And so, all good things must come to an end. The Necromunda Campaign that we started all the way back in October came to an end after 6 weeks of furious gaming. It’s been a great little ride, giving em a chance to try a brand new game, build up a cool gang for it and then beat up my friends in open combat.
However, before we wrap up, we must first talk about my trip t’up North to Middlesbrough to catch up with the campaign arbitrator (and former housemate). One of my goals in terms of moving back was to be able to catch up with my friend groups in the Leeds/York/Middlesbrough area but in a move that will shock literally no one, that didn’t happen due to the past year. However, it was nice finally getting up there and just hanging out, going for food and few beers on the Friday evening.
But enough life stuff, lets talk about the games! So the big thing about going up north is getting to play on different types of terrain. Despite having a pile of MDF buildings, most of my terrain is very modern realistic, with not a massive variety in terrain elevation aside from maybe a floor or two. This is in contrast to the Campaign Administrator’s pile of terrain – from the tiles of the Underhive release up to this rather marvellous multiple layered monstrosity that he came up with. The MDF is all from Mad Gaming Terrain, which I have to say is a pretty fantastic set with plenty of nice design features – I particularly like the fact they have assembled a full system with different wall sizes, doors and more. Plus they are easy enough to go from walls on a single plane up to multiple levels with large detail pieces to stretch between the levels.
This is also the third style of terrain for Necromunda I’ve played on, adding in a greater amount of vertical terrain than I’ve tried before. It’s great seeing how the same rules work in different ways, with the vertical terrain adding in another level of horror/complications to the usual gang fights. Different gear becomes much more useful – things like grav-chutes and rappels went from “a nice handy thing” to “incredibly important to get an edge”. Also positioning becomes much more important – being near edges means you’re likely to fall off if your stats are lacking.
With that pre-amble out of the way, lets run through the games!
Game 1
On the Friday night I kicked off taking on an Orlock gang. As someone who had only been fighting Delaque and choas gangs so far, fighting Orlocks was a pretty major change. They feel a little bit like Enforcers with their statline but OH BOY they have some fiendish tools at their disposal. The combination of demolition charges and jet packs would prove to be a pretty nasty setup.
In the game, the mission “The Hit” was decided, with Orlock competing for my Whisper Broker. Thanks to the bar on the board, it was obviously the McNespy boys had been hitting the beers when suddenly the Orlock attack! And let it be said, the Orlock attack was pretty damn effective. Sending in the juves in jump packs and demo charges let them out manoeuvre my guys (especially with the weekly event of Bad Air slowing my guys down) and drop large templates of death down on people. My attempts at return fire were… unlucky to say the least; one of the Orlock gangers ended up with 10 serious injuries after being opened up on by a close range heavy bolter attack, made worse when the knockback pushed him into a pit right next to a secondary objective. On the other hand, I did cause some damage – the Heavy Bolter on Grom actually did wreck another Orlock but Kimsesys managed to do some glorious death from above before destroying a few other gangers.
End Result? The Orlock guys took control of my Racket and I had some guys out of action for the following day.
Game 2
Game 2, after a breakfast of Greggs Steak Bake, saw me face off against the Van Saar gang that had been kicking ass left right and centre and was at the time leading the pack with how many territories and kills they had. Because of this, I had a little bit of worry facing off against them.
As predicted, the game had the most out of actions I think I’ve ever seen, with the Enforcers ending up with a single figure who eventually bottled out. However, aside from a few standout deaths (including me 66’ing one of the Van Saar champions who had been a Pain for most of the campaign) the vast majority were simply knocked cold or into recovery, leaving each gang relatively well off by the end. The Van Saar provied just how dangerous their shooting was. However, after some tutoring the night before form my fellow Enforcer player, I realised that concussion weapons and edges were going to be key. That said, the best drop related death had to be what’s pictured above – a falling Van Saar manged to land and knock out my ever useful bounty hunter.
The mission however was key – Manufactorum Raid. This required the Van Saars to actually get across the board to all three locations and set off bombs. I managed to hold off one flank, thanks to the combination of Heavy Bolters and building hugging Bounty Hunters and this just scraped me a win thanks to some interesting wording in the scenario, despite managing to set off the other two bombs.
In the post game, I managed to reach into intrigues and pulled “Resurrection”. This intrigue is dangerous with a very high chance of knocking your alignment around. Luckily, I rolled successfully and my favourite Grenadier Tikho returned to the fray.
Game 3
***Image Missing – reminder to always take photos of games!***
The final game of the weekend was supposed to be a full size battle but unfortunately we ran out of time due to the first game overrunning. Because of this, we settled on doing a Gang Raid, something quick and fun to wrap up. Even better, we settled on Clandestine Rendezvous – a rogue enforcer? I guess someone in the McNespy organisation was about to tell the rest of the gangs about what we’ve been up to and has joined up with the OTHER Delaque gang. I end the campaign as I started – fighting Delaque!
And to make it even more of a similarity to the start of the campaign, a certain intrigue card re-occurred. Turns out Tikho wasn’t exactly who we thought he was, swapping sides and adding a grenade launcher to the Delaque arsenal. The bigger problem was that it removed half of my coverage of the map, giving an easy route out for the corrupt enforcer. A good win for the Delaque!
On the other hand, Grom once again proved his worth by just vaporising a juve turn 1. I’m really annoyed I didn’t get the heavy bolter out sooner – it’s definitely worth the 305 points he totals.
Wrap Up
And with that my campaign finished. I unfortunately missed out on the finale game as I was busy the following weekend but from all the photos, the remaining gangs had to survive the ravenous hordes of hungry cannibals.
Triumph | Criteria | Final Position |
Racketeer | Most Rackets Owned | Joint 3rd |
Financier | Largest Wealth | 5th |
Muscle | Most Battles Fought | 2nd |
Hitman | Most fighters taken Out of Action | 3rd |
Lord of Law | Highest Rep (Lawful) | Joint 1st |
Of course, as part of the wrap up is seeing how well I fared in the grand scheme of things. There are several “triumphs” that are awarded at the end of the campaign and I managed to do pretty well overall! Out of the 11 gangs in the campaign, ending up in the top 5 for everything was a pretty successful result.
How did I find it personally? Honestly, a Necromunda campaign is unlike anything you can play. I love campaigns anyway but the addition of all the extra building blocks means that Necromunda just sticks in your brain for long time. I spent several evenings still thinking about what the next step of the gang would be, what gear and gangers do I need, what might I need to purchase for. Enforcers were both a good first choice and maybe a little bit of a crutch at the same time – they have a well rounded statline and a pretty handy house equipment list but the free juves is a real good safety net. On the other hand, you’re lacking some of the more exciting elements – only having a max of two champions, a lack of weird and wonderful alternative gangers/juves/champions and less chance to do wild and crazy things. If I run them in a future campaign, I’ll probably push in a few other directions with them, such as leaning HARD into the boltguns and picking up more concussion weapons.
However, there is a whisper on the breeze that there will be a new campaign next spring… and I do have all these Escher to assemble. Necromunda will return…