I want to cover two related things in this post today. First, just wanted to recap and review the first third of the Return to Atronos campaign that I’m arbitrating for my Necromunda group. Then, connected to that I wanted to muse a bit on when a mini doesn’t work out like you envisioned.
So, the Return to Atronos campaign wrapped up the first of three phases yesterday. We are doing a heavily modified Underhells campaign, so it is 3 phases of 3 games each, as opposed to the “standard” of 2 phases of 3 games each. We generally felt that even if we weren’t really doing a traditional Underhells campaign format, the added length of the campaign gave more time for character and lore development, and for funny/wacky/cool shit to happen.
The scenario I had folks play yesterday was a custom one, 2 3-player games, with one gang trying to keep Dr. Hartleby (a recurring nemesis who has shown up in previous campaigns we’ve run and who I am particularly proud of as a character I created) alive as the other two gangs do their best to kill him. Each game played out very differently, though in each, Hartleby bit the dust at the end of the 4th round.
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| One version of Dr. Hartleby getting pulverized by an over-stimmed Goliath |
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| The other version of Hartleby trying to escape |
That was absolutely fine with me, as I used that event as an opportunity to narrate a sort of in game cinematic cut-scene, with a mysterious door appearing in thin air right by Hartleby just before he expired, and an even stranger figure stepping through to take Hartleby away for his “failure to abide by the agreement with the King-in-Rags”. This is my teaser intro for the “King-in-Rags” who is going to be the ultimate big bad at the end of the campaign, but that’s for later.
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| The Harbingers of the King-in-Rags |
The other is a bit more interesting. It is a kitbash done by @totally_not_panicking, of Smashbash & Sun Rot fame. I don’t know where I first saw this guy, I thought it was an issue of 28 Mag, but having looked back through all of them I can’t find it. Anyway, I’ve loved it from the get go, and when, at Under the Dice Fest ’25 I saw it on Matt’s merch table, I had to buy it immediately.
This brings me to the second thing I wanted to talk about, and that is the disappointment that was this:
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| Se.Te.B.O.S |
Now this was supposed to be Se.Te.B.O.S, AKA Sentient Telepathic Biological Operating System, or basically a brain in a jar with robot legs and big ass gun. I meant for this to be one of Hartleby’s creations that would serve as his ultimate defender, blasting enemies apart with it’s psy-cannon. This mini would also be first experience with a resin pour, as I really wanted it to look like the brain was in a vat of….something!
Well, through a combo of inexperience and just me being dumb, things didn’t go to plan. I got resin that was meant for a much shallower depth of the pour than I realized, and I also added what I thought was an appropriately tiny amount of green paint to color the resin, and I’m sure that contributed to the bad result. Can barely even tell there is a pinkish shape in there, that’s about it.
This is especially disappointing since I’ve actually had this mini sitting on my shelf since the last campaign Hartleby featured in, which was several years ago. I was just putting off completing it forever, waiting for motivation. Then, I started planning out how this 1st phase of the Return to Atronos campaign would end, and figured this would be a great opportunity to finally finish Se.Te.B.O.S and get this mini off my pile of shame.
Well, suffice to say that Se.Te.B.O.S didn’t make an appearance, and I am frankly lacking the motivation to finish it right now because of my messing up the resin. I believe what I will do is save it for later on in the campaign, maybe say it escaped from Hartleby’s lab following his disappearance, and is now wandering the lower depths of the ruined hive. We’ll see.
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| Gilbert says hello! |
