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House Rules

The Necromunda ruleset is an amazing system. Nonetheless, to ensure that everyone has a good time, some rules need clarifications and some limits need to be imposed. That’s what we’ve tried to achieve here – a system that limits “gameyness” and emphasises narrative development and encourages building gangs for fun rather than pure competitiveness.

Rather than try to rewrite the fundamentals of the game or pre-empt every possible issue, we’ve kept these house rules as simple as possible with minimal changes – If you’re familiar with the rules from 2018-onwards, you won’t find much radically different. We’ve avoided trying to pre-empt every potential issue.

Necromunda is a vast game and so it is entirely possible that you may come across a situation that the rules do not cover, or you are unable to find that single line of text in the rulebook that explains how to resolve it. Where possible, when this occurs we encourage players to resolve disputes at the table by discussing what they think should narratively happen next and then doing that. If an agreement still cannot be reached roll-off to decide or speak to an arbitrator. The important thing is to keep the game moving and not get bogged down. Then after the game discuss it. Arbitrators as always are available to resolve any major issues and rules queries.

Don’t be a Dick

The first and most important rule. Seriously, don’t. This is designed as a fun, fluffy setting allowing players to embrace the weirdness of Necromunda. Ask yourself if your approach or actions feel like an attempt to find a loophole or game the system. If it does, it probably is. Ask yourself whether you would enjoy playing against you. If not, it’s likely that other players wouldn’t either. Don’t. Be. A. Dick.

WEAPONS

• Boning Swords – Not available through the Trading Posts.

• Paired weapons – A Fighter with two of the same weapon with the Melee trait count as Paired weapons. The Fighter doubles their attacks after a Charge action, gains +1 attacks for charging and +1 attacks for having two weapons with the Melee trait.

WARGEAR

• Ablative Overlay – Gains the Limited trait. After each piece of armour has been fully degraded (i.e. has taken two or more hits) it is deleted from the Fighter’s card.

• Melta Bombs – The Melta trait on this item can be triggered at long range.

• Scarce/Limited Ammo – Failing an ammo check on one of a weapon’s profiles does not trigger Scarce or Limited on its other profiles.

CHANGES TO WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT

Changes To Gangs

HOUSE ESCHER

• Maiming – This chem is banned.

• Outlaw Escher gangs may hire an Apprentice Clan Chymist as normal. However, Escher Chems applied to Xenos or Corrupted Weapons give the weapon the Unstable trait.

CORPSE GRINDER CULTS

• Initiates do not start with the infiltrate skill

• Initiates may only take close combat weapons and pistols

• The effects of masks only apply within the vision arc ie. the Corpse Grinder Fighter has to be looking at the attacker for the mask to take effect.

Enforcers

• Only Captains and Sergeants may equip items bought from the trade post

• Please select a deck of a minimum of 20 Tactics Cards

• The following cards are banned:

  History of Violence

  Dangerous Footing

  Worse Than It Looks

• Both Law-Abiding and Outlaw gangs have standard access to the Badzones and Ash Wastes Trading Post.

• Purchasing House List equipment is a Post-Game Action.

• Players may purchase as many Common items as they like.

• Players can only purchase a single item at each Rarity/Illegality level.

• Alliances

• Intrigues

• House Sub-Plots

ACTIVATIONS

• All Fighters must be activated in a turn.

SHOOTING

• Blindfire treats the shooter’s BS as 6+.

• Overwatch shots with an Unwieldy weapon treat the shooter’s BS as 6+.

• Stray-shots hit within a 1” wide corridor between the shooter and target on a 4+. This is affected by cover modifiers.

• Blast weapons use the stray shot rules above. If no hits are rolled, the blast scatters from the original point targeted.

• Shots with the Blast trait targeting a point on the battlefield or made in Pitch Black against an unrevealed fighter always scatter unless the ‘hit’ symbol is rolled on the scatter dice.

• Shots into Combat are randomly distributed among all Engaged Fighters.

• Shots into Combat with Blast or Template weapons will hit all Engaged Fighters.

CLOSE COMBAT

• Fighters do not need line of sight to charge.

• Fighters do not have to charge the nearest model, so long as they can reach their target without moving within 1” of another enemy Fighter.

• If a charging Fighter has enough move, it may move around its target, staying 1” away as it does so, to attack from behind or any other angle.

• Fighters making a follow up move may end this move Engaged.

BOTTLING & LEAVING THE BATTLEFIELD

• Bottle tests are not taken before turn 3.

• Deployed reinforcements count towards crew size for the purpose of bottle tests.

• A gang that voluntarily bottles out may not secure victory.

• A gang may conduct an Ordered Withdrawal to leave the battlefield while also securing victory: Fighters that end their activation within 6” of a board edge may immediately exit the board.

GAINING EXPERIENCE

Fighters gain XP from every Fighter that goes Out Of Action as a result of one of their actions. In addition to direct Shoot, Fight, or Coup De Grace actions, this includes but is not limited to indirect causes such as:

~ A recovery roll after being Seriously Injured by a Fighter either directly or indirectly.

~ From a fall caused by an attack.

~ From the damage caused by the Blaze effect after being set on fire in an attack.

The amount of XP gained is equal to the number of wounds on the card of the Fighter taken Out Of Action. In addition, Fighters gain an additional +1 XP for taking a Leader out of action.

LASTING INJURIES

Only ONE lasting injury roll is made for each Fighter taken Out Of Action.

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