Grand Cathay Spearhead, or How We Kitbashed a Ruleset Without Breaking the Game
Grand Cathay Spearhead, or How We Kitbashed a Ruleset Without Breaking the Game
Sometimes army-building starts with models. Sometimes with lore. And sometimes it starts with a PDF, a formatting fix, and a slightly nervous confession.
That was exactly the case with our Grand Cathay Spearhead idea.
It started with a file
Michał dropped a draft of a Grand Cathay Spearhead document into our chat, then almost immediately came back with a corrected version because the text formatting had gone weird. Same content, better layout, new PDF, crisis averted.
And honestly? First reaction from the group was very simple:
looks cool, we’d play it
Which is probably the best possible outcome when someone shows up with homebrew army rules.
The confession
A day later came the reveal.
Michał admitted that since nobody complained that he had invented some wildly overpowered nonsense that nobody would ever want to play against, he could finally say what he had actually done:
he took the Cities of Sigmar Spearhead and basically swapped unit names and abilities to fit Grand Cathay.
The important bit: all the stats stayed the same.
That explains why the whole thing felt surprisingly reasonable at first glance. It wasn’t trying to reinvent Spearhead from scratch. It was a reskin built on an existing, playable foundation.
And honestly, we love this kind of approach. It is practical, fast, and most importantly, it gives you something you can actually put on the table without needing six rounds of emergency balance patches.
Why it felt balanced
Wilini immediately pointed out that it looked pretty balanced, and that makes total sense in hindsight.
If the chassis is already an official Spearhead list, then a lot of the hard work is already done. You’re not guessing points, inventing profiles from thin air, or trying to predict whether one cool rule will accidentally flatten an entire game mode.
Michał also mentioned that Cities of Sigmar had recently received a buff and that they are apparently in a pretty decent place now. On top of that, both the cavalry and infantry have reinforcement mechanics, which made the list feel like a good fit for the concept he wanted.
So this wasn’t just random copy-paste. It was a pretty smart bit of army-building:
- start from an official Spearhead shell,
- keep the statlines intact,
- rename units to match the army concept,
- tweak the abilities for flavor,
- and see if the result still feels natural on the table.
That is the kind of hobby engineering we deeply respect.
“I don’t know Cities of Sigmar, but I’d still play it”
One of the nicest reactions in the chat came from Ender, who basically said: I don’t know Cities of Sigmar at all, but I’d still happily play against it.
And for us, that is a huge green flag.
Because with projects like this, the real test isn’t whether the creator knows exactly what they borrowed from. The real test is whether the opponent looks at it and thinks:
yeah, that seems fair, let’s roll dice
If you get that response, you’re probably doing something right.
The lore question: what does reinforcement mean for Cathay?
Of course, once rules are in place, the next question is always lore.
Staś raised exactly the kind of question we love seeing: if Cathayan units are using reinforcement-style rules, what is the in-universe explanation? Is this some kind of resurrection? Is Tzeentch turning them into terracotta? How do we justify replacement models appearing during the battle?
Michał’s answer was perfect in its simplicity:
this isn’t resurrection. It’s the call to battle in the Emperor’s name — when some fall, new warriors arrive in their place.
That works really well for us.
It keeps the mechanic readable on the tabletop, while giving it a distinctly Cathayan flavor. Not undead magic, not weird warp nonsense, just disciplined ranks answering the call and filling the gaps.
Why we like this kind of army-building
This whole exchange is a great example of the kind of army-building we enjoy most:
- grounded in existing rules,
- transparent about where the mechanics come from,
- open to feedback,
- and still full of personality.
Not every custom project needs to be a total from-scratch rules design. Sometimes the best move is to find an official structure that already works and adapt it carefully to the army you want to see on the table.
In this case, that meant using Cities of Sigmar as the mechanical backbone for a Grand Cathay Spearhead concept. And judging by the reactions, it landed exactly where a good homebrew should land: interesting, believable, and something people actually want to play.
What’s next?
At this point, the obvious next step is simple: get it on the table.
The document passed the first test, which is surviving group chat scrutiny. Now it needs the second one: actual games.
If it plays as smoothly as it reads, this might be one of our favorite examples of practical, low-drama Warhammer hacking — the good kind, where everyone knows what is going on and still wants in.
And honestly, that is probably the highest compliment a custom Spearhead list can get.