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I really like the ash wastes fluff. It really made a post-apocalyptic style setting as unlivable as it should be.

 Grot 6 wrote:

There are different Hives on the planet. Each has different things/ gangs/ and events going on. That's where the underhive and ash wastes comes into play.

There are indeed but there is no interaction at all between the various underhives so each underhive would be completely self contained.

IIRC the only 'contact' is with guilder smugglers and that would really only involve ash waste nomads.

I'm not so sure about that. Necromunda never really addressed the idea of travelling beween Hives, because the setting was a small area of a single Hive. If they're going to expand on that, then I'm sure the various inter-Hive travel tubes and surface caravans will get more mentions.

There clearly is interaction, otherwise the Guilders and Ash Waste Nomads would have nothing to do. And if a gang can rustle up the money, there'll be someone to move them around.

I was never entirely sure how the "Guild" worked. As depicted in the Necromunda and Outlanders material, they seemed to be awfully low-rent, but then they got mentioned in conjunction with goings on in the upper hive and Spire. Presumably there are important Guilders who deal in billion-credit deals with the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Terra and move vast quantities of material off-world, and the it scales town to the guys in the Underhive, who are just as lowly and irrelevant as the gangs themselves.

-IIRC it was made fairly clear that getting out of the hives is extremely difficult to the point of being nearly impossible.

-Ash Wastes was a cool supplement fluff-wise, but I'm not sure how playable it was. If you want to do post-apoc combat with flexible vehicle rules and an on-the-edge feel, then "Nuclear Renaissance" is a far better ruleset. It's free from ramshackle games, but has much of the necromunda spirit in it.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Still whinging, I note. Just change the rules if you don't like them. Job done and no need to sob to strangers on forums.

Looking at the replies here, it seems most people wouldn't want to change the rule, so just '' change the rules if you don't like them '' doesn't seems doable.

 Eilif wrote:
However, it seems to me that it might prove be even MORE important in SW:A to have some rules in place to keep high BS shooters with powerful weapons from dominating

Its even worse in SW:A, where instead of gangers that are supposed to be quite undisciplined/on drugs or whatever, you have people that have been training since a very young and are apparently unable to figure out that the nearest target isn't the most critical.

Shooting Priority. I agree that it might not make sense as far as combatant training. However from a practical level of keeping ranged weapons from ruling the day it may still be a good idea,

Also, it does compensate a bit for the idea that troopers have only a very limited scope of the battle An omnipotent player sees all the options and can strategize but in the dark of the underhive the poor bloody infantry likely just sees the nearest threat.

If you don't find those convincing enought then, as others have said, if you don't like a rule, change it. For a one-off-game that may be a tough sell, but these types of games are intended to be played as campaigns and there's no reason a competent group of gamers can't decide on a set of rule changes to better the campaign.

The "only shoot closest" rule is simply logical on a base level, where we look at the soldiers perspective. Taking the time to shoot at a more distant foe without the certainty of a kill when a closer one is drawing a bead on you or rushing with a knife isn't something people are likely to do.
People often forget this though, as most of us have never been in such a dangerous scenario where each judgement call is represented by "turns."

Neronoxx wrote:
The "only shoot closest" rule is simply logical on a base level, where we look at the soldiers perspective. Taking the time to shoot at a more distant foe without the certainty of a kill when a closer one is drawing a bead on you or rushing with a knife isn't something people are likely to do.
People often forget this though, as most of us have never been in such a dangerous scenario where each judgement call is represented by "turns."

There was a rule for you to be able to pick your target. One of the skills, IIRC. That shoot closest was a base game deal that was lost after a few games. It also came into play when I ran a batch of juves up and bum rushed the figures. A Juve with a pistol in mass is a dangerous thing.


Damn, you guys are making me pull on my grey matter.

As to the Ash wastes, it was part of the game, after awhile. I don't know how everyone else did it, but there was interaction in the wastes with scaveys, the ratskins, and the Ash waste runner guys. They had caravans, and tunnel; fights in there as well.

There was outposts out there, and the tunnels came into play, as there were deep levels in and around the underhive. One of the ones we were working was a deep underhive lake of gak from the upper hives. There were animals that lived in it, and on the boat, you had to roll to see if the thing dragged someone out of the boat.

Then the spider hunts... Giant White Spiders. Reaper models were the best, but any giant spider model/ or rubber ones worked as well.


The guy I was thinking of with Hive of the living dead was Karloth Valois. He was a special character with the undead hive thing.

I saw this blast from the past as all. Tip of the hat to you, Old Dog- Lone survivor of the pit.
http://files.sigil.biz/data/xxxcj_38_down_amongst_the_dead_men.pdf

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

There clearly is interaction, otherwise the Guilders and Ash Waste Nomads would have nothing to do. And if a gang can rustle up the money, there'll be someone to move them around.

The hives are hundreds if not thousands of miles apart though extremely hostile terrain so they aren't going to be walking and there is no way that a gang of underhivers would be able to get to the spire and its transport links. One of the central themes of Necromunda is that underhivers are stuck in the underhive, having them able to travel completely deflates that.

Ash waste nomands can travel but they are an exception and to be honest they are at least partly in the realm of fan fiction

Pseudomonas wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

There clearly is interaction, otherwise the Guilders and Ash Waste Nomads would have nothing to do. And if a gang can rustle up the money, there'll be someone to move them around.

The hives are hundreds if not thousands of miles apart though extremely hostile terrain so they aren't going to be walking and there is no way that a gang of underhivers would be able to get to the spire and its transport links. One of the central themes of Necromunda is that underhivers are stuck in the underhive, having them able to travel completely deflates that.

Ash waste nomands can travel but they are an exception and to be honest they are at least partly in the realm of fan fiction

Many of the hive cities are linked by ancient roadways and tunnels - most of which have collapsed or been overrun over the millenniums. Some hive cities are even stacked one within the bounds of each other, such as the Pentad on Necromunda itself.
Furthermore, even in the Necromunda books underhivers have used powered watercraft to hunt for Spyders in the deep realms of the underhive. It's not unfeasible that junkcraft of various sorts has made it way into or been built in the underhive, allowing for the occasional transport between hive cities.

Marksman was the skill that let you pick your target. It was a very powerful skill. Too powerful, really.

Picking the closest target was fine. It lessened the impact of going first.

"My turn. I shoot everything at your heavy!"

Marksman, at least to me, feels so powerful because noone else could pick a target, but if given to everyone, wouldn't be that good because you could target your enemy best shots that stands in the back.

And as for '' the grunt perspective '', well being a grunt myself (albeit I've never been deployed in actual combat mission), we tend to shoot at the biggest threat, wether or not they're the closest is irrevelant. What matters is what they're packing, and taking them out as quick as possible, even if they're 100-150 meters away from the group with rifles (and personally, I've been trained to reliably hit targets at ranges of 300 meters so its not a matter of feeling you can reliably hit the target, unless they're set up out of range of my rifle)

 Eilif wrote:

raekone wrote:
They are Champ Industries "Industrial" plastic bases.
http://www.champindustries.net/orders_b.html
They are only availble in two themes (urban and industrial) and with only 4 scupts each, but since they're made of polystyrene they're super easy to modify or glue bits onto to mix them up a bit. Also, they're only 30 cents each!
I'm a big fan of them and have used them for alot of projects.

Thanks for that. I'm going to check them out.

 Stormonu wrote:

Pseudomonas wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

There clearly is interaction, otherwise the Guilders and Ash Waste Nomads would have nothing to do. And if a gang can rustle up the money, there'll be someone to move them around.

The hives are hundreds if not thousands of miles apart though extremely hostile terrain so they aren't going to be walking and there is no way that a gang of underhivers would be able to get to the spire and its transport links. One of the central themes of Necromunda is that underhivers are stuck in the underhive, having them able to travel completely deflates that.

Ash waste nomands can travel but they are an exception and to be honest they are at least partly in the realm of fan fiction

Many of the hive cities are linked by ancient roadways and tunnels - most of which have collapsed or been overrun over the millenniums. Some hive cities are even stacked one within the bounds of each other, such as the Pentad on Necromunda itself.
Furthermore, even in the Necromunda books underhivers have used powered watercraft to hunt for Spyders in the deep realms of the underhive. It's not unfeasible that junkcraft of various sorts has made it way into or been built in the underhive, allowing for the occasional transport between hive cities.

I'm going back to Confrontation here, but it had a diagram that showed a typical hive being ~30 miles across at the base, and three or four hives in a radius of 100 miles. At least one Hive in the Palatine/Primus cluster was a transport nexus for the cluster and the planet as a whole, with plenty of merchants based there for that reason.

I'm quite happy to accept that it's very rare; but we're talking about a volume of several hundred cubic miles and a population in the billions; "very rare" is fine and still allows plenty of scope for games. Alternatively, different hives are different settings. Not keen on houses Escher, Orlock and Cawdor? How about houses Giger, Schreck and Glamis in Hive Secundus?

I think a much more fruitful approach to new houses would be to use something other than houses such as: Mid hive mercenaries, 'Beast House' trapping expeditions, Guilder enforcers etc.

Pseudomonas wrote:
I think a much more fruitful approach to new houses would be to use something other than houses such as: Mid hive mercenaries, 'Beast House' trapping expeditions, Guilder enforcers etc.

Agreed. GW loves to work with archetypes. Adding more gangs would probably just result in overlap. Escher are the chem gang now? Well, did you know there's another chem gang in that other hive? But wait for it! Made entirely out of dudes!

Adding more exotic groups would be a better way of broadening selection.

Pseudomonas wrote:
I think a much more fruitful approach to new houses would be to use something other than houses such as: Mid hive mercenaries, 'Beast House' trapping expeditions, Guilder enforcers etc.

Well, yes. However I'm at work, and not at the Specialist Games studio, so I wasn't going to think up those other ideas. Look back in this thread at some of the comments attributed to the Specialist Games team for ideas they've already had.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Marksman, at least to me, feels so powerful because noone else could pick a target, but if given to everyone, wouldn't be that good because you could target your enemy best shots that stands in the back.

And as for '' the grunt perspective '', well being a grunt myself (albeit I've never been deployed in actual combat mission), we tend to shoot at the biggest threat, wether or not they're the closest is irrevelant. What matters is what they're packing, and taking them out as quick as possible, even if they're 100-150 meters away from the group with rifles (and personally, I've been trained to reliably hit targets at ranges of 300 meters so its not a matter of feeling you can reliably hit the target, unless they're set up out of range of my rifle)

I think the point, though, is that these are untrained fighters, not the planet's militia. They are more likely to panic and fire at the closest threat rather than think tactically and fire at the guy with the biggest gun. That's why marksman made sense as a skill, it represented these untrained fighters learning the value in prioritizing certain targets.

It makes sense in Necro, I suppose, but not in Shadow War, where you got Space Special Forces and mutated Space Special Forces amongsts other well trained soldiers.

Yeah, you got me there. Although to be perfectly honest GW probably only put as much thought into Shadow War as they had to in order to get it out the door. That much is evident by the somewhat boring rules most of the non core-box factions got.

I seriously doubt any real consideration was given to it 'making sense'.

Closest Enemy rule worked as intended. Otherwise there're no reason to shoot at anything other than Leader and Specialist. You can always shoot at a further target if the hit chance is higher (cover, +1 sniper weapon) Hello Assassination mission, wow fun game!

Nobody want their leader and specialists down/pinned first turn or injured/dead first game and be left with recruit/troop with terrible weapons. Is it fun if the leader is dead after first game because Skitarii guy taking potshot at him? How could the Chaos Champion even get to CC with that rule anyway? because the moment he peak out he'll be a beehive.

It will eventually turn into a crawl paced game where you're forced to hide leader, specialists and crawl slowly/overwatch toward each other, which defeat the whole point of it being a fast-paced game in the first place. And it became a joke when you bring that in campaign, because most people would rather restart campaign/make new gang after first game until they can have the first game where they can take out the enemy leader.

How it is intended to play : take out recruit/troop and sometime specialist if they're careless, force the leader to either bottle out voluntarily or with a failed roll.

Well it grates my suspension of disbelief way too much. No matter how well it would make a game work.

Awkwardly enough, that's how I killed Shadow War Armageddon at the local store. I played Skitarii and tabled my chaos opponent on the first turn by "sniping" his leader with the Transuranic Arquebus paired with an Omnispex held by the Alpha and focusing on his regular Marines over his cultists. He already played with few models, so taking out some forced him into a bottle test and well.. it's not often I'm hated for playing a game. I got gak for that some time after.

The closest model rule is probably one of the more realistic ones in the game. When you are under fire it takes a very calm head to not fire at the closest target that is blazing away back at you or charging at you with a large weapon intent on inserting said weapon into you.

 vonjankmon wrote:
The closest model rule is probably one of the more realistic ones in the game. When you are under fire it takes a very calm head to not fire at the closest target that is blazing away back at you or charging at you with a large weapon intent on inserting said weapon into you.

My concern is more how it plays. I'm not a fan because except for the odd case in which a target further away is easier to hit, it eliminates player choice. On both sides, too. The shooter's player has no choice but to shoot the closest target, and the target's player has reason not to screen their valuable models with chaff.

It also affects how you assemble gangs, making deliberately worthless cannon fodder and focusing your attempts to create powerful gangers to hide behind these instead of spreading out gear and talent.

Finally, just as with lane sniping in 4th or 5th ed 40k, you can circumvent this targeting rule in a very gamey way by positioning you models in such a way that the preferred target is inside your 90° arc but the cannon fodder is not.

I doubt you could just throw out the rule and keep everything else the same. Assassination has been named as an example already. But if we get an overhaul of the rules anyway, I hope this is a rule we're not going to see anymore.

 vonjankmon wrote:
The closest model rule is probably one of the more realistic ones in the game. When you are under fire it takes a very calm head to not fire at the closest target that is blazing away back at you or charging at you with a large weapon intent on inserting said weapon into you.

You have decided to interject with logic and common sense into this forum. The closest mod has been notified and a brief discussion about the length of your ban is underway.

 Geifer wrote:

My concern is more how it plays. I'm not a fan because except for the odd case in which a target further away is easier to hit, it eliminates player choice. On both sides, too. ... But if we get an overhaul of the rules anyway, I hope this is a rule we're not going to see anymore.

If I had to pick a rule not to see in the new game, it would be pinning on a hit. I get that it gives the game a deeper level of tactics, but I just don't like games where the stuff you do with your models is so drastically restricted. One of the reasons the game died super fast at a local store was that new players are easily caught off guard and end up having a large portion of their models pinned and have sort of a grind of an experience. I've seen turns where a new player basically does nothing. That's really awful for a game demo. People don't come back to games where they basically don't play.

8th edition definitely has a "you can always do what you want with your models" approach and I hope that is present in this game as well.

It's frustrating, but then I'm not a fan of modern games where the player has perfect control of their armies. the "shoot the closest target" rule might not be an exact reflection of "reality", but it demonstrates that your underlings don't always do exactly what yu want when you want them to. Likewise for pinning; those hapless gangers might not want to rush out into the teeth of enemy fire just because you want them to soak up some bullets as a distraction.

Removing things like that makes it more of a game and less of a simulation (however imprecise) of an "actual" battle. It's one of the main reasons I went off Warmachine and Malifaux. I never felt like I was ordering Zealots and Flameguard and whatnot across a battlefield - just moving meeples on a board.

 Geifer wrote:

 vonjankmon wrote:
The closest model rule is probably one of the more realistic ones in the game. When you are under fire it takes a very calm head to not fire at the closest target that is blazing away back at you or charging at you with a large weapon intent on inserting said weapon into you.

My concern is more how it plays. I'm not a fan because except for the odd case in which a target further away is easier to hit, it eliminates player choice. On both sides, too. The shooter's player has no choice but to shoot the closest target, and the target's player has reason not to screen their valuable models with chaff.

It also affects how you assemble gangs, making deliberately worthless cannon fodder and focusing your attempts to create powerful gangers to hide behind these instead of spreading out gear and talent.

Finally, just as with lane sniping in 4th or 5th ed 40k, you can circumvent this targeting rule in a very gamey way by positioning you models in such a way that the preferred target is inside your 90° arc but the cannon fodder is not.

I doubt you could just throw out the rule and keep everything else the same. Assassination has been named as an example already. But if we get an overhaul of the rules anyway, I hope this is a rule we're not going to see anymore.

I get where you are coming from but in practice (years ago in old Necromunda) tended to be that you could protect your heavy and leader if you stuck them in the *far* back but due to the multi level nature of the terrain and the LOS blocking it did it was next to impossible to set 1-2 models in front and make your opponent only fire at them. This is one of my biggest concerns with the game as they are releasing it, people may not realize it but the type of terrain in the original Necromunda played a large role in the correct function of the game. Now the new game could function totally differently and the closest model rule may be unnecessary or not function properly as you outlined but I am really not interested in a small scale game of 40K with gangers. I personally want the feeling of battling in the underhive that the original portrayed so well.

Sorry, mis-read the post.

 Chamberlain wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

My concern is more how it plays. I'm not a fan because except for the odd case in which a target further away is easier to hit, it eliminates player choice. On both sides, too. ... But if we get an overhaul of the rules anyway, I hope this is a rule we're not going to see anymore.

If I had to pick a rule not to see in the new game, it would be pinning on a hit. I get that it gives the game a deeper level of tactics, but I just don't like games where the stuff you do with your models is so drastically restricted. One of the reasons the game died super fast at a local store was that new players are easily caught off guard and end up having a large portion of their models pinned and have sort of a grind of an experience. I've seen turns where a new player basically does nothing. That's really awful for a game demo. People don't come back to games where they basically don't play.

8th edition definitely has a "you can always do what you want with your models" approach and I hope that is present in this game as well.

Agreed. I'm partial to pinning the Bolt Action way because it allows the troop quality to play a role and gives the shooting player the option to concentrate fire for better effect on a single unit or spread out the love to gamble for more pinned units, or anything in between. I always found original Necromunda pinning harsh and taking away player choice.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
It's frustrating, but then I'm not a fan of modern games where the player has perfect control of their armies. the "shoot the closest target" rule might not be an exact reflection of "reality", but it demonstrates that your underlings don't always do exactly what yu want when you want them to. Likewise for pinning; those hapless gangers might not want to rush out into the teeth of enemy fire just because you want them to soak up some bullets as a distraction.

Removing things like that makes it more of a game and less of a simulation (however imprecise) of an "actual" battle. It's one of the main reasons I went off Warmachine and Malifaux. I never felt like I was ordering Zealots and Flameguard and whatnot across a battlefield - just moving meeples on a board.

I'm really advocating for a middle of the road approach. I share your dislike for perfect control over your troops, but I also dislike an equally reliable way for your opponent to control your troops.

I'm actually (and possibly foolishly) hopeful in that regard. If they're bringing back diversified leadership from Rogue Trader, one assumes they want morale to have greater impact. Like, let's go with pinning. That was an I test for the ganger, if they had a nanny to hold their hand. I understand the reasoning behind this, but that could have been a simple LD test instead. Side benefit? Booze that boosts LD helps gangers not get pinned, but doesn't exactly help their life expectancy either, what with all the bullets flying around. I could totally see that. More importantly, I want to see that. It also helps a stat that isn't used all that often but easily gain from advances.

 vonjankmon wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 vonjankmon wrote:
The closest model rule is probably one of the more realistic ones in the game. When you are under fire it takes a very calm head to not fire at the closest target that is blazing away back at you or charging at you with a large weapon intent on inserting said weapon into you.

My concern is more how it plays. I'm not a fan because except for the odd case in which a target further away is easier to hit, it eliminates player choice. On both sides, too. The shooter's player has no choice but to shoot the closest target, and the target's player has reason not to screen their valuable models with chaff.

It also affects how you assemble gangs, making deliberately worthless cannon fodder and focusing your attempts to create powerful gangers to hide behind these instead of spreading out gear and talent.

Finally, just as with lane sniping in 4th or 5th ed 40k, you can circumvent this targeting rule in a very gamey way by positioning you models in such a way that the preferred target is inside your 90° arc but the cannon fodder is not.

I doubt you could just throw out the rule and keep everything else the same. Assassination has been named as an example already. But if we get an overhaul of the rules anyway, I hope this is a rule we're not going to see anymore.

I get where you are coming from but in practice (years ago in old Necromunda) tended to be that you could protect your heavy and leader if you stuck them in the *far* back but due to the multi level nature of the terrain and the LOS blocking it did it was next to impossible to set 1-2 models in front and make your opponent only fire at them. This is one of my biggest concerns with the game as they are releasing it, people may not realize it but the type of terrain in the original Necromunda played a large role in the correct function of the game. Now the new game could function totally differently and the closest model rule may be unnecessary or not function properly as you outlined but I am really not interested in a small scale game of 40K with gangers. I personally want the feeling of battling in the underhive that the original portrayed so well.

Terrain is tough to incorporate. As a designer, you probably have a vision or else plenty of play testing to tell you what's ideal, and putting that in the rulebook to help players won't hurt either. But honestly? When I started playing Necromunda, I had the box contents and a couple of 40k terrain pieces. And the game worked. Later on I had much more dense terrain. And the game worked. I occasionally played on flat boards (with enough terrain, of course) and the game worked. It didn't work the same, but it worked. I'm not going to go and say it worked equally well and the designers delivered a masterpiece without even realizing it. But I think they created a ruleset that's good for what it's intended to do but also allows you to deviate from the ideal without ruining the game experience.

Why am I saying this? This is how new Necromunda needs to work (according to me anyway). They have tunnel fighting now, as the default to boot. I cannot imagine that their wonderful Day 1 DLC dramatically revises the core rules, and instead just builds on them. That's not going to work well if you have notable differences in how these things should play out.

I imagine with tunnel fighting the problem with targeting the nearest unit becomes even more pronounced because of the limited room to maneuver. Then it opens up in 3D games and all of a sudden you can, going with your experience, circumvent meat shields? There could be a pretty big gap between the demands of these two game modes, and until I see otherwise I'm going to assume the designers made a ruleset that works similarly in each one. Simply because then there will be one core ruleset which everything works off of, and if you have something like that, restrictions that only work in one part are likely to be dropped because they don't work in the other part. That's my take anyway.

I mean, I'm with you on wanting a proper underhive feel to the game, but as I said above, I'm more the middle of the road guy and I think you could still portray the untrained gangers with a really low leadership used for pinning tests with campaign advancements allowing them to become better and more controlled under fire, while giving them higher leadership for other things to represent their dogged fighting spirit.

I wouldn't pin it all on a single rule. Or 2D versus 3D for that matter. It's the complete package that matters* to me.



*Insert comment about having zero faith in GW's ability to provide that.

Guys, did you miss that Cool, Intelligence, and Willpower are back in the game? If Pinning isn’t a Cl test and Target Priority an Int test then something has gone wrong.