I have been threatening to write some tactical articles for all the fleets for a long time and I am finally getting round to writing this up. I have also enlisted the aid of several members of the community to assist in specific ship tactics too (much appreciated guys). However, I thought before going into specific ship details for fleets, a general all round review of each of the fleets would be a good starting point. One of the things that I love about BFG is that each fleet tends to lend itself to a different style of play and/or tactics. So I have found that each game I have played is different. Just a disclaimer here, this is just my experience with the fleets and not the be all end all of tactics. So let’s kick this off: Imperial The Imperial Navy is probably the most common fleet used in the game and in my opinion the most versatile out of all the fleets. The Imperial fleets don’t have the most guns, don’t have the most ordnance and they are not the fastest. However, what they lack in specialty they make up for in variety. The Imperial fleet has a wide selection of ships available to them and is a bit a jack of all trades fleet that can deal with most situations and cause a few surprises. Due to this jack of all trades approach the Imperial fleet, more than most, needs to work as a unit to succeed. Keeping your mainline ships together for mutual support is key, this allows them to easily react to the situation at hand and mutually support each other’s firing. The Imperial fleet needs to combine its firepower to destroy ships, to bring this down to simple terms – pick on a ship, cripple or destroy it, move onto the next target. Using your large amount of torpedoes to force enemy into firing zones and break up their own fleet is also a tried and trusted tactic. Keep escorts and light cruisers behind the main gun line, these ships are the most manoeuvrable in an Imperial fleet but do not have the survivability of your main cruisers. Keeping them back but in touching distance of your main ships allows them to support and also defend the rear. Escorts and light cruisers I have found are best used to finish off crippled ships and prevent other faster fleets from outflanking you. Finally – The Emperor Battleship is the darling of the fleet, you will see why. Chaos The real heavy hitters, they have some of the most powerful ships in the game and are quicker than their Imperial counterparts and most other fleets too. They do have lighter armour though, so while it is tempting to just throw their ships into the thick of it, they can end up being destroyed in a war of attrition. However, they have pound for pound the best cruisers in the game in my opinion; all classes can hit hard and are quick. The Chaos fleet also have the added bonus of having some of the longest range weapons too. So those pesky Eldar can be hit by your long range guns. The Chaos fleet also have some of the best carriers in the game (there’s a theme here) and can generally hold their own in wars of ordinance. Due to the nature of their cruisers, their escorts become somewhat redundant though, so keep that in mind, taking another cruiser over a squadron of escorts should always be the question. Using your usually superior speed to outflank and keep out of the enemies’ field of fire is a great tactic as well. Consider a squadron of cruisers too, the devastation and look of horror that a squadron of two Murder cruisers can do is a thing of Slaaneshi beauty. Also, don’t ignore the marks of Chaos. A mark of Khorne with boarding is brutal and taking Nurgle mark against Orks negates one of their biggest threats. One thing missing though is torpedoes, never underestimate a salvo. I have in the past and it hurt. Orks The Orks tend to get a bad rap in BFG and this tends to be because of their slower speed, perceived low ordinance and the poor rear armour. While the armour is something that cannot change the lack of speed can be negated due to the automatic success of leadership for all ahead full orders. Using this order can get the Ork fleet very much within hard hitting distance and it should be the first thing an Ork Warboss attempts to do. In the Imperial section I said use your mainline cruisers to screen your lighter ships, I would say do the opposite here and use a lovely screen of ram ships in larger games. Most admirals will be wary of a large ram ship charge. The key thing is that this shouldn’t be the main tactic of an Ork admiral, that’s…. Boarding! For every 500 points you can put a Warboss on your cruisers. This drastically improves your boarding value, especially on cruiser hulls that already have extra hit points compared to all other cruiser hulls already. Using all ahead full and then getting into boarding range can cause your ships to destroy and/or cripple ships easily a turn. The lack of ordinance is also slightly misleading, as the Orks can trade in a lot of the heavy gunz for ordinance and this can not only cause big problems offensively but also help keep those pesky bombers from the rear armour. There are only so many fleets where you will be able to close and get into the range of the double damage gunz, so keep that in mind when selecting your fleet. Necrons Does this fleet need a tactical? Hmmm. The Necrons are the strongest fleet on paper in the game; they have strong armour, plenty of offensive capabilities and are fast too. However, they do lack ordinance completely so can be very susceptible to massive waves and often spend much of that firepower trying to keep ordinance at bay. I am generally fine with Nercons being the strongest fleet though, that is very fluffy for me really. The key for this fleet is to ensure that one aspect is not picked on. Due to the rules around Necron ships phasing out and the victory points rule around crippled ships and destroyed ships counting more etc. losing one Necron ship can be disastrous and in all honestly lose you the game. I have found pairing cruisers together for mutual support really does help. Also don’t bother taking the light cruiser Shroud. It is a weak link in the Necron fleet and any opposition admiral will pick on those ships if they are in your fleet to get easy victory points. It might look cool but it’s a flying liability. Tyranids People new to the Hive Mind fleets often find the instinctive behaviour difficult to deal with but often this can help rather than hinder once you learn how to deal with it. Failing the behaviour doesn't mean all is lost, for instance it can help auto pass reload ordinance. But once you get to grips with it the rule wont be much of an issue. However, what is an issue is keeping your Hive Ships alive, they are key to victory for any Tyranid fleet. Keep them safe! It can be tempting to go overboard in buying upgrades for a Nid fleet on various ships, but more Hive ships are better than an overloaded single ship. Giving a Hive ship max ordinance and decent weapons batteries at long range will offset that weakness of the fleet with the eventual aim to close and board and hit the enemy with close range bio-plasma too. A neat trick is to use escorts with feeder tentacles to cause havoc amongst enemy fleets too. The Tyranid fleet can put out the most ordinance of any fleet and really, only Tau can match them so using that to full effect is a must. You can also purchase ordinance at the start of the game to provide a nice fighter screen to begin the fight. This is certainly worth doing in the initial stages while you try to close. The moment you are in close its generally game over for most fleets. Kraken with massive claws can really prove devastating here, also with ramming too! There is also a tendency to over purchase of bio-plasma, as it ignores shields, but I would say use this as an added bonus rather than your main armament. Corsair Eldar Now I am talking about the original rules here, which involve the move-shoot-move rules. I have always found them fun to play with and against and not really enjoyed the change the community made in BFG:XR (just my preference please don’t @ me). Think of this fleet as a hit and run fleet, get into cause damage and then make a run for it. While celestial phenomenon can help the fleet it can also hinder the fleet, so be wary of that. Blast markers can cause some serious damage too if not avoided. They are the typical glass cannon, hard hitting with their weapons batteries, pulsar lances and ordinance but if they are caught out in the open then they will be shredded. The low armour and low critical hits roll can and will result in any battle plan being thrown out the window if you are caught. Many advocate for the escorts in their fleet and while they are powerful I have always liked their cruiser hulls. Many admirals will go for the pulsar lances due to the hitting on 4+ rather than the armour of the enemy. However, I would suggest to not immediately jump to that, Eldar weapons batteries are always considered closing. So locking on can give you some serious dice to roll. The one thing that can make or break Eldar fleets though is the way the sun is facing. So always keep that in mind, a savvy enemy will suddenly have you moving away from the sun and so that speed suddenly disappears and you can be on the back foot within a single phase. So to sum up, always be on the move, never stay still, get in hit hard and run away (cowardly xenos!) Craftworld Eldar Very similar to the Corsair but they have a bit more staying power due to the improved armour. The battleship available to this fleet is quite simply amazing for its points with its weapon batteries and lances, it can basically shred any ship it targets. The benefit of this fleet is that both its wraith and dragon cruiser ships can swap weapons around to meet the needs of the fleet, unlike their Corsair kin. So it turns into quite a versatile fleet. The same weaknesses apply to these ships though, so dont be mislead by the improved armour. Dark Eldar Dark Eldar are similar to their Craftworld and Corsair brethren and although only two models were produced they can in theory create five (5) different cruiser class hulls (similar to Craftworld here). So they do have a bit of variety. The mimic engines and shadowfields prove to as useful as their Eldar kin and they are actually slightly faster. However, they suffer from the same drawbacks as being made of wet paper if weapons batteries are used against them. While the weapons batteries the Dark Eldar put out are the same as their kin and their lances do similar impacts one aspect that is different are the Leech Torpedoes. Leech torpedo are very effective weaponry. Whilst doing damage isn’t their main purpose, they slow down enemy ships, as any successful hit reduces 10 cm movement from the target vessels movement. Multiple hits do not stack but they need to get repaired separately before normal movement speed is restored. So you can really hamper the movement of your enemy and avoid damage. The Impaler is also a neat weapon that I think is more situational that a must have. Explorer Fleet Tau Even as a loyal Imperial citizen I do love the aesthetic of the Explorer fleets (more to come on this site of those too). They are often overlooked for the newer looking forgeworld fleet. They are similar in tactics to the Imperial fleet and keeping the fleet together is needed, using a strong core of their only true warship. They are very much a standoff fleet with the aim to unleash as much ordinance on the board as possible. This can lead them to being susceptible to failed leadership rolls, so buy as many rerolls as you can is my advice. The carriers are relatively cheap so trying to swamp the board is a must, you have to have ordinance superiority otherwise you will not win. Something that is often missed it that these ships have quite long range guns that do not suffer the accuracy issues that other fleets do. So make sure to keep your enemy at arms distance. Punch, dodge and weave! The darling of the fleet is the Hero, which pound for pound is the hardest hitting and cheapest ship in the game in reality. Having as many of these in your fleet as you can will greatly increase your chance of victory. Finally, don’t ignore the Defender escort, she can cause a few surprises. Kor'or'vesh (Forgeworld) Tau The forgeworld ships have better front armour than their Explorer fleet contemporaries. The spread of ordinance on the forgeworld ships is more even and so can prove more versatile and they also have greater firepower and are faster. This means you can be a little more aggressive with this Tau fleet. You have to force your enemy into brace for impact as early in the fight as you can to try to both reduce enemy firepower and retain the advantage of your ordinance. Picking on the greatest threat and concentrating on that will help both Tau fleets succeed. The Custodian is probably the best battleship in the game too, so having this spitting out tonnes of ordinance and striking from distance is the way to go, keep it out of harms way. One major thing to note - Don’t let anyone board you! You will lose. Also consider the Demiurg ships, they can plug some holes in the battle line, these ships can take a bit more punishment that the regular Tau cruisers, so they are typically worth the sacrifice. Space Marines The Adeptus Astartes, what to say. Well have are very strong armour all round so can usually tank ordinance and weapon battery fire thrown at them. They are susceptible to lance only fleets though. While their weapon batteries are not to be sniffed at its the bombardment cannon that causes and will cause some problems for enemy ships. However, the major weapon that can and will win games for the Marines is their ability to cripple fleets with critical hits from the large amount of thunderhawks. Thunderhawks cause critical hits on a +2, and they can result in a ship becoming totally ineffective and able to be picked off at the marines leisure. Fear the thunderhawk for it will be your doom if you ignore waves of them. Strike cruisers are a good, cheap, cruiser than can certainly hit harder than initial impressions would suggest, a fleet should consist of as many as you can get your hands on. Boarding and teleport attacks can also cause major damage and should be utilised along with the ordinance to maximum effect. However, the ships are slow and have short range firepower, so you may be struggling to hit some fleets if the game board doesn't fall in your favour. Adeptus Mechanicus The fleet list for Ad Mech is limited for cruisers and they cannot have battlecrusiers unfortunately. However, this is offset with all the cruisers they can have having an extra dorsal lance. They benefit from the same tactics of the standard Imperial fleet too. The Dictator is your only really ordinance hull at a reasonable price and so pairing it with a couple of lunars together is a sensible, solid fleet tactic and gives you a nice coverage. The Ad Mech fleet can also roll on a refit table to give them some extra goodies. Honestly, I have never really seen the huge benefit but each to there own. Suffers from the same pros and cons as the standard Imperial fleet. Rogue Traders Originally, Rogue Traders didnt have a specific fleet of their own in reality. Any fleet, apart from Necrons and Tyranids (Id also say Orks but thats just me), can take an Rogue Trader, with Imperials and Tau being able to take more ships per 750 pts. Then for each cruiser take you can take between 2-6 escorts to accompany them. So you potentially could get 3x cruisers into a list thats just over 1500 pts and then have plenty of escorts to join them. You can also potentially include Demiurg and Kroot vessels too. So that kind of makes a fleet....kind of. Then the exploration fleet list was created, which lets you build an actual Rogue Trader fleet. This list allows you to build a Rogue Trader fleet using the trader cruiser hulls and escorts like above but also allows you to include some ships from the Imperial (Lunar) and Chaos (Carnage) lists etc as well. I would recommend using this list in reality if you really want to build a Rogue Trader fleet rather than just add them into another fleet ad hoc. The Rogue Trader cruiser ship itself, is, well, an ok class of ship. It has decent weapons batteries and is a cheap ship. However, where the fun is in my view is the xenotech systems you can either roll for or buy for an additional 5 points. I would always recommend purchasing to give yourself a choice. I would do this anyway but with exclusive rogue trader fleets not having any carriers at all, I think the ability to buy extra turrets will greatly help prevent them being overwhelmed by ordinance. Additionally, buying targeting matrix for a carnage or tyrant class will dramatically improve their weapons battery fire and is a must for these ships. Being able to not take a column shift on those powerful batteries at range will give any enemy fleet pause but the kicker - Always closing under 30cm! But that on a carnage class cruiser with that hulls weapons batteries, lock her on and see things blow up. For real giggles, squadron two of them together. Even Battleships will be scared of that. I would recommend keeping a rogue trader fleets together, similar to the usual imperial fleets for mutual support as well. They could operate separately under the right conditions, such as using the grav thrusters to give a few ships extra turning ability, flanking becomes easier. But overall, Id keep them together. I would be remiss not to mention the little xenos escort that the list can also purchase, they are decent little escort but at 50 points each I would recommend potentially looking at a light cruiser over a squadron of them. Inquisition The Inquisition has no fleet list on its own. Instead, there are various ways to add an Inquisitor or Inquisitorial ships to the Imperial factions.
Any Imperial, Ad Mech or Space Marine fleet 750 points or greater may be led by an Inquisitor Lord. They must be aboard an Inquisitorial Cruiser or on an Inquisition Blackship either of these are included. If none of these ships are present, they have to be placed on the most expensive ship in the fleet. The different ships themselves that can be included in a fleet, blackships or the types of Grey Knight ships add flavour to imperial fleets but for me its the choice of your Inquisitor that will be a key choice. You can select a Lord from the big three inquisition factions Ordo Malleus, Ordo Xenos or Ordo Hereticus. I think that if you can looking to add just a little spice to your fleet and have some spare points then going with an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor to lead say, a boarding heavy fleet, will stand you in good stead. The extras to the boarding values and hit and run could be a wonderful bonus to certain imperial fleets and could cause a surprise or two. Additionally, its the cheapest Inquisitor option with no drawbacks. Now if you really want to board and mess up some other ships then the next option of the Ordo Malleus is a good choice. As you then purchase extra Grey Knight terminators and/or honour guard on ships. This greatly helps in boarding and your hit and run attacks, perfect for Space Marine fleets but also adding that tactical option to Imperial fleets that potentially wouldnt usually use it. One of these inquisitors also helps against the agents of chaos as well, as grey knight ships ignore marks of chaos essentially, again a useful tactic if applied correctly. You could now board that Nurgle ship thats been literally plaguing you. The same can be said of the Order Xenos as well. My personal favourite choice, as you can randomly roll on an upgrades table for the Inquisitors vessel or pay 5pts to choose one. I think the extra 5pts is very much worth it when you can choose an upgrade that plays to your style, I personally love the Grav thrusters, having a battleship being able to double its turn movement is a powerful upgrade and will catch plenty of admirals out, imagine possibilities of Battlebarge that could just turn on the spot. Ordo xenos has one other little bonus that I think is very much worth it and really pips it for me, as long as your facing these opponents mind - Rolled saves by holofields, shadowfields or any similar rule against a boarding action or hit and run attack succeed on a 3+ instead of a 2+ . That is massive against those pesky fast eldar and dark eldar, and an instance purchase in my view. So I would suggest seeing how you want to play your fleet, who against and potentially then choose the most appropriate Inquisitor to join your fleet. ------------------- Thats your lot, wow that was a lot to type up. I hope this was useful and points you in the right direction to develop some tactics moving forward. So the first specific tactical article will be on…. The Aurora Eldar Cruiser! If you have a ship you would like to have an article for or if you if you would like to write one please let me know.
9 Comments
White_Crow
3/19/2019 11:53:26 am
Nice overview and the Pics are great. Did not think a lot of People still play BFG, but it's my favorite Tabletop so far.
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Tom
3/19/2019 05:11:06 pm
Hi,
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White_Crow
4/15/2019 01:28:18 pm
Doesn't matter which content you post, als long as it is BFG. Perhaps a battlereport would be nice.
Tom
4/25/2019 08:04:29 pm
Hi mate, awesome, I have done a few battle reports but not many. I would be happy to do more though
Pascal
6/1/2020 02:12:29 pm
I'm getting back in bfg after what feels like 40000 years. I love the articles. There nice to read and give a comprehensive overview for me.
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Koko
6/9/2020 08:51:18 am
Would you be able to make a tactica on the Chaos fleet? I'm starting the game with a few friends and would like to get some ideas and advice from experienced players. ^_^
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Tilo
12/17/2020 03:05:50 am
Nice article, got smashed with my Imperials and already found the mistake a made, Took a gothic cruiser and spread out too much.
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william
3/27/2023 08:11:27 am
Very nice, can you add in your thoughts on MMS Eldar?
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Tom
8/1/2023 04:02:03 pm
Will have a look sure
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AboutHere are some tactics that I have found useful for each of the fleets in BFG. The more I play the more I will update. Some of the community also have provided tactics for ships/fleets Archives
February 2022
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