Return to The Underhive

Besides diving back into the Middle Earth Miniatures Game, I’ve also been collecting, painting and playing Necromunda Underhive. In High School, our gaming was all about Games Workshop: Warhammer 40k, a tiny bit of Warhammer Fantasy, lots of Mordheim, a lot of Inquisitor, a dabbling of Warhammer Quest, and a bit of Necromunda. I much preferred Mordheim, the fantasy version of Necromunda, but would still play it if offered. I didn’t own any of the minis, and more often than not, we would just play using my friend Ben’s Imperial Guard miniatures, of which he had hundreds.

Necromunda is a small-scale warband wargame, where you control a maximum of twenty models (sometimes down to just three models), claiming territory in the hiveworld of Necromunda. The rules are fast and loose, use a lot of dice rolling, and take about an hour to play.

With the release of Underhive (the newest edition of Necromunda), released back in November, I decided to hop in, especially with the gorgeous new minis. I decided to have multiple gangs, because I find that I tend to be the person in my game group who gets others into games, so I needed to be able to have all the materials to play at a moment’s notice.

If you’ve been following my Twitter, you’ve seen my painting progress. Here are the gangs so far.

The Holograms

When I first saw the Eschers, I knew I wanted a rock band look, which reminded me of a comic book cover I had recently seen, featuring Jem and the Holograms. With this idea, I knew I would need to do something to make them more… rock and roll. I found a company in England, Spellcrow, who have guitars with hands. They were perfect! So I picked up a couple of copies, and waited patiently for them to arrive.

In the end, the arms are a little big, as they’re intended for Chaos Noise Marines, but when they’re on the table, you hardly notice. All of the champions have guitars, which double as Power Swords (for Power Chords!), and I’ve got three more guitars I can apply to any other heroes I want as the gang levels up. The gang is a mixture of Jem and the Holograms with The Misfits added in. I’m thinking if the gang expands, I’ll add in Josie and the Pussycats as well. I’m pretty proud of the gang, as they look great on the tabletop.

Toxic Masculinity

Toxic Masculinity is a pretty straightforward gang. Not as many conversions. The Champion on the far left side is a Khorne Slaughterpriest from Age of Sigmar, done up to look like a roided-out Goliath. He has a Goliath head, and I replaced his weapons with two from the Goliath sprue. He’s jacked up on Stimms, and has the Bulging Biceps skill, so he’s able to wield two-handed weapons with one hand. On the far right is my Juve, who is a chaos cultist with a Goliath head and thigh-plate as a shoulder-plate. He looks scrawnier than the others. No roids for him yet. These guys are really brutal in combat.

The Sump Sea Salvors

I was really excited for the Orlocks. The look of them is just my aesthetic, and I knew I’d be picking them up right away. I ordered a set of new heads from Shapeways, because of all the gangs released so far, this gang lent itself to having both male and female gangers. There isn’t much in the way of conversions for this gang, beyond the heads. The woman with the headscarf on the right there was tricky. I had to carve away a lot of the collar and neck area to fit it on there, but I think it looks great. Any models with red drum clips are shotguns, those with blue are autoguns.

I’ve played four games so far. My first game was Van Saar vs Cawdor, using the Legacy gang rules they put out, just to test out the rules. We missed a ton of rules, figured out a ton more, and had a good enough time to convince the other player to buy into the game.

Secondly, a three-way game at the local tattoo parlor. The owner is a massive Necromunda player, and after the shop closed, we got out the tables and started playing. I got to play my Holograms against another Escher gang and a gang of Goliaths, which tore both of our warbands apart. It wasn’t pretty.

At my house, I’ve now played two games with my Orlocks against two Escher gangs and my own Goliath gang. I’m looking forward to more games once I return from Bahrain. My friends are painting armies, and I’m plotting what terrain to buy that will work both for Necromunda as well as Star Wars Legion.