Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead - First Game!

I rode all the way out to the Warhammer Store on Friday to see if I could get in a game of Warhammer Underworlds... and no one showed up... 

Dray showed up with his Flesh-Eater Courts Spearhead force and I was talked into trying out a game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead - using the store's Stormcast Eternals force.

The Stormcast Eternals force consisted of:

• Lord-Vigilant on Gryph-stalker (armoured warlord on giant beastie!) 
• Lord-Veritant (priest?) on foot with Gryph-Crow companion
• 3x Prosecutors (winged, flying troops in plate armour!?) 
• 5x Liberators (foot troops with BIG HAMMERS!?) 

The Flesh-Eater Courts Force consisted of:

• Abhorrant Archregent (King of the Ghouls?)
• Varghulf Courtier (big Beastie!) 
• 10x Cryptguard (Ghouls) 
• 3x Morbheg Knight (Ghouls on big beasties) 

These forces are fixed. If you are playing Spearhead, each faction has a fixed list that can be used to play. Some factions have two? The Stormcast and the Skaven. Most of them seem to have four elements - 1-2 Heroes, with 2-3 Units of troops of some sort. 

My Hedonites of Slaanesh have the one hero (Shardspeaker of Slaanesh) and three units (3x Slaangor, 11x Blissbard Archer, and 5x Slickblade Seekers). The Soulblight Gravelords (which I have a feeling I'll pick up later this summer, after I've finished the Hedonites also has one hero (Vampire Lord) and three units (3x Vargheists, 5x Blood Knights, 20(!)x Deathrattle Skeletons)

I somehow have a feeling that, as new Battletomes are released, there may be new Spearhead force released along side it, giving each faction another option to play with...? Maybe that's wishful thinking? 

Anyway, THE GAME!

I managed to forget my reading glasses at home so there was a lot of squinting and hoping I was reading things right and John reading about or reminding me what all the units did... 

Somehow I got to go first, so... I charged... like, clear across the table and engaged them Ghouls on their own turf... something about best defence being a good offence...? fortune favouring the bold....? "There they are, CHARGE!" is the only tactic I know!?

It seemed to work out, though... 

The Lord-Vigilant on his Gryph-stalker beat down the Varghulf Courtier pretty hard... 

The Prosecutors did less well... It was probably hard work flying around in that plate armour in the heat of Aqshy! They did not roll great and then got swarmed by Ghouls and the King of the Ghouls and one of the Ghoul-knights riding the bit beasties even attacked them... 

The Liberators tried Hammering on the Ghoul-Knights... but running across the sun-baked plains of Aqshy in full plate armour, was hard work and by the time they got across that field they were mighty tired and... rolled a LOT of ones and twos... 

The Ghouls and Ghoul-King pushed on past the dead Prosecutors... or... maybe they were blasted back to Azyr in a flash of lightning as they died...? Regardless, the Ghouls charged forth and attacked the Lord-Veritant and her Gryph-Crow companion! Rude! Attacking the Clergy... a woman, at that!

Two rounds of attacks just could NOT take her down... 

I forgot to continue taking pictures at this point... so here is what I remember of the rest of the game... 

The Liberators were destroyed by the Ghoul-Knights on Beasties. The Ghoul-Knights on Beasties charged the Lord-Vigilant. The Lord-Vigilant just trashed them. reinforcement Liberators and Prosecutors arrived and... the Prosecutors didn't do much as there was no one to charge, by the time they showed up. The Liberators charged and took down the Ghoul-King.... 

We only ended up playing three of the four rounds that are normally played... But it was pretty clear who the victors were... WOW, the Stormcast are nasty. They did not win by any tactical genius or crafty gamesmanship or stellar dice rolls on my part! 

Like most GW games, the game is determined by who scores the most Victory Points throughout the game. Some of those are from holding various objective at the end of your turn. A card is flipped at the beginning of each round that gives the players a new way to score some points. Also at the beginning of rounds, each play draws up to three other cards that they hold - these cards have an interesting mechanic as each can either be used to give a benefit to a unit during the round OR be scored for a point if the objective listed on the card can be done. It's a little like objective cards and power cards from Warhammer Underworlds (but there are way less of them to get overwhelmed by, and they are dual purpose - in that they can be used for one things or the other thing). 

There were a lot of special rules for each of the units, and some options for units and forces that need to be chosen at the beginning of the game, but not SO MANY that I was overwhelmed by it all. I'm sure I fogot a lot of them throughout the game, but I think after a game or two with a force, it will be pretty easy to remember all the stuff. 

I like it. It's quick to play. Not SO many rules (and special rules and abilities) that it will be overwhelming to keep track of. 

I feel like it suffers from most of the other competitive games from GW in that, with all the running around trying to score points, it feels a little more like a sports match of some sort that any sort of simulation of combat. With the FIXED forces, I'm a little concerned that games might get pretty samey-same... there are some different choices with special abilities, and the cards that tell you how you score will all come out in a different order... but still... 

Mind you, Warhammer Underworlds has very fixed forces... There, though, you are playing with different decks that can WILDY change the outcome of each and every game. Also with Warhammer Underworlds, there are different boards to play on that can be oriented in wildly different ways. The different boards offer different set-up options and areas that can affect play (Lethal Hexes, Blocked Hexes, Snare Hexes) and wildly different placement of Objective tokens every game. The Spearhead board is FIXED as well, with two set up options (along the long edge, or in the corner) and the terrain is negligible and placement of it has almost NO impact on the game, whatsoever. 

I hope that this gets some people excited about Age of Sigmar again and inspired to paint their models! Maybe once their spearhead forces are done and they start getting a bit bored of the Spearhead matches feeling very similar... maybe they'll expand their forces into smaller, regular Age of Sigmar forces and we can get a Path to Glory Narrative campaign going with forces starting around 500 - 750 points and slowly build to playing with slightly larger forces (up to 1000?) 

We shall see... It wasn't a great disappointment that made me regret purchasing the Hedonites of Slaanesh Vangard box, rather I cycled home quickly, hoping to get some painting done in the evening! 

(In the end I DIDN'T get to do any painting as i ended up cooking a late supper and then sorting out stuff with Amanda until WAY TOO LATE in the evening...) 

I don't think I finished the game report from the Warhammer Underworlds tournament last weekend!? I shall try and get to that this weekend. Spoiler: I did not win!