necromunda

[eilif]

I think through rose tinted specs, everyone is forgetting the fundamental flaw with all the metals: necromunda was a campaign system where you would upgrade your gangers...with no way of actually representing them on the tabletop! We used to just use stock figures and "remember" that the goliath leader had a bionic eye, power fist and carapace armour (or whatever) by the tenth game. Even as a kid I thought it was quite a silly system.

This is true, but as I pointed out before the range of figs was wide enough for most factions that if you collected most of them you'd have representations most upgrades and weapons options availble to you.   Some of the more uncommon options won't be represented, but it's a compromise you have to make, just the same as any RPG or campaign-based skirmish system.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

I updated figures as they progressed, though I started out with all lasguns and just added figures generally.

[Dr Mathias]

Ah good times. I played Escher and had all the figs, more than I could use in a gang actually- so when I switched a weapon I was good to go.

When I played Mordheim I was actually pretty mental... if a witch hunter acolyte lost an arm I'd model a new one with no arm.

I must have had a lot of free time.

[Bloodaxe]

Thats the reason I played Spyrers- no conversion needed and 4-5 members.

[mcfonz]

This is true, but as I pointed out before the range of figs was wide enough for most factions that if you collected most of them you'd have representations most upgrades and weapons options availble to you.   Some of the more uncommon options won't be represented, but it's a compromise you have to make, just the same as any RPG or campaign-based skirmish system.

This.

Most of the pistols could be said to be holstered and most gangers had a holster modeled on them. For close combat weapons, if we didn't have a mini to hand that was easily convertable, eg swap the knife for a sword, we'd just glue it onto the back of a new one etc. The heavy weapons were all seperate so swapping them out wasn't too hard either. That really only leaves the special weapons. Again, most gangs were in the process of getting those as well, the Orlocks at least had a flamer. Which wouldn't have been too hard.

But if it was a real struggle, we'd just write it on the roster and go with that. No biggy, it was too fun a game to be overly fussed with.

Again, if they were to go with plastics, then a sprue of five ganger models would be great for this as you could buy and build them as needed each time a basic ganger advances. Or if you wanted to start again but were happy with the heavies and leaders etc.

[Elbows]

Yep, it was pretty easy to remember what was what, and as long as a model with a rifle had a rifle...the type was easy enough to remember.  There's no real alternative (even now).  If you're dedicated enough, sure, model up a bunch of stuff - if you're a magnetizing ninja, go nuts.  But small bits of wargear aren't necessary to model.

This is where the arguably awful plastics shined a bit - you could pop off the arms, . 

[Belligerentparrot]

Andrew's comment about rose-tinted glasses made me wonder why I remember Necro so fondly. And I never actually liked the rules! (In short: gangs quickly unbalanced over time, normal GW problem of ineffective shooting - all that GW art of armies lined up meters away from each other blasting away to apparently no effect certainly reflected the rules).

I think it was the poses of the minis. I've never liked the way the minis are so uniform (Goliaths *never* wear shirts? WTF?) but the poses are great. My hazy recollection is that at the time a lot of GW minis were static poses - you saw whole armies of orks and marines and high elves etc holding weapons but not really doing anything with them. The Necro minis were dodging forwards, taking aim, flattening themselves against cover etc. It made you want to play games using them.

[eilif]

As a counterpoint to the rose-tinted glasses, I've been playing necromunda a few times a year for the past year and I'm loving it.  To be clear I only played one game of Necromunda when it was first announced and I using the NCE verison from Yaktribe, but it's not dramatically different from original Neco, just cleaned up and balanced.

I will agree that after 10 games or so, you will likely get some pronounced divergence in power the gangs involved in a campaign. However, around that point it's probalby time to start a new one anyway or get together and collectively rebalance and carry on.  Regardless, I found that necro really delivered what I had always hoped (since I bought it in 1994) that it would.  A fun and fast game with loads of charachter and great scenarios.

One other point I would make is that it hasn't been my experience that shootign is inneffective. Quite the contrary, it's been quite deadly.  Thus, both for this and for fluffy reasons I think that Necro needs tons of terrain.  It helps moderate the shootyness of certain gangs and provides the movement options that a game like Necromunda needs.   I like to tell folks that it's much better to play on a 3"x3' (or even a 2.5x2.5) table that is crammed with terrain than a 4x4 that is more sparsely covered.

As relates to nostalgia-clouding-judgement, I went back and tried 2nd edition 40k (the version I started with) a couple years ago and it was terrible.

[Major_Gilbear]

In my experience, the problem is that 1 point off the mostly-3s statline that's typical of many gangers makes a notable difference, and 2 points is basically broken. Whilst the injuries do help to counter some of the skills/stat increases, it only takes a few games (maybe three or four, depending on how much XP is earned/rolled?) before the difference between two gangs is often quite pronounced. However, that's also a product of the D6-based mechanics (which are very limited and linear), as well as everything else.

Funnily enough, I found that the original terrain was actually pretty bad for gaming with. It didn't offer enough full cover (it was full of holes and gaps), and that encouraged everybody to constantly lurk in -1/-2 partial cover all game. Which terrain is played with (original box stuff or homemade) is probably a huge factor in whether the game feels balanced to various people or not, as much as whether enough terrain was used.

In end, people who like Necromunda usually seem to accept these things as part of the game. Personally, I've been itching to re-write it for about ten years now! 

[eilif]

In my experience, the problem is that 1 point off the mostly-3s statline that's typical of many gangers makes a notable difference, and 2 points is basically broken. Whilst the injuries do help to counter some of the skills/stat increases, it only takes a few games (maybe three or four, depending on how much XP is earned/rolled?) before the difference between two gangs is often quite pronounced. However, that's also a product of the D6-based mechanics (which are very limited and linear), as well as everything else.

Funnily enough, I found that the original terrain was actually pretty bad for gaming with. It didn't offer enough full cover (it was full of holes and gaps), and that encouraged everybody to constantly lurk in -1/-2 partial cover all game. Which terrain is played with (original box stuff or homemade) is probably a huge factor in whether the game feels balanced to various people or not, as much as whether enough terrain was used.

In end, people who like Necromunda usually seem to accept these things as part of the game. Personally, I've been itching to re-write it for about ten years now! 

I agree with your assessment of the effects of a 2 point increase.
However, in my experience You have to make some seriously impressive victories and incredible dice luck to get multiple increases in the same stat for a given miniature in even 10 games.  It takes a couple of succesfull games to get a level-up and the level-ups are randomly (some folks hate this) determined between all of your available stats and a range of special abilities so the chances of having the same stat increased twice inside of 10 games is pretty slim. Gangs do tend to diverge around 10 games though, often as much a result of the random nature of advances as much as victories on the field.

If you play to play a campaign past 10 games, I advise accepting the loss of a bit of competitiveness, and get someone to GM (Outlanders suggests this) to even things out a bit, provide a bit of a boost to weaker gangs and provide suitably difficult challenges to tougher gangs.

I agree with you about the original terrain though.  It's a good starting point, but it's only enough for a much smaller board than the games pictures suggested and you need ALOT of scatter terrain to fill it up. 

Out of curiosity, have you played the NCE rules? It's still necromunda -with alot of the randomness that implies-  but I've found that the tweaks and rebalances they've applied have made for a much more balanced and clear ruleset and a better game overall.

[Major_Gilbear]

I didn't mean to suggest that one stat would be regularly boosted that much across a whole gang, sorry!

Rather, that after about four games you have likely levelled most gangers about twice. Any decent combinations arising from that can quickly make that model disproportionately more powerful than others, and if a gang that's lucky to have a couple like that against a gang that has a few unlucky combinations... Well, let's just say that a lot of people don't enjoy the losing streaks that seem to be typical of these games. Personally, although I don't mind the randomness as such, I do feel the skills and a few other critical things are not very well balanced - no way is Van Saar on the same level as Goliath for example.

I haven't played the CE version of the game, but I did try some of the revised skill tables that were worked on by fans after Underhive was released somewhat DOA. To this day, I find it weird that GW chose to change things that were perfectly fine (the House weapons idea was awful), but failed to fix something as fundamental as the skill tables. The revised skill tables I tested were better (and highlighted them as being a key part of balance), but more recently we just played the classic version with the Sustained Fire and High Impact rules from Underhive.

The issue for me with the CE version is that it tried to add too many things that weren't needed (like more weapons) as well as applying fixes - and at that point it no longer appealed to me the same way because I felt it just broke a different part of the game instead. I feel a bit that way about the Outlander gang re-writes too, although the Spyrer efforts do look pretty good to me.

I love Necromunda (no, I really do!), but I think it desperately needs a re-write that frees it from it's 2E40k roots and lets it be it's own game.

[Belligerentparrot]

I love Necromunda (no, I really do!), but I think it desperately needs a re-write that frees it from it's 2E40k roots and lets it be it's own game.

Quoted for truth, I feel exactly the same way. For myself, I went back to Confrontation to solve that problem (well, something I made up that borrowed very heavily from Confrontation). And IMHO the Confrontation minis are far superior too 

[Genghis]

I'm really rather excited about SWA.  I've played a few Necromunda campaigns in the past (up to maybe a dozen or so games max, but we didn't get too much disparity in gang 'power' - maybe we just got lucky).  Having played Inquisitor last year, my love for the 40K mythos has been rekindled (having given up on 40K proper several years  ago) & I've been on the lookout for a good skirmish system that plays a bit faster than Inquisitor, but will still support GM-led, story-driven scenarios.  SWA looks like it might well have potential in that regard, especially with the rumours of the standalone rulebook to include Inquisitorial warbands.  As much as I loved the old trading post and gang territories systems, I can see why they've been dropped when dealing with the military forces covered in SWA.  Hopefully they'll bring out a proper old school gang warfare expansion/companion game with cool minis, but even if not, a bit of tinkering should be able to make the old Necromunda gang lists work with SWA.

(I'm going to have terrain covered once my Kickstarter from Battle Systems arrives, which I got a bit carried away with - dense, multi-level sci-fi terrain is not going to be a problem for me.   )

[eilif]

The issue for me with the CE version is that it tried to add too many things that weren't needed (like more weapons) as well as applying fixes - and at that point it no longer appealed to me the same way because I felt it just broke a different part of the game instead. I feel a bit that way about the Outlander gang re-writes too, although the Spyrer efforts do look pretty good to me.

I love Necromunda (no, I really do!), but I think it desperately needs a re-write that frees it from it's 2E40k roots and lets it be it's own game.

Interesting. I've found NCE to be refreshing and well balanced though I have not played NCE Outlanders yet. As for the mechanics, always thought that Necromunda was very well suited to 2nd edition 40k. Certainly far more than 2nd edition 40k ever was! 

To each is own I guess. 

[Major_Gilbear]

@ Genghis:

Actually, the modifications would probably help get more games in, as well as cycle the campaign to a conclusion before players lose interest. Not a bad thing, and it keeps things manageable.


@ eilif:

Although I agree that 40k2E suited Necromunda better than 40k in a lot of ways, it is still limited by things that 40k was never designed for (like progression) as well as things that were never factored into Necromunda which were nonetheless a part of 40k (like a lack of armour/saves on models, and low wounds/toughness). Although I understand perfectly well why this is, the disparity wasn't ever really addressed in the rules mechanics.

Add to that a lot of what I'd call "legacy rules" like the to-hit mechanic (why exactly do you subtract BS from the arbitrary number 7?) and the to-wound table (needed in a game between humans only... because why?), and the game just doesn't telegraph that well once stat increases and skills start becoming more common - hence why so few games' worth of progression are needed to knock the game balance out of whack. Don't get me wrong, any game with progression and injuries will always be unbalanced over time, but in Necromunda this happens quite fast.

Anyway, I've moaned enough, apologies! Back to the original topic.