The new Avatar model is obviously gorgeous, and hopefully signals some strong combat options in the upcoming Craftworld Codex.
We don’t know what they Yncarne is going to be about yet, but this new model got the time machine in my brain whirring. I thought back in time to a crazier time in 40k. A time where units could activate twice for free, characters could stand by themselves without fear of being shot, and a man named Sean Nayden ran the Avatar of Khaine and the Yncarne in the same list.
It’s important to know how the character rule used to work. In 8th edition, you couldn’t shoot a character if there was another model in your opponent’s army who was closer to the firing model. That’s it. The character didn’t have to be within 3″ of a unit with at least three models (or a vehicle or monster.) You used to be able to block characters from being shot with *other* characters. As you can imagine, this rule was incredibly easy to abuse, and almost no one did it better than Nayden.
This was also in the days before the rule of three, and the Adepticon that Nayden brought this list to was stuffed full of crazy spam lists, including the eventual winner, Matt Root (and others’) 7 Hive Tyrant monster mash. Tracking down the specific list proved a little difficult, but it featured The Avatar of Khaine, The Yncarne, Maugan Ra Yvraine, a couple Farseers and a couple warlocks.
To top it off, Nayden ran 2×20 Guardian bombs and 3×5 Rangers. Back in those days Rangers could infiltrate, and the idea behind character spam lists like this were to hide your infiltrating units out of line of sight in the mid-board so your characters could run around unscathed. Nayden ran this style of list to a top 8 finish at the 2018 Las Vegas Open, but with only one Avatar (The Yncarne, who was much better overall.) Those Guardian bricks started in deepstrike and would teleport in at crucial moments to protect the characters as they engaged with the bulk of the enemy force. Especially since back in those days, you could cast move twice powers like quicken and soul burst on squads that just came in from deepstrike. I told you, 8th edition had some crazy elements.
It’s worth nothing that this list had roughly 1000 points of characters alone, with nearly 500 tied up in the Avatars. Did Nayden win Adepticon with this? No. But, it’s worth noting that he only lost to eventual champion Matt Root and then dropped. It’s not like Nayden hasn’t won big events with crazy lists (see: nearly every list the man has run at large events) so this could have been another situation where he took home the trophy on the back of some bizarre models and strategies.
Will we see double Avatar return to some kind of viability with the new Craftworld codex? Inspired by Nayden’s creativity I tried to run double avatar in some RTTs, but got absolutely obliterated. With a new model and a new codex though, who knows, now things might be different. What are you planning on running your Avatar with once you get that new model? Will it be The Yncarne, or, I don’t know, normal stuff?
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
