Necromunda Returns With Underhive Announcement
August 13, 2017 by brennon
The return of Necromunda has been announced this weekend with the newly titled Underhive making its way back onto your tabletops in the future from Games Workshop.
The premise of Necromunda takes the world of Warhammer 40,000 and boils it down to the skirmishes between gangs in Hive Cities. You will be starting out as fledgling gangs who are working their way up to become overlords of the underhive.
The Gangs
Two of the gangs that will be starting things off are House Escher who embracing the fast and the deadly.
As you can see the colours and wild array of accessories on display here is pretty different from your regular Warhammer 40,000 armies. We're also seeing a lot more female miniatures!
Arrayed against them it looks like we're going to have the forces of House Goliath who are more about brawn than brain. If you like smashing things into a pulp these fellows are for you.
Armed with all manner of cruel looking melee weapons and decked out in some Mad Max-style armour they are a dangerous foe to face in the Underhive.
As you might imagine, the models you see here are all going to be multi-part plastic and very customisable allowing you to make the gang that YOU like before taking it off on a new adventure.
Are you excited by the prospect of Necromunda: Underhive?
"You will be starting out as fledgling gangs who are working their way up to become overlords of the underhive..."
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Shut up and take my money
couldnt have said it better my self
ahhhh…. I’m having a heart attack 🙂
I am not, and before anyone jumps upon for me being a hater, this is one game whose appeal always baffled me even when I was heavily into playing GW games. Smart move on their part bringing it back. The nostalgia hit should maintain the revenue they got last year for the Blood Bowl release.
I feel exactly the same about Bloodbowl. I never understood the attraction. Different strokes for different folks I guess
Not fussed about Blood Bowl either, though I recognise it as a very strong piece of design for its time.
I extend that to fantasy football games in general. It all depends on what motivates you I guess. The IP is essentially a skin for a dice mechanic. For some people it’s the mechanics of the game that matter, for me it also has to have a wrapper that interests me. I can’t play a game just for the games’ sake. Having great looking models is also important, that’s my favourite part of the hobby – bringing parts of a story, the characters and locations, to life. I know that you have very different priorities though and you’re less motivated… Read more »
Probably to a larger degree than you are. As you note in your next main comment, the original Necromunda minis were nothing to write home about, and coupled with it being just an okay game it held little appeal. These are undoubtedly better, but unless the game has had an overhaul to make it competitive in the current market on its gameplay then it’ll be a bit of nostalgia I’ll easily be able to let pass by. Looking at it from GW’s point of view, it’s easy nostalgia money and a smart thing to do. They obviously can’t trade on… Read more »
@redben
You say that ( they obviously can’t trade on nostalgia forever ) but if they can trade on one round of nostalgia for one generation for long enough then they’ll have a new disgruntled generation to appeal to with a new round of nostalgia. If i use the phrase ‘Games Workshop’s good ol’ days’ in a comment i’d say there are at least three different periods in Games Workshop’s history that i could be referring to, depending on who’s reading, at least two of which contained significantly different iterations of the same games.
The longer you trade on nostalgia and don’t do anything new then the sooner you’ll run out of things to trade on. It remains to be seen whether the current wave of new games take root in the manner of the games from the 80s and 90s, but if they do then they can ride those for a while, and then revive them for a nostalgia hit further down the line.
The metal gang miniatures were pretty good, the plastics not so much.
I don’t know what the rules will be like and don’t really want to speculate. On the one hand Shadow Wars was released with what was essentially the old Necromunda rules. On the flip side the new Warhammer Quest games are a completely different rules system. So I guess it could go either way. I will also be interested to see whether it gets supported beyond releases of the original gangs.
brief chat with one of the creators today, he said the rules will be new, not the old ones from back in the day
Oh dear. This might mean i’m out on Necromunda…. I’ll wait and see.
It’s in here.
https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/2318
Based on 8th ed rules but with an action point system similar to Space Hulk to activate gang members
The action point thing sounds like it could work, depending on how they do it obviously. I’d like to see that in WH40K rather than the You Go I Go. Anything is better than You Go I Go.
To really, truely understand the attraction of Necromunda you need to be open for the rich and dark but colourful atmosphere of the setting. It’s the grimey, gritty underbelly of the pompous Imperium’s inhouse fighting. Ever liked style and ways of Blanchitsu and Inq28 / Inqmunda? In a lower more industrial form this is *the* place for it.
Blanche, Ackland, and Miller were a huge part of the appeal of GW in the 80s for me. The rich, dark, colourfulness of that time was pretty absent by this time. Necromunda was an okay game with less than okay minis (even by GW’s standards of the time).
The miniatures in the box were pretty pish. I still have some plastic Goliath models and they’re so bad they’re funny. The metal gangs were pretty good though
Agreed – for the time, a lot of the metal figures were realy inspiring and characterful. And of course the game promoted a lot of conversions and customisation.
I would like to see female members of all the gangs rather than women being pigeonholed into a single faction defined by their gender, but these plastics look promising, and given what we know GW are capable of, this could be a really exciting release.
I do remember people getting into Necromunda because they thought the minis were cool. The trouble was that the Goliaths were the game’s poster child- and they looked awful (there was even a White Dwarf article that admitted that they were the least popular among fans). It also hurt that the “Mad Donna” bounty hunter was an absolute wreck of a sculpt. But the Escher, Ratskin, Scavvy, Spyrer, Deloque and Cawdor minis were all pretty cool in their time. And as for the rules- mostly they were lifted from 40k with some tweaks. The part that really worked was where… Read more »
Necromunda has been ticking along nicely in the underground for years without any assistance or interference from GW. Now GW have decided there’s money to be made from it again they’ve stuck some big appendage (!?!) into the pit. I suspect this will see it rise like a star – burn brightly for a while (potentially pi$$ing off some of the long-standing faithful that have nurtured it for years) before exploding into small pieces and appearing to disappear again.. … apart from a few sparks that may land in that underground stream that will quietly carry on – stubbornly ignoring… Read more »
I think the same is true for all the specialist games I know it’s true for Epic and Warmaster and I remember seeing a fan based Mordheim version that’s very popular as well
It will last as long as it is making money for them, which is really all you can ask. however I suspect that GW will make all the development costs for this game back with the release of the boxed set meaning that even if they don’t produce regular updates and expansions that the miniatures will remain in production for quite some time.
Those miniatures are absolutely stunning. I still have some of the original plastic House Goliath gangers from the 90s box set and they’re truly awful lol. I can’t wait to see what weapon options are available. Also wondering whether the box will come with more scenery and of course whether we will see all of the original gangs re-sculpted and perhaps even some new gangs. For now it’s time to dust off my Arbites… I wonder if these might also make good miniatures for anyone running Chaos or Genestealer Cultists armies in 40k. At a push some of the gangs… Read more »
That was my thought – mix up Delaque and stealer cult bits.
Check out Heresy miniatures for what can be done with Sci Fi gangs:
http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_15&zenid=04lu30lhjmjs6asks49a3045m6
Would you even need to do much? I would think any gangers from any gang house could be a member of a genestealer ( or chaos ) cult.
Van Saar and Delaque – not much – maybe just head-swaps? and Goliath/aberrants – pale skin?
They made me have a pants accident. So excited for this. Those Goliaths would make great Khorne cultists too.
Yeah, I’m sold. Unless the price is absolutely bonkers.
I’m expecting around the £90 mark, that seems to be the going rate for a large boxed game. I would expect it to come with between 12 and 16 miniatures and some plastic scenery. If shadow wars is anything to go by the box will be worth it as a scenery bundle in and of itself
If people local to me have bought into it I’ll give it a go again as An have some Copplestone future wars stuff knocking about that would do. Hope they have tightened up the campaign rules though
Yeah, one could fear that it’s just a reprint.
Spoke to Andy Hoare at the open day, sounds like he’s made a lot of changes to the campaign system based on his experiences GM’ing campaigns over the last ten years.
Meh, I’ve been enjoying Necromunda Community Edition for years so don’t much care if its the same or similar although a re-worked system would be great, as long as its not based on collecting 15 Promethium Caches to win the campaign. I prefer a more perpetual campaign system.
Not only those look really good but i am also happy that Underhive Gangs are back with vengeance. Not to mention that I am happy that House Escher is among them because as far as human female sculpts go GW doesn’t really have many of those.
I think I still have some of the original House Escher models lying around. It will be interesting to see how much scale creep has occurred. However those new Escher models look very bad ass indeed. As do those Goliaths truth be told
Ignoring the diversity stuff for a second though, this is still a better choice than house Orlock which were a bit bland and out of all the original gangs they need a bit of a redesign in my opinion.
I have no diversity agenda like you might think.While I get that wanting more human female sculpts might seem like it to those that hate word “diversity” because of how aggressively opposing side pushes it so much I just want more of those for variety and because GW still hasn’t given us plastic SoB let alone upgrades to have some Guardswomen among all IG models when those are thing in lore. It’s that wrong to ask.
I didn’t mean it in that way, I just couldn’t think of another word to summarise the comment about GW not having enough female sculpts
the escher models i saw at the open day today do look very tall, bigger than the originals i would say
Great news. Time to dust off my Van Saar gang.
Holy Crap!!!
Necromunda is my favourite tabletop game of all time, still play the original one, we modified campaigns a little to avoid some of the issues you can get, but I love that game. Delaque plastics, here we come.
Never played Necromunda before but I’m willing to try anything.
An auto-buy. Maybe play necromunda, otherwise they are cultists.
could they work as I.G. conscripts?
If you can get enough lasgun arms I would think so
O.m.g…..the return of a great game…..
This is going to be an auto-buy for me. I used to love this game when I was younger. Me and my 2 brothers used to play this regularly, Sunday was always campaign day.
My list of wants for the new game:
Redemptionists
Spyre Hunters
Mad Donna
Ratskins and Scavvies
Rules for underhive NPCs and aliens
Oh, and I’ll start the petition now…
Please do a Necromunda Boot Camp!
GW have said on Facebook that Necromunda is its own game and is not an expansion to Shadow War Armageddon.
People have been asking if the 2 games are compatible, so this answer suggests the possibility of a new rules system, or changes to the SW:A rules to make it unique.
Shadow Wars doesn’t have a particularly in depth set of advancement rules for levelling up, that was a key part of Necromunda. So I suspect we will some changes there making the two games somewhat incompatible
they said at the open day that all the original gangs will be remade. i so imagine you’ll be happy with what they have planned
Great news…now, about Epic…bring it back! 😉
It will be next year, in the form of Adeptus Titanicus.
Holy cow, it actually happened! Do want!
Amazing one of the best games ever. Looking forward to new models and the old rules
My usual niggles with Games Workshop are that the miniatures are out of scale and cartoonish, and that they are overly pimped up. They apply here and these factors are off putting. On the other hand, i like Necromunda a lot, so i think that they’d have to change the game rules in some ‘fundamental’ way for me not to buy in. On the mutant wing though, i see Modiphius’ Fallout on the horizon, which looks like it could fill a Necromunda shaped hole quite well, and it has some fantastic miniatures i’m quite taken with. Modiphius’ offering could mean… Read more »
[ … ] and makes me happy to buy into Necromunda.
( +1 for an edit button. )
Really looking forward to this, love the idea of diving down into the depths of the 40K imperium and look at it from street level rather than a galactic level. Models look great and its good to see that they are plastic too!
As long as there will be plastic Adeptus Arbites I’m in, never cared much about any other ‘gang’.. Hunting down scum has a certain appeal to me tho 😉
This was just posted on the War of Sigmar site, along with what looks like some new Blood Bowl elf pics.
Necromunda is next, with FULL plastic support.
Adeptus Titanicus sometime next year.
Battlefleet Heresy after that, new scale.
https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/2318
Yessssssssssssssssssssss !
All hail the underhive scabbies and muties !
So many board themes have just popped into my head I can’t decide on just one to start !
Dear games workshop,
Thank you for finally bringing necromunda back. I have one request though. Can you not go over the top with the scenery and push the cost up to 4 digits? Cardboard with plastic clips is fine. Other companies are making better scenery than you. Deal with it.
I don’t want a whole plastic city that requires a mortgage.
Thanks for taking the time gw for reading this and totally listening to me.
All the best,
Redyeti
I might have to disagree there. Card pieces and plastic clips was OK in the 90s, it doesn’t pass muster any more. I was personally happy to pay the asking price of £90 for Shadow Wars because of the scenery. It’s robust and hard wearing and the components were of a sufficiently high quality that scenery can be reconfigured each time you play. The only real niggle I have is that it’s very 40k centric and looks out of place in any other game.
*£80 sorry.
I see what you mean but the price was too high for shadow wars considering you didn’t really get enough scenery.
Think about infinity, the starter boxes come with the buildings made of card and they are pretty functional for the game.
Necromunda requires large amounts of scenery and to get people started there should be a tonne of cardboard in it 😀
The price being too high is debatable – it sold out very quickly (in something like half an hour in the UK on the GW preorders). It’s too high for you is a perfectly valid position to hold. It’s too high universally less so. I bought a copy and was more than happy with the contents, go figure. Comparatively I think that Shadow Wars and the Infinity boxes are very similar. You get a functional amount of scenery in the Infinity boxes but it’s otherwise awful and looks exactly like what it is – cardboard boxes. But I would similarly… Read more »
Oh my god… oh my god… oh my god… NEED… NOW…
Necromunda has kept me in the Hobby for a long time, I played this more then 40k… now it´s comming back, and I´m hyped.
Really excited about this.
Time to get my old badly painted minis stripped 🙂
This is wonderful news! Truly my favourite tabletop game of all time. The narrative of developing a gang of characterful reprobates over the course of a campaign, the rivalries between individual characters and the stories that emerged each time we played -and carried over into future encounters – were absolutely wonderful. I also adored (and still do) the whole range of minis despite their age and lack of sophistication and have spent years trying to assemble as wider a range of them as I can. Can’t say the wallet is keen for this development but I could not be happier… Read more »