Necromunda... Newcromunda... OPR Gang Wars... Stargrave... Opinions?

[Mark]

Hi all,
Mulling over what the next project might be when I have got the WW2 resistance stuff to a playable point, and I am tempted to go back to the underhive with some Necromunda gangs and terrain.

I played the 1995 version 20-odd years ago when I got the boxed game for a princely £10 in one of the great GW sales of the time (oh for those days!) and had a blast with the couple of campaigns I did back then. Sadly, my stuff was ebayed away by my dad whilst I was out of the hobby so will be starting from scratch.

The offputting element of the new version is that it seems that it follows GW's current model of needing to spend pots of cash on constant books, which must make rule interactions horribly complex and hard to find. This does not attract me. On the other hand, the new miniatures look good, and can be picked up for a reasonable amount new, so will be easier than attempting to find N95 stuff for a reasonable price on ebay.

I am thinking I might use the new models but with an alternative ruleset - either Necromunda 95, OPR Grimdark Future Firefight or perhaps even Stargrave as the general principle seems to be the same. I would love to hear what others may have done or recommend.

Also would be good to hear about terrain - either reasonably priced commercial stuff or homemade, as I will not shell out loads of dosh for GW plastic terrain sets!

So... what are the considered views of my fellow LAF-ers?

[Elbows]

I played Necromunda back in the 90's and loved it, up until the Spyrers etc. came out and the game moved away from "grubby gangs fighting for survival".

We played the new game when it came out...and...then we didn't.  In my opinion the new game is an absolute mess.  It does feature all of the hallmarks of modern GW: terrible rules writing/editing (the original few books of the new edition being - without exaggertaion - the worst produced/edited written wargaming books I've ever encountered), endless books (often invalidating books from 18 months ago), some 20-30 decks of cards that are randomly discontinued and invalidated, the "you can't take it if we don't make a model for it" approach to wargear, a lot of models being sold by Forgeworld (which are still awful resin and expensive), etc.  Some new content is hidden in $300 box sets, etc.

The rules for the game itself we found really underwhelming, and with the usual GW "feel bads".  Loads of unbalanced stuff, over-powered options for certain gangs, etc.  Unlike the original Necromunda where gangs were more or less the same, but themed by certain limitations - new gangs are wildly different, with hundreds of (unnecessary) wargear options.  Some gangs have bonuses that can break the game, stuff like Corpse Grinder Cults being insanely powerful in certain circumstances to the point they're outlawed in a lot of peoples Necromunda campaigns, etc.

I'd imagine by now Yaktribe has a ton of it sorted out.  I know they have the details for most of the card decks, etc.  After maybe two years they finally released compilation books instead of players having to wait over a year for some of the original gang rules to come out, etc.  I think at last count there were some 50-60 gang options...which is craziness.

Is there a game you could scrape out of that and enjoy?  Probably.  I'm sure you can narrow it down to something acceptable with some work.

Now to the plus side...while GW is still doing price hikes every 6-12 months for almost everything, the Necromunda models are pretty good and were up til recently pretty reasonable priced compared to stuff like 40K.  You could get a gang box for $36 shipped or so, which is surprisingly good considering it's a GW kit.  They have finally released weapon upgrades in plastic.  The terrain is nice but insanely expensive, and getting moreso.

Another nice thing is that Etsy is flooded with nice alternate models, so instead of paying $20-30 for a single poorly cast resin miniature from Forgeworld, you can pick up a nice 3D printed mini for around $5-10 depending.  Search "Inquisitor", "Necromunda", "Dieselpunk", etc. and you can find a ton of excellent NPCs and character models.

So the TL:DR version: shit rules, great models.

We currently play a house rule game in place of Necromunda, because we all like the theme and lore of Necromunda, but not the game.

[Storm Wolf]

Well I for one am going with old necro, shadow wars armegeddon and old 40K (5th ed) even for my Stargravey type games, as try as I might I don't get on like the frost/stargrave rules and boy have I tried 

The upcoming sci-fi Rampant game seems interesting and I do really like the FFOL lead type games, so who knows?

Whatever you decide, good luck with it and most important of all have fun 

Glen

[v_lazy_dragon]

I enjoyed the Combat Zone rules from EM-4; sadly no campaign rules but fun skirmishes with distinctions between military and gang forces, rules for robots and the like with a vaguely Hollywood/action movie feel.  Lots of free expansion stuff on the Combat Zone Chronicles webpage too

[sir_shvantselot]

Elbows has captured it beautifully

[Mammoth miniatures]

You could always give planet 28 a go

[mellis1644]

I am very much like you that I love the 40k background and Necromunda even more but the rules just do not work for me. We tried the OPR gang fight rules a week or two ago and was impressed. I wrote a blog ion that which you can see here:

https://mellis1644.wordpress.com/2022/04/10/opr-grimdark-future-gangfight-games/

I expect to play more OPR games in the future.

[eilif]

I'm giving up on Newcromunda. I love my old figures, don't want to buy new, bigger ones and I refuse to stay in  the GW book-buying club.  My Gang War books 1-4 will be going up for sale shortly

I highly recommend Yaktribe’s free Necromunda Community Edition (NCE).  It's a thoughtful and periodically updated version of the last version of classic Necromunda -then called ” Living Rulebook”- that GW handed over to fans for free before Specialist Games went belly up.  The balances, tweaks and additions are generally minor, well thought out and play tested, and compatible with the incredible variety of official and fan material freely available for classic Necro(aka Necromunda 95, aka Original rulebook, aka ORB.) We tried a short campaign with the NCE rules a couple years ago and were very pleased.

There are other good rules that could be used, and OPR Gangfight is probably acceptable, but NCE just nails the Necromunda world and vibe so well.  It also proves that the basic mechanics of 2nd edition 40k are pretty great and fast playing when tweaked and limited to very small model counts.

[NotifyGrout]

The new gang boxes are probably some of the most reasonably priced GW models out there right now- actually cheaper per model than the old metals. I'll echo the sentiments of others here: get the new crew boxes for your gangs, use one of the rulesets folks have mentioned.

Thanks for going over your experience with the current Necromunda, Elbows and eilif. I needed a more realistic perspective on it.

[eilif]

Your very welcome
Just to be clear I've not actually played the new rules. I bought the box set and started acquiring the Gang War books just in case the opportunity arise.   It finally dawned on me how convoluted it had become and how many books I'd have to buy to activate all my old gangs that aren't really optimized for the new rules anyway.

 I'd still like to build a Goliath Gang (the only house I don't have a painted force for) from the new models (anyone want to trade their Goliath for my Escher Sprues.?), but for rules I'll be sticking with NCE, with a possibility of checking out the OPR Gang Fight.

Put another way, if it runs great and ain't broken, stick with it!

[blacksoilbill]

Grimdark Future: Firefight plays really smoothly, and has a Necromunda expeansion (which I've not played). Our go-to rule set is Pulp Alley: you can build lots of interesting characters and play objective-based games as well as straight shoot-em-ups.

For terrain, there are heaps of MDF options these days that look really good and are a lot cheaper than GW: off the top of my head I can think of TT Combat, Promethium Forge, Mutiverse Terrain. There are heaps more though.

[Mark]

Thanks all for your input. A bit of confirmation bias but glad my general thoughts seem to be on the money! I am inclined to try the yaktribe NCE, though if I end up playing with the kids then OPR might be a better option.

I am thinking I will get a couple of gangs and a set of ttcombat terrain to get me started off - has anyone got a current ttcombat set and could comment as to how well (or not) it covers a 3x3' table? The photos on their website aren't particularly clear on this...

[Elbows]

What "set" are you looking at?  TT Combat does a ton, and you get free shipping at 100 Pounds Sterling if you're outside the UK.

When the previous Necromunda box came out with the Zone Mortalis styled terrain, TT combat immediately copied it, and my buddy has four of the following sets:

https://ttcombat.com/collections/industrial-hive/products/iron-labyrinth-death-quadrant-complex

He set up and painted two of the sets and we used them to cover this area on a single folding table which is maybe 20"x24".  If you mean the normal 3D terrain, I couldn't say, but it's cheap enough to grab a few sets - or grab a set and them some of their shipping containers (shipping containers are superb for any game table in this setting).



I would imagine for a 3x3 you'd want two of any of the other normal "complexes" to have solid coverage.

[Mark]

Cheers Elbows. I am UK based, so no problems with getting TTC stuff. I was thinking of the more traditional, 3D setups as for me that was always one of the big attractions of Necromunda.

Somthing like this: https://ttcombat.com/collections/industrial-hive/products/copy-of-iron-labyrinth-floors

I enjoy building terrain, but am not that quick at it, so with the necessary density needed for Necromunda was thinking of getting a decent way there with some MDF and then supplementing that with scratchbuilt stuff.

I can then go through the territory table to decide what to build!

[Elbows]

Yeah I think two of the 28 pound sets would cover a 3x3 pretty well.  You get a ton of bang for your buck with that stuff.