[Necromunda] Gang Aft Agley

 There I was, one week out from drafting my annual review post, safe in the knowledge that the Hobby Expenditure for the next year was done, and I had three projects laid in to tide me over during lean times. Paint the Nemesis Claw. Paint my terrain. Build and paint the "Hypercrypt Legion" value box. I had a plan, and it was a good plan.

Wait, what?

This really wasn't my fault. You see, my good enby wife, of whom this outlet has occasionally spoken, likes to browse the charity shops, and every so often she surfaces from one of these trawls with a Bargain. This Goliath gang cost £15. Bargain. You can't say no to this sort of thing.

Now, Goliaths are not historically my go-to gang. I was a dyed-in-the-mohawk Escher player back in the day. That said, they pleasantly surprised me in the video game, and since I last played tabletop Necromunda (about sixteen years ago) I have come to accept that I love a Barbarian, me. Turns out I actually quite like a big damage-soaking dual-wielding thickie.

What's that? Yes, I have played Necromunda before. My original gang, Morticia's Misericordia, were exactly what you'd expect from me (I was quite proud of the stripy socks I freehanded on all of them), and were basically the old metal gang box with a few extra grenades and a chainsword stuck on.

They were the only gang in that campaign made up of Necromunda models. Everything I played into was proxied with either Cadian or Catachan Imperial Guard plastics: every ganger had a lasgun, except for the two heavies, who had heavy stubbers. Solved, optimised, and spectacularly missing the point of scrappy gang warfare in the Underhive.

Mind you, that's changed somewhat since the 2018 relaunch: I can't claim to be the custodian of the one true way any more. Gangs now rock up to the start of a campaign with combi-weapons and power weapons of hitherto unknown types and all sorts of bespoke unique fripperies. Gone are the days when we were all using the same list of stuff from the 40K Wargear book and the only difference was what we had available at the start of the run and what skills we'd pick up as we went along. 

It's all quite bewildering and I've spent a couple of days binge-reading the Goonhammer writeup - yes, I know, but nobody else does comprehensive long-form written descriptions of all the stuff a particular gang can access. They've had some influence on my decisions, but I didn't refuse to build the rivet cannon on my first sprue of lads because Goonhammer said it was F tier rubbish bad gun for stupid people. I didn't build the rivet cannon because it looks daft and I spent whole minutes figuring out that a rivet cannon was, in fact, what I was looking at.

In terms of assembly, these are the usual CAD monstrosities with the kind of choices made to get things flat on the sprue and more "dynamic" when built. The occasional "why are both of this one's feet separate? whose idea was it to have the upper arm as a discrete piece? I appreciate a choice of faces but good GOD they're picky about which bodies they go on!" moment aside, though, I've been pleasantly surprised by them. There's some flexibility in terms of what arms go where, at least, although in a couple of cases I found myself stumbling back into what the instructions told me to do because it turned out nothing else looked quite right.

So far I've built (most of) one sprue: half the gangers in the box. These are they.

This cheeky chappie is a Bruiser Specialist (I think),
packing a grenade launcher (very small) and brute cleaver (very chunky).

This one's probably the leader - sorry, Forge Tyrant.
Power hammer and stubber/plasma pistol combi weapon.
Seems to be the "meta" pick, but also looks badass.

I think this one's a Forge Boss?
He's got a spud-jacker and a combat shotgun.

I call this champion "Skullmaster, Master of Skulls." He has a Renderiser.
Once I knew that thing was called a Renderiser, I knew someone was having it.

The last fella doesn't have arms, because I don't like how any of the arms on this particular sprue sit on him. We can fix that, though. And we're going to, because this box set doesn't come with any proper Juve models, or the newfangled Stimmer: a really big Goliath with the option to dual wield grenade launchers or Pulverisers. I would, of course, choose the Pulverisers, because if you can dual wield something called a Pulveriser, you must. I don't make the rules. Or I might swap them out for something in the extra weapons kit. I mean, I'd have to buy the extra weapons kit, but if I'm going all in on this nonsense, it might be quite a good idea to have some bread and butter gangers with shotguns and boltguns to back up the rest of the silliness...

This is, I believe, how they get you.

As for actually playing it: well. Here's the thing. I believe there's a thing called "Zone Mortalis," where you play Necromunda in a corridor-type environment. I believe this form of gameplay uses the same space hulk tiles and plastic walls as Boarding Actions and, more to the point, Kill Team: Into the Dark. Who do I know who was around in second edition and owns a set of Into the Dark terrain?

Kraken, are you doing anything next weekend?