[Archive] Expanding Dreadfleet. early ideas

Archive [Archive] Rules Development
1

Grimstonefire:

I�?Tve been thinking about how you could turn the dreadfleet game into one with race themed fleets. So Empire, VC, Dwarfs etc.

Whilst obviously we don�?Tt know any of the rules, I was thinking in terms of the type and number of the ships needed to keep it very simple in terms of selection.

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What I was thinking is:

Dreadfleet ships

You obviously have to take the dreadfleet captain for the race in every battle. This would be the most powerful ship for each race.

Warships

These are very large individually named ships, but smaller than the dreadfleet ones. Have a lot of crew.

Battleships

These are smaller gunboats that would be called basic things like Ironsides or Galleons. Not much crew for boarding.

Support Craft

Very small boats, barges etc. No boarding crew and simple weapons.

Then it would simply be a case of saying �?~how many * do you want to play? (I can�?Tt think of a suitable navy name, battlegroups??).

People can take 1 Warship, 2 Battleships or 4 Support Craft per battlegroup. All ships move and fight individually, to keep it really simple. We’ll presume they all had their orders before the battle. :wink:

So if you played empire and had 3 battlegroups you could have between 4 and 13 ships to play with, including the Heldenhammer.

They would be scaled in terms of power as this:

100% Warships

50% Battleships

25% Support Craft

If the Heldenhammer and Bloody Reaver are rediculously strong in comparison to the others then the other races could take an extra battlegroup or something.

Thoughts?

2

Thommy H:

I think it really is too early to discuss much of anything yet - it’s not even clear what the rule mechanics will be and even if it will be possible to extrapolate them into an expansion. For example, since the fleets are fixed and all the main ships are effectively special characters, they may not have points costs at all or even all function the same way - since it’s really a boardgame, the rules may be a series of exceptions rather than having any underlying mechanic. There’s no way to know.

That said, you might want to take a look at Battlefleet Gothic. That’s effectively “ships in the age of sail…in space!” and not only uses the kind of ship classes and fleet structure you’re talking about but is also the objectively best designed game GW have ever made. If they’re smart, Dreadfleet will crib heavily from it.

3

curlybeard:

The more I read about the rules process of dreadfleet, nd after GW’s video, I think it is a modified version of the Warhammer Historical Trafalgar Rules. If this is the case, then there is possibility for expansion, using a b***ardised version of both rulesets/ army lists