Join The Goliath’s House Of Chains In Necromunda Soon
January 30, 2020 by brennon
If you're a big fan of House Goliath in Necromunda then you might want to snap up a new book which is coming soon for the House Of Chains. Some big burly gangers are coming to smash up your stuff thanks to Games Workshop.
Start Your Own Necromunda Gang @ Store.OnTableTop
The new book comes with rules for some of the new models plus ways for you to play differently too. The Goliaths are of course the main focus and gives you a way to add more of the might-is-right mentality into the mix. For example, you'll even be able to find rules for the Slave Ogryn gangs which certainly means we're going to be seeing some fun miniatures soon.
As well as that you'll also find new house alliances, unique scenarios, themed terrain features to include in your games and more. There is plenty for you to get stuck into.
Stimmers & The Forge-Born
Looking back at the miniatures though, leading the way we've got a pair of rather steroid-loaded meatheads, the Stimmers. The Stimmers have taken some tips from Bane it seems and filled themselves full of drugs so that they can brutally smash their way through anyone who stands before them.
These absolutely muscly dudes are able to carry around all sorts of big weapons, be they melee weapons or ranged options, and you would not like to bump into them when wandering through dark alleyways.
I really like the look of most of the gangs from Necromunda and House Goliath have certainly got an interesting style to them. I think that the traditional paint scheme for them is neat and all but I'd love to see someone do the whole hazard lines thing, mixing a bunch of yellow and black into the equation.
As well as the Stimmers you also have the Forge-born who bring a whole bunch of heavy weapons into the mix.
Carrying all sorts of weapons which were once used in the factory, these Gangers are looking to rise within the ranks of the Goliaths and hopefully win their place higher up the pecking order. It seems like a good way to do that is to blow things apart with old factory equipment.
All of these miniatures are going to be coming soon and they give you a new insight into the Goliaths on the tabletop. I would assume that since we're getting a book focused on House Goliath we're going to be seeing additional books which focus on the other factions too.
So, are you tempted to give Necromunda a go?
"I would assume that since we're getting a book focused on House Goliath we're going to be seeing additional books which focus on the other factions too..."
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6 models… 3 poses…. GW is getting really lazy
I think that the silhouettes are different enough because of the heads/weapons that you don’t really notice, especially in a gaming context. Plus, that’s where you can get creative with a bitz box too.
But yeah, repeat posing is a bit annoying – it’s what I don’t like about the PP range.
from someone who used to play old necromunda to death in the 90s, the releases of the new necromunda seems confused, i thought it would be great to expand the gangs from the first edition (create new ones etc) but the last few gangs are just boring goliaths or gangs which look seemingly more like chaos cultist sculpts, where are the spyrers and other weird oddities of living in a hive. the releases quickly became boring
or not-arbites gangs
There’s so much missing (Arbites, all manner of underhivers, Spyrers) and they go to … Goliaths. The faction from the original box set. In a way it’s nice to see the continued support but I don’t know where this is going. “New ways to play” is a worry too. If the book is, say 90% Goliath and 10% general purpose rules do I have to pick it up for my Orlocks? GW still selling Necromunda fans short it seems.
I doubt you’ll have to pick this up if you don’t collect Goliaths. I think it does make a kind of sense for them to bring out something to build on the gangs they already have so that they can go deep rather than wide with their releases.
I think there is enough out there for Necromunda right now for someone new to it to get their teeth into. So, I’m sure that the other kinds of Underhive gangs and such will get worked on in the future – maybe as full gangs or as hired guns and such by Forge World.
I’m wary. The first round of gang-specific books all had generic rules in too.
Since the new Necromunda, and also because I write for the Wrath and Glory RPG, Arbites are not local enforcement. So Enforcers are what old school Arbites gangs were. Arbites operate at a higher level and deal with crime across sectors.
At last some “Juves” for Necromunda (the community been asking for these since the game launched in 2017).
HOWEVER
Another “rule” book to “retread” the rules released in 2019 (Gangs of the Underhive) to introduce some for of Goliath “heavy” (although we already had rules for “Brutes” and Goliath Zerkers). It’s a prime example of “Rules for Rules sake” to pad out yet another book when a couple of pages in White Dwarf (or a PDF) would have been enough to introduce to new rules for these Stimmers.
Buy the new figures (they are great), but keep with the NCE version of the rules (the community version of the original rules released in 95), or you’ll find yourself spending more on incomprehensible rulebooks that you can’t work out which rule supersedes which other rules than you do on the figures themselves.
So it’s both good and bad news for Necromunda this month 🙁
Despite all the complaining about “yet ANOTHER rulebook” and “repeat poses,” I’m actually glad to see that they’re going back to one of the first gangs in the range and giving us a bunch of stuff that was missing- Juves and Brutes. Hopefully this means that Escher will get their own Juves and Brutes soon, so we can start filling in a lot of the missing offerings in the range.
Well you could look at it this way, after the game came out in 2017 GW released the “Gang War” books along side each gang as they were released featuring Gang specific rules along with some “general” rules (so you had to buy them to keep up to date even if you weren’t collecting that gang. And the community HATED the format.
The GW compiled the Gang War books and the N17 rulebook into the two main rulebooks and updated/revised the content from the Gang War books (making the Gang War Books redundant before the last one scheduled for release with the Delaque gang was released (this actually came out in a booklet in White Dwarf). And the community felt they had been ripped off for buying those Gang War books and having them made redundant within 12 months of purchase.
And NOW GW release Gang War V2.0 Goliath (presumably this is going to make the content in Gangs of the Underhive redundant again within 12 months of release. Starting to see a pattern forming here?
Why is it so difficult for GW just to release a game these days in one go (they did it with the Original Necromunda, although it did have ONE official expansion with another six gangs). They do seem to have adopted releasing games piecemeal across their entire catalogue with multiple books and cards. This is the main reason why we went back to the original ruleset, not because the lastest rules are “bad” (once you clarify what the heck is going on within them), but because it’s a never ending cycle of tread and retread of the rules that gradually get more and more complex and cumbersome as GW pad out the rules to fill out these hardback books with rules that can totally mess up the balance (and introduce a fair bit of “codex power creep”, which is why few play the original house gangs anymore, so GW probably need to release another “codex” for each of the House gangs to keep pace).
Original rules, not perfect, but just 2 books and a few White Dwarf Articles. Nu-Numunda, never ending cycle of “partial” releasing (three years for the Juves to get released?), obsolete rule books (4 of them so far), OOP gang tactics cards which are the only source to obtain these rules as they aren’t printed in the rulebooks (over 200 of them so far). Basically Nu-Numunda is running at 5 Hardback rulebooks (soon to be six), about 10 sets of “rules” card packs (if you can find them), probably about £300 RRP for that lot.
Like I said invest your money on the figures (they ARE really good), but use the old rules system. Because NO ruleset is worth £300 to play it (once you take a step back and think about it).
I have to agree, GW are far too book-heavy. It’s confusing trying to figure out what books you need and, while people say that it is folly to try and keep up and buy every GW release, it sometimes feels like you have to where books are concerned.
Am I the only one who notices the new Goliath Heavies look odd? As in the material detail depth looks odd for 28mm plastic? It just doesn’t look right, study the small details. Is this an aluminum mold mini?
Think it’s just the proportions that make the Stimmers look a bit “weird”. Overall the proportions are good (for an oversized, steroid abusing, human I guess), but the small head in relation stands out. But what REALLY makes them look “weird” is the placement of the head from on top of the shoulders towards the front of the chest (mimicking Terminators and even Orks). Granted it could just be the angle of the photo (the figure could be leaning forwards a lot more than seems to be evident). But it’s this head placement more than anything that just stands out as “wrong” to me (although it does look like a “nudie” Terminator Marine I guess if you ever wondered how they fit into that armour) 😀
i’m here waiting for @avernos to say “told you so” about having to buy a million books just to play the damn game.
This looks great. Wasn’t sure if I would ever use the minis that came in the original core box but the extra stuff coming for Goliath looks sweet.
I don’t mind them releasing the new books as I don’t think they were happy with the Gang War books. We’ve already had three of these books (Peril, Ruin, Judgement) and the format is much nicer so Goliath getting one isn’t unexpected.
I’m only sorry that if they’re doing a book for each house we probably won’t see Scavies or Ratskins for quite a while.
nice interesting figures.
I think this is a very odd release. Having made a mess of the original wave of releases – spreading the core gang rules across multiple books – and then fixing it with the two hardbacks, they now go and produce a new gang-specific book. Which presumably means an expensive, heavy and space-consuming collection if you want all the gangs.
I like the Juves, but really dislike the brute people. They look like they’ve been scuplted by an artist working to a different design brief when it comes to the look and feel of the setting. They’re quite cartoony.
Well some more information gleaned on these….
Stimmers and Forgeborn are NEW gang types (ie not a new name for Champions/Specialists and Juves). Stimmers are a “heavy” form of a champion and Forgeborn are a gang specific type of Juve. Both of these are basically “upgraded” from the basic troop type on purchase. From previous seminars at FW open days, there’s going to a similar box set for each house gang.
So we’re not getting the plastic kits to make normally equipped Juves and Champions, just these “new and improved” forms of each (jury is still out if GW or FW are going to do the Brute Goliath Zerker which kind of fit the profile for these Stimmers as per the Gangs of the Underhive book released last year….could this be Necromunda’s first N19 retcon?).
So initial reaction aside (“HOORAY JUVES”), there’s not going to be any normal equipment to fit on those Forgeborn bodies/arms (they are equipped with unwieldy 2H weapons) although they could make for at least easier conversion pieces to actually make some Juves up. Saddened to see that GW/FW decided to bring in NEW ganger type models before finishing the basics (Champion/Juves for each gang as we only have a box of basic Gangers for each gang). I do wonder at times if people in charge of these releases actually have played a single game of what GW puts out, because they do seem to prioritise putting out what we don’t need over what the community actually DOES want 🙁
I”m looking at the way the Forgeborn are built, and honestly, I could see FW producing a conversion set so that you could easily turn them into Juves. If they use similar weapons to the standard gangers like stub-cannons, it’s not too much of a stretch to create a pair of arms holding one that could be swapped for the heavy weapon arms. As for the brutes retcon, Artel W makes unofficial versions of Goliath and Van Saar brutes, so you can still use them in games, but I have been wondering about that since none of the other brutes besides the Ambots have been given official releases. It’s also possible they’re tinkering with the way the kits will be designed so you have different weapon options; I could see the Stimmers kit coming with parts or a FW kit to turn them into Zerkers.
When GW first released the Necromunda gangs, it did make sense to give you a couple weapon options in the box and then release separate arsenal sets later; if they gave you every weapon option you wanted in the first box, it would drive the price up way more than it already was. True you would have to spend more to get the additional weapons, but you don’t have to spend quite as much just to get started. They’re probably trying to get more mileage out of the kits as well; once you have all the specific Brutes and Juves you need, that will be it. By introducing new variants, you can make the kit go further as you can build more than just one type of model.
But as for the whole books issue, I can understand that they introduced these supplements to get people in and playing right away, but they REALLY should have just compiled everything all in one go.
Yup. just wondering if we are going to see both the Brutes AND the “general” Juves retconned out of the game. Reasoning is we did have hints from the FW open days over the past two years about this box with new specialists and aspirants for each gang, but we’ve had absolutely no hints from FW/Specialist games about releasing the Brutes and Juves (so if it’s been 2 years waiting for this box to arrive, then it would be another 2-3 years for “Juves”). I think they are going to go with new specialists (they might not have to be LARGE like the Goliath ones), and a gang specific form of Juve for each gang for the game in the future.
I guess this is going to mean we’d have to see the “general” Juve models come from a third party (as GW doesn’t seem interested, and their inclusion seems to have merely been a place holder until they wrote the new rules that are going to appear in this new book).