[Necromunda] Wait, Those Aren't Eschers!

 

The flank is not so much "refused" as "abjured."

Fifteen months after the initial "guess I play Necromunda now" happenstance, my Goliaths finally get their day in the sun. Well, their second day. I've used half the crew for a teaching/learning game with the Ocean City TT lads, but this is the first time I've rolled out a proper gang with rosters and everything.

This one's off the books, a test game to see if my initial small, elite squad of seven overcooked beefcakes would be a viable replacement for the Eschers in future campaigning. See, while I love the Eschers' aesthetic, concept, and potential, I've been having trouble getting games I enjoy out of them. I like games that go the distance and see some trading of pieces, which you don't get with the fast, flighty and fragile lady-type gang. It's possible that a gang who can in theory all roll up with T5 at the start might be more my thing. Hedgehog was kind enough to mash together a starting crew of Nomads and pop round this weekend to test the waters.

Hedgehog's Leader lurks out of sight, surrounded by a bodyguard of Versatile weapons.

Sir Loin and Chuck of the Meat Sweats ready to scourge the centre ground.

Terms of engagement were drawn from the Open Hive War deck, or at least its simulated equivalent. I'm not sure what a Hive Ram is, but it's evidently quite painful, as three of my crew and one of Hedgehog's started off with Flesh Wounds. This would prove to skew the test a little bit, since it dropped the Toughness I'd spent perfectly good credits on improving back to normal Goliath levels, then normal human levels, and then sub-normal levels as more and more injuries were accumulated.

This young Nomad has carefully remained safe 
from a marauding Goliath with a combat shotgun

 

Alas, she is not safe from a lurking Goliath with a boltgun.
This fella, name of Rump, was consistently solid.

It turns out that Nomads are in many ways a perfect spoiler for Goliaths - a lot of Versatile weapons that can put wounds on the big boys without risking retaliation from reactions in return, and a lot of Shock weapons that bypass high Toughness on the roll of a 6. I can't complain too much though, since their krak rockets consistently missed, jammed, automatically reloaded, missed and jammed again, failed to reload, and didn't actually land a shot on anyone until the fifth round when everything was more or less over anyway. My grenade launcher was similarly ineffective, bouncing one fragger off the map entirely and proving impossible to reload until I was on my "may as well bottle at this stage" uppers.

 

The centre turned into an absolute bloodbath once Sir Loin got stuck in...

... but Versatile shenanigans helped the Nomads turn the tide.

 That said, the boys gave a good account of themselves. Covering fire from a high-up boltgun ganger took about three Nomads out of action, Sir Loin's hammer dealt seven injury rolls in one go to another, and an amount of vicious point blank combat shotgunning paid off when one of the Hunters had her face blown off by a Goliath she hadn't thought to Engage with honesty.

 

There were, at the end of the day, only three out of seven gangers left on either side, mainly face down and crawling or out of ammo and out of place. If my useless melee Forge Boss T-Bone had actually made his charge when he was finally not move-blocked, running away, or hopelessly out of position, things would have gone a very different way with another Nomad probably biting the dust instead of the frustrated renderiser owner.

 

The aforementioned T-Bone, advancing behind the wall of Chuck.
He would become very familiar with this particular spot on the table.

 On balance, and correlated by both opponent and spectator, I had a much better time with the Goliaths. It's not a win, but it's the kind of loss I don't resent, with give and take, back and forth, so on and so forth. I want to fine-tune the gang a bit more: for one thing I badly misapplied the rules for Gene-Forging, for another I want a second boltgun in the starting lineup rather than the useless renderiser-only guy, and for a third I think the vanity Tyrant might be a bit overpriced and need some cheaper weapons and maybe rolling back to Vatborn status. It's nice having T5 and W4 on your leader but 50 credits could buy me a whole extra Juve. Not a Forge Born. I am not running out and buying the expansion set just so I can have some proper scrawny bodies to use as Proto-Goliaths, and a real melee beatstick in the Stimmer. Not at all. Would never be me.