New "gang" for Necromunda (and yet another rulebook)

[phaidknott 7014xp 0]

So it’s going to be “Outcasts” this time around….

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/09/19/gen-con-a-new-gang-of-outlaws-revealed-for-necromunda/

Not sure on this one, as Outcasts is such a vague term. Is it a enhanced listing for Hive Scum or something more. Yet another £30 rulebook to reprint about 80% of content previously released (with about 10% being new and useful when it comes to rules). Again with “Outcasts” being so vague it’s hard to predict what this content is going to be.

Some new figures, I’m not seeing “Outcasts” or even Hive Scum from the look of these (the old push fit Chaos Cultists make far better Hive Scum once you’ve trimmed off the Chaos icons). HOWEVER what I am seeing is a range of figures that seem they would make PERFECT “juves” for the House Gangs. Looking at them I see long coats for your Delaques, waist cloths for your Orlocks, and even some more tattered looking ones for making up Cawdor Juves (I wonder if these were originally concepts FOR the various House Juves at some point).

Looks like some more Necromunda Terrain coming out as well. Better move fast on these on release day as they are always snapped up by the EBay Scalpers day one and GW never seem to bother producing any more beyond the initial release (the playerbase has been crying out for the plastic flooring they did with the Dark Uprising box set, but GW seem disinterested in re-releasing those. So be at your keyboards at 10am GMT and be prepared to be disappointed (in fact with GW supplying “limited” numbers to the FLGS these days I suppose you would be better off just going to GW directly (or was that the plan all along).

But still at the end of the day good news, as it’s going to be a lot easier to kitbash up your Juves for Necromunda in the future (the previous Gang boxsets didn’t seem to bother doing your “standard” Juves, just the VERY expensive (points wise) ones where you put the best kit on your poorest fighters…..never made sense when they first came out, and still don’t today.

But I still hope for the day when GW STOP with the whole “we put out a £30 10 figure box set, now we’ve got to release the rules to use them in another £30 rulebook” again (I remember the days when the rules just would appear in your issue of White Dwarf in a couple of pages rather than the “bloatware” version we get today 🙁 )

[sundancer 42627xp 4]

But I still hope for the day when GW STOP with the…

They won’t. If they make money this way they will enforce it.

[limburger 21555xp 2]

If you think that Necromunda is bad.

Look at what they’re doing to Killteam.
Instead of all the factions getting stats at release we only got two of them and a compendium that’s barely worth the paper it is printed on, because (as was predicted) the new sets will give them proper stats.
You want T’au or Space nuns ?
Better buy the expansion when it releases …

The only ‘good’ thing is that we’re seeing new sculpts for the killteams that they are releasing.

I think the best strategy is to find a system that will work and only ever use GW minis when they suit your needs.
The new ‘outcasts’ might make interesting crew additions for Stargrave for example.
At least that’s how I’ve started to look at GW releases. I take what I can and ignore the things they claim are ‘games’.

The new Necromunda terrain kind of looks cool, but considering that we can’t trust GW to keep it in stock after launch I’m not even going to bother pre-ordering them.

And yeah … I wouldn’t be surprised if these ‘hive scum’ were part of an original plan to add proper juves to the existing gangs, until the shareholders demanded ‘moar munny’.

Once you start looking at GW’s releases through the lens of a shareholder everything starts to make sense.
It’s not about doing what is good for the game or the gamers.
It’s about maximizing profit for minimal effort.

It’s what all companies do if they want to survive, but GW has taken it to a whole new level.
They’re the EA/Blizzard/Activision/Ubisoft of tabletop gaming.

Remember : companies are not your friends!

[phaidknott 7014xp 1]

Yup the one thing I’ve noticed from the previews is that there’s only three bodies seen so far (GW usually do five in their Necromunda releases so that the two sprues give you ten figures in a box). The only other box that had just three torsos was the Palanite Subjugators box that gave you six figures in the box. So not sure if it’s just going to be the six figures in the box (that would be amazingly poor value), perhaps twelve (although that one is unlikely as it makes “sense” to have large numbers of figures in a box for low points cost gangers), or perhaps there’s more yet to be seen that might appear in the box release.

Not sure what this Outcast book is going to contain (the cover shows one outcast and two previously released forge world Hired Guns. I hope they aren’t going to be completely lazy and just do the Venators (They added a Bounty Hunter gang made up of Hired Guns because no-one was buying the figures from Forge World as the Hired Guns rules just don’t work in a campaign setting) as an “Outlaw” gang (same rules, just means they use a different table to buy equipment). I just can’t see how they are going to fill up an entire book based on a “Hive Scum” style of gang (again these count as Hired Guns (of a sort) and again nobody uses them in campaigns as they are an “experience black hole” and don’t advance like normal gang members).

I was REALLY hoping we might see the Scavvy gang appear finally (my favourite gang from the 90s Necromunda), and dreading them adding either Ratskins or Spyrers (although the latter is lobbied by the playerbase quite a bit as they were totally OP in the 90s version of the game (Space Marine players used Spyrers, and Eldar players played Van Saar 😀 ).

 

 

[innes 11086xp 2]

Yet another book i won’t be buying. I stopped at Gang War 3 or 4. (How many books has there been since then?). New scenery looks nice but will be overpriced then never restocked.

[phaidknott 7014xp 2]

Since Gang War? Eleven hardback books currently (at £30 a pop), and at least twice that many “card packs” (many of which contain rules not found in the other eleven rulebooks). So as Gerry said about the rules being broken (and playing Deadzone instead) “I don’t need to play a game where I need fifteen rulebooks to climb a flight of stairs”, which sums it all up really.

So “if” you wanted to bring your game up to current GW “standards”, even if you could find a source of the cards selling at retail…you’re looking at over £500 (retail) for ALL the rules (plus about £60 in outdated rulebooks like the gang war series and the (£30) “Gangs of the Underhive” being almost being outdated other than for the table for trading that GW hasn’t reprinted in any of the other ten rulebooks). Talk about rules “bloat”.

I really have a love/hate relationship with the game. I really love the minis, the background, the whole grimdark aesthetic (I always felt it was the closest game to a Blanche painting the GW did). But I LOATH what GW has done with the rules in marketing selling a hardback rulebook almost every time they release a plastic boxset (and adding rules for rules sake). The books ARE a work of art, but usually contain about ten pages of “new” content over what was published earlier. I do feel “locked in” (FOMO), as I’m that heavily invested I dare not stop (or I’ve wasted the money already spent in keeping up to date). The problem in stopping arises when you turn up to a game when everyone has rules that you don’t (and you end up trying to absorb the rules for half an hour while your co-gamers wait around for you to read up on things). Trying to run a campaign? then you DEFINATELY need access to all the rules.

Necromunda went from being two books in the 90s that did everything you needed to a 40Kesq “codex” style rulebook release meaning you need a whole library of books to play the game alas.

 

[limburger 21555xp 2]

I do wonder for who they’re making the new Necromunda stuff for anyway ?
New players won’t have an easy way in as half the stuff from launch is either unavailable or outdated.

I pity the people who want Necromunda to be a fun game with a fertile community.
There is no way to keep such a community alive, unless you are willing to become a pawn in a ponzi scheme.
Maybe time to raise the black and keep the game alive that way ?

Makes me think that (someone at) GW doesn’t want the game to survive so they’re making it hard for new players to start.

[phaidknott 7014xp 1]

Well they seem to put out the rules at such a pace I don’t think they actually have the time to get them playtested (other than using a small in-house team), some rules leave me thinking they were never playtested and just “theory hammered” out.

But for new players, there’s no easy way in (even the hardback rulebooks are hard to get (although you can still pay out for an very expensive eBook version). I didn’t get into the new Blood Bowl (that came out before Necromunda) BECAUSE I missed that launch and subsequent “limited” release schedule. I’ve no idea “why” GW decided to do it this way for the specialist games range, but lets face things, GW are not the best rules authors out there and nearly all their games are a bit of a messy, bloated, disjointed system with continual “power creep” for whichever Codex has just been released.

If I had my time again, I would have bought the minis and just stuck with the 90s version of the rules. My mistake was buying the starter set and playing games with others with the new rules (and thus ending up on this rollercoaster). It would have been more difficult finding opponents for the old rules perhaps (but it would have been a lot cheaper and perhaps left me less PO’d as GW’s marketing department and whoever though that “limited” was a good thing and wouldn’t annoy the hell out of the playerbase).

It IS crazy that a game system costs over £500 in rules alone before you’ve even spent a penny on the miniatures, and I don’t think anyone would go near it “if” it was presented that way. But GW do it by dribs and drabs (and has always done so), perhaps things have been accelerated with Necromunda when it came to “codex” releases (15 rulebooks since the launch in 2018) and prices (£30 for a rulebook for an ARMY isn’t that bad when you’re spending a couple of hundred for the figures, but for Necromunda it’s £30 for a box of ten figures…..you’re spending as much on the rules as you are on the figures). They really have seemed to want to “push it to the limits” with Necromunda with just how far they can take things before the playerbase rebels (perhaps testing the way for their more popular game systems). And we’re starting to see similar with Warcry and Kill Team (a rulebook for each faction coming your way, and a “team” being about 10 figures), again you “could” stick with the older rules, but it’s finding the opponents that starts to get trickier (as the majority always wants to play with the latest rules).

[limburger 21555xp 2]

it’s the super slick marketing and FOMO that gets people into their systems.

It’s so dissappointing to know that the next best thing doesn’t even have a tenth of the marketing and presentation of GW’s equivalents, which makes it very tricky to make people aware of alternatives without them feeling like they’ve travelled back in time.

[nogbadthebad 5771xp 3]

I have recently been looking at One Page Rule’s stuff as my eldest has started showing an interest and I dont want to go down the GW money sink.

They have a gang warfare supplement for their Firefight/”Honestly not Killteam” game, and all the rules/army lists are up and free to download…

Just a thought for an alternative – I’ve yet to use the rules for the Grimdark game in anger and gang warfare isnt really of interest for me but seeing as it wouldnt necessarily cost you anything to try

[phaidknott 7014xp 1]

Yup, but I do have a feeling of being “locked in” by previous purchases (basically dumping £500 in rules and cards) before going with an alternative system (as I said if I had my time again I would have just purchased the minis and used the old 90s rules).

Ofc if anyone wants to buy all the rules and cards from me I’d jump at the sale (but I doubt anyone would give me the RRP back). All these purchases sort of sneaked up on me, it was only when I re-ordered my chaotic hooby area/bookshelves that I was stunned by just how many rulebooks GW had put out for Necromunda (you sort of have the house gangs (six of those) and the main rulebook to mind, but it’s the other eight rulebooks that sort of sneaked in).

All I can hope now is that we’re past the bulk of the rulebooks (although I expect GW to make another “compedium” rulebook like they did with “Gangs of the Underhive” and “Necromunda Rulebook” to try and get all this mess back into some sort of readable format (without flipping between 15 books trying to find the latest iteration of a rule). This madness has to end at somepoint..although there’s still all the old Outlanders gangs that haven’t been done (in the 90s four/five gangs in the one rulebook, probably this time around a rulebook for each gang for another £150 🙁 )

[limburger 21555xp 0]

@nogbadthebad this hobby is still a money sink without GW 😉

@phaidknott I suspect in a few years (maybe next?) we’ll see a new version, because it looks like they’re almost out of stuff.
And knowing GW they will do a new version once they’ve completed the cycle.

Expecting something a la KillTeam v2 … so two gangs in the starter set, no rules for the rest, and even more books to buy.
That is … *if* the new Killteam sells (and it probably will), because like any company if they discover a way to print even more money they will.

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