Spearhead

Over the weekend we gathered at Brian's house to test Spearhead, the game variant GW put out a while back in a WD. We've played many of the variant game types so far and it makes the game a lot better to mix in a change once in a while. I wasn't too keen on Spearhead from the start, since 5th Edition is already Warhammer Tank Battles and the Tyranid spearhead formations were abysmal. We played it this weekend and I used my newly minted Mantis Warriors.

My army was made up of the following:

Captain on bike, relic blade
Librarian in terminator armor
Terminators with storm bolters and fists
Bike squadron, attack bike, melta, fist
Bike squadron, attack bike, melta, fist
Land speeder storm, melta
Scout squad with bolters and missile launcher
Predators x2, autocannon + bolters
Vindicator
Venerable dreadnought, TL lascannon and fist

Not a super spearheady army, but really I used all the tanks I have so far. I have three rhinos to put together and a crusader that needs new guns. The bikes and speeder were part of the "Seek and Destroy" spearhead formation where they can go flat out or turboboost and still shoot a shot once per game. The tanks were part of an armored spearhead where they got a 5+ invuln save.

My partner Brian brought three vindicators, three baal predators, and three lascannon predators. He also had two deep striking units of terminators.

We faced off against Eldrad and Tau. Lots of railguns, lots of wave serpents and fire prisms. Eldrad is the biggest jerk in the world.

The game played very similar to regular 40k. We ran at each other from two short sides of an 8x4 board. Rather, the Blood Angels and Mantis Warriors charged headlong and then deep struck our terminators in. The Tau managed to land some crisis suits in the back of our lines that didn't die to a torrent of fire, so they contested one of our objectives.

Our terminators and most of my bikes were 'Doom'-ed by Eldrad and died like babies. We did manage to destroy quite a few things, but not enough to hold their main objective at the end of the game.

Brian's vindicators charged forward on the first turn. My bikes moved up. This was pre-Eldrad.

My land speeder storm (nicknamed "Deathtrap") managed to scout 24, move 24 in my first turn, then move 24 in my second turn. He made it all the way across the board in two turns, it was pretty funny.

Josh's Eldar made a suicide flank march to try to blow up our tanks. It worked out pretty well for them, then they died.

Deathtrap takes on an entire tau armored division

Minutes later everything was dead from Doom

I think we had a great time. It was pretty much 40k as the book says it should be - lots of stuff blowing up. Next time I think I'd take less bikes and three more tanks. We'll try to kill Eldrad in turn one as well. Dude is a jerk.

Teaser! Mantis Warrior drop pod priming: