Yoroni Battle Report 3

Got the opportunity to head over to my buddy Ty’s house after work on Sunday and get in a match versus his Wadrhun. Ty has the near superhuman ability to just play one faction…which seems more like witchcraft to me than anything else. So he’s played Wadrhun since he started playing conquest and is VERY good at them. I am stumbling through Yoroni but am very happy with how I am improving and what I was able to get done this game. Let’s dive in!

I had a goal with my list to play my Tengu Ayakashi (Forever to be called bow birbs) better this game. I have never gotten the proper value out of them and I slammed three duos of them into this list to basically force me to activate them thrice per round and hopefully learn them. It was decently successful! I love going into games with this mentality, a single goal and a path to improvement.

Round 1

Inquisitors are Domaru-Damashi, the Talos is the Genya No Yokai, and my Kappa bushi are origami warriors.

As is proper in round one, we walked at each other menacingly

My opponent does have some serious scenario pressure because he is able to pop objectives instantly with his raptors and his relic. Staring down two apex predators and a drum beast I know I have some serious dinobeef to chew through.

Round Two

I lose supremacy and my opponent entourage activates so that he can chant, kill the objective, fluid, charge, clash and kill my Domaru. A powerful play for sure. I line up my bow birbs to plink two damage off the objective. A slam my murder kitsune regiment onto the zone to start scoring. I end the round 2 to his 3.

Round 3

Using the advantage I am able to win the supremacy roll and absolutely vaporize the raptor riders. Sadly the Chosen of Conquest are able to triple activate and get the march, charge clash and take out my favorite unit. This is a COSTLY error that only happens because I space the ability of Chosen of Conquest to triple activate. My kitsune block is one of the key pieces I have to actually deal with the monsters coming onto the board and absolutely should’ve moved my Tengu Bushi (Stab Birbs) in to move block and keep them alive. I have a decent amount of regiments available and the bow birbs on the left are getting good damage into things. The hunting pack have tied up one unit though. I end the round up 7-5

Round 4

I am able to give my leftmost bow birbs fluid with the Fu card and then fluid, shoot, march out of charge line of sight for the chosen of death, I am quite happy as I felt this was clever and aligned with my goal of getting gooder at the bow birbs. Leaving my opponent stuck with an unfortunate march charge into the Kami Daimyo block. I have begun to whittle that unit down. My Yokai has collected Ka and Mu and is becoming a problem on the right side of things. And in the middle we stare at each other menacingly, the round ends with 9-7 being the score.

Round 5

I send my Yokai in. When the Yokai activated the Apex was already committed into the Daimyo Oni unit, looking back I should’ve clashed reformed and made is so that he was unable to get both his Drum Beast and Chosen of Death into my Yokai. As it was, I activated my Yokai with Chi (Bringing him up to three infinity stones…I mean ideals…) and clash charged. My bowbirbs on the zone had effectively whittled down the chosen of death to one stand…Yokai charged in and did 3 out of their five wounds with impacts….and then they did 8 damage to him. Turns out rolling three 6’s against deadly blades is a bad idea 😀 Going from having tied up two of the remaining key regiments on an evasion 3 tenacious 2 monster with 13 wounds remaining, to having that monster only have 5 wounds remaining changes the math of how that fight works out. Doing the rough math of it, the scion and drum beast are only doing about six to 8 damage per round (This includes spells and resolve!) and my Yokai does around the same amount. 7-8 hits and 2 resolve. Add in my Bow Birbs aiming and shooting I potentially could’ve won this flank, it absolutely could’ve gotten me another 2-3 rounds of scoring. Sadly it didn’t come to pass. We end again with Yoroni up 2 points but sadly attrition has drastically swung in the favor of wadrhun. Potentially I could’ve clash reformed and made it so the drum beast and chosen of death couldn’t both get into the Yokai, but I think I lose too much scenario to make that viable, I am not sure what would be best here.

Round Six

I felt quite happy about one key thing this round. I won supremacy and pulled my first card and then changed my mind about who I was going to activate. I was going to activate my Yokai before he died, but I took a few breaths and looked at the field and realized the Drum beast wasn’t going first, it was going to be the Apex, so I chose to activate my Daimyo and Oni and I killed the apex. My gamble paid off I was able to kill that apex and force him to activate the apex sitting on the zone when he did flip over that apex card. Who still charge clashed and killed my unit, but I think this is exactly what Yoroni players need to think about WAY more often than I am doing. Find ways to upset your opponents best laid plans. Yokai and bow birbs on the right activate and do a truly PUNISHING amount of damage to the drum beast and I have to laugh as I realize I have misread and forgotten some rules. Not enough to swing the outcome of the game, but definitely impactful ones! Classic blunders of a new army. I try to get cute with my tengu’s and fly onto zones and sneak out some points for a potential scenario win but it doesn’t work out and I end up tabled and we call it there!

Recap

All in all, a fantastic game! My opponent is VERY good at conquest and Wadrhun are one of the strongest armies in the game. I feel like I did some things very right in this game and also had some key learning moments, such as remembering my rules, or playing a bit more defensively when I was up on scenario. Also I think I could’ve leveraged the flight power of my Tengu’s more on this scenario, we both deployed super centrally due to the scenario and the positioning of the buildings on the right and left, but birbs don’t care about that. I love looking back and learning from my games and hopefully in the next one I’ll remember these lessons and get just a little better. I don’t think i’ll play this many Tengu Ayakashi but I did enjoy the “Spam them to get better at them” approach I took as I think I did achieve that goal.

As always thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think I am always happy to chat about the game, tactics, list building, or painting! I’m Arrest on the Discord and arrest_paints on instagram.