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...why isn't anyone talking about it? I'm using Spearhead as my que to start collecting an Armored Battlegroup (Forge World's Imperial Armor 1). When you combine the two though! Look at this:

Tank Hunter Spearhead - 3 Chimeras, Ace Gunners, 255
Ambush Spearhead 75 points - 2 Medusas, Bastion Breacher, Enclosed Crew, 310
Colossus, Slick Loader, 160
Leman Russ Vanquisher, Co-axial Stubber, Lascannon, 180
Leman Russ Battle Tank, 150
Leman Russ Punisher, 180
Leman Russ Executioner, 190
1500

The pride of the list is at the top: Tank Hunter Chimeras. They get +2 to their armored penetration rolls, can fire all weapons while moving at combat speed, can fire each weapon at a different target and aren't a squadren. Fragile? Maybe, but they're cheap as dirt for how much anti-tank they throw out. The Ambush Spearhead I thought would be really cool. The Medusas have 48" range, so I don't need to Infiltrate as close as possible; the benefit of infiltrating is really just to deploy last so I can get shots on my opponent or hide them as I see fit. And then there's a whole bunch of tanks, cause you gotta love tanks.

As far as my Chaos Space Marines on concerned, I was thinking something like this:

Mechanised Assault Spearhead 60 points -7 Plague Marines, Personal Icon, 2 Meltaguns, Rhino, 221
7 Plague Marines, 2 Plasmaguns, Personal Icon, Rhino, 231
7 Possessed Marines, Icon of Nurgle, Rhino, 267
Seek and Destroy Spearhead - 2 x 4 Chaos Bikers, 2 Meltaguns, Icon of Slaanesh, total 394
Mass Attack Spearhead - 3 x 6 Lesser Daemons, 324
1497

This list wants to get ahold of the enemy as fast as possible and not let go. Everything in the Mechanised Assault Spearhead closes deploys next to the enemy and opens fire, while the Seek and Destroy Spearhead can choose to either start working on the other end of the enemy's line, or help the Mechanised Assault Spearhead. The whole point of getting as close as possible is to deliver the Mass Attack Spearhead; it grants the Lesser Daemons, S7 Krak Grenades which means they'll be able to open vehicles like soda-cans. This list'll have a huge advantage in Break Through where my entire army basically starts out in their deployment zone.

Show me what Spearheads you'd like to try, or how you'll change your lists for Spearhead. I'd perfer this not be moved to the Army Lists section, because it is more about the tactics you'd like to employ in Spearhead and the army lists posted are a frame of reference.

As Imperial Guard, I'm wonderfully pleased. Every vehicle seems like it has one or more spearheads custom built for it, so there are a lot of potential just waiting to be unleashed.
The armoured speahead is insane for line breaking demolishers or executioners armed with plasma cannon sponsons.
The tanks in the spearhead can all move at combat speed while staying in formation, therefore being able to fire their main cannon, and BOTH plasma cannons while on the move, one of the PC's even at another target if you want to.
That AND they get a 5+ inv save to protect against incoming fire. That is just insane.

There's also a lot of potential for sentinels, hellhounds and all other vehicles, even chimeras.

Okay, I give up. I looked all around and can't find it.

What the heck is Spearhead?

A rules add-on like apok or planetstrike. The rules are in the new white dwarf

New Expansion for 40K, which mainly focusses on tanks, and tank formations. We are talking about the new released products for Spearhead, especially the Night Spinner. Check out the threads: 'Night Spinner?' and 'Wraithlords, Fire Prisms, or Night Spinners'. It isn't a great expansion, all it is, is a different force organization chart, and some new formation types.

YmeLocSquirrel256

I won't be able to play spearhead until the rules are online. I will not buy White Dwarf, even for these free rules.

IIRC the rules, formations and additional missions will be released as a soft back book, just like battle missions.

Well, the WD covers the missions and deployment but not all formations, just one of them.
In toto, there will be 12 formations.

A soft back book would be great.

It's not as exciting for other armies, either due to high points cost, lack of options, already being able to fire while moving at cruising speed, or lack of exciting sponson options (hey look, all of my secondary weapons are Str 5 AP 5).

I'd probably go with:

Tank Hunter Spearhead:
3x Railhead /w burst cannons, dpods, MT (570 points)

Seek and Destroy Spearhead:
3x Piranha /w fusion gun (245 points)

wuestenfux wrote:
Well, the WD covers the missions and deployment but not all formations, just one of them.
In toto, there will be 12 formations.

There are 12 formations.
See this: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=9800021a. You'll need to become a member of games workshop though!

YmeLocSquirrel256


Automatically Appended Next Post:
hth

YmeLocSquirrel256 wrote:

wuestenfux wrote:
Well, the WD covers the missions and deployment but not all formations, just one of them.
In toto, there will be 12 formations.

There are 12 formations.
See this: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=9800021a. You'll need to become a member of games workshop though!

YmeLocSquirrel256


Automatically Appended Next Post:
hth

Well, I'm not a member of GW, but I usually play each weekend in a GW hobby store.

Gamble wrote:I won't be able to play spearhead until the rules are online. I will not buy White Dwarf, even for these free rules.

Ah, that's where I can help! This guys are great. In that episode they go through all the missions and deployments word for word (I just transcribed that). The rest of the rules are where YmeLoc posted; just make an account, open the PDF and save it.

Don't own enough tanks :(.

I have 3 Wave Serpents, 4 Falcons, 3 War Walkers and 12 (yes, 12) Wrathlords, so I can get some use out of it...

Fifty wrote:I have 3 Wave Serpents, 4 Falcons, 3 War Walkers and 12 (yes, 12) Wrathlords, so I can get some use out of it...

Do you have the rules yet? I can imagine some really devastating double Autarch builds with an army like that. Ambush Spearhead 2 of the Falcons, Skyfall the other two Falcons, Mechanized Assault the Serpents, and outflank the War Walkers with Tank Hunters. Or you could take 6 Wraithlords in a Monsterous Spearhead, take 3 more normally and field an Avatar. Then stick the Falcons in a Skyfall or Seek and Destroy Spearhead, so you can drop in on the opponent and open them up for your beasties. You've got a lot of options there.

sexiest_hero wrote:Don't own enough tanks :(.

You don't need to if you are cunning enough. My CSM's Spearhead consists of 3 tanks. Granted, I'll probably pick up some more so I have options, but it is do-able. So the question is: what do you have?

Wow this is the first time I've heard of this spearhead thing. Nobody I know has a WD subscription.

I'm looking forward to playing this, I've got 9 Russes, a Basilisk, 2 Hellhounds, Valk/Vendetta, 4 Sentinels, and a Baneblade that are waiting for it (And 6 Chimeras in a pinch)

I have a LR demolisher, a rhino, A chimera, a predator, and 2 ork trucks lol. Lots of armies but they all walk or stand and shoot.

The crusher spearhead is going to be oh so much fun...

We had a giant spearhead multi-battle (4 tables used, 3 battlefields) with a tank board, a walker, monstrous creature and fast skimmer board and a super heavy walker and smaller tank board (preds and railheads etc).

It was absolute carnage on the tank board as we had a check and EVERY tank on the board had either crusher (5 grot tanks ramming a baneblade was really fun to watch), tank hunters (2 tank hunter railgun batteries was also funny to watch) or armoured spearhead. A random steam tank on the imperial side was rather wierd though.

The walker board we were outnumbered and it was a very wierd battle, especially since our sides only fast skimmers were my 3 phiranha's who drew the fire of half their walkers two turns and noone even told me they were being shot at so they didn't get cover saves and 6's to hit when they got charged.

Reaver finally got pulled down by the remaining enemy and then went apocolyptic and took down the stompa right in front of it. Overall a draw but many people agree that some non AV/ MC's might have been good. Overall a very good day even if we only got 3 turns in, having 375 or 376 tanks will do that.

O'shovah wrote:Overall a very good day even if we only got 3 turns in, having 375 or 376 tanks will do that.

Sounds kool but sounds like you should of played Apocalypse.

Spearhead seems like it's suppose to be a mini-apocalypse game. I got a game in last night we played 2500 points and my after thought is that is about as much you should go. 2000 points might of been better 2500 can clutter a board when you playing from the short ends. Spearheads not about static tank lines just blasting each other, it's all about maneuver and fire. It makes for a real fluid battlefield which is plays very different than a normal game of 40k.

General_Chaos wrote:

O'shovah wrote:Overall a very good day even if we only got 3 turns in, having 375 or 376 tanks will do that.

Sounds kool but sounds like you should of played Apocalypse.

Spearhead seems like it's suppose to be a mini-apocalypse game. I got a game in last night we played 2500 points and my after thought is that is about as much you should go. 2000 points might of been better 2500 can clutter a board when you playing from the short ends. Spearheads not about static tank lines just blasting each other, it's all about maneuver and fire. It makes for a real fluid battlefield which is plays very different than a normal game of 40k.

Yeah. I tried but it was hard when the tanks stretched 144" across and around 18" deep leaving ust over 1 turn moving distance between the sides. The random vortex missiles fired across the store did make some holes to manouvre in though .

I think putting loads more super-heavy tanks in Apoc is best, because then that Super-heavy spearhead doesn't become useless to a majority of 40K players imo. Hopefully that will have a knock-on effect on updating those codexes. I mean, come on GW, a 2nd Edition Dark Eldar Codex, and a 3rd Edition Necron Codex?! To me, serious updating is needed here, as a Necron / Eldar player as I am sure all of you would agree. *sigh*Back to the topic then...

YmeLocSquirrel256.

The "2nd edition" DE codex was released for 3rd edition 40k, it's just the 2nd version of the codex for 3rd edition 40k.

willydstyle wrote:
The "2nd edition" DE codex was released for 3rd edition 40k, it's just the 2nd version of the codex for 3rd edition 40k.

As they always release the rulebook first, it was probably the last codex they updated before the 3rd edition, and so possibly had a last minute design change, so players could 'get a taste', of what 3rd edition 40K would be like.

YmeLocSquirrel256.

YmeLocSquirrel256 wrote:I think putting loads more super-heavy tanks in Apoc is best, because then that Super-heavy spearhead doesn't become useless to a majority of 40K players imo. Hopefully that will have a knock-on effect on updating those codexes. I mean, come on GW, a 2nd Edition Dark Eldar Codex, and a 3rd Edition Necron Codex?! To me, serious updating is needed here, as a Necron / Eldar player as I am sure all of you would agree. *sigh*Back to the topic then...

Remember that you are allowed to use any datasheet, which would include those for other armies.


I play Space Marines, and I've been considering a few spearheads.

Tank Hunter Spearhead: 3 dreadnoughts with 2 twin-linked autocannons
This spearhead becomes the ultimate anti-transport weapon. As a whole, it puts out 12 twin-linked BS 4 S 8 shots per turn (against vehicles), and it can run and still shoot half of these, all for around 400 points.

Ambush Spearhead: 3 vindicators
Vindicators would normally be disadvantaged in Spearhead because of the greater starting range. This gives them shots from turn 1, and they can move at cruising speed and still shoot. They also get better cover (good with siege shield) and outflanking.

Mechanized Assault Spearhead: 3 rhinos with Tactical Squads or maybe Sternguard
These provide much-needed outflanking, on turn 1.

Outrider Spearhead: Land Raider and two light vehicles (Whirlwinds, Rhinos, maybe Predators)
This is an evil one. Place the light vehicles behind the Land Raider for cover. To kill the Land Raider, they will essentially have to kill both of the light vehicles first, which is hard when they have cover. Even better, get one of them completely out of LOS. This forces them to shoot at the AV 14 Land Raider and resolve the damage against AV 11.

Mass Attack Spearhead
This can be combined with the Mechanized Assault Spearhead. It is tricky, since all the units have to start in reserves and arrive on turn 1, so to get more than 3 units in this, you will need drop pods. For more than 4 units, you will need extra drop pods to allow more to come on turn 1.

Seek and Destroy Spearhead: 3 units of Land Speeders
Fast multi-meltas are awesome.

Super-heavy Spearhead
Thunderhawk Gunship, anyone?

Let me say, although GW allow you to do this, I think this is why the Apoc expansion (like all the other ones incl. Spearhead) are so bad. Because they have hardly put in the time at effort to develop them at all, they really don't seem that significant in the end. GW really do need to start bringing out more kits, because I feel that a home-made datasheet for a home-made unit doesn't have that same level of authority as GW units and datasheets. You do have to admit that they have literally cheapened all of their 40K expansions by saying these sorts of things 'so they don't have to do the dirty work'.

YmeLocSquirrel256.

That chimera formation looks really nasty. I'm happy this came out, now my tanks can destroy even more!

YmeLocSquirrel256 wrote:

willydstyle wrote:
The "2nd edition" DE codex was released for 3rd edition 40k, it's just the 2nd version of the codex for 3rd edition 40k.

As they always release the rulebook first, it was probably the last codex they updated before the 3rd edition, and so possibly had a last minute design change, so players could 'get a taste', of what 3rd edition 40K would be like.

YmeLocSquirrel256.

You don't quite get it. I've been playing since early 2nd ed. When 3rd ed was first released, it was a complete revamp of the rules, rather than the series of incremental changes which 3rd-5th have represented. A 2nd ed (game edition) codex cannot work with post-2nd-ed rules. Both the original and "second edition" (i.e. current) Dark Eldar codices were released under the third edition of 40k rulebook.

willydstyle wrote:

YmeLocSquirrel256 wrote:

willydstyle wrote:
The "2nd edition" DE codex was released for 3rd edition 40k, it's just the 2nd version of the codex for 3rd edition 40k.

As they always release the rulebook first, it was probably the last codex they updated before the 3rd edition, and so possibly had a last minute design change, so players could 'get a taste', of what 3rd edition 40K would be like.

YmeLocSquirrel256.

You don't quite get it. I've been playing since early 2nd ed. When 3rd ed was first released, it was a complete revamp of the rules, rather than the series of incremental changes which 3rd-5th have represented. A 2nd ed (game edition) codex cannot work with post-2nd-ed rules. Both the original and "second edition" (i.e. current) Dark Eldar codices were released under the third edition of 40k rulebook.

Ok, after all, I started playing 40K a few months before Assault on Black Reach went on sale, so have almost no idea of what previous editions were like, I was only guessing lol!