Using Necromunda rules in Mordheim?

Hey guys,

Since we're restarting our old Mordheim campaign, we've had several people remark that the Mordheim rules appear to be rather imbalanced and based largely on the luck of the die, more than any tactics. In seeking to remedy this, we've house-ruled a fair bit, but the suggestion has come up to try something more drastic. The Necromunda rules, I've been told (never played it myself) are more balanced and would translate well to Mordheim with very little tweaking. In essence, we would either be adopting the rules for shooting or for shooting and close combat straight from that system, leaving the rest largely as-is.

What do you think? Could it work?

That's funny because I jokingly suggested this to my group recently, but I seriously considered it. I think we may adopt the rules for overwatch directly. I don't really know much about the rest of the rules though, and so far I've been too busy to read much about it! Can anyone summarize the important points?

Well looking at them briefly (as I said, not much experience with it), these are some things that jumped out at me;


- Models have facing (90 degree arc) in which they may shoot
- Partial and full cover (either less or more than 50%, -1 or -2 BS)
- Overwatch
- Models may be 'pinned' as opposed to 'knocked down'
- It's more difficult to go out of action, but easier to get stunned (1 - flesh wound, 2-5 - stunned, 6 - OOA)
- Models test each turn to see whether they recover (flesh wound means they get up, but have -1 WS and BS for the rest of the game)
- In close combat you have one attack (you roll more dice when you have more A or two weapons, but pick the best roll) but can cause more hits (determined by how much you exceed the other guy's roll)
- Critical hits aren't as overpowered (when you roll two or more 6's, you simply add +1 WS to your roll for each 6, so you just add more hits.

the Necromunda rules will change the relative balance of the game. Shooty warbands will be that much better (Reiklanders, Cheesy Skaven), Close Combat focused Warbands will really really hurt (Possessed, Beastmen). If you end up playing with these rules, I think you'd have to give some of the warbands more of a ranged option than they have out of the box.

As for Necro being more tactical than Mordheim, I really don't know about that. If you think standing around with overlapping overwatches, waiting for your opponent to blink or jam his gun is more tactical then who am I to argue?

I'd still keep the Mordheim campaign rules, however. The Necro ones are pants.

Before Mordheim I used Necromunda rules for my skirmish Warhammer games. Once Mordheim came out I never looked back. Necrounda may seem balanced in some people's view (and you know and can speak directly to these fellows as opposed to internet entities), but I haven't drawn the same conclusions. The game seemed ridiculously random to me, I mean you have to roll a die to recover from Stunned...

Adapting some rules to Mordheim is a worthy experiment so go for it. Dropping the Mordheim rules for Necromunda is trading in a new car for a broken down clunker. For a change of pace the guys decided to play Necromunda for a few months while I was out of town. Playtable and Skeptic kept at it. The rest stopped playing after a couple of weeks and have declined the opportunity to repeat the experiment.

Problem is, that I'm not really familiar with Necromunda while others swear by it. And one of the main complaints was that Mordheim was too random, with critical hits being far too powerful and armour being useless. So we may add a few more houserules or go with Necromunda rules entirely. Maybe a test game is in order..

The issue is which game do people prefer. I am a bit lost with your dilemma, if you have more Necromunda players why not play Necromunda? Why bring Mordheim into it at all? As I said when there wasn't a Mordhiem to play, I used the Necromunda rules for Mordheim style skirmishes. Now there are Mordheim rules so I don't need to do that anymore...
In our group we have one Necromunda player. He is kind of stuck playing Mordheim because most of the rest of us do not like Necromunda.

I would recommend the test game. Or just going with the majority and play Necromunda because as gamers they will complain bitterly if you don't. lol

No no, it's not that we have loads of die-hard Necromunda players - they're all gamers and enjoy most games you throw at them. We love Mordheim, especially for the backstory and the setting, but we had some issues with the balancing of the game. Then the one or two people who had played Necromunda piped up and told us that those rules appear to be more balanced / less random. So we'll give that a try.

And these guys will complain no matter what you do ;-)

Fixing Crits and armour is the easiest thing in the world. Just take a look on this site, there are dozens of proposed tweaks for those (while your at it, you may as well fix slings, 12" Maximum range, twice at -1 under 6" is what we use).

Mordheim out of the box has a few problems (so does Necro, tbh), but they are easy fixes with a little thought. Just make sure any rule changes are clearly written down and circulated to avoid misunderstandings latter.

As for grognards, that's as common in gaming groups as dice. Just "steer towards the accident" as they say in NASCAR. Amazing how quickly complainers fall in line when you make a change with purpose.