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.
DREW: Another two-parter means you’re back for the second half, you poor bastards. The worse news is that we survived the diarrhea pizza (diarrheazza?) so this episode is more than just our obituaries.
Do you remember last time when I said I had a “fun surprise?” I’ll refer you to the Goon Hammer Dot Com House of Escher article, which offers the following regarding the “Maiming” chem-alchemy for Toxin weapons: “Also, don’t use Maiming unless you want to be a dick. That ain’t fun. Don’t be that guy.”
I want it on the record: it doesn’t count as “being that guy” against Chris. There are rules, common codes, for interacting with others. The courtesies do not apply within the bonds of Bro-hood.
CHRIS: I fully concur, but please note you are still a dick for a cornucopia of other reasons. When I sent around the list of missions for this week, we both realized Murder Cyborg would be a not great experience for you. The titular cyborg has Toughness 5 and is immune to Toxin, Gas, and Flash. It basically exists as a giant “fuck you” specifically to Eschers. I figured my Goliaths would have a better chance with it but for you it could be extremely frustrating.
Naturally we rolled Murder Cyborg.
The gist of this mission is one of the gangers present is secretly a cyborg assassin. Every time a fighter is wounded you roll and on a 5+ that fighter tears off their fake (?) human skin revealing their gleaming homicidal nature. From there you roll on another table (this is Necromunda after all) to determine the cyborg’s programming – it can either try to kill all humans, focus on killing the leaders, or just try to high-tail it off the board.
We futzed around for the first round, skulking through the Zone Mortalis maze toward each other. Early in round two Drew shot at The House, my newly recruited Champion, and bingo: cyborg identified. The fact that it was my brand new guy was perfect. I have an image of him showing up at recruiting day in a big hat and trenchcoat, and becoming very nervous when he had to click on the Captcha box affirming he was not a robot.
To delve into the narrative here for a sec – we decided the cyborg had to be an escapee from the Hall of Primarchs (remember, this whole dumb thing is inside a theme park). Alpharius was the obvious option, but as Drew noted the park was highly unlikely to have any of the traitor Primarchs on display unless it was about ten thousand years old.
DREW: There have always been only nine Primarchs in Oceania.
CHRIS: So we settled on the next most logical option. We were facing down Robot Guilliman! A massive hulking automaton which, looking at the face, was clearly supposed to be Horus but the Heresy caught the planners off guard so they just slapped a wig on it and called it a day. Strangely, several of the plates from its faded blue power armor were missing, something which couldn’t possibly be foreshadowing the upcoming finale scenario…
The dice dictated Robot Guilliman’s programming commanded him to run the fuck out of there once detected with an exit on the opposite board edge. The “good” news was the shortest path to that exit would mean moving away from Drew’s gang… and pretty much through all of mine. Since the player with priority could control RG and he was free to do whatever he wanted as long as he made one move toward the exit each round I really hoped I’d win priority and could just run him off the board without mauling my boys. So you know how that went, right?
DREW: To be fair it wasn’t entirely on Roboman. I was the one who could pick the exit point and since I knew I couldn’t even scratch him I sent him on a wild rampage through your mohawked idiots instead of my mohawked idiots. You’re welcome.
CHRIS: To keep things exciting I decided to try to keep attacking the cyborg as it tried to escape, mainly because there’s a nice fat cash reward for the gang who takes it down. Thanks to the completely ridiculous stats it has I didn’t even really scratch it. A fully drugged-up Pizz only did one wound. I also figured I’d try to take some of Drew’s gang out because fuck that guy. I was similarly successful in this endeavor.
DREW: To be fair once more, I spent multiple rounds attempting to feed my Little Sisters to a couple of your gangers to basically no avail. You also kept trying to light one half of the board on fire and the result was mostly a shrug from me. Thanks, flak armor and Dodge skill! You finally did something.
However, my special surprise did in fact go off! It’s a combination of Concentrated and Maiming, which meant my first needler shot against Pizz had a great chance at wounding him and I could roll twice for the Lasting Injury. As it turned out I needed it because the rolls were not great. Physicist Barbie tagged him after Robo-G mangled him and let’s just say the low roll was Out Cold and the high roll wasn’t much better; clearly I only nicked his ear. I really wanted to permanently kill Pizz this game, not because I thought it would affect anything but because I run on both Dunkin and spite in equal quantities.
In the meantime Robo-Guilliman was a complicated mess. As I said, it ate Pizz’s lunch very briefly but it had one piece of equipment which made it a giant pain in the ass: the displacer field. On the surface it’s simple: a 4+ save which teleports the bearer in a random direction every time a save is successfully rolled. That simplicity is what made it such a pain because every time someone tried to shoot or fight it – BAMF, as Len Wein and Dave Cockrum used to say. The damn thing hopscotched across the map ruining everyone’s plans. Most importantly, it repeatedly teleported toward the exit, hastening the end of our scenario. I don’t think I hated it quite as much as you did, mostly because I really enjoyed watching you despair.
Eventually Robot Guilliman made his way to the conveniently marked exit and was never seen again, but legend has it that every now and then you can hear a tinny voice screeching “FOR-TWELVE-YEARS YOU HAVE BEEN-ASKING: WHO-IS JOHN-GRAMMATICUS…”
CHRIS: Boss Pizz survived your custom made assassination attempt but since he was taken down on his first mission as boss he picked up the “Humiliated” Lasting Injury. Much like us he experiences deep personal shame at having done a thing not not completely perfectly and it will keep him paralyzed with self-doubt for years, leaving a swath of ruined relationships in our wake.
But more importantly, you didn’t win! And neither did I! The big climactic face-off of the campaign ends in a damp shrug. 100% on brand.
DREW: The end! No moral.
CHRIS: So how were things going over on the other table, you may ask? Super awesome! Allan and Josh rolled the Search and Destroy mission. The board is divided into four quarters with a cache of weapons in each of them. Let’s continue leaning into the narrative here and say they are crates of delicious Korpse Whip, a delightful frozen treat served in the park in olden days. The attacker is trying to destroy (or eat) the crates while the defender, well, defends them. But nobody knows exactly where the crates are! You have to search for them which requires Rolling Good on Dice. How do you think the guys fared?
JOSH: Like God, the numbers 4,5, and 6 had forsaken us. I don’t usually get tilted but it was just so bad. I literally take tactics cards and weapons to try and mitigate my dice rolling but they were not enough. For example moving close enough to gain the +2 to hit with the stub gun… the die says “get rekt have a 1.” Thank god for Anthracite and the auto hitting flamer (it didn’t actually kill anyone but it did make them pinned and this game that was all I was getting).
It was also a non-scenario. I couldn’t search for the crates because I had Corpse Grinders in my face on turn 2. Allan gave up after the 3rd time he couldn’t roll a 5+ because it was better for him to just kill me.
It was durdle dome extreme, except Allan rolled slightly better than me. He ran across the field and I couldn’t stop him – made a successful charge, but failed fear test. Or passed a fear test, rolled a 1 on extra distance and failed the charge.
Although there was the hilarity of Allan absolutely annihilating one of my champions (the multi-melta guy) and rolling 5 Lasting Injury rolls and gently laying him out into Recovery each time.
DREW: It’s a widely known fact that Corpse Grinders are renowned for their soothing lullabies.
JOSH: One of those “that’s Necromunda baby” games, and why you can’t take this game too seriously.
ALLAN: I actually have nothing to add to this other than if I roll multiple “go to sleep, baby, it’s just Convalescence” results they should at least stack into a head injury or something!
CHRIS: Like Josh just said, That’s Necromunda, Baby! Apparently the Underhive follows pre-2016 NFL medical policies.
So this wraps the Takeover phase of the campaign. Does that mean you are free? No, reader, it does not.
DREW: Hold on, what? Then I’m not free either. Hell!
CHRIS: I’m not trapped in here with you etc. etc. Because the best way to end a Necromunda campaign is with some completely over the top bullshit. And that’s what we have for you next time: a full on four player extravaganza as we celebrate Opening Day of the ALL NEW WINKY WORLD!!
Next Time: The Big Finale! No Survivors!
*Some survivors.
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