Battle fleet review how to#
Battle fleet review full#
Battle fleet review download#

Battle fleet review download#

The good news is that the rules are all free to download and it really does not take much to get your fleet into ship-shape and launched into the void. It’s unsupported by Games Workshop with the latest release being a warehouse-clearing ‘re-release’ in 2013. The unfortunate reality is that BFG is a ‘dead’ game. Credit: Unknown What Do I Need to Get Started? If the idea of planning out your deployment to set up a maneuver trap for your opponent 3 turns down the line makes you shiver with anticipation, if your heart leaps from your chest in exultation at the thought of a well executed Crossing of the T, or if you’ve ever felt a deep and abiding kinship with Rear Admiral David Farragut, then on behalf of the crew here at Goonhammer we just want to say this: The crunch in the rules isn’t gratuitous, but instead has a very clear purpose: it’s meant to give you a front-row seat to some of the most spectacular battles that the 41st millenium has to offer. Battlefleet Gothic is a game that’s massive in scope and has a lot going on, but it needs to be if it’s going to capture the scale of naval engagements in the far-flung future. A Chaos battlegroup might think they’ve drawn a bead on your Aeldari Corsair fleet, only for the sleek and agile cruisers to ride the solar wind and slip into your opponents’ forward arc so they can rake their pulsar lances down the length of their prey, rendering them into so much space dust.Īnd there’s your reason.

Battle fleet review full#

Your Space Marine fleet’s Battle Barge can make a daring attack run, disgorging its boarding torpedoes full of gene-wrought super soldiers bent on turning the tide of a battle taking place over tens of thousands of square kilometers with nothing more than bolter, chainsword, and the Emperor’s grace. Your nimble escort ships can duck and weave through incoming fire to exploit an enemy cruiser’s limited maneuverability and pump fire into its vulnerable engines, setting it up to get torn apart by the massed weapon batteries of your ships of the line. Adding this sort of crunch to your game opens up strategies and tactics that just aren’t possible in more abstracted games like 40k or AoS. Add to that at least four separate categories of weapons (each with their own rules), list building options that can be difficult to tell apart until you get a few games under your belt, and a heaping helping of faction-specific rules and abilities that make each fleet approach even the most basic actions in completely different ways, and you’ve got a lot of information to digest and incorporate into your game before you’ll be able to hang with the grizzled veteran admirals out there.īut we think it’s worth looking past all that to the game that lies beneath the complexity.

Fleet games add several additional systems to keep track of on top of what you’re probably used to dealing with from other wargames – things with strange and frightening names like “firing arcs” and “manoeuvre values” and “the Gunnery Table” – that complicate the process of shoving your models across the board and forcing your opponent to pick theirs up. In many parts of the US, it could be downright hard to find minis for BFG, and even if you could, wrangling someone else into playing it wasn’t always the easiest thing to do. Why Should I Resurrect This Old, Dead Game?Īt the time of writing this article, Battlefleet Gothic has been out of print for over 6 years, and even when it was alive, it didn’t benefit from the same level of support as GW’s flagship (what cruel irony) products, 40k and what was then Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Battle fleet review how to#

Part One: Why You Should Play, How to Get Started, Game Setting, & Game Mechanicsįor a review of the newest Battlefleet Gothic video game, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 please see J B’s article. We’ll cover content in the following areas: We’ll talk about why you should take one fleet or the other depending on your style, rage along with you at Eldar bullshit, and fondly reflect on a time when Necrons phased out because they were so laughably good. Over the next few articles we’ll explore the setting, factions, and mechanics of the BFG universe. There’s just something special about an Eldar corsair fleet gracefully dodging in and out of asteroid fields, plinking off Ork vessels with ease, only to have an exasperated Ork Warboss order a suicidal all ahead full into the asteroid field heedlessly plowing into monster space rocks and wraithbone hulls alike. It’s also the best game GW ever produced, and we’ll fight you if you disagree. Battlefleet Gothic (BFG) is a game for those among us who really enjoy the setting of the Warhammer 40,000 universe but feel it’s missing a certain flare for space-faring gothic cathedrals, comically oversized weapons batteries exchanging broadsides, and metric blue-whippy measuring sticks.