Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Long Story short - I went pretty heavy into Shadow Wars - got some extra copies of the book, working on getting people to play it, got a campaign going. The play has been really solid, especially for a GW product, though the kill teams are a bit cookie cutter, and the scenarios are not as interesting as the old necromunda stuff.

Now we've got Necromunda, and I'm wondering if I should jump ship. I haven't read the rules yet - how do they compare to shadow wars? Clearly close combat is different. How is the balance and scenarios? Is it worth making a change if Shadow Wars works for me? Obviously I should play a game or two, but that might be a ways off, so I'm kind of wondering what direction I should go in for modeling and such.

considering the price points, do both, they are not overly expensive to preclude each other and some stuff (terrain) can go both ways

necromunda is the superior system. All the updates are for the better and it's a pity about how the rulebook was organized

SWA is a modification of the old necromunda game, with a very bad replacement for campaign.

New necromunda is very different, more modern, more fresh, less clunky. New Necromunda is a much richer experience and will receive loads of new content. SWA is pretty much dead.

If you enjoy SWA/old necromunda game mechanics, keep playing it. It got value. But I recommend testing new necromumda also.

I'd go with Necromunda as your base system - for the very good points brought up above - but keep your SWA books for supplemental material.

...that likely won't be covered in years, so you really haven't wasted any cash.

 kestral wrote:
Long Story short - I went pretty heavy into Shadow Wars - got some extra copies of the book, working on getting people to play it, got a campaign going. The play has been really solid, especially for a GW product, though the kill teams are a bit cookie cutter, and the scenarios are not as interesting as the old necromunda stuff.

Now we've got Necromunda, and I'm wondering if I should jump ship. I haven't read the rules yet - how do they compare to shadow wars? Clearly close combat is different. How is the balance and scenarios? Is it worth making a change if Shadow Wars works for me? Obviously I should play a game or two, but that might be a ways off, so I'm kind of wondering what direction I should go in for modeling and such.

Play both. gangs and squads give you great incentive to customize, and personalize. The scenery works well in both games, too.

Do the SW:A point costs work to bring the SW:A forces over to Necromunda?

 dracpanzer wrote:
Do the SW:A point costs work to bring the SW:A forces over to Necromunda?

No, the prices don't match up nicely. For example, a lasgun is 10 points in Necromunda, but 25 points in Shadow War; a plasma pistol costs 35 points in Necromunda and 50 points in SW:A; etc. Overall, Shadow War seems to have higher points for weapons and lower points for dudes with decent stat lines.

I need to get to my books to check. Are they relatively the same for a model plus its weapons?

Play new necromunda and switch your SW:A armies over to the Heralds of Ruin Kill Team revamp. SW:A is nice because you can just tell people to buy a rulebook from off the shelf, but honestly the HoR:KT does everything SW:A does and does it much better. The base rules are modify 40K to even smaller skirmish, but there's additional rules for campaigns and advancements and there's a very active facebook group for it that are constantly providing feedback for updates and balance changes. They still have the older rules and armylists for both 6th and 7th ed up, you will need the actual GW rulebooks and codexes to play whatever edition, but it's pretty much THE best way to play 40k

I just cant see this as an either or situation, if you already have SW and you have models for it, then you are good to go.

I am going to go with Shadow War over Necromunda, for the sole reason that everybody here already has a 40k army. None of us have to buy new models if we want to play a skirmish game, or have to focus on painting anything besides our 40k armies.

Plus, Shadow War games make great ways to add flavor to a 40k campaign to secure areas, or make it so the winner of the Shadow War game gets to reroll tbe die to see who goes first in a game of 40k.

SWA: Single Games and short Campaigns (8-10 games over a day or a week)

Necromunda (classic): long term Campaigns (1-3 games per week over a year)

New Necromunda: Boardgame, use it as such

The new Necromunda isn't a board game.

The old Necromunda campaign was just to play until everyone got bored and stopped. Shadow War added a mechanic to determine an endpoint before that happened. The new Necromunda has more structure to it - play for a short period (a couple of months was suggested) and determine a winner, then begin a new round, using old gangs (or individual gangers) or new as players wish.

What I don't understand is "New Necromunda: Boardgame, use it as such ". That adds nothing to the conversation, because the last sentence is meaningless. How does one "use" a boardgame differently to a miniatures game (or a videogame, for that matter)? Being a boardgame tells you nothing about the complexity, immersion or longevity of the game (an Imperial Assault or Descent 2 campaign will be just as long-term as any SW:A or Necromunda campaign, and that's not even counting things like legacy games). The only conclusion is that kodos thinks boardgames are somehow inferior to "miniatures games" (ignoring the fact that there's quite the crossover) and that calling Necromunda a "boardgame" is somehow an insult and should put people off buying it.

If something is superior or not depends on the rules

But people have different expectations for a tabletop game and a boardgame
Going for new Necromunda as a Tabletop with long time campaign and show people the boardgame style box leads to problems as players expect different things from the game

using at as a boardgame (and there are also those that were played over several days) and players do not expect stuff that the new game is missing

Underhive isn't a board game though. It's a game of Necromunda on flat terrain with walls, doors and the like. The squares are just for the aesthetic, you don't move by counting squares. How is it not just a cheaper version of a Zone Mortalis board?

Also, I don’t understand why you can’t play a “long time campaign”using the new Necromunda. There is nothing that you could do in the original game that you can’t do in the new one, so I don’t see why there’d be any unmet expectations.

Tiles are great really happy with them add an extra dimension than just playing with 3d terrain. During my current necromunda campaign using gang wars we have our campaign map divided into 3 different zone types - open terrain (flexible 3d) underhive tiles (open 2d) space hulk tiles/corridor (narrow 2d). Gives a good mix.

Necromunda is more special, unique, has a different vibe. Shadow Wars is like small scale 40k, in the gameplay style of Necromunda. But honestly the appeal to me of this kind of game system is the setting first...neither of these games are going to win any kind of awards for their rules.