N18 Escher House of Blades, early campaign purchase order?

[FunGals]

Getting my first ever Necro gang started went well thanks to some guidance in an earlier thread.

Queen
Plasma Gun, Mesh Armor
Iron Will

Matriarch
Boltgun, Mesh Armor
Spring up

Deathmaiden
Stiletto Sword x2, Mesh Armor
Combat Virtuoso

Sister (Specialist)
Grenade Launcher w/Frag+Krak, Grenade Launcher-Smoke Ammo, Mesh Armor

Sister
Lasgun, Shotgun - Solid/Scatter, Shotgun-Acid Rounds

Sister x3
Lasgun

I managed to win my first campaign game, getting 2 kills, 4 rep and earning 50CR 40CR
I did get my Sister Specialist captured though. (My own fault for not reading the rules thoroughly but I got kind of tricked into voluntarily bottling when I didn't fully realise the consequences.)

I'm struggling to figure out my best move going forward now.

50CR isn't enough to buy anything meaningful so I need to send my Champs to "work the gangs turf" for some D6x10 credit boosts, maybe my Queen too and just forget about getting rare items this time.
That would mean having 50CR + 40-240CR depending on rolls. (Or +30-180CR if having my Queen go hunting for rares is worth it.)

My Queen went out of ammo real fast thanks to the Click tactic card and she was then useless the rest of the game and I can foresee this being a common problem so giving her a back up weapon is very tempting. Possibly a Long Las as it's bonus over 18" compliments her Plasma that gets its bonus under 12". Needle Rifle is also an option as I do want to play around with Chems once I can afford them.
I think I want a Chain Axe for her, which does make a pistol instead of a long range gun a possibility, although getting all 3 of her close combat attacks in with a Chain Axe could be brutal.

My Matriarch and Death Maiden were great and don't need anything yet.
I don't actually know what to add to the Matriarch at this stage, probably just another high damage gun like a Melta but I do know the Death Maiden will be getting a Frenzon Collar as her first upgrade.

The Specialist was good but as she is a POW now I don't see the point buying more gear for her until she is back with the gang.
If I don't get her back then I'll need to get a new ganger in ASAP to keep the gang balanced if I do get her back I'm thinking of adding a Hand Flamer as her backup.

Giving my Sisters Hotshot packs is my first idea. Making them considerably more dangerous would be a big boost to the gang.

Bringing a Doc, Chemyst or Ammojack on board feels like a smart move, as the sooner they're on roster the sooner they start paying back their cost. I'm not sure I'm ready to move into Chems yet though as I don't have the income to support them so the Ammojack is probably the top of that list I think but I do wonder if getting the Chymist early just for the Fixer skill is worthwhile as it is extra income even if I don't want chems right away.

Similarly, Uphive Raiments seem like something to buy as early as possible as they break-even pretty quickly and it's all extra profit from there.

There's also a part of me that just thinks get as much armour for as many gang members as I can as quickly as I can but I'm pretty sure aggressive/offence buys are the way to go instead of trying to be defensive.
Also, the Delaque web weapons were a nightmare and I am half thinking about just buying everyone Web Solvent!

I do want another Deathmaiden ASAP but that's 190CR with gear and I would need another Lasgun Sister first to keep balance so that will have to keep until later.

I'm also curious about joining a cult (maybe Tzeentch or Slaanesh) but that may be something for another thread as I don't really understand the implications.

My opponents are;
Delaque (going web/Psyker/genestealer)
Van Saar (going Plasma/Grav-Cutters)
Chaos Cult (the most experienced player who has gone for 10 bodies all with good value loadouts and a Witch to just put a lot of firepower on the board ASAP even if none of it is very high quality)
NPC Enforcers. (We haven't seen them in play yet but I'm expecting a fairly standard loadout of stubguns, boltguns, shotguns, grenade launchers.)

 

[FunGals]

As a follow up on buying gear, anything in House of Blades is available without doing a trading post seek rare equipment check right?
For example HoB lists the needle rifle as available for the Queen, she could buy that even though Trading Post has it as a rare item?
What I am unsure about is in the HoB Weapon Reference Chart it says "This reference section contains weapon profiles, Wargear rules and weapon traits for all of the
weapons and Wargear available to House Escher gangs" and lists a bunch of weapons, then armours and then details for a "displacer field" - is that something that's always available to buy for Escher or do I have to go to the Trading Post and do a seek rare action?

 

[MusingWarboss]

"This reference section contains weapon profiles, Wargear rules and weapon traits for all of the
weapons and Wargear available to House Escher gangs"

It’s probably a piece of equipment used by a dramatis personae or hanger on. Check their profiles.

The reference to a House Escher Gang is most likely to include all hireables for them too, not just the usual gang fighters.

 

[FunGals]

@MusingWarboss Thanks, it looks like your instinct was close.
It's actually under "Strong Alliances" and it is the House Ulanti Court Advisor, Ulanti Courtier and Mirror Mask that both have a displacer field.
Shame though, I thought they sounded really cool and useful and would have loved to give them to most of my girls!

 

[spafe]

Okay, a lot to unpack here, so I'm going to jsut generally answer in a rambling way...

Displacer fields, are available through the trading post, but certainly a later campaign item due to rarity and price. You can buy anyhting on any of your fighters equipment and weapon lists at any point without needing the trading post visit.

On purchase order... I would aim for a chem synth asap for your death maiden to make the most of the toxin. I would also consider hot shots as a dull but useful upgrade for the lasgunners, although would use that as a slow burn, 'I've bought the main upgrades and got enough for one extra hot shot from this set of income' type purchase. the long las would be the other thing I'd get asap for the boss, if you want her as a long range shooter. If you want her to duel purpose (ie, fun gun but also generally closing in to make most of her ws and A stats, then a pistol would be better). Couple of queries here, do you allow weapon removal from fighters? its a common house rule, but it is a house rule so worth asking? If so, a cheap lasgun backup for her for now is fine to give her something and you can strip it off her later. If not, then dont jump into something, make sure you have the creds to buy the final weapons you will want for her. Personally I think either a needle rifle backup (cheap and matches fairly closely the ranges of the plasma), or chainaxe and plasma pistol (if combating) would be the best long term loadouts for her.

One thing to bear in mind for the chemist, she has fixer so generates d3x10 creds per game, which is what I would use to pay for the chems for the next game (kinda a rolling mini budget for them, as she makes them cheap it will normally be a couple of sets per game minimum).

uphive raiments are also great, esp on your leader and the bolter champ (as both are likely to survive games wheras the death maiden is on the firing line a lot more). Getting these sooner as you say is good to get the gang rolling in cash.

On the cash front, when you say 'work the turf' to get more cash, what campaign are you playing? because I believe thats a turf war option only, but would change advice a fair bit (as that entire economy is based around champions, so alot of the above advice goes out the window and beyond some minimal upgrades here and there, the main aim is get more champs).

In terms of going for a cult, personally I prefer the stealer option for a psyker leader (perminantly) and the guaranteed option to hire abberants (even though death maidens arguably fufil this roll) rather than a hope for a spawn to get rolled up (which will also mean no blessings for at least a game if you do get one). All of them unlock familiars which are fantastic pieces of kit/pets, so definetly invest in them if you do go culting.

 

[FunGals]

@spafe Thanks for the response, and yes it is a lot, sorry about that! I'm new to Necro and table top war games in general so this is all new to me and although I have some knowledge from just being around gamers I am mostly learning as I go.

I'll find out about the weapon removal rule but as far as I know we are using virtually no houserules. (The only one I can think of is Overseer has had a leadership test added to it to make it slightly less busted and encourage other skill picks.)

I have considered the Fixer skill as making the Chymist worth getting early even if I am not ready to go deep on Chems yet. It seems like the smart play. At 75CR she would wipe out most of my first game earnings but I guess the sooner I have her the sooner she works that off. If I get a good roll on Work The Turf I will get the Chymist and Raiments I think.

With regards to Work The Turf. I'm getting that from the rule book.
4. POST-BATTLE ACTIONS
Each Leader or Champion in the gang can make one postbattle
action. The actions below are always available, but others might
also become available through Special Territories, skills or
other means.
WORK THE GANG’S TURF
The fighter generates D6x10 credits, which are
immediately added to the gang’s Stash.
TRADE
SELL TO THE GUILDERS
MEDICAL ESCORT

but now that you have questioned it, I looked again and it is only listed in the Turf Wars Campaign section.
I did a search for "POST-BATTLE ACTIONS" and didn't realise there would be multiple different listings for that.
That means I actually only have 40CR to play with. (I thought I would get 10 for Collect Income and d6x10 for each of my leader+champs thanks to WTT)
I guess that changes my perspective completely as I will generally be earning a LOT less than I expected through this campaign.
Additional CR sources are now my priority I think and with that in mind saving for the Chymist and Uphive Raiments is the plan, although adding the Ammojack seems like such incredible value for 50CR that is hard to ignore. A decent body, with mesh and a boltgun and a power sword and all those skills for less than a lasgun Sister!

I'll look into Genestealers as a Cult choice. I feel like most of what I've read about them suggests psyk abilities are weak in Necro which is why I had been thinking about Chaos being my route.

 

[spafe]

okay, what campaign are you playing? The turf war campaign is fine, if that is what you are playing, but it is different to pretty much all other campaigns. Others are dominion, law and misrule, dark uprising, outcasts or ash wastes. All of those (apart from turf war) have territories, some of which generate income. So finding that out I would say is a priority as it will heavily influence the advice, and how rich you are going to be.

although adding the Ammojack seems like such incredible value for 50CR that is hard to ignore.

So this guy is not actually going to help you fight. Hangers on are different to brutes. Brutes (ogyrns, ambots, krimerx (for escher) etc) will show up with your crew for a fight. Hangers on are bought for their other bonus, and have stat lines because if you have the 'home turf advantage' and roll a 6 (from memory, thats how rare this comes up), they are caught with the crew when the fight happens. Its mega rare for them to join in games.

I feel like most of what I've read about them suggests psyk abilities are weak in Necro which is why I had been thinking about Chaos being my route.

So if you are using/have access to the outcasts book, that has expanded powers table, and there are some fun ones in there that (imo) make psykers very fun. I also suggested stealers because of the overlap with the tzeentch benefit of making your boss a psyker. TBH though at this stage I wouldnt worry about any cults for a few more games at least.

 

[FunGals]

@spafe It is a Dominion campaign.

Territory	House	Gang	Ruined
Corpse Farm	Cawdor (GotU)		N
Gambling Den	Delaque (GotU)		N
Narco Den	Escher (GotU)		N
Needle Ways	Delaque (GotU)		N
Promethium Cache			N
Rogue Doc Shop			N
Settlement			N
Sludge Sea			N
Smelting Works	Goliath (GotU)		N
Tech Bazaar	Van Saar (GotU)		N
Toll Crossing	Orlock (GotU)		N
Workshop

Thank you for the clarification on Ammojacks. I knew they HAD to join the fight in some circumstances but didn't realise you couldn't have them join voluntarily.

 

[spafe]

So you have a settlement which is d6*10 income as well yeah? was this where the 40 came from?

but yeah, with that selection, depending on which territory you end up getting, I would say the uphive raimants are probably a good buy, as anything that can increase your income is going to set you in good stead

 

[Bracer]

I dont know... i think you might be able to get chems without a chymist. She just makes things cheaper. Doesnt switch on avilability.

If you check out my list on here. https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/escher-the-dragonflies.12487/

You'll see that i went for some cheap 5 credit tox chems. I havent gone through all the possible combinations yet as that would require big brain. But it seems like the only really useful ones are the two 5 credit tox chems and bad blood and blood rush. Theres some inventive things you can do if you have a chem thrower such as boosting the range by 6" or using a blast template fitted over the flamer template to increase range. But the cost of these things is pretty injurious. Maddening tox and paralyzing tox seem hilariously powerful. Maddening can turn a 3 wound orlock leader with a heavy stubber into billy no mates because he'll shoot anything thats closest (i think thats the way the rules worked last time i checked). You can also put paralyze on said 3 wound leader and if you wound you get 1 injry which he can easily absorb as a flesh wound or regular wound. However paralyze forces him to use is weak str3 to overcome the toxin. If he fails his 3 wounds and flesh wound capacity dont matter a jot. He'll still go down. Bonus points of you can get a juve to run up and coup de gras him for extra xp.

Im still waiting to see if any veteran players prove me wrong about his... im still learning too.

 

[FunGals]

@spafe the 40CR were a mission reward for stealing 2 loot boxes.
As I wont be able to afford Uphive Raiments or the Chymist unless I save my creds until next time I earn I will hang on to my creds for now and hope I earn enough next game. (I'll go Chymist if I can as they are only a bit more than the Raiments but do a lot more.)

@Bracer You can get chems without a Chymist, although you need a Chymist to make Elixirs.
I've not done a deep dive on chems yet but I have a few notes of things that look good to me.

Stimms - hyper, icecold, nightnight, bloodrush, wide-eye (I'm expecting darkness shenanigans from the Delaque player)

Gas - expansive, liftin, pyrophoric, blinding, hallucinogen (although maybe less so as one of my rivals in Chaos Cult and they can shrug off insanity), bane (once there are some higher toughness characters in the campaign) - in general I am dubious of gas though as it doesn't pin and respirators are a pretty cheap one-off purchase to make gas much less effective. I guess it does force rivals to invest in gas defence to shut you down and you get a window at the start when gas will wreck people. Like you I need a veteran to weigh in on how gas works out in game.

Toxic ammo - concentrated, paralysing, bleeding, panicking, maiming.

 

[spafe]

the 40CR were a mission reward for stealing 2 loot boxes.

Every gang should have a single settlement territory in a dominion campaign, which they cannot lose. So you should have an extra bit of income. Unless of course this has been houseruled out

With regards to Gas, its good, but not something to lean too heavily into. Like, having one or 2 gas weapons is nice, and if you can force the other gangs to overreact and buy respirators, thats a huge win (the rating bloat on their gang if they equip everyone with one is huge). Overall I've never really gone for Gas weapons though, preferred toxin as at least it pins when it hits even if it doesnt take them out, wheras gas.... always worried me it was a bit to luck of the dice. I have been on the recieving end of enforcers gas attacks before though and it was unplesant.

 

[JayTee]

@Bracer You can get chems without a Chymist, although you need a Chymist to make Elixirs.

Just to note this isn't the case, you absolutely can buy any Chem-Alchemy effects without a Chymist they just reduce the cost of any that you buy by D6x10 creds.

 

[Bracer]

As usual i back the sagacity of spafe.

Most gas effects are pretty meh considering their high cost. Trying to go cheap and cheerful i recommend the fear gas grenade. It will try to kill them aswell as scare them which is a two for one deal. It gets better if you put it on a leader who already has a chemsynth for another weapon like a combi-needler or stilletto sword. The chemsynth then can improve the fear gas grenade as a fringe benefit. The grenade itself will most likly only shoot once before you run out. But if you have an absolute do or die scenario you can stick expansive on it for 20 points which brings the total cost for the nade to 65 points which is pricy for a weapon that can only really shoot once. But expansive doesnt just add another blast template to the nade. It adds a blast template anywhere YOU want to put it, aslong as still touches the first one. This means that you throw the nade and it scatters maybe hitting nothing, but then another template just metasticises off the first one and hunts down some dude. Best case scenario: in one shooting phase you get to hit a whole string of dudes cowering behind cover. The best part is this only took one shooting action so the rest of your squad is still able to act. This is the way to use it i think.

Another honorable mention is the gas effect pyrophoric that grants the blaze trait is like a worse version of incendiary charges which genestealers can spam. But if you combo it with fear gas then it is atleast original. But 3" blast templates are generally meh especially if they scatter. 5" blast templates however are much better like the ones found on flash grenades. These will probably still hit a dude even if they do scatter, which also means you can rely on the scattering ability to just allow you to throw them further. Like if you throw it 9" because you're st3. Add 5" from the template reaching out for you. Then add scattering d6 (i think its d6) to combine for a total reach of 14+1d6 averaging out as 17" threat range. Then added to that it its a pie plate that could be lucky and hit more than just one guy and add to that that even if something like a juvie throws it, it doesnt just delete if they miss with their poor BS, it then scatters, so your gauranteeing a BS test passing in a kind of way. Then add to THAT that escher have good initiative checks so if you flashbang your own girls or do friendly fire on someone who is in melee with a goliath, there is a good chance she will just be immune to the flash but the other guy wont. Most escher girlies have an initiative of 2, which means you roll a d6 and on a 1 you fail. Does this mean that eschers should be slinging flash grenades like theres no tomorrow? Probably. I mean, theyre in our house gear list probably for that reason. However dont wast a shooting activation on it if you dont need to. For this reason i think putting them on juvies works, who generally cant hit a barn door with a shooting activation anyway and cant start with a gun worth a dam anyway.

 

[FunGals]

@JayTee Thanks! I had totally misread the rules on Elixirs and thought only a Chymist could mix chems.