Intro:
The final game for phase 1 of our campaign would be against the top gang in our group at this time, Steve’s mighty War Pigs (check out the famous insta here: https://www.instagram.com/hobby.dad/ ).They are a Goliath gang who heard the whispers of Grandfather Nurgle and have gleefully taken his gifts and blessings. Steve was gracious enough to host a group of us for this final game at his place again so we had a lovely outside battle in the sumps!
The Preamble:
Steve’s gang is tough. Very tough. Goliath are strong enough as is but infused with the powers of Chaos they are nothing to scoff at. Making this even more of an uphill battle for me I have very little high strength or good AP weapons to punch through them. Meanwhile his gang is sporting a shiny autocannon and some a few boltguns… Eek.
The Mission:
Escape the Breach
Both gangs are attempting to find a path through the Breach, while stopping the other from doing the same. Each gang must get its fighters off the board edge closest to their opponents deployment area. If in the End phase a fighter is within 1″ of their opponents board edge and not Engaged, they may be removed from the battlefield and count as having escaped the Breach. Fighters within 1″ of a loot casket may choose to take the casket with them when they leave the board. Fighters removed in this way are ignored for the purposes of make Bottle tests (i.e., they do not count as part of the crew size but also do not count as having been taken out of action).
Perils
Carnivorous Plants! Man eating plants that will will chase and eat you all game. Amazing. 1 set of plants would randomly shoot the closest target each turn. The other set would move towards the closest opponent and strike them in close combat. There were 3 bases of each type of plant randomly placed on the map. We thought the shooting ones would be the scariest but in the end… those CC ones were murder.
The Game:
We started off 6″ in from the board edge on either side. Both of us split our forces into two, 1 on each flank. We were both scared of the purple plants (shooters) which really pushed out deployments to those areas. But what we should have been afraid of was those moving CC plants (the teal/white ones).
Being both Nurgle gangs I can tell you there was about a minute or two of hesitation about wanting to shoot each other. After all are we not brothers? That being said, by the 2nd activation I chose to break that hesitation with a cheeky grenade launcher shot, that bounced around and did nothing.
Very funny, this game saw A LOT of that on both sides. Shoot, hit, no wound. Shoot, miss. Shoot, scatter, no hit. Shoot,hit,wound, make the 6+ save. It was as if Papa Nurgle himself was stopping us from doing any damage to each other. I think it wasn’t until some point in the 2nd turn that people actually started taking wounds from our own shooting.
My push up the right flank was… well…not good. Steve and I traded some grenade launcher rounds back and forth, causing some pins, but no damage. However, the very hungry plant made its move quickly right into my guys. So not only does this thing hit hard, it also has a large reach, lashing out 3″ in all directions around it. This bloody thing managed to entangle 4 of my guys after a couple turns including causing some serious injuries. It was not looking good. And good luck hurting them back without some flame weapons.
Funny enough the shooting plants I don’t think did a thing all game. This is due to how they work, as they first only activate on a 4+, then have to hit with a 4+ on top of that, whereas the plants that chase you don’t need to roll to activate.
Meanwhile, on the left flank, things went…not much better. I managed to sneak a couple boys up towards the middle to try and cut off some of Steve’s guys, while my leader and Papa Scabs played Doge the Autocannon. Thankfully I knocked his Autocannon on its butt pretty quick and used that chance to move up. However, much like the right flank, hungry plants came for me. They tried to get Ethan but he was able to trot away from them, and then it came after my leader and Papa Scabs, causing some damage to them.
Steve helped slow down the plant chasing him with some smoke, cleverly getting himself inside it which stopped it from attacking him. Poor Ethan tried to charge some pigs and managed to miss entirely with both his swings.. He was then quickly dispatched by the massively mutated Goliaths.
I kept the Autocannon under control thanks to a lovely Click action, which Steve to his dismay rolled a fat 1 on his hit roll. However, due to the stray shot rule, a very unfortunate ricochet bounced into my poor ganger who was in cover, and taking him out of action.
I managed to get a couple wounds into Steve’s huge war boss, but not nearly enough to keep him down while he advanced with his buddy and took out my new ganger who replaced Fulgungus (RIP), Festivus.
In one of the worse cases of throwing a grenade I’ve managed so far… Poxy Pete tossed an incendiary grenade onto one of the Warpigs. It missed. It bounced. It landed right on top of Pete and also managed to hit 2 other of my own guys. This resulted in taking newbie Goomba out of action. Fantastic.
I also had Steve’s most terrifying weapon, Big Daddy, absolutely destroying the poor bastards in his way. This insanely roided up kill machine is a goddamn monster. In the pictures below he was still not finished, but you can see him in his painted glory above (and more so on his insta)!
By this point things were looking grim. If I recall I think Steve had nobody out of action, I was down multiple fighters, and no way in heck was I going to make it off the board! In order to save from any more serious wounds I pulled the plug and got my surviving boys out of there! You can see the rather large pile of wounded on the right hand side in the above photos.
I clearly got 0 crates off so no extra cashola while Steve grabbed a couple of them, escaping the clutches of the evil plants!
The Wrap Up:
Woof! That was a rough battle. Just look at the casualty list!
But, thankfully, this game was the game before downtime. And downtime means anyone in recovery will be available for your first game out of downtime. This reason alone is why I didn’t pull the plug sooner! There wasn’t anything too noteworthy on injuries, majority were out cold or grievous (go to recovery).
Next up I finally add a heavy hitter into the gang and strike out to take some turf away from the Corpse Grinders in the 2nd half of our campaign, the takeover phase!
WarGamer Eric's Hobby and Gaming Emporium 
Leave a Reply