[Necromunda] The Breaching of Fenni's Dome

Dome Y’Fenni once lay at the heart of Necromunda’s longest and fiercest legal wrangle, its ownership disputed between several of the great Houses and fourteen distinct claimants from within the Merchant Guild. Recognising the value in keeping the Imperial Society of Solicitors occupied and well paid, the House of Helmawr declined to step in, decreeing instead that Y’Fenni would remain off limits to everyone until such time as its ownership was clarified.

Of course, the House of Helmawr no longer rules Necromunda. This has caused several problems, in the grand scheme of things, but the biggest is the collapse of gubernatorial interest in petty affairs of landholding. Ozostium Aranthus simply does not care.

Enter Evil Annie, gang queen from House Escher. Annie claims, variously, to be the last descendant, legally defined inheritor, and secret clone of the original Fenni: although she’s probably talking guff, her claim was at the top of the pile when Lord Aranthus dismissed the matter from his interest, and as such has been upheld.

Annie’s gang have cracked open the bulkheads and accessed the depths, only to find that quite a few of Necromunda’s denizens couldn’t give a used crabstick where the planetary governor says they can live. Y’Fenni is home to squatters, who happen to be Squats; it has a fringe cult, some balding individuals with very unorthodox religions opinions; it has a tribe of wasteland nomads who seem to have fallen in through the ceiling and can’t get back out again; it has some escaped ogryn slaves who aren't at all keen at going back to work; and it has whatever the hell that Venator gang is about.

None of them are especially impressed with the pink-haired lady who’s just shown up and claimed she owns all she surveys. Down here in the underhive, claims and dockets take second place to bombs and bullets, and the “legal owner” of Dome Y’Fenni is going to eat a lot of both before she gets her just desserts.

What's It All About Then?

We're playing a Necromunda campaign! ARGG has gone Skirmish mental this winter, with a Mordheim round robin drawing the veterans out of their torpor and the prospect of Newcromunda drawing in a couple of new faces to boot. As the one who originally floated the idea last year, I have ended up Arbitrating, and as such have prepared the premise shown above, and the full campaign packet.

The short version is: half a Dominion campaign, three rounds of territorial occupation and then a period of downtime in which gangs who fancy a challenge can set out on a special mission. If this goes well, as I feel it must given the enthusiasm in group chat, the back half of the campaign (robbing land off each other) can take place after our summer break.

This would be insanely difficult without Munda Manager, a web-based utility that takes the effort out of populating a gang Roster, collating all relevant profiles, and applying special rules at gang creation. It also does territory control tracking on the Campaign side, which will be highly useful pour moi later on. Here's one I've made earlier, for use later. 

So What Are You Playing, Von?

Girls! 

It was going to be Goliaths, and perhaps it should have been now that I know what the others are rolling up with, but I've always had a thing for Eschers. I'm not actually very good at playing them - fast, fragile, middling strength and tricksy is not a playstyle that comes naturally to me - but I want to run them at least once for the aesthetic. 

I'm also the only person running a traditional House gang, which is why the backstory is like it is, and also why I stuck with vanilla Eschers instead of going all Chaos Cult.

Anyway. Meet the team! 

Evil Annie, Dirty Harriet, Angel (with the shotgun), Smokin' Jo Rudegirl, and that's Jenna Vive in the back there with the lasgun. Harriet's bolter/needler ain't cheap, but it's probably the best gun in the outfit; Smokin' Jo may not have the Gunfighter skill no' mo', but Sprint is nearly as good for getting that plasma pistol into someone's face. Angel's simply cool. The individual model with whomst I am happiest.

Bertha Spurtz, my Gang Specialist: I wasn't entirely sure about the chem-thrower, and I'm still not, but I am pleased with the texture work on it (which actually gave me the idea for the bases). In the back we have Avemaria and Evan Jellica, who came up through the same Cult Imperialis foster programme as Jenna and presumably were issued the lasguns on the same day as their evictions.

Evil Annie herself. The hot pink plasma pistol was a spur of the moment choice and I'm very happy with it; the greenish tint to her cloth slightly less so, the result of staining on the Wraithbone undercoat, to which Contrast seems very vulnerable. I'll live with it. These are the first humans I've painted in a very long time and they're not terrible.

Annie's kit is a lot - the shock whip allows her to attack in melee from a whacking three inches away, and the plasma pistol provides a punchy option. I have high hopes for her, if she can actually make it into proximity. In the test game Kraken and I played she didn't turn up at all in one. Wherever she'd got to, she clearly wasn't having those roots done. (This is a pleasant aspect of Contrast; the accidental wet blends from colours contaminating the primer. Further experimentation required.)

The girls also have a hidden backer: Noisette, the clan chymist, a throwback to my videogame days when I exported a bunch of the ladies from my online VtM experiences into Necromunda and let them do what they do best. She won't show up unless someone dares to attack Legal Acquisition, the gang's home base on the edge of the dome, but her presence will nevertheless be felt through peddling pharmaceuticals (a handful of extra credits after every game) and brewing her own (chems, stims and toxins become so much cheaper when you're only paying for ingredients).

My plan, insofar as I have one, is to aim for both the House Escher territories on our list: the Synth Still and Narco Den. I would also like to avoid the Slave Ogryns and Squats like the plague until I've had the chance to brew up some decent toxins. The girls will struggle to wound mass T4 and T5 targets without them. I can probably dunk the Genestealers even if the Old Master is a better player than me, and the other gangs and their players are unknown quantities but not hard counters. The Takeover round of games... well, that'll depend on who's taken what ground, whether or not I seized what I wanted out of the first two, and how many broken fingernails and mussed mohawks the girls sustain in the Occupation stage. 

The voices are already suggesting I should pick up a spare sprue of gangers and build a Magos version of Evil Annie, and a couple of three-armed Juves. Just in case, you know? I don't know if I can manage a girly Aberrant, but... let's say that if I lose a couple of games and the Genestealers are amenable, I may join the special snowflake crowd for the final round...