Sump Flood!

Not much going on tonight, so I'm using my time to move along the club's Necromunda campaign. I put the new pitfighter stuff out last night (see post below), and I've just finished off posting up the new scenario. I've not built the swing bridge model I'd intended for the 'toxic river' scenario yet, so I've gone with 'sump flood'. I shamelessly lifted the idea from the Yakromunda website resource archive, but added my own rub on it to personalise it for our own campaign. I'm looking forward to playing this one myself. I like the idea of heavies breathing out their arse and scrambling up ladders to avoid the rising toxic gunk as enemy gangers perched on nearby buildings pepper the bulkheads with bullets and lasfire...



SUMP FLOOD

The Papa doesn't like the way things are going, so he's taken matters into his own hands. Folks from all round these parts have been coming down out of their vents, shafts, and far flung domes to congregate in Blake's Pit's largest settlements for the annual festival to mark the Emperor's Name Day. Once a year the big towns hold bustling celebrations where the bars and flophouses creak at the seams with revellers and the streets are packed tight with traders and entertainers of every strain.

Fiddler's Elbow was always jumping.

The town of Fiddler's Elbow, at the heart of Boss Blake's turf is one such mecca for party-goers; due to its size it offers the best bars, nightclubs and gambling dens for miles around. Located at the centre of Sputnik dome it sits on a crossroads for people round these parts, and is always the busiest place for miles aroud.. Unfortunately for these teeming masses, the Papa is privy to a little titbit of information unbeknowst to almost all. Sputnik dome sits over the main effluent conduit for the midhive munitoria miles above. The pipes themselves run right under Fiddler's Elbow town square. The Papa has bided his time until the moment was right. Now the moment is here...

Papa Tango's agents have been busy - the explosive charges have been set, the timers wind to zero detonation is imminent! Few can guess at the horror to be unleashed. Even fewer will survive!

Sump Flood is a campaign scenario to be fought between 2-4 gangs from rival factions. The festivities in Fiddler's Elbow were a magnet for the great and the good,  welcome friends and despised enemies. For one day a year, everyone goes. The scenario starts as a gang fight. At the beginning of the second turn, the gunk from the gushing sump flood rises d6-2 inches. It will do this at the start of each full turn thereafter (ie at the start of the turn for whichever player went first).

Sludge is going to erupt like a volcano!

The gunk is vile, toxic and deadly. Any fighter standing in 1" of gunk moves at half rate. Any fighter standing in 2" of it takes an automatic flesh wound, and moves at half rate. If caught in 3", the fighter is out. Downed fighters caught in any gunk automatically go out of action. Falling damage into gunk is suffered as normal, and the gunk doesnt offer any cover. The gunk will never go higher than 10"

For set up, use a 4' x 4' board, and place the higher buildings towards the centre of the table. This should be a rat race to the top of the highest buildings! The objective of the game is to eliminate the opposing gang before your own succumbs to the toxic sump gunk! Experience is accrued as per a normal gang fight, with the exception that fighters receive d6+2 exp for surviving rather than the usual d6. Good luck, and get climbing!

Got my swimmin' goggles on!

INTO THE PITS!

Mid term hols from work just now, so a bit of a breather to get some gaming stuff done. Last night I took the chance to get some more material down for the club's Necromunda campaign. Its been too long since I had the chance to get out new scenarios for the campaign, and I'm wary of letting it peter out, especially with attention now turning to the club's WHM vet's league.

The idea is to allow Necromunda 'quickies' with players choosing to risk their best combat fighters down in the pits for potentially handsome experience and financial reward. The dangers of losing of course will put off some! I found the scenario sifting through a 'settlement events' pack for Necromunda on the Yakromunda website - which is an amazing resource! Gangers go in for the fight, accompanied by the gang leader as 'minder' and the one who puts the bets on. There is a random events table to roll on before the fight commences, which affects the betting with results such as the leader getting pickpocketed and losing all his creds, to fighters being under the weather and suffering stat mods, or even just legging it and not showing up! The fighting is limited to hand to hand combat weapons only (and no sword or power weapons), so its purely a dirty bludgeoning match. I'm hoping to use the game board from Martin's Spartacus set to stage these as it would look immense!

I'm going wear your spleen like a hat!

Players simply pick a ganger to fight, and grab someone to play the pit fighter (randomly generated from the Outlanders book). No campaign points available for this one on account of its scale, but players could build up legendary reps for their combat specialists here, so it should make for good sport if enough of the lads go for it. No doubt Craddock will rule house if he puts an Ork boy in there! If it catches on and people build reps for their boys, we could have ganger on ganger pit fights and cut out the pit slave. Other campaign players who want to watch could bet gang credits on the outcome...

Now this is just awesome.

I wrote this bit of fluff below to set the scene. Quaego is back, although a bit damaged. When I sent out the faction offers to draw the players into the campaign 'camps', Tam's leader got jumpy and shot poor Quaego in the face!

This ones got balls of steel!

PIT FIGHTER

Quaego leaned in close, too close for your likin’. His swarthy bulk was oppressive in the close space, seeming to loom over you like the walls of some implacable edifice.  The ever present stogie hung as always from one corner of his stygian visage. The other half of his face was a monstrousity of soldered plates, cable and whirring gears.  A trigger happy ganger had fragged him in the grid a few months back. Would have killed any normal underhiver outright – only reasonable outcome, to be sure.  Seemed it took more than a double tap to the head to put down a lump of meat like Quaego though. 

Now here you were again, feelin’ like a bug stuck to flypaper as he set to asking you his questions. Always with the fucking questions! The red glow of the artificial optic telescoped in on you with a sterile whine as you weighed the question in your head.

‘Well,’ a shovel  like hand scooped the stump of the stogie from his lips as he exhaled a cloying, acrid cloud, like the smokestack on an Imperial munitorium. ‘You sure your man is up to this?’ The baleful glow of the optic swept up and over your shoulder to dwell on your boy.  Your eye couldn’t help but be drawn by that deprecating gaze.  Through the jumble of jostling, sweaty bodies you found Icy standing against the far wall, drinking in the spectacle playing out below. The lad was trying hard to look as mean as a man could, but was coming off looking like a great big streak of piss instead. You stifled a grimace at the sight of the little bastard. 

Icy wasn’t much to look at. You might of guessed he was only nineteen or twenty. He didn’t even know himself. You’d picked him up after finding him wandering alone through the old ruins by Butler’s Gooch.  He wore threadbare clothes scabbed off corpses and didn’t have so much as a two bit stubgun to protect himself. Mean little cunt with a blade though. Kept his head down when the lead was flying and would wait for his moment. The creepy little bastard was a fucking surgeon with a blade when he got in close. Could give a man a DeVannian necktie in a heartbeat. The lads started calling him ‘Icy’ after they saw that, on account of how it left you feelin’ once you saw his handiwork. 

Useful as he was, Icy was startin’ to give the rest of the lads the heebie jeebies. It was time to get shot of him, and you didn’t fancy being the one to break the news to him. The thought of waking up with your tongue yanked through a new hole in your neck wasn’t a particularly edifying one. So it came down to this: either you emptied a round into the little bastard’s head whilst he slept, or you made a few creds out his demise down here… You lifted your bottle of Scuzz and took a long hard draw as you eyeballed the juve.

‘He don’t look much, but he’ll do just fine.” You wish you sounded surer – even you could hear the doubt in your own voice. Quaego’s glowering optic burned into Icy, drinking him in and not much caring for the taste.

‘I don’t want another ten second wonder out of you. If the crowd aint happy,’ Quaego took another heavy drag on the stump of the stogie, savouring the silky smoke that seemed to wash away the taint of Icy, ‘then Quaego aint happy.’ The stygian giant’s two heavy eyes – natural and machine – swept back to you. He paused for a moment, and that fucking oppressive stare of his seemed to press you down into the very floor. ‘No one disappoints Quaego twice.’ You gulped hard at the implication, and hoped to whatever Gods were listening that the gains would outweigh the risk.

‘He’ll fight. My man’ll put on a show, rest assured. Give him the best you’ve got, you’ll see.” Another drag on the Scuzz, and you could hear your own pulse hammering in your ears, even over the bestial cacophony of the arena. Shit! You always let your mouth run when you got nervous. Now look where it was fucking getting you! Quaego seemed real pleased though.  That great buckled face of his twisted into a leering grin as he swept an impossibly trunk like arm around your reluctant shoulders.

‘Good’, just for a moment those heavy eyes danced. ‘I should never have doubted you! The boy will do us proud – now lets go place us our bets…’ As giant gangster led you off into the stalls, you wondered how the juve was going take the news. Seemed honesty would be the best approach.

‘See how I said we were coming down here to watch the pit fights tonight lad? Well, that’s not quite on the mark. You see, I will be watching the pitfight son, but you’re not. No, you’re going to be in it…”

The Colonel and his chicken!

Another two weeks gone in, and too much time has passed before getting back to the blog... Its putting me in the mind of a certain Mike Myers film and his Dad's fortnightly craving for CHICKEN! Damn the Colonel, with his wee beady eyes! Anyhows, been mind blowingly busy with work <again>, cant wait until April for it to blow over again... No halt to the gaming though!

A week last Sunday I had a second go at Tam's Warriors of Chaos. After Geoffers' withdrawal from the vets league and Harky's no show, it opened up a space for the gloriously placed 9th place player to come in. Lo and behold the Vampire Counts have risen again (who would have guessed it!). I needed some practice at the 2k points total set for the vet's league, so it was high time for a game. I felt like I'd pretty much beat out all the most useful permutations for the 1500pts tally set for last years WFB league, but now there was scope for some juicy new toys. The 2k list I'd run the week before in the double header with Robert against Angus and Craddock seemed fun to play and fairly effective if used correctly, so I tweaked that and gave it a whirl.

When I met him in the league, Tam was a hardened 40k player, but a relative fresh faced noob to fantasy. His army was unusual, as he is the first person I've seen run WoC for a good 15 years, and he was already tasting success. I had a couple of vamps, a black coach, ghouls, wraiths, grave guard and the usual core cheese. I knew his troops were hard, but I thought I had a fair chance. For his part, he was fielding the hellcannon, 5 knights and a couple of big units of warriors. Turned out it was a massacre! I managed to ding a couple of knights, but it was truly a grim spectacle to behold as he steamrollered me with his big, tough, nigh invulnerable troops... Grim times indeed.

Ye trusty coach - been a while since its been out of the mausoleum.

So this was revenge time then. I'd played alongside Tam since with his WoC, in a 6 player dark vs light storms of magic game. It was 2k a player then, and to be fair his army alone could have won the game for us. This game was going to be tough! I took a plethora of cheese - nearly 100 zombies and 40 skellies to tarpit him on one flank, with two necromancers to restore casualties. On the other flank was the heavy right hook - a mortis engine, alongside 5 crypt horrors and a grave guard unit with a supercharged strigoi-ghoul king. I also had a terrorgheist to give back-up. Tam's army was an evolution of his 1500 force, with the knights dropped for 12 chosen warriors, a level 4 mage for general, a new war altar and some warhounds to make up the points.

Chosen Warriors: 95% immune to death.

My tactic was to hold back with the cheese, move to get round the back on the left with the terrorgheist, and go in on the right with my heavy 'hook'. I had 3 screams to soften them up - scabscrath on the ghoul king, the banshees on the mortis engine, and best of all the terrorgheist. Hopefully this would get past all that chaos armour and down some of those walking tanks!

The tactics bore some fruit. He met my 'hook' with his chosen: 4+ armor and 3+ ward saves all round! The screams did some fair damage, downing a few. I managed to take down the war altar, but it had already done its work, augmenting his chosen at the outset of the game. His L4 mage swooped around behind me on his disc, but I was spared much damage from him or the hellcannon by Tam's appalling rolls. In turn 3 his mage even nuked himself and cascaded off into the warp. Heh. I'd hoped to put the grave guard and the crypthorrors in at the same time on the chosen, but the grave guard couldn't make the charge due to spacing. Instead I charged the strigoi out solo to aid the horrors. Dangerous, but it was an eggs in one basket list - he cost the points and he'd have to earn them. Disastrously though, the horrors made it and he didn't. They survived two rounds of combat with S5 WS6 A2 troops with a 4+/3+ save, but the strigoi took 3 TURNS to charge those 10 inches. By the time he got there, the task was too much even for him (even so, he damn well nearly did it, gah!) Not meant to be. The mortis engine got hellcannoned and went nuclear about the same time. Through his misfortune as much as my design, I'd reduced the warhounds, altar, mage lord and taken down half the chosen on one flank, but now my cheese wing faced two units of 18 warriors backed with a hellcannon. It would only be a matter of time...

The Mortis Engine- with any luck mine will look not too far off this in a couple of months

The terrorgheist did some good work though. With Tam unsettled by the Mortis Engine, he focussed the hellcannon fire on that, allowing the Terrorgheist free rein. I worked him around the back of Tam's line and screamed into the warrior unit on his right flank, reducing it down to only 6 warriors before the general died and the crumble test snuffed it out.

Post game analysis? Did much better than last time out, and the screams did some notable damage. There was a fair dead pile on Tam's side - but at the same time he was quite unlucky with his own dice rolls this time out. My general's double failed charge was critical - but once he, the grave guard and the horrors went down, the army had almost no teeth to it. Quite grim to see actually! The ward saves the chaos troops get with the table they roll on seem almost insurmountable when combined with how good individual rank and file are in hand to hand. The best way to deal with the hellcannon also seems to be to leave it alone and hope that it blows itself up... Not good! Hopefully the new book will balance the WoC out a bit more before I face them again.

Life in the 40k universe - walk softly and carry a big gun... oh, and always use 'burst fire'. It rocks.

The following Tuesday, 'Gunner' Cutter got his autopistol out again for round two of Dark Heresy at Robert's. Martin joined us for this one, bringing a cog boy into the group. Playing out the 'Illumination' mission, we went off to hunt down the aborigine seeress after she turned her back on the Abbot and legged it. By the time we'd questioned her and gotten back to the cathedral, everything had predictably gone pete tong. Brother Lazarus was down and bleeding out through a selection of new holes in his chest in the Abbot's house, where we found a smashed in data slate telling us our superior had been possessed by a local godly spirit and was hellbent on opening a gate into warp space inside the cathedral. Off we went to finally get a look inside the cathedral and there he was floating in the air with tarot cards spinning around him as he chanted to a big swirling warp rift in the ceiling.

Shoot him in the bulbs!

As we went in to get him, the Abbot revealed himself as the true villain - completely possessed by the spirit of the Crowfather, and noodling about like something out of Silent Hill. He made a mess of James' scribe and it all seemed a bit hopeless and grim with most of the party paralysed by terror until Craddock's PC double tapped the critter in its milky white bulbs with his autopistol and blew the tainted swine back into the screaming warp. Gah, we'll never hear the end of it! Perhaps death and eternal soulless damnation would have been preferable to sharing a space cruiser to the next mission with a new 'Hero of the Imperium'... Good game again though, so props to Robert. Still feels quite fresh, and I'm enjoying the system and the setting. The party took a group award for XP and a bounty and all busied themselves buying upgrades for their characters, so no doubt next time we'll have some new toys to use!

Last Sunday it was back to the club again, this time for my second match in the Flames of War 600 league. This time I'd be leading my Wehrmacht Infantry Company against Dougie's filthy, lice-ridden Commie dogs. The scenario was a straight up battle, with two objectives in either deployment zone. To win, you had to start a turn with one of your units on an objective in the enemy's DZ.

He had so many men! Dougie literally filled his side of table from side to side. He had a carpet of infantry, with a couple of hmg teams attached to the platoons. The red dogs had 4 field artillery guns for support. My single platoon of infantry, mortar platoon, StugD and half track seemed paltry in comparison; however this game taught me the value of getting infantry dug in. Whilst my mortars rained down barrage fire on the red wave, my infantry dug in over one objective, ably covered by a wood. The StugD held the other along with my company command. As he came at me, my Stuka's (all but useless, they only turned up twice) harried his artillery and his left flank infantry. They were slowed but came on - as his platoon crested a rise across the middle of the field, my platoon opened up with 12 dice and butchered them! Dougie's surviving platoon members failed their break test and legged it off the field. One objective would be safe at least.

Cant you see them, Yuri? The Germans are the trees over there!

The mortar platoon bogged down the Russian platoon moving up to occupy the village in the centre, supported with occasional fire from a base of my dug in infanrty and an odd shot by the StugD. They would sit there in cover in the centre of the table for the duration of the game. On Dougie's right, my StugD and the half track held the objective against Dougie's last infantry platoon, which he initially held back. My company command made a bold attack - and even got close enough to assault the enemy in their DZ, but got plastered for their efforts. As the Ruskies came back at me, the mortars and my lonely armour pinned them continuously and whittled them away. I even eventually forced him to make a break test on them (if he failed they'd be off and I'd win by default), after which the survivors scarpered off to hide in terrain in the table centre.

Pesky Russian artillery.

This left the path open for the noble StugD to scoot off solo and drive onto the objective in Uncle Joe's right flank DZ! By this point it was turn 14 - the scenario imposed no turn limit, and both sides had been bogged down and pinned into a stalemate by turn 6, so I felt this had some potential. If I could survive Dougie's turn, then the game was mine! The StugD had studiously avoided LoS from Dougie's artillery for the entire game after a near fatal speculative shot early on, and it now took 6 rounds from the 3.5" guns that could draw a line on it. Three shots hit and I saved on two and drew on the last. If Dougie could pass a firepower test, he'd save his bacon - other than that the game was mine.

Poor, beat up StuG. So brave, so naive.

He passed it. Balls. The Fuhrer will be disappointed. The StugD went pop (note to self: buy bigger Stug), and the ruskies in the centre broke out and made for the now hideously exposed and unprotected mortar platoon. Ah well, that was it all over now. Still though, I got 2 league pts for breaking one of Dougie's platoons, so not a total loss - and it was an pic game! It flowed much better this time round, thanks to Dougie's knowledge of the rules. Looking forward to my next opponent - I think it may be Kev, with his weak-kneed Highlanders.

Nice components - lots of pieces though!

Last of all, D&D was called off on Tuesday as a couple of the guys couldn't make it. We played the 'Game of Thrones' board game for the first time. It was great! All houses - except for Arryn - can be played, and players vie for land, power, wealth and station just as in the books. At first look, the game seemed quite complex, with many steps and procedures in a game turn. Martin had predicted we'd only get to turn two or three, but we rattled along and made it to the full ten.

I drew House Stark, which was quite a fun position. Up in the north the resources are stretched thin across great swathes of land, but you dont have to contend with rivals snapping at you from all sides like the Martells, Baratheons and Lannisters did! The map makes for some really excellent strategic minefields as the players balance for power and risk conquests vs. consolidation.

For a little while at least, winter was coming...

In the end, Robert blocked my bid for glory - the git - and in a three way tie for the turn 10 win between Martin's Greyjoys, Tam's Tyrells and myself, it came down to seeing who had the most strongholds (home provinces) and then to who had the highest supply rating. Tam took it in the end. That man really does have the golden touch. I cant wait until I own him one day and hammer the shit out of him!

Looking forward to next Sunday at the club now. I've got a 2k practice game lined up against Rambo to have one last practice with my VC list for the vet's League. I also hope to get the next scenarios up for the club;s Necromunda campaign, as its been a fair while and I dont want to leave it hanging.