N18 House of Iron (General discussion)

[almic85]

If you take an Escher Juve, to match a Escher Ganger in stats you need:

+1 BS (+20creds)
+1 Will (+5)
+1 Int (+5)
+1 Cool (+10)
+1 Ld (+10)

So that's +50 creds so your premium over an actual Ganger is +20 creds.

For Orlock it is:

+1 BS (+20)
+1 WS (+20)
+1 Will/Int/Cool/Ld (+30)

Which is +70 creds which is a crazy +60 over a basic Ganger though you do get a +1Mv and +1Init which is worth +20 creds I guess and you could maybe forgo one of the WS/BS increases to take you to just a +20 creds premium over a basic Ganger (With Mv and Init advances) if you're not designing an all-rounder plus that's your 5 advances.

For Goliath it is:

+1 BS (+20)
+ 1 Ld (+10)
+2 Cool (+20)
+1 Int (+5)

Which is +55 creds, and +25 creds over a basic Ganger.

So for the 3 "up-to-date" Gangs, the premium for a Juve is only +20 or +25 creds, which also gets you a Specialist (Which doesn't cost anything in rating but is rare to roll up) but the Orlock Juve has some baked-in stat increases that makes them expensive. You're also probably stuck, assuming you play with Sticky Fingers, with some sub-optimal Juve-weapon loadouts that while you don't have to take into combat anymore, do probably bloat your super-Juve a bit.

The main problem I have with promotion/advancement is the glacial pace of XP gain which means I've rarely seen a Juve accrue enough XP to promote. I don't think, outside of Orlock Juves, they are overly bloaty for the 3 refreshed gangs. Cawdor, Van Saar, and Delaque Juves are pretty bloaty however.

EDIT: Specifically on the Orlock Juve, I think they are too expensive. 35creds compared to the 20/25 creds the two other refreshed Gangs get seems a little too expensive for generally similar stats. I'm tempted to give them a small nudge down in cost to 30creds

Your numbers are right but why would you ever take the stats that are just bloating out the cost in the current ruleset?

Juves in the House of X books seem to be started towards being close combat fighters and no longer promote to champions so for Escher and Goliath you can just take a BS advance and you have a fighter that is just as good in the core stats and is cheaper.

Or even better you can lean into their better stats and take extra movement (and extra WS, S, or T) and have a better close combat fighter.

The trick with juves is that you are not trying to make a better balanced fighter, you are trying to make a better specialised fighter for a similar cost.

I do 100% agree that experience gain in the current ruleset is too slow for everyone and I wish that the d6 Xp just for taking part in the battle was still a thing.

Edit: as this is the house of Iron thread I should add that I can’t see Orlock juves actually being useful. Without a starting bonus to either WS or BS it makes them hard to build into something worthwhile for a good price.

 

[Vonvilkee]

Why would you ever do that? Most of them are so garbage that they are not even worth 1 XP.

A few of them are good, and easily worth the extra 3 XP to pick.

Fair but it might be interesting to take a juve, single stub gun. Add BS*2, CL and two random legendary names That's 5 advances and now they can be a specialist get a heavy weapon... Still might not be fast enough but I could see trying...

Don't even need the cool as there will prolly be a sargent that could hang out with em for cool tests...

 

[MrAndersson]

What's that, 23 XP? That's probably going to take 15-20 games for a juve with only a stub gun. Probably closer to 20. I don't know how long campaigns you play, but...

 

[Vonvilkee]

Yeah it's quicker than other juves but still unlikely. You don't need much to charge seriously injured fighters...

To get juves advancing you gotta play lots of games. In the few campaigns I've gotten in I'm the energetic one so play more games than most get challenged allot cuz I'm available. This definitely colors my perception and plan of attack.

 

[Atom-Cat]

Our campaigns you play about 14-16 games before the campaign closes.

my leader and starting champs will usually see 2-3 advances.
my gangers may get 1 advance... maybe 2 for the guy that gets a decent weapon.

juves are usually dead in 3-5 games. Never level up more than once...

 

[JawRippa]

I love how leveling up was done in Shadow Wars: Armageddon. You had juves and gangers. Juves do not get advancements, instead they turn into gangers after 3 games, gaining all appropriate stats and changing in price to match the ganger's price. It is simplistic, but seems more natural than juve cherry picking only some stats to improve and never touching others; also it does not result in gang bloat.

Would anyone be interested in making a separate thread for discussing old/new advancement system and possible improvements?

 

[ntw3001]

Would anyone be interested in making a separate thread for discussing old/new advancement system and possible improvements?

Someone would, who is me

 

[KA7777]

I love how leveling up was done in Shadow Wars: Armageddon. You had juves and gangers. Juves do not get advancements, instead they turn into gangers after 3 games, gaining all appropriate stats and changing in price to match the ganger's price. It is simplistic, but seems more natural than juve cherry picking only some stats to improve and never touching others; also it does not result in gang bloat.

Would anyone be interested in making a separate thread for discussing old/new advancement system and possible improvements?

"Cherry picking" advances is one of the *more* naturalistic elements in the game's progression systems.

It makes sense that a fighter could train in specific areas (or that a guy who is armed with a stick, and tries to hit the enemy with his stick every game, would go up in stick-hitting-related stats instead of somehow waking up one day knowing how to shoot a gun or lead comrades into battle).

It's the block statlines of every other fighter type that don't make sense! A deeper game would give you a base statline and then let you toggle a few pluses along it wherever you wanted to represent fighters with different areas of expertise.

 

[JawRippa]

"Cherry picking" advances is one of the *more* naturalistic elements in the game's progression systems.

It makes sense that a fighter could train in specific areas (or that a guy who is armed with a stick, and tries to hit the enemy with his stick every game, would go up in stick-hitting-related stats instead of somehow waking up one day knowing how to shoot a gun or lead comrades into battle).

It's the block statlines of every other fighter type that don't make sense! A deeper game would give you a base statline and then let you toggle a few pluses along it wherever you wanted to represent fighters with different areas of expertise.

The problem with cherry picking is that if there are stats that are clearly better than others (like toughness or ballistic skill), people will always go for those, making all fighters samey.

 

[TopsyKretts]

Random advancement is the only way to enjoy the game for me. That's what Necromunda is about!

 

[ntw3001]

I like to have some element of control over advancement, but N17's version is pretty boring IMO. It's just spending points and building lists. I fondly remember the shotgunner with 3 Attacks, BS4 and Fast Shot, the lad with T4, W3 and carapace armour, and the leader who got max stats in everything except Wounds. Not so much the Warlocks whom I gave Conceal for 20 points.

What if there were multiple advance tables to choose from, which had random results but with a distribution that favoured one type of outcome? Instead of differentiating houses by mostly-absent skill tables, they can have different advance tables. Like Goliaths can roll on the Beefiness and Melee tables. And assume that the stats are somehow sufficiently balanced that the tables aren't firmly ranked in order of 'optimal chance of rolling either BS or T'. And give that to everyone, don't leave gangers with a bullshit system.

 

[TopsyKretts]

I need control over what I can do with the random advancements I get. This is what makes swapping weapons and items so important. Again, this is what Necromunda (originally) was about, and will always be about for me.

What if there were multiple advance tables to choose from, which had random results but with a distribution that favoured one type of outcome? Instead of differentiating houses by mostly-absent skill tables, they can have different advance tables. Like Goliaths can roll on the Beefiness and Melee tables. And assume that the stats are somehow sufficiently balanced that the tables aren't firmly ranked in order of 'optimal chance of rolling either BS or T'. And give that to everyone, don't leave gangers with a bullshit system.

Nice idea, but I have gang-specific content fatigue. 12 advancement tables? Ugh! Having 10 separate Favour tables already give a bad taste (house gangs can even choose between 'generic' house favours and gang-specific house favours). Game needs much more simplification and streamlining, not more diversity.

 

[ntw3001]

Yeah, I'd have liked it instead of army lists and codexes. My thought is basically that the skill table selection would have been folded into it, so each gang would get a small selection of advance tables rather than of skill tables, then the advance rolls would dictate which skill tables they could take. But it doesn't really fit into N17 as well as it would in the original game.

 

[KA7777]

The problem with cherry picking is that if there are stats that are clearly better than others (like toughness or ballistic skill), people will always go for those, making all fighters samey.

I find that in the new system there are enough valuable characteristic that I don't go for cookie cutter builds; M, BS, WS, S and T are all attractive on different fighters.

The other stats do mostly suck, though. Nobody will ever voluntarily take one of the "mental" stats. Ideally, they would be free bonuses (like, every second advancement you add +1 to a mental stat, or something like that).

I would still prefer cookie cutter builds to random advancements that are totally useless. Also notable: selected advancements are waaay better than random for the sake of balance. I've seen multiple campaigns upset by one player getting a series of amazing advancements while another guy keeps getting Leadership bonuses or whatever. The way Mordheim did it was kind of interesting, since henchman were inducted into groups; once you finally got a decent advancement you could bring that group up to max size if the other groups were stuck being, for example, underwhelming Initiative experts.

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

Mordheim was the best advancement system I've seen on GW games ever. It would drastically help the current version of Munda.

In particular it had a racial maximum set of stats which avoids the issues of T6 Goliaths etc.
Also, the advances scaled out from only a couple of XP per advance to start with then requiring more and more XP to make further advances.

Each advance was semi-random rolled from a table (2D6) allowing you to pick 1 of 2 stats to advance for a given roll (biased to WS/BS etc based on table number) with the pick a skill on 1's or 6's.
If you had already maxed out a skill then you got to pick any other stat to improve.

This gave a little variety in how peeps progressed, but enough agency that you never felt like you were punished for an advancement.

I would like to see a move to that type of system instead of the long march to an optimal build.

 

[TopsyKretts]

Mordheim was the best advancement system I've seen on GW games ever. It would drastically help the current version of Munda.

In particular it had a racial maximum set of stats which avoids the issues of T6 Goliaths etc.
Also, the advances scaled out from only a couple of XP per advance to start with then requiring more and more XP to make further advances.

Just like Necromunda always has had (and always should have)? And Blood Bowl got this too.

 

[Atom-Cat]

Am I reading this correctly
a gunner AND a specialist are only allowed weapons from the house list?

So I can not have a specialist with a combi weapon, a long rifle, missile launcher, or web guns... even if I buy them at a TP or loot them from a captured enemy?

Gunners are effectively reduced to being Autogunners, Bolt gunners and shotgunners... I can never have an orlock ganger with a las pistol?
Specialists are restricted to only 4 types of heavy weapon (2 viable and 2 pointless) while 4 special weapons, admittedly 4 solid ones.... but there are at least 20 special weapons.

Doesn't this make very boring cookie cutter gangs... have these decisions been thought out?

 

[JawRippa]

Gunners are effectively reduced to being Autogunners, Bolt gunners and shotgunners... I can never have an orlock ganger with a las pistol?
Specialists are restricted to only 4 types of heavy weapon (2 viable and 2 pointless) while 4 special weapons, admittedly 4 solid ones.... but there are at least 20 special weapons.

Same with goliaths and eschers. I'm not saying that I'm a fan of this approach (restricting gangers so much is just stupid, Necromunda should be all about customisation), but at least it is somewhat consistent amonst the houses. Orlocks got off a little easy because their specialists can at least wield heavy bolters, stubbers, harpoon launchers.
GW is doubling down on no models - no rules as it seems. They are trying to tie all ganger loadouts to their box contents.

 

[Atom-Cat]

Yikes. The Orlock plastic box is terrible for weapon choice.
Escher, at least get a good 10 special weapons, so there is a bit of wiggle room there.
Orlocks will basically have either plasma, melta or most likely grenade launchers ... with heavy bolter/stubber .... very limited.
As the rest of their choices are bad.. harpoon launcher and heavy flamer are just trash,

Im fine with restricting gangers to house lists, though think specialists should also have access to TP weapons.

Most gangs are going to get quite boring if I can only choose between a very tiny pool of weapons.

 

[EAfirstlast]

Yikes. The Orlock plastic box is terrible for weapon choice.
Escher, at least get a good 10 special weapons, so there is a bit of wiggle room there.
Orlocks will basically have either plasma, melta or most likely grenade launchers ... with heavy bolter/stubber .... very limited.
As the rest of their choices are bad.. harpoon launcher and heavy flamer are just trash,

Im fine with restricting gangers to house lists, though think specialists should also have access to TP weapons.

Most gangs are going to get quite boring if I can only choose between a very tiny pool of weapons.

XD What good special weapons are escher getting that orlock don't again? The needle rifle?