Spearhead!









A little snippet from Doc Railgun

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Like a good hobbyist, I was taking a look at the new Spearhead rules available on the GW website and was intrigued. Spearhead seems a link between huge Apocalypse games and normal force-org strict smaller point games.
I won't go over most of the rules, since we've probably all seen them or seen them discussed by now. Instead, I thought I would mention a few things off the top of my head that seemed useful for the Blood Angels and the sorts of lists I enjoy playing.

Of course the BAs have some great Walkers, and the "shoot one weapon after running" seems perfect for Furiosos. Combine that with the "Ambush Spearhead" (which gives 3 Walkers or Tanks Stealth and Infiltrate, but cannot be placed in reserve), then there ought to be a lot of Furisos starting 12" to 18" away from an enemy, moving 6" (or jumping 12" if they're Librarians), melta-ing and Assaulting. Ouch. This formation would be pretty good for multi-melta Dreadnoughts too, as they might get in a second round of shooting before Assaulting, even if they don't Infiltrate.

I also wonder how nasty 3 Vindicators in an Ambush Spearhead would be? Infiltrate them into terrain and shoot from improved cover? It's only 75 extra points.

We can also now Outflank with our Assault-cannon armed Razorbacks filled with melta-armed Assault Marines with the Mechanised Assault Spearhead. Better, they all come in at the same time and on the first turn.

Assault Marines can also join a "Mass Attack Spearhead" in which all models have S7 Krak grenades AND Preferred Enemy: Monstrous Creatures.

How about Assault Cannon or Lascannon-armed Razorbacks with AV15 t for purposes of Ramming attacks?

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

The strange way in which Blood Angel Assault Marines buy their transports has a weird knock on affect in Spearhead. Since you buy the transport vehicles as heavy support vehicles for your spearhead before you purchase the troops to go in them this means for a Mech Assault spearhead you would have to buy 3 Razorbacks as a Mechanised Assault Spearhead (55x3+60=225 points) then choose three units to transport in them. You then buy 3 assault squads for 100 points each to put in them. In effect you lose the 35 point transport discount because of the weird way you have to buy the spearhead before you buy the units that go into it.

It is an unfortunate case of weird phrasing in the BA codex interacting badly with the wording of the spearhead rules that effectively ends up making a Mechanised Assault spearhead cost an extra 105 points for Blood Angels. I guess you could still buy the unit 3 razorbacks as dedicated transports for 20 points each and just field them as stand alone tanks but you better have a lot of razorbacks available.

Of course, you may be able to get it house ruled to allow you to buy the squads + transports and then make a mech assault spearhead from it or just view the extra points you pay as a fair cost for the tanks being able to score but it is worth being aware of either way.

suneokun said...

Just checking ... but I'm pretty sure you can't apply two spearheads to the same formation/models. In the same way you can't have more than one distinct type of spearhead in you army ... Which kinda kaiboshes the 'dreadnought' idea.

My conern is that Spearhead simply underlines the pre-eminence of mech ... while two formations (the horde and the MC horde) don't really offer any balance. Especially since the MC horde applies rage to all members. Nah thanks!

I realise spearhead is about 'fun over balance', but does everything have to be tanks?

Unknown said...

Suneoken is correct. You can not apply two spearheads to the same formation. You purchase a spearhead, then purchase models to fill it. Nor can you take two spearheads of the same type.

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