THE BROS ARE BACK and they’re not alone. See which innocent souls they’ve dragged into the foolishness of Necbromunda. Battle Bros is an ongoing bi-weekly column where Drew (PantsOptional) taught his brother Chris (head58) how to play Warhammer 40,000 and now is being hoisted by his own petard as he learns Necromunda. Catch up on their past adventures here.
Meet the Battle Bros
Chris
The older of the two brothers, and for once the more experienced in what is to come.
Drew
The younger brother, slowly realizing the horrors he has unleashed upon himself.
CHRIS: We made it, folks. We’re at the end of the campaign. Granted, it was only 7 games long but given our track record I’m marking this in the Win column – for some aspects anyway. Mainly that we got paid for eleven installments of pure blather without the Goonhammer corporate security team escorting us off the premises.
This was the grand finale game and I didn’t want to just pull an existing scenario from any of the eighty seven different Necromunda books out there. This had to be special. This had to be incredibly dumb.
DREW: Friends, when he says this? Remember he doesn’t mean dumb for normal people. This is incredibly dumb even by our standards. That’s saying something.
CHRIS: We’ve had this whole theme park narrative going on all along, which frankly nobody cared about but me, but I knew from the start that I wanted to lean super heavily into it for the finale. And it definitely had to be a four player free for all, because Chaos Reigns.
I pondered having a Conveyor-type mission where the player’s gangers are on a boat in the center tile, drifting on a track through countless horrors. Maybe I should have gone that route but I was concerned it would limit mobility and Allan’s Corpse Grinders would just mulch everybody in the boat.
DREW: I would honestly just jump over the edge. As we’ve seen in the past episodes the CGC runs roughshod over everyone and everything if they can pull off a charge and being trapped on a boat with them is literally the worst case scenario. Better to take my chances in the chocolate-and-LSD river.
CHRIS: Instead I decided to answer the question of why this theme park has been deserted for mumbledy-hundred or thousand years: the titular Professor Winkie of course went fucking bonkers and started killing al the guests.
So: opening day of the park! The gangs formed an uneasy truce because as much fun as murdering each other is, the prospect of getting filthy rich off of guileless hive denizens is even better! The Goliaths worked the ticket booths, the Squats operated the rides, the Eschers provided customer service and/or recreational drugs, and the Corpse Grinders ran the concessions. Entertainment-starved hivers flooded into the park to spend their hard earned credits. What could go wrong?
DOWNLOAD THE “OPENING DAY” SCENARIO
The scenario started thusly: I purchased and painted up a big tube of super cheap models. So they were slightly larger than the Necromunda models, and they all looked like stock characters from Happy Days, who cares. NInety models for $24! Close enough! They’re all from Uphive where they have better nutrition and 50s retro fashion is in! I put fifteen of these Hivers around the board and told the players to begin deploying within 12” of the board center. Each of us selected d3+2 of our crew – I didn’t want to deal with full crews on top of everything else which would be on the board, and I wasn’t quite dickish enough to make it a random selection.
DREW: Yes you are, but I would end you and I would not be kind about it. Maybe one of those ironic deaths like force-feeding you donuts until you explode. Maybe making you learn 10th Edition.
CHRIS: But I wasn’t revealing the victory or game end conditions just yet. Would the Hivers start sprouting extra arms and start singing the praises of the Four Armed Emperor? Would they need to be rescued? Who knows!
Yeah, they’d need to be rescued, because as soon as they had finished deploying I started dropping the other half of the tube of cheap models – the aliens! These were “Humpa Dumpas,” a subterranean race of mutants which Prof. Winkie had long ago freed from slavery and forced them to work for him in his park. They were here to subdue the surface dwellers and drag them down into the sewers for Reasons. The tiles which I’d printed had sewer grates scattered around them, and the Humpa Dumpas emerged within 3” of the grates, singing merrily the whole time. There were twice as many Humpa Dumpas as players’ fighters, so 28 of the little bastards. The whole scenario was basically a mashup of “Meat Harvest,” where one side is trying to save civilians from being eaten by the other side, and “MEEEEEEEEAT!,” where hordes of cannibals are trying to eat you, plus a twist of “Monster At The End of the Book” (read on).
Also I refused to stop saying “Humpa Dumpa.”
DREW: That kind of petulant and annoying behavior is Little Brother shit and it’s my duty to inform you you’re stepping on my shtick. If this continues I will involve my lawyer, who is just me in a wig after six Gansett tallboys, screaming half-intelligibly about maritime law and flag fringe.
CHRIS: The objective of the scenario was to keep the Humpa Dumpas from dragging away the paying customers. If only one gang still had fighters on the board or if there were no more Hivers left on the board or if there were no more Humpa Dumpas on the board the scenario would end. Winner was the one with the highest Humpa Dumpa Kill Count.
So naturally Drew kicked things off by shooting, and taking Out of Action, Josh’s leader.
DREW: Well, I’m sorry I read the victory conditions and saw killing every other gang would satisfy. I thought I came here to play Necromunda, not Happy Scrappy Hero Pup’s Friendship Adventure. Do y’all make your Chaos Daemons hug each other as well? Yes I took a max strength plasma pistol shot at a ganger who was within five inches and I’d do it again.
CHRIS: Any Seriously Injured or Out of Action models, both gang fighters and Hivers, remained on the board as delicious snacks for the Humpa Dumpas to drag away. Savor the screams of your friends as they are pulled into the nether regions of the Park for unspecified but likely unpleasant fates!
The first round saw some of the worst rolling I’ve witnessed since our last column. We’ve been playing dice games for decades now – between the four of us there’s probably close to a century and a half – you’d think we would know not to say things like “I only need a 2+” by now!
Toward the end of round one, someone’s meaty hand (there is still some dispute over the owner of said hand) bumped a large walkway, knocking it over and sending the models on it tumbling. I took full advantage of my role as Arbitrator to cry out “play it as it lies!” A nasty hivequake rattles the park! What could it portend? Models on the platform needed to make an Initiative check to avoid taking falling damage. How’d that go, Drew?
DREW: It killed goddamn Proust Barbie is how it went. She fell off and went straight to Out of Action. This took me by surprise, mostly because in an actual civilized game no one would have let that shit stand. Also I’ve been informed it wasn’t your hand by the person whose hand it actually was but it doesn’t matter because I’m blaming you anyway.
CHRIS: This is a lot less fun than the last time I played “whose hand is that.” Also at the end of round one I lived the dream with Tommy-1. He fired his stormwelder into a target-rich environment (friends, civilians, foes, who cares!) and got a full seven shots! He aimed, so he needed a 4+, and he whiffed every shot! Next round Tommy would live the other dream of the stormwelder and blow himself up. RIP Tommy-1, he died as he lived, being completely ineffectual.
At the start of round two, more Humpa Dumpas spawned around the grates. They continued their grim harvest. Boss Pizz had charged into a big blue one which looked like John Goodman’s character from those Monsters movies whose name I’m not bothering to look up, but that thing absolutely refused to die. See my note above about rolling.
Meanwhile Josh was having a great time with his Drill Master, hosing down Humpa Dumpas with his Ironhead flamer. He was less thrilled when he rolled two Ammo results on Obsidian, his other Drill Master. His boltgun was jammed. Obsidian had the “Dependable Like Kin” skill, which lets him reroll ammo checks when out of ammo, and a tactics card which let him reload automatically without a roll. You know what both of those things do for weapon jams? Bupkus. Once again, Josh questioned why he plays dice games.
DREW: Allan spent his time cleaning up one entire side of the board. When you have ninety attacks apiece and can charge for the length of the entire board it’s hard not to kick the holy hell out of some “monsters” which were slightly less combat-effective than an individual Guardsman. You and I spent some time doing less effective things like knocking each other down in the stupidest gun battle known to man.
CHRIS: We had gangers standing about three inches from each other, repeatedly shooting but failing to wound, so we took turns lying down for a bit until you got through with a Serious Injury and just coup-de-graced me. Pure Necromunda.
The end of round three was when the much predicted “Twist” dropped – the dreaded Professor Winkie himself emerged from the sewers to wreak havoc, yelling incoherently about wanting everyone to stay and play in his park forever! He was more machine than man, armored in a hodge podge of armor pieces from the Hall of Primarch robots and assorted accursed Xenos tech. I’d statted him up as a mid-level threat, didn’t want to go full ambull/murder cyborg because I knew the players would have a lot of other things to deal with, but he was fairly formidable. I’d initially given him a displacer field but after seeing what bullshit that was last time I swapped it out for a holochromatic field and an archaeo-carapace. He had a Xenarch death arc because I was fascinated with a rapid fire melee weapon. But my most sinister plan was the pairing of Gunk grenades (remember the Gunk Tank scenario a few weeks back) and a balefire thrower. Being covered in Gunk makes you much more flammable. I tossed on the “Fast Shot” skill so he could do both in one activation, gleefully hoping he would be setting Drew’s fighters on fire and making them Insane. I’d also settle for Josh’s or Allan’s. However it worked out it was going to be hilarious.
So of course when we rolled randomly to see what sewer grate he would pop out of, it came up the one where Boss Pizz was standing. I got to enact my Cunning Plan, but it was on my own guy. Pizz would burn to death a round later, to be dragged below by Humpa Dumpas. Womp Womp.
I should note that Professor Winkie was in no way vital to the mission goals. The players clocked this almost immediately and largely ignored him, declaring him a Distraction Winkie, a phrase we agreed we should probably stop using in public lest we end up on yet another watch list.
DREW: There were children in the store, sir. Or at least, Magic players. To me it’s the same thing.
I will say my favorite part of the Professor’s situation was when we spent quite a while talking about how you had reworked the dramatically unfun “Cursed” condition which his balefire thrower delivers so that one of the other players at the table controlled the Cursed fighter as opposed to them maybe going Insane and acting randomly. Except none of the rework mattered because half the time the target was going to be on fire anyway and would spend the turn screaming and running in a randomly determined direction.
CHRIS: Yeah, that didn’t work as I’d envisioned but I didn’t want to deal with the whole nonsense of the Insane condition. I really just wanted the “oops I just ate ghast” effect. It’s almost as if playtesting is important.
DREW: Okay, I lied. My favorite part was when it became my turn to activate him and I threw balefire at Allan’s Warp Horror, which didn’t catch on fire but did become Cursed! We randomly rolled for control of the Horror and I took control of it as well, charging it toward Descartes and failing to even scratch him but catching a nasty series of reaction attacks in the process which took out the Warp Horror.
I paid for my sins a moment or two later when Descartes thought about making an eleven inch charge across the board to turn Lawyer Barbie into gazpacho and therefore did it.
CHRIS: Eventually we got to the endgame condition of “no more Humpa Dumpas on the board at the end of the round.” By that time all my gang was dead, and I think each of you had two models left. By my math it was six rounds, but the last two really felt draggy. It would have been sped up by not having d3 Humpa Dumpas spawn at the start of each round but it still feels like the right call. The Professor retreated into his subterranean lair, having collected enough victims to keep his minions fed. Would the gangs just shrug and continue operating the theme park? Maybe. There were only a handful of Hivers who survived to tell the tale and that situation could be easily remedied. And with the Goliaths out of the picture the profits only need to be split three ways… maybe if horrible monstrosities only show up every once in a while to devour the innocent the whole endeavor is worth continuing? I refer you back to our comparisons to current late stage capitalism a few columns ago. It’s “Those Who Walk Away From Winkie World,” ladies and gentlemen. Bows, curtain falls, audience applauds.
DREW: Honestly? Full credit to you here. I liked this. I might not have liked your tyrannical dictate regarding the hive quake, but I liked the scenario. Sure, I didn’t engage with it directly as much as others did, but that’s still part of the design. Every multiplayer game needs someone who knows he’s not going to win and sets out to cause as much chaos as possible and drag everyone else down with him. What I’m saying here is never play SPQR with me.
Moreover, it was the fact that the scenario was a perfect capstone to the campaign. It tied everything back together narratively, the mechanics drove (most of) us to play the objectives, and there were just enough moving parts to keep things interesting without making them tedious. You did good, hoss. Cherish those words; you shan’t see them from me again.
Next Time: There Is No Next Time
DREW: As the header says, this is the end of this particular moronic journey. Maybe next time we both learn how to play a game poorly? I’d still love to make Dracula’s America work despite the fact that I have no minis for it and neither of us have Wild West terrain. Maybe we could learn to play Age of Sigmar, although I have no desire to paint an entire new army.
CHRIS: Um, you haven’t really seen the depths of my terrain bins. I think I could pull off a Wild West table. I have a problem.
DREW: As for reflections and takeaways, overall I think my view of Necromunda is probably understood at this point and not entirely a hot take. It’s a game which I enjoyed despite the rules. It really needs a full overhaul rather than a collection and slight revision as happened in 2023. Too many things are scattered over too many books and the mechanics are somehow still laid out in a fashion which makes U.S. tax codes look easy to follow. It also needs a balance patch – some gangers and some equipment are just too much bullshit as written and there are far too many situations where you can deploy elemental anti-fun to cancel everything your opponent tries to do.
It’s an interesting game, and it has decades of following for a reason, but right now the Eschers are going to sit on a shelf in the closet, kept safe by Top Men.
CHRIS: Necromunda really is a game you have to love in spite of itself. You’re absolutely correct that it’s too scattered and needs a heavy editorial hand on the tiller. I don’t know about balancing the game though. I think Necromunda is inherently unbalanced, and I fear trying to do so would bring competitive try-hards to the game. I love the asymmetrical scenarios, they’re more narratively interesting than most other games. Maybe dial in some extremely abusive cases (coughCorpseGrindermaskscough) and make it not quite as easy to fall far behind in a campaign.
GW seems not to be moving toward a more streamlined edition and instead just stapling more stuff into it though. I’m particularly nervous about the Spyrers coming back and the level of complexity a bunch of Specialist roles will add to each gang. Have to see how it shakes out in the long term. Short term though I think I’m taking a break from Necromunda after the NOVA Open, since I haven’t played much else in a year and a half. Of course I say that but I have a really dumb idea for a Cawdor gang rattling around in my empty noggin.
As for a “next season,” do you have a minute to learn the Good News about Battletech Classic…
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