Man O' War Redux - Dreadfleet is here!

"For two bleak decades the Undead reavers of Count Noctilus have plagued the oceans of the world. After each raid, the Dreadfleet disappears into its lair as quickly and silently as it appeared, far from the reach of Man. And yet there remains hope. Captain Jaego Roth of the Heldenhammer has vowed to hunt down and destroy Count Noctilus and his Undead captains once and for all. With him sail the most notorious and cunning of the pirate lords of Sartosa, each borne to battle upon a giant warship bristling with cannons, organ guns and bolt throwers. At the stroke of midnight on Geheimnisnacht, most forsaken of nights, the Heldenhammer and her companions sail into the realm of undeath known as the Galleon's Graveyard. One by one, Count Noctilus and his vile allies move in to stop them."

Dreadfleet is a boxed game for two (or more) players that includes everything you need to make war on the turbulent seas of the Warhammer world. At your command are two fleets of ships - the Dreadfleet led by the Vampire Count Noctilus, aboard his gargantuan sea-hulk the Bloody Reaver; and the Grand Alliance commanded by the Pirate Captain Jaego Roth, who recently stole the Heldenhammer - the pride of the Imperial Fleet, and one of the largest galleons to ever sail the high seas.

As your ships engage in furious battle, it's down to you, the fleet captain, to make important split-second decisions. Do you bring all guns to bear on the closest enemy warship, or do you sail into position for a furious broadside? What happens when the warship catches fire, or worse, the powder kegs ignite? Exactly how much punishment can your warship take before it sinks without a trace? Are those Undead seagulls or flying piranha fish? And, when all else fails, do you have the courage to ram your foe, board their ship, and engage them in a duel to the death?

Dreadfleet | Gaming Advance Orders

So, Dreadfleet came out on advance orders today. Love how the overall game looks like, especially the Skaven ship is brilliant! Not a big fan of the price tag, though.. I’m having my doubts about whether I should buy it or not, the thing is with these boxed games is that they are in limited quantities, just like Space Hulk was 2 years ago (which I bought by the way, awesome game and miniatures!). So should I miss out on it and later in the year realise that I actually want the game and find it for twice the price on eBay, or should I order it today?

What are your thoughts?

My reaction to "limited editions" is invariably: "keep it!"...of course that's just moi.

I knew a couple of Guys that were addicted to the original ManO'War game. The game itself was, from what they said, a blast, but the big attraction was all the cool extra ships et al that could be added to the game. If they're just going to do this as a one off item, that would eliminate a major draw.

I would imaging G.W. Fans, like my erstwhile friend Mac, will snap the sucker right up just to add to their collection. I think I'll pass on the sucker.

For more opinions on the thingy, there's a lively discussion on L.A.F. here:

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=32923.0

Pfreck--Thanks for posting the photo. My computer is too out of date to visit the GW website so I hadn't seen a picture. Everyone else had posted links (at least as of yesterday).

I love seeing the models and such, but the scale and the limited edition-ness of it make it a pass for me.

The artwork by Blanche is as always amazing but the minis doesn't really do anything for me.

Warhammer Pirates... This is right up my street. I LOVE it! (big shock eh?)
Several other Flame Onners are also very excited so it will get played loads!

I love the oh-so-very-Warhammer feel of all the components and I suspect I shall be reproducing some of them in 28mm Warhammer scale for proper Warhammer naval games.

I can see why other people aren't as keen but I want it... a lot! Also, don't let the "Limited Edition" thing put you off - I hear 35,000 copies are being produced (Space hulk was only 10,000), which is more than most non-mainstream board games!

Looks nice, the closeup of the ships on the GW site show that they are really REALLY sweet miniatures.
Big price tag but it's a whole game.

Get it or regret that you didn't.... If I had the money I'd buy a coppy.

Hm, I'd love to grab it but it is a bit pricey and I'm not sure about who I'd realistically get to play with...

I really like the look of the ships and all the extra doo-dads (islands, sea monsters, wreckage, whatnot), I'm very, very tempted! I'll have to see whether or not there's any way I would be able to budget that in. Only one ship per faction (and no Lizardmen or Bretonnians, that I saw anyways?) is a downside, though.

What factions are represented? From the pictures, I can fairly safely identify

Empire (red sails with gold lion motiff)
Tomb Kings (Egyptian-looking with oars)
Looks like Araby (with djinn coming out of the ship)
Probably Vampire Counts (ghost ship)
Dwarfs
Maybe Chaos Dwarfs (steam-kraken thing)
High Elves (with dragons)
Skaven (mutant anglerfish)

That leaves the second and third ship, which both look like they could be either Chaos or Dark Elves, but don't fit real well with either.

The Araby ship almost sells it for me... massive inspiration when they made that.....sooooooo cool.

Btw the kracken ship must be DE i....t's their thing..

kracken is chaos dwarfs acording to the video on the GW website and there is a second vampire counts ship which is more of a ghost ship as well . I think if it would be possible to expand the rules yourself it would be worth getting but if they are very specific to the box contents its a bit over priced. So i'm holding out for more information.

smokezombie wrote:

Btw the kracken ship must be DE i....t's their thing..

Normally that's what I would have thought, too, but the emblem on the side is very dwarfy.

I'm not feeling it. And I'm rather annoyed that chances are the next issue of WD will be wasted on them bigging up a LE game that most people won't ever get.

I stand corrected. My bad

Just noticed something...

anyone know what the fluff justification is/might be for the Tomb Kings vessel siding with the Vampire-led fleet?

5pointer wrote:

Just noticed something...

anyone know what the fluff justification is/might be for the Tomb Kings vessel siding with the Vampire-led fleet?

I was kind of wondering that too - dunno but I think (at least I heard somewhere) that all the evil vessels are supposed to represent undead versions of those races. Since Tomb Kings are already undead, maybe the vampire is just supposed to be a particularly powerful necromancer and was able to take control of them?

I hope that isn't the explanation Myntokk, if it's true , that makes me sad

5pointer wrote:

I hope that isn't the explanation Myntokk, if it's true , that makes me sad

If you go to the GW blog and check out yesterday's entry for "What's New Today" you can see an image of a spread that talks about the Tomb Kings ship. The image is small and doesn't enlarge, as far as I can tell, so it's hard to get any concrete info but I can tell that the ship's name is The Curse of Zandri and the captain's name is King Amenhotep.

Based on that, it sounds like they're probably not slaves to Count Noctilus (the vampire captain), but are maybe either defectors or have forged an uneasy alliance for some reason or another. Without being able to read the fluff, it's hard to say.

Yeah, I saw that article, I'm not sure why I'm bothered really seeing as I view this whole game as a waste of game developer/sculptor resources by GW.

Guess it's the former Tomb Kings player in me getting fired up

Ya know, if it came painted, I might be a bit interested.



I already have enough things to paint other than a box full of single-release ships, rocks, and wrecks.

playtable wrote:

Ya know, if it came painted, I might be a bit interested.

God, that would put me right off!

Playtable don't listen to Kurgan, he's a pirate.

Not sure if folks have been keeping up with the Dreadfleet news, but I thought I'd pop in and give a quick update/correction to one of my earlier posts:

Not all of the evil ships are crewed by undead, although 4 out of 5 are. They are:
- The Bloody Reaver, the flagship which is captained by the vampire Count Noctilus
- The Shadewraith, a semi-corporeal ghost-ship captained by the ghost Vangheist
- The Curse of Zandri, a tomb-kings ship captained by King Amonhotep (still no explanation for why he's siding with a vampire...)
- The Skabrus, which is a disastrous result of a skaven expedition fleet being completely swallowed by an enormous sea monster - all of whom were killed in the event and re-raised by Count Noctilus.
- The only non-undead ship is the Black Kraken, the mechanical octopus-looking ship controlled by the chaos dwarf sorcerer-engineer Tordrek Hackheart.

And while I'm at it, the allied fleet consists of:
- The Heldenhammer, an imperial ship captained by Jaego Roth
- The Swordfysh, a Sartosan pirate vessel captained by Aranessa Saltspite
- The Flaming Scimitar, a barge from Araby crewed by sorcerers and captained by "The Gold Magus"
- Grimnir's Thunder[i], a dwarf ship captained by Red Brokk Gunnarson
- the [i]Seadrake, a high elf ship captained by Prince Yrellian.

Myntokk wrote:

- The Curse of Zandri, a tomb-kings ship captained by King Amonhotep (still no explanation for why he's siding with a vampire...)

He's no so much "siding with a vampire" as siding against Jaego Roth! The pirates stole a huge heap of loot from Amonhotep and he wants it back. "The enemy of my enemy..."

The game must be doing well; the gaming pieces are starting to appear on the auction at C.M.o.N.:



Pretty cool...strange, but cool nonetheless.

That's a pretty nice paintjob! I just received my set last week - the minis are beautiful. Haven't given the game a go yet, but I'm definitely excited about getting my fleets and islands painted up.