The Pros and Cons of Necromunda

[m0nolith]

Given that Secundus is around the corner, I've been seeing more and more people talking about finally making the jump into Necro, and given that it's been my primary game for a few years now I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give a make a list of what the game is, what it isn’t, and what to expect from it.

Necromunda isn’t for everyone so I'm not here to convince you to play it...well ok maybe I am. What I really want to do is to give the reader a good idea what they can expect and what they can get out of it if they decide to give it a try. That being said I do need to point out that its obviously my main game for a reason so the pros will naturally heavily outweigh the cons, and what is a pro and what is a con is very subjective as are a lot of things here.

Another thing to note that what I wrote below is…extensive. Frankly, this probably should have been a blog post given its size, but given I don’t have a blog and I'm on B&C so I get to write to you wonderful people instead. I divided it up into sections to make it a bit easier to digest, but still there is a lot to go over, and even with all of that there is still much more that can be written about this game.  

 

Also, although it may be obvious, I still need to point out that this all in my humble opinion, so no pitchforks please.

 

Without further ado, here are some pros and cons when it comes to playing Necromunda based on my experience with it.

 

Necromunda is easy to start….for the most part.

What I mean by that is that all you really need is a standard plastic gang box, and that’s about it. Now from here on out you can expand it with secondary plastic boxes that all the main clan houses have, and then even further with plastic and resin upgrades, FW resin Champions, Hangers-On and Brutes, Hired Guns ect ect, but the key thing I want to say is that you really don’t need anything else past the initial gang box to play the game fully, with the one exception being that you may want to get a vehicle or two if you want to play in the Ash Wastes. This means that the initial monetary investment is going to be pretty low in comparison to a standard army, and even if you do decide to go down the Forgeworld path it will still end up being substantially cheaper than an army for 40k or 30k, but admittedly in the long run it will probably end up being more expensive than say something like single box of Kill Team or Warcry.

With that in mind, what's hard is all the other stuff; playing with a group that fits with the game (ie not being hypercompetitive), having a good Arbitrator, having a decent table to play on, and finally finding the time to play it. I'll get into each of these points later.

 

It's not a competitive game, it’s a gentleman's game.

You play the game with your opponent with an understanding that you're both there to have fun and not at the expense of the other players fun.  You play to win, but not to table your opponent turn one. Necromunda by design is not a balanced game as there are far too many factors to take into account to ever balance it fully given the depth of its campaign system, so it's on the player to not make something completely broken and ruin the fun for the other player(s). Fortunately there is the role of an Arbitrator to help with this.

An Arbitrator is someone whose role is to organize a campaign, make a narrative if they want to implement one, make calls on rules disputes, and generally make sure that everyone is having fun. I wouldn't call them a Dungeon Master like in games of D&D as they don’t have that level of control, but it's someone who makes sure that the campaign runs smoothly to best of their ability.

Now even though one of the Arbitrator's roles is to make sure nothing is broken, I need to clarify that the game isn't completely unbalanced out of the box by any stretch of the imagination. The most common types of games I've had are ones that keep swinging back and forth so there is clearly some balance there, but I need to clarify that this balance is nowhere near to the level of a more competitive game. If competitive games are more to your liking, Kill Team would probably be something that would resonate more with you.

 

The Campaign.

What makes Necromunda… well, Necromunda is the emergent narrative that comes out from playing games in a campaign. You can absolutely play one off games if you want to, but it’s the campaign that really makes it what it is.

Most campaigns last for seven weeks, three weeks gaming, one week downtime to rest up, and another three weeks gaming. This isn’t the case every time, some can last far less, and others much longer, but out of the box most of them last about seven weeks. Now what's going to be tough for some of us is finding the time to play, because when you're in a campaign, you have to devote time to it. When you're in a campaign you going to want to play at least a game a week to keep up with the rest of the players, and admittedly that can be tough for some of us when life gets in the way.

But if you do commit to a campaign and do find time to play it, what you get out of it is something that's really special. There's a weight to every action as it carries off into the rest of the campaign. You will inevitably get emotionally attached to your models as they fight, progress, get permanently injured, succeed, fail, live and die.

You will remember then that one Champion that stepped up to become a leader of the gang after your old leader died in the second game of the campaign, having been split in two by an Escher Death Maiden, eventually becoming a powerhouse that other gangs learned to fear and eventually getting revenge against that Escher gang.

Or maybe that one game where one of your Juves ran across the board to grab the objective while braving the enemy gunline, and against all odds grabs it, only to then fall prey to an NPC tentacle that drags them into the dark abyss.

Or that one campaign where that one model never missed a chance to fumble or fail every opportunity they had by refusing to roll anything but 1s, and then half way though the campaign as a laugh you give him a new expensive piece of gear which makes him do a full 180 and becomes the best killer in the gang, so much so that other gangs hire a Beastman Bounty Hunter to take him out, only to in turn have the Bounty Hunter get melta'd in the face by that very person he was sent to take out, killing the Abhuman outright (rolling a 66)!

Because of the campaign system, the highs are so much higher and the lows are going to be so much lower. You will feel absolutely elated when one of your gangers makes a nearly impossible shot winning the game, and absolutely devastated when one of Champs having been with thought the entire campaign gets their noggin viscously clobbered by two handed hammer being wielded by an enraged Goliath, killing them outright in the second to last game of the campaign.

A significant part of the game is what happens off the table. There are markets that need to be visited where you can find exotic and strange goods. Manage captured territory by building new buildings giving you boons and managing population sizes. Generate income form that captured territory or manage various businesses, routes or relics. Hire new recruits to your gang or Hangers-On to give your gang various boons on or off the table. Petitions made to the heads of your House, or heretical rituals preformed turning one of your models into a Chaos Spawn. What if in your last game you managed to capture one of the enemy gangers and they fail to get them back? Well then you can think about selling that ganger to the guilders, or maybe you would hold onto them to as leverage over the opposing gang, only selling them back to them when the price is right.

The point I'm trying to say is that there are so many permutations to the basic campaign, that what I described above only covers a fraction of what's possible in the game. You can make it as deep and complex or as simple as you and your group want to make it. This depth, emergent narrative and fantastic worldbuilding is what makes this game shine, but it also doesn't hurt that the models look fantastic, which leads me to my next point...

 

The model range is (IMO) the best looking model range that GW has.

Not a lot to say here as it is only my personal opinion. I think the range looks, simply put, excellent. The character and aesthetics of the game is right now at least, are hard to beat. I credit this to a very small, dedicated and talented team at Forgeworld that has a great vision for what Necromunda is and can be.

5. The world itself.

The game is absolutely overflowing with character, which I think is entirely a result of its fantastic worldbuilding. It’s a strange mish mash of many different themes and genres; Indusial Post-Apocalypse, Baroque Cyberpunk, Lovecraftian Survival, and many many more all glued together by the wider 40k grimdark aesthetic. In many ways it’s a microcosm of the Imperium, ie Van Saar are an analogue for the Mechanicus, Cawdor for the Ecclesiarchy, Helmawrr for the Emperor, ect ect, but adds its own personal flavor to each. Necromunda is a vast and ancient world, so vast and ancient in fact that whoever you are, you're just a cog in the machine that is the world itself. You're not going to change the world nor the galaxy, you're simply someone who's trying to survive this dystopia, riding the tides of fate that you have no control over, and the best you can do is find a little prosperity for yourself and those around you, that’s so long as you don’t find yourself on the wrong end of a stub gun on the way there.

From the bottom of the Sump, to the highest Spire tower, form the smallest Ash Waste settlement to the largest Hives, the writers of the game have created a fantastically and well thought out world. Speaking of the Ash Wastes…

 

The Ash Wastes, Underhive, Zone Mortalis, and Terrain.

Initially when the game came out the only two options when it came to mission selection, Underhive (a generally terrain dense but larger and more open environment), and Zone Mortalis (tight corridor based scenarios based off that terrain set). With the Ash Wastes expansion, the world has opened out (literally) to the outside of the hives themselves and to the wider Necromundan hellscape, which added a whole new angle to the game; vehicles. Before I go on, I need to clarify that games in the Ash Wastes are optional and you are given the option of avoiding it altogether and staying inside the safety of the hives themselves (they're absolutely not safe). But if you want to live out your Mad Max/Fallout Wasteland fantasies, then the Ash Wastes may be your thing. Here as well you're given options when it comes to vehicle customization. You can absolutely take a STC based Imperial vehicle that you can find in the Genestealer Cult range, or you can go make your own custom vehicles made with a plethora of options when it comes to variety and gear. There are of course Necromunda specific vehicles like the Ridgehauler and Ridgecrawler, not to mention gang specific vehicles as well.

In regards to games set in the Underhive and ZM, you will need a terrain dense table to recreate the feel of a Underhive, so they can end up being expensive unless you look into alternative 3rd party terrain, but a well painted forest of brutal industrial looking terrain really adds a lot to the immersion of the game, especially when you add verticality to your terrain. Terrain, I would argue is more important in this game than most other, and some of the most fantastic Necro projects I've seen have been form people creating some truly incredible works of terrain!

One thing that has to be brought up though is that sometimes it can be a bit of a pain to measure something or move a model given the absolute forest Sector Mechanicus thrown about. Its rare, but it does happen.

Bloat

There's a ton of Necromunda books and more are on their way, so if you really want to get a good sense of everything that's available to you, there will be a lot of reading to do. Most books cover new gangs, some will have a few new units to existing gangs and almost always a new campaign. There is also the fact that Specialist Games Studio semi regularly puts out Apocryphas, snipped PDF rules that expand units, lore, the world, and add new rules or permutations of existing rules, adding even more that needs to be at least glanced if you want to get a good grasp of the new stuff.

But that all being said what I need to stress is that these books, Apocryphas and expansions are more like modules that you can add onto the basic rules to add variety and depth, meaning the bloat that exists is more of the kind that simply gives you more options instead of making it mandatory to learn. You can use them if you and your group want's to, or you can always run the basic bare bones Dominion campaign from the rulebook which is still the most popular type of campaign. All you really need is the basic Rulebook and whatever book your gang is in, and that’s about it when it comes to books. If on top of that on the other hand you want to add settlement building, or a campaign with scarce resources for example, then there are campaign books that will add a ton of variety to your campaigns. Necromunda is somewhere between a skirmish wargame and an RPG, granted its closer to the wargame side on that spectrum, and most of the books are here to add more depth and variety into that world.

As for what the future holds, I remember in one of the FW open days (back when they had those), they put out a plan of all the places the design studio was planning on the game to, so we could potentially see future releases set in the Eye of Selene (a space station above the planet), the Polar regions, Hive Mortis (zombies), among others. Granted, this was all the way back in 2019, but so far they seemed to have followed this list.

One personally I would love to see that wasn’t on that list is a place called the Skull in which we could find Necromundan themed Orks, the refuse left from a failed raid many years ago.

 

So Many Options!

There’s also a reality when it comes to Necro that GW may not be exactly a fan of, but it’s that fact that Necromunda for the most part is a miniatures agnostic game… kinda, sorta. Meaning, the general wider Necro gaming world consensus is that you can use what you want to use as long as it fits the theme of Necromunda, but the vast majority of what you’re going to be seeing on the table are GW models. There’s a statement that’s used a lot in comes to this game: “Every models is a Necromunda model”. I don’t exactly agree with that statement myself, but it does speak to a simple fact that this game is a kitbashers and convertors heaven. GW and Specialist Games have made rules that lets your imagination go wild. Want to play Mad Max in 40k and go nuts with creating wild Ash Wastes vehicles? There are rules for that. What about creating a gang of mutant dregs converted from Sigmar Ghouls and Astra Militarum? There are rules for that. What if you want to create gang of pious and zealous Cawdor preachers, but instead of preaching about the Emperor on Terra they’re actually Genestealer Cultists and venerate the “Four Armed Emperor” instead? There are rules for that! There are is so much variety and so many permutations that you really will be spoilt for choice. The designers of the game have given you the ability to really do something unique if you want to. Finally another thing to note is that 3D printing has also really opened up the possibilities, and there are some amazing Necro themed models being created by excellent STL artists out there, but we are still in the early days of something that will soon become much more common. Again, options, options, options!

 

In Conclusion

I could go on for much longer as there's so much depth to this game that I would love to dive deeper, but this is already far longer than it should be.
In the end the question is; Is Necromunda a game for you?

It's not for everyone, but for those that it is, like me, love it. The immersion, models, gameplay, granularity, options, and sheer fun of it make it (in my opinion) the best game GW has ever put out, at least this is the opinion of this one player. 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

Necromunda can be best enjoyed in campaign play. So if you are not a pupil or a student then you will have a rough time making use of that content. When N18 was released I only played four games of it in the first following six months and then never again due to lack of opposing players. All games were with gangs who had a starting roster of 1000 points. These single games though can still be fun.

[Antarius]

Not to derail the topic but rather an additional pro (well, sort of) - should you try out the new Necromunda and find that you'd prefer something a little bit more simple, you can also use the gangs and terrain for 1st ed. Necromunda with basically no trouble. That's what I ended up doing as I simply found the game too complex for too little gain (although I still tend to buy the supplements for current Necromunda just out of interest). But I think I'll probably go back and try out the new edition again at some point; it really is amazing how much they've managed to do with it on the specialist games design budget.

[Maximus]

My son and I started playing Necromunda a few years ago, mainly because we wanted a small scale skirmish game that didn't cost a fortune to start. We originally bought the Kill Team Octarius launch box because he is an Orks fan. Well, that totally fried our brains, it was so complicated (I know it's had a few revamps since, but we've never gone back to it) to play so we started looking for other games where we could still use our models. He found Necromunda and we have loved it. The gangs are easy to start, you can proxy and kitbash models and no-one seems to mind (players are a lot more relaxed about things than 40K ones), overall it's just a good game. We have now paralleled  it with Mordheim, which is similar but on more of a fantasy/ old world vibe.

[Lord_Ikka]

Necromunda is great for people who want narrative-driven gameplay, cool models, and a relaxed atmosphere. It is not good for people who want a competitive experience with a tight rule set- if you want that you are looking at the wrong game. My experience with Necromunda for a long time was simply buying the models, as I didn't know anyone who played it, but within the last year and a half a great Arbitrator showed up in my area and we've had several great campaigns. I'll piggy-back on some of what @m0nolith said.

 

Campaign and Arbitrator

The core of the Necro game is the campaign. One-offs (Skirmish games in Necro parlance) are fun for trying out a new gang/combos/learning, but the real meat of the game is in the campaign system. Growing your gang, upgrading weapons, and learning new skills turns each gang into a unique play experience- you'll never play exactly the same gang week after week. Think of the campaign as the RPG part of the game, where out-of-combat decisions will affect later gameplay.

 

The Arbitrator is extremely important to the campaign- in my experience it is the Arbitrator that is setting up game days/overseeing the schedule of who fights who, the Arbitrator who rules on what house rules are employed (needed, as there are many "iffy" rules issues that come up, or stuff like trading out weaponry that are commonly house-ruled), and the Arbitrator who is the final say in what gets included in the campaign. A good Arbitrator will know the rules and have a decent idea of what are trouble spots within them; they need to have some organization and decent people skills to make working with the various personalities of players possible. 

 

Models/Kitbashing

Necromunda has the best range (in my opinion) of models in the various GW lines. It is also now the only real GW game that allows extensive kitbashing/conversion work as a main feature of the game, as now most 40k (and I think AoS/Old World) units are restricted to just being equipped with what is packed in the unit box. In Necro, the world opens up- if you can buy it from the Trading Post or source it somehow (some campaigns/Arbitrators allow scavagening a dead enemy's weapon/gear), you can give it to your fighter. Thus, common weapons like autoguns, lasguns, and bolters can be given to fighters who don't have those options in their gang box (such as lasguns for Orlocks), and special/heavy weapons such as missile launchers or multimeltas can be modeled as well (generally a gang box has 2 heavy weapon options and 3 or so special). Plus, with the Outcast gang you can now basically make a gang from any sort of model you have, so the options are really unlimited as far as that goes. I've made several gangs/fighters from the Warhammer Underworlds/Warcry lines (which are also great), and they fit into Necromunda just as well as the old standbys of Goliath and Esher.

 

If you are a fan of making/painting terrain, Necro is for you. Necro needs to have lots of terrain, and it also usually needs to be multi-level, for the game to work well- there are some gangs that will absolutely destroy everyone else if there are too many open areas for them to snipe (Van Saar...). So making terrain can become another hobby in itself. While I myself am not a fan of making/painting terrain (and I also don't really have the room to store it, according to the wife), I have friends who are deep into it- they will use everything from official kits, 3d printed bits/entire models, and "trash" terrain (like discarded soda cans/packing material) to make full 3" x 3" boards that have four or five levels and tons of character. They're great to play on, as nothing is quite as fun as playing on a board that looks exactly like a deteriorating oil rig over a radioactive slug pond. 

 

I will also say that Necro is probably one of the least expensive GW games to get into, aside from the rulebooks. The gang boxes are great, and starting a new gang can be a low as buying two regular gang boxes, or a regular box and a "specialist" box (around a hundred bucks), which will last you a while as most gangs don't need 20+ models.

 

Rules/Books

This is the major downside of Necromunda. The rules are scattered across quite a few books and tend to not be updated/looked at all that often by the design team, as generally they are focused on making new products rather than tightening up already-released rules- not a dig on them, I understand that GW is a business and Necromunda very much a vanity/specialist project rather than a major money-maker like 40k/AoS. So unfortunately it can be quite confusing for new players to figure out what they need to buy/get to make a gang. The rules themselves are also not always written in a concise, cohesive fashion, leading to interpretation issues and not being able to figure out where a specific rule is. 

 

Despite those issues, the basics of Necromunda are fairly easy to pick up on and make sense. When you go into a Necro game you come to expect the unexpected, as the random rolls for injury can go from the great of a juve gaining some experience for surviving a head-bash to your expensive plasmagun-toting Champion dying to a lowly cultist on the first activation of the first game of a new campaign (not that I would have that exact experience... ). The random nature of injuries, or environmental effects, can change the outcome of a game or campaign, and make a victor out of the most unprepossessing fighter.

 

 

Overall, Necromunda is the game I most recommend people to get into now. 40k can be way too big in scope, both in money and time/investment in learning rules, while Necromunda is, I've found, easier for people to understand and want to try. The cons aren't enough to outweigh the customization, character, and just overall fun of both the game and the setting.

[Noserenda]

Necromunda can be a great game but i think it really, more than most other games, needs you to be on the same page. Its just to bloated and wildly imbalanced in places to work otherwise.

[Timberley]

The imbalance in Necromunda is part of the charm to me, similarly to HH.  As other Frater have said, if you look at Necro as anything competitive, you're looking at it wrong.  To use an analogy, if Horus Heresy is the Bruckheimer film of GW's games, with 40K being the Disney+ film, then Necromunda is the HBO drama series.

 

My Van Saar, The Spark Tracers, has gone through 2 leaders and had an array of Subteks become Teks become Augmeks, as well as one Neotek getting injured enough that they came back as an Arachni-rig.  Their current leader, Artur Felde, was a Subtek back in 1996!

 

I've also got a couple of other gangs that have similarly evolved over the years.  I still have my old Heavy Stubber VS ganger somewhere...

[Antarius]

8 hours ago, Timberley said:

The imbalance in Necromunda is part of the charm to me, similarly to HH.  As other Frater have said, if you look at Necro as anything competitive, you're looking at it wrong.  To use an analogy, if Horus Heresy is the Bruckheimer film of GW's games, with 40K being the Disney+ film, then Necromunda is the HBO drama series.

 

My Van Saar, The Spark Tracers, has gone through 2 leaders and had an array of Subteks become Teks become Augmeks, as well as one Neotek getting injured enough that they came back as an Arachni-rig.  Their current leader, Artur Felde, was a Subtek back in 1996!

 

I've also got a couple of other gangs that have similarly evolved over the years.  I still have my old Heavy Stubber VS ganger somewhere...

Yeah, the real trick is to take the inevitable deaths/disfigurements of key characters with good humour and just take it as a story twist.

Probably my best story with newcormunda was my redemptionist gang, "The Brotherhood" (just a couple more Redemptionists than regular Cawdor, so they were a fanatical outlaw gang hellbent on bringing righteous fire to the underhive, or at least that's how they started out).

In their first game, one of the very first things that happened was my Leader got taken down after heroically chopping/flaming a couple of mooks - of course he died instantly, so after the game my decidedly less heroic second in command (who was a regular Cawdor wit ha big crossbow and some scrounging skill) took over and promptly failed his (now necessary) leadership test to keep the gang from going law-abiding and my Underhive Preacher hanger-on abandoned them at once. So the whole crusade very swiftly went from being all fire and brimstone (literally) to being more of the "hang back and maybe steal from the collection plate" variety of religious.

Next game, my new leader got shot in the spine, so they quickly ended up basically just being a bunch of trash-collecting lowlifes led by a hunchback (and let's not forget Handsome Pietor, the battle-scarred juve who ended up being the leader in all but name, as he was always at the forefront while my leader hung back and hoped to not get taken OOA too quickly with his newfound T2), which was not really what I had envisioned when I created the gang, but in many ways a much cooler story 

Edited July 19 by Antarius

[Xenith]

Love the stories, necro never really took off in my club, but I have the gangs in boxes and would like to give it a go! Does anyone know if the new box set rulebook will be the full rules? That was always an obstacle, even GW mail order couldn't tell me which books I'd need. 

[Antarius]

Seems like it will be the full rules, except for vehicle rules. AFAICT from the warcom articles anyway.

[Noserenda]

Imbalance isn't very charming when you gang gets obliterated out of hand or you end up facing a double bucket of things you have never heard of that need explaining when you want to be playing.

 

That's why you, your opponent and everyone else need to be on the same page, whatever that page is, it's weird that people seem against that.

[Timberley]

4 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Imbalance isn't very charming when you gang gets obliterated out of hand or you end up facing a double bucket of things you have never heard of that need explaining when you want to be playing.

 

That's why you, your opponent and everyone else need to be on the same page, whatever that page is, it's weird that people seem against that.

Exactly.  You kind of answered your own complaint there.  The Arbitrator and the players involved in the campaign need to make sure they have any House Rules agreed upon before the campaign starts, so you don't end up with someone taking all the OP stuff with their 1000 credit starter gang.  A good Arbitrator will know the silly combos that can occur with specific Houses/fighters in the initial stages of the campaign and will do their best to mitigate them until 'late campaign'.  If you move to a new gaming group, or have a new campaign, get together and talk about it before the first game, or see if you can set up a group on WhatsApp or Discord or something if you can't do it in person. 

Other than that, it relies on you understanding the rules and seeing what (if anything) stands out to you as something that may need clarifying or arbitration.  If you don't have every book, then Necrovox is great for looking at House-specific stuff and getting an idea of what your opponent(s) could be capable of, and any shenanigans they could get up to with special rules and such.  Failing that, YouTube has some interesting videos about it all (I recommend Wellywood Wargaming).

[No Foes Remain]

I've wanted to get into Necromunda for a while now, but with all the expansion and all the books I would have no idea where to start. I've read a few things that mention some of the earlier 'core' books being out of date with updates in the later ones, but I don't really want to spend all that money on books without any models to show for it.

 

I'm half hoping that a new 'edition' comes which cuts back some of the bloat (something which Bolt Action are doing with their new 3rd which has me interested) but with the amount of new releases lately I doubt it and the bloat will just continue.

[Doghouse]

9 minutes ago, No Foes Remain said:

I've wanted to get into Necromunda for a while now, but with all the expansion and all the books I would have no idea where to start. I've read a few things that mention some of the earlier 'core' books being out of date with updates in the later ones, but I don't really want to spend all that money on books without any models to show for it.

 

I'm half hoping that a new 'edition' comes which cuts back some of the bloat (something which Bolt Action are doing with their new 3rd which has me interested) but with the amount of new releases lately I doubt it and the bloat will just continue.

 

Same, I'm a bit lost at what goes where and if the books I do own are the latest edition or not, 

[No Foes Remain]

12 minutes ago, Doghouse said:

 

Same, I'm a bit lost at what goes where and if the books I do own are the latest edition or not, 

100% with you, just looked on GW's site and there are 16 different books. Who knows which ones are valid, which ones need updating or which ones aren't really up to date?!

[Redcomet]

Pros: Fantasic lore, art and miniatures range.

 

Cons: extremely convoluted and confusing rules, spread over a lot of books.

 

The Specialist studio are abysmal when it comes to rules and book bloat. They really need to sort it out.

Edited July 20 by Redcomet

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

2 hours ago, Redcomet said:

Pros: Fantasic lore, art and miniatures range.

 

Cons: extremely convoluted and confusing rules, spread over a lot of books.

 

The Specialist studio are abysmal when it comes to rules and book bloat. They really need to sort it out.

Book bloat is not a bug but a feature. The intention is to sell you books without end.

[Timberley]

To get started in Necromunda, you need the Core Rulebook (current version), the book appropriate for the gang you play as (in my case it's House of Artifice), and your basic gang box.  And that's it.  Everything else is a nice to have, not a must have.  If you want to look at stuff contained in other books, then check out Necrovox (this also means you don't really need the rulebook, but I like the book).  Yaktribe is great for creating a gang list and doing various gang admin.  

 

As a Van Saar player, I have the physical copies of the Core Rulebook, the House of Artifice, and The Ruins of Jardlan (Ash-Jumper rules).  I only got the Core book this year, because I got fed up with either looking at Necrovox and Yaktribe, or borrowing my mate's book.  In a few weeks I'll have the book from the Secundus box, and after that I'll be getting Desolation, because VS.

 

I don't have psykers (yet), so I don't need Book of The Outcast, but I can get the rules from NV.

Edited July 21 by Timberley

[Antarius]

In many ways, I think they ought to do the current version of Necromunda as more of a roleplaying-type game. There are just too many rules for a skirmish game with gangs of 10-15 models, but as an rpg setting, it would be awesome and the many, many books would indeed be a feature, not a bug. As it is, the game needs to be heavily curated by an arbitrator, so everyone knows what game they are playing (and, more importantly, that it is in fact the same game everybody’s playing).

But again, the setting is fantastic.

[Timberley]

In many ways @Antarius , that's how Necromunda plays and is marketed (from my point of view). It's essentially a tabletop RPG with skirmish game elements.  Hence why Necromunda's main game mode is the campaign, and set match skirmishes aren't really the focus.  Certainly all of the WarCom articles about Necromunda talk about things being in a campaign.  Unlike a standard D&D type setting though, you control the whole party, not the individual character. 

This is why I'm kind of impressed with the various books that have expanded Necromunda.  Each of them adds a module, if you will, to the game, but isn't required for the core experience; playing a campaign against other gangs to expand your territory and influence in an area of Necromunda.  That area can be the Underhive (Underhive & Hive War)), Hive Arcos (Dark Uprising), the yearning deserts between hives (Ash Wastes), and now the Underhells (Secundus), and your group can choose which area in the planning stages with the Arbitrator.  Each book has it's own setting, whilst also feeding back into the core game (mostly - vehicles are a bit niche).

[2PlusEasy]

I'll second the comments about the arbitrator. The arbitrator is a fundamental and often under-utilised aspect of the Necromunda experience. The hive is alive, and having a third person to call shots keeps the game on track.

 

[Edit] It's a shame that they've discontinued the core book and Gangs of the Underhive pair: the core experience was self-contained in those two books and a really clear starting point. I still favour them over the house of x codex books for their simplicity.

Edited Tuesday at 07:15 AM by 2PlusEasy

[Antarius]

On 7/21/2024 at 11:36 PM, Timberley said:

In many ways @Antarius , that's how Necromunda plays and is marketed (from my point of view). It's essentially a tabletop RPG with skirmish game elements.  Hence why Necromunda's main game mode is the campaign, and set match skirmishes aren't really the focus.  Certainly all of the WarCom articles about Necromunda talk about things being in a campaign.  Unlike a standard D&D type setting though, you control the whole party, not the individual character. 

This is why I'm kind of impressed with the various books that have expanded Necromunda.  Each of them adds a module, if you will, to the game, but isn't required for the core experience; playing a campaign against other gangs to expand your territory and influence in an area of Necromunda.  That area can be the Underhive (Underhive & Hive War)), Hive Arcos (Dark Uprising), the yearning deserts between hives (Ash Wastes), and now the Underhells (Secundus), and your group can choose which area in the planning stages with the Arbitrator.  Each book has it's own setting, whilst also feeding back into the core game (mostly - vehicles are a bit niche).

I do sort of agree. But it is still marketed as a game of "your gang against another gang" and there is still an awful lot of "what is the best build" talk going around in all the Necromunda groups I'm aware of (as well as, unfortunately, my own - which is part of the reason we went back to 1st ed. as it is simply easier to start from the same baseline if people can't be trusted to, knowingly or unknowingly create overpowered gangs). To some extent, I do think it's fair that that falls back on the system, not (just) the players.

As it stands, I feel the system is a bit in between chairs; either make it more streamlined and let it be a skirmish game or make it even more advanced and let it be a roleplaying game a la Inquisitor.

[ThePenitentOne]

I played the heck out of the original Necromunda, and LOVED it. And I wish I could afford to keep up with a second GW game, because damn... That range is amazing. If you play cult armies in 40k, whether GSC or Chaos, Necromunda is just a huge value-add.

 

And the thing I remember about the original Necromunda was all the the things we dreamed about. Citadel Journal did release Ash Waste Nomads, for example... But they were just Tallarn painted in various shades of ashen grey. We DREAMED of Ash Wastes expansions, or Hive Secondus expansions... But they never came.

 

And what's amazing about the current version is that they did it. They fought the reset-button churn and burn edition cycle, and followed through on their expansions. I mean heck, look at the Enforcers, with their Tauros and Automata- that's like an army! It's awesome! And if the Citadel Journal Ash Nomads could see the Dustback Riders, they'd drop to the ground in a sincere Wayne's World "We're not worthy!"

 

If I had known this would be the edition where they actually got through Ash Wastes AND Secondus? I might have left 40k on the shelf and chosen Munda instead.

 

My only problem with it is that it is super book-intensive, and what gets reprinted where is difficult to navigate. Like, you want to know in advance whether you'll be playing all the expansions, because you can't have all the content in just one book; you can get the BRB, which has vehicle rules for use in Ash Wastes, but then you've got no content for Secondus. And if you buy the box, you get the base rules and the Secondus rules, but no vehicles.

 

And a book for each gang? In 40k, people complain about dexes, but at least in that game the book to model ratio feels better- this book allows you to use various combinations of these 30 units. But in Munda, you're basically buying a book for every 10-15 models you're putting on the table.

 

Another issue for me is that so much of the good stuff is Forgeworld. When I saw that Engineseer with his pet 'Stealer, it broke my heart that it's Forgeworld (Yay, an exta 10-20% cost!) and resin (excellent, who doesn't love extra work to prepare a model for use- painting this stuff and getting it to the table is hard enough). I mean, don't get me wrong... I think I have to have that model, and I am likely going to get it. There are also two Navy looking character dudes- one looks like a middle aged commander whose soldier days have yielded to a more strategic command role and a young fighter ace carrying his helmet. Since GW gave us a Fleet detachment in Agents but no Fleet HQ, I'll have to make them up myself. But I digress- that's more 40k than Munda.

 

It does bring me to my final issue with Munda though, which is the lack of 40k compatability. Yes, I know, I can make my own 40k Cargo-8 datacard... But I don't want to- I just want GW to get over their ideological hang up about mixing 40k with Munda and just be the corporate profiteer that everyone says they are. Sales of the Cargo-8 would triple if there were 40k rules for it. They don't even have to waste money on a book- just give it to us as a downloadable PDF or WD Article. While you're at it, give 40k SoS a datacard for the Acquisitor... But again I digress.

 

 

[Timberley]

On 7/23/2024 at 5:39 PM, Antarius said:

I do sort of agree. But it is still marketed as a game of "your gang against another gang" and there is still an awful lot of "what is the best build" talk going around in all the Necromunda groups I'm aware of (as well as, unfortunately, my own - which is part of the reason we went back to 1st ed. as it is simply easier to start from the same baseline if people can't be trusted to, knowingly or unknowingly create overpowered gangs). To some extent, I do think it's fair that that falls back on the system, not (just) the players.

As it stands, I feel the system is a bit in between chairs; either make it more streamlined and let it be a skirmish game or make it even more advanced and let it be a roleplaying game a la Inquisitor.

And I do sort of agree with you.  It's possibly controversial, but I really like the potential for something to be OP, but it relies on players wanting a difference experience (as they mention in the various designers notes in the books) to a 40K-style game to not pick the OP option, or for the Arbitrator to neuter the power to keep it fun for the others.  It could be the circles I run in, but most 'new gang' discussions revolve around 'is this good/fun/flavoursome?' rather than 'is this a list that'll wreck face?' with the people I know.  

Don't get me wrong, some of the interactions could do with tightening up, but I'll take the current iteration over the issues and constant course correction that 40K has to do at the moment.

As for skirmish vs. RPG - I think it having a foot in each camp is a definite design choice based on the N95 rules that were themselves an iteration from 2E WH40K (IIRC), which was itself the first step towards wargaming from the heavy-RPG styling of Rogue Trader.  Personally, I'm absolutely fine with it, as I like that mix, but I appreciate it's not for everyone.

[Petitioner's City]

22 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

I played the heck out of the original Necromunda, and LOVED it. And I wish I could afford to keep up with a second GW game, because damn... That range is amazing. If you play cult armies in 40k, whether GSC or Chaos, Necromunda is just a huge value-add.

 

And the thing I remember about the original Necromunda was all the the things we dreamed about. Citadel Journal did release Ash Waste Nomads, for example... But they were just Tallarn painted in various shades of ashen grey. We DREAMED of Ash Wastes expansions, or Hive Secondus expansions... But they never came.

 

 

 

So, I hate to break this to you, but Ash Wastes did happen for oldmunda - with models :)

 

 

Somehow you missed out on the Necromunda Magazine, which replaced Gang War (which became the place for Munda articles instead of the journal). There was a whole Ash Wastes expansion in the magazine, like Lustria and Khemri for Mordheim in Town Cryer, with the main gangs being Nomads (released in metal), House Prospectors (ie the core six houses), Shanty Dwellers and Caravaners (who had a big rig). Of course others could take part but you needed to buy respirators for everyone :)

 

The core delight of the system was the vehicle design rules and riding creature rules.  Different rare trade tables, new weather rules, specific other things. It was a big expansion, and one which was really well developed by the fanatic team from 2001 to before the 2003 relaunch of the game (Necromunda's second edition). 

 

So sad you missed this and clearly the tons of creativity Gang War and the Magazine contained!

 

 

After the second edition the magazine carried on for a bit, then Specialist Games/Arms really took off. You'll find some of John French and Alan Bligh's earliest published work (when trolls) writing for and about the second edition of Munda, including French's version of redemptionists (the second that edition), and Bligh writing about the campaign he and French were running

 

Before he was famous Arbiter Ian made compilations of the first and second edition additional rules, including all of the Ash Wastes.

Edited Wednesday at 08:33 PM by Petitioner's City