necromunda

[Major_Gilbear]

Good point, but some structures could have been made to look more ruined I guess. My favourite terrain I think was the one that looked like subway access because I could easily imagine what it was for. I still liked the terrain, and in fact brought it out recently to play a sci fi game with my son.

It should look semi-ruined and run-down, rather than destroyed IMO. That was hard to do with the old style terrain set. The new stuff can be blended in with Cities of Death terrain if you wanted it to look more ruined (or just attacked with clippers!).

I really liked the tunnel part too (I think most people did) for the same narrative reasons that you liked. In fact, I always thought it was a shame that there weren't two such pieces (perhaps with rules for travelling between them) and also some air-vent pieces.

Outlanders added some welcome parts in the form of a sturdy walkway with sides, barriers, and lift (with rules for using it).

There's an amazing building by Rob Hawkins here, and a fair amount here by Thib-0. There's also a modelled version of the old card stuff here by 92acclude on Dakka. What I love about these is that they capture the original studio look and style of the terrain, whilst not looking like something that's being used/lived in. Shabby and run down, but not ruined. Buildings that have been stripped out and left empty to rot. That sort of thing!

Unless they drastically change the rules, a sprue with 10 gangers would be a no go.

Ideally it would be a sprue of five gangers so they could sell it as a booster.

Juves would be two or three - again, on their own sprue.

Leader and heavies would probably have their own as well.

Starting gangs used to be around 8 models. Leader, Heavy, mixture of gangers and juves.

10 gangers for this would be overkill early on and also not create any follow on sales.

I'm not holding my breath on plastics either. I wouldn't be surprised if forgeworld just finecast the old models. And by the old ones, I mean the more recent resculpts which were hideous.

Plan for the worse, hope for the best.

Firstly, you only need ten models ever if you never run different equipment setups. Otherwise, if you want three or different heavy weapons for you gang to choose from, that's a corresponding number of models. Same with models armed with rifles vs those armed with pistols and CC weapons.

Secondly, most people buy more than one gang. So although GW might only sell a couple of boxes of each gang to a player, they might still sell several gangs to each player.

Thirdly, look at Bloodbowl for a closer example of how this is. You buy a team in a box, and dedicated players might buy two of a particular team. You aren't going to see many people buying lots of one box, and most won't buy more than one.


@ Wachaza:

I have a lot of the "newer" models, and there is a good reason that they are the only part of my Necromunda collection isn't exhaustive. The models on the whole were pretty... Amateur.  Their best feature was the effort to make them modular, and the best-looking resculpts were the Goliaths and Scavvies by a long way. The Enforcers were also nice, but they were a new gang, same with Ash Waste Nomads. The Ratskins, Van Saar, Orlocks, Bounty Hunters, and Redemptions were all sadly much poorer than their earlier counterparts.

[Wachaza]

@ Wachaza:

I have a lot of the "newer" models, and there is a good reason that they are the only part of my Necromunda collection isn't exhaustive. The models on the whole were pretty... Amateur.  Their best feature was the effort to make them modular, and the best-looking resculpts were the Goliaths and Scavvies by a long way. The Enforcers were also nice, but they were a new gang, same with Ash Waste Nomads. The Ratskins, Van Saar, Orlocks, Bounty Hunters, and Redemptions were all sadly much poorer than their earlier counterparts.

A lot of the originals have the advantage of being Jes Goodwin sculpts so are classics but I like all the newer stuff bar the child like ratskins and the rather odd scavvies.

[mcfonz]

I could go into depth but lets just say anatomically and pose wise they are woeful. Especially when compared to these:




I think the Perry's sculpted the older range of Orlocks, and for me, the quality shines through. You can see the attention to detail, pose and the anatomy is better.

The Ratskin resculpts were poor as well. Goliaths I was never a great fan of so I'm not sure.

Redemptionists -

Vs


Note how one of the models in the new sculpts, can touch his shin whilst standing straight . . . . . ape arms. Just basic things like that which are first glance issues I would not expect from GW - or any other decent miniature manufacturer.

[eilif]

Agreed. About the new sculpt.  Modular is nice but not when the figs are chunky and blocky with none of the character or detail of the originals.  I bought few of the new ones to add variety to my van saar but that was it.

As for terrain i like the look but at this point i can cram a table with multilevel terrain that I've built myself.  Necro needs alot of terrain and properly dense table of gw terrain would be repetitive and incredibly expensive.

[Major_Gilbear]

Note how one of the models in the new sculpts, can touch his shin whilst standing straight . . . . . ape arms. Just basic things like that which are first glance issues I would not expect from GW - or any other decent miniature manufacturer.

Well, some of that is due the multi-part nature of the models.

Also, the old Redemptionist Deacon with a flamer has a hilariously long left arm.

Lots of old GW models had these sorts of "anatomical sculpting imprecisions" really, and it's part of what people regard as "charm".

Generally though, the level of sculpting across the whole of the original Necromunda line was very high, and I think it was fairly evident that the sculptors had rather enjoyed themselves.

The Fanatic sculpts however were all done by trainees, or by third-party sculptors IIRC. That's one reason that they are so mixed in quality, and why the ranges were as spottily-complete as they were.

[eilif]

Here's another example of the old and new.  Forgive my tabletop paint jobs and mediocre photography. The guy on the right is the later/new fig. Head is from the range but the hands and gun are other bits.


At first glance it's not bad, but looking closer you see that every detail is chunkier on the new one and it has none of the grace of the originals.  It's even worse when you have them in-hand.  Add to that the fact that the new figs separate heads didn't have any of the charachteristic Van Saar hair style or facial hair and one wonders how much oversight they even had.   As I said above I got a couple for variety, but only 3 or 4 out of 18 are the newer scupts.  The whole gang is here blogged here:
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2014/10/12/new-paint-for-old-friends-necromunda/

[mcfonz]

Firstly, you only need ten models ever if you never run different equipment setups. Otherwise, if you want three or different heavy weapons for you gang to choose from, that's a corresponding number of models. Same with models armed with rifles vs those armed with pistols and CC weapons.

This isn't particularly accurate. Most of the original starter gangs came with 8 models. But you would soon shoot up to over ten in a matter of 2-3 games.

Juves turn into gangers, and then you buy a new juve etc. Heavies, I think you could have max 2 basic for gangs, unless you skilled up another ganger to be one. Leaders - you only have one.

Now, you could put the starting 8 models on a sprue. But ideally you would still want to be able to offer additional models. You could put say 14-15 on a sprue and then you really would cover everything. But if the intent was to encourage follow on sales . . .

But as I said, I somewhat doubt we will see gangs in plastic. As of yet, there has been no indication that we will see rules for gangs, rather than kill-teams. In fact, calling them Kill Teams is also suggestive of what I thought which is that these rules coming out coincide with Kill Team being OOP.

They also coincide with the information from Adapticon in regards to GW's vision for 40k, which I won't go into here in great depth as it is something for the GW chat thread. Suffice to say that it sounds a lot like they may well be taking a step back towards 2nd edition. Which of course, is the rules Necromunda are based upon.

[Dr Mathias]

I could go into depth but lets just say anatomically and pose wise they are woeful.

I'm with you. I owned about six or seven first gen Necromunda gangs, and I also had the 2nd generation Redemptionists and Ratskins. They were simply not good sculpts- and I love Cawdor and Redemption. I got rid of them. I kept the 2nd gen Enforcers and Scavvies though.

[Major_Gilbear]

@ Eilif:

Yeah, that's a great example of the issue I had.

To be fair, the differences are less obvious if you stick to just one generation of models, but the Van Saar got screwed both times there. Not only are they the joint-smallest gang in the original range, but they are also the smallest gang in the Fanatic re-releases too.

(Your link doesn't work correctly BTW).


@ mcfonz:

I'm not really following you, sorry.  

Having more models than you strictly "need" gives you options for when you set up your starting gang, or add new recruits to a gang, or to reflect skills and/or equipment changes and/or progression of gangers.

So, having a few Heavies with various weapons gives you choices when you set your gang up, and (if equipped with any special weapons) gives you options if one of your gangers happens to get a suitable skill.

However, this is an example. I'm not suggesting that you can recruit more than two Heavies, or that Juves always remain Juves, or anything else of that sort. I'm also not suggesting that you have to have a huge maxed-out starting gang either.

It's also worth noting that some gangs (in particular those with access to Shooting skills, or that have both Shooting and Combat) are likely to want different weapons as the campaign progresses and they gain skills. So a chap with a Lasgun that picks up Gunfighter will probably want to swap to a pair of pistols for instance. In these cases, it's worth having some spare models with different loadouts so that you can avoid too much confusion.

I therefore don't think a Gang box giving you 10-12 mixed models is that far out of question (and certainly not if it's priced accordingly). In fact, it's much easier for GW to pack and stock just one kit/box per gang, and if you happen to need a couple of extra figures, it requires you to buy a whole Gang box again.

Will we ever see plastic Gangs? Well, I never thought I'd see plastic Genestealer Cultists, or plastic Adeptus Mechanicus, so I guess anything is possible as long as GW thinks it will sell well enough.

[Dr Mathias]

Will we ever see plastic Gangs? Well, I never thought I'd see plastic Genestealer Cultists, or plastic Adeptus Mechanicus, so I guess anything is possible as long as GW thinks it will sell well enough.

I was pretty surprised at the release of both those factions. Plus, GW recently showed Nurgle-specific chaos cultists. Plastic Necro gangs are not impossible. I could even see Arbites coming down the pipe, which would be the last major Imperial military faction.

Why they haven't done Sisters in plastic yet is something of a mystery to me though, but I always pick the gimp of any game system.

[eilif]

Glibear and McFonz,
     I think you both may be part right. The number of figures needed really depends on two things.
1) Whether or not you want to play WYSIWYG.  Part of what makes necro great is customizability. If you only have 10 figs you are very limited in what you can field.  Which leads me to point 2...

2) Whether or not you are playing in a campaign.  Campaign play inevitably needs to new weapon acquisitions level up's etc.  If you're trying to be even somewhat WYSIWYG then a campaign will require more than 10 figs.

I think that 18-20 models is a good number of figs to get and it's about what I've acquired for each of my gangs (Orlock, Van Saar, Escher, Delaque, Cawdor).  You can't cover every eventuality, but if you choose them sensibly then you will have about enough figs to swap around and cover most upgrades, acquisitions, etc.  This swapability is also why I never did the "name-on-base" thing that alot of folks do.  Over the course of a campaign I may need to use different figs to represent the same ganger and I may need to swap figs as I move acquired weapons to gangers who can make better use of them.

I've only done one Campaign (still going on now) but with about 10 games under my belt so far I definitley see where planning ahead and acquiring more figs if-possible is the way to go.

I really liked the tunnel part too (I think most people did) for the same narrative reasons that you liked. In fact, I always thought it was a shame that there weren't two such pieces (perhaps with rules for travelling between them) and also some air-vent pieces.

My favorite part of the old Necromunda terrain. I've still got my Necromunda and Outlanders terrain, but that didn't stop me from buiding another "subway" entrance of my own when I went on a scatter terrain binge.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2014/09/10/scatter-terrain-for-sci-fi-and-pos/

Though truthfully, "build" might be a bit of a stretch. If really just found a piece of a toy that looked right and after a little bit of cutting I added some ballast and cardboard and painted it.

[Major_Gilbear]

@ eilif:

Yes, I think we are in agreement on all counts!

I did try playing box-vs-box gangs when I was young, but it was hard going for anything other than one-off games.

[Bloodaxe]

Whats this set selling for retail? Ive seen anywhere from $130 to $240 USA.(marked up already by scalpers)  I've seen its "out of print" but im sure it will be restocked in some form.  I could do without the terrain & figs anyway.

Id like to just buy the rulebook.

What factions are in the book? (obviously Orks & Marines)

[Elbows]

It has an MSRP of $130.  Expect (if you find it in stock at online retailer) to drop that buy 15-20%.  A friend located one for $101 shipped.  However, some stores are saying that GW is not providing them with the copies they ordered, so who knows.

The rulebook contains Imperial Guard, Space Marine Scouts, and Orks.

The other 12 current factions (made from explicitly plastic kits, unfortunately) are available in a free PDF.

[Bloodaxe]

Thank you kindly.  I'm hoping Gangers will be part of it eventually.  But I guess you could use Guard or Cultists for it.