Grudgingly Read: Weekly Progress; Necromunda Convoy Scenario, Downtown dust-up setup and figure prep

So, this weeks focus has been shared a bit more evenly between my game systems, but primarily on Necromunda. This week, we tried the Convoy scenario....

Setup for this was the most fun. Making that ambush alleyway through the Underhive was genuinely one of the most fun things I've done

The ability to make this a completely focused board gave me a headache, but was great fun at the same time. Half of the stuff I own is Mortalis, with big chunky blocks on either side of the tile. These are a little bit too harsh to play this scenario on, as parking everyone round the corner from an arriving caravan won’t make for a great scenario (may still have to play that one however).

So I used my open tiles to make the caravans approach be as tricky as possible to sneak up on. This way, the defenders could target people crossing to the caravan, and they themselves had room to manoeuvre.

I used a pretty short pathway for caravan to traverse, with only a slight deviation from a straight line to ensure that the scenario felt like a traversal, rather than an ambush.

Then to the high stuff. The main thing I picture with convoy heists is a good old canyon! (think Indiana Jones etc)

Therefore, I needed some good height to get some gunfire down on the caravan, but also wanted it to be high enough so that the attackers only had a couple of easy ‘jumping on’ points.

To that end, I made sure there were only 2-3 places where the attackers could jump on from on-high. Otherwise it would all be ground assaults!

The board was good, and I even played 2 games over the board before we did the convoy mission as well! The central bridge was a very dangerous place to be. But control that, and you’ve got open angles to everything else.

I wanted to make sure I was fairly balanced, the players in the campaign are a fairly easy going bunch, and we take the rules lightly when it comes to deciding which scenarios we play. With that in mind we generally play the scenario we want, and randomise the attackers/defenders if there are any. When one of us starts to excel, the other gets to be the side with the benefit. At this point both gangs were fairly evenly split.

So, to the mission then.

I used the Mechanicus crawler model, and the containers. Lovely models and fitting for this scenario. I would love to have some better Necromunda vehicles and a proper ‘cab’ unit for the tractor, but this will do.

Before the scenario started we also agreed to put a decent amount of cover on the unit itself, and a pintle mounted heavy stubber, which wouldn’t suffer the unwieldy trait, we used a random bit of metal found on my garage floor to represent that!

So, board was set, objective was planned. Combatants were my Cults vs Van Saar team of around 150-25 points lower difference.

We rolled off. I think I secretly wanted to be the descending attackers, and the Van Saar with low mobility and agility would be better defending?

Such is luck and I WAS the attacker.

The scenario deployment was a bit trickier for the attacker, whereby all models have to be deployed 6inches from any board edge other than that picked by the Caravan. This meant with the horde of boys I had (13 and one Chaos familiar) were able to surround the caravan on all sides with the intent to take out the escort and hop on board at the end. I therefore added a couple of boys near the terminus of the caravans path to ensure that happened. Turns out that was a very good idea!

The game went heavily in my favour fairly early by interrupting and/or pinning the majority of the big guns in the Van Saar gang.

Sadly for the Van Saar they couldn’t bottle as per the scenario rules so had to tough it out.

Great shooting all round from my guys meant that the Van Saar were quite unfairly hammered.

Now onto the looting, and this is biggie. GET ON THE CARAVAN ASAP!

Looting the caravan is a simple action, and you get one counter. There is no limit to the number of counters looted, and you don’t need to get the loot off the board.

However, its bloody hard to keep up with the caravan unless you intercept it. 6 inches of movement means you’ll need to close on it fast, as 6 inches is often more than a single gangers move. Because the caravan moves before everything else, and it’s a single action to climb on, you don’t want to end your move near its rear edge as you’ll not catch it in a single move.

You’ll need to be in a position in its middle or front, to move up and hop on appropriately.

Once you’re on the caravan you can focus on looting. There’s no winners/losers for this scenario, just a cash amount for all.

So I ‘only’ made around 200 credits from this scenario, but this could have been far higher had I focused on the money rather than the mosh-up.

The next scenario I’ve tried was the Archaeo Hunters mission. This one was a fairly easy one to setup, and the use of an Iron Circle model as the automata was very cool.

This game was Escher vs the Cults again with Vault point in the centre of one long edge, and the automata nestled in the centre of the board.

I was worried about this one, my gang had a few upgrades but were fairly beaten up. Low intelligence meant that I would struggle to control the automata, and the Escher had the same and better movement than I did.

Thankfully, infiltrate won me the day. Snuck my Disciple up on the bot and they clicked the automata on as I won priority (still took 2 intelligence rolls…). With her purpose done, she got torn apart by the incoming Escher, but I managed to move the automata slightly closer to my incoming cults.

From there, the Escher did a lot of hurt and without bodies I was fading fast. Luckily near the end of the game my enemy failed a bottle check and started to fade away. With possession of the automata I opened the gate and ran a couple of guys in.

Stupidly for me, I decided to get looting rather than trying to stop the last remaining Escher in. Had I have stopped her running in after my cultists I could have added a few more bodies.

With a clever move, my opponent moved her last ganger into the vault, ending the game, stopping me sending anyone else in, and nabbing herself some credits!

Good fun, but Cults will not do well without infiltrators.

Next scenario to try will be the Downtown Dust-up, with some bodies which have been made.