The rad-choked wastes of Armageddon are nearly impossible to fight on unless you’re encased in a thick, armoured shell, so battles led by great hordes of tanks and other vehicles are especially common. The new Armoured Gauntlet rules let you fight these battles yourself, and today we’ll find out how.
At the core of these rules is the SPEARHEAD keyword, which is given to any VEHICLE or MONSTER with 10 or more Wounds that isn’t an AIRCRAFT or FORTIFICATION, and doesn’t have the Hover ability. In short: big tanks, big stompies.
Spearhead units in Armoured Gauntlet games are a fair bit tougher than the average metal box, so when they suffer their last unsaved Wound, they roll on a new(ish)* table to see what happens instead of simply dying. Certain rules can load them up with Damage Tokens too, which add to the roll and so increase the likelihood of exploding in a spectacular fireball.
Transports, Monsters, and non-Transport Vehicles all get their own tables with different effects. Having your Engine Damaged, for instance, will make you move slower and add a Damage Token, while a lucky glancing hit that rattles the crew will only require them to take a Battle-shock test.
Factions can also have their own tables for specific unit types, to better reflect the unique troubles they might encounter as damage mounts, and also add units not covered by the conditions above to their SPEARHEAD roster. Astra Militarum Tank Commanders can be injured and only issue one Order per turn, Drukhari Pain Engines might suffer damage to their stimulant injectors and lose their Feel No Pain ability, while T’au Empire Broadside Battlesuits suffering from a destroyed weapon will have to divert all their power to keeping a single gun online.
With so many Vehicles and Monsters around, some of them will invariably be veterans of their craft with more skills and experience than the average tanker. Accordingly, you can pick a number of SPEARHEAD units** at the start of the battle to receive a Spearhead upgrade, with each faction getting three options.
Space Marine Dreadnoughts can be upgraded into Venerable Ancients, forcing their targets to roll an extra dice on the damage table and accept the more lethal result. Orks can get a Kustom Mek Job, which applies a random boost to speed, durability, or strength at the start of the battle, while the Genestealer Cults can fit their Goliaths with Unstable Explosives to maximise the carnage their Deadly Demise ability causes.
Naturally, you’ll need a suitable arena to try out all of these new rules and fancy upgrades, and the Armoured Gauntlet book contains 12 missions for just that occasion. Nine give you balanced objectives and mission rules for when you both bring along armies full of SPEARHEAD models, while the last three Challenge missions are unique scenarios designed as exhilarating asymmetrical showdowns for when one side has significantly more big guys than the other.
In the Desperate Assault mission, one side’s most important SPEARHEAD unit has been caught out of position by the enemy, and they must survive against unrelenting attacks while half of their army is caught in Strategic Reserves – slowly filtering onto the battlefield as the fight goes on.
GAUNTLET CHALLENGE:
DESPERATE ASSAULT
ARMOURED GAUNTLET:
GLORY TARGET
In the Declare Battle Formations step, the Attacker must select one of their SPEARHEAD units to be the Glory Target. This must be the unit with the highest Wounds characteristic (if there is a tie, choose from amongst the tied units). Each time a roll on a Damage table is made for this unit, subtract 1 from the result. This unit cannot start the battle in Reserves (including Strategic Reserves).
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
During the Declare Battle Formations step, the Attacker must place 50% of the points value of their army in Strategic Reserves. A maximum total of 500 pts of the Attacker’s Strategic Reserves units can arrive during the second battle round.
Finally, the book contains the framework for short Armoured Gauntlet campaigns that progress through a series of missions while Ace tankers and infamous Monsters rack up kills and gain further upgrades. Three separate campaign trees give you plenty of replayability, as success and failure can activate modifiers in future games, and a change in fortunes for one side may result in dramatically different missions being played.
You’ll be able to read more into these exciting missions and plan out your future campaigns when the Armageddon: The Return of Yarrick expansion goes up for pre-order this weekend – containing the Armoured Gauntlet book alongside an extensive tome of lore covering Commissar Yarrick’s return to Armageddon and new Detachments for Orks, Astra Militarum, and Space Marine armies.
* Warhammer 40,000 veterans may be making wistful looks into the middle distance at the mention of vehicle damage tables.
** The number of Spearhead Requisition points you get to spend is determined by the total points cost of all your SPEARHEAD units.
