The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)

[Seahawk]

BFG:FE is still perfect as far as I'm concerned.

"FE" standing for "Fan Edition".

[Xca|iber]

Aaaannd we're back, with a new update!

Great news everyone, I've settled on a name, and can now get back to doing some real work on the project. I'm proud to (re)introduce you to the Battlefleet Gothic: Expanded Revised Edition! (Or BFG:XR aka BFG XcalibeR edition). All of the documents have been updated with the new name and a little blurb at the beginning which explains more about this project and its differences compared to official BFG rules and the original BFG:R rule books. Note that this broke all of the DB links, so I'm going through them today to fix everything.

I really appreciate all of the suggestions and discussion in this thread, it helped me a lot. While there were a number of ideas that I really liked, such as Gothmog's fluff-based names, I settled on a combination of Horizon's suggestion of a "remastered" edition and the suggestions from several people that I make it the "Xcaliber" edition. The end result is a bit of word-play (like I said, I'm a sucker for puns) and I think BFG:XR should be sufficiently clear as to what the project is about. Whether one wants to call it the "Expanded Revised Edition" or just the "Xcaliber Edition" is up to you - both are "official" as far as I'm concerned.

Once again, thanks for the support! Imperial Navy will be the next codex up, once I get around to finishing it!

[Seahawk]

Ooo, BFG.EXE for Expanded Xcaliber Edition. Makes it sound like an awesome computer program.

[heavygear]

Great Work

[Thinking Stone]

Ooo, BFG.EXE for Expanded Xcaliber Edition. Makes it sound like an awesome computer program.

Haha Seahawk, there will be a BFG.EXE coming out before any 'remastering' of the rules by Games Workshop! :p

I like the name, Xca|ibur, BFG:XR is quite unique and distinctive and I think it fits the purpose of the document as a complete (hopefully :p) revision.

Now to find time to look at the actual rules!

[Xca|iber]

Well, well, well... What's this? Why did this thread pop back up? I'm glad you asked...

...Because the Imperial Navy is finally, finally, FINALLY done!

Clocking in at just over 30 pages, this is the longest of the BFG:XR codices yet! (And the overall longest document I've made besides the complete rulebook). This comprehensive Imperial Navy faction book covers all of the major battlefleets that have been showcased throughout BFG's history, including the Battlefleet Bakka from the 2010 FAQ!

I have to apologize for spending so much time to get this made; it ended up being much more challenging than I had anticipated, on account of having so many ships. Repeatedly making ship pages was really draining on my energy and enthusiasm, so I took the advice of several posters here and tried to pace myself out, which helped immensely. And so, after an admittedly over-long break, BFG:XR is back off the ground!

As always, let me know if you have any questions or find any issues with the document. You can post in this thread, PM me here, or send me an email at [spoiler]BattlefleetGothic2015@gmail.com[/spoiler]

EDIT: Coming up, we've got AdMech, Chaos, Tau, and Rogue Traders left to finish off the fleets. Once those are done I'll finish up the Scenario and Campaign books, as well as (if I get around to it) a Lore book compiling all the stuff that didn't make it into the expanded-revised rulebooks.

EDIT EDIT: Just forgot to mention that there have also been several minor updates for the other various books as I happened to find small errors, typos, incorrect (or unclear) cross-book references, and so forth while I was putting the Imperial Navy one together. A few books had some ships rearranged (in page order) for ease of reading.

[Fr05ty]

Well, I've been reading through all the released documents and I have to say, I LOVE THEM!

A few issues to address:
1. The Eldar book is missing the refits and crew skills table.
2. The same is true for the Dark Eldar.
3. And for Orks.
4. And Necrons.
5. The Ork Brute Ramship has the wrong image, it should have the one from the rulebook.
6. Ork Basha Light Kroozer should have 6 hits, not 8 as it's a light kroozer. Ork Terror Ships and Kill Kroozers should have 8 hits, 10 hits is the realm of the Hammer Battlekroozer. If you're trying to make it so that they have more hits than their imperial equivalents, then the Hammer should have 12 hits and the Battleships 14. Although IMHO it should be as it were in the rulebook, as this causes really cheap ships so that you can spam them as an ork ramshackle fleet.
7. Why did you get rid of so many random-strength weapons for the Orks? It's their flavor!
8. Ork Heavy Gunz should have shorter ranges than normal Gunz, otherwise they're OP as even with the column shift, they'll deal double the damage of the Gunz. With shorter range, they encourage the Ork ships to close in even more to use their heavy gunz and getting in range for boarding (which is as fluff suggests they fight).
9. The Imperial Navy is missing the Jovian class Battlecruiser from BFG2010

I'm guessing that 1, 2, 3 and 4 are addressed in the campaign rules. Will you also add the Tau refit rules that came out in Warp Rift 2 for or the standard ones will apply for them?

On a different note:
Will you add ships from the Additional Ship Compendium or the Nemesis book? Also, how about the ships that show up in BFG:FR's Addons? You can find them in the sticky post with Official and Unofficial rules in there.
And how do you achieve such a clean look for these documents, I would like to know so I'd be able to edit them so I can add some of my homebrews in the future. I have a single ship you might want to add to the Chaos supplement (Dethroner class Battleship) which came from the makers of the Nemesis book.

Great work, mate!!! Can't wait for the rest of them!

PS: I'm guessing you're not using each race's spread from their original appearances in the rulebook due to consistency, but it'd be a nice touch of individuality for each of them

PS2: I'll keep modifying this post with whatever other things I find in the documents.

[Xca|iber]

Well, I've been reading through all the released documents and I have to say, I LOVE THEM!

Thanks! I'm glad to hear it!

A few issues to address:
1. The Eldar book is missing the refits and crew skills table.
2. The same is true for the Dark Eldar.
3. And for Orks.
4. And Necrons.

I'm guessing think that 1, 2, 3 and 4 are addressed in the campaign rules. Will you also add the Tau refit rules that came out in Warp Rift 2 for or the standard ones will apply for them?

That is correct; all the refit and skills tables will be in the campaign rules. I was not aware of the Tau refits in Warp Rift 2, but now that I am, that sounds like something I'd be happy to include.

5. The Ork Brute Ramship has the wrong image, it should have the one from the rulebook.

I'll take a look at it. AFAIK I was using the image from the existing BFG:R document, but I'll swap it out if I can.
EDIT: You're right. I totally missed it. Thanks for catching the issue - it'll be fixed immediately.

On a different note:
Will you add ships from the Additional Ship Compendium or the Nemesis book? Also, how about the ships that show up in BFG:FR's Addons? You can find them in the sticky post with Official and Unofficial rules in there.

Since the ASC is still an active, ongoing project (props to Gothmog for his work!), I'm probably not going to directly include them in BFG:XR. I might try to get the Vanguard Strike Cruiser and Imperial High Conveyor into the SM and IN books, because they're from an "official" source (Forgeworld), but since the ASC already has them, it's not a high priority for me.

I am not as familiar with Nemesis or BFG:FR. For the moment, I think I'll have to say no to any of those ships, on account of them being designed with a different system in mind. In short, I'm trying to keep the majority of the BFG:XR content consistent with what was decided upon in BFG:R, for balance reasons. That being said, I have made alterations myself, so as the project develops I may reconsider broadening my sources to include FR and Nemesis (as well as any other fan-projects). I just need to be sure not to upset the integrity of the ruleset through cross-project content.

And how do you achieve such a clean look for these documents, I would like to know so I'd be able to edit them so I can add some of my homebrews in the future. I have a single ship you might want to add to the Chaos supplement (Dethroner class Battleship) which came from the makers of the Nemesis book.

All of the PDFs are made from scratch using Adobe InDesign, by carefully studying the sizing, layout, and format of the digital BFG documents currently available. Custom (or manipulated) artwork is made using Adobe Photoshop. Many of the art assets (such as background images, textures, etc) were made by extracting images out of the hi-res digital BFG rulebook released by GW. I'm currently using a mix of Caslon Antique, TNR, and Arial for my fonts.

PS: I'm guessing you're not using each race's spread from their original appearances in the rulebook due to consistency, but it'd be a nice touch of individuality for each of them

If you mean the cover spreads for each of the factions (such as those found in Armada), then yes. It was also a matter of readability, in that some of the text on the Armada/FAQ2010 spreads was almost unreadable. This is an issue of some of the images not having a "designated" area for text, so the font tends to get lost in the jumble. Down the road this may be something on my radar (or I may add additional cover pages with the specific faction stuff), but right now I'm just trying to stay in gear to finish 

[Fr05ty]

Might want to re-read my post, I added a few points beforehand that you missed

I've added them here for completion:
6. Ork Basha Light Kroozer should have 6 hits, not 8 as it's a light kroozer. Ork Terror Ships and Kill Kroozers should have 8 hits, 10 hits is the realm of the Hammer Battlekroozer. If you're trying to make it so that they have more hits than their imperial equivalents, then the Hammer should have 12 hits and the Battleships 14. Although IMHO it should be as it were in the rulebook, as this causes really cheap ships so that you can spam them as an ork ramshackle fleet.
7. Why did you get rid of so many random-strength weapons for the Orks? It's their flavor!
8. Ork Heavy Gunz should have shorter ranges than normal Gunz, otherwise they're OP as even with the column shift, they'll deal double the damage of the Gunz. With shorter range, they encourage the Ork ships to close in even more to use their heavy gunz and getting in range for boarding (which is as fluff suggests they fight).
9. The Imperial Navy is missing the Jovian class Battlecruiser from BFG2010

Comments on these?

Also, can I help somehow?

[Xca|iber]

6. Ork Basha Light Kroozer should have 6 hits, not 8 as it's a light kroozer. Ork Terror Ships and Kill Kroozers should have 8 hits, 10 hits is the realm of the Hammer Battlekroozer. If you're trying to make it so that they have more hits than their imperial equivalents, then the Hammer should have 12 hits and the Battleships 14. Although IMHO it should be as it were in the rulebook, as this causes really cheap ships so that you can spam them as an ork ramshackle fleet.
7. Why did you get rid of so many random-strength weapons for the Orks? It's their flavor!
8. Ork Heavy Gunz should have shorter ranges than normal Gunz, otherwise they're OP as even with the column shift, they'll deal double the damage of the Gunz. With shorter range, they encourage the Ork ships to close in even more to use their heavy gunz and getting in range for boarding (which is as fluff suggests they fight).
9. The Imperial Navy is missing the Jovian class Battlecruiser from BFG2010

Ah, I was wondering when someone was going to bring this up. The reason for the multitude of changes to the Orks was the result of this thread in which the community discussed numerous issues with Orks as they appear in the classic rules. (There's a pdf in there with most of their initial work). Unfortunately, afterimagedan never actually published a finished product, but most of the changes were already voted on and decided. You can read about the reasons in that thread.

In short though, the HP changes were, as you said, to make them a bit beefier than their Imperial counterparts, but I think they felt upping the Battlekroozer and Battleships was too OTT. Random weapons were toned down (at the cost of flavor, I'll agree) to simply make gameplay with Orks a bit less headache inducing. There were also power level issues with some of the weapons being too weak. A similar argument was made for the Heavy Gunz, which were deliberately buffed in BFG:R. I can't comment as to whether that makes them too powerful, but the consensus by minds much smarter than me was that 30cm range with relatively low strength and an extra column shift outside of 15cm was enough drawbacks to offset their additional damage.

As for the Jovian, that was the result of a similar thread in which the BFG:R team discusses many issues which plagued Battlefleet Bakka, mostly on the flavor and playability end as compared to the other Imperial Navy lists. They removed the Jovian on account of it a) being an odd 1-off ship whose use was absurdly restricted and b) for going against the majority of the Imperial Navy's faction flavor. It was replaced by the Cardinal class instead. The current BFG:R document for Bakka (not the list in the BFG:R Navy doc, but the separate one) doesn't have the Jovian either.

It would probably make for a good ASC ship though (*hint hint* Gothmog )

PS2: I'll keep modifying this post with whatever other things I find in the documents.

For ease of replying, it's actually better if you make new posts. I'm more likely to see them that way in case I don't scroll back up the page.

[Fr05ty]

6. Ork Basha Light Kroozer should have 6 hits, not 8 as it's a light kroozer. Ork Terror Ships and Kill Kroozers should have 8 hits, 10 hits is the realm of the Hammer Battlekroozer. If you're trying to make it so that they have more hits than their imperial equivalents, then the Hammer should have 12 hits and the Battleships 14. Although IMHO it should be as it were in the rulebook, as this causes really cheap ships so that you can spam them as an ork ramshackle fleet.
7. Why did you get rid of so many random-strength weapons for the Orks? It's their flavor!
8. Ork Heavy Gunz should have shorter ranges than normal Gunz, otherwise they're OP as even with the column shift, they'll deal double the damage of the Gunz. With shorter range, they encourage the Ork ships to close in even more to use their heavy gunz and getting in range for boarding (which is as fluff suggests they fight).
9. The Imperial Navy is missing the Jovian class Battlecruiser from BFG2010

Ah, I was wondering when someone was going to bring this up. The reason for the multitude of changes to the Orks was the result of this thread in which the community discussed numerous issues with Orks as they appear in the classic rules. (There's a pdf in there with most of their initial work). Unfortunately, afterimagedan never actually published a finished product, but most of the changes were already voted on and decided. You can read about the reasons in that thread.

In short though, the HP changes were, as you said, to make them a bit beefier than their Imperial counterparts, but I think they felt upping the Battlekroozer and Battleships was too OTT. Random weapons were toned down (at the cost of flavor, I'll agree) to simply make gameplay with Orks a bit less headache inducing. There were also power level issues with some of the weapons being too weak. A similar argument was made for the Heavy Gunz, which were deliberately buffed in BFG:R. I can't comment as to whether that makes them too powerful, but the consensus by minds much smarter than me was that 30cm range with relatively low strength and an extra column shift outside of 15cm was enough drawbacks to offset their additional damage.

As for the Jovian, that was the result of a similar thread in which the BFG:R team discusses many issues which plagued Battlefleet Bakka, mostly on the flavor and playability end as compared to the other Imperial Navy lists. They removed the Jovian on account of it a) being an odd 1-off ship whose use was absurdly restricted and b) for going against the majority of the Imperial Navy's faction flavor. It was replaced by the Cardinal class instead. The current BFG:R document for Bakka (not the list in the BFG:R Navy doc, but the separate one) doesn't have the Jovian either.

It would probably make for a good ASC ship though (*hint hint* Gothmog )

PS2: I'll keep modifying this post with whatever other things I find in the documents.

For ease of replying, it's actually better if you make new posts. I'm more likely to see them that way in case I don't scroll back up the page.

Oh, well, seems the community has spoken! Thanks for the links to the threads, was not aware of them! I'd still advocate for adding an extra 2 hits for the Battleships and Battlekroozers and upping their points cost by 15 or 20, but that's just me

I thought you weren't online while I was updating, so to avoid spamming I just kept on modifying, won't do that again

On a different note, how hard is it for you to edit these files if we wanted to enact those changes?
What's the next fleet coming out for review?

[Xca|iber]

I thought you weren't online while I was updating, so to avoid spamming I just kept on modifying, won't do that again

On a different note, how hard is it for you to edit these files if we wanted to enact those changes?
What's the next fleet coming out for review?

No worries. The forum actually emails me when people reply to this thread, which makes it easier for me to see what's going on.

In terms of ease, since the documents are fully re-written (as opposed to manipulated PDF pages), I can make changes pretty easily. Adding a ship page here and there, or altering stats is not that big of a deal. The absolute hardest thing is space-management though. Many of the fleet lists are packed (in order to make them readable) so adding bunches of ships would mean ending up with fleet lists that were more than 1 page long (or stuck in tiny font).

Next fleet should be Admech, which I haven't started yet, but I expect it will go quickly since most of the ships are the same as their IN counterparts (other than different pictures). Chaos, Tau, and Rogue Traders will follow, and I expect those will take some time. I'm already aware of some errors/inconsistencies in BFG:R Chaos, so I'll have to do more research (like with Orks and Bakka), and the structure of both the Tau Empire and Rogue Trader fleets are very out of the norm, which will take some time to sort through.

[Fr05ty]

If you point me to where you think there are inconsistencies (And especially threads on the discussion of such matters) I'll be happy to assist you in figuring out what should be happening with the fleets. Got pretty much all the docs that have been produced with fleet updates and such.

When you're done with the official releases, it can be revisited for the Nemesis ships, Additional Ships compendium and other stuff

[Fr05ty]

Sorry for double posting, but do you have the image for the Eldar Wyrm class Battleship without blurring out and the top secret on top? I'd really like to see what it's meant to look like

[Xca|iber]

Well, yes, I do... But I don't think it's what you're looking for. You see, the Wyrm class never had any official artwork from the team that did the Eldar MMS list (as far as I'm aware, anyway), instead only having the generic "Top Secret" image where the ship should be.

Since I'm generally of the opinion that most ships (other than perhaps a few unimportant escorts/transports) should have at least some artwork, I ended up making my own, essentially kitbashing the art from the Void Dragon into a "new" ship. That being said... There's not much substance to it. It's fairly obvious without the blurring that it's just 2 Void Dragons "belly to belly" with some warping to shape it like the Void Stalker.

So... You've caught my artistic trickery 

If you still want the image I can send you a png or psd of it via PM, just let me know.