Necromunda: what happens to plague zombies when they go down?

Question

My brother and I play the skirmish game Necromunda (made back in the '90s by Games Workshop, its a spin-off of Warhammer 40k).

My question is, what happens to zombies when you have wounded them and they get the 'down' result (roll a 6 sided dice, 1 has no effect, 6 taken off the board, 2-5=?).

This relates specifically to damage from anything other than close combat, i.e. shooting, but also fall damage, seeing as any down result is out in close combat, unless its a multiple combat.

So, do zombies start to crawl after the damage, like a normal ganger? Or do they shrug it off?

Answer 1

Being as the Outlanders rules pg 28 make no special mention of how to handle downed zombies, I would say they do crawl around because I can't think of any reason that you would not treat them like any other ganger.

They can't suffer flesh wounds and you can't pin them, so until they roll a 1 or reach a ganger to attack them in close combat, I would say they just crawl around.

Also since they can't suffer flesh wounds it is safe to assume that they do not suffer the -1 WS/BS penalty when they get back up.

One last thing I would suggest is to remove their 'always charging' rule when they crawl into base contact with a ganger, but that is just opinion, I have nothing in rules as written to back this up. As was pointed out in the comments by Paul Marshall, if a zombie did this, they would be removed during the combat because when a fighter is downed as a wound result in close combat, they are automatically removed.

I looked high and low for an official ruling and could not find one, but from a discussion about it on another forum, it seems that most interpret it this way. There does however seem to be some contention over weather or not they stand back up if they roll a 1 during recovery.

Rules Reference

Answer 2

Downed zombies act the same as any other downed ganger: their movement is a 2" crawl (the plague zombie's owner chooses the direction), and they make the same end-of-round injury check as any normal ganger. The only exception is that if a plague zombie rolls a "1", it doesn't take the flesh wound as it stands up. This makes plague zombies about as tough as any other ganger: with the exception of close combat, it takes an injury roll of "6" to take them out.

If a downed zombie "charges" into combat, it simply gets taken out automatically, just like any other ganger that crawls into combat (unless there are multiple combatants, of course).

As a side note: in the fluff, plague zombies are still alive – just brain-damaged by the plague. So it makes sense that all of the rules of living gangers apply to plague zombies, with the exception of the rules that apply to pain or psychology.