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NEWcromunda: Are the Legacy Houses Worth It?

By Jack Stover | February 16th, 2018 | Categories: jstove, Necromunda

arbites female necromunda wal horJstove has returned with a review of the Legacy House gangs for Necromunda: Underhive and what you can expect to encounter when using these lists.

Jstove here, and today I’m “unboxing” the Legacy House gangs for Newcromunda.

No School like the Old School

In previous articles, I talked about my thoughts on how viable the new plastic boxes for Eschers and Goliaths were, based on their ability to build a starting roster that I thought could carry a gang through a campaign. You can read all about it here and here. If you don’t care enough about Eschers or Goliaths, here’s the short version – I think the Escher box has great value, but I am not convinced by the Goliath box. Today I’m going to unpack the Legacy roster and take a look at how I think a gang built with these lists measures up against the Gang War House lists

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Our assumptions

The previous articles were focused on determining if the new gang boxes had one-stop shopping for their value, according to what was available on their roster. Since I’m unpacking the Legacy House lists today, I’m going to make a different assumption. But before I get that far, allow me to explain to the new kids on the block that don’t know what the Legacy House rosters are.

The Legacy House rosters cover the hive clans of Necromunda that have not had a new wave of models and an official release yet. This is currently the Orlocks, the Cawdors, Van Saars, and Delaques. These gangs all had models, but do not have their new identities and rules yet like the Goliaths and Eschers do. They are a temporary rule set to use the models until their House gets a facelift. Today we’re going to see if they can hold their own in roster building against the shiny new poster boy Houses, the Eschers and Goliaths.

imperial guardNow, back to my different assumption that I mentioned earlier. As part of my evaluation from earlier, I’m going to assume that the player has access to either A) classic Necromunda models or B) the more likely option, Imperial Guard miniatures. I’m sure a lot of 40k players that don’t have existing Necromunda classic collections from back in the day would love to get into the game but are concerned that their models aren’t appropriate. So let’s assume that Guardsmen are the order of the day because grunts with lasguns are easy for any 40k enthusiast to get.

Just a little more about the humble guardsman…

I would personally encourage all Astra Miliwhatwhat players to get into Necromunda with their Guardsmen model because I think it can work. More importantly, with Genestealer and Chaos Cultists, there’s enough variety of normal human jerk models to actually be able to build the miniatures you need. Assuming you actually want to unpack some plastic and build a real gang instead of just recruiting your normal Cadians and Catachans from your existing collection.

However, I believe that Guardsmen/Cult models are most appropriately used in the House list for two simple reasons – The Goliath list is inappropriate because the Goliaths deviate so far away from what is normal that you pretty much have to use their models and their House list. Their goofy Goliath only weapons really have no analog outside their House. The Eschers, on the other hand, are theoretically capable of being Guardsmen thanks to their easy access to lasguns, but Eschers have no shooting skills. If you’re going to play with all your little lasgun army men, you’ll probably want them to be shooty with their flashlights!

Goliath Gang

How the roster works with readily available models

First of all, the roster has all the weapons that are readily available to basic humans in 40k. You can have plasma guns, flamers, meltaguns, grenade launchers, bolters, and lasguns and autoguns. You can also have the heavy stubber, but I want to talk about that later. For now, let’s just say that all your 40k staples are usable and readily available.

A question that you’ll probably have is, “Will a gang composed of just Guard models with lasguns and a couple guys with special weapons actually do work?” Yes. The reason a Guardsman chump with a lasgun works in Necromunda is that hitting your target pins it, which severely hampers their ability to fight back. In Necromunda, hitting = board control. So, in many cases, just hitting a target is as important as actually hurting it. The wound roll is just a cherry on top. Since the lasgun is cheap, never runs out of ammo, and has a very generous, very accurate short range, this actually makes it a major workhorse weapon in the game.

The advantage that House Escher has is that their starting gangs pay 5 credits for lasguns. The disadvantage of Escher however, is that they can’t capitalize on this amazing gift from the Emperor because nobody on their roster can get primary access to shooting skills. Shooting skills allow you to minimize things like cover penalties, shoot while sprinting, and getting critical hits on a six-hit roll. They make your hit rolls more consistent and make the gun itself more deadly, this is a huge loss for House Escher. Legacy gangs must pay 15 credits for their lasguns, however Legacy Houses, depending on which one you pick, have relatively easy access to shooting skills. So while it’s a shame that they pay three times the credits for a humble lasgun, I think it’s a fair trade, because it’s easier for you to cultivate a gang member that can actually shoot straight early in the campaign.

EscherAnother big deal for the legacy roster is that they’ve got access to the bolter! And oh boy, the bolter, thanks to Space Marines, is a bit that’s even easier to find than a lasgun! If the lasgun is the prince of Necromunda through economy and pinning, the bolter is the crownless king of killing people. It is the most consistent premium ranged weapon in the game, and with rapid fire and S4, along with a pretty decent range profile, will probably put serious hurt onto whatever it hits, in addition to pinning it. The real great thing about the legacy bolter is that it doesn’t have a needle gun duct taped to it for no apparent reason. The Eschers get a bolter, but they pay extra for it because of that goofy needle gun stuck on it. Furthermore, the Escher bolter is a snobby weapon, and only select models can take it. In a Legacy roster, any Ganger can grab a bolter, but you would probably limit your selection because the gun isn’t cheap.

The cheap weapons that also fill out the roster are available as well. In my article about Goliaths, I mentioned that the weakness of the Goliath kit was that the sprue had too much expensive fancy stuff on it, and not enough dirt cheap weapons on it to really put together a full gang. Fortunately for classic Necromunda collectors and Guardsmen, laspistols, autopistols, and stub guns are not hard to find. The stub gun is the king of the Necromunda sidearms. It’s dirt cheap and it can be upgraded to S4 later in the campaign by putting dum dum bullets in it. This is a great deal, provided you don’t mind that dum dum bullets are crappy to reload and are prone to making the gun malfunction. Don’t care, they’re S4!

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Knives, bludgeons chains/flails, and two-handed weapons are also back, as are generic power weapons. The cheapo weapons are effective and do their job, and the generic power weapon is on par with the fancy weapons of the Eschers and Goliaths, so if you are inclined to leave the lasgun at home and go for an angry facebeater gang (I recommend Cawdor) then you have the tools to get the job done. Chaos Cultist models are basically already House Cawdor models anyway since it’s in the fluff that all Cawdors wear goofy evil looking masks. (They did it first, Chaos Cultists stole their look!)

Final Verdict – Can it be done?

So can a classic Necromunda gang, or more likely, a box of Cadians, Elysians, Kriegers, or a mixed batch of Guardsman and Cultist bits do work in the Underhive, and can they do it on the cheap? My answer is yes. I personally believe it’s completely possible to rip open a box of Cadians and throw them on the table and expect success. Moreover, I believe that the pair of grenade launchers that come in the Cadian box is actually a pretty great weapon in the Underhive, since you can shoot grenades into tight corridors and they’ll stop if they hit walls, making them nearly impossible to miss with and great for flushing out enemies that refuse to abandon their cover.

Underhive

The Addendum

Unfortunately, like all GW documents, the Legacy roster has what looks like some obvious cut and paste errors and inconsistencies that need to be addressed, and they need to be either FAQ’d by GW or houseruled at the start of the campaign. One of the obvious ones is the bolter. In the Escher list, the boltgun does Damage 2, but in the Legacy House list, it’s Damage 1. Is this intentional? Do the Eschers just have a nicer boltgun because it’s got feathers and a turkey baster duct taped to it? My guess is that this was an error and that the Legacy bolter should be D2. Another interesting goof up is that the Heavy Stubber is 130 credits, but is basically just a bolter with double the range. This is absolutely not worth the price since you’ll probably never get to utilize this weapon at its full range anyway. To make this gun worth the 130 credits, I’d houserule it to be Rapid Fire 2, so it actually bangs out the rain of bullets it’s supposed to.

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The final inconsistencies are in the House profiles themselves. In some Houses, the Champions can shoot/fight well, but the Leader can’t. It doesn’t make sense. Some effort needs to be made to normalize their stats as appropriate. If you look at the rosters, you’ll see what I mean. Finally, their armors have also obviously been riddled with cut/paste errors. Most Legacy gang fighters start with mesh or flak armor, or a mix of some models flak and some models mesh. Sometimes, you’ll see that the Champs and Gangers wear mesh, while the leader wears flak. Why would that be, since mesh is the better armor? Isn’t the Leader supposed to have the nicest toys?

Before you write your Legacy gang, have the arbitrator of your campaign go through the roster with a sharpie, and make a ruling on the GW copy/paste goofs.

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About the Author: Jack Stover