Battlefleet Gothic: New Table & Game Report

First up are a few close ups of some celestial bodies which I airbrushed onto my groups new space board.  It's made out of an 8x4 hardboard sheet cut in half.  Spray painted it black, added a bunch of stars and stuff then sealed it with gloss clearcoat.  It does tend to make it reflect the flourescant lights a lot, but it makes the black look so much darker.

First up is a nebula I painted from some images on the internet and it was dubbed by Kevin as the Blue Rose Nebula.

Next up is a warp rift, complete with tendrils reaching out into real space to snatch up any unwary ships.  We have not thought of a name for the rift/storm.

Next is a red and green nebula thing, also unnamed for right now.  I also made a few larger stars which you can see throughout the pictures.

We plan on using this board for Battlefleet Gothic as well as X-Wing.  Right now we're sorta on a BFG binge out of sadness at it's discontinuation.  Here are a few pictures from my first game on the new board.  Kevin has just really got going in painting his ships, he painted a few when we first started but it's mostly been my painted fleet fighting bare plastic ships for a few years now.  It's really nice to play painted and named ships against painted and named ships!

We tend to play with the 2010 FAQ rules but without really using the set fleet lists as we just play for fun.  We still follow the ratios for allowing the Battlecruisers, Battleships, etc. We have a chart of scenarios and we ended up rolling Cruiser Clash.  This means we basically just try and kill the other fleet.  For terrain we got the Mercurial Zone and wound up with Solar Pulse and what you can see on the board.

My List:
Imperial Navy - Battle Group Secondus 
Retribution Class Battleship - Acta Non Verba
Gothic Class Cruiser - Salvation
Tyrant Class Cruiser - Pax Imperator
Lunar Class Cruiser - His Holy Light

Kevin's List:
Chaos Fleet
Repulsive Class Grand Cruiser - Deus Lapsis
Murder Class Cruiser - Furor Impuis
Devastation Class Cruiser - Horror Fiend
Archeron Class Cruiser - Malediction
Infidel Class Frigates - Hate, Malice, &Spite

We set up and I end up with first turn.  We pretty much line up with each other head on, though his escorts are to the side to harry my flank in short order.

After the first turn or 2 we exchange light fire.  I destroy 1 escort as soon as they are in range and others prepare to close and torpedo my side.  Our Capital ships exchange long range lance fire, but the volume is low and the ineffective.

As we close the escorts move in and shoot at my Lunar, they strip a shield and his other fire takes down the other as well as dealing 1 point of damage with no critical result.  Kevin prepares a fighter screen to dull my inevitable torpedo salvo.  His torpedoes end up detonating due to the blast markers.

I close in a half speed.  I take out another frigate and deal some damage to his carrier with weapons before my torpedoes all go through a gap in his screen.  I sacrificed one wave so the other three would be able to get through.  Even still, they do not do much damage. I believe a hit or two on the grand cruiser is done.

Kevin's fleet closes in and tries to envelope me.

His next turn of shooting manages to strip the shields of every one of my vessels.  He also deals a hit to my Gothic, with no crit, as well as a couple of hits on the Retribution  He launched boarding torpedoes at my Retribution but fails to penetrate my Armored Prow.

Up to this point we forgot to roll for a Solar Pulse and so I roll and get the required 6.  Every ship receives a blast marker, meaning all of my ships will have to test for a hit when they move away.  The \ Retribution takes a hit as does the Gothic. I move up slowly again, turning the cruisers to get the enemy vessels in arc.  Acta Non Verba locks on to Deus Lapsis and the other vessels target his carrier.  I end up crippling both of these vessels and put 3 crits on the carrier and 1 on the Repulsive.  At this point he decides to call it.  All of my vessels were still un-crippled and in better position to continue firing.  Adding to this the dice I used were on fire and my hits were great and crits were awesome.  His dice were not with him and he was finding it hard to roll above a 3 all game.

I have to say that this was one of the best turns of shooting I have ever had.  Even though he braced he took enough hits to leave his two most important vessels crippled.  I used my armored prow to max effect and did what IN does, plow straight in, launch torps and deliver broadsides.  He probably should have tried a bit more to force me to keep distance and head on.