Necromunday: Building a Better Ogryn Part I - The Gun Lugger

Necromundans got their first taste of S5 T5 beef in 2020. Spread out over 11 total pages towards the back of Necromunda’s House of Chains book, the Slave Ogryn gang makes for an interesting list. With some of the most powerful melee weapons in the game, access to excellent grenades (with the strength to meaningfully lob them), and a singular ranged weapon across the entire list, Slave Ogryns excel at one thing: turning anything they manage to catch into paste during close combat.

This can be fun and effective as easily as it can be a frustrating slog or bad time on one or both sides of the table. There’s always a bit of rock-paper-scissors skewing to various gang matchups and board setups within Necromunda, but Ogryns can get a bit wackier with it. Many scenarios punish the Ogryns for their limited numbers, activations, and ability to stop gangers without physically pummeling them. Wide open Sector Mechanicus boards can give enemy fighters plenty of lengthy shooting lanes to ping Ogryns to pieces. Zone Mortalis setups, on the other hand, offer tight and twisted corridors that can keep these large models out of sight until they’re within blind charge range. Again, it can get pretty swingy.

Credit: Games Workshop

Fast forward to 2025, and GW drops an entirely reworked Venator gang list via the Bonedry and Broke Necromunda Apocrypha supplement. This adds the ability to take Ogryns and equip them with just about any gun in the game. They are, of course, absolutely terrible at hitting anything outside of Template range, but it’s something!

I personally found this to be an opportunity to burn creds on expensive and unfluffy weapons that will be put to poor use shooting with a Ballistic Skill of 5+ and squandering a natural Strength of 5. A little too “Wild West Weapons List” for me. This did get me thinking, though, on what fun modeling and playing opportunities are out there for Ogryns with guns.

Enter: The Gun Lugger

There is plenty of precedent for Ogryns with guns over in the Astra Militarum. Warhammer 40k has a whole dang plastic kit dedicated to Bullgryns and Ogryns, with a small selection of oversized firearms, in addition to the classic lineup of metal options dating back to the game’s 4th edition. Darktide has them, as does the upcoming Dark Heresy game from Owlcat Games. There are also a number of references and illustrations of Ogryns with guns across the various 40K RPG books. How could that look in Necromunda?

It’s a Gun Lugger! Credit: Fantasy Flight Games

Ogryn Gun Luggers are discussed as large, brutish fighters entranced by the repeated loud banging from their own weapons. Their natural size and strength help transform them into mobile weapon platforms, and they are unlikely to flee the thick of combat between their natural loyalty and suboptimal intelligence. Sounds fun to me! Could we make it work for Necromunda, though? Yes. Yes we could.

Wait, Who Are You?

I’ve approached this little project having played a range of Ogryn-centric gang lists over the past few years, between Slave Ogryns, full-on Venator Ogryns, a Venator Abhuman Alliance featuring a few Ogryns, and one chock full of them. It’s an infection, and I’m not interested in the cure.

Credit: Hive Market Minis

I’ve also built a lot of them, and I mean it when I say a lot. Point being, I am as invested in having more kitbashing opportunities as I am in hitting the table with something fresh. You can only slap so many Augmetic Fists on varying large bodies before you start to go a little crazy. Thus, I’m ready to get a bit more ballistic with my approach for a while.

Lugging Guns

All this is to say, I have been working to fill the “Specialist Champion” hole in my Slave Ogryn heart, and am here to share the results. How can we keep things fun, interesting, and somewhat balanced? Let’s start with stats.

Ogryns run with an abysmal 5+ Ballistic Skill in Necromunda, and if we recruited one specifically trained in the art of ballistic combat, I don’t imagine it getting much better. I feel confident we can bump BS to 4+ and drop WS to 4+, balanced out by the residual 5 in Toughness and 3 Wounds to focus on staying power over effectiveness. Picking up some weapon-based accuracy bonuses with your arms selection can push the Gun Lugger beyond a 50% hit rate, so there is a path to hitting targets with some reliability.

We’re going to have to walk our fighter into position, which would typically be a challenge for gunners with heavy weapons. Taking advantage of an Ogryn’s natural strength and a bit of formal training, we get Bred for Battle.

Swapping out the need for Suspensors with a possible penalty to hit gels with the physical nature of our Ogryn here. You’re still able to shoot and then move, so the specific challenge here is making sure your fighter gets into position during their previous activation to hunker down for this one. You’re going to have a hard enough time hitting enemy fighters in cover, so Bred for Battle is focused on rewarding tactical planning while still giving you some flexibility to move and shoot if absolutely necessary.

Speaking of necessary, what about when your Gun Lugger simply needs to hold down a chunk of the board against a number of incoming enemy fighters? Time to hold down the trigger finger with Ballistic Fury!

Leaning into an Ogryn’s love of repeated loud noises and localized mayhem, Ballistic Fury lets you saturate a 5” template-sized area of the board with bullets, getting shots off on every fighter that you can cram under it. Those shots will be wildly inaccurate, coming with -1 penalties to hit, but with this specific ability you do make individual rolls on each hit from a rapid fire weapon.

Beware of friendly fire, and know that going ballistic comes at the cost of automatically jamming your own, possibly expensive as hell, gun for the remainder of the battle. Save this ability for when you truly need it, and leverage the psychological deterrent against your opponent grouping up their fighters for as long as possible! Don’t worry, though, as a Gun Lugger isn’t completely out of options when the bullets run dry.

You’ve still got a hefty hunk of costly metal, and a Gun Lugger is ready to swing it around. The bigger the gun, the harder the hit! You’ll also notice that the penalty from Bred for Battle only applies to ranged attacks, meaning you’re free to run the board in pursuit of a proper enemy to fight. The downside is, of course, that you’re still not great at hitting anything, but getting 3 swings in on a charge isn’t half bad.

Is there a way to make those attacks a bit more lethal? Yes! Enter the Ripper Gun, a Heavy Weapon option I’ve limited to the Gun Lugger only, running you a cool 85 credits.

Put together in Munda Manager!

Meshing the 2nd Edition and 10th Edition profiles of this venerable firearm, we’re left with an Ogryn-sized automatic combat shotgun spitting out jumbo-sized slugs at short range. It’s heavy, it’s expensive, but it can do some work. The Full Automatic profile whips off a Rapid Fire (1) volley of Strength 5 projectiles with Scattershot. You can potentially light up a single target, but you’re going to need to be within 12” at most, with the Short Range Accuracy bonus of +1 only extending 6” out. If you had to move first or are going against any cover, it’s going to be a hard day at the target hitting factory.

For those sticking with Burst Fire, you keep the Rapid Fire (1), jump up to a 12” Short and 18” Long Range, and get off a few shots at D2 with Knockback. This is more akin to a heavier Combat Shotgun profile, picking up AP -1. You’re not going to outclass a heavy bolter or an autocannon, but that’s factored into the cost and you’re still plenty lethal if you can get into short or possibly mid range.

Ogryn. Credit: SRM

Oh! About getting more lethal in close combat: the Ripper Gun comes standard with a full combat knife of a bayonet, imparting AP -1 onto any melee attacks made through Gun Club with this Unwieldy metal beatstick.

With all of this, though, a Gun Lugger has a reasonably tight Weapons and Wargear list, focusing on what could be properly sized for and used by your Ogryn. You can pick up some Template weapons or a grenade launcher, but we’re skipping past bolters of all sizes to stick with heavy stubbers, autocannons, missile launchers, grenade launchers, standard and heavy flamers, and all three flavors of traditionally-sized shotgun. For hand weapons, we’re keeping it to the axe, fighting knife, flail, heavy club, maul, and spud-jacker, with these verging on luxury purchases when you can just clock everyone with your gun. Frag, krak, and smoke grenades round out the projectiles, with light carapace, furnace plates, and mesh armor locking down that category. Lastly, personal equipment consists of the armored undersuit, bio-booster, drop rig, filter plugs, photo-goggles, respirator, partial servo harness, skinblades. And Lho sticks. Always Lho sticks.

Darktide Operatives. Credit: Fowler

Final nuts and bolts? This is of course a Gang Hierarchy (Champion) fighter who’ll always be too busy shooting something for group activations. Primary skills are Brawn and Ferocity, while you can dabble into Shooting, Muscle, and Leadership as secondary picks. Make sure to throw on your favorite CCR album while building any Gun Luggers if you’d like to capture the exact energy I channeled into both the rules and models for this little outing,

I’d love for you to give this a shot (more likely many shots) in your next Slave Ogryn or Venator list, with Arbitrator approval of course! For me, this Champion build hinges on the sub-optimal Ballistic and Weapon Skills to balance the natural Ogryn toughness on the tabletop, with the point being a fun model throwing out a volley of bullets without so much control on if they actually hit.

I’d value any constructive feedback folks might end up with. It’s not like I’ve been obsessively working on a draft for an entire Ogryn gang refresh complete with a leader, standard champion, ganger, brute option, exotic beast, mounted fighter, living vehicle-style profile, and unique gang mechanic. Nope, definitely have not been doing that.

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Tags: necromunda | Necromunday | Hive Market Minis