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Is it any good, I picked it up today at my lgs. Unfortunately they ate going out of business so I got it dirt cheap.

I know it's an old out of date product but as they were cleaning host they found 10 nib they didn't know they had.

Was it worth picking up?

How cheap are we talking here? It's worth it just for the minis, to me. I loved assembling them. Haven't played the game itself, but from a brief read through, it seems to be based more on random chance and event card him inks than cunning and skill.

I got it for 40 bucks. Plus I used it to negotiate a 50% discount on an x wing starter kit, so in reality it was 20 bucks.

I think it's a visually stunning game that received a lot of undeserved flak for not being Man'o'war.

It is a somewhat luck-heavy "boardgame", though, not a tactical "tabletop". If you adjust your expectations accordingly, there's a lot of fun to be had with Dreadfleet IMO. To me, it was worth the original price tag for the presentation alone - at the price you got it for, it's a positive steal!

As a game, crap, IMO. Worth it for the components? Undoubtably. I use the fabric mat for my Man O War games and the terrain sort of is OK too despite being a little out of scale. Production values are excellent as you would expect from a GW game.

 Dave-c wrote:
I got it for 40 bucks. Plus I used it to negotiate a 50% discount on an x wing starter kit, so in reality it was 20 bucks.

Where was this? I'm a bit busy panicking over Tomb Kings and Bretonnians right now, but if it's still available for $40 in a couple months, that'll be great for me.

It was at a lgs in Arizona

It's another box in a big pile of unassembled boxes, the mat has seen use in dystopian wars. Models look beautiful and they will get built. I haven't played it, but have heard from a couple of people that if you remove the cards it becomes a lot more tactical. I don't know first hand if it works, but might be worth a try?

Dreadfleet looks nice, as GW's offerings usually do. As a game, however, it stinks. Its randomness and lack of meaningful player choices might perhaps be acceptable in a beer-and-pretzels game for £10 and that took half an hour tops to play. (See Cheapass' Captain Treasure Boots, for a vaguely pirate-themed parallel.)

The breathtakingly bad game we got, however, is memorable only as an historical signpost on the disastrous road to the Age of Sigmar.

So is that a dog at age of sigmar? I have been out of the gw lifestyle for a few years...

As a game, it looks terrible. The models look awesome though. I wouldn't mind picking up a copy for the models, but I seemed to have missed the boat on picking up a cheap copy.

I always wondered how hard it would be to rewrite the rules to be simple and less random, just for the sake of having a nice looking game to play now and then.

Well I might just make an entirely new set of rules and turn it into a pirate game.

 Dave-c wrote:
So is that a dog at age of sigmar? I have been out of the gw lifestyle for a few years...

I think it would be fair to see in Dreadfleet the microcosm of the GW studio's narrow, dogmatic obsession with 'forging the narrative' by (and only by) removing meaningful choices from gameplay. And of the arrogance that allows them to believe that in a market already crowded with like wargames (age of sail, fantasy skirmish) they can roll out products that really don't function, in the generally understood sense, as wargames, and that the kids will snap them up thanks to the 'Warhammer' brand.

(So yes, I guess you could consider that a pop at Age of Sigmar; I think it a fair one in context. )

I always thought the models look a lot of fun but the rules look too random. If you ticy up the rules, or maybe use a simple Napoleonic or Steampunk game and add some fantastic elements, then you've got some good value on your hands.

I have never played, but I have recently started painting the little ships between projects. They are a lot of fun to paint, and my son likes to take them out and have naval "battles" once in a while, which makes it a worthy investment in my mind.

I picked up a copy very early on (was waaaay into Man o' War) at full retail, ha. The models are, as others note, top notch. The game was fun, but we were drinking at a game convention. It is very random and I can't imagine taking it very seriously. If you're up for a lighthearted romp that's more an "experience" than a game, it can be fairly fun. But don't set your expectations too high.