At Historicon I met up with my buddy for a game of Spearhead on Friday night. He brought his Ossiarch Bonereapers Mortisan Elite while I brought my Skaven Gnawbeast Clawpack. Wow, seven “spelling errors” in the first two sentences. My OCD is going nuts with the red squiggles!
Anyway, with that insight into my soul behind us lets take a look at the game!
Our first turn twist was Reclaim Ghyran. As we had no Underdog we both got to choose an objective on the battlefield that would be worth an extra victory point if we controlled at the end of our turn.
The Elite got the first turn and advanced through the center with their unit of Immortis Guard and Necropolis Stalkers. Meanwhile the Mortisan Ossifector scurried off to take an objective. This would have dire consequences for Nagash’s Elite warriors later in the game! The Immortis Guard were able to charge the Rat Ogres, but the Necropolis Stalkers failed their charge! The Immortis Guard did their best to up for their elite brethren and killed two of the Rat Ogres, but they were going to have to face the wrath of the remaining beast and his Warpfire thrower next turn!
In the Skaven turn one unit of clanrats and the Grey Seer heroically scurried towards the objective on the flank. Everyone knows they would have rather engaged in glorious battle but they generously allowed the unit in the center to have the honor of fighting the Elite Undead constructs while they took the inglorious, but necessary job of holding an objective. The Clawlord spurred his Gnaw-beast to a position to outflank the Stalkers while the Engineer took pot shots across the board, managing to put a wound on himself as he defended the objective! In combat I gave the Clanrats strike first with the use of a Battle Tactic card and between them, the remaining Rat Ogres claws and Warpfire Thrower one of the Immortis Guard was torn to bits with two wounds placed on one of it’s brethern.
At the end of the turn the Undead had 5 points to the Skaven’s 4! Moving on to turn two the Mortissan Elite once again first turn and like a thunderbolt the Morghast Archai descended from the skies! I was able to limit the placement of these constructs as I had spread across the table and thus limited the choices of deployment more than 6″ from my troops. My buddy said these two fighters are individual units, but as I was just looking at the army list to see their proper name I’m not so sure. Having to deploy them as one unit might have ended up being better off for him as we shall see in just a little bit!
One of the Archai was able to charge the Clawlord while the other landed out of range to charge anyone with the plan of being able to choose different targets in the remaining two turns as needed. Looking around the board it looked like the elite troops should be able to handle the rats they had in front of them so leaving this Archai free to attack other units made sense. In the center of the board the Immortis Guard finished off the Rat Ogres while the Necropolis Stalkers trundled off to fight the Clanrats heroically holding the objective on the flank. I was surprised at how little damage the Stalkers ended up doing. In part due to some poor rolling they only killed three Clanrats, but statistically the should probably end up killing 5, maybe 6. Sadly for the elite troops, while they didn’t take any damage three clanrats crawled out of the sewers to replace those that were killed!
The Archai and the Clawlord exchanged blows, each taking two wounds in the turn. The 5+ ward really helped the Clawlord stay in the saddle!
The Engineer super charged his Warplock musket again, headless of the potential of taking damage again, and put down one of the Stalkers!
Much to my opponents chagrin I had the Battle Tactic Card that allowed me to bring an infantry unit back to the field and on the roll of a 5 I got all three of the Rat Ogres back. To make things worse I was able to place them within potential charge range of the Ossifector!
In combat the Clawlord and the Archai continued their fight…
and the cornered Clawlord struck with a frenzy killing the Archai before it could swing again!
The Rat Ogres made their charge and through a combination of Teeth and Claws were able to tear the Ossifector apart! It was actually a close run thing as they whiffed most of their attacks, but just enough got through to finish the evil construct apart!
Going in to the third turn things had started to swing the Skaven’s way with them taking the lead 8-6 and having destroyed a decent chunk of the Bonereapers army.
The table as we started the third turn. Once again the Bonereapers won the roll for the first turn and used their chance to charge the Clawlord with both the remaining Immortis Guard and the Archai!
Things were looking grim for the Clawlord but with a strike he killed the Immortis Guard and was able to survive the attacks of the Archai! He was probably starting to feel quite invincible at this point!
In the Skaven turn the clanrats charged the Archai attacking their Clawlord, while the Rat Ogres ran towards the objective on the flank so they could continue controlling more objectives but with also earn the Take the Flanks Battle Tactic. The Grey Seer bravely ran off on his own to end up within both the enemies table edge and the flank to help earn two Battle Tactics.
Things didn’t go entirely the Skaven’s way as the Archai was able to finally kill the Clawlord and rather too late the Stalker managed to start whittling down the Clanrats.
At the end of turn three the Skaven were up 13-6. As were about to go into turn 4 a GM asked how long we had left as he planned on getting up his game for the next day. (He made sure to let us know he wasn’t rushing us, so no bad etiquette here at all!) Looking at the board we realized even if the Bonereapers got maximum points for the turn and the Skaven got none it would still be a Skaven victory at 13-12. Realistically the with only two models left on the table the game would have become worse for the Ossiarch’s and as it was past midnight we called it.
While I only played two or three times since our last meeting this made me the subject matter expert as my opponent hadn’t played at all since Historicon 2025. That coupled with us playing past his bedtime gave me a few advantages for sure! The Ossiarchs Relentless Discipline rule can be used in every phase, but I’d say my opponent remembered it about 25% of the time, and that includes remembering after the fact and us agreeing he should go back and try again! I tried to help him remember but even with my help we probably only remembered about 50% of the time. He was also at a disadvantage as his placement of his Ossifector was less than ideal as he was too far away to help his units with his +1 to Relentless Discipline and use his other buffs effectively. On top of this I managed to have some decent rolls and pulling the Battle Tactic that allowed me to bring my Rat Ogres back on the board was just plain rude! I’m hoping we can play again sooner than Historicon 2027, I know my opponent is looking for a rematch!
-Wachtmeister
The Wachtmeister's Patrol 