The Bald and the Bellicose

 I've had a bit of a Necromunda renaissance here at home. 

My old pal General Bubonicus (last seen on this blog here, where he nearly romped to victory in the Swedish Woffboot) has fallen for the game in a big way. He's hosting a four-player weekend tourney in the near future, he's spent hundreds on mdf terrain, he's converted an immaculate Redemptionist gang. Everything he needs, in short, for the full Necromunda experience. 

Except he's never played the current game. 

Enter the Kraken - I offered to host a few matches to help him learn the rules. Necromunda is easily one of GW's better game settings, it's got one of the best ranges of models and scenery and is still popular and fairly well supported. What it totally falls down on are the rules. 

There are a million and one rulebooks and supplements. Many of them are a bit out of date now, with the latest rulebook at least representing a decent effort to put everything important in one place and keep it simple. That rulebook is over 200 pages long. 

It's a daunting game to learn, is what I'm saying. It deliberately makes no effort to be particularly balanced, which is mostly great - it's almost a roleplaying game, really, a mad story generator. Given that some of the optional rules are a lot stronger than others, though, it's easy to create pretty obnoxious and one-sided stories. 

Could he and I avoid that, learn the game in its current state and still have a good time?

Hairless Whisper

Art by Will Beck

First, we needed gangs. Delaque were the no-brainer for me, I've got tons of them and still haven't really plumbed the depths of what their newest incarnation (psychic sneaks) can offer. 

My gang is Forgotten Whisper:

• Shush, Master of Shadow (a gang boss) - shock stave, shotgun, mesh armour and the psychic power Spatial Psychosis
• Tyst, a Nachtgul (melee assassin champion) - shivver sword, Spring Up and mesh
• Quietus, a Phantom (gang champion) - Plasma gun and mesh, Munitioneer skill
• Shuttit, a Ghost (ganger) - lasgun, mesh, photon flash grenades
• Shhh, a Ghost - lasgun, mesh, smoke grenades
• Schtum, a Ghost - autopistol, flechette pistol, mesh
• Mumm, a Psy-gheist (specialist juve) - Stubgun, mesh, Psychoteric Wyrm, Unrememberable Utterance psychic power
• Zipit, a shadow (juve) - stubgun, autopistol, flak armour and stun grenades

Not wildly dissimilar to the gang I ran against Pootle last month, in fact. 

How do they work? Well, Delaque are sneaky and annoying, many of their tactics letting you dodge hits, make extra moves, infiltrate or swap positions. They're psychic, and the powers I've taken let me knock enemies prone without having to see them (from the boss) or strip down the enemy's actions (the Psy-gheist, although setting that up is hard). 

If that sounds pretty good, and also frustrating to play against, you're not wrong! The downside is that most of my weapons are pretty short range and fairly unimpressive, and aside from the Nachtgul, I'm flat out weak in close combat. So I can easily get outmatched in any sort of prolongued confrontation, but I'm good if I can pick people off one or two at a time on my own terms. Glass cannons, really. 

O Combust, All Ye Faithful

Bubonicus also has a go-to team. For him, it's the shouty fanatics of Cawdor - this is The Saints of Detritus:

• Father von Kurtz, Redemptionist Priest - Chainaxe, stubgun and exterminator cartridge, mesh armour, cherub-servitor and Parry as a skill
• Deacon Frost, Redemptionist Deacon - Eviscerator, cherub-servitor, Devotional Frenzy and Nerves of Steel
• Brother Namshiel, specialist - Stubgun and long rifle
• Brother Heckler - blunderpole, bomb rats and frag grenades
• Brother Koch - blunderpole
• Initiate Korlus - fighting knife and flail
• Brother Pykel - reclaimed autogun
• Sir Rollo - greatsword, flak armour
• Initiate Scrotus - twin stubguns
• Initiate Greft - twin autopistols
• Father Crow - Hive Preacher with a great hammer, a hanger-on 

As you'd expect from Cawdor, there's lots of them! Bubonicus has wisely not bothered arming them with much stuff. It's all cheap gear, but what it lacks in effectiveness, especially at range, it makes up for in fire. Lots of template weapons, and quite a lot of close combat power. If any of it can make it into range and then actually hit, always something of a challenge. 

Cawdor currently have a brilliant mini-miracle system. It uses faith dice, generated by non-redemptionist gangers at the end of each turn. The Hive Preacher lets this gang start with a few too. This lot follow the Path of Doom - a bit like a Recongregator Inquisitor, they want to make the Imperium stronger by starting over. By killing the Emperor, in fact, which is some impressive hubris! Despite this, they're a law-abiding gang, having more Cawdor brethren than Redemptionists present.

Anyway, their miracles make them harder to put down and remarkably likely to deliberately blow themselves up in your face. They very much embody the Witness Me! approach to combat, running madly towards you in waves of shabby idiots, happily taking themselves out with the enemy. There's enough of them to make this very viable, although it may not go so well over a longer campaign. 

Making Friends and Influencing People 

We've played three times so far, and both our gangs already hate each other.

Game one was a standard 'meet in the tunnels and fight' affair, to learn the rules and see how the gangs handle. No photos, just carnage.

Almost everyone ended up as a casualty. I picked off a few here and there, I kept the rancid tide of inflammable goons at bay with a combo of irritating psychic powers (at least until the Psy-geist blew his own mind out) and lucky plasma fire. 

The Nachtgul, who is terrifying in close combat, managed to infiltrate himself in such a way as to get counter-jumped by a trio of Cawdor maniacs. They could keep him at bay with the longer reach of their weapons, but not put him down. They kept miraculously refusing to die in turn. In the end, the last of three blew himself up and put my champion down. An expensive way to deal with him, but effective!

In the meantime, my luck had turned. Those cherub-servitors turn out to be ablative wound shields, able to soak hits on their chosen leader. I got rid of them, but by the time I did, the Deacon and the Priest were in charge range, where they proceeded to massacre everyone. 

Our gangs were in tatters, we'd both bottled the fight, and it came down to my Champion desperately trying to scavenge plasma ammo from a loot chest while the Deacon and Priest pelted towards him. He managed it, too, slamming the clip home just in time to get thoroughly chainsworded. 

Kidnapped!

All that left both of our gangs sore and battered, with a mere four players each. Worse, we'd each captured one of the opposite number, but where I'd scored a lowly grunt with a rubbish gun, my expensive Psy-geist had been taken hostage. 

No amount of bargaining would convince the Cawdor to let the psychic heathen go (apparently any member of the faithful would gladly die so that the abberation might be set on fire), so I tried to do it myself. 

It went relatively well, in that I got the guy out. Most of the rescue team went down in the process, although they at least accounted for the Redeptionist Priest and his cherub on the way. I'd won! 

Neither of us had any money, though, and almost my entire gang was stuck in the infirmary, covered in burns plasters. So when the Redemptionists came trying to rescue their ganger, I just let the sod go. 

Bar Fight

That meant it was my turn to challenge again. We'd decided to play a territory campaign, so most fights stake a useful location as the prize. Not the rescue mission, so we were both running off small holdings. Generating the locations on offer from a card deck (standard playing cards, nothing as easy as a dice table in this game), I decided to go for a Drinking Hole. 

So far, we'd clashed in Zone Mortalis tunnels. Close range, which suits both of our gangs, but probably the Cawdor slightly more. So this time, I set up a more open fight. 

This was to be a Border Dispute. Two gangers start in the middle, one from each side, and the rest come in from the edges. We have to a) survive and b) deface the enemy gang's relic for a win. My damn Psy-geist was randomly picked to be in trouble again, facing Initiate Korlus with his knife and flail in the middle.

What a match it turned out to be! A couple of Cawdor hung back (the sniper and the autogunner, plus a couple extra in case the Nachtgul felt picking them off), the rest legged it forwards. As before, I tried to stem this tide either by keeping them pinned with autogun fire or using my psychic shenanigans. 

The problem with the latter is that although it slows the enemy down, it doesn't make them go away. And it also slows me down, in that I'm using actions to pin them instead of kill them. Great to stop, say, a Deacon charging me so someone else can shoot him. But so does actually shooting him, and I got carried away with my weird powers to the extent that I couldn't stop them all. 

Bomb rats exploded, stun grenades popped, plasma fire littered the field with crispy initiates. It wasn't like I did nothing! In the end, though, I was outnumbered, and couldn't take down as many as I needed to stop them reaching charge and flamer range. 

Luck was with me! I kept making armour saves. Luck wasn't with me! I kept ending up on fire, which pretty much stops you contributing anything other than laughs. Once again, by the end of the match, we'd both bottled out, and it was a race to see who wouldn't just run away to end the game. 

The Priest and the Nachtgul managed a showdown during all this carnage. Closely fought, but I just managed to squeak through with lucky armour saves. 

We both had gangers touching the enemy's relic in the last turn, and it came down to a roll to see who would get first chance to deface. I stole it, and managed a lucky shot to pick off poor Brother Rollo just before he could set fire to my nice freaky statue. 

Delaque are marginally cooler under fire than the Cawdor, so I just about stole the match. I'd claimed the drinking hole, and some very nice Delaque-specific benefits. Money wasn't one of them, though, and nor was free medical care. All my income got blown on saving one guy with expensive doctor's bills. I couldn't pay for a second critical wound, either, so I ended up a man down. Winning the game but losing the war, that's where I came in with Delaque twenty years ago!

Big shout out to the Cawdor long rifle sniper. We played about seven rounds, he took about seven shots and missed every. Single. One. Including point blank range at the Delaque who eventually killes him.

On Balance

Is Necromunda fun? Oh yes, absolutely. Each game was a hoot, full of idiots slapping each other feebly about and blowing themselves up in slapstick shootouts. The gangs are wildly divergent from each other, with clear playstyles, tricks and weapons to draw on. It's wonderfully granular, from ammo checks to injury rolls. 

There is no one piece of wargear or fancy skill that ever amounts to a win. Luck will always bite you at the most inopportune moment. No shootout is so hopelessly loaded against you that there is no chance of winning, as in all wargames. Yes, it's fun!

Is Necromunda fun? No, absolutely not, from a rules perspective. There is no balance other than what the players bring, the rules are convoluted beyond all reason, even a small game with a few gangers each takes several hours. Even with the newest rulebook, there is just so much going on that finding that one rule you half-remember as relevant right now adds so much time to the game. 

Some bits of gear are just so under-costed (ablative armour gives you a slowly decreasing 2+ bonus to saves in each match for 20 creds, only five points more than mesh armour) that if one player takes them, the other is instantly at a disadvantage. Let's not even mention how much buying all the rules and pieces costs in real money!

Some skills are amazing, some are almost totally valueless. Cawdor's cherubs and miracles seem a lot more effective than Delaque random brain wizardry, although that's obviously from my point of view. Bubonicus probably has the reverse opinion about Nachtguls and Tactics! 

And like any wargame, it's an absolute crapshoot which you can load in your favour. That loading procedure, call it min-maxing or fun-killing depending on your sensibilities, can lead to dismal balance issues. Any wise player can work round that, but not all players are equally wise. Play it as a roleplaying game, it's great. Play it as a competitive skirmish game, it's miserable. I know which I'd recommend.

Both of us love the game despite the flaws, but it's the love of the setting and the narrative that sees me through. Having an occasional game is great, and I can see why many of the Woffboot crew love it for that. The campaign brings a lot more fun to the experience, sure. Without a more streamlined game you really can't play it at the casual speed you need to make that campaign come to life. Not at our age, at least!

I'd still like to try out the Ash Wastes vehicle rules at some point, and there are so so so many scenarios, hangers-on, sub-settings and rules that look cool to try. Time is always the limiting factor. If only there was more of it about. And less fire. Definitely less fire.