A catch up (mainly Necromunda)

Hey everybody,
It’s been a bit of a quiet week here on the blog, as life gets back to normal in 2023 and the post-festive blues begin to settle a little. My wife has been struck down with some kind of flu that’s been doing the rounds as well, so I’ve been in full-on dad mode for the little folk. They’re both at a different cheeky stage, so neither wants to do what I tell them to – the eldest just ignores me, but the youngest is actually smiling at me as she ignores me and continues to do what she shouldn’t. Hopefully it’s all just a phase, and things get easier soon! It’s been nice to have them both to myself, though, and there have been fun times as well!

Since I launched the plan of 10×10 games for 2023, I’ve had some pretty amazing success with actually playing games, which has been really nice! I am currently around 5 or 6 games played this year, with a good breadth of stuff hitting the table, so I’ve been quite pleased about that. Look out for a blog coming out in the coming days where I catch up with the Angmar Awakened cycle for Lord of the Rings LCG, at the very least!

The biggest success so far this year has been the Goliath gang for Necromunda, however. I’ve just been slowly chipping away at these big lads for about an hour or two most nights, and have had a real sense of achievement as I see them coming together. It’s only seven gangers plus the two mauler vehicles, so it’s hardly a massive task of course, but even so, I’ve been pleased with my progress!

Necromunda is currently hovering near the top of my list as well, when it comes to games that I am excited for – despite the huge intake over Christmas, it has actually displaced Marvel Champions as the game that I’ve been most looking forward to playing! I have been really excited by the Ash Wastes box, of course, especially given the fact that I have got the terrain fully painted up now, so it’s on my list to try and get to grips with everything over the coming week, and see what is new and how these vehicles work. I’ve got a game day booked in for Tuesday, so I’m super excited for that!

Being firmly in a Necromunda frame of mind, I picked up the new Escher bikes yesterday (sadly no cards were to be had). I’d actually forgotten that these came out last month, but seeing the tutorial from Mediocre Hobbies on youtube made me want to pick up a box for my growing vehicle pool! I don’t think it’s likely to happen anytime soon, but I was also watching Andy’s Cargo-8 tutorial, and found myself wanting that behemoth to paint up! I don’t honestly know that it would really get used, though, so I’m much preferring these smaller buggy-like vehicles, or the bikes, for now. It’s one of the reasons I was looking at my outstanding Genestealer Cult models last week, as I have been thinking it’d be good to get the bikers painted up to try them in the Wastes, too.

Picking up the Escher bikes has got me thinking, though. We’ve seen the Cawdor vehicles previewed back in November as shambling walkers, though I’ve seen a few criticisms of these online as walkers would be inherently more difficult to maintain, so why does the scummiest of the gangs get them? I’m not an engineer, but I suppose it does make a bit of sense that they are more complex machines than a wheeled vehicle. At any rate, they’re presumably going to come next. But what about Van Saar and Delaque vehicles? What will they look like?

Van Saar have already had their hover boards in with the Prospects box, of course, so it’ll be interesting to see how their vehicles turn out. Skimmer bikes would have made sense, but that’s what Escher has – maybe they’ll be sleeker? Who knows! As for my beloved Delaque, my first thought was for some kind of ground car that could be made entirely anonymous with blacked-out windows or something sinister, but I’ve now been thinking: wheel bikes. Like General Grievous. Maybe?

Once all six of the House gangs have vehicles, what’s next? Will Enforcers get vehicles? Probably not, the lore has said that Enforcers don’t really go out into the Wastes. The motor pool is basically built on the Genestealer Cults range, so they’re okay. Chaos cults probably won’t have bespoke vehicles. What about the Corpse Grinders? They’re likely to stay in the Underhive too. That leaves us with the Ironhead Prospectors as a specific gang that doesn’t have their own vehicles, though – it’s possible that you could use some of the Votann vehicles in Necromunda, I’m specifically thinking of the Sagitaur buggy rather than the hover trikes or the land fortress, although the latter could well come into things.

I think Necromunda, more than any other game right now, is firing my imagination in so many different ways, and I just cannot wait to play it some more!