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im very seriously considering starting an imperial BFG fleet and i have some questions.

1. where does one find stats for tau and tyranid vessels?
2. can one do a combined space marines and Imperial Navy fleet?
3. if you land a boarding party do you keep getting hit-and-run in later turns?
4. if a ship intercepts the line between the broadside and prow firing arcs can you fire both weapons at it?
5. once you fire torpedoes do also you move them the full 30 cm in the same ordinance phase?
6. what markers for torpedoes does one use?
7. how large are squadrons of fighters/bombers/attack boats?
8. what templates doe one use?


now i have tactics questions.

1. im thinking its better to fire a broadside weapon first to take out the enemy's voids before hitting them with lances. am i right?
2. what are good tactics that people have used?

i would appreciate help as i flail about in my noob-ness. thanks

The Angry Commissar wrote:im very seriously considering starting an imperial BFG fleet and i have some questions.

OK


1. where does one find stats for tau and tyranid vessels?

In the Armada book or here:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=cat1290343&aId=4300022&_requestid=1433136

2. can one do a combined space marines and Imperial Navy fleet?

Yes, but not every ship is in the combined list.

3. if you land a boarding party do you keep getting hit-and-run in later turns?

Yes you do. hit and run attacks are small actions normally teleporting deep into an opponents hull.

4. if a ship intercepts the line between the broadside and prow firing arcs can you fire both weapons at it?

You choose the most appropriate arc; if dead on you get to choose either, but not both.

5. once you fire torpedoes do also you move them the full 30 cm in the same ordinance phase?

Yes torpedoes move when fired.

6. what markers for torpedoes does one use?

Markers are provided in ther boxset, and possibly by download. Use an individual torpedo marker per torpedo in a line. The markers themselves have on two three or six torps on them. mixc and match markers to fit the salvo.

7. how large are squadrons of fighters/bombers/attack boats?

as large as you want them to be up to the combined size of the launchers on the ship or squadron. You need to squadron carriers to combine up a large squadron of attack craft. Remember this might be defeatable with one fighter or weapons hit. only do this if you can guarantee the attack craft can reach the target when launched. If you squadron carriers you are not rerquired to squadron their attack craft, its optional.

8. what templates doe one use?

All templates required are in the boxset. you need this for an imperial fleet anyway.

The Angry Commissar wrote:now i have tactics questions.

1. im thinking its better to fire a broadside weapon first to take out the enemy's voids before hitting them with lances. am i right?

Yes, because after you hit the target there will be blast markers which cause a column shift. So ideally fire all your weapons batteries you want to fire in one salvo so no column shift applies. Lances ignore blast markerrs and thus can be safely fired afterwards without losing effectiveness.

2. what are good tactics that people have used?


There is a lot to go on, some basic tips:

Tactics in BFG are all about leaning the curve of odds in your direction. For me the best general tactic is 'choose maneouver by forward planning, choose fire selection by immediate opportunity'. Have a long think about what that means.

More specifically look carefully at your special orders as each has a tradeoff and a time to be used, use them or force the opponent to use them to your psychological advantage.

Beware of drifting/burning hulks, detonations are nasty. I have seen whole fleets gutted from a chain reaction of blowing hulks. Try to set off hulks when advantageous to do so, you can blow up the hulks of your own lost ships. Read the comic in the boxset for inspiration on the effectiveness of this.

wow that link you gave me was a gold mine. thanks a ton. ordinance phase makes so much more sense to me now. appreciated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
o btw, ive found the segmentum obscurus list (this is what im using for my fleet) but do you know if there is one for segmentum tempestus? my buddy wants one for his fleet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ps.
so it makes slightly more sense to have smaller squadrons of fighters and bigger ones of bombers and assault boats?

The Angry Commissar wrote:
so it makes slightly more sense to have smaller squadrons of fighters and bigger ones of bombers and assault boats?

An actual wave (wave is the term you're looking for, squadrons are actually individual counters) of fighters is largely useless as their job is to intercept other ordinance markers.

The wave is simply used for defense against turrets.

If you throw ALL of your bombers in a single huge wave (by squadroning carriers) the great thing about it is that a target ship's turrets will only fire at your wave a single time. Turrets fire at each wave of either 'craft or torpedoes (you have to pick) that come in to attack ...by combining all ordinance into a single wave, they get one shot.

The bad news is that if the wave is stopped somehow...by a single blast marker or a lance targetted at them...you lose the entire wave. Thats the trade off.

Hey Orlanth would you mind clarifying your answer to Q3, as i understood it, when you land a boarding party you got a single hit and run in the turn landed, not in sucessive turns after that, otherwise assault boats and thunderhawks would be devestating. (but I could be completely misinterpreting the question/your answer)

Sirius42 wrote:Hey Orlanth would you mind clarifying your answer to Q3, as i understood it, when you land a boarding party you got a single hit and run in the turn landed, not in sucessive turns after that, otherwise assault boats and thunderhawks would be devestating. (but I could be completely misinterpreting the question/your answer)

The question was unclear.


3. if you land a boarding party do you keep getting hit-and-run in later turns?

Yes you do. hit and run attacks are small actions normally teleporting deep into an opponents hull.


Clarified to cover just about everything:.

If you make a boarding action you get to resolve one boarding attack as shown on page 34 of the rulebook.

Boarding actions are not hit-and-run attacks. See page 35.

Boarding an enemy vessel doesnt use up your boarding troops, so you can hit and run on the same or subsequent turns. Normally you would do so, the only time you dont hit and run while boarding is if you board a vessel with its shields up, which you can do or if the target is larger. Boarding troops use gangways, small craft or hull to hull contact to transfer crew to attack the other vessel. Ship to ship hit-and-run attacks are far more select and small scale and use teleporters (as Star Trek).

Necrons have special Portals dedicated for making hit-and-run attacks and are not tied to many of the restrictions for other races.

Hit-and-run atacks by attack craft and boarding torpedoes are also not restricted in target selection.

new questions.

1. if one fires torpedoes do they travel straight line forward from the ship until they go off the board? if they cant change direction all the enemy would have to do is dodge them. so pointless...

2. how big is the board you play on?

1) torps are placed in the entire 90* Front arc. But they cannot turn once fired. Yes, at long ranges easily to be dodged. But they can be effective area denial when in masses. They are also good close range shot gun weapons.

2) 120cm x 180cm

BFG is as much a game of manouver as it is of combat.

Due to momentum and such most ships in the game have predictable paths of travel, so you can determine where a certain enemy vessel might be in 2-3 turns time (this would give you an 'area of possible location').

Torpedo launches can take advantage of this, either by being in the right place at the right time (by planning ahead the moves of ships and torpedoes), but like horizon already said, they can force an opponent to change his course (making it even easier to predict where he'll end up) or eat a spread of torpedoes instead.

effectively torpedos are guns with a range of just over 30 that use different rules. The only effective way to long range fire with torpedoes is to shoot hulks and defences or to havwe a line of torpedo firing ships, normally imperial cruisers and make a wall of torpedoes so large the enemy has nowhere to hide.

In both cases you can still deal with torpedoes easily with fighters or your own torpedoes.


Boarding torpedoes are something else though. A swarm of Infidels at the rear can throw out pairs of boarding torpedoes, every turn, everywhere. Unlike normal torps they can turn, while they cause hit and run attacks instead of damage they are only slightly less deadly to escorts.

Might I suggest this site:

www.portmaw.com

This is an awesome resource for BFG players both beginners and veterans.

how does one know the strength of a wave of fighters or bombers?

The Angry Commissar wrote:how does one know the strength of a wave of fighters or bombers?

A wave consists of the number of squadrons of fighters/bombers the player decides to launch, which is limited to 1 per launch bay on the ship. Each squadron is represented by a single marker. Note that it is 1 fighter or bomber squadron per bay, not one of each.

i must not be getting something. if thats the case why wouldnt someone just launch 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 bombers so that turrets cant do anything?

How would you do that...

See: you may only launch as many fighters or bombers (or assault boats) as there launch bays available in your fleet per turn or have active in the game at any point.

So for example: if you only have 1 Dictator with 4 launch bays you may never have more then 4 attack craft markers in play at any point.

With 2 Dictators that would be 8.

ooooooooooooh that makes MUCH more sense. thanks

The Angry Commissar wrote:i must not be getting something. if thats the case why wouldnt someone just launch 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 bombers so that turrets cant do anything?

Besides all that can be negated with one fighter.

What? No.

1 fighter marker can take out 1 torp wave (marker), be it strenght 1 or strenght 10000.

1 fighter marker can take out 1 bomber/a-boat marker. So 1 fighter vs 4 bomber marker wave means that 3 bomber markers move on.

Wow, I'm finding this very interesting.

Quit making this game sound more interesting...I'm broke enough as it is...

CrashUSAR wrote:Quit making this game sound more interesting...I'm broke enough as it is...

lol do what i did. download all the books and stuff from GW for free. for ships i just painted 40k bases different colors. didnt spend a dime and had a lot of fun