Space Fleet Gothic

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Game series logo

Space Fleet Gothic is a tabletop game from 1999 based on Games Workshops' Warhammer 40,000 Universe. It is a space battles game and is about the invasion of the Gothic sector by the Abaddon fleets and the ensuing military campaign by the Empire to regain control.

The game

This is a strategic dice game with often self-assembled and painted miniatures, which is mostly played at a table. As a player, you gain command of the space fleet of one of the Warhammer races in the 41st millennium and lead them into battle against other space fleets. This is a turn-based game in which you maneuver a small number of spaceships between asteroid fields and planets in order to defeat your opponent with torpedoes, ferries and laser salvos. The figures themselves cannot be classified in a standard commercial scale, they are each 2 to 10 cm long.

The game came to Germany with the campaign devised by Games Workshop about the Gothic conflict and at that time it was more of an obsession than a tangible game, as the rules were nothing more than a revised compendium of White Dwarf articles.

There are now space fleets and appropriate rules for all races in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The first miniatures came from Citadel Miniatures, but in the meantime sales and further development have been taken over by the Specialist Games division.

Influences and tactics

The game tactics are heavily influenced by the naval battles of the two world wars . The focus of the battles is on large-caliber cannons, torpedoes and, to a limited extent, on carrier-based interceptors and boarding boats. In addition, elements from the time when sailing ships dominated the oceans are also included in the game. In the game itself, these are the importance of broadsides , outmaneuvering the opposing fleets ( Crossing the T ) and ramming and boarding other ships. Influences from this period also appear in the descriptions of the recruitment techniques of the individual fleets ( Shanghai ). In addition, some texts describe the living conditions that existed on ancient slave galleys.

Computer games

Since 2005 it has been possible to play Raumflotte Gothic over the Internet with the help of the free 2D board and card game software VASSAL . There is also an alternative VASSAL module with a modified set of rules, in which the game is played on a hex field card. The game is similar to a real tabletop game in that no rules are programmed in and the players have to do everything manually.

In addition to the two VASSAL modules, there is also an implementation for the Cyberboard program called Distantguns, which, however, is not complete and is currently not being further developed.

In January 2015, Tindalos Interactive announced its own implementation for Battlefleet Gothic, which appeared in April 2016 under the name Battlefleet Gothic: Armada . In January 2018, Tindalos announced the 2019 sequel .

In 2016 the game Battlefleet Gothic: Leviathan was released as an implementation for IOS and Android devices. The license is held by Grand Cauldron.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Golem article on Battlefleet Gothic by Tindalos Interactive
  2. ↑ Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Focus Home announces sequel . In: PC Games Hardware . ( pcgameshardware.de [accessed on May 6, 2018]).