I have written about void admiral before, it is a modern, streamlined interpretation of the BattleFleet: Gothic style of naval space combat wargaming.

After my first ‘intro’ game, I felt slightly underwhelmed – it had all the components of a good system but felt as though there wasn’t much flavour. I realise in retrospect, there were a few things missing.

use the rules

Each fleet has custom special rules which I completely ignored in my test game – Brutes (Orcs) gain +1 to boarding with Vicious Fighters, Renegades (Chaos) deploy last with Shadow of the Void, Cyborgs (Necrons) gain +1 to gunnery with Ancient Weapons

I deliberately ignored the Command Board sheets, which also provide a significant contribution for interesting actions: Insectoids (Tyranids) can chain-activate their Destroyer squadrons due to Chitinous Swarm, Mining Guild (Squats) can shoot into terrain without penalty due to Mineral Scanners

Characterful ships needed

One of the issues with Fighting Sail is that it’s very difficult to characterise vehicles and ships and relate to them in the way you can with a humanoid figure – and I think that was exacerbated with the use of very generic ‘tiny fleet’ STLs which while functional, had all the flavour of a bread sandwich.

I decided to lean into the space-cathedral style of BF:G by printing off the Starter Kit STL files.

Renegades

The renegades are Chaos-analogues, and the lineage shows in the art, so the Chaos fleet STLs were an easy choice:

These were undercoated red, washed with brown ink and then touched up with some orange, with bone and brass highlights.

loyalists

The Loyalists represent the Imperial Navy, distinct from the Space Marines or Imperial Guard – and while the former are represented as ‘Disciples’ in VA, I decided that the standard armoured-prow Imperial ships were most distinctive in that classic late-90’s GW vibe:

The Battlefield

In my original Void Admiral post I spoke about a conversion to hex maps, and the use of Paizo Starmaps with a hex grid – neither of these things panned out, but I did order a faint hex grid printed onto a nebula mouspad mat. It might end up being a little TOO faint, but should be usable.

The Game

The fleet lists are relatively simple in VA, each army has four classes (heavy, medium, light, squadron) each of which always cost the same points (9/6/3/1 each) and are armed with basically the same set of weapons – cannons, lasers, missiles or fighter bays – in different permutations. As a result, the fleet lists look like so:

Renegade fleet list

• “Dominator” heavy cruiser w/ fighter bays and cannon turrets
• “Vanguard” heavy cruiser w/ broadside cannons and cannon turrets
• “Enslaver” squadron each with missile pods and cannon turrets

Loyalist fleet list

• “Invincible” battleship with laser fore and broadside, cannons and fighter bays
• “Drake” squadron ecach with cannon turrets and lasers
• “Fury” squadron each with cannon turrets and missile pods

The Battle

Turn 1

The Renegade special power “Shadow from the Void” means they can deploy/redeploy after their opponent, which they do and offer a refused flank, weighting both of their cruisers beyond the asteroid field on one flank.

Loyalists gain initiative, due to their special power “Dictatorial Command”, they gain +1 command dice unless their flagship is destroyed.

The Loyalist forces sweep planetward, hoping to leverage the refused flank to their advantage, while the renegades creep forward

Turn 2

The Dominator surges forward and launches cannons and fighters at the Drake squadron, but is ineffective and wide open for a counterblast by the Loyalist Capital ship “Invicible”, leaving it half crippled.

The Renegade’s Enslaver squadron pummels the Loyalist Fury ships near the planet’s moon, two of which are lost as a result.

The Vanguard is able to slip through the Asteroid Field and around the Invincible, delivering a hammer blow of upgraded cannonfire into the stern, before being the focus of a dogfight between the victorious Enslavers and the loyalist Drake Squadron.

Turn 3

The Enslavers take out a Drake, but the manouvering thrusters of the Invincible bring it around to bear a full broadside at the stern of the already damaged Vanguard – blasting it to smithereens. The undamaged Enslaver squadron spool up their warp drives to make for the hills!

Post-Game

I kept forgetting to use the ‘Armoured Prow’ special rule for the Loyalists, and a few times had to go back and re-trigger command board abilities, but overall I think this. was a much more faithful representation of how Void Admiral should be played.

I used the hex grind for movement/angles – essentially saying that the front/rear hexsides were the bow/stern arcs, everything else being side, and a 45′ degree turn was 60′ and a 90′ degree turn was 120. The additional angles for turns made the more limited arcs moot.

The hexes made movement and measuring pretty unequivocal and there were no drawbacks I could see particularly – it made the compulsory 2-hex movement before turning pretty hairy around the asteroid field.

Rather than fannying around with more dice for fighters, I printed and painted some after the game was finished:

Final Thoughts

The game felt close all the way through, with both sides having the possibility of success. I will need to let it percolate fully to put together a review, but my gut feeling is middling-to-positive.