Shadespire or Necromunda?

I really want to jump into the GW pool again but I’ve always been far more intrigued by their “boxed games” than the full-on AOS or 40k scene. I own and love Blood Bowl and Space Hulk and want to add another to my collection.

I’m thinking Shadespire would probably hit the table more often but, holy shit, Necromunda looks amazing. I guess my big question about Necromunda is how essential are the 3D rules to the game? Can I play the campaign in 2D or will I need to devote my life to building and painting scenery to get the most out of the system? Also, if not playing the campaign, is it worth getting Necromunda if I already have Earth Reborn?

Sell me on one of these! Or both...

Haven't played either game, but I find the absolute best rule with minis or minis games is go with the one that looks cooler or you are more interested in the models/aesthetic. If you aren't painting them you can disregard that advice.

You can play the campaign in 2D. I think in an ideal world you use both 2D and 3D, switching off for more variety.

I personally prefer Shadespire by a hair, but these two alongside Gorechosen are the best things GW's done in years.

My biggest problem with Necromunda is you can't really play a satisfying campaign yet. We don't have rules for anyone but Goliath and Escher.

Something that is not really being advertised enough is that the 2D Necromunda is set in tunnels beneath the Underhive- so it doesn’t need the Sector Mechanicus (or any other terrain. Hazards and obstacles are either printed on the board, are counters, or have a mini. And they already another set of tiles on the way. Like Charlie said, you could do a campaign with either or both the Zone Mortalis and Sector Mechanicus rules. If you go 3D, it needs the Gang War rulebook which adds rules to accommodate vertical space and physical terrain. It is totally not necessary. I am finding that I actually prefer Zone Mortalis.

It should be noted too that if you just want a kick ass guys on a grid style game, Necromunda plays out of the box just fine without the need to ever buy anything else. Build the gangers to match the character cards and you’ve got unlimited play of five scenarios and whatever else you come up with. You don’t need anything else.

I like Necromunda a hair better than Shadespire. But they are different types of game. Shadespire is a competitive arena battle with deck construction and an extremely tight structure. It’s about placement, combos, seizing objectives, that kind of thing. Necromunda is wilder, more narrative, and closer to a miniatures game with unique weapon profiles, wargear, traits and that kind of stuff.

I'm deep into painting my Necromunda set, and I'm looking forward to playing it as an out-of-the-box board game, as I doubt it's going to surpass Infinity as a a 4x4 skirmish experience. That said, I've set up and played a couple of solo games, and have about a dozen games of Shadespire under my belt. A few thoughts:

1) I have enjoyed my plays of Shadespire, though I wasn't surprised to learn that the Orks (ed: oops! and see below) won the last official tournament. I'm sure there's balance in the game, but some teams seem easy to play right out of the box, whereas some teams (the skellies) require a pretty deep study of the game to play well.

2) I was very pleased to see that GW streamlined the Shadespire rules for rolling off in the latest FAQ. Rolling off was a pretty tedious part of the game, as ties and re-rolll-offs were so common.

3) This transparency-of-balance problem seems to exist with the Necromunda board game, at first glance. Eschers are designed to work the edge of a 4 x 4 board, getting a few good shots in before the Goliaths march in and clean their clocks. In a 2x3 ish board game setting, the Eschers barely get a shot in. There must be a way to play them properly on the tiles, but I haven't figured out how yet. This is compounded by the fact that there's no more overwatch in the game, and that alternating activations make pinning much less effective. Good shooting is just not that valuable in the board game.

4) I'm thinking about instituting some House Rules before our first match-up. Something like: "The Eschers grew up in Zone Mortalis, and always know the best place to fight. After set-up, the Escher player may rearrange the terrain (but not the loot crates) in anyway they see fit. They know all the door codes at the start of the game. In addition, they're slippery. An Escher player can always spend a tactic card to retreat without penalty to shooting, etc." Something like that.

5) But I love making house rules, so there's that.

Don't know which I prefer yet.

When was the last Shadespire official tournament? The Undead won the only one I was aware of (an 85 person event about 3 weeks ago).

Hm, I think I might have misread a podcast mention (Garagehammer?) of an unofficial tournament win for the Orks as an official win, and just let the bad information stick. I defer to you, Charlie. and to this report: www.warhammer-community.com/2017/11/06/b...6gw-homepage-post-1/ Mea Culpa.

And I'm encouraged to hear that the Sepulchral Guard won. I'll have to try out that deck and see if I start getting results.

I struggled with the Sepulchral Guard and we hadn't seen them win in my group, until I tried out the tournament deck. I was able to pull out a win in a tightly contested game against the Stormcast.

It had never occurred to me to run a deck without the Objective 1-5 cards, but it worked.

thanks for the insight, guys. The thing that scares me off of Necromunda a little is I keep reading how the smaller map really favors Goliath and that it might not be at all balanced right out of the box. Maybe extra tiles to increase the play area would help? It seems like Shadespire might be much better right out of the box and will work better as a game I can pull out for friends.

Also, I can't seem to find this anywhere: Does Necromunda have any scenarios for 3 or 4 players?

Sepulchral Guard really depends on leveraging their special objectives- they can't win in a stand-up fight against the other factions, such as they are, right now. The reanimation thing is fun, but with only 3 rounds of play I find that it has limited utility- and you are putting free, fairly easy to get glory points back on the board for the Orruks to smash up and grab. I definitely think no objective 1-5 cards is the way to go- and I'm actually kind of thinking that may be the case with ALL of the factions.

A smaller, fairly open map will favor Goliath every time. Once they get into charging range, they are brutally efficient at wiping out Escher. Escher has a chance with their shooting game, it's not totally a walkover, but some whiffs and bad injury rolls put them at a pretty serious disadvantage. So you don't want to try to stand up to Goliath, thinking that the poisons and the whips and so forth are going to carry the day. You want to stay at range as much as possible, combine and concentrate firing lanes, that kind of thing. Play 'em like Tau.

But there are also enough tiles in the box to make larger maps. If you play the first two scenarios, you are going to see the Goliath gut punch both times, most likely. The first one is on the map printed in the box. The second is 2x2 tiles and it is sort of difficult I've found for Escher to win without at least two solid rounds of good shooting and leveraging cover, ducts and cardplay. When the board gets bigger, things even out a little more.

There aren't set 3 and 4 player scenarios at this time ,so that may be another check on the Shadespire side for you.

But you know, I was playing Shadespire last night and it's...actually kind of more complicated than Necromunda! I think for a "pull out for friends" game, Necromunda is the winner. You can play a simple game, hand out 4 or 5 of the premade gang cards and explain everything pretty quickly. A new player will be looking at just 2-3 cards. With Shadespire, it's got the CCG thing going on, so card knowledge is a big thing. For example, there's a card where you can cancel a player claiming an objective if you name it before they do...but you have to know that objective card. And there is deck construction involved- you can have a "guest" deck ready to go, sure, but the sense of ownership that comes from construction is lost.

No way Shadespire is more complicated than Necromunda, especially if you play with Necromunda's full rules.

You don't need a player aid for Shadespire, check out the length of the Necromunda player aid. Characters have like 8 stats. You're crazy Barnes.

Shadespire is definitely satisfying if two newbies grab the pre-built decks and play with no card knowledge.

I dunno man, maybe it's because I've been playing more miniatures games than board games or CCGs lately...but I find Necromunda easier and more immediate to grasp. It is true that there are more rules, but I think the cardplay and the really strict tempo make for a more complex game in a lot of ways. With Gang War, yeah, it does bring it up to probably more than a 40k level. But there again, I'm so familiar with those rules at this point that it's more or less instinctual. The 8 stats are easy.

I think what puts Necromunda over the top for me is that since Shadespire is so objective-driven rather than narrative-driven, you do things to score points rather than just to be awesome and see what happens. Shadespire is a more serious game, there's more strategy involved (and _good_ strategy at that) but it isn't really one that's full of eye-rolling, groaning, cheering and bellowing oaths. There isn't much character in the fighters, whereas the gangers can develop a full sense of character over the course of a 5 round game.

But yeah, I think two players out of the box with the stock decks is a good game in Shadespire, sure. One thing I'm going to ding the expansion warbands on is that it's stupid that they do not include a default precon. I just netdecked them for the Orruks and Guard and adjusted them to my taste.

You know what REALLY bugs me about Shadespire? They kept the skeletons, these hot ass new sculpts, in the OLD scale. So they look TINY compared to even a Reaver. That really bothers me, and it's the main reason I didn't move forward with an AOS Undead army- the skeletons just look too small, especially up against a Stormcast.

But hey, both of these are AWESOME games. GOTY this year is almost definitely one of these. Or both. Or a trifecta with 8th edition.

.... hmm, time to check out this Necromunda based on this quote from MB

I think what puts Necromunda over the top for me is that since Shadespire is so objective-driven rather than narrative-driven, you do things to score points rather than just to be awesome and see what happens

I am not in the position to buy either of these games right now, but if my longing glances at them at the store is any indication, I will probably get one of them at some point.

I picked up Shadespire yesterday but there's pretty much zero chance I won't also be getting Necromunda to paint up over the holiday break. I've officially been bitten by the radioactive GW spider.