Necromunda is back for a brand new edition with the new Warhammer Necromunda Skirmish Core Set from Games Workshop! Boasting a host of new miniatures along with an updated Core Rulebook that claims to more streamlined and quicker, is this the right time to get back into Necromunda? And is this still the Necromunda you remember? We’ll be checking out the set and new book in our full unboxing and review!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending over the new Core Set. If you would like to support the site then why not pick up your copy of Necromunda Skirmish through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

In this review we’ll be unboxing the new set, checking out the miniatures and seeing what they look like painted up and having a full deep dive into the new rules and seeing what exactly has changed since the last edition!

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the new set with a look through the entire rulebook which you can see just below or over on YouTube.

So without further ado let’s head back into the Underhive to see what is new in Necromunda!

Warhammer Necromunda Skirmish Core Set Review

Can you believe it’s been over 30 years since Necromunda was first released? I still have fond memories of that classic 1995 box containing Orlocks vs Goliaths and fighting over iconic multi level cardboard and plastic terrain allowing you to make the sprawl of the hive on your tabletop!

Set on the Hive World of Necromunda, the game allowed players to see a different slice of the Warhammer 40,000 universe , with the focus on small scale skirmish gang warfare linked together in continuing campaigns rather than the mass battles of its 40k parent.

With the camera zoomed into these smaller conflicts, the rules had a lot more detail, a lot more “crunch” and it quickly became a cult favourite, with the Necromunda community creating their own content long after the game was no longer officially supported.

Almost 10 years ago, Games Workshop (under the Forge World Specialist Games umbrella) re-released the game with a new version “Necromunda Underhive” with an updated ruleset and awesome new miniatures for the Escher and Goliath gangs.

Since then, we’ve seen some fairly regular revisions of Necromunda with updated core rules and over 20 hard back suppliment books that expanded out the game, focussed on the various gang and added more and more layers of rules for Arbitrators (The Necromunda term for Games Masters) to run their campaigns. However, it sometimes felt that you needed to be carrying around a small library to play the game and rumours were abound about a new edition of the game.

And so today the new edition of Warhammer Necromunda Skirmish is up for pre order with a new Core Set. The name is a little clunkier now, but it adds that Warhammer branding to the title, and I suspect the “Skirmish” subtitle is something we’ll see in the future on things such as Mordheim (Warhammer Mordheim Skirmish maybe?) in the future. The box has an RRP of £98 and is released Sat 15th August

So what’s in the new set?

First up let’s chat about the new plastics in the box. There’s not quite as much in here as in the Warhammer The Old World Core Set that recently released, though this box is about 2/3 of the price of that (Though I do feel a £150 box containing a lot more scenery may have felt a little better as a core set)

There’s 2 new gang sets in the box, one for the Eschers and one for the Goliaths. These are all new ganger archetypes for both of the gangs and each is comprised of two frames that make up 8 models for gang.

For the Eschers we get Blade Maidens (melee gangers with Deadly Blows and Hit & Run), Gun Maidens (ranged gangers with Hip Shooting and Lightning Reflexes), Huntress (duel pistol gangers with Gunfighter and Hip Shooting) and Chem Wych (Medics)

For the Goliaths we get a similar breakdown – Forge Breakers (Melee fighters with Heavy Blows and Unstoppable), Forge Gunners (ranged fighters with Hip Shooting and Mighty Leap), Forge Haulers (heavy gunners with Bulging Biceps and Immovable Object) and Forge Patchers (Medics)

We get profiles for these in the included Starter Set booklet, but I suspect these will be fleshed out further in the gang books once they are released. Each model has a couple of parts that can be swapped out across models, and I suspect we will see upgrade frames down the line with more weapon options – as with most recent Necromunda kits outside of a couple of weapons the builds are fixed for most of them and I just followed the construction guide to have coverage across all these different ganger types

The box also contains a couple of pieces of new terrain – The Ruined Factoria Pipes are nice, and it looks like when the full kit comes out there will be lots of potential for putting together your own layouts, but in the box once built following the instuctions you end up with just 4 different pipe sections. This is really nice to spice up a Zone Mortalis layout, but I feel it’s a bit sparse by itself. Necromunda is at it’s best when fighting through tight and claustrophobic corridors, and I think it would have been better to include some of the Zone Mortalis terrain even if it meant the box was at a higher price point. Hopefully Games Workshop do some bundle boxes of ZM terrain alongside the Necromunda Skirmish Core Set, as more terrain is really the one thing I feel this box is missing.

Finally we also get a brand new sprue of tokens. These follow the pattern that Specialist Games have done over their other systems replacing any card tokens (or the need for having to lie down models) with plastic tokens. These are all pretty clear to what they represent, but I think I might colour code mine just to make it easy to eyeball them during a game. You get 20 ready tokens in total on here, so enough for two players to play with the contents of the box, but with larger gangs you’d probably want a set of them per player.

There’s a double sided 36″ x 24″ battle mat in the box which is perfect for starting out your Zone Mortalis collection – the spacings on it matches the plastic tiles and covers an area equal to 6 tiles, and isn’t far off a “full” battlefield (the maps in the core rulebook cover a 36×36 area equal to 9 tiles, but you can play on anything from 24×24 really)

While the terrain in the box is a little wanting, the card components are great! There’s a number of different decks that are really useful for players and Arbitrators alike! This is enough for a 4 player campaign in a box with each player getting a card that shows what free skills specialists have access to (more on this later), and their starting settlement card, along with an entire deck of settlements to randomise for the campaign. There’s also cheat sheet cards for the pre and post battle sequences along with two that detail everything that is done from an admin point of view for the Takeover Phase and Occupation Phase.

There’s 4 sets of cards that are used to randomly generate your missions with different deployment layouts, objectives, gang selection methods and side jobs for your gang to try and score – This is a bit of a departure from the fixed scenarios in previous editions of Necromunda, and we’ll chat about these a little later in the Necromunda Skirmish rules.

Finally you get a full set of the updated Gang Tactic cards – in a campaign you could use this single deck to draw them randomly across all gangs, but again this is something that each player might want to pick up one of (Though there are tables for all these in the Core Book, and it says they will be available to download from Warhammer Community too)

The box also contains rulers, dice and a set of cheat sheets too, with enough for two players.

Included in the box is a softback booklet that contains the assembly instructions for all the models in the box, but also contains the gang lists for the models in the box (There’s no Leader or Champions in the set, so this just has you create two 800 credit gangs using the models in the box) – It also contains a basic intro scenario for running through your first game. This is a simple “Kill all the other gangers” scenario, but does make it easy to jump into your first game and learn the ropes – though I feel this would really lean heavily towards the ranged gangers with the lack of terrain in the box.

So what about the core Necromunda Skirmish rules? How does the game play? Let’s take a look!

Necromunda Skirmish Core Rulebook Review

When Games Workshop announced that Necromunda was getting more streamlined in the new edition I was really worried. This is a game I’ve been playing since the 90’s and the “Crunch” and campaign system is one of the best things about it. Yes, over the run of this edition things had got a little bloated and there was a lot of admin needed, but at the core of it this was a game that I still loved.

Happily I can report that Warhammer Necromunda Skirmish isn’t a completely different beast to it’s predecessor. This is still the same core Necromunda experience, though there are a lot of small things that have been refined, tidied up and tweaked to make the game go quicker and have less having to drop everything and check through the rulebook for a specific interaction.

First things first, the book is a lot slimmer than the 2023 Core Rulebook. That one was a weighty 336 pages long while this Necromunda Skirmish book is around 70 pages lighter at 168 pages. And while there are a few things (vehicles in particular) that look a little light compared to last time, the core feel of the game is still the same.

The first 30 pages of the book are dedicated to Lore (which itself is almost half the lore section from the previous core book – I suspect a lot of the gang specific lore will be sitting in the new gang books) and things here are picking up from the new state of Necromunda following the events of the Aranthian Succession. Lord Helmawr still rules the planet following the Aranthian being defeated during the narrative series, and Kal Helmawr (formally Jeriko) has been named his successor in the event of his death. Kal is probably not too keen on this, and it seems that this is just political maneuvering from Lord Helmawr to ensure that his daughter Haera is kept in line somewhat after the carnage she caused during the Aranthain succession.

The timeline takes us right up to the end of the campaign, and ends with whispers of the Mynerva Cluster falling into silence, a new Great pilgrimage starting and the danger of the other remaining Aranthians reawakening…

Hopefully we see the storyline continue through more campaigns similar to the brilliant Aranthian Succession during the run of the edition.

So onto the rules, and while it’s not the complete overhaul that I feared, there are a lot of things that have changed for veteran players. Interestingly, throughout the book there are a lot of “Arbitrator’s Tools” boxouts that offer optional advanced rules that add another layer of complexity and add back some things that have been compared to the previous edition.

Measuring for example is now allowed at any time during the game, but the Arbitrator may opt to make that illegal – I think the focus here has been on making the core engine run slickly, but still allow us old vets to bring over the more complex elements that we liked. On top of this, models can now see 360, meaning that facing isnt as important as it used to be. I know some people will already be shouting at their screens for this changing, but in reality it always seemed a little odd that a ganger wouldn’t be able to just glance behind them to see if anyone is sneaking up on them…

Cover and terrain has also had some tweaks – Previously terrain interacted alongside distance from target to adjust the hit roll, now in Necromunda Skirmish all those modifiers now instead affect the save roll of the target – essentially cover doesn’t make the target to hit, instead the cover makes it easier for the target to make their save. Some terrain interactions have changed too – interacting with a door for example used to cost an action, now it instead costs 2″ of your movement to open a door, which makes moving through them a lot cheaper from an Action point of view. Previously you’d have some silly situations with someone opening and then shooting, then the person on the other side shooting and then closing the door – now you can do more interesting things such as kick open the door as you’re moving through it, close it behind you and blast what’s on the other side all in the same activation.

Likewise Necromunda Skirmish also refreshes the conditions and statuses a little. Pinned for example is now “Suppressed” and just reduces your actions you can do by 1 for your activation. Functionally the same, but you no longer have to stand up first and then do your one action, you just lose your first action to represent you being pinned in place by gunfire. Being charged still removes your suppressed status and there’s now handy tokens to mark this rather than having to lie your model down. The same goes for Seriously Injured, you just mark this with a token now, which is much easier on models getting scratched from popping them down and up each time they change status.

Fighter Subtypes have been expanded upon in order to give clear universal rules to different types of fighters – the Beast subtype for example stops you from using an interact or treat ally action, while the Flying subtype allows units to move between levels at will and never become supressed from falling.

There’s now fixed progression between types of gangers too – Once a prospect gains 13 xp they become a specialist (now gaining a fixed skill depending on what specialty they want to follow – so for example you could pick “Heavy” and gain Bulging Biceps, or pick “Medic” and gain Medicate) and a Ganger becomes a Champion when they hit 37 XP – It’ll be interesting to see what those different roles look like in the new gang books.

Vehicles also get their own subtypes, but it looks like all vehicles now work like all other models – there’s no unique vehicle dice in the box, and the rules suggest they take wounds as normal then suffer damage from their own unique table rather than lasting injuries. In a call back to Gorkamorka you can even have models stand on top of vehicles as they are moving, with a chance of them falling off based on agility tests.

Conditions have also changed somewhat in Necromunda Skirmish. With Fearful and Terrifying now working like they do in Old World, Frenzy forcing models to charge if they can, Hatred making your model reroll hits and intoxication reducing your BS and WS while also increasing cool. Webbed and Insanity get the biggest changes here, Webbed now makes you unable to move and -1 to hit on your attacks, but you can do a strength test to try and get yourself free. Meanwhile Insanity now has a much bigger chart with different outcomes depending on the current status of the insane model. These are a lot more fun and thematic, and there’s some funny stuff that can happen to an insane model such as being forced to charge the nearest model (friend or foe) or try and climb as high as possible because they believe the ground is covered in spiders!

Actions have also had a fresh pass – some things such as Take Cover have now been removed (with cover now benefiting your save roll) but new things have been added such as Dash (which is a double action that allows you to move your movement + initiative value). There’s no longer such a thing as a simple action, so unless they have a piece of gear or skill that allows otherwise each action can only be done once per turn! There’s also some fun new ones such as Sabotage, which is essentially Coup de grace against a seriously damaged vehicle, or Braced Shot which is a double and the only way to fire a heavy weapon. All actions while engaged are doubles, which means you’re going to need to pick between fighting and retreating .

Necromunda Skirmish also shaves off some of the rough edges in combat. Target priority is gone (but can be brought back with an optional Arbitrators Toolkit rule) so you are free to shoot whoever you can see, shooting into combat is now allowed but this edition you then randomise who you have hit, making it very risky! the only hit modifier is a -1 to hit if you are shooting a Seriously Injured target to represent the fact that they are huddled up on the floor bleeding out and so are harder to hit. All other hit modifiers are gone, with range and cover now affecting the save of the target. This essentially makes it easier to hit something, but more likely they will make their save. Of course, they will still get suppressed, but there’s more that the player getting shot at can do to keep themselves ticking over. I like this as it still makes getting shot a big downside, you’re only getting a single action after all, but your models are less likely to get killed from being hit.

Speaking of saves, models now have their saves listed on their profile, with armour and gear now affecting that save roll rather than being burried away in the back of the book.

For melee you now get to pick a primary weapon and get your full attacks characteristic with it (+1 for charging) and you also get to add a single attack for a secondary weapon if they have one available. Everyone in the combat fights, but it now in initiative order, with some modifiers such as “unwieldy” weapons setting your Initiative to 1 and charging giving you a +2 bonus (this happens after you set initiative for unwieldy weapons, so someone charging with an unwieldy weapon would strike at I3). Modifiers still exist here for assists and interference, so there’s still a good reason to gang up on enemy fighters.

What has changed this edition is that weapons now have a “lethality” rating rather than damage. Every successful wound does a single wound to the target regardless of the Lethality. Only when a model reaches 0 wounds is when that lethality comes into play, determining how many Injury dice are rolled – this is much cleaner and stops situations like “How many injury dice are rolled if someone with 2 wounds is hit by a 3 damage weapon?”

As mentioned earlier, Injuries and Vehicle Damage now have their own tables, with vehicles (including their crew) just being treated as a single profile. Location dice are no longer a thing, though I do wonder if vehicle rules will be exampled in a future book.

Bottle Checks have been revised, failing one now causes a model to flee, or two models if you roll a double 6, with just a single check made based on your highest leadership. A game won’t just end now because you’ve bottled, instead you’ll just start losing models – but you can still choose to free if a third of your gang is taken out.

Post Battle has now been split into two distinct phases – Post Battle and Post Cycle. Essentially this means that after your game you work out injuries, territory and experience and then once EVERY game has been completed for all players that phase you then do the post cycle phase together for shopping etc.

There’s more you can do post cycle. Medical escorts now exist, and you can opt to pay more credits to ensure that there will be no complications. You can take your leaders or champs to have Bionic bodyparts fitted to counter any lasting injuries (another nice Gorkamorka throwback, sadly there’s no chance of having your legs replaced with wheels though!), models can go into training to gain XP and you can even earn new Gang Tactics (now you start the campaign with a single random gang tactic, and your pool of available gang tactics are expanded by sending your champs to research them in the post cycle). You can also send your gangers to work territories in order to each money.

The Trading Post still exists, and your Leader and Champions are still the only ones who can head off to do this, but now there is a new mechanic called “Trading Points” – basically in addition to the credit cost, rare items will also have a TP value – when you go shopping you get a pool of TP, the Leader adds 2 to the pool and each champion that also comes along on the shopping trip adds 1 – this is a nice way of making it so that if you want to pick up some of the rarer pieces of equipment then you are going to need to send a large chunk of your gang to the trading post rather than do some other actions – it also means that at most you’re going to be able to pick up one really good item when you go shopping, or a handful of ok ones. Most gear doesnt have this restriction, it’s just a way to police things such as melta or plasma weapons for example

We get a full campaign back in here (with a full deck of territory cards in the box as well as listed within the book) and if you’ve played any previous campaigns then you will know what to expect here with a period of time with gangs fighting to pick up new territories, a period of downtime and then a period of time for the gangs to try and steal territories off each other. I’m sure we’ll get more complex ones in the future, but this is a nice no nonsense campaign that is really easy to run. Again, a bit factor in all this is the actual gang lists, which hopefully are not too far off after the launch of this box!

Scenarios on the other hand are very different in Necromunda Skirmish – rather than the pre written scenarios that we got last time round, the new edition uses a system for randomly generating them – you have tables (and cards) to generate the deployment zones, the main objective (this can be anything from trying to hold a single point in the centre of the board, fighting over objectives or simply trying to take out enemy fighters – there’s 6 in total here and have a lot of variety) what’s cool here is that there’s also a “side job” that each gang generates too – this is again randomly selected and gives each gang their own objective for earning some extra credits durng the game. Finally, players then randomise what the gang generation is for the battle, from simply picking your gang, random generation or something in between. The book does promise that future suppliments will expand on the ways of generating scenarios, and you can easily use scenarios out of previous editions too with minimal tweaking.

Skills have been revised with there now being 6 catagories – Agility, Brawn, Combat, Cunning, Savant and Shooting. There’s some things moved around, removed and added – mostly just tweaking things to work with the rules changes in the new edition, a lot still work the same way, but vets will want to read through them as there are subtle changes for a lot of them too. Of course there’s brand new skills too, with each skill also clearly stating if they can be used for fighters, vehicles or both! With Vehicles now operating as their own entry on the roster (including skills) it makes developing the vehicle as important to your gang as your gangers.

Summary

So what do I think about Warhammer Necromunda Skirmish? I was very worried going into this that the new editon of Necromunda was going to be a very different beast and feel like another game, and thankfully that is not the case. While a lot of things have changed, I do feel the game is better for these changes. A lot of the bloat and mess has been removed while keeping the core engine and feel of the game the same, this is going to be easier for people to get into, but still give existing players the “crunch” they love from Necromunda. Yes, I guess profiles and rules may be changing in the upcoming Gang Books, but I don’t expect them to be a million miles away from where they are now, with any changes done from a balance and tidying up point of view. At the time of writing this I’ve not seen the new gang books yet, so I guess this is only half of the picture – but hopefully they follow soon so we can have a full deep dive into how gangs operate too!

The box feels good value considering it has the gangs, rulebook, cards tokens and the frame of scenery it has in it, but part of me does with this was a little more expensive and had a better selection of terrain, as I do feel that people coming into the game will have a very different experience to a “standard” game if they don’t already have a decent terrain collection. If you’re new to the game I’d deffo recommend picking up a lot more terrain to get the full feel for the game!

I’m excited to see what the future holds for Necromunda and I can’t wait to start a new campaign using these rules.

The Warhammer Necromunda Skirmish Core Set is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 15th August

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