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I dunno, but they never did well in the campaign.

Yeah, the battles were a crazy amount of effort for a single pip.

Mordheim is/was a great improvement over Necromunda, arguably GW's best-realized campaign system.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So except removing the huge game changing random cards the tweaking is minimal, yep sounds about what I said.

Except cards weren't consistently game changing, each player had two cards each in most games, and outside of a small number of touchdown stopping cards they gave small boosts. Describing their removal as a major change, let alone a change made possible once the game stepped outside of GW's commercial control is very silly.

No I am not missing the point, Necromunda was never played as that, nor as a game to win, it was played as "how I am going to exploit the system in order to get the best outcome with the minimal risk win or loose"...

And here we experience 'my way of playing is the only way a game can ever be played. Which is a pretty tiresome way of approaching wargames. When the attitude is applied to a thread about different ways to approach wargames it becomes almost a parody of itself.

Cards actually are a good mechanism for allowing players to influence the narrative during the course of the game.

You can hold a card until the best moment to play it, which probably creates a dramatic reversal of fortune.

 sebster wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So except removing the huge game changing random cards the tweaking is minimal, yep sounds about what I said.

Except cards weren't consistently game changing, each player had two cards each in most games, and outside of a small number of touchdown stopping cards they gave small boosts. Describing their removal as a major change, let alone a change made possible once the game stepped outside of GW's commercial control is very silly.

The cards were a huge random advantage especially because of their wide distribution, ranging from minor things to game changing or game breaking alterations like what you said touchdown preventers, one side could just end up with two of those cards and the other side with nothing to write home about.

In general GWs game design approach is one were huge imbalances are countered with random advantages with huge distribution, the fact that bloodball removed these randomizers as soon as it left commercial significance speaks a lot about GWs mainline game design and about the impact of the cards in the games balance.

 sebster wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
No I am not missing the point, Necromunda was never played as that, nor as a game to win, it was played as "how I am going to exploit the system in order to get the best outcome with the minimal risk win or loose"...

And here we experience 'my way of playing is the only way a game can ever be played. Which is a pretty tiresome way of approaching wargames. When the attitude is applied to a thread about different ways to approach wargames it becomes almost a parody of itself.

It is not my way of playing, it is how virtually everybody I know or seen reporting games played Necromunda, or any other of GW's "campaign games", if somebody plays it different I will file it under "statistical anomaly", worth observing, but not how the game is played.
Moreover this subforum is about game design and we discuss how games are designed (and also our design bias), GW campaign games boil down to the post battle game, the actual battle is by design an afterthought that players must do in order to go to the meat of the game that is the post battle game.

Now why is this on the narrative discussion I am not sure?

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
The cards were a huge random advantage especially because of their wide distribution, ranging from minor things to game changing or game breaking alterations like what you said touchdown preventers, one side could just end up with two of those cards and the other side with nothing to write home about.

And a player can roll a 6 to intercept. Randomness is a thing in games. Your description of special play cards as being hugely random, distinct from anything else in bloodbowl is just miles off the mark.

In general GWs game design approach is one were huge imbalances are countered with random advantages with huge distribution, the fact that bloodball removed these randomizers as soon as it left commercial significance speaks a lot about GWs mainline game design and about the impact of the cards in the games balance.

Actually it was because once you're no longer selling a boxed set of the game, cards can't be distributed.

It is not my way of playing, it is how virtually everybody I know or seen reporting games played Necromunda, or any other of GW's "campaign games", if somebody plays it different I will file it under "statistical anomaly", worth observing, but not how the game is played.

I agree that many people Necromunda in that competitive sense, exploiting the rules as they could. You'll note that I said that's how I played it when it first came out. And it is a problem with how the game is still understood by most gamers today.

But the reality exists that it isn't how Necromunda was designed, and it isn't how it is best enjoyed. And I can tell you as a fact that there's plenty of gamers out there who get how the game is best enjoyed.

Now why is this on the narrative discussion I am not sure?

The OP commented with the following; "the pronouncement that some games are narrative rather than competitive has become a popular way of explaining the lack of a game balance". Necromunda is a game system which works best at producing fun stories and interesting characters, but works terribly with balanced, competitive play... that couldn't be more on topic, really.

Anyone could have that 6 to intercept, not everybody could have the special card, yes, cards needed printing, but as with many games GW could just make a print to play file as they did with the star players cards.

Removal of those cards was a decision discussed at length and one very welcomed by the community since it removed that level of randomness from the game.

Do not mix how a game is designed and how a game is intended to be played.

Necromunda was intended by GW for players to convert all the changes their models had, injuries, weapons and armour, of course with the intention to sell more models.

The game was designed in a way that these changes were quite frequent and players had to juggle around them, its not hard to expect the players will get the most optimal way in your design and this is what the vast majority of necromunda players did (that plus the not converting part).

Necromunda was a system broken at its core, not sure what fun stories it produced, I remember liking the game, I remember the OP gang members and how one of my heavies started going around with a power axe because at WS6 why not? but I do not remember a nice narrative gangfights felt for what they were minor skirmishes from factions unwilling to fully commit because there was no reason.

Is this narrative? does it tell a story? frankly the vast majority of the story was in the post battle, if the battle was abbreviated in a simple mechanic without models and terrain the experience would roughly be the same.

I remain firm that the narrative is a poor excuse for poor game design and that a good balanced game design can and should produce the same narrative if not better than a broken unbalanced system.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Necromunda was intended by GW for players to convert all the changes their models had, injuries, weapons and armour, of course with the intention to sell more models.

I do not remember a nice narrative gangfights felt for what they were minor skirmishes from factions unwilling to fully commit because there was no reason.

GW's campaign games are always like this. Mordheim, Inquisitor, same thing.

If you commit to a Necromunda gang fight, you had darn well better win flawlessly, because there's almost no further benefit over squeaking a small win, while there's lots of expensive & painful risk that your best Gangers get hurt / maimed / crippled / killed.