Ynnari, try and get some initial thoughts on actually using soul bursts, to play around with try some of initial tactics.

For reference I was playing a non competitive tau list comprising of numerous pathfinders, fire warriors, a couple of missile broadsides, a single riptide, commander with crisis suit bodyguards and an imperial knight. Oh he also brought a unit of kroot!

We called it after turn 4 as he only had the riptide, one unit of fire warriors and one unit of path finders all castled up in a corner, were as I had full run of the board with c.75% of my starting units.

The list:

Ynnari Primary:
REBORN WARHOST:

Autarch, jet bike, banshee mask laser lance,

3 scatbikes
7 dire avengers

7 hellions
7 hellions
6 reavers (2 blasters, 2 caltraps)

wraith knight (sword and shield)

aspect host
7 swooping hawks (exarch)
7 swooping hawks (exarch)
7 warp spiders (exarch)

DARK ELDAR REAL SPACE RAIDERS:

Lhamian (venom)
5 Kablites (blaster, venom)
5 kablites (blaster venom)

5 kymera
5 kymera
1 clawed fiend
1 clawed fiend
1 clawed fiend
1 clawed fiend    

This list is going to bleed, no haemorrhage kill points (22 units including dedicated transports).
My initial thoughts for Ynnari was to go hunting in packs of three to four units keeping them in 7” of each other where possible, to get in their face as quick as possible and give them too many targets to kill.

My two hunting packs consisted of hellion, swooping hawk, clawed fiend and kymeria one with scat bikes and the other with dire avengers and reavers. The warpspiders just sort of as a flying reserve.  

I think my initial thoughts on mobility being key with the ynnari holds up. Mobility allows the units to get into advantageous positions (positions likely to generate soul bursts) and to respond to what is happening. It also leverages soul burst movement. However, when hunting in packs the pack can be limited by the slowest unit but it wasn’t actually that bad and the dire avengers, although never soul bursted, they did trigger it more than one.

It was interesting, it was difficult to figure out the best way to move and then fire the packs to maximise soul burst. On occasion I moved parallel and even past an enemy unit knowing my back field units (venoms) and dire avengers would kill the unit and then soul bursted two units further up the table to shoot further units that were not in range.

Once during his shooting phase, he killed a unit I then got to shoot two units, the first of which killed a drone squad enabling a further two units to soul burst shoot, which left me going back to the second unit from the first soul burst and having to remember that two other units could soul burst. It got a bit messy.

The small beast packs worked as well as I hoped and even though I wasn’t sure about which unit would be better, the clawed fiends or the kymera, I would probably run them again in the same mix. The dogs have the advantage of a larger foot print and therefore larger zone for when they die, the clawed fiends were more predictable on when they would die.

Before the Ynnari release I was thinking of running them as a sort of lictor shame type detachment with maxed out objective secured CAD with jet bikes and talos. However, I thought they may be able to do a job in a Ynnari force. Basically their job was to die when and where I wanted to make it easier to predict and control areas where soul burst could happen. Move them up and charge, depending on what you are charging there could be a good chance that they’ll die to over watch, just ensure that you have two good shooting units nearby. Also use them to hold a unit in place (once they’ve charged) and give yourself a chance to get into position either through soul bursts or by something as simple as movement.

There’s more for me to learn, I know I made mistakes, the effectiveness of the ynnari is going to depend in part on the opponent and the order in which they activate their units to shoot and the units they shoot at.

Sometimes you need to move to shoot at the meat of their force and movement in the opponents phase is interesting to say the least. Aggressive, attacking movement is probably best towards the end of their shooting phase where as defensive movement could be a double edged sword move the unit you want out of danger could leave other units more vulnerable.

Anyway I think that’s enough rambling but please let me know what you think of my musings and to chip in with thoughts of your own. It’s going to be a steep learning curve.