Battlefleet Gothic (game)

Games Portal Battlefleet Gothic

This article is about the Battlefleet Gothic (game). For other uses of Battlefleet Gothic, see Battlefleet Gothic (disambiguation).

Battlefleet Gothic
Box art
Manufacturer	Games Workshop
Designer	Andy Chambers, Gavin Thorpe & Jervis Johnson
Preceded by	Space Fleet
Released	1999

Battlefleet Gothic is a miniature game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It deals with the space combat aspect of the universe, and particularly the events surrounding the Gothic War. The game background is explored in the novels Execution Hour and Shadow Point. Battlefleet Gothic is part of Games Workshop's Specialist Games range and has its own line of miniatures.

The Game

There are four phases in a turn:

• Movement - This is when the players move their ships. Ships also use "Special Orders" during this phase, which allows them to move faster, reload, or other special abilities.
• Shooting - This is when the players fire their weapons.
• Ordnance - This is when the players operate their ordnance. Ordnance is used separately from the ships and is a category that ranges from landing parties to torpedoes.
• End - This is when damage is applied to ships or they can repair themselves.

Fleets

Battlefleet Gothic (game) Logo

• Imperial Navy
• Space Marines
• Chaos — Abaddon and his Dark Crusade
• Ork — Waaagh! fleets and pirates
• Craftworld Eldar — Craftworld fleets and pirates
• Dark Eldar — Raiders and pirates
• Tau Empire — Tau, Demiurg, Nicassar, and Kroot
• Tyranid — Hive Fleets
• Necron — Raiders

Weapons

Ships use three types of weapons for combat. They are Batteries, Lances, and Ordnance.

• Weapon Batteries - Various weapons that fire mass attacks at enemies.
• Lance Weapons - Focused attacks used for precision strikes against enemy ships.
• Ordnance - Direct attack against ships, normally torpedoes or landing ships that are send to make physical contact with enemy ships.

Expansions

Battlefleet Gothic is a combination of the old Space Fleet game and the Epic gaming system. There is a box set available for purchase and the rules can be downloaded from the Games Workshop website.

The box set for the Battlefleet Gothic game contains:

• Battlefleet Gothic Rulebook
• Getting Started guide and comic strip
• 4 Imperial Cruisers
• 4 Chaos Cruisers
• Fleet Registry roster pad
• 2 plastic range rulers
• 100 game counters
• 2 reference sheets

There are also updates called "Annuals" that are released every year and include supplemental rules, fleet sheets, and other information to help create variations in the game.

Armada

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada

The "Annual update" for Battlefleet Gothic for 2003 was Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. This book introduced new fleets for the Imperial Navy, which are Armageddon, Bastion, Cadia, and the Reserve of Segmentum Obscurus.

This book also collects the various rules on the many different fleets so that gamers could officially use them:

• Battlefleet Armageddon
• Imperial Bastion Fleet List
• Battlefleet Cadia
• Segmentum Obsuras Reserve Fleet List
• Codex Astartes Space marine Fleet List
• Chaos 13th Black Crusade Fleet List
• Later Gothic War Eldar Corsairs Fleet List
• Dark Eldar Pirates Fleet List
• Ghazghkull's Ork Waaagh! Fleet List
• Necron Harvest Fleet List
• Tyranid Vanguard Fleet List
• Tyranid Hive Fleet List
• Tau Kor'Vattra Fleet List

There are two new campaigns introduced in Armada:

• The Third Armageddon War
• Abaddon's Thirteenth Black Crusade

Related articles

• Space Fleet (game) (1991) — An out-of-print game which is the predecessor of Battlefleet Gothic.
• Battlefleet Gothic: Invasion — An out-of-print booklet with rules to combine Battlefleet Gothic and Warhammer 40,000.
• Warp Storm (rulebook) — An out-of-print compilation of game related White Dwarf magazine articles.

Sources

• Official Battlefleet Gothic gaming site