As I previously mentioned in the epic saga of my last campaign, it appears that my Dastardly Regular Opponent has been truly bitten by the Necromunda bug – seemingly bitten hard enough to not only paint up his terrain (unlike someone) but also play multiple skirmish games with his Orlocks. Well seeing as I haven’t rolled some dice in a bit (and I had a pile of terrain to deliver to him), I decided to jump in and get a game in. Unfortunately, the best time for him was early on Sunday morning, a time which in my opinion shouldn’t exist. However, I set my alarm, dosed myself with a suitable amount of caffine, and headed over to introduce him to my new list.
Yes, my new list.
Well, more like two lists combined into one. As I mentioned last time, I was intrigued by the concept of the Secundian Incursion, a list variant where you combine a single Spyrer with a regular house gang, Venators, Squat Prospectors or Palanite Enforcers. You miss out on your regular leader (and need to pay a considerable part of your starting income on one of the Spyrers themselves), but in return, gain a solid, hard-to-kill core to the force. The Spyrer still keeps all their fancy rules (such as double activations, ignoring pinning from non-damaging hits, ignoring break tests from friendly casualties and the Kill Count upgrade system) but you only get one – if they die (be they 66’d or overcome with glitches), then that’s it, you don’t get a replacement. Frankly, I love this idea – the noble in their finest armour being assisted by a gang of paid mercenaries, the classic banter back and forth between two very different groups. For this skirmish game, I went for my favourite breed of Spyrer – the Power Fist-equipped Orrus. She was the MVP of the last campaign (able to stomp through gangers, statues and more) and so it makes sense that she’d make a reappearance.
So with 400 credits spent on one model, it was time to build the Enforcers to go with the noble brat. Unfortunately Enforcers share with their noble overlords the unfortuntate trait of being very expensive. This is still using the Book of Judgement rules, where each enforcer comes with all the gear they will need (armoured undersuit, flak and stub pistol) and therefore costs 70 points each. This meant I was going to have a pretty limited number of guys to assist (especially as the Orlocks would be clocking in at 45 before any gear). The advantage of all the equipment though it that you can run them pretty slick and they are effective – 5+ save and pistol is far better than most of the underhive.
For my champion, I went with a Palanite Sergeant with a Concussion Carbine (a must have for its ability to bounce enemies around the map) and also gave him a Hardcase Cyber Mastiff. Now, technically this is 130 points that would probably be better spent on another ganger, giving me another ranged attack. However, the Hardcase is a unique toy for the Enforcers and it’s abilities inclujde such delights as “still getting to have a final activation in the round it’s killed” and “whoops, you charged my owner, I get a free move to enter combat” made it such a MVP of my first campaign. It’s a good way to deal with anything close combat-y something that (other than the Spyrer) the gang isn’t designed to deal with.
The rest of the gang were pretty standard. One Patrolman with an Enforcer shotgun, one man with an Enforcer Boltgun and the last one with an Autopistol paired with his Stub Gun (because I already have the model and it’s cool). This give me six models (technically only five gangers) which is not a great starting point but should give me enough to push forward and secure. It also JUST hit 1000, meaning i’d managed to get as much as possible out of the points.
Now it was time to see how well it would do.
To make sure we finished with plenty of time, my opponent set up the board before I arrived. We also decided on a simple scenario, Tunnel Skirmish, and got to playing. His gang was a good mix of classic Orlocks – leader, champion, cybermastiff, gangers and juves. A good mix of weapons meant we were about to have a gun fight, with a few close-quarters weapons hiding among them.
I deployed on the front edge of the central tile on my side. The Dastardly Orlocks took the far left corner, out of my line of sight but in cover. This was going to be a firefight across the central area so my goal was to stick to the cover, and take advantage of my ace in the hole.
As you might have been able to predict from the list, said ace would be the Orrus. I had planned my game around her – with the long corridor at the side combined with the Bulldoze card, I’d be able to push the flank and get in behind the Orlocks, without having to charge across a gunline. This did unfortunately mean he’d need to smash through a pair of Juves – not the highest priority or best immediate use of points BUT if I could get the flank, I’d be in a good position to do some real damage by smashing into the Orlock attack from behind.
And speaking of real damage, paired power fists can lead to some devestating attacks. As you can see above, the first Juve I charged at ended up taking 11 damage dice from the special rules (especially Power) – even without Pulverise to turn all those flesh wounds to serious, that is still one very dead Juve.
The other Juve however decided to introduce the Orrus to one of Necromunda’s great levellers – fire! Only a single wound from the hand flamers (and in fact they would soon run out of ammo) but for two activations, all that my 400 point gorilla could do was stand up, run around, roll back and forth on fire. Not the most cinemate response. However, once she managed to get back to her feet, one heavily singed noble brat decided to give the jetpack boy both barrels – with an incredible dice roll for two short range Bolt Launchers going guns blazing he got shredded.
However, before I could really get the Orrus to smash through the wall and unleash the master plan, I had a slight problem with my centre – it was getting absolutely torn apart. An attempt to counter the Orlock advance with a Concussion Carbine Sergeant and his dog led to some bouncing around of the Orlocks, but then resulted in some absolutely terrible dice rolling in combat. This then meant that the Sergeant went down hard while fighting the Orlock Leader and Champion (a bad situation for Enforcer Sergeants who focus on ranged combat due to their lacklustre melee stats), taking one of my key figures off the board. The centre was also a shooting match, with the Orlock armed with a boltgun, causing my own fighters to stick to cover and pin down any Orlocks crossing the gap.
There was one glorious moment of Necromunda Shennighans showing how well the ruleset captures the madness of the underhive. When the shotgunner (whose gear seems oddly similar to my own airsoft set) went click on his salvo shotgun, the Orlocks pushed forward. My Patrolman pulled his sidearm (remembering Gaz’s instruction), pointed it at the advancing ganger and took him down hard with a stub round only for the slide to lock back empty. And then took a round through the cover that knocked him down with an injury.
Seeing as I had the grand total of three figures still standing (and one of them was wearing a poncho for Emperor’s sake), my Orrus decided we needed all hands on deck before the Orlocks mopped up. So I pulled him back, coup de gracing one Orlock before preparing to assist his fallen comrade at the end of the turn. Turns out power fists are very bad for medical work – he rolled two Out of Action dice, meaning no chance of the patient getting back into action.
On the other hand, rushing back to the centre meant we got one final round of Spyrer murder, even able to put some serious wounds on the cybermastiff when it attacked. The Orrus was able to fight through the attackers, dropping another ganger but found herself way out of position and unable to deal with the remaining Orlock leadership.
The game came to an end with a stand-off. The Patrolman, armed with two guns and already dealing with an early game flesh wound versus the Orlock Champion. It was a quick shoot-out, the Patrolman blasting away but unable to find their mark. The return volley took ripped the gunslinger off their feet, leaving the Enforcers almost entirely out of the fight. The end phase brought a failed bottle check and the Orlocks won, keeping the ground. But at great cost; you can see above the sheer number of markers placed for fighters taken out of action and many of the lasting injuries would have resulted in pretty banged-up fighters going into the following week. The Rep for winning would also go to the Orlocks, although seeing as this was our first meeting of the gangs, the loss of rep for bottling would have been balanced out
Overall, it was a fun game. There were some appalling and incredible dice rolls on both sides, with some glorious combat and much fun had (even while half asleep). It’s also definitely a time slot that I should be using more – sleeping in is lovely but between the Dastardly Regular Opponent often having the slot free and the collection of PC gaming friends who can use the time, I’ll need to keep my lie-ins to Saturday and make Sunday be the chance to be social. I also love how much Necromunda has taken the Dastardly Regular Opponent. Between the walls he’s printed up, the doors I delivered to him and multiple games, he’s fallen a little bit in love with scrapping in the underhive. He has also managed to control himself and currently has only one gang (a rarity for Necromunda players – even I have two mostly complete gangs and two more in construction). We have both agreed we want to keep Necromunda at the forefront of our minds, especially as the next full campaign is probably going to be adding even more rules through the addition of vehicles.
As for the gang, I think it’s definitely a very strong start that plays to my style (elite, armoured, packing a punch) without straying too far from the original setup of a Necromunda gang. Spyers were great fun, but very quickly you realise that they do not engage with many of the systems in the game. In fact, due to the inability to earn credits, most missions become more focused on Rep (not always very important) and Kills/Terror level increases. Instead of a variety of objectives, you realise most missions become Team Deathmatch – highly appropriate for the gang but can be unpleasant for another player to deal with (especially if you find yourself locked in ONLY playing a Spyrer player).
By taking a Spyrer leader with a regular gang, you get to have an incredibly powerful early game figure (and one with a cool custom ruleset as you still level up via kills), combined with still playing the same campaign as everyone else. And with Enforcers, you get a gang that fits both thematically (perhaps a young noble has come down to make sure his house’s enforcers are doing what they should be) and mechanically (focusing on shooting alongside a close combat monster). It was great fun to be back using actual Necromunda tactics of using the cover and relying on only a single activation, rather than simple eating shots with high levels of armour and moving super fast. I will definitely be doing more with this gang.
Now, there was an elephant in the room when playing this game – this would be the last game using the old Enforcer book as the new one (Bastions of Law) had been announced with no release date. That was until, obviously summoned by my blood ritual of scarifising enforcers, that evening we got the announcement that pre-orders would be going up the following week. I got my pre-order in with Leodis Games (always buy from your FLGS) for several pieces – I expect I won’t be collecting the Enforcer Weapons and Upgrades spure this weekend due to an issue that has cropped up, but there is plenty to play around with. I was also tempted by the Haunts (because Psychic Cops) but the prospect of Forgeworld Resin makes me far more tempted to convert my own. The big changes are in the rules and I’m excited to play around with the new list building.
Now, if only I had some kind of game day that I should be preparing for. I hear the Dastardly Regular Opponent has a birthday coming up and there have been rumours that I may be busy in a few weekends time. Time to prepare a delegation from my noble house to ensure the workers aren’t slacking too much. The fun police, if you will…
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