Last weekend, I went to my first Spearhead tournament at a local club close to my hometown. There were 10 players, and the tournament had four rounds.

In a very untypical flash of sudden hobby FOMO, I bought a box of Ironjawz and decided that these would be my Spearhead for the next few months, as I really enjoy painting orcs. I once owned a Bad Moons WH40k army, and the Ironjawz definitely tickled some nostalgic nerves…

Having played only one game with the orcs prior to the tournament (see stats), I went in pretty blindly.

One of the main reasons why I choose to play at tournaments these days is to meet new people and – more importantly – play against a variety of Spearheads. That being said, I was delighted that my first game was a mirror match. It was pretty close, and due to two rolls of 3 on 6″ charge rolls, I wasn’t able to turn the tide and lost 15–16. Overall, it was a fun match. I learned a lot about my own Spearhead for the next game – mainly by making mistakes.

In my second game, I came up against the Cursed Shacklehorde, and I was really excited as I like the models of this Spearhead very much and had been thinking about starting them myself at some point. The game was dominated by my orcs, and I have to admit I played a pretty good game. However, the objective card (I forgot its name), which scores VP for destroyed units, earned her 4 VP and thereby secured a 22–22 draw. Good game. Interesting Spearhead…

At this point, I was already doing better than I had expected, not having lost all my games. The third game against the Ossiarch Bonereapers was really fun. My opponent was a kid who was really enjoying the Spearhead and the game itself. Therefore, I simply couldn’t be mad about my 15 Brute attacks not doing a single point of damage, only to lose one Brute to horse attacks in return. No matter how bad my dice were, the gaming atmosphere was too good not to enjoy it. I do believe that I performed reasonably well but lost in the end 18–20. If it weren’t for the rather terrible models, I would be very interested in the Ossiarch Bonereapers. I actually thought about proxying them with Warhammer Khemri models; however, the Khemri infantry are very old and not particularly appealing.

My last – and arguably best – game was against the Hedonites of Slaanesh, which I won clearly, 21–15. The mechanics of this Spearhead are interesting, and for most of the game, I largely ignored them. As my units are rather small, I decided that the mortal damage inflicted by denying the offered dice would harm me more than a 5+ ward save on my opponent’s units. The game was very tactical, and my boss didn’t see much combat until the late game. It was a game I really enjoyed, as it forced me to play a bit “un-orky” in order to secure points. My opponent was very funny and nice, too.

Overall, the tournament was a great experience. I managed to face three new Spearheads and learned a lot about my Ironjawz – as well as a few rules I hadn’t encountered before:

• In AoS, you can shoot into combat.
• If a unit is deployed, it cannot move, no matter what. Not that I had needed to use this rule before, but I always thought this was the case because you can only take one Core action per phase. It turns out this is a core rule.