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Author Topic: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)  (Read 191277 times)

Offline Thinking Stone

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (Dec. 25th 2020 Update!)
« Reply #390 on: January 09, 2021, 04:09:27 PM »
Now time to look at the Eldar! One thing already stands out: I think the Supernova should ditch the Weapons Batteries, since the coolness of the ship is that it relies solely upon pulsars :P

It will be interesting to see how the MSM and MMS elements balance themselves out.

I do still like my idea of holofields causing lances to count as weapons batteries, but the tracing mechanism is pretty cool. Another way to do it might be to remove the turrets and give Eldar the holofield save against sundry attacks, but have it reduced by tracing (you could even simplify tracing so that any blast marker on the Eldar ship reduces holofields).

Do the Void Stalker's shields work out at 2 instead of MMS's 3? And with the cruisers all having just 1 shield, does that mesh well with the escorts also having 1 shield? That seems to push the equilibrium back a bit towards escorts.

There are still so many ways to explore Eldar; it'd be interesting to tweak the differences between Craftworlders and Corsairs to differentiate them a bit (e.g. 5+ armour for Craftworld ships, but slower). But perhaps that's thought for a future point when this 1.5 edition of XR is complete.

Offline horizon

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (Dec. 25th 2020 Update!)
« Reply #391 on: January 09, 2021, 09:21:24 PM »
Corsairs may have a small tilt towards escorts, that's fine.

Upon rereading I think this new variant goes back to a core rule breaking mechanic but also makes it all a bit more rule heavy. One point of MMS was bringing the rules back into the core rules. Which, admitted, was only achieved after several updates. ;)

Offline Thinking Stone

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (Dec. 25th 2020 Update!)
« Reply #392 on: January 10, 2021, 10:37:05 AM »
@horizon What I mean is that the pre-existing tilt to escorts is increased when they get 1 shield per HP and cruisers get only 1 shield for every 6 HP! ;D It would be interesting if Corsairs had no shields but Craftworlders did.

Not that any of this is new, but I think the biggest mechanical issue with BBB Eldar is how the second move exploits the biggest weakness of the IGoUGo system’s representation of simultaneity (giving artificial resilience because nothing can react). I don’t think the holofields in BBB are as much of a problem except that they disproportionately affect lances to an extent that’s bad for game balance, but they’re pretty easy to tweak.

But the MSM mechanic seems pretty core to at least Corsair Eldar and you lose a lot of the feel when going to MMS (as well as you miss out on the Uboat-like tactics). Ideally, one could fix this with alternating activations (BFG2020 away!), but if you’re sticking with IGoUGo and you want to keep the MSM character, I think you’d need one or some combination of the following: a reaction fire mechanism, a firepower output reduction when using MSM, reduce the success rate of MSM, or everyone gets a ‘submarine’-type unit that uses similar rules to MSM (probably + holofields).

If you make MSM harder then you get the issue MMS had where you need to up the resilience a lot because BBB Eldar are fragile enough that pulling MSM off becomes a bit of a binary ‘no cost to Eldar’ versus ‘maximum cost, Eldar ship dies’.

I like the idea of using CTANH to reduce firepower because it gives the player a meaningful choice about whether they want to risk the lower firepower and chance of failure for a MSM ambush versus setting up an ambush the hard way without relying upon MSM’s ability to almost-trivially escape.

Now for the unpopular ideas :P I personally like the idea of escorts being able to fire reaction fire (i.e. shoot their guns in the opponent’s move phase, in lieu of their own shooting phase). It gives them a solid role that they really want for (at the moment, everyone but Corsairs basically has ‘torpedo boat’, ‘supplemental firepower’, and ‘a few more turrets’) and follows history by allowing escorts to deter ‘submarine’ attacks.

Giving everyone a escort submarine with Eldar the only ones with cruiser+ subs is an interesting idea for balance, but I’m not sure it really suit BFG so well. 

Now obviously the overall question is whether any of these things do enough to counteract the egregious turn order artefact that allows MSM to work in IGoUGo. I’m guessing MMS tried out some of these ideas? If it were me doing this round of XR, I would have probably taken MSM Corsairs and added the CTANH requirement, and changed holofields to either use the tracing mechanism or made lances count as WBs against them, and just done some balance tweaks. Maybe Craftworlders could have some shields (probably 5+ armour at least); it makes sense to me that they’d have shields where Corsairs might not, but I know they’re there primarily because of the MMS changes. I’m not sure how much @Xca|iber considered those ideas, but maybe some food for thought to at least settle some questions!

(obviously, @Xca|iber, this is theoretical and I don’t mean to unduly influence ye to throw the hard work out the window!)
« Last Edit: January 10, 2021, 10:47:07 AM by Thinking Stone »

Offline horizon

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (Dec. 25th 2020 Update!)
« Reply #393 on: January 10, 2021, 10:59:26 AM »
Officially it is still msm all they way.

For XR is said xabre should see if
Corsair Eldar could be msm
Craftworld Eldar MMS
Dark Eldar MS (as is)


Offline horizon

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Offline Xca|iber

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (Dec. 25th 2020 Update!)
« Reply #395 on: February 01, 2021, 08:48:53 PM »
I'll make a note to increase the number of allowed SCs in the Armageddon list. In retrospect 3 is a little low, especially for fleets larger than 1500 points. The purpose was more to softly turn off the IN Armageddon list from allowing a "pure" SM fleet.

He is correct about the IN reserves in the SM Dominion list as being reserves. The exceptions in that list are that an SM captain can be assigned to it to remove the "allies of convenience" restrictions (aka the previously unnamed limitations on cross-faction reserves from the classic rules, for re-rolls, squadrons, etc), and/or that the IN reserves in a Dominion list use a different ratio than normal reserves.
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BFG:XR - The Battlefleet Gothic Expanded Revised Rules Project

Offline Xca|iber

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #396 on: December 31, 2021, 08:46:50 PM »
Happy New Years everyone!

With a new year comes a new BFG:XR release (this time anyway ;D). See the first post for the update!

-Xca|iber
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BFG:XR - The Battlefleet Gothic Expanded Revised Rules Project

Offline Thinking Stone

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #397 on: January 01, 2022, 01:37:45 AM »
Christmas and New Year have, indeed, come as foretold!

Thanks for the hard work, @Xca|iber, I’m excited to see what the next revision brings!


As a brief aside, on the topic of Space Marines in the Armageddon list: I did some research to find the first iteration of Marines in BFG (which was White Dwarf 235, if anyone is interested! It's reproduced in Warp Storm). The notes in the article mention how taking Marine vessels as an unrestricted part of an Imperial fleet was one of a few ideas for including them in games; when the Armageddon list appeared in BFG Mag later on, they ran with that method as a trial.

So the original idea seems to be that all Imperial fleets could take Marines, and that Armagedon wasn't special like that! Armageddon has nice character without the Marine parts anyway. (And as I've said before :p I don't really like the Reserves system and I'd prefer something more like the reserve fleet being a subfleet of the main list—but maybe the different ideas they had at the time could be food for thought?)

Offline horizon

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #398 on: January 01, 2022, 06:35:47 PM »
Here you can find the annual 2002 which has warp storm included.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-aXA8fc5AQ8Uzg0d2xKZjZ2UVk&resourcekey=0-R23Uy6Yaj79k1cBVBC23Vw

In the text you refer to they just created the Armageddon list to be combo fleet they write about.

Offline Thinking Stone

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #399 on: January 04, 2022, 03:54:45 AM »
Here you can find the annual 2002 which has warp storm included.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-aXA8fc5AQ8Uzg0d2xKZjZ2UVk&resourcekey=0-R23Uy6Yaj79k1cBVBC23Vw

In the text you refer to they just created the Armageddon list to be combo fleet they write about.

Ah yes, thanks for that, @horizon! I wasn’t sure if Annual 2002 had the exact text reprinted, but it does! The BFG Mag #14 list for Armageddon mentions it too.

I think the Imperial Navy part of Armageddon was always different, too. The 1:1 battlecruisers and different ship availability is in the original BFG Mag list (which I guess is meant to show off Armageddon as being a fancier and more updated fleet than the Obscurus one?).

I do always find it funny that they created the Reserves rules so you could ally in the Retribution that was loaned to Armageddon for the war, but the rules are so restrictive you’d never actually do it in a normal game! In that original iteration, you needed 3 battleships to take a reserve ally battleship, and you also needed three cruisers for each of those battleships (including the allied one)—so 3 battleships and 12 cruisers before you can take the ship the rule was invented for… that’s 2860 points if you took the cheapest options in the original list (3 Oberons and 12 Endeavours, + 50-pt fleet commander + 365-pt Retribution).

Offline horizon

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #400 on: January 04, 2022, 08:05:51 AM »
But in a way it makes sense: reserves are drafted in when the war becomes really heavy.

When you are playing a campaign and took such a battleships through reserves you could field that battleship in any given game alone.

Offline flybywire-E2C

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #401 on: January 10, 2022, 04:36:09 AM »
<comes up for air>

Hi everyone! I hope you all are doing well and feeling blessed. Roy's been hitting me on the head with a hammer for ages now to come on back, so here I am.

Horizon's right. Reserve fleet limits are taken against an entire fleet list, not what's on the table for a given battle. For one-off battles, whatever two players agree to should be fine.

- Nate


Check out the BFG repository page for all the documents we have in work:
http://tinyurl.com/23nul8q
:) Smile, game on and enjoy!           - Nate

Offline flybywire-E2C

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #402 on: January 10, 2022, 04:57:51 AM »
<stirs pot... >

So I've taken a deep dive into all the BFG-XR rulesets and such, and well, it's a lot. A fantastic amount of work went into this, which I can tell from experience by just going through it all.

I tend to be more of a purist when it comes to 'da rulez, mainly because I helped create some of them the first time around, and I was in on the discussions with the original content creators behind why some of the rules are the way they are. That being said, good games either evolve or die, and it's great to see this much interest still exists for BFG.

Roy, the other HA's and I have been trading emails back and forth for a little while now. It would be great to see BFG-XR turn into a finished fan-driven ruleset. It would be even better to see it turn into something semi-official, which is the best we can hope for since BFG's been officially dead since 2013. To that end I'll toss a few monkey wrenches into the mix every now and again for argument's sake. When I do, feel free to throw a wrench or two back at me!

- Nate
Check out the BFG repository page for all the documents we have in work:
http://tinyurl.com/23nul8q
:) Smile, game on and enjoy!           - Nate

Offline horizon

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #403 on: January 10, 2022, 05:35:07 AM »
<stirs pot... >

So I've taken a deep dive into all the BFG-XR rulesets and such, and well, it's a lot. A fantastic amount of work went into this, which I can tell from experience by just going through it all.

I tend to be more of a purist when it comes to 'da rulez, mainly because I helped create some of them the first time around, and I was in on the discussions with the original content creators behind why some of the rules are the way they are. That being said, good games either evolve or die, and it's great to see this much interest still exists for BFG.

Roy, the other HA's and I have been trading emails back and forth for a little while now. It would be great to see BFG-XR turn into a finished fan-driven ruleset. It would be even better to see it turn into something semi-official, which is the best we can hope for since BFG's been officially dead since 2013. To that end I'll toss a few monkey wrenches into the mix every now and again for argument's sake. When I do, feel free to throw a wrench or two back at me!

- Nate

GW may be officially dead but the hobby is pretty much alive!

ps. change your signature to this:
https://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/index.php?topic=5203.0

Offline horizon

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Re: The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)
« Reply #404 on: January 10, 2022, 12:54:19 PM »
Just transfering the last comments I had from the Discord into here (for Nate):


* I have a feeling the Corsair Eldar rules are flawed, the reduced turn rate will make them to weak. Even with the 'jibe' setting up attack and escape might prove to difficult.

* I really dislike the new Necron mechanic.

And a bit old ones:
* urgh on chaos light cruisers. ;)
* the attack craft placement rules should be like official (aka no stacking)

* removing overlapping is good
* returning to blastmarkers 1999 is fine (as an advanced ruling).


Talking about individual ships is a long run... cause some okay, some just no. :)

And as a sidenote:
if something turns semi-official I really hope it will be the remasted style books (the fleet book already has 2021 official updates) which can be updated with adjustments.
That book is so much more beautiful than what we had before.