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

[Tves]

Torpedo Launchas & Launch Bays
As with their weapons batteries, Ork ordnance varies wildly in strength from moment to moment. Because of this, Ork ships may never combine torpedoes into larger salvos. However, when calculating attack craft launch limits, always use the highest possible value for the fleet.

Does this mean a skwadron of Ravagers fire individual torpedo salvos? Example a Skwadron of 5 Ravagers would thus fire 5 seperate d6 str waves or can they combine into a str 5d6 wave?

[Xca|iber]

Torpedo Launchas & Launch Bays
As with their weapons batteries, Ork ordnance varies wildly in strength from moment to moment. Because of this, Ork ships may never combine torpedoes into larger salvos. However, when calculating attack craft launch limits, always use the highest possible value for the fleet.

Does this mean a skwadron of Ravagers fire individual torpedo salvos? Example a Skwadron of 5 Ravagers would thus fire 5 seperate d6 str waves or can they combine into a str 5d6 wave?

It would be 5 individual D6-strength salvos (rolling separately for each).

[AJCHVY]

One thing I noticed about the ork battleships is that I think they are supposed to be speed 15 with the 2 with Soopa Boostas at speed 20.

It was a typo I feel in the previous edition that all of them were speed 20.

[Xca|iber]

One thing I noticed about the ork battleships is that I think they are supposed to be speed 15 with the 2 with Soopa Boostas at speed 20.

It was a typo I feel in the previous edition that all of them were speed 20.

AFAIK, all the Ork battleships have had a base Speed of 20cm since their introduction in Armada (where Soopa Enginez only improved AAF orders). As a result, when the speed increase bonus was added to what then became Soopa Boostas, the speed of Dethdeala and Kroolboy became 25cm (which can be seen in the old published version of BFG:R Orks). While it's possible that all 4 speeds have been typos all this time, without a concrete indication of the original/revised intent, I'm not sure there's enough of a reason to change it.

If there's a serious problem with the 5cm speed difference, I'd be willing to take a look at it, but with the fleet-wide buffs to the Orks in the last update, the battleships seem like they're in a relatively decent place balance-wise.

[AJCHVY]

I think the initial 20spd was also a typo. If you look at all other non-eldar battleships almost all of them are spd 15. Orks in their own fluff are stated as having worse engines and as a faction are generally slower and turn less effectively.

I'm fine with the 25spd battleships as I play orks 

All I'm saying is it might need looking at.

[horizon]

Chaos Desolator 25cm speed
Chaos Despoiler 20cm
IN Retribution 20cm
IN Emperor 15cm

All other have 15cm? That is basic blue book stuff.

Given other Orks speed I would rate battleships at 15cm, with a fast one doing 20cm. But all at 20 seems also fine. I think.

[Xca|iber]

Chaos Desolator 25cm speed
Chaos Despoiler 20cm
IN Retribution 20cm
IN Emperor 15cm

All other have 15cm? That is basic blue book stuff.

Given other Orks speed I would rate battleships at 15cm, with a fast one doing 20cm. But all at 20 seems also fine. I think.

I also think it's probably fine at 20, unless you and the High Admirals decide to FAQ it, of course... 

[Lord Borak]

Another question regarding the Rogue Traders.

Reserves. Do all Grand Cruisers (Specifically reserved) count as Man o' Wars? What about Battlecruisers?

So, at 1500pts. Could I take a Man O' War Grand cruiser (Avenger), 2 Merchantmen  (so 3 cruisers now) and a Reserved Exorcist?

[Xca|iber]

Another question regarding the Rogue Traders.

Reserves. Do all Grand Cruisers (Specifically reserved) count as Man o' Wars? What about Battlecruisers?

So, at 1500pts. Could I take a Man O' War Grand cruiser (Avenger), 2 Merchantmen  (so 3 cruisers now) and a Reserved Exorcist?

Yes, this is correct. Man O' War should be synonymous with grand cruiser.

I've updated the RT fleet list headings to clarify this.

[Lord Borak]

Good man! 

[AJCHVY]

One thing I noticed regarding the ork fleet. It says that with a looted vessel, you change all lances to zzap guns, attack craft, and nova cannons to killcannons.

Do you change torpedoes? This will only matter with Tau torpedoes, as they have unique rules.

I thought it would be cool if the orks got access to the special tau torpedoes, but only get 1 shot then back to normal torps.

[DrDaniel5]

I have some concerns about the balance of the Proteous Hive ship. Our nid player takes it every game because he doesn’t have enough escorts and we’ve basically found it way too powerful in our 1500point games. I know one solution would be to have him not take it but I'd like for it to be a balanced option that is guilt free.

I’m vacillating between a points increase, or leaving the points alone and changing it to be counted as a defense. The fluff does describe the thing as often being the size of a small moon so being as hard to hit as a fast Chaos battle ship seems a little odd. So something more like the ork space hulk.

I otherwise love what you’ve done with the BFG rules and appreciate how open to discussion you are.

[Green_Squad_Leader]

So I took it upon myself to create a revised version of the BFG Campaign rules from the main rulebook, here is what I have so far:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/jfnq214z9lbtjbe/BFG%20-%20Revised%20Campaign%20Rules%20v1.0.docx?dl=0

Changelog:
- Some simple but really needed edits accounting for how any faction can be used either as a Primary or Pirate faction in a campaign.
- Added that you pick one capital ship as the flagship of your fleet in each game you play, even if your commander's actual flagship is not present (matters for renown changes)
-Removed Planetary Assault and Exterminatus from the randomly generated scenarios table.  They are now things that players must decide to do.
-Battles other than Planetary Assaults now act like raids for resource purposes.  Winning battles and raids in a system before launching a Planetary Assault or Exterminatus gives the attacker extra points for those missions.
- A few changes were made to the Renown table to make it so that losing renown is an actual (but not crippling) thing.  Also added was an effect for crippling/destroying a flagship.
-Added the Refit and Crew Skill tables for Eldar and Orks, minor changes to modernize them were also made.
-Changed the Space Marine Appeals Table to actually mesh with how space marines work in BFG.
-Changed the Chaos Appeals table to be a bit more interesting and also to make it work in line with how Chaos Space Marines work in BFG.
-Reinforcement Appeals are slightly different now that the level and type of reinforcements you can request is now tied to your Renown.  No more summoning a new battleship every campaign turn.  This should help scale the conflict more gradually.



Biggest Changes:
-Repairs
One of the biggest failures of the original BFG campaign system was in just how little you could actually try to repair your ships without having to withdraw them.  Even well into a campaign it wasn't uncommon for players to barely be able to replace their lost escorts. Often people would rotate nearly identical ships on and off their fleet roster using the withdrawal system so that they wouldn't be hassled by this.  Also Withdrawing a ship had very little downside as you were guaranteed that a Battleship would be repaired just as fast as an escort.

The first change I made was to the repair point table.  This change was really simple, I just converted most of the values into D3 repair points.  So where before a Hive world would give a 20 renown player 4 repair points it now gives 4D3.  Given how few systems players tend to control over the course of the average campaign there isn't much hassle with this.

Withdrawn ships and squadrons now recover D6 hit points every campaign turn and do not become available again until they are fully repaired.

Also destroyed ships are not immediately replaced, instead they follow the same process as Withdrawn ships.

Overall this system encourages players to conserve their resources by withdrawing crippled ships rather than just letting them die over any over again.  Most players by their third campaign turn will be able to repair at least 12-15 hit points in damage between games, so the improved ease of repairing ships using repair points compensates for the decreased value of withdrawing ships.

The great thing about these changes is that they don't require any additional book keeping.  Any unspent repair points, which is unusual, are discarded.  Also in the "Advanced Rules" section I added at the end you can spend left over repair points to try to generate additional appeals.


-System Rules
The different types of systems have optional special rules, overall these are really simple additions.  The jist is that mining and agri worlds are more valuable because without them forgeworlds and hive worlds only generate half their normal repair points.  There are a bunch of other tidbits here, let me know what you think of them and if you have any ideas.

Faction Rules
I only included special rules for a few factions.  The rules for IN, Orks, and Eldar/DE are simple and fluffy without imbalancing anything.  Tyranids have a different repair point chart representing their stripping a world's biosphere over time.

Please let me know what you think of this and I'd love to hear any recommendations you guys might have for special rules for the factions I didn't cover.  Something else I was considering adding was advanced rules for special objectives and "command points" similar to the points in 30k or the new 40k.  Still ruminating on those.

[Xca|iber]

Hey sorry for not posting. Been away with RL stuff and gotten embroiled in X-Wing pretty hardcore. I'm still around though. 

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I have some concerns about the balance of the Proteous Hive ship. Our nid player takes it every game because he doesn’t have enough escorts and we’ve basically found it way too powerful in our 1500point games. I know one solution would be to have him not take it but I'd like for it to be a balanced option that is guilt free.

I’m vacillating between a points increase, or leaving the points alone and changing it to be counted as a defense. The fluff does describe the thing as often being the size of a small moon so being as hard to hit as a fast Chaos battle ship seems a little odd. So something more like the ork space hulk.

I otherwise love what you’ve done with the BFG rules and appreciate how open to discussion you are.

I'll take a look at it. In the meantime, could you provide some more specifics about the situations where it's become a problem? If it's more of a general issue of point-efficiency, a cost change could easily work, although if there's an issue with something in particular (e.g. you mention its targeting with respect to gunnery) that could be a more appropriate fix.

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@Green_Squad_Leader: Thanks for the help! I'll go through the document and post my comments once I've taken a closer look. From just what's in your post though it's looking really good! 

[Green_Squad_Leader]

To help manage games and such for the campaign I keep intending to start I've made ship cards for the new Ork Fleets rules.  The goal is to print out and laminate these cards, making keeping track of ships in and out of game easy.  I also made cards for your commanders as well, as the old Fleet Roster sheet really didn't do a good job at giving you enough room to fit your bosses and their special rules.

Given just how customizable Kill Kroozers and Terror Ships are I made different named types of them for card purposes rather than have lots of "this OR this" in the Armament lists.

One thing that I tried to incorporate into these that previous ship cards I've seen haven't really incorporated is a simple way to incorporate the various upgrade options that ships have access too.  The way I made these you just need to check a block to mark that you have an upgrade, nice and simple.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jdot1djv5dxi8ex/Ork%20Fleet%20Cards.pdf?dl=0

I plan to make a set of these for each of the fleets, or at least each of the fleets I have.  Now that I have the templates made its pretty fast to pump them out.