Switch Theme:

Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit  [RSS] 

Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/29 15:54:09


Post by: Baxx


GW release more content all the time for Necromunda, and the latest news is the Outcasts and the Outlander campaign. On that topic, it seems like many people aren't aware that all campaigns are designed to let the winner take everything and keep winning, while the loser to lose everything and keep losing. This is an attempt at explaining this fundamental flaw that exists in all campaigns (no matter if it is Dominiation, Law & Misrule, Uprising or Outlander).

First off, a clarification on statistics. The examples shown here will be the most likely outcome. Not necessarily the actual or only outcome. It is possible for a winning successful gang to suddenly have all their fighters die. That is however unlikely. This discsussion is about what is most likely, so will not take into consideration unlikely events (just note that they are acknowledge and do exist).

Second off, this discussion will make comparisons to the most relevant games to Necromunda. This should unarguably be stuff like:
- Blood Bowl.
- NCE.
- Mordheim.
- GorkaMorka.

All these games have similar contents:
- factions (gangs/teams/warbands)
- campaigns (campaign/league)
- development over the course of a campaign:
- suffer setbacks (injuries/deaths)
- gain income (gold/credits/money) from resources (territory/racket/structure) and objectives (loot/touchdowns)
- experience (XP/SPP)
- earn various bonuses

For simplification, these examples will start with 2 identical gangs played by 2 "identical" players over a campaign. All income will grant equal amount of money.
Only 2 players will be considered, in real life it will often be more players. If you want, you can consider each player a group of players, but it won't affect the outcome.
Each player will start out with identical gangs, all gangs have a "rating", meaning the total power of the gang, how injured they are, how much money they got, what expensive skills and gear they obtain, how much XP and level-ups they got.

Example 1: Blood Bowl

First battle: One random player wins, let's say A wins this one. Each player is awarded the same amount of money, X + 10 per touchdown. Let's say X is 40, winner has 3 TDDs and loser has 1 TDD.
- Player A is awarded 70 money (40+30)
- Player B is awarded 50 money (40+10)

Player A now has higher rating than player B. This will make player A more likely to win the next battle.

Second battle: Player A wins. Same result and rewards as last match.

This is the total income obtained by the 2 players over the course of a campaign:

Top graph is winner (player A), having optained a total of 750 money.
Bottom graph is loser (player B), having obtained a total of 500 money.

In addition to pure money income, the winner will increase their rating further by having earning more XP (by scored more objectives and inflicting more damage). So in total, the difference in rating will be higher than just the income alone. However, income cannot be safely stacked (there's a risk of losing money if you are above a certain limit), and even with excess money, each faction has a limited amount of stuff to buy, and buying excess stuff (like re-rolls) will bloat the rating, granting the underdog stronger bonuses like star players etc.

So let's say rating improves by 5% each battle for the winner. However the loser still gains some income and XP regardless of the result, and is able to improve it's rating by some extent, even if having to recover and repair their team from injuries and death. Let's say the loser improves rating at 1%.
Winner's rating multiplier after 10 games: 1.62
Loser's rating multiplier after 10 games: 1.10

So there's some discrepancy here, awarding the winner a stronger, bigger team than the loser.

Example 2: Necromunda

Unlike all the other similar games, there's no upkeep here, and each victory will grant a "resource" that will continue to bring income after all future battles.

First battle: One random player wins, let's say A wins this one. Player A gains bonus credits from the scenario in addition to a permanent resource which will grant extra money after all future battles. Let's say each territory grants 10 and the scenario grants 5.
- Player A is awarded 25 money (2 resources + 1 scenario reward)
- Player B is awarded 15 money (1 resource + 1 scenario reward)

Second battle: Player A is now more likely to win, gaining yet another resource.
- Player A is awarded 35 money (3 resources + 1 scenario reward)
- Player B is awarded 15 money (1 resource + 1 scenario reward)

This is the total income obtained by the 2 players over the course of a campaign:

Player A (winner) accumulates a total of 700 money
Player B (loser) accumulates a total of 150 money

Winning in Necromunda correlates strongly to inflicting most damage to the enemy, which in turns correlates to more XP, move more freely around the battlefield and can gain more loot or other objectives, which in turn correlates to more income.

To simplify:
Winning = more credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, resources, less injuries and death
Losing = less credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, resources, more injuries and death


In addition to pure money income, the winner will increase their rating further by earning more XP (by scored more objectives and inflicting more damage). So in total, the difference in rating will be higher than just the income alone. Income can safely be stored when needed (no risk of having excess money). Less money is needed to recover from injuries/death. A stronger gang not only inflicts more damage to the enemy but also suffers less damage in return (because the enemy loses more fighters and damage output). More money can be poured into expensive, competitive and rare items. There will be more champions and less fighters in recovery, giving a better modifier to finding rare items. More reputation will grant further bonuses from hangers-on and brutes.

The loser on the other hand, needs to spend more money on recovering their losses, less amount of champions, more fighters in recovery and therefore harder to find or afford rare and expensive items.

Let's say rating improves by 10% each battle for the winner. The loser still gains some income and XP regardless of the result, and is able to improve it's rating by some extent, even if having to recover and repair their gang from injuries and death. Let's say the loser improves rating at 1%.
Winner's rating multiplier after 10 games: 2.59
Loser's rating multiplier after 10 games: 1.10

Compare this to the previous result for Blood Bowl!


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/29 17:21:16


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


For Necromunda, it depends on the Mission, and how exactly one achieves victory under the mission’s rules.

Winning should come with perks, of course it should. But losing shouldn’t mean you walk away empty handed.

This is why Necromunda needs an active GM.

A gang can pull away from the pack early on not just by winning their games (player skill based, that’s fine), but by lucky rolls on the injury table, decent income rolls and lucky dice when seeking rare equipment. The latter three are all luck based, and so the GM needs to keep abreast of how gangs are doing.

Likewise, I could win my first game by a country mile, but end up with say, a Heavy and a Gang Leader properly dead, their likely expensive equipment lost forevermore. I’m then at a massive disadvantage, as those aren’t commodities so easily replaced.

If one gang really does break away from the pack? The GM needs to be permissive of things not really catered for under the rules. For instance, two or more opposing gangs forming an alliance to kick the snot out of the campaign leader’s gang.

This shouldn’t be a way to punish someone who is leading. Rather, it’s a way to stop them getting complacent. To keep them on their toes and really push them.

In extreme cases, the GM can also unleash something Bloody Awful on the leader. Perhaps the local Enforcers are getting uncomfortable with so much power being concentrated, so decide to disrupt the gang’s activities. There are lots of ways the GM could do this. Perhaps the Guild decide to seize assets/territory for themselves. Maybe they get a visit from 20 or so very heavily armed and not at all caring Enforcers. Those are two which immediately spring to mind. The aim should only be to rein them in, not break the back of their gang.

The campaign isn’t just meant to tell a story. It’s meant to be fun and engaging for all partaking. It’s meant to be a challenge, and a sandbox to play in and explore.

Heck, when I run my campaign, with the backdrop being the early then ongoing exploration and exploitation of a newly opened dome? Any break away players can expect to get the riskiest missions. Yes they might walk away even stronger - but that depends just how nasty I want to get.

In the original Necromunda, my Cawdor often clawed their way to the top of the pile quite quickly. A self moderation I imposed was to face lower down or newer gangs armed only with Power Mauls. I’d still play hard, but as Power Mauls didn’t cause Serious Injury rolls, I could duff my opponent’s gang up without any risk of crippling them.

I still got my win and the territory. They got a boatload of experience helping their gang level up, their not insignificant underdog bonus, all at minimal risk.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/29 17:46:20


Post by: Baxx


 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For Necromunda, it depends on the Mission, and how exactly one achieves victory under the mission’s rules.

Winning should come with perks, of course it should. But losing shouldn’t mean you walk away empty handed.

This is why Necromunda needs an active GM.

Why does Necromunda need GM and Blood Bowl not? I really don't understand this argument! Would you say the same about Blood Bowl, it needs a GM or not?
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

A gang can pull away from the pack early on not just by winning their games (player skill based, that’s fine), but by lucky rolls on the injury table, decent income rolls and lucky dice when seeking rare equipment. The latter three are all luck based, and so the GM needs to keep abreast of how gangs are doing.

Yes, anything can happen. But this is unlikely to happen and therefore not the topic. What is likely to happen is winner keeps winning, loser keeps loosing. Unlike something like Blood Bowl, NCE, GorkaMorka or Mordheim for example. All of these games include crazy luck events, yet they don't need some ad-hoc random intervention to handle it.

Imagine if a Wood Elf team got extreme luck or won 5 matches in a row, then the league commissioner would step in and stomp the wood elves with a 2000TV chaos kill team, all leveled-up with mighty blow, tackle, frenzy and guard?!?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

In the original Necromunda, my Cawdor often clawed their way to the top of the pile quite quickly. A self moderation I imposed was to face lower down or newer gangs armed only with Power Mauls. I’d still play hard, but as Power Mauls didn’t cause Serious Injury rolls, I could duff my opponent’s gang up without any risk of crippling them.

I still got my win and the territory. They got a boatload of experience helping their gang level up, their not insignificant underdog bonus, all at minimal risk.

Funny you mention original Necromunda, out of the two examples above, would you say old Necromunda was similar to exponential growth or linear growth?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/29 18:42:22


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


Without a GM? Exponential.

Now, very importantly, all my posts here as based on my experience and my opinion is informed by those experiences. Whilst my opinion is therefore rooted in fact, it’s not to be taken as gospel or universal etc.

Since I got started on Necromunda’s release day (yes, I am vintage. And a fine one at that!), me and mine have always tweaked and customised the rules as we saw fit to ensure as fun a campaign as possible.

This months explain why I’m so blasé about the flaws in the system, regardless of which era or rule set it is. Make do and mend is, to me, an indelible part of the experience.

It does not excuse poorly written rules. Please don’t confuse my being perfectly happy to iron out the kinks with me preferring not to have to. It’s just…..something I’ve always done, and happen to enjoy doing, usually with a “dry run” short campaign. That not only allows everyone to get up to speed and familiar with the rules, but can help the wider group point out issues etc.

Gang progression has long been such an issue, for the reasons already covered.

The trick as said not to punish success, but for the GM to be permissive in collective attempts to kick the snot out the leading gang. Or to create extra burdens upon breakaway gangs.

Exactly how the GM goes about that is a delicate matter. It depends on the players, and how into the narrative side of things they are as a group.

Suffice to say, this is why I was always wary of people wanting to play Spyrers. Some players could be trusted, becoming lurking terrors. Others? They just wanted a gang that became well hard super quick so they could keep on winning, and sod the post-battle side, which I consider an integral part of Necromunda and the gaming experience.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/29 19:09:29


Post by: Baxx


 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Without a GM? Exponential.

Now, very importantly, all my posts here as based on my experience and my opinion is informed by those experiences. Whilst my opinion is therefore rooted in fact, it’s not to be taken as gospel or universal etc.

Since I got started on Necromunda’s release day (yes, I am vintage. And a fine one at that!), me and mine have always tweaked and customised the rules as we saw fit to ensure as fun a campaign as possible.

This months explain why I’m so blasé about the flaws in the system, regardless of which era or rule set it is. Make do and mend is, to me, an indelible part of the experience.

It does not excuse poorly written rules. Please don’t confuse my being perfectly happy to iron out the kinks with me preferring not to have to. It’s just…..something I’ve always done, and happen to enjoy doing, usually with a “dry run” short campaign. That not only allows everyone to get up to speed and familiar with the rules, but can help the wider group point out issues etc.

Gang progression has long been such an issue, for the reasons already covered.

The trick as said not to punish success, but for the GM to be permissive in collective attempts to kick the snot out the leading gang. Or to create extra burdens upon breakaway gangs.

Exactly how the GM goes about that is a delicate matter. It depends on the players, and how into the narrative side of things they are as a group.

Suffice to say, this is why I was always wary of people wanting to play Spyrers. Some players could be trusted, becoming lurking terrors. Others? They just wanted a gang that became well hard super quick so they could keep on winning, and sod the post-battle side, which I consider an integral part of Necromunda and the gaming experience.


You think old Necromunda without a GM has exponential growth? Now that's easy to test!

My posts here are based on facts, not experiences.

Let's do the same experiment for old Necromunda then. Again, 2 identical gangs.

First battle: One random player wins, let's say A wins this one. Each player has 5 territories, giving an average of 150 credits. Let's say the winner gains +50 from any scenario loot. This is then taxed (incrementally), so let's say both has 10 models.
- Player A is awarded 200 money (150+50) --> 65 after tax
- Player B is awarded 150 money --> 45

Second battle, same thing:
- Player A is awarded 200 money (150+50) --> 65 after tax
- Player B is awarded 150 money --> 45

It gives something very similar to the following graph:

If the winner spends their money on more fighters, they will in return gain decreasing amount of money, as bigger gangs require more tax. So in reality, the curve should slow down the higher it gets.

Now that's not exponential at all, is it?




Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/29 19:17:06


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


Except each player rolled up their own Territory, ideally with a third party present to ensure nobody cheated.

Each territory had its own perks and that. The humble slag heap looks poor, but at least provided a steady, reliable income.

It was possible for someone to kick off with multiple settlements, and so end up with a surfeit of Juves, and a pretty decent income.

With really lucky dice, you could roll nothing but high value territories, giving you an arguably unfair advantage should your gang get mullered, as you had a great deal of cash in hand to replace casualties with.

That’s….just Necromunda. Always has been, always will be. Charts don’t come into it. A GM does.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/29 19:34:23


Post by: Baxx


Right! That could cause some problems, still the income tax would reduce MUCH of it. And if the richest gang poured all their money into extra fighters, that would just reduce the income further. Even if one gang gained 100 (before tax) and another 300 (before tax), that's hardly exponential?!? Or is your definition of exponential different than mine


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 07:58:05


Post by: Blackie


In my experience players who lose the first game aren't doomed and players who win the first game aren't already campaign winners.

The key is avoiding min maxing at gang creation, and the GM can help re-shuffling things if there is the need to do that. But even without a great intervention from the GM a campaing can go pretty smooth.

However playing a campaign in a very competitive way can lead to massive imbalance and then an OP list that starts winning will certainly be ahead of everyone else for the whole campaign. Thankfully I don't know anyone who would want to play like that.

As a Van Saar player for example I don't see the point of equipping two models with plasma guns out of the 20 I own, just one should be ok, and that's what I did. I also have a grav gun, a melta gun, a rad gun, a flamer, three heavy weapons, a girl wielding two plasma pistols, another plasma pistol dude and a combi melta/shield guy. Why would I need to spam the same special/heavy weapon then? The WAAC Van Saar would definitely start with 2-3 plasma guns out of 7 dudes instead.

Same with goliaths, I see lists with 2-3 grenade launchers, but what's the point of doing that? Go with one and differentiate all the other dudes. Only cheap basic weapons should be taken in multiples.

Necromunda doesn't work without a friendly casual mentality.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 08:01:47


Post by: AnomanderRake


If we're doing the pure optimization mindset are you calculating assuming all Mordheim warbands are Skaven sling gunlines?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 08:48:30


Post by: Baxx


Primarily I want to establish some facts.

- Is new Necromunda campaign exponential or linear?
- Are all other comparable campaigns exponential or linear?

In another forum people were clear and a unanimous. Here I see some hesitation and clinging to their opinions like "but the game must have GM".


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 15:17:28


Post by: Easy E


So what's your point?

What is your proposed solution?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 15:33:06


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


I don’t think anyone is denying Necromunda campaigns can quickly become unbalanced.

What we are saying is “this is where a GM comes in”.

Someone running the campaign and for my tastes, ideally not competing in the campaign (to ensure they’re as impartial as possible).


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 16:24:37


Post by: Racerguy180


 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don’t think anyone is denying Necromunda campaigns can quickly become unbalanced.

What we are saying is “this is where a GM comes in”.

Someone running the campaign and for my tastes, ideally not competing in the campaign (to ensure they’re as impartial as possible).


Necromunda works best with an independent arbiter. Some of the most fun I had playing OG necro was running the campaign and not playing in it.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 16:56:01


Post by: chaos0xomega


Theres a huge critical flaw in this in that you assume only two players, and have also naively extrapolated that you can assume the players represent two groups instead (i.e. a winning group and a losing group).

If you have 4 players in a campaign, and in the second round the two winners from the first game face off against eachother, one of them needs to lose - ergo you do not suddenly produce this growth trend that you defined for all "winners" bas ed on the first game.Same with the two losers facing off - one of them needs to win, ergo that breaks the trend. You will not always have a person who won all their previous games facing off against a person who lost all their previous games. This implements "noise" into the trend that generally acts to prevent a runaway victor as indicated in your trends - more players usually means more noise.

As others have pointed out your analysis also fails to take into account other factors/"degrees" of victory/defeat (i.e. won the game but half your team is permanently dead and their upgrades/equipment permanently gone, etc.) which throws a wrench in the works.

In general, I am inclined to agree that the campaign systems are not well designed on the surface and pick winners and losers, but not to the extent that your simplified analysis indicates.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 17:02:32


Post by: the_scotsman


In my experience players hate campaign systems where the winner gets better bonuses than everyone else and hate campaign systems where the winner doesn't get better bonuses than everyone else.

Most people want to play in a campaign system where the winner gets unfair bonuses, but they want to be the winners.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 17:13:54


Post by: Graphite


Well, you're considering a Necromunda campaign only in terms of cash. Which is not unreasonable in Newcromunda.

Newcromunda - gangs tend to get cash rich quite quickly. In the base campaign, everyone gets d6x10 creds from their settlement every game, and a free fighter every third game. Scenario rewards are often quite high compared to territory income.

Oldcromunda had the issue that you were constantly strapped for cash, and getting any much better gear after gang creation tended to require a bit of luck.

There's an awful lot of REALLY EXPENSIVE stuff to spend those creds on now. Most of this is "very cool" rather than "very effective". Servo harnesses, Brutes, great big guns - certainly one-on-one they'll be good, BUT:

- A lot of the scenarios have restricted numbers of fighters

- A lot of scenarios have randomly selected fighters

Are your cool things going to turn up every game? If they take an unlucky ping from a Juve and end up sitting out a game, does your gang's game plan revolve around one fighter (lookin' at you, Overseer leaders...)? Does your gang have depth?

What more creds can, and will, buy you is durability. If you have a gang of 10, and 2 of your guys are out of commission you hit the point where you can't field a full force. Having more bodies in the gang is a definite advantage. But, if you've considered what I say above, you've spread the cash around a bit so as not to leave yourself without The Very Important Fighter who represents 1/2 your gang rating.

The main campaign problem with this is that advancement in Newcromunda is really slow. The disadvantage of having more gang members would be to spread out the xp, and so your gangers would quickly be out-classed by their opponents. Since basically nobody advances, this can be fairly safely ignored.

In Oldcromunda skills and XP were king. Having a guy with a pair of master crafted plasma pistols was nice, but going up against a rapid-fire-3-attack-gunfighter with a brace of Laspistols would get him shredded.

I think this is at the root of runaway gangs in the current version (which certainly can exist) - it's not that rich gangs have better gear, it's that they've got more durability due to a deeper roster.

But is that a "if you win the first game you win the campaign" problem? Not really. It's more of a "if you lose the first game, you have to play the second game very carefully and probably take a loss without many casualties" problem. After that you're back up to full fighting strength.

This can certainly become more problematic in a campaign which only has two players (which, full disclosure, is the only type of Newcromunda campaign I've played). But if you've got, say, 3 players:

Game 1 - A vs B. A wins. B gets mauled

Game 2 - B vs C. B plays it safe, gets in a few licks against C, takes the lose, back up to full strength

Game 3 - A vs C - both have take a few hits in their fight against B, so it's fairly even. Lets say it's a bloody slight win to A.

Game 4 - A vs B, the rematch. On paper, A is in a good position, as he's won his last two games, is now rocking 3 territories and has bought some better gear and an extra guy. But he's a couple of guys down from his fight against C, while B, who's lost every game so far, is fighting fit on a full roster. It's probably a fairly even match.

Runaway gangs are going to kick in much later in the campaign than gang creation (and always did, in Oldcromunda as well) once someone's managed to assemble a gang which doesn't have one or two good fighters, but a core wrecking crew of 3 or 4 guys who you can consistently expect to turn up and have (Oldcromunda) terrifying skills or (Newcromunda) gear that would make a space marine look underequipped. If one or two of those guys are out of commission, it's an issue but not a catastrophe. This is one of the reasons Spyrers were so dangerous - they started out as this. The rest of the gang becomes essentially filler. Campaign problems arise when one gang has reached that stage.

An issue that Newcromunda does have that exacerbates this is that the underdog system it has is a bit rubbish. I think this is meant to be mitigated by Newcromunda campaigns being generally short, with a group running half a dozen campaigns during a year (possibly linked - i.e. run a Territories campaign followed by a Rackets campaign followed by a Law and Misrule campaign, with each gang starting fresh each campaign with "splinter" gangs. Oldcromunda basically assumed that you'd be running one campaign for ages, so the underdog system allowed newer gangs to get up to the campaign's power level relatively quickly. The way the campaign is written, with the 3 weeks/1 week/3 weeks split seems to be based on the assumption that most players will be in a club with one or two game nights a week, with each gang therefore playing 6 to 12 games. By the time it's getting really unbalanced, the campaign is over.

Why does this matter, and how does it compare to other campaign games?

Well, Blood Bowl for instance is a REALLY bad counter-example. Blood Bowl will usually be played in a league or tournament, and in addition to your team's advancement there's the league position to consider. Each game in Blood Bowl matters. If you're through to the Quarter or Semi finals of a tournament, if you lose you're out. Therefore you need a fairly robust balancing system to ensure that, in any given game, both Coaches are competing based more on skill level rather than how advanced their players are. It'll never be perfect - and the fact that Blood Bowl has Tier 1, 2 and 3 teams is an open acknowledgement of this - but due to how the game is played it's important to have this sort of short term, game-by-game balancing in place.

Necromunda, however, one game doesn't matter. Not really - it's a true campaign. If you're powergaming, you should be powergaming to try to build up that wrecking crew. More likely you're in it for the ride, and the concept of "winning" a campaign doesn't actually make sense.

Do I think the Necromunda campaign system as written works well for long-haul campaigns? No I don't.

Do I think older games did a better job of balancing this (Oldcromunda, Gorkamorka, Mordheim) - Sort of? But only in the sense that, particularly in Mordheim, the "out of game" campaign bit, which was almost completely random, would produce such huge swings on the players that it was essentially disconnected from what happened on the table. You could tip the odds, but everyone was pretty much equally at the mercy of the dice gods.

Blood Bowl, as discussed, is a completely different thing.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 17:23:26


Post by: Baxx


 Easy E wrote:
So what's your point?

What is your proposed solution?

As I said, I want to establish the fact that current Necromunda has a fundemantal flaw compared to all other campaigns from the most comparable games. It's not evident that everyone agrees with this, as can be witnessed in this thread.

Solutions have been discussed far and wide, I made my choices publically in Bookromunda so don't need to repeat that here, but I can give you a couple of keywords that should be well known for those who played Necromunda longer than 4 years: income tax, underdog XP bonus and giant killer bonus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Racerguy180 wrote:

Necromunda works best with an independent arbiter. Some of the most fun I had playing OG necro was running the campaign and not playing in it.

That's besides the point and not really relevant. Do you prefer a balanced campaign with arbitrator or an unbalanced campaign with arbitrator? An additional benefit of a balanced campaign is that it runs smooth without arbitrators.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don’t think anyone is denying Necromunda campaigns can quickly become unbalanced.

What we are saying is “this is where a GM comes in”.

Someone running the campaign and for my tastes, ideally not competing in the campaign (to ensure they’re as impartial as possible).

But why not have a balanced campaign instead? Here is a quote from someone who says it better than me:

You know, when you bring up legitimate issues with balance, campaign progression, etc. and some respond by pointing out that fixing those issues is the arbitrator's job, I believe they are missing something crucial:

There is a huge difference between a system that is designed to be fair but is random enough that it will sometimes require an arbitrator to intervene and set things right, and a system that is inherently unfair and requires the arbitrator to intervene constantly.


I'm relatively ok with having to bring my car to the garage for maintenance once a year, but I would object to having someone constantly work on it, including while I'm driving it!






Automatically Appended Next Post:
chaos0xomega wrote:
Theres a huge critical flaw in this in that you assume only two players, and have also naively extrapolated that you can assume the players represent two groups instead (i.e. a winning group and a losing group).

If you have 4 players in a campaign, and in the second round the two winners from the first game face off against eachother, one of them needs to lose - ergo you do not suddenly produce this growth trend that you defined for all "winners" bas ed on the first game.Same with the two losers facing off - one of them needs to win, ergo that breaks the trend. You will not always have a person who won all their previous games facing off against a person who lost all their previous games. This implements "noise" into the trend that generally acts to prevent a runaway victor as indicated in your trends - more players usually means more noise.

As others have pointed out your analysis also fails to take into account other factors/"degrees" of victory/defeat (i.e. won the game but half your team is permanently dead and their upgrades/equipment permanently gone, etc.) which throws a wrench in the works.

In general, I am inclined to agree that the campaign systems are not well designed on the surface and pick winners and losers, but not to the extent that your simplified analysis indicates.

Two winners face off in the 2nd battle. For the example they are identical, one random player wins and now has 3 territories. The other loses and have 2 (or 1 depending of if it was stolen or not).
So we end up in the same situation, one gang has won all and accumulated most, 1 has lost all accumulated exponentially lower, the rest are gradients in between the 2 extremes. You can add as many players you want, same applies.

Do you thing other campaigns are exponential or linear? You think new Necromunda campaign is exponential or linear?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 18:05:17


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


There’s also player pairing to consider.

Someone not in the spirit of things might simply go up against the weedier Gangs as often as possible. Get some easy and profitable wins under their belt.

A GM can prevent this. As ever there are multiple ways you can go about this. I prefer to have my players submit their gang’s preference in secret. If I have predetermined turf for them to scrap over, they each pick on, and will end up fighting whoever else went for that. If no-one else went for it, that’s when I as the GM can field something NPC. This ensures everyone gets a game, and somewhat prevents the cherry picking of fights.

And remember. You’re only ever one disastrous game from plummeting in the standings. A single well placed grenade can scatter multiple Gangers off a walk way like 9 pins, and let the resultant plummet do the real damage. More expensive models can be mass attacked, and suffer the indignant kicking that a Coup De Grace.

This is all part and parcel of what Necromunda is. It goes further than simply “win each game”. If you’re not getting into the Narrative, Necromunda, like GorkaMorka and Mordheim probably isn’t the game you’re looking for.

A GM or Arbitrator is an essential part of it.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 18:12:53


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


Gorkamorka is pretty fun cause you can just call someone a git if they’re bein unorky, trying ya give you a bad fight.
I guess unless they’re playin muties lol.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 18:32:25


Post by: Racerguy180


But the campaign shouldn't need to be balanced. Should it be better "balanced", of course but until necro dies again(officially) expect this trend to continue.
Playing a cooperative game like Necromunda without a 3rd party governing it is lacking something.
It's kinda like playing DND without a GM. Weird and you can do it but not as enriching as one with.

I get that you don't like how the campaign is set up and can understand not seeing the need for an Arbiter if system is fair/balanced.

The reason I see a need for an Arbiter is that they are the balancing tool & represent the unseen hand of Lord Helmwar.

One Gang gets to big for its breeches, Arbiter sends in a Palanite sweep thru their territory or like previously stated a couple gangs tag-team the front-runner.

This is significantly easier to do if there is an impartial person keeping tabs & helping/hindering those that need it.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/11/30 23:12:34


Post by: Baxx


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Gorkamorka is pretty fun cause you can just call someone a git if they’re bein unorky, trying ya give you a bad fight.
I guess unless they’re playin muties lol.

Gorka Morka, like all other related campaigns (except new Necromunda) has self-balancing mechanics. Which makes them fun for all without random intervention.

First establish the facts:
-all campaigns other than new necromunda has income tax, spiralling expenses, underdog xp bonus, giant killer bonus
-new necromunda doesn't have any balancing mechanics
-all campaigns other than new necromunda has linear growth
-new necromunda has exponential growth

New necromunda is designed to spiral out of control. No other campaigns are. This is the fundamental flaw - a fact!

Doesn't matter how hard you cry for GM or arbitrator, some campaigns work smooth without. Should all campaigns work smooth from the core? Or should some crash and burn without ad-hoc interventions from some random 3rd person?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Racerguy180 wrote:

The reason I see a need for an Arbiter is that they are the balancing tool & represent the unseen hand of Lord Helmwar.

Do you see a need for arbiter in blood bowl?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Racerguy180 wrote:
But the campaign shouldn't need to be balanced.

Let me put it a different way: The most important aspect of a campaign is balance


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

If you’re not getting into the Narrative, Necromunda, like GorkaMorka and Mordheim probably isn’t the game you’re looking for.

You're making some bold claims here! Did you keep in mind that old Necromunda like GorkaMorka and Morhdeim have linear growth? They have self-balancing mechanics? Compare that to new necromunda: Exponential growth. No self-balancing mechanics.

What is it about these facts you don't udnerstand?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Graphite wrote:

An issue that Newcromunda does have that exacerbates this is that the underdog system it has is a bit rubbish. I think this is meant to be mitigated by Newcromunda campaigns being generally short, with a group running half a dozen campaigns during a year (possibly linked - i.e. run a Territories campaign followed by a Rackets campaign followed by a Law and Misrule campaign, with each gang starting fresh each campaign with "splinter" gangs. Oldcromunda basically assumed that you'd be running one campaign for ages, so the underdog system allowed newer gangs to get up to the campaign's power level relatively quickly. The way the campaign is written, with the 3 weeks/1 week/3 weeks split seems to be based on the assumption that most players will be in a club with one or two game nights a week, with each gang therefore playing 6 to 12 games. By the time it's getting really unbalanced, the campaign is over.

Thank you, exactly right! New necromunda has exponential growth without self-balancing mechanics, so the only solution is to cut it short.

Unlike old Necromunda. All campaign-based games! Blood Bowl, Mordheim, GorkaMorka.

Imagine a Wood Elf team in Blood Bowl winning 5 matches in a row, only to be stomped by the commissioner who makes a 2000TV chaos kill-team all with mighty blow, frenzy, guard, tackle and whatnot. Who would think that is fun?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 02:18:38


Post by: Rihgu


I've found that tactics cards like Click, History of Violence, and Dangerous Footing can be very useful for taking out a turbo-gang's turbo-best turbo-fighter and bringing their runaway gang rating down to your level. And hey, if they want to do the same thing to you... well you took out their 800 credit monster fighter and they took out... your 180 credit monster fighter. One team lost a lot more than the other...


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 04:36:33


Post by: Racerguy180


Baxx wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Racerguy180 wrote:

The reason I see a need for an Arbiter is that they are the balancing tool & represent the unseen hand of Lord Helmwar.

Do you see a need for arbiter in blood bowl?

A League commissioner sounds like an appropriate job.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Racerguy180 wrote:
But the campaign shouldn't need to be balanced.

Let me put it a different way: The most important aspect of a campaign is balance


Why? Personally don't think I've ever played in a campaign that was what you refer to as "balance".
You seem to be laser-focused on that, can you give an example of how you would create this magic "balance" in Necro? Linear progression and progression for progressions sake are just illusions of balance. I'm all for progression but there should also be a risk of regression. I'm not talking about losing a character & weapons, that is really equally punishing to a gang. The x factor of having a custom tailored "balancing" system is what keeps the gangs in check and a campaign from running away.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 06:49:05


Post by: Baxx


As I've said, I need a common understand of the facts.

Would you say a campaign could be designed to be exponential?
Would you say a campaign could be designed to be linear?
Would you say a campaign could be designed to include self-balancing mechanics?
Would you say a campaign could be designed without self-balancing mechanics?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 10:40:14


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


I don’t think you’ve ever played GorkaMorka or Mordheim, have you?

Both of those had the same issues as Necromunda.

The sole mitigating factor in Mordheim was henchmen being limited to a single advance in any stat, and levelling as a group.

Even then? I always played as Reiklanders. Gimme that delicious BS4 from the off, and most opposing warbands would struggle to get close enough to smash my head in.

You still had Warbands pulling away from the pack, and settling into a position of near unassailable dominance against everyone but other campaign leaders - the henchmen thing merely slowed it a teensy bit. My characters still got sickeningly hard, and I’d still have better Henchmen than you (trust me, once Reiklander Bows are BS5, I can then focus on turning them into nasty prospects in HTH too, because I only need that one advance).

I really don’t know why you’re so resistant to the concept of a campaign having an independent GM to run things. I’ve literally never, ever seen a GW campaign run without a GM, and only rarely where they were involved (which is a bad, bad idea).


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 11:46:30


Post by: Baxx


You don't think?!? You have yet to participate in this discussion honestly. And to set aside all your lies, opinions and what you think or not, I'll put it out bluntly since asking questions leads nowhere. Here are the facts:

-I've played all related campaigns of all related games

Now onto each individual game!

Mordheim:
-Has income tax (new necromunda does not have income tax) - this is the most important and mitigating factor!
-linear progression (new necromunda has exponential progression)
-underdog xp bonus

GorkaMorka:
-Has income tax (new necromunda does not have income tax)
-linear progression (new necromunda has exponential progression)


Blood Bowl:
-Has sprialling expenses (new necromunda does not have any tax on credits)
-linear progression (new necromunda has exponential progression)
-Has petty cash (new necromunda has no meaningful/working petty cash)

New Necromunda:
-Has no balancing mechanics (unlike all other campaigns)
-Has exponential progression (not linear, unlike all other campaigns)


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 12:02:14


Post by: Vorian


I don't know why anyone is arguing with Baxx. What he's saying is pretty obviously true.

If there are no mechanics to give you diminishing returns as you get bigger you will experience a snowball effect.

Almost everything that's come before have had these, new Necro doesn't. The old systems were generally bad, the new system is worse.

Saying you need a GM is a weak response. There is absolutely no reason to have poor campaign rules.

A GM should be making things interesting for the campaign (if you have one), not be responsible for 99% of campaign balance.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 12:12:51


Post by: Baxx


Vorian wrote:
I don't know why anyone is arguing with Baxx. What he's saying is pretty obviously true.

If there are no mechanics to give you diminishing returns as you get bigger you will experience a snowball effect.

Almost everything that's come before have had these, new Necro doesn't. The old systems were generally bad, the new system is worse.

Saying you need a GM is a weak response. There is absolutely no reason to have poor campaign rules.

A GM should be making things interesting for the campaign (if you have one), not be responsible for 99% of campaign balance.

Thank you! Simple as that.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 12:23:28


Post by: Albertorius


Vorian wrote:
I don't know why anyone is arguing with Baxx. What he's saying is pretty obviously true.

If there are no mechanics to give you diminishing returns as you get bigger you will experience a snowball effect.

Almost everything that's come before have had these, new Necro doesn't. The old systems were generally bad, the new system is worse.

Saying you need a GM is a weak response. There is absolutely no reason to have poor campaign rules.

A GM should be making things interesting for the campaign (if you have one), not be responsible for 99% of campaign balance.

I mean, both things are true...

This is the same with RPGs, actually. A GM is needed (well, usually), but the rules must be there, you're paying for something after all.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 12:30:35


Post by: Vorian


Sure, a GM should be there to decide - oh, this round there's a zombie invasion and you have d6 zombies spawned on a 6 each turn.

The GM should not be there to eyeball the relative acceptable strengths and advances of a gang each round.

Its not like this is particularly controversial, its pretty standard across all manner of games.

Rather than the graphs in Baxx's original post you want them to look like this :



Edit: You could achieve this by doing something like introducing an upkeep charge of (#territories - 2) credits per territory you own for example, if you work off Baxx's 10 credits per territory example.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 13:03:30


Post by: Baxx


Vorian wrote:
Sure, a GM should be there to decide - oh, this round there's a zombie invasion and you have d6 zombies spawned on a 6 each turn.

The GM should not be there to eyeball the relative acceptable strengths and advances of a gang each round.

Its not like this is particularly controversial, its pretty standard across all manner of games.

Rather than the graphs in Baxx's original post you want them to look like this :

Edit: You could achieve this by doing something like introducing an upkeep charge of (#territories - 2) credits per territory you own for example, if you work off Baxx's 10 credits per territory example.

Exactly right, thanks again! I was unable to put it clearly as you manage in so few lines.

A campaign should be DESIGNED to create a curve like you show. Instead, the new Necromunda campaign is DESIGNED to have the opposite curve. That's independent of GM and so GM isn't really relevant for establishing that fact.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 13:31:40


Post by: H.B.M.C.


 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
This is why Necromunda needs an active GM.
I reject this premise. Necromunda shouldn't need a GM to run correctly, and exponential growth is something that needs to be curtailed within the rules themselves, not by someone making up house rules on the fly.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 13:47:53


Post by: Vorian


Baxx wrote:
Vorian wrote:
Sure, a GM should be there to decide - oh, this round there's a zombie invasion and you have d6 zombies spawned on a 6 each turn.

The GM should not be there to eyeball the relative acceptable strengths and advances of a gang each round.

Its not like this is particularly controversial, its pretty standard across all manner of games.

Rather than the graphs in Baxx's original post you want them to look like this :

Edit: You could achieve this by doing something like introducing an upkeep charge of (#territories - 2) credits per territory you own for example, if you work off Baxx's 10 credits per territory example.

Exactly right, thanks again! I was unable to put it clearly as you manage in so few lines.

A campaign should be DESIGNED to create a curve like you show. Instead, the new Necromunda campaign is DESIGNED to have the opposite curve. That's independent of GM and so GM isn't really relevant for establishing that fact.


Not to be overly mean, but I don't think there was a conscious decision to have it work like this. I think it's more likely the system was made without really thinking how it would develop.

Its something players would come up with rather than a game designer who understands what they are doing and why they are doing it.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 13:58:50


Post by: Baxx


Of course, I can't know it was designed this way intentionally. It may have been designed this way unintentionally. But I find it very suspicious that someone who works for GW and claims they played related games in the past are not aware about key self-balancing campaign mechanics of all previous campaign-based games. They simply dropped all of it and called it a day.

And for the sake of being fair, there are some attempts at mitigating the problem. There was a very poorly written white dwarf article mimicking the blood bowl petty cash system. There are favours which are very random and requires heavy book-keeping. The alliances could in theory help, but that's flawed as well (only some alliances differ depending of the gang, and they use reputation as measure). Then you have agents which are also sub-optimal in similar ways.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 14:19:42


Post by: Vorian


I can only imagine it wasn't designed on purpose because no one in their right mind is making a campaign where snowballing is likely as the initial design goal.

You must surely start out with the aim that all gangs will tend towards a middle ground.

To do this you need diminishing returns at the top and catch up mechanisms at the bottom.



Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 14:23:25


Post by: Baxx


Yes, similar to rubber banding effect.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 14:24:39


Post by: Graphite


Baxx wrote:
As I've said, I need a common understand of the facts.

Would you say a campaign could be designed to be exponential?
Would you say a campaign could be designed to be linear?
Would you say a campaign could be designed to include self-balancing mechanics?
Would you say a campaign could be designed without self-balancing mechanics?


Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Now, the more complicated answer to these - is Necromunda any of these things?

If my reading of your first post is correct, you're assuming essentially a triangular distribution for for the income of the gang that wins every game, with a cumulative income of:

((g^2 + g)/2)*10+10+5

Where g is the number of games played. 10 is the income per territory, and 5 is the game reward.

This is, obviously, an exponential distribution - it has an exponent (g^2)

This only works when you have the assumption that after every game, you get a territory. Given that there are generally a limited number of territories in a campaign, number of players x 3, this can't be true. In the worst case in a campaign of, say, 3 players:

Assume Player A never loses
Assume Player B never wins against A, but always wins against C
Assume Player C never wins and somehow doesn't get massively annoyed and go do something else

After 9 games, assuming everyone plays each other at the same rate:

Player A has 6 territories, B has 3 territories, C has none. (Starting settlements excluded)

The (g^2) link is now broken - at this point, there are no more territories to hand out. Income becomes linear. Unless A keeps winning against B in the "takeover" phase, at which point income becomes linear after a further 3 games between A and B.

So yes - given this very specific set of circumstances, and mainly during the initial stages of a campaign, the growth will be exponential. After that it will become linear, though the linear growth gradient of the the gang which "won" the exponential phase will be greater than the gradient of the other gangs.

So - how did older and other campaign games avoid this and what can be done about it? What does this mathematical nonsense actually mean?

If we assume that other campaigns have a linear slope, it's a relatively simple matter to balance the campaign. Give a "new joiner" or somebody who's fallen way behind (maybe they were ill or on holiday) a large injection of territories so that their income graph gradient will roughly match the gangs already in the campaign, give them an initial cash boost so that they've got roughly the same gang cash as the gangs which have been accumulating since the start of the game.

Who does this? The GM.

"But wait, Graphite!" you cry, "You've entirely missed the point! Our campaign doesn't have a GM! Our campaign shouldn't need a GM! And anyway what about the runaway gang who are dominating the campaign because they came out on top in the exponential growth phase!"

To which I reply - you do have a GM. Who's letting this extra player join the campaign? The existing players. The GM duties are spread between them, they are a Gestalt. A GGM if you will. I'm assuming that since you're playing a campaign together you're talking to each other on at least a semi regular basis! Does this require everyone's agreement? I dunno, I've never met the people you play games with.

Equally, if somebody's absolutely running away with the campaign - Surely the GGM is going to notice? Who is this player in your group who derives joy from totally stomping on everyone else? Why on earth does anyone still play with them?

And if somebody's gang has been absolutely banjaxed through no real fault of their own - surely they will speak up to say "My gang is crippled, guys, can I start over?" Are you, as a group, going to say no? Do you like your fellow players to be miserable? Of course you don't.

So how did Old Necromunda avoid this? Well, firstly - there was no exponential phase - for income. Territories changed hands extremely infrequently, and even then it was fairly rare that you had enough gangers to work all the territory you. The game on the table had very little connection to your campaign income etc. If everyone started off at the same time (ish) time, generally everyone would have the same income.

However, for XP - the individual gangers would absolutely gain XP exponentially. The more experienced you were, the more likely you were to do things that gained you XP. So in some ways, old Necromunda was even more exponential!

Also note that the underdog bonus as implemented in the previous version of Necromunda does not help you win that individual game - it grants you additional rewards for playing a game that you are likely to lose. Most importantly it gave your gangers additional XP (because let's face it - nobody EVER got a worthwhile "giantkiller" bonus payment).

So I think your argument that "Necromunda is exponential now but it wasn't before" is flawed. It was always exponential - just on XP rather than on cash. And as I've previously stated, I think the current underdog system is less good than the old one was, and needs more GM or GGM intervention. Given that the fact that cash is king in New Necromunda and XP is less important - if anything it should be more easy to balance a campaign now than it used to be!

I think GW tried to use Rep as another balancing factor, but I don't think it quite works.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 14:28:54


Post by: Pacific


I will get splinters in my arse here by sitting on the fence and saying both sides of the discussion are correct

- New Necromunda (N18) is lacking the balancing mechanics that other games of its ilk (including the Classic edition) have held previously; this includes wealth taxes, handicap systems, randomisation of advancement. This means, playing out of the box with only the rules as they are written, anyone playing it quickly realises that it's not fit for purpose as a campaign system as victorious gangs get stronger. After a few games, no-one wants to get kerb stomped by a mega toughness Goliath gang kitted out like a Deathwatch killteam, and the campaign dies.
- There have been a stream of constant, relentless discussions on the need for a GM or Arbiter for this game with a campaign in the Necromunda community. The majority consensus is generally that the game has the potential for a better campaign if an Arbiter takes part and the gaming group is chilled about it. If you want a tournament format, you will probable struggle with the game as it is out of the box and it is arguably not playing to the system's strengths.
- There is way, way too much material now released to run a cogent campaign if you try and run all of the expansions, books etc at once. People who live and breathe Necromunda as their main hobby struggle, for people who dabble it is an impossible task. I tried recently and my head exploded like the guy from Scanners. Instead the general advice (from people that know a lot more than me) is to pick and choose a few bits from the new releases and temper them with some fan-made rule amendments, which blunt the most egregious rule feth-ups. Have a look on Yaktribe and there are a number of good threads on this.

My view is that GW have released Necromunda as a veteran community/fan service release. It's designed to appeal to 30/40+ year-old gamers who played the game first time around. GW are fully mining all of the historical miniatures and releasing them in lovely new miniatures that they know those veterans will want to collect (anecdotally I know of a few people that have collected the miniatures, don't play any other game, and are quite likely never to use these miniatures in a proper game - but have bought them for nostalgia's sake).
But, the 'miniatures first' (i.e. just release everything, worry about the rules afterwards) while cool for miniatures collectors, has created a nightmare for anyone that wants to play the game and use everything. There doesn't seem to be any central control or oversight of the rules, and so they have ended up as a kind of stew with everything thrown into it.

The game is amazing but has a lot of caveats attached, for me these would be: Play with your mates (not PUGs), none of them can be WAAC as the game is too easy to break, have a trusted arbiter, use a hybrid rule system (N18 game for the standard mechanics but bring in the pre and post game from the classic edition, for balancing purposes) and do as much planning as you can for narrative events.

I would say absolutely Necromunda has given me some of my favourite ever wargaming experiences, certainly in the classic edition. The new edition has helped with the lovely new miniatures, but brought in a lot more pit-traps that need to be successfully navigated so the game can be enjoyed. Just my tuppence worth


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 14:54:13


Post by: Vorian


Here's a simple question then.

Are there any issues that better rules are incapable of solving and are only able to be solved by a GM?

If rules can function well without a GM, surely we all agree that is preferable?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 15:30:58


Post by: Graphite


I do agree with that yes.

I think it's agreed that GW's rules as written currently don't solve the issues with the campaigns that people want to play (long campaigns with gangs dropping in and out)

I think this is less because it's impossible to do, and more because GW's intention was to have multiple sequential short campaigns.

(This also makes sense from a sales point of view, incidentally - you're more likely to buy and start a new gang for each campaign, which will make them more money than gradually evolving one gang for years)

I think we're possibly having difficulty framing exactly which problem we're trying to solve in a long campaign by framing the discussion in terms of Necromunda having exponential gang experience game and no other game ever having that. I don't think that's true.

I think it's just more obvious in Necromunda because the current exponential part of a campaign results in a gang having obvious on-table bling, rather than in other games where the bling is hidden on your roster sheet in terms of skills, stat boosts and XP.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 15:55:30


Post by: Baxx


 Graphite wrote:

Now, the more complicated answer to these - is Necromunda any of these things?

Amazing, an honest answer - I'd almost given up hope earlier. You understood my argument and improved upon it. Yes, you show clearly that the whole campaign is not exponential, but there are an exponential component to it. Well done. To my defence, I didn't set out to make it perfect, but to prove a point. A point someone here probably still haven't understood properly.

When you say "who enjoys stomping everyone else", it's one of my best friends going back 20 years of wargaming. And it's not something they wanted, but it happened accidentally when they made their new plastic van saars with plasma, and I made my goliaths with various loadouts including many pistols and close combat weapons from the FW weapon packs. That's not a topic I'm interested to discuss here, suffice to say it ended exponentially bad from my perspective. It didn't affect our friendship, just putting necromunda on pause with a fading enthusiasm. Because who am I to say to my opponent that he can't have all those plasmas? That he can't have all that BS2+? We don't play like that in any other game. That's not what my entire gaming experience is about.

One of the main expectations I had for this game back in 2017 was a solid campaign. Turned out nothing was solid at that time. A lot of things have been fleshed out since, more gangs, more weapons ++. But I've yet to see a proper campaign for this game, and without one, there's not much to build on (for me at least). And I'm reminded every time one of these books come out with a "new" campaign, having the exact same structure and problems as all previous campaigns. Dominion, Law & Misrule, Uprising and now Outlander.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 16:03:20


Post by: Vorian


The short campaigns suffer from snowballing too though? I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion over what is exponential or not, but you can snowball.

Solving it for short campaigns then allows perpetual campaigns.


The point about skills/xp contributing to the balance problem is valid, hopefully no one is suggesting BB, Mordeheim, old Necro campaign rules couldn't be improved upon - its just that lack of an upkeep mechanic is a pretty major flaw that they don't suffer from.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 16:07:51


Post by: Baxx


 Pacific wrote:

My view is that GW have released Necromunda as a veteran community/fan service release. It's designed to appeal to 30/40+ year-old gamers who played the game first time around. GW are fully mining all of the historical miniatures and releasing them in lovely new miniatures that they know those veterans will want to collect (anecdotally I know of a few people that have collected the miniatures, don't play any other game, and are quite likely never to use these miniatures in a proper game - but have bought them for nostalgia's sake).

I would be exactly such a person, however my impression is opposite. Those who knew and loved the old game cannot stand all the new stuff. Sure, the minis are nice, and I like collecting them because I was too young and too poor to get much of the official minis back in the day. My impression is that Necromunda is super popular today to people who doesn't know what bloodbowl or gorkamorka is. People who doesn't know that a necromunda gang shouldn't be better equipped than space marine devastators. Some times I feel very alienated when discussing online with other necromunda players - we don't share any relevant/common gaming experience at all. To me, new necromunda feels like a stab in the back to those who kept it alive throughout all these years. I'm being pessimistic here, so take this with a grain of salt.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Vorian wrote:
Here's a simple question then.

Are there any issues that better rules are incapable of solving and are only able to be solved by a GM?

If rules can function well without a GM, surely we all agree that is preferable?

This is the way. My impression is that not all can agree on this. Because GM.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 16:59:00


Post by: Graphite


Baxx wrote:
 Graphite wrote:

Now, the more complicated answer to these - is Necromunda any of these things?

Amazing, an honest answer - I'd almost given up hope earlier. You understood my argument and improved upon it. Yes, you show clearly that the whole campaign is not exponential, but there are an exponential component to it. Well done. To my defence, I didn't set out to make it perfect, but to prove a point. A point someone here probably still haven't understood properly.


I like having a good ol' root around in the mathematics. I started out convinced that by mathematical usage what you were describing wasn't exponential growth, banged together a spreadsheet and looked up the formulae for a triangular distribution and discovered that to my surprise, yeah, it is exponential. Which was a neat thing to work out.

I still think there's a large degree of "wobble" in it even before we reach the linear phase as I don't think the campaign leader will win every single game, but for the purposes of our discussion - yeah. It's exponential.

Is that bad? When everyone follows the same exponential curve (roughly) - no. It's just a thing. Once you can see a thing you can try to work out what to do about it.

When you say "who enjoys stomping everyone else", it's one of my best friends going back 20 years of wargaming. And it's not something they wanted, but it happened accidentally when they made their new plastic van saars with plasma, and I made my goliaths with various loadouts including many pistols and close combat weapons from the FW weapon packs. That's not a topic I'm interested to discuss here, suffice to say it ended exponentially bad from my perspective. It didn't affect our friendship, just putting necromunda on pause with a fading enthusiasm. Because who am I to say to my opponent that he can't have all those plasmas? That he can't have all that BS2+? We don't play like that in any other game. That's not what my entire gaming experience is about.


Ah. Fair enough, criticism withdrawn - an unfortunate case where modelling for theme happens to coincide with modelling for power. That's really difficult to mitigate against in any setting or game, where powerful things tend to act more as force multipliers (exponential again!) rather than a linear increase in power. A classic example I came up against in 3rd/4th edition 40k was a guy with three Hammerheads. This is not an insane army by any means - it's a light tank squadron with backup - but I had a foot troop and light vehicle Ork army. Taking down 1 hammerhead? Sure. Three? Against that many submunition pie-plates? Not a chance in hell.

I don't know what you can actually do about that, (well, OK, I have some ideas) but as you say it's not the topic of the current discussion.

Vorian wrote:
The short campaigns suffer from snowballing too though? I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion over what is exponential or not, but you can snowball.

Solving it for short campaigns then allows perpetual campaigns.

The point about skills/xp contributing to the balance problem is valid, hopefully no one is suggesting BB, Mordeheim, old Necro campaign rules couldn't be improved upon - its just that lack of an upkeep mechanic is a pretty major flaw that they don't suffer from.


Whether snowballing is due to an exponential distribution or otherwise doesn't matter too much, until you're trying to develop a mathematical way to fix it.

I'd actually think of it the other way around, though - if you solve it for long campaigns it will automatically never be a problem for short campaigns, except that if you push it too far so that (for example) nobody will be able to deploy an Ambot until they've got a couple of dozen games in, it could get annoying. People have the shiny plastic toy soldiers. They want to be able to put them on the table without having to wait months to do it. It's not necessarily as simple as "A long campaign is just a short campaign that lasts for ages".

I don't think the upkeep mechanic is necessarily the problem. As I've said, I think that in Oldcromunda income was essentially flat, with a slow increase. Newcromunda XP is essentially flat with a slow increase. They're both throttle back by either being "taxed" (Old) or really slow to gain (New, with tax included in the fact that you gain advances slower the more XP you have)

I think the problem is that the exponential XP in Oldcromunda was counteracted by massive underdog XP bonuses. Newcromunda doesn't have an equivalent where the exponential (ish) income is counteracted by big underdog cash bonuses.

Essentially, it looked like Old Necromunda was balancing a campaign by penalising high performing gangs to prevent them getting too far ahead, while in fact it was balancing a campaign by giving extremely high rewards to lower level gangs until they caught up.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 17:16:07


Post by: Vorian


Old Necro had normalised income - which was then also reduced by gang size. As Baxx was alluding to above, it was very different and with far less income once you got going.

The XP in Old Necro does have diminishing returns though. The XP required between each level grows exponentially so you gradually improve less as you accumulate xp, until ultimately you hit the max cap.

The system in new Necro diminishes less because its only repeat characteristics that gain the 2xp tax


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 17:19:11


Post by: Pacific


Baxx wrote:
 Pacific wrote:

My view is that GW have released Necromunda as a veteran community/fan service release. It's designed to appeal to 30/40+ year-old gamers who played the game first time around. GW are fully mining all of the historical miniatures and releasing them in lovely new miniatures that they know those veterans will want to collect (anecdotally I know of a few people that have collected the miniatures, don't play any other game, and are quite likely never to use these miniatures in a proper game - but have bought them for nostalgia's sake).

I would be exactly such a person, however my impression is opposite. Those who knew and loved the old game cannot stand all the new stuff. Sure, the minis are nice, and I like collecting them because I was too young and too poor to get much of the official minis back in the day. My impression is that Necromunda is super popular today to people who doesn't know what bloodbowl or gorkamorka is. People who doesn't know that a necromunda gang shouldn't be better equipped than space marine devastators. Some times I feel very alienated when discussing online

If rules can function well without a GM, surely we all agree that is preferable?


Yes I know from reading around the community there are still a fairly sizeable proportion of Classic players that feel the same way. That are still using the Classic ruleset because they really don't like what has been done to the new game, quite often with those criticisms around either poor balancing of the campaign or just badly written rules.

In some ways we are very fortunate there is such a passionate community really into Necromunda. Eventually GW will stop releasing stuff for it, but that community will look at the rules, blunt the sharp edges, introduce balancing mechanisms and the like to make the game more playable - that's already happening in fact (and I really recommend to anyone reading this, but thinking of starting a campaign, to go to Yaktribe and look at the Community version of the game at the very least).


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 17:57:54


Post by: Graphite


Vorian wrote:
Old Necro had normalised income - which was then also reduced by gang size. As Baxx was alluding to above, it was very different and with far less income once you got going.


Sort of? It certainly wasn't a cap on higher rated gangs compared to lower rated gangs since no one, EVER, took a gang over 9 if they could avoid it (except outlanders) so everyone's income was fundamentally flat.

The XP in Old Necro does have diminishing returns though. The XP required between each level grows exponentially so you gradually improve less as you accumulate xp, until ultimately you hit the max cap.

The system in new Necro diminishes less because its only repeat characteristics that gain the 2xp tax


In Old necromunda that took a while to kick in though - Juves levelled up FAST - the first 4 levels were 5xp bands - and gangers kept levelling up pretty quickly (The next 4 bands). That's 7 advances before you start to see diminishing returns kick in and the next 7 advances are 20xp. It's only once you've got 14 advances that you start to reach the point where you need 40 xp to advance. And old Necromunda handed out XP like sweets - You got D6 just for showing up. A first game juve, who showed up and did a wounding hit (unlikely, but not unachievable) against a gang with a rating 200 higher, would go up 2 levels and possibly 3. (And that's assuming they lose! D6 + 4 + 5 - a juve who did NOTHING would gain an advance on a roll of 2 or more). Hell, in that circumstance the majority of your gangers would gain 1 advance.

200 difference in gang rating would be far from uncommon in a busy campaign. The rate at which underdog gangs could level up was meteoric. In the above example, a fresh juve in the higher rated gang would level up on a D6 roll of 6!

New Necromunda is a bit different, in that (as you say) there's no diminishing returns mechanic except for Stat improvements, and not even that for Juves. But good grief you have to work for those XP. You get an XP for putting someone out - not wounded, not downed, you actually have to take 'em off the board. And you get 1 XP for turning up. If you're a ganger, or a Juve/Prospect/Champion/Leader who wants to spend their XP on something actually useful you're looking at 6XP. That could, very easily, be 6 games before you even get your first advance. In Old Necro, with no underdog bonus, a ganger who has never achieved anything could reasonably expect to have gained 6D6 XP = 21 on average, and gained two advances. And he'll have been in 12 games, doing absolutely nothing, before his rate of advance slows. Just by existing he'll have added +42 to the gang rating.

Does that illustrate what I'm saying? Income and XP have effectively switched which one grows fast and which one remains fairly constant.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 18:47:44


Post by: Baxx


Racerguy180 wrote:

The reason I see a need for an Arbiter is that they are the balancing tool & represent the unseen hand of Lord Helmwar.

One Gang gets to big for its breeches, Arbiter sends in a Palanite sweep thru their territory

Someone at yaktribe described this as the blue shell



Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 19:02:26


Post by: Vorian




Yes, so you had virtual caps at 9 or 12 members and then those members would start to level much more slowly once your gang was mature, so a gang would start to level out in power.

Meanwhile a gang far behind the average gang would a) not be too many members behind, b) would have their power catch up much quicker and c) not be that much behind in income.

I don't want to say old Necro campaigns were good at preserving competitiveness between the gangs because these mechanics weren't perfect. You could still get huge disparity. But there was an effort to combat snowballing.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 21:15:48


Post by: Baxx


Thank you. This will be a nice future reference whenever somebody doesn't understand the difference between new Necromunda and all other campaign games..


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/01 21:49:05


Post by: Easy E


Baxx wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
So what's your point?

What is your proposed solution?

As I said, I want to establish the fact that current Necromunda has a fundemantal flaw compared to all other campaigns from the most comparable games. It's not evident that everyone agrees with this, as can be witnessed in this thread.



What are the comparable games? Do they NOT have this flaw? Do you have the "proof" of that as well?

Edit: Also, your proposed "solutions" all ready exist in the old rules, so I am really confused about the purpose of this thread again?



Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 01:09:51


Post by: stratigo


 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For Necromunda, it depends on the Mission, and how exactly one achieves victory under the mission’s rules.

Winning should come with perks, of course it should. But losing shouldn’t mean you walk away empty handed.

This is why Necromunda needs an active GM.

A gang can pull away from the pack early on not just by winning their games (player skill based, that’s fine), but by lucky rolls on the injury table, decent income rolls and lucky dice when seeking rare equipment. The latter three are all luck based, and so the GM needs to keep abreast of how gangs are doing.

Likewise, I could win my first game by a country mile, but end up with say, a Heavy and a Gang Leader properly dead, their likely expensive equipment lost forevermore. I’m then at a massive disadvantage, as those aren’t commodities so easily replaced.

If one gang really does break away from the pack? The GM needs to be permissive of things not really catered for under the rules. For instance, two or more opposing gangs forming an alliance to kick the snot out of the campaign leader’s gang.

This shouldn’t be a way to punish someone who is leading. Rather, it’s a way to stop them getting complacent. To keep them on their toes and really push them.

In extreme cases, the GM can also unleash something Bloody Awful on the leader. Perhaps the local Enforcers are getting uncomfortable with so much power being concentrated, so decide to disrupt the gang’s activities. There are lots of ways the GM could do this. Perhaps the Guild decide to seize assets/territory for themselves. Maybe they get a visit from 20 or so very heavily armed and not at all caring Enforcers. Those are two which immediately spring to mind. The aim should only be to rein them in, not break the back of their gang.

The campaign isn’t just meant to tell a story. It’s meant to be fun and engaging for all partaking. It’s meant to be a challenge, and a sandbox to play in and explore.

Heck, when I run my campaign, with the backdrop being the early then ongoing exploration and exploitation of a newly opened dome? Any break away players can expect to get the riskiest missions. Yes they might walk away even stronger - but that depends just how nasty I want to get.

In the original Necromunda, my Cawdor often clawed their way to the top of the pile quite quickly. A self moderation I imposed was to face lower down or newer gangs armed only with Power Mauls. I’d still play hard, but as Power Mauls didn’t cause Serious Injury rolls, I could duff my opponent’s gang up without any risk of crippling them.

I still got my win and the territory. They got a boatload of experience helping their gang level up, their not insignificant underdog bonus, all at minimal risk.


Giving struggling gangs a boost is probably my favorite way. GW's added more'n a few tricks to do this with (but heck if I remember them all), but an arbitrator straight boosting is a solid choice


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 H.B.M.C. wrote:
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
This is why Necromunda needs an active GM.
I reject this premise. Necromunda shouldn't need a GM to run correctly, and exponential growth is something that needs to be curtailed within the rules themselves, not by someone making up house rules on the fly.


An arbitrator is a good idea, but should not be a crutch GW leans on to make their game less rigorously


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 08:39:59


Post by: Baxx


 Easy E wrote:
Baxx wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
So what's your point?

What is your proposed solution?

As I said, I want to establish the fact that current Necromunda has a fundemantal flaw compared to all other campaigns from the most comparable games. It's not evident that everyone agrees with this, as can be witnessed in this thread.



What are the comparable games? Do they NOT have this flaw? Do you have the "proof" of that as well?

Edit: Also, your proposed "solutions" all ready exist in the old rules, so I am really confused about the purpose of this thread again?


What are the comparable games? Hmm, I don't know, maybe those mentioned ad nauseum since the start?
They do Not have this flaw no. And yes it is proven.

If you are still confused, read the discussion again. Everything you ask is answered multiple times over. I'm used to forums where it's easier to paste pictures, if it was easy on dakka I'd post all the pictures from all the old games. But that's like a 10 min job I don't have time to do now to get them on dakka. You think it's controversial that Blood Bowl has linear growth? You think it's controversial that GorkaMorka has income tax? You think it's controversial that Mordheim as underdog xp bonus and giant killer bonus? You think it's controversial that new Necromunda has exponential growth (at least in parts) and doesn't have any of these self-balancing campaign mechanics? It shouldn't be. For anyone who have played at least some of these games, it should be glaringly obvious.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 09:47:22


Post by: Graphite


Baxx wrote:
Racerguy180 wrote:

The reason I see a need for an Arbiter is that they are the balancing tool & represent the unseen hand of Lord Helmwar.

One Gang gets to big for its breeches, Arbiter sends in a Palanite sweep thru their territory

Someone at yaktribe described this as the blue shell


That is absolutely a blue shell

Vorian wrote:


Yes, so you had virtual caps at 9 or 12 members and then those members would start to level much more slowly once your gang was mature, so a gang would start to level out in power.

Meanwhile a gang far behind the average gang would a) not be too many members behind, b) would have their power catch up much quicker and c) not be that much behind in income.

I don't want to say old Necro campaigns were good at preserving competitiveness between the gangs because these mechanics weren't perfect. You could still get huge disparity. But there was an effort to combat snowballing.


Thinking about it a bit more, you're right - the campaign system didn't just have a good catchup mechanic, the effects of higher XP causing slower levelling would kick in for higher level gangs. So both sides tend towards the middle, but I think crucially - the balancing mechanism to get lower level gangs up to the same level as others kicked in immediately, while the mechanism to slow down higher level gangs only kicked in later in the campaign. That allows everyone to feel that they're making progress from their starting point.

 Easy E wrote:
Baxx wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
So what's your point?

What is your proposed solution?

As I said, I want to establish the fact that current Necromunda has a fundemantal flaw compared to all other campaigns from the most comparable games. It's not evident that everyone agrees with this, as can be witnessed in this thread.



What are the comparable games? Do they NOT have this flaw? Do you have the "proof" of that as well?

Edit: Also, your proposed "solutions" all ready exist in the old rules, so I am really confused about the purpose of this thread again?



Yes, other games do have this flaw. But they had better counterbalancing systems.

And the purpose of this thread seems to be to discuss if this flaw exists and to try to frame exactly what the flaw is, and if a significant number of people think that it's fixable or indeed needs to be fixed. I don't think the subject of this thread is to find a solution.

(Because that would require house rules. And therefore the dreaded GM. Unless GW themselves develop a better campaign system, which they have shown absolutely no interest in doing)


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 09:56:48


Post by: Hellebore


The issue you've hit on is that BloodBowl has a team size, and necromunda does not.

The simplest way I've 'balanced' this is by saying that the 'cost' of a mission is the value of the smallest gang.

so while a larger richer gang has a wider range of models and weapons to choose from, the actual fight itself is more even.

Rather than my 15 dudes with 1500 gang rating taking on your 6 dudes with 300 gang rating...





Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 10:23:28


Post by: Pacific


Yes that's a very good point. I know we used to sometimes to the 'quickdraw' scenario (sorry I forget the name - the one where you just had a few gangers against each other, and had to roll to see who lost their nerve and shot first). It was a way of giving the lesser gangs a bit of a chance, although probably didn't change the outcome that often!

You definitely did used to get mega gangs in Classic edition, so there was still a lot of space for imbalance.

We used to mitigate it by having scenarios that made it harder for them, even 2 vs 1 at one point, but again for that you probably need a campaign overseer (I will say that, rather than arbiter) or at least players that are willing to be magnanimous if they are winning comfortably, and to give the lesser gangs a chance and allow the other players to have fun as well.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 10:27:05


Post by: Baxx


 Graphite wrote:

Thinking about it a bit more, you're right - the campaign system didn't just have a good catchup mechanic, the effects of higher XP causing slower levelling would kick in for higher level gangs. So both sides tend towards the middle, but I think crucially - the balancing mechanism to get lower level gangs up to the same level as others kicked in immediately, while the mechanism to slow down higher level gangs only kicked in later in the campaign. That allows everyone to feel that they're making progress from their starting point.

Yes, I enjoyed starting a new gang playing against a much stronger gang because it would propel my gang forward (xp underdog bonus). It wouldn't make me fall behind, I would get income regardless of the outcome and extra income if I won (giant killer bonus). I noticed this had changed very quickly in new Necromunda. A new gang is simply stomped without any catch-up mechanics.

Keep in mind that that in new Necromunda, the following correlates strongly:
Winning = more credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, XP, resources, less injuries and death
Losing = less credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, XP, resources, more injuries and death

A gang with only lasguns can cause injuries or death. But a gang with all boltguns will inflict more injuries and death.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 10:46:14


Post by: Vorian


 Hellebore wrote:
The issue you've hit on is that BloodBowl has a team size, and necromunda does not.

The simplest way I've 'balanced' this is by saying that the 'cost' of a mission is the value of the smallest gang.

so while a larger richer gang has a wider range of models and weapons to choose from, the actual fight itself is more even.

Rather than my 15 dudes with 1500 gang rating taking on your 6 dudes with 300 gang rating...



This is the second part of the equation really. You have the campaign balance and you have the scenario balance.

It is indeed possible to have horrifically unbalanced campaigns/leagues and restrict the scenarios to keep every battle/match fair.

Blood bowl for example has a very high level before teams begin slowing progress and its quite easy to enter a death spiral, so league balance is generally all over the place and you rely on "match balance" to stop games being completely unfair.

Two options being:

Cut down to the lowest (limiting by gang rating as you mentioned, limiting by gang fighter numbers as Necro old and new does sometimes)

or temporarily increase to the higher (in BB we have inducements, I have played a Necro campaign where you get free hired guns to even it up).


The ideal is you have a decent campaign balance and then some measures to balance scenarios. If you become too reliant on the latter it starts to feel a bit artificial, no-one really wants to play a league with only 3 rostered linemen and the rest in inducements every game!


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 10:50:44


Post by: Hellebore


I rationalised it through gang arrogance and commitments - big gangs have lots of things they need to keep track of and they don't send their whole gang to fight every little upstart that appears.

So sparing only some of the gang to take on a newb gang means they can keep everything going.


Knowing that you're limited in your gang roster also means you get the opportunity to deploy different types of gangs, to play different types of games and/or to level up gangers that normally get shut out of the fight by the elites.

I've found that it ended up generating more interest in playing lower level gangs and created more tense and interesting games over all.



Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 10:57:16


Post by: Vorian


Yup, it's easy to rationalise pretty much all of these things in a logical story.

The sad thing is these things are pretty trivial to do, but all these games have poorly done systems.

I would love to do a BB league system where you have to pay the players. Would give much better results for long term play (would be a good way to handle Necro too actually).


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 11:53:46


Post by: Blackie


Baxx wrote:


A gang with only lasguns can cause injuries or death. But a gang with all boltguns will inflict more injuries and death.


True, and that's why we house ruled our campaigns with a strict limitation on wargear: full WYSIWYG and only one heavy/special/expensive basic weapon of each kind allowed per gang. Max two for expensive pistols instead (just because being single hand weapons there are more modelling combinations and players should be able to use all their models). That means just one grenade launcher, one bolter, etc... per gang and the player who is ahead can spend a lot of money on wargear will end up taking non optimal weapons like a flamer, rad gun, bolt pistol + close combat weapon, etc if he already has functioning gangers with better weapons like melta gun, bolter, grenade launcher or plasma gun.

No multiple plasma guns for van saars or grenade launchers/bolters for goliaths winning the first games. So far that 0-1 limitation has worked well in our campaigns, where the GM is always a player controlling one of the gangs and he can't really be more that just a simple arbitrator when controversies come.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 12:03:27


Post by: Hellebore


WYSIWYG is getting more difficult with 3d printing - you can print a whole model or the weapons pretty fast.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 12:19:03


Post by: Blackie


 Hellebore wrote:
WYSIWYG is getting more difficult with 3d printing - you can print a whole model or the weapons pretty fast.


Yeah, not just that, even regular GW kits allow to spam some of the best weapons. But painting duplicates in low count models armies is boring, no one in my group wanted to do that. The WYSIWYG is a consequence to the fact that players wanted to differentiate their models as much as possible while also making use of all the bitz included in the kits they bought.

Someone willing to 3D print multiple expensive weapons doesn't share the mindset of my playing group. We're talking about a game that works best with people with garage hammer mentality, not those who want to min max the best options.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 16:40:00


Post by: Easy E


Baxx wrote:


Yes, other games do have this flaw. But they had better counterbalancing systems.

And the purpose of this thread seems to be to discuss if this flaw exists and to try to frame exactly what the flaw is, and if a significant number of people think that it's fixable or indeed needs to be fixed. I don't think the subject of this thread is to find a solution.

(Because that would require house rules. And therefore the dreaded GM. Unless GW themselves develop a better campaign system, which they have shown absolutely no interest in doing)


Fair enough. I really am not trying to be a jerk about it, I really am trying to understand. Basically, this thread is "Do you agree that water is wet? Discuss!" Since we all agree water is wet, the real question is why does that matter to the game design?

If the thread is to just tell us that there is a flaw in the campaign system..... great. Why does it matter and what do we want to do about it? How does it impact the design goals of the game? What different goals does it hinder?

Now, it sounds like you are trying to get alignment on the fact that "water is wet" in this thread? To me that is not an interesting discussion, but if that is where we are, I have a better understanding of the goals of this thread.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 16:46:28


Post by: Baxx


Water is wet should be obvious, but as this thread clearly shows, it's not obvious to everyone.

Hence false arguments like:
-"the campaign shouldn't need to be balanced"
-"the reason I see a need for an Arbiter is that they are the balancing tool"
-"New Necromunda is just like old Necromunda, GorkaMorka and Mordheim"
-"Old Necromunda (without arbitrator) has exponential growth"

I'm not interested in discussing solutions with people who can't agree that new necromunda campaigns are fundamentally flawed in a different way compared to all other related campaign-based games. This started as a disagreement about this particular topic. There are countless other discussions about how to fix the problems (and many suggestions are also made in this thread). I'm not interested in that discussion here and now, but anyone who are feel free to discuss that here as much as you want!

 Blackie wrote:

True, and that's why we house ruled our campaigns with a strict limitation on wargear: full WYSIWYG and only one heavy/special/expensive basic weapon of each kind allowed per gang. Max two for expensive pistols instead (just because being single hand weapons there are more modelling combinations and players should be able to use all their models). That means just one grenade launcher, one bolter, etc... per gang and the player who is ahead can spend a lot of money on wargear will end up taking non optimal weapons like a flamer, rad gun, bolt pistol + close combat weapon, etc if he already has functioning gangers with better weapons like melta gun, bolter, grenade launcher or plasma gun.

No multiple plasma guns for van saars or grenade launchers/bolters for goliaths winning the first games. So far that 0-1 limitation has worked well in our campaigns, where the GM is always a player controlling one of the gangs and he can't really be more that just a simple arbitrator when controversies come.

That's all fine and reasonable. Too bad the game can't run smooth without this house rule, or at least had something to the similar effect in the official rules! Never needed strict rules like these in all my years playing previous editions. The point I made however is that gang rating correlates to everything of importance in this game:

Winning = more credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, XP, resources, less injuries and death
Losing = less credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, XP, resources, more injuries and death


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 20:10:56


Post by: Toofast


 Blackie wrote:
 Hellebore wrote:
WYSIWYG is getting more difficult with 3d printing - you can print a whole model or the weapons pretty fast.


Yeah, not just that, even regular GW kits allow to spam some of the best weapons. But painting duplicates in low count models armies is boring, no one in my group wanted to do that. The WYSIWYG is a consequence to the fact that players wanted to differentiate their models as much as possible while also making use of all the bitz included in the kits they bought.

Someone willing to 3D print multiple expensive weapons doesn't share the mindset of my playing group. We're talking about a game that works best with people with garage hammer mentality, not those who want to min max the best options.


Isn't finding the best/most useful options for the credits available part of the game? Recruiting the best players is part of college sports. Drafting the best players and signing the best free agents is part of pro sports. Setting up the best car for the track is part of racing. That's pretty much an integral part of every game ever made that didn't have symmetric teams (chess, checkers, etc). I don't understand the community attitude towards people that play tabletop games with the best list they can make. That's half the point of the game. I also don't expect people to spend hours building and painting substandard models just to intentionally handicap themselves. To me, that seems a lot less fun than getting rolled by Van Saar quad plasma at 1000 creds. I also don't understand the narrative argument as any commander with half a brain would equip his guys with the best weapons he can get his hands on for the mission at hand. If he's going into a confined zone mortalis to collect hidden weapon caches which will require going hand to hand, he's probably not going to take a sniper rifle just so his guys look different. IMO the onus is on the player getting beat to go over their options again and find counterplays. That's how you get better at the game, not by forcing your opponent to paint up overcosted weapons. I also find painting 3-4 plasma guns vastly more fun than painting up rad guns that are totally useless on the battlefield.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 22:28:06


Post by: Baxx


Yes, I also don't understand this duality. A lot players will say stuff like:
-"Necromunda doesn't work competitive and people shouldn't play to win"

At the same time, I see countless discussions all over the internet for people asking stuff like:
-"What is the best way to start my gang"

Where people actively discuss "drop that weapon, take smoke grenades instead" or "trim off the fat, take an extra stimmer".

This is another big problem for me in this game. I like to try new angles, do original builds, twists or min-max in crazy ways. Not necessarily math-hammer WAAC style, but more crazy fun style, like I had an old 1500pts Blood Angels army ages ago with 6 dreadnoughts in it. It wasn't great, but fun and unique (no other faction was able to do so).

Problem now if someone do something crazy/original/fun is either that it will be super powerful (like my friend stumbled into van saar and plasmas,ending up dominating everything) or suck horrendously. And once something is good or bad, it will be exponentially good or bad.

Problem is the game doesn't offer much counterplays against fresh gangs starting with BS2+ fast shot rapid fire plasmas. And certainly no casual counter plays. Once you go down that route, everyone is limited to top tier choices, for example goliath with only boltguns, nade launchers and +1T genesmithing. And when in that situation, what's the point of having 400 weapons to choose from, when only top 2-3 weapons are valid? What's the point of having 96 different skills when you only need the top 2-3? What's the point of having 400 tactics cards, when a selected handful beats all the rest? What's the point of having all kinds of options?!?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 22:55:17


Post by: Toofast


I think people are playing on the wrong style table for Necromunda if they have an issue with Van Saar. I took 2 plasma guns with fast shot and trick shot and a dual plasma pistol with gunfighter in my starting list. I'm 0-4 because we've been playing on smaller tables with tons of terrain and we rolled a couple missions like caravan where you need mobility and close combat to score any victory points. They were close games but in one game one of my plasmas ran out of ammo turn 1. The next game a guy blew himself up turn 2 on an overcharge and ended up in recovery with a head injury so I had to spend 30 creds to get him back to full health. Their counterplay is positioning and the fact that they can either run out of ammo or kill themselves fairly easily.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 23:17:51


Post by: Baxx


Why do terrain matter? You hit on 2+ rapid fire anyway, shooting twice per activation. Feels like this discussion is derailing though...


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/02 23:25:48


Post by: Toofast


Baxx wrote:
Why do terrain matter? You hit on 2+ rapid fire anyway, shooting twice per activation. Feels like this discussion is derailing though...


Because you can only shoot what you can see. You also have to shoot the closest model. If you run your leader at me out in the open without any screening models, yea he's gonna get vaporized. If you duck in and out of buildings with a juve in front, you can probably get into combat with me and then it's over for me. I'm also confused as to how we hit on 2+ all the time while shooting twice. If I shoot twice, I can't aim first. I'm not always going to be at short range and if the table has terrain, I should be shooting at someone that's at least in partial cover.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 06:41:25


Post by: Racerguy180


 Toofast wrote:
Baxx wrote:
Why do terrain matter? You hit on 2+ rapid fire anyway, shooting twice per activation. Feels like this discussion is derailing though...


Because you can only shoot what you can see. You also have to shoot the closest model. If you run your leader at me out in the open without any screening models, yea he's gonna get vaporized. If you duck in and out of buildings with a juve in front, you can probably get into combat with me and then it's over for me.

This.

Baxx, what kind of tables do you use? How much LOS blocking stuff is there? How much height is there?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 08:47:28


Post by: Blackie


 Toofast wrote:


Isn't finding the best/most useful options for the credits available part of the game? Recruiting the best players is part of college sports. Drafting the best players and signing the best free agents is part of pro sports. Setting up the best car for the track is part of racing. That's pretty much an integral part of every game ever made that didn't have symmetric teams (chess, checkers, etc). I don't understand the community attitude towards people that play tabletop games with the best list they can make. That's half the point of the game. I also don't expect people to spend hours building and painting substandard models just to intentionally handicap themselves. To me, that seems a lot less fun than getting rolled by Van Saar quad plasma at 1000 creds. I also don't understand the narrative argument as any commander with half a brain would equip his guys with the best weapons he can get his hands on for the mission at hand. If he's going into a confined zone mortalis to collect hidden weapon caches which will require going hand to hand, he's probably not going to take a sniper rifle just so his guys look different. IMO the onus is on the player getting beat to go over their options again and find counterplays. That's how you get better at the game, not by forcing your opponent to paint up overcosted weapons. I also find painting 3-4 plasma guns vastly more fun than painting up rad guns that are totally useless on the battlefield.


It depends on what you expect from the game. From a pick up game against strangers I'd definitely expect all the things you listed, but from a game that mostly works as campaign played by a group of friends? I simply want to field unique models, all named, and play with my expensive toys, not bringing cheesy lists. I love listbuilding in 40k, I couldn't care less about it in Necromunda though. To me it's almost no point of the game, it's simply a matter of deciding which ones of my 25 dudes are going to start the campaign. We also avoid things like cards and all the tools to shoot twice, as they look too gamey.

And painting duplicates always bores me as well.

I understand someone can't imagine playing without a competitive mentality, I hope GW doesn't turn Necromunda into a tournament style game like 40k as the game's core and gangs rules are great, it just needs a few house rules to handle the campaigns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Toofast wrote:
I think people are playing on the wrong style table for Necromunda if they have an issue with Van Saar. I took 2 plasma guns with fast shot and trick shot and a dual plasma pistol with gunfighter in my starting list. I'm 0-4 because we've been playing on smaller tables with tons of terrain and we rolled a couple missions like caravan where you need mobility and close combat to score any victory points. They were close games but in one game one of my plasmas ran out of ammo turn 1. The next game a guy blew himself up turn 2 on an overcharge and ended up in recovery with a head injury so I had to spend 30 creds to get him back to full health. Their counterplay is positioning and the fact that they can either run out of ammo or kill themselves fairly easily.


Yeah, that's the problem of min maxing the lists. Those van saars can either crush the opponents with no effort or succumb to a few bad rolls. That's why I never consider this kinds of lists, I prefer starting a campaign with more bodies, than risking to have half the roster unavailable after game 1, especially the best dudes. Typically 8 with Van Saars.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 09:03:58


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


I remain pretty old school when it comes to Gang Selection.

Only a few basic weapons (as in Lasgun, Autogun), the rest mostly pistols and CCWs. Get up nice and close whilst hugging cover.

This not only suits my play style, but I’ve noticed the Dice Gods tend to have a certain sense of humour when it comes to very expensive models…


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 09:41:12


Post by: Baxx


Dice swings both ways, but are most likely to worsen the topic in this discussion.

As already stated, new Necromunda has exponential growth (at least in parts, unlike old Necromunda and all other related games which have linear growth), has limited to no self-balancing mechanics and finally, all the important elements correlates strongly. To make an extreme example to prove the point:

Winning = get all the credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, XP, resources, less injuries and death
Losing = get no credits, rare items, bonuses, rating, XP, resources, more injuries and death

This isn't the case of "all games are unbalanced", this is a case of new Necromunda having unique design problems no other games have.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 09:46:52


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


Which is why we alter those parameters.

Nobody walks away entirely empty handed. Winners do better of course.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 10:19:55


Post by: Baxx


You do that as house rules. No other campaigns needed those house rules. This is an unique problem for new Necromunda only. All other campaigns have self-balancing mechanics and are linear. New necromunda was designed to be exponential without self-balancing (either intentionally or unintentionally). I cannot stress this enough because you give the impression you don't agree or don't understand.

I don't pay for books that need house rules on this fundamental level just to be playable (or at least enjoyable). I can take any other related campaign game and play it RAW "out of the box" and still enjoy the game.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 10:26:07


Post by: Graphite


Oh GOD we've hit the point of "git gud"


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 10:32:49


Post by: Vorian


If one person is saying the rules are broken and the other person says they have to change those rules when they play - those two people are saying the same thing.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 10:44:45


Post by: Blackie


Vorian wrote:
If one person is saying the rules are broken and the other person says they have to change those rules when they play - those two people are saying the same thing.


Exactly. What is really worth discussing is wether house ruling a game prevents having fun. And to what degree.

I have no doubt that Necromunda has flaws, but I can't see any significant difference between having a more balanced game system by GW rules or a more balanced game system by house rules since this is not 40k where it's common to play pick up games against random people.

My impression is that some people demands playing RAW because they need to feel that they're good at the game. They don't want someone saying their results don't matter since they don't play the official game.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 10:52:31


Post by: Vorian


That's not really what it is.

If I'm playing a game, the fun is from both of us playing to rules and seeing what happens.

A game is a series of interesting decisions and the feedback is how well you (or your opponent) do(es).

I'd be perfectly happy playing houserules to fix the game into what it should already be. A balanced game where you can make any decisions within the rules to not break the game.

If the houserules are things like "you can only take what weapons are on the models" or "the GM will add or subtract credits when they feel like it to keep gangs balanced" then it makes the interesting decisions pointless and ruins the game.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 11:28:03


Post by: Blackie


Vorian wrote:


If the houserules are things like "you can only take what weapons are on the models" or "the GM will add or subtract credits when they feel like it to keep gangs balanced" then it makes the interesting decisions pointless and ruins the game.


But what happens if the rules that make the interesting decisions pointless and ruin the game are actual official rules? Are you willing to house rule them in order to have a more balanced game where decisions matter? Because I can assure you, a lot of players would not be willing to do that. They'd either play strict RAW or not play at all.

Limitations on the wargear has also always been a part of GW games, so it's not even that unreasonable as a concept. In 40k you can't equip an infantry unit with any combination of weapons you want, it's typically X models every Y models that can take Z weapon, etc...


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 11:32:58


Post by: Pacific


Baxx, I feel like this is going in circles. If people don't agree with you on some of those points, and they haven't been able to see it for themselves when playing, I don't think anything you say is going to make a difference.

As far as I am concerned GW have released a game that is tremendous fun (or can be) but has more holes in it than a sieve, and is hilariously unbalanced. They won't make great efforts to stabilise the system and make it more balanced 'out of box' because that isn't a business priority for them. If it was, they would have done it already, and wouldn't continuously be releasing new rules and miniatures that make it keep going in the opposite direction.

What I would advise is spending some time on Yaktribe and having a look at some of the community-led amendments that exist for the rules. You could start with the NC18 community edition for starters. Personally, I like the work this guy has done (look at the posts by user alexflagg who has posted some links about halfway down the page)
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/the-arbitrator-a-discussion-with-poll.9821/page-3#post-220699

I have gone further, taking some of Alex's suggestions with my proposed campaign and entirely used the NCE for pre and post game. Not sure if this is any use to use but please take a look and let me know what you think
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/the-quest-for-the-blue-oyster.7127/#post-148555


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 11:37:28


Post by: Vorian


Personally I'm willing to change anything as long as I think it makes an interesting game, I'm trying to avoid talking about things I'd specifically like and stick to general concepts though.

I know a lot of players are RAW, that's also a perfectly reasonable position to take. You shouldn't have to be interested in games design to play a game. That's why it is important for the base rules of things to be decent.

Limitations are fine. If X models every Y can take Z and that's written down and everyone knows this at the start, then great.

If it's an ad hoc decision based on what each player happens to build (or in the old days what the sculpt had) then its bad. Not least because what one person thinks is ok will be different to another.

I like my Necro gangs scrabbling round in the dirt trying to survive, so personally I'd be all for all sorts of things to limit gangs. But only clearly defined at the start so all players know the framework they are making decisions in.

I also understand people enjoy getting all their toys game 1 and would be fine playing it that way - so long as everyone knows that framework before you start too.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 11:43:08


Post by: PetitionersCity


 Pacific wrote:
Baxx, I feel like this is going in circles. If people don't agree with you on some of those points, and they haven't been able to see it for themselves when playing, I don't think anything you say is going to make a difference.

As far as I am concerned GW have released a game that is tremendous fun (or can be) but has more holes in it than a sieve, and is hilariously unbalanced. They won't make great efforts to stabilise the system and make it more balanced 'out of box' because that isn't a business priority for them. If it was, they would have done it already, and wouldn't continuously be releasing new rules and miniatures that make it keep going in the opposite direction.

What I would advise is spending some time on Yaktribe and having a look at some of the community-led amendments that exist for the rules. You could start with the NC18 community edition for starters. Personally, I like the work this guy has done (look at the posts by user alexflagg who has posted some links about halfway down the page)
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/the-arbitrator-a-discussion-with-poll.9821/page-3#post-220699

I have gone further, taking some of Alex's suggestions with my proposed campaign and entirely used the NCE for pre and post game. Not sure if this is any use to use but please take a look and let me know what you think
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/the-quest-for-the-blue-oyster.7127/#post-148555


Pacific, you have missed that Baxx is amongst the most prolific of Yaktribe posters and was central to the current YCE edition

But that's an excellent idea of just using NCE for pre and post. So much simpler! But how do you cards and things?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 12:00:48


Post by: Apple fox


Thanks pacific, how up to date are those ? We are starting up a campaign so been looking over there for updates as there is no way I could do such work myself.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 12:29:30


Post by: Baxx


 Pacific wrote:
Baxx, I feel like this is going in circles. If people don't agree with you on some of those points, and they haven't been able to see it for themselves when playing, I don't think anything you say is going to make a difference.

Yeah sorry about that, there's been many interesting arguments and the discussion came full circle a while ago.

And to reply to Toofast and Racerguy, yeah you are correct terrain matter and I obviously don't have enough, which I think is a separate issue because I spent a lot of money on that sweet Sector Mechanicus terrain back in 2017 but it turned out I probably need twice as much to get the best effect. I think Kill Team does a good job in this aspect by abstracting terrain rules so less terrain have more impact. The best result I had for terrain was Zone Mortalis walls which effectively denies any long firelanes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 PetitionersCity wrote:

Pacific, you have missed that Baxx is amongst the most prolific of Yaktribe posters and was central to the current YCE edition

Cheers


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 12:58:28


Post by: PetitionersCity


Baxx wrote:
 Pacific wrote:
Baxx, I feel like this is going in circles. If people don't agree with you on some of those points, and they haven't been able to see it for themselves when playing, I don't think anything you say is going to make a difference.

Yeah sorry about that, there's been many interesting arguments and the discussion came full circle a while ago.

And to reply to Toofast and Racerguy, yeah you are correct terrain matter and I obviously don't have enough, which I think is a separate issue because I spent a lot of money on that sweet Sector Mechanicus terrain back in 2017 but it turned out I probably need twice as much to get the best effect. I think Kill Team does a good job in this aspect by abstracting terrain rules so less terrain have more impact. The best result I had for terrain was Zone Mortalis walls which effectively denies any long firelanes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 PetitionersCity wrote:

Pacific, you have missed that Baxx is amongst the most prolific of Yaktribe posters and was central to the current YCE edition

Cheers


TTCombat is your best answer, TK!


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 15:36:28


Post by: Pacific


Apple fox wrote:Thanks pacific, how up to date are those ? We are starting up a campaign so been looking over there for updates as there is no way I could do such work myself.


You would need to check, but I think the documents I was linked to were from start of 2020 so should be mostly OK.

I would say it would definitely pay to check what new units or rules everyone wants to use in the campaign, but as most of the rule changes are generic relating to the main structure of the campaign (a few mention skills specifically) I would have thought it was mostly OK.

PetitionersCity wrote:
Pacific, you have missed that Baxx is amongst the most prolific of Yaktribe posters and was central to the current YCE edition

But that's an excellent idea of just using NCE for pre and post. So much simpler! But how do you cards and things?


Ah I didn't realise! In which case, apologies Baxx, I am preaching to the converted

For Cards, this is the bit I have taken from the AlexFlagg document
Tactics Cards - You may not choose Tactics cards, even if the scenario allows you to (the only way you may choose a card is by using an Underdog benefit, below). When drawing your Tactics cards at the beginning of the game, you may draw freely from the Gang Tactics deck, or up to ½ your cards, rounded up, from your House Tactics deck. All bonus draws made during the battle must come from the Gang Tactics deck (not your House or Underdog Tactics decks).


The underdog penalty it references is this:
- Pick a House Tactics Card (200 credits) Sacrifice 2 card draws to choose House Tactics card from your deck (rather than drawing at random).




Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 22:09:54


Post by: H.B.M.C.


What a wierd restriction: Tactics Cards? Yeah, don't use 'em! Ok he can, but, like, only from this deck. Or the other deck, but only half the normal amount. No I don't care what the scenario says!


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/03 22:52:11


Post by: Toofast


 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What a wierd restriction: Tactics Cards? Yeah, don't use 'em! Ok he can, but, like, only from this deck. Or the other deck, but only half the normal amount. No I don't care what the scenario says!


Seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Newcromunda has a lot of issues with balance but tactics cards would be the last thing on my mind causing poor balance. It's almost solely to do with how xp, rep and credits are distributed. Allowing the gang with less wealth to choose intrigues for each game while the other gang has to choose them randomly is the first place I would start addressing that.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/04 12:01:04


Post by: Baxx


The card system could be good, but I don't think it is working properly. Whenever anyone say "choose cards" my head start to ache. There are 158 sub-plots. 396 tactics (+13 underdog tactics). It is a nightmare for new players to have to read through all without knowledge about which ones are good or not. And it is not an easy task for experienced players either. And instead of utilizing the full range of cards, the same top 5 cards are used every battle.

Want me to choose cards before the battle? Ok, see you in a couple of hours...


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/04 17:30:31


Post by: Strg Alt


Rihgu wrote:
I've found that tactics cards like Click, History of Violence, and Dangerous Footing can be very useful for taking out a turbo-gang's turbo-best turbo-fighter and bringing their runaway gang rating down to your level. And hey, if they want to do the same thing to you... well you took out their 800 credit monster fighter and they took out... your 180 credit monster fighter. One team lost a lot more than the other...


That´s why should draw tactic cards randomly like you did in Blood Bowl when there were Random Events, Magic Items and Dirty Tricks available. Otherwise you will have the Click card in every match.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/04 18:47:45


Post by: NH Gunsmith


 Strg Alt wrote:
Rihgu wrote:
I've found that tactics cards like Click, History of Violence, and Dangerous Footing can be very useful for taking out a turbo-gang's turbo-best turbo-fighter and bringing their runaway gang rating down to your level. And hey, if they want to do the same thing to you... well you took out their 800 credit monster fighter and they took out... your 180 credit monster fighter. One team lost a lot more than the other...


That´s why should draw tactic cards randomly like you did in Blood Bowl when there were Random Events, Magic Items and Dirty Tricks available. Otherwise you will have the Click card in every match.


While likely a contentious move, I wouldn't be sad to see all the current Tactics/Underdog/whatever cards dropped and replaced by a SINGLE pack of cards that STAYS in print.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/04 21:12:18


Post by: Albertorius


 Toofast wrote:
 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What a wierd restriction: Tactics Cards? Yeah, don't use 'em! Ok he can, but, like, only from this deck. Or the other deck, but only half the normal amount. No I don't care what the scenario says!


Seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Newcromunda has a lot of issues with balance but tactics cards would be the last thing on my mind causing poor balance. It's almost solely to do with how xp, rep and credits are distributed. Allowing the gang with less wealth to choose intrigues for each game while the other gang has to choose them randomly is the first place I would start addressing that.


Dunno, seeing as I mostly abhor that kinda mechanic, I'd rather not use it at all.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 02:32:33


Post by: hellpato


I come late in this topic and i think im at the opposite of all what i read here.

Im playing Necromunda since a year and a half and what I understood is the game is made to be unbalanced. You win, you got the loot. You lost, you got the scrap.

For me, the role of the Arbitrator is to manage the "who go what".

The only thing the bad unbalanced game come from come from the players. If you have people who just want to have fun around a few beers, the unbalanced and the flaw are not a big deal. When you are playing with hardcore players or WAAC, even a arbitrator, taxes or a balance system does nothing.

just enjoyed the game...


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 07:30:38


Post by: Lord Damocles


The game would still be better for the players who 'just want to have fun' if it was better balanced.

If the game balance is better everyone benefits - in fact the casual players benefit more.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 12:04:34


Post by: Apple fox


 Lord Damocles wrote:
The game would still be better for the players who 'just want to have fun' if it was better balanced.

If the game balance is better everyone benefits - in fact the casual players benefit more.


Imbalances that create choice are interesting, if there are trade off to gain that imbalance then players need to choose to make those trades.
I still learning the new game, but I had been throwing around in my head a maintenance and payment system. Since we plan to do a campaign for about 6 months at a time, we would like to have some kind of self balances in place.
If going to buy a table of terrain, and it’s pricy… we want the experience to be the best we can get.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 12:11:06


Post by: Blackie


Baxx wrote:
The card system could be good, but I don't think it is working properly. Whenever anyone say "choose cards" my head start to ache. There are 158 sub-plots. 396 tactics (+13 underdog tactics). It is a nightmare for new players to have to read through all without knowledge about which ones are good or not. And it is not an easy task for experienced players either. And instead of utilizing the full range of cards, the same top 5 cards are used every battle.



That's my problem with cards as well. In my group we don't use them, but maybe if they were randomly selected before the game starts I could consider proposing to my friends to use them. As they are they're too gamey and boring.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 15:54:46


Post by: Easy E


 Lord Damocles wrote:
The game would still be better for the players who 'just want to have fun' if it was better balanced.

If the game balance is better everyone benefits - in fact the casual players benefit more.


I hear this argument a lot, and what I have found is that it is not true in practice.

Why? Theoretically, better rules help everyone right? No, it only helps the folks who want a competitive experience because the people who do not want that style of play leave, and only the competitive folks stay, and that creates a death spiral for the game locally. Then, it creates a death spiral at a larger level too.

Exhibit A, B, and C: War Machine and Hordes, Guild Ball, and X-wing.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 22:17:58


Post by: Toofast


 Easy E wrote:
No, it only helps the folks who want a competitive experience because the people who do not want that style of play leave, and only the competitive folks stay, and that creates a death spiral for the game locally. Then, it creates a death spiral at a larger level too.

Exhibit A, B, and C: War Machine and Hordes, Guild Ball, and X-wing.


I don't think making more than one special weapon in each gang actually playable would cause the mass exodus you're expecting. I also think people quit those other games for many reasons besides good game balance. Warmahordes killed their press gangers which were a big driver of local communities. Their models themselves are nothing to write home about. I never saw Guild Ball played at any of the stores I frequent in 3 different states. X-Wing has fallen off slightly from its peak but is still very popular


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 22:47:00


Post by: H.B.M.C.


 Easy E wrote:
No, it only helps the folks who want a competitive experience because the people who do not want that style of play leave, and only the competitive folks stay, and that creates a death spiral for the game locally.
What does that even mean?


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/06 23:21:51


Post by: Toofast


 H.B.M.C. wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
No, it only helps the folks who want a competitive experience because the people who do not want that style of play leave, and only the competitive folks stay, and that creates a death spiral for the game locally.
What does that even mean?


I'm wondering the same. "Good balance makes everyone quit the game" is the hottest take I've heard on Dakka and the bar was pretty high...


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/07 00:06:38


Post by: H.B.M.C.


I mean X-Wing didn't die because "the rules got better".

X-Wing died because FFG released a second edition out of nowhere, invalidated everyone's carefully gathered card collections, and told everyone "Buy this instead!".



Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/07 00:16:51


Post by: AnomanderRake


 Easy E wrote:
...Exhibit A, B, and C: War Machine and Hordes, Guild Ball, and X-wing...


WMH died because it's a brutally difficult game to learn that was being propped up by the Press Ganger corps, and when they went you couldn't get new people into the game anymore, so when the Mk.3 rollout annoyed the existing playerbase they couldn't keep the game going. Guildball never got started for a long, long list of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that they prioritized releasing new teams over giving anyone any options. All the people I know who played 1e X-Wing still play 2e, and almost universally agree that it's a big improvement, I don't know that it ever "died".


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/07 11:39:26


Post by: Pacific


I kind of get what Easy E is saying, because a lot of the time it's about the community.

When you get games that are razor-tight, and can be played very competitively because they are balanced, they build a community that wants that kind of thing. So you have had a lot of people moving who have long since given up with 40k etc.. The community then builds up around making lists, tournament results and any perceived imbalance is treated as a heresy and the community goes full-fatwah on the rules writers and company. And that does not make a pleasant nor welcoming community.

Take a look at the GoT: A song of Ice and Fire community as an example. I think perhaps because the game gives such a tight set of rules, and it's very well suited to tournament play, those guys are brutal. Funnily enough Epic Armageddon is a bit like that too (which you wouldn't think - but again a very tight, balanced ruleset) and also Infinity, although I think with both EA and Infinity there are enough community modellers (people that are just in it for the painting, especially with Infinity) that it dilutes the 'OMG they changed stat of X and now my army is ruined' threads.

So if you have a community that has built up around a competitive tournament setting, as some games do, then it's not always welcoming and can put off people trying to get into that game.
That isn't to say though that this should be a reason to not try and make a tight set of rules. But right now I would say very few people are playing Necromunda for its worth as a tournament game or to prove their tactical acumen..


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/07 14:28:28


Post by: Baxx


 NH Gunsmith wrote:

While likely a contentious move, I wouldn't be sad to see all the current Tactics/Underdog/whatever cards dropped and replaced by a SINGLE pack of cards that STAYS in print.

That's what happened with N20+. All gang codex books (7 so far) have their own table of 18 tactics. Even Ogryns got one! The only exception is Hive War which reprinted/modified some older ones.

I don't mind your suggestion at all, were it not for 2 things:
- all the existing cards (alot!) are then garbage
- many of the new tactics of the SINGLE deck are garbage (utterly useless). Like all the ones who say "hey, got those brand new minis painted up and added to your gang? buy another box because you get additionals for free". One criteria I have for tactics is they must not require additional random minis, because not all players have them and if players have them chances are they're included in the crew already, or they didn't bring them for that particular battle when you draw that tactic.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/07 14:57:34


Post by: Vorian


You can have a balanced game without it being "razor sharp" though.

Obviously as you add more complexity and introduce more combinations, it's going to get progressively harder to have chess-like balance.

But doing stuff like having a bit of a go at having campaign rules that aren't going to result in completely unbalanced gangs is not exactly a high bar to clear.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/17 22:15:13


Post by: Easy E


 Toofast wrote:
 H.B.M.C. wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
No, it only helps the folks who want a competitive experience because the people who do not want that style of play leave, and only the competitive folks stay, and that creates a death spiral for the game locally.
What does that even mean?


I'm wondering the same. "Good balance makes everyone quit the game" is the hottest take I've heard on Dakka and the bar was pretty high...


It is a bit more nuanced than that. Eventually, if you primary goal is balance for competitive play, eventually all you have left is competitive players. The rest get driven out of the game for a number of reasons.

There are several types of players and buyers besides them. You need to attract a wide number of players/buyers to keep going.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I mean X-Wing didn't die because "the rules got better".

X-Wing died because FFG released a second edition out of nowhere, invalidated everyone's carefully gathered card collections, and told everyone "Buy this instead!".



Why did they create a second edition "out of no where"? What would cause a design team or company that was doing really well to do that?




Despite all this side chatter, I am appalled to learn that the new version of Necro has no Giant-Killer/Underdog mechanics? They were in Oldcromunda and seemed to be a staple of the old Necro/Mord/GM/BB campaign system this was built on. That is a HUGE mis-step. I was under the impression those things were built in!


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/19 17:07:41


Post by: Toofast


The new campaigns have underdog mechanics.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/20 11:05:13


Post by: Baxx


That's correct, but it is random and the effect varies.
- Extra tactics (granted by most scenarios, usually determined by crew rating)
- Favours (cycles aren't defined, so who knows how effective this is)
-Agents (randomly receive a discount for low rep gangs)

Anything else? Oh yeah, that patronage article from white dwarf which attempts to introduce something similar to petty cash from blood bowl. But it's impossible to understand exactly how it works, no specific rules about when it triggers other than a 'guideline' of 400 difference in rating and pretty broken in several aspects.

Compare this to a proper campaign from other games, these things would be well defined and part of the core rulebook. Here we get some bonuses with random effect scattered across several books and white dwarf articles. Not all gangs have access to all of these either. Non-house gangs doesn't have agents. Enforcers doesn't have favours. Tactics are dependent of the scenario and patronage only triggers for a difference of 400 rating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Vorian wrote:

Obviously as you add more complexity and introduce more combinations, it's going to get progressively harder to have chess-like balance.

Yes, that's correct, I wouldn't expect the balance to be maintained after releasing 19 books because of all the additional content, combinations and complexity. For example I'm fine with Outcast allowing any fighter to be the leader because of the freedom it brings, even if some choices can be unbalanced in any direction. But I'd argue that the game is unbalanced from the core, in particular some key weapons like boltguns and plasmaguns and also van saar starting out with BS2+ and 3+. It is so sever, some people are discussing T2 to balance it.


Necromunda: The fundamental flaw of all official GW campaigns @ 2021/12/20 14:45:24


Post by: Pacific


It's quite interesting how the new GW releases are handled by the Necromunda community. It almost makes me think of like declarations coming from the heavens; there is a lightning bolt, a loud echoing voice "THOU SHALT INTRODUCE KHORNE WARBANDS AND A BB PETTY CASH TYPE SYSTEM IN AN AMBIGUOUS & CONFUSING WAY, HERE IS AN AMBULL AND A SQUAT", then a lightning bolt and some new minis, then the community just starts scurrying around, running in circles trying to make sense of it all, what is it the Gods actually mean, and translate it into something that is actually playable and balanced.

10 years after the last GW rules or miniature release, there will be a 'schism' in the Necromunda community with two NCEs, offering very different ways to play, one will ban certain plasma weapons and max toughness Goliaths. The losers will be exiled or burnt on the stake (have to make their own forum community or be banned!) with any mention of the forbidden ruleset forbidden. There will be a generally hopeful consensus that the Gods will stay away for a while, for the sake of law and order