Necromunda Underhive - House of Chains Pg272

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**Vorian**

Yeah, I more meant random things from full 40k armies. Thematic random things are, of course, welcome

**insaniak**

BrookM wrote:
Having the Squat / Demiurg set up shop on Necromunda is cool, as they could be seen as suppliers of raw materials for the ever busy industries of the hives. Necromunda cannot survive on its own meagre resources alone.

Squats and Demiurg are two completely separate things.

**BrookM**

insaniak wrote:
BrookM wrote:
Having the Squat / Demiurg set up shop on Necromunda is cool, as they could be seen as suppliers of raw materials for the ever busy industries of the hives. Necromunda cannot survive on its own meagre resources alone.

Squats and Demiurg are two completely separate things.

Anything can happen, it wouldn't surprise me if both were rolled into the same thing somewhere down the line.

**kendoka**

I totally agree that (the official) Necromunda should be quarantined from 40k.

That said, adding a few tyranids in a campaign might be fun:

Spoiler:

**Theophony**

kendoka wrote:
I totally agree that (the official) Necromunda should be quarantined from 40k.

That said, adding a few tyranids in a campaign might be fun:

Spoiler:

That would be an awesome game. The gangs are trying to outrun the Nids and get off the far table edge, while the other gang is trying to do the same. Somewhere in the middle they remember the old adage of not having to outrun the bear, just have to outrun the other guy

.

**notprop**

There are no cannibals just imperial citizens.

More corpse starch anyone...?

**Yodhrin**

Neronoxx wrote:
zedmeister wrote:
wuestenfux wrote:
mdauben wrote:

This. I don't want to see SM shoe horned into Necromunda just because people want to use their 40K figures. They are two different games with two different "power levels" and they don't mix properly.

MEQ units are not suitable to field in an underhive.
But maybe a unit of Scouts?

Why would they even be down there? It'd be a waste of a very scarce resource to send a Marine Scout down instead of an Arbite Snatch Squad.

Possibly because marines do as they please, and may not trust the authorities to do the job right?
That took me 5 seconds, so I'm sure there are a number of good explanations possible.

I can probably invent a logically coherent explanation as to why Doctor Who is in Necromunda, that doesn't mean putting him in the game would be a good idea. These kind of wildly implausible fringe-case "possibilities" are what house rules are for, they should be kept well out of the actual rules.

Also, those Corpse Starch and Goliath t-shirts are getting bought - time to hit up the anti-scalper FB group(I swear if GW limit these to 1-per customer...). A lot of the designs recently for apparel have been really good - a fan will know exactly what they're referring to, while random people will just think it's a band tee(people keep asking me what kind of metal the band Vermintide plays

).

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Yodhrin, there’s at least two from the Loot Sharing group going

And I’m there on both days. Want to keep pick ups limited though. 61 Primaris Captains was...a logistical challenge!

**Lord Perversor**

I think a lot of people is considering Necromunda as another battleground for the normal armies when it should be just the oddity pop up here and there.

The random Inquisitor doing a search, some lone or trio of Eldar outcast experiencing something different, the Mutie or Abhorrent that it's just trying to hide from the authorities and such.

All the special characters should be considered as the guest Stars of a show they appear randomly here and there but shouldn't be your everyday mill of the run guys in a Necro game.

**Haighus**

Inquisitor Kallus wrote:
mdauben wrote:
zedmeister wrote:

Why would they even be down there? It'd be a waste of a very scarce resource to send a Marine Scout down instead of an Arbite Snatch Squad.

This. Unless there is some sort of major Chaos or Xenos incursion in the underhive, why would SM send scouts down there? And if they did, it becomes a 40K game played in an industrial setting, not a Necromunda game.

Indeed. Necromunda is a chance to break away from the 'standards' of 40k, to go to street level, literally, and be immersed in a setting of gangs and criminals that gives a hugely different feel in both game and setting. Marines are in everything else, however, they are not everywhere in background terms, being composed of only a thousand or so marines per chapter, which is infinitesimally small compared to all the other life out there. I dont understand why people feel the need to have to have marines in something like Necromunda, it's the equivalent of bringing the Avengers or the Justice League to a walllet theft....

Conveniently, the Imperial Fists Legion brought Necromunda to compliance during the Great Crusade, and has maintained a Chapter keep for recruitment purposes ever since, so finding Space Marines is not a huge issue. Some Space Marines come from Necromunda.

I don't advocate having Space Marines as a gang, but they would make great NPCs for a GM to use during a campaign. One of the gangs is getting too powerful compared to it's peers? The Imperial Fists get wind of this, and raid the gang to steal promising recruits, thus knocking them down a peg. The gang just needs to escape with as many gangers intact as possible, or maybe sacrificing the less important members. As a full gang, Space Marines should stay well away from Necromunda.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

I dunno.

As cool as the suggested scenarios sound, I feel they should be kept to home brew stuff.

Necromunda is a chance for us to see the Little Guys in action. Not just base level Imperial Citizens of all stripes, but lesser known or previously unseen Xenos. Let it be the background microscope to 40k’s telescope. Keep it for the smaller scale, and keep the Big Boys to the galaxy shaking events.

Hell, in the original Necromunda I didn’t even like Spyrers being a playable gang. They sat out much of the game (stuff like trading and territory), and were instead simply rock hard at the Combat. I found they attracted a certain type of player, who was rarely much fun as an opponent. NPCs? Sure. But include them in a campaign and they’ve always felt like a millstone round things.

**timd**

So I think the real question is: Why were they called "Squats" in that piece of fluff instead of the current term "Demiurg"?

T

zedmeister wrote:
At the risk of going off tangent, I feel I have to post this in defense of Squats. This is Jervis Johnson, posting on the old Fanatic Epic: 40,000 boards back in the heady days of 2004 on what actually happened with the Squats for those unaware:

Spoiler:

I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist

Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.

First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.

No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.

Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.

Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.

In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based ont he Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...

The second point I'd like to make is about 'old moulds'. In the past, Mail Order in the UK and US used to be the place that we kept all of the retired moulds for Citadel Miniatures, and we used to offer a service where you could order any Citadel Mniature ever made from MO. However, there are now so many of these 'back catalogue' miniatures that it is simply impossible to keep all of the old moulds in Mail Order and offer this service. Instead, we pick and choose which back catalogue miniatures are kept available. At present we're still struggling to produce special catalogues for these ranges (in the US there is the 'Phone Book' catalogue with everything in it, while the UK has special 'collectors guides' that are themed round a race). Once we've ironed out the kinks in the way we deal with the range of collectors models we want to keep permenantly available, the plan is to offer up other parts of the back catalogue for limited periods of time. In effect this will divide the back catalogue into three parts: a range of classic models that are permenantly available, a range of classic models we dip into and bring out for a limited release, and a range of retired models that will no longer be sold either because we've decided that they are embarrassingly bad, or because we are no longer allowed to sell them due to licencing agreement changes. So far we're still slowly working on deciding which classic models we want to keep permenantly available, and its going to take several years to work through just those. The old Squat range is most likely to end up as retired models, I have to say, though there is a good chance that the Squat war engines they could simply into the limited release classic range. Once again, only time will tell...

I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.

Best regards,

Jervis Johnson
Head Fanatic

So, yes, in a sense you are right in that they [GW] felt their 40k iteration was poor. However, their Epic iteration was well loved. I am hoping, if they return, that they capture that bespoke, artisan feeling they used to have in Epic.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Because Squats and Demirug are completely separate species and always have been I’d imagine?

**timd**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Because Squats and Demirug are completely separate species and always have been I’d imagine?

In the quote from Jervis, he says that if space dwarfs come back into the universe, they will be called Demiurg.

T

**Yodhrin**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I dunno.

As cool as the suggested scenarios sound, I feel they should be kept to home brew stuff.

Necromunda is a chance for us to see the Little Guys in action. Not just base level Imperial Citizens of all stripes, but lesser known or previously unseen Xenos. Let it be the background microscope to 40k’s telescope. Keep it for the smaller scale, and keep the Big Boys to the galaxy shaking events.

All of this.

I want Sump Thing, and mutants, and weird Imperial citizens who's professions and attire reflect the grim, surreal lunacy of humanity in the 41st millennium, and of course gangs old & new. Not Space Marines yet again. I mean look, I like Space Marines, I like 'em plenty, but for the love of jeebus you can't live on a diet of only chocolate - you can play Space Marines in Kill Team, Shadow War, 40K, hell they even have basically a whole game to themselves in 30K with its own small-scale variants, I think it's fair that we have one game in the 40K setting that focuses on something other than Marines punching other Marines or the handful of Big Bad enemies.

EDIT: As for the Squads/Demiurg thing, that's not hard to rationalise - Demiurg is what they call themselves, their society and race; Squat is the derogatory slang term the broader Imperium use for them(probably not to their face). The issue though is they would have to retcon Demiurg, since I recall(though might be imagining) them being described as a kind of crystalline xenos race rather than abhumans.

**Vorian**

timd wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Because Squats and Demirug are completely separate species and always have been I’d imagine?

In the quote from Jervis, he says that if space dwarfs come back into the universe, they will be called Demiurg.

T

I disagree with him in his quote where he says Squats is a bad name. That's exactly what the imperium of man would call little dwarfy adhumans. It's perfect imo

**Haighus**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I dunno.

As cool as the suggested scenarios sound, I feel they should be kept to home brew stuff.

Necromunda is a chance for us to see the Little Guys in action. Not just base level Imperial Citizens of all stripes, but lesser known or previously unseen Xenos. Let it be the background microscope to 40k’s telescope. Keep it for the smaller scale, and keep the Big Boys to the galaxy shaking events.

Hell, in the original Necromunda I didn’t even like Spyrers being a playable gang. They sat out much of the game (stuff like trading and territory), and were instead simply rock hard at the Combat. I found they attracted a certain type of player, who was rarely much fun as an opponent. NPCs? Sure. But include them in a campaign and they’ve always felt like a millstone round things.

Oh, that is fair enough, I see them as a campaign tool for a GM, not a playable race. So literally NPCs. If GW released a campaign supplement, I can see having NPC rules in there for Imperial Fist recruitment teams. But certainly not in the core rules.

**Crimson**

I think generic 40K skirmish based on Necromunda rules would be a great thing (so basically Shadow War: Armageddon with updated rules) but it should be kept separate from Necromunda proper.

**BrookM**

Yodhrin wrote:
EDIT: As for the Squads/Demiurg thing, that's not hard to rationalise - Demiurg is what they call themselves, their society and race; Squat is the derogatory slang term the broader Imperium use for them(probably not to their face). The issue though is they would have to retcon Demiurg, since I recall(though might be imagining) them being described as a kind of crystalline xenos race rather than abhumans.

While not wholly crystalline, the concept art of aeons ago did sport crystal outcrops:

**Galas**

Squats are Abhumans, Demiurg are a Xenos race allied with the Tau Empire and organized in Merchant Guilds.
https://youtu.be/StCXrBMl648?t=81

I don't see why both have to be mixed when they are totally different things. And IMHO Demiurg are much more interesting.

**Mr_Rose**

timd wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Because Squats and Demirug are completely separate species and always have been I’d imagine?

In the quote from Jervis, he says that if space dwarfs come back into the universe, they will be called Demiurg.

T

Yeah, referring to the archetype of high fantasy dwarves (short, stubborn, honourable, miners) once again becoming a playable army in 40k.
This is not the same as Squats=Demiurg.

Squats are a race of abhumans that were almost entirely wiped out by a Tyranid Hive Fleet that attacked their home worlds in the galactic core, whose few remnants are essentially all refugees in the Imperium.
Demiurg are an alien species of asteroid miners, loosely allied to the T’au Empire, who are known to be doing well enough for themselves that the T’au haven’t managed to totally subjugate them like certain other “allied” species.

**Crimson**

Mr_Rose wrote:

Yeah, referring to the archetype of high fantasy dwarves (short, stubborn, honourable, miners) once again becoming a playable army in 40k.
This is not the same as Squats=Demiurg.

Squats are a race of abhumans that were almost entirely wiped out by a Tyranid Hive Fleet that attacked their home worlds in the galactic core, whose few remnants are essentially all refugees in the Imperium.
Demiurg are an alien species of asteroid miners, loosely allied to the T’au Empire, who are known to be doing well enough for themselves that the T’au haven’t managed to totally subjugate them like certain other “allied” species.

It is unnecessarily confusing to have both though. They should just retcon the Squats to be Xenos, whose real name is Demiurg, 'Squat' being a nickname for them.

**Galas**

Is confusing for people to have Dark Eldar, Craftworld Eldar, Harlequins, Exodites and Ynnari?

"Oh jeezz I can't remember all those types of space dwarfs, one rocky and Xenos and other abhuman... what? You don't know who are the Novamarines and the heroic deeds of his Chapter Master Bardan Dovaro?!"

**Crimson**

Galas wrote:
Is confusing for people to have Dark Eldar, Craftworld Eldar, Harlequins, Exodites and Ynnari?

No, because they're actually all Eldar. We're talking a situation here where there are two different sorts of Space Drwarfs, which are no way related; they're not two offshoots of the same race.

**Galas**

Yeah. Two types of Space Dwarfs. Like Ogryns and Orks, they have similarities but expanded upon the generic "space dwarf" theme nobody should have a confusion with them.
But as I said before, for me just let the Squat's squatted and expand the Demiurgs.

**zedmeister**

Please, keep Space Marines out of the place.

What I want to see:
I want to see Squat tech smugglers
I want to see gangers suffering from MACS (Mysteriously Acquired Crazy Syndrome)
I want to see Pontifex Maximus out for a stroll
I want to see Muto's in gunfights amongst the barrios
I want to see exotic aliens hiding away or moving clandestinely about, like Krashrak the Stalker here from Inquisitor:

**Rolsheen**

I remember you could play as a Eldar Farseer and his 2 Fire Dragon bodyguards or have a Eldar Ranger as a hired gun. The Ranger I wouldn't mind coming back, he wasn't to OP. The Farseer & Co not so much.

#KalJericoLives

**Pumpkin**

Eldar are basically taller, thinner humans with a few other specific superficial details tweaked.

In-universe, just think of the Demiurg as basically the Eldar-equivalent for Squats; a completely different species with a very similar physical form, differentiated only in small ways.

IRL, though, I get that humans and Eldar (elves) are both different archetypes, whereas Squats and Demiurg are both space dwarves, so I suppose it's not quite the same thing from a design point of view.

zedmeister wrote:
wuestenfux wrote:
mdauben wrote:

This. I don't want to see SM shoe horned into Necromunda just because people want to use their 40K figures. They are two different games with two different "power levels" and they don't mix properly.

MEQ units are not suitable to field in an underhive.
But maybe a unit of Scouts?

Why would they even be down there? It'd be a waste of a very scarce resource to send a Marine Scout down instead of an Arbite Snatch Squad.

Because it's their first day and they are very bad at this and they got lost during orienteering, and their scout sergeant is going to have some very stern words with them when they get back to their fortress monastery and maybe the Chapter Master will be speaking to their parents.

Or just executing them. Depends on the Chapter.

**JohnnyHell**

Haighus wrote:
Inquisitor Kallus wrote:
mdauben wrote:
zedmeister wrote:

Why would they even be down there? It'd be a waste of a very scarce resource to send a Marine Scout down instead of an Arbite Snatch Squad.

This. Unless there is some sort of major Chaos or Xenos incursion in the underhive, why would SM send scouts down there? And if they did, it becomes a 40K game played in an industrial setting, not a Necromunda game.

Indeed. Necromunda is a chance to break away from the 'standards' of 40k, to go to street level, literally, and be immersed in a setting of gangs and criminals that gives a hugely different feel in both game and setting. Marines are in everything else, however, they are not everywhere in background terms, being composed of only a thousand or so marines per chapter, which is infinitesimally small compared to all the other life out there. I dont understand why people feel the need to have to have marines in something like Necromunda, it's the equivalent of bringing the Avengers or the Justice League to a walllet theft....

Conveniently, the Imperial Fists Legion brought Necromunda to compliance during the Great Crusade, and has maintained a Chapter keep for recruitment purposes ever since, so finding Space Marines is not a huge issue. Some Space Marines come from Necromunda.

I don't advocate having Space Marines as a gang, but they would make great NPCs for a GM to use during a campaign. One of the gangs is getting too powerful compared to it's peers? The Imperial Fists get wind of this, and raid the gang to steal promising recruits, thus knocking them down a peg. The gang just needs to escape with as many gangers intact as possible, or maybe sacrificing the less important members. As a full gang, Space Marines should stay well away from Necromunda.

Agreed, but GW has even depicted them in the Underhive before... if the cash grab feels too good to pass up, then...

**Haighus**

Pumpkin wrote:

Because it's their first day and they are very bad at this and they got lost during orienteering, and their scout sergeant is going to have some very stern words with them when they get back to their fortress monastery and maybe the Chapter Master will be speaking to their parents.

Or just executing them. Depends on the Chapter.

Imperial Fists. So probably they would receive time in this badboy...