Necromunda: Armoury Row II

Time for an apotheosis!

At the end of a Turf War campaign, you get the two gangs with the highest reputation together. And they fight! How simple can that be? No fancy footwork, no weird scenarios. Just a straightforward battle, the two gangs fighting it out with any running away being entirely voluntary. Winner takes the campaign. This final fight is called the Apotheosis of the campaign.

After some very fun clashes, Kasfunatu had joined me in my solo campaign, taking over the helm as Eschelon Containment Ltd, a Van Saar gang. Against them, competing for the honour of ruling Armoury Row, was the brutal power of Goliath's Sump City Slashers. They'd rocketed ahead in terms of reputation after a the Escher attempted to loot their turf and got very finally smacked down doing it. As leaders of the leaderboard, could they see off this last attempt to unseat them?

Go-Go Liath Dancers

The Sump City Slashers had developed from a small and beefy gang into a large and beefy gang, all equipped with as many stimm-slug stashes as I could afford. Their signature equipment, it allows you to boost a ganger to more than space marine strength and toughness, with a one in three chance of hurting yourself at the end of the turn. On top of this, it cures a flesh wound, and given that the Goliaths are already stronger and tougher than other gangs, makes them very hard to stop.

• Raging Bork Neckless - Leader, with combat shotgun and chainsword, can Inspire his gangers to run away less, has better armour than the others
• Masher Jack - Champion, two-handed hammer and bolt pistol, can Hurl people
• Spudd Gunn - Champion, grenade launcher and stub gun with dum-dum bullets, he's got True Grit
• Deff Ledd and Solid Durk - a pair of Stub Cannon gunners for short range firepower
• Raw Kane Lash - Hand Flamer and axe, for fiery assaults
• Brikk Waul - The hilarious Goliath combi-special, a plasma-stub pistol, plus an axe and a huge wrench
• Gurth - Another shooter with a rickety reclaimed autogun
• Metal Mann - token juve with a Brute Cleaver

So far, I'd learned that their extra toughness and reasonable armour meant these guys were pretty good at just storming forwards, taking whatever you could throw at them on the chin, and then mulching you at close range with an assortment of blunt tools.

Throw in tactics cards like Unstoppable Behemoth (someone completely shrugs off the hit they just took and gets back up) or Stimm-Slug Surge (adds move, attacks and even more strength, stacks with the drugs they can already take), and these guys are horribly hard hitting, with some decent firepower to cover their attack!

Van Sore

Kas used to run a Van Saar gang back in the day, and was delighted to be back in the saddle. He played four of their fights overall by the end, one against each of my other gangs and then the final.

It will surprise nobody who knows either of us to learn that he won all three of the first battles, including a brilliant shootout across a wobbly gangplank against the Goliaths and a miserably failed ambush from the Delaques, where they cut the lights and snuck in at close range only for the lights to turn right back on again before I could shoot anyone.

All of these guys sport their groovy Van Saar armoured undersuits, plus a healthy amount of Mesh armour upgrades. A few learnt the hard way that respirators, flugs and photo-goggles are all well worth having.

• Mads Kjetilsson - Leader, Plasma Pistol, Shock Stave and Sensor Skull, plus he's a Mentor to the others and helps them gain more experience for their kills
• Jinjer van Raad - Champion and heavy, toting the excellent Rad Cannon with added suspensors, some posh clothes to help him rake in the creds from their turf, plus he's a Marksman and Ballistics Expert
• Kjeld Vaal - Champion, plasma gun and energy shield, a Fast Shot and Munitioneer who's got the most kills of anyone in the campaign 
• Maakerel, Haalibut and Jake Hake - three gangers with an assortment of lasguns and hotshot, a reliable if rather low-strength gunline
• Baas Flånder - tooled with a Suppression Laser, a Van Saar special laser shotgun
• Captain Expendo - for the last fight, House Van Saar very kindly donated this unarmed juve to the gang. There were no credits to arm him, but that didn't stop Kas sending him into the front line to 'learn'. 

Eschelon are very much a gunline. Even at close range, even if you've tied them up - you can shoot into close combat in this game, and these guys aren't afraid to do it. Both the plasma gunners (Mads and Kjeld) have racked up a hefty number of KO's with their powerful guns, and Mads has even managed to excel in close combat a couple of times, once even beating three Delaque at once with his power stave.

That said, they can't fight in hand to hand otherwise. But they've proven resilient in their white armour, and very good at pinning the opposition with their lasgun volleys.

Stand-off

It's the last game of the campaign, and it's a straight fight for dominance. Last gang standing wins, and seeing as we can both choose to pass or fail Bottle Tests at will, such is the gangs' determination to win, it's likely to go down to the last man!

Here's the board, featuring a few deadfalls, a malfunctioning generatorium to the north that we both stayed well clear of, and the lovely red room that the original box set gives you. Kas made me set up first after roll-offs, which meant I started with initiative.

Both of us set up cagily, spreading fairly thin across our respective lines, although Kas was clearly thinking of doing some flanking with Kjeld, his plasma gunner, on the top edge.

First Contact

Over the first three turns or so, we closed in on each other.

The first casualty was the least exciting - there's a tactic card Kas found called Dangerous Footing, which lets you slap an instant pitfall on whoever you want. A simple initiative test to keep them alive, or out of the game they go. After this helped him deal with a Delaque Leader in the early game last time, both of us had chosen this stinker of a card and then waited to play it on each others' leaders as soon as possible. Mean! This time, Bork managed to jump the broken grate at his feet, but Mads (who had a twisted ankle from an earlier fight and wasn't so hot on initiative these days) took an early burton.

The Goliaths went hard and fast along the bottom, packing their shootier gangers into the central chamber to interfere with the Van Saar as they tried to reinforce. Immediately, the Van Saar started irradiating my gang. The Rad Cannon is my absolute bane at the moment - it has a huge template blast that's hard to hide from, and although it's very weak, anyone hit takes an automatic flesh wound. Great for pinning and weakening a gang on the way in!

All that gamma! And all it did was hulk them both out. 

Sure enough, my leader and his flamer backup got pinned in a pool of goo before they got too close. However, I managed to turn the tables a bit by using Goliath smarts - I broke through the locked door Kas was relying on to hold his flank, smashing through it with a massive axe, and slamming into his gunline from the side.

In the middle, I'd occupied the central chamber and had begun firing grenades into the corridor beyond, keeping the Van Saar reinforcements disrupted. Kas was very much on the back foot as Raad and Jake Hake got pulverised in close combat. Not without cost! Metal Mann, the juve who'd hacked through the door, took enough shooting on the way in that he succumbed to his flesh wounds afterwards. And Masher Jack, my champion, got shot in the back before he could actually flatten Raad, so it was down to the leader to finish the big heavy.

I'd been hoping to use Raw Kane's hand flamer to burn the Van Saar out. Nothing doing - in attempting to use his stimm stash to shrug off that radiation burn, he'd overdone it and collapsed in a frothing heap at the back!

Close Quarters Combat

From here, it turned into an absolute mess of a shootout.

In the central chamber, despite a barrage of grenades keeping the Van Saar from making great gains, I hadn't actually taken anyone out. Except Captain Expendo, of course, who was dancing a little jig in front of my guns and trying to keep me distracted. This is because you have to shoot the nearest ganger unless you pass a cool test first, and although Goliaths are pretty cool, he did divert my attention long enough for Kjeld Vaal to reach the action.

Kjeld is a murder machine, hitting very reliably with his plasma gun and usually finishing off what he hit. Coolly, he picked off first of all my grenade launcher, then most of the rest of the room, occasionally flinching manfully as stub cannon rounds knocked him off his feet. His energy shield kept him alive, though.

The action spilled back out into the corridor when Solid Durk ran out, flail whirling, and starting taking names. He took one name, not very carefully, leaving Maakerel flesh wounded, before the others shot him to bits.

On the south flank, my guys spent a little time gathering themselves, not quite willing to risk running into the one-man plasma storm Kjeld was laying down. This gave Raw Kane the time he needed to stop his acid flashback, get on his feet and get ready.

Once they were there and ready, though, I'd have a couple of nasty template weapons ready to let rip! And the Van Saar were pretty bunched up. Kas could see my hand twitching, reaching for the flamer teardrop...

Burn It Down

When it came to it, Kas just managed to mitigate the impact. He got initiative that round and ran headlong into the central room, spreading out as much as he could. It wasn't quite enough, and the flamer caught Kjeld and Haalibut, knocking them over and leaving Haalibut on fire.

Raw Kane was left in the open and had also run out of ammo, so Flånder took the opportunity to floor him with his laser shotty. And that obligingly left me line of sight for Neckless to unload the scatterstorm shells from his combat shotgun.

I love the combat shotgun precisely for this function - it turns the gun into a shrapnel blast, using a flamer template. Low strength, but the Van Saar were already flesh wounded from previous hits. Alas, there was a mild price, in that I also had to shoot my own guy on the floor. Poor old Raw Kane Lash, he was out of action. But perforating two of the Van Saar was a price worth paying!

Alas, I still hadn't hurt Kjeld, who immediately got up and shot back. And missed! We both had three gangers left in the game by this point, it was looking close.

Close, but no cigar. Bork charged in through the door, souped up with stimms, and starting whipping Kjeld with his chainsword. In a righteous world, that would have been game over for plasma boy, but Necromunda is not a righteous world. Instead, he cowered behind his energy shield long enough for Flånder to come in and shotgun Bork in the back.

After that, Kjeld was able to shoot the other remaining ganger in the red room. I was left with one on his feet, Brick Waul with his stub-plasma combigun and paired axes. Could he avenge everyone?

He gave it his best! But no, basically, no he couldn't. Instead, he first of all ran out of ammo for the plasma half of his gun. Although he miraculously shrugged off a round of shooting from all three Van Saar, he then embarrassed himself by not managing to finish off even one of them in hand to hand (I couldn't reach Kjeld, and Flånder got a lucky armour save in). Triple point blank fire finally took my last behemoth down, and that was that. Game!

Last Past the Post

Nine gangers went in, six came home for the Goliaths. Brick Waul was critically wounded, but nobody was left standing to take him to the doc, so he snuffed it. And Raw Kane Lash turned out to have died from being cruelly shotgunned by his own leader. Finally, Solid Durk had been captured, although with the campaign ending, the Van Saar were obliged to ransom him back for half his worth. A hatful of lost fingers, ankles and frontal lobes for the others, with only Raging Bork Neckless learning from his wound and scoring some bonus experience.

Eschelon were fine. Completely fine, nobody was badly hurt and they all had a nice shopping spree instead.

And they'd won! Kas had taken the smallest gang in the campaign and swept them straight to victory, leaving the other three all much diminished in his wake. So yes, despite this technically being my own solo campaign, I'd still lost to someone else. Mad skills, that Kraken.

Great fun! And it wasn't an unearned victory, he'd had to fight for it in a vicious game that could have easily gone my way. Although the rules do teeter on the edge of too much (so many moving parts, easily-overlooked subclauses and rules interactions are fairly common), they give you a cheerful tale of mindless violence, mad guns and angry loonies.

We will be back with more of this, once I've learned the rules for the more involved Territory campaign. And I will murder all Van Saar when I have!