Jstove’s back and it’s time once again for his ongoing series of articles about Necromunda gangs. More Specifically, the Van Saar, and whether they are HOT or NOT in the underhive!
Before I get to the Van Saar, I have to talk about some caveats in Gang War 3:
Necromunda & Gang War 3
When Necromunda and Gang War 1 came out, it was a bit of a mess. Gang War 2 helped a little bit, as it expanded the trading post and added the Orlocks, who are the true Jack-of-all-trades gang in Necromunda. Gang War 3 is revolutionary and is the book that should have been with us from the start. Now that we have 4 house gangs and 2 cult gangs on the roster, and Gang War 3 is here with more cleaned up and up-to-date toys, it’s time for everyone who was holding out to jump in on Necromunda.
Gang Reviews From The Past
My previous articles on the other houses are now a little dated because Gang War 3 expanded the weapons and gear available to each house.
You can read all the links to those articles here, escher, Goliath, and Orlock.
Here’s a quick rundown on what was added to the other 3 houses in GW3.
- Goliath- Wasn’t helped that much. They got access to a lot of big new weapons that they mostly can’t afford because their gang members are so costly.
- Escher- Escher became more viciously cheaper because they now have starting access to the stubgun. It’s now possible to hand out 5 credit guns to every member of an Escher gang. They can almost compete with the cults in terms of cheap bodies. Escher also got the flamer and hand flamer (everyone did, but Escher has the speed to use it) and these are pretty much default upgrades to the chemthrower, which does not set enemies on fire.
- Orlock- Picked up my personal favorite weapon in the whole underhive, the bolter, for the same price as a combat shotgun. Make absolutely no mistake, Orlocks with bolters are a big deal, this is a gang that can crap S4 rapid fire thunder for days.
NEWcromunda Van Saar
In my previous articles, I talked about whether or not a player was able to build a starting campaign gang out of just one box of models. Escher and Orlock were more than capable, while Goliath was lacking.
Looking at the Van Saars, I have a very good feeling about their kit. The Van Saars come with what I like to call “primaris” lasguns, meaning that most models in the kit can be assembled with the skeleton of a lasgun, and then you put different parts on it to make it a specific kind of lasgun. This is the same build option as Primaris Intercessor marines, which assemble a skeletal bolter and then attach different parts to determine the type of bolter. From the outset it looks like as a box the Van Saars have the customization to make it work, unlike the Goliath box, which is just full of expensive sadness.
New Toys, Old Problems
The Van Saars have a unique weapon list to pull from. Some of these weapons are very good, but some of them look like expensive traps and I’m not a fan.
- Lasgun- Like the Eschers, the Van Saars get a discount lasgun. Not as cheap as the Eschers, but under market value. This will likely be the go-to weapon for most Van Saars.
- Lascarbine- for 5 more credits than an Autogun, you get 2 extra inches of short range and plentiful ammo. It’s just a more expensive, marginally better autogun. However, at 20 credits a pop, it’s riding the scale in terms of worthiness.
- Suppression Laser- It’s a solid/scatter shotgun with plentiful ammo, and is massively more expensive. The good news is that it won’t run out of ammo. The bad news is that you will never update it with different ammo types, and it’s super expensive for just passing ammo checks.
- Van Saar Bodyglove- AKA the stilsuit, this armor item stacks with all other armors except the undersuit. Very handy.
- Plasma Cannon, Rad Cannon, Multimelta- Just because you can have it, doesn’t mean you want it. All of these weapons are going to be prohibitively expensive in a Van Saar gang because your fighters aren’t cheap. Furthermore, Van Saars are phenomenal at shooting, which means that they can get great value out of rapid-fire weapons, so relatively cheaper big guns are an effective option for them.
Build For Shooting
The Van Saars have a few problems that we’ve seen already in House Goliath. The actual gang members are expensive as hell.
Van Saar gangers are even worse than Goliaths in terms of cost. Even the juves are expensive compared to their peers in other gangs. This cost is offset by the fact that Van Saars all have a great ballistic skill, with 3’s on the gangers and 2’s on the leaders and champs.
Van Saars are unfortunately also cowards. They have no access to Ferocity, and only the juve has primary access to agility. Why are ferocity and agility important? Because both skill trees have a must-have skill that allows the model to escape pinning for free without giving up an action. This really hurts the Van Saars because every other house can start both champions and the leader with one of these power skills out of the box.
Van Saar instead gets priority access across the board to shooting skills, which make an already shooty gang devastating. These guys are the Tau of Necromunda. If they shoot the way they want to shoot they’ll kill everyone. But if you close the gap on them and put them in a corner, they’ll get ripped to shreds every time.
Starting A Gang
Despite the attractiveness of the lascarbine, it’s looking like only leaders and champs will ever pick them up. This is because Van Saar gangers are a massive 65 credits, and you need 5 of them for a starting ten model gang. Therefore, we have to assume that a standard lasgun-ganger is going to be 75 credits. That’s pretty rough, and he’s going to need to hit every shot with his lasgun to make himself worth it.
Van Saar has a pretty robust selection of melee weapons, but I’m not even looking at it. With the accuracy bonuses provided by las weapons, it’s very easy for almost every model in the gang to hit on 2s. Van Saars can reliably shoot and pin any enemy they’d never want to charge in. Furthermore, with no access to ferocity or agility, they lack the ability to take the survival and quality of life skills that make melee worthwhile in Necromunda. It’s a dead end for them. The most melee a Van Saar would ever get is 2 pistols.
Don’t Underestimate the Enemy
Despite the fact that they can absolutely hose and pin everything they shoot at, this gang is hard countered by cults. Cheap bodies with autoguns will put out a lot of fire. Cult gangs have very good Cool rolls, which means that even if their buddies are shot dead right in front of them, they probably won’t run off.
The Van Saars are not just gods at shooting, they have to be gods at shooting to win. Every other gang in the Underhive outmaneuvers or outnumbers them. Accurate shooting is good, but so is the weight of sheer fire. Van Saars also suffer from poor initiative which means that while they want to get high ground and abuse it, they’ll probably also fall off the catwalk under fire. With poor initiative, it’s better to hold chokes in hardcover on solid ground than on high ground.
Van Saar gangs have to spend their early careers very cautiously, because the expensive nature of the gang means that they will suffer a lot from attrition. An early death in the gang, even a chump ganger, is a serious loss for them.
Playing the Long Game
Fortunately, Van Saars that can establish themselves will be in good shape. More than any other gang, Van Saars build for the future. Lasguns and laspistols can both be given hotshot packs, effectively turning them into super-accurate bolters. (Carbines and suppression lasers can’t take hotshot packs unless that gets covered in an FAQ.) Stackable body armor also means buying mesh armor for your Van Saars can be an effective defensive strategy. It’s important for Van Saars to try to cover their defensive gaps with armor because they can never get above 4 toughness. (All other T3 models can get up to T5, T4 models can get T6.) Since you will never have the buff ‘roids of a member of a more healthy house, you’ll want the armor to shrug off as much autogun lead as possible.
As far as firepower is concerned, I think most of their weapons are expensive traps. The rad weapons look cool because they inflict automatic flesh wounds, but flesh wounds do not lower ballistic skill. This means that if you shoot a guy with a rad weapon and he survives and recovers from pinning he just immediately shoots you back with no penalty. For Van Saars especially, I much prefer a weapon that’s going to reliably put a model down. My top choice for Van Saars that can afford to splurge on big guns is the las/plas combi gun, because it gives the Van Saars low budget access to a plasma gun, which is fundamentally a S5 bolter.
Don’t Be Afraid of Close Range
Van Saars can defend themselves from enemies trying to close the gap by cowboy-ing up. Two pistols in Van Saar gangs are serious business. Take a champ with 2 plasmas or a ganger with 2 laspistols if you have to splurge on someone. When I first saw the box and saw the model with 2 plasmas, I groaned because I knew a lot of noobs that just assembled the kit by the box art would get hoodwinked into a bad campaign build. (cough, Goliath box loadout is awful, cough). However, for a Van Saar character, the -1 penalty for gunfighting is effectively nothing. Since they already natively hit on 2s and the accuracy benefit at short range for plasma pistols and laspistols is very good you can cream the enemy.
This is arguably better than using a lascarbine since 2 pistols will take 2 shots every time. The lascarbine will bet it’s whole rapid-fire die on one hit roll. Add in the fact that Van Saars have priority access to start-of-game shooting skills, using a badass gunfighter as area denial sounds like a problem solver.
Back Off of A Stand Off
You could argue that it would be better to simply use your skills and your super accurate las weapons to just stay at standoff range. But I don’t think any other house gang is going to let that happen.
Cult gangs with lots of bodies will probably happily stay in standoff range and trade shots with you. Thanks to numeric advantage and tons of rapid fire dice on their dirt cheap autoguns. House gangs have access to high-strength guns and templates that are most useful in your face. Van Saar shooting does not get stronger up close since your starting gang is based entirely on S3 las weapons.
Expect the other houses to hug LOS blocking terrain until they can jump on you with shotguns and template weapons. A cowboy with a pair of plasma pistols can be an effective strat here.
Secure The Early Game
Overall, your goal in Van Saar is to get an early snowball. Some gangs, especially the cults, are very forgivable with attrition due to the cheapness of their fighters. (It’s entirely possible that a visit to the doc for the cultist might be more expensive than the cultist himself!) Once Van Saar gets money in their pockets, they have room to grow more than any other gang. With stacking armor, hotshot packs, and primary shooting access, this gang grows up very well in a protracted campaign.
Keep in mind that although you are the shootiest gang to ever shoot, you do not automatically win at mid-range. Van Saar shooting supremacy is all about extremes. You have the best long distance shooting at S3 and S5 with las and plasma. But these are guns that cost 10, 20, and 75 or 100 credits. That means that with how expensive your super accurate gang is, your shooting in the midrange pocket is going to feel a little anemic.
Despite the fact that you have almost guaranteed hit rolls and pinning on your las, never count out a pinned fighter if he is unwounded and his friends can still close the gap on you. For Van Saar, it is probably a good idea to spend some time advancing, so that you have cover behind you to fall back too. These are the gangs that give you problems.
What To Watch Out For
Orlock shotgun/bolter gangs- 55 credits is the golden number in Orlock gangs because it buys a combat shotgun or a bolter, and both of these weapons really start to go off at 12 inches. This is that mid-range pocket when Van Saar can lose a shootout despite always hitting, and it can be a good idea to fall back from cover to cover to maintain control of the fight.
Orlocks will never have just one bolter or combat shotgun (expect them to start with 2 and a heavy stubber, or 4 if no heavy stubber) and they have the ferocity skill to ignore pinning. This means a bolter Orlock that hits the 12” pocket will hurt you and absolutely will not stop unless wounded.
Escher bolter/template gangs- Eschers are fast and for the most part, can pace your gang without even having to sprint, and they can initiative roll out of pinning on a 2+ if they take the skill. They also have the speed to apply template weapons, and they have a combi-bolter. Like the Orlocks, but faster, if this gang closes to the midrange pocket it will ignore pinning and beat you.
Cults
Genestealer and chaos cults will happily trade fire with you at standoff range and they will eventually win the exchange. Even though they have an average ballistic skill, they are so cheap that every one of your gangers is worth 1 and a half of theirs. To fight them, you will need to hold back up with lots of cover to penalize their average shooting. Prioritize denying them good ground, rather than trying to set up your own good ground.
You don’t need as many models in firing positions to fight as they do since you can consistently hit. Against cults, your best answer is to pick up cyberachnid pets. These pets are great value against cults. Cultists lack high strength shooting that easily pick them off and remove them like house gangs will.
With Van Saar covered and getting a thumbs up for a straight-out-of-the-box gang, will you be picking them up? If you’ve got the Van Saar gang, what do you have the, loaded out with?
Let us know in the comments on Facebook.
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About the Author: Jack Stover
