Necromunda is one of the most hellish places to live in the galaxy. Outside in the Ash Wastes if you’re not killed by radiation, picked apart by the wildlife or die to the nightmarish weather, you’ll instead encounter the vicious nomad gangs. And if you’re “lucky” enough to live in the hives then things rapidly go even more downhill. But there’s somewhere on the planet that is even less pleasant than Hive Primus…

In Necromunda Hive Secundus, up for pre order today, we delve into a ruined hive infected with mutated Genestealers with a self contained boxed game featuring the Malstrain, Spyre Hunters and Van Saar Tek-Hunters, as they delve for precious and arcane data.

In this review we’ll be unboxing and checking out the Necromunda Hive Secundus box, covering all the gaming content in the supplement and painting up all the miniatures in the box!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over a free review copy to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too?

We also have a full video unboxing up today too, which you can see just below or over on YouTube!

So without further ado, let’s delve into the secrets of Hive Secundus

Necromunda Hive Secundus Unboxing and Review

So before we fully dive into the contents, first of all what exactly is Hive Secundus? Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had a Necromunda starter box – and in some ways, this is a more accessible entry point than the recent Ash Wastes box. Where that was all about introducing vehicles and the wide open spaces of the Ash Wastes, Hive Secundus takes things back to how they were back in the original 2017 Necromunda box that kicked off the new edition of the game. We get 2 double sided play mats featuring the twisted passages and corridors of the Zone Mortalis along with a sprue of bulkheads that can be used to seperate off sections with doors that need to be opened and make up dangerous choke points and dead ends. It’s worth noting that if you have an existing Zone Mortalis collection that you can absolutly play through the included campaign just using that, but the play mats offer some fun things such as ruined sections that your gangers can fall down, plus the Data Crystal Stacks that are needed for most scenarios illustrated directly on them.

As this is a starter set, you get everything that you need in order to play games including tokens, templates, dice, a ruler and a decently thick set of cards that cover territories, items that can be found between missions, and both pre filled unit cards for the Genestealers and blank ones for your hunters.

Particular shout out has to go to the absolutely gorgeous dice – if these were available separately I’d have snapped them up in seconds, so the fact they are included here is a massive bonus!

The real star of the show, and the main draw for a lot of people coming into this box however are the miniatures

Four kits are included here, with 3 of them being brand new and available here for the first time

Malstrain Genestealers & Tyramites

As a fan of horrific gribly space aliens, the Malstrain kit was what jumped out to me first – you get enough here to build 6 Genestealers and 4 Tyramites across 2 identical sprues, and you also get some extra parts on the sprue to give the Hive Scum some more Genestealer curse infected looking heads (More on these shortly)

I have a large Genestealer Cults army for 40k, so had to paint these up to match the colour scheme, which absolutly still works! That said, the weird diluted studio scheme for them really captures the fact that these guys have been trapped underground in an irradiated hellhole with no natural sunlight for centuries, and i can see some people doing some really nice schemes for these

Brood Scum

Built using the old Hive Scum frame, plus the new parts off the Genestealer sprue, you get enough bits to make 8 Brood Scum, who are essentially the cannon fodder hybrids of your Malstrain force. Each scenario requires you to take some, and they are likely to make up the most of your force in the early campaign, but they are quick to build and paint and have enough parts to add a lot of variety across them

Van Saar Tek-Hunters

New in this box are a brand new specialist choice for the Van Saar, the Tek-Hunters. These are actually broken down into 4 sub-choices, the Gunntek, Teknomat, Bioteknist and Augurtek – each of these have their own unique weapons and Equipment options, and the box allows you to build 8 in total with 2 different load outs for each of those 4 sub catagories

Again, these were great fun to build and paint, mostly because of the variety on show here – most have a unique gadget or weapon that makes them feel different, with even a range of different armour types included on the sprue allowing you to use the full range of gear options available to them.

Spyre Hunter Orrus (And Caryatid)

So here’s the big one! Spyre Hunters are back in Necromunda! Long time fans will know them as a (Very powerful) gang from Old Necromunda, and they have been absent in the new game except for a few teasing illustrations here and there.

But now they are back on the scene with an awesome kit that builds 2 Orrus suits and a lucky Caryatid they can bring along to allow them to reroll a save and ammo roll once a round. I love that the studio have decided to make it very clear these are not of human origin, with limbs removed and modified to make them fit in the suit, and some unnatural curves to the armour which suggests that something very not-human once wore it! I’m looking forward to checking out the other suits when they get released!

Hive Secundus Rulebook

In the box we also get the Hive Secundus Rulebook – and this is actually a full Necromunda Rulebook, with a new 2 player Underhells Campaign and rules for all the miniatures in the box. The set very much sets itself up as the perfect way for 2 players to learn how to play Necromunda within the confines of a self contained box set. When this box was first announced people were worried this was going to be more of a board game, or something like kill team, but that is certainly not the case – this is very much full fat Necromunda, and to be honest that’s the best way to learn how to play the game.

The first section of the book contains new lore about Hive Secundus and what happened there. Essentially, at some point in the past the Adeptus Mechanicus commissioned a xeno-biologist to reverse enginer Genestealers and Hybrids in order to try and find a cure for the Genestealer Curse. Hive Secundus on Necromunda was chosen as the ideal location due to it containing some rare Data Crystals filled with knowledge and technology from the mysterious Aranthians who ruled the planet long ago (You may remember that at the end of the Aranthian succession one has now returned and taken command of Necromunda in place of the Helmawr line)

With a planet with a decent source of gangers that no one will care if they become a science experiment, the depths of a hive far from the prying eyes of the Imperium and this ancient knowledge saved on Data Crystals, Hive Secundus seemed the perfect place for this work to be done in secret.

Now like any Wayland Yutanai science day, things went from “fine” to “alien infestation” pretty quickly. Hermiatus, the Mechanicum representative conducting the experiments quickly ran out of test subjects, and in a moment of madness formed a neural link with the last surviving Genestealer himself. 5 mins later, the Genestealer is free, Hermiatus is infected and all his staff dead. Due to his experiments the infestation spread rapidly and suddenly Necromunda was under investigation by the Ordo Xenos. The Imperial Guard got deployed, and when they couldn’t clear the traint even the Imperial Fists got deployed – Lord Helmawr, beginning to sweat a little that every shady deal on Necromunda would soon be under scrutiny decided to take matter into his own hands and moved the Eye of Selene above Hive Secundus and opened fire with everything he had. Nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure. Secundus collapsed into itself through the combination of nuclear and gravity bombs, millions upon millions died and a massive wall was erected around the exclusion zone to ensure noone got in (and nothing got out)

Helmawr had saved the day and everything was fine… probably…

Unfortunately, for the people of Necromunda the massive nuclear barrage had not killed the Genestealer infestation, but had actually mutated them into their very own evolutionary offshoot that even the Tyranids distanced themselves from. Reproduction cycles had shifted to random chaos, with the traditional generational jumps between Genestealer Hybrids gone, instead Malstrain Genestealers were birthed more regularly and they projected a psychic aura of fear. They also horded the Data Crystals and moved them closer to the broodthrone in order to lure in unwary adventurers.

And this is what sets up this boxed game as a Spyre Hunter looking for glory accompanies Van Saar Tek-Hunters who want to retrieve that precious data…

I suspect this lore will be expanded further in the upcoming Necromunda Book of Desolation, but it was great fun reading this and it already has my imagination going for campaigns set within this ruined irradiated hive.

The next half of the book contains the core Necromunda rules – everything that you need in order to create your gangs (Except the gang lists themselves – the models contained in the book are included later, but you will need the relevant “House of” book if you want to form any other gang), everything needed in order to play the game including all the post game actions and things such as psykers – the Trading Post itself is not included, though this is available as a free download on Warhammer Community.

This is perfect for anyone new to Necromunda, and also makes it really easy to use this box as a way of introducing a new player to the system – we’ll see shortly in the details of the Underhells campaign, but this is very much possible to use for introductory sessions for an Arbitrator to show new players the ropes.

The Underhells Campaign

So the last half of the book is what a lot of people will be interested in, the new 2 player Underhells Campaign plus the rules to all the new models in the box!

As mentioned before this is 2 player only with one player controlling an Incursion Gang who are diving into the hive in order to obtain data and treasures, while the other controls the Malstrain Genestealers.

Gang makeup is quite different to a normal campaign. For the Incursion player they get 1000 credits to spend on a single Spyre Hunter Orrus, with the rest of their credits to be spent on any combination of Van Saar Tek-Hunters. What’s worth noting here is that if you have the other House Of books then you can easily swap out the Tek Hunters for other gangs – so if you want your Escher to accompany the Spyre Hunter then that’s fine, the important part is the Spyre Hunter as they have the best chance against the Genestealers.

Incursion gangs gain experience as normal, however they do not earn income and are not able to visit the trading post (I guess Hive Secundus doesn’t exactly have a Tesco Express) – instead during the course of the campaign they can collect data crystals and exchange them for random Acheotech items that can then be equipped to gangers.

The other player controls the Malstrain, and again their gang construction is very different – Each scenario has a base “Malstrain points value” and then depending on what territory is being fought over there will be a modifier – so for example a territory that doesnt offer a massive bonus may have a small modifier, where a valuable territory could add 6 Malstrain points. These points are then used to purchase a gang – You have to take a set number of Brood Scum as defined by the scenario (So for example a scenario may have a limit of 10 MSP, and require 6 Brood Scum at 1 MSP each – leaving you 4 MSP to spend on whatever you want)

Brood Scum with 40 credits of equipment are 1 MSP

Tyramites are 2 MSP

Genestealers are 3 MSP

This gives you a level of flexibility on what to bring depending on the map layout and the opponent. There is an element of threat scaling up as the gang gets deeper into the hive, with early games only allowing 1 Genestealer, where by the end of the campaign the ‘stealers are coming out of the goddamn walls with no cap to how many you can take.

As cool as this is for the boxed set, I do hope that we see a more “normal” Malstrain list for multiplayer campaign play in the suppliment.

As with other Necromunda starter sets, all the territories that are fought over have physical cards and there’s some nice flavour as the incursion gang delves deeper and deeper until ultimately facing off against the broodthrone.

As you can imagine, a lot of new rules are included to accommodate the Spyrers, who operate very differently to other gangs. Firstly and most importantly, they get 2 activations a round, making them very powerful. They also only go prone and pinned if an attack wounds them, glancing shots do nothing to them! Finally when they get taken out of action, instead of lasting injuries they instead get glitches on their suit – this represents the damage to their hunting rig and makes it very very difficult to kill one. In order to clear the glitches, the Spryer can spend something called Kill Count. Spyre Hunters keep a track of every model they kill, and once the kill count has reached 4 they can either clear their glitches, resetting their suit back to normal, or they can spend 4 in order to power boost their suit, giving them a random permanent stat increase. Each of these increases also increases their credit value, but means that late campaign these are going to be ridiculously strong, which I suppose is exactly what you need when heading into the lower depths with unlimited numbers of Genestealers!

The Van Saar are also pretty nice, and the absence of a trading post gives them some unique abilities – Gunnteks specialise in Long Las and have the ability to craft new weapons between games, Teknomats can wield Rad Guns and Combi Weapons, wear Carapace armour and can craft new gear between games, Augurteks have Vox Arrays that give them Group Activation, and Biotecknists can do Medical Treatments to keep your gang in the fight. There’s a place for all of them, and I’d certainly start a campaign by making sure to take one of each plus your Spyer Hunter.

There’s a few things you need to keep in mind during games in the Underhells too – firstly it’s very dark, so visibiity is limited and all fighters are hidden while they are silent (Spyre Hunters and Genestealers can see just fine in the dark however!) and if a non-Sprye hunter is ever more than 6″ from another friendly ganger then you have to do a test in order to keep your nerve in the dark – again capturing the scenes we’ve all seen in sci-fi films where the group splits into small 2 mans teams, and then suddenly one of them is taken out by an alien jump scare moment causing the other to flee!

Moving onto the Malstrain Forces, Brood Scum are basic statline cannon fodder who’s job is just to slow down the incursion force until the Genestealers can tear them appart.

The Tyramites are strange parasites that live within Hive Secundus, not Tyranid, but corrupted by the Genestealer Curse – they are pretty resilient and are able to ignore terrain to scout ahead and pester with their Rad Phage and Toxin weapons.

Finally we have the Malstrain Genestealers themselves, they have a very good profile with 3 attacks hitting on 3s, with Ap1, base 2 damage and rending then can easily make short work of anyone – add in Rain of Blows allowing them to fight twice and you really dont want to end up in combat with one!

Summary

So what do I think of Necromunda Hive Secundus and is it worth picking up for a new or existing Necromunda player? Costing £110 (And less from Element Games) I really do think this a great set for both old and new players. For newcomers it works really well for introducing new players to the game and giving them the full Necromunda experience in a self contained box – after playing through the Underhells campaign they will be in a great place to take their first step into a multi player campaign. Necromunda often works best with multiple players, but as this is designed as a 2 player experience it reduces the barrier for entry by needing to find just one other person to play with. This also makes it great as a way of an experienced player teaching someone new how to play Necromunda. I feel that existing players will also want to give the Underhells campaign a go too, as it really is good fun with lots of nice sci-fi horror flavour to it. In terms of models I feel there’s easily enough here to justify the purchase too, and thats before you factor in the full rulebook, accessories and playing surface.

Necromunda is one of my all time favourite Games Workshop games, and there’s never been an easier way to get into it than this box!

Necromunda Hive Secundus is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 3rd August

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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