Embergard has fallen, Destroyed by the vile rat-men of the Skaven the city is now defended by the desperate forces of the Cities of Sigmar, and in Spearhead City of Ash these two forces face each other in fast paced games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

In this full review we’ll be checking out the contents of Spearhead City of Ash, checking out all the new rules for both of the Spearhead forces, seeing what new objectives and twists are in the card decks and looking at what has been added to the game format. We’ve also built and painted the entire box, so we’ll be showing them off and seeing what they look like in the flesh!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over an early review copy to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy of Spearhead City of Ash through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full 38 min unboxing of the new box which you can see just below or over on YouTube!

So without further ado, let’s venture into the City of Ash!

Spearhead City of Ash Review

So first things first, what is Spearhead? We’ll if you’ve been collecting the Spearhead partworks magazine, or picked up any Battletome this edition then you’ll know that Spearhead is the new game mode for Age of Sigmar that allows for fast paced battles on a board small enough for the kitchen table using set armies for every faction in the game. It’s been one of the high points of 4th Edition, and a lot of people have fallen in love with how the game plays – giving you the full Age of Sigmar experience in a 30-45 min game.

The Original Skaventide box acted somewhat as a gateway into Spearhead, but City of Ash really feels like a true Spearhead starter box.

Retailing at £134 this is a huge box that contains not just the core cards, board and books you need to play but two entire Spearhead forces. One thing that I feel is missing from the box is a set of dice, which to me feels a real shame as this would make this feel like a real “starter set” with everything you need to play in a single box, but thankfully all the cards and board needed are here.

With each Spearhead selling at £91 each and the Gaming Packs retailing at £42.50 this gives you around £224.50 of value, saving nearly £100 (Potentially even more if you grab it from Element Games at discount!)

There’s a lot of models in the Spearhead City of Ash box, and most of them are brand new too! In fact the only returning model is the Skaven Deathmaster. He comes from the previous Skaven release, but is accompanied by a new named Deathmaster Crixxit and 2 sprues of 10 models that can be built as either Gutter Runners or Night Runners (though for Spearhead you’ll want to build a unit of each) – these are gorgeous kits and are a massive step up over the previous ones!

Skaven are very quick to paint and take to contrast well, but there’s lots of detail on these to also allow you to go to town on them too. The Night Runners and Gutter Runners have slightly different builds to make them look different on the battlefield, but in order to make it a lot easier to eyeball them mid battle we decided to give them a red or purple drybrush on each unit to give them some subtle colour just to make them stand out from each other, as 20 black robed rats can start to look very similar after a while!

The other half of the Spearhead City of Ash box are the Cities of Sigmar! There’s a new Battletome on the way for them very soon, and this is the first batch of early releases from that set including Jorvan Kreel, a Mallus Forgepriest, 5 Freeguild Gallants and 10 Freeguild Grenadiers

These are phenomenal models and I had so much fun working on them! I used the traditional box art colours so I can use them alongside my existing Cities of Sigmar army and they fit some really nice themes that are not currently covered in the morning, from the foot knights to the elite Grenadiers, they have a much more elite feeling that the Skaven they are facing off against, and the advantage of that is some really nice varied sculpts. The Gallants in particular can each be built in one of two different poses, which means a unit of 10 or two units of 5 will all look completely different, which is ace!

There’s a lot of cool details and loadouts on the models that don’t have any game rules, so I do wonder if this box was originally going to be a Warcry box and has been rethemed to Spearhead, but that is no complaint and they are cracking models!

The surprise star of the show for me in the Spearhead City of Ash box has to be the new terrain and relics though! These all have in game rules (we’ll chat about them a little later) so it’s nice to see these as physical models rather than just tokens.

They are brilliant with lots of detail (You build up the floorboards of the upper level of the buildings) and go together as the ruins of a bigger manor house. I really hope we see some terrain in this style come to AOS, because I feel they look so much better than the current Age of Sigmar terrain available in the range!

Put all together on the table it looks brilliant and I feel this is one of the nicest sets we’ve seen so far for Age of Sigmar, there isnt a bad model in the box!

Spearhead City of Ash: The Rules

So what’s changed from a rules point of view for Spearhead City of Ash? Well, this is essentially a new Battlepack with a couple of itterations of rules rather than being an entirely new edition of Spearhead – so don’t panic if you’re an existing player, the game still plays how you know it does!

For new players through, there’s an Age of Sigmar handbook in the book that contains the assembly instructions for the contents of the box along with lore on the two forces in it. I think I would rather an instruction manual, as the book had a habit of trying to close while i was building models, where the usual leaflets fold out nice and flat – but the layout and instructions are very clear. These are full multi part models that need glue – so a little more advanced than the single pose push fit kits that come in the old Spearhead Starter Set, but personally i feel these new models are far superior.

The rest of the Handbook actually contains a really nice guide to learning how to play Spearhead, and it’s in a format that matches the Spearhead magazine too – It’ll cut down game concepts into a a number of different scenarios that slowly teach you different elements of the game, so you’ll start with just two heroes fighting, and then over the next few scenarios it introduces movement, shooting, combat and abilities.

The book ends with a summary of all the core game rules and explanations of how the boards, cards and various gubbins all work, which is nice to have for reference for people new to the game. While this might be a little basic for experienced players, this is great both for getting new people into the game and helping existing players teach newcomers how to play.

As a game Spearhead essentially runs on the same core engine as Age of Sigmar, so if you’re looking to progress to “full” AOS this is a really nice start point too, as you’ll already be used to a lot of the main concepts and rules – This is something that makes Spearhead so great as a “quick” version of Age of Sigmar, because your gaming experience is very similar across the two of them rather than this being a different game completely.

The other book in the box is the City of Ash battlepack – this contains all the extra rules unique to battles set within the City of Ash.

Like with other battlepacks, players will determine which set of the board they fight on, and each place a piece of terrain in their half of the board. With Spearhead City of Ash being set in the tighter confines of a ruined city, terrain placement is a little stricter, with the buildings having to be placed on one of the rectangular objectives that make up the board. This adds a little to the thematics of this one, as the roads and builds matter in this Battlepack. One side of the board is set over a crossroads between a number of ruined buildings, while the other side is the remains of a larger manor house.

One big thing that is added in Spearhead City of Ash are Relics – There are 5 of these in total, and 2 are placed at the start of the game. What’s cool here is that these 2 are different depending on what side of the board you are on. Each relic has a physical model included in the box and each has their own unique rules

The Crate of Aqua Ghyranis gives units within 6″ a 5+ ward

The Barrel of Emberstone allows you to add 1 to your wound roles for a unit within 3″ of it

The Battered Barricade stops any unit within 3″ from being targeted with ranged attacks (very handy given both forces in this box have decent shooting)

The Ulguan Steel Caltrops are used to deal mortal damage to units that charge someone nearby them

And finally the Inconspicuous Manhole can be used to remove a unit from the battlefield and bring them up anywhere in friendly territory

These are a great addition to the game and there’s a lot of interaction between these and the new Battle tactic cards:

There’s a big chunk of objectives that now revolve around the Relics – this could be taking the Relic in enemy territory, killing a unit near a relic or even having every one of your units in range of one. On top of objectives you’re going to need to really make sure you keep the Relics within your plans for the turn otherwise you can easily miss out on extra victory points if you’re used to playing the older card packs.

There’s also two new decks of twists, one for each side of the board – and again these have a big focus on the Relics. Some cards will place additional ones, while others will offer up extra victory points for interacting with them in different ways. I love these cards as they really mix up the formula if your games of Spearhead were getting a little stale with the previous set. It also means that some Spearheads may be a little more geared to scoring some of these, mixing things up for everyone!

In addition to the main battleplan for quick pick up games, Spearhead City of Ash also contains a 3 game campaign that allows you to take a single spearhead force across 3 linked games – depending on who wins or loses the game will determine who goes first in the following game. Because Spearhead is so quick to play you could easily play through all three games in an afternoon, and this works as a nice little “best of 3” for players who want to have a little more narrative and story to their games of Spearhead.

The book also contains the rules for the two Spearhead forces in the box – now one of my very minor criticisms of this box is that I’d have rather these been in card format rather than printed in the book. playing a game was an exercise of passing the book back and forth so that we could both see our rules during the game. the way these pages are printed you could cut these out, but that seems a little extreme! Just a small deck of cards would have made this so much easier and helped keep all stats to hand during the game. Hopefully these specific Spearheads get cards in some future Warscroll cards packs.

Cities of Sigmar – Sentinels of Embergard

First up in the Spearhead City of Ash box we have the Sentinels of Embergard. These have a cool Battle Tactic that allows your general (or a unit within 12″ of your general) to move 6″ after fighting – this is pretty handy as being locked in combat with the Skaven is not a place you want to be in!

As usual two different Regiment Abilities are available – the first allows a unit to shoot in combat, which is very good on your Grenadiers, while the second increases the control scores of units that are in combat – but in my experience if you are in combat with a big swarm of Skaven then you’re probably not going to last very long! For me shooting in combat is the way to go here.

We also get 4 enhancements. The first is the ability to throw a dagger every shooting phase that deals 1 mortal wound. This is ok, and could be really nice for finishing off a nearly dead hero. Trained Ranger feels better – this allows you to pick a unit within 6 of your general and pop them on a board edge. This one is particularly great for getting some of the battle tactics. You also get the ability to make your general run and charge, or once per game double your generals attacks – this one is reliant on timing, but did allow me to murder an entire unit of Night Runners in our practice game in one round of combat!

Jorvan Kreel is a nice combat character with 6 attacks and flat 2 damage, giving him a lot of punch against a lot of targets in Spearhead! Every turn he can pick a unit and allow them to increase their move by 2, which is handy for getting units on objectives or relics. Finally, his pet Ash Panther deals D3 mortal wounds to a nearby target at the end of every turn.

The Mallus Forgepriest is probably the most important model in the Cities of Sigmar side of the box. He’s excellent in combat and also has a prayer that makes every unit on a target objective gain a 5+ ward save (something very important given how much Mortal Damage the Skaven deal!)

Freeguild Gallants are your tanks – their job is to sit on objectives and not die. With 2 wounds each and a 3+ save they can weather most attacks, and if they get charged they reduce the rend of incoming damage too. Sadly one thing they are weak to is mortal damage, so make sure to combo them with the Forgepriest’s rule to give them that 5+ ward!

Finally, the Freeguild Grenadiers are an excellent jack of all trades unit. Offering decent shooting and a really strong combat profile these guys can deal a lot of damage but are quite fragile with only a 4+ save and 1 wound each. They get a nice ability that can cause mortal damage on a target at the end of the turn as they throw grenades at them! these have the Reinforcement rule, so can come back when dead

Skaven – Crixxit’s Kill-Pack

The other Spearhead force in Spearhead City of Ash is Crixxit’s Kill-Pack, a swarm of assassins from Clan Eshen.

Their Battle Trait is also very fun. Essentially in the combat phase you pick a hero and if you roll a 3+ you can teleport that hero to within 6″ of them – This is great for leapfrogging onto an objective, but what’s more you can use this to even pop models into combat! Very nasty and can be a sneaky surprise to your opponent when a deadly assassin-rat suddenly appears in their units!

The Skaven get 2 Regiment Abilities too, the first is pretty straight forward and allows you to teleport a unit from one board edge to another once per game. This is pretty handy, but I feel the second ability pips it, as this allows your hero to gain Strike First once per game, something that saved the skin of the Deathmaster in our practice game!

Likewise we get a choice of 4 enhancements. One allows you to charge through models (to get to a hero behind a unit for example), the next makes him add one to the rolls for his battle trait. Just Another Shadow gives your general a 4+ ward while he is near a friendly unit (I think this is the best one myself), or Death Screech makes your general -1 to hit on a roll of 3+

Crixxit himself is bananas good – 13 attacks with Crit Mortals will kill a lot of targets with a lucky roll, and he has a 5+ ward keeping him in the fight longer too! He also can make a friendly unit of Gutter Runners +1 to charge rolls.

The Deathmaster actually killed more stuff in our practice game than Crixxit – he only has 5 attacks, but each does D3 damage and is rend 2 against heroes and also does crit mortals. This guy is your hero killer and is pretty likely to kill whoever he charges. On top of this you can only hit him on a 5 or 6, regardless of your Hit stat!

Gutter Runners are an excellent and quick combat unit – with 3 attacks each with crit mortals there’s a very good chance you do damage here with a lucky roll, and with a 6+ ward they can survive hits if they are lucky. They also have a chance of doing extra damage on the charge with their bomb rats that trigger on a 3+. Amazingly these have the reinforcements rule too!

Finally the Skaven also have Night Runners – these are not quite as good at fighing as the Gutter Runners, but they still have crit mortals allowing them to get lucky spike damage, can come back as reinforcements and also have ranged attacks! on top of this at the end of each turn on a 4+ they can run out of combat!

Summary

So what do I think of Spearhead City of Ash? This is an excellent starter set for Spearhead with some more interesting forces than what was in the Skaventide box. I really hope we see Cities of Sigmar get the main army treatment in the next AOS starter box, as they are just much cooler than Stormcast and have a lot of personality to them. Equally the Clan Eshin Skaven stuff was always my favourite of the Skaven clans, and its great to see them get some ace new models in this set.

The terrain and relics have brilliant physical models, and the addition of a “how to play” book really helps newcomers to the game while keeping all the battle pack specific stuff to the separate City of Ash book which stops you from having to flick through the book while playing.

Sadly, the fact that both forces are printed in the book rather than being on cards means that you will have to pass the book back and forth in order to see your stats while you play, which is not ideal – this really would have been a 10 out of 10 set if it wasn’t for that small detail! After a few games you’ll learn your rules, but I just wish we had cards too to make things a lot easier.

That’s a small quibble though, and this really is an excellent set that shows just how fun Spearhead is while still having good value and some really brilliant models that are great fun to paint!

Spearhead City of Ash is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 2nd May

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.