Crazy system! Power gloves would let you "lock on" to an opponent's limb. Win the combat, and you pushed that opponent back an inch or two. But you were still holding that limb. So you ripped it off of them! Ah, fond memories of my youth...
Glad to see people remember this game! What I loved about it was the background and how intuitive it felt. Sure, it was burdened by lots of tables and modifiers, but the sense of freedom you had when controlling your characters was amazing: no arbitrary restrictions - if you can do it, so can your character! I also like how you can buy anything if you're filthy rich - Terminator Armour? No problem - if you find the right dealer and have 1200 creds to spare! It was horribly unbalanced if used as-is, though. One gang could start out with just a few rookies, the other with a bunch of hard-as-nails henchmen. Weapons were rather strange, too. Autoguns and autopistols could fire *only* in automatic mode, shotguns and stub guns generally sucked, bolters were great but ammo was scarce and expensive, lasguns and laspistols were the all-rounders. Swords gave you a huge advantage (+100 WS!) if you got close enough to use them. Melta and Plasma weapons were generally overkill and over-priced. If you ever decide to give the rules a go, remember to use lots of terrain, or the "rich but slow" gangs (techs and brats) will dominate. There's nothing more satisfying than watching your undercity gang carve those rich bastards up with just knives and swords. Oh, and one last thing - the starting equipment chart never gives you knives, so I believe it was intended that every ganger should start with one.
Confrontation was a tremendous handful to play, hopeless and exhausting. Oldmunda was such a relief - to have a game that you could actually play, in this awesome setting. Bryan Ansell's ideas about how a skirmish game ought to feel changed dramatically in the years after. The set called The Rules With No Name (it's a western, there is a modern one) was extremely heavily chance driven and mostly played from a deck of cards for characters and actions. Madly unpredictable, almost no record-keeping, very fast and completely brilliant. I kinda wish Games Workshop would experiment more with their mechanics.
Try it! All the editions are quite different (as we'll see) but even the modern one, which is probably the most complicated, is quite easy to get the hang of, especially if you start with only a starter set and none of the bazillion extra rules!
Ah, the dice rolls in 90s 40k. Who remembers the Madboys where you had to roll every turn to decide how they'd act, thus making strategy...basically impossible
Or the Robots... where you had to program them in advance... Or the Ork robots that you had to program in advance and then roll to see if it actually worked.
Me and my mates loved Confrontation as kids, we played it more than 40k back in the 90s. I always wished Necromunda took more from it, especially the broader outlook. We ended up making so many rules, banning terminator armour, and them used the shiny new Necromunda models for our gangs! Nice to see its not been completely forgotten 🙂
Gah, Confrontation... Great game, I love the detail in this. For those interested in playing this game, two tips: a calculator is pretty handy, as you'll be adding and subtracting a lot of modifiers to the basis d100 rolls; and be patient, as each character can do a lot of things as their actions (and yes, I use "the can of beans" as a standard of time measure even in RPG's). Thanks master Ian for sharing this (presumably) forgotten system. (If I'm not totally wrong, I think I have some old Confrontation metal minis lying around... i'll go and see)
I was thinking about these White Dwarf rules - hence how I found this video. I also remember a ruleset (40k) for vehicles that had pictures in the mag and you overlaid a plastic template when selecting which areas to shoot at. Sadly, I sold my big pile of old WDs to a school friend, when I got old enough (socially, not legally) to need 'weekend money'. 😞
Loved Necromunda, still have my old metal Cawdor gang! I'd heard of Confrontation before but I really enjoyed this deeper dive into its history and mechanics!
At least you're allowed to trade in your starting equipment for starting equipment you could possibly even use. The Old Ways were harsh. Then again, an unpredictable start is certainly going to be interesting, as compared to one where you build everything from a system. Plus, if you're used to characters dying a bunch, randomness can almost seem like a relief, albeit a haphazard one.
Wow! 3 Years ago? You've certainly come a long way from those early days Ian! That said, this is still an excellent video and I'm glad I re-watched it. Can't say when I watched originally, but I liked it at the time. Now... have you done the rest of the editions? Secondus is about to release....
I found my original Confrontation rules last week, in an old folder all cut from various White Dwarf’s. I wish I had time and someone to play it with again.
Hey there! Where did you manage to track down these rules exactly? I'd really love to give confrontation a shot but I keep seeing it came out in multiple issues of white dwarf and don't actually know where to track those down online or even the exact issue numbers. This video is great by the way :D
White Dwarf 130: Introduction; background to the planet and hives White Dwarf 131: Necromunda Gangs; background to the hive gangs White Dwarf 132: Creating a Gang; background and rules for creating a gang including generating equipment, a stash and skills, with a short story White Dwarf 137: Combat Rules (first half); game rules for characters, group coherency, game sequence, turns phase, actions, visibility, firing and rules for trading equipment White Dwarf 138: Combat Rules (second half); game rules for hand-to-hand combat, hit locations, damage and injuries White Dwarf 142: Weapons; rules for weapons
familiar with Necromunda spinoff media like the comics Kal Jericho and The Redeemer but NOT the game itself let alone its predecessor Confrontation, so this is very enlightening... frankly Confrontation sounds like a nightmare to play with the randomly generated gangs you had to play with and how complicated the rules were
I remember playing Confrontation with friends! Although I recall (perhaps incorrectly) us getting the rules from the Citadel Journal, and there was much less WH40K flavour. Maybe we just didn't have all the articles. Anyway I remember it being really hard to hit anything because we all played defensively with use of cover, but when a ganger did get hit... hoooboy it was brutal! Of course a few years later we went on to have a great time with 1st ed Necromunda. What a fantastic box set (and expansions) that was. Ratskins forever!
Ah this brings me back. This was right around when my friends and I started playing 40K, we never actually played Confrontation but vaguely entertained the idea of frakenstiening it plus WHFRP to make a full 40K rpg.
Surprised you didn't cover the old Rogue Trader hive gang rules from the CitiBlock floorplan box (supplement for 40k and the Judge Dredd RPG), which predate even Confrontation!
I still have three confrontation psyker gangers... They have been folded into my guard as astropaths now but ahh the memories... You build a gang and you fight one encounter and you lose the gang (mostly).... Good times
I'm currently painting up Orlock models I assembled @1 year ago, using Underhive rules (like I was painting them just before starting this video current). This is my second painted Orlock gang (my first being made up of three sources, original Orlock juves, 2000s era Specialist Games era models, and kitbashed Cadians), but I'm never going to use them as-is, because the House of Iron book sent me in a completely different direction meaning that half of the models I'm painting now will be reserves for late in a campaign. So FWIW, I think there's scope for two different videos using the current rule-set, one using the Gang War / Gangs of the Underhive rules, and then a final House of Iron video. One of the things that snuck up on me is that armour is a separate purchase in the House of Iron rules, but choosing both a starting skill and legendary name for the leader and champions is probably makes the biggest difference, even more than jetpack-juves!
Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting when we get to the current rules, since I haven't actually played with House of Iron yet! It's hard to draw a line in the current rules - it definitely feels like there was a 'V1' and 'V2' but they're such a mess it's quite random picking where that is! I think it will probably go: 1ed/Outlanders, then Underhive/LRB, then Community Edition, then N17, and I'm not sure what after that. Might also sneak in a 'ten more weird things about Confrontation' video as they keep popping up!
Really interesting! I had heard of confrontation, but had no idea that it had anything to do with Necromunda. Do you plan on playing a game with these rules? Or are you just building the gang and leaving things there?
Russ (from my Tale of Four Gamers) suggested we do that, yeah! He has a tech gang somewhere and I think I have enough Scavvies to build a gang, especially if it's only six models. So we might actually try a playthrough once the world opens up again!
Huh, I don't think that I was aware that there were any minis made for Confrontation (and I definitely didn't know that Marauder made any sci fi minis) #TIL :)
The Brian Ansell system Confrontation is based off also has miniatures (the sculpts are even still available today) - the game was called Laserburn, and Snipe and Wib did a really good video on it🙂
Confrontation got pretty close to being released as a boxed game (The Box art and mock-up was completed), but was pulled for some reason - possibly the complexity. I heard a lot of talk in the 90's/00's about a semi-complete playtest version of the rules having been circulated inside GW, and even a copy or two making it as far as ebay at one point, but this may be untrue gossip. The rules, as found in White Dwarf, certainly had some obvious voids - they mention Psychic and Mutant gangs, and have some of the rules for 'rolling' them, but then have no rules for using them in an actual game.
Just need to create rules to fill in the games. I had made a set (now lost in a house move) but I am in the process of redoing them. I have Mutant rules written and 'Post Bellum' rules (ganger experience and improvement as well as new members). Just need to do Psyker gang rules, Venetor abilities (tied in with Chaos rules and 'Chaos Points') as well as equipment abilities for the equipment lists that aren't weapons or armour. Edit: Oh and campaign rules regarding territories and income.
I've actually got some of the tech gang models, I did have all of them the leader had a bionic arm and leg but I now only have the ordinary guys they have plastic guardsmen arms, ( not spamming for views but I do have a video with all my necromunda collection)
Probably only about 20 mins. It really is just rolling and noting down the result. Figuring out which weapons to buy/swap and still get a useable gang of models probably took longer than all the rolls. It helps that you only start with six models!
Crunchy, incomplete, and very likely broken... I don't care. I have been wanting to try Confrontation ever since I heard about it, and perhaps use elements from Rogue Trader and Necromunda to sort of Jurassic Park it into a complete game. It'll never replace Necromunda, but I think it would be fun to try it anyways.
I found my original Confrontation rules last week, in an old folder all cut from various White Dwarf’s. I wish I had time and someone to play it with again.
