Dem's Blood Angel BFG Blog

[Vaaish]

yep, that's correct :D Don't worry, a lot of people miss it. The first time my group did boarding we had to reread the thing about 8 times over before we caught the difference.

 

It shows how impressive marines are that they can have a nearly crippled strike cruiser, board a full health enemy cruiser and still come out on top.

[Demoulius]

yea i can see that ;) the natural 6 helped alot in that aspect to :)

[Demoulius]

hmm also a few questions that arose durig the game.

*can thunderhawks, bombers etc split up their volleys? for example his mars had 2 bays of 2. if he wanted to, could he split 1 up and add 1 to the other 2 to form 1 wave of 1 bomber and 1 wave of 3 bombers?

*if several torpedo volleys hit you in 1 turn, do you get to roll turrets against every one of them?

*if an torpedo marker hits one of your own ships, does it attack and can you fire turrets at it normally?

*entering a planet. basicly this is somewhat confusing to us. we had a planet on the table and one of his cruisers was in danger of entering it. we just moved the planet a little because we couldnt really find how you entered the low orbit (the planet itself) all it says is that you can...

*nova cannon. my opponent wanted to fire the nova cannon, but the SC's were to close. so he elected to place the template a little behind them. the SC was still the closest target but he adjusted his target after checking range, blowing up a gladius in the proces instead. since im fairly easy going and these are our first few games with this point total, nova cannons etc i wasent to uptight about it.

*fleet admiral re-rols. are they per turn or once per game? (im fairly sure theyre one per game but hed like me to ask)

[Vaaish]

1. yep. you can launch things however you see fit so long as you don't exceed your total launch bay strength.

2. yep, you roll turrets against every salvo that hits. Note, though, that if you choose to fire at torpedoes you can't fire on bombers or other AC in the same turn.

3. unless the rules for the torpedo type say otherwise, they will always attack on contact and you will be able to fire turrets as normal with the above restriction.

4. low orbit is a funky one and we generally ignore it since you can choose if you enter low orbit or not. the way we play planets is that they block line of fire to anything behind them, but anything on the planet template itself can fire and be fired on by anything other than ordnance which is immediately destroyed when touching the template.

 

5. NC, you have to put the template at least partially over the closest legal target unless you are firing at ordnance or pass a check to fire at a different target. You can't put the template in space and hope for a good scatter. If the SC were within 30cm, then he can put the template over the gladius, but he would still have to roll the scatter dice to see if it hits.

 

6. Rerolls are once per game.

[Demoulius]

a mail order is coming my way with some fresh ships to put in my fleet :rolleyes:

 

so il be trying the list i worked out earlier out:

4 SC's. master of the fleet. 1 reroll.

2 glad

2 glad

4 hunters

 

im kinda uneasy about dropping the nova's but after using the hunters better in my last game i can see the use for them :ph34r:

 

ive got a question though, should i squadron the cruiser in 1 group or 2 groups of 2?

[Vaaish]

two groups of two would be best for the cruisers as it provides more flexibility and hurts you less if you brace than if you have all four in a single squadron.

 

I'd also put the gladius in a single squadron.

[Demoulius]

what im afraid off if i squadron the glad's in 1 squadron theyre alot easier to be destroyed. like this, they provide 2 different targets (which ussualy means that at least ONE group will survive) and can still potentialy pose a threat. mind you if 1 is destroyed the majority of the threat is already gone but bracing wis also less of a problem this way :tu:

 

mind you the 4 hunters were also grouped as 4 and never that much of a huge target...perhaps. until i took out 3 swords in one go after which 2 got toast in 1 turn of his shooting :)

 

squadrons of 2 it is. seemed to make the most sense to me as well but im still a newbie in game terms :lol:

 

thing that worries me though is that the advantage my fleet had over his was the fact that i had more targets flying around and more squadrons to move around with. if i group my escorts in 1 big group i lose that :ermm:

 

the IN fleet for example had 2 groups of cruiser (1 made up of 2, and 1 of 1) a group of firestorms, a group of swords, and a group of cobras. 5 squadrons. if id put my escorts together id have 4 squadrons (2 groups of 2 SC's, hunters and glad's) wouldnt it be easier for him to take me down? ;)

 

-edit-

moved to new post

[Vaaish]

Look at it this way, a squadron of 2 escorts only needs one ship to die before it counts as crippled while a squadron of three or four requires two casualties before it gives up VP. Four isn't quite as ideal as the odd numbers but it does mean you can lose a single ship and not give up any points. Don't be afraid to park your escorts abeam to fire and brace when necessary. I've seen a squadron of 5 swords (same armor as the gladius) take fire from an entire chaos fleet and still limp away with a single braced ship. Any enemy shooting at an abeam escort squadron either has no targets or just got stung and either way that means a disproportionate amount of their firepower isn't going to be hitting anything else.

 

Don't worry about how many squadrons he has to how many you have. BFG isn't Epic where the activations would matter. It's better to have fewer squadrons that can do damage than many that just diffuse their firepower to BM shifts or multiple targets. As IN, I typically have three squadrons and a battleship. An emperor, two dauntless, two lunars, and two vengeance. That's never been a problem against Chaos who typically puts nothing in squadrons and has seven things running around the board. It works because it groups WB so that I can have a higher combined strength that won't shift on the gunnery chart.

[Demoulius]

also something i forget to ask for about 3 times. if several vessels are in a squadon and you brace.

 

for example 4 gladius frigates. my unit take 6 hits from lance weapons. the way i understand the rules is you substract 1 for the shields, and then roll the 4+ saves. the next damage then takes down a ship, the next damage takes down a shield. the next damage takes out a ship etc..... are we doing this right?

 

anyway i thought squadrons could group certain things together if they moved base to base? the only thing i can find on this is batteries though... i thought shields could also be "massed"?

 

and on another subject. bombers. do they attack individual targets or do they cause hits against squadrons as a whole? for example 4 bombers hit 1 gladius frigate. it has 2 turrets and manages to take 1 bomber down. the 3 bombers now attack with d6-2 a piece and any "overkill" hits that do more damage then the original ship has go over to the other ships in the squadron? i found it abit odd but we play it like this... (or rather, the IN player who owns the bomber does ;))

[Vaaish]

Yes and no. You take 6 hits, the first takes down the shield. The second kills the ship if you fail your brace save. If that happens, the third drops the shield on the next eligible target in the squadron. If you pass your save, you allocate the third hit to the same ship and roll the brace save on it again. This sounds a bit odd, but the blue book says to allocate hits to the same target until it's destroyed so in your example you keep putting hits on the first ship until it fails the brace save or you run out of hits.

 

Squadrons can only group WB and Lances if they are not in B2B. If they are in B2B you can mass turrets against incomming AC to a max of +3 (you don't have to squadron to do this). These turrets do not modify the bomber attack runs. Also when a squadron is in B2B, it may launch AC or torpedoes as a single wave. This means a squadron of two dictators can launch a wave of 8 AC, while unsquadroned they can only launch up to 4 AC in a wave regardless of base contact.

 

Nothing in the game masses shields. In fact, if you are in b2b when you take fire, your opponent can place the BM and drop the shields on all of your escorts with a single shot.

 

 

on your last example. AC will never have overkill hits bleed onto other ships in a squadron. Any extra hits are wasted. The reason for this is the last line on p. 30 that states the entire wave is removed after attacking the ship even if the target is destroyed before all the markers complete their attacks. Since bombers have to be in base contact to attack a ship and they were removed after the first target was destroyed there aren't any hits that can fall on other ships in the squadron. This allows for tactics like sacrificing a single escort to block a wave of 8 bombers from hitting a cruiser or battleship.

 

Also it was unclear from what you wrote but on bombers, you do d6-turrets to get the total number of attacks not hits. So in your example the bombers would do d6-2 attacks each. Say the three surviving bombers roll a 4, 3, 2. That means you then roll a total of three dice against the lowest armor value for the ship not that you would cause three hits.

[Demoulius]

thanks for clearing up the bombers Vaaish :) i know the rules are available in PDF's but for some reason i find rules hard to read if i dont have them in book form in my hands <_<

 

i figured the bombers worked that way, but then again were all pretty easy going. knowing this hell just put a single base against my escorts most likely :P (though granted having every single escorts have a chance to take a bomber down 2 times increases their survivability ALOT :woot: ) phew, bombers arent so scary anymore :) (for my escorts, my cruisers and BB still :cuss their pants when they see them coming :lol: )

 

the wording on your reply to brace tests confuse me though...is it mandatory to roll brace tests one at a time?

 

in hindsight it wont matter much compared to how we do it now but it increases the chance of surviving if anything... ^_^

 

hope that book comes in soon...feel like such an idiot having to ask for so many rules clarifications....

[Vaaish]

You can usually roll all the brace saves at once since they tend to be against targets with more than a single hit. You probably could roll them all at once against escorts too but it does leave the question as to which hits go against the shields. Rolling them separately with escorts ensures that the right hits go against shields and armor.

 

Remember, ships in b2b just give +1 turret to a max of three and the added turrets do not affect the d6 rolls bombers make for attacks. That means a sword with 4 others in b2b has 5 turrets not 6 and any surviving bombers will roll d6-2 not d6-5.

[Demoulius]

if i understand it right (again) you can just roll any saves you get at once. then any dice that you dident save roll over to the next ship with the first stripping its shield, correct?

[Vaaish]

that would probably work.

[Demoulius]

neato :D

 

that would be a huge difference to how we do it now. benefits of it (in general) is that you get the chance to save against the hits several times ^_^ we kinda figure squadrons would be the same as 40k's equilavent of a squad. in which case taking hits is worked out very diffferently. we generally have only skimmed the rules as well and thats probably the reason we miss so many things...

 

cant wait for that rulebook to arrive :)

 

might have a game on sunday, not sure :)

[Vaaish]

perhaps I misunderstood what you typed, but you should only get a chance to save the hits once. If you roll all of them for the first ship you don't get to roll again against the failed ones that roll over to the next ship because you've technically already saved as much of the damage from the BFI rolls already and anything left just gets applied to the ships.

 

The book method of rolling the saves is like this:

an Escort squadron not in base contact takes 8 hits which successfully braces.

hit 1 is applied to the first escort stripping shields. no brace save

hit 2 is applied to the hull, but is saved.

hit 3 is applied to the hull, but not saved destroying the escort.

hit 4 is applied to the second escort stripping shields. no brace save

hit 5 is applied to the hull, but not saved destroying the escort.

hit 6 is applied to the third escort stripping shields. no brace save

hit 7 is applied to the hull, but is saved.

hit 8 is applied to the hull, but is saved.

 

Rolling them as a group would work like this:

an Escort squadron not in base contact takes 8 hits which successfully braces.

8d6 are rolled for brace saves resulting in 4 failed saves.

hit 1 is applied to shields of first escort

hit 2 destroys first escort

hit 3 is applied to shields of first escort

hit 4 destroys second escort.

third escort is untouched.

[Demoulius]

poo, back to square one :cuss

[Demoulius]

my mail order just arrived with some SC's to name just a few items. one of the SC's though is missing an part...

 

how do you normally contact GW to replace a part? my local Gw (and IIRC all GW's) doesent sell BFG....

[Demoulius]

can someone tell me if individual ships in a squadron can break off from battle or is the squadron then forced to follow? cant really find a good anwser looking at the rulebook myself :)

 

breaking of is per ship, but squadrons take tests together and if one moves off the table the rest has to follow (if im reading this right) :P

 

also, argh my SC is missing parts :) how do i get them to replace it? call them and kindly ask them to send me another one? :D

[Vaaish]

Currently all ships in the squadron have to disengage if one does. The 2010 FAQ that should be along shortly changes that and allows capital ships to attempt to disengage separately although if they fail they are considered to be out of formation with all of the drawbacks associated with that (p.33) and may not rejoin the squadron.

[Demoulius]

i hear lots of talk about that faq. is there a date for its release or will it be done "when its done" aka noone is in a bloody hurry? :)

 

another question: im reading here that fighters can screen ships against bombers. how does this work though? if i understand it right they "stick" to the ship and any bombers or torpedoes that hit the ship get intercepted by the fighters instead?

 

if i understand that correctly wouldnt thunderhawks be able to do the same? essentialy making cruisers uh...resistant to incoming bombers?

[Demoulius]

played a game today against my necron budyd. we played IIRC 1055 points or so. i ran:

4 SC's. master of the fleet with 1 RR.

4 hunters

4 glads

1 nova (squadroned with the glads)

 

he ran:

tombship with sepulcher

harvester

4 50 pt escorts (squadroned 2x2)

my deployment 1

my deployment 2

 

first turn we both moved towards eachother, i fired my thunderhawks.

his fleet after movement

my fleet after 1st turn (bombers are also thudnerhawks)

 

his 2nd turn, he fired abit at my thunderhawks trying to shoot them down (rest was out of range) whenever he hit i saved with my 4+ resiliance save :) my 2nd turn i fired my boarding torpedoes, and the rest of my fleet was out of range. my thunderhawks blew up 2 of his escorts (even with him bracing, he rolled a 1 for both of them :) ) 1 of my thunderhawks hit his tombship (even after the 4 turrets) and caused 1 LD damage to it, but he repaired it inmediatly in his end phase.

ordenance away!

fleet placement after 2nd turn

 

his 3nd turn he moved up abit, took down 4 of my escorts (the nova, 1 glad and 2 hunters). my 3rd turn all 4 of my SC's had lock on. i scored 7 hits on his tombship. he had braced in his own ordenance turn (i hit him with my torpedo markers, he braced and i dident do any damage. rest of the torpedoes flew into the warp rift in the middle of the table) and saved everything. then i got about 4-5 more hits on it, and he saved those as well (:D)

my escorts down

 

his 4th turn he used his sepulcher at my LD9 SC. i failed LD (rolled a 10...forget that i had 1 RR :cuss ) his fire focused on the other squadron and he took down one of my SC's. he rolled 12 on the catastrophic table, and got 14 cms.....

 

after the dust had settled, he had blown up 1 of his own escorts, 2 of my SC's were now crippled and the 3rd SC had 2 damage. his tombship wasent damaged at all and his harvester (as the only model) was out of range of the explosion. and then only by 0.5 cm....quite literally every ship/squadron (except my SC's since that DAMNED sepulcher hit it) were braced. i totally forget i had a RR to begin with and tbh, i feel that if i at least would have had the CHANCE to brace, it COULD have made a world of a difference....

 

my 4th turn. i tried to board him until i realized that 2 out of the 3 vessels were crippled and just called the game.

a last ditch effort (futile) it did raise the question though. 2 of my 3 ships were cirppled. did he get +2 for every crippled ship? we played that it did. i rolled a 5, he got a 6. both of us were on special orders. he had higher boarding value. so when we calculated it he had: 6+1+4. and i had 5+2 so he beat me by 4. i just conceded right there, was meaningless to carry on.

 

in 1 turn he caused 14 points of damage on my SC's. they had 24 left before he opend fire....

 

yea........ i really have to renember to space my ships out abit more ;) and renember i have re-rolls. the not "spacing out the ships" has caused me a loss with the same reason before (IN vruiser blowing up taking 3/4 of my fleet down along with it... ;) ) other then that some insanely good luck on his part with his shooting and armour saves, nothing that you can do against that really....

 

as far as i see it anyway. thoughts on things i could have done differently?

[Vaaish]

And the evilness of necrons rears its head. You should have just ignored the tombship. if you had taken down his escorts and the scythe and just disengaged I think you would have won. Pretty much nothing you had on the table had enough firepower to put much of a dent in a braced tombship.

 

Unfortunately, you only get that resilient save against other ordnance, not against capital ships shooting at the ordnance since the rules only allow it when you contact other AC and the rules for shooting at ordnance as well as traveling through BM say the marker is removed on a 6+ without making mention of allowing the save.

 

On shooting at the Tombship. When he braced his tombship armor is reduced to a 4+ (you didn't mention this had any effect on your shooting and depending on aspect you should have rolled something like 11 dice for WB and 8 for BC and at the worst 6 and 4 w lock on that should net a bit more than just 7 hits.) but he does gain a 2+ save.

 

I'm unsure of how the Tombship used the sepulcher. You mentioned his tombship was braced and you can't use the Sepulcher if you are on special orders or crippled. Second, the effect is only targeted at a single ship which means he can't prevent an entire squadron from bracing if he succeeds in using it on a single ship in the squadron (excluding escorts). In a capital ship squadron it makes for a complex situation, but I would treat the affected ship as if it is out of formation since it cannot use SO.

 

On the boarding action, he should have only applied the modifier once. Multiple ships in boarding actions only add their BV together and you as the attacker get to distribute any hits.

[Demoulius]

yea first time facing that god awfull piece of flying cheese :( i guess it can be seen as an BFG monolith i guess *sighes*

 

oh the thunderhawks...poop. i figured youd get to use it to remain in play whenever it would get shot. the last entryon page 21 of armada says "using its 4+save does not prevent it from attacking a ship if in base contact with one when stopped."

 

the way i see it that means that if i get into contact with a ship, and use the 4+ save against turrets i can still make the attack. it doesent outright say that he can do it but the sentance to, at least. implies that it can.

 

he had braced in his own ordenance phase when i flew 3 boarding torpedo markers into the side of his ship. i dident do any damage but that would mean that in my turn he had a 2+ save and armour 4 and in his own turn returned to normal. that how we played it at least and after your queri i looked up the rules for the order and i read it right, he should have been on half firepower, not use his sepulcher etc etc.......GREAT WAY to find out now <_<

 

i scored 7 (out of 8) hits with the locked on strike cruisers. i was facing my front towards the tombshuip so the side batteries couldnt fire. they fired at the harvester instead but caused no damage (IIRC). i had some shots from 3 nearby gladii (on brace so half firepower) and 1 shot from the 2 nearby hunters. fact remains though he just passed all his 2+ saves. if i fired at his harvester and that had braced the result would have been the same (dice willing)

 

on the sepulcher effect itself. he targetted a SC who was squadronned with another one.

 

on the boarding value. can you tell me where it states that you only apply modifiers once? i cant seem to find it anywhere on the pages :huh:

 

LOVELY to find out that YET AGAIN misenterpritting the rules makes me lose badly, when it shouldnt have happend like that by a long shot. he would have still crippled one of my SC's (4 of the damage from the exploding one came from the harvester) but it wouldnt have been as dramatic is this.

 

if the fist SC wouldnt exploded and i still had boarded him i would have beating him hands down, knocking a few hits off the ship at the very least. i think im also going to insist on making attacks with ships 1 at a time. he was moving between his harvester and tombship left and right, doing every other weapon in an un-organised matter. it also gave the result that when the ships went boom. he braced, and halved his firepower which was not needed with some organised gameplay. it also made it unclear about what weapons were already fired and which ones werent...

 

tbh a good learning curve for me. keep my spaced abit, brace lasts till the end of your next OWN turn. and dont focus to much on the oversized battleship with my weapons. And IF i do, fire normal batteries first. i started with my bombardment cannons and out of fear he inmediatly braced (well he wanted to, but we renembered he WAS allready braced <_< )

[Kythnos]

LOVELY to find out that YET AGAIN misenterpritting the rules makes me lose badly

 

You seem to get that experience after every game you play. Maybe you should scale a bit back on your game sizes and check every rule twice when using it might help to get a firmer grasp on them and prevents such mistakes. I think in the long run that'll help you and your mates more, than finding out about everything later in forums. Of course, mistakes happen to everyone, but they seem to be pretty dominant in your games, judging from your descriptions.