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 Sqorgar wrote:

Necromunda, to become a game which thrives over at least 18 months, needs to have a reason for players to keep buying Necromunda material. If all the old grognards, with their already complete gangs, only had to buy a single rulebook, how exactly would Necromunda survive for more than the opening weekend?

The flipside of that is that in order to last those 18 months, it needs people to buy it in the first place.

I would have bought a new (complete) Necromunda rulebook. I would have bought expansion books like the original Outlanders. I would have bought campaign books offering different, non-core content like the original Necromunda magazine.

I'm not buying an incomplete rulebook and then separate rulebooks for each gang.

They could simply have released the core game and one new, as-yet-unseen or highly reimagined gang. Leaving old players nothing 'new' AND stringing the old House Gangs over 18 months is... not gonna generate 'longevity'.

I like the Orlocks. Might need to pick them up for this game.

I wonder just how significant all of these disappointed old players actually are, numbers wise.

This new player is delighted by this release. Here is a 40k based game where I can lovingly convert and paint every miniature to the highest standard I’m able to. One which will have a release schedule I can keep up with too and not feel like I can only ever buy a fraction of the stuff I want and not feel like I have to paint a huge army that will be huge disappointment, because I can’t spent weeks on perfecting each model.

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:
I wonder just how significant all of these disappointed old players actually are, numbers wise.

This new player is delighted by this release. Here is a 40k based game where I can lovingly convert and paint every miniature to the highest standard I’m able to. One which will have a release schedule I can keep up with too and not feel like I can only ever buy a fraction of the stuff I want and not feel like I have to paint a huge army that will be huge disappointment, because I can’t spent weeks on perfecting each model.

That's awesome. Hope the system hooks you as much as the old one did me!

 insaniak wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

Necromunda, to become a game which thrives over at least 18 months, needs to have a reason for players to keep buying Necromunda material. If all the old grognards, with their already complete gangs, only had to buy a single rulebook, how exactly would Necromunda survive for more than the opening weekend?

The flipside of that is that in order to last those 18 months, it needs people to buy it in the first place.

I would have bought a new (complete) Necromunda rulebook. I would have bought expansion books like the original Outlanders. I would have bought campaign books offering different, non-core content like the original Necromunda magazine.

I'm not buying an incomplete rulebook and then separate rulebooks for each gang.

Today alone, I bought Necromunda, Gang War Vol 1, Clint Beastwood, and around £200 of terrain for a nascent Necromunda board.

I am not alone.

[MOD EDIT - Please find a different way to express that. - Alpharius], take this as reassurance that when you’re ready to buy in, there’ll be people ready and equipped to show you the ropes

Those Orlocks have awesome guns. They really, REALLY have a biker look now, whereas the older models remind me of bikers x Mafiosi...not helped by the paint scheme and Rick Priestley's names in the battle report Not sure if I want dudes with handlebars or not.

The Delaque should look downright creepy and Cawdor sufficiently sinister if they cintinue to use the old designs and turn it to 11. If they remake The Rat King...drool.

If they do more bounty hunter models I so hope that they also do one of Belladonna, used in the preview below:

Voss wrote:
But the health of the game is really dependent on it being functional and buyable as a game, not a series of crazy marketing gimmicks.

Actually, I think it needs both. Lifestyle games are generally only as healthy as the release schedule. See too many months without a significant new release (AoS) and the game's community starts to dwindle. It doesn't matter how passionate the fanbase is, without a near constant stream of new releases to renew the game, it will stagnate and people will start to abandon it. Keeping a healthy community is about keeping the rate of growth at or above the rate of shrinkage.

And as a note, it can't both be a niche game AND a third pillar. That simply doesn't fly- if it's one of those, it is by definition not the other.

It's a niche industry. I'll bet Necromunda does a lot better than Infinity and Infinity has been enough to support Corvus Belli all by itself (though now they have Aristeia). I also think that third pillars are like third wheels - nice to have for balance, but doesn't have to as much heavy lifting if the other two wheels are strong enough.


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 insaniak wrote:

I would have bought a new (complete) Necromunda rulebook. I would have bought expansion books like the original Outlanders. I would have bought campaign books offering different, non-core content like the original Necromunda magazine.

I'm not buying an incomplete rulebook and then separate rulebooks for each gang.

The gang war books are not codices for individual gangs. I'm pretty sure the gang wars books are kind of a mushing together of core expansion material and different, non-core content like the magazine. Gang War 1 has full rules for Escher and Goliath, adds a campaign mode and rules for 3D terrain, along with a few scenarios. Here's what the website says about Gang War 2:

The Orlocks will be released alongside Gang War 2; the second instalment in the Gang War series. For starters, this will contain the rules for founding and playing with your Orlock gang as well as their various new weapons and gadgets, hiring the aforementioned Hive Scum, as well as a wealth of other content to suit any Necromunda player, like using the new Badzone Delta gaming tiles

So buying the Gang War supplements would be equivalent to buying Outlanders and Necromunda magazine.

The rulebook is not incomplete. They are self contained provide a complete experience. It is not unplayable. It may not be the experience you desire or expect based on the previous Necromunda. For that, you need to add on a few extra (optional) systems like the 3D rules and campaigns. But that doesn't mean the rulebook is incomplete - just that you disagree which rules are "optional". And that's fine. I just don't think you can objectively call the new rulebook (for a new game) incomplete when it provides exactly the experience it intends to provide. The other systems are built on top of it, not excised from it.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Voss wrote:
But the health of the game is really dependent on it being functional and buyable as a game, not a series of crazy marketing gimmicks.

Actually, I think it needs both. Lifestyle games are generally only as healthy as the release schedule. See too many months without a significant new release (AoS) and the game's community starts to dwindle. It doesn't matter how passionate the fanbase is, without a near constant stream of new releases to renew the game, it will stagnate and people will start to abandon it. Keeping a healthy community is about keeping the rate of growth at or above the rate of shrinkage.

A reasonable stream of releases, sure, that's healthy. There is lots of room for that sort of thing- buildings, hive scum, bounty hunters, new tile sets if they want to keep on that tack.

But dribbling out the absolute basics and cutting core parts of the rules so they can be sold as separate purchases for the sake of having new releases is not productive or healthy growth. You can have your salad today, but you can't have the entree til next week (and you have to buy a different menu) is just crazy.

It's a niche industry.

Of course it is. But it's also a niche game for GW, not a third pillar. Despite (in fact because of) the wacky marketing approach, the entry for a league or campaign is a single box of whatever gang (once they come out). They've effectively told at least half the potential audience not to buy in and just wait for whichever gang when they get around to it. And implicitly probably to wait until a collected rulebook.

They've set it up to undermine sales and keep people from buying in. That isn't an approach to a pillar- by contrast the absolute rush to get new 8th edition codexes (despite all the balance problems) is what you do with a 'pillar' category game. You prioritize getting customers the product so they can buy in and keep buying.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


[MOD EDIT - Please find a different way to express that. - Alpharius], take this as reassurance that when you’re ready to buy in, there’ll be people ready and equipped to show you the ropes

To be honest, that's unlikely to happen at this point. I prefer to own all of the rules for the games I play, so the drip-feed approach they're taking with Necromunda is just as off-putting as the hardback-half a codex releases through 6th and 7th edition 40k were.

Make it easy for me to get the rules, and I'll spend insane amounts of money on miniatures.
Make the rules too difficult or expensive to keep up with, and I'll just play something else.

I'm impressed with what they've released so far and the look of the upcoming releases.
I'm not impressed with the schedule for those releases and the rumoured lack of alternate gangs

After all this fanfare I'm mostly annoyed that we still can't get away from GW's minimum wage intern tier editing.

The book has whole sentences repeated, remnants of cut-and-pasted wording scattered in the text, at least one rules entry missing for a weapon keyword (Fear), at least two tactics cards misprinted into non-functionality.

 Sqorgar wrote:
The gang war books are not codices for individual gangs. I'm pretty sure the gang wars books are kind of a mushing together of core expansion material and different, non-core content like the magazine. Gang War 1 has full rules for Escher and Goliath, adds a campaign mode and rules for 3D terrain, along with a few scenarios.

But the page count to price ratio is pathetic.

With GW1 I can get that adding it to the main rulebook would have changed the price-point of the core box, and they wanted it to keep it to BB levels. But 4 more GW books next year, one for each gang + stretching out other concepts (this book has Hive Scum, this book has Hangers On, this book has Bounty Hunters, this book has Wyrds) is too much. I don't want to need a corerulebook + 5 supplements just to play the 6 base gangs. That's absurd.

For me, the best option if they wanted the starter to just cover the included models would have been for Gang War 1 to cover basic rules for all of the core gangs so that they're all on the table and usable, and then use later releases to add new and interesting weapons and wargear to each gang.

I want to get into this so bad but the estimated price to do it right has climbed far past the reasonable mark.

Models? Gorgeous.
Hive terrain? Perfect.

But to make a reasonable 3x3 (and I really MEAN reasonable) with two gangs and rules? I'm past $400 easy.

Sure I could play on cardboard tiles.....but we all know that isn't really the point of Necromunda.

I just look at this and feel like i would he collecting 40k from the ground up.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Necromunda, to become a game which thrives over at least 18 months, needs to have a reason for players to keep buying Necromunda material. If all the old grognards, with their already complete gangs, only had to buy a single rulebook, how exactly would Necromunda survive for more than the opening weekend? GW is creating a niche game that they expect to be a third pillar (in addition to 40k and AoS), so they need to keep people buying stuff. Ideally, it is by providing new stuff that they want. And GW is doing that with new tactics decks, scenery (both tiles and sector mechanicus), gang war supplements, hired gun characters, and eventually weapon sprues to update old models. The majority of this is what a new player of Necromunda would want, and it is necessary for the health of the game over a long period of time.

I bought the Frostgrave rulebook, a complete game (rules wise) in 1 purchase. I liked the rules and when they released (non essential) expansions at a great price point I bought every single one. I havent to this day even played a game (I dont get to play much) but I felt there was value in every purchase as they added (once again non essential) content to the base game.

If GW released Necromunda as a complete game and then released extra content (like the old gang war/necromunda magazines) then people would buy them to extend the life of their original purchase plus people actually playing the game is the best advertisement for new people to purchase the game.

As it is some (maybe many?) people see through the GW gak and realize the full rules arnt available because 'we are going to release the rules for X gang or Y weapon sometime in the future....' and so are telling GW to go jump.


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 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

This new player is delighted by this release. Here is a 40k based game where I can lovingly convert and paint every miniature to the highest standard I’m able to. One which will have a release schedule I can keep up with too and not feel like I can only ever buy a fraction of the stuff I want and not feel like I have to paint a huge army that will be huge disappointment, because I can’t spent weeks on perfecting each model.

Thats great, but let us know how you go after you paint your gang and then in a couple of months they release 'new' weapon options that suit your gang more than what you have already painted and you hear us old grognards say "why didnt they just put those in the original book" and you look at some of your models and think "I just wasted some of my precious hobby time because GW released incomplete rules"

Maybe you wont feel that way, thats ok but I dont have much hobby time and I would be far from impressed.

 insaniak wrote:
For me, the best option if they wanted the starter to just cover the included models would have been for Gang War 1 to cover basic rules for all of the core gangs so that they're all on the table and usable, and then use later releases to add new and interesting weapons and wargear to each gang.

But you have basic rules for all the core gangs in a free PDF. Providing you have old models, you can literally start playing right now.

 Crimson wrote:

But you have basic rules for all the core gangs in a free PDF. Providing you have old models, you can literally start playing right now.

That doesn't help new players. That's the absurdity, IMO. The models for the other core gangs would be finished by now, but for some inexplicable reason they've chosen to release as a two- faction game and drip feed out the rest. A lot of new players are turned off by lack of faction options (thats one of the bigger hurdles faced by new start-ups) so if you have the opportunity to release a more fleshed out game, it seems silly not to.



Few players are going to collect all of the gangs, so dropping all of them at once would have only had a positive impact on sales, as what you lose to the diehards who can't afford to buy 6 gangs at the same time, you make up for with the people who are only interested in the look of, say, Delaque... Who may or may not wait around for that hand to be released outherwise.

 insaniak wrote:
For me, the best option if they wanted the starter to just cover the included models would have been for Gang War 1 to cover basic rules for all of the core gangs so that they're all on the table and usable, and then use later releases to add new and interesting weapons and wargear to each gang.

Was never going to happen because:

1. No model = no rule. They don't sell Delaques/Orlocks/Van Saar/Cawdor.
2. They don't want to write rules for a gang and have that lock them in for new weapons and so on.

 insaniak wrote:
... you make up for with the people who are only interested in the look of, say, Delaque...

Like me. I'm just thrilled at the prospect of having to wait -a year- for my chosen gang.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
For me, the best option if they wanted the starter to just cover the included models would have been for Gang War 1 to cover basic rules for all of the core gangs so that they're all on the table and usable, and then use later releases to add new and interesting weapons and wargear to each gang.

Was never going to happen because:

1. No model = no rule. They don't sell Delaques/Orlocks/Van Saar/Cawdor.

No, I was talking about releasing the gang boxes along with the book. Even if they were simplified 'starter' versions of the gangs, with all the whackier gear to be added later.


Although they've certainly made later expansion harder for themselves with all of the gang-specific gear. Instead of being able to release, say, a model for each gang armed with a hamster launcher, with rules for adding this entry to the armoury, they have to add a whole bunch of new stuff to give everyone an equivalent update.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Does anyone know what the name of that track is or where you can get it?

It very much sounds like the opening theme to the TV show “Lucifer”.

Did we get any info from the Open Day about when/if we can expect digital versions of the rulebook and Gang War 1?

insaniak wrote:For me, the best option if they wanted the starter to just cover the included models would have been for Gang War 1 to cover basic rules for all of the core gangs so that they're all on the table and usable, and then use later releases to add new and interesting weapons and wargear to each gang.

There are no models for the other gangs. GW can't just release all the gangs at one time. It would represent an unprecedentedly massive release, representing years of design and production work that would need to be completed before even the first Necromunda box is sold. GW operates years in advance, so the Orlocks being released in February are completed, design-wise. However, they may not have the plastic production plates created (the pictures shown were likely painted resin prototypes), the sprues may not have been produced, the packaging not complete, the rules not fully tested, the White Dwarf photos and articles not created, and so on. You can say that the rules for playing those models could be made available (and they are, through the legacy pdf), but I think it is asking a bit much for several months worth of GW releases to be made available all on one day. I mean, it took months for the Dark Imperium models to be released separately. Maybe they could've done some monopose models, but that kind of defeats the purpose of Necromunda when you remove the customization.

At three months per gang, that is a very accelerated rate that means the core gangs will be complete in a single year. This gives new players and early adopters a chance to acclimate to the game, and all the grognards can simply come back in a year and see how the game turned out. Think of Underhive as a preview, with the real game being released a year from now - if that's what helps you through this.

MangoMadness wrote:I bought the Frostgrave rulebook, a complete game (rules wise) in 1 purchase.

And Necromunda: Underhive is a complete game. There are no Orlocks to play, so not having rules for them does not make the game incomplete. Also, the legacy rules have rules for them.

If GW released Necromunda as a complete game and then released extra content (like the old gang war/necromunda magazines) then people would buy them to extend the life of their original purchase plus people actually playing the game is the best advertisement for new people to purchase the game.

Necromunda: Underhive is a complete game. Some people could play it for years and never want for more. The only reason you think it needs more is because your expectations are being set by a game released twenty years ago. New players don't have that expectation and thus can accept something like Underhive as a starter set for a game with additional releases to come. As a comparable example, RuneWars TMG was released with a single box of two factions. Initial releases were just what was in that box, but separately. It took several months for a fourth faction to show up, and now, a year later, the third and final faction has been released.

insaniak wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

But you have basic rules for all the core gangs in a free PDF. Providing you have old models, you can literally start playing right now.

That doesn't help new players. That's the absurdity, IMO. The models for the other core gangs would be finished by now, but for some inexplicable reason they've chosen to release as a two- faction game and drip feed out the rest. A lot of new players are turned off by lack of faction options (thats one of the bigger hurdles faced by new start-ups) so if you have the opportunity to release a more fleshed out game, it seems silly not to.

New players (and I mean NEW players, not old players new to this edition) need a much simpler starting point with fewer options. Just putting together a model may prove to be an insurmountable challenge (if you go by Board Game Geek threads). Underhive gives you exactly two factions and has precreated characters that tell you exactly how to build them. Underhive is aimed at new players. People who play board games and have never really touched a miniatures game before. They need to be handheld through the entire process, and Underhive should be seen in the same light as most starter sets, like Infinity's Red Veil/Icestorm sets, Wrath of Kings' Treachery and Honor set, or the Malifaux starter set. You can NOT play complete games of Infinity, Wrath of Kings, or Malifaux based on the rules that come in the starter sets alone - but they are complete games in and of themselves (maybe not the Malifaux one). Gang War is all about customizing your models and playing on non-standard terrain that you build yourself. It is the equivalent of buying the Infinity, Wrath of Kings, or Malifaux rulebooks.

Again, I think Gang War is too expensive by a third, and if they keep a quarterly schedule on those supplements, it'll get expensive fast. I'm not convinced that they will go quarterly with it yet. They may be much slower coming and have more than just the rules for one faction (it's possible they only mention the Orlock rules because the Orlock gang is the only one they've announced - GW is weird like that). I'm not against a quarterly supplement release schedule, and honestly, I bought all the Age of Sigmar campaign books that were much more expensive and released much closer together. It's just that right now, Gang War being a quarterly release is an assumption.

Also, the design work may be done for the other gangs, but I don't think you should consider them completed just yet. If GW is just sitting on a warehouse filled with finished products that won't become available for another year, they are losing money.

Few players are going to collect all of the gangs, so dropping all of them at once would have only had a positive impact on sales, as what you lose to the diehards who can't afford to buy 6 gangs at the same time, you make up for with the people who are only interested in the look of, say, Delaque... Who may or may not wait around for that hand to be released outherwise.

Again, think that is asking too much. Necromunda came out yesterday and already has 14 individual products released for it (I'm not even including the bundles or the new Sector Mechanicus terrain). For each gang, you have the gang box, dice, and tactics cards. You've got the core box, but all the scenic bases, bulkheads, and scatter terrain are separate releases too. And then you've got Gang War on top of it. To release 4 more gangs would add an additional 12 releases to that 14. Not all releases are created equal, sure, but when was the last time GW released 26 new products (106 new models) on one day?

 Mymearan wrote:
Underwhelmed by those Orlock, they are... very boring, especially compared to the very nice Goliath and the fantastic Escher. The Scum, however, are incredible! Need those, stat.

Agreed, but then again, wasn't much of a fan of the old one either.

If they release a new book for each gangs, that's pushing it a bit too far......

 Sqorgar wrote:

Few players are going to collect all of the gangs, so dropping all of them at once would have only had a positive impact on sales, as what you lose to the diehards who can't afford to buy 6 gangs at the same time, you make up for with the people who are only interested in the look of, say, Delaque... Who may or may not wait around for that hand to be released outherwise.

Again, think that is asking too much. Necromunda came out yesterday and already has 14 individual products released for it (I'm not even including the bundles or the new Sector Mechanicus terrain). For each gang, you have the gang box, dice, and tactics cards. You've got the core box, but all the scenic bases, bulkheads, and scatter terrain are separate releases too. And then you've got Gang War on top of it. To release 4 more gangs would add an additional 12 releases to that 14. Not all releases are created equal, sure, but when was the last time GW released 26 new products (106 new models) on one day?

Your scenario relies on there only being two possible options at either extreme, but the problem is there are far more than that. They could roll the cards into the gang boxes ala Shadespire. They could drop the gangs one week and the book & accessories & terrain the next. They could have included the Gang War book itself in the core box at negligible actual cost to them, stick with the two starter factions for the initial release, then drop the remaining four gangs with the second(and final, as far as the "core" experience is concerned) Gang War book in February. Even stretching things out to two more releases of a Gang War book and a pair of gangs at say the end of January and the end of April would have been tolerable. Four gangs spread over a whole year each one requiring its own additional supplement? That's taking the piss IMO.

There were any number of ways to handle this release that balanced the needs of old players, new-old players, and new-new players and they're all pretty self-evident, so the fact they settled on the release model that extracts the maximum possible revenue regardless of how it might affect the long-term viability of the game is no accident, and it's certainly not about prioritizing the needs of new players.

 Sqorgar wrote:

There are no models for the other gangs.

I very much doubt that. The initial plastic gangs would have been completed at least 6-12 months ago.

As a comparable example, RuneWars TMG was released with a single box of two factions. Initial releases were just what was in that box, but separately. It took several months for a fourth faction to show up, and now, a year later, the third and final faction has been released.

Yes, quite a lot of new games kick off with only two factions. And quite a lot of people refuse to even look at such games until they get more factions added.

New players (and I mean NEW players, not old players new to this edition) need a much simpler starting point with fewer options. Just putting together a model may prove to be an insurmountable challenge (if you go by Board Game Geek threads).

You're conflating new players and new gamers.

Again, think that is asking too much. Necromunda came out yesterday and already has 14 individual products released for it (I'm not even including the bundles or the new Sector Mechanicus terrain). For each gang, you have the gang box, dice, and tactics cards. You've got the core box, but all the scenic bases, bulkheads, and scatter terrain are separate releases too. And then you've got Gang War on top of it. To release 4 more gangs would add an additional 12 releases to that 14. Not all releases are created equal, sure, but when was the last time GW released 26 new products (106 new models) on one day?

You've misunderstood. What I was suggesting was the core game release, and then Gang War following up within a reasonbly short timeframe with the rest of the gangs. Releasing 6 sprues at once isn't a big ask for GW... it's equivalent to a new army release for 40K. Frankly, I couldn't care less about cards and dice. They can release those at the same time or save them for a separate release, for all I care. Or get really drastic and release the cards in the game box like they used to.

The price is too high for few figures, some caps and papers. I'm disappointed. Will stay with conversions and PDF rules.

Im really concerned about the viability of the game now. There is clearly not enough factions, and the nickel and diming on rules will piss off old and new players, even if some refused to admit it for some weird reason. If they had release 4 factions at the beginning, and didnt cut down on the weapons available, it would have received a much better reception

Im still all in, and ill buy every single gangs, books and models they release for it, but unfortunately, i think they are setting this up to be a failure.

I'm sure most of us here are all up for exploring and expanding Necromunda. Hell, so much of the early talk was how we're even going to look at stuff outside of Hive Primus, something we know they wanted to do back in the day but never got around to. But they're not going to explore the other areas yet because they're still retreading a lot of the same ground with their initial gang releases. A year from now - a year from now! - we won't even be onto Outlanders, FFS. We'll just be getting Delaques and their rules.

It's too damned slow.