Battlefleet Gothic
Discontinued as of 2013 along with most other Specialist Games. Fuck you, Games Workshop.
Battlefleet Gothic is a little-played specialist game made by Games Workshop, where players control fleets of spacecraft.
It is set in the Gothic Sector, bordering the Eye of Terror, where Abaddon has launched his Twelfth Black Crusade in order to obtain the Imperium's Blackstone Fortresses.
Some people still think that BFG is one of the best or at least most fun games that GW have ever made and anyone who says otherwise is likely to get a swift kick in the dick. Particularly assuming you just ignore the Necrons, and everyone playing is faintly competent then much fun can be had by all. Doubly so when the optional limit on assault boats is used so that escorts are worth a fuck. Any game that encourages you to plow through the middle of the enemy so that you can shoot all your guns at once has got to be pretty good. Also, the flavor of the game is pretty fucking awesome actually, what with the various planet demolishing shenanigans and just plain gorgeous rule book.
Also, in the land of 30cm range weapon batteries, the man with an unerring ability to guesstimate his Nova Cannons on target is king. Putting the 1cm hole onto a 3cm ship base at 100cm range and straight fucking up a cruiser is just beautiful. Although that takes a fair amount of skill. Alternatively this can be achieved by building your own board and making apparently random stars bigger and brighter and knowing the distances between them. In theory this is faggotry, but since not a single fucking person ever built BFG tables except the people that were crazy into it, this counts as homefield advantage, or at least is near on impossible to spot and as such is not really cheating.
In general it is outclassed by Battlefleet Neoclassical due to its purposeful use of rich ornamentation, elegant arcades,use of isolated decorative elements and superior shielding and medium range arsenal. When compared to the geometric designs, smooth lines, sparing use of ornamentation and forward acceleration and missile and lance arsenal of Battlefleet Art Deco it is clearly outmatched. Can go toe to toe with Battlefleet Ultra Modernist despite it's use of vast fleets of cheaply mass produced fighters and typically can best Battlefleet Romanesque in a straight up shooting fight unless severely outnumbered.
Factions
Of course this wouldn't be a GW game without the Imperium, their ships look like giant fucking Vaticans with warp drives and cannons. its rumored that in the lower decks there's like...villages of lost workers, but nobody gives a shit. According to the rule book they have massive fucking crews and apparently zero actual technology to move shells weighing hundreds of tons into gun breeches and such. The book shows slaves running on massive treadmills to move them about. Wouldn't your navy work better if you used like... machines or something ? If only we had a bunch of crazy ass priests who are fucking insane about technology on board to sort that shit out for us!. This probably had something to do with with the fluff being form 3rd edition which GrimDark levels were at their highest to the point of being retarded.
In general, the imperials are good at torpedoes and nova cannons and other stuff. They also have 6+ front armor, which isn't that big of a deal, but its nice y'know.
Alternate view
The above statement fails to point out that the Imperial Navy is the most diverse fleet in the game, comprising of no less then six fleet lists and sports more cruiser classes in every subtype, then any other fleet in the game. You can take space marine or some chaos ships as reserves and sport up to four re rolls (more then any other fleet). Nova cannons are so powerful that it is considered poor gamesmanship to take more then three in a tournament list (1500 points) and most of your basic cruisers can be upgraded to carry them. The six up prow is a huge help since most hurt comes from the front, and it lets you take power rams, a nice but situational point filler. Your average range is 30 cm, and only two basic cruisers can push to 45. Your 60 cm weapons are few and far between.
With all the options in the world, the biggest reason why the navy fails to win many matches is that it is predictable by nature and everyone and their pet otaku has a fleet. Easy to play, a real pain to master.
Chaos
Pretty similar to the Imperial ships, but emo'd up. Also a bit faster than their corpse-god worshiping counterparts. Also have the largest selection of ships, making them superior to any other fleet (except sometimes Necrons) if correctly built. For unknown reasons the Chaos ships look totally different from the imperial ones, not just Imperial ones with tentacles and spikes and crap. While this obviously helps people tell the ships apart, the explanation of 'Oh they are just old ships' doesn't stand up to more than 8 seconds of scrutiny. They later made some ship that was supposed to be the 'old' imperial ships that were bastard chimeras of both and they were ugly as all fuck and somewhat terrible, which begs the question why the Chaos fleet is actually any good.
Chaos is good at having MOAR DAKKA on their ships, and using their speed to rock balls.
Better view
The above summary can be best disgnosed as acute butthurt when his favorite navy fleet was kicked over by a chaos player six years younger then he was. Chaos sports the second most diverse fleet in the game with the second highest in complexity and ship count. While they lack the strict durability and torpedo numbers of the Navy, they make up for it with absurd firepower, assault boats, better speed and overall better ships for fewer points. As a result they have some of the best ships, point per point, in the game. Your average range is 45 cm with lots of 60 cm options, and a few 30 cm options.
Where chaos suffers is their lack of durability to incoming fire and ordnance. You quickly start missing that six up armored prow after you watch your prized repulsive grand cruiser get erased by a lucky round of fire.
P.s. the imperial grand cruiser design is awesome and the rules boss
Necron
They have like 5 different kinds of ship and according to fluff are fucking nasty to fight. Also the most powerful fleet, second only to chaos (and only if the Chaos player very wisely chooses his ships, you on the other hand, have light cruisers that can blow apart battleships without a scratch), due to having the only armor saves of the entire game (no joke here) and a shitton of close-ranged weapons, thus being unkillable. The drawback is that if you lose even only one ship, your opponent will gain way more victory points than said ship's point cost, something that can cost you victory if you are careless. There is no defeating a Necron fleet that outnumbers you, not in the fluff, not in the game. They remain OP.
Eldar
Their ships look a lot like their vehicles- no surprise Eldar can't be original. With only about six ships in the original rulebook, they were somewhat gimped from the get-go. They have shiney fields of awesome to protect them from lances and the like, but gun batteries fuck them up so hard its retarded, particularly since they HAVE to dip into battery range to fire. Also, the cruisers were so frail and lacking firepower that they were worthless, so they were left with a fleet of escorts and while they were pretty fucking awesome for what they were, they just melted when they got sneezed at, the Eldar were pretty fail except in specific scenarios that let them abuse the fuck out of their movement rules. If the sunside edge is towards the enemy, you are fucked and there's just no reason to play.
Tau
The Tau have two choices of fleet. Their initial fleets were composed of refitted modular merchant ships and scout vessels. After getting their shit wrecked, they got together and finally built combat ships. Players have the option of the modular, adjustable, Merchant fleet (boxy) or the efficient, effective Combat fleet (sleek). Names of all ships can't be pronounced.
Orks
Look like the most fun to paint, their ships are ramshackle at best and if you used gum instead of super glue to make them it would probably be more thematically accurate... and gross. In theory their random strength heavy batteries are pretty cool, it turns out that random translates alternately into 'pathetically ineffective whenever its important' and 'did exactly what any other weapon system would have done' inside the game. However, fleets of ram ships are pretty awesome, because nothing is funnier than ramming the shit out of people.
Dark Eldar
Like the Eldar up to eleven. Except you have no battleships. You are pretty much the epitome of glass cannon in this game, you hit hard and move ridiculously fast but if the enemy gets so much as a mean look your way you spontaneously combust. You have exactly two ship choices (a cruiser and an escort), rarely a good sign, although their ships have customiseable weapon loadouts (unlike most other factions, where each ship has fixed armaments).
Tyranids
Extremely deadly at close range, all ships besides the Hive ship are expendable in the extreme, reasonably durable, ridiculously deadly at boarding. But oh man are you fucked if your hive ship bites the dust.
Space Marines
Essentially the imperium's mighty glaciers. Just like their ground pounders, except apparently the chapter serfs defend the ship and operate everything. They have armor like necrons on the two ships that aren't just imperial escorts with a new paint job and those same ships also have bombardment cannons that are good, but thankfully aren't common enough to be broken. They excel at boarding and going toe-to-toe with the enemy, like everywhere else.
Adeptus Mechanicus
Pretty much the Imperial ace custom squadron. Operates Imperial Navy vessels with a shiny paint job and upgrades (offset by higher prices and/or downgrades). Apparently, they use servitor slaves instead of human slaves, and occasionally use auto-loaders. Progress! Get an Explorator ship, which is like an Imperial Capitol ship but shinier and goofier.
Homebrew rules
As mentioned above one of the best ways to make the game more enjoyable is to limit the amount of fighters, bombers, and assault boats. This prevents the game from devolving into something resembling the sky over Germany circa 1945. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
External Links
- Battlefleet Gothic on Games Workshop's website -- look under "resources" for the rules.
- Battlefleet Gothic 2010 Compendium, a set of updates made by a bunch of community members who worked with Specialist Games before GW axed it. It includes updates and FAQs to the main rules and all official fleets, plus new fleets for the Imperium (including the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Inquisition, and Rogue Traders), the forces of Chaos, the Eldar, the Orks, and the Tau.
- Battlefleet Gothic: Revised, an effort to rebuild BFG from the ground up. The original coordinator retired from the project in July 2012 (which is a shame, since he had a slick dev blog), but development is continuing actively at the Specialist-Arms forum.