Necromunda Void War V2.2

A year ago I wrote a small ruleset for fighting in the vacuum of space. The aim was to portray Necromundan lunar colonies and space stations, as well as underwater and toxic environments where pressurised space-suits were necessary.

I’ve revisited those rules, expanded, improved format and generally made something better of them.

The new version strips away a lot of the turn-by-turn micro-management and less sensible stuff in favour of a quick and streamlined system.

The core of the rules is Suit Damage and Air-tokens.

Essentially each fighter is equipped with a personal air-supply and a sealed spacesuit of some description. Whenever that fighter takes an Injury roll, they additionally roll on a Suit Damage table. This uses an injury dice as well, but affects the suit independently of the fighter.
The three options are that the suit is punctured but able to immediately self-repair, it’s damaged and must be manually repaired with a repair-kit, or it’s been torn wide open and can’t be repaired at all.
These results can happen completely independently of the normal injuries. So for example a knife-slash that merely caused a flesh-wound on the fighter might tear the suit badly enough that it can’t be repaired. Requiring that fighter to sprint for safety.

Or perhaps the life-threatening Serious Injury caused minimal damage to the suit and the material has sealed over the hole..

The second part of this feature is the Air Tokens. Whenever the suit is damaged, the fighter loses precious air, normally recycled around and around, the suits only contain a very small volume of air and have little margin for loss. Typically a suit can take damage no more than 6 times before the suit runs out of air entirely.
These can be replenished at certain locations, you can buy expanded air-tanks and similar equipment and there are plenty of options to make the suits themselves more robust.

If a fighter finds themselves without any air and is in hard-vacuum, they go out of action at the end of the turn.
I’ve written full rules for handling airlocks and hull-breaches, unique territories and scatter-terrain for scenarios, new Trading Post items and equipment to suit the new setting and I’ve also written two new factions since using existing ones made very little sense.

The new factions are:

Clan Coronus, specialists in bio-technology and life-support equipment. They inhabit the agri-domes and live a techno-tribal lifestyle. I’ve been converting models to represent them using Escher and Idoneth Deepkin parts.

House Sirius – Mining and industrial faction, based on the Genestealer cult line of models. They are in fact intended to be infected by a Genestealer Cult, however the House at large is not, and the cult is meant as background flavour rather than providing any unique units or rules. (Really it’s just an excuse if I forget to remove a Cult sigil on any models I make for them)

Together the two houses form a duality of nature vs technology, a common theme but a strong one I think.

I’m planning to build some custom scenery specially for void-war, specifically an agri-dome (jungle scenery inside a circular building with part of a transparent dome over it) and a couple surface-outposts consisting of a few rooms and an airlock each.

Those plus some scatter terrain and I should be able to play some cool scenarios!

Necromunda_VoidWar_V2.2

Please play with them and tell me how you find them!

Necromunda Vehicle Rules V3

Following on from my rewrite of the Adeptus Mechanicus ruleset I wrote for necromunda, I’ve spent a couple evenings reformatting my Vehicle ruleset in a similar fashion!

Hopefully I’ve streamlined it suitably.

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To recap the premise:

I’ve made Vehicles as an interactive battlefield object rather than a unit in its own right. A gang can find or purchase a basic chassis and then upgrade it over the course of a campaign with improved weapons and wargear.

The Vehicles themselves are crewed by Fighters, and if the controlling player chooses, those Fighters can dismount and fight on foot as normal, or other fighters can occupy passenger seats, operate pintle weaponry and generally crew the vehicle.

I also have a Component system, attackers can target and destroy individual parts such as wheels, engines and weaponry as well as sniping the crew off their seats.

Ultimately, an empty vehicle is up for grabs, and a canny foe might well kill the crew and take it for their own use.

The core rules are quite straightforward, detailing all the normal elements of a bike or attack buggy in the tunnels of necromunda.
However there are also Advanced rules, incorporating Walkers, Flyers and Cargo Storage mechanics.

There are Skills associated with vehicles too, such as ‘Ace’ which permits greater agility and ‘Gunner’, which removes some of the negative modifiers for shooting from a moving vehicle.

Have a look at the current version here:
Necromunda Vehicle Rules V3.2

EDIT:
Updated Link with 3.2 version

Necromunda Mechanicus Version 2

After two evenings of work, I’ve finished rewriting my Mechanicus ruleset for Necromunda!

I realised that when I first wrote it I formatted it more in the vein of 40k than Necromunda, writing specific profiles for unit-types rather than generic Leader, Champion, Juve and Gangers as is normal.

So this rewrite fixes that and ties in a lot of newer stuff like the Bionics rules, Brutes and Pets, Field Armour and so on.

Most of all, I’ve formatted the actual rules to match how they appear in the Gangs of the Underhive rulebook. It was always meant to be a serious attempt at a plugin for Necromunda, not just shoehorning in my beloved mechanicus.

Grab the PDF here!
Necromunda Mechanicus V2.0a

 

Conversions and Commissions

A week or two ago I got asked by a good friend to paint his Orlock that had been languishing for months.

Pretty nice simple task, Match The Box-art.
I think I did a solid job!

It took me about 14 hours total to paint the ten models to my satisfaction, I was paid with an Inquisitor Greyfax mini still on the frame! Not sure what I’ll do with her, but that kit is always good fun to work with.

I’ve also been spending some time making Ash-Wasters, These are the gribbly wastelanders outside the hive-cities, preying on poorly defended convoys and the unfortunates that have to live outside the walls.

Mine are Rad-Cultists, they worship abandoned and dumped reactor-cores and live short painful lives protecting their shrines from interlopers.

 

Next up, I’ve got a Van-Saar Leader converted using Prince Yriel!

And I’m starting out on my Genestealer Cult at last!

 

So things are busy! I never seem to stop making new things.

I leave you with a preview of something I got hold of after literally years of searching…

Necromunda Vehicles

Following on from my Admech ruleset, I’ve written a pretty comprehensive, though still very-much work in progress Vehicle Plugin for Necromunda

The concept is pretty simple:

It’s all about interaction.

In 40k, a vehicle is a unit in its own right, big, durable, packing powerful weapons and requiring a lot of force to destroy, but ultimately it’s a very shallow experience, you whittle down its hitpoints and destroy it.
It was a little more complex in 7th edition when you could inflict Immobilise and Weapon Destroyed results, but they happened at random and they were never something you relied on tactically.

In necromunda, it’s all about the gang. So a gang vehicle needs to keep that focus.

With that in mind, I wrote my rules around the idea of Crew and Components. When a vehicle activates, all its crew and passengers activate with it, meaning that there are a lot of different things going on. most importantly, the driver controls the movement of the vehicle, fires its hull-mounted weapons and generally acts to direct it.
Gunners operate specific weapons, and have to be seated on the appropriate weapon to use each. So an under-crewed vehicle may not be able to be used to its fullest extent.
Passengers are along for the ride, but since they’re not operating anything, they get to use any weapons and wargear they personally have to fight from the passenger seats.

The Component system is a bit more complex, the idea is that a vehicle is comprised of a Hull, and a number of subsystems.

Those subsystems may be targeted specifically and produce different effects as they are damaged and destroyed. For example:
* Wheels reduce the Movement stat of the vehicle for every wound they take.
* The Engine outright immobilises the vehicle if destroyed
* Weapons may be shot off to reduce its firepower
* Other more esoteric subsystems have their own effects like a Comm relay, which allows the Leader or champion who’s using the vehicle to activate gang members in a much wider than usual bubble.

So the Vehicles in this ruleset are quite direct in implementation, but have a lot of potential tactics and strategies to make them useful and manipulate the flow of the game. Both the controlling player and any foes have plenty to think about, and it should never devolve into a game of “whittle the hitpoints”

In my first test-game, a Sentinel Scout-walker belonging to House Escher was outright hijacked by the Goliath leader and turned against us!

For the purposes of testing, I’ve been building a variety of vehicles.

The two complete ones are the Sentinel mentioned already, and a Bounty hunter on a bike.

 

Necromunda Adeptus Mechanicus Gang

It’s been a long time! and a busy time at that.

I quit my job, got a new and better job, that job imploded as Indie studios are wont to do, so I got an even better job with a bigger and more stable company (one you’ve probably heard of!)

So now I’m on awesome money and getting my hobby on in a big way.

The biggest thing going on with me is that I got into Necromunda in a big way, I have a group of half a dozen friends who come around to my flat on a Wednesday night and play, each week, every week for the past two or three months.

I started with Escher, but quickly reverted to form and started writing my own rules. A complete ruleset for an Adeptus Mechanicus gang!

Necromunda Mechanicus Rules

The guys and gals report that it’s neither overpowered nor unpleasant to play against, and with the more recent updates to the base-game, the bigger, nastier weapons I’ve added are actually quite tame.

The main thing is that I’m not fielding a single model that isn’t customised specifically for the games we’re running, so it’s been a bit of an adventure!

 

The first model I built was this guy, going by the name of Aleph-0, he’s a Praetorian Gun Servitor, armed with a Servo Arm and Heavy Bolter.

I built him using a Slaughterpriest as the base model, it took me a couple hours to build and a couple more to paint. I then immediately bought another slaughterpriest and pumped out a second one!

Then after a few weeks where I fielded Horus Heresy models to stand in for an Adept and Tech-thrall/gun-servitors, I finally built a model for my Adept.

 

Adept Kovarian is made using a Primaris Psyker and parts from the standard plastic Tech Priest, plus a little brass-etch and a few spare parts I had lying around.

In ruleset, he’s a fairly capable combatant, so far he’s consistently beaten the snot out of anyone who dared enter melee with him (power axes in necromunda are horribly dangerous!)

On one notable occasion he blew himself up with the plasma pistol though. so there’s that 😛

I’m also using a couple custom models for my Servo-Skulls, though no pictures of those specifically (see the last picture where I show the whole gang together for those!)

I followed Kovarian with a bit of a boondoggle project, A Cataphract battle automata, based off the old Rogue Trader robots in concept.

It’s built using a Primaris Aggressor as a base model, with the body of a Horus Heresy Servo-Automata I had lying around, plus some parts of Kataphron Breachers for the backpack.

All the weapons are magnetised so I can swap between loadouts, In game it usually wields the melta gun and a bolt-pistol, the fists also count as power-fists, meaning it’s a brutally dangerous close-ranged opponent.

I dispensed with the idea of a carapace weapon after deciding the model was too small to mount a Lightning Gun without looking silly.

The final shift towards using entirely custom models was to make Tech-Thrall equivelants.

I wrestled with the idea a lot before settling on the solution.

Electro Priests with Kataphron parts made a surprisingly effective combination! The guns were an interesting part to figure out, they’re actually the Kataphron’s Arc rifles without the giant capacitor block on the top. I figure they resemble the original Tech Thrall Las-locks quite well!

Just in the past couple days, I’ve been expanding my gang further with a Tunnel Stalker (Rust-stalker variant for necromunda, armed with dual auto-pistols and a sword)

And a third Praetorian, this one based on Guilliman for reasons of ribbing the many many ultramarines players I hang out with! I take a perverse pleasure in reducing Roboute Guilliman: Primarch of the Ultramarines, Lord of Macragge etc etc down to a mere weapons servitor..

 

 

All in all, it’s been a very very fun project. The gang has been reasonably competitive without being overpowered and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on the models!

The Big Wheel of Warhammer is spinning again, I’ve got plans for Seraphon and an Aquatic Ork army for 40k in the works.

 

Hopefully it won’t be two years before I post again!

Solar Auxilia Charonite Ogryns

I’m happy to say, I’ve finished my Ogryns!

Beautifully sculpted, they fit together like a dream and were a joy to paint.
I love the large areas of fluorescent orange I was able to do, and I’m particularly proud of the face on the one with his mask open.

All this means is that I actually have nearly enough force to play with them!

I’m thinking next on the force will be a lasrifle squad and a Dracosan Transport

Pictures!

Back from the wilds!

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen.
I return from the wilds.

By which I mean, I’ve spent three months moving into my new flat, enjoying christmas and then looking for the cable to plug my camera into my computer.

So I have a bunch of stuff to show off!

The New Flat

I have a new Games Room and hobby desk on which to play and work at home rather than relying on a 30 minute trek into town to do anything. It’s worked wonders on my hobby!

Once the table was set up, I immediately invited some friends to have a game with me, we wound up having a three-sided 3000 points apiece battle. Orks vs Chaos Marines vs 30k Mechanicum.
A grand success with chinese takeaway and beer! I was able to snap a fair few photos over that battle but very few were clear shots of the table without blur.. ah well.
Behold the battlefield!

Warlord Titan

I bought my Warlord Titan!
Previously I only had one gun and the head, the rest of the parts arrived shortly after christmas and I was delighted to be able to take some pictures…

“What have I gotten myself into?”

 

That’s a LOT of parts..

I’m going to get this thing framed…the reaver’s certificate too.

Since these pictures were taken, I’ve partially assembled the torso of the titan

To my minor annoyance, it turns out I hadn’t quite been thorough enough cleaning the parts, so I’ll be going back over these parts to make doubly sure.
That’s the trouble with such large components…
For the curious, the unpainted circle on the side of the chassis is where I had placed another model (with its round base) on the part during spraying.
That whole area is going to be under the shoulder anyway so I figured it didn’t much matter.

Amazingly, the carapace is actually large enough to drive a tank over…

 

In any case, now I’ve got my camera and photobooth set up again, I’ll be updating my blog a LOT more frequently. and with that, I’ll have a lot more impetus to work on the warlord. I’m thinking I’ll dedicate saturday entirely to it.
I won’t leave the house that day. Hoping to get a lot done!

Dark Mechanicum Acolytes

I had a LOT of fun with these, I’ve been slowly building a collection of Daemon Engines for most of the time I’ve had this blog, so long-time readers know exactly what I’m talking about…
I figured it was time I made some infantry to go with the monsters.
But not just any old cultists or marines would do, they’d have to be something dark, gribbly and John Blanchian.
So I turned to my bits box and some spare dark eldar parts…
I hope you’ll agree that the results speak for themselves!

I’m still painting the back three, but the two with their bases done are complete.

I’ve been working on tentative rules, but the basic idea is that these are a Retinue or can take the role of squad-leader for cultists and traitor-skitarii.
They’re highly upgradeable but basically not designed to stand alone. you -can- give them all plasma guns and field them as mobile special weapons teams, or attach them to the cultists as a major bonus to leadership and other bonuses depending on wargear.

Their secondary role is to be used alongside a Heretek Magos to beef out his power and provide a bodyguard.
To make them, I primarily used Dark Eldar Wracks and Skitarii Ruststalkers as parts-sources. some bits and bobs (mostly servo-skulls and the plasma gun) from other kits too.

Next up, the Magos. I’ve picked up the Everchosen Gaunt Summoner, I think I can get some interesting results by adding DEldar and Admech parts to him…

30k Mechanicum

Running alongside everything else, I went to the Horus Heresy Tournament in Nottingham a couple weeks ago. I had a fantastic time (even though I was the bottom of the league) and I’m definitely going again in june/july

However in preparation, I spent some time prepping my army, so now every single model is fully based and painted.
I built a Macrocarid Explorator using the Land Raider Proteus kit, since my existing Mechanicum Land Raider was no longer part of the army list. Happy to report that it was only destroyed once in the five games I played at the tournament.

I also built and painted a Knight Atrapos.

I’ll post pictures of both the Macrocarid and Atrapos in my next post (probably tomorrow evening)

General lessons learned in the tournament; Mechanicum are okay at melee, but benefit from using the right units for it.
I was fielding my Magos as a Malagra (melee assault specialist) with a unit of Ferrox type Thallaxii. The Rage special rule was meant to make them a lot more lethal, but in practice I never really got to take advantage of it properly.
I also learned that I really REALLY need more tech thralls and transports.
So at some stage I’ll be buying some Triaros transports.

My feeling is that the Ferrox was largely wasted, so I’ve purchased some Scyllax guardian automata to fill the role. uncertain how they’ll mesh with my army since I normally field my Magos with a jetpack. perhaps they’ll play nice with her if I remove the jetpack and replace it with something else…

Solar Auxilia

I actually got a game against the solar auxilia while I was at the tournament, my first proper encounter with them. My previous meetings were when they were attached as allies to a Sons of Horus army so I never really got a sense for what they were good at.

As I’m sure my dear readers are aware, I’m aiming to build a Solar Auxilia army and currently have a command squad/legate-commander, Storm Section and an Arvus Lighter built for them.
After the tournament was over, I bought Book 4 and a pack of Ogryn Charonites to really kick off my army.

I adore the charonite models. They go together with a nice snug fit on all parts and no messing around with bending anything, even those pipes are the right shape to fit as long as you use the correct numbered parts!
They’re also big, a Lot bigger than you might think.
Guard players may be mislead about their size by comparing them to 40k era ogryns.
These are not your regular ogryn in a space suit, they’ve been gene-bulked and given augmetic surgeries. they’re a LOT scarier. They are to 40k ogryns what 40k ogryns are to guardsmen.

I mean wow, they make regular ogryns look puny!

This Ogryn isn’t finished yet, still quite a bit to do on him, but you get the idea of how I’m painting them. The vibrant orange is very striking, I’m having a great time with this army so far!
Hoping when I get to the infantry tercios I won’t get so bogged down I lose the sense of fun with them.

Imperial Assassins

Some may recall my previous posts in which I showed off my Culexus and Callidus assassins?
Well, the new models showed up and I decided I liked the look of the eversor and vindicaire more than my own rough attempts. So I went ahead and bought them.

Nothing much to say, I’ve painted them with the same style as my previous models and I’m very pleased with the results.
Special mention goes to the vindicaire’s glowing eyes and blended camoleoline suit.

 

Anyway, that’s all for now. It’s been a busy couple months!

Somewhere in there I fitted moving house and christmas…

 

Character Models – Marco Columbo & the Solar Auxilia

About two years ago, I went to the Birmingham GW Games Day event, 2014. Amongst other things, the event included an exclusive model (as they often do)  of Marco Columbo, this is apparently the second version of the character they’ve done, this one in finecast resin.

I set to work, figuring I’d try and change up my style to a more brightly coloured pallete. Hah.
About an hour into painting it I realised I wasn’t having any fun with it, set it aside and worked on something else.

Cut to Two years later.

GW:Manchester runs a Speed-Freaks competition, paint a model within one week and include the specified colour (in this case Xerius Purple) somewhere on the model.

I figured I should dig out Marco again and have another try at painting his purple britches.

This was on the saturday evening, the competition being judged on the sunday afternoon.
I spent five or ten minutes gluing the parts together, spray-based it in black and took it into the store the next day.

Two and a half hours of painting later, I submitted it to the competition.

I’m given to understand that it was a very popular result in the judging, but set aside simply because it was an exclusive model no longer sold, not for its painting standard.
So I feel pretty happy with that 🙂

I’ve been painting character models pretty much ever since.

After having done Marco to my satisfaction, I went ahead and painted Perturabo (as previously seen) and now more recently got around to some of the models of my Solar Auxilia command squad.
I’ve painted the Vexillius and the Legate Commander.
I’m particularly pleased with the freehand on the banner and the mix of tones on the cloaks and coats.

Perturabo – Primarch of the Iron Warriors

October 7th was my birthday, A great time was had, I travelled to Nottingham and played a fantastic game of Horus Heresy, I ate and drank at Bugmans, toured the newer exhibits in the museum and particularly importantly (for you dear readers) I bought myself some Birthday presents!

To-wit, Perturabo and a Land Raider Proteus.

More on the Proteus later, rest assured that post is coming.
But Perturabo I’ve wanted since I first saw him.
Lots of metals, few colours, plenty of detail, Here is a model which I felt I could do justice.
A character model in a style that matches my range of techniques to a tee.

So, over the next few days, during the course of about eight hours of painting. I toiled and produced this!

I think this may qualify as the first Primarch to be painted for GW:Manchester’s Speed Freaks competition!
I didn’t win, but then I’ve never cared about winning as much as participation.

No more talk, behold his majesty!

Honest critique: I feel his tabard needs more work, and I totally didn’t notice the hip chevrons at all.
But all in all, I’m very pleased with the result.
There will be more character pieces in future!