Necromunda The Sump: General hobby venting thread (Beware: old men shouting at clouds)

[Troubled Child]

These are the ones I'm thinking of and they came out in the early 2000's.

Yeah those are from the second edition. They kept some of the ascetic from the old Arbites but made them a local force. That edition mostly passed me by as I was in my late teens/early twenties but they were some of the better new models they did for it.

 

[sykoholic]

I meant a purely fluff book, light on detail so it would have been more for inspiration than a rigid expansion.

I'm all for fluff books but I'm under the impression that most "wargamers" are not. If such is truly the case, it likely wouldn't sell well hence why GW doesn't do it. They are a business after all and the whole purpose of a business is to make a profit. If a product isn't likely to be profitable, smart business sense says "don't do it".

Many of these ideas we're tossing out (including fluff books) would actually be better suited for a role-playing game. I've always felt that the setting of Necromunda and the Underhive would have made an excellent RPG but...

 

[spafe]

I rarely post in here, but on this topic I kinda agree with the point of a living game, but actually, they have shown they can do it with Bloodbowl (a much more bound scope accepted).

Also, I'm okay with a living game with more expansions, I just wish it wasnt nickle and dimed (I think thats the right expression). They could have had a 'ash wastes' expansion, which had the rules for vehicles, generic vehicles, weather, etc etc etc all in the one book, with a single specific crew/ride for each of the house gangs (and even stealer cult as they have the bikers etc already, no harm in that). that would have been an actual 'bolt on' expansion. It then is a single other reference book 'if' you want to use that setting. They can release the generic vehicles for it, provide whatever else they need to.

A 2nd book which has the squats and ash wastes as a 'gang' expansion, which is just those two books... no issue with that (even including their own mounts for the nomads as they are heavily tied into the setting, but as a seperate seciton in the book for if you are using them combined with the ash wastes setting).

By having it purely as an expansion setting book, the core rule book is still correct, there isnt any 'stealth' errata and re printing of new core rule books. they can always up rev the core rulebook to 2.0 (as they have done), completely fine, and no issue with that.

This model is a living game, with expansions, that they can sell new stuff for, but isnt screwing over everyone.

What they are doing now, its the equvilant of dropping the 2 army faction boxes for 40k, and including a slightly updated mini core rulebook in each. Can you imagine the outcry amongst 40k players if they did this.

 

[cronevald]

I rarely post in here, but on this topic I kinda agree with the point of a living game, but actually, they have shown they can do it with Bloodbowl (a much more bound scope accepted).

Also, I'm okay with a living game with more expansions, I just wish it wasnt nickle and dimed (I think thats the right expression). They could have had a 'ash wastes' expansion, which had the rules for vehicles, generic vehicles, weather, etc etc etc all in the one book, with a single specific crew/ride for each of the house gangs (and even stealer cult as they have the bikers etc already, no harm in that). that would have been an actual 'bolt on' expansion. It then is a single other reference book 'if' you want to use that setting. They can release the generic vehicles for it, provide whatever else they need to.

A 2nd book which has the squats and ash wastes as a 'gang' expansion, which is just those two books... no issue with that (even including their own mounts for the nomads as they are heavily tied into the setting, but as a seperate seciton in the book for if you are using them combined with the ash wastes setting).

By having it purely as an expansion setting book, the core rule book is still correct, there isnt any 'stealth' errata and re printing of new core rule books. they can always up rev the core rulebook to 2.0 (as they have done), completely fine, and no issue with that.

This model is a living game, with expansions, that they can sell new stuff for, but isnt screwing over everyone.

What they are doing now, its the equvilant of dropping the 2 army faction boxes for 40k, and including a slightly updated mini core rulebook in each. Can you imagine the outcry amongst 40k players if they did this.

This is exactly in line with my thoughts on the living game argument. If I tried to add to this I think I'd just dilute the points that @spafe has articulated better than I've been able to. I have a full shelf of heavy expensive hardbacks, many of which I've either never used or which have been made partly or fully obsolete before I've gotten much use out of them. That's just not what I want from a living game and not a business model I want to support.

 

[almic85]

I enjoy several GW skirmish games these days, Underworlds, Kill Team and Blood Bowl. They all got great qualities that Necromunda could learn from.

Only one of those games is done by the specialist games team though (being bloodbowl). The other two (Underworlds and Kill Team) are written and managed by the actual rules writers for the main games.

That is why Underworlds and Kill team are actually very tightly written rules, while Necromunda and (to a lesser extent) bloodbowl are heaping piles of crud.

The main reasons Bloodbowl isn’t dying under the weight of multiple rulebooks are because it was reset from the 2016 rules to other a 2020 ruleset, and because there ability to f**k with only 4 main stats is limited (even though they found a way and made a new passing stat!).

Bloodbowl also has the benefit that it was already very “wide” in terms of available teams, with 24 already established races in 2016 which they have expanded to 28 since 2016, as well as rewriting 3 of them, and adding new positionals and roster changes to 9 of them.

we are also still to see new models released for 4 existing teams, so there is still scope for GW to sell new stuff without creating any new rules and we are 7 years into the revamp.

Compare that with Necromunda where there are only 6 standard house gangs and they were all released with new models in the first year and a half on N17, essentially leaving GW with no more runway for easy revamps of exisiting miniatures.

They could have done things differently (and I think they should have) by following up the 6 house gangs with smaller box sets of Juves and champions/leaders as well as the weapon packs. That would have given them 2-3 years of runway on the base set of models.

They could then have followed that up with the already existing Outlander gangs in a “second season” which had 5 more gangs ready to go and could again have stretched over 2-3 years of releases with some modifications of those gang lists to include a base box and smaller champion/juve boxes/clam shells.

Again all of that without adding anything “new” to the setting, and we haven’t even hit enforcers or ash wastes nomads at that stage, plus squats, corpse grinders, gene stealer cults, chaos cults, Venators, hive scum gangs, or anything else they could have dreamed up.

And all of this without hitting the ash wastes as a setting.

Honestly I think Necromunda really just suffered as a result of its popularity and success which made GW want to keep releasing things for it that have made the setting unsustainable.

 

[ntw3001]

I wouldn't say they're doing a great job with Blood Bowl; they're just doing their damage more slowly because the community is more independent. But almost nothing they've changed since at least the 2020 edition has been an improvement. Just more layers of bloat, a point-buy advancement system and rosters driven by manufacturing over balance coughunderworldcough

 

[TopsyKretts]

Blood Bowl got one rulebook since 2020

 

[spafe]

I wouldn't say they're doing a great job with Blood Bowl; they're just doing their damage more slowly because the community is more independent. But almost nothing they've changed since at least the 2020 edition has been an improvement. Just more layers of bloat, a point-buy advancement system and rosters driven by manufacturing over balance coughunderworldcough

I think that is a disservice. Yes GW is handheld through Bloodbowl due to a very (VERY!) different environment, but they have released many more FAQs to address balance issues, work with the NAF (to an extent), taking on board feedback from the community, and I would argue that the passing stat is actually an improvement (unlike the mental stats added for necromunda). I was against the concept of the passing stat to start with, but actually prefer not to have gutter runners passing better than the throwers, and having dedicated throwers on the team. It does change the dynamic a little, but tbh, none of the changes so far have (team rewrites, extra stats, new skills or other minor changes to the rules in edition advance) have broken the game or even dramatically upset the balance. The only mistake I think they've made is the underworld team... that is literally it.

 

[almic85]

I think that is a disservice. Yes GW is handheld through Bloodbowl due to a very (VERY!) different environment, but they have released many more FAQs to address balance issues, work with the NAF (to an extent), taking on board feedback from the community, and I would argue that the passing stat is actually an improvement (unlike the mental stats added for necromunda). I was against the concept of the passing stat to start with, but actually prefer not to have gutter runners passing better than the throwers, and having dedicated throwers on the team. It does change the dynamic a little, but tbh, none of the changes so far have (team rewrites, extra stats, new skills or other minor changes to the rules in edition advance) have broken the game or even dramatically upset the balance. The only mistake I think they've made is the underworld team... that is literally it.

I know plenty of bloodbowl grognards that would vehemently disagree with you.

Personally i don’t mind the 2020 rule changes for the most part, but wildly inaccurate passes are a complete failure of a rule.

And the number of FAQs required in bloodbowl is atrocious and is largely linked to GW’s ability to butcher a functional rule set just to rewrite it and remove other people’s copywrite on it.

And they certainly don’t like working with the NAF or the the wider community to the point that the largest community bloodbowl forum has to rename itself from talkbloodbowl to talkfantasyfootball due to cease and desist letters as well as the NAF receiving them.

 

[TopsyKretts]

How come renamings like GFI (Go For It) to Rush are so widely accepted?

 

[spafe]

How come renamings like GFI (Go For It) to Rush are so widely accepted?

Dunno, I still call it a GFI but its the same thing

@almic85 fair enough then mate. I havent seen that side of stuff so will take your word for it. I mainly follow BB on Bonehead discord, BB3, play in Fast Crunch and in a local group, so havent been on BB forums massively.

 

[almic85]

BB3 is an interesting release to see how they are stuffing it up (not GW this time but the developers and publishers).

They have managed to take a mildly successful game in BB2 and drive its user base into the ground.

I’d strongly suggest playing on FUMBBL if you can handle the “retro” graphics and user interface as it’s the full ruleset implemented with the FAQs, as opposed to the rulebook without FAQ’s and only 10 teams.

To be fair to the bloodbowl rules they do work with a small to medium sized isolated tabletop playing group, they just start to break at the pointy ends you get with online play and the number of games some coaches fit in.

Small league play also works with their rebuy rules, it just isn’t the sandbox it used to be with higher player turnover between seasons due to the new end of season mechanic.

 

[Troubled Child]

I'm all for fluff books but I'm under the impression that most "wargamers" are not.

I've met a lot over the years that would fall into that category and when prompted they will rattle off the 5 or 6 Black Library books they've read recently without a hint of comprehension that they've just listed a bunch of fluff books they paid money for. I think you are right though, it wouldn't have been super profitable even if back in the mid 90's I think it would have sold better than it would today.

Many of these ideas were tossing out (including fluff books) would actually be better suited for a role-playing game. I've always felt that the setting of Necromunda and the Underhive would have made an excellent RPG but...

Honestly most RPG games are just as bad now, every book needs a load of new, poorly tested options designed to make you feel left behind if a member of your party has built their character using new books and you built yours using just the core. I haven't played the current 40K RPG so I don't know how easy it would be to use for Necro but the FF ones were convertible enough.

 

[ntw3001]

I think that is a disservice. Yes GW is handheld through Bloodbowl due to a very (VERY!) different environment, but they have released many more FAQs to address balance issues, work with the NAF (to an extent), taking on board feedback from the community, and I would argue that the passing stat is actually an improvement (unlike the mental stats added for necromunda). I was against the concept of the passing stat to start with, but actually prefer not to have gutter runners passing better than the throwers, and having dedicated throwers on the team. It does change the dynamic a little, but tbh, none of the changes so far have (team rewrites, extra stats, new skills or other minor changes to the rules in edition advance) have broken the game or even dramatically upset the balance. The only mistake I think they've made is the underworld team... that is literally it.

The passing stat is the only change to the core rules I can think of that's an improvement. Oh, and jumping over prone players, although that's yet to come up in any game I've played. And several of the skills I'm sure are fine (I don't know because people always build players exactly the same, and randomly-rolled skills are almost always incidental and ineffectual). Multiple rerolls I didn't like - and it's very obviously the same 'oh we uh that was intentional yeah' error that led to template weapons being inexplicably capable of blind fire in Necromunda - but I've come around, it's alright. Maybe better?

Aside from that, we have... wildly inaccurate passes (obviously terrible, a change made for the sake of selling a new starter set that's obviously not aimed at beginners at all), point-buy advances (some people like it but its main effect is to remove decision points), random rolls which both cost less per advance (as an incentive) and permanently contribute less to team rating (to make bookkeeping more difficult and undermine the purpose of rating as a power measure), those random rolls causing them to force equal number in each group (splitting up or consolidating skills that didn't need it, or adding new skills-that-aren't-skills with the Amazons' Hit and Run ability). And while not every team change has been negative, the majority have. Aside from the weakly-balanced manufacturing-driven rosters, we have teams taking on random webs of negatraits (Orcs, traditionally a good beginner team, getting a different zero-impact animosity rule attached to each player, being a particular low), new special traits for every single team release, and new special abilities for every star player. They're piling special rules on top of special rules just the same as with Necromunda, it's the GW layer-cake style of rulewriting. Another layer of icing with every release.

All that said, Blood Bowl is still fine, they haven't broken it yet. I still play it, still like it, the bad rules are mostly low-impact (bar the advancement rules which are right there making every league less interesting than it could have been). The core rules of Blood Bowl are extremely solid and the cake is still mostly cake. Necromunda's cake is eight feet tall.

 

[Mr. M]

They could have done things differently (and I think they should have) by following up the 6 house gangs with smaller box sets of Juves and champions/leaders as well as the weapon packs. That would have given them 2-3 years of runway on the base set of models.

Completely agree on the release of juves, champs, and leaders, @almic85. They could have also simply released new sculpts of gangers as some sort of "ganger reinforcement box". Seeing as how the game is officially played WYSIWYG, having plentiful options for modelling gangers with different stances and loadouts would have been a nice product.

 

[Ben_S]

They could have done things differently (and I think they should have) by following up the 6 house gangs with smaller box sets of Juves and champions/leaders as well as the weapon packs. That would have given them 2-3 years of runway on the base set of models... They could then have followed that up with the already existing Outlander gangs in a “second season” ... Again all of that without adding anything “new” to the setting, and we haven’t even hit ... gene stealer cults, chaos cults...

While I agree with most of this, I think it was probably sensible to release rules for the two cults from the start. They already had the models ready and it probably helped entice some 40k players into Necro (or vice versa). But that's still redoing old stuff, rather than inventing corpse grinders and flying hoverboards.

 

[almic85]

While I agree with most of this, I think it was probably sensible to release rules for the two cults from the start. They already had the models ready and it probably helped entice some 40k players into Necro (or vice versa). But that's still redoing old stuff, rather than inventing corpse grinders and flying hoverboards.

Maybe I didn’t articulate it very well, but I don’t have any issue with GW adding new gangs at any point in the release schedule.

I was really trying to say that they had plenty of runway with existing stuff in the Underhive without going as wildly off track as they have.

I don’t even mind the idea of the specialist champions and prospects and think it adds flavour to the gangs in general, though some of them are a step too far for a skirmish game.

Bloodbowl looks more successful because it has made relatively small changes to the rules themselves in a single rulebook, with more significant changes limited to the rosters which were on a staggered release, with a free base PDF until they were rereleased.

In Necromunda terms imagine if the initial Hive War box had all the progression rules in it, was accompanied with a free PDF version of Gangs of the Underhive, and the release of the Gang War booklets included all the rules in the House of books.

 

[Punktaku]

Thinking back to our massive “N17 is coming” prerelease thread, I’m fairly sure we were all looking forward to a series of releases akin to the original. Which they could have done and still put out everything that they’ve already put out (model and box set wise). I completely dislike their “no rules without a model” method of doing things. I think they shot themselves in the foot there.

Original box set would cover all the original gangs just like it did. Plus venators for something new.

Dark Uprising could’ve come out as it did, but included all the cult gangs.

They could have them done one House book to expand on the basic gangs so that the gangs would look like their current incarnations.

Ashe Wastes would then have included Nomads, Prospectors, Mutants (instead of the apocrypha) and vehicles.

Then the Aranthian Succession would happen but only as a campaign pack.

Although a LOT of people wouldn’t have spent soooo much money on books. But they’d be able to buy more minis, and GW does claim to be a mini company, not a rules company.

And they could still put out a Companion type release containing White Dwarf material. Plus future boxes or campaign packs like Sump Sea, Eye of Selene, Artic Waste, etc.

 

[MusingWarboss]

Also, I'm okay with a living game with more expansions, I just wish it wasnt nickle and dimed (I think thats the right expression). They could have had a 'ash wastes' expansion, which had the rules for vehicles, generic vehicles, weather, etc etc etc all in the one book, with a single specific crew/ride for each of the house gangs (and even stealer cult as they have the bikers etc already, no harm in that). that would have been an actual 'bolt on' expansion. It then is a single other reference book 'if' you want to use that setting. They can release the generic vehicles for it, provide whatever else they need to.

Very nicely put. I’ve said similar in probably more convoluted words in the past.

Necromunda would have had a lot less issues if it had been a core rules book, faction book if needed and then the rest being interesting settings and the occasional (non-destructive) campaign in a box type expansions.

I’ve put it as being similar to the expansion/campaign packs you used to get for AD&D, or more recently, the Kill Team Kill Zone expansions.

Just imagine how cool it would be if they released interesting environments to play though, weird settings or campaigns and you could choose to buy and play what you wanted and it didn’t change swathes of core rules!!

What I like to bring these things back to is Heroquest. I know, I’m of that age…

You get the core game, if you choose to you can buy the expansions and they add more fun environments to play in, new characters, quests and models for that expansion. The core game is unchanged.

Then you get Advanced Heroquest, which is a completely different game but has some backwards compatibility with HQ. It’s a great game but in no way an expansion to the original. It’s like going from KT to full 40k.

Unfortunately GWs attitude to new Necromunda has felt more like pushing out lots of AHQs as expansions to the 2017 game, except they mangled it up and some of the rules are from HQ and some are AHQ so you get a weird mix of older rules mixing with newer.

 

[Greyhart]

And yet another blatant rip-off by GW on WarCom today.

'Stormbringer' magazine.

Moorcock's estate should send a C&D along with Frazetta's.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Sump programming.