Necromunda Re-Release

Last Sunday, shortly after I finished the coverage on my visit to the Lord of the Rings Hobbiton Movie Set, the first info from Forge World Open Day trinkled in. And it was quite hot news. The first guests in the line were handed flyers covering the artwork below, announcing the rerelease of Necromunda!

Games Workshop has changed, I've already covered that in an older article (see Games Workshop on the rise?), but they have changed a lot. Especially in communication with the community. While back in the day, we needed to wait for the bloggers to return from the event, to get some more or less decent pictures - Games Workshop is now spilling the beans themselves with some proper pictures. And as Necromunda is such an important item, it even got its own post on Warhammer Community (where all of the official pictures in this article came from).

About the rerelease, just miniature- and designwise, I really like the new skull / aquila combination as part of the new logo. The new look of the models is quite overhauled, but I was expecting something else from the Artwork of the Escher. There is a big gap between the two female Ganger of House Escher, as the first with the pistol and half mask is absolutely not my taste and looks to much like a Dark Eldar for me, the second with the high heels, mohawk-hairdo and firm grip on the rifle is so hardcore necromunda. It is a great model. About the Goliath, great redesign, love both poses, very bulky, very masculine. They now look like the iron workers they are from the background, with the mask, the more tool like equipment and masks. A lovely little detail is the chainaxe, that is designed like an iron skull with a chainsaw mohawk. This combines some of the silly old designs (the Goliath gang used to have a Gang Boss with chain saw mohawk). That the Goliath are now on 32mm bases is something to discuss about, as it depends on if the other male gangs are going on 25mm and just Goliath will use these larger bases to show that they are bulky, brutal fleshbeasts. The gangs will receive plastic kits, with double sprues like Blood Bowl, but most likely two times 5 miniatures with some interchangable parts (think of the Dwarf team) instead of 6 per sprue. With the recently released Primaris, the whole True-Scale Conversion projects of Space Marines got a lot easier, but it would be a shame if that advantage would be nullified by enlarging the regular humans. But more on that further below.

Necromunda will be released as a two player starter set, with a whole product launch similar to Blood Bowl (so sharing the brand between Forge World and Games Workshop). This means the miniatures we see above are plastics. Some of these already went rogue and landed in the cunning hands of John Blanche, the man behind Blanchitsu. And this picture of an (converted?) Goliath ganger was seen on instagram for a few days.

I see the shared product lines of Forge World and Games Workshop with mixed feelings. If it is like Blood Bowl, we can be very lucky with reasonable priced two sprues gang boxes with a few options. But special characters will cost the same as the entire plastic box, which bothers me. And if they pull the same nonsense stunts, they did with Blood Bowl (the referees that were available for a limited time), then this will be even a bigger problem towards the community.

The Tiny Plastic Spacemen used the time at Forge World Open Day to speak with a few of the delevopers and gather information around the re-release. So here are some specs and rumours, beyond my 2 cents on the relaunch.

• The game was written before Warhammer Fest and has an own rules team, that was not the one that took care of Shadow War Armageddon.
• The game will be streamlined and the gangs will be up to 10 models per gang (back in the day most gangs were about 12-13 models).
• Activation will be alternate single model and not I-go-you-go where the whole gang moves and shoots etc.
• Leaders can activate multiple models around them, or allow models to activate multiple times (so taking out leaders is a big deal!)
• It will be based on 8th edition Warhammer 40k, but with more details.
• Full campaign rules will be provided.
• Campaign points used to upgrade skills for existing gang members.
• You can also purchase new gang members, rather than changing models for new weapons.
• Stats for Intelligence, Willpower and Cool like in Rogue Trader.
• You can choose different gang members for each battle.
• Each game will take about 30 minutes.
• Abstract turf control, possible to use hive maps if you want.
• Four gangs are already finished, with 6 gangs ready at launch.
• Blood Bowl type expansions and models will be available.
• No terrain included in base game box, because most clubs and groups have the Shadow War and other terrain already.