Before I get started, I gotta give a MASSIVE shout-out to one of my Noble Patrons, a Mr. Chad Nabors. He is the artistic genius that built the above diorama featuring a cunningly deployed mechwire trap. He is one part Hephaestus, one part Gepetto, and equal parts Hephaestepetto. He’s like a living hologram of gnomish tinkering. I cannot thank the man enough for his behind the scenes contributions, and while I’m barely making a song off of Patreon (CLICK HERE TO JOIN US), Chad and the other(s) put fuel in the creative fusion engine and keep this battle-stomper stomping.

Moving on…

Gamblers

You wanna know why I think they let a lowlife like Johnny Stars walk off with a fortune and they clapped me in irons the second I was two grand in the hole?

Its because of his hair. Goddamn that fucker's got hair.

I aged like a chew toy. Just like my paw. I worked my ass off in the shops. Wouldn’t have found a mechanic that'd put in more time or love. But I was about as photogenic as a fistula.

Johnny though...he's been mint-cherry since day one. His hair and his chin were sculpted from the same chunk of Terran marble. I ain't tryin' to sound sly, but he's beautiful.

For a man.

I'm decent for a tortoise at best. Truthfully though, I'm more like a ballsack on legs with a grizzled ex-wife and a debt they'll never let me pay down. Not with money, at least.

So of course Johnny would get the glitz. He's easy on the eyes. Slap him up on a poster with winnings and women and suddenly every slagger on Circinus is rushing to the betting halls, diggin' a tunnel straight to the Sprawl. "Ah, but only if I can catch a sliver of Stars' luck" they think. "Just for a day. A moment even."

Truth is this: the Circinus Casinos are like financial slaughterhouses to the desperate masses. People go in one end, and "product" comes out the other.

Whats the product?

Gamblers.

No, not crank-handle addicts. Not wager-junkies. Gamblers. Press-gang infantry units. Fodder for the Stompers. The fans love a good bloodbath, ya see. Love a good bloodbath.

But before you can have a bloodbath, ya gotta have blood.

Here's how it works: Life on Circinus will crush you, will grind you into a paste. But there's a secret way out: money. Crime runs this world. Selling drugs or sex or bio-mats or violence or services indescribable. They're all potential staircases leading up from the filth in the street to the next level, ten feet above the stink and the squalor and the spectre of death waiting to snatch the charge outta your brain.

A lot of people ain't up for that life though. They's squeamish. Uncomfortable with moral greyness. So they look for something a touch less nefarious than hooking or slipping a shank into a rival pusher's neck. The casinos and betting palaces are an obvious nexus to people like this. And they have mountains of money.

All you have to do is win it.

You show up and things start looking good. You're on a roll. The House get their hooks into you. Makes you feel rich. Like a Czar. You're riding a wave, higher into the sky. You feel your self respect trickling back in, start dreaming about renting a luxury studio, buying some companionship, eating real meat. And just when you're about to walk, they chop your legs out from under you and you're spitting blood and teeth and dreams. You ain't flush anymore, you're not even broke. You're in the red. Bigtime.

You break away from the tables, head spinning. You knew you shouldn't have made that last bet, should have left it all at zero and called it. Idiota. But there was a buzzing in your ears, like a swarm of bees, that said "one more roll, my liege. You will win". The dice flew, and even as they left your hand, you knew...you fucking knew it was coming to this.

The goons were waiting for you at the doors. You turned to run but they knew you would. Darts puncture flesh and electrical current passes through you like the Holy Ghost. White lights and then pitch black night.

You come to in a room, naked.

Across from you sits the "Welcoming Committee", flanked by cameras, ensconced in elegant chairs behind an elegant table. They wear masks. Hideous things, gaudy things, finely crafted, the touch of high-priced artisans gleams forth at the edges. The masks are not to hide their identities. They're in the protected class. They don't care if the people know. We cant touch them anyhow. The masks are part of their ritual. To taunt and terrify us common folk. They feed us to their god, to Spectacle.

The Chamber of Heroes, they call it. The cunts would. There's a grating beneath the chair you're shackled to in case you're one of the countless "heroes" that pisses or shits themselves upon coming to.

Far away the Sternenlicht watch the vidstreams and laugh in their pleasure palaces, walled off from the city and high above their gardens, opulent tumors, drunk on priceless liqueurs, high on priceless drugs. I know because I was their "honored guest" once. I smelled the reek of their orgy and the smoke leaking out between their porcelain teeth as men on vidscreens, shackled to their steel chairs, begged for mercy. They laughed and jeered and placed mocking bets. Who's going to purge their bowels first? Who's going to beg for a bullet? Who's going to eat fists? Who's going to break down, blubber, beg, offer favors, offer anything, for one more chance at a different fate?

Not a chance, propizio. The interview with the Welcoming Committee always ends the same.

If you're lucky you pass the initial proficiency assessments and get billeted with one of the thrall units, like the Boogeymen, the Bugbears, the Roughshod, the Ice Picts, the Satyrs, or the Creatures from the Red Lagoon. They kit you out. Train you up. Show you the ropes. A thousand and one ways to break a 'Mech's arm and all that. You're in, son.

But if you're unlucky like I was, you and twenty-seven terrified strangers are lumped together and auctioned off to a rich patron, some asshole with a stable of BattleMechs, eager to wave his dick around in the Bouts. When the next gladiatorial match comes 'round, you're given vouchers for the battlefield armory and then thrown through the gates of the Sprawl with simple instructions:

Please us and the burden of your debt will lighten.

Displease us and we will crush you.

Hunt and kill our enemies.

Live for spectacle.

Die for spectacle.

Surrender to the Electrodrome.

I mean, just LOOK at this shit! So fucking good!

WHAT ARE GAMBLER INFANTRY?

Gambler infantry units are, as described in the fiction above, press-gang infantry units with basic armaments, minimal training, and a slight edge in terms of a one-time chance to not get massacred.

I know they’re not great. They’re not supposed to. They’re losers. They’re supposed to be disposable.

But if you take them seriously, if you take care of them, feed them, nurture them on blood and coolant, they can grow into something so much more than simple Gamblers. They can become…

Gambler Thrall Units

Gambler units that survive a bout may be purchased from the Houses of Vice at their base price plus an additional 2,000 C-Bills per trooper which will be used to pay off their outstanding debts.

Once purchased, these units become gambler thrall units, and will be bivouacked in the controlling player’s stable, a topic to be discussed in a later post.

Once enthralled, these units can be equipped, trained, and modified as a player sees fit so long as they are able to pay the costs.

Equipping a Thrall unit with new weapons and equipment requires training, and is calculated as follows:

Number of Equipped Troopers x (Gear Cost x 1.5)

Once this initial cost has been paid, the thralls are considered proficient with that piece of gear, and so long as a quarter of their number survive a bout, they do not have to pay to regain that proficiency, only to replace lost equipment.

Special training and its costs, such as advanced anti-mech training, covert ops training, and urban pacification training, will be covered in future posts.

Below is a sheet for tracking your thrall units.

Here’s an easy, nifty way of tracking your unit. Nifty, eh? FUCK that’s nifty!

Gambler Special Rules

At the beginning of any campaign/bout, all pilots are assigned a single unit of Gambler Infantry by their stable patron in addition to any thrall units in their command.

These units may be placed in any appropriate hex on the map (following normal stacking rules) and may be placed as hidden units according to the rules in Total Warfare, p.259-260.

Gamblers may be hidden inside of spectacle-generating buildings at the beginning of play, but cannot be used to generate/influence spectacle until they are revealed.