"Necromunda AAR and quick review." Topic

Even through the thick metal door Glenn could tell that there were Escher on the other side.

"Doyle, get ready you're going in first. Robo you back him up," the Goliath leader said, "Jerry and I will follow you in and Mikail is going to bring up the rear."

"Aye, aye," said Doyle, he held his shot gun with his left hand punching the open button on the door and jumping through.

Glenn saw him drop to the ground as a searing jet of plasma rolled over his back.

As he was falling Robo was through the door and his grenade launcher was up and firing. A metal cylinder hurtled down the room to land behind the makeshift barricade and exploded sending two of the enemy to the ground in a hurry.

No sooner had Robo fired than he was hit himself and dove to the ground looking for any cover.

Jerry stepped past him his head snapping to the left as he heard the distinctive sound of a plasma weapon recycling.

He glanced down and saw Doyle rolling on the ground to put out his clothing that was on fire.

His stubber barked and the scarred lady with the plasma pistols was thrown back against the wall behind her before stumbling to the ground.

That was all Jerry saw though as the room was suddenly flooded with a noxious, choking gas.

Glenn burst past Jerry as he fled, the leader got Doyle back on his feet while Mikail picked up the wounded Robo and made their way back through the door they had just entered.

As they left the gas was already dissipating under the powerful underhive air-filtration system.

When it was all clear both gangs were gone, leaving only spent cartridges, some new burn marks and blood.

Well done,

thanks

This was our first game of Necromunda. It was quick.

We messed up a few things and had to restart the game from the first turn of contact.

The game only lasted one turn of contact.

The scenario called for 6 gangers a side but we only had 5 so we made do.

So for the review of the rules:

There are some pretty significant differences from the first edition. The most noticeable for those looking to use their old gangs is that there are pretty much no heavy weapons in the game in the basic rule set.

The Goliaths have a rivet gun which is kind of a heavy weapon and the Escher have a chemical shooter which is also kind of a heavy weapon but there are no lascannons, heavy stubbers, heavy bolters or other such things.

Gangs also have weapons more typical for their style I guess. The Goliaths have no lasguns or laspistols. The Escher have no stubbers.

So there isn't some list of equipment that everyone can use. The two gangs that come with the game have their own lists which you use when you make up your gang.

The big improvement I see over the old edition is that there is alternating activation and we really screwed this up the first time through.

When we played it without that the Goliaths burst through the door and half the Escher gang was on the ground before their turn was over.

With alternating activation when the Goliaths came through one of them dropped, then an Escher dropped, then a Goliath and so on. It was pretty even and stopped anyone from getting a big jump on the enemy just because they got priority that turn.

What we didn't do was allow leaders and champions to activate other gangers with them, which the rules allow.

We did this just to see how the turn sequence would work with out it.

This is just intended to be a brief review so I'll pretty much leave the mechanics at that and just mention a couple more things. Not a lot else is all that exciting. If you have played 40K 8th edition the fighting is very similar.

The morale rules are a lot more complicated though. With individual fighters testing when a comrade goes down.

There are also tactical cards. Each gang has some of their own and then there are a stack of them that are generic tactics cards.

The parts:

The game itself is pretty sweet. The tiles are nice and matte so that you could use them for other things. I am unlikely to be playing this on the tiles. I may use the tiles for making surfaces for other game boards and add texture to them as needed. We will see. They might be great for an upcoming convention Istvaan III game I have planned for Historicon.

The figures are great. They are very well sculpted, you get five different body types and each one will build you two differently armed figures.

The Escher seem like they might be a bit more easy to mod than the Goliaths but if you really want to do something with them it should be pretty easy since they are all plastic.

Each leaves you with a lot of extra bits if you assemble them the way they are supposed to go together. For the Goliath sprue those extra bits are going to be handy when doing some 30K World Eaters.

I know that the big chain axe thing is going into the hands of assault squad sergeant.

The power maul will probably also make an appearance among the ranks of the Sons of Angron.

There are clear instructions on how to put the figures together.

The game comes with a variety of dice in colours that will make Pittsburgh fans happy.

There are dice for when you get wounded, multi-shot weapons and ammo, scatter dice and just regular d6s.

The terrain that comes with the game is definitely meant for use with the game as it is not really enough to do much with on its own. If you have a pretty large collection of terrain similar to that, as I do, then it could be helpful in other capacities, especially the door pieces and the access panels.

The foot lockers will come in handy in other games as objectives too.

The book has all the rules in it broken down into basic and advanced rules. It would probably be useful for a player new to wargaming to play through the basic rules a few times before adding in the advanced rules.

Probably we should have just played through the first game with the basic rules actually.

The only problem with this method is that it does make it hard to find the rule you are looking for in the book.

Fortunately they do have a couple of cheat sheets included and they have the pg of the rule referenced on them which makes it much easier.

The game also comes with a stack of cards.

Some of these are blank for you to put new gangers on. But they also have cards for the standard build of all the gangers that come with the box.

They also have the above mentioned tactical cards of which each gang has four of their own plus a bunch of generic ones.

Overall it seems a good value for the price.

Thanks for the review.

thanks!

Interesting.

Seems odd gangs are armed differently. Used to be the all got their gear from the same shops. Are they now changing that part of the background? Can they still buy the same stuff in the campaign I wonder?

Glad you guys found it helpful. I'll take more pictures tomorrow when we run the demo. And by tomorrow I mean in about 10 hours, so technically today.

The gangs have different options to start. I think it is based on the idea that they have different fighting styles and choose weapons to reflect that. The two gangs are probably the most different from each other in those terms of all the gangs.

The Escher are stealthy, subtle, agile and quick. Their weapons reflect this with lasrifles, power swords, stilettos and so forth.

The Goliaths are brutal, up-close fighters. Their weapons reflect this with stub cannons, rivet guns and massive axes.

In the Gang War book you can buy anything you want from the trading post so gangs the old models will still be able to be used.

I would imagine that the other gangs will have more access to a variety of things.

From the campaign book Juves will be included in the gang roster eventually.

Thanks for taking the time to provide your review!

The second edition Necromunda, had weapons by gang restricted until they went to the trading post.

Nice review. Thanks.

I've got too much on my plate right now but will be watching for new models/gangs in the new year. (full set of rules would be good too) There are six of us regulars in the group now and it'd be cool if everyone picked up a faction.

Very useful info Pictors Studio. Thanks for the piccys and the quick review! Much appreciated.

I recall the original gangs leaning to certain weapons, to give them a little different feel. But of course, once you went off to the trading post, you could buy just about anything.

I am hoping that the tactics cards will help give a gang a reason to go high-tech, or stay low-tech, or use certain types of weapons. Its cool when the rules reward certain aspects.

Is anyone thinking about using rare earth magnets on certain arms, so they can swap weapons more easily?

I'm curious Pictors, did you assemble the gangers as sown in the instructions (and their provided data cards)? Or did you alreayd opt for some different weapons than those shown?

Since I was going to be using these for a demo game I wanted them to have the stuff from the cards, so assembled them that way.

I'm not sure on which gang I'll settle on, I will probably at least have a Goliath gang for the time being for myself.

Whatever it is I'll probably buy a couple of boxes of them and have one assembled as the initial gang and then up grade them with the other box as I go through the campaign.

Thanks for the review! This is just what I was wondering about and has reinforced my decision to wait until a complete book comes out.

You might be waiting a while. Gang War three is already under way.

I'll probably wait for a while. NCE works very well and at this point none of my club-mates with Necro armies has bought Underhive. If it takes too long maybe I'll break down and buy the supplements and pick up the rulebook on ebay.

If I didn't already have 5 Necro gangs of 15-19 figs each Im sure I'd feel differently but the boxed set offers little to entice me.

How necessary are the fancy dice and strategy cards?

If the rules are available on eBay, so will the dice. I'm sure people will be braking boxes and selling them off.

You could always make your own dice or a simple cheat sheet allocating a result to each side of standard die.

How necessary are the fancy dice and strategy cards?

There are four types of dice (8 dice in a set):
- 3x Standard D6
- 1x Scatter (each face has an arrow for the direction, and one face is a direct hit symbol)
- 2x Injury Dice (each with 1 skull, 2 crosses and 3 broken bones)
- 2x Firepower Dice (2 "one", 2 "two", 1 "three" and 1 "one plus out of ammo symbol)

Would be pretty easy to have a table for the Injury and Firepower Dice, and use a regular D6.

Scatter dice have been around for decades (I have so many from all the various boxed GW games I have purchased over the years). Easy enough to get from many sources.

Of course, you can buy a "gang" set of dice, they come in fancy colors, and give you the 8 dice as a set.

I am sure people will break down the core box and sell various components on ebay. I rather like the 8 yellow and 8 black dice you get in the core game. I would probably pick up an extra set myself.

As for the cards, see a related Necromunda thread, where I just posted a bit of info on some of them, so people can get an idea of their uses and usefulness.

I like them, and think they add a nice bit of extra chaos since you won't know what cards the other gang has. But I suspect they will all be typed up in an excel spreadsheet and available on the web from someone, so you will probably not "need" to acquire them in printed form.

Or, you can just agree with your gaming buddy that nobody gets to use them, and not worry about it.

A typical game has two cards per side, so they are not a HUGE deal, but the cards I have read pack quite a nice surprise for the enemy. I am going to enjoy using them.

Thanks for that folks,
I've got tons of scatter dice and some 1/1 2/2 3/3 dice of various types.

I would like to at least have the option to play necro outside of my circle of gaming friends. Proably time to start looking at ebay for parted out games.