I’m not even German. I’m American. And, even then, ethnically, I’m mostly Swedish. If I’m German, it’s mixed in there with the rest of my American mutt heritage. So I don’t really know how I ended up running the Necromunda Discord server in Hamburg, Germany. I think it was just a right place at the right time kind of thing. Nobody voted me to this position and I’m acutely aware of this so I use my moderation powers for good and not evil.
But it does allow me to take a few liberties at times. One of which has been the creation of my own “Everlasting” campaign, a Necromunda campaign literally designed for people who don’t have time to play a Necromunda campaign.
The Problem
I think everyone’s been there at some point. In your area, the excitement for a fresh campaign builds until it’s basically ready to explode. Everyone creates fresh gang lists, maybe tries a gang they painted since the last campaign, everyone commits to playing a game at least every two weeks. It’s going to be seven cycles… fourteen weeks…? Yeah… everyone can commit to that.
And Cycle One goes swimmingly. There’s always one person who built their gang wrong so they’re scrapping it and trying again. But everyone else, winners and losers are just happy to be playing Necromunda again. And this probably goes equally as well for Cycle Two. But, already by Cycle Three there are at least two players who can’t because of family, vacation, whatever. Okay… a good arbitrator either plays either of those people or, if they haven’t played yet, matches them up. But, by the time downtime rolls around, there’s really only half the original participants as who began.
I belonged to the Blood Bowl league here in Hamburg and, honestly, my hats off to them. They’ve managed to keep a city-wide league going with over 50 participants for years with everyone playing a game a month. Honestly, I don’t know how they do it. Or, it’s just a testament to how passionate Blood Bowl players are.
But Necromunda is a smaller game. Both in scope and the number of regular players. And losing one player can really put a damper on a game.
The Solution..?
What if you had a campaign where no one had to play?
Or what if you had a campaign where no one was obligated to play? But it was always there if people wanted to play?
Necromunda really shines when you can see your gangs evolve and progress
My experience with gaming as an adult has always been that it’s not a lack of will to play, it’s usually a lack of time. If asked, people want to get a a game in. But if they have a wife, kids, other time commitments, it just makes it hard.
And that sucks because, yes, you can play Necromunda with a bunch of skirmish matches (after all the game has been renamed Skirmish:Necromunda:Warhammer or something…) but it really shines when you can see your gangs evolve and progress. It’s like Blood Bowl like that but even more so. If everyone is the same in every game, you’re probably just playing with a fairly static base list and not getting into any interesting skills or Wyrd Powers or any of the fun color elements, like things you can buy on the Black Market.
So what if there was a campaign you could play like a skirmish but track like it’s a proper campaign?
And that was my idea for the Hamburg Everlasting campaign.
Essentially, it’s a MundaManager campaign that people can join but it differs from normal campaigns in two major ways: first, no one can have more than two campaign territories and you can only collect their boons three times and, two, there’s a chance to reset every three months. And, depending on gang value, you might have to reset.
Why The Changes?
The idea behind limited territories is super simple, you don’t want those players who play all the time to be collecting all the territories and building out mega gangs no one can compete with. Of course, there’s always underdog rules but it’s often easier to just not force people to do something a little more complex if you can ask them to keep to something simple.
It’s real hard to get rich off of two territories. Most of the boons have a random element that might nerf the boon altogether. So limiting players to two means their path to riches is much more limited. And limiting them to three collections also forces those territories back into rotation and prevents players from just sitting on the best ones. They can fight for it again but they have to specifically fight for it. This always leaves a pool of unclaimed territories to play for and, again, stops gangs from getting too rich, too fast.
The second big change is that the campaign offers a chance of a reset after three months. Or… if your gang is worth above 2500cr before vehicles, you have to reset.
The reset is for people who picked a gang and then decided that they weren’t enjoying it very much
The reset is for people who picked a gang and then decided that they weren’t enjoying it very much. You’re part of an Everlasting campaign so… maybe you’re not playing all the time. But, at the reset point, when it’s also easier for new people to jump in, maybe you create a new gang list and give that a shot instead. It’s an easy point for people to do something they might already be inclined to be doing but don’t want to because they think it might look like poor sportsmanship.
It’s not poor sportsmanship to create a new gang mid-campaign if you’re really not enjoying it. After all, this is a game. It should be fun. Don’t turn over the table out of frustration but if you end a game with a lot of out of actions and people dead or missing the next game… and you think… “hmm… maybe I just start over.” It’s totally reasonable. But some people don’t want to and the reset point is there for them.
Lastly, it functions as a gate for gangs and players that have gotten incredibly strong either through good game-play or because they played more than everyone else. The goal isn’t to penalize these players. In fact, my Everlasting rules set a 1200cr limit for new gangs but when a gang reaches 2500cr and it’s time for them to reset, if they want to create a “legacy gang”, a gang fronted by a champion and a couple of gangers from the old gang, they can begin with 1500cr. So we’re not returning them to zero exactly but it gives them a new place to work from while keeping tie to what they’d built.
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The key art to this piece was generated using GPT Image 2 from a tableau built and photographed by the author of his own terrain and miniatures.
