As you might have seen, things have been a little quiet on the old hobby front. This year is an important one for the day job and the last few months have seen me working additional hours as part of the push to the finish. This has, of course, meant that I have ended up with zero time for wargaming (aside from updating The News Stand each week). The paint pots remain sealed, the printers have been quiet, and several plans had to be cancelled. One of them was being involved in this year’s Necromunda campaign run by our group, which was annoying as this one was taking a step away from the Underhive in favour of the Ash Wastes. I had started preparing a gang (even printing out a vehicle), but the need for overtime caused me to have to put that project aside.

However, man can not live on overtime and catered food alone. I’ve been taking a long weekend at the start of each month as a rest period, a chance to properly decompress. The start of May saw me taking the break over the Bank Holiday weekend, which just so happened to line up with one of our group’s big Scout Hut game days, giving me a chance to get out of the house, see my friends and roll some dice. Now I just needed to get a gang together, including some vehicles.

As previously mentioned, my plan was to run Enforcers, pulling from the Bastions of Law book. This meant I could take the Tauros Venator, an updated version of a Forgeworld kit I used to long for when it appeared in White Dwarf for the Elysians. The kit had been picked up during my buying spree at the launch of Bastions of Law, and starting in our usual Monday hobby time, I built the vehicle up over a couple of sessions. It is mostly stock, with the only additional parts being a spare lasgun from the bits box next to the drive and a pair of 3D printed heads – my Enforcers are supposed to be space mercs (hence the colour scheme) and so come with a variety of heads from Anvil Digital Foundry, with this set including a sci-fi cowboy head for the gunner and a jungle fighter head with cap and aviators for the drive (who is also leaning over to shoot with his pistol because how could I not use those pose). This gives me a cool scout vehicle with double stubbers, providing some nasty firepower that could clear some space before moving enforcers on foot into the target area.

Speaking of moving the Enforcers in, they need something to keep them off the horrible GW sells a plastic kit for the Cargo-8 Hauler (something that is much beloved of our Necromunda master and former housemate Dreadquill), but I am a 3D printing man and so went looking for a suitable alternative. The Colossus from PrintMinis got me excited from an initial look, but going deeper, I discovered the combo set for an absolute steal. This is an incredible, multipart, modular setup that lets you build a regular hauler, the open-topped and gun-toting Line Breaker or the enclosed armoured Bullwark APC. But, because this is a modular kit, you can open up the folders, pull out the literal pile of parts and decide what sort of vehicle you want to create. For example, I decided that my truck full of space mercenaries would be a primarily civilian vehicle that has been retrofitted as a troop transport/armed convoy escort vehicle. After assembling the common base, the unarmoured truck cab upfront would nail the civilian but not unarmed look, while the rear bed used the extension pieces from the Linebreaker release. Thanks to how the kit works, you can create a ridiculous variety of vehicles, and I’m already pondering a few more (it even includes a printable shipping container, so I could really make a big old convoy through the wastes).

Now, this is where I get to admit one of my failings. My first attempt to print this vehicle involved printing out all the individual bits and assembling them as a kit. However, I soon discovered a problem – while my printer produces items I am very happy with, it’s not as well-calibrated as it could be. This led to a pile of pieces that looked fine but barely fit together, looking far more ramshackle than I’d like (or would make sense as a vehicle). The biggest problem was the bed at the back – designed to form a single space to be on top of the truck, a mismatched set of pieces made it look more like something that was just begging to explode. As demoralising as this was, and I will admit this failure did temper my excitement a great deal, I came back at the start of the week before the game day with a new plan – assemble the pieces in Blender and print as a single piece. This worked incredibly well, and I was able to finish assembling the truck in literally two evenings (one evening building the STLs and the other carefully glueing them together). A few heavy stubbers from AlpineWeiss3D’s Not So Enormous Tank Update kit, and I had myself an armoured truck to roll around the wastes in. True, not a painted one (I’m not a miracle worker), but good enough to get on the board.

Now the pieces are in place, let’s talk about putting them on the board – this will be where all the Ash Wastes players start looking at the truck and chuckling because THEY know how much that son of a bitch is going to cost. In Necromunda, you start with 1000 creds to build your gang. In Ash Wastes, you get an additional 400 creds to spend exclusively on all things high speed.

I proceeded to immediately spend 725 creds on building the Custom Rig – adding a transport bed and an extra hardpoint, making the pintle hardpoint 360 degrees and then buying a trio of heavy stubbers and a crew for the vehicle. Combine that with 315 creds for the Tauros Venator and it’s crew, I’m suddenly 1040 creds down and don’t have a leader yet. I just about managed to get a rough set together, with an Enforcer Leader (with an actually practical plasma pistol and power knife loadout), a Champion (armed with a stub pistol) and a Juve (also with a stub pistol). I’d then rely on Emergency Deputisation to get myself an extra body, but as someone used to running a small gang, even this felt ridiculously small.

However, something was wrong. The leader, although well armed and with Munitioneer to keep the guns going, just didn’t feel very exciting. Maybe it was the lack of painting on my converted Severina Raine model (originally designed to lead my eternally unfinished Escher gang), or maybe it was just the lack of bullshit I’m used to pulling (shouting TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK apparently not shenngihans enough). So at the last minute, I decided to change my gang to a Secundian Incursion gang, drop a regular leader and replace her with the Yeld Spyer. In the Underhive, this type is one of the weaker ones, but now we’re on the surface with the need to suddenly travel great distances, the fact that she has the same movement as my vehicles and her wings let her ignore most terrain means she is now a real threat. Plus, having a small missile launcher might be handy if people get too close.

And with that, it was time to play.

Game day came along, and after a lazy morning, I turned up for the afternoon session. The guys actually properly playing in the campaign had already been going at it, with the morning games across two tables seeing some shennighans among the various gangs. One thing that is cool with the Ash Wastes is getting away from the single-level Underhive fights and moving onto maps with verticality and larger spaces. Dreadquil has done a fantastic job of building terrain for this campaign (which you can read about on his blog), filling one table and partially filling another (helped out by various gantries that the Dastardly Regular Opponent has been keeping from me). This also leads to some fun plays, especially as now tools such as drop rigs and photogoggles (especially when the weather rolls in) are incredibly useful.

However, before we jump in, it’s worth catching up with someone who has previously graced this very publication. The Blobbies have returned and are now in a more powerful form – motorised! I wasn’t involved in setting up this gang; this has instead been a labour of love (and not a small amount of spite towards Blender) as The Corporate Regular Opponent decided to not only build a vehicle but go all out. The two blobbies on maulers have been modified and tweaked, one waving handcuffs and the other waving a traffic ticket. The Stimmer, the one with concerningly muscular arms, is riding a tiny dirt bike as syringes full of drugs hang out of his back. Even the two “normal” blobbies have police hats on as they tote their heavy weapons. If you thought the first round was well done, this lot is even better.

The centrepiece has to be the truck, though. Using the same Colossus kit, the Corporate Regular Opponent scaled it up to fit the seated blobby inside, then went to work on the wheels, using clear resin and some sculpting to make them look more in motion. It’s a great effect. The paint job is a perfect final touch, with the British police stickers, crisp exterior white paint work and the Soviet turquoise interior all done incredibly well. Now, the fact that the truck isn’t a Custom Rig is a crime that will be fixed in our next campaign, but I felt the need to share just what the Corporate Regular Opponent had managed to get done.

All this is fine, but what about the game? Well, it was a death race – rushing down a rolling road board attempting to be further forward when time runs out. I managed to get priority and position myself on the central road, all lined up to get that road advantage through most of the game and shoot off. Against me, I had the Blobbies, a Goliath gang on maulers accompanied by a truck full of dudes, and a horde of Cawdor, spread across various light vehicles (including a two-legged walker whose rider had a krak lance) and one suitably large and imposing Popemobile.

I took the lead early, but very quickly messed up my fragile alliance with the blobbies due to the sentry turret I had deployed on the back of my truck opening fire on the ominous vehicle behind me. Overall, my heavy stubbers spent most of their time experiencing stoppages and forcing ammo rolls, with the most dangerous thing in my gang being the Tauros Venator’s ability to come out on top when rammed by the other vehicles. The sentry gun also overheated by turn 3, as it enjoyed a rather target-rich environment. The good news was that my nightmare (of enemy gangers boarding the truck) didn’t happen, but I could definitely see a few people eyeing it up.

Nearing the end, and with the bad guys closing in, I decided to make one final push. Initially leaping to the rocks nearby, the Yeld then used her skill sprint to move 21″, heading toward the board edge in the final turn. However, it was not to be – the Dastardly Regular Opponent managed to get a quad bike just a little further forward, a suitable victory after seeing one of his vehicles smashed and a ganger 66’d. However, this is Necromunda – while his Ridge Walker destroyed my Venator with a krak lance, another of his vehicles raced forward. At first, we assumed he had just failed, matching my Yeld’s distance and unable to push past the quad. But then, we realised that the ganger on the back of the vehicle hadn’t activated. With a victorious cry, the Cawdor faithful dived off the front of the vehicle and claimed victory for the Emperor.

Ash Wastes seems a really good tweak to the Necromunda I have been playing (which admittedly has mostly been the sweat box of the Zone Mortalis). In many ways, ZM is the purest version of the game, with small boards, a heavy focus on close combat and requiring both a careful tactical mind to get through the tiles and an ability to adapt when things go wrong. In contrast, Ash Wastes seems to be a lot less deadly and a lot more madcap. Listening in on the game, you hear a lot of ridiculous things happening (collisions, flips and big plays abound) while there doesn’t seem to be quite the same level of grinding melee combat that can make the Zone Mortalis less fun for those lacking in close combat. I’m really excited about trying to play some more, either by taking some time off later this month for the big finale or in next year’s campaign (where I shall hopefully be free of this project).

However, it was also nice to just get out and play with my group. I’m reminded that, especially with non-ultramodern games, the big thing about them is getting together to roll dice and see each other face to face. Our weekly paint chats are fun, but actually getting struck down with laughter when someone flubs a dice roll or scream in good-hearted anguish when they pull some shenanigans? That’s why I game and that’s why I still very much this group I’ve managed to find myself in.

The long weekend also made me realise how much I actually like doing the hobby stuff as well – it was actually realxing to puit the truck together in the end, so I feel that forcing myself to actually put figures together or put some paint on them may be a big help for long term happiness (rather than suffering a hobby depression and just resorting to games as a quick fix.) Plus, I do have some paratroopers to finish off, but that’s a story for another time (along with the one about the even tinier soldiers).

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