Dreadfleet Expansion Ideas

[zerodemon]

So, first forces up for expansion in my mind are

Empire
Chaos Dwarves

I say this because their ships are the most readily available in my eyes. Visit these links for examples.

http://spartangames.co.uk/shop/index...product_id=304

http://spartangames.co.uk/shop/index...ory&path=35_54

I would create an expansion by writing the rules for ships, attributing points costs to ships and captains individually and treating the models from the Dreadfleet boxed set as "Special Characters."

The new ships would be weaker than the overpowered Dreadfleet boats. Things like cogs and special character captains (like Jaego Roth, Aranessa Saltspite etc.) would cost extra.

Has the potential to be a fun little project. Any thoughts?

[Rick Blaine]

I fear that the damage card mechanic is too clunky to handle additional models. 5 per side is pushing it as it is.

[Vos]

I'm just going to use the sea mat and all the terrain to play Uncharted Seas myself - it seems a lot easier than essentially scratch building fleets and writing my own set of rules!

Vos

[Karak Norn Clansman]

That's the spirit!

I've thought a lot about a Dreadfleet expansion. I suspect the gameplay is too clumsy for larger games, although I support any house rules. One thing possible for the actual Dreadfleet game mechanic would be to add more ships of about the same size as the officical models, and then make cards and rules for them. Such as this one: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=319692

That way one could add new ships even though the naval battles would still only be about four ships per side.

For a game aimed at recreating larger naval battles with lots of lesser ships involved, I guess it is sound to take a peek at Uncharted Seas or Man o' War for inspiration. But most importantly, whip up your owns rules and then test them, tweak them and test them again. Try to find a good formula and discover the weak spots in the Dreadfleet game mechanic for larger battles. Personally, I hope that the damage card system will be fine also for larger battles with many smaller vessels.

[Col. Tartleton]

The problem is that the Kraken sub thing is a one of a kind warmachine and those "Empire" ships are Cathayan Junks.

[Tyrelli]

GW could if they wanted to re-release the game with another 10 new ships and a new story .. the core-rules are very good and the y could just do a rebox with new ships and matt ..

[Vos]

They could do very easily, I agree.

They won't though, especially if the rumours of the poor sales are true.

Shame really.

Vos

[ArtificerArmour]

You could always make 5 ships for "another" fleet. A chaos fleet for example?

A tzeentch sub
A daemonic hell ship
A sleek slaanesh light cruiser
A huge khorne battering ram
A nurgle plague ship
A beastman...thing
a dark elf black ship

or a force of light?

Lizardmen giant turtle
brettonian ship
an albion ship
ogre mercs
cathay/ind

Instead of making the fleets larger, make a new fleet with their own special rules

[sigur]

All we'd really have to do is take a look at Man'O'War. There's all the concepts and so on and the rules would have to be "translated". I agree, we won't see any "expansions" from GW though and that has nothing to do with "poor sales", it's just the nature of the project. Space Hulk sold like crazy and didn't get any "expansions" because GW don't do those things. They sell 40k/WHFB/LotR miniatures and rules, that's their thing. For boardgames they got a nice cooperation with FFG.

[Tyrelli]

Lizardmen giant turtle
brettonian ship
an albion ship
ogre mercs
cathay/ind

Instead of making the fleets larger, make a new fleet with their own special rules

Wow great minds I thought about a giant lizardman seagoing turtle !! Also the bret ship should have Pegasus knight auxilariys, how about a slandsh flying ship, like the old man o war one and a ogre ship.

[Ironmonger]

Has anyone tried developing a formula for points in DF? Something like Hull+Crew+Broadsides+Handling? That would give a decent range of points, though admittedly doesn't take all aspects of a ship into consideration.

A few Examples:
Heldenhammer-23
Bloody Reaver-24
Swordfysh-14
Shadewraith-13
Grimnir's Thunder-16

Thoughts? I also thought maybe a way to incorporate the armour values into it would be to add a point on for each Armour 6 or less (6+=1 point, 5+=2 points, etc.).

EDITED to reflect armour idea...

[Greyshadow]

I've been discussing it in the Warhammer General Forum but I've been putting quite a bit of effort into Dreadfleet recently. I have almost completed a points value calculator for Dreadfleet. The main reason I am making it is to assist me write custom scens with new ships and characters to create games that link with my gaming groups Warhammer battles. I hope it will also be useful to the community in general. I intend to take feedback and produce updates to the calculator too. (You can see my first attempt at costing the ships elsewhere in this forum based on my first unreleased version of the calculator).

P.S. Also on the home stretch with painting the set too. Only three ships and two auxillaries to go!

[corps]

scenarios to take islands fortification. they have good models but i find them not enought exploited.

[schwager]

Great to see some love for DF around here.

Personally I think that new named ships and scenarios (as previous posters have suggested) are the way to go. The game just oozes so much awesome flavour and works best when it's story-driven.

Not sure if "fleet actions" would work very well, but I'm planning to design (and hopefully) build smaller (and more generic) ships that fit in somewhere between the big ones and the auxiliaries.
I came across some interesting ideas for (smaller ship) squadrons... I believe it was on Boardgamegeek, but am not entirely sure now.

Either way, I hope there will be plenty of fan content for DF to come.

[schwager]

scenarios to take islands fortification. they have good models but i find them not enought exploited.

Love that idea. Got any plans on how to do it?