It’s taken me more than a handful of games to finally start forming concrete opinions on the new edition of Necromunda. Which is fair. We live in a social media driven culture where everyone is expected to have a hot-take from the second something they’re interested in is announced. The closest thing I had to a hot-take was, “Well… I hope they don’t fuck it up…”
But that’s not really an opinion. It’s more of a worry.
And, then, when the box finally showed up at my door… well, I did a hell of a deep dive but that was trying to understand the rules from a mechanical perspective. I hadn’t played the game yet. So how was I supposed to know if the new mechanics were as good or as bad as I believed they might be from just having read them?
If you’re pushing fifty like I am and refuse to play the social media game and just admit when you don’t know something, well… the truth is, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even after I played my first game. And I couldn’t for several games after that. This isn’t indecisiveness. Every game is different and reveals different things. For instance, one game I played, I spent what felt like the whole game on my butt. But it was a three-way battle that played a lot faster than any other three-way battle I’d ever played before. Is this good? Is this bad?
[…] the scenario structure. I just don’t think it’s very good.
Then the next game I played was almost the reverse. I was shooting dudes off of ledges and standing tall through a hail of gunfire. That was a one-on-one battle and it was over in under two hours. And my prediction that moving the shooting math to the end would speed things up has definitely panned out. But did I have thoughts on the edition yet? Not in totality but impressions were forming around things I noticed again and again.
Thus, I haven’t taken to these pages to pronounce whether N26 is definitively better or worse than N23 or its predecessors.
But there is one thing that I don’t like and I can now say this with confidence. I can also say this knowing it won’t convince anyone who’s on the bubble not to buy into it because I also think it will be solved in one of the future Underhive journals. And that’s the scenario structure. I just don’t think it’s very good.
Right now.
This isn’t a slam article, so let me start with the positives, because there are a few. But, before even that, let me describe how it works.
There is essentially a deck of cards used to generate a scenario. And in this deck are four sub-decks: one used for picking the deployment zones, one for determining the main objective, one for each gang to pick as a side job (essentially a secret secondary objective), and one for determining crews. For those who played Necromunda back before I got into it, there was a set of cards called Hive War. These were functionally similar to the new scenario cards. As there are six cards for each sub-deck, this works out to 6,480 different unique combinations. And all without having to agree on a scenario from a book to play. Which sounds great!
But, in practice, is not.
If I told you that you could select four toppings from twenty-four potential toppings to put on your frozen yogurt each time you went to the fro-yo place, it would sound almost unlimited, wouldn’t it? But, see, there’s a flaw. And that flaw is that you’re putting toppings on top of fucking frozen yogurt!
If the core is unappetizing, it doesn’t matter how many gummi bears or Oreo chips or sauces you put on it. In the end, it’s fundamentally unfulfilling because the center just isn’t great. And the core of the system in this case is just the totally generic and not terribly interesting series of objectives.
What is an objective? Does it have a definition? An objective can literally be anything. Which is kind of okay in the sense that if a host doesn’t have a fat collection of objective markers or things to stand in for an objective, throwing a Euro down on the game mat suffices. But it robs whatever the scenario is of a lot of other character. And this character drives story and terrain choices.
Is the objective a computer terminal? Great! Put them next to generators and we’ll say you’re activating or shutting down generators. Is the objective a shrine? Neat, we’ll put it somewhere more protected than we might otherwise.
Of course, this can be done with the new system but the old pre-written scenarios provided the context for the fight, named the type of objective being fought over, described what type of action had to be taken in order to claim it. In this system, a fighter just needs to keep any other opposing fighter three inches at bay. No interacting with the objective, no reason why that objective is important beyond the fact that it earns Victory Points.
Also, it has one other flaw that really is like grit in my teeth. Every underhive game is supposed to have the cards drawn as described and then to determine visibility, a roll on a table in the Core Rulebook. Why? Why not just include four more cards so the lighting effects can be face up and referenced at a glance like every other aspect of the scenario?
Also, it has one other flaw that really is like grit in my teeth…
Lastly, and I’m just bringing this up because I referenced color above, but like so much of this edition at launch, it really does feel like a lot of the defining color of Necromunda has been removed. I’m not a doom-sayer about this as I believe it will all be reintroduced with the journals and that the Core set was simplified in this way so Johnny has a “complete” thing to receive on Christmas. But, because of the card system, the scenarios generated almost by nature have to be fairly colorless as no card can reference a card that wasn’t drawn. And that leaves the “how” the fight will take place but scours it of the “why”.
Fortunately, we have sites like Necro RAW and the Necrodamus rules compilations as well as the whole last edition where the old scenarios still exist. And I predict the mere existence of these resources will eventually force Games Workshop into revisiting the scenario structure because I also believe that most players will find themselves drifting back to them. Because players will remember that the reason two gangs are fighting is as important as how to set one up.
I don’t think this will take very long. Yes, as they release each gang’s journal, they’re also including supplemental cards for gang specific side jobs and territories, which is fantastic! But if they have any interest in doing another Succession-style series, we will see a revival of the old scenario format. I have no inside knowledge about this but that is a prediction I am willing to hang my hat on because the storytelling in the old scenarios is just too good to let die even if, for the moment, they may prefer the new system.
