First Game With Yoroni

I got to sneak in a game after bedtime over at a friends house. Having had a great 2 months with City States I decided to try out my Yoroni as I do have a bit of army ADHD (To my credit I usually play an army 4-6 months, but I was ready for the swap). I had just gotten them back from my assembly guy (Thanks Dex) and I was itching to get them on the table. I stumbled through the list building process and rushed over after my kids fell asleep.

Some important things to mention before we dive into the report. My opponents…REALLY good at conquest. Literally #1 in the world for quite a bit of time this season, might still be actually I dunno. But also a good friend and we always have a blast playing. He is also REALLY good at Yoroni so he was doing some coaching while we played. Don’t worry I still lost, but thanks to this it was much closer than it would’ve been! I had some issues with messed up orders/shipments from my FLGS, so I had to proxy my Yokai and Damashi as they haven’t arrived.

Round 1

I’m fighting Nords, and just like those dang dirty vikings he had so many lights, and so many scoring units.

My Domaru Damashi got Fu from the kitsune and were *Checks Notes* very fast. I was able to get onto the zone. But the Nords were poised to start scoring 3 zones next round (Ya know, when scoring actually exists)

Round 2

I marked his middle zone and he marked my right zone for the no scoring. This prompted him to march charge his raiders into my Domaru, I reallllly should’ve marked the left zone to incentivize him to leave with the regiment in my front arc, not in my flank.

I am unfamiliar with playing conquest without entourage actions. It is a VERY different game. He knows that next round I either have to Fu activate my Kitsune to get fluid formation, or deal with a reform clash without the inspiration. His rolls were pretty sad for reinforcements but I made another rookie mistake. I brought in my Kami instead of my Tengu Bushi. I definitely would’ve loved to have the board space Tengu Bushi can claim.

Round 3

Sadly he won supremacy roll and proceeded to obliterate my Damashi. Attrition was coming off the rails. I was able to clear a few raider units but that just put me into some crappy positions to take more charges. My Yokai on the flank had collected two infinity stones (Fu, and Mu) and was not really afraid of that mountain jotnar across from him. Funny note from this game is that both of our dice were truly terrible. My buddy’s were a bit worse, but he made up for it with smart layering of threats, and positioning improvements.

Round 4

Here was my other big goof. I was holding up decently well, only down about 6 points at this time, but I activated my right side of the board poorly. Throughout this whole game I was a bit too rigid in my activations, focusing on getting buffs onto units instead of ya know….activating the right things at the right time… To be fair, It was my first game with Yoroni, but as I look back and try to learn from this game I can’t help but shake my head a bit. The ideal card buffs are quite powerful, but I need to look at the flexibility as the priority instead.

Because of these mistakes the ice jotnar got to go first into my Oyabun blob. Left side of the board was holding it’s own. And the middle is collapsing horribly, but my Daimyo blob is actually performing quite well even though they were dropped to a single wound remaining by the bearsarks. It’s crazy how just one stand of yoroni and a character is still a major threat.

Round 5

At this point in the game I’m only down 8 points because of the unique nature of turning off zones in this scenario. I can see now how some slight changes into my activations and positioning would’ve really helped out a lot. My opponent had some insane plays though, march charging things to get the scoring bonus from the Nords army rule and stealing zones, knowing my army super well and deploying smartly against it. It was a great learning game and we called it here at the start of round 6. I was going to get wiped for sure and then he would have 3-4 rounds of full scoring.

Recap and What I learned!

Alright, Obviously playing one of the best players in the world, with a new complex army is an uphill battle. So I do cut myself some slack there. But I really, REALLY, liked Yoroni. My list definitely needs some tweaks and we talked about some ways to improve my options there. I love how Yoroni present a real thought provoking challenge in all stages of the game, from list building to the final turn of the battle. Genya No Yokai is truly my new favorite model. Collecting all the infinity stones, catching all the pokemon, getting to power up that moster feels SO fun on the table.

List building changes we discussed – Firstly the two Kappa bushi blobs were cute, in theory, but the flexibility they provide is a bit too slow to come online in practice. I moved both Daimyo and Oyabun from Kappa Bushi blobs into Kami, Kami, Origami and Oni, Oni, Origami blobs respectively. SECONDLY the Murder Kitsune is wayyyy too valuable to be in a unit of Domaru Damashi. She has moved into Oni, Oni, Origami. I also changed two of my two man tengu units to Ayakashi instead of Bushi. I really needed the ranged pressure they provided, and the “I’m going to sit on this objective and still contribute damage” energy they provide.

I am really excited about this next iteration and to start painting this army. I usually paint a complete army at a time but I have been bouncing around a lot the past few weeks between conquest models, warmachine models, and 40k models. So it’ll be good to focus in on a 2000 point army and get it fully painted (it usually takes me 3-4 months to finish an army from the ground up, but these models are quite detailed so we shall see). I also graduate from my masters degree next week and am excited for all the new opportunities and time that will provide for my family and I.

Thanks again for reading! If you wanna talk shop about tabletop gaming, get a game of TTS in, or just connect i’m Arrest on the Discord and arrest_paints on Instagram.