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The original Necromunda Boxset
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Many of you in the club are too young to remember
Necromunda, which Games Workshop first published in 1995 and finally stopped supporting part way through last year. The game is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe and is focused on small scale skirmishes between criminal gangs in the lowest levels of Necromunda's Hive Primus. Unlike regular 40K games you only need a handful of miniatures to play across a table strewn with scenery to represent the twisted walkways and hazardous chemical dumps in the long forgotten hab domes of the underhive.
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A Necromunda board, full of scenery on multiple levels.
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The main rules of the game are pretty much the same as those of the 2nd Edition of Warhammer 40,000 and were developed from a game called Confrontation that was published in White Dwarf in 1990-91. Both the original Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader and Confrontation were heavily indebted to Laserburn, a game created by Bryan Ansell prior to joining Games Workshop in the late 80's. The basic stat lines for models in Necromunda will mostly be familiar to current 40k players, with the addition of a movement stat (which also featured in the earlier editions of 40k), however some of the game mechanics are quite different (particularly close combat).
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A Delaque Gang
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There a a variety of gangs to choose from in the main game from muscle bound Goliath's, sneaky Delaque's, Latino inspired Orlocks and the all female Eschers. The supplements add a variety of other options from Redemptionist firebrands and Muties to noble born Spyrers and Ash Waste Nomads from the desolate plains between the hives. Each gang is recruited from a stash of credits with a choice of Gang Leader, Heavies, Gangers and Juves in the main gangs and a variety of other miscreants for the outlanders. Each ganger gets their own equipment and as a campaign progresses their own stats and personality.
I'm not much of a wargamer these days, but Necromunda is a game I still really like. The rules for campaigns are great, the fact that mostly your gangers survive between games picking up experience, injuries and grudges against other gangs makes it a cut above the rest of GWs products in my eyes. Sadly GW no longer produce the models but they are available second hand through sites like EBay. Alternatively there are a range of other models you could use, the chaos cultists from the Dark Vengeance box set can easily be converted to form a Cawdor gang, Heresy Miniatures produce sci-fi ganger minis that are pretty much Delaques and there is a whole blog post covering other suitable miniatures
here.
Though GW no longer officially support Necromunda you can still download the rules for free from their website (along with most of the rest of what became known as the specialist games).
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An Escher Ganger
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Necromunda is in many ways a product of a bygone era for Games Workshop, it is far more cyberpunk than the grim gothic imagery of the current game. Gangs are able to get some pretty high-tech equipment, from lascannons to plasma guns, which feels somewhat incongruous given the very low-tech feel of the recent 40k roleplaying games. There isn't so much leopard print or pink hair dye in the 40K universe these days and perhaps that creates a more distinct background for the game, but I do miss it a little bit. I'm looking forward to bringing my Eschers or Redemptonists along to the club to create some more mayhem in the underhive.
PS. Sorry about the wierd formatting, Blogger refused to let me automatically add the captions on the images so I've had to edit the html, which is rather badly formatted meaning its quite difficult to work out what the tags are referring to.
I arrived back from holiday late last Saturday to see an unexpected package waiting for me, then it dawned on me the Victoria Miniatures Arcadian Rifles miniatures I had pre-ordered several months ago had finally arrived. They are rather lovely resin figures with pretty reasonable prices in comparison to Games Workshops resin products (and free postage from Australia). 
