Brawl Bar Gun

Nobody knew exactly when Deacon Frost started drinking, but everybody knew when it became a problem. 

Those Cawdor he ran with, the crew? Gang? Hard to say exactly what the Saints of Detritus were. You couldn't call them a cult, those who did ended up on fire. Sure as sump rises, they weren't your average pack of death-preaching mask-wearers. 

They gave out all the usual soup about what a mess of sin and misery we all were here in the Hive, right up to the tip of Helmawr's palace, how we all needed to atone. But their preacher, Father von Kurtz, poured this extra layer of slime on top, how they'd topple the high and mighty, bring in a new era where we'd all be equally glorious. You'd smile politely and listen right up to the point where he put the Holy Emperor on his Throne right top of on that falling spike, then your smile got kind of awkward. You kept it up, though.

Day came when Frost had been sucking back Second Best at the Low Bar, the Delaque place under the old sumporium, for five days straight. Instead of anointing the new converts with holy oil, he threw up on one of them, slipped in the mess and headbutted a second hard enough to break his nose on the way down. 

Von Kurtz had had enough - it was closing time.

I'm back with the next fight in my ongoing Necromunda campaign with General Bubonicus. His Cawdor are running a Manufactorium Raid on my Drinking Hole territory, which I've been using to keep his Deacon hungover and less use for most of our games to date.

Opting for a less than diplomatic approach, Bubonicus has to prime bombs at three locations on my side of the board. The bombs then tick down (roll a d6, add the turns since the bomb was turned on, it detonates on a 6+) unless I manage to defuse them, and of course there's always a chance they go off immediately after being set. Never change, Necromunda!

Bubonicus sets his goals as the neon Bar sign, the gas cylinders by the grill shack and that most heinous of heretical symbols, the snack machine by the sewage park. 

I'll give you dry roasted.

First Round's On Me

Not all of my gang is there to start with, I've got seven out of my ten chaps facing off against the whole mad pack of Cawdor fanatics. I'm also staring down a 300-point mismatch, made slightly better by the House Delaque high-ups sending me a free ganger to pad my battered baldies out. 

This gives me extra tactics cards too. I opt to swap two random rolls for a straight pick, taking one that lets me entirely redeploy after Bubonicus has done his side, and still have three more (swap the results of the priority roll, deploy a Web trap and make an enemy's melee weapon confusing to use). 

The Cawdor are running in three broad packs - von Kurtz and a couple of fellas heading down the left for the bar sign, Deacon Frost and another pair of nutters in the middle aiming for the gas tanks, and his frenzon-collar Zealot and some juves down the right, set on the peanut machine. His sniper and crossbow man take towers in the middle and right, ready to provide cover. 

I shuffle about and hide at the back - some of my heaviest hitters are not yet present, so I need to let him come to me a bit and then clear him off while he's busy with the fuse wires. There is a Nacht-gul in the vents, of course. 

Obviously, the Cawdor all come dashing forwards. Early sniper exchanges get off to a great start when I try and run a guy forward up the tall gantry - the crossbow bomber misses me, I miss his sniper and his sniper shoots me off the gantry where I land and bounce, unharmed but embarrassed. 

Bar Bar Bar, Bar Barbra An-gry

My counterplay is to come forwards a bit to the first line of cover and prepare to pounce. The Cawdor are all sprinting up as fast as they can, and I'm going to get overrun fast unless I can thin them out a bit, so at the start of turn two, I drop my Nacht-gul Tetoire into the middle and charge Deacon Frost. 

Frost gets utterly blendered in the now-familiar way. One of his nearest buddies breaks in horror and spends the next three turns cowering behind a turbine, trying to get the intestines out of his hair. Also in the now-familiar way, however, Frost is somehow not actually completely dead, and his buddies quickly convene on the Nacht-gul and beat him down into the muck with their massive swords. 

Elsewhere, I stick the web trap down in the middle lane, manage to snipe the frenzon zealot down with a lucky las-shot, and sneak my leader and his pals up ready to scrag whoever comes for our precious signage. In return, the Cawdor sniper picks off the lone juve I've got protecting the peanut machine, and then both he and the Nacht-gul (who are lying face down in green goop) go out of action at turn's end. 

Amazingly, Frost doesn't! Bubonicus uses one of his tactics cards to play a minor miracle on him, making him deathproof until the end of his next activation. Arg! Leaving a trail of his own insides behind him, he promptly runs forward and flops onto the web bomb before slumping in a sticky mess to the floor. 

Argy Bargy

I'm supposed to be getting reinforcements, but they're coming in a slow dribble. First to arrive is the Spyker, who crops up at the back and immediately starts giving Cawdors headaches. Bubonicus establishes that he can roll flesh wounds when he needs them, though - everyone I take down gets back up, bleeding slightly and looking determined. 

Brother Heckler, backing up the Cawdor left, starts ushering bomb rats towards my ambush site while his boss and brethren try to climb the sign tower. Despite three of my guys blazing away at it, nobody hits.

On the right, although the zealot is down, one of the Cawdor juves makes it to the vending machine. 

I've got a bead on him with one of my lasgunners, but I can't connect the shot. And then a host of angry broadsword wielders come screaming out of the central corridor and flank him! 

Somehow, and despite krak bolts bouncing off the nearby railings, he survives all of this aggro. He backs off carefully (the Cawdor are using weapons with reach, so he's not engaged during his own turn) and lobs a handy photon flash at the incoming choirboys. 

It's somewhat overcooked, landing somewhere in the middle distance to no effect, and he gets run over by cowled whackjobs shortly afterwards. That sees the collapse of the right flank, as Initiate Scrotus clamps a bomb to the vending machine and sets off the timer. 

It immediately blows up in his face, which is obviously hilarious for everyone. 

Don't tilt.

Bar Jest

One of three targets down, I'm getting low on bodies already, and there's a lot of danger close going on. Luckily, my plasma gunner, Quietus, has turned up! 

Unluckily, Bubonicus gets to place him, and sticks him in max cover at the back where he can't see anyone. 

Heckler's bomb rats start going awry at this point - the first runs in the wrong direction, but still takes out one of my guys. A second Delaque gets gunned down by Father von Kurtz, who has started packing a bolter, and both these two immediately go out of action, leaving a big hole in my defences. 

And Heckler's next bomb rat runs in entirely the wrong direction. Heckler himself is now sporting a flesh wound from my Spyker, who is apparently great at giving people nosebleeds. 

As fast as the Cawdor scrubs can climb the tower, they can fall off again. Kysh, my leader, is using his psychic power Spatial Psychosis to excellent effect. 

All I'm doing is slowing them down, though. As what was their right flank moves into the centre and plants bombs on the gas tanks, I'm being boxed into a corner with the few guys I've got left. What shooting I do produce hasn't much effect; Quietus keeps missing easy shots, although he manages to perforate one of the irritating Cherubs that protect the Cawdor leaders. 

Another bomb is planted, this time on the gas tanks. I just about get someone in place ready to disarm it, but it then goes off (and once more takes the hapless engineer who set it with it). Two out of three - uh oh. 

Barbysmal Performance

Quickly, the Cawdor's numbers start to tell. Quietus fails another easy shot and runs out of ammo and Heckler outpaces his own bomb rat and manages to set fire to the Spyker. Like a psychic Hindenburg, he flails about burning before dying spectacularly. 

I start bottling at this point, the Psy-gheist legging it immediately. Somehow, Bubonicus also starts fleeing, with his crossbow operator getting cold feet! He's still got five guys against my two, though, and the end game is very much in full swing. 

Between his leader and the sniper, they plant the final bomb. If my leader, who is currently surrounded by three Cawdor of various stripes and a bomb rat, can keep all of these guys busy, maybe Quietus can rush up and snip the wires in time?

Kysh makes a pretty good stab at it! Dancing and weaving, he leaps in and out of combat. When he fails to connect on his first target, he makes up for it by dodging Sir Rollo's attacks and skewering him in return. 

At this point, Father von Kurtz tires of his minions' incompetence and lets rip into the fight with his bolter. Kysh's armour saves him from the worst of it, but he gets pretty badly wounded, staggering on with a flesh wound. 

He nips out of engagement, opens up with his combat shotgun and manages to floor von Kurtz and Brother Heckler (who is still whistling rats into this mess), but then everybody once more gets up with flesh wounds!

Rince and repeat - he somehow avoids another turn of being jabbed and shot at, dances out of the fights and gets all three junior Cawdors with his shottie. Bag of the night is Initiate Corlus, currently under the effects of a miracle that doubles his toughness and strength. Amazing what enough buckshot can do! 

Once again, however, there are just too many of them. Heckler's bomb rat reaches Quietus before he can get to the sign, Kysh goes down to von Kurtz's bolter and then the Cawdor walk away from all the blazing wreckage in slow motion as the last bomb goes off. 

For Whom the Bar Bell Tolls

Oof. I felt under the hammer from the off, being out-numbered and out-gunned by a bigger and better equipped gang. 

Funnily enough, though, so did Bubonicus! He felt the last turns were an uphill fight, and although I ended the game by losing my Drinking Hole and having everyone on the floor, about half of his gang were down too. Both of us bottled, so we'd both lost reputation as well. 

Which meant it was nobody's favourite part of the night - the rolls for lasting injuries. 

Turns out that frenzon Zealot had managed to bleed entirely to death quite spectacularly! Extra points for me, plus a trip to the hospital to sew the wings back on to Father Kurtz' cherub. This all sounded pretty bad until I reached for my dice. 

Free tattoo with every surgery! Ask about our loyalty plan!

Yikes. Humiliated turned up a couple of times, one lasgunner got an eye injury, the other got captured. Then Mr Hindenburg proved to have really burned up, plus my juve and the Nacht-gul were critically injured. Ouch. 

Paying for the Rogue Doc seemed almost prophetic, really - he managed to save the Nacht-gul, but I didn't make enough money (20 creds only!) to pay to save the juve, plus everyone else was too banged up to actually carry his leaking carcass anywhere. 

To add insult to these injuries, the Cawdor have a Corpse Farm territory that gives them a 2d6x10 creds for each ganger killed in the last fight. Bubonicus has turned my dead into next week's hamburgers and made a tidy profit doing so, buying a huge pile of cool gear for our next clash. We're now about 800 points apart in gang rating, plus he's got more territory, more men and more rats than I can easily face. 

Oh, it is on.