Some Questions

[Tellos]

Hello All,

I always likes BFG and have some fleets lying around, which are Imperial Navy/Space Marines, Chaos and Tau.
I want to take the plunge in playing the game, and have a few questions.
1. What do you use to play on? Did you make it yourself or did you order it, and this goes for terrain as wel.
    Some advice in this department would also be nice.
2. How long does the average game takes to play per x number of points?
3. I looked around this forum for a few days and did see something of BFG Revised, is this official new rules
    or player created new rules and are they better then the rules in the book?

Any other advice you can give me would be nice, maybe some things i forgot to ask but are essential, that kind of stuff.

Cheers

[Dan_Lee]

1) Most people use a 6" by 4" gaming table painted black with stars (etc) if they can, but a table with a black cloth could do to begin with. BFg can benefit from larger tables though, but they get harder to store. I think most people make their own. For terrain, I downloaded pictures from the NASA website and printed them out in colour, then laminated them.

2) Depends on the fleets used, as some use more time consuming tactics, but a 750 or 1000 point game can usually be played in 2-3 hours.

3) BFG Revised is player created. The "official" rules haven't been touched by GW in a long time, and probably are never going to be touched again. Other people are better qualified to talk to you about BFG Revised than I am.

[CyberShadow]

I have a large (8' x 4') piece of black felt, and some very cheap picnic tablecloth clips (basically plastic, spring loaded clamps for keeping a cloth on the table in the wind). I got my felt piece for under £20 and it just rolls up and stores away. Table cloth clips were in the £1 shop.

[frogbear]

I do Full Thrust and use black flannel tracksuit/pygama material over a table. Heavy enough not to move, easy to fold and store and you can paint on it (or paint flick if you want) and it is all very cheap.

Depends how anal you want to get really.

[Bessemer]

Terrain-wise, Dust clouds are very easy and cheap to make. Cotton wool is the classic method, just lay it on the table, viola!
 My own method was to cut out some cardboard clouds and roughcoat them, then it's just a case of dry brushing to whatever is your fancy.

@Dan_Lee- never even considered that!

Asteroids can be bodged out of polystyrene and stuck to bases, or even just bits of cardboard cut to whatever shape. Hell, for years I just had pieces of A4 torn to size with dust on one side and asteroids on the other. If your just getting started this would be the best way to go

For warp rifts, I managed to get hold of some 3rd ed 40K vortex grenade markers. If you play 40K you could easily use blast markers for these.

As for the board, what size are your fleets? The classic 6x4 will suit any game, but if your fleets are small (around 750) a 4x4 may be more manageable, but does skew some fleets tactics (hurts Chaos and Eldar but favours Imperials and Orks).

Hope these nuggets help

[Tellos]

Thanks for the replies. So basically the same size as a 40k battlefield. Like the idea of printing stuff out for the table to begin with, sort of instant terrain.

Cheers

[ThaneAquilon]

The BRG:R that's being worked on in the forums is not official, and not quite complete, but once it is we're hoping it'll be a more balanced version of the rules. There will be minor changes, some fixes (Tyrant!) and some relatively large changes (Looks like 2 hit escorts might make it in). The scope right now is just Fleet lists though, so you'll still use 2010 FAQ and BBB for rules. Some of us are hoping to flesh it our to be more than just fleets,  though.

Right now my opponent and I use the kitchen table, while a board is pending. We've got lots of other stuff on the go that gets in the way, unfortunately.

Hope this helped!

[Tellos]

I'll use my kitchen table for all games i play, since its 2m long you can make a large enough playing field for almost any game.

I thought the specialist games were all fairly balanced rules wise? At least that's what i keep hearing.

Anyhow good luck with the BFG:R rules making.

Cheers

[ThaneAquilon]

Imperial Navy and Chaos are well balanced, I believe, though they each have ships that needed work (Styx's cost, Tyrant etc) The other fleets though, are not really. Orks are just poorly thought through, Eldar in the BBB win if there is terrain, and lose if there isn't (Check out MSM elday, in the OP of the main BFG:R thread by AfterimageDan, it's alt rules that balance the fleet way more. credit to Horizon and Sigoroth) Space Marine are just too small a fleet, so they're more fringe, and the strike cruiser have been given way more options since inception now, I believe. Dark Eldar needed a lot of work too, with only too ships. Tau had only 1 real fleet option (AC spam) when they were initially created. The list goes on. Tyranids, they're just broken (Not the powerful broken) with several iterations of their rules to try to fix them. It's possible to have good games with the fleets, and the imbalance isn't ALWAYS horrific, but there are a couple glaring ones here and there (Eldar MMS in particular strikes me, as I play Eldar).

Having said that, it's not as imbalanced as 40k, I believe. You have no 3rd and 4th edition codecies playing off against 6th edition anything.

[Tellos]

We went actually back to 3rd edition codices with 4th edition rules, as we hated the power kreep and the fact no edition after 3rd had all codices.

That aside are the fleet lists found here on the forum better balanced then in the rulebooks? I looked at the imperial and chaos fleets and there are some point/stat changes, as well as some extra ships for chaos.

Cheers

[Dan_Lee]

I wouldn't say the specialist game are more balanced, it's more that they are more static. By that I mean there is no codex creep to keep changing the balance.

The specialist games were always intended to be more true to the background and aimed at veteran players rather than balanced for fair play.

Everyone realises Eldar are very powerful in BFG after playing them once or twice and that is the way it has been since BFG was released over a decade ago - and it's never going to change in the core rules (Ok MMS fixes this particular issue).

[ThaneAquilon]

Cool! My FLG is always on the newest rules, unfortunately.

Well you'll want to use the 2010 FAQ for sure, it's got fleet lists for all the various races, and rules corrections. Use it in tendem with the BBB. The rules we have here are supposed to be more balanced, and the fleets that are almost done are cetainly more balanced, but it's still very much a WIP. You could check out Plaxor's BFG:R. It's the previous attempt at what we're doing. It's also not done, but it's more complete than what we have, and it has some interesting rules, but they can very much be house rules taken individually. and use Eldar MSM 1.9.

[Sigoroth]

... (Eldar MMS in particular strikes me, as I play Eldar).

You mean MSM.

... and use Eldar MSM 1.9.

You mean MMS.

[ThaneAquilon]

Sig! You are correct, my appologies.