Okay, okay, okay… I’ll admit, this wasn’t actually a Necromunda scenario. I mean, it is, but it’s not one you’ll find in the book. It’s because I came up with this one for a game I hosted the other night.
There are some multiplayer scenarios and there are some really good ones. But there aren’t a lot of them and sometimes they ask for boards that are really large or… whatever. What I wanted was a fun, relatively unique scenario that up to four people could play at once. Honestly, you could do just two gangs but it’s a lot more fun when there are four.
The scenario is easy enough, there’s a large, broken down vehicle in the center of the board and the gang that drives it out, wins. To activate it takes four successful Intelligence checks (by any fighters, doesn’t have to be the same one, or even the same gang), just four successful checks and then it’s drivable by a fighter who’s on top of it. If that fighter is tossed off, another fighter can take control. And it can drive 6″ once per round. Once it’s off the edge, game is over and the driving gang is the winner.
By the way, if you’re interested, you can download a very nice PDF copy of this scenario by signing up for our newsletter. You’ll be sent a welcome email and a link to our subscriber-only content and, every now and then, receive an update as to what we’ve been doing here on spudWorks
I set up the board so that it was semi-circled by Ash Wastes habs, leaving one side more or less open. But, because it was an Iron Crawler, I also declared any and all terrain destructible on impact with the thing. This was fun as one of the players rammed it through some terrain that was blocking his exit.
As with any Necromunda scenario, it pretty much provides a good reason to turn and shoot your neighbor in the face. And such was the case with this one, too. I think having an actual Iron Crawler model on the board created enough interest though that the players all at least attempted to get to it to claim it as their own. But it also didn’t stop fighters from taking pot-shots at those they could see… just because they could. But we actually had fighters climb aboard and pass the four checks to activate it. And then it drove off the board! So someone actually won the “non-violent” win condition!
As I was hosting the game, I got to select the group of people who were going to play and I was able to bring in two relatively new players and a guy who’s been playing as long as I have. Especially for a group game, it made it fun because those of us with experience were really interested in making it fun for the beginners. The nice thing about a scenario like this one is, it gives a good reason to fight, has a slightly different mechanic, but doesn’t go adding all kinds of rules that aren’t necessary and might confuse things.
For instance: we played it out in an Ash Wastes setting but, because we had enough terrain to create a relatively dense board, we left out the weather and ground effects of an Ash Wastes game. This might be something people can bring in if they want to play this scenario and their board is a little thin on terrain but, otherwise, it’s not necessary and was something else that we could streamline.
All in all, it was a very good night, even if I maybe had two or three whiskies too many. But everyone had a good time and that is, really, the only thing that matters.
