Necromunda New Edition

[Gamiel]

1 hour ago, Lord_Ikka said:

My other want is some sort of vehicle/mount for the Delaque. Come on GW, I know they are sun-adverse spies, but they use the Ash Wastes just like everyone else. Give them some sort of bike or covered dune buggy!

They mention in the Ash Wastes book that they just seems to appear where they are in the waste without any vissible transport. So i think we will not see anything specefic for Delaque.

[Lord_Ikka]

3 minutes ago, Gamiel said:

They mention in the Ash Wastes book that they just seems to appear where they are in the waste without any vissible transport. So i think we will not see anything specefic for Delaque.

Boo! Secret advanced stealth skimmers then! 

 

Edit: In all fairness, the Delaque were the only gang to not really get anything out of Ash Wastes except a gang-specific variant of a couple of generic hangers-on. It is pretty lame.

Edited June 29 by Lord_Ikka

[Gorgoff]

Fishmen don't make a lot of sense in deserts anyway. ;)

 

[Doghouse]

On 6/29/2026 at 8:51 AM, Blindhamster said:

I had just been looking to make an outcast gang lead by vandoth… no idea if it’ll be viable now lol. One project I’ll put on hold

 

Probably a good idea mate. I have heard rumours from people that the game is going to be a lot more simplified and one much less believable one where the resin minis are going away. 

 

If I were invested I'd be downloading any PDFs from the GW site to be honest.

 

At a 100% guess I'd say Skirmish could possibly be a branding they could apply to stuff like Kill team moving forwards.

 

[Silvereyes]

I have a lot of time to think when I'm at work, so naturally I've been thinking a bit about the new edition of Necromunda. I would say I'm a casual player, I've probably got about 15+ games in over the last couple years, first with Van Saars, and after really struggling with them, swapping to the Palanite Enforcers. Currently my games group is running a campaign, with 10 of us in it. I think all of us are casuals at the game, with the exception of our campaign master, who has I think all of the 2nd edition books, and keeps up with a lot of media about Necromunda.

So basically, I want to throw out some predictions and hopes for what may change. Stuff I'd like to see, and y'know, perhaps bag some bragging rights if I somehow get any of this right. But as I said, I am a casual, so don't take any of this with any evidence or informed reasoning behind it.

 

1) Hanger-ons/Hired Guns/Bounty Hunters/Companions etc are going to be far easier to take. When you consider how much of the Necromunda model range are these resin character figures, I find it a bit amazing how little incentive there is for players to use them. I mean sure, if you're a hardcore fan, who buys all the books, and wants to run weird and varied gangs, you'll scoop them up. But for casuals, who just own the rulebook and the core book, maybe a campaign book too if you're lucky? You have to go out of your way if you want to use them, and really, unless it's a model you love the look of, or it has either a specific ability, or a busted datasheet, I don't see why you would. 

 

Now, a big problem is going to be solved immediately with all the datasheets across 9 years of books being consolidated. (And hopefully not start to spiral out of control again once the House books start getting released, but we'll see.) But I think in terms of actual rules, I think there's going to be less restrictions, and maybe even so far as having a dedicated "slot" for them. I do think the cap given by your gang's Reputation will be replaced, in some way. I think restrictions will still exist, but I think they'll be a far bigger incentive to add in non-gang members into your gang.

 

It's part of a broader point, which would be, while I think the bones of the current rank system (Juves, Gangers, Champions, Leaders etc) will remain, with gangs still incentivised to take a healthy number of Juves and Gangers, I think they'll be changes to allow a starting gang to take a varied roster. I actually think the introduction of Malstrained Gangs and Spyre Hunters points towards this, with inter-mixed gangs more possible, and decently encouraged. Far less likely, but I think it is even possible this could apply to Gangs being able to hire a member of another Gang. Like a Goliath Gang hiring a Van Saar Sniper for example. They don't get any special rules or XP, and maybe just have a fixed loadout. But you benefit from their good BS skill and Van Saar firearm.

 

2) Changes to the health system. Of Necromunda's core rules, the one that I find confused me the most, and has confused a few other players the most, in when a model takes a point of damage, goes to 0 wounds, and you roll injury dice. I understand how it works, and I understand the point of it. But it is a pain to explain to others, and I'm not convinced there isn't a better, easier ways of doing this. Like, say, when a characters hits 50% or less wounds, that's when you roll injury dice, and the model suffers +1 to wound from any enemy. Maybe even +2 to wound if it's on its last hit point or something. I also predict that Toughness isn't so linked to your health, in that it currently serves as a sort of emergency health bar. 

 

I don't know how they would do it. I just think, very simply, that no longer can a model survive when it has 0 wounds.

 

3) Increases to Strength, Toughness, and health across all weapons and models. Basically, like when 40K jumped from 9th to 10th edition. Not a buff per se, but rather expanding the range of all these values, so that there can be more variance to play with when making weapons and datasheets. Not to mention how in 2nd edition, the difference between 3 Toughness and 4 Toughness can feel large, and likewise a weapon feeling far more lethal it can do 2 damage rather than 1. 

 

4) Gangs being law-abiding or not is being binned. Possibly reworked, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this whole concept is scrapped, at least for the time being. 

 

5) Buff to beasts all around. The rule that they have to be within 3" of their owner or they can break is either extended to a much further distance, or just dropped entirely. 

[Castigator]

They've just done a Q&A on warcom.

Gangs of the Underhive will have:

Delaque, Escher, Goliath, Orlock, Van Saar, Cawdor, Palinite Enforcers, Venators, Corpse Grinders, Palinite Justicars, Hive Scum, Ambot, servitor Ogryns, Rogue Doc, Ammojack, Slopper, Ripperjacks.

 

The Gangs of the Outlands will have:

Outcasts, Free Ogryns, Genestealer cults, Malstrains, Spyrers, Chaos Helots, Squats, Ashwaste Nomads, Kal Jericho, Aranthus, Lady Haerra, Carytid Servitor, Giant Rat, Millisaur, Guild Ridge Hauler and gang respective vehicles.

 

Both books will last as long as the edition does. necromunda journals will release new lore and new unit rules but the two books will be the bedrock of this edition.

 

Sounds like there are a few rules changes, short range to hit modifiers going away and now having an impact on cover.

Overall it sounds like a positive

[Joe]

I would caution people not to immediately take what was said at the Q&A at face value - we saw similar commentaries in the run up to HH3E that were either partially or wholly innaccurate.

 

Until we have the rules in hand it's a guessing game.

[Irongert]

11 hours ago, Castigator said:

They've just done a Q&A on warcom.

Gangs of the Underhive will have:

Delaque, Escher, Goliath, Orlock, Van Saar, Cawdor, Palinite Enforcers, Venators, Corpse Grinders, Palinite Justicars, Hive Scum, Ambot, servitor Ogryns, Rogue Doc, Ammojack, Slopper, Ripperjacks.

 

The Gangs of the Outlands will have:

Outcasts, Free Ogryns, Genestealer cults, Malstrains, Spyrers, Chaos Helots, Squats, Ashwaste Nomads, Kal Jericho, Aranthus, Lady Haerra, Carytid Servitor, Giant Rat, Millisaur, Guild Ridge Hauler and gang respective vehicles.

 

Both books will last as long as the edition does. necromunda journals will release new lore and new unit rules but the two books will be the bedrock of this edition.

 

Sounds like there are a few rules changes, short range to hit modifiers going away and now having an impact on cover.

Overall it sounds like a positive

Pffft, I know the books were somewhat annoying but do we need journals for everything now?  It worked for ToW for a while, sure (and even there they are now really struggling with them, even those sometimes barely have content in 48 pages) . But why does it need to be forced into every other game aswell? It's not as if the rate of publication goes up. It's just a lot less content in the same time frame. Less background and less rules. I'm getting some serious journal fatigue. I was becoming cautiously optimistic about a cleaned up edition but just give me proper books and leave the leaflets be. 

[Silvereyes]

With the news that 40K codex books will be cheaper too, makes me wonder if the old hard book formula just wasn't selling as much with how high the prices were becoming. Hence the journal formula that a bunch of games are doing now.

[irlLordy]

It might also be that the smaller paper backs are easier to get printed (and quicker to reprint) in the UK? That way they avoid the shipping from China.

[Captain Idaho]

The new rules sound like the edition will be awful. They're spreading the style of the main studio rules writing to the games that were still good.

 

Set to hit modifiers with cover giving bonuses to armour saves, which are themselves now set on the profile.

 

Read in-between the lines - if the armour save is set by the choice and included in the profile, that indicates take armour choices isn't a thing as otherwise the profile is pointless.

 

Then there's the other implied issues. If the armour is set and can't be changed, then how does that impact the other level up changes?

 

I'm not optimistic. 

[alfred_the_great]

19 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

 

I'm not optimistic. 

I’m genuinely not sure I’ve ever seen an optimistic prognostication from you. 

[Captain Marcus]

5 hours ago, alfred_the_great said:

I’m genuinely not sure I’ve ever seen an optimistic prognostication from you. 

Anyone who enjoys Necromunda for its primary strengths as a narrative-focused, highly customizable game has every right to express concern when they learn that the newest edition of this game is removing customization and details such as armor and BS statistics, at a minimum. These are the only things that have been confirmed right now, but they speak volumes. If there even is a Trading Post anymore, we know for certain it's been gutted; experience gains, if they still exist in some form, will no longer apply to core characteristics like WS and BS since to-hit values are now baked into each weapon on each datasheet. It's all but confirmed that gangs will no longer be expressions of the player's creativity that evolve over the span of a campaign, but instead a set of pre-baked datacards you choose from, Kill Team style. What is even the point of a Necromunda without all this stuff?

[Captain Idaho]

7 hours ago, alfred_the_great said:

I’m genuinely not sure I’ve ever seen an optimistic prognostication from you. 

 

Might want to tighten your search-fu, padawan:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Castigator]

3 hours ago, Captain Marcus (V.2) said:

Anyone who enjoys Necromunda for its primary strengths as a narrative-focused, highly customizable game has every right to express concern when they learn that the newest edition of this game is removing customization and details such as armor and BS statistics, at a minimum. These are the only things that have been confirmed right now, but they speak volumes. If there even is a Trading Post anymore, we know for certain it's been gutted; experience gains, if they still exist in some form, will no longer apply to core characteristics like WS and BS since to-hit values are now baked into each weapon on each datasheet. It's all but confirmed that gangs will no longer be expressions of the player's creativity that evolve over the span of a campaign, but instead a set of pre-baked datacards you choose from, Kill Team style. What is even the point of a Necromunda without all this stuff?

I'm not sure where you're getting your assumptions that customisation, armour and BS statistics are being removed?
They're adding a save characteristic to the fighter card but that doesn't mean that armour will no longer be a thing. It sounds to me like it will work similar to template weapons with regards to saves?

As for the trading post, experience and everything else your fretting about, that seems like wild speculation to me. They've specifically stated that it won't be like Kill Team and that it will still contain the 'crunch' that us narrative-focussed, highly customisable Necromunda players want.

The Q&A session came across (to me at least) like GW was trying to ease player's concerns that the game was about to be gutted.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy about my complete collection of 'Munda books being made obsolete but even an old grognard like me (who believes that the last decent edition of 40k was back in 5th) can understand how difficult it can feel to take up Necromunda from scratch. Hopefully it will bring in new blood and clear up some of the discrepancies within the current ruleset......Because I've never met a Necromunda group yet that hasn't House Ruled the game to some extent.

If half of what you fear comes to pass then the new edition will die and people will stick to the 2023 rule book. We have all we need to continue with what we have if the worst comes to the worst, but I still think this could be a positive direction for the game 

[Timberley]

As someone who's loved Necromunda since N95, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have misgivings about this update.  The line from the reveal that has me particularly concerned is 'There is a new Core Rulebook, which updates the game to be quicker, more streamlined, and more balanced' (emphasis mine).  Following the release of the last few editions of 40K, and the chaos that unfolded with the HH3.0 release, my usual reading of that is that they've removed the granularity of the game, and invalidated most of your custom models that you've made, as they can't take those options any more.  As a caveat to all of my writing, I've not watched the Q&A as they've not released a transcript for me to read, which is normally faster than them talking, so I could be wrong.

 

I do wonder if Secundus, and the release of the Tek Hunters, was their way of testing the waters.  If you look at the new Escher and Goliath sculpts, they seem to follow that Kill Team idea of fairly individual sculpts (based around 4 repeated core sculpts), with limited options, unlike the fairly free reign we had with the older sculpts.  The Tek Hunters (I have 2 sets - one from Secundus, one as the standalone box) are very similar to the Kill Team sets (I have the Krieg and the Voidscarred) insofar as they could be built as their specialist roles, or as generic Van Saar with lasguns.  The old Van Saar box (again, I have 2 of the modern ones - my gang is Van Saar if you couldn't tell ) were fairly limited when it came to options out of the box, but they did have several options, and upgrade kits you could use to further expand them to cover the available options from the Trading Post.

 

Further, they've decided to rename it as 'Warhammer Skirmish: Necromunda' (assuming I'm reading the art properly), which also has me slightly nervous, as it implies they're making it much more for pick-up/one-off games, rather than the unbalanced madness that is the glorious nature of a Necromunda campaign.  Balance comes from the GM and the players having a discussion (underdog helping hands, etc.), not the gangs having baked-in restrictions!  I'm aware that they've talked about cards and so on for campaigns, but still, that spidey-sense is tingling.  This isn't helping by their terrain selection for the new core set, which doesn't feature any ZM terrain.  Have they decided to neglect the verticality of it all?

 

However, I do hope that they take the opportunity to reconcile all of the various books, without removing any of the stats and options that made it such a good game for people (like me) who like granularity and depth.  I've got a most of the books legitimately (and the few I didn't bother getting via other means), and there's a lot of rules and datasheets spread between them that could do with being collated and distilled.  I hope both of these new books are meaty, as the various 'House of...' and 'Book of...' books amount to a lot of pages.  Last time around we had the 'Gangs of the Underhive' book before they started releasing the individual 'House of...' books, so I'll not be surprised if they repeat that again!

[Castigator]

I think we were all concerned about the GOTU and what happened after with the Gang books. They've said the Gangs of the Underhive and Gangs of the Outlands will remain as the bedrock of this new edition so that has put my mind at ease somewhat.
I do think we will lose some things, especially in the short term but hey, Necromunda players are a resourceful crowd and I'm sure we will adapt the rules if they're found wanting 

[Captain Marcus]

16 minutes ago, Castigator said:

I'm not sure where you're getting your assumptions that customisation, armour and BS statistics are being removed?
They're adding a save characteristic to the fighter card but that doesn't mean that armour will no longer be a thing. It sounds to me like it will work similar to template weapons with regards to saves?

As for the trading post, experience and everything else your fretting about, that seems like wild speculation to me. They've specifically stated that it won't be like Kill Team and that it will still contain the 'crunch' that us narrative-focussed, highly customisable Necromunda players want.

The Q&A session came across (to me at least) like GW was trying to ease player's concerns that the game was about to be gutted.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy about my complete collection of 'Munda books being made obsolete but even an old grognard like me (who believes that the last decent edition of 40k was back in 5th) can understand how difficult it can feel to take up Necromunda from scratch. Hopefully it will bring in new blood and clear up some of the discrepancies within the current ruleset......Because I've never met a Necromunda group yet that hasn't House Ruled the game to some extent.

If half of what you fear comes to pass then the new edition will die and people will stick to the 2023 rule book. We have all we need to continue with what we have if the worst comes to the worst, but I still think this could be a positive direction for the game 

10th and HH 3rd have preconditioned me to expect the worst when GW uses the word 'streamlined'. From the little we've seen, that pattern is holding here as well. Saves and to-hit being integrated into the weapon profile on each card, in turn, means that fighter cards will now have a specific selection of wargear available rather than full freedom of the Trading Post (unless they intend to make the Trading Post a giant list of every single weapon in the game, with separate to-hit profiles for every single fighter type). And if to-hit is integrated in weapon profiles per card, again, it doesn't make sense to be able to modify that with XP. Granted, I am making guesses, but I'm pretty sure these are reasonable leaps of logic based on the evidence shown so far. I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong, as I actually like the new minis they're releasing, but the rumor mill has been brutal.

[Antarius]

Whether one is optimistic or not is up to the individual, of course, but I think there are way too many factors at work to say that signs point conclusively one way.

 

Seeing as how they have a bunch of plastic weapon upgrade sets for the different gangs and they're going to be rereleasing the current gangs in boxes of "core gang" + "special expansion gangers" (for lack of a better term) as part of the relaunch, I don't think I'd be super worried that those things are going away. So a fair bit of variety and customisation in gang creation still seems reasonable to expect. If anything, I'd be more worried that they'd be going the way they initially tried with the 2017 version and say that you couldn't change your gangers' gear, once you'd created them.

As for words like "narrative", "streamlined" and "balanced" they can mean a lot of things, some of which would be terrible and some of which would be awesome. But really, any game that isn't spread out over 20+ books would legitimately count as "streamlined", compared to the current Necromunda edition. As it is, I would be quite surprised if we see something remotely as "streamlined" as 1st edition Necromunda and "too much streamlining" has never been a complaint I've heard leveled at that game (although, if it were released today, people would certainly make that complaint and point to one of the absolute greatest things about it, the identical gang profiles and equipment lists, as a clear sign of NuGW's complete decline and pandering to the "kids of today", but I digress...).

I'm not super optimistic about the new edition and I don't think I'll be buying it, unless people I trust tell me it's great, but I also think some of the doomsaying is going a bit far. At any rate, it seems like a bit of a fool's game to believe we can really say anything, positive or negative, with any degree of certainty at this point in time.

Edited July 13 by Antarius

[Captain Idaho]

4 minutes ago, Antarius said:

At any rate, it seems like a bit of a fool's game to believe we can really say anything, positive or negative, with any degree of certainty at this point in time.

 

It's not foolish but pattern recognition and GW have been behaving like that for a while.

 

Remains to be seen and confirmed either way of course. I would love to be wrong and the new edition will be rocking, I can't lose on that.

[Antarius]

The thing about pattern recognition is that you tend to end up looking for things that support the pattern you expect to see and discount things that go against it. "GW behaves like this" is only true insofar as we ignore the instances where they do not, in fact, behave like this. The current edition of Necromunda was initially quite streamlined and much more like what people are afraid of in this thread and hoo boy, did that ever change! So the perceived pattern of increased streamlining has certainly not been true for Necromunda during these last 9 years, so one might equally well see the exact opposite pattern.

For another example of how pattern recognition is messy, the 3 year cycle is a definite pattern, but still, it seems to only hold true for some games - and indeed, Necromunda is perceived as not being on this cycle, but it has actually had many more rulebooks released during its lifespan than games perceived to be on the edition cycle. Another example would be how, according to many 40K fans, moving away from "grimdark" is a clear and disturbing pattern, but at the same time, the AoS community is up in arms that things are rumoured to become more grimdark and so it goes. Just like many people have the idea that GW purposefully makes new armies overpowered, to the point where it's assumed as fact, even though we regularly see complaints about new, "nerfed" or underpowered codices and new minis. People perceive very different patterns and often from the same (very little) evidence. 

Whether what they do with the new edition will appeal to us or not, we don't actually know anything about what it will be, at this point.
All we really know is that GW wants our money and they want to get at it by releasing things we want to buy; they may not always get what appeals to us, but they do want to appeal to us. So one can hope that they manage to strike a balance between (absolutely necessary) streamlining and keeping the flavour of Necromunda.

And of course, we also know the current models aren't going away, because they've previewed them being sold in new boxes.

[Captain Idaho]

14 minutes ago, Antarius said:

For another example of how pattern recognition is messy, the 3 year cycle is a definite pattern, but still, it seems to only hold true for some games - and indeed, Necromunda is perceived as not being on this cycle, but it has actually had many more rulebooks released during its lifespan than games perceived to be on the edition cycle.

 

I disagree. Those are supplements and not new editions.

 

15 minutes ago, Antarius said:

Just like many people have the idea that GW purposefully makes new armies overpowered, to the point where it's assumed as fact, even though we regularly see complaints about new, "nerfed" or underpowered codices and new minis. People perceive very different patterns and often from the same (very little) evidence. 

 

It's still a pattern. It's a trend.

 

Whilst the patterns can be disrupted and people might see a different emphasis, the trends are still there.

 

Here's a better example to the point - which of the last 4 new factions that came out in 40K were NOT overpowered upon release? Leagues of Votann, Adeptus Custodes and Genestealer Cults all were disproportionately high powered. Imperial Agents... had their moments but not really destroying the balance.

 

Then look at when Necrons were released in 3rd. Absolutely horrible to play against. Tau not so much.

 

So the pattern is there even if it's not 100% every time.

 

And no, I dispute the legitimacy of dismissing pattern recognition with a hand wave of "only seeing what we want to see." Disprove the pattern recognised to disprove the opinion.

 

It's essentially an ad hominem.

[Antarius]

I have no idea how you take that to be an ad hominem. It seems extremely uncontroversial to me, to say that people often perceive very different patterns from the same evidence, as that literally happens all the time including in this very thread, but that's not really something I'm interested in discussing with you.

You're free to disagree with me of course, but I still maintain that we have no actual evidence about how this new edition will be, except for what we have actually seen and that everything else is speculation, not fact, at this point in time. If this somehow feels like a personal attack, then I simply don't know what to tell you.

[Antarius]

As for the amount of rulebooks released since 2017, I mean that's just a fact. I'm not talking "House of XYZ" either, I'm talking straight up core rulebooks.

[Captain Idaho]

Saying people are not seeing patterns but in fact only seeing what they want to see (or don't want to see in this case) is attacking their credibility rather than disproving their position.

 

Ergo, ad hominem. 

 

You are correct we have precious little evidence, but what we do have is a claim to have made the game more streamlined and an example of how armour saves are included in profiles like AoS and 40K, as well as an example that there are no more to hit modifiers and instead factoring cover into saves.

 

We can add that information to current design philosophy trends, the reception of Horus Heresy and it's implementation... there's more evidence to be concerned with than optimistic.

 

No one is saying it's written in stone either. Even in this thread, people have all confirmed they're concerned and you yourself confirmed the same -

 

2 hours ago, Antarius said:

I'm not super optimistic about the new edition and I don't think I'll be buying it,

 

Which seems familar to my own position:

 

On 7/11/2026 at 5:25 PM, Captain Idaho said:

I'm not optimistic.