Hearing of the Thousands...

Hey Guys,
As I said in the last post, I am trying to hit the blog hard, so hot off the presses, here is a review of the newly released expansion for Warhammer 40k "Spearhead".
Ok, Spearhead is a series of rules based on massive armies of armoured (Aussie spelling) forces clashing into each other on an epic battlefield. At the end of these battles, carnage is the only evidence of living things as everything is destroyed by the crushing strength of the massed armour that has crossed the now barren lands.

The main mechanic of Spearhead are apply named, Spearhead Formations. Spearhead Formations are units of tanks, walkers skimmers or even bikes that tread (or, speed) across the battlefield, decimating their enemies with massed fire power. They move and deploy exactly the same as the do usually. There are many different Spearhead Formations used for different reasons. Crusher Spearheads used for massing tank fire, Monstrous Spearheads for bringing the strength of monstrous creatures and even a Super-Heavy Spearhead to bring the stubbornness of a super-heavy vehicle to the playing field.

Organising a battle of Spearhead is not much different to a regular one. You pick forces, do battlefield prep, choose a mission and deployment, then deploy the forces. The differences aren't the steps, but are actually in the steps, if you get what I mean. First off, the force organisation chart hasn't changed except for the fact that Spearhead Formations are a seperate (Aussie spelling again) part of the chart. You may take one of every type of formation, so you could take 12, although I do not recommend it. The other two changes are the missions, which are based mostly on objective taking, and deployment, which do not encourage close quarter fighting. The missions are all based on objectives and scoring units. In Spearhead, scoring units are troop choices, as usual, all spearhead formations, as expected when trying to promote taking the formations, and all tank and walker units are scoring, wow, sounds like a good marketing strategy for selling models 'wink wink, nudge nudge'. Back on track now to the changes in the deployment, units, including Spearhead formations, now deploy off the short board edges.

I would play Spearhead with probably 2 HQ's and 2 strong Troop choices in transports, 2-4 Spearhead formations, depending on the pints level, and maybe some Elites or Heavy Supports, depending on your army, for tank/armour hunting.

My opinion on this expansion is it seems fun but it will not be regularly played by various gamer groups. It will not flop as much as planet strike but will not be as popular as apocalypse, maybe the same level a little bit higher then cities of death. On 1-10 gamer coolness rating, 1 being playing the "that guy" who is the jerk of the tournament to everyone, and a 10 being blowing up a Leman Russ with a deep striking gun drone, I would give this game a 6. Pretty good, but wont last a long time, only in my opinion. One part I can give a 10 is how Games Workshop produced it. A White Dwarf/PDF expansion in my mind is much better then a 50 page book of nothing that takes a month of no good releases (*cough* planetstrike *cough*).

Once again guys, thanks for reading, remember to follow the blog to your right and follow me on twitter @spinner5555.
Till next time,

spinner