Dorky Goodness

Well, now that Armada is out there really isn’t any need for me to maintain the Dark Eldar Fleet rules on my site. So they’re gone.

It’s awfully difficult to find the Dark Eldar Fleet rules for Battle Fleet Gothic on the GW website. So, for your ease of use I’ve put ‘em up on Dorky Goodness here.

By no means is this a threat to the copyright of GW’s Intellectual Property. I just wanted to make sure the file is available to all my Dark Eldar cohorts.

I received a blister of assault craft as my prize for writing the Precious Cargo scenario. Included with the metal sprues are a number of Epic 40K bases to affix the fighter or bomber squadrons.

Now the problem with this is that the Epic bases are long strips. Each fighter sits side by side in a line. Well, the markers provided by the game are cardboard squares. So what I’ve done is affixed my assault craft to WFB bases in order to keep ‘em the same size as the markers provided by the game. Quite ingenious, if I do say so myself.

Pictures to come.

When I played my first game of BFG, the guy I was playing with was operating on the principle that a cruiser needed to move one half it’s move in order to turn. While that’s a fairly simple rule, it’s also incorrect. Cruisers need to move at least 10cm before making a turn and battleships need to move at least 15cm.

Now that brings up an interesting possibility.
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I had the opportunity to be a dork on Sunday and made a pilgramage to Danger Planet. I was invited to try a game of Battle Fleet Gothic and so I did.

What a fun game! The mechanics are slick. The game play is a blast. It’s really easy to get into the spirit of the game while manuevering little warships around the table.

A couple of things jump out at me as far as tactics.

1. Escorts are considerably cooler than I thought. I shot the hell out of my opponent’s escorts but he left mine alone and so one of ‘em was able to sit and fire torpedoes into the engine tubes of the Imperial scum each turn. Tons of fun.

2. Launching fighters is only really useful when the enemy is at a reasonable range. I was using them as a screen to protect my ships from ordinance and to wipe out his fighters so that my torpedoes and bombers could make attack runs unimpeded. Once distance between fleets shrinks, fighters aren’t much use, unless you completely surround a vessel.

3. It’s odd, but I found that ships took a few turns of fire without too much damage and then all of a sudden they just collapse. Part of that was probably due to the fact that our ships closed the distance quickly and issued some serious broadsiding (well, I did at any rate. For some reason my opponent didn’t capitalize on the proximity of the bulk of my fleet).

4. I had ZERO luck with bombers. I think they’re slick, but I just couldn’t do ANY damage.

5. Do not let yourself be rammed. I had a completely unharmed ship become crippled by a last ditch ramming attempt by one of my opponent’s crippled cruisers. He scored four hits against me and I didn’t do anything to him. It was ugly. He then put two lance hits into my aft and that pretty much put the nails in the coffin for that ship. He didn’t destroy it, but it was badly mauled.

6. Arcs of fire determine your success! Now I hadn’t ever played before and so I was kind of unfamiliar with the ships I was using so at times I’d maneuver in ways that didn’t allow me to bring some of my weapons to bear. That was ugly. However, it did teach me a valuable lesson that I capitalized on for my escorts. Drop behind an enemy capital ship and just start pounding ‘em. Not a single cruiser I was up against had aft firing weapons so as long as I hung out behind ‘em I was able to fire with impunity. I imagine a Dark Eldar fleet would be pretty good at this since there’s not a lot of ships that can out manuever a Dark Eldar ship.

The end result of the battle was I had destroyed his carrier early. His four escorts were destroyed. He disengaged one of his cruisers and his last cruiser was chased into an asteroid field and the damage from that caused a plasma drive overload.

I had lost two of my Infidel escorts. All three of my cruisers were crippled - but still combat worthy. My last Infidel probably would have been destroyed, but the Imperials were routed and couldn’t hurt me at all.

Oh, the short version: I was victorious.

Well, more accurately, I won the blister!

The results of the Danger Planet Battle Fleet Gothic Scenario Contest is in and I won first prize with my “Precious Cargo” scenario.

The caveat? I was the only entry. Ah well, while I may not have crushed my competition I still score a $10 blister out of the deal.

My understanding is that the BFG club will be playing the scenario next Sunday. I’d be interested in seeing how it goes.

This is going to be one of my entries in a Battle Fleet Gothic scenario contest. I’m pretty happy with it. Any feedback would be mucho appreciated.

Download file

Here’s my fleet list (if I ever get around to making it) for the Kabal of the Malebranche

Theophile Exael
Torture Class Cruiser w/Mimic Engines and Launch Bays (290 pnts)

Orus Focalor
Torture Class Cruiser w/Mimic Engines and Phantom Lance (270 pnts)

Gadreel Mansemat Malkira
Escort Squadron #1 w/Mimic Engines and Impaler Assault Module (210 pnts)

Maresin Ezuarte
Escort Squadron #2 w/Mimic Engines and Phantom Lance (210 pnts)

Dread Archon Ardat Lile 100 pnts

Total 1080

But I do it anyway.
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What a silly idea! A BFG fleet based upon Battle Star Galactica.