Tales of the 13th Necromunda- "Ma Bell"

Field Tale: “Dial V for Vengeance”

Vehicle Designation: Ma Bell – Manticore Missile System

Crew Motto: “We don’t call often, but when we do—it’s collect.”

The siege of Hive Segmentum 44-Zeta was going badly. The traitor line was dug in, triple-reinforced, and shielded by a network of stolen void-field projectors. Most of the 13th’s armored company was stuck playing meatshield while the artillery units played a guessing game with their targeting cogitators.

But Ma Bell’s crew didn’t guess.

Hunched over their strange mess of humming vox-receivers, signal rods, and a cracked dataslate permanently tuned to "something called Channel 5," the tank’s commander—Sergeant Picker—claimed to “feel” the signal more than track it.

“It’s a tone lock, lads. They’re trying to mask the grid with harmonic static. But they forgot—”

He tapped the launch console, a ghost of a grin creeping under his comms rig.

“We invented the dial tone.”

With a whisper of ancient music playing softly in the background—something about “reaching out”—Ma Bell’s launcher lifted into position. Four warheads screamed skyward, curving over the hive’s dead spires in a textbook-perfect arc.

The traitors didn’t even have time to raise shields.

The missiles hit the exact void-node junction powering the projector net. Not the area—the node itself. The explosion didn’t just collapse the shielding—it caused a chain reaction that lit the trench line like a promethium refinery.

Cheers echoed down the 13th vox channels, but Ma Bell’s crew was already tuning in to another frequency.

Sergeant Picker lit a lho-stick off the venting heat panel and leaned back, muttering:

“Next time, they can call us.”

Tales of the 13th Necromunda- Ratling Sniper Teams

 

Field Tale: “Lunch at No-Man’s Table”

Featuring Ratling Sniper Teams: The Verminators & "Whisker six”

No one really knows how the two Ratling sniper teams ended up a full kilometer ahead of the main line, dug in behind enemy territory. Official records say they were “scouting forward positions.” Most of the 13th know better.

They were looking for a place to have lunch.

The ruins of an old hab block on the outer ridge of Zone Theta were just right—had a clear field of fire, plenty of broken wall for cover, and a collapsed pantry that still held a crate of somewhat-edible ration bricks. Naturally, the two squads set up shop.

Sergeant Bort of Whisker six even laid out a proper cookfire using promethium gel and a bent ammo pan. Meanwhile, Gunk and Loaf of The Verminators started racking up headshots on a Chaos militia patrol trying to set up a mortar nest on the far side of the ridge.

Between bites of scorched grox hash and sips of recaf boiled in a helmet, they casually dropped twelve enemy troops, one vox operator, and a cultist standard bearer.

“Ey, Gunk,” Loaf mumbled through a mouthful of protein bar.
“Hmm?”
“Scope that fella trying to flank our position.”
Pffft–click.
“Not anymore he ain't.”
“Ta, mate. Pass the salt.”

At some point, the fire from their perch was so effective that the rest of the enemy force turned and ran, believing they’d stumbled into a hidden Imperial forward firebase.

When command finally caught up with them six hours later, they were finishing second helpings and arguing about whether blood pudding counted as “morale-boosting” or “war crime adjacent.”

The ruins were renamed on the unit’s unofficial maps as:
“No-Man’s Table.”

Founding of the 13th Necromunda

 

 

The 13th Necromunda – Regimental History

Regiment Designation: 13th Necromunda Armoured Assault Company

Informal Name: "The Rat Catchers"

Motto: “We Take What's Left... Then We Take What's Yours.”

Originally raised in the wake of a violent suppression campaign within Hive Primus, the 13th was not part of a traditional founding. Instead, they were scraped together from the survivors of a failed Arbites purge operation against rising gang activity in the lower hive. The PDF forces, decimated and demoralized, saw unexpected salvation in the form of a dishonored noble house—House Malrec, stripped of its spire holdings after a failed political coup, and cast into the mid-hive.

When the Imperium called for reinforcements during the Fourth Archenemy Incursion of Heliox, Necromunda's hive governors saw an opportunity: sweep up the gangers, the exiled nobles, and the undesirables, slap on a regimental badge, and send them far from the hive.

Composition

Officer Corps: House Malrec’s remnants—militarily trained, bitter, and clinging to pride. Their personal vendettas and ambition for reinstatement fuel many of the regiment's more reckless operations.

Rank and File: Gangers from all across Necromunda’s underhive: Orlocks, Goliaths, Eschers, and even some scavenged Delaque and Cawdor cells. Hardened by gang wars, they're better at close-quarters urban warfare than parade-ground discipline.

Support Staff: Ex-hive techs, outlaw chem-surgeons, and a disgraced Mechanicus Enginseer with a fondness for salvaged STC templates and "questionable" upgrades.

Doctrine and Tactics

The 13th fight with a "smash and grab" philosophy—urban blitzkrieg powered by looted tanks and repurposed armored transports. Their vehicles are often heavily modified, featuring jury-rigged armor,  mismatched components, and unauthorized weapons mounts.

They prefer:

Close-quarters tank assaults

Surprise flanking maneuvers in urban settings

Combined-arms raids to 'procure' enemy supplies

13th Necromunda - Units of Note- “Night Blade”

 

“Night Blade”

Rogal Dorn Battle Tank

Freshly stolen from a Cadian motor pool during a “supply confusion incident,” its paint is still drying. The name—chosen by the crew’s gunner, a former Goliath named Rynn—pays tribute to a character from old underhive stories (and also happens to match the name of a favored D&D rogue). The vox-chatter still bleeds Cadian command codes on occasion, making it a minor security risk and a major nuisance for the Commissariat.

Tales of the 13th Necromunda- Sniper Team

 

Field Tale: “A Brush with the Emperor’s Shadow”

They say Corporal Veck of Ghost Alley once found the perfect nest: a rusted gantry in the collapsed spire of Hive Helix, five floors above the kill zone and cloaked in sump steam and shadows. No light reached there. No sound escaped. It was ideal—the kind of spot Ghost Alley lived for.

He’d been still for four hours. Breathing through his mask’s slow-pulse valve. Watching through the scope. Waiting for the command.

Then he felt it.

Not a sound. Not a motion. Just… presence.

He shifted his eye just slightly from the scope—and froze.

There, not three feet to his right, nestled in the same ruin, a Vindicare Assassin sat cross-legged, rifle cradled, still as death. The black-clad killer turned just enough to lock eyes with him.

No words. No threats. Just a single, approving nod from the Emperor’s own executioner.

Veck nodded back—or at least tried to. Hard to say. He’d gone completely numb. Good thing he was wearing a rebreather, or the assassin might have seen the pure, unfiltered terror on his face.

They fired within seconds of each other.

Two targets dropped, never knowing how close they’d come to twice the Emperor’s judgment.

---

It’s become a quiet legend in the 13th. Now, whenever a member of Ghost Alley claims a particularly flawless shot, someone always says:

“Close... but not Vindicare close.”

 The 2024 Image I created but never posted.

13th Necromunda Finished!!! (Part 1) Troops

 Hello all,

Long time no post. This stuff is so much harder to do than it used to be. Most of the time I cannot be bothered to post anything. 5 posts since 2018. It's not like there is nothing to talk about...

2022 I spent most of the year working on the 13th Necromunda project. This is a Warhammer 40K IG army I built on commission. It took 11 months to finish as the client was in no rush. It was completed just before Thanksgiving. I also worked on a hybrid Necron-like army for another client. It is a mix of several model ranges including 40K, OPR's Grimdark Future, and AT-43. I'll post about that later. 

Here is the first batch of pictures of the finished Troop units.  

The symbol we came up with for the figure cases

The commander- AKA: "The Rat catcher"

The Major!

Commissar Bison 

Ordinance officer James "Phone it in" McPherson 

Fleet officer (Naval) Captain-Willian "Duck" Dodgers 

The army only has 3 squads

1st squad (Former House Guards) 

2nd Squad (House Orlock) "The Warriors"

3rd Squad (House Goliath) "The Head Takers"

Next time we start getting into the hardware!

Till Next time.

RGH