The armoured truck rumbled through the slums surrounding the Whisper Broker’s compound, each of the ramshackle shacks assembled from the detritus that forms in a busy shipping port, bonded together and covered in a strange sandy material to hold its’s form. The Captain ran an armoured glove down it, before being returned to the task at hand. Inside the vehicle, a riches a plenty, enough to buy a kingdom instead sent to buy the Security agency into the good graces of
A cough from beside him brought The Captain back to reality. He turned to find the bulky form of Tikho, one of the heavily armoured Subjugators and the squad’s explosive man. His visor raised, The Captain couldn’t help but notice the concerned look in the man’s eye.
“Well?” The Captain snapped before drawing himself back. “What troubles you trooper?”
“It’s Yalniz, Sir” the voice from inside the helmet rumbled in reply. “He’s acting a little… odd.”
“What kind of odd?” The Captain asked, peering over the mountain of flak to look up at the gas masked trooper sat behind the heavy stubber. Yalniz was never the most stable of troopers but The Captain did have to admit, he seemed especially squirrely today. His fingers seemed to be dancing over the safeties on the stubber, his head moving as if scanning for something.
Before the Captain could investigate further, a cry came up from the slums. Frantic radio messages echoed across the net, reports of shadowy figures creeping into position, of slave drivers and roaring chain blades. However, one sound cut through all of that.
The snap of the first heavy stubber round passing right by his head.
And we are off, the first game of the campaign. This was in some ways a bit of a trial by fire – neither myself or my opponent had played much Necromunda recently so there was a lot of re-learning to be done. Additionally, this was our first time in the campaign so we had to get used to things like Intrigues.
We’ll come back to those guys later.
I decided to challenge my opponent to the Whisper Brokers. It’s location bordered both of our holdings, it links to the life coin exchange I hold and sneaky dealings seemed perfect for the Delaque. My opponent agreed and decided the scenario. I had gathered a few suggestions from the GM, and we eventually settled on Caravan Heist, a fun scenario requiring something to represent the caravan. Thank god for the Bushmaster looking suitably “big bus”-y and roughly able to fit into the setting.
Sidenote: As you can see, we’re not playing over the traditional Necroumunda ironwork or sci-fi slums. Instead, I’ve broken out my modular Adobe compounds from Sarissa Precision. They are still in need of a paint job but as someone who hasn’t got dedicated Underhive terrain, the adobe buildings and tiles should make it easy enough to assemble a maze of firelines, sneaky places to move through and cover that matches up to the “traditional” way of playing Necromunda.
We laid out the terrain with a route through the maze, with two right angle turns (as with any vehicle escort mission in a FPS). Having worked it out, with the vehicle moving at 6″ a turn, we probably wouldn’t reach the final gates but it still gave use plenty of ground to play over.
Now let’s talk about deploying the Enforcers. I decided to use a tactics card to give me an extra figure in the infiltrate position, alongside my bounty hunter. This left me six figures to deploy. Two of my Subjugators (the champion Ser Hjälte and a stub gun wielder Bezlikiy), along with my Palanite Champion Tohtori and his concussion carbine, took up position on the southern board edge, planning to move parallel with the caravan.
My gang leader, The Captain, and my grenade launcher wielding Subjugator, Tikho, set up position to move alongside the caravan. The boltgun and GL are both among the longer range equipment in my arsenal and so can run a firefight along the main route.
The core of my plan was the little variation rule in the scenario – “The Caravan may be equipped with a weapon”. We decided a forward mounted pintle heavy stubber would be suitable and (after quickly printing it off on the 3d printer) undercoated it and put it to work.
My final enforcer, Yalnız, would sit behind the gun and man it, able to put down a storm of fire. The profile of the Heavy stubber in Necromunda is pretty nasty, with higher than average strength and a great set of range bands. It would be more than handy for dealing with anyone getting in the way of the convoy.
After realising the gap in the far side of the table, we added a few additional buildings. And then the Delaque started to deploy… WELL by deploy I mean place a few gangers down while piling the rest into infiltrate. A sneaky stand-off.
On the bottom side, the Delaque had brought along their ace in the hole – a Slave Guild group. Bringing four fighters at almost 800 credits in total, these guys are a fundamentally different fight compared to the rest of the gang – tough as nails and lots of lovely wargear.
On the top edge of the board, the rest of the Delaque appeared, taking up positions overlooking the centre of the board. The biggest danger at first appeared to be the gunman on top of the building, but the other chain-glaive fighter was lurking among them.
For infiltration, I deployed my final enforcer, Tilki, at a position to flank the Delaque on the top board edge…
And my personal ace in the hole, my bounty hunter appeared in the middle of the board. Thanks to her various pieces of equipment, Kimsesys is able to move across the terrain easily, making up for her lack of ranged weapons. From this location, she could either choose to tangle with the Slavers or help clear the route for the
The Delaque infiltration was mostly filling in gaps. The main threat for me was the sniper champion nad a lasgunner taking up positions close to the target location. There was also the Delaque appearing behind cover along the vehicle route, obviously planning a quick rush to grab a loot token.
And then the bullshit began.
I MEAN, Intrigues. My opponent revealed he acquired this card from the roll. And worse the dice gods were against me. As we rolled for a which character I would be losing control of they chose…
Yalnız, the Enforcer currently sat behind the heavy stubber, with a perfect flank on my leader and main death dealer.
Well then.
Game on!
As expected and out of the gate, I wanted to shut the stubber down ASAP. For first activation, both The Captain and Tikho started dropping rounds onto the caravan (probably much to the drivers annoyance). I only managed to inflict a single flesh wound, but it was better than nothing.
On the bottom flank, a melee brawl was soon to begin. Of course, the Delaque started it off the way they usually do with a quick burst of webber fluid. Unlike in the demo game however, only one figure fell foul of the annoying stuff. Ser Hjälte, despite his best attempts, found himself tied up in the horrible goo.
I pushed forward to lock the webslinger down, using Bezlikiy and his riot shield to engage the target.
Of course, a lasgun equipped Delaque was quick to start putting lasgun shots down range, just showing how enveloped the Enforcers were.
On the main road, Kimsesys, my bounty hunter moved quickly to take out the lone gunman in the way. Although she was able to move quickly, the sneaky little Delaque managed to just about survive with a few lucky dice rolls.
Back at the caravan, the grenadier decided to move into a more dramatic position, climbing on board for a scuffle. These two would fight as the vehicle drove along.
While the Subjugator Champion was still webbed up, the Palanite Champion would now have to fight the Slavers and their pile of toys. Surprisingly, the fighting wasn’t as against the Enforcers as you might expect. The armour held, while the use of a Dum-Dum rounds as a reaction caused some damage.
Also useful in this fight was the armoured shield of Bezlikiy, the nearby Subjugator. It made his armour save stop nearly everything thrown against him, and being able to react with a higher strength pistol shot gave him the ability to react to someone attempting to chain-glaive him, seriously injuring a slaver but not taking them out of action.
On the other side of the board, the sniper and lasgunner were trading rounds with Tilki, distracting them from the main group. In fact, the sniper even managed to run out of ammo, forcing a quick reload check.
Also trading rounds with the enforcer was the other overwatching lasgunner. These two got into a little bit of a two way shooting range – turns out combat shotguns had just enough range and just enough firepower to land a hit (even if it didn’t cause a kill)
Back at the Caravan, The Captain was about to climb aboard when a lone Delaque juve came round the corner and went in all guns blazing. The shots were successful, knocking him prone before he could join the brawl on top of the vehicle.
In the midst of the street fight, the first enforcer was about to bite the dust. Distracted by a fight against the Webber gunner, the Bezlikiy didn’t spot the harpoon gun Slaver creeping up on him. With a resounding THUNK, the harpoon went through the armour and knocked down the Enforcer. Just afterwards, the Webber Champion delivered a killing blow, taking my guy out of action. And to finish off this whole fight, the currently webbed up champion also received a coup-de-grace.
On the other side of the map, the Delaque Leader started sneaking up behind the shotgun wielding enforcer on the balcony before the round ended.
At which point my opponent revealed another of his intrigues – there was more than one imposter on the board! And again, the dice rolling was here for shenanigans. Turns out the Delaque Leader was actually an imposter here to provide some information to the newly arrived McNespy Agency. Time to swap more character cards over and give me an extra ganger to use.
Another good piece of news was Kimsesys finally wining the back and forth. With them already being engaged, victory in the first action meant the second was the stomp of a servo claw onto the ganger, taking them out of action.
Of course, you can’t win all the time. Tohtori fought bravely, Stub rounds flashing in the darkness, but King of the Slaver group did one point of damage, a mastercrafted las pistol did another and then a final Delaque assault administered the coup de grace.
You can also see a similar event in the background as The Captain, injured by the burst of pistol fire was finished off by the whirring chain glaive of the slaver. Two major characters taken out in one turn, not a good event!
However, it wasn’t all going the Delaque way. As well as murdering the lone ganger in the open, Tikho had killed off the imposter on the caravan. For the moment, the caravan was relatively safe and I had some gun covering it.
Bad news – the sniper and lasgunner were about to open up. First of all, Kimsesys was hit by a round and knocked prone (although unharmed and able to roll out of the way of the oncoming caravan).
Into the Round 4 (and the final one of the evening as it was getting late and a school night) and the Delaque shooting caused more havoc. Pretty much all of the remaining fighters were knocked prone by the pair of lasguns and sniper rifle.
In fact, Kimseys was knocked prone so hard she fell off the room. Luckily the low buildings means she was okay, although I am now wondering if Catfall might have been a handy skill.
With all my activations done, the Delaque managed to get to the caravan and start looting. However, as bad as this might look, it actually wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Only four token were able to be grabbed before we called it (obviously the Whisper Broker’s guards came out to see what the gun battle was).
I had managed to withdraw a few people, preventing them from being taken out completely (or worse, captured). But the caravan got through, and only for the loss of four enforcers.
In the post game, both sides came away pretty nicely. The Delaque took no long term casualties (servo claw injuries can just be walked off) while I only had one of my casualties sent into recovery. We both raked in the cash and XP – you earn a lot of dosh from each loot token, and the Delaque getting only 4 tokens meant I still got the bonus for delivering (obviously the Whisper Broker accepts a certain amount of corruption).
I’m still working out my spending. Despite only spending two champions to the trading post (my captain being out of action and unable to go) I managed to hit a rarity of 14 and so pretty much anything legal was on the table. As much as I don’t want to waste my opportunity for some new shiny toys, I would also like to add another ganger to the board – someone with a boltgun and stub pistol would give a handy additional long range weapon, while the dum-dum rounds are handy for close quarters reaction shots.
Helena McNespy rested her armoured boots on the desk of her cabin. She lowered her sun-shades, closing them and placing the fine lenses into the top of her armour. “So, the Whisper Brokers have come round to our ways? Excellent, the Life Coin Exchange will look forward to having an inside track on the location of new bounties. Before we know it, we’ll have those underhive scum on the run.”
Across from her, Sgt Tohtori shifted uneasily, rubbing “Commander, the Delaque are…”
“A minor obstacle, nothing to be too concerned about. Once we have a foothold, we can work to break their organisation apart.” She sniffed. “Go and prepare your team for a new mission Sgt, we’ll have need of them.”
“But the Captain…” Sgt Tohtori started but a gloved hand was raised in front of him.
“The Captain will need time to recover. But don’t worry. I have heard some of the local scum wish to assist us… for a price. And thanks to your success, we have plenty of credits to go around.”