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Hey there Dakkites... Been a while since iv posted on here!

Anywho getting back into fantasy with a couple of friends.
Was looking at the DE Battalion and just wondering with all the warriors you get in it is it really only possible to make 12 of them armed with spears?
Considering the new rules for hordes I am planning on having a horde of spear armed warriors central to my army and ideally want to get as many of them built and painted while Im still riding the 'I really want to paint' wave.
On another unrelated matter... Does MSU still work in fantasy considering the new rules???
DE's seem like an army that might be able to pull it off...
Anyway, tear me a new one Dakkites!!!!!!

Yes that is true about the spears.

On the other hand who cares Repeaters armed warriors are a really good solid choice give them a shield and deploy them in a decent numbers and all of a suden you have good shooting and a viable melee unit.

DEs are one of the few armies that can do MSU just because of good units like shades and hydras that can work in small numbers/solo.

However infantry combat blocks still need to fielded in decent numbers ie 30-40.

Ive seen a lot of mindrazor corsair/witchelf spam that works well backed up with hydras and shades.

The bizarre problem with both the battalion & a spearman/rxb box is that they only give you 10 shields. Why? Its one of life's mysteries.

There are also more spears than bodies in the spearmen box, so you could turn your RXBs into warriors if you really wanted to.

giant stegadon wrote:The bizarre problem with both the battalion & a spearman/rxb box is that they only give you 10 shields. Why? Its one of life's mysteries.

Considering the shield sprue comes in sets of 4... IMPOSSIBLE.

The Battalion comes with 28 warriors, of which they seem to say only 12 can be armed with spears... Jellybaby sort of touched on the crux of the issue, how many 'spear-arms' come in the Battalion set?

Not that i have any idea of how the warrior sprue set is composed, but it seems odd that only 12 could be made seeing that I assume a boxed set of warriors allows you to potentially make all of them armed with spears.

On the flipside, is there any way to sort of 'cheat' and make 12 warriors armed with spears AND 3 command models so that technically i could use them as at least 15 spearmen?

Thanks for the replies thus far though!

I'm pretty sure there's a rule that says the unit is armed with whatever the majority of models have.

Yeh I understand that, just looking for DE players who have bought the Battalion and know how many spear arms are actually provided!

Need as many spearmen as possible while im still enjoying the grind of painting RnF... then i can reward myself with a few characters or perhaps a Hydra

I just counted 42 spear arms in my battalion box....that seems like an awful lot....


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It has 7 warrior sprues, each with 6 spears, 4 bodies, and for crossbows.

The warrior box give you 5 spears on each double-sprue
There are 4 double-sprues in the warrior box
So to make a total of 28 models there must be 7 double sprues in the Battalion box, meaning there are 35 spears
More than enough to make 28 spearmen.
If you must, only stick shields on the front rank as you only get 3 shield sprues in the box.

This is my logic.

The problem with making spearmen isn't with the number of spears, it's with the number of shields. You'll wind up with the same problem using Repeater Crossbowmen.

Why they don't give you enough shields for all the 'warriors' I'll never know; it's not like one version can't use shields in the first place.

Could always email them highlighting this problem and asking for shields? You never know as their customer service is kinda good that way sometimes

Ahhh so the problem lies with not the number of spear arms but the number of shield sprues... kinda ridiculous seeing as Repeater Crossbowmen can be given shields!

Thanks for your help tho guys, I guess I'll just ask around my FLGS to see if anyone wants to do some sprue swapping!

Whilst I do want some crossbowmen the majority of my warriors will be spear armed. Would 2 regiments of 10 crossbowmen be enough for a 2000 points list?

GW does sell the shield sprues on their website... for $4 per sprue, or $1 per shield (and three icons).

I have seen armies done using the big skull icon as a shield in and of itself; that doubles the amount of 'shields' available.