Necromunda - Downhive Dispatch #4

More mayhem in the underhive! The fourth session had some schedule conflicts and as such we only had three players able to make it. As such we went with a couple narrative missions - There's been an ever-increasing surge of Plague Zombies showing up in Dust Falls over the last several sessions, and the 2nd Shift Linemen organized an assault on the hideout of P.T. Barnacle's Carnival of Wonder in a search for a potential cure or weapon to use against the shambling hordes, while the two Cawdor gangs decided to air their grievances and attempt to establish whether the Lectitio Divinitatus should be printed in a Serif or Sans Serif font.

I pulled out all the sloppy and slimy tiles and ginned up a hideout for the scavvy cavalcade of P.T. Barnacle, with a vault where the vial of mcguffinite is stored and stationed the disgusting horde here and there throughout, where they lay in wait for the Van Saars.

  

The high-tech ordnance of the 2nd Shift Linemen paved the way for the gangers as they delved ever deeper into the muck, with a few succumbing to the tender ministrations of the Scavvies. Luckily though none of them were captured or eaten and they managed to retrieve several containers of samples that the Van Saar chemists would be able to synthesize into a weapon to fend off the incipient zombie plague.

 

On the other table, The Light of the Emperor's Benediction and the congregation of Meticulosa Nomen clashed near one of the downhive Schola Progenium, where they battled it out over the souls of the juves (and future congregants).

 

Both gangs deployed along the catwalks and took cover among the rubble, cat-calling and sniping at each other across the playground.

 

Eventually the forces of Good(?) triumphed over the forces of Evil(?) though when the dust settled nobody really seemed to know which gang was the victor. "All them Cawdor nutjobs look alike ta' me." claimed one onlooker, once the flames had died down. In the end, the merry-go-round was deemed heretical and the smoldering ruins were left as a warning to all. What that warning may be is still up for debate.

Next up, the dramatic conclusion of the campaign as the zombie hordes pour forth from the Abyss!

Necromunda - Downhive Dispatch #3, CARNIVALE!

More than a bit behind schedule, there were a number of pict-captures of the events in Dust Falls that took a while to sort through and update. Rather than dump them all in one giant slosh of pictures, I'm going to break it out by session. Per the Dominion Campaign rules, it's suggested that at the midpoint of the campaign to do a special scenarios day to give people a break from the norm. We went with the conceit that every few cycles there is a celebration day in the underhive known as Carnivale where the various gangs put aside their differences for a few days and celebrate with various feats of skill, speed and strength. I'd ginned up a couple themed tables and let the players have at it!

First up was the Rust Town Run, in which two gangs took it in turn to make their way through a dangerous maze in an attempt to make it to the vault and retrieve the prize - A Chrono-Chrystal worth a huge sum of credits!

The initial setup was based on the scenario The Gauntlet and I'd laminated some copies of all the various special effects the tiles provided, which did make things easier for everyone to remember what did what as they made their way through the hazards.

  

While the theory was sound, the way we ended up running it meant the defenders had a huge advantage and only one of the attackers made it to the vault. Some tweaks will definitely need to be made to ensure it's a fun and somewhat more balanced scenario.

  

All told this particular event had the most issues, though the players all gave it a go and could see a glimmer of goodness to be had in it. I will definitely be running a new Gauntlet series in the future, based on some excellent suggestions from the players which should make it more fun for all parties involved (which is the point, in the end)!

The second table was much more well received - A game of Lord of the Spire, wherein multiple gangs send a pair of contestants to race to the top of a massive structure, with the teams with gangers on the hightest level gaining points each turn until someone reaches the very top and hits the buzzer. Of course, as is the case they have a tendency to shoot at each other on the way up as well...

 

I pulled out almost all of my plastic bulkheads and set about building a thirteen story tower of terror! As precarious and rickety as it looked, it actually was surprisingly solid. Granted, there was a liberal use of alligator clips clamping everything together...

  

I was rather pleased to see that the building itself was taller than some of the participants, and there was a fair bit of standing on tippy-toes to get at the upper floors. The battle raged in the lower levels while some of the faster gangers raced for the top!

  

There were quite a few folks knocked off ledges and a fair bit of plummeting all around, which always elicited a cheer from the players. All in all the Lord of the Spire scenario was a rousing success!

Of course, the real centerpiece event for the session was the unveiling of the THUNDERCUBE!!! (which must at all times be in all-caps).

Overseen by Count Enrique Horatio Amador DeMonet, Guilder Exchequer and Trade Envoy for the Dust Falls Financial Underdistrict, THUNDERCUBE saw a field of hardened pit slaves fighting for the entertainment of all.

  

The rounds were punishingly brutal, bloody and short. The field of eight pit slaves were whittled down to four, then two...

  

...With the final two victors pairing off against a legend of the underhive, the pit slave champion Bull Gorg! Even the two hardened killers teaming up stood no chance against the behemoth's twin turbo-chainswords and the crowd roared as Bull Gorg made short work of the erstwhile champions.

All in all it was a very enjoyable session, and made for a great break between the first and second halves of the campaign. I'll be doing something similar for the upcoming Sump City Showdown campaign, giving the players a chance to have some fun themed multiplayer games!

Necromunda - Council of Crows complete!

Praise be unto the changer of the ways, the Council of Crows are ready for the upcoming Sump City Showdown campaign!

First off, gotta have the family photo! I ended up picking up a second box of the Corvus Cabal to make a few more gangers - While the predominantly pistol-and-axe guys looked great, a gang just needs a few members toting las- and autoguns! Also a couple special characters were added...

Leading the flock is Lord Macrorynchos, armed with his trusty flamer. I'm sure that at no time will he accidentally catch his wings on fire and plummet to his death...

Next in the hierarchy of the cult are two champions and a witch. Cadfan the Hidden Claw infiltrates onto the battlefield, carrying his trusty heavy stubber with him. Engelram is a pyromaniac like his lord, bearing a hand flamer and toting the cult icon. The cult's witch is known as The Korbinian and even among the deranged cultists he's seen as a bit of an odd duck. Well, raven.

The bulk of the cult is comprised of Helot Cultists, with Fichra, Velasco, Beltran, Korbl, and Merla acting as the firing line armed with a selection of rifles.

Hraban, Ravenna, Bertok, Hrokr, and Hrafn are all armed with various close combat weapons and refer to themselves the cult's Claws.

Magnon the Large provides some much-needed muscle to the cult, and also has possibly the worst pun name of any of my gangs to date. With all of the others being some raven or blackbird derivative name, I needed a real groaner. You see he's a Crow, Magnon.

...I'll see myself out.

Necromunda - The Council of Crows, Tzeentch Chaos Cult built!

I'm still going through the literal hundreds of pictures from the last couple Down and Out in Dust Falls sessions, hope to get them uploaded this weekend. That said, I've also been beavering away on a new gang for the upcoming Sump City Showdown campaign - A chaos cult, the Council of Crows!

As soon as I saw the Corvus Cabal for Warcry, I knew that I had to have 'em and turn them into a Necromunda gang - There was no choice, really! I'd pulled out a mess of Escher bits which seemed to be ideal as they also have a bit of a feathers and birds motif going on. Turns out they worked well together!

 

Started off by turning the winged guy into a Demagogue with a flamer. In game I'm going to be angling for a grapnel launcher and a drop rig to allow him to 'fly', and added in a couple champions with a double handed axe/hand flamer and a heavy stubber, respectively.

 

A trio of cultists with laspistols and axes, keeps them cheap and cheerful - Close combat is a little rough in Necromunda, so it's worthwhile to have a bunch of guys kitted out that way so hopefully at least one or two of 'em will make it into contact.

 

A couple guys with autopistols and one with a shotgun round out the initial nine members of the crew (as befitting a Tzeentch-themed cult). Overall these are mostly just simple weapon swaps as far as conversions go, though now that I understand how the Corvus Cabal models go together, I'm planning on doing some further conversions to create some guys with lasguns, autoguns and the like. Should be fun!

Really looking forward to getting some paint on these guys!

Necromunda - From the depths of the Underhive...

Between a mix of Real Life(tm), login issues with my webhosting company and general ineptitude I've once again let the blog lay fallow for far too long. That's not to say there hasn't been a ton of hobby progress, but I've not had much luck uploading pics to my web galleries of late. Luckily, that's now been resolved and a flood of new images are ready to be posted! Brace yourself for bandwidth!

 

First up, as a follow on from the last post (back in June? Really? Yeesh.) are the completed pics of the Goliath truck and some reinforcements for the muscle-bound galoots.

Really digging the FW weapon upgrade kits, most of the Newcromunda models don't lend themselves well to easy kitbashing as most of the arms have bespoke connection points meaning unless you're a fair hand with a sculpting tool you are gonna have a rough time. The FW kits go a long way to providing all the alternate options not available on the plastic sprues!

 

Along with the Goliath truck, I figured the insectile walkers would be ideal for the Van Saar gang and as such they got the same hazard yellow scheme as the associated gangers. Hard to go wrong with Caterpillar/JCB yellow on working vehicles!

 

These walkers were designed to carry the loot piles made a while back, and I'm really happy with how the green/blue/red of the cargo adds to the overall look of the vehilces!

 

If one is good, two is better, right? The intent is to do two or three vehicles for each gang to allow for some vehicle based scenarios in the upcoming campaign.

Speaking of, the Down and Out in Dust Falls campaign wrapped up this past weekend, and I realize I haven't uploaded the pics from the previous session either. Got a ton of game pics inbound for the next post!