The Dreadfleet's Hunt!

 
So following my latest Merchants and Marauders game, played at le Grimoire, the store owner Israel, noticing my interest for ships and pirates in general, had the good idea of showing me the content of the Dreadfleet box, the latest naval game from Games Workshop. I was simply blown away by the quality of the miniatures, flipping through the rulebook and looking at all the amazing drawings by John Blanche, who made all the art found in the book, the seed was planted. I went back to get the game a few days later and ran home to assemble all the components of the box.

But before going any further, let's sum up what is Dreadfleet in a few words;
Dreadfleet is a stand-alone, one-time release two player (up to ten players) game from Games Workshop released on October 2011 that is set in the Warhammer Fantasy world. One player takes command of the Grand Alliance which is composed of the greatest pirate captains, whilst the other commands the Dreadfleet, a force composed of undead captains and their skeleton crews. 



As a Phil Kelly's pet project, the game didn't get the commercial success expected from GW and, with all the GW-hater gamers out there waiting like sharks to bash on this company's releases, good or bad, the game was tagged negatively. There was even a rumor that GW called back the product from all stores worldwide and burnt them so they didn't have to pay to store them...ahhhhh haters! Fact is you can still find the game here and there in gaming stores, big or small, and even at some official GW stores. Truth is it didn't sell mostly because it is a stand alone game and they announced from the start that there wasn't going to be any expension whatsoever. In comparison to the greater lines from GW, namely 40k and Fantasy, the replayability seemed so weak that players decided simply not to buy this game and keep focus (and wallets) on their main ones. 



Now back to the game: first thing I noticed was how full this huge box was; there's a lot of content in there my friends! I took me pretty much the rest of the day to assemble and prime all the components carefully. Once everything is put together, you can tell that this game is no joke; all sorts of islands (a castle on a gigantic turtle skeleton anyone?), sea monsters, small auxiliaries, from small ships to dragons to dwarf zeppelins and of course the main ships of the story, 10 amazing models from a dead gargantuan orb leviathan carcass used as a ship by a horde of undead skavens to a floating ghost ship, a mechanical kraken manned by a lone chaos dwarf inventor and last but not least the two flagships, count Noctilus's shipwrecks amalgam topped by a chunk of Sylvania, housing the castle of the infamous vampire captain of the Dread fleet and the gargantuan Heldenhammer, stolen from the cult of Sigmar to go and chase the Dreadfleet.

Now as I write this I am still reading the sole book contained in the box, an amazing work in an unusual format completely illustrated by the regreted John Blanche and his unique art. I decided to read the fluff part of it first, as this always inspires me to paint and play a game. So far the story has been very captivating!

Now rulewise I watched a few batreps and reviews, namely the Beasts of war review and the batrep from the esoteric order of gamers. Both were quite positive but in the batrep they tweeked the rules just a little by drawing a single event card instead of two every turn so the random factor still leaves place to strategy. As they say in the batrep, with two event cards each turn it's more like your fleet against the sea instead of facing your ennemy! Well, the field of battle depicted in the game is the Galleon's graveyard, some sort of out-of-this-world warp-created sea of despair but eh, as evil as it might become, you don't want to fight the waves instead of your nemesis !

Otherwise the system seems great, with deadly broadside shots and bloody boarding actions, wind direction and ship-like movement on the wonderful cloth sea-mat included with the game. For now I will keep on painting the ships and get back to you guys as soon as I am ready to gather the crew and hit the deck!