@@jakea3950 It's more balanced than anything else GW has put out lately. Most of the unbalanced outcomes came from atrocious die rolling and poor tactics.
It all came down to the cards Jordan had some amazing ones. Ridge seemed to not have any good ones but also that big dino wasn’t in the best position most of the time.
I think several of these games feel like the players are getting a feel for how the game format works. Alpha Striking seems strong, but only on durable or disposable units, as losing one unit is devastating. Additionally this game really highlights how sometimes the best move is to just avoid combat and survive to keep getting points.
Spearhead seems to be something of a numbers game in both models and attacks - losing significant output from large parts of the army on fluffed charges or poor rolls is going to hurt low attack-high damage factions like Seraphon,
After seeing a score of 21 to 10 or 14 in the last supposedly comeback part, hard disagree. Too reliant of good vs bad cards or some cards do nothing for you. It's definitely not well-rounded, but did look atleast fun. Fine for a quick casual mode.
LOL well rounded? Whoever goes first just auto wins. They rush in and burn all their skills for maximum damage. Super unbalanced. Seen it across multiple channels and armies.
@000NULL thats assuming all the cards are the same, which i doubt they are? Yeah maybe was a shuffle problem but its not looking good so far. If the game survives a 100 or so games i guess ill have a better data pool.
@@jakea3950each deck is the same for each player, so yea, one person can draw garbage and the other person can draw gold every turn, like we saw with this game.
I swear I heard that the underdog could take the double turn and still draw cards. It makes sense... now, there just never seems a reason to take a double turn.
It's amazing how good the new Seraphon are - it's not a range that has ever been well-served by GW's Studio colour schemes, but the new Kroxigor and Aggradons in particular are fantastic.
Thank you for letting us see Spearhead in action so early from the scheduled release. If you have the models handy, any chance of Sons of Behemat in action for Spearhead for a future video?
Wow from the faction focus I already thought blood knights would be broken in spearhead, seeing them reinforced back up to 3 was crazy! Can that card work on the Kroxigor as well?
I wonder if spearhead should give players the ability to "once per game" Mulligan any amount of cards out of the game (not back in the Deck), and draw up to 3 at the start of the Battle round. To give you a little bit of a change to mitigate bad luck? Or event 1 Mulligan per battle round?
looks like spearhead matches are going to boil down to first-turn alpha strike charges by whoever wins first turn, taking out a comparatively large chunk of the opponent's limited army roster before they can do much. it seems a bit too small of a field of play for that reason.
Completely agree. This would also make armies like nurgle completely useless as not only do some of them HAVE TO start in reserve, but they are unable to do an effective alpha-strike even if they win the roll-off. And yeah, they have the ward and what not but that is not going to save your five (!) plaguebearers from a carnasaur or bloodknights charge lol. Major reworks are needed for this.
Remember that in spearhead you can bring back destroyed units. So alpha striking may mean your opponent can bring units back quicker. Better to 80% destroy them and leave them.
Looks really fun! All comes down to cards though. Soulblights cards were leagues better and seraphons nearly did nothing leading to a clear white wash which is lame to see. Not competitive at all and wont see in competitive play. Good for anyone just starting out ans want a quicker game. Sadly think ill be skipping this format, didnt see gw being able to balance this lol.
How are you guys playing the Double Turn? I thought that if you won Initiative, but had already had the Initiative, that you had to choose to Double Turn (but draw no additional Cards) or forfeit the Double Turn in order to draw cards as usual. It looks like Jordan continued to win Initiative, continued to take Double Turns and continued to draw cards as usual... This gives him all the momentum and advantage...
Not a huge fan of the double turn changes, it feels like we went too far in the other direction. There isn't that comeback potential any more. It would be nice if underdog who took the double could still score in some capacity - draw fewer cards in spearhead and maybe score 2 for BT instead of 4.
It is a hard balance, but I agree I don't like what they have at the moment. Underdog forced to pass double each time is bad idea, but somebody losing by 1 point having no penalty would be bad as well. They need a middle ground.
While I also have my concerns for the double in the full game, the problem is that in small scale games, a double turn can literally end the game early. I understand their hesitation in spearhead for it to be good
I very much dislike the double turn change - it wasn't needed and takes any tactical element or interest out of the decision: you can only ever use it if you're ahead, and so it usually just closes out the game and makes things feel bad for a losing opponent even though it rarely affects the outcome, and as you say it removes the comeback potential that was largely the point of the mechanic. The AoS 3 system was good, and with the addition of further reactive commands in AoS 4 I really don't see that any change to the mechanic was needed. And if anything I think it will be less punishing in Spearhead than in the main game - in Spearhead there will often be situations where you still have cards when you're in a position to take the double and may not lose a lot. Also, I think in this game there might have been a misplay by Ridge - you still get to draw the cards if you're 5 or more points behind when you take the double, and I think Ridge might have been.
Spearhead needs to be played on a board that is twice as big as this or the movement characteristic of every unit needs to be cut in half. Currently the first turn charges are too powerful for some armies. The draw-cards-to-score-points is also waaay too random to produce any kind of balanced gameplay. I know this is not supposed to be a tournament format but I fail to see the appeal of playing the exact same units game after game just to see who gets better luck on the card draw...
Ah man I was hoping that some of those beefier units would go to 5 man units like how Stormcast has. I’d rather be running ardboyz and chaos warriors in units of 5 than 10 most of the time anyways
wow, I thought about getting into this game, but I can see how biased the developers are towards the Undead......glad I saw this first! In every aspect of the game the undead seem to have a massive advantage. This game is either completely wack or the undead are extremely unbalanced......which could it be?
I wasn't at all sure who to root for here - I have both factions, but ultimately sided with the Soulblight. The Seraphon are nicely unique but I suspect they and Sylvaneth will both suffer from their low unit and model counts. Unfortunately, as fun as the Soulblight Spearhead looks I can't bring myself to buy WFB-era Vampire Counts models and dislike the Vargheists, the only one of these units I don't have. Hopefully the kit will be refreshed reasonably soon.
The carnosaur was badly utilized and fought like once during the first 6 combat phase. It had a lot of impact. The vampire lord also had incredibly good save rolls too
@@franzt8955 I don't think it would have had that much impact. Had it made its initial charge it would have, at best, killed a skeleton unit that didn't do a lot except sit on an objective, amounting to a maximum of 3 points over the course of the game. More likely given its performance when it did fight, it would have been tied up with them for a couple of turns and, when it eventually cleared them, would give the Soulblight player the chance to bring them back with the enhancement. That's the issue - even with slightly better luck the tools just aren't there to clear hordes, and with battleshock gone the tarpit trumps the hammer. The Seraphon are only ever playing whack-a-mole with a list like this.
@@GeneralPuni It's identical to the full game version, barring any advantages conferred by battle formations or enhancements - only keywords and abilities differ between warscrolls in Spearhead and main AoS, all stats are the same, and the AoS version has the same charge bonus to Saurus ability.
@@philipbowles5397which you said already more abilities which is not the same * Terror ability for control scores * Blood Frenzy ability You also didn't mention the real warscroll has a whole additional attack profile of 4 4+ 2+ -1 3 which is nothing to scoff at. And you didn't mention the bonus damage on the spear when it charges. So yes. It is different even excluding the whole army bonuses/ enhancements in the full game. So no it is not identical.
@@craigwelter5862 That's going to be an intrinsic weakness of Spearheads like this - they have so few units and dice that they're going to be extremely swingy, especially as you have no All-Out Attack to give all your high-damage 4+ attacks +1 to hit whenever you need to.
I suspect Seraphon are bad rather than Soulblight being especially good, although I'd bank on them being better than average - though with neither the Vargheist entry really mattering nor the enhancement skellie unit being called on, and the Seraphon still losing badly, this was a more one-sided game than it looked from the score. The Seraphon have very few units, and those with not many models and no tools for reinforcement or healing, and they aren't very well-matched against most of what Spearhead forces are using, which is largely chaff units with multiple ways to replenish or reinforce them. You don't want to have to commit a Carnosaur to clear a skeleton tar pit, and this army doesn't really have anti-cavalry tools. I was hoping for Cities to go all the way but I'm not optimistic they'll do well against Soulblight. The two factions seem broadly well-matched with what's on board at the start, though Soulblight having 20 Skeletons is outright better than having 10 Steelhelms with reinforce. Cities, unlike Seraphon, seems to have the alpha strike potential to clear a unit of skellies outright, though. I'm not sure what they can really do against the Vargheists as both forces are likely to be running low by then and I doubt that, if the cannon is still around, it can be effectively protected from a Vargheist attack.
@@philipbowles5397 yeah its sad. I just bought the Seraphon spearhead. And while they look awesome, they are definitely on the back foot against most other spearheads. They need 1 more unit. (Mabe som chameleon skinks or terradon riders)
@@capefury8731hold judgment on the spearhead. Cards play a huge part of the game, rich got bad cards for what he wanted to do or bad in general. I think knowing what all your cards do is key and planning with that un mind. I think these matches are just learning and they aren't taking it too seriously like a tourny.
@jakea3950 yeah i think you are right. But i recon there should be a way to mitigate some of the bad luck with card draws. From what ive seen. Just to keep it more interesting
@@capefury8731 yeah i agree. Some mulligan sytem is a must. Some cards seem to immensely buff some boxes and literally do nothing for other boxes, so that's not a good sign. Lets see more games i guess!
I think that's the point. It's meant to get people's feet wet into aos. "Buy this box, build them, play this smaller sized non-intimidating board game". Not really intended for competition. Imo at least.
@@curticusmaximus Yeah the problem with that plan is the boxes are extremely badly balanced and the card-draw-scoring is too random to the point where you might end up losing the majority of your games cause you start on the back foot each time. A great way to turn people off.
The tournament Spearhead is such a great idea guys. At this point, it's getting the hype real high. Keep being awesome.
Glad you're enjoying it! There's even more games available for members if you're interested! XD
I expect Spearhead to become very popular, and will have a great tournament presence. You could easily have 8 game tournaments over a weekend.
Not when its super unbalanced.
@@jakea3950 It's more balanced than anything else GW has put out lately. Most of the unbalanced outcomes came from atrocious die rolling and poor tactics.
@@blkjet117... or more like who goes 1st and model count.
the casual pizza holding while killing vampires
Given the army size and the battlefield size, going first in this format seems like a HUGE advantage…
It all came down to the cards Jordan had some amazing ones. Ridge seemed to not have any good ones but also that big dino wasn’t in the best position most of the time.
I think several of these games feel like the players are getting a feel for how the game format works. Alpha Striking seems strong, but only on durable or disposable units, as losing one unit is devastating. Additionally this game really highlights how sometimes the best move is to just avoid combat and survive to keep getting points.
Came for seraphon sad day
Spearhead seems to be something of a numbers game in both models and attacks - losing significant output from large parts of the army on fluffed charges or poor rolls is going to hurt low attack-high damage factions like Seraphon,
Love these. Spearhead looks well-rounded and fun.
After seeing a score of 21 to 10 or 14 in the last supposedly comeback part, hard disagree.
Too reliant of good vs bad cards or some cards do nothing for you. It's definitely not well-rounded, but did look atleast fun. Fine for a quick casual mode.
@@jakea3950 that’s a single datapoint. Statistically it balances the same as rolling dice. Just don’t forget to shuffle your cards before each game.
LOL well rounded? Whoever goes first just auto wins. They rush in and burn all their skills for maximum damage. Super unbalanced. Seen it across multiple channels and armies.
@000NULL thats assuming all the cards are the same, which i doubt they are?
Yeah maybe was a shuffle problem but its not looking good so far. If the game survives a 100 or so games i guess ill have a better data pool.
@@jakea3950each deck is the same for each player, so yea, one person can draw garbage and the other person can draw gold every turn, like we saw with this game.
Damn those Kroxigors put in work!
love this rapid fire spearhead cannon
no Kharadron Overlords in this tournament
I swear I heard that the underdog could take the double turn and still draw cards. It makes sense... now, there just never seems a reason to take a double turn.
If the Underdog is down by 5 points or more they can still draw.
The Lumineth vs. OBR was decided by a nasty OBR double turn. You can still score big if you can take out some units and capture some points.
That Seraphon box looks like a lot of fun to paint, kroxigor are such cool models
I just assembled one myself. It is AWESOME! and a good core to get a Seraphon army started.
It's amazing how good the new Seraphon are - it's not a range that has ever been well-served by GW's Studio colour schemes, but the new Kroxigor and Aggradons in particular are fantastic.
Really excited to be able to get my hands on this box and start playing Spearhead! Really enjoying these videos, great work!
There goes the bracket.
Vampire Lord certainly paid his way in this one! What a guy
Oh wow, that carnousaur
Just picked up my soulblight gravelords spearhead box! I've wanted to own Blood Knights since I was a kid playing whfb 6th edition!
Thank you for letting us see Spearhead in action so early from the scheduled release. If you have the models handy, any chance of Sons of Behemat in action for Spearhead for a future video?
Wow from the faction focus I already thought blood knights would be broken in spearhead, seeing them reinforced back up to 3 was crazy! Can that card work on the Kroxigor as well?
nope, only on units with 5 or more models
It definitely doesn't feel like Blood Knights just be re-enforceable, but hey, that makes this force REALLY strong.
I wonder if spearhead should give players the ability to "once per game" Mulligan any amount of cards out of the game (not back in the Deck), and draw up to 3 at the start of the Battle round.
To give you a little bit of a change to mitigate bad luck?
Or event 1 Mulligan per battle round?
Go seraphons!
Sad that big dino still doesn’t hit like a t. Rex 😢
looks like spearhead matches are going to boil down to first-turn alpha strike charges by whoever wins first turn, taking out a comparatively large chunk of the opponent's limited army roster before they can do much. it seems a bit too small of a field of play for that reason.
JuSt sCreEn~
Completely agree. This would also make armies like nurgle completely useless as not only do some of them HAVE TO start in reserve, but they are unable to do an effective alpha-strike even if they win the roll-off. And yeah, they have the ward and what not but that is not going to save your five (!) plaguebearers from a carnasaur or bloodknights charge lol. Major reworks are needed for this.
Remember that in spearhead you can bring back destroyed units. So alpha striking may mean your opponent can bring units back quicker. Better to 80% destroy them and leave them.
Any chance you can flash up the data sheets when something is attack so newbies like me can follow along ?
Both my main armies.. i don't know who cheer for^^
Really loving your videos guys!
1 quick question, where are you finding the rules for the spearheads?
They got them from GW because of the channel. We mortals have to wait.
Nice! My original army fighting my new army!
Great to watch guys I'm just about to give this game a go with the soul blight. Look forward to seeing the rest of the match ups💪
Picked up some Blood Knights. Now I wanna go build them!
Looks really fun! All comes down to cards though. Soulblights cards were leagues better and seraphons nearly did nothing leading to a clear white wash which is lame to see.
Not competitive at all and wont see in competitive play.
Good for anyone just starting out ans want a quicker game. Sadly think ill be skipping this format, didnt see gw being able to balance this lol.
How do you guys play Spearhead without all the warscrolls? Or you have them in advance?
Dosnt the gauntlet always gave 6 shots in spearhead or was that a new thing that was added?
What are those lights you have at each corner? I want some
Gotta say I’m loving this but as you guys know me and my boys are huge chaos fans so looking forward to seeing them especially my 11 year old son 👍💯👹
How are you guys playing the Double Turn? I thought that if you won Initiative, but had already had the Initiative, that you had to choose to Double Turn (but draw no additional Cards) or forfeit the Double Turn in order to draw cards as usual. It looks like Jordan continued to win Initiative, continued to take Double Turns and continued to draw cards as usual... This gives him all the momentum and advantage...
Winning priority is not the same as taking a double. I was never taking two turns in a row, which is why I was never punished for taking the turn.
@@SeasonofWar I misunderstood the gamestate then.
Not a huge fan of the double turn changes, it feels like we went too far in the other direction. There isn't that comeback potential any more. It would be nice if underdog who took the double could still score in some capacity - draw fewer cards in spearhead and maybe score 2 for BT instead of 4.
It is a hard balance, but I agree I don't like what they have at the moment. Underdog forced to pass double each time is bad idea, but somebody losing by 1 point having no penalty would be bad as well. They need a middle ground.
While I also have my concerns for the double in the full game, the problem is that in small scale games, a double turn can literally end the game early. I understand their hesitation in spearhead for it to be good
@@Kollider115 That's fair, I just thought it was a shame there wasn't even a shot for a comeback in this game. It was just a steady downward spiral
I very much dislike the double turn change - it wasn't needed and takes any tactical element or interest out of the decision: you can only ever use it if you're ahead, and so it usually just closes out the game and makes things feel bad for a losing opponent even though it rarely affects the outcome, and as you say it removes the comeback potential that was largely the point of the mechanic.
The AoS 3 system was good, and with the addition of further reactive commands in AoS 4 I really don't see that any change to the mechanic was needed. And if anything I think it will be less punishing in Spearhead than in the main game - in Spearhead there will often be situations where you still have cards when you're in a position to take the double and may not lose a lot. Also, I think in this game there might have been a misplay by Ridge - you still get to draw the cards if you're 5 or more points behind when you take the double, and I think Ridge might have been.
If you pick the double turn. You are not allowed to pickup cards
Spearhead needs to be played on a board that is twice as big as this or the movement characteristic of every unit needs to be cut in half. Currently the first turn charges are too powerful for some armies. The draw-cards-to-score-points is also waaay too random to produce any kind of balanced gameplay. I know this is not supposed to be a tournament format but I fail to see the appeal of playing the exact same units game after game just to see who gets better luck on the card draw...
It’s purely to get people interested in AoS, that’s all. 2k is where it’s at
I see 2 units of 5 small lizards. Did unit size get changed to 5 for them??
Spearhead has split units in certain cases
They're 2x5 in Spearhead but minimum 10 in main AoS. Not sure why though they aren't great at 5 models each
It's a common thing for the spearhead forces!
Ah man I was hoping that some of those beefier units would go to 5 man units like how Stormcast has. I’d rather be running ardboyz and chaos warriors in units of 5 than 10 most of the time anyways
@@Questioningbasics 3 units would be too few to contest objectives effectively - even Sylvaneth have 4.
Great game ! Yeah, I won one bracket !
That pizza looks good ngl
wow, I thought about getting into this game, but I can see how biased the developers are towards the Undead......glad I saw this first! In every aspect of the game the undead seem to have a massive advantage. This game is either completely wack or the undead are extremely unbalanced......which could it be?
We haven't found that the Death factions are notably better than any other armies
Why aren't there any Orcs?
Lets go!
No slaanesh? T_T
Still great to see your brs! Ty:)
Does charging no longer give fight first?
Never did in AoS - might be mixing it up with 40k rules!
@@SeasonofWar well I've been a dirty cheat last week
So how did the kroxigor get strike first?
@@SeasonofWar how did the kroxigor get strike first?
@@JoeBecker-zh6ce players turn chooses the first combat
Dinos dinos dinos!
3 from 3!
Yeah, hitting on 4's are garbage, it's frustrating that kroxigors are considered the same as monsters...not a fan
let's go dino's!
No sons of behemoth spear head😢
I wasn't at all sure who to root for here - I have both factions, but ultimately sided with the Soulblight. The Seraphon are nicely unique but I suspect they and Sylvaneth will both suffer from their low unit and model counts.
Unfortunately, as fun as the Soulblight Spearhead looks I can't bring myself to buy WFB-era Vampire Counts models and dislike the Vargheists, the only one of these units I don't have. Hopefully the kit will be refreshed reasonably soon.
The carnosaur was badly utilized and fought like once during the first 6 combat phase. It had a lot of impact. The vampire lord also had incredibly good save rolls too
@@franzt8955 I don't think it would have had that much impact. Had it made its initial charge it would have, at best, killed a skeleton unit that didn't do a lot except sit on an objective, amounting to a maximum of 3 points over the course of the game. More likely given its performance when it did fight, it would have been tied up with them for a couple of turns and, when it eventually cleared them, would give the Soulblight player the chance to bring them back with the enhancement.
That's the issue - even with slightly better luck the tools just aren't there to clear hordes, and with battleshock gone the tarpit trumps the hammer. The Seraphon are only ever playing whack-a-mole with a list like this.
Dang, my bracket is done. I was really banking on Seraphon, but they may have one of the worst Spearhead boxes... Carno is a 0/10 unit.
There's never any kruleboyz
So the carno still is kinda crappy wth
It's the spearhead version though.
@@GeneralPuni It's identical to the full game version, barring any advantages conferred by battle formations or enhancements - only keywords and abilities differ between warscrolls in Spearhead and main AoS, all stats are the same, and the AoS version has the same charge bonus to Saurus ability.
@@philipbowles5397which you said already more abilities which is not the same
* Terror ability for control scores
* Blood Frenzy ability
You also didn't mention the real warscroll has a whole additional attack profile of 4 4+ 2+ -1 3 which is nothing to scoff at. And you didn't mention the bonus damage on the spear when it charges. So yes. It is different even excluding the whole army bonuses/ enhancements in the full game. So no it is not identical.
There was some really bad dice rolling for it, though.
@@craigwelter5862 That's going to be an intrinsic weakness of Spearheads like this - they have so few units and dice that they're going to be extremely swingy, especially as you have no All-Out Attack to give all your high-damage 4+ attacks +1 to hit whenever you need to.
Soulblight seems a bit insane 😅
I suspect Seraphon are bad rather than Soulblight being especially good, although I'd bank on them being better than average - though with neither the Vargheist entry really mattering nor the enhancement skellie unit being called on, and the Seraphon still losing badly, this was a more one-sided game than it looked from the score. The Seraphon have very few units, and those with not many models and no tools for reinforcement or healing, and they aren't very well-matched against most of what Spearhead forces are using, which is largely chaff units with multiple ways to replenish or reinforce them. You don't want to have to commit a Carnosaur to clear a skeleton tar pit, and this army doesn't really have anti-cavalry tools.
I was hoping for Cities to go all the way but I'm not optimistic they'll do well against Soulblight. The two factions seem broadly well-matched with what's on board at the start, though Soulblight having 20 Skeletons is outright better than having 10 Steelhelms with reinforce. Cities, unlike Seraphon, seems to have the alpha strike potential to clear a unit of skellies outright, though. I'm not sure what they can really do against the Vargheists as both forces are likely to be running low by then and I doubt that, if the cannon is still around, it can be effectively protected from a Vargheist attack.
@@philipbowles5397 yeah its sad. I just bought the Seraphon spearhead. And while they look awesome, they are definitely on the back foot against most other spearheads. They need 1 more unit. (Mabe som chameleon skinks or terradon riders)
@@capefury8731hold judgment on the spearhead. Cards play a huge part of the game, rich got bad cards for what he wanted to do or bad in general.
I think knowing what all your cards do is key and planning with that un mind. I think these matches are just learning and they aren't taking it too seriously like a tourny.
@jakea3950 yeah i think you are right.
But i recon there should be a way to mitigate some of the bad luck with card draws. From what ive seen. Just to keep it more interesting
@@capefury8731 yeah i agree. Some mulligan sytem is a must.
Some cards seem to immensely buff some boxes and literally do nothing for other boxes, so that's not a good sign. Lets see more games i guess!
It's always so satisfying seeing Seraphon loose :P
Spearhead is so small scale in unit size that actual player skill matters extremely less than just luck of the dice roll. I am not a fan.
I think that's the point. It's meant to get people's feet wet into aos. "Buy this box, build them, play this smaller sized non-intimidating board game". Not really intended for competition. Imo at least.
@@curticusmaximus Yeah the problem with that plan is the boxes are extremely badly balanced and the card-draw-scoring is too random to the point where you might end up losing the majority of your games cause you start on the back foot each time. A great way to turn people off.