Chicago Skirmish Wargames

That's the in-character response Mike wrote after our two games of Shadow War Armageddon with campaign additions after each game. I was playing chaos marines with a Nurgle flavor and Mike had his excellent Eldar corsairs. After the first game, I had lost my relatively replaceable chaos cultists, but took a few of Mike's more precious Eldar out of action. I won the game and got a significant reward in the campaign as well as captured one of Mike's fighters.

For the second game I was far ahead of Mike, with almost twice his number of heavy warriors. We played a scenario where Mike was attempting to rescue my captive from a building in the center of the board.  Given that the Nurgle marines are particularly tough in close combat, this made quite a challenge for Mike to face.

The appeal of Shadow War is a combination of the classic Necomunda rules with all the big tough trained fighters of 40k, but does that make the game fun? For me, it is a bit less interesting.  There is really no way for a space marine to get better within the framework, unlike a Necromunda juve, or even a gang leader.

The use of the same old basic Necromunda scenarios don't quite make as much sense in Shadow War, either. Sure, you have small confrontations, but the idea of taking prisoners and invading a base camp does not have the same feel for special operatives in the way they sort of made sense for struggling street gangs.

So, after a few exploratory games of Shadow War, we have largely set the game aside. I'm looking forward to playing more of the new Necromunda, but I think we will save the 40k figures for rules ets more suited to them.