Necromunda: Underhive Wars Is A Warhammer 40k Game That Focuses On The Little Guy

For some time, I’ve been hoping for a Warhammer 40k game that has nothing to do with the main playable factions. Necromunda: Underhive Wars may very well scratch that itch. Space elves, tuberculosis marines, and BDSM knights are cool I guess, but there’s a lot more to the expansive lore than that. After all, there’s a million billion people in the 40k universe, and all of them are actively killing each other nonstop.

The setting for Necromunda: Underhive Wars takes place in a “hive city,” an incomprehensibly huge megacity on a “hive world.” Hive worlds are described as the breeding ground for ordinary people, used as factory workers or for human wave attacks in order to clear minefields (40k does not put a great value on life, as you may be aware). But to my limited knowledge, the politics of these cities are not too thoroughly explored. Like most everything in 40k,the local politics of Necromunda city involves an incredible amount of meaningless bloodshed. 

Necromunda: Underhive Wars has you coordinating a gang in service of one of the city’s three ruling houses. Made up of miners, House Orlock is able to give their gang members all the guns and bullets they could ever need. The Orlocks are ranged focused, utilizing an incredible amount of firepower. House Escher is a matriarchal faction, who love love love drugs. Uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… all kinds of chems to buff your fighters in the field. And finally, House Goliath, who are about as close to space marines as you’ll get. Massive gene-spliced monsters, they can use all kinds of weaponry, as long as it’s comically oversized. 

The gameplay for Necromunda: Underhive Wars appears to be akin to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and XCOM. A turn-based game, each character goes in order to do all the things they need to do; place traps, buff friends, do a line of space-coke, or attack. The strategy for success seems to be determined by positioning and setting ambushes more so than superior firepower, so it will be interesting to see how this type of turn-based combat works. 

Necromunda: Underhive Wars will be available on September 8th on the PC, Xbox One, and PS4. For more information, check out their website by clicking here.