Bastions of Law, up for pre order today, is the latest supplement for Necromunda, this time diving into the Palanite Enforcers with a fully expanded gang list and background covering the law keepers of Necromunda. Much like the House Of books, this is your go to book for everything about the Enforcers and using the gang in your games.

In this full review we’ll be checking out the new book, seeing what’s inside and also building up and painting the new miniatures getting released alongside the book.

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

We’ve also filmed full video review of Bastions of Law and the new Necromunda releases which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s dive into the new book and see what it’s all about!

Bastions of Law Review

This isn’t the first time we’ve had a book dedicated to the Palanite Enforcers, back in 2019 we got The Book of Judgement a tome that covered the initial Palanite Enforcers list along with a full campaign system and the Black Market. 6 Years later and the Specialist Games Studio have followed up with something more like the “house of” books, an entire book covering the Palanite Enforcers in detail. Necromunda books have been some of my favourite publications from Games Workshop, and there’s been a lot of stuff added in various books since 2019 – making this the definitive book for the Enforcers.

So what is a “House of” book? Well, if you’re new to Necromunda those books were essentially “Codexes” for your Necromunda gangs. The series covered the main core houses in the game, but with all of those gangs now complete Games Workshop have started to cover some of the other gangs such as the Ash Waste Nomads in Tribes of the Wastelands and the Squats in Halls of the Ancients.

So this book, Bastions of Law, looks to do the same for the Palanite Enforcers – these guys are the “police” force of Necromunda, though much like everything else on the planet they can be corrupt or look the other way when it suits them best, and ultimately operate like any other gang.

I Am The Lore

I love the Necromunda books for the lore, there’s been so much world building since the game was re-released and the team have expanded on this in great detail across the newest books. One of the advantages of doing “House of” style books is that they can have a laser focus on a single slice of Necromunda and take a real deep dive into the background.

In Bastions of Law we learn all about how the Enforces have changed across the years. How they have operated and the power they wield has changed quite a great deal across their existence, and the book does a great job at exploring this and fleshing out a lot of stuff that hasn’t been covered before.

Stretching back to The Lone Marshal, Martek Helm’ayr’s most loyal warrior during the Great Road War who ended up deputising many officers and creating a proto-enforcers organisation, all the way through to the events of the Aranthian Succession and what impact that this massive upheaval on Necromunda has had on the operation of the Enforcers a lot of ground is covered here.

We also get a full breakdown and detail on how the Enforcers operate today, what their structure is and a little about each of the various ranks and rolls within the force. This includes some of the new units we’ll talk about a little later such as the Haunts. There’s a nice section which dives into a number of famed Precincts and Patrols too which gives you some great inspiration on how to build the narrative of your gang. In this section we also get whispers of the Cartels Mortifoli who deal in a substance known as Brainleaf which can create zombies – I do wonder if we’ll see this represented on the tabletop at some point, as an undead gang for Necromunda is crying out at being done!

There’s some ace lore here and I highly recommend picking this up just to read if you’re a Necromunda fan.

Palanite Enforcers Gang List

As with other Necromunda books, we get a full and expanded gang list here. I’ll call out any of the big changes from The Book of Judgement as well as take a look at the new kits that are getting released alongside this book.

Firstly, the Enforcers now operate much like any other gang. Previously they were not able to occupy and control territories, but in Bastions of Law they now get territories as usual, get boons like normal and even get some enhanced ones, getting the Toll Crossing one as if they were Orlocks and the Drinking Hole as if they were Delaque. This makes the Enforcers much more fun to play as you still have the enjoyment of taking territories and making the decisions of what ones you are looking for to best benefit your gang. They also now start with a unique territory the Palanite Precint. This gives them +1 rep and D6x10 income plus the ability to hire a new rookie if they delete anyone from their gang.

Palanite Enforcer Captains have now been sufficiently trained in shooting things with their BS now 3+, which is great! they only come stock with Magnacles (each of your gangers gets these for free) which are basically handcuffs that can be used with an action in order to cuff someone in base contact – once cuffed you can only make melee attacks, and they are at -2 to hit. Someone can break out of these, but it requires a strength test, with friendly fighters offering a modifier for breaking someone free. The equipment list has also been greatly expanded with a lot more options available off the bat such as flamers and heavy stubbers.

Palanite Sergeants have been split into two different profiles to better distinguish them. Enforcer Sergeants are ranged specialists who have WS 4+ and BS 3+ and access to Shooting as a primary skill, these have access to lots of different ranged weapons now, so you can gear them up for multiple roles.

Subjugator Sergeants on the other hand are your close combat specialists who have WS 3+ and BS 4+, Brawn is their Primary skill and they favour close combat weapons and heavy weapons

All three of the above units have the ability to take 0-2 Hardcase Cyber-Mastiffs, These are a little expensive at 130 credits, but very nice – if they are taken out of action before activating then they get a free activation before they are removed from the battlefield, and they are tough too counting as having light carapace armour and a respirator. In addition, they stop their owner from being subject to coup de grace, and when their owner activates they can immediately move into base contact.

All three of these models are in the new Enforcer Captains and Sergeants box, which builds some great looking loadouts.

I’ve got some details to finish off on these guys, but I really enjoyed painting them up – especially the Cyber-Mastiffs!

The kits are quick to build up and it shouldnt be too difficult to combine them with the upgrade set that is also up for pre order today. it’s worth noting there’s some odd stuff in here, such as the Chem Thrower, which isn’t in the gang equipment list – but you could use this as gear you pick up during the campaign.

These are designed to go with the basic Palanite Enforcer kit, but a lot of the options on here are Trading Post upgrades that can actually be taken by sergeants at gang creation – I’ve not tried combining the two new kits together yet, but the selection I put together based on the basic enforcers look really nice and give you lots more options when tooling out your gang mid campaign

You get two full sprues giving you loads of parts to tool out your gang!

Back onto the gang list and Palanite Patrolmen have also been split into two profiles Enforcer Patrolman and Subjugator Patrolman. Like with the Sergeants this allows them to have different weapon lists to better suit the gear they can take. Over the course of a campaign they can also get any gear from the trading post too, allowing them to use other weapons not listed in the gear list for them.

One of each type can be upgraded to a specialist at gang creation, and its worth noting that your basic gangers cannot gain skills, only your Specialists can – like with the Sergeants these both have different primary skills depending on if they are Enforcers or Subjugators. You can of course upgrade all your normal gangers to specialists over the course of a campaign.

Finally your Rookie Patrolmen fill the role of Juves, these now have a cost of 25 credits, but you still get to replace deleted members with a free one due to your Precinct. They have a much sparser selection of gear available to them , but can be given gear from the Trading Post after gang creation.

Palanite Crew exist for crewing your vehicles, and Venators, Ridgerunners, Rockgrinders and Wolfquads can all be taken along with custom vehicles. Venator stats are included in Bastions of Law, the stats for the other vehicles are not in the book however, so you’ll want to have one of the Ash Waste supplements in order to use these. This seems a shame that they are not in here for completion.

There’s a fair spread of returning Hangers On and Brutes with Sloppers, Rogue Docs, Ammo jacks, Gang Lookouts, Dome Runners, Enforcer Automata, Ambots and Ogryns all returning. There’s also a new Hanger On added for the Enforcers in the form of Haunts.

These guys are really cool – you can only have 2 in a gang and they are essentially sanctioned Psykers that fall into one of two different classes, Psyrenders have an aura of terror that makes anyone have to pass a Willpower check in order to charge them – in addition they can mind control enemy models, getting them to shoot on their allies, force nerve checks on units and even make enemy models insane. On the other hand Bonecrushers passivly increase their Strength and Damage by 1, and have the ability to go full Darth Vader using their psychic powers to hurl terrain elements at enemy models, create a force shield that increases their save or even knock people off platforms using their mind! Both are really cool, but I love how offensive the Bonecrusher is. The blister comes with one of each in resin and are an absolute joy to paint up!

There’s also entries in the book for Hive Scum, Bountry Hunters and House Agents (These are similar to Bounty Hunters, having a range of profiles that can be picked from and are petitioned to join the battle – they come with 150 credits worth of Enforcer equipment, so these can be a huge help for a struggling gang)

For those needing even more muscle, the profile for the Enforcer Bounty Hunter Scrutinator-Primus Servalen is also included.

The Palanite Drill Skills have been updated in this book with a couple of tweaks. Some of these are just tweaks in wording to bring them in line with the language of other skills, but some have had some updates. Helmawr’s Justice for example gives the fighter bonus XP when they perform a Coup de Grace, and Non-Verbal Communication just allows anyone with line of sight to use their cool stat.

One of the big things that has been added in Bastions of Law are Prefectures. There’s 6 of these in total and they represent different areas of Necromunda that shapes the way the local enforcers that operate there work. From a gameplay POV the choice of which Prefecture you are from gives you aditional Skills and Equipment that your gang can gain. So for example if your gang is from the Palanite Prefecture around Cinderak City then you can pick from 3 additional skills: Call Reinforcements allows you to bring in a friendly fighter as a double action when one of your officers is taken down, Priority Threat has you randomly determine an enemy model who is worth a bounty at the end of the game and Shield Companion allows someone in base contact to also get the benefit of an Assault Shield. Alternatively you might want your gang to come from Poison Sea, giving you cheap and easy access to combat drugs and chems while also having a natural resistance to toxin and gas attacks. I really like these and there’s a nice mix to appeal to different play styles.

A new Alliance option is introduced in Bastions of Law allowing gangs to make a deal with the Imperial House. This allows the gang to set one of their territories as officially apointed by the Imperial House, allowing them to collect the boon of that territory twice a post battle sequence, and also allows them to bring Enforcer Bodyguards along with their gang. These guys are pretty cool, armed with decent armour and disintegration guns and equipped with the Overwatch and Fearsome skills!

The models are very cool too, again coming two to a blister pack in resin.

There is a downside to this alliance however, whenever you earn credits as a scenario reward you have to give the Imperial House D3 x 10 credits in tax. Worse, if you break the alliance for any reason your gang immediately becomes Outlaws – so make sure you have enough coin to pay the tithe!

As with the House of books the Enforcers get their own set of Gang Tactics – these are available in card form, but are also printed in the book too in case you can’t get your hands on the physical cards.

There’s a couple of fun Enforcer themed missions in the book and they are both really cool! Asset Seizure has the Enforcer gang performing a raid to try and secure contraband from a gang den – The defender has stockpiles of Contraband around the battlefield with the Enforcers trying to sweep in and take them off them – this is a brutal fight to the death with the game only ending when all the Contraband has been seized or all the gang members of one side are out of action! The other mission is even more fun, The Getaway is a full on police chase – It starts with the rival gang loading up a getaway vehicle with the spoils of a heist in an Ash Wastes battle, but at the end of any turn they can declare that they are going to attempt to make a getaway and the game shifts to a rolling road mission! This is really really cool and I’ve already got plans on folding this into a future campaign.

Bastions of Law ends with a nice little extra gang list for Badzone Enforcers – this is a much stripped down gang list that represents a precinct cut off from their fellow enforcers – they do not get a prefecture and they have scarce ammo on a lot of their weapons, however due to the cicumstances they are in they are very corrupt and gain 2D6x10 credits whenever they take 4 fighters out of action, to represent them harassing any local populace into paying protection money. Instead of Juves they also have enlisted Hive Scum – these can never be activated with Group Activation rules, as technically they are not part of the enforcers, but they do have a greater range of weaponry including some brutal things such as two handed hammers and Shotguns. I feel this is a much harder way to play enforcers, but your life of crime and corruption could lead to you being able to get much more money to spend on the trading post than a more lawful Enforcer gang would.

Before we finish off, I just want to quickly talk about another kit that is up for pre order today, the Ashwing Helemites

Being an Ash Waste Nomads player this was one I was very much looking forward to, and I was really surprised that it’s a plastic kit rather than a resin one! The models look really cool when finished, and there’s actually the option of putting them on flying stands if you want to, but oh boy are they difficult models to build

The legs are all seperate pieces, with some of the legs even coming in multiple parts. I suspect this is so that they can be built crawling on the ground or flying, but it makes assembling them really really fiddly – these are probably the most frustrating models I’ve built in a long time, and if you don’t build the base first so you can use it for dry fitting the legs, you’re going to end up with a model that doesnt quite fit on the base properly. Luckily, the legs are quite bendable so you can manipulate it into place, but I found using superglue to hold it in place makes things a little easier, as the plastic glue takes a little too long to set with the model being so spindly. Once done it’s ace, but yeah this one might test your patience!

Summary

So what do I think of Bastions of Law? I’ve been meaning to do a full enforcer gang for ages, and the extra options in this book have finally given me the kick I needed to dig out some of the kits I’ve had kicking around for ages! I always love when a Necromunda book drops on my desk, and I have thoroughly enjoyed digging through this one and making some gang lists. The kits accompanying this release are great fun too, and while they do seemed more geared to mid-campaign there’s enough bits usable at the outset of a campaign too, especially when combined with all the other Enforcers kits currently available.

So what do we think is coming next? We’ve had Malstrain and Spyrers covered in a book, and Ash Waste Nomads, Squats and now Enforcers are all covered – so what next? The Aranthians do feel like they will be making themselves known in the game soon, and we havn’t seen any Scavies or Ratskin Renegades in this edition either. What about some off-worlders? Aeldari pirates would be pretty cool, as would some of the lesser houses turned into full fledged gangs. There’s lots of scope for Games Workshop coming up with some new stuff too, so I’m excited to see what the future holds!

Bastions of Law is up for pre order today and is released on Saturday 28th September

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review pruposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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