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What are peoples feelings on battlefleet gothic? GW recently revealed they were going to bring it back, and it was one of their most fun games of all time. I ask because I would rather play that with its fluff and ork fun ships rather than dropfleed commander, but in the end ill play whichever ACTUALLY has a playerbase. Do you think battlefleet gothic will play by some new crappy ruleset, or can be what it once was. Please no Age of gothic, I dont think I could handle another game getting completely ruined. People want tight, well thought out rules GW. Not some excuse to buy any kit and use everything you think looks pretty all at once, like an elf on a dragon leading vampire knights, with goblin lackeys.

As of right now, it is impossible to tell because we have no information on GW's plan for BFG. We don't know when they'll release it. We don't know what the rules will be like. We don't even know if the models will be plastic versions of the old ships or completely new.

I personally would choose DFC because the kickstarter gives you a good deal on starter armies and the rules look solid. You can always convert the ships to BFG stuff if you change your mind once BFG finally comes out. But that's just my 2 cents.

I preferred Space Fleet to BFG myself. GW took a simple, fast game and made it overcomplicated.

And GZG's Full Thrust (which is free) is superior to both.

Note that GW is CURRENTLY advertising for people to work on Specialist Games. So there's not even a team in place.

I wouldn't expect anything from them for a year at least.

Bfg for flavour, dropfleet for streamlined play.

There are two types of space combat games out there. The Beer and Pretzels games, and the Space Combat Simulators.

I loved BFG, but felt it was a very simple system easily borken (the Necrons and Eldar Wraith ships really messed that game up, and when the Hive mothership for Tyranids arrived, well, the game was pretty much dead). If all you played was Imperial vs. Chaos with Orks and Eldar thrown in to spice things up, then yeah, great beer and pretzels game. Start adding in the "second wave" fleets- Necrons, Bugs, Tau, Eldar Wraith ships- and the game broke down pretty fast. Funny enough, this was also the only game system where the Space Marine fleet was NOT all that powerful. Yeah, they had some mean boarding parties and they actually mounted a Nova Cannon on a cruiser. The Space Marines in general had very weak ships. My favorite part about BFG? Get a foam ball from a hobby store, carve it up and glue some Orky pieces and whatever other pieces from other ships on it, and you now have a Ork Rock Battle Plateform.

I haven't played Dropfleet Commander yet, but the USMC ships look fantastic! It looks to have some interesting game play with levels of engagement (space, upper atmosphere, lower atmosphere... that's not what they are, but it's pretty close). The one thing that makes me leery are the bases with pegs, and some kind of dial on it. Reminds me too much of Hero Clicks or Mechwarrior, where it was all too easy to fiddle with the dial and suddenly, you are an inch closer/farther away, or you suddenly are in a fire arc...

Firestorm Armada from Spartan Games was the space ship themed version of Dystopian Wars. Both felt a bit like BFG to tell the truth, but the exploding d6 mechanic really killed the system for me. Basically, if you roll a 6, you get to roll another d6. If that one is a 6, you pick it up and roll again, etc. etc. This is in addition to the fact that a six was a critical hit- at the very least, it was doing two points of damage and a possible roll on the crit table if you rolled enough hits...

There are one or two other games out there with similar playing properties- games that focus on dice rolling, moving ships around, and minimal book keeping (maybe 1-2 tokens next to the ship for crits or on fire, etc). Star Trek Attack Wing and X-Wing come to mind here. These are all collectively the Beer and Pretzels games that require minimal prep, can be played in 1-2 hours, and have minimal rules.

Then you move up to the "Space Combat Simulations"- Star Fleet Battles, Babylon Five, Full Thrust, Honor Harrington Space Combat System, and a couple more that escape me. These systems require INCREDIBLE amounts of bookkeeping. Each ship takes up 1-4 pages of silhouettes, damage boxes, weapons charts, maneuvering tables, energy allocation spread sheet, and in some cases, movement plots. They are also characterized by large and complicated rule books with many, many errata, FAQ's, and supplements. These games are the most accurate, and intensive space fleet games out there. They are NOT Beer and Pretzels by any stretch of the imagination. They have a very, very steep learning curve, and a game could quite possibly take DAYS to play. I remember playing a game of Star Fleet Battles that lasted five days with us playing about 5-6 hours every day. Not typical, but if you played with a large fleet of ships, then that's what it took. These games are not for the feint of heart, but have some of the most rewarding game play of the two types of games out there.

I'd say that Full Thrust actually sits somewhere between the two. It has elements of the space sim games but more streamlined.