Dreadfleet Tactics

I may be one of the few guys who really enjoy Dreadfleet and I really feel that GW hit head on with the game. A GW game in a box, with the full production quality, models, and bling of the GW experience, combined with the fantasy background to bring you into the story.

A hybrid wargame/boardgame it is easy to find players at the club and comic shop just because it is a GW product and many of the mechanics borrow from fantasy/40K making learning it easy.

Lets’ dive into some general tactics…

I’ve played through the campaign in the book and expansions twice, and that will be coming up when I have a chance to write it up, so for now let’s talk about free for all play.

We get to the club, set it up, and shout out who wants’ to play!

Maybe we get three guys, maybe six, always multiple on same sides. We divide the guys up to good guys and bad guys, randomly draw ships, deploy on either side and move out blasting away. After a number of turns (usually six or eight) the side that has the most ships standing wins.

So what have I learned?

Right out of the box not all the ships are balanced- what balances them out in the game is the scenarios and randomness of drawing the damage and fate cards. That random factor means that if only you can hold on a bit longer with your burning and sinking ship, maybe it will get repaired or maybe your opponent’s ships will get hit with something wacky.

This sometimes has a lot of guys complaining that the game is like Talisman- drawing cards and just doing what they say, when the game isn’t really like this if you can bypass the random element.

So blowing up pirate ships is the mission…

Each ship can draw a card or two from the damage deck, and even if it is one of the more sever ones, they can usually take it. The randomness of a shuffled deck then means you will also draw some less severe cards, combined with repairs, and your ship will be able to continue for a while.

Here is how you bypass that.

For the most part the ships in the game are either fast and weak, or slow and strong- with both dwarf ships kind of being in the middle with their gimmicks.

As a team you want to gang up on one ship- which one often depends on what the other side just puts out first to approach with, and do enough damage to it to force so many damage cards draws that they draw enough catastrophic cards to sink the ship.

You do this by anchoring it in place…

Approach your target ship with your side’s fastest ship and the remaining ships just behind on the right or left. With the lead fast ship you are going to want to try an approach head on and ram/board the enemy ship to hold it in place, followed by the other two ships breaking off to the sides and opening up broadside.

Gang up, wolf pack, and force those cards draws to break past the randomness…

GW is out of Dread Fleet of course, and ebay is pushing the price like Space Hulk, best place I've found to get it is Amazon- $90 bucks or so. Dreadfleet