The Necromunda: Underhive FAQ has dropped and Jstove is here to cover the changes, the big winners, and how it may affect your rosters!
Jstove here, and today I’m combing through the big changes in the Necromunda FAQ.
A lot of little stuff, and a few big deals.
First, most of this FAQ was just cleaning house. There were some inconsistencies with weapon profiles throughout the book, but it was nothing major. Just some flubs on stuff like range bands and ammo rolls. A lot of the correct information was available somewhere if you had the rulebook and all the Gang Wars to look at. It’s nice to have all the good news collated into one correct source, rather than spread across the galaxy, as is GW’s typical Modus Operandi.
One disappointment was that they did not address Gang War, and the glaringly incomplete prices and rarities (or complete absence) of certain items. That was a failed opportunity. I guess we’re waiting for a General’s Compendium style book to get a whole trading post. I’ve personally consolidated all the information in my Gang Wars and the Gangs of Legend list and scribbled them into the book myself.
The Big Winners
HOUSE GOLIATH’S GRENADE-A-PALOOZA
This change was relatively minor, and the ammo roll on the grenade launcher is pretty poor, but it is an important distinction. Grenade launchers do not automatically crap out like hand grenades do. Why does this matter? Because in House Goliath, one of the only premium weapons they have that isn’t hot garbage is the grenade launcher. It’s their best gap closing weapon, and blast weapons mitigate their otherwise average-on-a-good-day ballistic skill. Chucking rocks down range is how the Goliaths get it done. Therefore, actually getting to make ammo rolls instead of just messing the bed with your grenade launcher is a big deal in a gang roster that basically only has 2 guns worth using.
AUTOPISTOL, KING OF MELEE WEAPONS
Pistol class weapons with the rapid-fire trait are able to rapid fire in melee. This one is a major game changer. At 10 credits for a rapid-fire die, the autopistol was already a solid choice of pistol for any Ganger looking for a backup weapon or even just a Juve looking to try his luck. I still like the laspistol a lot on Escher Juves for the generous short range bonuses, but on any model that has a ballistic skill worth using, the choice of champions is either an autopistol for the rapid-fire, or a stub gun with dum-dums for the S4.
But with this FAQ, the autopistol is no longer just the prince of Marksman’s pistols. It’s also one of the best melee weapons in the game, because it’s one of the cheapest melee weapons, and it has a rapid-fire die.
Let’s take a look at the competition. My current favorite melee weapon in the game is the flail. It’s 20 credits (Gangs of Legend roster) and it has a +1 to hit and +1S, so it turns a character that’s already a good fighter into a monster. It also turns that little girly S2 Escher Juve into a real fighter. It can’t be parried, and it has the entangle rule: On a hit roll of a 6, the enemy fights back with a -2 hit roll. The flail is the weapon that does everything you want. It hits, it hurts, it can’t be stopped, and it protects you from reprisal.
Now, look at the autopistol. It’s ten credits and every hit turns into 1-3 hits. But what’s really important here is that it’s way harder to mess up hit rolls in melee combat. If you charge into a group of enemies and get ganged up on, you’ll trash your hit rolls from interference, but that’s really the only way to sabotage your weapon skill. It’s not nearly as bad as shooting, where your opponent has lots of opportunities to abuse target priority and cover to keep you from getting your shot. So a fighter with a +3 or +4 WS is almost always going to get his decent roll when he gets to melee.
What’s also great is that because you’re using a pistol in melee, you’re only concerned with your most fundamental melee stats: Weapon Skill. You can’t raise the pistol’s strength, you can’t use more attacks than you have hands to hold guns (but that’s fixed by rapid-fire) and most combat skills are irrelevant. What this means is that a cowboy with 2 autopistols can still focus on buying shooting and survival upgrades without losing out on melee effectiveness. The autopistols are on cruise control.
THE SCUM MISSILE
The rise of the melee autopistol has given Necromunda it’s first dog missile/rat missile. Players who remember Mordheim remember the “animal missile.” It’s using a cheap 15 credit animal like a giant rat or a witch hunter hound to run headfirst into the enemy gang and lock in free charges to pin them down or soften them up. The animal missile is largely disposable and you don’t care about him. You only care that he gets in there and opens up new charge lanes by taking the sacrificial charge lane. (Keep in mind that Mordheim used a 500 credit starting roster, and Necromunda uses a 1,000 credit roster. Effectively, the dog missile translates to a 30 credit model in Necromunda terms.)
Necromunda previously had no animal missile. You could theoretically Juve missile, but that’s ill-advised since the Juve can grow up to be somebody. Their hit rolls are so poor that they’ll almost never pull off a miracle. I wouldn’t call a Juve missile a missile, it’s more likely to call it a “Juve dumb bomb.”
But we do have a missile now, and it’s Hive Scum. A Scummer with 2 autopistols clocks in at 50 credits, which is cheaper than a naked Ganger with no weapons in any other house. With his 4+/4+ hit rolls, he’s just good enough to make autopistols work at range or in melee, and he’s the right price to throw his life away. If you’re going up against a gang that’s set up to outmaneuver or outfight you, the Scum Missile is the perfect model to bait out a sacrificial charge and hopefully do some work before he goes down. Naturally, you can always equip your own gang members with double autopistols as well, but since they actually cost money and you don’t have to pay them every game like a 1 shot Scummer, you’ll be more invested in keeping them around and not throwing them into the meat grinder with the missile.
We also know from the Forgeworld weekender that Necromunda will eventually get actual animal missiles. So far, the one that looks the most dangerous (in terms of my rampant speculation) is the Cawdor bomb rat.
