Sorry for the delay in an update, holidays and floods have slowed me down a bit.
And also Xcom: Enemy Unknown. Holy amphetamine parrot, it's good. It's basically Necromunda the computer game.
Incidently, if anyone in the Brisbane area sees someone turn up with a new Cadian Imperial Guard army with a catachan green and codex grey colour scheme, let me know.
If I find the rather unsavoury chap, what-ho old bean? who stole it out of the boot of my car, or the person he sells it too, I promise I won't even call the police.
Because that wouldn't be enough fun.
I'll
sue the stupid prick. And in doing so, regardless of whether I get them back, I'm going to make
damn sure that I'll get a costs order just above the statutory minimum amount necessary to bankrupt the little amphetamine parrot.
I'm actually looking forward to it.
But I digress.
The Black Coats -v- GothikaJoffrey started out the campaign in arguably the strongest position. He had the best starting territories and arguably the best gang. He was able to leverage that to squeeze Gannicus while I was on the run from the Gorlock Alliance. For a while he had more territory than both me and Gannicus combined. But then he had that shootout with my guys, and Shamora was deafened by Amon and the campaign turned. Gannicus and I started attacking him, and he has been in retreat ever since. His territories have fallen like dominoes, his gang members have died, and the ones that remain are riddled with injuries.
Due to Shamora's crappy leadership, he's been forced to resort to playing the scenarios where attacking gangs get to resist bottling out until taking 50% casualties. In that regard, he's played mainly Hit & Run scenarios which Escher gangs are well suited to. He is able to pick the scenario each time, because his leader, Shamora holds the strongest type of Ratskin Map, which allows him to modify the scenario by +/-3 per roll.
So that is what he did again. Joffrey rolled a 6 on the Hit & Run table meaning that he could pick the specific type of Hit & Run scenario. He picked Blitz, which requires the attacker to run a model from his deployment zone to the table edge of the opponent.
Blitz can be a hard Hit & Run to defend against during the mid to late stages of a campaign. TO conduct a Blitz, you want a gang that can run fast and either avoid getting shot or absorb enemy shooting. The three gangs that are best at Blitzing are the Agility gangs, Escher, Cawdor and Delaque.
In my view, Escher are probably the best at Blitzing, because the Stealth skills suplement their Agility skills by allowing them to avoid enemy fire. Cawdor are not quite as good, because although they are fast and their Ferocity skills help absorb incoming enemy fire, it still tends to slow them down, so they are a little bit slower which allows more reinforcements to show up. Delaque are third. Although their Stealth skills supplement their Agility nicely, they lack Combat skills, and gangers at the forefront of a Blitz have a very good chance of ending up in close combat.
The difficulty for a defender in a Blitz is that you only start out with D6 gang members, and reinforcements come on at random table edges. If you start out with only 1 or 2 gangers and are up against a fast moving attacker, then if reinforcements come onto the table on the wrong table edge, you're pretty much beslubbered. Ganicus wasn't going to let that happen to him. He hired 5 Ratskin Scouts at a cost of 75 creds, assuring him of starting with at least 6 Defenders.
Given all the be-atching I've done about other players using mercenaries to gain an advantage over me back when I had no money, I guess it would be totally hypocritical and obnoxious for me to laugh, and laugh and laaaaaaaugh about such a tactic being used against one of my principal opponents, so I won't.
Anyway, Joffrey rolled 5 attackers, and Gannicus rolled 4 Defenders (including both Heavies), so it was 5 on 9, and Joffrey was beslubbered from the word go. 4 of his girls were pinned on the first turn, and one of them was down. Gannics had 2 Defenders come on behind the Escher on the second turn, and from there, it was just a matter of keeping the Escher pinned and concentrating fire to take down 3 gang members to allow the flanking reinforecements to remove them from play.
There was one tense moment for Gannicus when it looked like Shamora might make it to the end, but she beslubbered up her Leap roll and came up short by 2", and Joffrey failed his bottle roll on the following turn.
Gannicus ended up taking the Old Ruins 3:1. Gannicus expressed his joy at securing the last Escher territory by going on a circuit around the entire store, one arm, fist clenched in victory, the other pointing at Joffrey and all the while humming the tune to Land of Hope and Glory.
Land of Hope and Glory (GREAT VERSION)
