Battlefleet Gothic Report

Well, I was impressed in spite of myself.

(and it was nice to finally meet Aaron Teske in the flesh,
a rather handsom tall gentleman)

First off, the miniatures are gorgeous!  They were not much
like the the cardboard punch-outs in White Dwarf #225,
they more resembled the concept drawings and ship miniatures
in the article. You can see one in the illustration at
http://www.games-workshop.com/newreleases/battlefleet.html

Like Aaron observed, they were just *made* for drybrushing.
Lots of very deep detail, with raised fretwork.
We figure that given Pudding Workshop's history of pricing,
some people will by the boxed set and throw away the rules,
so they can get a price break on a set of minis.

All the Imperial ships had that Greek trireme nosepiece
( for ramming ) and actually have some minor customization
built in.  The sides of the ships can accept different
panels: broadside turrents, fighter launching bays, etc.

The cruisers were fairly large, I estimate they were
about 3.5 inches long.	What do you think Aaron?

For the game, they had the chaos fleet painted black with
dark red dry-brushing, and the imperial fleet was black
with dark green dry-brushing. 

The actual game is due to come out in Easter, for about
$50-$60.  It will come with 4 imperial ships and 4 chaos
ships.

The gameplay was pretty fast.  With a crowd of 8 novices
who had just heard a quick run-through of the rules,
they managed to play about 3 turns in 30 minutes, and
were playing faster after that as they got the hang of it.

The game had some chrome added to it, but the basic
system is as specified in White Dwarf.
The game has a fleet book with lots of ships, and
rules for Eldar and Orc vessels.
There are rules for fighters, boarding actions,
and teleport attacks.
Eldar ships are flimsy, but their holographic
projectors make them hard to hit. As are their missiles.
Orc vessels are clunky, with slower speed and abyssmal
command control. On the other hand, their weapons
are much more brute force powerful than the others.
On the third hand, since they are not what you'd call
"organized", the force of each volley is random.

There are also rules for space stations and mine fields.

I did like the illustration of hundreds of slaves dragging
a missile into the launch tube.  The missile was about
fifty feet in diameter.

There was a "naval" feel to the game, with a lot of
attempts to "cross the T".  Heading straight at 
an enemy gives the enemy the most favorable chance to
hit you.  This is why Imperial ships have stronger
nose armor.

The naval feel comes from the fact that most weapons
fire to the port and starboard, broadsides as it were.

Aaron asked Andy Chambers (the designer) about Full Thrust.
Andy's main comment was he didn't care for the pre-written
movement orders in FT.	Battlefleet Gothic therefore uses
the old "Player A moves and fires, then Player B moves
and fires".

They played the demos on a huge table, with handfulls of
pebbles representing asteroid shoals, sprinkings of brown
artifical dirt for dust clouds, and a nice planet hemisphere
for a small moon (a 4 inch hemisphere, with large craters
molded in plaster or sculpy, and drybrushed).