Hey everybody,
Necromunda week has been fantastic so far, as I have caught up on all of my games in the ongoing Law & Misrule campaign. Ordinarily, I don’t think we’d have been able to play so many games, but fortunately the stars have aligned with no childcare issues for either of us to worry about!
For the third game, we went for a Tunnel Skirmish, with the objective being to take out as many enemy fighters as possible, scoring points for the type of fighter (3 for leader, 2 for champions and 1 for everybody else). Whoever had the most points was therefore the winner!
As it was a tunnel skirmish, we decided to use the Gallowdark terrain that I had recently finished building up from the kill team box Into the Dark, as that leant itself quite nicely to tunnels and things, though as is often the case with these sorts of games, you end up not using a portion of the board as you’re just trying to get into close combat and beat each other up! The Subjugators are carrying shock staves, however, which are a versatile weapon that has an engagement range of 2” or something, which means they don’t actually get into base contact with my Goliaths. This is harsh, for me, because in Necromunda if you survive a close combat attack without getting seriously injured, you can make a reaction attack and fight back, even if you’ve already fought that turn. By keeping me at range, though, it has meant that I’ve had a bit of a rough time of things.
I can’t really complain too much, though, as I had bought a new champion for this battle, given that my current champion was in recovery following the last game. It seems to be quite powerful to be able to just buy a champion, but it seems perfectly legal, as the rules talk about simply hiring fighters as you would at gang creation. Interestingly, whenever a fighter dies and is removed from the roster, their equipment is kept in the stash, so you can hire a body but then give them the equipment that you already have on hand. So you don’t have to keep investing in new weapons as well. I think this will be useful as the game goes on, because I don’t have an infinite supply of Goliath models to build and paint – I can basically hire the ganger again, give him the equipment I already have, and hey presto, it’s like that fighter is back from the dead under a new name!
Interestingly, in this game one of my Intrigue cards was actually to resurrect a dead fighter, so I have chosen to bring back Luca. He comes back with -1 toughness, but with the Fearsome skill, presumably because he’s a walking corpse. Fearsome forces a willpower check prior to charging the model, and if the enemy fails this, they lose the rest of their activation. So I suppose that’s quite useful because I can be a bit more ballsy with him knowing that the patrolmen won’t necessarily want to charge into him. Luca also has a combat shotgun, which is a very good weapon to have (as far as I can tell!) so I want to keep him available to me if possible!
The game was very much wide open until the very end, when I narrowly managed to win 7-6. By claiming points for killing off gangers, I think I was a bit vulnerable because of my higher gang size – see, one of my rackets is the Promethium Guild Bond, which allows me to bring a free Bounty Hunter and two free Hive Scum to each game. So even with just five Goliath fighters on my side, I still had more models thanks to my supporting cast. It pretty much all came down to the finale, where the last remaining Subjugator patrolman bottled out and fled. Otherwise, we had both done really well to not bottle during the entire game, keeping our fighters, well, in the fight!
Again, though, due to the combination of Intrigues and Rackets that I now have, I was able to come off really well from this battle. I gained a total of 300 credits all told, most of which came from the Dead, Not Alive rule that my bounty hunter has. I had taken out the Subjugator Captain (more in a bit!) and so the bounty hunter can claim half the credits cost of that fighter, so with all the income I had from my rackets, plus the 110 credits from him, I did well. I also gained a good deal of reputation thanks to the Intrigues, and my surviving fighters all did pretty well for XP thanks to the brawling nature of this game.
For me, the highlight was using my new champion, Neri. I’ve equipped him with a flamer, which seemed an extravagance because it costs more than the champion himself, but despite a lacklustre performance to begin with, as he was out of range of everybody, he was able to roast the Subjugator Captain and set him on fire, causing him to go out of action as a result. He later went on to roast a random rookie cop, too, setting him on fire as well. Glorious stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree! At 265 credits, he’s my most expensive fighter, but I am quite pleased with his overall performance, so fingers crossed he continues to rack up the bodies!
During the post-battle sequence, however, we both took fighters to the doc, and both times, we rolled a 1 on the “medical escort” table and the model died! So I’ve lost Spiro, my grenade launcher guy. That’s a shame, as he was doing really well in the last game, though not quite so well this time. Being able to bring Luca back from the dead now means that I have six Goliath fighters, and 335 credits in the stash, so I have been buying yet more people!
I’ve bought a third champion, mainly because I wanted to make a guy with the rivet cannon but, as a heavy weapon, only a champion could carry it. To balance this, I’ve also bought another ganger, giving him a combat shotgun and spud-jacker. I now have all ten of my Goliath models built, then, so that’s that! I’m down to just 25 credits in the stash, and have two guys in the mortuary. However, my reputation is now at 12, so I can get a free Scabber hanger-on as well as not only having unrestricted access to the black market, but also gaining a 10% discount while I’m there! There’s all kinds of xenos weaponry or special ammo available there, I think I need to look into this some more, especially the ammo available.
Another of the post-battle steps is to capture enemy fighters, and as luck would have it, I captured one of the rookies! Capturing fighters is another post-game action, where if a gang has completely fled the field, their opponent can attempt to capture a random fighter. You add all the fighters who went out of action during the game to a 2D6 roll; if the number exceeds 11, then one of those fighters is captured and a random fighter card is drawn. We can trade captives back to their gang, or sell them to the Guilders, however the opposing gang must be able to attempt a rescue first.
This is what we’re going to do next game, to see how the Enforcers get on! At this point in the game, I think James is really struggling overall, without a great deal of credits and with a gang now mainly comprising of rookie cops. As such, my sort of Abitrator role is kicking in, as I don’t want the campaign to be miserable for him while I’m running away with things.
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