Hot Take: Commissar Yarrick Datasheet

Old Bale Eye claws his way out of retirement with a potent new datasheet, which Games Workshop has revealed on Warhammer Community today.

As befits the hard-as-nails defender of Armageddon, this Datasheet provides a mix of personal grit and super strong buff effects. Yarrick is unusually dangerous in a fight for a footslogging Guard officer, able to pick off a few models either in melee or at close range, and his legendary toughness is represented by the always powerful ability to stand back up at the end of the phase on a 2+ the first time he’s killed.

That keeps him in the game that bit longer for what you’re really here for, which is the buffs. Yarrick gets a Primarch-style pick one of three abilities effect, and two of them are super strong. For simple efficiency, you can select Decisive Command, which means that the next Order he issues affects all eligible targets within 6” of his original target. As one of the most renowned leaders the MIlitarum has produced, he can order any REGIMENT, SQUADRON or TITANIC units, meaning that if you pick something with decent footprint as your original target, you can Order a good chunk of your army in one fell swoop.

That’s a great option for proactive play, but if you want to wait for your opponent to come to you, there’s a reactive option that might be even better. When the aptly named Counterstrategist is active, at the end of your opponent’s Movement Phase, you can pick one enemy unit that either set up or ended a move within 12” of Yarrick’s unit, and one visible friendly Regiment unit within 6” to do one of three things:

Move up to d6”.
Shoot at the enemy unit.
Charge the enemy unit, as long as it’s within 12”.

This is wildly powerful. The Reactive Move is in line with many other effects in the game (though being able to trigger it off setting up means it can perfectly dodge Deep Strike charges on a 4+, which is an extra bonus), but the other two are far rarer and much more potent. Full shooting from a Regiment unit can be pretty nasty - obviously your baseline squad of Guard won’t do too much, but if you get a volley from Kasrkin, Tempestus Scions, or one of the full Cadian/Command/Castellan blocks that are popular in Recon Element, you might legitimately just kill something outright, potentially even something quite good! With scions, the timing is also such that you can Rapid Ingress a unit in to shoot with. If you don’t have any of these super killy units available, then killing the foe might be out of bounds, but sending a cheap and cheerful squad of expendables in on a free charge can be a massive disruption to enemy plans - it’ll stop them shooting, and stop them launching any charges of their own, and it seems pretty likely they were planning on one of these two things if they’re getting close to you.

This ability is a nightmare to plan around, and can be quite difficult to avoid - you can run Yarrick solo if you want him moving around freely, but you can also join him to most Guard Infantry units as a Leader, and if you pick something with a decent amount of models then avoiding ending within 12” of them can become impossible. In addition, while Yarrick needs to be able to see the Guard unit that he’s triggering Counterstrategist on, he doesn’t need to be able to see the enemy unit that triggered it. Because it triggers on setting up, even the normal way around Reactive Moves (parking a Transport 9.1” away then disembarking) doesn’t get around it.

Counterstrategist gives Yarrick the potential to be a really strong engine in any sort of Infantry-heavy build, and the bouncing Orders mean he could also see some use in some sort of tank-heavy list that wants to run light on Characters. Technically he has a third optional effect, which is an aura of re-rolling Leadership or Battle-shock tests, but let’s be serious here. Maybe once in one hundred games against Chaos Knights, Nurgle Daemons, or Tyranids where you’re guaranteed to win unless some big Battle-shock play zeroes you out for a turn.

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