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I'm trying to slowly put all the pieces together for my upcoming 8th edition 40k campaign over time, which is to be set in Hive Primus itself. I basically want to play my Necromunda gangs, namely my Goliath, Escher, and soon to be other gangs, all in Warhammer 40k 8th edition rules. If anything, I'd like them to be on the underpowered side - they're just 'cruddy' gangs after all

But how could I do that? I have been thinking in the back of my mind all this time that I could just call them a penal legion of Imperial Guard and let that be that, but that takes away just about *all* of their flavor. And something tells me it can't just be as easy as subtracting 1 from each of their stats.

Would anyone have any suggestions as to how to make this conversion, well/consistently [while perhaps making them weaker than actual 40k armies, as they should be, in the transition]? (Weapons and armor too, I suppose...)

The simplest would be to split them across units:

Juves 5+ 5+

Gangers 4+ 4+


Otherwise you get complicated stat combos.


You could then go through and give them different weapon options that they all share.

Otherwise you get really all over the place weapons etc so
IT takes ages to work out

As a low-effort option, how about using GSC rules? Shooty and stabby gangers as neophytes and acolytes. Goliaths as abberants. Use non-patriarch hqs. Cult ambush makes sense for locals on their own turf.

If you want you could convert them into Renegades and Heretics. Could easily count as Militia Squads or Disciple Squads

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
If you want you could convert them into Renegades and Heretics. Could easily count as Militia Squads or Disciple Squads

Sure, that would do, but also be highly masochistic
.
positive sideffect, nobody would complain about op rules.

You could probably represent them fairly well with IG, and different Doctrines.

I guess there are a few different options, with a few different codex purchases involved, hah

But just for sake of going for the gold - would there be any reasonable way to house-rule them? Basically, would there be some way to take the Necromunda rulebook itself, chop it up, and make it into a sort of ganger codex?

 Netsurfer733 wrote:
I guess there are a few different options, with a few different codex purchases involved, hah

But just for sake of going for the gold - would there be any reasonable way to house-rule them? Basically, would there be some way to take the Necromunda rulebook itself, chop it up, and make it into a sort of ganger codex?

Sure. I mean, you'd basically just have to actually write Codex: Gangers. There's probably not an especially elegant rule-of-thumb conversion system that would result in a fluffy and functional army, so you'd have to sit down and actually figure out how everything ought to behave.

My initial thoughts on such a venture would be:

* Consider just making a single datasheet for each of the Necromunda gangs and then treating those as auxiliary units that can be splashed into other armies. Gangers could just as easily end up siding with tau or chaos with a good sales pitch as they would loyalist imperial forces. So you'd give them the Ganger keyword and either the Imperial, Tau Empire, or Chaos keyword. Then explain that units with the Ganger keyword can be splashed into another detachment without removing your chapter tactics equivalent rules.

Each gang in Necromunda probably doesn't have enough variety to warrant a dark eldar style split-faction codex. Like, Escher would be what? A gang leader, maybe two troop units (if you split them up into shooty and stabby variants), and maybe some sort of alchemy specialist? Doing that for each of the gangs would just result in a lot of redundancy and overcomplication. Better to just make each gang its own datasheet.

* If you really want to field an all-ganger army (or at least detachment), then make a generic "gang leader" HQ. Having every single instance of such a person unite the warring gangs by walking a mile in all their shoes EVERY TIME you want to use these rules seems like it would strain one's disbelief, so give them a list of special rules to choose from that match up with one of the gang types. The weird thing here is picturing goliaths and orlocks deciding that some rando escher ought to be their boss, but dire times call for dire measures I guess.

* In general, gangers should probably have statlines reminiscent of a guardsman. As cool as they are on their own scale, they're just a slightly scrappier than usual human with a couple extra special weapons next to a tyranid. If your gangers feel like they have pretty good odds of taking down a primaris marine 1v1, then they're probably too powerful.

* Escher units probably get something similar to wych combat drugs and the ability to shoot on the run.
* Goliaths probably behave like toned down ogryn or shootier aberrants.
* Van Saar is probably equipped similarly to scions.

* I still like the idea of giving cult ambush to these guys. It represents the home field advantage pretty well.
* If you want to give them access to transports, you're probably looking at genestealer cult vehicles.
* You can probably condense a lot of the Necromunda wargear down into generic profiles. All the various Van Saar glowy guns, for instance, can probably just be treated as "plasma guns."

* In general, I see these guys playing a lot like GSC but with a little more oomph on their squad leaders or characters.

But honestly, I still think GSC could pretty much give you what you're looking for. Just creatively refluff a couple things.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Netsurfer733 wrote:
I guess there are a few different options, with a few different codex purchases involved, hah

But just for sake of going for the gold - would there be any reasonable way to house-rule them? Basically, would there be some way to take the Necromunda rulebook itself, chop it up, and make it into a sort of ganger codex?

Sure. I mean, you'd basically just have to actually write Codex: Gangers. There's probably not an especially elegant rule-of-thumb conversion system that would result in a fluffy and functional army, so you'd have to sit down and actually figure out how everything ought to behave.

My initial thoughts on such a venture would be:

* Consider just making a single datasheet for each of the Necromunda gangs and then treating those as auxiliary units that can be splashed into other armies. Gangers could just as easily end up siding with tau or chaos with a good sales pitch as they would loyalist imperial forces. So you'd give them the Ganger keyword and either the Imperial, Tau Empire, or Chaos keyword. Then explain that units with the Ganger keyword can be splashed into another detachment without removing your chapter tactics equivalent rules.

Each gang in Necromunda probably doesn't have enough variety to warrant a dark eldar style split-faction codex. Like, Escher would be what? A gang leader, maybe two troop units (if you split them up into shooty and stabby variants), and maybe some sort of alchemy specialist? Doing that for each of the gangs would just result in a lot of redundancy and overcomplication. Better to just make each gang its own datasheet.

* If you really want to field an all-ganger army (or at least detachment), then make a generic "gang leader" HQ. Having every single instance of such a person unite the warring gangs by walking a mile in all their shoes EVERY TIME you want to use these rules seems like it would strain one's disbelief, so give them a list of special rules to choose from that match up with one of the gang types. The weird thing here is picturing goliaths and orlocks deciding that some rando escher ought to be their boss, but dire times call for dire measures I guess.

* In general, gangers should probably have statlines reminiscent of a guardsman. As cool as they are on their own scale, they're just a slightly scrappier than usual human with a couple extra special weapons next to a tyranid. If your gangers feel like they have pretty good odds of taking down a primaris marine 1v1, then they're probably too powerful.

* Escher units probably get something similar to wych combat drugs and the ability to shoot on the run.
* Goliaths probably behave like toned down ogryn or shootier aberrants.
* Van Saar is probably equipped similarly to scions.

* I still like the idea of giving cult ambush to these guys. It represents the home field advantage pretty well.
* If you want to give them access to transports, you're probably looking at genestealer cult vehicles.
* You can probably condense a lot of the Necromunda wargear down into generic profiles. All the various Van Saar glowy guns, for instance, can probably just be treated as "plasma guns."

* In general, I see these guys playing a lot like GSC but with a little more oomph on their squad leaders or characters.

But honestly, I still think GSC could pretty much give you what you're looking for. Just creatively refluff a couple things.

This is exactly the post I needed, and very inspiring - thank you! And you definitely make a good argument for GSC lol.

I do wonder how guys like Goliaths would compare to guardsman for WS and BS etc... Any thought son that? Lower BS, higher WS maybe? (orc stats there I guess)

The special rules you suggest seem *awesome*, ty! I only have really old Imperial Guard codexes but I might pick up a new one for some inspiration there. But you've definitely secured a genestealer cult codex purchase in my near future, too XD

If I come up with something good as a result of all this, I'll let you know!

Everyone here seems to forget the underhivers have ogryns and other abhumans.
Because they live in other filth and are often choice recruits for the fething astartes maybe they could have a 6+FNP?
I unno.