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I wanna do a super galactic campain but I wanna know is it worth the time and money?

The question is- are you ready to invest money into an unsupported specialist game system?

You can make cardboard/paper ships and even your own paper templates/markers if you can hunt down the rulebook.

If you can get the rulebook, I'd like to add that BFG is the most fun I have ever had with any sort of vessel or space-based game.

The rules are free on the specialist games gw site. There are fan based faqs and revisions availabe also that address a few issues. Its a very simple and fun game that can be easily tied in with epic/40k, infact gw has a supplement called invasion just for this purpose although there are better fan built versions around the net.

A new question can I mix it with inquisitor


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I'm make ing a super campaign btw where wold post
the campaign


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It has most specialist games

Battlefleet gothic is essentially an out of date version of dreadfleet in space.

It SHOULD be exciting, but it's just a 2-dimensional naval battle, lacking completely in elements of the 3rd dimension, so it takes away anything *I* might find attractive about it, but it might hold interest for you.

If you are okay with a sea-based naval game set to starships that can't float up or down (theyre all on the same plane), then you'd probably like it.

Battlefleet Gothic is a fairly self-contained game, with a lot of strategy and tactics involved in maneuvering your ships in two dimensions (which in my opinion takes exactly nothing away from the game).

The Specialist Games in general have superior and often tighter rules than the core games (LOTR SBG excepted), so you really don't need reams of FAQs or multiple army books to play it.

Out of date version of Dreadfleet? Really? I have yet to see anyone ask about starting Dreadfleet, nor the Dreadfleet community (of which Gothic has an extensive one).

Gothic is great fun, and as mentioned, free as a download. You can usually get the ships inexpensively on eBay or bartertown, or use any ships you like from other manufacturers unless you want the 40k aesthetic. My 5 fleets are pretty extensive, and GW and FW models. However i do use Full Thrust ships for system monitors, rogue traders, convoy ships, etc.

Cruentus wrote:Battlefleet Gothic is a fairly self-contained game, with a lot of strategy and tactics involved in maneuvering your ships in two dimensions (which in my opinion takes exactly nothing away from the game).

The Specialist Games in general have superior and often tighter rules than the core games (LOTR SBG excepted), so you really don't need reams of FAQs or multiple army books to play it.

Out of date version of Dreadfleet? Really? I have yet to see anyone ask about starting Dreadfleet, nor the Dreadfleet community (of which Gothic has an extensive one).

Gothic is great fun, and as mentioned, free as a download. You can usually get the ships inexpensively on eBay or bartertown, or use any ships you like from other manufacturers unless you want the 40k aesthetic. My 5 fleets are pretty extensive, and GW and FW models. However i do use Full Thrust ships for system monitors, rogue traders, convoy ships, etc.

the trick is to ignore that instead of wooden boats, it's metal boats, and instead of cannon and ballista, it's laser and torpedo. It's got a nice premise and all, but... it's just the same thing as a wooden-boats on water game.

You'd expect some sort of an extra mechanic with a void war, and I feel it's just absent.

I'm not actually sure I'm confident in describing the problem I find with it.

I have been playing various naval/space/etc. wargames for a very long time, and I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised with BFG.

Overall I found the basic rules quite simple yet with some very clever mechanics allowing for a lot of tactical opportunities in play .

The rules are free and pretty good, so I would give it a try.

As for the being flat in space they adress it saying that: while there might be advantagesto high/low ground where a lot of gravity is involved, for deep space it's just a range modifyer and a hassle.

Paraphrased from the rulebook take it or leave it but it's their answer.

I recently had my first game of BFG, a 400point skirmish with my brother to get my head around the rules yesterday.

Its now 10am the following day, I've played three games. The rules are well written, but in need of an update just due to there age. But I really cant tell you how to enjoy this game, but in those first three games I had, I got sucked into the "Lore" of BFG, I even ended up imagening the combat in real time. lol.

Get yourself the Basic rulebook, (Official GW PDF links thread, here on dakka. Or the GW website) Cut out some blast markers, find a couple of cruisers in "Ships of the gothic sector" (My brother had two Imperial Lunar class cruisers, myself had a Chaos Murder Class cruiser and a Chaos Archeron Class Heavy Cruiser, equall poins ) Take over the living room floor and have a game!! If its not for you, its not for you. If you enjoy it you will be buying a fleet shortly!

The joys of playing BFG can also convert into playing 40k, a rolling campaign for EG: 40k - Chaos attacks a Imperial world, play a planetstrike mission> BFG Imperial relief force arrives, Play a BFG scenerio, Chaos vs Imperial. Whoever wins decides the force sies in the next 40k > 40k (imp win) Landing sucsessfull, try to wrestle the plaent from chaos. (chaos win - imp landing sucsessfull, but too late to stop ritual. chaos gains XXX amount of daemonic allies. ect.) And so on.

Hell, when I was younger my mates used to play in this order. BFG to Epic40k, to 40k, to Inquisitor in one rolling campaign.

Rarmah wrote:

Hell, when I was younger my mates used to play in this order. BFG to Epic40k, to 40k, to Inquisitor in one rolling campaign.

I think that was GW's ultimate goal, certainly when they had all these systems 'supported' in-store as it were. I know that when I was younger, my friends and I would devise campaigns and battles fought at Epic scale with small skirmishes and engagements fought at 40K scale. The beauty of it was that results in both could affect the course of events in the other and the course of the campaign as a whole. Now that I am a bit older (but maybe not necessarily wiser!) and having only recently got into BFG, I plan to do a similar thing and link all 3 systems together.

Not that I've played it in a while, but Battlefleet Gothic's a decent tactical starship game, albeit one the design of which really just puts a sci-fi veneer onto the tactics of 18th/19th century naval warfare. If you can ignore its failures as a realistic simulation, it's a well-balanced game with an elegant system.

poda_t wrote:Battlefleet gothic is essentially an out of date version of dreadfleet in space.

It SHOULD be exciting, but it's just a 2-dimensional naval battle, lacking completely in elements of the 3rd dimension, so it takes away anything *I* might find attractive about it, but it might hold interest for you.

If you are okay with a sea-based naval game set to starships that can't float up or down (theyre all on the same plane), then you'd probably like it.

Though I understand and agree with your point about "two-dimensional thinking", I've really got to point out that the BFG is quite a good tactical game, and has nothing whatsoever in common mechanically with the card-driven feast of randomness that was Dreadfleet.

Space combat is not a theme I've ever really investigated; do you know of any tactical games which do make use of realistic (or at least semi-realistic) space physics? If not, I spy a gap in the market...

Yeah, a proper 3-D space game is going to be very difficult to make properly. Especially if you want a realistic(ish) representation.

"Ok, my ship is tilted at a 45 degree pitch with the table while also being spun 30 degrees on its central axis so I have my prow to your Desolator and my port side to your Escorts"

How exactly are the models going to be supposed to show that sort of an angle?

A minitures game like that would have to rely heavily on record keeping due to the inflexability of the physical representations. Just thinking of what you would have to do to keep track of what is where and how its facing etc would leave me wondering whats the point of even having minitures in the first place? Your already just writing down where the ships are in elevation relative to the game surface, along with pitch, roll and yaw so why not just keep track of the ships location along the game surface? This could be pretty intersting for small scale (1 or 2 ships/ player) but would really bring down the enjoyability of a fleet based game such as this.

A minitures game like that would have to rely heavily on record keeping due to the inflexability of the physical representations. Just thinking of what you would have to do to keep track of what is where and how its facing etc would leave me wondering whats the point of even having minitures in the first place? Your already just writing down where the ships are in elevation relative to the game surface, along with pitch, roll and yaw so why not just keep track of the ships location along the game surface? This could be pretty intersting for small scale (1 or 2 ships/ player) but would really bring down the enjoyability of a fleet based game such as this.

I can do you one better.

Relativistic Velocity.

Now that you have to record where and how each ship is pitched, you must now include the fact that they are all moving and the distances involved. Now every projectile weapon must use counters like when firing torpedoes, so a firing ship has to fire at where their target will be at a later turn, not the current one.

Oh, yeah. Also take into account the fact that if a ship if far enough away, you are seeing an afterimage. The light from it has taken so long to cross space to your sensors that it may have had seconds, minutes, or even hours to move away from it's current position, and you are just now seeing it start that move.

Plus, if you fire at it., you have to aim at "where it will be", and then hit the button. It will take a certain time to get to the targetted spot, and then that same amount of time again for you to see the light reflected from where it was supposed to hit to see if you even scored a hit. oh, and that's just for lances, because they are travelling at the speed of light. Projectiles will be magnitudes longer than that do to their slower velocities.

....Nope. "2D naval game in space" sounds and plays like more fun and much less of a physics midterm.

I've just recently started BFG myself.

I've been playing 40k since the early days of 2nd Ed 40K where there was only 1 codex and several boxed armies that came with a booklet detailing all their points, stats, etc. I've played Epic40k, Space Hulk 2nd & 3rd Ed, Nec, even Blood Bowl & Inquisitor in 28mm scale.

Overall, I find BFG to be one of the most enjoyable overall & I don't really care if it lacks GW support, it doesn't need it. With all the varied fleet lists available for most of the races, there's not need to make new supplements or ships. The game plays very smoothly for a GW game, but then it was written by the old team, before people like Matt Ward (the veritable hanging chad of GW) showed up on the scene. It has a 2010 FAQ that addresses some of the loop holes or the few clunky rules the original version had and there are a decent number of advanced rules such as upgraded torpedoes, veteran captains etc.

Even with the inevitable rules fumbling and just learning to play, my friend & I ran 3 games in less than 5 hours of escalating points & complexity. Try that with 40k lol.

Ultimately, it's an excellent diversion or addition to 40k and it can mix well with it since it would be very easy to run linked games of BFG & 40k (planetary assaults) or kill-team (boarding actions) or even Space Hulk (SM playing an investigation of a drifting hulk near an inhabited system). Plus, with a bit of imagination, even a basic game of BFG without adding in another game can have a full 40k twist such as my opponent doing a teleport attack on my lunar class. We were discussing how a squad of raving Khorne Berzerkers were dropped in the midst of the ship & as the crew fought a losing fight they sealed off the corridor & blew the bulkheads to space the Berzerkers.

Is BFG 2D? Yes, Would it be possible to make a space combat game with full rules for 3D? Sure, but God knows I'd be terrified of the rules. I remember the rulebook for SFB in the attempts at completeness. BFG is less than 100 pages of actual rules (not ship profiles), SFB was... I don't even remember, I've had textbooks with fewer pages and bigger fonts.

I haven't played a game of BFG in about 7 years, and I am eager to get back into it.

I just bought some finishing touches for my Ork fleet with a recent GW webstore purchase, and I am pondering doing a Tau fleet out of Firestorm: Armada ships, after seeing the price comparison from places like The Warstore. (two resin cruisers cost about 15.99, 6 frigates for the same, and battleships are about 20 dollars)

So about half the price for a fleet from F:A ships, even better if doing Tau, whose cruisers are all $35US.

For the budget minded Tau you can look at Forgeworld. They have an entire fleet based off the 40k apperance (i think theyre ulgy but most people like them). Theyre reasonably priced and the faq2010 has a set of decent rules for them (Forgeworlds rules are considered... well aweful. http://tinyurl.com/23nul8q

I find BFG one of the most stimulating and challenging tabletop games, it's something you have to be about 2-3 turns ahead mentally with, it's not all about or even much about your list. The lack of 3d bothered me as well, for all of about a day, then I realized the practicalities of bringing in 3d to a 2d tabletop would be entirely impractical. I love my imperial fleet and am going to be adding a small guest chaos fleet soon.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

A minitures game like that would have to rely heavily on record keeping due to the inflexability of the physical representations. Just thinking of what you would have to do to keep track of what is where and how its facing etc would leave me wondering whats the point of even having minitures in the first place? Your already just writing down where the ships are in elevation relative to the game surface, along with pitch, roll and yaw so why not just keep track of the ships location along the game surface? This could be pretty intersting for small scale (1 or 2 ships/ player) but would really bring down the enjoyability of a fleet based game such as this.

I can do you one better.

Relativistic Velocity.

Now that you have to record where and how each ship is pitched, you must now include the fact that they are all moving and the distances involved. Now every projectile weapon must use counters like when firing torpedoes, so a firing ship has to fire at where their target will be at a later turn, not the current one.

Oh, yeah. Also take into account the fact that if a ship if far enough away, you are seeing an afterimage. The light from it has taken so long to cross space to your sensors that it may have had seconds, minutes, or even hours to move away from it's current position, and you are just now seeing it start that move.

Plus, if you fire at it., you have to aim at "where it will be", and then hit the button. It will take a certain time to get to the targetted spot, and then that same amount of time again for you to see the light reflected from where it was supposed to hit to see if you even scored a hit. oh, and that's just for lances, because they are travelling at the speed of light. Projectiles will be magnitudes longer than that do to their slower velocities.

....Nope. "2D naval game in space" sounds and plays like more fun and much less of a physics midterm.

Ok, IIRC 40k ships arn't engaging at distances where there is a light distortion of more then a fraction of a second.


OTOH, a game like that actually sounds like fun. Maybe not 3d(keep it flat) but having to aim ahead of the enemy could make for some very tactical engagements.

Its a good game, love it...just need more time to play...

I have played a lot of games, including some which were 3d, and others which did use a more vectored approach to movement.

While simplistic in lacking those things, I find that some of other basic mechanics in BFG add a lot more tactical diversity than those other things, especially when taking into account the challenges in implementing them.

If I want 3d space combat, there are a large number of video games I can play...

For the budget minded Tau you can look at Forgeworld. They have an entire fleet based off the 40k apperance (i think theyre ulgy but most people like them). Theyre reasonably priced and the faq2010 has a set of decent rules for them (Forgeworlds rules are considered... well aweful. http://tinyurl.com/23nul8q

That's true now that I have checked their current prices, though Forgeworld is still a bit more expensive than I want for a few friendly games a year (mostly due to shipping because it would all have to be at once, rather than the piecemeal that I can do from US-based stores).

I'm thinking that even if I go the FW route for a main Tau battle-fleet, if I add elements of the original Tau fleet it will be by using the Terran fleet from Firestorm Armada. I think it fits the Exploratory fleet's aesthetic the best, with the most model options vs what that fleet can take.

It is easier to get to 1500pts with Forgeworld models/ship stats. (be it FW rulings or FAQ2010 rules).

eg
1 Custodian
1 Protector pack (2 models)
1 Emissary pack (2 models)
1 Warden pack (4 models)
2 Castellan packs (3 models)

is fantastic for friendly play and already 1500 points (the BFG most played point value I reckon).

What wpuld a Firestom Armada equivalent cost? Thus also 1 battleship sized, 2 cruiser, 2 light cruiser, 3 frigates, 4 destroyers.
Above Tau fleet would cost 65 pounds.

You will need more vessels if you follow the GW TAu list in Armada (pdf to unite the stars).
(An Explorer is only 230 points).

As to the distances, In salvation's reach (dan abnett), there is a fleet action where the opening shots are taken at "half a million kilometers" away. at that point it's taking light a full 2 seconds to reach you. Hell of a long time, really.

Ok, thats a little time. Easily corrected though.

Once the time/visual distortion is reaching 10+ seconds then we might have some major issues with corrective sensors.

Attached Galactic Fringe/Reg Steiner his 3D rules idea.