Battlefleet Gothic First Impressions

Morning all,

Over the last few weeks, part of the 40k circle of MAWS have attempting to give Battlefleet Gothic a run, as a break from 40k. Heavy tournaments, busy summers and general boredom made most of us take a look at our gaming storage and think "What else could we play?" and one that's stood out for a good 15 months or so is Battlefleet Gothic.

So where to begin... A couple of weeks prior to me getting involved, Angryman and Straken had a few games, read up on the rules and got the hand of it, then I observed and rolled some dice in a game between the two, on the Imperial side.

It seems like a pretty strategic game, moreso than 40k for me, simply due to the way in which the ships have to move. Ships have to constantly be on the move (or pass a LD test) and have to move in order to turn (in most cases). This means you'll need to be planning your attacks way in advance and how to react to enemy manouvres.

At one point on Monday in a 2 v 2 game, we ended up with a swirling, circling ship fight, as no one wanted to sacrifice their firepower in order to re-manouvre. It was a twist that I really enjoyed.

Shooting in BFG is also drastically different to 40k. It retains the target priority system, requiring an LD test to fire at further away enemies, but ththe ranges of weapons are a lot shorter than in 40k. A LOT shorter... as we found out on Monday when misjudging weapon distance.

You're also allowed to fire different weapon arcs at different targets, meaning a ship can sacrifice volume of fire, in an effort to attack more ships. One situation on Monday had a Chaos cruiser wedged between 3 Imperial ships and fired each system at each of the ships, managing to weaken some for the other Chaos ships to fire.

We've yet to try some things like boarding, planets and celestial phenomena, but overall I'm really enjoying it.

Continuing playing at the minute is key, as I'm trying to build up an Ork Fleet to combine this into our 40k campaigns. At the moment I've been cannibalising Ork vehicle and weapon bits in order to make crude ships. I just need to make a start on the 4 Cruisers I need to actually play a Cruisher Clash scenario on Monday.

So I'd say to those who are interested, the premise of BFG is pretty easy to learn and understand and I've managed to read the core rules, take them in and understand them pretty quickly (with help from others). All the rules are free to get hold of, fleets can be made quite cheaply (if you're not a mega purist) and it's a quick enjoyable game.

If anyone's got any thoughts on BFG, feel free to drop a comment - my aim over the weekend is to get my Ships painted up and posted on here.

Peace,
SB