BFG:R initial impressions and questions

[Frozencore]

My friends and I have recently been getting back into BFG, and we happened to stumble across the special rules for BFG:Revised. After a brief read-through things more or less seem the same with a few changes here and there. Now I don't know if there is anything newer than version 1.1, or if a 1.2 is in the works, but it is good to know that such a great game is getting some love.  That being said there are some errors in the PDF that should be fixed (some more important than others) for example page #24 and #25 are out of order, and sometimes the punctuation and sentences in places don't entirely make sense.

Page 24 and 25 bring me to my second point, which is the change to fighters which gives them all a 4+ save. I have read through the section in the forum where a bunch of you are discussing the merits/flaws of that system twice over, and it still doesn't make sense. Seeing as how our gaming group has an Imperial Fleet, a Chaos Fleet, an Eldar Fleet, and a Space Marine fleet, it might be understandable that over half of our group has an issue with this change. Giving everyone a 4+ save significantly devalues the Eldar fighters and SM Thunderhawks, which all have smaller launch bays to compensate.  IN and Chaos have much easier access to cheap carriers which have greater capacity, making spamming "resilient" fighters rather obnoxious. It was often sighted in the other thread that fighters aren't good enough in an offensive bomber wave, but it really doesn't seem to me that that is their role. Isn't the point of a fighter that it gives an important defense against enemy ordinance? Shouldn't releasing a bomber wave or a fighter wave be a tactical choice depending on the situation and the fleet you are facing? Would adding the rule for fighters helping in the bombing run also make them more desirable in a mixed wave, but still make them less annoyingly powerful and without devaluing the smaller launch bays of Eldar or Space Marines?

I am sure there are more changes and subtle nuances in the rules for BFG:R than what we have found so far, and that future readings will only produce more questions and concerns.

With that in mind that you all for your time and for your effort, in reading my post and answering my current and future questions.

[horizon]

Hi Frozencore,

welcome to the forum.

First of all: BFG-Revised is fanmade and in no way official.

RcGothic & Plaxor have done most work on it but a lot of people contributed to how rules / points /stats / etc ended up being.
Plaxor should be doing a final version but haven't seen him in a while.

iirc resilient fighters from the Eldar gained a 3+ save instead of a 4+ save.


And as it is I should mention on what is official development for Battlefleet Gothic.
Check out the pdf's in this thread:
http://tinyurl.com/23nul8q

It contains the FAQ2010 & several fleet specific pdf's. These are all made by the BFG rules committee/high admirality in pretty close collaboration with the community.
Currently these files are pending for official Games Workshop approval.

As you know (I think) you can download all pdf's at the games workshop site from the rulebook, armada and some others.

From the link I gave FAQ2010 is the most important (even though I won't use it 100% as I dislike certain aspects). From the fleets I advice to give a read to Space Marines, Rogue Traers & Tau most importantly. The others are okay though, especially for backgrounds and all.

[Frozencore]

Thank you for your extremely fast reply. We have found all those resources that you have linked, we just were searching for an unofficial community-made ruleset, as sometimes they are better or have interesting tweaks that make sense.

Trudging through the base rules and all the fleet lists going back and forth between BFG:R and the GW official is slow work, though.  Is there any sort of compiled list of changes and the reasoning behind them? It would be extremely helpful if there was, and if there isn't perhaps one should be made/stickied.

I have noticed that in some "books" they list universal special rules which don't appear in the 1.1 base rules, which is troublesome.

I hope I don't come off as nitpicking, perhaps as someone just coming from the outside of the forum I have a different view of the rules than the rest of you, because I am able to find things that everyone here already knows and takes for granted.

On the specifics of the resilient fighters; do SMs also get a 3+ save, and is the 3+ for the Eldar/SM ordinance compared to the 4+ for the cheaper price of others working out for those of you who use it? Our chaos fleet (with its many cheap launch bays) is already pretty impervious to enemy ordinance, we are all afraid that having the fighters live 50% longer would cause issues.

[horizon]

Welllllllllll......
102 pages of reading for you, the BFG:R development thread:
http://sg.tacticalwargames.net/forum/index.php?topic=2007.0

edit:
In effect I must say that in BFG:R you could/can seperate game rules and ship points+stats.
It is possible to use the ships as in BFG:R in the official rule set.

The Eldar rules in BFG:R are an adaption of the Eldar MMS v1.9 rules. Got some minor changes I have no real troubles with.

[RCgothic]

4+ Save fighters aren't going to make the final cut, so don't worry on that point.

The idea stemmed from the fact that having fighters in a wave is pretty pointless unless you want to use fighter suppression of turrets, which is itself a bad mechanic. Making all fighters do more damage (whilst dropping turret suppression), would encourage their use in an escort role for mixed waves. But there was significant community objection, so it's been dropped.

[Plaxor]

It's good to see my rules in use, even in their incomplete state!

RC is correct, the 'resilient fighter' idea won't make it into the final version. It was an idea to make combined waves more appealing.

Horizon does have  a point about the fleet lists/rules. You can very well separate the fleet rules from the core rules, which I know some people prefer. Vessels in BFG:R are quite balanced for points, however you might have some issues with rules, but common sense should get you through it.

BFG:R is supposed to ultimately be more streamlined than the current rules, with easier to find information and more appropriately balanced rules. Additionally more 'noob' friendly. As far as I can tell now it won't be very far from official rules, so there isn't much to worry about. We wanted to change ordnance significantly, but a system couldn't be found, so they will look almost identical. All other fixes are generally minor, wording/mechanic fixes. USRs was a necessity, as there are a large number of things that work identically, but lack similar wording. This system worked well in 40k, so we decided to adopt it.

Feel free to PM me about any questions you may have!