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Me and my brother have been considering getting into Necromunda. We’ve been 40K players for a hefty sum of years now so we ain’t strangers to the setting, but I’ve heard mixed things on the rules.

Is the game in a good place yet? Much depth and fun to be had? Written any better?

Thanks

I love Necromunda, it's way better than 40k imo.

There's a lot of depth to the rules, but they aren't written very well and scattered across many many different books.

It’s a mess. It can easily cost a couple hundred bucks just to get core rules plus gang rules under the new edition. We eventually gave up since there are so many errors, inconsistencies and house rules required.

Since it sounds like you plan on playing with a small pool of players, I highly recommend one page rules. They are based largely on 8th edition 40k and they are free along with free rules for every necromunda gang analogue. They also have rules for nearly every 40k army so more options are available. We still play and use our necromunda minis and terrain, we just don’t use their rules.

https://onepagerules.com/portfolio/grimdark-future-firefight/

https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1gXXoQ2Gj5Xz7OjBHMQ_VfsyonUe2Z1wn

Another alternative is to visit yaktribe and use their community edition which cleans up earlier original necromunda.

It's a pretty fun game, I recommend it. My club has had heaps of fun playing Necromunda.

As a long time 40k player, I always find it amusing when 40k players bash other rule sets. Although I love 8th ed., its small 5 page rule set was, imo, just as good/bad leaving many open rules questions, no different than Necromunda and any other game.

With that said, make your own opinion.

What I like about Necromunda:

Cost:
- Compared to 40k its cheap. You need a box or two of models at most, you can find NIB gangs online for $35. the rulebook, and the house book. $150 will get you there. I spent more money on Terrain then miniatures.

Flexibility:
- the game can be as in depth, or as simple as you want it. You can turn it into a long RPG type campaign if you wanted to. Or just streamlined skirmish battles. Its really how much you want to add to the game.

Considering some 40k/AOS boxes go for $ 80-100 alone for a single model, I think anyone can also afford the jump into necromunda [provided they have some terrain already] and enjoy the game.

Necromunda had a great launch but has gone through some structural changes which resulted in them having more rule book releases and updates than normal.

Right now is a great time as they are taking the game from a single rulebook format into a full core-game style format. So each major gang is getting its own gang book - like a codex/battletome.

The model kits are fantastic and offer a huge amount of weapon variety - which is boosted if you get the weapon packs from Forgeworld. In addition there's bountyhunters and addons sold through forgeworld. So there's a huge amount of variety you can build into your gangs.

I would say now is a great time as the game is growing and clearly shifting gears. Whilst the releases of new gang books have slowed a bit due to corona and such; they are still coming out at a steady rate of one per quarter of the year right now.



I'd say jump on board

The danger is that you always need more terrain!

If you have no prior experience and each choose one of the 4 main gangs that already has a book out, you should be fine.

Necromunda is a great game.

...the original one, that is, and the fan version of that. The current one is a hot mess.

Game's a lot of fun to play, but campaigns with 4+ players are the best part of it, an amazing experience.

The only downside is the rules scattered in multiple (and expensive) books.

I'd suggest avoiding the expansions and playing with rulebook and Gangs of the Underhive, or just the rulebook if you get Dark Uprising and want to use the gangs the come with the box.

Thanks for the replies. It seems this thread has become just as divided as most other things have been on it haha.

What makes the game messy? What books do you guys think are needed to get the most out of the game?

EDIT: Though most of what’s been said here has been positive, actually. I have the potential of 5 of us playing, so if 4 or so player campaigns is where the fun is, then could be quite good.

With necromunda, the big problem.GW has created for itself is that they can't copy and paste to save their lives. Each of the books has some kind of weird inconsistency in terms of special rules or weapon rules or prices or something like that. It's hard to decide if they meant the differences or if they are mistakes. Hence a gaming group effectively needs to agree how these inconsistencies are dealt with.

In my view the easiest way is just to go to the Yaktribe website and have everyone use the summary and reference information that they have pulled together so everyone uses a consistent base for things like trading post costs and such like.

The core rules mechanics themselves are fine and lead to great story telling g opportunities.

Okay awesome, thanks for the clarification. Good to know there’s a website for a general consensus.

 Flinty wrote:
The danger is that you always need more terrain!

If you have no prior experience and each choose one of the 4 main gangs that already has a book out, you should be fine.

I couldn't agree more! Or at least it feels that way. Then again, I wanted enough zone mortalis terrain to play 40k size games on.

I think if you like campaign games, Necromunda is def. The way to go.

I absolutely love Necomunda, IMO one of the best games that GW has ever released.

That being said, there is definitely a caveat (and this I think ties in with the negative comments about it) - it is *not* a game to take lightly if you want to get the most out of it.

I would take a look at the Yaktribe website and spend a few hours submerged in the topics and conversation on there. There are a bunch of guys on there that live and breathe the game and have been working on the community update for the latest game version which basically smooths over the many rough edges the game has. They did the same with the original version and really tied everything together well (and that game was a lot more focussed and less sprawling than the new one).

If you put the time and effort in, and have a gaming group that are happy to let you 'run' a campaign as you see fit (I think the game really does need a GM), enjoy campaign and narrative-style play Necromunda can give you one of the richest wargaming experiences you will ever have and it can be just so much fun. But, if you play with a few asshats who will loop-hole and min-max their gangs (and not let you GM a campaign effectively, or at least make the most of the toolset and setting that the game offers) then it will definitely be less of a fun experience!

Good luck though, IMO it's definitely worth making the effort if you have the group to support you!

 Pacific wrote:

I would take a look at the Yaktribe website and spend a few hours submerged in the topics and conversation on there. There are a bunch of guys on there that live and breathe the game and have been working on the community update for the latest game version which basically smooths over the many rough edges the game has. They did the same with the original version and really tied everything together well (and that game was a lot more focussed and less sprawling than the new one).

As one of the people that lives and breathes Necromunda over on Yaktribe, I agree.
Yaktribe has an amazing resource in it's gang builder and the forums over there are much more active and detailed for Necromunda discussions than here.

Necromunda's biggest flaw imo is campaign balance. It really needs an arbitrator looking over things to help out the weaker gangs and hinder the strong gangs a bit.
Hopefully the community edition Yaktribe is working on will resolve that (I am involved in that project so if I get my way it will).

I totally agree about the lack of campaign balancing. The original game got bad enough with super-gangs forming and then players who had some unlucky injury table results a few times having to continuously restart, but the new one takes it to a different level!
How far has the community edition got with the updated version do you know?

I really liked the version that is in this thread (if you look for the post by AlexFlagg about half-way down this page)
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/the-arbitrator-a-discussion-with-poll.9821/page-3#post-220699

I took things further with my own version and used the Classic edition campaign system: Using the original pre-game and post-game sequences as well as a randomised advancement table.

YMMV! I will say a lot of it is quite subjective and I'm sure lots of people play and enjoy the standard, out the box campaign system (especially if you don't try and include all of the expansions).

Necromunda is definitely worth getting into. Book-wise, you need a copy of the rulesbook - which if you're going to play in a campaign and are willing to split the costs isn't that much of an expenditure - and Gangs of the Underhive (again as a split expenditure)

The "House of" books definitely have "better" gang lists, but how much more powerful they are is up for debate. You might hold off on buying them until you've got a campaign under your belt.

Current Necromunda campaigns do seem to have a bit of an issue in running perpetually, as the amount of cash on hand looks like it could lead to run away differences between gang power level in the longer term.

However, Necromunda campaigns have always been unbalanced, and they always will be. For the old timers - remember when a Redemptionist crusade could capture and loot an Archaotech Horde and get an extra gang worth of credits, instantly turning them into a ball of flamey death for everyone else? Good times.

But if you keep in mind that there's a decent slice of RPG to the game, and rather than trying to "win" you're telling the story of your gangs - you'll be fine.

We've almost finished making the decisions about the basic principles of the game. So we've not gotten very far.
Things are speeding up though, we got bogged down for a long time discussing how we wanted LoS to work. Wreckers and Neoteks flying really threw a spanner in the works.

That document you linked to has a lot of good ideas, certainly. I and my group have some of our own as well that I hope to bring to the project.