Skaventide, Spearheads, and a Surprise Detour into Old World Orcs
A quick rules-and-boxes reality check
Sometimes army-building starts with grand plans, and sometimes it starts with a very practical question: what exactly is in the box?
That was basically our conversation this time, when we started untangling how Skaventide relates to the separate Spearhead boxes for Skaven and Stormcast Eternals in Age of Sigmar.
The key takeaway is simple:
- Skaven and Stormcast each have two Spearheads
- the ones included in Skaventide are not the same as the other standalone Spearhead boxes
- in our chat, the Skaventide Spearheads were identified by Clawlord and Lord-Vigilant
- the separate boxes were referred to as the Warpspark and Yndrasta Spearheads
So if you’re trying to plan an entry point into AoS 4th edition and wondering whether buying Skaventide is the same as just picking up the standalone Spearheads: apparently not. At least not one-to-one.
That kind of distinction matters more than it first seems, because it changes how we think about expanding from a starter set into a full army. If the contents overlap differently than expected, then the next purchase can either neatly build on what we already have… or accidentally duplicate the wrong stuff.
Can you mix units between Spearheads?
The other useful clarification from the chat was short and brutal:
No, you can’t mix models between Spearheads.
At least not if we’re talking about the Spearhead game format itself. So even if you own multiple boxes from the same faction, that doesn’t automatically mean you can mash them together for Spearhead and call it a day.
For casual collecting and for building a larger Age of Sigmar army, obviously those models still matter. But if the goal is specifically to play Spearhead as Spearhead, then the composition is fixed.
That’s actually good to know early, because it saves us from the classic hobby trap of assuming a format is more open than it really is.
Yndrasta: iconic, dramatic, and apparently on a timer
No Warhammer discussion is complete without a bit of affectionate slander, and this one took a detour into Yndrasta.
She came up because one of the referenced boxes includes her, and from there the conversation naturally descended into the kind of tactical-summary-meets-shitposting that every gaming group eventually produces. The verdict, in short, was that she’s a wonderful character who may or may not spend a suspicious amount of time arriving later and hitting hard for a limited window.
Which, honestly, feels very Stormcast.
We also stumbled into the fact that there’s a book being recommended as a way to get a better grip on the lore around her.
And yes, naturally, we also had the obligatory screenshot moment while checking the box contents.
Then the chat swerved into painted miniatures
As often happens, a practical army-building conversation turned into: okay, but who has actually painted anything yet?
Apart from Budzor, Michał pointed out that Staś has been painting Orcs. Not AoS orruks, but proper square-based Orcs for Warhammer: The Old World.
That last part was confirmed in the most old-school way possible: someone noticed the square bases and immediately went, ah right, TOW.
And honestly, fair enough. Base shape is sometimes the fastest rules summary in the hobby.
We got a few screenshots of Staś’s work, and it’s always nice when a rules chat suddenly produces actual painted models.
Our hobby takeaway
This was one of those very useful little conversations that probably saves us money, confusion, and at least one mistaken purchase.
Our current summary looks like this:
- Skaventide contains specific Spearheads, not every version of them
- Skaven and Stormcast have multiple Spearhead variants
- Spearhead lists aren’t mix-and-match within the format
- and while we’re figuring out AoS boxes, someone is already quietly getting Old World Orcs onto the table
Pretty good snapshot of our group, really: half of us are comparing product contents, half are memeing about named characters, and somebody in the background is just steadily painting greenskins.
Which is, frankly, exactly how a healthy Warhammer hobby ecosystem should function.