Necromunda

Well, after less than a single week, my year is off to a really good start, and it’s all thanks to the internet. I sold some Necromunda figures on ebay before Christmas and one of the buyers, Matt, lives in Plymouth and picked up the figure personally. We got chatting and arranged a future game of Necromunda.

This, combined with my newly created frugal mission, got me to thinking about a large set of Urban War Platformer Terrain that I purchased a couple of years ago (for a reasonable £12). I dug it out and got to work snipping out the pieces from the numerous sprues included in the box. Firstly, I was amazed at both the amount of pieces on each sprue and the level of detail on the components. They’re not quite up to the same level of detail that you’d find on, say, a Games Workshop product, but they are certainly more than suitable for general gaming. Features such as nuts and bolts are well defined and on a suitable scale, and the rest of the detailing (embedded pipes and panels) are subtle enough not to detract attention and cause a nightmare when painting.

As well as the quality of the components, the other feature of these kits is the sheer number of pieces, this is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because the possibilities for creation are limitless, and a curse because the possibilities for creation are endless! Personally, I just started sticking pieces together and stopped every ten minutes or so to see how I was getting on. The pieces go together in any number of configurations, so it really is a flexible kit, with lots of potential. When my creation was complete, I stuck it on a base made from MDF and polystyrene foam decorated with sand and some pieces from my Hirst Arts mould. I then primed using grey primer (the cheaper the better, I only paid £1 from mine). For the painting, instead of using my normal acrylics, I bought some cheap blue, grey and white paints from a local artshop; again, these were only £1 each, can be blended and drybrushed as normal to give a good finish. I was really happy with the result and had loads of pieces left over for a future project. Overall I can highly recommend this kit, just don’t be afraid to experiment with it!



I already had a painted Necromunda gang (pictured in the title bar of this blog) that I’d got from Kallistra these aren’t fantastically detailed miniatures, but they’re relatively cheap and with a bit of conversion and some care over the painting, I think they’ve come out really well. If you want to get into Necromunda, these can be a good, cheap start to your gang,

The game itself should be a staple of any frugal gamer. The rules can be downloaded from the Games Workshop website and a starting gang only needs a few generic sci-fi miniatures. Terrain can be easily or cheaply made and there’s generally a lot of other players out there in your local area. If you fancy getting into frugal sci-fi skirmish gaming, you can’t do much better. I really enjoy the game and the background (the ‘fluff’), but for me the best thing is the campaign system which lets you progress your gang from game to game, increasing (or decreasing) the number and skill of gang members and the amount of equipment you have. I’m a sucker for campaign systems and this is a pretty good one, with the purchases you make for your gang as important as the tactics you employ on the table.

Of course the day of the game came and after a number of terrible dice rolls and a total disregard for any sort of tactics I got severely whupped by Matt. Ah well, maybe my resolution next year should be ‘winning more...’