Outside of the Regular Opponents subsection, I am lucky to be in contact with a larger wargaming group. From the Tyne in the North to Wakefield in the South, from York in the East to the wrong side of the Pennines, I have found myself with a solid group of friends interested in sharing the wargaming hobby both online and in a weekly hangout session. And despite my own eclectic mix of games (matched only by The Creative Regular Opponent in his desire to play everything), the group has narrowed down on a pair – The Old World (as I’ve written about in the past) and Necromunda.
I’ve written about Necromunda in the past (having run through a previous campaign with my Enforcers). I really like Necromunda as an experience with friends – there are very few other games that can provide quite the same mixture of excitement distilled from list building, scenario planning, campaign-based madness and general shenanigans that happen when you unleash the madness of a game where characters being bounced around a room with shotguns and grenades. going insane and being controlled by another player and dropping into a big pit is not only normal but actually expected and welcomed (usually with a chant from the others around the table). While the core of Necromunda is relatively easy to learn (especially if you grew up with older GW games), I do find that I can end up being quite a heavy mental load – there is a lot going on when you play a game of Necromunda, with everything from the basic rules (designed to cover lots of different situations), the pile of wargear in the game, tactics cards, scenario rules and more to all keep in your heard when trying to plan your moves. This is made worse by the big gaps in the time between play sessions, meaning the first few games usually end up being spent frantically relearning the game. However, despite all of this, when my former housemate over at Dreadquill announced a new campaign was in the running – time for Emperor Falls, pitting various gangs (controlled by various friends) against each other in the interior of a spaceship-sized statue.
- Planning
- Game 1 – Familar Foes
- Games 2 and 3 – Weekend Madness
- Games 4 and 5 – Dastardly Danger
- Games 6 and 7 – The Grand Finale
- Wrap-Up
This is going to be a big one, so grab a drink, take a break and use the contents to jump around if needed.
Planning
For this campaign, I had a few choices for who I would be deploying. The Enforcers were complete and all ready for the table (as well as some extra sprues for when additional recruits were needed). There were also two other new gangs I could go with – either Eschers (needing to be started from one or two assembled figures) or my Outcast gang around a rogue psyker (all models completed by still needing a few final touches). However, a new player entered the scene with the announcement of Spyrers returning to Necromunda. Spyrers, noble assholes wearing suits that upgrade the more they kill, have been a favourite of mine from the lore, even when the old models were slightly janky and the old rules aggressively overpowered to the point of being banned. The new version of the rules are at a much more sensible power level while still keeping that vibe of hunters deep in an untamed place, jumping targets in the depths of the underhive, spreading terror as rumours grow. I really like playing this style of list – very powerful when used correctly, but vulnerable to being swarmed or taken out by high damage, high penetration weapon systems (such as a melta bomb).
The other bonus is that Spyrer gangs are tiny; while everyone else is looking to start the campaign with 7+ figures at least for their 1000 creds, I entered with only three models and with very limited chances to expand the gang or buy new items (the noble assholes don’t really engage with the local economy except to remove workers from the streets and keep the sausage man well supplied with injuried juvies/meat). The other upside to me was that it wouldn’t take much to get them painted… and yet I entered the campaign with them at least obeying the three colours rule and not much else (as you might have spotted, I’m suffering a little bit of a drought in my painting). It doesn’t help that new GW models are dripping with detail, meaning it can be hard to focus up and finish painting a figure while also trying to hit all the details and I REALLY want to capture all the details.
For my list, I went with one Hunt Master (mixing Malcadon and Jakara weapons to be a pretty nasty close combat machine) and then a pair of Orrus hunters. These brutes are both fantastic models and absolute nightmares to fight. Both started off with the basic loadout but I specc’d one to be more smashy (with Flurry of Blows) and the other to be more shooty (with Gunfighter to make them better at blasting way with both hands). Overall, it’s a small list (and not ideally kitted out as I had to save money to fit two big guys in), but it has the potential to do some massive damage and be pretty hardy against return attacks.
Unfortunately for me, the campaign managed to drop right at a busy moment in my day job schedule (boy, I hope you enjoy hearing that phase for the next 12 months for some reason). This meant I had to miss the first few weeks of the campaign (also not helped by me falling ill on the first weekend session), leaving my gang of noble miscreants behind in terms of rep and XP versus the gangs who managed to play a load of games (many of which had the sneaky habit of living closer to the Arbitartor in the frozen north). However, there was some good news. First up, the Campaign Arbitrator decided to bump me to Terror Level 4 (only 1 point away from the first tier) to make sure I could start getting the fun stuff before the campiagn ended. I also did well through the campaign system (every character gaining 2XP in the first week, 1XP per week from the following weeks even without playing) and managed to rejoin the game during Downtime.
Which was good news for me because Spyrers are weird and Downtime is the only point where you actually get to spend money – it’s unlikely Rich Folk would be engaging in the local Economy other than to suddenly cause a massive labor shortage so you only collect and spend credits during the Downtime Phase (presumably to represent some rich patrons uphive sending down gifts for their darling offsprings). This meant I had 250 credits to spend, which got me a few minor tweaks to the list – these included one of my Orrus’s getting a pair of power fists (a loadout that would be very handy in the games I played), gave my leader a lucky flying baby as a pet (Necromunda continues to be delightfully weird) and then made sure the entire gang all had bioboosters to make sure injury rolls were less of an issue. This meant I was good to go for the campaign when my first opponent arrived.
Game 1 – Familar Foes
Turned out I wasn’t the only one struggling to get games, as my Former Housemate (and arch-rival during the last campaign) also had the world pile on top of him during the campaign. I ended up being one of only two games he played, and seeing as how he was playing the Delaque with their god damn webbers again, there was probably much rejoicing at the absence of those bastards (less so for him not being there, hopefully we’ll get more games next time).
For this game, we decided to go thematic – a public execution. An imperial scribe had found himself in deep trouble with the Delaque and now a group of Spyer’s were here to horribly interrogate rescue him. The Delaque managed to set up in the centre of the board with doors and plenty of cover (as well as a patch of darkness to stop them getting sniped), with the only easy access being via the vents.
And then I got to introduce them to the Spyrers’ party trick of “Ooops, all activations all the time”. With 2 activations per turn, the Spyrers were able to move out rapidly, setting up positions to breach in a single turn. Once turn 2 started, I was able to utilise the Bulldoze card to Koolaid man his way through. That Orrus’s following activation then saw him utterly annihilate a poor Delauque danger. My gang leader also got to show off how destructive he can be, utterly shredding the enemy leader in a matter of moments thanks to the naga blade/poison whip combo.
The problem, of course, was that I forgot I was facing the Delaque. The other Orrus found itself taken down very early in the game with rounds flying through the vent (you can see it even before I breached into the corridor) and I had to burn a tactics card to get him back on his feet. However, the next gun shoved through the vent was a webber that flued him to the floor, followed up by a teleporting Delaque ganger who managed to curbstomp him while he was wrapped up in the web. The other Orrus (not pictured) found itself bounced by the reinforcements, webbed and then stomped by a sneaky boy.
And as for the objective? Unfortunately, my success in shredding Delaque put them on edge, leading to the timer rapidly ticking down. By the time we got to the end of round 3, the ticker reached zero, and the unfortunate imperial servant found a stub round in his head. Victory to the Delaque.
Not a great start for the Spyrers, their first mission failed and a reminder that, as much as the Spyers can be incredibly destructive, it doesn’t take much to knock them out.
Games 2 and 3 – Weekend Madness
One excellent feature during the campaign was that we had use of the Scout Hut thanks to the Dastardly Regular Opponent for four weekends. This gave us a chance for the group to get together and play, allowing those without terrain to have a go and for the newer players to be coached through their first few encounters. Unfortunately, I missed the first two (one due to illness and the other being unable to spare the day other than to drop in to deliver some prints), so by the time we got to the third I was raring to jump in.
This was also the first week of the Damnation Phase, meaning things were about to get very grim. Unlike a regular Necromunda campaign, where credits and trips to the trader are the aim of the game, the Uprising campaign shows the decline of a community as Chaos’s tendrils sneak in. I had missed the whole of the “regular” stage of the campaign and so leapt feet first into hell. Now, the goal is hunting for meat as rewards (often by taking out rival gangers or working territories), with the choice to eat into your supplies to keep your fighters in the best condition. If you don’t feed them, then they have less strength and a nasty habit of chowing down on the downed enemies mid-battle.
The good news for the Spyrers is that they are very cheap when it comes to food portions, with a full gang needing only a handful of meat. The lack of The Trading Post also meant that everyone else was now limited to scavenging for gear (while I was running a pretty useful set), so much of the power increase had slowed down. There was also the slight problem that this week’s event meant every game had zombies running around.
The first game of the weekend saw me going up against the campaign master himself (while my Corporate Regular Opponent had his intro game with gang far less unusual). Mr Dreadquill brought out his Beast House gang (a team assembled using the Venators inspired by the criminal group from the Dark Hersey game), which meant I got have encounter some interesting creatures, such as a big Ogryn lad and some horrible flying things. The scenario in question was Meat Harvest, with the Spyrers attempting to take a slice out of the Beast House’s supplies. This is actually a very fun scenario for the Spyers, giving them a chance to speed around the board, mutilating civilian figures with ease and building up the stockpile of meat to run through the rest of the campaign.
It didn’t go all my own way, though, as the Beast House were pretty effective at getting their civilians off the board (blissfully unaware they are about to end up beast chow). I once again found myself having to use a tactics card to bring one of my Orrus’s back to life, but we did also see a flying baby (also known as a Caryatid Prime) curbstomp an Ogryn. The end result was a close Spyrer victory, but more importantly, it set me up for the rest of the campaign in terms of supplies.
The Big Event of the weekend was a four-player game at the end of the day. We had all been dispatched into the depths of the statue, looking to find the source of the cannibal zombies that had been distracting us all. Turns out we had a chaos icon in the depths that needed to be destroyed, playing the Urban Renewal scenario. Two groups of Escher (including a corrupted gang), my Spyrers and of course, the House Party entered into the arena to destroy the icon and stem the flow of horribly hungry fellows.
Now you may notice a trend in these photos, and that’s because the ungrateful little git known as Corporate Regular Opponent decided that he wanted to directly engage the man who helped bring his House Party to life (you can see the process on making them elsewhere on the blog). When the first round of shooting took out the Orrus attempting to do the objective (while shouting HULK SMASH with his power talons), I took that personally and proceeded to introduce him to the Spyrers. This included their nasty habit of multiple activations in a turn and the rather horrifying effect of their weapons – my gang leader managed to chew his way through several of the pink bastards.
I had managed to ally myself with the Escher gang on the other side (the only other non-corrupted gang on the board (I am always keen for gentlemen’s agreements in these games), and so was able to focus the most effective building destroyer (the other Orrus with the Power Fists) on getting the job done and purging the heretical icon.
This success (accompanied by the first game’s setup) definitely had me feeling like this group is less of a group of nobles on a jolly and more of a team, sent in to perform specific tasks for their House. So yes, once again, I find myself controlling a Special Forces team, just one full of arrogant, noble assholes.
Games 4 and 5 – Dastardly Danger
Of course, the Dastardly Regular Opponent may have been unable to join us for the multiplayer day but I was able to get over the following day for a tussle or two. His Orlock gang was built over Lockdown around 2020, 2021 and only just managed to get itself on the table. However, he has since managed to leap in feet first and get stuck in, playing far more Necromunda than I have in the last year and even keeping it up after the campaign is over.
At this point, however, we were mid-campaign. Just in time for me to jump in and pit his guys against my Spyrers. The other thing was that I was getting closer and closer to the next tier in the Terror level tracker. I had already added a second lucky flying baby to the gang and now I was looking to try and add an additional low cost Spyrer to the group. With a few good missions, I’d get myself over that threshold.
And then I got a good few missions.
The first game (and original plan) was for us to play a game of Search and Destroy – Spyrers hunting down the arms caches that the Orlocks have been laying around. It started off poorly for my gang, with one Spyrer being knocked down after smashing through a wall to avoid a hail of heavy bolter fire, while another found himself on the wrong side of a melta bomb. It looked like the Spyrers were about to be taken out very early on. But then the winds changed, Bio-boosters and tactics cards coming into play.
While the revived Leader found himself hunting cannibals, the power fist Orrus went into full-on smash mode. He grabbed the heavy bolter gunner and knocked him out cold (hitting him hard enough to be captured) before proceeding to rampage his way through the Orlock back line and knocking out a couple more gangers. The Orlocks had started with a fraction of their total gang size (literally only four defenders for the caches), so they ended up bottling as the first reinforcements
Seeing as I’d just managed to capture one of the Dastardly Regular Opponent’s hottest items (a heavy bolter and suspensor) and seeing as the game ended so quickly, I decided to offer him a chance to get his boy back. Time for another round of Public Execution! This time, the Spyrers were on the defensive, and worse entirely surrounded by horrifying cannibals. The Orlocks also brought the whole gang out (including the leader and his dog) AND managed to setup in a big enough group to potentially cause me problems. Surely nothing could go wrong?
In fact, everything went wrong. It seems my opponent’s dice were cursed, leading to dud demo charges, gangers getting 66’d (meaning dead dead dead) and even a rescue attempt ending with a jetpack trooper plummeting into the pit. Seeing how much the Orlocks were getting kicked, I decided to offer my opponent a deal – let me take out his leader, thus giving me enough terror to recruit a new spyrer, and in return I would bottle voluntarily, costing me 1 Reputation but gaining me far more. The deal was signed, the Orlock Leader got stomped but the Heavy Bolter (and it’s gunner) was saved.
Overall, a fun morning of games, but also a pretty nasty blow to my Dastardly Regular Opponent’s meat stockpile, thanks to playing two games in a row. There was definitely some consternation about needing meat to get his leader healed up after his beatdown, which unfortunately meant that several blasting charges ended up in the inventory of a certain Ogryn. Surely nothing bad will come of that.
Games 6 and 7 – The Grand Finale
Alas, all good things eventually come to an end. By the start of the final week, all things narratively were going to hell in a hand cart, as the starvation mechanic had changes into a bonus to strength rather than a negative. The end times were upon us and so, we gathered for one final weekend of Necromunda.
The first game of the final day was against the hordes of The House Party, as blobbies and spyrers clashed in a round of Slaughter. This was all about the murdering, with special rules making shooting less effective and a bloodlust roll for each activation that meant the stronger fighters found themselves charging enemy and friend alike, outside of player control. It ended up being an absolute slaughter fest, with plenty of blood being drawn and the horrifying Blob-oth unleashed. This was also my first taste of just what a full-powered Stimmer can do, with something like 10 attacks in a single round at a horrifying strength. It was amusing to play against these creatures, especially with the comedy pinned markers featuring Mr Blobby in peril.
However, the big finale saw five gang on the board yet planning to try and get the hell out of there before the station was destroyed by the Imperial Navy to prevent the spread of the horrors inside. Alongside my Spyers and the House Party was the Dastardly Regular Opponent’s Orlocks stuck in the middle of a two-way shooting range with the religious zealots from the two Cawdor gangs that had spent the morning scrapping.
The objective? Get to the centre of the board, climb the landing pad, get into the lander when it arrives and then get the hell out of there. There are a few minor problems – every turn we played things are getting worse and worse, so random events are in full effect. Everyone is rolling to check for insanity as they move across the board (this will be important later. Finally, the Arbitrator is rolling a big dice every turn and not telling us what it does.
Oh, and did I mention that one of the Cawdor players (controlled by my Other Former Housemate) had dumped a load of mines around the objective? Yeah, I sure hope that’s the only trick he pulls.
The game itself was a glorious slug fest of a match – a game with 5 players takes a while to play (Necromunda works with each player taking an activation and working around the table in priority order), especially when two of the forces are made up of the unwashed masses that are the Cawdor gangs. I again made a gentleman’s agreement with the Cawdor next to me (because there was a pile of them and I really didn’t fancy getting into a scrap on the deployment zone) and even managed to (for the most part) hold off fighting the House Party (who had been joined by a hanger-on – perhaps the mysterious Noel?). Instead, I focused mostly on securing the objective, clearing the mines (or at least playing with them) and getting ready for the final fight.
However, a game this size had no chance of being sorted peacefully. The conventional fighting saw the Orlocks, both sets of Cawdor and the House Party start beating the shit out of each other. The Orlocks, caught in the middle, found themselves pretty beat up, barely able to get out of their deployment. The House Party also got stuck in against the Other Former Housemate’s forces, leading to some absolute bloodshed on the other side of the board. And then a literal demon stepped out of the darkness right behind the Other Former Housemate’s Cawdor gang, leading to even more bloodshed.
For me, however, the bigger threat was madness (something only the non-corrupt gangs had to deal with). I ended up losing two of my very expensive Spyrers to losing their minds, failing willpower checks and then rolling badly to end up losing their mind. In Necromunda, this can result in their coming under the control of another player, allowing them to do all sorts of aggressive actions to remove them. And unfortunately, my hunt master ended up in control of the Dastardly Regular Opponent (who had spent the game being pummelled and fresh off the previous weekend’s game), and the Yeld found herself dunked in the fire pit by the Other Former Housemate, a man whose Necromunda gameplay is best described as no holds barred. One of my Orrus also got a little mad, leading to an accidental fight with the Blob-oth as the Cawdor fighter waded in.
When the lander arrived, my Orrus were among the first onboard and I was fully prepared to take control, fight the others and make sure I was in control. I even had a tactics card to drop a template attack on the craft, to hopefully clear out the single Blobby and the trio of Other Former Housemate’s Cawdor that had managed to claw their way onboard. However, my activations were not friendly, and so I settled for merely forcing the ship to take off quickly (heavily armoured nobles with power fists can be very persuasive), extracting my surviving Spyrers, the trio of Cawdor and the Blobby we assumed was hanging off the edge of the ship. Mission accomplished!
(until the Navy blows the shuttle up to prevent corruption because 40k)
Wrap-Up
Something I think is worth mentioning before I wrap up is just how much a campaign game like Necromunda brings out some of the best parts of the hobby. The gangs had a fantastic mix of set-ups, each one unique to the player running them (even if we didn’t all manage to get them painted). However, there were also other elements that are awesome – the MDF wall pieces that Dreadquill and the Other Former Housemate brought along looked awesome, really setting the mood (and including some incredible artwork by the Other Former Housemate’s partner and some great posters). There were also conversions galore (such as the Caged Heretic using a GW zombie) and the return of an old favourite, the Arvus Lander (or The Pig).
Additionally, I want to also call out Dreadquill for running an incredibly fun campaign. Being the campaign Arbitrator isn’t easy, requiring a pile of work behind the scenes – organising game days for players to actually play the game, keeping track of territories and advances, keeping everyone informed through weekly updates (all delivered by MailChimp to our inboxes each Monday) and answering the literal pile of questions every Necromunda player will find themselves asking. This was increased by this campaign being the first for quite a few people, with lots of new players learning their ways into an aggressively newcomer unfriendly game. But thanks to Dreadquill’s hard work, the campaign was a joy to take part in.
If you want to see more from Dreadquill, you can find more hobby stuff at his blog and on his BlueSky page.
With the campaign over, I have plenty of thoughts:
First up, Necromunda is still awesome to play. The game is a little clunky with the sheer number of pieces to it (especially in the larger multiplayer games), and there is still a load to learn even for me. But as I said at the start, there is no other game quite like. No other game has had the mix of excitement, glee and inevitable disappointment from a single day of gaming. We also got to play around with a whole load of new toys with all the different gangs, and Dreadquill really rolled out the shenanigans with weekly modifiers and multiplayer games. It’s actually made me really interested in looking at the other ways of playing, including some weirder campaigns. As much as I may have enjoyed my Necromunda time, this campaign really got me excited to play more.
Second, turns out playing games with friends is actually really fun. This year has been a little light on games due to a variety of factors (including work) so having an excuse to actually put time aside to get out there and play games. Having access to the Scout Hut really helped us to have a common space that we could get to (especially one a simple stroll from the local Co-Op) and with plenty of space to run a stack of games.
Third, Spyrers are 100% the gang for me. In contrast to their original version, they are far less overpowered and far more in the glass cannon category. You are always going to be outnumbered (although double activation helps) and by late campaign, you’re also going to be outgunned. In fact, even a starting gang can cause some serious damage to a group of rookie Spyrer. There are lots of tricks and toys to keep them in the game (including a tactics card that literally brings them back when taken out of action, which is basically mandatory), but if you mess it up, you’ll soon eat the curb. On the other hand you can also absolutely rip and tear. The campaign economy for the Spyrers is also odd – in some ways, it disincentivises actually doing the missions in favour of simply pulling the enemy gangs apart to keep the terror level ticking up. I’d love to see how they do in a full campaign, getting a chance to really tick up the nightmare. The Orrus are definitely my Spyrers of choice – with a few upgrades and advancements, they very quickly become a high speed monster that hits like a freight train while still being able to take a hit or two.
So what happens next? Well, as I said, I’m really excited to keep playing Necromunda – it seems like multiple people in the group will be continuing to play even during the downtime. This includes the Dastardly Regular Opponent who got a whole set of terrain printed ready for the future. It also seems like we’ll be taking a look at the Ash Wastes version of the game, exchanging the cramped hallways for the open road (and potentially needing to get some vehicles).
For me personally, I’ll need to decide what gang I want to run next. My Spyers still need finishing off, but there is also an update coming for my beloved Enforcers, which I’m very interested in seeing. I do also have two other gangs in the work in progress state (Escher and Outcasts), so there are lots of possibilities for the Underhive next time. Maybe I’ll even combine them – after all, you can run a Secundian Incursion gang where you combine a single Spyrer with a regular House or Enforcer fight. As someone whose man of the campaign was a big lad with two power fists, what better commander for the next run?
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