SumpKroc, many Necromunda games played, Escher take to the field, Armigers are good in Heresy!

He’s green and mean and looks far too clean…Its Krocka my Goliath Sump Kroc! I’ve currently got 2 Goliath gangs running in 2 separate campaigns, and only just managed to afford this charmer in one.

Painting this guy was fairly easy, and I didn’t nearly apply as much attention as I should have (plus the camera washes everything out)


Started with a layer of Caliban Green, then adding progressively more Averland Sunset I progressively drybrushed up the highlighted areas. As he was looking very saturated and classic Crocodile colour I then wanted to dull him back to something paler, so washed him completely with a Caliban Green wash again, and then went over the drybrush again with a touch more Ceramite White rather than yellow.

I actually remembered to do his mouth first, and I must say I really like his teeth and gums. Starting with Ushtabi on the teeth I then washed them with Druchi Violet around their gums and mouth as well before a wash of Pink once it had dried. Finally I highlighted the teeth with pure Ceramite White. I think it looks nice and organic!

I did debate whether to go over the belly region as that’s often the lighter area with reptiles in 40k/AOS but didn’t want to in the end.

Statwise he’s close to a Goliath champion. He’s slower with only Move 3”, but WS 3+, T4, S4, unfortunately Initiative 6+, 2 attacks, 5+ armour (all round) with a decent AP-1 + Rending weapon

I didn’t realise that Krocka can be fairly independent as well, outside of 3 inches it needs to pass a cool check or run back to the boss man, well this thing is cool 6+ so shouldn’t fail too many of those. Great for corralling the enemy into the bosses arms!

Looking forward to pairing him and the main man up on some missions.

Games played
Speaking of missions…Necromunda has some fantastic missions and scenarios. So we’ve been making conscious attempts to try all of the scenarios available to us, rather than sticking to just those which the campaign chart recommend.

This works fairly well, as a fair amount of the games which we should (according to the rules in the books) would be picked, and then dominated by the leading gang, which doesn’t make for great games (everyone would always play ambush surely?).

Our way, we alternate picking fun scenarios, if it’s an attacker + defender we then flip a coin.

Recently, great fun had with the Prison escape mission. 3 plucky Orlocks against the many Cultists. With a fairly hard scenario as it was, my opponent performed fairly well, waiting out the random movement of the sentries to pounce on the one that ventured too near to the cell door!

Sadly, one lucky roll and all them thar reinforcements start coming onto the table, whereas each ganger can get a code or a weapon from an enemy they take down, codes are not helpful when the alarm is going off! (That rule should be a ‘pick between a weapon or a code’.

Victory Chaos cults!

Moot!
Next up we played Gang moot with all 4 leaders. With our campaign we each have 2 gangs in the running, so had to randomise the focus in game as otherwise it would be a big 2vs2 game rather than free for all. We played it so that 1-2 you had to target your other gang, 3-4 you target enemy Gang 1, 5-6 Enemy Gang 2 ( with caveats if you’re within 3 inches of an enemy/engaged etc).

This works pretty well, as it matches the chaos in the scenario itself, and makes for some fun randomised moments, the Escher leader managed to take out all three leaders, (including my opponents own-controlled Orlock champion) and get away scot-free.

After the leaders disappeared thanks to the Escher, no one was able to directly alert their fighters. The rest of the gangs generally moved towards the centre of the board to try and notice the loss of their leader. As one of the closer and smarter gangs (as its based on intelligence check) the Orlocks ran first, having brought a smaller crew anyway. Therefore the first time that a ganger made it into range of the enemy, he notified his buddies and fled.

Chaos cults didn’t have much force on the board with the random selection, so after a turn of speculative shooting to knock out a couple of targets, they legged it too.

My Goliath were fairly slow and plodding to react and were the last to flee the field battle. Victory Escher!

Escher
I managed to get these ladies on the field as well, so first game with an Escher force was interesting. Turns out standing them clumped for an infiltrating Delaque was not smart.

Armiger Helverins
Happily later in the week the rules for the Armigers in Heresy dropped, finally a nice way to be able to use some of these lovely models. I’m still behind on all of my painting, but having a couple of these boys supporting the larger Thrall-knight will be nice.

The rules for these guys are fairly decent, but I would struggle to pick between the Sunder-auto-cannons, or the Melta. Mechanicum do suffer from decent ranged anti-tank and the auto-cannons may be the safer choice for long range smackdown. Pricey for that cost however so will see how the model works best.

I can also see some fairly reasonable proxies using the Secutarii Strider vehicles from 40k, potentially with some covered cockpits etc. Hmmm, maybe.


Next week, we magnetise some Goliath like a bitch, play some more games and maybe discuss gaming aids.


Thanks all!