Skypehammer Round 11: Skypromunda

The death toll on Averment is rising! As the campaign surges towards its final moments, the Planetary Governor has issued a lockdown in the main Hive City. While the Space Wolves and Guard muster outside, determined to sell their lives dear, the Cabal's forces gather in force without the walls, brazenly displaying their overwhelming numbers. 

But one of their generals is away this week, so in an unexpected twist, we're playing Necromunda instead!

"You'll be fine. Straight as rails, it'll take you five minutes."

Pootle clapped the juve on the shoulder, gave him a reassuring grin and pressed the pair of stub guns into his hands. Bod looked back at his grizzled leader with wide-eyed awe, tinged heavily with trepidation. 

"We're all back here, keeping an eye." Pootle jerked a thumb at the other Flumps. Penfold, honing the edge of a harpoon to a shimmering razor. Posie and Perkin, twins, squabbling over who got to use which of their rugged autoguns. Batfink was swigging Second Best from an empty shell case, and Karate was stood at his side ready with a refill. Burk, counting under his breath as he thumbed ammo into an autogun hopper and frowning as he concentrated. 

"Hey, rivet your eyes on me, kid!" Pootle clicked his fingers for attention. "Remember what to do?"

Bod thought hard for a moment, then recited his tasks. "Go through the access door. Go right. Right again, down to the vault panel. Type in the code. Open the green box and bring what's inside back."

"And if there's a problem?"

"I whistle."

"You whistle, that's steely." Pootle slapped Bod's shoulder again and the boy nearly dropped the pistols. "Steady there! Those were mine once. These old sixers plugged me my first kill. Might get you yours some day. You ready?"

"Yes."

"Great. Off you go!"

The Flumps watched Bod take a few nervous breaths, jig from foot to foot and then dash out through the rusting hatchway that led to the Averment vault core. 

"Think he can do it?" Penfold asked. 

Pootle see-sawed his hand. "Maybe. He'll flush out whoever else is watching that vault, sure as iron rusts. If he makes it back, great, he's a veteran, tried and true and we buy him a snakebite. If not, his ma has three other kids the same age. We'll get another one. You lot ready?" They were. "Right! Take cover, Flumps, let's see who takes our bait."

-

Tonight, we're playing a fairly straight-forward skirmish game, hosted by me, Kraken. Three newbies to Necromunda, each with a starter gang, will be learning the rules the best way anyone can - in a live fire exercise. 

The objective, deep in the bowels of Averment Hive One, is to get a single ganger into the locked vault room. Or, if you're violent that way, drive off the other two gangs who have come to do the same thing. 

No proper maps tonight! Just like yours truly, Battle Chronicler can't handle a threesome. Photos to give you flavour, as ever. So without further ado, let's meet the contestants!

Omega Dawn - General Rapid

Left to Right - Daily Nu, Racko Lamda, Curtis Psi the Witch, Beta Blocker, Jackie Omega, Death Rho (Spawn), Lively Pi, Justified Nu and Gamma Ndeggs

Chaos Helots, fresh off the painting table! The largest of the three gangs tonight, with a fearsome Spawn at their disposal, and a plethora of lightly armed cultists, witches and disciples serving their Cabal-sponsored mistress. 

Lightly armed apart from all the grenades, heavy stubbers and psychic powers, that is. The Witch has a nasty aura he can turn on to cause insanity in nearby foes. And the Spawn (the Averment Campaign is famous for its Spawn) isn't maybe the fastest or most accurate, but it's appallingly tough and features the ability to more or less ignore any damage short of going Out of Action. If these plucky vultures get into the vault, they'll be able to open the blast doors and let the Cabal into the Hive!

The New Flumps - General Pootle

We never tire of telling tales of Pootle's Orlock gang from way back when. Here they are, safe in their retirement! 

Left to Right - Karate, Bod, Penfold, Batfink, Perkin, Pootle, Posie and Burke

But tonight, they will be played by their plucky offspring, a band of eight Orlocks with a good mix of medium range firepower, a harpoon gun and the boltgun of their leader, Pootle II, tonight representing a special client from the Unknowable faction. Versatile and resilient, they might not have the special options or abilities the other teams have, but they're certainly not to be sneezed at. 

Cogito Ergonomics - General Monkey

For the thinking man, accept no substitute. It has to be a gunstock from Cogito Ergonomics, the stylish Van Saar gun accessory craftsmen with a line in brutally suppressive mercenary work. Free suede combat holster with every kidnapping you order!

Left to Right - Stephen Claw-King, Ludwig Boltzgunn, Maximal Plankus, Halberd Einstein, Robot Hooker and 'Heavy' Volta

This is the smallest gang by a few heads, but they're also the most heavily armed and armoured. Nothing less than a 4+ save here, a selection of lethally accurate laser guns and the terrifying Rad Cannon to boot! Their leader, Maximal Plankus, also has a combination las-melta gun, easily the most devastating gun on the field. Can they suppress all the Chaos for an Alliance win?

Averment Hive One: Security Vault

Here's the table for tonight, a fairly standard Zone Mortalis board. There's only one important terrain feature in play tonight, the large hole with the bridge in the middle. Anyone getting shot within an inch of it has a chance to topple in. Otherwise, there's a few doors, but only one locked one - the all-important Vault in the bottom middle. 

The gangs each get to deploy in a 6'x6' corner square, and dice off to choose, although they can't pick the bottom right nearest the vault. The Orlocks go top right, the Van Saar take bottom left, the Cult is left furthest off on the other side of the bridge. But that might also mean the other two gangs run into each other first, letting the Cult divide and conquer!

Scouting for Boys

The early turn was very cagey. Not least because nobody had played before and we were feeling through the rules a bit. Nobody wanted to make any early enemies!

The Orlocks got the drop on the others, and started by running their juve, Bod, straight for the door that led towards the vault. The rest of the gang huddled out of sight around their leaders, waiting for a tactical advantage. 

So the Van Saar took the bait, sloped out of their corner and started getting lines of sight out across the board. Bod the Juve almost immediately got dropped by lasgun fire, and the Orlocks started shooting back, but at these ranges it was all pretty ineffectual. Lots of pinning and huddling in cover, very little blood. 

Disappointed by this, the Cult split up, sending the spawn and heavies in a vaguely Orlockish direction, and the Witch with various cultists towards the Van Saar. 

Bod, the sole casualty, turned out to have just a flesh wound, so lay on the floor in full sight of anyone who cared to look and wondered how the hell to get out of this one. 

Spawn of a New Era

The next couple of turns, though, things rapidly got lively. First up, the Cult shuffled about a bit and changed direction, sending their fire support to cover the bridge (and that vital door), whilst the spawn started closing towards the Orlocks. 

"15 metres? That's inside the room!"
"Posie! It is clearly inside the room! Get your shit together!"

They understandably got nervous about this, and huddled even closer together, keeping their guns trained in the direction they could hear the gentle thunder of mutant hooves from. One ganger ventured out to help poor old Bod, who in the meantime had started crawling towards the door, but he was quickly pinned by the Van Saar las-teams. 

However, the Van Saar now found themselves flanked by cult autoguns, although these, thanks to a quite spectacular number of ones, struggled to do anything other than pin the white suited snipers. Before this shooting match really got going, however, it was the Spawn's moment to shine. 

Using the Cult Demagogue's Overseer ability to fling it forward, the Spawn strode confidently into the middle of the Orlocks. Seemingly confused over what to eat first in this splendid buffet, it didn't actually hurt anyone, but it certainly got the Flumps' attention. 

Before they could really lay into it, however, the Van Saar had managed to manouver their heavy into position. Halberd Einstein planted a perfect Rad Cannon shot right in the middle of the fight, leaving everyone bar Pootle himself on their backs and slowly cooking. 

None of them are going to have children.

The extra flesh wounds this hit dished out left the Spawn a bit vulnerable, however, and between every single shot the Flumps could muster, they somehow brought the horror down. 

Flame On

The action kept hotting up from here on in. Everybody wanted to get through the door, with the Orlocks heading out in force and the Cult running headlong over the bridge. But nobody wanted to open the door first - then their rivals might go through before them!

The cult backline poured on firepower to try and break the Van Saar before they could regroup. A single well-flung firebomb nearly achieved this!

Except that it really wasn't well-flung at all - Lively Pi managed to fumble the toss spectacularly, landing the bomb more or less in his own face. Embarrassed and on fire, he dropped into the pit, out of the game and into all our hearts. 

Nor was he the last - the Cultists on the bridge drew a lot of fire, and although one of them made it all the way across, a couple more followed Pi down. Clearly, there was going to be a party in the Sump levels. 

Although the Flumps were looking like they had the numbers to rush the door, Halberd Einstein struck again. His rad cannon wiped a huge handful of Orlocks, already parbroiled by the early hit, straight out of the match. And the other Van Saar champion, Boltzgunn, took on the cult witch in close combat with his shield and stave. 

The injuries were totting up, with a fair few bodies piling up around the door, but everyone's nerve held for now. 

Shut That Door

Finally, a few brave souls made their grab for the door. One of the few Orlocks left nearby slammed the panel and the door opened, only to immediately slam shut again! The Van Saar played a Tactics card to deny the Orlocks the easy win. 

They quickly got it open again, but there was a lone cultist, who'd made it through the hail of fire to the other side of the bridge, just ready to jump through. Except she didn't! She made a lovely grenade toss instead, knocking Pootle and the Orlock heavy over in the doorway they were attempting to provide covering fire from. 

It was a target rich environment in there. 

The cultist got blown in half by shotgun fire straight afterwards, but the Orlocks were stuck in cover, picking wire out of their skin. All but plucky Bod, who'd been lurking behind a barricade all this time. He darted through the open door. 

That gave the Cultists the break they needed - their Demagogue Overseer ordered another of their endless supply of bodies into an impressive sprint, taking him right over the bridge and in behind Bod. 

The Van Saar cautiously moved forward, firing as they went. More Orlocks went down to melta and las shots, although not as many as could have - Averment really has been a snake-eye heavy campaign! In the background, their shielded champion very slowly forced the witch over the edge of the hole, then turned his shock stave on the Heavy Stubber. 

Olympic Vaulting

The race was now on for the door. The Cultists' nerve started to fail at this point, and their Demagogue was first to flee. Bod paused in his race for the vault to unload both stub pistols, point blank, into the cultist right behind him, and that sealed the hapless minion's fate. He crawled along behind the juve for a bit, then bled out in a corner. 

With the Cultists gone, the Van Saar turned all their firepower on the Orlocks. They'd yet to take a casualty in the game so far, their bodygloves and mesh were proving well worth the creds. So their gameplan was to shoot the Flumps into a retreat before Bod could figure out the code to the door. 

And it was close! But Maximal's melta was clearly stuck on defrost, and he just couldn't finish his targets. Instead, he nearly got spear-fished off the edge of the ledge by the Orlock Harpoon gun. It took a couple of tries, but in the end, Penfold reeled him off the edge. 

Even that wasn't quite his last move, though - another Tactics Card, Last Gasp, gave the Van Saar leader a final melta shot as he toppled into the blackness. This one struck home and fried Penfold, leaving Bod and Pootle as the last gangers standing for the Flumps. Could their nerve hold? 

Bod ran in a blind panic. He could hear the booted feet of the Van Saar thumping down the corridor behind him. Pootle's bolter was still firing, there was no mistaking that snap-crump noise, but the only other shots Bod could hear were lasfire. 

He'd been whistling for so long his lips were chapped. There was no help coming. 

He threw one of the stub pistols away - it was empty, and there was no time to reload. With the other, he hammered on the door. The code they'd given him hadn't worked! How the hell was he supposed to move a solid sheet of six-inch plasteel out of the way? Chew through it?

A flicker of light caught his eye - there, at the end of the corridor, the green glow of Van Saar eye pieces. One of their lethal fireteam had him in his sights. 

"Nyaaaargh!" he shouted, and unloaded his stubber into the door panel. It sparked and crackled, bursting into flame. If he couldn't have it, they certainly wouldn't. 

Except that the door groaned and swept upwards instead. He was in! He'd done it!

Result - Victory to the Flumps!

Back at the Drinking Hole

It came down to a very tense finish. Bod somehow managed to bodge his way past the door at the eleventh hour, nipping into the vault moments before he would have been hosed down by lasfire. The Van Saar had managed to wipe almost all other life from the field, but they were just too slow to catch up with Bod. 

Elsewhere, the cult licked their wounds. Or at least the two who'd run off did, the rest were in a big heap at the bottom of the hole. Later dice rolling revealed that the Orlocks were almost all going to be missing the next game with an impressive variety of permanent injuries. The cult got off relatively well, in the final analysis - in fact Lively Pi managed to convert his broken ribs into a writhing chaos mutation. He clearly knew what he was doing all along!

Bit of a slow game, perhaps, as we were all fumbling through a lot of new rules. And maybe Necromunda isn't as quick and simple to parse over Skype as 40K. But the players were very forgiving of my rules explanations, and it really was a cracking three-way shoot out. Brilliant game, cheers lads!

This means the Orlocks, serving the Unknowables, have the keys to the blast doors. What will they do with them? Will it make any difference? Tune in next week, as normal service will resume!

We promise this time - the very final final installment of the Averment Campaign!