Necromunda: Skirmish Wargame
A game that left a meltabomb in my heart
Welcome to the Glyph and Grok - A “weekly” blog-letter exploring topics in the tabletop gaming arena. We explore design, execution, and culture relating to anything played on a tabletop.
Introduction
In the vein of my favorite past time of "get some friends together and play pretend with serious rules", wargaming is the third leg of the holy trinity with board games and tabletop roleplaying games.
The origin of roleplaying games can be traced back to wargames. If you’ve never delved down the rabbit hole of the origins of D&D, check out The Questing Beast’s video here. The lines defining these tabletop game types can be very blurry. TTRPGs with tactical nuanced rules for combat share much of the same genetic makeup with wargames and wargames that tell a story - like Necromunda's dominion campaign - may as well be a role playing game when the player is making decisions for their gang at higher levels.
What is Necromunda?
Necromunda is a Warhammer 40k universe skirmish wargame of gangs fighting for supremacy in a grimy underworld. For the uninitiated, these games are produced by Games Workshop.
Play consists of tactical skirmish battles between two or more low-model-count groups of fighters on a tabletop playing out scenarios that link together to tell a story of post-apocolyptic gangland war. The rules and terrain serve to create epic multi-story battle scenes that come up off the table. This is in contrast to the main Warhammer 40k game which is armies of space marines and inhuman xenos.
Each player outfits a starting gang from one of the factions available, having distinct flavor of gear and tactical strengths and weaknesses between them, and the fighters will gain experience to unlock new abilities and the gang will earn money and reputation to spend on rare gear. Each fighter in your gang becomes a storied character unique to that campaign.
What is it to me?
When Necromunda came out in the 1990s, I was between 10-12 years old and had interest in Warhammer 40k but could not imagine having the money to outfit an army. Necromunda wasn't cheap, but it was a far cry more accessible with its lower model count and fantastic terrain-rich starter set.
As I remember this time in my life, it has the bronzy-golden hue around it of "the good old days". I have seen a meme somewhere that being an adult is just doing all the things you wanted to do when you were 13 but with financial backing - and that hits me at the core. Imagine a nerdy tween with a handful of friends that would come over and hang out in my parents basement to play Mortal Kombat II and Magic the Gathering. This eventually became Golden Eye and Smash Bros, and taking turns logging into Everquest on dial up from the same computer. This stuff sits deep in my soul. Even today, my favorite way to spend time with friends is hanging out in the same space bullshitting over a ttrpg or boardgame.
Once Necromunda was introduced to the group, we put the entire weight of suburban 90's kids with nothing to do into playing out campaigns of gang warfare in the Underhive. The creation, growth, escalation, and culmination of a Necromunda gang still stands for me as a a top rated satisfaction in gaming. I've always thought that if a Necromunda video game was done right it would make untold fortune. XCOM2 was the closest thing I've seen (even including actual Necromunda games that have been made) and it basically re-defined tactical sci-fi video games. The thing XCOM2 missed that still puts Necromunda at top tier for me, is the fighters being irrevocably altered by their experiences. Yes, you get experience and unlock abilities, but in Necromunda you can’t just save scum out of losing a single fighter.
War is hell and the consequences were there. A fighter that took a hit was likely to need to replace a limb, have a wavering will, or myriad other ticks and snafus. That balancing act of chaotic chance and permanent repercussion gives so much weight to the story of the fighter. When everyone involved is playing with this expectation, it’s makes for a satisfying rich story.
The Catch
So clearly I have things I love about this game. So what’s going on with it today?
Well, the short version is that it’s a bloody mess.
The game was left on the shelf by Games Workshop for decades, and then apparently a reboot of sorts started in 2017. It had popped up on my radar then, and when I looked at it I was unimpressed.
The rollout of the game’s “reintroduction” was a starter set that was followed up by multiple large volumes that slowly doled out rules for gangs in the new aesthetic. Outdoor “Ash Wastes” scenarios were added with vehicles and other things that some may find interesting. Over some years and some book and terrain set releases a slew of stuff hit the market.
After this release schedule, apparently the rules and the game itself became unwieldy, because Games Workshop felt it necessary to do another book refresh and started selling a new Core Rulebook and refreshed books for each playable gang in the game.
This is where my largest point of contention exists with this game. Games Workshop has taken a game that stands on its own and cut and shuffled it so that you are buying multiple books and multiple “terrain sets” to play with the same value as the 1990’s box set. It costs hundreds dollars to get into a rudimentary campaign now, and the value is not what the original set was.
As someone who was once an avid player and now is trying to dip my toe back in, I am now scrounging around on the internet for information on what even to buy that is worth my time. This seems like an epic failure for expanding the player base. Thanks to players having kept the game alive in the interim between 1995 and 2017, there’s a substantial amount of player community love and you can find entries by kind players on How to get started.
I settled on purchasing the most recently released core rulebook, pictured below, and a starter gang of the Van Saar house. Happening to be a 3D printing hobbyist, I did find someone who modeled up terrain just like that 1990’s box set, and I spend a couple roles of PLA plastic and hours of my life to make the plastic buildings you can see in the image at the top of the article.
The Core Rules
The remainder of this discussion will review the above pictured rulebook and the rules themselves.
The 2023 Core Rulebook is about twice as thick as the previous iteration of core rulebook. My hope would be the increased thickness meant the piles of rules previously split into other books was now consolidated here, but I do not believe that’s what happened.
Lore
When it comes to Warhammer 40k lore, this book has a lot to like. A beautifully awful post apocalyptic world is painted in words and images that feel like Mad Max, Judge Dredd and myriad dark anime plot lines. A timeline with ornate “future-gothic” bulleted reports of the history of Necromunda and how it fits into the larger story of the dark imperium of man in the 41st millennia. I skip this on my first read through on many game books like this, but I read it here and I was pleasantly surprised I did. You are fifty pages into the book before the first game related content is displayed.
Rules of Gang War
The game uses only D6s, but in what feels like an effort just to get people to buy special dice, there are a couple designed in. There are blast markers, a flame template, and ruler that are necessary to play, the rest of the tokens, cards, and dice feel superfluous and can usually be sidestepped with a simple rollable.
Vehicles have been added to the game since I last played it, and to me this is not something for the better. I want to play down and dirty Underhive gang fights over territory the way the God-Emperor of man intended.
Anyone who has learned the finer points of combat in ttrpgs like D&D 5E, will recognize much of the guts of the rules around actions to move, aquire targets and factor in for cover and environmental conditions. Each “fighter” in the gang fielded to the table has a stat line like a roleplaying game character:
Everything is done with D6s and different stats are tested or effected in different situations.
Each player creates a 1000 credit gang, is assigned a territory out of a generated list based on the number of players, and then scenarios are played out to determine ownership over unclaimed territory and then finally scenarios are played out with fighting over owned territory.
As we continue to discuss the rules at a high level, this is where I will mention the layout of this book is most infuriating. I feel spoiled by TTRPG books that have concise and well designed reference tables on the inside covers. Games that clearly intended to make learning and teaching the game a priority do not lay out the information in their books as this one is. There is CONSTANT flipping between ideas and concepts and sometimes there are page number references and sometimes there is mention of something but not direct reminder or page number as to where to find what is a predictable logical knock-on question.
This rulebook does something I see a lot in older board game rule books, it explains the rules through the exceptions. Combination with verbose technical description, this can equate to entire sentences of information for the reader to parse out of a majority of instances when they will read a particular rules entry. The time it takes to internalize certain rules is more than it needs to be and it will keep a player from being able to keep their focus on making good tactical decision on their turn.
The default way to play this game is in a campaign, and the rules for playing out a play session are separated and described in full before the campaign rules, and then the actions that can be taken during the majority of the game are separated out as well. This leads to the flow of questions a player will naturally ask themselves when learning how to paly, are sporadically separated across this 350 page book.
I wrote a 4300 word reference document in Obsidian to play this game with less overhead and page flipping. A sure sign that the usefulness of a book as a rule set has missed its mark.
In The End
Necromunda is still around. I have my gripes and I think there’s just too much “cash-grab” feeling to the frequency of book redesigns and the breadth of lack-luster terrain offerings, but the game I have loved an could love again appears to still be there.
Splitting up each gang into their own book means you are looking at purchasing at least 2 books to get started. Games Workshop is like the Wizards of the Coast of table top wargaming, they don’t give PDF copies of the rulebooks when you buy them - they want you to buy EPUB versions of the book for half the price of the physical book - and it just seems to me that the decisions are markedly anti-consumer.
HOWEVER, with a gang miniatures box, a rulebook, and some terrain - maybe some you’ve made or created yourself - you and your friends could play out a campaign that would provide many hours of storied fun in the Underhive. It’s imperfect, but it can be a hell of a lot of fun.
Do you play tabletop war games? Do you find battle reports from wargame campaigns interesting? Comment below!
Thanks for Reading!
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It was great to read your experience with Necromunda, it made me think of my own feelings as a child with Warhammer.
I for one have been adjacent to Warhammer since I was little but never had the opportunity to get into the hobby because of how expensive the minis were and frankly because didn't know if I would have the patience to paint such small things. Now, a few weeks ago, I took my first step into the miniatures hobby with a second hand version of dungeon bowl and I'm eyeing Mordheim to get into the skirmish world. But Necromunda also looks as an interesting option!