N18 Escher - New Player, New Gang - Help me avoid obvious pitfalls!

As a final update to this journey, I thought I would fill you in on how it ended up and what lessons were learned (about Escher especially).

Our campaign drew to a close with a final missing of Escape the Hive. My Escher ladies took on the combined forces of Goliaths, Van Saar, Delaque, and Cawdor in a mad dash for the spaceship to get off-world. Much madness ensued, including some "accidental" shooting on the loosely-allied side of non-Escher but in the end the killer ladies got bogged down in the corpses of their enemies and despite making more than a pretty headcount for themselves, they were unable to reach the spaceship and were obliterated to the last woman.

Despite this last outing, the Escher managed to finish first in the campaign in every category - Rating, Reputation, Wealth, Kills, Battles (shared 1st), and Territories (shared 1st). Making this a bit of a runaway win. I think this was almost the case mid-way through the campaign as the gap between first and last place grew wider, it seemed like there was a clear runaway winner. Obviously we've all learned something in this first run through for all of us but the points I would say contributed to such a huge lead were:

- Concentrating on Credit-generation early on. By the end of the campaign, I was getting a mad amount of credits from Settlement, Mine (+ Captured Slaves), Ambot, Narco Den (+Synth Still), Fixer, Uphive Raiments, + Scenario win bonuses that I was running out of things to buy. I actually once bought 3 more Uphive Raiments only to shy out and sell them for almost nothing the next opportunity, it was just too silly.
- Use Hangers On wisely. I purchased a Clan Chimyst early on and along with Fixer, used her discount on Toxins very generously. It got even more silly when I eventually got the Synth Still but that was almost at the end of the campaign, so by that point it didn't make a huge impact to the landslide. I also used a Whisper Merchant almost exclusively to make those odd poor rolls on my Territories credit generation to 6's. My Merchant made me 210c profit (360-60-90). The Ambot, while providing a great distraction, did nothing on the battlefield but did provide more steady income, so paid for himself.
- Chems.. some are fun (& often crap), some take away too much risk from the game. Night Night is probably the biggest culprit. It's not so much the cost or the 1-time use of it, it is the fact that it changes the way you play your game because you literally have zero risk with that model. You can overcharge your plasma without repercussions, you can charge into questionable combats and hope for the best. When there is no risk in losing your expensive, suped-up model, it makes it too easy (& not fun for anyone). I stopped using Night Night half-way through the campaign when it became obvious that having your characters be out of commission is a part of the story of the game.

Despite all this, my W/L/D count was 7/4/3, so not a complete stomping but when you're generating 200c-odd after each game and spend about 60c on a Chems refresh, it doesn't really feel like losing, even if you don't win the scenario.

Overall, there are clearly some things you can do to make your campaign silly and there are a lot of risk mitigation items that I think you would have a more fun time not using if you want to have a fun campaign and keep your friends.

I'm sure we've all learned these lessons in time for our next campaign :LOL:
 
Great to hear the feedback of how it ended, and congrats on the win. Maybe give a few bullet points of do's and dont's of your own now you are a veteran of the underhive amazons, in case any future juvie comes a wandering through these tunnels in search of guidance
 
Great to hear the feedback of how it ended, and congrats on the win. Maybe give a few bullet points of do's and dont's of your own now you are a veteran of the underhive amazons, in case any future juvie comes a wandering through these tunnels in search of guidance
Happy to, not that I feel like a much of a "veteran" but i've survived my first campaign, so happy to share the lessons learned. Just to give it some structure, would you recommend this focuses on starting out with Escher, running a first Dominion campaign, or how to enjoy Necromunda in general? This could be quite a write up.. 😅
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mr. M and spafe
Or more properly, whatever you fancy writing up... but in short.... yes