The Return of Karloth Valois - Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash

Every year I like to celebrate my birthday with a gathering of friends and a big game. I've been doing this for about the last 15-16 years. Initially it was one big game the evening of my birthday. One year it was a whole afternoon, as my birthday fell on a Saturday. After a couple years it grew into a whole WEEKEND of gaming - on the weekend closest to my birthday. Later still that moved to the Family Day weekend in mid-February... and now we've come full circle - one big game on my actual birthday! (Largely because ToonCon was just a couple weeks later, I decided to forgo a game weekend this year... or perhaps I'll host one later in the year, perhaps in the summer or fall...?)



Since this day was all about me, I started the day off right with the Breakfast of Champions - my regular Mocha smoothie, but with a bonus donut from Darkside Donuts - located just a block away from our house!



In the afternoon I got the game all set up - I knew it was going to take a while to play and this was a Tuesday evening - so a work/school night for most people. My hope was to get it done in under 4 hours.




I chose Necromunda because...well... I LOVE Necromuda and am feeling like I just haven't played enough of it lately - ALSO I'm running a game of it next weekend at ToonCon and thought I'd best get in one more practice/playtest of the scenario before so!

The scenario was The Return of Karloth Valois! I played Karloth and his horde of Plague Zombies - and a few Scavvies working for him. I had five players out (and a couple others stopped by briefly to say "hi" and "happy birthday" and see what was going on). Each played a different gang/faction - they common goal was to stop Valois - if Valois escaped the table THEY ALL LOSE!

I did keep track of Victory Points, however, to determine a "winner" - assuming they stopped Valois! One Victory Point was given for each Zombie, Scavvy or enemy Ganger taken out of action, TWO Victory points given for each enemy gang leader or champion taken out of action or each wound dealt to Valois, and FIVE Victory Points given for taken out Valois. In addition to this, however, each gang had its own "Secret Agenda" - something else their gang could do which would gain them extra victory points... I'm not going to go into those in THIS Game Report as there is a chance one of those players for next week might be reading and... well... they ARE supposed to be SECRET! (I'll let you know what they were in the ToonCon game report!)



Other Tim played a squad of Enforcers.



Jacob played a Crusade of Rademptionists.



Kurtis played a Cawdor gang.



Rick played a Delaque gang.



And Aaron played the Escher Gang.



Right off the hop, Kurtis sent his Cawdor Champion up the middle, with his Heavy Stubber, thinking that would be useful to stop the oncoming horde. The redemptionists didn't think it was so necessary and REdemptress Jezebel reduced him to a pile of ash and puddle of melted metal with her Melta Gun...

Yikes!

Didn't expect the inter-gang fighting to get started off so quickly! At that point I warned them that Valois and the Zombies were NASTY and if they kept that up they had NO HOPE of defeating him.

I should have kept my mouth shut and just let them fight...



Tim (Enforcers), Aaron (Escher), and Kurtis (Cawdor).



Kurtis (Cawdor), Rick (Delaque), and Jacob (Redemptionists)



End of Round One - the Horde moves out.



The Redmptionists were doing pretty good to start off - burning Zombies and Scavvies - then started taking fire from flanking Scavvies.



Scavvy that took three or four blasts from Enforcer Shredder shots to take out... Need to play the Scavvies a bit smarter - and be a bit more concerned about those Enforcers!!



Escher and Cawdor trying to set up a defensive line.



Escher taking the brunt of the Zombie attack.







Doelgr (Scavvy Champion) got into a protracted firefight with the Redemptionists taking turns pinning each other - eventually the Redemptress ran out of ammo on the Melta Gun (and everybody breathed a HUGE sign of relief - after having seen what it could do to a champion in the first round!)



Enforcers sneaking in behind Valois and his horde.



Rick, planning his course of action.



Enforcers unleashing shredder salvoes and not really caring who is caught in them... They made a mess of the Zombies.



massive line of defence that Valois and his horde had to fight its way through - while being blasted to bits from behind by the Enforcers.



Valois' horde looking a little thin on the ground...



And then, as it looked like the Enforcers were going to finish off Valois, the Delaque gang started killing other gangers...



Including their leader!



BLAM! Enforcer took down Valois.

DAMN! Those Enforcer shotguns are NASTY! I'm feeling a little like I should leave the Enforcers at home... I did set the game limit at FOUR for ToonCon... I was planning on brining enough for six to play (if other people showed up and wanted to join in... but now I'm thinking I might just stick with four - though I REALLY liked the Enforcers Secret Agenda!)



Losses weren't terribly high. There were a lot of serious injuries, but I think most gangs only lost one ganger Out of Action- the exception being Cawdor which lost both Leader and Champion. A few of them bottled out, and the entire Redemptionist crew up and fled the field at the beginning of the second last turn.

Good fun was had by all. I think the scenarios going to work out quite well for ToonCon. I think it took us 4.5 hours to play through the game - the exact time I have to run it at ToonCon - and that included explaining the scenario AND explaining all the rules (Aaron and Tim had never played Necromunda and Kurtis had never played a miniature game!).


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

A round-up of all the other games I played in February - not nearly so many as I had planned!!!

After that some pics of a few miniatures that have been trickling off the workbench this last week!