Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A couple of friends and I started playing Necromunda again a couple of years ago. We’re now at the very end of our second ‘campaign’, for which we used the amazing Community Rules (Sensibly balanced skills! Reasonably priced grenades! Stubguns that are actually usable!). I decided to go a bit off piste, give my trusty Escher gang a break and converted a Scavvy mob, liberally stealing ideas from Kid Kyoto and PDH along the way. Papa Jeb and the Scrafton Clan started out with a couple of Scalies (one with a scatter cannon, another with a massive club for the intimidation factor caused by being a ‘High Impact’ weapon), a few mutants (tentacles, eyestalks, extra arms) and scavvies with a variety of hand-to-hand weapons, autoguns for suppression duty more than anything else, shotguns and some cannon fodder with blunderbusses. I think there were 13 models in the starting lineup. They faced off against two shooty Orlock gangs.

The rules I used for the mob were a cross between the original rules from the Outlanders book and some of the new stuff from GW and Anthony Case. For example I dumped the nonsense about scavvies deserting between battles but kept stuff like their starting experience at 10+D6 so that they wouldn’t be too powerful. Kept the ammo roll at 1 and 6 rule and nerfed the zombies a bit so that you get D3 for 10 creds. This was mostly done because of an experience in a campaign I played as a kid where one guy bought the scavvy gang boxed set and a plastic zombie regiment and spent all his creds on zombies in every game. Terrifying, quite funny, but ultimately rather tiresome.

My mob had a shaky start, but nothing too serious. They just didn’t seem to be able to make any money. I wondered if I should have saved enough of my initial creds to buy zombies from the very first battle.

Then Papa Jeb and his boys managed to raid a guilder caravan, completely routing the defending gang in the process. They got about 10 guys off the table and predictably rolled the highest bracket, bringing in about 300 creds. At this point I began to feel slightly guilty, as if I might have made things a bit too easy for myself.

There followed a golden age for the clan. They actually won a few games, the gang expanded and brought zombies and combat drugs to nearly every game.

Then things began to go wrong. I had a few big losses as my opponents gangs started to get quite hard and wise up to my antics. There were multiple wound and high toughness shooters in both who I couldn’t touch with my rubbish low-tech guns. Frag grenades started appearing more frequently, and I cursed the new Community Rules that made them effective. The Orlock hand to hand guys were tough as well. I’d gone for lots of stealth skills but these guys all had combat skills: multiple parries, counter attack, etc. After a number of embarrassing losses in which I’d been too overconfident to bottle and ended the game with only a couple of scavvies in any shape to scavenge, the big pot of money ran out. Some of my ‘good’ fighters died or picked up serious injuries. Some of the worse ones went in the cooking pot in an attempt to save a bit of cash.

Finally, I entered an unprecedented seven game losing streak. The clan couldn’t win: the house gangs got better whether they won or lost, but every time I lost I’d end up eating my own men because I was unable to scratch together the creds to feed them.

Now my gang is down to eight men and in the last game my hand-to-hand scaly was embarrassingly beaten and killed by a fairly average ganger in close combat. We’ve decided that after the next game we’re going to call it a day with this campaign and I’m going to be switching back to my Escher again *massive sigh of relief*

So, I have a few questions to the Scavvy players out there for the next time I dust off the Scrafton Clan:

Any general tips for the starting lineup? I didn’t find the whole ‘ammo test’ issue to be that bad, but the drop in BS took me by surprise a bit. At the risk of sounding a bit like a power gamer, is the answer to take more autoguns in the hope that some of them hit, or just ignore them altogether and max out on hand-to-hand guys?

Anyone else get into the vicious cycle of losing games and not being able to replace/ feed fighters like I did? I kept on trying to raid caravans for a while (and failing); is it better to say, try doing a scavengers mission and just go all out for getting maybe one or two loot counters than legging it?

My Scalies were pretty ineffective. They drew a lot of fire, but rarely achieved very much to justify the price tag. Any thoughts?

General tips for playing? Seems to me like focussing on grabbing the loot and getting off the table is the way forward with scavvies. Is it insane to max out on stealth skills like I did? My thinking was that infiltrators and chaps with ‘dive’ would help me to achieve the above, but I might have just been DOING IT WRONG.

Any other thoughts about playing scavvies would be appreciated- both on the battlefield and in the postgame!

Sorry, I think I've written far too much.

Cheers, Simon.

I can imagine that scavvies are very hit and run, using the hiding and the sprinting rues to effect.
Ranged weapons are only really worth the investment if you are going to be hitting. So get some more melee fighters in there until you get a BS upgrade.
If the scalies are under performing, dump them for more general gangers, maybe to get more autoguns in or more melee.
A good balance of skills is always helpful, some of the stealth skills are good but shooting, muscle and close combat are all useful depending on what you want the model to do.

For all gangs it is usually better to bottle out when you feel you are on the bad end of the stick to keep gangers around for the post game sequence. Unless its the last game of the campaign or the opportunity to take the top spot, bottle out when necessary rather than taking a forlorn hope.

That's my 2 pence from playing a few games. YMMV

First of all, Orlocks gets quite nasty (that's why i got both ) as they get experienced since they have access to all those nasty fighting skillz, plus being a House gang. I've sure had loosing streaks that ground my scavvies to a pulp and when that happens it can be hard to come back. Voluntary bottle is one way to conserve your gang when this happens but that could work against you as well. I'd say you seem to have gotten most of the stuff right, I never spammed stealth skills though, I believe I went for a mix of both ferocity and stealth (been a while now). In my experience scavvies gets quite nasty later in the campaign as long as you keep your numbers up. You might just have had a whole lot of bad luck.

This is my mantra when I make a new scavvie gang:

- Quantity over quality:
* 14+ is a god number
* Scavvies with a clubs and a stub guns are your best friends, dirt cheap and deadly in cc (an occasional autopistol is always nice in case you actually want to hit something at distance)
* Never give them any extras, you''ll need those points for more bodies

- Fresh scavvies can't shoot so don't spend to much on that long range fancy stuff (I never take more than three dudes with autoguns, shotguns are king though). As the gang evolves I usually incorporate more ranged options, but for a fresh gang you only need enough to not make your opponent feel all to comfortable out in the open.

- The following mutations are awesome: eyestalks (give this guy an autogun, hope fore an BS increase and evade, hide him behind hard cover and calmly snipe away), extra arm (CC monster from day one or give him a basic weapon and still have those two CC dice), claw (str 4 in CC, 5 with a club, unless house rules forbids this, str 4 is still nice however), tentacle (will turn any scavvie into a slippery CC opponent, give him a sword when you can afford and it's hardly even fair).

- The following mutations are quite underwhelming IMO: Spikes (expensive, will be less useful as other gangs evolve and gets better weapons), wings (cool but quite situational), two heads (it looks cool but costs just as much as two scavvies, I'd go for numbers).

- Start with two scalies if you want to be hated.

I usually kick ass when I follow these guidelines and I've played scavvies quite a lot. Sure scavvies often struggle a little in the beginning but once you got things rolling they are usually awesome! Just try to stay in cover as you advance, then swarm your unfortunate opponent with bucket-loads of cheap low-lifes People are usually quite afraid of your scalies, use that to your advantage!

Hope it helps!

Wow, loads of advice there. Cheers guys. Might have to do a few weapon swaps to have a few more clubs and stubbers before I take my scavvies to the field again.

One other thing: what's everyones opinions on blunderbusses? I had a couple of scavs with just blunderbusses who I'd use as 'juves' (i.e. meatshields) and if they did survive to get close to anyone then the +3 to hit at close range was a bonus. Tempted to employ a few more next time, but it's not as good in HTH as a pistol, obv.

The insta-hit at short range should be fun though?
give him a stub gun and away you go.
Remember everything has a free knife/club/crowbar