Sunday, May 30, 2010

Evaluating Spearhead Formations for Daemons

The Spearhead formations are now available for download from Games Workshop. Today, I wanted to take a quick look at which of these formations might or might not be any use for daemon armies. (I'll leave chaos space marines alone for now). So, in turn, let's have a look.

Armoured Spearhead: Daemons only have soul grinders, and they're walkers rather than tanks: hence this one is not applicable.

Ambush Spearhead: For 75 points, we could give our soul grinders stealth and infiltrate and set them up (assuming that the spearhead rules take precedent over daemonic assault???? - that's unclear to me at the moment). I'm a little on the fence about this one until I find out which rule takes precedent. Even if the Spearhead takes precedent, I'm still not sure I'd take it.

Mechanised Assault Spearhead: Not Applicable.

Tank Hunter Spearhead: Yes please! The soul grinders could really use this well. If there are 3 in the army, that works out at 20 points each for the tank hunter universal special rule.

Archeotech Spearhead: Cool artwork, but a little dangerous to be sure. But soul grinders will ignore shaken and stunned results which compensate for the danger somewhat. I probably won't be taking it, except in fun games where I'd be happy to blow up my own tanks ... I'll balance that viewpoint by pointing out that I run chaos dreadnoughts in my chaos marine armies ...

Outrider Spearhead: this would be useful in an army that has lots of tank options, but not really daemons. Can't see myself running it in a regular Spearhead game. Unless it's Apocalypse Spearhead.

Skyfall Spearhead: Not Applicable.

Monstrous Spearhead: This could be very good with daemon princes. Pity it cannot be taken for HQ selections. I would have liked +1 strength here, but furious charge makes up for that a little. If we have 3 Heavy Support choices of daemon princes, it works out at 20 points each - not bad. This is probably a taker for me in spearhead.

Mass Attack Spearhead: Strength 7 Krak grenades with preferred enemy Monsters - yes please. Especially given I tend to run plenty of troops in daemon armies. The re-group won't matter to daemons since they won't be running in the first place. But otherwise, all good.

Crusher Spearhead: Not Applicable.

Seek and Destroy Spearhead: Not Applicable.

Superheavy Spearhead: Here's a way to bring a superheavy to a (not-quite) standard game. Could be rather interesting!

3 comments:

  1. personally I'm not convinced that when the spearhead rules were being written that they considered deamons, sure no problem for chaos marines, after all I get to finish converting my plague tower now ;)

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  2. Spearhead by definition is designed for a clash of mechanised armies. Surely daemons are just plain out of it? Their whole 'ethos' doesn't fit.

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  3. We could say similar things about tyranids :)
    The challenge is how to adapt the rules to best fit.

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