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Have you ever played dreadfleet? We just got it and it is incredibly fun! What do you think of it?

Played it when it first came out.

Was alright but ultimately felt it was so random the player's choices seemed almost meaningless.

Nice models and kudos for the attempt though.

I have it, have never played it. Love the models

 nolzur wrote:
I have it, have never played it. Love the models

Pretty similar to me, I assembled all the models and undercoated them, I just never got around to playing the game. I ended up selling it a while ago, I think that while the individual models are great they just felt to disjointed from each other to be like Man O War which I was hoping the game would be like.

Pointlessly random.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Pointlessly random.

Thank you for the productive comment.

It was pointlessly random.

Joking aside those two words really do sum up the game. You haven't played, just wait...

I could always say the review with more words. The game was pointlessly random. Not 'fun' random like you might find snakes and ladders where the random move made you move up the board.

But pointlessly. There was very little thought involved. I reckon in retrospect it could be a solo game. Or replaced by rolling a d20 each.

There are many detailed reviews of why it is pants scattered around. For example of Jake Thortens blog. http://quirkworthy.com/2011/10/08/dreadfleet-review-2-more-ships-more-battles/
Entitled "Please can I have my money back?"

Some excerpts

Sad as it is to say, I think Dreadfleet is the worst game that Games Workshop have ever made. Bar none. I’m not talking about the components here (which are fine), or the price (which is high), I’m talking about the playing experience (which is the worst).

The worst? Really? Worst by Phil? Worst this year? Nope. Worst ever. I’m trying to think of something that comes, as a whole package, further down the list than this, and am failing.

Worse than Combat Cards?

Worse than the Troll games?

Worse than Kerrunch! and SpaceFleet?

Yup, yup, yup.

*Snip*

The rules make Snap! look deep and tactical.

*Snip*

The rule to decide who had won this scenario was simple: Get as many ships off the table as you cold then roll a dice. In our case, after 4 hours of play, we rolled a single D6 to decide the game. On a 1-2 I would win; on a 3+ it would go Bob’s way. Did that make it all feel worth the effort? I’ll let you guess.

*Snip*

ut I didn’t; I bought Dreadfulfleet. Whatever you do, avoid making the same mistake as I did.

If you want a game that poses a series of interesting tactical challenges, keeps you on the edge of your seat with excitement and allows you to engage in a cunning battle of wits with your opponent, buy something else.

Pros: the ships and mat are pretty.

Cons: everything else.

I think the main problem with Dreadfleet is where the hell did this game stem from?

It seems for the money they invested in the game they could have re-released a big box version of Man O' War, with a solid pair of fleets, as a one-off game. Even if it was something as simple as "Imperial versus Dark Elves" or something like that, which would offer two completely different playstyles of "Order" versus "Disorder", it would be eminently more interesting of an offering.

I guarantee you would have seen situations where people would head to Ebay for an additional copy's worth of ships to bulk up each fleet, even with the single-release matter of the game meaning that it had no future for growth. People would be bodging together rules for the other races using ships like the ones from Spartan's Uncharted Seas, or something similar.

But instead, it's this weird one-off game about pirates with no two ships following the same theme, and leaving me with the idea that it would be better to get a bunch of stuff for Uncharted Seas and just rename everything with Warhammer-centric titles. The fleet options are certainly there for most races.

Or heck, they could have released a copy of Epic Armageddon, and had it be "Imperials Versus Orks", and have every single model use plastic molds that they already have from decades of versions of Epic/Space Marine/Titan Legions. Very simple to produce expansions offering "X Race vs. X Race" could have followed suit in the exact same fashion. Pretty much everything for every race from Epic other than some of the Titans has been released in plastic at some point in that game's lifespan and they must have the molds sitting around somewhere.

I would buy an entire Eldar force consisting of 90's models, even for vehicles that no longer resemble their counterparts in 40K, than a discounted copy of Dreadfleet, beautiful as it is.

I have it, I love it for what it is, and it isn't a WAAC tourney game, which apparently lots of people wanted or expected. It's a good casual/party game with really smooth basic mechanics.

I have never ever played the scenarios included, what we do is get 8 people together and each one gets a random ship (excluding the 2 flagships as they're on a different power level to the rest) and we have a free-for-all deathmatch.

Dreadfleet is the game that makes Atmosfear a good game.

Both look good, both are some how entertaining for the first game, especially if you're 12 years old. In the end, both are boring, because those games don't need you: you just follow the games instructions and apply the result.

However, Atmosfear has some qualities: it doesn't require you to learn a lot of rules, plays faster and is not even remotely as expensive as Dreadfleet. In the end, Atmosfear hasn't aged well, and its flaws may well come from its very concept, with the use of that VHS.
Dreadfleet hasn't aged at all, and its flaws just come from lazy game design.

The models and components are gorgeous which is why I bought it. I am hoping to utilise them in Man-O-War somehow as fleet flagships along with the islands and monsters. The rules could have been "Roll a dice, highest wins" for all I care.

That would have retained the overarching rules design philosophy, while speeding the game up.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
That would have retained the overarching rules design philosophy, while speeding the game up.

But enough about Spartan Games, this is a Dreadfleet topic