Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Articles
  • The Seven Best Innovations in the New Necromunda Rulebook

The Seven Best Innovations in the New Necromunda Rulebook

Necromunda is a fantastically tense, narrative game set among the hellish hive cities of the ruined planet of Necromunda, in which gangs of colourful desperados battle for scraps and dodge searing bolts of plasma in an impossibly hostile environment.

Last year, our gangs burst out of the underhive and onto the ash wastes, bringing ramshackle vehicles into environments that are somehow even more hostile than the hive into play. Add that to the combined weight of many other supplements, expansions, and downloads, and you have a recipe for a sprawling set of rules in dire need of consolidation… which is where the new Necromunda Core Rulebook comes in.

NEC RuleUpdate Jul12 Book

This mighty tome consolidates all the major rules you need to play a game of Necromunda – whether it’s in a Zone Mortalis, Sector Mechanicus, or the Ash Wastes. It collates all the actions you can take, all the vehicle rules, and all the weapon traits in one place – and still makes time to slide in a bunch of updates, clear up some confusion, and grant XP for seriously injuring someone. Here are a few of our favourite changes.

The Black Market and Trade Post Are One and the Same

Visiting the store between battles is now a single action. Black Market items are rarer, harder to acquire, and often Illegal, but you don’t need a separate book to acquire them – because they’re all published in full at the back of this one.

Earn XP for Inflicting a Serious Injury

A ganger now earns 1XP every time they nail someone hard enough to leave them face first in the dirt. That reward is doubled if they send them immediately out of action; and they also earn XP if they help a teammate recover from a Serious Injury. Which is just as well as…

NEC RuleUpdate Jul12 1

Each Serious Injury Roll Counts as a Flesh Wound

Serious Injuries are now much more lethal – every roll, whether it’s in recovery at the end of a turn or after an especially painful shot to the face – also now causes a Flesh Wound. And those Flesh Wounds mount up fast. On the plus side, a critically injured fighter is much less likely to take a permanent injury if they are Stabilised on a visit to the doc after the battle.

Choose a Secondary Skill for 12XP

The Secondary Skill table was for a long time the preserve of gamblers and people who didn’t properly read the rules. But now there’s a meaningful use for your guys’ Secondary Skill access – you can pick the skill you want for just 12XP.

NEC RuleUpdate Jul12 2

Certain Skills Have Been Improved

It’s safe to say that several of the original core skills are less favoured than the rest. The likes of Headbutt, Iron Jaw, and Hurl have been substantially improved – while Overseer now requires a Leadership test to function.

Impressive Scars and Bitter Enmity Are Back

There’s a new Lasting Injury Table, and it comes with a lot more flavour. Or, more accurately, there’s a much older Lasting Injury Table, which harks back to the 1995 edition of the game, allowing your fighters to collect scars, rivalries, and old battle wounds (as well as all the regular dismemberments and lessons learned…) 

NEC RuleUpdate Jul12 3

Hit Penalties Apply for Certain Tricky Actions

Certain combat activities have been made a little bit harder to do. It’s one thing to target someone with a frag grenade launcher, but a lot harder to aim at a point on the field – so that now gets a -2 penalty to hit. Likewise, charging someone you can’t see puts you at a disadvantage with -1 to hit.

This is just a snapshot of the many small but important quality of life changes made in this rulebook. In short, this is the essential tome for any player – and you’ll now really only need to bring this book and your chosen gang’s special rules to any dust-up within the underhive or without. It’ll be up for pre-order shortly, and there’s much more to come from Necromunda, but Lady Haera is breathing down our neck and we just can’t say any more yet…

Related Topics