Thursday, 25 February 2010

Another game, another loss, another round of run!

Despite my first game of Necromunda in well over a decade ending in a rather bad loss, I had fun reliving the past. I was amazed that I remembered anything from that time at all and didn’t need much help remembering certain rules.

I turned up at the club, which was quite busy as all of the table were booked, all excited like my old teenage self. I put my coat and bag down and got my self a pint of bitter (I was a little early). I got to talking to another gamer who is selling pretty much all of his models (he is leaving the country soon). We had arranged for me to buy some Necrons from him (this little lot takes my army total to nearly 6000). Once I bagged my purchase, I watched some of the other Necromunda games being played. I actually missed my opponent playing his first game, but I caught his post game (rolling for injuries, generating income, etc). Once Dezul (real name Chris) had finished, he called me over to begin play.
Now Bill (the guy who dropped out of the campaign) had forgot to leave his Ratskins behind. This meant that I had to use a handful of zombie models to use as proxies to add to the few models that I had received from evilBay. Once I established which model was which ganger (the zombie with the bone club has a lasgun while the zombie with the green trousers has a shotgun), we got down to setting up. I had challenged Dezul and his Eschers to a Loot and Pillage scenario. This meant that he had to set up just a few of his gang (the remainder coming on as reinforcements) and set up the loot tokens which I would be after. I then set up my large gang (14 members) in 4 smaller groups in the hope that if one was hurt, their buddies could still carry on the fight.
To start off, the only thing I could do was to race towards the lovely loot. Then Dezul took a pot-shot with his leader (she was on overwatch) and took out my leader straight away. He also failed his reinforcements roll.
The next turn saw more running on my part. Those Ratskins that were under fire had frozen and pinned by enemy fire, couldn’t shoot back because they were mostly carrying muskets and blunderbusses (very short range weapons). This time Dezul managed to get some reinforcements to come on. They came on behind on behind my leaders’ group and toasted them with a Flamer! Just one Ratskin was left standing from that group, amazed that he survived. The amazement didn’t last long as he was taken out by the flamers’ buddy. Dezul’s Wyrd took shot at the Ratskins on the other side of the table and missed. His leader did much better and took out another scout.
I raced forward some more and grabbed some loot. Dezul’s turn saw some more reinforcements enter play. This brought another flamer, which in turn brought some pain to a couple more of my gang.
One of my braves then raced forward to grab some more loot, while two of my guys took out the newly arrived flamer and pal. This time Dezul’s Wyrd performed a little better and used his telepathic power to knock out one of my guys. Then the Escher leader had the best shot of the game where she shot one of my guys at long range. While this only caused a flesh wound, it was enough to make him fall two stories onto another one of my gang (thankfully he wasn’t hurt).
I spent the next turn trying to retreat back to my table edge in order to regroup. My shooting was ineffective. Dezul then led a charge with his Eschers. The first hand-to-hand combat of the game ended with a draw.
With the vast majority of my gang either down or out of action, I decided to tactically ‘bottle it’. It was clear that I wasn’t going to get anything more from the game.
So we both did our end of game stuff. I had a bit of bad rolling on the Serious injuries chart with two Dead results, one Capture and a couple of Head Wounds. With everything updated, my gang (Bill’s gang) were looking a little shell-shocked. There were unlucky to have a flamer sneak up behind them, but it didn’t retract from the fun. I later learned the Ratskins are resilient. This means that they can re-roll on the serious injuries chart. I can actually save my dead Ratskins and maybe get rid of the head wounds. One thing that I’ve agreed not to re-roll is the captured result as Dezul and I had already resolved the issue (he gave me back the brave in return for the loot I took). Any changes to this would prove slightly chaotic for Dezul in his next game.
But still, it was great to get back into the game. It has been a long time, but the wait was worth it. One good thing about this campaign is that the players can add some back story to it. So everyone has been writing some fluff for the narrative. I wrote a piece for the game against Dezul. I think I will centre my writing on two of the gangers (they are twins) rather than the exploits of the leader. The first piece was of fluff was about harmony within the warband and how it is disrupted by other gangs in the underhive. It has also shown a disruption in the harmony between the two brothers. Hopefully I can keep the fluff going in order to enhance my gaming experience.

No comments:

Post a Comment