Necromunda: Hold Until Dawn

It's the final installment of the Assault on Precinct 17!

The gangs have mustered in full force, I've somehow still got my entire Police Squad more or less intact to keep them out. Six turns, and all they have to do to win is wipe me out entirely!

To help them, any time a board tile has more upright and active gangers than enforcers in it, it gets claimed during the end phase. Once it's claimed, my forces have to evacuate that sector as quickly as possible, using all their actions to get to friendly turf. The centre tile can't be claimed, and given their weight of numbers, it's likely going to be where I end up!

Turn One - Kick In The Doors

The gangs start off mustered around the four main entrances to the Precinct, although three of them (a particularly deadly trio of shooters) have already snuck into my armoury. The main thrust of the plan is that the gangers will use their superior numbers to wait out my turns, forcing me to use activations to do nothing much when I have nobody to shoot. 

However! They know that the nearest Palanite to their armour snipers is armed with flash grenades, and are anxious that a single well-placed blast could rob them of their turns. So the snipers go first, the Delaque leader letting all three of them move in sequence. First up, the Delaque leader puts some bolt rounds into the flash bomber, merely knocking him over where he's now out of sight. Then the Orlock harpoon champion manages to miss his shot, leaving the Delaque heavy to spray a final Enforcer with his big stubber. This takes my man down, although given the weight of firepower about to burst in through the door, it's not the worst place to be. 

Elsewhere, the breaching teams make their entries without too much bother. Whoever I bought these locks from was probably on the take! Luckily I've mined two of the entrances, and although the Orlock rad beamer manages to sweep their entryway clear, the Orlocks on the other side struggle to hit anything. As they stand about shooting erratically at the floor, the nearby Palanite team pop out, putting one of the hapless gangers on the floor with stub gun fire. 

The Goliaths are leading a big pack in through the south entrance, and there's not much I can do to stop this. In fact, they are also bringing extra members - some penal troopers, juves given a club and a frenzon collar apiece. Backed with some light Delaque and Van Saar firepower, this formidable slaughter pack pour into the corridors, taking down the hapless rookie on their way in. 

As I try to shuffle along the gantry that overlooks this entrance point, I manage to step on one of my own mines! The blast knocks the ammo jack who triggered it off the edge to his doom and also floors the chef. Clumsy! Following my tradition of diving off stuff, my overwatch specialist takes a stub cannon round to the shoulder and topples off the main gantry too. He survives the fall, but isn't left with such a commanding view of the battlefield. 

By the end of the turn, there are packs of hostile gangers pouring in through every door. I finish the turn off slightly ahead, having put three of them down, but I'm already losing control of what I have, and will have to abandon most of the outer sectors. At least I've managed to get the prison open, and the two criminals in there join my defence effort. For now, anyway...

Turn Two - Defund the Police

The attackers keep their initiative up and keep pouring in. Pootle starts by ordering his injured ganger to crawl on the mine blocking their ingress. Once he's absorbed the blast with his maimed torso, the others dash in, Pootle leading the charge himself with a nippy bolter flanking move that puts my Sergeant  down. His comrade, already pinned from the round before, doesn't last much longer, getting hammered by sheer weight of autofire. Both of these two succumb to their wounds this turn, leaving this entrance dangerously open!

The newly-freed criminal bounty hunter tries to plug the gap. He's a pistol slinging gunfighter, but some bad luck sees his autopistol run out of rounds and his bolt pistol miss. Rather than shooting up the newly-exposed Orlocks, I merely delay them with all these shots. 

The rest of the turn follows a similar pattern. Several of my guys have to retreat instead of shooting, and the attackers make a splendid job of prioritising those few who could retaliate. Goliath leader Prince Royal takes out all three of my gantry chaps with a near-perfect automatic shotgun burst, his drug-fuelled cronies murderate my ground troops, and a sea of Van Saar and Delaque from the other two quarters either rinse my proud policemen to the floor or drive them back. 

By the end of the turn, I've managed to take out precisely none of the attackers, although I've knocked a few over with frag grenades. Only my Captain is making much of a stand, in fact, and it's quite a flat one. The Van Saar rad cleaner has already sprayed him, inflicting a flesh wound and knocking him over. If he stands up, the repositioned sniper teams are going to make a colander out of his head. If he stays down, the goliath berserkers are on their way up the ladders. Not much of a choice...

To make matters worse, I've now lost half my team and fail my bottle test even with a reroll! So desertion could well become an issue. 

Turn Three - Defenestrate the Police

Sure enough, one of the scum from the jail decides to take this time to relocate to a new prison. And it's not a bad choice - although I manage to get my bolter copper up off the floor, pretty much everyone else gets flattened this turn. 

The Rogue Doc is shot off the gantry, where Van Saar gangers pounce on him. The bevvy of wounded enforcers in the centre are overrun and mopped up by Delaque and Goliaths, and the Bounty Hunter once again fails to take out any Orlocks before beating a retreat back towards his jail. A massive pack of massive men thunders up the ladders to the gantry, with the Van Saar leader melting my grenade launcher from distance with his plasma gun. 

As before, the Captain is really the only fighter putting up much of a scrap, and he does it from the floor, attempting to shoot down the Goliath prize fighter French Ruby from his prone position before it gets to clobbering time. The shot fails to connect, of course (my luck has been entirely to form all night), and the fourth turn is swiftly upon us with a mere trio of loyal police still standing. 

Turn Four - It's Always Darkest

Nobody turns and runs from my team! And that's the only good news I have. 

Orlocks flood round the corner and mow the bounty hunter down in an absolute hail of autogun fire. Any remaining troops on the floor are hosed with plasma and bolt fire, leaving nothing in the centre except the Captain and his loyal (if heavily wounded) trooper, the bolter-armed Hailstorm.

French Ruby slams into the Captain as his berserker juve flattens the Hailstorm before joining the final battle. As before, however, the Captain proves a tougher nut to crack than the Goliath can manage - two good hits bounce off his riot shield, then he wounds the big beefcake by swatting him over the head. That's just my retaliation hits, too - on my turn, I lash out again. But Goliaths aren't easily floored either, and I merely drive the big guy back. 

This leaves me locked in combat with the drug-enhanced juve, which at least makes me harder to shoot! But none of the attackers give a damn if they miss me and hit the worthless druggie, so a large number of snipers take careful aim on the gantry. 

Once the Captain has been further weakened by more rad blasts from the Van Saar underneath him, it's really a race to see who can land the finishing blow. The Goliath leader's shotgun glances off my armour, then the Delaque leader's bolter doesn't wound me. In the end, it's a bald shotgun shell from the Delaque heavy that settles my hash. Doubly flesh wounded, the weapon's knockback slips through my armour and slams me into the frenzon juve for bonus damage, and that proves terminal. 

Dawn never comes for the Palanites!

They Fought The Law and I Rolled One

That's been a good two months' worth of Sunday night gaming! Good fun too, a very cooperative experience for the gangers as they weighed their options up together and coordinated their strikes with deadly efficiency. 

Skype doesn't do the game justice, sadly, my cameras aren't really up to the adjustable angles a close-quarters maze in Necromunda calls for. So a big shout out to the four attackers for putting up with hazy details and approximated information, and I'm very glad they all kept coming back for more!

For my part, I had a hoot seeing the hapless Enforcers getting mullered. It was a pretty relentless mullering, though! Mostly the dice to blame, but actually I wonder if I'm actually failing to grasp some of the basic tactics in the game. Okay, having four brains to pick over the exact threats to react to probably helped, compared to my meagre one, but I did wish I'd managed to give them a better run for their money in the last fight there. My whole gang took down a mere two gangers and a juve - ouch!

That's it for now, although we may well be back for a go at some of the other cooperative scenarios in the future. Although really, Necromunda is a lot more fun when it's a lot less cooperative. I did point out that although the game closed with the attackers claiming the precinct, there are four gangs there and only one police station...