Back to Battlefleet Gothic: 5 months later

Charlie: I've been running a campaign for Tom and Drew in which each of them plays a Space Marine officer with a strike cruiser and some escorts. Confrontations are fought in a mix of Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer 40K, and Boarding Actions. We're now 5 months into the campaign (that's 10 sessions). When Tom and I were teenagers, my Eldar Corsair fleet single-handedly crushed his ability to enjoy Battlefleet Gothic. In today's post, we'll hear from Tom and Drew about how it's gone so far. Expect notes on the campaign format, repainting old minis, and most importantly, how Tom is finding this ancient system he remembers with such distaste?

Tom: Getting back in has, broadly, been what I had hoped and expected.  Taking a fresh look at it and consciously trying to shed my former view has, largely, worked.  Mostly this is due to Charlie’s gently gently approach of feeding us slowly escalating encounters.  Our initial foray was very gentle, and the difficulty and tension has slowly been ramping up, but at the same time the building of an ongoing narrative has been strengthening my engagement.

I still have mixed feelings about BFG, and I think it’s fair to say that it will never be my favourite GW game.  There’s a level of thinking ahead and planning for multiple possibilities that I’m simply not very good at.  I find there’s a much higher instance of “oh I should have thought of that” feelings in BFG than in 40k, and they tend to be more dramatic.  I guess, just thinking aloud here, that this is because of the huge variation in damage output you can get in BFG.  In 40k, a bolter is either in range or isn’t*, whereas shooting in BFG varies so much from a long range light tickle to a full close range barrage up the tail pipe, so a misplay can be devastating if you accidentally put yourself in a bad spot.  

The flip side to this of course is the satisfaction when things pay off.  Nothing going well in 40k is quite as satisfying as pulling off the right manoeuvre and delivering an absolutely devastating barrage in just the right spot.

*OK, yes, there is a bit more to it like cover etc.

Drew: In contrast to Tom this is my first toe dip into the world of BFG, and so I am learning everything from scratch. I definitely do not have all the rules down yet, but my initial take is the game feels a lot closer to something like the original Warhammer Fantasy Battle: positioning is key, the movement is limited and working out your damage sure does take a minute. The game as a whole feels very much from another time, which is not a bad thing. The hard limitations on things like movement (especially versus the comparatively free flow 40k) means stretching your brain in a slightly different direction and it’s a challenge I’ve enjoyed. Charlie has eyeballed the difficulty well, meaning that each time we’ve played I’ve had the opportunity to see what mistakes can lead to, without immediately being blown to smithereens.

What about the Eldar though?

Tom: Well…  Yes.  About that.  Whilst the game is ostensibly about Imperium vs Orks, the Eldar, tricksy bastards that they are, have indeed made an appearance.  At a particularly tense engagement which was not going very well for us, where any and all assistance was sorely needed, appeared a small flotilla of Eldar.  Either our saving grace, or the nail in our coffin.  A very Eldar situation.  Drew, filthy knife-ear lover that she is (Drew: Forgive me for having taste), was delighted by their smooth hulls and pretty little wings.  Disgusting.  

For my part, I admit, I was less than thrilled.  True to form, they appeared, unleashed incredibly devastating firepower with torpedoes that reroll if you miss, weapons that just keep rolling damage until you fail and more nonsense upon nonsense, and then they simply dance back to safety before the enemy can retaliate.  In theory I should have been happy as they were shooting at my enemy, but I honestly just found the whole thing to be depressing and was glad to see the back of them as soon as they’d finished winning our battle for us without losing so much as a fleck of paint.

Immersion therapy for BFG in general, going well, for Eldar in particular, a long way to go still.

The Haivadh Ceraith and its escorts Eleinrhianth, Surma, Naulann and Virkea

Drew: As Tom said, I was absolutely buzzing to see the galaxy's cattiest boys roll into the fray. 

It’s no secret I’m a raging Aeldari fangirl, and they did not disappoint. The design on the Aeldari ships are beautiful and just seeing them was great. Did they swoop in and save the day for the Imperium? Absolutely: as is right and proper! And whilst seeing them in action did give me a desire to get a few of my own, I appreciate that learning with the middle of the road Imperial fodder may be wiser. The Aeldari ruleset seems lethal in the hands of an experienced BFG player, but like they would buckle immediately if caught due to the limited armour. 

Charlie: My hypothesis that Tom might be less distressed by them when they’re on the same side has been explored and exploded. The extent to which this man has hobby PTSD cannot be overstated; he was vocally having flashbacks before they even rolled a dice. But he is correct about their rules: the balance IS bananas, and you really have to know what you’re doing to engage them effectively.

On the upside, BFG’s poor balance means that the Orks, whose fleet is unutterably dreadful, provide great enemies for a GM to run. I can deploy whole kroozer squadrons and shoals of escorts, all safe in the knowledge that (barring some serious misplays) the Bolter Bros should be able to handle them.

How about that Narrative?

Tom: The narrative has been great.  It started out with the Salamanders and the Raven Guard buddying up to save the Salamander ship from being overrun by Tyranids, and has segued into a system-wide campaign to keep an overwhelming number of Orks at bay and protect the locals as best we can with limited resources.  It’s been a real odd couple adventure, with the booming enthusiastic Salamander and the brooding taciturn Raven Guard.  We’ve had insult trading with Orks and high tea with Naval officers.

Charlie: Here's a summary of the story so far:

Answering a distress call, finding a bigger problem

The Raven Guard strike cruiser Sable Sword responds to a distress call from the Salamanders strike cruiser Aegis Aeterna, which has fled to a safer part of the Segmentum Pacificus after getting boarded by of Tyranids. With the Raven Guard providing assistance, the stricken cruiser's decks are cleared of the xenos.

The Aegis Aeterna had translated out of the warp into the Iudex system. Awkwardly, the system authorities assume the Astartes have arrived in response to the orks marauding the system. The Astartes agree to join forces and deal with the orks as best they can.

Gathering mortal moths to the Astartes candle
The Astartes ships soon receive a distress call from a flotilla of civilian craft fleeing Jebalt, further out in the Iudex system. The Sable Sword and Aegis Aeterna successfully fend off the ork ships attempting to capture the merchantmen.

Both ork and Imperial reinforcements are arriving in-system at random intervals, creating a lot of meeting engagements and accidental ambushes, blunting the efficacy of the Imperial Navy's response. One carrier, the Cardinal Durante, is rescued by the Astartes, and forms up alongside them in an attempt to consolidate naval power.

Learning the orks' plan
The Astartes board an ork capital ship, abduct its captain, and use their Libarians to interrogate the creature. They learn that the orks have invaded the system because they want control of Jebalt's mining facilities, but to get them, the orks believe they must smash Imperial control of the system so that the Imperium will give up and leave the orks in charge. On this basis, the orks intend to focus their attack on Iudex itself, rather than Jebalt.

A divergence of opinion
The Salamanders and Raven Guard disagree on the best way of dealing with the ork threat. Shadow Captain Yiraka believes in making the orks think the best fighting is on Jebalt, thereby sparing Iudex's bigger population. Conversely the Salamanders' Lieutenant Iskandar argues that if the orks are following a basic strategy of crushing all resistance in the system, they will not be easily distracted, and focusing the Astartes' scant resources at Jebalt leaves the people of Iudex vulnerable.

Ultimately the Raven Guard leave Phobos-armoured troops on Jebalt to cause as much noise and distraction as possible, then move the flotilla, and the civilian ships, to Iudex.

The battle above Iudex
Upon arrival at Iudex, the Astartes find that the orks are already landing troops. The ork fleet, led by a battleship, break orbit to meet the oncoming Astartes vessels, which they outnumber significantly. The battle escalates as the Imperial battlecruiser San Bastiano approaches from the orks' flank, escorted by the cruisers Fortitude and Iusta Irae alongside three frigates.

Battlegroup San Bastiano, commanded by Commodore Bertram Strand

Shortly after that, aeldari corsairs launch a surprise attack the orks from the rear. Numerically superior but assaulted from all sides, the ork fleet crumbles, with only a handful of capital ships making good their escape, and their battleship being destroyed after the Sable Sword and Aegis Aeterna board it from both sides. With the ork fleet scattered, the civilian ships are able to land on Iudex, finally freeing the Astartes flotilla of its escort duties.

Drew: A particular favourite bit of mine has been picking up a flotilla of civilian ships that we have had to escort through several battles in order to get them home. It led to a lot of fun, tricky decisions regarding the characterful thing to do (defend each and everyone with our lives, learn all their birthdays, big damn hero stuff), versus the tactically optimal thing (use them as bait for the Orks). 

The merchant fleet: a mix of original BFG system ships (the little ones) and 3D prints (the big ones).

Tom and I (or I guess I should say, Shadow Captain Yiraka and Lieutenant Iskandar) have also had several conversations regarding how to approach problems where we have firmly come down on opposite sides: do we think we can tempt the orks to fight over the mining planet, or is it inevitable that they will attack the heavily populated world, and therefore where should we send our forces? It’s been interesting to see the difference in our reasoning, despite trying to reach the same goal. 

Tom: The downside to playing a Space Marine Captain is of course that I am not a Space Marine Captain.  Every time I make a tactical mistake I feel like I’m breaking the immersion.  Not that this is in any way unique to BFG, I feel this way about 40k too, I’m just better at 40k.  It would probably have worked a lot better if I’d been playing a junior Naval officer recently given a big promotion (presumably due an exploding bridge or something), but I just love my stupid emo bird boys too much.

Drew: Likewise, I am feeling my own lack of skill when pretending to be a 80 year-old, tactically l33t super soldier. Iskandar has only recently been promoted to lieutenant, which does give me a little wiggle room, but I suspect it will not last for long. Time to get good!

How does the GM think it’s going?

Charlie: I’m experiencing a mixture of excitement to be moving little spaceships around on a table with my friends, and inwardly-directed dissatisfaction. I don’t feel I’ve been bringing my A-game to this campaign. I’m not upset with myself; the campaign happened to coincide with a series of preoccupying Real Life events. One has to prioritise. But as those things calm down, I’d like to bring more thought and time to bear on keeping proper GM logs, and doing proper prep.

I am a little concerned that I may have bitten off more than I can chew, with the mix of spaceships and ground campaign being so sprawling that I’ve been rushing through to try and keep a sense of momentum. Counterintuitively I think I need to slow down and give the characters more room to breathe, and deepen the players’ connection to both the marines under their command and the other factions. Something else that would help is considering what the emergent themes are, and leaning into those as the focus of the narrative. "Space Marines do war" isn't a story, whereas those moments where there's a genuine difference between the Raven Guard and Salamanders' approaches (see Drew's examples above) felt like pivotal moments in the story.

This is all rendered a little tricky by virtue of the fact that, with the Fantasy campaign I ran for Jon and Drew, I very much had GM ownership of every character that wasn’t the player characters, whereas with this campaign they’re using their own armies, and thus I feel hesitant to portray characters that belong, creatively, to the players. So if nothing else, it’s showing me the pitfalls of this iteration of the format, and forces me to think about how to navigate that.

Hauling Hulks out of the Boneyard

Charlie: Since Battlefleet Gothic is out of print, I am mostly populating Battlefleet Eridani by repainting ships I bought back in the early 2000s, with only a few strategic eBay purchases or 3D prints (my younger self did not invest very heavily in escorts, and I reused a lot of my stock painting Battlefleet Achernar for the previous BFG campaign).

Battlefleet Achernar

Happily there’s still loads of cruisers and battlecruisers left in the boneyard, including two entirely new on sprue. Delicious.

The new Eridani colour scheme is easy enough: a black primer followed by a zenithal dusting with Grey Seer, followed by some basic detailing. The red and gold prows are a nod to John Blanche’s original cover art. The lettering on the bases uses the method I outlined in this tutorial.

To enable multiple nerds within our group to field their own Imperial Navy fleets in BFG, I wrote the potential for multiple liveries in Battlefleet Eridani into our campaign wiki. I've then hinted at this in the campaign by having the carrier Cardinal Durante in different colours. The Durante was actually painted as the edgily-named pirate ship Severed Rose years ago for an Inquisitor campaign, hence its battle-worn appearance. When I hauled it out of the boneyard, it inspired the idea of a carrier that has been hounded by Orks ever since it jumped into the system. Its escort ships are all gone, it's just this lone scrappy survivor with an intrepid madwoman of a captain. I tarted up the paint job very slightly, adding running lights and a gold dome atop the bridge.

The Dictator-class carrier Cardinal Durante, captained by Dalia Chima

The campaign map

The campaign, informally referred to as Bolter Bros and formally known as... err... something more serious than that...  is set in the Iudex system. Having a map always helps people process information, so I made something comparatively simple in Photoshop, then made some little icons as PNGs (to allow for transparency) and stuffed them all into a Google Drawing so that we can move those icons around, and remind ourselves where we are.

What's next?

Tom: I’m looking to pick up some more escorts.  It doesn’t really make sense to me that the 5th Company would have more than one Strike Cruiser, but I can see them being rich in escorts for reconnaissance and running small sneaky missions.  For variety I’d like a squadron of each, and as the mainstay maybe I’ll pick up a second squadron of Gladii to supplement my existing one.  Certainly the Novas will be handy for knocking holes in the heavy frontal armour of the Orks, and the Hunters could be fun for some more wide ranging manoeuvres to outflank the enemy, who will then have to choose between chasing after them or risking a barrage of torpedoes up the jacksie.  

Drew: I too have gone for a second set of escorts, just to bulk out the current set and add a little more flexibility.

On the whole I’m looking forward to getting a few more RP sessions in as part of the campaign. The mix of Battle and Bonding really helped Musket Bastards (this campaign style’s predecessor) shine, and made the whole thing feel very rich. The unlikely buddy dynamic is a classic for a reason, and being the upbeat, wise-cracker to Tom’s voice of reason is a ton of fun.  

The Salamanders' flotilla so far