In response to questions being asked on the various forums and facebook pages around which rules are official and which are used etc. I thought I would put this little piece together. I have noticed that every few months the question of rule sets and which are the most prominently used comes up. So here goes: Official Rules The only truly official rules the Games Workshop endorsed were the two main books they produced and then some data sheets (for want of a better word) for a few other fleets. These were the original blue book rules book that came with the original box set of the game. This contained the major bulk of all the rules and provided information on the four main fleets available at the time. These fleets included Imperial, Chaos, Ork Pirates and Eldar Corsair Raiders. It also included rules on defence platforms, space stations and the Blackstone Fortress. The second was the yellow Armada book that was released sometime after and included rules on Space Marine fleets, the Voss Armageddon ships like the Apocalypse, Necrons, further Eldar and Ork fleets and the Tau explorer fleets. The data sheets that were then officially recognised were:
This was mainly due to GW now stocking these ships (although some fleets produced didn’t have rules for a long time) and needing rules for them. These were released on the GW website originally as printable PDF versions. Additionally there was several magazines and annuals produced by GW. These included:
These had various ships and scenarios that could be used. These magazines pre-date the yellow armada book and went into the creation of that book. There was also Imperial Armour Volume III: The Taros Campaign (1st edition), which contained the 'official' rules for the Forgeworld Tau ships. The Imperial Armour vol 9 or 10. Badab war from Forgeworld also had Space Marine fleet lists included. ‘Semi’ Official Rules The main one is the 2010 FAQ which was completed by the BFG rules committee, also known as the High Admiralty. The good thing was that this FAQ was made in close relationship and with a lot of feedback from the community and Games Workshop designers. It was well received and made fleets like the Space Marine fleet much better (actually playable to be honest). The bad news was that it was never officially recognised by GW. That being said tournaments, such as Adepticon, use these rules as part of their ruleset for the games. So it is generally agreed these rules are used. In addition to the FAQ there are rules that were part of the large Compendium that are a generally regarded as official but technically aren’t but these include:
Battlefleet Kronous Is a fantasy flight games RPG book which allows you to play D&D style games on a void ship. It also has a few new classes. While not official canon it still has a few ships. But no rules that directly relate to the BFG game. Fan Made The beauty of the BFG community has been its willingness to generate their own content for a system that is no longer supported (just look at this site for instance). The community is one of, if not the most, active community in generating their own rule sets and while this has been awesome it has created some levels of confusion in what rules to use. So there are a number of fan made rules but the main sets are:
www.dropbox.com/s/l6k5upf8easabgk/BFG2020%20-%20RULEBOOK.pdf?dl=0The community in France really embraced BFG and they created a great range of rule sets as well. These included:
More recently a 'Red Book' has been prepared which is purely a Battlefleet Heresy rule set as well. This book has been prepared to provide unique named ships from the heresy and rules on legion lists. There are also some gloriana class rules. Probably the biggest rule alteration though is that of BFG:XR, with is an extended rules addition which adjusts fleet lists, some of the rules for fleets, like changing holofields for eldar and adjusting points cost. I also understand that this going through an update too. Additionally, there was Warp Rift magazine that was a fan made community magazine that contained artwork, new ships, stories and fleet lists. In total there were 33 Warp Rift magazines made but I am unsure if it has discontinued. That’s about it for rule sets but I suppose the main question is what the general agreed set of rules to be used. In my experience the following rulesets are the ones used to play a standard game and the ones used in tournaments still:
Now where the major diversion comes is typically with regards to the Eldar/DCraftworld Eldar ‘Move, Move. Shoot’ rules. I have found these are usually agreed with the players prior to use as it does change the way the Eldar play quite a bit. Some consider it to be fairer; others think it takes away from the Eldar fleets appeal. I would say it purely depends on the players. You can find all these rules here: Specialist Games Fourm You may have heard mention of a project earlier in the year, BFG2020 or BFG:APA, which was primarily focused on incorporating an Alternating Player Activation mechanic into BFG. The first stage of this project is now completed thank to the hard work of Xcalibur (creator of BFGXR), Aus30k, Krafty Juárez and myself. The original rules have been rewritten to incorporate the mechanic with as few alterations as possible to try and keep it in the same vein as the changes made up until FAQ2010. We have done a fair bit of play testing and discovered a few unforeseen ramification of the mechanics and so adjusted and retested. We hope that the system is now at a stage where it is stable and all major kinks have been ironed out. Please feel free to have a look and give it a go, we have found that it has given the system a nice modernisation while still keeping the spirit of the game true. The next two stages of the project are compiled ships listings for Imperial and Xenos, however the stages of the project are intentionally separate so as to allow the rules to be used with any fleet list and the latter fleets lists to be used with any rules. BFG 2020 Rules
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