Gang Wars

Life has been very busy lately so not much blogging going on.

Last night was the latest instalment in the clubs Necromunda campaign. THis is game 7 of a 10 game campaign, but so far I have only played in about 4 games (I think).  To be honest I have not been enjoying them very much so have skipped a few games.  

Whoever wins a game gets to pick teh scenarion for the next round, and as John and his Eldar won last time he sleected a scenario tailored specifically to his Eldar.  As far as the other gangs were concerned it was a pretty normal loot fight, with each payer trying to secure some loot counters without sufffering to many casualits. The Eldar however had come in search of a missing soulstone, and JOhn had to secretly select one of the loot counters to be the soulstone. That became his primary target for the mission, with the Eldat having a break point ot 75% and not allowed to voluntarily flee the battlefield.  

The other players were me with my Cawdor gang, Douglas with his Genestealer Cult and Andy's gang (I still cant remember what they are).

Andy started off and we pretty much all ganged up on the Eldar, and they took a pretty hefty pounding as a result.  I tried to make my contribution but my gang is well behind teh curve at this point in the campaign so Andy did most of the heavy lifting.

After a few rounds the Eldar were looking pretty ropy and I decided that the Genstealers that were breathing down my neck had ot be dealt with. Unfortunately it didnt quite go toplan and after a couple of rounds I failed my bottle test and exited the game, with the Genestealers right behind me.

This left John and Andy to fight for the win and with John having taken a good beating from everyone else Andy made short work of him, and what with John stuck until he failed a bottle test they finally called it when John got down to his last model, as there did not seem to be any point in spending the rest of the night chasing down a lone Eldar.  

So a fairly typical game of Necromunda for me, and a resounding victory for Andy and his gang.  I came away with no lasting casualties and gained another pile of useless stat advances and skills.  

 I suspect that that will be my last game in this campaign as I am not enjoying it.  I am finding the campaign system for Necromunda very frustrating as my gang has some excellent close combat advances, while not one of them has actually been in combat yet in the entire campaign!  While all the gangs have basically the same profiles the difference in skill lists seemd to be a bit silly. Some gangs get seem to have acces to some excellent skill sets that give them improved shooting and technical skills, while some seem to get skill sets that would seem better suited to Mordheim.  The running joke at the moment  is that my gang would be an excellent gang to use in Mordheim, where there are less firearms.  If I were to try this again I woudl probably select a different gang to use, something with a more suitable skill set!

Nest week something completely different.   Malifaux!

Round 4 in the Underhive

Round 4 of our Necromunda campaign and four of us turned up:

Me with my Cawdor
Rory with his Redemptionists
Andy with his squats
Dave with his Goliath Mob.

We rolled for random deployment again and I ended up deployed between Andy and Rory, with Dave on the opposite table edge.  Andy got the first turn, with me second, then Rory and Dave going last.

Boxed in.

Andy had his first go and using vents deployed two of his gang on top of a nearby building, granting him an excellent field of fire over my position.  In my turn my gang all ran for cover, either trying to stay out of site to looking for good firing positions.  Rory opted to go for a headlong charge towards me, while Dave started to send his mob towards Andy's gang.  

Under fire right from the start!

Turn two and when it rolled round to Andy his two advance gangers opened fire, putting one of my men out of action and pinning the other. Not a good start!  In my turn I returned fire with little success, while also trying to take out a few of the approaching Redemptionists, but to no avail.  Rory continued his advance, with a few shots pinning some of my gang members, while Dave swarmed toward Andy.   

Andy hastily redeployed to meet the approaching Goliaths, thankfully leaving me in peace as I had enough to deal with.  I tried to thin out the redemptionist numbers but could only manage a measly two downed from the heavy flamer, with everything else missing.  Rory's return fire was decisive, with three of my gang going down to their return fire, which combined with earlier casualties left me a bit short of men.

They're coming!

Across the other side of the board Dave had got stuck into Andy's squats and downed a fair few. Enough to force a bottle test on Andy, which he duly failed leaving three on the board.  I was right behind him as my casualties were starting to mount so I decided to call it a night there and cut my losses, leaving Dave and Rory to fight for the spoils.   Dave resorted to a bull rush on Rory, which worked quite well as Rory decided he had had enough as well, leaving Dave the victor!

Another short game (very short for me and Andy) and to make matters worse I lost my Heavy with the heavy flamer who succumbed to his wounds.

There was some post game discussion and there was a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the games.  In the end we came to the conclusion that the table was not large enough to allow for much in the way of movement. In three of the four games so far I had barely managed to get of my baseline, with vents and tunnels also proving invaluable as it let you deploy quite forward and create a buffer for you to move into.  Also most of the scenarios are designed for 2 players and cannot really be played with any more than that but there does not seem to be an easy solution to that as part of the attraction of these games is the social aspect and they would be lost if we went to two player games only. 

Next campaign game we are going to try a bigger table to see if that helps any, but my gang is starting to really suffer so I don't think that I am much of a contender any more in the campaign.  I will keep at it though and see how it goes!  

Apologies for the terrible photos this week (they are always terrible I know but these ones are worse than usual), as I pretty much forgot to take very many. 

Eldar prove to be a Pain

The penultimate game of 2014 saw round three of the clubs Necromunda campaign, with me having choice of scenario due to my victory in round two.

Participants for round three were:

Rory and his Redemptionists
Dave and his Goliaths
Ian and his Eschers
John and his Craftworld Eldar
My Cawdor gang.

The table just before we started.

Stuck in the corner. I never managed to advance much further than this!

As the club forum is currently down we did not have access to the campaign ladder that Rory had put up, and a lot of the scenarios were unsuitable for a 5 way game so we opted to play a gang fight.

We rolled randomly for deployment and I ended up sandwiched in a corner with John Eldar to my right and Ian's Eschers to my left. There was very little cover as well.  John wont the roll off for first turn and advanced towards my corner, with me going after him.  The game started well for me as I managed to down one of his Eldar and take another one out of action, while elsewhere on the board Dave decided that a headlong rush was a good tactic and tried it on Ian, with mixed success.  Rory was a bit isolated in his part of the board and started to advance towards the Eldar and Ian's Escher.

Turn two saw a couple of Eldar Guardians poke their head round the corner of a building and put two of my gangers down, while I incinerated one with a Melta Gun for his trouble.  Elsewhere on the table there was an almighty gunfight happening between Ian and Dave, with Dave starting to come off slightly worse, while Rory exchanged fire with some Eldar scouts.

Turn three and John's guardians put down another two of my gangers, at which point I decided I was on a hiding to nothing.  I had moved my gang about 3 inched in total, with basically no where to move unless I go through the Eldar, two of which had managed to put nearly half of my gang down in two rounds of shooting.  I called it a day at that and retired, slightly miffed at the whole affair.

bloomin' Eldar...grumble grumble

Dave was next to go, thanks to casualties, leaving Rory and Ian to contest the spoils, which Ian eventually won when Rory decided enough was enough.

Another miserable experience being completely outgunned by the Eldar, although a consolation was that I managed to actually kill one outright. Eldar are unable to replace casualties easily so that is a bonus for the future campaign for everyone.  I also managed to get a boatload if experience for fighting against a much more powerful gang and some advances. My gang is now starting to look like it has a close combat bias and would certainly do well in Mordheim!  Unfortunately this is Necromunda so I am not sure how much use these advances are going to be.

One thing about Necromunda is the amount of time and effort that it takes to put the table together, with 4 people all putting terrain together and laying out barricades etc. It makes for a very collaborative experience!

In other news our Chain of Command has moved on, with my German Platoon getting ready to make the assault on the French defended Baincthun bridge, after the other Platoon commanders fluffed their assaults (if you want something done!).  Unfortunately the French commander decided to give ground and withdrew. This would give him time to recover some men to his depleted platoon. This means that the way is clear for the German assault on Mont Lambert, which we are planning on playing in the new year as a big Cain of Command game. We should have enough models as there are already three Germans Platoons available for this and while there are only two French Platoons the casualties on the French side have been quite heavy so there should be enough models on their side as well.  Looking to concluding a fun campaign and trying a big Chain of Command game.

Loot in the Underhive

Game 2 of our ongoing Necromunda campaign came around and we had four players turn up:

Me, with me Cawdor
Rory's Redemptionists
Douglas genestealer Cult
Andy's Van Saar.

Andy had already played his round two game but decided that he needed the practice and joined us for round two.  The scenario was the Scavenger Hunt, which meant we were fighting over a number of loot counters spread around the table.  

We had all brought some terrain with us and we tried out best to use every ounce of it, which meant the 4x4 table had a good amount of cover on it.

Rory tries to shoehorn one last peice of terrain onto the field!

Ready for the off.

We asked another member of the club to place the loot markers so that it was all above board. Unfortunately he placed 5 of the 6 counters on the other side of the table, which meant I was going to struggle.  There was one loot counter in my corner of the table and I had hopes that I could at least manage to grab that one.  Alas this was not to be as Douglas made use of his Vents territory to drop a ganger right on top of the loot counter on our side of the table.  Andy, who has vents and tunnels managed to grab three counters right from the off, whereas Rory managed to get one.  Not a good start.  

Things got worse when I decided to start taking out the Genestealer Cult and had my gang spring from cover ready to launch a destructive Alpha strike. Alas I missed with everything, leaving me slightly exposed and staring down the sights of a flamer.   Luckily the worst I got was two men downed, and I managed to get the rest of my gang to cover.  An exchange of fire ensued between me and Douglas, with Douglas coming of slightly worse. I even managed to down one cultist with a lucky pistol shot from a juve.

Taking Cover

On the other side of the table Andy and Rory were exchanging shots with a few casualties. Eventually Rory's gang broke as he suffered losses in hand to hand. I was now starting to get the better of Douglas and he decided to leave the table with the single loot counter that he had (despite my best attempts to take it from him).

In the end there was some confusion as to the victory conditions.  In the scenario if you manage to collect every loot counter on the board and return to you deployment zone then you win the game.  Andy assumed this meant the remaining loot counters, whereas I assumed the it meant all of them, including the ones already taken off the field by the other gangs. There was some discussion and in the end it was decided that Andy could abscond with his loot if he wanted, leaving my gang in possession of the field.

So a rather Pyrrhic victory, but in the end I was just happy to earn some income!  In the last game I had no gangers left who could work any territories so am a bit behind on income.  I did quite well out of it for experience though, with a few advances gained to build on the advances from the last game against the Eldar.  My gang is starting to take shape, with clear specialisations appearing in some of my gang members.

Next game in the campaign is in a few weeks. and my victory allows me to select the scenario so that should be fun.

Turf War

So with the house move out of the way I finally managed to make a return to the club for a much needed break from unpacking boxes and decorating.  Luckily my return conincided with the inaugural game of the clubs Necromunda campaign.  We have decided to do this for a change of scenery from our usual Mordheim, and it has generated a lot of interest, with 12 players signing up.

We had six in attendance last night:

Me with my Cawdor

Rory with his redemptionists

Dave with his Goliath

Ken with his Cawdor

Andy with his squats (although I dont know what gang he was actually using)

John with his Eldar (there's alway one!)

We set up two tables and decided that it might be a little bit more even if we went for four players on the big table and 2 on the smaller table, as during our Mordheim games whenever there was an uneven number of players one usually just hung about on the sidelines and waited to pick off whatever was left of the other two warbands after they had finished fighting each other. 

We rolled off to see who would end up where and I ended up on the small table paired off against John's Eldar.  In Necromunda each warband has a rating, which reflects its size, level of equipment and experience.  The higher the score, the better your warband.  My warband rating for this game was 900, and thanks to all the special rules John's Eldar had a rating of over 1900.  I was not hopeful.

We started the game and there was not much to see as there was a lot of terrain. On the right we closed to short range and started to exchange shots, while on my left I set some gang members on Overwatch to hopefully stop Johns advance.  The Eldar quickly started to outgun me and if it wasnt for my Heavy armed with a Heavy Flamer and my Gang Leader armed with a Melta Gun I would not have inflicted any casualties on the Eldar at all.  In the end the best I managed to do to him was put one of the Guardians out of action, while forcing a bottle test due to the number of models that I had downed.  For my trouble I ended up with 5 gange members taken out of action, mostly thanks to a late game charge by the Eldar Warlock and some close combat guardians.  

All in all a disastrous start to the campaign, but not entirely unexpected considering what I was facing.  I managed to come away with some minor wounds and no loot as only your Gangers could gather any and they were all back at base nursing their wounds after being taken out by the rampaging Eldar.  The only bright side to this whole affair was that the massive difference in gang ratings meant that I gained a large amount of extra experience just for facing the Eldar and so gained a lot of advances.

On the other table Dave's Gloiath horde managed to emerge victorious, with numbers proving to be as effective as ever.

THis was my forst taste of Necromunda and it is hard to tell what to make of it as my game was so skewed by the presence of the Eldar.

Next game is in a month or so and hopefully it will be a bit more balanced!

Big Table, which I never got to use.

My gang trying to identify their strange looking opponents.

Dave's victorious Gloiaths.

Ken's Cawdor

Andy's squats

My gang take cover from he Eldar firepower.

Heavy Stubber takes aim (he never hit anything all game!)

On overwatch

Rory's redemptionists (all painted!!!)

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August Painting

Not much painting done in August.  Life has been busy with house selling, work and kids going back to school. Plus I have started playing Diablo3 again, as the v2 patch has actually turned it into quite a good game.

One thing I did manage was to get a gang painted for the club impending Necromunda campaign.  I am going to use the chaos cultists as a House Cawdor gang, as in the background they are supposed to be quite a bunch of fanatics, just my bunch are fanatical in the wrong way.  I could have used the chaos cultists rules but as I have never played Necromunda before I thought I would try and keep it simple.  The campaign has attracted quite a lot of interest and it looks like there are going to be a large number of players involved.

These are very hasty paint jobs and it really shows as there are lots of messy bits that could really do with getting tidied up, but they are good enough to hit the table for now....

Youths

Gangers

Heavy

Leader (with a strong left arm!)

No names are anything yet, but they did not turn out to bad in the end.