Tuesday 15 June 2010

[Orks] Preparing for Spearhead

Morning all,

In a lull between big articles for me, I thought I'd talk a bit about Spearhead and what I've been up to at my paint desk recently. Having been stuck on painting Guardsmen and Tanks for a while, I thought the other day that I'd do some actual converting and modelling and decided to add to my Ork army, especially with talk of playing some Spearhead coming soon, I wanted to crank out even more Orks!

Raiding my bitz box for everything possible, I managed to get enough bits to make 5 more of my converted Killa Kans. 4 with Big Shootas, 1 with a Grotzooka / Rokkit Launcha.


So here they are in their unpainted stage. I finally managed to get the Plasticard Visors and Teef to stay put, after they decided to break off when spray painting. These guys aren't supposed to be pretty - they're cheap and nasty - but quick to make and crank out so I can get a load of walkers on the table.

I then thought, if I'm going to be playing some Spearhead, I'll be taking Tankbustas. Then, after assembling some WHFB Orc Archers over last weekend, I found I had 2 spare Boars from a Chariot used in another conversion. So I thought "I wonder what I can use these for?", then I thought immediately of an Ork strapping bombs to a Boar, giving it a swift kick and seeing which way it will run. So these "Bomb Boars" were born, counting as 2 Bomb Squigs in my Tankbusta unit.


Now I know Tankbustas get bashed by the Internet list mongers, and Bomb Squigs don't do anything to help that (especially with the increased number of Vehicles on my side of the table) but the bitz were there and I thought they would be fun.

Onto actually talking about Spearhead though, I'm really excited to have a game of it. My vehicle tally for Orks looks like this:
- 2 Battlewagons
- 3 Trukks
- 1 Looted Wagon
- 1 Looted Wagon with Boomgun (2 more on Standby when I can magnetise some Guard tanks)
- 3 Warbuggies
- 11 Killa Kans
- 1 Deff Dred
- 1 Stompa

I'd not realised I had so many Killa Kans until making this other unit of 5, but that's still not enough! There's 12 Spearhead formations in all, and here are a few ideas of what I'd have in mind to do for the Orks:

Armoured Spearhead - Stick this on my Looted Boomgun wagons, no need for a KFF to hang back with them then...

Ambush Spearhead - 3 Infiltrating Stealthy Deff Dreds? Yes please. All I need to do is hope they don't get smashed to pieces close up. That'd be a good idea for these guys to take out Support Weapons fire and then start hitting rear armour on the lap around.

Mechanised Assault - Trukk Boyz personally, 3 mobs of them. Coming on from the side table edge being fast vehicles, I think this seems pretty cool.

Tankhunter Spearhead - Personally, this goes on a unit of 3 Killa Kans with Rokkit Launchas. The improved BS, along with the Tank Hunter special rule turns these into pretty handy light armour busters. I would have liked these to be able to go onto the Warbuggies, but they're Fast Open topped Vehicles and this spearhead only applies to Tanks and Walkers.

Archeotech Spearhead - I can't really say I'm favouring this one. My tank units Strength of weapons is already pretty decent for what they are, and the Walkers don't have strong enough weapons to merit using it on.

Outrider Spearhead - I see this one being used on a Deff Dred "commander" along with 2 Kans as a Bodyguard offering their Protection Duty special rule.

Skyfall Spearhead - No use in the Ork army, but I'm sure there will be plenty of Valk Vet spamming Alpha Strike guard armies out there that LOVE this.

Monstrous Spearhead - Again, no use to the Orks, but Tyranid players are drooling at this one... non-Tyranid players are quaking in fear!

Mass Attack Spearhead - This is perfect for 30 strong mobs of Ork Boyz. S7 grenades when attacking Rear Armour AND able to Re-group below half... awesome!

Crusher Spearhead - Only would really work on Battlewagons, but in spending 15 pts for that... I'd rather have spent the extra 5pts to take a Deff Rolla on each and do far more useful damage.

Seek And Destroy - This can be used on bikes. I'm envisioning either Turbo-boosting Nob Bikers able to Turbo Boost and still fire, or for a Wazdakka and Warbiker bodyguard to do the same.

Superheavy Spearhead - Just because I need an excuse to get my Stompa on the tabletop more often...

So what do you guys reckon to Spearhead? And any thoughts for your armies on the Spearhead formations? I would expect to see more Monstrous Creature formations to keep the Nids happy in the future.

And as a side note, if anyone out there has any Force Pylons from Battle for Macragge boxset, please get in touch. I've got the urge to build up some more Killa Kans and have run out of them to use as feet!

SB.

No comments:

Post a Comment