Year of the Rat - Stimmer for the Win!

Necromunda – We haven’t started our official pit fight campaign yet, however I was able to play a few exhibition matches to test out my latest fighter.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about a grenade launcher wielding Stimmer in a pit fight. Not having access to his guns until round three could be a bit scary, that is until I found inspiration from Sump City Radio. Their discussion of House of Chains in Episode 5 was quite good and it made me rethink my opinion of the Muscle Skill Tree.

My champion Knuke did a phenomenal job smashing his opponent. Dancing around the board is a little easier when you’re playing 1v1 so most games I was able to either get off the charge or weather the storm of blows to beat my opponent back with my Fists of Steel.

I think this will be my fighter of choice for our Pit Fight campaign. He’s tough enough that most weapons have a hard time hurting him so I might feel pretty comfortable betting on myself in a few matches.

Year of the Rat - Pit Fights via Hangouts

Four Player Pit Fight Over Google Hangouts

Necromunda – Perseverance pays off, when this pandemic made meeting up in person a bad idea and then potentially a crime I thought our Necromunda campaign would die off. Luckily with a little bit of trial and error we were able to work out the kinks in our pit fighting rules.

First up using the 24”x24” mat that came with Dark Uprising is a much better choice. I made some identifiers for the grid one the side so players could call out the direction they wanted to move. We also opted to just have me do all the moving and measuring. Using my phone to join the hangout and suspending it over my dining room table we got a decent view of the map.

Second the changes we made: to only allow (1) action on the first turn, allowing pistols and grenades Turn 2 and all other ranged weapons on Turn 3; seemed to balance the game out a little better. We were able to play two games and each went to turn 4 before there was a winner. Even with five players it seemed to flow smoothly.

Next time we’re going to start an actual campaign that will allow betting and fighters to buy further upgrades. Here’s a summary of the first pass at betting/campaign rules:

• Each player get 300 credits to build a fighter and 50 credits for entrance fees/betting to start
• To enter a fight it costs 5 credits, the winer takes the purse
• Players may place bets with the house for: First Blood - First fighter to eliminate another, Winner - Player that wins the match, Sacrificial Lamb - First player Eliminated. These bets will pay out 1:1, so a five credit bet will pay out 10 and so forth.
• Players my use their winnings to improve their fighter. Any upgrades cost 3x the listed cost in credits. This represents training and the slave owner keeping the bulk of the winnings.
• In the event a player runs our of money they may sell back weapons and equipment for 1/2 the listed cost in credits. Players may not sell back stat increases or skills.
• The Injury chart will not be used to the first pass at this campaign. If this goes well we might incorporate it into the next iteration.

Here’s the Goliath Stimmer I ran in the last match as well as another I’m considering for future matches.

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Revised Pit Fight Rules

Year of the Rat: Necromunda – Hangouts Pit Fight

First pass at playing over Google Hangouts

Necromunda – Five members of my gaming group were able to meet up over Google Hangouts to have a pit fight. We used the rules I posted up the other day day and it was pretty successful. After three games we did have a few issues that need to be addressed before we play again.

First off being locked in a tiny fighting pit with a Corpse Grinder armed with Paired Heavy Chain Cleavers is bad news. Corpse Grinders are a very strong in close combat and many of the abilities they have seem to be an over correction to the weakness of close combat in Necromunda. If you don’t have a chance to shoot and pin them or stay out of charge range there’s little hope of beating them. Right now we’re considering limiting pit fights to the original six house only, it makes sense from a fluff perspective and puts everyone on a more even playing field. The downside is the non-house gangs are really cool and everyone wants to be able to play their favorite character. The compromise is to eliminate the “scary” part of the masks and remove any ability that flat out takes a model out of action. We’re going to try this next week and if it doesn’t work out better than we’ll go to just the original six gangs.

The other issue we had was a chess board isn’t big enough if you count squares as 1” the easy fix is to change them to 2” squares and count a diagonal move as 3”. Intially we opted to use a chess board because everyone could easily replicate the board state at home. In practice I use my laptop and phone to both join the call and suspended my phone above the board. So it wasn’t necessary for everyone to have a board at home. That being said we’re going to use the game mat that came with Dark Uprising next week. I’ll make a number and letter key for the grid so we can easily call out our moves.

We’ll also be tweaking a few things.
• Showboating: Models only get one action on turn one.
• We Want Blood: Ranged weapons aren’t allowed until turn three.
• From the Hip: Weapons with the Sidearm trait may be used on turn two.
• FIGHT CLUB: Fighter may purchase any items from theBook of Judgement Trading post up to Rare 9.

Apart from those minor snags we had a great time and played three games. We’ll try again next week with the tweaks detailed above.

Year of the Rat: Necromunda - Via Google Hangouts

Necromunda – Prior to all this COVID nonsense I was participating in two separate Necromunda campaigns. Neither of my gangs was doing particularly well, but I was having fun. Both campaigns were moving along and didn’t seem to be in danger of stalling out, then the world went to shit and getting together for games wasn’t going to happen.

After a few brainstorming sessions we decided that running Necromunda pit fights over video chat seemed to be the most feasible way of playing. Only having one model per player to keep track of and an easily translatable grid seemed to make sense. In the event that this goes well we can continue to have fights during lockdown and generate some credits for our gangs when we can meet back up face-to-face.

Here’s the rules I came up with, I’ll post a follow up later this month with some type of after battle report.

Year of the Rat - Campaign Update

Necromunda – Necromunda can be a brutal game. Part of the fun is seeing your guys get better over time and/or your enemies get worse. Most of the time things even out over the course of a campaign particularly if you’re playing enough games in a cycle to generate income and experience. With a good number of games under you’re belt losing a model hurts but you can typically play catch up with most of the houses as they get the Settlement to recruit Juves from.

One of the Necromunda Campaigns I’m taking part in is a Dominion Campaign that meets once a month to play 1-2 games. For that campaign I opted to play Enforcers against a Van Saar, Healot Cult and Corpse Grinder Cult. The first month things went ok and we worked out the kinks with a multi=player game.

This month however things took a dramatic turn for me. We played a three-player “Tunnel FIght” on multi level board. We house-ruled a triangular deployment so everyone had relatively the same distance between them, and infiltrators had plenty of options. The game seemed to be going well with my Enforcer teams working together to take out a few models. That was until the Corpse Grinder Leader joined the fray. Some nasty combats saw my leader and one of my champs in need of medical care and one of my patrolmen in recovery. During the post-game sequence I had to pay out all my credits to visit the Doc who couldn’t save either model. So essentially my gang was gutted.

In a normal duration campaign I could probably come back from this. Because they died at the Doc I keep their equipment and get a single Rookie that I could gear up, and my remaining champ could take on the leader role. It wouldn’t be easy but I might be able to keep myself in the game.

However since we’re only getting together once a month and this was only the second game, I’m retiring this gang and starting over. With the infrequency that we’re playing I’ll struggle to catch up and won’t have much fun in the campaign, So instead I’m going to found a new gang. I’ll be tw games behind, but the odds are better that I could catch up from the baseline rather than being down 1/3 of my crew.