Last of the three part look into the Necromunda Cultists is the juicy one, here is an overview of each mission of 24 (thanks book 4) missions at time of going to press that will benefit you as the Chaos gang loving-sinisters the most....
Ultimately don't be afraid to give those I've noted as 'poor' choice a chance, as once the bullets get flying its all to play for! Based on how I run the gang (cheap horde) this is my interpretation of how each would go.
So I looked at all the missions and weighed up some strengths and weaknesses from last weeks blog post, and identified core strengths being...
- Large gang size, high movement capability, high initiative
Weaknesses being
- Weak secondary stats, poorly armoured guys, poor cool
- 5/13 times being the defender you’ll be worse off
- 7/13 times being the defender will be of neutral benefit
- 1/13 times being the defender are good for you! (Fighter down)
When you pick a scenario as the attacker
- 1/13 times being the attacker you’ll be worse off
- 5/13 times being the attacker will be of neutral benefit
- 7/13 instances of being the attacker are good for you. (Looters, Sabotage, Rescue mission, Prison break, Last stand, Caravan Heist, Escape
So stats wise –23.5% of these missions are not in your favour, 46% are neutral and 30.5% are good choices.
Generally then get in there and pick these missions be the attacker! Unless you’re really struggling with the rest of the campaign, be that attacker and get in there!
For the other 11 missions where there are no attackers/defenders.
- 6/11 are a bad choice (Downtown dust up, Shootout, Spook Harvest, Archeo hunters, Monster hunt, Murder Cyborg)
- 2/11 are a neutral choice and depend on your play style (Stand off, Border Dispute)
- 3/11 are a good choice (Claim the spire, Escape the Pit, In the dark)
54% bad, 18% neutral, 27% in your favour
Generally if you get to pick a mission and you want to do a scenario, pick the attackers/Defenders ones.
Here’s my detailed analysis....
Red for don’t do it!
Neutral grey for ‘it depends on you to win based on how you deploy/move/prioritise/play the mission’
Green for ‘this is gonna be fun’
Stand Off - Neutral choice - Nice and simple deathmatch
Looters as Defenders- Bad Choice, low numbers of starting fighters will mean you’re not guaranteed to get your decent guys on the field.
Looters as Attackers – Good choice, you’ve got decent abilities and mobility, so you should be able to get in there fast and out with the loot. -
Ambush as Defenders – Bad choice, you’ll have a better time at range, with low armour and highish cool you’ll suffer from not activating much.
Ambush as Attackers – Neutral choice Ultimately you don’t want to be near to the enemy, but needing to be close before the enemy can scatter away into better cover means you’re not going to excel here.
Border dispute - Neutral choice – You will do ok here, tending to bad simply for reinforcements. Moving to the enemy relic is easy enough with decent movement and even infiltration, however, a larger gang also means slower reinforcements (d3 a turn) so don’t expect everyone to arrive fast!
Sabotage, Rescue mission, Prison break as Defenders – Neutral choice– good initiative and movement mean that you’ll be roaming around the map and hopefully will spot people early. The bad is that you won’t have many people on the table to stop the full gang on the other side, and those guys on the table will be (on average) weaker than the others.
Sabotage, Rescue mission, Prison break as Attackers – Good choice –you can assign a cultist for each enemy and track the sentries with superior numbers. The high movement and initiative will allow for quick movement around these scenarios. Your primary skillset being cunning also allows infiltration up the map as well.
Claim the spire Good choice! Infiltrate to the highest point and reap those points. Decent movement and decent initiative means you can also race to the highest point if you don’t have an infiltrator, additional bodies mean you can dedicate some of your guys to pinning the other gang, while your fastest bods get cracking and climbing.
The Gauntlet as Defenders – Neutral choice, putting the melee/flamer armed guys near the enemy will definitely benefit the Ferocity skills in the gang, but your unarmoured helots will get chewed up fast.
The Gauntlet as Attackers – Neutral choice, you can move pretty quick with a lot of bodies at high initiative, but you are squishy so may close range is good, strength will help with close range stuff but Initiative may also be a big factor
Last stand as Defenders – Bad choice. This mission is a test of staying power without the ability to bring on more bodies, and Cults need bodies! While we may be good at this game at the start of the campaign, the further in we go, the harder it will be as the enemy can bring in their entire 20+ man gang fairly quickly.
When the enemy can keep bringing on their guys when they get knocked down they become the endless horde of guys! The random selection also puts us at a loss as we can miss out on the uppers altogether.
Last stand as Attackers – Good choice. The ability to bring on everyone? The whole crew? This works nicely in the large gangs favour as we’re pretty mobile too, and should mean we can whittle the enemy down fast, and be very themey with suiciding the guys up into the enemy
Escape the Pit - Good choice! Base gangers have decent Initiative to avoid the crushing walls of death, and good movement to get into the centre. If I were you, I’d place the loot directly in the direction you want to travel, so you can pick any up on your journey out. 1xp for the mission plus 1xp for escaping in the correct way is nothing to sniff at, if you can carry loot with you-great, ideally you can also get to the highest point with all the crates and wait for the walls to crush the other gang below you!
Downtown dust up - Bad choice. You can’t swarm these guys with bodies this time around, and the random selection hurts your game-style. You can be quite gamey with the placement of the Hive Dwellers but then so can the enemy, and stats wise a default Helot cultist is going to be worse off than any other ganger if they get shot by a stub gun from one of the guys nearby.
Shootout - Bad choice – Random selection method, small gang size, poor overall cool for gangers, the only saving grace is the initiative steps they may get ahead of others but not likely! Avoid!
Caravan heist As Defenders - Neutral choice. You get the benefit of not bottling, but we have that anyway with the size we are.
Unlimited bodies is also a great option to have. With you being locked to being near the caravan to protect it, you don’t get much defence standing around/in the open.
Caravan heist as attackers – Good choice. Climbing and jumping are the Cults strengths, we can ambush well from a decent position, and we have plenty of bodies to jump on and get capturing those counters. A horde of 5 guys leaping onto that thing would be great fun!
Spook Harvest - Bad choice. Custom selection – boo!
Intelligence checks to harvest – boo!
Toughness tests to take the stuff - boo!
Willpower to not fail – boo!
However, our guys are more disposable, so this would be fun as hell to get em all trying it.
In the dark – Good choice, the majority of basic weapons we have are ‘horrors of the dark attracting’ and so we’re likely not to enjoy firing much. Saying that we do quite well in close combat with ferocity and cunning skills, so when we are close we can do some damage. We can draw the enemy to shoot us with some sacrificial offerings.
As well as this we can bring enough bodies to not get tagged by the ‘Horrors in the dark’ 8inch from a friendly rule.
Archaeo hunters - Bad choice, Random selection, and intelligence to activate the Automata to help
Monster hunt – Bad choice, random selection, and the simple fact that your guys have to be pretty wounded to attract the monster in the dark, as well as getting rid of the monster lair counters at close range! We don’t like close!
The hit as Defenders - Bad choice, Random selection to start combined with the simple fact being that our leader to start is base toughness 3, the rest of use not being that tough doesn't help, leaders need bodies for the bullet shields!
The hit as Attackers - Neutral choice, again random selection, but at least we can keep bringing on bodies to take the leader out.
Settlement attack as Defenders - Neutral choice dependant on playstyle, we'd rather not be stuck in one place, as it doesn't benefit us much, however always getting cover does help.
Settlement attack as Attackers - Neutral choice, running at a wall defended by another gang with little cover? No thanks, there are a lot of us to flood the wall with attackers, but still...
Escape as Defenders - Neutral choice, stand and gun them down as they run at you seems pretty fun overall with your gunline of guys. overall no massive benefit other than horde tactics..
Escape as attackers - Good Choice - only three guys need to get off the board edge to win, which should be easy for the nimble horde.
Murder Cyborg - Bad choice, lets face it, we're likely to get the first wounds of the game, and trigger this guy to spawn in our territory. With them boltpistols it doesn't matter what protocol you get!
Escort mission as Defenders - Bad choice, low random selection (d3+5) to defend against the reinforceable waves of the enemy isn't fun.
Escort mission as Attackers - Neutral choice, still low random selection but combined with getting waves of people make this pretty fun, and ultimately suicidal assassinations is a fun one for our theme!
Fighter down as Defenders - Good choice, go after that downed boy with all you got!
Fighter down as attackers - Bad choice. Our wounded boy aint got high-quality guts to keep under a flak/mesh jacket so expect this mission to be over faaaaast...
Tactics summary
Cultists are great fun to play. Throw bodies at the enemy and don’t care about what happens to them. Because of their high movement, and good initiative they can and do enjoy highly mobile missions.
Harsh as it sounds, defending sucks for these guys. Try and get the decent missions where each gang is on a relatively even footing. VS missions are far better, and it seems like success with these guys will grow over time.
They don’t have physical staying power with their resilience, but can be bloody minded, which counts too.
Use cover where possible, double up against tougher targets, and avoid small squad missions if you can..
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