40K: The Ynnari Soulburst Conundrum
With the Ynnari on the horizon how will Games Workshop address the specter of soulburst? Let’s chat.
The Ynnari faction really rocked the meta when they arrived. For a faction which really only had a model count of 3, it certainly did a number on things. For a while, the scourge of soulbursting Dark Reapers dominated the game. So now that they are set to get an update in May, the question remains – how will GW handle Soulburst?
For the uninitiated, Soulburst is a part of the Strength from Death rule. It basically allows a unit to get an additional action when a unit is completely removed/dies within 7″ of it.
While it’s nice that a unit can only commit a soulburst action once per turn, it can still trigger a cascade of soulburst actions as units can wipe out other units which can trigger more actions. You get the idea. It’s also used in conjunction with their psychic powers to trigger a soulburst action via a psychic test:
The Ynnari ability to essentially trigger a second phase of “whatever is needed” is what has been so game-busting about this faction. That’s why Yvraine was one of the most prevalent Psykers for a time.
Fixing Soulburst
So how WILL GW fix Soulburst? They’ve got a few options:
- Leave it alone – just reprint the rules in a new format so that all players have access to it.
- Make some major/minor changes – looking at the meta, you can see that this ability was pretty broken and many attempts to fix things around it were implemented. It’s still needs work.
- Scrap it and start over – do a complete overhaul for Strength from Death and redesign Soulburst from the ground up.
I don’t think that the first choice is going to happen.
In terms of major/minor tweaks, I’m not sure what all they could do. Maybe they do something similar to Khorne’s Bloodtithe points where Ynnari units can accumulate kills and then can spend them to trigger additional effects. The real issue with Soulburst is that it’s frankly just too easy to trigger. Compare it to something like Cacophony that has some hard limits (it costs CP, and it can only impact a single unit per turn). There needs to be some other limit to Ynnari’s Soulburst – whatever that it is – and that’s what the major/minor tweaks have to be.
The final option is to scrap it and start over. I’m not sure what that looks like either. Perhaps they rework it so that the Ynnari units get some smaller benefit for wiping out units nearby. If it some type of burst of speed or strength, getting a +1 strength for their attacks in the following fight phase seems to fit. What if they got to strike first or always counted as charging? Or maybe they are so fast their armor/cover save improved by +1 for a turn?
Regardless of what happens, Soulburst has to be tweaked. It’s never good for the health of the game to have a single faction exercise that much influence over the entire game. (Look at the current problem in the meta: A Castellan.) Something has to be done – and come May, I guess we will all found out what they’ve come-up with.
So how would you opt to change Strength from Death/Soulburst? Let us know in the comments!
