N18 Hired Guns / Allies: Gang Composition and Point Costs

[thanejaw]

Hey there - running a campaign in London and it's due to start tonight and I wanna talk through a few things (as I understand it) and see if you guys have thoughts:

Allies vs. Hired Guns Point Costs

Allies work groups currently don't have a points cost associated with them - Hired Guns explicitly do (as per Gangs of the Underhive).

This disadvantages gangs which have rackets/ guild allies which add Hired Guns (adding to the Gang Rating) vs. Allies (which don't have a points value)

For the sake of simplicity, we've got a working rule of thumb for our group that Allies add a flat 250 to the Gang Rating (which is a band-aid fix for the first game tonight). How are other people dealing with it? Is it something that I'm over-engineering? I'd rather have a flat rule of thumb for this then differing values for each group of allies.

Adding Hired Guns and Allies

Allies explicitly take up the slot of 1 Fighter in your gang composition. It's not clear whether Hired Guns are in addition or in place of fighters in your crew (it doesn't say anywhere helpfully). I have a half remembered line from a video (I believe it was this one https://www.twitch.tv/warhammer/video/432077960 - I'll add the precise time below once I've played it back) where Hired Guns are in addition to the fighters in your crew (meaning your starting crew can be larger than the number in the book).

My interpretation:

Allies work as described - which makes sense.

Hired Guns are always in addition to your Starting Crew (otherwise - you'll be at a significant disadvantage by hiring them, both by reducing the number of fighters from your gang that you can bring, the added increase to your Gang Rating (ignoring the points cost issue flagged above) and (if you're hiring them) the cost of adding them.

 

[TopsyKretts]

Relevant questions. Your band aid solution seems to be the best fix without going deep. If I remember correctly, someone tried to calculate the cost of allies. I believe it ended up something like 600+ gang rating.

 

[Petitioner's City]

I've done calculations for my campaign a la the following:

Faction | Gang Rating Value
Guild of Coin | 550
Corpse Guild | 600
Iron Guild | Variable (Each scum is 30 credits + equipment)
Promethium Guild | 700
Slaver Guild | 800
Water Guild | 600
Cold Traders | 500
Fallen Houses | 500
Imperial Imposters | 500
Narco Lords | Variable (each scum is 30 + equipment)
Psi-Syndicate | 300
Rogue Factoria | 400

These aren't exact but kinda match the variations, and we add them to gang rating at the end of step 2 along with other hired guns. Maybe the mind locked wyrd is worth more but psykers are overall quite weak, so maybe not.

I also nerfed the void born scum to s/t4 +1w, and improved some of the rogue factoria weaklings, otherwise they'd be worth a lot more and less respectively

 

[TopsyKretts]

Not sure what the best approach is. Slap these costs on and call it a day?

 

[Petitioner's City]

This is how I tried to balance both recidivist factions:

 

[thanejaw]

thanks for the input - glad I'm not the only one trying to address this or recognising it as a problem.

Thanks for the detailed costs - Petitioner's City - I'll be honest I'm broad strokes in my approach to this (there are a shed ton of variables already!) - so I'd probably take 500 credits as the rating and leave it at that. We'll see how it goes tonight - the guys I play with are on the whole pretty chill and constructive - so we'll adjust as we see fit.

I'm assuming you guys are also in agreement regarding the Hired Guns being extra to your starting crew?

 

[Petitioner's City]

thanks for the input - glad I'm not the only one trying to address this or recognising it as a problem.

Thanks for the detailed costs - Petitioner's City - I'll be honest I'm broad strokes in my approach to this (there are a shed ton of variables already!) - so I'd probably take 500 credits as the rating and leave it at that. We'll see how it goes tonight - the guys I play with are on the whole pretty chill and constructive - so we'll adjust as we see fit.

I'm assuming you guys are also in agreement regarding the Hired Guns being extra to your starting crew?

Thanks! It's a difficult decision, but an important one, because certainly some groups give a real advantage in numbers but potentially ineffective fighters (the factoria) while others give a single amazing character who could 66 in response to dangerous footing and others have a mix of strong and weak (coin guild and corpse grinders). Skulls are quite ineffective gear but they really drive up the cost of the corpse and coin guilders; and I forgot I reduced flamers to 80 credits, so the promethium guild are in truth worth even more than I've costed them if you are using unmodified compendium rules.

On your second question, I treat all hired guns as extra, actually, just seems to distinguish them better from hangers on.

 

[spafe]

@DarkNwss , @BearsWillEatYou , @feralhaggis , @andrewedwardbrown Chaps, any thoughts on the costs in @Petitioner's City 's post further up for giving a rating to allies/rackets in respective future campaigns?

 

[DarkMouse]

I think it's certainly a good idea to have them costed up extra so they do have a meaningful interaction with a gang rating, (else you end up with a ton of free dudes And also possibly the underdog?!) costing them up based on equipment and such is definitely good

The costs themselves look pretty decent, but the question becomes for the more expensive allies will ppl just not bother with them?

 

[BearsWillEatYou]

Hrm. Maaaaaybe.

Having crunched the numbers for the Corpse Guild by subbing in close-enough gang profiles and advancements I ended up with around 550 credits. @Petitioner's City might be using a more precise method than me though, and there's an argument to be made that the ability to bring a few fighters over the crew cap for the mission is worth those extra credits! It's certainly helped to stop me bottling in low crew size scenarios a couple of times. I also didn't account for the special ability you get for the Guild party showing up, so maybe that's where the extra 50 is coming from? Frankly I've got no idea how to fairly value those various special abilities. Stuff like the Promethium Guild turning the lights out, or Guild of Coin changing the scenario seems like it should have a pretty hefty attached value though.

Assigning a rating to each alliance party probably matters less if everyone ends up taking one, though it's difficult to say how likely that is. I was fairly surprised that only two of us went for allies this time around- were you not at all tempted by non-Scarce plasma @Lazyboy346 ?

 

[BearsWillEatYou]

I think we've also ended up with a somewhat weird scenario in our current campaign, as despite having the highest gang rating my reputation is awful enough to have the Guild party show up more often than not. More normally in Dominion or Law and Misrule I'd expect lower rep players to also have lower gang ratings, at which point the not-adding-to-your-rating Guild party should be another way of letting those players keep up with the gang rating front runners. Assigning ratings to Guild parties runs the risk of screwing with that.

 

[thanejaw]

So... as an observation my first game of the campaign this evening I had 9 fighters (Cawdor) 4 Hired Guns and a free Gyrinx Cat (a “Medium Pussy” as one member of my group adroitly named it - although he/she is “Mr Cat” to me).

This led to a protracted battle lasting many turns (you need to take a lot of people out to force a bottle check if you’re starting with 13 / 14 fighters and they count as part of your starting crew). With Bottle checks only coming to play in turn 4/5

Given Allies explicitly don’t count toward starting fighters - this then does potentially tip the scales of usefulness back towards Hired Guns (unless I’m missing something)

 

[spafe]

This will happen still in Law and Misrule though, as you get the rackets that mean they always show up regardless of rating. (also the funky way it works, you can test alliance/break it whenver you want and the racket lets you re ally with them whenever which is also strange coming together of rules I think)

 

[Petitioner's City]

I think it's certainly a good idea to have them costed up extra so they do have a meaningful interaction with a gang rating, (else you end up with a ton of free dudes And also possibly the underdog?!) costing them up based on equipment and such is definitely good

The costs themselves look pretty decent, but the question becomes for the more expensive allies will ppl just not bother with them?

Fair question, although I'd say the Slavers and Promethium Guilds have such positive impacts on the field. Of the 600 credit crews, the Corpse Guild really keeps your fighters living through its reroll Lasting Injuries boon, and the Water Guild circumventing normal capture rules is nasty.

As for the expensive single figures - I think the Fallen House, Imperial Imposter, and Psi-Syndicate fighters are very strong additions to a crew.

I think a fair criticism of these crews is that - as hired guns - they suck up the experience from your gang, and because there are more of them this is more likely to occur, which is a shame. It would be nice if they too could advance with your crew....making the loss of them more sore, but extra complications there.

 

[BearsWillEatYou]

Good point. I guess that if the random chance of the allied party showing up was meant as a balancing mechanic, they threw out the idea in favour of more cool stuff happening for Law and Misrule. Compared to Dominion it seems set up to turn everything up to 11 that little bit sooner. I'l be curious to see how that feels when we get to playing it.