EXCLUSIVE! Necromunda: Underhive Gameplay
October 27, 2017 by dignity
Justin gets to play Necromunda: Underhive from Games Workshop at Essen SPIEL '17. We get down and dirty with House Goliath and House Escher as the clash heats up.
Make sure to delve deeper into this game with us but for now, this is looking like it could be a refreshing change for the world of Necromunda. Away from that, they also have loads coming to support the existing campaign style gameplay,
Will you be picking up Necromunda: Underhive?
This looks quite fast a passed game and adding in lots of multi level 3d terrain will make it really tactical, you could use some of that large range of Infinity terrain made by various companies. I would really love to see a board made up of some fantasy dungeon or sewer terrian, with some tech terrain scattered around to represent the real oldest part of a hive city.
I’m thinking we might get Warrens Oil rig set out and use it as the under hive oaf an ocean world 🙂
@dignity or the sump beneath the necromunda hive infested with mutants and crystal spiders, even throw in a few skiffs.
Sounds Fun to me, though where would i get crystal spiders?
Only their eyes are crystals. Other than that they look like any other normal giant (oxymoron?) spiders.
The game looks cool and very fast-paced. But my main question is: Will there be a campaign mode like in the old version.
The answer is yes, in the Gang War supplement released at the same time.
Need it… now…
Great stuff. I was worried it would lose the flavour of the original, but its all still there.
My favourite game of all time, now all I need is my Delaque gang to be released and I’m golden.
(Still wish i didn’t have to buy a separate book to get rules for 3D terrain though, its kind of like day one DLC for miniatures games.) GW are better, but they aren’t perfect.
I dont see it as DLC at all, more a case of two separate products targetted at different demographics, if like me you still play original necromunda and have existing gangs, just buy the gang war book and skip the 2.5d version. Personally i think they have been very clever with this release, drop the terrain out of the core box, because card scenary dont cut it any more, and lets be honest here 99% of all industrial sci-fi terrain on the market is recreating parts of the original card jenga tower, bet there will be a bundle on pre-order… Read more »
also bet that gang expansion boxes will come with core rules, as goliaths still suck and escher are at best my 4th or 5th choice gangs to play, redemptionists, muties and spyreres ftw!
Happily for me, Goliaths and Eschers have always been my gangs. Those and Scavvies.
I never actually played Necromunda (it occurred in my “grown up period” …. pffarg, “grown up” what was I thinking……) THis looks nice and nippy, a great little skirmisher. Have to give it a trial in the shop
I was willing to wait and see but it wasn’t until I watched this that I realized how much the terrain made the original game. It’s sad it’s not in the box.
you do get the barricades in the box, and not to mention if you want to build a 3D board you have the buildings from GW and others. 🙂
Yeah, but I have Deadzone now 😀
Yeah I was just thinking Mantic will make as much off this game as GW because their future-paint-ball-course deadzone terrain is perfect for this.
It is. Any boxes bought between myself and my friends will be raided for the barricades and they will be added to our flgc terrain to make up a 4×4 table.
its flat 🙁
It doesn’t matter how fantastic the models are or how great the gameplay… there is no skill needed to balance a plastic model on a flat board 🙁
So many broken models. Who’d have thought that combining heavy metal minis with flimsy foot-high card walkways would be a bad idea?
I’m joking 🙂 But Old Necromunda was a bit like Jenga 🙂
As i have posted else where, that sodding walk way was the enemy of spyrers everywhere, dont think i had a game without some emergency gluing required, when GW released that super glue keyring last year i thought that is perhaps the ultimate necromunda tool….
End of the Yeld spyrer’s gun was always like a banana and his wings were always on the floor.
Gorkamorka was next level jenga as it actually caused injuries
I do wish they’d kept the old Necromunda close combat.
Always preferred that system that seemed to better balance the skill vs toughness aspect than newe GW stuff which feels like it favours toughness since you get to hit back if you survive.
Game mechanics seem ok but the close combat doesn’t seem as engaging as the original @superfurry maniac has hit it on the head.
Will be interesting to see if overwatch and hiding etc still exist as they where a massive part of the original rules. Without them it could feel rather too stripped back and just 40k light.
The whole thing seemed like a lot of dice rolling to minimal effect.
That’s what happens when you roll dice. They’re inherently random. It’s why I find people calling 40K ‘competitive’ hilarious. Too much is random.
I sort of agree with you there. But I would say that it’s possible to make tweaks so there’s less likely to be lots of pointless dice.
Terrain blocking shots for example, given its likely shots will be obscured most of the time having a bonus for a clear shot instead of penalties for obscured shots means fewer rolls with a very low probability of success.
The issue is not the random element. Loads of games do just fine with random elements, whether intended for competive play or not. Magic, for example, has random card drawing. My point was that this demo was a whole lot of dice rolling to minimal effect. The issue there isn’t randomness.
The original could suffer from that, when you stick to d6 and success/fail with random outcomes it is always a possibility.
Isn’t that the main premise of wargaming though?
In all fairness though, the old Necromunda was the same.
It was hard to hit anything, so a lot of dice were rolled and and nothing happened. Except, of course, the occasional jam…
Apologies for the stupid question, but what base sizes are the models on? I assume 32mm for the Goliaths and 25mm for Escher?
You are correct.
“It’s how gamers remember it”, might be a little white lie that as I remember it with a lot of plastic and card terrain, not a dull board and a few doors.
So very much this…
They might call it Necromunda, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the old Necromunda.
I have to say – that looks dull as dish-water. Game design has moved on so much since “roll lots of d6s”. I am not sure GW really have, though.
This was largely my impression also. Shadespire at least has the card element to inject some interesting choices.
Yeah, rolling loads of D6s sucks. That’s why games like Bolt Action, AoS, 40k, KoW, Dystopian Wars and DZC have been so unpopular. Seriously, not every game needs fancy card decks or weird dice mechanics to be fun. I found the Frostgrave / Infinity style comparative roll + stat method to get quite tedious quite quickly, where I can roll buckets of D6s and not get bored, but each to his own. Game design hasn’t so much “moved on”, more that recently it has seen loads of new and varied ways of generating the same random numbers in order to… Read more »
Completely agree.
I will say though, that GW seems to be trying to mix things up with cards and activations and other stuff… But it’s kinda like throwing a lot of mud at the wall and see if it sticks. Even if it does, it’s still mud…
They’re doing them by the dozen now. Nothing truly interesting on innovative is happening. They’re just churning out one half-baked game after another, expecting us to buy multiple expansions just to get the full rules. Necromunda without 3D movement – who on earth came up with that bright idea…?
Sounds like practically every game that is being made by anybody at the moment. There is no such thing as innovative games anymore. Its all been done. Necromunda doesn’t need to be “new and innovative”. Its a remake of a 22 year old game. Can you imagine the backlash if they’d changed it to a card and poly dice based collectable competitive game with prepainted PVC figures?
It does have 3d movement though. Just has the option to not use it for ease of learning the rules.
I agree that it doesn’t need to be new and innovative. But why then, did they try to do just that? The old rules could use a bit of tweaking, some polishing, and having all gangs collected in a single volume and properly balanced. That’s it. The rules worked very well for their purpose, so why make these large sweeping changes? Take the cards, for example. What are they good for? As soon as you make your own gang and play a campaign they become useless. On the surface, cards sounds like a good idea, but when you think about… Read more »
What al lot of Bull by the GW employee. I played a lot of the original Necromunda but this game doesnot look anyway like the original. If you want to see the original rules go to https://yaktribe.org/community/vault/ I understand that they take the mechanics to the new 40k with there new kind of dice. But don’t call it Necomunda and don’t say that we senoir player see a game we like becaus played it in the past.. GW themselve call the the 3d version “Necromunda gangwar” on the website. This is a total new game with GOOD miniatures based on… Read more »
I am a senior Necromunda player and even though I have been playing the original (all versions but currently the Community Edition rules) on and off since release day in 1995, I see something I like in the new version. This game has all of the depth of the original Necromunda and more along with cool new ways to play (in tunnels) and sweet new minis. What’s not to like? IMO James M Hewitt and Andy Hoare have done a really fantastic job of reviving an old game in a format that will be familiar to current 40K players, while… Read more »
this looks very plain compared to the original game.
It actually has a bit more detail than the original like rules for picking or smashing locked crates and doors etc.
It looks great; quick and fun to play! I do wish the proper ‘Munda terrain that was put in the Shadow War: Armageddon game (why did they do that, that was ‘Munda terrain!) was in this box, but for me it, looks like something I could get playing quicker (after all the minis are cleaned up and painted, of course…) and with less room needed to play as well, depending on how many board tiles you put down. I’m looking forward to it.
If the Sector Mechanicus terrain was in the box it’d be £150+. I would much prefer no fancy terrain and a cheaper set as I already have tons of terrain for the game. Terrain will likely be available in a separate bundle for anyone who wants it.
Is does seem to lack a certain something with the cast that demo was played out
I really didn’t get my hopes up for this game, but it looks pretty good. Nice, quick and no reason not to put third-party terrain in there. Well done GW.
This was a favorite game of mine and I am stoked to see it back. Now if they will just redo Man O War!
Sigh…
The more I see of this game, the less I like it. It looked utterly dull, to the point where I could barely keep myself awake watching it.
Sigh…
More people crying about a game they never intended on buying in the first place. Yawn.
Don’t presume to know me…
I certainly did intend to buy it. But sadly, the more I hear about it, the more I realise that it’s a far cry from the great game it once was.
I might buy the models, but I’ll keep on playing with the old rules.
“I might buy the models, but I’ll keep on playing with the old rules”
There’s a WIN right there and that’s what’s class about Tabletop Gaming, if you don’t like the new stuff just play what you do like 🙂
We don’t need services like online servers etc.
I loved playing Necromunda back in the day, will have to dig it out and see about having a few games. Nice to see GW revisiting the old games, lets hope they keep them a live this time.