N18 Sniper weapons and fun: can they coexist

[Merzbau]

I want to check in and see how other groups are dealing with long-ranged weapons like long rifles, heavy bolters/stubbers, and (in particular) the combination of these with the Overwatch skill.

The situation I've been in is this: I set up a short intro campaign to try and interest folks in Necromunda; it turned out to be mostly unnecessary for anything but getting the rules down pat (and agreeing on the interpretation of ambiguous or poorly worded rules) as people were raring to go on a full Dominion campaign. I made the mistake of allowing people a tournament packet-like setup- so 1350 credits, some free Specialists, extra skills and advances, all to give people more of a chance to experiment and see what the "developed" version of their gang would play like.

This led to a huge imbalance in favor of gangs that could field long-ranged firepower and close combat or mid-range oriented characters (like the entirety of my Goliath gang) being brutally shut down in every single game.

For example: in my game a few days ago against Van Saar, we rolled Sabotage (we're doing a straight d6 instead of the actual campaign mission table to get some more variety), with my Goliath defending. The objective was on a slightly raised pedestal in the center of the board, in what we thought was dense enough terrain. Previous games have notably featured far too few line of sight blockers, with plenty of wall segments that fully block advancing but have open windows to shoot through; for this game we decided they would fully block line of sight.

The Van Saar gang deploys on their table edge, traces a line of sight to the objective, fires with a heavy bolter and deals 4 damage, ending the game with a single roll (well, two rolls, since the first shot missed on a 1 and had to be Overseer'd).

We tried a followup game, just to try and have one that actually felt like a *game*, and rolled Looters. Both of my random tactics cards were traps, I was able to arrange the crates in what I thought would be decent kill zones, but two snipers managed to deploy on top of a crate and control virtually the entire battlefield, with a third further boxing me in. Instead of having a defensible position, I was corralled ever tighter in an effort to get away from sniper fire all while Van Saar juves with Sprint effortlessly carted away crates. I managed to get in range to fire a gun- any gun- a single time, missed, and was promptly taken out in the return fire. The sheer rate of casualties meant that despite the escalating reinforcements I was outnumbered 2 to 1 or worse in every round.

So my question is this:
This sucks, right? How do you prevent this from happening (in general, to anyone, not just for Goliath)? So far I've decided to ditch Goliath for Delaque in the Dominion campaign (Goliath were already a distant third choice based solely on already having the models), as melee basically never happens in our current meta (my chunky boys being unable to climb 5" ladders without using a double move certainly doesn't help). I also know (well, hope) starting from scratch with 1,000 credit gangs will further mitigate some of the worst excesses, particularly heavy weapons; our group has also agreed on a house rule that only Specialists will be able to field special weapons, instead of every single ganger after your starting crew (meaning that first ganger during creation gets a free promotion to Specialist, although no skill or advances).

I'm also going to try and convince my group to USE. THE TERRAIN. RULES. THAT ARE IN. THE BOOK, instead of having a third party set up a board in advance as they're so used to doing for 40k- the back and forth construction of a table is a good rule and seems designed to cut down on situations like this.

But apart from all this: do any of you have any tried and tested terrain setup guidelines to prevent this from happening? Every time we play we try to introduce more LoS blockers, and every time long rifles and heavy weapons still end up utterly dominating the game.

 

[almic85]

Sabotage is a tricky scenario as if there is any form of LOS from the edge of the board to the objective in the middle it is easily exploited by the attacker. The only way to solve that is to surround it with varying bits of LOS blocking scenery.

You have also identified and resolved two other major issues being the high starting creds you allowed at gang creation and the excess of special weapons allowed in the rules.

If you are having issues with the board being too open I would strongly suggest not using the rules in the book as they give minimal cover.

If you are finding that snipers are finding it too easy to draw LOS every game then you are having issues with table set up. To resolve this I would provide the following basic board set up principles.

1/ no scenery taller than one floor should be set up in either players deployment zone. There are some scenarios where this doesn’t work because of the size/shape of deployment zones. This helps prevent sniper nests becoming a thing as they need to get to them rather than deploy in them.

2/ if you have proper walls for zone mortalis try setting up the tiles and walls before placing 3D scenery over the top. This gives a lot more cover at ground level but allows shooting gangs to take the risk of standing at height for a better shot.

If you don’t have proper walls try placing as much dense terrain and rubble as you can over the wall areas. Essentially you are going for not allowing a model to see across the board on ground level.

3/ the tallest terrain needs to be in the middle of the board and both gangs need to have equal ability to access it via ladders and other platforms. Players tend to gravitate their models towards both the centre of the board and the biggest scenery piece on the board so this will bring players together at a focal point on the table.

4/ Avoid hard cover giving scenery on upper levels of buildings and stick with thin hand rails or very low balustrade. Their higher position is likely to already be giving them soft cover from those on the ground and any cover you give them will only maximise this advantage.

5/ If you do put hard cover up on buildings try to keep it to a minimum and put it in places that are at least cinematic so it’s becomes fun running your gangers at the pill box. Also make sure that any hard cover only protects them from one direction so that there is the option of flanking them.

6/ if you do put LOS blocking bits on upper levels have it block an entire edge of the level to create a blind spot. This can be done for whole sides of buildings and creates some interesting tactical choices for gangs as they try to minimise and cover their blind spots.

They are just a few thoughts on board set up that might help your group have some more fun playing.

The other things to keep in mind to stop snipers is to use smoke grenades to restrict line of sight while approaching and to pick up grapple guns for slow moving gangs like Goliath. While they are not silver bullets they will help immensely with getting your fighters up the board.

Also keep in mind that no gang should really be fitted out for all close combat or all ranged combat. The ideal for a close combat gang is 2/3 armed for short range (weapons 18” and below) and 1/3 armed with long range (24” and above) and vice versa for shooting gangs.

 

[Merzbau]

No grappling hooks was definitely my bad. I did try to mix up my ranges with a combat shotgun, Executioner ammo for a regular shotty, a boltgun, a couple of grenade launchers, etc, but anything 24" or less never made it within firing range without catching a bullet. I brought smoke, but my smoke launcher was sniped out of action in the first activation of the game and my old-fashioned hand-tossed grenades ran out after a single throw -_-

But the terrain suggestions are fantastic, and will really help me guide future build decisions. I've seen people use spare ladders to make excellent, very spare handrails (the kind of thing I would say gives a bonus to initiative checks for falling, but doesn't provide cover) and I might use those on the highest levels.

 

[almic85]

Cover is an odd one for Necromunda.

With the amount of terrain you have on the board basically everyone should be in soft cover unless you are right up next to the target or have a really good flanking position.

You just really want to limit the amount of sniper posts that anyone can deploy in or get to first turn.

The other thing I didn’t meantion above is that there should always be at least two ways for anyone to get anywhere. Every platform should be hard to defend for a single fighter, and the better shooting positions should have even more access points.

That will help mitigate sniper nests, but it will also stop either gang from being funnelled into a kill zone unless they have been woefully outmanoeuvred.

 

[Scavvierising]

Have some large solid buildings about and get some shipping crate type pieces to really break up any fire lanes that are more than 24" at ground level.
Plenty of scatter pieces on all levels barricades crates oil drums etc. If in fought add moar scatter.
Remember that flimsy looking hand rail is partial cover as well on walkways.
With gangs having greater access to weapons and mod's high BS and cherry picked skills on champions it is tricky to go up against a dakka gang.
Also make sure you do mix up of ZM and SM bouts in your campaign as suddenly all those expensive toys and long range guns will not have an advantage in ZM.

 

[KA7777]

I'm also going to try and convince my group to USE. THE TERRAIN. RULES. THAT ARE IN. THE BOOK, instead of having a third party set up a board in advance as they're so used to doing for 40k- the back and forth construction of a table is a good rule and seems designed to cut down on situations like this.

Terrain is the answer you're looking for, but this particular idea is very dangerous.

The terrain placement rules in the book are awful -- either player can elect to stop placing terrain at any point and then the procedure ends (once their opponent has placed a final piece).

That means that the Van Saar player you're concerned about could decide to place no terrain whatsoever. You could conceivably end up playing on a board with 1x piece of regular terrain and 1x piece of scatter terrain... or elevated sniper nests in deployment zones, and nothing in the centre...

This version of Necromunda gets more balanced the more terrain is on the table, so your goal should just be to amass as much as possible and get everyone on board with very dense boards.

 

[Merzbau]

Yikes. Good point. I wonder if the solution might be continuing the alternate placement of terrain until *both* players agree there’s enough? It’s much harder to make a bad board with too much terrain, after all, and this is always happening before deployment is chosen (and, unless I’m remembering wrong, before attacker/defender are decided with the exception of Rescue Missions during a campaign)

 

[spafe]

have you tried some games using the tiles? they are honestly really good as a balancer

 

[Merzbau]

We did, yeah- people wanted to keep it 3D (and I don’t expect to see ZM much during the campaign) but we figured we should give it a spin. We made the mistake of more or less unrestricted use of Badzone tiles; I ended up getting boxed in so thoroughly after door placement that once again I was getting gunned down like a dog by an Overwatching heavy stubber and long rifle. It was poor board setup on my part between using an obstacle I thought would work well for my +1 strength that only served to slow me down rn route to the single chest I could access, while having to undo door after door to get funneled into a Kill zone (the fan tile in particular essentially shuts down all movement with the placement of just one or two barricades).

I’d like to incorporate them again but our group needs to come up with rules for when and how to use them.

 

[Jon Reinhardt]

It looks like a lot of players dont use enogh scatter terrain. To get close you need a mix of smoke and enough body's to rush forwards.

 

[spafe]

Also the dive... Moving half speed then going pined is great. Remember, if you are pined and in any cover you cannot be shot

 

[LIVe13New]

Also the dive... Moving half speed then going pined is great. Remember, if you are pined and in any cover you cannot be shot

But don't forget about blasts and template s.

 

[Kiro The Avenger]

You need to really limit the badzone delta tiles, they're too brutal.
When they were unrestricted games always seemed to work like
"I'll deploy this man eating death fungus over here to hurt you"
"Well fine then, I'll deploy this man-melting death goo over here to hurt you"
"Well if that's how we're doing it take this man-blending death fan"
Etc etc.

Badzone delta tiles aren't fun.
People in my group have started ignoring the special rules and just using them as regular tiles with fancy graphics

 

[almic85]

To back up Kiro here we often use the Badzone Delta tiles just because they look better and agree with the opponent which ones we are going to use the actual rules for as we place them.

 

[GraaEminense]

We solved BZD by simply allowing players to veto the other player placing a "special" tile next to another "special" tile.