Necromunda
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Contents |
Background
Necromunda is a skirmish miniature game produced by Specialist Games, a division of Games Workshop. The game takes its name from the planet Necromunda which is set within the same universe as Games Workshop's popular Warhammer 40k game setting. In Necromunda players control rival gangs who battle one another in the shadowy and ruined lower levels of Hive Primus. The games are small, generally played no a table top or similar with a suggested area of four foot by four foot or slightly less. The number of models per side tends to be small as well with a dozen miniatures per side being standard.
Each member of a Necromunda gang becomes a unique individual, gaining their own specific skills and abilities as they survive more games.
Necromunda miniatures can become highly customised, showing not only the specific weapon combinations that they carry, but also injuries they get, or bionics they buy.
Setting
The game Necromunda takes its name from the planet of Necromunda, one of the longest inhabited planets in the Imperium. Settlements which were once nothing more than small collections of survival domes have since grown over the tens of thousands of years of human habitation. Now giant hive cities rise from the planet's surface. The development of these enormous structures took many lifetimes and have seen the complete destruction of the planet's original ecology. Necromunda was once a fertile planet well suited for colonization. Now the adamantium-walled hive cities, which rise like metal-skinned termite mounds, are the only truly liveable areas on the surface of Necromunda. The area between hive cities is a barren wasteland known as the Ash Wastes, which is filled with the pollution from thousands of hive city factories, accumulated over a thousand lifetimes.
The hive cities themselves are divided into different regions by height. At the very top of a hive is the Spire, below that is the Hive City, below that is a region known as the Underhive and at the very bottom is the Sump.
The Underhive is a lawless zone outside of the rules and laws of the Hive City and its houses. This is the area that most of the action in games of Necromunda takes place.
More about the Necromunda setting has been explored in various Necromunda books, published by the Black Library.
The Rules
The rules to Necromunda are based on an earlier version of Warhammer 40k, the 2nd edition of that game to be exact. Many players consider the 40K 2nd edition rules to be superior to the current rule set. The rules are written for more skirmish oriented combat, they offer a level of detail and intensity not seen in the current 40K rules. This suits the game Necromunda well which is very popular for its addicting campaign system where individual models develop unique skills, abilities and personality.
Before Necromunda was released in 1995, as a complete boxed game, a forerunner to it existed. This forerunner to Necromunda was called Confrontation and appeared over many issues of White Dwarf magazine in the early 1990s. Not to be confused with another game of the same name (Confrontation), Confrontation differs greatly from the game that would eventually become Necromunda. It used rolls on percentile dice to determine successful to hit rolls with both shoot and hand to hand combat for instance. Confrontation, like many Games Workshop games of the time, forced players to build their gangs through a series of random tables giving players little control over what their gang or miniatures would need to be.
Rules resources
The full set of Neromunda rules (the online rule book (ORB), sometimes called the living rule book) can be found here:
http://www.specialist-games.com/necromunda/rulebook.asp
Rules quick reference - A quick reference guide (summary sheet) for the Necromunda rules.
Weapons summary - for the standard weapons.
Scenarios - Full Lists from GW publications
EF Custom Scenarios - Eastern Fringe scenarios
Fanatic Online Articles - Index of Necromunda related FO articles
Necromunda Fan Rules - Alternative scenarios and a vast array of alternative house rules.
Beginners Guide to Necromunda - A summary of the game, by Speshul.
Houses of the Hive City
Orlocks
Goliath
Van Saar
Cawdor
Escher
Delaque
Outlanders
Scavvies
Spyrer Hunters
Redemptionists
Ratskins
Pit Slaves
Ash Waste Nomads
