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BigKahuna and I had been wanting to test out the Spearhead rules since they came out. I was in St Louis on the weekend of June 26th for some wedding planning, so we decided to grab a table at Miniature Market and throw down between his Space Wolves and my Orks.

I decided I wanted to try out a Dred Mob army from the list in IA8:



Dred Mob - 3000 point Spearhead Army List

HQ:
Painboss – Power Klaw, Bosspole, Attack Squig, Cybork

Troops:
20 Spanna Boyz – shootas
19 Spanna Boyz – Slugga / Choppa, Cyborks
10 Spanna Boyz – 1 Mek, Grot Oiler
10 Grots + Runtherd
1 Deff Dred – 4 Klaws, Grot Rigger
1 Deff Dred – 4 Klaws, Grot Rigger

Fast Attack:
1 Deth-Kopta – Twin-Linked Rokkit Launchas
1 Deth-Kopta – Twin-Linked Rokkit Launchas

Heavy Support:
1 Fighta-Bomma – 4 Bombs, 2 Burna Bombs, 2 Grot Bombs
1 Fighta-Bomma – 4 Bombs, 2 Burna Bombs, 2 Grot Bombs
1 Fighta-Bomma – 4 Bombs, 2 Soopa Rokkits, 2 Grot Bombs

Outrider Spearhead:
1 Kustom Mekka-Dred – Kustom Force Field
3 Killa Kanz – big shootas

Tank Hunter Spearhead:
3 Killa Kanz – Rokkits
3 Killa Kanz – Kustom Mega Blastas
1 Deff Dred – 2 Klaws, 2 Rokkit Launchas, Grot Rigger


Superheavy Spearhead:
1 Stompa

Force selection for this game really wasn’t all that hard.

Take as many expensive models as possible, so I could keep my end of the game moving.
Try out some of the spearhead formations to get a feel for the flavor.
I’ve only had IA8 for a little while, so I wanted to try out the Dred Mob list.
I painted the stock kit stompa a year ago and haven’t used it yet so it needed to go in.
I painted 3 fighta-bommas over the weekend of June 19-20 so I wanted them in as well.


Using the Dred Mob list cut down on a few of the possible spearheads I could field. I don’t really have scrap trucks built and painted (and changing that quick would be hard because I used all my Grabba Klaws on my Mekka-Dred) so Mechanized Assault was out. The only tanks in the Dred Mob list are Lifta-Droppa Wagons, Grot Tanks, and other choices I don’t currently have available, so the Armored and Crusher Spearheads were out (and I just recently put the finishing touches on 3 battlewagons).

The Tank Hunter Spearhead was a logical choice for a couple mobs of shooty Killa Kanz. They’re my most accurate shooters and the tank hunter skill will give them a chance against any Space Wolf landraiders that roll their way.

The Outrider Spearhead was another logical choice to protect Boss Black-Spanna in his Kustom Mekka-Dred. I can imagine him picking up an unfortunate kan and using it as a shield from enemy fire. The conversion I’m using for my Mekka-Dred just really isn’t complete without its big Kustom Force Field projector, so I upgraded Black-Spanna’s personal Dred with a field. Between the field and Outrider defense, I’m predicting he’ll survive to make contact with some wolves.

A Superheavy Spearhead let me include one of Black-Spanna’s Stompas. I resisted the urge to be an extra cheezy git and mount a Big Mek with kustom force field in the troop compartment. I did include a minimum sized unit of Spanna Boyz with a Mek in my list to ride in the Stompa and try to repair some of the damage I expected from massed Space Wolf las-cannons.

I tried to fit in a Seek-And-Destroy Spearhead composed of Deth-Koptas. I felt like they would fit in well with the rest of my ork air force. I could imagine them turbo-boosting on from a flank and lighting up Space Wolf armor with rokkits from the rear. They just kept coming out too expensive once I put together a mob and added the spearhead cost. I considered dropping a fighta-bomma to make room, but in the end my desire to swoop around the battle-field, making whooshing noises with all three jets, kept the deth-koptas out of the list. (Note: BigKahuna wanted to upgrade to around 3100 points, so I added 2 Koptas with Rokkits to my list at the last minute.)

I didn’t feel like there was a good fit for the Archeo-Tech Speahead. I felt like the Tank Hunter Spearhead was filling that niche in the army and I didn’t have any other set of vehicles to use.

The Mass-Attack Spearhead was appealing. I am putting 4 units of infantry Troops on the field. But one of those units is a min-sized bunch of grots (who already have a special grenade attack), and one is pretty-much designated to ride in the Stompa, repair damage, and possible dismount to camp an objective if the opportunity presents itself. The other two units of 20 boyz would benefit from Mass Attack, but I decided in the end to use what points I had to upgrade one of the units to cyborks and have them bodyguard my Painboss. That will give them a 5+ invulnerable save and FNP, making them fairly tough to get rid of.

Neither the Skyfall or Monstrous Spearheads were appropriate. (At least not unitl I get a herd of rampaging squiggoths!)

The 3 fighta-bommas are probably a suspect choice. I certainly had some pre-game doubts about how useful the would be. They add a level of long-range ordnance fire to my army through grot bombs that would be hard to come by otherwise, but they can only fire one of those each turn and wouldn’t be able to use any other weapons when they do because of ordnance restrictions. The two carrying burna bombs are limited to one burn per turn so that’s 4 turns of shooting allocated for a unit that has to come in from reserve. I foresaw them flying back to their hangers with some ordnance still on the wings. I planned on having them unload grot bombs and supa-rokkits early to hopefully crack some transports and set up some late game napalm strikes.

BigKahuna here, and here is my list of Space Wolves I took:


Space Wolf Spearhead List

HQ:
Rune Priest – Chooser of the Slain, Living Lightening and Stormcaller
Rune Priest – Chooser of the Slain, Living Lightening and Tempest Wraith


Troops:
9 Grey Hunters – Meltagun, Wulfen, Rhino w/ Extra Storm Bolter
9 Grey Hunters – Meltagun, Wulfen, Rhino w/ Extra Storm Bolter


Heavy:
6 Long Fangs – 5 Missile Launchers, Razorback w/ Twin Linked Lascannons
6 Long Fangs – 5 Missile Launchers, Razorback w/ Twin Linked Lascannons
6 Long Fangs – 5 Lascannons, Razorback w/ Twin Linked Lascannons


Ambush Spearhead:
3 Venerable Dreadnoughts – Assault Cannon, DCCW w/ Heavy Flamer


Seek & Destroy Spearhead:
3 Land Speeder Tempests – Assault Cannon, AA Mount Twin Linked Missile Launcher


Superheavy Spearhead:
Warhound Scout Titan – 2 Turbo Laser Destructors


Similar to JoshB, the force selection was initially based on getting as many expensive models out to keep the game moving; 3000 points of infantry can take a while to play and we really didn’t have that much time. Since Spearheads are all about armor, I wanted to capitalize on the Imperium’s strengths against armor.


So, the first choice on anti-armor was my Warhound Scout Titan with two Turbo Laser Destructors. Strength D weapons are unmatched in cracking armor with auto penetration and +1 to the damage roll. In addition their physical height on the Warhound give them excellent fields of fire and their range give them complete control of the battle field.


Next I moved on to my Space Wolves. When I think anti-armor I think Long Fangs! So I chose three squads of Long Fangs, two with missile launchers and one with lascannons. While this array of anti-armor weapons is impressive they will lack range initially, since Spearhead missions are played long ways on the table I added Razorbacks as taxis and additional firepower.


The Ambush Spearhead was also chosen based on Spearheads missions being played long ways on the table. I wanted to close the gap with JoshB’s units as soon as possible. Units that can infiltrate and get a bonus to their cover save seemed like a good idea and my Venerable Dreadnoughts stepped up to the challenge. The cover save bonus from Stealth coupled with their Hard to Kill ability would greatly increase their survivability and would slow up an armored column with their rending assault cannons and strength 10 close combat weapons.


Since Spearhead missions are objective based I needed more scoring units, so in comes the most versatile Troop choice in the game… Grey Hunters. I thought about giving them the Mars Attack Spearhead but decided against that as I did not see the cost being worth it, they are already armed with krak grenades. I also added a Rune Priest to each Grey Hunter squad as their Living Lightning psychic power comes in handy with the unlimited range.


The Seek & Destroy Spearhead was my final choice. I really wanted to field some speeders and I liked the ability to once move flat out and still be able to fire. Ultimately I decided on my Land Speeder Tempests as they haven’t seen the battle field in over a year, this turned out to be a very wise choice.

Mission:
The mission was randomly determined to be: Lightning War with the Escalation deployment type.

The three objectives are placed as one might think: one in the center and one towards the back edge of each player. JoshB wins the dice off for first turn and chooses to go first.



Notes:

Deployment:
Orks set up 2 big units of Spanna Boyz and the Painboss as far forward as possible.
Wolves counter with an Ambush Spearhead made up of three Venerable Dreadnoughts that set up to either flank of the Orks and directly in front of them.

Apologies in advance for the quality of some of these pictures. I was trying out a new camera that doesn’t have the steady shot features of my old camera, and I ended up blurring some of the shots. Click on any of the pictures to see larger images.















Turn 1A: I send my ork spanna boy mobs straight ahead to flood the center objective with bodies.





Turn 1B: The Wolf Dreadnoughts counter by shooting up my mobs and sending one Venerable Dread into hand to hand with the cybork mob. My cyborks prove especially resistant to his dreadnoughts shooting, the combination of FNP and a 5+ invulnerable save worked well. My painboss survived a round of attacks from his dreadnought, only to whiff on his own attacks.








Turn 2A: Reserves: 1 Fighta-Bomma (with 2 supa-rokkits), the Outrider Spearhead, and Tank-Hunter Spearhead, both Deff-Dreads, and a Deth-Kopta arrive. The Dethkopta outflanks behind one of his Venerable Dreadnoughts and immediately blows a weapon off the Ancient Space Wolf Machine. The Fighta-Bomma swoops across the battlefield and unloads a pair of supa-rokkits into the rear of another Venerable Dreadnought, only to have one miss and the other bounce off his armor. A great long line of clanking ork machines run forward towards the center of the battle as fast as they can. My painboss again survives attacks from his Venerable Dreadnought, but can’t accomplish anything other than scratching a little Spacewolf Grey Paint off his armor.

Turn 2B: Reserves: 1 rhino loaded with Grey Hunters and a Space Wolf Rune Priest. A second Venerable Dreadnought charges into the scrum with the cyborks. The damaged dreadnought pops smoke to hide from my Dethkoptas as it moves forward to try to get safely into hand-to-hand. My painboss uses up his third strike this turn, leaving the two Venerable Dreadnoughts locked into hand-to-hand with around 15 cyborks that can’t hurt them.










Turn 3A: Reserves: The second deth-kopta outflanks into a good position beside his skwadron-mate. Another fighta-bomma arrives, and my grot mob wanders on to camp on my objective. The two fighta-bommas both launch grot bombs into the Grey Hunter Rhino, one devitates horribly (even with a re-roll), the other hits and immobilizes the troop carrier. The pair of deth-koptas both fire into the rear of the smoked Venerable Dreadnought. Even with a +1 on his cover save, the venerable dread can’t hide and he is destroyed. My wall of kanz and dreads run forward, doing their best to spread out before the barrage of D-weapons starts to pound them. My yellow spanna boys run into the central woods and claim the objective. In hand-to-hand I lose a couple of cyborks, but they continue to tie up the pair of dreadnoughts.











Turn 3B: Reserves: The Warhound, Seek and Destroy Spearhead of Landspeeder Tempests, another rhino loaded with a Priest and Grey Hunters, and three squads of Long Fangs arrive. One of the cursed Rune-Priests suffers a wound via perils of the warp. The Warhound’s fire is devastating, all of it centered on my Mekka-Dred. The Mekka-Dred takes 4 penetrating hits, three of which would have destroyed him, and makes no saves. His three ablative Kanz are wiped out in an instant. A nearby Deff Dred is immobilized and suffers 3 weapon destroyed results. The Seek-and-Destroy Spearhead turbo-boosts toward my fighta bommas and unleashes krak missiles from the speeder’s AA mounts. One fighta-bomma spirals off to it’s destruction in a cloud of black smoke. One of the long-fang razorbacks picks off a kustom mega-blasta kan with a twin-linked lascannon.

It suddenly looks like a long way across the table for the orks.








Turn 4A: Reserves: The dice gods curse the orks and the Stompa fails to show up. The last fighta-bomma streaks in to add its firepower to the battle, but it is small consolation. The grot riggerz on the damaged Deff-Dred fail their roll and he remains immobilized. The rest of the Kanz and Dreds run towards the wall of Space Wolf firepower, hoping to get into cover somewhere near that center objective. Grot Bombs from my figta-bommas destroy a rhino and a razorback at the feet of the warhound, taking out a couple of Long-Fangs that were trapped in the wreckage.










Turn 4B: My Yellow Spanna Boyz are broken from the objective by massed missile and assault cannon fire from Long Fangs and Tempests. The Warhound spreads his turbo-lasers between my boss Dred and another Deff-Dred. The Mekka-Dred ends up immobilized with one klaw blown off and the Deff-Dred is destroyed outright. Lascannon fire from the wolves other flank wipes out the kustom mega-blasta kanz. In close combat my cyborks fail a heartbreaking leadership test at a nine leadership. They are run down by the Wolf Dreadnoughts, one of which consolidates into the woods while the other falls short of cover. One of the landspeeder Tempests shakes one of my fighta-bomma.






Turn 5A: Reserves: My stompa finally arrives and moves his full movement allowance towards the enemy warhound. His fire proves to be disappointing, sending a supa-rokkit into each of the three Landspeeder Tempests, but only knocking one from the sky, and having his Deth-Kannon scatter wildly off the exposed Wolf Dreadnought. That Dreadnough survives shots from a Tank-Hunter Kan with rokkits as well. One of my fighta bommas can’t shoot and the other is out of heavy ordnance. He still has a payload of bombs though and he places them well, making some Wolf Grey Hunters and Long Fangs make 16 power armor saves. He follows up by strafing another squad with 15 shots, but causes no casualties there either. My last tank-hunta Kan and remaining Deff-Dred both attempt to charge the the exposed Space Wolf Dreadnought. The Deff-Dred’s charge fails and the Kan is crushed before he ever gets a chance to swing.









Turn 5B: The warhound continues to hand out punishment. He finishes off my Mekka-Dred and knocks a structure off my Stompa. The Dreadnought’s charge gets my last Deff-Dred as well. One of the Wolf Speeders repositions by moving as a flyer so that he will be contesting my backfield objective if the game goes into turn 6. One of my koptas is picked off by Long-Fang fire, and the Fighta-Bomma that just bombed the Wolves gets his turret blown off by massed Long-Fang fire.












The orks have a kopta, two fighta-bommas, a grot mob, a stompa, and a unit of spanna boyz riding along in the stompa left. The orks are rapidly running out of options.

I roll for game end and the die comes up for the Wolves, game over vicotry to the Space Wolves …. 2 objectives to 1.

For grins we play a sixth turn. I had realized that in the firth turn I really should have unleashed the supa-gatler into his units near the objective, instead of saving it to strip the shields off his warhound in when I finally got in range in turn 6.

Turn 6A: My last kopta moves to contest the objective. One fighta-bomma moves to shoot down his contesting Tempest (and does so ably with 4 AA big shootas). The other fighta-bomma moves to line up his last grot-bomb on a good target. The Stompa unloads on the center of the table where one Dreadnought is cowering in cover (on the objective), one dreadnought is exposed, and one Tempest is hovering nearby. The supa-gatler fires probably 70 shots before running out of alternate targets. The exposed dreadnought and speeder are destroyed, but the dreadnought in cover is still standing (although immobilized and with only one weapon). The stompa’s dethkannon bounces off, so do the last grot bomb and deth-koptas rokkits. In frustation I end my turn, forgetting to charge the venerable dreadnought with my deth-kopta, protecting it from enemy fire.






Turn 6B: The Warhound does two more structure to the Stompa and immobilizes it. The remaining deth-kopta is blown out of the woods by long fang fire.

The Wolves still hold the center objective and retain the advantage.

We play out a 7th turn, just to be silly, and my remaining orks still can’t get through that Stealth + Cover Save with anything serious. My fighta-bommas put 27 big shoota shots into its back arc, accomplishing nothing. In return, his long fangs mass fire and shoot down a fighta-bomma and his warhound pummels the stompa into scrap.




Recap: This game was probably decided before the first die hit the table. My dred mob list, while characterful and fun, was far too slow if forced to deploy from the table edge on a long table. It would have be ridiculous if we had been on an eight foot table. Spearhead format games really do seem to lean towards mechanized army lists (which they should) given the real chance that a large portion of your army will deploy in reserve on a really deep table. The Dred Mob list from IA8 has some significant weaknesses (like a lack of upgrade characters with power klaws for the big boyz mobs!), but I think it’s pretty well balanced for the most part (I just didn’t bring all the right parts!).

BigKahuna’s warhound might have been a little OTT. I say this only because it reaved its way through my army, destroying walkers at will, and all from beyond any range at which I had a chance to strike back. We’ve experimented with reducing the template size on strength D weapons (5” down to 3” and so on), and we probably should have done that in our game. With the 5” template, he almost never failed to hit and penetrate what he shot at. By comparison, the Deth-Kannon on my stompa had its template scatter so that the center deviated off his dreadnought, leaving me unable to penetrate even with my Str 10, AP1 big gun.

It was a fun game, even though my orks were handily routed from the field.

I think the Spearhead rules are great, and the format allowed us to easily finish a 3100 point game in less than 5 hours. I can’t wait to try it out again.

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of my Ork Fighta-Bomma wing. BigKahuna was impressed with them, until I asked him if he thought they were worth 3 land raiders … then he was more thoughtfull. I should have expected he would have a squadron of Land Speeder Tempests that would prove to be a counter. Otherwise, aside from pintle weapons the average marine player would probably not have any AA support. They destroyed a number of the Wolf transports, but getting it accomplished early enough in the game to line up effective burna bomb attack runs proved hard to accomplish. The grot bombs were effective at busting his transports, and the supa-rokkit attack on the rear of his Venerable Dreadnought in turn 2 was just unlucky. The jury is still out for me, I’ll want to try them out again in a another big game.

Kudos to BigKahuna for having some good ideas for his spearhead list. The Stealth + Cover save offered by the Ambush Spearhead Dreadnought in the woods was what kept the game from being a bloody draw in turn 5.

Great battle report looked fun.

I notice you are using a Painboss and cyborks. Is that in the IA8 book or are you using the rules from the older Ork Codex? I ask because the Painboss used to be my favorite HQ and it breaks my heart that I can't use him with the current codex.

Ouch. Those photos hurt my eyes. I'm perplexed as to why 90% of those pics are out-of-focus.

On a more positive note, seems like a pretty fun battle. Apart from his warhound killing all your dreads and them not having the chance to do anything due to the distance they needed to travel, it's cool to see all those nice forgeworld models. And they're nicely painted as well. I really like your fighta-bommas and kans/dreads.

Too bad you can't use the strength of your army - its speed and numbers. Orks will never outshoot MEQ's from a distance. That's an auto-lose.

Madmax1 wrote:I notice you are using a Painboss and cyborks. Is that in the IA8 book or are you using the rules from the older Ork Codex? I ask because the Painboss used to be my favorite HQ and it breaks my heart that I can't use him with the current codex.

The painboss is in IA8.

Essentially a generic version of the Bad Dok from the Codex.

Nice!!! Yet another reason for me to pick up the IA8 book.