You know the feeling. You're three cups of tea deep, hunched over a half-painted gang, muttering about ammo rolls and flesh wounds — and then Games Workshop wanders in and announces a whole new edition of the game you've just spent six months building a crew for. Welcome back to the Underhive. It's grimy, it's lethal, and it's got a fresh coat of paint.

Games Workshop has confirmed that a new edition of Necromunda is clawing its way out of the hive sump, and it's a proper reset for the game — the fourth edition, no less. If you've been on the fence about diving into gang warfare in the toxic depths of Hive Primus, this is the cleanest jump-on point we've had in years. Here's everything worth knowing, minus the marketing fog. You'll find the full range over in our Games Workshop collection, and we'll be flagging pre-orders as they land.

What actually is the new edition?

The headline act is Necromunda: Skirmish — a brand-new boxed core set that reboots the game and serves as its fourth edition. This isn't a token repackage of the old Hive War box. It's a new rulebook, new miniatures, and — crucially — a set of rules that GW is billing as streamlined. If you've ever tried to teach Necromunda to a mate and watched their eyes glaze over somewhere around the third weapon trait, you'll understand why that word matters.

Necromunda has always been the deep, characterful, slightly unhinged cousin in the Warhammer family — a skirmish game where a single fighter can develop scars, grudges and a genuine personality across a campaign. The promise here is to keep all of that flavour while making it far less of a homework assignment to get to the table.

What's in the box?

The Necromunda Skirmish core set pits two gangs against each other, and both are made up of brand-new plastic miniatures — not reboxed old sculpts. In the blue corner (well, the leather-and-hairspray corner), the House Escher gang; in the other, the muscle-bound bruisers of House Goliath. Eight fighters each, sixteen new minis in total.

Alongside the models, you get a genuinely generous pile of kit:

• The full Core Rulebook — the complete new ruleset, not a cut-down starter pamphlet.
• Gang Tactics and Campaign Scenario cards — the tools for turning one-off fights into a proper grudge-fuelled campaign.
• A starter guide and construction booklet — for getting the gangs built and your first game running.
• 54 condition and status markers — because someone is always Pinned, Prone, or on fire.
• A folding range ruler, dice and templates — the full measuring-and-maiming toolkit.
• A new game board and broken pipe terrain — instant Underhive to fight over, straight out of the box.

In short: two full gangs, a battlefield to fight over, and everything you need to play out of the box. For a Games Workshop launch set, that's a genuinely complete package rather than a starter that needs a second mortgage in add-ons before it's playable.

Meet the gangs: Escher vs Goliath

It's a classic Underhive rivalry, and a smart pick for a starter box because the two gangs play so differently.

House Escher are the chem-fuelled, blade-and-toxin specialists — fast, elegant and absolutely lethal in close quarters, with a nasty line in poisons and needle weapons. They're the gang for players who like finesse, speed and a bit of theatrical cruelty.

House Goliath are the polar opposite: enormous, chem-swollen bruisers who solve most problems by walking through them. Tough, hard-hitting and unsubtle, they reward players who like to punch first and read the rulebook later. If Escher are a scalpel, Goliath are a lump hammer wrapped in barbed wire.

Pitting the two against each other in the box means new players immediately get a feel for the game's range — the hit-and-run knife fighters versus the walking wall of muscle. It's the sort of matchup that sells the whole game in a single evening.

Expanding your crew: Underhive Crew boxes

Eight fighters is plenty to start, but Necromunda gangs love to grow. To feed that habit, GW is rolling out Underhive Crew boxes for six of the great Houses:

• House Escher — the toxin-slinging speed merchants.
• House Goliath — the chem-jacked heavies.
• House Orlock — the working-class industrial gangers, the classic honest-thug archetype.
• House Cawdor — the zealous, ragged fanatics of the hive's underclass.
• House Delaque — the shadowy spies and information brokers.
• House Van Saar — the tech-obsessed gang with the best kit in the Underhive.

Each Crew box packs roughly 16 to 20 miniatures drawn from existing kits, plus a House-specific Weapons and Upgrades Set. That combination is the clever bit: you get a big pile of bodies and the specialist weapons and bespoke bits to kit them out exactly how you want, so no two gangs of the same House need look alike.

Terrain, bases and the rest of the range

Necromunda lives and dies on its battlefields — a flat board of cover just doesn't cut it in the vertical, claustrophobic Underhive. To that end there's a new set of Zone Mortalis terrain, designed to match existing sets, packed with pipes, attached machinery, and a mix of extra options and larger pieces. If you've already got a hive's worth of terrain, the good news is it's built to slot straight in.

There are also new Necromunda-styled bases, available in the standard 28.5mm size and a new 50mm option — the 28.5mm packs come as ten bases split randomly across four designs, and the 50mm bases arrive in packs of three. Perfect for the larger brutes and beasts prowling the hive. If you're planning to rebase a collection, stock up on your favourite basing materials while you're at it.

Lore fans and campaign obsessives are catered for too, with a Gangs of the Underhive supplement bringing lore, gang information, fighter and equipment profiles, and rules for Hired Guns, Brutes, Hangers-on and — yes — Pets. Because every gang needs a horrible mutated dog.

Will my old gang still work?

The question every existing player asks the moment a new edition is announced, usually through gritted teeth. The reassuring news is that this is a fresh core set and ruleset rather than a scorched-earth reboot of the miniatures range — the Houses, the fighters and the terrain you already own are still very much the Underhive you know. New rules mean profiles and points will shift, as they always do, but your beautifully painted gang isn't headed for the bits box. Keep an eye on our Warhammer pre-orders page as the supporting releases firm up.

When can you get it — and should you?

At the time of writing, the new edition is right on the launch pad, with pre-orders imminent and the core set leading the charge. Exact UK pricing hadn't been nailed down as we published, so we'll update this piece and our listings the moment it's confirmed — no guessing games from us.

Should you take the plunge? If you've never played Necromunda, this is the best jump-on point in years: two full gangs, a board, terrain and the complete rules in one box, with a ruleset built to be less intimidating than editions past. If you're a returning veteran, it's a new rulebook and a stack of gorgeous new Escher and Goliath sculpts to fold into your existing hive. Either way, you'll want paints and a bit of bench space cleared, because Necromunda has a way of quietly eating entire weekends.

Final thought: Necromunda has always been the connoisseur's Warhammer game — smaller in scale, bigger in story. A streamlined new edition with two cracking gangs in the box is exactly the excuse the hobby-curious have been waiting for. Grab a gang, name your leader something menacing, and lose yourself in the Underhive. Just don't blame us when you're up at 2am building a fifth ganger you swore you didn't need.

Further reading: new to all this? Start with What Is Warhammer 40k? A Beginner's Guide, then catch up on everything else GW revealed in The Big Summer Preview 2026.