Creating a Brat Gang or "Rogue trader with style and panache"

1990 entry by John James

1992 entry by John James

After exploring the background and available informations on the Venator gangs in confrontation and after seeing some interest about the brat gangers by some other bloggers, I felt like giving some attention to some far more colourful factions. You can find some more info about confrontation and the venators in a previous post.

For the Brat gangers, I will follow a similar way as with the venators, trying to get every bit of info I can from the original confrontation rules published in White Dwarf and trying to see if links can be made with previous and later concepts.

Background :

First mention of Brat gangs in the confrontation rules is found in the characteristics of Hive gangs :

"The word 'gang' describes many different types of armed bands on Necromunda. Gang is a generic term which includes clan warriors, bands of ash nomads, savage gangs and mutant bands from the undercity, scavvies from the shanties, armed bands of techs, bands of fugitive psykers, unruly brat gangs of the upper hab layers, as weil as sanctioned gangs and professional bounty-hunters, guards and retainers such as the Venators and Custodians."

The mention of the upper hab layers is the first information which indicates what makes the brats special. To understand it, you have to look at the maps and cross-sections given to illustrate the hive. 

You can see the hive concept is derived from the medieval castles and the vertical ranking of the time with the most powerful and leaders at the top and the poorest and working masses at the very bottom. The upper hab layers are under the Noble families facilities and under the protection devices but they are above everything else, including main habitation level, factories, and undercities.

Now we get a clearer view of how nobles are organised in Necromunda. It looks like the noble families from the very top penthouse levels control sectors of the upper hive layers thanks to gangs made up of their rebelious youth. Those gangs frequently travel in the deeper areas of the hive to hunt, terrorise population and get weapons, drugs and equipment.

We can also note the emphasis on fashion, elaborate costumes and hairstyles, tattoos and extravagant rather than practical clothing. This and the fact they tend to favor exotic equipment all coming from the fact they have great wealth ressources.

We can also note that Drugs are one of their concerns and you can read in the section about Spook that :

"There has always been a massive demand for drugs in hive-society, mainly to supplement the diet and ward off sickness. Spook became popular among the nobility who revelled in its exotic effects and it has slowly filtered down throughout hive-society."

Rules :

Looking at the Gang determination chart, you can see Brats are quite a rare gang with a chance of getting rolled of 5.5% just like Venators and Tech gangs.
They are the second rarest gang after Psyker gangs and mutant gangs (both having a 2,7% rate of getting rolled), far more rare than Clan gangs who represent a 3rd of rolled gangs :

The gang modifier chart indicates that Brats are not particularly talented fighters with Initiative and weapon skill being lower than average (though the text and chart don't state the same).  They do rely on exotic equipment and drugs though :

With no surprise, the brats start with a lot of credits (the imperial currency) with a starting wealth 2nd to the techs only and with the same amount as the venators.

The modifiers on the trading charts also has some infos on the brats. They get a +5% bonus for guns, missiles, equipment but they get a +10% for drugs. Now we see that's easier to get spook when you're a noble.

From this, we are led to believe that Brats rely on exotic weapons and drugs to fight but I've failed to find any rules for combat drugs in the confrontation rules.

 4 types of combat drugs are available in confrontation but only spook is described in its effect though not in the rules.

• Spook: Increases the user's psychic potential, but makes their mind more susceptible to mental damage while they do so.

Design :

The brats have had the chance of being designed by Jes Goodwin who tends to make a lot of sketches for all his concepts. In the conforntation rules, we have a first sketch for a sort of "generic" brat. We have some feats which will be the Brat trademarks like :
- tight pants
- padded vests
- big hair (called psychomanes in the sketch)
- fancy decorations like jewels and ribbons
- face decoration

 

John Blanche also offered his take on the brats, 

You can read notes :

Brats : Rich young middle-class (note : the rich middle-class seems a bit off with the description of nobles in the rules).

About the hair :

High Hair, Shock wigs, Beard wigs, Metalic thread wigs, Shaved foreheads, Multicoloured hair

About materials :

Rich materials, Silks, Velvets.

About clothes :

Doublets, Slashed cloth, Knee-length trousers , Occasional High Heels, Jewelled pouches, Hanging purses.

About decorations :

Jewels, Face paint, Body tatoos, Face paint, Mock eldar armour, Metal face masks, Large earings, Multiple earings, Rainbow shades, Finely wrought weapons, Mock eldar armour, Metal face masks, Riot of colour, Mock Ledar face Icons.

Note the grotesque mask in the bottom right corner which looks more like a Venator's

You can actually see that most of the ideas given here have been put in the models and the final drawings about the brats. They seem to have been quite inspirationnal to the artists of the studio.

Apart from those generic attributes for the brats, Jes Goodwin's sketches show some variations for a number of different gangs. This helps to show that there is not one Brat style but as many as there are families and bands.

The Dance Macabre : 

I like the name of it, coming from the french "Danse macabre". You can note the bat-shaped pectoral and the exotic crystal gun.

I bet they are slightly less colourful than the rest of the brat bands, here is what the "danse macabre" was in medieval times :

Taken from wikipedia

The fright knights :

 

Those look a lot like the limited release model (well I guess it's the other way round) and I like the mention "scream a lot" written in the description...

The jaggers :

 

Described as Duelling Freaks, they display bolts and a rather eccentric look :

Necros :

They display skull tatoos on the forehead and sport  fencing style swords

Rakehellions :

 

Probably my personnal favourite, they sport white make up with beauty spots and coloured lips. They have exagerated neckties and ribbons everywhere.

I can't help thinking someone gave a little inspiration here :

Strypers :

Apart from having wigs, the strypers distinguish themselves by wearing stripes pattern in clothes, hair, ...well, everything.

Though the Brats do not appear in the rogue trader rulebook, there is picture of punks with big hair and fashionable clothes. They are clearly more on the punk side but the shape of the hairstyle is close to what the brats were going to have.:

Taken form page 228 of the Wharhammer 40k : Rogue trader rulebook

Since the description of the brats indicates they often raid tech facilities just to mess around, it is quite natural that 2 of the drawings depicting them are in fights against the Techs.

Can you spot the famous studio members on this one?

Not excatly sure these are Brat gangers, they look more like regular gangers to me...

For the models, most people know the 3 armless gangers which were quite easily available. They have the shaved foreheads, big hair and decorations described in the design sketchs and they even have shades and communicators to indicate their good equipment. Those sculpts are the work of Jes Goodwin which seems natural since he did many sketches and that as we've seen there are many eldar/brats crossovers.

 

The limited release Brat seems to have been based on the Fright Knight concept above. The sculpt is Jes Goodwin's so this comes as no surprise. It has the very "flat" pose many models had at the time (for casting issues).

Limited edition Brat (Picture taken from Solegend)

There have aslo been some unreleased models (found in the CCM wiki) which all seem to have been sculpted by Jes Goodwin too.

Painted by Mark Dixon (Picture taken from Solegend)

Now, looking back a little, the confrontation rules were published in 1990/1991 and from what has been said about the game, its developement has been made before in the late 80's which is not remembered as the most sober period in terms of fashion :

I'm s

I'm sure you all know an inifnity of other references of colourful 80's madness...

But amongst all of these there is a particular trend that really seems to have inspired the design team. I'd like to thank zhu bajiee from The Realm of Zhu for pointing me in this direction (see comments below).
The new romantics movement is full of those young people puting everything they are in their outfit :

For further informations, may I advise you to read the references here for example.

But what happened with the brats? We've seen that the Venators have gone back to square one in  being zealots and fanatics again but what about the noble family members of the imperium today?

Well first, in Necromunda, the sons and daughters of the Noble families who felt like going on a rampage in the lower levels were called "Spyrers" and were pretty much hunters :

You can see that all their power comes from the very specialised equipment they wear and all traces of fashion and style has disappeared. Where the early designs described extravagant over practical clothing, in Necromunda it was the complete opposite. The paintjobs are colourful indeed but it sems to me that in this case it is more due to th epoor taste of the painter than anything else...

It is intersting to note that the design studio abandonned this faction which was clearly bound with its time instead of updating it like they did with so much other races and factions.

The only traces of models that have kept the colourful 80's design are the popular Harlequins (Jes Goodwin, eldars...):

From here :

to here :

You can see how the new Harlequins have nearly all the characteristics of the Brat's design. The very fact that Brats were wearing exotic gear and  somehow copying eldar outfit must have been the cause of their disappearance... both concepts were redundant on too many points.

But after all, who said that all nobles of the imperium want to dress like predators with silly equipment? I have seen some interest in more elegant Brats lately and I am sure that we will some fashionable nobles come out of the hives ...


PS : Many thanks to Axiom for his aid to decipher Jes Goodwin notes. (If you fancy Brat gangs, check out his blog, you might have a good suprise in little time)