Necromunda sessions on the new Towers

I had planned for a session of Necromunda last saturday with a good old friend, who actually brought along a colleague who had never played Necromunda before, but was very interested in. They're both professional set designers (hope I got the title translated right), so it was very nice to have the new Towers properly finished. We use the Necromunda Community Edition (NCE) rules from the utterly awesome YakTribe.

The initiate decided to use my old Spyrer miniatures, because they were painted the brightest. I didn't feel like continuing with the battle-hardened (and crippled) Cleaner folks from House Cawdor with the gang rating well over 2000, but gathered a pack of newly (almost) painted Skavies. Chose to proxy and run them as Delaques for now. Didn't have enough nice Mutants/Scalies for a proper Scavvy gang, or suitable Braves/Shamen/Totem Warriors for Ratskin Renegades. Felt a desire for some serious sneaky business, so Delaques were a no-brainer.

Delaques were my first gang back in the 90s' when the Necromunda initially came out. So as a nod towards the gang I employed then, I just had to pick up a Heavy with the heavy stubber, a couple of Juves with autopistols and gangers with shotguns & manstopper shells. Higher powers were paying attention when I rolled for territories. Very close to the repertory I got over twenty years ago, the dice came up with Old Ruins, Slag Heap, TWO Guilder Contacts and (drum roll...) VENTS!!! When shuffling the dice I actually announced that I had the Vents territory back in the day, and would need and definitely want them now. And then got them. Tears (and screams) of joy!

Facing our fresh gangs of Spyrer Hunters and Delaques were an experienced and well equipped gathering of Redemptionists with their pointy red hats. Almost everyone in their crusade had Frag grenades, which have proven awesome with the terrain we use (high buildings and cramped walkway areas).

I didn't keep any notes on the precise events of the two games we had, but took a couple of pictures when remembered. So rather than try to write a proper battle report(s), here are the pics I took with accompanying notes.

The setup for the first game, which was just a standard gang fight scenario. Tallest buildings on the edges and a killzone of rubble in the middle. We deployed our gangs just outside all the pieces of terrain on ground level, so no lucky first turn shots with heavy weapons/snipers were in order. The Redemptionists had some Quick Witted dude running for better positions, but unfortunately forgot to use another Brothers Infiltration skill. My Heavy along with one Ganger and a Juve were up in the Vents crawling to find the best positions from the Towers...

The tiny Delaque-rat Juve called "Anni Hilaattori" found a nice ventilation tower near the Redemptionists hideouts, and was instantly downed by the fire from their Priest and Brother with two pistols. The Juve immediately recovered to just a flesh wound, while the heavy-rat "Mickey Mausoleum" shot the Priest with 6 heavy stubber rounds but didn't wound with any of them. The Priest lost his balance however, and fell down to the hive floor.

Meanwhile the Spyrers advance amongst the rubble, Yelds flying high and efficiently covering behind their Chameleoline Wings. I missed a pic from a surprising and rather sad moment, when the Malcadon Spyrer succeeded in a 12" charge at the Redemptionists Deacon with flamer, won the combat easily but didn't wound the Deacon. The next turn some mace & plasma pistol wielding Brother joined in the fight. Malcadon failed to wound the Deacon again, and was then put out of action in turn by the brother. I think even the Orrus Spyrer struggled in combat against some shotgun wielding Brother for a while, but won in the end. My snipers (the Heavy and a Ganger with autogun, overexposed in the foreground) try to draw lines from their positions up in the walkway. Despite the Heavy rolling very high on the number of shots throughout the game and hitting with most, he rarely wounded anyone. The Yeld Spyrers in particular were escaping his shots very efficiently.

The other Yeld was also being harassed by three other Delaque-rats with shotgun and pistols to no avail for quite a while. Yeld then took better positions higher up to completely hide from my heavy stubber fire, but one of the Juves with bolt pistol and a scythe took a lucky shot on the uphiver, downing him. The Yeld the fell from the high walkway and later died on his injuries. Definitely not a nice start for a new gang and the player. 😢

One of the Spyrers, this Jakara here fared a lot better. Tried to sneak upon me, got hit with two shotguns (with manstoppers) and bolt pistol, but only got pinned. Then she proceeded to charge and wipe out two gangers and follow-up on my leader with the big staff of Lettuce (or is it Broccoli?). They fought for a few turns very evenly, both having swords, similiars weapon skills, initiatives and dice rolls. In the end the Jakara got one stab through and wasted my leader as well. Then the Spyrers actually won their very first game!

They even managed to capture one of the Redemptionist brothers, despite the poor Yeld (with three lasguns for a head) getting killed. All in all, a horrible number of fatal injuries were inflicted in this game even though only two or three of each gang went out of action. I got head wound and old battle wound on the two gangers sliced by the Jakara, and my leader VERY luckily got the impressive scars as a nice positive injury! Don't remember what the other gangs suffered, apart from the one captured guy.

We decided to settle the capture-thingy right away. Rather than confuse everybody with the actual ruleset from the Capture scenario, or even try to adapt it for three players, we devised our own simple rules. Normal Gang Fight scenario, with the Spyrers getting to place the captured (and drugged near comatose) Redemptionist brother ANYWHERE on the table. If the Spyrers won the fight, they would kill the captive. If the Redempionists won OR managed to get any fighter on base contact with the captive, he would be free and fine.

The game was rather short due to Spyrers and myself bottling out on our first or second rolls. Lots of uneffective shots from my heavy stubber again (he downed the wall-climbing Malcadon however, which was crucial), and the Spyrers managing surprisingly bad despite their superhuman abilities and trinkets. I spent several turns just to get into decent firing positions, and was then remorselessly gunned down by the zealous Redemptionists. In the end three more fighters got captured between us (all got traded back safe to their gangs), and some bitter enmities were developed.

Very nice day (and night) of gaming. The new big towers were an absolute joy to use. Gotta think of some different means of deploying the gangs however, put up some loot on the highest walkways and maybe introduce specific Treacherous Conditions to really get fighters up and running on the highest levels of the buildings as well. Now climbing even at the mid levels (already above 10" high) felt way too risky to even think about.