Trapped!

The final dark days of the Delaque are upon them. 

Over the year, Bubonicus and I have managed to play an entire campaign of Necromunda. Following the official rules and everything! We played a Dominion game, fighting over territory to establish our petty Underhive empires. 

It's coming to an end here - twelve games or so, all told, starting with 1000 point gangs and ending up with a pair of sprawling mobs. The Cawdor's Saints of Detritus had a rocky start, but have ended up relatively far ahead of the Delaque's Hairless Whisper. As usual, my dice have never missed an opportunity to kick me in the teeth, and my early turf advantages vanished in the face of a relentless sea of unwashed zealotry.

Not that they had it all their own way! I managed a fairly epic victory in the last game that left quite a few key Cawdor recovering from surgery. Bubonicus gets to make the last challenge, so our final match is The Trap, where just a few of each gang are ambushing each other. This cancels out the advantage I might have had in numbers, and because Cawdor scrubs get lonely by themselves, they bring extra bodies. I'll be outgunned as usual!

Something in the Bushes

We're on an outdoorsy board today. My baldies seem to have found an overgrown hab-dome deep in the warrens, and were busy looting it until the Cawdor showed up. 

Have shadows, will lurk

This means I'm out in the open in the middle, with the entire pack of Saints bearing down on me from one side. Through pure luck, I've managed to get some of my guys in counter-ambush positions, and wouldn't you know it, it's the Nachtguls! 

Bubonicus is not pleased. 

He does get first turn, though, and immediately puts a sniper round through my plasma gunning champion. Whilst the rank and file turn to observe, my leader immediately panics (quite wisely, I'd say) and legs it off into the distance round the central tower. 

I try a bit of countersniping, but miss, and have to wait patiently as all the largest melee threats in the Saints come pelting straight at me. I'm particularly upset to note that their leader, Father Kurtz, has bought a second Cherub-Servitor. Those bloody things make it nearly impossible to shoot him, not that anyone I've got to hand is going to be doing much shooting!

Cherubbed Out

The next couple of turns see the centre turn into an absolute bunfight. 

As the Cawdor pile in towards the tower, they end up in a natural funnel. And as luck would have it, my leader and his oldest ganger Schtumm both have template weapons - a web pistol and a combat shotgun. Although the initial wave of Delaque are firmly gunned down by the supporting sniper on the Cawdor team, I've got a pretty good chance to mop up his forward elements, especially when the two Nachtguls pop up behind the tower for a counter strike. 

The Cawdor send a bomb rat out ahead of their advance to try and stop me charging past it, but I've learned over time - my Nachtguls now have ranged options, and the little rat gets a throwing knife to the chops that stops it dead. 

So my plan is on! Webs and bullets fly in all directions! And wouldn't you know it, those awful cherubs completely ruin everything. 

The way they work is that as long as they're within a couple of inches of their owner, that owner can shrug hits on to them instead. The rules sequence technically mean that when I allocate hits, the target can then reallocate all of them (at once!) on to a nearby cherub, but we both felt that's a little much and did it gun by gun. 

Now, I can rules wrangle through that a little with templates or blasts, because then I get to pick the order in which models get hit. So if I pick off the cherubs first, then the boss has nobody to cower behind. Cherubs are only T2, but have a special invulnerable save (4++). 

Guess who rolls a whole ton of ones?

I mean, it's not a total washout - the nearby gangers end up webbed or riddled with buckshot. Not a single cherub even dies, though one ends up injured, and the Cawdor's Priest is entirely untouched. Aargh!

Surely the Nachtguls can charge in and fix this problem?

Well, not quite - one claws its way through Initiate Scrotus but then falls just short of Deacon Frost, who immediately hacks it apart with his saw. The other one is waiting to avenge his pal, though, and hits the Deacon from behind, very nearly finishing him. The Deacon yells for his pals, who make a reasonable attempt to pull down the faceless killer, as well as activating a miracle to keep him tougher and stronger. To no avail! Some luck power weapon rolling, and the Nachtgul skewers the cleric before Father Kurtz pulls it down in turn. 

The Leadcoats are Coming

All this hubbub has sent my leader squirrelling off to the back lines again. Fine, he needs a break to reload his shotgun, but it also puts him in range of the Cawdor sniper, who has a grappling hook and has been relocating to better shooting positions. 

I'm kept pinned at the back, and I'm down to two men - the boss and Schtumm. 

Schtumm is out of web juice, but still has a pair of pistols (I get surprised at one point - web pistols don't actually count as pistols, apparently, they lack the 'sidearm' rule. Fair enough, firing one in each hand would be a bit much!). That's not his greatest asset, however. 

That's his T5, the result of random advances rolled across the campaign. As his guns run out of bullets one by one, Schtumm keeps the Cawdor at bay by sheer dint of being unwoundable. There's clearly a lot of padding in that big coat. 

In the end, Father von Kurtz does the heavy lifting, using his lightning claw and inferno pistol to good effect. 

Kysh, my leader, is once again alone, facing an advancing line of angry burny men. There's only one thing to do - charge them!

I aim for the leader, knowing the extra range of my shock stave will keep me out of retaliation's range. Kysh has clearly over-estimated the range of his stick, however, as he fails three of the four wound rolls he'd need to make an impact, and Bubonicus saves the last one. My dice are clearly on the side of the Emperor's faithful here, and finish their sweep of the battlefield by giving me snake-eyes to avoid bottling out, so home I trot in ignominy. 

Dearly Departed

The post-battle sequence is not kind. 

Not to me - my plasma champion and one of the Nachtguls are both left missing various portions of their torsos and brains. 

Not to the Cawdor either. Deacon Frost, beloved chainsaw operator, he of the running grudge match with my Nachtguls and MVP in nearly every match he's been in, dies spectacularly and permanently. 

The Nachtgul who done him in adds insult by rolling a double one for his recovery - he gets two lots of bonus XP, one from killing the Deacon and one for surviving extra-well (or something). 600 points of angry alcoholic archbishop vanish from the Saints' roster, and we're both left grieving. 

Well, Bubonicus more than me, obviously, but that Deacon has been a key part of the campaign! He probably needs a commemorative bit of terrain built for him. 

Speaking of tombs, I've been thoroughly buried at close of business. The Saints have just claimed the last free bit of campaign territory, they've nicked all of mine off me, they are worth more credits, have more money and have a higher reputation. For a moment, I think I might have pulled off more kills (these campaigns don't have a single winner per se, just a bunch of bragging rights to be claimed at the end), but I've forgotten a pair of pet psychoteric wyrms that died off early on. 

The Saints are triumphant, although the mood is tempered somewhat. As his main prize, Bubonicus decides to finish the Delaque for good. We'll play a final match in which he descends into the dark recesses of the hive to find what writhing monstrosities my psychic loonies worship, and see if they can be terminated with maximum prejudice.

Next: Into the Lair of the Wyrm!