Escher weren’t my first gang. My first gang, if I take it all the way back, was Delaque. But not these snake-headed weirdos we have today. I’m talking the original N95 Delaque that were cool dudes in trench coats and goggles.
Back then, there really wasn’t a whole lot of difference in Necromunda gangs. I mean there were the Escher on one end of the spectrum and Goliath on the other and then there was a vast middle where everyone else kind of sat. Okay, Cawdor have always been strange… But Delaque, Orlock, Van Saar… kinda all the same! I mean, subtle differences but not really anything major. So it was look that determined which gang you took if you didn’t want to be leather daddies or chicks.
I wasn’t secure enough to play a gang of chicks back when I was eighteen, so Delaque it was. But that was then.
Since getting back into Necromunda, and since I started with the Ash Wastes box, I first painted Nomads for some reason, and then did the Orlocks. I made the mistake of magnetizing my minis which is a mistake I’ll never do again (and will detail in a different article). Then I did my Bad Zone Enforcers. Then after that, I thought… Escher!
By now, I was secure enough that, go ahead, laugh at the dude in his mid-40’s playing a girl gang. Ha ha hah, motherfucker. No, seriously, it was just another gang and I kinda liked their vibe. I didn’t like their hair though. It was too spikey… the faces… well… typical Games Workshop… just not very feminine. Fortunately, I was sitting on a bunch of 3rd party heads I’d collected somewhere else.
So it was time to do the world’s easiest conversion to make your minis your own… head swaps!
I won’t claim I did a perfect job at it. But it was pretty adequate!
And then I went to work on the minis themselves.
For my leader, I liked the idea of a bolt gun but I didn’t want that fucking whip. So, one sharp knife later, off it came. In it’s place was a power sword. Much, much better.
But the whip didn’t go to waste. For some reason I thought a specialist with a power whip and an auto-pistol was going to be a good idea. So… I put her together.
But my absolute favorite was just kismet itself. I built the pose everyone builds and everyone builds it because it looks fucking cool. It just does. Strutting around a battlefield with your gun over your shoulder? Come on! But I also happened to accidentally put the right head on it.
Look at this face!
That’s a face that says, “My job is to kill things. And I like my job!” Needless to say, whenever I make up a gang and she’s in it, her name is inevitably “Sunny.”
I also created a juve, a champ, and a death maiden, because you’ve got to. This was my initial gang. At some point, I’ll post what I did afterwards but, needless to say, it involved better weaponry, more juves, and a few more basic las gunners.
Top tips for people playing Escher!
- Give your Death Maiden Spring Up as a skill – once you play this a few times, you’ll see why and thank me.
- Always give yourself 3 lasgun gangers – I know this sounds spammy but, 5cr lasguns are there because this is a core thing they do.
- Start with two or more juves – They’re cheap and they can soak up target priority.
- Don’t use a needle rifle – You have to give it to a champ or a specialist. Champs should be used for better things and specialists, too. Plus, it’s one-shot. Sooo boring!
