Intro:
Week 2 of the campaign would see The Flymasters of Hulud face off against The Necromunda Pacification Division (N.P.D)! My buddy Martin (https://www.instagram.com/darkknight2k6/) . He came over to my place and we cracked some coronas (because it’s all about FAMILYY) and threw down to fight over Archaeotech territory!
The Preamble:
Martin is running an Enforcer gang (if you couldn’t tell by his gang name..) that have some of the best gear and certainly the best saves in the game at this point. Up to a whopping 2+ in the right instances. My gang by comparison doesn’t get better than a 5+! On top of that I have only 1 weapon with reliable armour penetration being the trusty ol heavy stubber. The advantage for me is numbers, and the best hope to force a bottle!
The Mission:
Sector Mechanicus – Looters
4 loot crates are put on the board. The defender must deploy his gang within 3″ of those crates. The attacker (moi) picks 1 board edge and can deploy a long it 6″ in.
The attacker must steal the loot crates and remove them from the board edge (by being 1″ from edge at end phase). Defenders win if they still have more loot boxes than the attackers could remove by games end. If the attacker bottles and runs, defender wins.
There is nothing stopping the defender from popping those crates open (as they follow normal loot crate rules) and possibly removing all the crates from even being attempted to be stolen. Martin had the great (perhaps) idea to pop them all as quickly as possible to hopefully secure a quick win. A dastardly plan, but one that ended up probably costing him a win! Stay tuned to find out how.
The Game:
I setup my gang a long the left flank of the board spread fairly evenly along it, using the large ruins to hide most of my gang. The enforcers spread around the various crates (minus his captain who had to come in via reinforcement roll later on). My plan was to push the enforcers off at least a couple of objectives, #1 and #2 being the main target, before he had a chance to open them all up (which I knew would be the first thing he did). The objectives are marked below.
As predicted on each activation Martin tried to open up a box to remove it from play, as I was trying to move up as quickly as I could to start taking shots.
He managed to crack open 3!! crates on his first activation’s. Number 4 was a bomb, and exploded in his face. But such heavily armoured enforcers barely even noticed. 2 turned into an ammo cache which meant it stayed on the board and was still a possibility to be grabbed. Number 3 turned out to contain a single coin, but is then removed! He failed when attempting to open number 1. Just like that I was down to only 2 crates left to possibly grab.
In truly game changing shot, Bronkestus took careful aim and fired a perfect burst at Robo(Robert)Cop who was standing over objective 1, knocking him backwards and over the railing of the building. This left 1 objective at least he would take a few turns to get back to.
I also managed to land a doozy of a shot from Papa Scabs’ heavy stubber, across the map at the enforcer who found an (un)lucky coin in his box. This shot blew him away completely and he was out of action.
I then moved the small group consisting of my leader with his pet and Ethan from their push on the north side of the map, to quickly run down and try and grab the middle container. I had originally planned for them to grab the container in the image above that ended up being a single coin 🙂
The game was on now, as I would have to scale the metal container, run across the ladder and into the building, grab the container, and run back to my edge. All of this would be mostly exposed to the enemy without much in the way to save me from being shot. In the end.. it probably went about 50% to plan..
Very much to my luck, all of Martin’s guys had short range weapons, save his captain who was stuck walking in from the corner edge of the map (bad reserve roll, I got to place him 🙂 ). I however didn’t realize this at the time, I assumed he had some longer range grenade launchers. So thanks to this, I was able to run across, and grab the container rather quickly thanks to the fan favourite Overseer skill on my leader. He did get hit after grabbing the container but only pinned much to my relief. I then stood him up, and jumped off the side of the building, taking a hit and getting pinned yet again. I managed to make it one more move after that before Marty’s Enforcers caught up (as you can see in picture 2 and 3), and brutally gunned Ethan down from behind. Now it became a relay race. Papa Scabs had to sprint over to the box, pick it up and keep running to the board edge. I also had to try and keep his captain and Robocop from catching up so I attempted to flank them with Fulgungus and pepper them with grenades, keeping them pinned.
I tried to help give Papa Scabs some covering fire as well from Office Asuka who was up high in the church ruins shooting down, managed to miss spectacularly and land a grenade right on top of both Papa Scabs and Bronkestus. Thankfully, this only pinned Papa Scabs and he was free to keep running away with his container. I can’t say much I was sweating as I saw that scatter result..
In the meantime, Officer Asuka ended up using the last of the ammo on the cache she was holding onto. By doing so, this exhausted it, leaving the only container left the one I was now holding. The only way this mission could have gone wrong using Marty’s plan… just did. Now I only had to get the 1 container off and I would win (as if I had more containers removed vs those left on the table at the end I win).
Another sprint to the finish would see Papa Scabs leave the board, taking the only objective on the table with him! At this point with most of my gang on the table and Martin not wanting to risk any injuries for his next game, he chose to bottle out.
The Wrap Up: This was a game that was always going to come down to some very extreme luck to pull off. Frankly I figured I had no chance especially with his plan to try and open the containers (which I don’t think anyone else had even thought of, kudos to that idea). The luck was on my side this game, from his captain being shoved into the corner and taking away his only long range for awhile, to all the containers being opened save the last one, leaving only 1 container left to play for while it was in my hands. The final straw was probably as his captain caught up, took aim with his boltgun at Papa Scabs just before he was off the table, and managed to whiff the shot… (I think he was at a 2+ to hit… ).
The big takeaway for me was just how TOUGH Enforcers are. Dear god. Other than the 1 lucky hit from Papa Scabs, I could do nothing to pierce his armour. Robocop took multiple hits including falling off the building to just keep getting up and coming after me. It was quite scary. Marty also realized he would need to invest in some longer range weapons to help with board control, something he has since done!
This game won me the Archaeotech territory, which I would totally forget to put to good use in my next game 🙂
Tune in next time for game 3, fighting against the Redemptionists!
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