Date With a Data Core

 

A few days ago I arbitrated the 2nd round of our current Necromunda Campaign, Timey-Wimey in Vela Mine(y). You can read a bit more about the campaign’s lore and background in my post here. 

For this round, I came up with a custom scenario, called Date with a Data Core, based around the idea of having the Tri-Sun Mining Corporation (TSMC) attempting to knock off their competition indirectly, by having them do it to each other. To complicate things however, I also added new NPCs, the brothers Vallejo (Balthazar, Julius, and Adrius) who are interested in Vela Mine for their own reasons. They had hired the Three Desperadoes to serve as body guards, and then intention was to have 3 1-vs-1 games, where each game would have one of the brothers, escorted by one of the desperadoes, and a frenzon-crazy servitor as bodyguards, moving across the board collecting data cores. 

Players had a choice to simply ignore the brothers and desperadoes, make an alliance, or kill them on behalf of the TSMC. If they didn’t target the NPCs during the game, then basically whichever player won the game would get an attempt to make an alliance with the brothers by passing a leadership test with modifiers. If they were successful, then they would get an alliance with the brothers that would yield both creds and chrono-crystals, but also narrative bonuses later down the line. If the players instead chose to attack the brothers, then if they were successful in taking them out of action, the TSMC would be quite happy, but would earn the bitter enmity of the brothers and the desperadoes. 

As it turns out, life intervened for two of our group, so only 2 1-vs-1 games go to happen, but it was still a blast. One game was the Bore Hole Beasts (Goliath) vs Wyrmhart Industries (Genestealer cult corrupted Orlocks), the other was the Seraphenii (Chaos corrupted Escher) vs the Last Echo of Succor Shore Party (Outcasts led by a Man-Of-Iron). In the Beasts Vs Wyrmhart, the twisted Orlocks clinched a victory which was wild, as they took a lot of damage doing it. The corrupted Orlock, maybe acting out of a perceived kinship with the TSMC, attacked the brother Adrius pretty quickie on in the game, managing to take him out of action and earning the lasting hatred of the Brothers Vallejo. The price was steep though, as Wyrmhart’s own leader got an avenging power pick to the face from a frenzoned out servitor, and in turn was taken out. Wyrmhart Industries may have just handed TSMC a major victory, but will the two groups of xenos worshippers continue to work together, or will the two revert to deadly rivals? 

The other game saw the Seraphenii and Last Echo shore party leaving brother Balthazar and his escorts to wander across the board collecting data cores while the gangers blasted, shot, stabbed, exploded and melted each other viciously. However, in the end, both failed their leadership checks to ally with the Brothers Vallejo, and the Last Echo party saw two of its members permanently dead, so even though they won the scenario, technically speaking, the Seraphenii came out in better shape. 

 

The day was a blast, and I had a lot of fun coming up with this scenario. Creating custom scenarios for my campaigns is one of the most time consuming, but also rewarding parts of Necromunda to me. There really is no other GW game (currently, obviously Mordheim and Inquisitor allowed this too) that gives you the freedom and space to just  make up whatever and have it translate to the table top. It might not be balanced, but then another thing I love about Necromunda is that balance is not prioritized, narrative is. Does this lead to certain gangs/factions being easily exploitable and becoming over powered monsters? Yeah, it does. But that is why the arbitrator is there, to reign that in. 

It’s also the sort of player that Necromunda attracts that acts as a check on that too. 

 

Most Necro players I’ve encountered are not competitive players in other games, or if they are they can turn that competitive mode off and switch gears to being collective story-telling mode when playing Necromunda.