Necromunda, 2 decade redux

Back in the days of the HitPoint, one of the owners loaded up a massive gang with heavy bolters and the like and blazed away at some puny starter gang I had. A lopsided introduction to a cool idea- but it went no further. There seemed little point.
Over the years since I have read numerous comics, novels, supplements and codexes with scraps of info on hive worlds and necromunda.
And when I saw the Necromunda boxed set coming up this time round, some 20~ years later my first thought was-

looks cool- I wonder if there will be any point?

As a result of an excess of miniatures in 2 directions I have a reasonably substantial sisters of battle army, some death cult assassins, a calidus assassin, null maidens, celestine and some female inquisitors. What I was missing for an easy brigade was 30 standard sisters with boltguns to fill out the troop requirement of a Brigade detachment. I had a few but I'd like to fill out retributor squads to 6 etc. When I saw the escher gang- my first thought was"female scout equivalents". Maybe not everyone's first thought, but that's the way my brain works (*/doesn't work)

So I was in. And the terrain looked nice- good doors for scifi rpgs.

But I still wasn't sold- what would make this better than a small game of 40k?

Well having played 3 games, my answer is multipart- 

First: the gangs and terrain have a nice interaction. They play differently. Goliath seem a bit strong but we have just been using numbers of gangers not n]points rating of gangs- and goliath are expensive- that is, strong , tough with nasty weapons. Even so- they feel really different to esher. That's good. Shadespire does that too. GW seems to have learned something about differentiating armies.

Second: it is more simulationist. In contrast, 40k is more of a game. In it's current form it feels like 

"this represents the fire power of unit X" not "these guys X fire at Y with kit Z". 

Necromunda is more like

 "you fall off the bridge, such and such happens". 

"There is sludge- it's toxic if you fall over in it",

 "you hit this guy but it is only a flesh wound"

 "your frag grenade knocks that guy back into his buddy"

The end result of this is that Necromunda has more texture. 

Third:  it is a bit more complex but much smaller scale. Now the entire gang which gets individual activations is only the size of a reasonable single squad in 40k.  But the weapon ranges are the same. And the board is 4x4 or perhaps a bit smaller.

Fourth: it has several tiers of play. Basic, Advanced, Campaign and various ways to play with either 2.1D terrain or normal 3D terrain. The tiers look like a good way to introduce folks to playing- 

Basic: set up with flat terrain boards, simple missions, simple death results, use pregenerated gangs

all the way to..

Build your own gang. Model them

Control Territory. Use 3D normal terrain built to suit such territory

Progress and injure gangers. Spend XP, buy gear, resupply. 

Wipeout enemy gangs.

To my surprise this is a strong alternative to 40k. Not as a wargame, but as a gritty, textured, 3D tactical, gang warfare game.

Trans-dimensional Murder Souffle

Why does sonic the hedgehog have such relentless opponent? And how does that dude run so fast?

Stolen from reddit for future reference and protection from webroot.


That's easy. It's fear. Picture this:
You're an industrialist, trying to modernize a backward planet and raise up standards of living through the use of technology, for the common good. One day, some of your industrial robots are blown up by a sentient, supersonic blue hedgehog. That's scary as fuck. Now, said hedgehog has it in his head that you're a monster who's turning animals into robots and wants to take over the world and oppress it, in large part because of all the steroids, speed, colloidal silver, and other assorted shit he's been taking in massive quantities for the past decade. You decide to see if you can't reason with the guy, but for your troubles you get assaulted, and your ride gets trashed beyond recognition.
So you decide to deal with this like you would with any other pest problems: You put out some traps, like spike pits, modify a couple of your robots with .22 rifles, etc. The way you'd deal with any rodent, really. Soon enough, the hedgehog gets himself impaled, and you're done. Or so you think. Soon after, despite having quite clearly been drained of his precious bodily fluids, he's back and trashing your robots again. Maybe the other one was some sort of decoy? No matter, you're taking this into your own hands. You modify your ride, mad max style, adding a couple of guns, some spikes, missile, slowly swinging giant balls, that kind of stuff. Then you roll. You meet the hedgehog and after a brief struggle where he manages to make one or two lucky hits on spots you haven't really bothered armoring, you make him into thin gruel. This time you're sure he's done for.
How wrong you are. Soon after, he's back. You can't believe it. You try to kill him yourself once more, but this time he seems to know where to strike. He seems to know when to strike. He seems to know when you'll strike. Once you realize that, you try to change your attack patterns, but it's too late, he's done enough damage to blow up your vehicle, and you barely escape with your life. For the next few days, he follows you, destroying everything you throw at him, and it's obvious he won't stop until he gets you. You can't sleep. You watch as he destroys everything you've done to help people: one after another, chemical plants, oil refineries, amusement parks, all you've built, gets blown up by this satanic, unholy, immortal demon from the deepest pits of hell. When you do manage to take him out, he's back within hours.
Eventually, as you're trying to escape to the one place where you think you're safe, space, he defeats one of your latest creation, and for the first time, you're face to face with him. There's no steel plate protecting you. There's no vertical distance. He's there, staring at you with those empty, demonic eyes.
You run like you've never run before. You just fucking run.

Something tech

Just a place to store this..
http://www.3po-labs.com/blog/echo-wake-words

Must change it to "Slave"  :)

Silver Tower 1 game review

So I pre-ordered Warhammer Quest Silver Tower.

I assembled it in a day and a half- 51 minis, 12 of which are "glue it to a base" but others require some real assembly.
We then had a play through the "first dungeon" with 4 players. I put a splash of paint on a couple but only for ease of identification. A week later I played another game with 2 players.

Value
It works out at $5 a mini with a free game.. if you are a pure wargamer. The mix of miniatures is such that you wouldn't have a 40k army of any sort and I think it would be a fairly mediocre Age of Sigmar army - but adding a Lord of Change, a screamer or 2 and some flamers of various sorts would make a very colourful and flavoursome army for either system. Not particularly competitive for 40k and with a bit of "beastmen-count-as-cultist", but cool none the less.
I may in fact do this. Khorne Daemonkin are an army where you can legitimately field a threat, but it is a very mono-red palette.
The minis themselves, taken individually are good value. The sculpts are awesomely executed.  I'm not 100% sold on the "goblin scuttlings"- they have some of the weaknesses of the earlier warhammer quest goblin minis- large cutesy hands, generic weapon waving in the air, lack of dynamism in the body. In contrast, the brimstone horrors, are well executed and, at worst, humorous. They look "fiery", mean little critters.
The ratling mini is spectacular. (it's a pair) The tzaangors are the business. If the next generation release of Tzeentch and Skaven are of this quality, those armies will be fantastic. You could argue that these are mono-pose, but having put them together, I think it would be quite do-able to make them poseable.
Compared to the resin kickstarter minis I have seen, this is miles ahead. As I have said elsewhere, this- this box, minis, sculpts is the GW answer to the kickstarted-resin mini games. It is in a different league from the games of that sort I have been involved in.
The cardstock floorplans are good, clear and colourful. The character-sheets are
So- you don't get any army by buying the box, but you do get a wide range of high quality minis in a range of factions. You get a lot of them for the money and the quality is fantastic.

Game Play
The characters- and effectively there will be as many variant characters to play as there are GW character minis (202  at the moment) - are quite different to play. There are considerably different play styles. And although you could assume the party needs a healer, tank etc I think you could play with all "damage dealers" or similar as long as you picked carfeully. Having bought the addon iOS application and looked through the toons I would say you could get away without a "healer"

The game is highly varied, even whilst playing the same scenario as a result of the encounter table and the "un-expected events". The actual scenario text is organised in a "choose your own adventure" style booklet. I found this a little off-putting to start with but it is well labeled and easy enough to navigate. It might not have a huge amount of re-playability, in the sense of getting to know the encounters. That being said, you could script your own adventures based on this format and GW could release addons easily and with great effect. I would like dunegeons with other themes- skaven and undead seem like obvious choices.

One of the design choices of the game is a limited play area. There are only small numbers of tiles on the table at a time. The fourth tile gets dropped during respite- the gap between encounters. The small play area is good from a "where to play" point of view but might limit expansions. They would need a "the crumbling skeletal tower" , "moving river barge" or "collapsing warren" mechanic.
Speaking of respite, this gap disappears once you have a brace of skilled characters on the board. We didn't reach this stage but it might result on a constant flow of encounters for higher level heroes.

Need to play it more and paint the minis :))

Skaven Warband

So Matt from "Playing the Odds" has grown a Mordenheim-Rogue Planet campaign.

Dux Mor Rogue Brit?

My first reaction was to use the excellent Tzeentch cultists from Silver Tower but Tzeentch was Lukes preference as well. I was thinking a Sea Elven Patrol -Mist Mage, Spearelves, bolt thrower, great weapon wielder. But no-one had taken Skaven, and it is Mordenheim. There must be ratties!

My first patrol @ 200 points had

Group of 4 with spear & shield
Group of 4 with grenade and flamer
I probably made their stats too high to be fluffy (4 ranged attack- should have been 3)
Single Packmaster with longstrike power weapon. Needs more nuanced rules for a stun weapon rather than armour piercing.
Single Skaven Assasin with chain and blade

After a bit of a re-jig I think I will go

Group of 4 with spear & shield (lower stats)
Group of 4 with grenade (lower stats)
Group of 4 with blade & shield (lower stats)
Packmaster with longstrike & spear (medium stats)
Deathrunner with chain, blade & axe (leader high stats)

The "problem" with this setup is a distinct lack of energy and only one "range weapon, although heaps of Fx range.

Considering the game, I sort of feel a bit denser terrain and more troops or smaller board might be warranted. Or maybe 40k's "knife fight in a phone box" has tainted my view point.
I guess Mordenheim is more about gang on gang rather than opposing armies. A bit of using cover, then get stuck in, rather than manoeuvre and flanks. Hmm.

Books

So a friend of mine was talking about reading stuff on the Kindle, and it being more accessible etc. Bravo I say.

I 'm doing up a list of books that I enjoyed, I might go back and read, and maybe others might like..

anyway:

The Wounded Land by Stephen Donaldson. I had no idea that there were 10 in the series now, but the first couple had a massive impact on my Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying games

Gormenhast by Merven Peake. The names, emotion and characters are awesome. Sometimes horribly awesome but great none the less. Love the names. Wish I could do names like that off the top of my head.

Conan the Conqueror by Robert E Howard. There are a great number of stories here with fantastic roleplaying plots. And the fights are bone-crunching. Only one Game of Thrones fight comes close. Don't use the movies to judge this. The book Conan is more like a Colossus - Punisher hybrid than some Hollywood body builder. No offence to Arnie, he brought great humour to the role, where none existed and made a sell-able movie. He's just not a swarthy black haired steel-eyed killer. Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises is closer in character. Heck, it's like Jack Reacher being played by Tom Cruise...

I remember "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and "The Hobbit" having serious impact on me. They are described as children's books, but then so is Harry Potter. No wait, that's a negative..
Read the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarilion you heathens! It's good for you. Or something. Read the other 2 to your kids. It won't give them nightmares, promise.

Elric of Melnibone and pretty much everything Micheal Moorcock wrote with Elric in it, before he got all serious and arty and started writing with crayons made of narcissism and calling it art.

There is cool Elric out there, but I like the DnD ideas it inspired, Black Razor etc

This is mostly fantasy... for Science Fiction I'd recommend-

Hidden Empire series by Kevin J Anderson. It's actually reminds of Avatar in (themes) and Robert E Heinlein in writing process.

Accelerando or "Halting State" or pretty much anything written in a napkin by Charles Stross. It can be a bit, um , icky .. but he handles modern issues. Copyright, 3D printing, cloud storage, digital currency, all form key plot elements in his near-future romps.

I can't remember if I actually liked the Grey-lensman (E E SMITH) series. Should read one again to decide if they go on the list.

Also need to re-read Fafrd and the Grey Mouser. I think I was mining the books too heavily for DnD material and missed the story.  I was GMing greyhawk -(using both Adnd and later Rolemaster) at the time and pretty much cloned Lankmar into Greyhawk.

I'll have something to do on leave...
:)
Ash out