Battlefleet Gothic General

>>54353983
if your just learning start with chaos and imperial navy.

List-wise start with pure cruiser fleets for the first few games.

>>54353983
spam swords and torpedo dauntlesses

Play DropFleet Commander instead. It was written by the same designer as a chance to fix the mistakes he'd made 15 years ago in BFG that hindsight had made clear.

File: IMG_5473.jpg (631KB, 2645x1979px) Image search: [Google]

631KB, 2645x1979px

>>54353983
>>54355294 is probably very true. But if you're deep into the 40k fluff, jump in. Get recasts on Aliexpress, find rules and ask questions at the Specialist Arms forum (definitely want the 2010 FAQ), and jump in.

Personally I recommend sticking to Imperial, Chaos, and Ork fleets at first(all flavors, including Astartes and AdMech). Craftworld Eldar are best played with the fanmade MMS (move-move-shoot) rules, otherwise they're too terrain-dependent. Dark Eldar are fine but a little limited, Tau can be a bit one-dimensional with their ordnance spam, Tyranids are complicated enough that you want some experience first, and Necrons are too good. Their victory points rules compensate and makes it feel properly cinematic, but it isn't fun on a regular basis.

I highly recommend using a lot of escorts; small numbers of cruisers can too easily fall into a stalemate because they have more defense than offense (battleships even more so). In BFG, smaller ships have more firepower for the points so keep them back and use them for the deathblow.

>>54353983
We play with paper proxies on a sheet of metal I made look like space. Painted up a bunch of round magnets like green blips. Its pretty fun. Main issue is a lack of printable terrain, most of the stuff around isn't big enough scale wise for randomly generated asteroid fields and nebula.

I recommend getting a few clear plastic protractors. We found it more clear for making turns.

Imperial and Chaos are the most 'balanced' lists, but its not super concerned with that anyway as a game. Campaign play with friends is much better than taking it very competitively, there's a lot of janky random rolls for terrain, deployment, orders, secondary objectives, etc.

There are some 2010(?) updates kicking around that seem to help out orks.

>>54355441
Necrons are too good? Victory points balance? Could you go more in depth? Sounds... quite odd indeed

>>54356710
Short version: Necron players are dicks who zoom in, blow something up and then disengage their entire fleet to win by victory points

>>54355749
The official 2010 errata, theres also a fan-re balancing project called "Battlefleet gothic: Revised" that I can reccomend

Can we talk for a second about the videogame? I suppose some advice applies to the tt too, but in the game at least I have trouble finding a use for escorts. They always seem underwhelming when I use them, what's their role in the Imperial navy supposed to be?

Also, trying to learn how to use space marines with some skirmish games. I get that I'm big on boarding, but what am I supposed to do between cooldowns?

>>54357805
On that matter BFG:A handles escort differently because they are not as cinematic and awesome as bigger ships, they are just point fillers
Use your bigger ship, fill up with light cruisers and then escorts
For TT BFG, 1 Big, 1-2 Medium rest escorts

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/user/u819c1602-2e3d-4aba-ab30-42b4d75d8d9e/DanTheMan?nav=models

I've been trying to recreate the old minis...

File: IMG_0353-001.jpg (120KB, 600x369px) Image search: [Google]

120KB, 600x369px

>>54356710
The whole game was more about getting the feel of the fluff right than balancing things. This was back when Necrons were new and terrifying, and every story made it sound like they were invincible. They weren't quite that bad in-game, but close. You can't beat them in a straight fight.

Their special victory points rules just move the bar for winning. You get partial points if you force Necron ships to disengage, double points for crippling a ship, and double points for destroying a capital ship (triple if it's a recoverable hulk). Suffered a narrow defeat? You're a hero!

File: BFG 003.jpg (2MB, 2272x1704px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 2272x1704px

>>54353983
Necrons, Tyranids, and non-dark Eldar (unless you use the fanmade MMS rules) are poorer choices because they break or ignore a lot of core rules. Get used to playing them first and you'll struggle to adjust to a more conventional fleet. The rest are fine.

Make sure you've got 6-8 launch bays per 1500 points, at least.