Necromunda! Our First Look

Hello Cobbers!

We had a lovely little surprise come through the door this week, the brand new Necromunda Underhive Box set! So this weeks blog post is all about our first thoughts.

Unboxing!

The previous day we had a surprise christmas card with a little Space Marine stamped on. This nice little surprise contained a bonus Tactics card that we will love to use. But the next day the actual box arrived, we ripped it open and it was stuffed full of goodness!

-The first thing we saw were the templates, in a snazzy orange colour and a cool flame pattern on the Flamer Template.

-Two identical sprues for Goliath and two for Escher, one of the Whips for Escher was broken but it did not matter because we only needed the one. The pieces are brilliantly detailed as ever.

- A bag of bases, these are not the usual plain black ones, they have industrial details worked onto them, this lacks the customisation aspect but also looks great anyway!

-The underhive doors seemed thick sturdy and suit the industrial-future theme of Necromunda

-The Rulebook is well produced and tough looking. The inside has well thought out diagrams and pictures that explain the rules perfectly. The 'Fluff' material is also fantastic and provides a great insight into life within the Imperium of Man.

- 2 sets of Dice, Black and Yellow, some have injury markers on them, looking forward to seeing how they work.

- tactics card and character cards. Also included are plenty blank Character cards so you can create your own gang simply and effectively

- A 12" ruler is included, this is see through and has a useful line of sight marker on it. However it does seem quite flimsy so we will see if it lasts through the wear and tear of battle

- Pop out tokens, markers and line of sight testers that will inevitably make playing the game easier although they might get in the way of the game.

- There are 9 double sided tiles, these are big in size with lovely details on them. The spaces look like they are divided into squares but the game is played in the usual way using inches.

- Also the box itself becomes part of the game! The first mission takes place inside the box!

Assembly

The miniatures are fantastically detailed. There are 2 sprues of each and they are packed with components that you can use to add variety to your minis. Whilst there are posing options available you do have to be careful if you decide to stray from the instructions. We had some issues with the Goliaths after be decided to exchange the legs and body between to characters, we found this affected the arms holding the guns so we advise caution if you choose to edit the pre-set characters. Little things like head swaps and weapon options can be easily changed. Putting them together took us ages! We are by no means the most experienced of model builders but we were surprised by how long it took. There were some extremely fiddly parts with the worst offender being the guy who required a cigar to be glued into his mouth! the Goliath models are naturally thick set and tough looking and so they look like they can survive a bit of wear and tear. On the other hand the Escher models seem to be a tad flimsy, especially given that many of them are running and therefore attached to the base on one foot. All in all though we love the miniatures and scenery pieces and we can't wait to get painting them.

Test game We played a couple of games using only the Basic Rules section and we liked it. Obviously the basic rules were easy to pick up and we hope that the advanced rules don't change too much only add some more depth. The test game in the Rulebook uses the actual box as a small scale battle using some of the barricades. The first game we played we found that the most difficult part was remembering which model was which! This first game seemed to favour the Goliaths because of the short range and the weapon types being used although it was a close game. We decided we should play a second game using a couple of the board tiles. The longer range gave an edge to Escher although the game was once again really close which would suggest that the gangs are quite evenly matched. It seems to be surprisingly fast paced game that will hopefully become alot smoother with practise and learning of all the extra rules and one we can enjoy for years to come.