The Return of Karloth Valois

Carlota Valois, is the stuff of legend... or... nightmares... or legendary nightmares!? A frightful tale that's passed into legend that parent tell their children to frighten them but no one actually believes anymore... Until he returned from the deep dark depths of THE ABYSS...

We had to cancel Tuesday and Wednesday due to illness... and Thursday... well... still ill... but while I am experiencing some intense discomfort, I'm not all that contagious, so we forged ahead with another game - which was a great way to take my mind off of things!

Instead of doing something simple for our second game ever, like an out-of-the-book scenario or something, I decided I needed to make something up on my own that was a bit more complex to start play-testing some ideas for the Necromunda game weekend in October!

This scenario involved the return of Karloth Valois - a rogue psyker, long thought dead - along with a horde of Plague Zombies! I'm not going to type out the specifics of their stats or abilities or what all the victory points were awarded for... as that's all in a state of flux at the moment... lessons were learned, changes will be made, but overall I thought it was a pretty fun scenario.



The battle area was set up with 8 Sector Mortalis tiles - two wide by four long. Karloth and his zombie horde were set up in one corner and the basic premise was that they had to stop him and his zombies from escaping off the far edge.

They rolled off to see who would deploy first. Highest got to choose where they set up, and could set up in ANY tile other than the one Karloth was set up in. Subsequent players could set up in tiles that were not already occupied, OR that were immediately adjacent to any tiles with another gang set up in (though they could set up in one diagonally adjacent to one). So the first, and to a lesser extent the second, could decide if they wanted to set up closer to Valois or further away. Because victory points were awarded for taking stuff out of action, setting up close could mean getting to take them all out by themselves and reaping all the victory points and Reputation... but it could  also mean being swarmed by an overwhelming number of Zombies while being shot/stabbed in the back by other gangers...



I can't remember who set up first, but Ian (who was playing with my Cawdor Gang) set up closest.



Keira set up her Escher Gang (the Pink Punchers) in the middle distance, and Finnegan's Genestealer Cult set up lurking in the back... ready to cheery-pick any that got through the other gangs.



Karloth and his zombie horde shambles ahead!



Willem Campbell, leader of the Cawdor Gang, attacked by a flaming zombie (which he had, himself, set on fire with his hand flamer). I had to make up rules on the spot for flaming zombies, because the regular "blaze" rule didn't really work - zombies wouldn't care if they were on fire... also, made up some rules for flaming zombies possibly spreading their blaze condition to other combatants they were engaged with...



Zombies, flaming and not-so-flaming swarm the Cawdor gangers.



The Zombies actually set one of the Cawdor Champions on fire! Escher Gangers preparing for their onslaught.



The zombies moved a little faster than people expected. I didn't want to make them TOO slow or it would be too easy to just simply keep shooting and falling back...



Cawdor Gangers desperately fighting for their lives amid the flaming zombies.

Ian had been so smug about being able to catch SO MANY zombies with the flame template of his hand flamer... I think he felt less smug when one of those flaming zombies shambled forward and set his champion on fire and caused him a wound...



Uh-oh... getting a bit close!



A lot of laughs were had.



the Escher gangers tried to fall back and form a line to catch the zombies in a bit of a bottleneck.



Zombies around the Cawdor gang thin out as the horde passes by with Valois.



The Escher gang lost a couple gangers, two more broke and fled their defensive line and, at the end of the turn, the gang bottled out...



The Escher gang leader kept things together for another turn or two, but eventually she failed a cool test to stay on the table and after another turn they'd all left.



One last zombie tying up a LOT of Cawdor gangers.



Valois slipped on by and ended up facing the Genestealer Cultists!



"Wait... where did everybody go!?"



It was hubris, pure hubris that eventually brought Valois down. He'd lost all of his escorting Zombies down and when faced with the Genestelaer cultists thought to himself "I've got THREE attacks, I can totally charge more than one of them" He kind of forgot he only had a 4+ weapon skill and was -1 for each additional fighter he was engaged with beyond the first...



Oh-noooooooooooos....



But it didn't end there.... The scenario only ended if there were no gangs left on the table... or only ONE gang left on the table.



So after dealing with Valois, the Genestealer cult chased down the sole surviving member of the the Cawdor gang - Muriel.



Poor Muriel... chased down this lonely hall and finally taken out of action by a coup-de-gras...

While the Genestelaer Cult was the last gang standing - and gained the most reputation - for taking out Valois (and NOT bottling out!), but the Cawdor Gang ended up "winning" as they'd scored one more victory point - from taking out so many zombies in the early rush...

Fun was had. Important lessons learned. We forge ahead tomorrow with another scenario... Not sure if that's going to be Spyrers... or the Cult of Redemption... or maybe Nemo has had it with Kal Jericho and put and outrageous price on his head that no ganger could ignore! Stay tuned tomorrow to find out what goes down!


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MORE NECROMUNDA!!!