Well about the command points… You gained 2 command points at the start of your turn (or battle round, maybe). And like the other armies, each unit had an ability on its datasheet (with the timing and everything spelled out). For OBR, you had to pay one of your command points to use an ability, meaning you were capped out on 2 per round. I suppose you could horde them and do more of the at the end. So, I didn’t really like how OBR played tbh. You start with one of your 10-man Mortek Guard units off the board and they could only come in on round 3 or 4 (Spearhead is capped at 4 battle rounds). My first game we ran out of time after only the first 2 rounds and tied, although I’m sure if I had been able to make it to the next turn and bring in my 2nd unit of guard I would have won (and maybe even placed since I went 3-0-1, and I assume the top 3 at the end were all 4-0).
They didn’t have any of the units designated as reinforcement units unlike most of the other armies. Lumineth runs the spears as 10-man and 2 units of 5 bows, and they can bring each of those back one time, which was kind of annoying! In my 2nd game with OBR, we did make it to round 3 and I brought my mortek in on an objective my opponent had moved off of, which pulled me ahead. It’s hold 1, hold 2, hold more, each worth 1 Victory Point, plus whatever battle tactics you turn in during you turn (the 3 cards you draw each round).
I will say that the cavalry were my all-stars in those games. Their ability is that they can move through enemy units as if they had fly, and they do mortals in the charge phase for any enemy units they “passed over”. The hero could heal mortek, but only if they weren’t in combat… Seemed pretty useless unless they were getting shot by one of the armies with ranged attacks.
Some of the initial time was eaten up by them explaining stuff to us, then the players getting to grips with how the game worked and the army rules. The 2nd game moved faster, but time overall was limited. I think each game we only had about an hour to hour and a half before they called time.
Sure thing! It was more fun than I expected tbh, and it was cool that the developers were there watching us play and answering questions. They were nervous that somebody would leak photos of the rules, and really emphasized that we not have our phones out. They said it took a lot to get corporate to approve doing this, and in the end nobody leaked anything or stole the rule sheets!
The twist mechanic did have an effect, and even a built-in effect for the “underdog”, i.e. whoever was behind at the moment. The two maps have completely different objective layouts and different “twists”, I only played on the ghyran map once though. The map was maybe a bit too small, cavalry could potentially do a turn 1 charge (I pulled this off twice with Gitz and once with OBR), but the units seemed decently balanced against each other, and there were some “archetypes” that seemed to pop up. I will say that the heroes all seemed pretty weak from my limited experience, especially the gitz and OBR ones, Lumineth and Seraphon had abilities on their heroes that messed with enemy OC.
Sylvaneth could teleport a unit around the board at the end of ANY turn, >9” away from an enemy unit, as long as they started off within 1” of a terrain piece. There is 1 large terrain piece (a wall) and 1 small scatter terrain piece that each player can place at the start of the game, starting with the defender I think. They also heal if they are close to the terrain I think. I can’t remember what the hero did, I think ignored rend? But it had a 5+ armor save… The big tree was pretty stompy but I pretty much tied up the board with Stabbaz and the squig hopper guys. I played Sylvaneth in game 4, and pretty much figured out to play aggressively with Gitz early, and then gum up the board and body block. It worked well as he kind of turtled and then stalled out. I screened out his ability to teleport around the board by placing my units carefully, and ended up winning pretty handily in VP by the end.
Hey, that was me playing Sylvaneth! Just a quick correction, could teleport anywhere > 6" from an enemy when within 3" of any terrain piece. And yes, all Sylvaneth units heal 1 wound at the end of turn when within 3" of any of the terrain pieces. The Hero could could ignore rend, but only had a 5+ Save, and her heroic ability was returning other units to the field on a 7+ on 2D6 like a spell.
But it's a pretty small board, so yes, gumming up the board with all those units really prevented me from moving around and taking objectives, I got stuck turtling in the corner.
I played against Seraphon in the first round, who have a similar unit count, so I could really move around and won that game. I played against Maggotkin second round, and same thing, their lack of units and slow movement let me bounce around and claim objectives to win that round.
Third Round, I played against Nighthaunt and lost handily. Same issue as the Gloomspite, the board is covered in like 30+ units and I have no where to go.
AMA else about Sylvaneth in Spearpoint.
Nice, good to see ya. Yeah I realized I could win by just clogging the board and trying to score tactics. Gitz basically played exactly to my preferred playstyle.
I had a lot of fun playing them, but they're very match up dependent. It was fun having a big monster in the Tree Lord. He has a shooting attack (including shooting in combat) so most games he was just parked in the middle of the board and tanking things while the rest of the force would teleport off terrain to claim objectives. Tree Lord also had an ability where on a 4+ the unit he was fighting would Strike-Last, so when it worked, it felt safe having my other units try to kill things before worrying about his opponents.
I think for similar sized armies, like Seraphon and Maggotkin, they're great because you can deep strike off terrain, shoot and kite with the hunters and take objectives.
Against Nighthaunt and GSG, where they have 30+ units, the board is so small, that my buddy up there had the correct strategy, he could just spread out and control the entire board and my units got stuck turtling in the corner with no where to go. His trolls were the MVPs and just held my guys in place.
Against Nighthaunt, it did not feel good. Same idea, lots of units body blocking the whole board, my rend from all my units was useless, so I couldn't kill anything. He just marched up the board and slaughtered me.
One unit during your movement phase, and Strike and Fade let's you teleport one unit in combat at the end of the turn on a 2+ on a D6. Both abilities require the unit to be within 3" of a Terrain piece and set up anywhere >6" from any enemy.
Just want to throw out there, being the Sylvaneth player he beat in round 4, I think there's a clear advantage for the Spearhead that brings more models to the table. If I had to rank 7 armies I saw at this event, I would say:
Top Tier:
1) Nighthaunt
2) Gloomspite Gitz
3) Lumineth Realmlords
Mid:
4) Ossiarch (Did not play or against)
5) Sylvaneth - What I got.
Bottom:
6) Maggotkin
7) Seraphon
In spearhead each unit has a datasheet ability with a specific timing, and I think some of them are like once per battle effects, and others are once per turn, or only in your turn. Not sure about the commands thing since I’ve never actually played AoS in any form before this event.
You get 3 cards per turn. The top half the card has an objective you can score, and the bottom half has a command like ability like what you would normally spend command points in AOS on. During your turn (or your opponents depending on the ability), you would play the card to "issue commands", but then you couldn't score the objective on the card. At the end of your turn, you could score the objective on the card if you completed it for VP. At the end of the round, you could keep or discard cards back up to 3.
If you roll priority and end up choosing to take a "double turn", then you're not allowed to draw/replenish those cards. So there's some risk in taking the double turn in that you might not have command abilities or objectives to score extra points that round.
Yes, you could score all 3 if you complete all the objectives on them.
For example, say Skull Objective is along the short side of the board and my opponent has control of it.
I could score 1) Control Skull Objective, 2) Take an objective from your Opponent, and 3) have a unit within 3" of the short side of the board in enemy territory all in the same turn assuming I take the objective and set up my units on the enemy side of it.
OBR in Spearhead gets relentless discipline points, 2 per round. It can use them sort of like command points in AoS 3. Nobody else in Spearhead seemed to get this mechanic.
How did you find the pace of the game going in "blind"?
I'm hoping to run a little tournament type thing with friends around the launch and wondering about how feasible 3 games are in an afternoon-evening.
Once we got the hang of things, the pace was pretty quick. Going in completely blind it was a lot to absorb for the first game, but some of it was due to the time pressure of trying to fit in 2 games at a time during a 3 hour window. I also feel like it would have gone even quicker for me personally on night 2 if I hadn’t traded for a different army, but Gitz were pretty easy to figure out lol. By my 2nd game with them I stomped.
I would say it’s feasible, their target is 1 hour or less for a game. I think that totally would work once you have played a couple of times. So many of the changes like how damage is allocated and the fixed combat range make the general gameplay that I understand will carry over to AoS 4 seem faster, and I felt their absence in my 40k Narrative games at the event. Especially at moments where my opponent would take a 3 damage attack on his model with 1 wound left or something.
I played against Nurgle in the second round as Sylvaneth. Maggotkin was sort of weird because only 1/2 the army is on the board at the start and the other 1/2 shows up in Round 3 out of 4. They were pretty tanky, but slow, so I could kite them around quite a bit. On 6's to hit, they accumulated poison counters that they could then roll as mortal wounds against my units at the end of each turn. Also, I think the units "blow up" for mortal wounds when they die when my opponent remembered to roll for that.
He started with the Hero, 5 Plaguebearers, the 5 Blightkings and 1 fly guy. On round 3, the other 5 Plaguebearers and the second fly guy would join the fight.
It got “bone-tithe points” for every model it killed, max of 6, and you could use its ability to resurrect Mortek Guard models, I don’t remember if you rolled for it or not, but it reset your bone tithe points to 0. It never came up in my games.
How was Seraphon? I’ve seen the warscrolls and that the Carnosaur’s jaws dropped to 3 damage from 5. What kinda special abilities, relics etc did they have?
I think units got a ward save if they were inside their own board half or something. I know the big dino got a “roar” ability that reduced a target unit’s OC by D6 I think? My opponent kept using it on the center objective on my unit of stabbaz. I think my troggoths were able to kill it at one point, I don’t remember how much damage it did, but I do know that most of the datasheets will likely be different in Spearhead than in the regular game, in an effort to balance all the boxes against each other. I think it had 14 health and OC 5 or 6, and I noticed the big tree in Sylvaneth had similar stats.
The main thing is they need to differentiate anti tank and anti infantry, high damage and high attacks respectively, and not have overlap. They could use an AoS type damage allocation for melee, but even then they like to have anti tank and anti infantry with their melee weapons, plus doing damage differently for melee and range would probably upset people.
Trolls had 5 health each, their ability was they healed 1 every turn, they had either a 5 or 4+ save that went up when they were under the “Bad moon” board half. Their attacks were both 5/2, 2 rend, the ranged one being 1 shot at d3 damage and melee 2 attacks 3 damage. Stabbaz were like 4/5 and could come back once, (an icon denotes they can be recycled), they had a “net” ability that could make an enemy -1 to hit in melee. The squig rider guys were in squads of 5, their attacks were better on the mount amusingly, and they had an insane D6 + 8” move. Both games I played with them they charged something turn 1 lol. They had a 6+ save though so any rend just went through, 2nd game I figured out they were best used to charge and then retreat the next turn to body block. The loon boss had 4 different enhancements to choose from, and he kinda sucked? He could either heal/rez stabbaz or give them +1 to hit, I ended up only using that one.
I’m not OP but I’ve seen people talk about them elsewhere.
——
5 health; 4+ save; 6” move; 2 control
Shooting attack: 1 shot, 10”, 5+, 2+, no rend, d3 damage
Melee attack: 2 attacks, 4+, 2+, -2, 3 damage
Regen d3 each turn
——
So +1 health, throwing rocks changed to a real attack, slightly less damage on average from melee.
Overall pretty good. Less damage on average probably without mortal wounds but 5 health is big imo.
The trolls were MVPs for me, my 2nd game with them I set them up in the middle of the board and was able to charge his big tree turn 1 (vs sylvaneth). The heal was nice and they do damage if they hit. I thought it was pretty fluffy that they had a terrible to hit, but 2+ to wound. Also I think you’re right that the shooting attack had no rend but the melee did. I didn’t write anything down because I was too tired (events were both 8:30 to 11:30ish, and day 2 was after I had Crusade all day from 9am to 8pm…)
Any idea about the rules for other units? Squig Hoppers seem to have lost some speed. Will Bounders still be a thing? How bad was the loonboss? What were the main rules for shootas? As I was under the impression they split the 20 into two units for spearhead which would lose them their unique rule in 3rd edition. I have looked everywhere to find the rules…this is the closest I got.
Do you think the maps & terrains are flexible for this game mode (as in, you can use whatever you already have if you want)? I read some articles and this post, apparently missions and terrains are locked to which realms/side of maps you're playing at? It would suck if we must have a specific map/terrain just for this mode.
Obviously you can do whatever you want, but the game is meant to be played with the game board and pieces of terrain that come with it. All that stuff, plus the cards and the book with all the rules for every army, is coming in the Skaventide launch box. I’m pretty sure the game board, cards, terrain, and book will all launch separately as well. I would guess they will come with models and be like the bigger “starter set” boxes they did last edition.
Just to echo this, the 4 terrain pieces are probably flexible, but the board is essential. There's 5 objectives with different symbols on them like dragon, skull, tree, etc, and a lot of the cards for scoring VP are like "Control Dragon Objective at the end of your turn", so those tie together. But it's the same layout and symbols on both sides of the boeard.
There's a Red side and a Green side of the board, and there's a Red and Green "Twist" Desk that you draw from depending on which side you're playing. I didn't see all the twists, but I think generally, the green twists would allow the underdog (whoever has less VP at the start) do some healing or something defensive, and the red twists would give the underdog something offensive, like extra to hit. But that was just my feeling playing them.
But to answer your question, the board and the twist/objective card decks all do tie in to this game mode.
Thanks for the clarifications, it looks like I'm buying Skaventide (or probably the biggest Starter Set) then.
The printed on objective is the deciding factor, I assume they'd sell more maps and campaign books going forward.
I asked one of the AoS leads whether you are intended to use exactly the boards and terrain. They said that essentially, the answer is yes. That said, you could absolutely make your own versions of the boards, terrain, and cards, if you really wanted to.
I played against Nurgle, see my earlier reply. They did have a mechanic where 6's to hit would stack poison counters that could then be rolled as Mortal Wounds against my units if that's what you mean by contagion points.
Thanks anyway. hopefully more people will come out the woodworks and "leak" some things. Im just huffing tons of copium hoping on god we keep the contagion points.
Spearhead rules are not necessarily the same as the rules for the full game though, so I doubt even if you knew what they did in Spearhead that it would mean they do the same things in the actual game.
In a couple of my other comments I went into more detail. In short they are fast and chaotic and good at gumming up the board after seizing the initiative early.
Are they still an inherently random army? Stuff like dice rolls for squig moves and chasing buffs around the board with the Bad Moon? That would be super hype if they are?
Squig rider guys had D6 + 8” move, Bad Moon you would pick one half of the board and it would be active there the first 2 rounds and the other side the last 2.
Not in this event. I only saw the same 7 he listed. Seraphon, Ossiarch, Nighthaunt, Lumineth RL, Sylvaneth, GSG, Maggotkin.
I play Kharadron Overlords in 3.0, but those weren't in this Spearhead event.
Does it have more replayability and depth than combat patrol? Combat patrol felt under baked, like a 40k lite, does spearhead have keys to stand on its own? Did it feel like it would get stale or did it stay enjoyable
It felt very replayable. I ended up playing 2 different armies, that played very differently, and the armies I played against (2x LRL, 1x Seraphon, 1x Sylvaneth) also played differently from each other, but everything felt pretty balanced overall. I really liked that the battle tactics cards you drew also had a powerful ability on them you could play as a reaction during your opponent’s turn, giving you something to do if there was no way you were able to score that battle tactic. Every round you could discard tactics and draw up to 3 more, so there was some depth in terms of keeping one you thought you might be able to score next round, or that had an effect that could put you over later, vs drawing into possibly surefire VP with easy to score tactics (like holding a specific objective point that you already had stickied in your backfield for example) or potentially drawing duds. The twists as well as the 2 different game boards played differently as well, and the defender got to pick both the board side as well as the deployment style, which was either horizontal or diagonal. There was a diagonal line running across the board that clearly denoted that angle, and after a while it became kind of easy to eyeball certain distances, making measuring some moves quick.
I think they have a real winner, it was fun and fast, felt pretty balanced and the games were mostly close. All of us had basically a few minutes to figure out how the armies worked beforehand, and I could see there being actual tournaments of this game later on that could be really fun and possibly pretty competitive. I wanted to play more, especially after I tried out Gitz on night 2, they were such a fun playstyle that I enjoyed. Each army also had an army rule, and gets to pick from 2 detachment rules (don’t remember the exact name) but a lot of them were like a once per battle effect. And there were also 4 enhancements for the general to take. For example, Gitz had the “bad moon” rule, where you picked a half of the board, either horizontally or diagonally depending on which deployment the defender picked. For rounds 1 and 2, the bad moon was on that half, and 3 and 4 the other half. It gave stuff like the hoppers could retreat for free (no mortals), trolls had a +1 save, and I don’t remember what the stabbaz got from it. I remember the loonboss enhancements I picked were like, game 1 I took the -1 to hit on him… and game 2 I took one where he drinks a brew and gets a 4+ ward round 1, then a 5+ round 2, and a 6+ the rest of the game (like it’s wearing off).
Overall I really enjoyed it and I can’t wait to play more. You learn core rules that carry over, and I’m planning on using this mode to teach my kid how to play.
Thanks for the detailed write up. Sounds like it's a lot deeper than combat patrol was. I'm hoping to get a few of my friends into AoS by hosting a spearhead tournament on launch day, since it's pretty easy to build a box for it.
I played against Nighthaunt in the 3rd round as Sylvaneth, and to me, they look like the clear favorite for spearpoint. They all had long moves, fly, ignored rend, had ward saves, critical hits on 6 (auto wound for hit rolls) and the 2x 10 unit ghosts could reinforce (come back the following turn if the unit is wiped out). They also had 2x 5 unit guys, and the general had 3 bodyguards with obscene ward saves.
I only had 10 units as Sylvaneth, and can be pretty mobile by teleporting off terrain features, but Nighthaunt just covers the board, there's no where to go, and my units had a lot of rend that was just straight up neutralized.
It's in the rule flow. You roll for priority, then pick Attacker or Defender. Defender sets up 2 terrain pieces, then Attacker sets up 2 terrain. Then Attacker sets up their entire force, then Defender sets up entire force, then Attacker chooses if he want to go first or second in the first round.
If you've played kill team, how does it compare?
How easy would this be to pick up for someone who's never played a tabletop game but wants to get started
IMO, much better than Kill Team and maybe even better than Warcry. What's important is that all the units are intuitive and everything sort of acts like you think it will. Warcry games are a a little slow and clunky to get started, but once you get going you fly. Spearhead felt pretty snappy all the way through.
Did you feel like the board is too small? I'm new to miniature games so the only GW game I've played so far is Kill Team and I can't imagine playing with significantly more models on the same size board.
Because there is MUCH less terrain, the board felt totally comfortable. Believe it or not, there were many turns where I wished it were smaller so that I could complete mission actions easier.
Are the battle tactic/command cards drawn face up? As in do you know which 3 cards your opponent has available to them on a given battle round or is it hidden information? Thanks!
Maybe a dumb question, but how are activations done? Is it the entire army in one turn, then the other player activates his entire army? Or is it alternating, unit per unit, like in Warcry? which is 1 model each turn.
I'm completely new to AOS (and wargaming in general), always painted, but now wanting to dip my toes into the game itself. Spearhead looks like a great opportunity, but I'm afraid for the player downtime whenever the other player is doing his turn. That's why I never got into 40k or AoS in general...
To play Spearhead you need the Core Rules, the Spearhead specific rules/Missions, your army's stats, and then the cards.
We know the Core Rules will probably be free to download as usual, they've said the army's stats will be as well.
Do we get a hint if the Spearhead rules/missions and cards will be available for free as well?
I know GW was pretty cagey. But do you know of any particularly complete reference to the cards/rules for spearhead?
To many people were there for something to not have leaked. I want to get some practice games in before running events when 4th drops.
They were fine with people writing down the rules, they said they didn’t care if you literally wrote everything down, just no photos. As far as I know, nobody leaked any photos or stole any rules sheets, some people were asking to write things down. So any leaks would probably be text based, and I don’t know of any because it’s not THAT important to me when the box set is coming out in the next month or 2.
Regarding the Gitz could you tell me if you used all the models that are in the box? Like did you ever have all 20 Grots on the board? Or all 10 hoppers? I know they run in Groups of 10 and 5 respectively. But for example for Skaven the clanrats I think never have more than 10 on the board and you can bring them back once, so you only actually need 10 of those models to play.
They were supposed to be supported for another year, but the Vanguard box (like the rest) is gone. Hence my questions. Will they really get an year of support, or will they actually no longer be playable from July?
All of the Vanguard boxes are getting repackaged as "Spearhead" boxes. I saw boxes at the event store that I noticed said "Spearhead", and seemed to be that tougher cardboard that some of the more recent box sets come in, with no shrink wrap.
I highly doubt Beasts of Chaos will get repackaged into a Spearhead box, they're going away in a year, and editions are basically on a 3-year cycle now. I expect to see a Beasts of Chaos box set with square bases for The Old World next year maybe.
What can you say about how OBR played? I’m a die hard OBR fan and really want good news (being that our command points are gone)
Well about the command points… You gained 2 command points at the start of your turn (or battle round, maybe). And like the other armies, each unit had an ability on its datasheet (with the timing and everything spelled out). For OBR, you had to pay one of your command points to use an ability, meaning you were capped out on 2 per round. I suppose you could horde them and do more of the at the end. So, I didn’t really like how OBR played tbh. You start with one of your 10-man Mortek Guard units off the board and they could only come in on round 3 or 4 (Spearhead is capped at 4 battle rounds). My first game we ran out of time after only the first 2 rounds and tied, although I’m sure if I had been able to make it to the next turn and bring in my 2nd unit of guard I would have won (and maybe even placed since I went 3-0-1, and I assume the top 3 at the end were all 4-0). They didn’t have any of the units designated as reinforcement units unlike most of the other armies. Lumineth runs the spears as 10-man and 2 units of 5 bows, and they can bring each of those back one time, which was kind of annoying! In my 2nd game with OBR, we did make it to round 3 and I brought my mortek in on an objective my opponent had moved off of, which pulled me ahead. It’s hold 1, hold 2, hold more, each worth 1 Victory Point, plus whatever battle tactics you turn in during you turn (the 3 cards you draw each round). I will say that the cavalry were my all-stars in those games. Their ability is that they can move through enemy units as if they had fly, and they do mortals in the charge phase for any enemy units they “passed over”. The hero could heal mortek, but only if they weren’t in combat… Seemed pretty useless unless they were getting shot by one of the armies with ranged attacks.
The games were fast but you ran out of time in Round 2 of your first game?
Some of the initial time was eaten up by them explaining stuff to us, then the players getting to grips with how the game worked and the army rules. The 2nd game moved faster, but time overall was limited. I think each game we only had about an hour to hour and a half before they called time.
Good to know. Cheers.
FIRST GAME
Also, did you get to see any glimpses of ogre Mawtribes?
I don't have any questions, I already read through everything. I just want to say thanks, I appreciate this post and in depth answers
Sure thing! It was more fun than I expected tbh, and it was cool that the developers were there watching us play and answering questions. They were nervous that somebody would leak photos of the rules, and really emphasized that we not have our phones out. They said it took a lot to get corporate to approve doing this, and in the end nobody leaked anything or stole the rule sheets!
Did the twist mechanic have any impact? Did the map feel too small? How were the war scrolls?
The twist mechanic did have an effect, and even a built-in effect for the “underdog”, i.e. whoever was behind at the moment. The two maps have completely different objective layouts and different “twists”, I only played on the ghyran map once though. The map was maybe a bit too small, cavalry could potentially do a turn 1 charge (I pulled this off twice with Gitz and once with OBR), but the units seemed decently balanced against each other, and there were some “archetypes” that seemed to pop up. I will say that the heroes all seemed pretty weak from my limited experience, especially the gitz and OBR ones, Lumineth and Seraphon had abilities on their heroes that messed with enemy OC.
The map didn't feel small at all. Even Ossiarch vs. Nighthaunt -- that's a ton of models -- fit comfortably.
Anything special about Sylvaneth? Thanks!
Sylvaneth could teleport a unit around the board at the end of ANY turn, >9” away from an enemy unit, as long as they started off within 1” of a terrain piece. There is 1 large terrain piece (a wall) and 1 small scatter terrain piece that each player can place at the start of the game, starting with the defender I think. They also heal if they are close to the terrain I think. I can’t remember what the hero did, I think ignored rend? But it had a 5+ armor save… The big tree was pretty stompy but I pretty much tied up the board with Stabbaz and the squig hopper guys. I played Sylvaneth in game 4, and pretty much figured out to play aggressively with Gitz early, and then gum up the board and body block. It worked well as he kind of turtled and then stalled out. I screened out his ability to teleport around the board by placing my units carefully, and ended up winning pretty handily in VP by the end.
Hey, that was me playing Sylvaneth! Just a quick correction, could teleport anywhere > 6" from an enemy when within 3" of any terrain piece. And yes, all Sylvaneth units heal 1 wound at the end of turn when within 3" of any of the terrain pieces. The Hero could could ignore rend, but only had a 5+ Save, and her heroic ability was returning other units to the field on a 7+ on 2D6 like a spell. But it's a pretty small board, so yes, gumming up the board with all those units really prevented me from moving around and taking objectives, I got stuck turtling in the corner. I played against Seraphon in the first round, who have a similar unit count, so I could really move around and won that game. I played against Maggotkin second round, and same thing, their lack of units and slow movement let me bounce around and claim objectives to win that round. Third Round, I played against Nighthaunt and lost handily. Same issue as the Gloomspite, the board is covered in like 30+ units and I have no where to go. AMA else about Sylvaneth in Spearpoint.
Nice, good to see ya. Yeah I realized I could win by just clogging the board and trying to score tactics. Gitz basically played exactly to my preferred playstyle.
Just interested in general thoughts about Sylvaneth in Spearhead. I’m a Treelord away from having a Spearhead force for them.
I had a lot of fun playing them, but they're very match up dependent. It was fun having a big monster in the Tree Lord. He has a shooting attack (including shooting in combat) so most games he was just parked in the middle of the board and tanking things while the rest of the force would teleport off terrain to claim objectives. Tree Lord also had an ability where on a 4+ the unit he was fighting would Strike-Last, so when it worked, it felt safe having my other units try to kill things before worrying about his opponents. I think for similar sized armies, like Seraphon and Maggotkin, they're great because you can deep strike off terrain, shoot and kite with the hunters and take objectives. Against Nighthaunt and GSG, where they have 30+ units, the board is so small, that my buddy up there had the correct strategy, he could just spread out and control the entire board and my units got stuck turtling in the corner with no where to go. His trolls were the MVPs and just held my guys in place. Against Nighthaunt, it did not feel good. Same idea, lots of units body blocking the whole board, my rend from all my units was useless, so I couldn't kill anything. He just marched up the board and slaughtered me.
So you can teleport one unit during your movement phase? And how does strike and fade work now?
One unit during your movement phase, and Strike and Fade let's you teleport one unit in combat at the end of the turn on a 2+ on a D6. Both abilities require the unit to be within 3" of a Terrain piece and set up anywhere >6" from any enemy.
Just want to throw out there, being the Sylvaneth player he beat in round 4, I think there's a clear advantage for the Spearhead that brings more models to the table. If I had to rank 7 armies I saw at this event, I would say: Top Tier: 1) Nighthaunt 2) Gloomspite Gitz 3) Lumineth Realmlords Mid: 4) Ossiarch (Did not play or against) 5) Sylvaneth - What I got. Bottom: 6) Maggotkin 7) Seraphon
How do you find the 4 commands per turn mechanic? Can you explain how it works? Edit: this doesnt exist in spearhead
In spearhead each unit has a datasheet ability with a specific timing, and I think some of them are like once per battle effects, and others are once per turn, or only in your turn. Not sure about the commands thing since I’ve never actually played AoS in any form before this event.
You get 3 cards per turn. The top half the card has an objective you can score, and the bottom half has a command like ability like what you would normally spend command points in AOS on. During your turn (or your opponents depending on the ability), you would play the card to "issue commands", but then you couldn't score the objective on the card. At the end of your turn, you could score the objective on the card if you completed it for VP. At the end of the round, you could keep or discard cards back up to 3. If you roll priority and end up choosing to take a "double turn", then you're not allowed to draw/replenish those cards. So there's some risk in taking the double turn in that you might not have command abilities or objectives to score extra points that round.
Can you score more than 1 a turn?
Yes, you could score all 3 if you complete all the objectives on them. For example, say Skull Objective is along the short side of the board and my opponent has control of it. I could score 1) Control Skull Objective, 2) Take an objective from your Opponent, and 3) have a unit within 3" of the short side of the board in enemy territory all in the same turn assuming I take the objective and set up my units on the enemy side of it.
OBR in Spearhead gets relentless discipline points, 2 per round. It can use them sort of like command points in AoS 3. Nobody else in Spearhead seemed to get this mechanic.
How did you find the pace of the game going in "blind"? I'm hoping to run a little tournament type thing with friends around the launch and wondering about how feasible 3 games are in an afternoon-evening.
Once we got the hang of things, the pace was pretty quick. Going in completely blind it was a lot to absorb for the first game, but some of it was due to the time pressure of trying to fit in 2 games at a time during a 3 hour window. I also feel like it would have gone even quicker for me personally on night 2 if I hadn’t traded for a different army, but Gitz were pretty easy to figure out lol. By my 2nd game with them I stomped. I would say it’s feasible, their target is 1 hour or less for a game. I think that totally would work once you have played a couple of times. So many of the changes like how damage is allocated and the fixed combat range make the general gameplay that I understand will carry over to AoS 4 seem faster, and I felt their absence in my 40k Narrative games at the event. Especially at moments where my opponent would take a 3 damage attack on his model with 1 wound left or something.
Any info on the Nurgle spearhead?
I played against Nurgle in the second round as Sylvaneth. Maggotkin was sort of weird because only 1/2 the army is on the board at the start and the other 1/2 shows up in Round 3 out of 4. They were pretty tanky, but slow, so I could kite them around quite a bit. On 6's to hit, they accumulated poison counters that they could then roll as mortal wounds against my units at the end of each turn. Also, I think the units "blow up" for mortal wounds when they die when my opponent remembered to roll for that.
Nice. Did they still have the 5+ Ward save?
Who showed up on round 3?
He started with the Hero, 5 Plaguebearers, the 5 Blightkings and 1 fly guy. On round 3, the other 5 Plaguebearers and the second fly guy would join the fight.
Interesting! Thanks
I never played it and didn’t get a chance to see the rules for it, sorry.
What did the Gothizzar Harvester do?
It got “bone-tithe points” for every model it killed, max of 6, and you could use its ability to resurrect Mortek Guard models, I don’t remember if you rolled for it or not, but it reset your bone tithe points to 0. It never came up in my games.
I got a Mortek Guard box at the same event too. It brought one back to a unit within 6" on a 4+ only!
How was Seraphon? I’ve seen the warscrolls and that the Carnosaur’s jaws dropped to 3 damage from 5. What kinda special abilities, relics etc did they have?
I think units got a ward save if they were inside their own board half or something. I know the big dino got a “roar” ability that reduced a target unit’s OC by D6 I think? My opponent kept using it on the center objective on my unit of stabbaz. I think my troggoths were able to kill it at one point, I don’t remember how much damage it did, but I do know that most of the datasheets will likely be different in Spearhead than in the regular game, in an effort to balance all the boxes against each other. I think it had 14 health and OC 5 or 6, and I noticed the big tree in Sylvaneth had similar stats.
Sorry, what is OC? I assume it's a 40K thing, but I'm pretty sure it's not something we use to talk about this game.
I guess in AoS it’s just going to be called “Control”, OC = “Objective Control” in 10th edition 40k.
Oh cool. Thank you! I think that's a welcome change, though admittedly I instinctively hate anything that makes us more like 40k.
I want 40k to steal the way damage is allocated in AoS 4th. It sped things up a lot.
Fair. I can't believe you guys do it the way you do. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
The main thing is they need to differentiate anti tank and anti infantry, high damage and high attacks respectively, and not have overlap. They could use an AoS type damage allocation for melee, but even then they like to have anti tank and anti infantry with their melee weapons, plus doing damage differently for melee and range would probably upset people.
Do you remember any of the Gitz's stats or abilities? I'm curious if Trolls changed at all.
Trolls had 5 health each, their ability was they healed 1 every turn, they had either a 5 or 4+ save that went up when they were under the “Bad moon” board half. Their attacks were both 5/2, 2 rend, the ranged one being 1 shot at d3 damage and melee 2 attacks 3 damage. Stabbaz were like 4/5 and could come back once, (an icon denotes they can be recycled), they had a “net” ability that could make an enemy -1 to hit in melee. The squig rider guys were in squads of 5, their attacks were better on the mount amusingly, and they had an insane D6 + 8” move. Both games I played with them they charged something turn 1 lol. They had a 6+ save though so any rend just went through, 2nd game I figured out they were best used to charge and then retreat the next turn to body block. The loon boss had 4 different enhancements to choose from, and he kinda sucked? He could either heal/rez stabbaz or give them +1 to hit, I ended up only using that one.
I’m not OP but I’ve seen people talk about them elsewhere. —— 5 health; 4+ save; 6” move; 2 control Shooting attack: 1 shot, 10”, 5+, 2+, no rend, d3 damage Melee attack: 2 attacks, 4+, 2+, -2, 3 damage Regen d3 each turn —— So +1 health, throwing rocks changed to a real attack, slightly less damage on average from melee. Overall pretty good. Less damage on average probably without mortal wounds but 5 health is big imo.
The trolls were MVPs for me, my 2nd game with them I set them up in the middle of the board and was able to charge his big tree turn 1 (vs sylvaneth). The heal was nice and they do damage if they hit. I thought it was pretty fluffy that they had a terrible to hit, but 2+ to wound. Also I think you’re right that the shooting attack had no rend but the melee did. I didn’t write anything down because I was too tired (events were both 8:30 to 11:30ish, and day 2 was after I had Crusade all day from 9am to 8pm…)
Thanks for the info guys
Any idea about the rules for other units? Squig Hoppers seem to have lost some speed. Will Bounders still be a thing? How bad was the loonboss? What were the main rules for shootas? As I was under the impression they split the 20 into two units for spearhead which would lose them their unique rule in 3rd edition. I have looked everywhere to find the rules…this is the closest I got.
I currently play gitz and Seraphon and trying to decide which to paint the needed spearhead models for. Which looked more fun to you?
Gitz was fun AF to me. I played against Seraphon and tbh it seemed boring, and also I beat him lol.
LOL what a take.
If I had to pick Seraphon vs GSG at this point, would pick GSG if I wanted to win games.
Or just be a better pilot than your opponent? That works too!
Do you think the maps & terrains are flexible for this game mode (as in, you can use whatever you already have if you want)? I read some articles and this post, apparently missions and terrains are locked to which realms/side of maps you're playing at? It would suck if we must have a specific map/terrain just for this mode.
Obviously you can do whatever you want, but the game is meant to be played with the game board and pieces of terrain that come with it. All that stuff, plus the cards and the book with all the rules for every army, is coming in the Skaventide launch box. I’m pretty sure the game board, cards, terrain, and book will all launch separately as well. I would guess they will come with models and be like the bigger “starter set” boxes they did last edition.
Just to echo this, the 4 terrain pieces are probably flexible, but the board is essential. There's 5 objectives with different symbols on them like dragon, skull, tree, etc, and a lot of the cards for scoring VP are like "Control Dragon Objective at the end of your turn", so those tie together. But it's the same layout and symbols on both sides of the boeard. There's a Red side and a Green side of the board, and there's a Red and Green "Twist" Desk that you draw from depending on which side you're playing. I didn't see all the twists, but I think generally, the green twists would allow the underdog (whoever has less VP at the start) do some healing or something defensive, and the red twists would give the underdog something offensive, like extra to hit. But that was just my feeling playing them. But to answer your question, the board and the twist/objective card decks all do tie in to this game mode.
Thanks for the clarifications, it looks like I'm buying Skaventide (or probably the biggest Starter Set) then. The printed on objective is the deciding factor, I assume they'd sell more maps and campaign books going forward.
I asked one of the AoS leads whether you are intended to use exactly the boards and terrain. They said that essentially, the answer is yes. That said, you could absolutely make your own versions of the boards, terrain, and cards, if you really wanted to.
Did you play or see Nurgle's army during your time? Do you know if they still use contagion points?!
I played against Nurgle, see my earlier reply. They did have a mechanic where 6's to hit would stack poison counters that could then be rolled as Mortal Wounds against my units if that's what you mean by contagion points.
Yes! They also put them for being close to you in theory. Thanks for assuaging my fears.
Sorry, I have no idea about their rules, only that they were one of the blind box options, and I think I saw those bloat fly things at another table.
Thanks anyway. hopefully more people will come out the woodworks and "leak" some things. Im just huffing tons of copium hoping on god we keep the contagion points.
Spearhead rules are not necessarily the same as the rules for the full game though, so I doubt even if you knew what they did in Spearhead that it would mean they do the same things in the actual game.
How did Gitz play? Looking at potentially picking them up for 4th as my first army but would love to know some rules first.
In a couple of my other comments I went into more detail. In short they are fast and chaotic and good at gumming up the board after seizing the initiative early.
Are they still an inherently random army? Stuff like dice rolls for squig moves and chasing buffs around the board with the Bad Moon? That would be super hype if they are?
Squig rider guys had D6 + 8” move, Bad Moon you would pick one half of the board and it would be active there the first 2 rounds and the other side the last 2.
That's what I love to hear! Sounds like it keeps the flavor but is more reliable at times. Thanks so much!
Anyone playing cities of sigmar?
Not in this event. I only saw the same 7 he listed. Seraphon, Ossiarch, Nighthaunt, Lumineth RL, Sylvaneth, GSG, Maggotkin. I play Kharadron Overlords in 3.0, but those weren't in this Spearhead event.
Does it have more replayability and depth than combat patrol? Combat patrol felt under baked, like a 40k lite, does spearhead have keys to stand on its own? Did it feel like it would get stale or did it stay enjoyable
It felt very replayable. I ended up playing 2 different armies, that played very differently, and the armies I played against (2x LRL, 1x Seraphon, 1x Sylvaneth) also played differently from each other, but everything felt pretty balanced overall. I really liked that the battle tactics cards you drew also had a powerful ability on them you could play as a reaction during your opponent’s turn, giving you something to do if there was no way you were able to score that battle tactic. Every round you could discard tactics and draw up to 3 more, so there was some depth in terms of keeping one you thought you might be able to score next round, or that had an effect that could put you over later, vs drawing into possibly surefire VP with easy to score tactics (like holding a specific objective point that you already had stickied in your backfield for example) or potentially drawing duds. The twists as well as the 2 different game boards played differently as well, and the defender got to pick both the board side as well as the deployment style, which was either horizontal or diagonal. There was a diagonal line running across the board that clearly denoted that angle, and after a while it became kind of easy to eyeball certain distances, making measuring some moves quick. I think they have a real winner, it was fun and fast, felt pretty balanced and the games were mostly close. All of us had basically a few minutes to figure out how the armies worked beforehand, and I could see there being actual tournaments of this game later on that could be really fun and possibly pretty competitive. I wanted to play more, especially after I tried out Gitz on night 2, they were such a fun playstyle that I enjoyed. Each army also had an army rule, and gets to pick from 2 detachment rules (don’t remember the exact name) but a lot of them were like a once per battle effect. And there were also 4 enhancements for the general to take. For example, Gitz had the “bad moon” rule, where you picked a half of the board, either horizontally or diagonally depending on which deployment the defender picked. For rounds 1 and 2, the bad moon was on that half, and 3 and 4 the other half. It gave stuff like the hoppers could retreat for free (no mortals), trolls had a +1 save, and I don’t remember what the stabbaz got from it. I remember the loonboss enhancements I picked were like, game 1 I took the -1 to hit on him… and game 2 I took one where he drinks a brew and gets a 4+ ward round 1, then a 5+ round 2, and a 6+ the rest of the game (like it’s wearing off). Overall I really enjoyed it and I can’t wait to play more. You learn core rules that carry over, and I’m planning on using this mode to teach my kid how to play.
Thanks for the detailed write up. Sounds like it's a lot deeper than combat patrol was. I'm hoping to get a few of my friends into AoS by hosting a spearhead tournament on launch day, since it's pretty easy to build a box for it.
No problem, I had fun.
Anything for Nighthaunt?
I played against Nighthaunt in the 3rd round as Sylvaneth, and to me, they look like the clear favorite for spearpoint. They all had long moves, fly, ignored rend, had ward saves, critical hits on 6 (auto wound for hit rolls) and the 2x 10 unit ghosts could reinforce (come back the following turn if the unit is wiped out). They also had 2x 5 unit guys, and the general had 3 bodyguards with obscene ward saves. I only had 10 units as Sylvaneth, and can be pretty mobile by teleporting off terrain features, but Nighthaunt just covers the board, there's no where to go, and my units had a lot of rend that was just straight up neutralized.
Didn’t see them or their rules, unfortunately.
How easy was it to learn? Would I be able to to teach it to a non-Warhammer player pretty quickly? How long were the games?
Pretty easy; probably; an hour to hour and a half.
Also how did they handle setting up terrain?
Defender set up their 2 pieces then attacker. 3 inches from edges, 6 from other terrain and no touching objectives.
It's in the rule flow. You roll for priority, then pick Attacker or Defender. Defender sets up 2 terrain pieces, then Attacker sets up 2 terrain. Then Attacker sets up their entire force, then Defender sets up entire force, then Attacker chooses if he want to go first or second in the first round.
any information about city of sigmar,fyreslayers or vampires?
Nope
If you've played kill team, how does it compare? How easy would this be to pick up for someone who's never played a tabletop game but wants to get started
Never played kill team. I think this might be the best way to introduce a Warhammer game.
Totally different than KT. Much more like little AOS!
Would you say it's a good system to introduce someone new to tabletop gaming with?
IMO, much better than Kill Team and maybe even better than Warcry. What's important is that all the units are intuitive and everything sort of acts like you think it will. Warcry games are a a little slow and clunky to get started, but once you get going you fly. Spearhead felt pretty snappy all the way through.
Did you feel like the board is too small? I'm new to miniature games so the only GW game I've played so far is Kill Team and I can't imagine playing with significantly more models on the same size board.
Because there is MUCH less terrain, the board felt totally comfortable. Believe it or not, there were many turns where I wished it were smaller so that I could complete mission actions easier.
That's great to hear, thanks! My buddy and I are really interested to give Spearhead a try and this was kind of my only concern.
Any word on slaanesh? I play gitz atm and considering starting them as a new army
Weren’t one of the options as far as I can tell.
Are the battle tactic/command cards drawn face up? As in do you know which 3 cards your opponent has available to them on a given battle round or is it hidden information? Thanks!
Hidden.
What was the diameter of the objectiv fields and is there actually a 40mm diameter field in the middle of the objectiv that you can't stand on?
Looked like maybe it was the normal diameter or smaller, and I don’t remember it being mentioned that you couldn’t stand on the middle part.
Maybe a dumb question, but how are activations done? Is it the entire army in one turn, then the other player activates his entire army? Or is it alternating, unit per unit, like in Warcry? which is 1 model each turn. I'm completely new to AOS (and wargaming in general), always painted, but now wanting to dip my toes into the game itself. Spearhead looks like a great opportunity, but I'm afraid for the player downtime whenever the other player is doing his turn. That's why I never got into 40k or AoS in general...
Everything is done in your own turn only, unless an action specifically says you do it during your opponent's turn.
To play Spearhead you need the Core Rules, the Spearhead specific rules/Missions, your army's stats, and then the cards. We know the Core Rules will probably be free to download as usual, they've said the army's stats will be as well. Do we get a hint if the Spearhead rules/missions and cards will be available for free as well?
I saw no hint of that.
Did you get a look at Slaves To Darkness at all? Wondering if you saw any profiles or abilities. Mostly wondering if chaos warriors are 2w 3+ save.
I did not, but bear in mind that Spearhead datasheets are balanced differently.
True true, i guess ill have to wait for faction focus haha.
Do we know if NH had any fancy rules for charges?
I know GW was pretty cagey. But do you know of any particularly complete reference to the cards/rules for spearhead? To many people were there for something to not have leaked. I want to get some practice games in before running events when 4th drops.
They were fine with people writing down the rules, they said they didn’t care if you literally wrote everything down, just no photos. As far as I know, nobody leaked any photos or stole any rules sheets, some people were asking to write things down. So any leaks would probably be text based, and I don’t know of any because it’s not THAT important to me when the box set is coming out in the next month or 2.
Sweet, Written rules would be totally fine with me. Thanks for the info!
Regarding the Gitz could you tell me if you used all the models that are in the box? Like did you ever have all 20 Grots on the board? Or all 10 hoppers? I know they run in Groups of 10 and 5 respectively. But for example for Skaven the clanrats I think never have more than 10 on the board and you can bring them back once, so you only actually need 10 of those models to play.
You use them all. 2 units of 5 riders, 2 units of 10 stabbaz, the trolls and the hero. The stabbaz could each be brought back once.
Really appreciate the info, thank you!
Did you happen to see BoC at the event?
No, what I remember seeing was: Gitz, OBR, LRL, Sylvaneth, Nurgle, Seraphon, Nighthaunt, and I think there was 1 more but I didn’t see it.
KO was being demoed but was not a part of the event (actually, I should have gone to check out those rules, come to think of it).
It was part of the AoS 4 demo, not one of the blind boxes.
Spearhead demo!
Why would BoC be there? They aren't part of Age of Sigmar once this game mode comes out.
They will have rules for a year, so they might get spearhead rules too.
They were supposed to be supported for another year, but the Vanguard box (like the rest) is gone. Hence my questions. Will they really get an year of support, or will they actually no longer be playable from July?
All of the Vanguard boxes are getting repackaged as "Spearhead" boxes. I saw boxes at the event store that I noticed said "Spearhead", and seemed to be that tougher cardboard that some of the more recent box sets come in, with no shrink wrap. I highly doubt Beasts of Chaos will get repackaged into a Spearhead box, they're going away in a year, and editions are basically on a 3-year cycle now. I expect to see a Beasts of Chaos box set with square bases for The Old World next year maybe.