Lets talk Dreadfleet

I could have put this in What You? but i figured i'd follow the footsteps of Jeff White.


I played two games of Dreadfleet this past few days.



This game is grade A Ameritrash! It's been given a tough ride by TOS. In terms of fairness and control it makes Wiz-War look like Go, and so i can see why some were disappointed. On the other hand, what where people expecting? Its a game about fantasy pirates in another dimension with mechanical Kraken, not a historical sim of Trafalgar! I stuck up the fish face image because that is essentially this games theme, you fight battles like the Pirates of the Caribbean one where they are shooting and dueling each other in a giant whirl pool.

If you drew the worst fate card on your opening turn, met its conditions, then failed saves on your ships and then drew the worst combos of damage cards your entire fleet, in theory could be sunk before you did anything. Other times you can fire thousands of rounds into a ship and it doesn't go down. Its great. I took out one enemy ship by sailing a small cog with gunpowder and an assassin straight at it. The assassin failed in his mission but the explosion sent the ship to the bottom of the maelstrom.

What have others made of this game? Any played?

I'm pretty interested in this game, what's the complexity like? What size play area is recommended?

the game comes with a table cloth that must be something like 1.4x1.2meters so its a pretty big play area. Complexity in play is not that much. Essentially you roll off to see who moves first, you then both draw and resolve fate (random event) cards. The player with higher initiative picks a ship and does a turn for that ship. You can move and shoot and do a special command if you pass a command roll. Movement is in inches with a jointed ruler. You can only turn after moving a minimum distance based on your ships stats and you use a little plastic 45degree angle thingy to turn. To shoot you roll die equal to your broadside and depending on the range, 4s, 5s or just 6s are hits. The target rolls their amour save, if they fail they draw damage cards. Damage cards can take points off crew, hull, speed, or do something special. If a ship loses all its crew or hull it sinks. You can also do boarding actions where your roll off one die per crew point and there are captains duels. That's more or less it. Most of the craziness is in the cards and the special abilities each ship has. One can summon sea monsters, another has a giant hammer on the front for smashing other ships, another can dive and resurface.

Because it flopped, you should be able to find a copy on the cheap.

I think the main reason it flopped so badly was due to expectations.

When they bypass a chance to reprint manowar for this, its bound to have a negative reaction from the get go.

Combine that, with the fact that gw haven't designed a competant game in two decades illustrating how shabby their design team is (remember, gw have publicly admitted they are a toy company who makes rule to play with their toys, not vice versa) and with the fact that gw have to overprice everything (because they state "GW are the porsche of miniatures" ~ Jervis Johnson, 2001) its no small wonder how this game sank.

Its not horribad™®©, but its also not very good either considering the price tag. If you can find it for $30, I could maaaaybe recomend it. Otherwise dont waste your money.
No, I'm not a fan, despite painting all the minis and trying my best to like it after more than 20 games before I gave up, and gave it away. Its worth trying, but as the sort of lifestyle game that gw tries to market, it failed.

Best thing about the game is the sweet tits playmat, which makes playing pirates of the spanish main into a sexual fiesta.

I'd agree it were probably not worth the original asking price. I like it, but there are better games for cheaper. I'd probably value it a bit higher than $30 though, 40-50 seems fair for what it is to me.

edit. Also, whats the skinny with Man o War. Not a game i have ever played but i know it is highly regarded. Some of GWs highly regarded games aren't actually that good, Mordheim/Necromunda, in terms of their rule sets. How is Man o War?

People wanted not Dreadfleet so there was a sad trombone playing when it released.
It is designed in the old-style of GW where crazy shit just happens which isn't for everyone, but a style I love.

As I've said many times before I started with mini-games but moved away due to the rule cycling, mini cycling and all those other...perks. So Dreadfleet being a complete miniature game in a box without threat of the rules changing, models becoming "outdated", or things being made obsolete is a huge plus to me. It is a full fledged miniatures game in a box.

Being a miniatures game though it also has the open grid/movement, line of sight, range...Things that turn some grid-based skirmishers off. Not to mention assembling and optionally painting the minis.

It is a game that is more flavor and narrative than game so that has to be kept in mind. The game is reliant on dice rolls and card flips to hopefully balance out in the end. What it reminds me of is the Golden Age of GW where they had rules where your captain can get drunk and fall overboard, where the Orcs created weapons that launched giant bubbles that covered the end of titan weapons potentially causing the shot to bounce back, when they loved to put drills on the front of both ships and vehicles the size of a skyscraper.

I love it because it recaptured some of the feelings of playing GW games in the late 90's. So I will freely say that there are factors in the game outside of the game that makes it so great for me. But if you're looking for a miniatures game and a game that is further from Space Hulk and closer to DungeonQuest where what happens is what happens and you just laugh at your fortune or misfortune then it is a solid game.

Man o War is a hot mess. It actually makes Dreadfeet seem more serious.
Every bit as random but Dreadfleet is actually streamlined as far as record keeping. Space Ghost started a thread that covered a bunch of ground some time back on it.

I think we need to say something about John Blanche. His illustrations for this game are just amazing and, because the miniatures are based off of his sketches, the minis are incredible too. These aspects of the design, i.e. the atmosphere, the theme, and the components are some of the best I've seen anywhere.

Unfortunately, Dreadfleet is also a victim of GW's game rules philosophy. I'm not sure if they're completely incompetent or if they are just mostly incompetent and also earnestly believe that randomness for its own sake is just the most fun thing ever. They want their games to be these grand experiences that tell stories ("forging the narrative" is how they put it in 7th ed. 40k). While that sounds like a great idea, in practice it boils down to rolling dice to see what random shit happens. It sidelines the players and their choices to such an extent that they are minimally involved in "forging the narrative." It just doesn't work for games. Cosmic and Wiz-War generate great stories because of the crazy shit that you did, not because you rolled a 6 twice in a row.

Bottom line: Like GW's other offerings, it's just too random for me and the actual game doesn't live up to the amazing Blanche illustrations in the rulebook. If you're determined to make this game work, I suppose you could make some house rules to turn down the randomness dial and it could be worth playing.

i agree with the narrative by random events pov for GWs bigger name games. If i were to invest a lot of time and money into a game i want some thing with some tactical nuance to sink my teeth into.

Manowar is indeed a hot mess, and in many ways I would prefer to just play dreadfleet since I can get a distilled experience with that.

Manowar does have more granularity though, but that's not always a good thing when actually using critical reasoning concerning game design. Though many will argue that granularity is the sole reason to enjoy such.

Again, expectations. After precedent set by reprinting space hulk, consumers assumed and expected other classics to be brought back in a similar manner. Apparently they still do.

In many ways they already have. Take legends of the high seas/wild west. Great skirmish game that uses a refined LOTR engine combined with the campaign progression of mordheim. Not exactly a reprint, but from a game play perspective, is an improved ressurection.

Dreadfleet missed this opportunity to win old manowar fans back, and possibly improve it. Instead those expectations isolated those fans. The very core that keeps gw afloat, despite gw claiming the contrary. They are no paying the price of that contrary claim with their ever dwindling income as illustrated by their yearly investor reports.

I think gw should be allowed to take a chance and make a new game. But ignoring expectations hurt them a bit in the process.