Surprise!

Its not often I am surprised particularly by my Family especially when it comes to gifts, but I had a birthday just this last week and this one threw me for loop. At my celebratory birthday dinner, where I got several interesting gifts, a large box sat giftwrapped on the table, my little girls...going 'open it', "open it", long before we even had dinner. so I should have know something was up.

I had convinced myself sometime ago that I was not going to bite the bullet on Dreadfleet. At $126 shipped for one shot game with no support...I got over the initial splash marketing and said not this time GW. Apparently my wife didnt get that memo, as She saw me ogling over this when it was first announced...and I even said then..I'm not getting it, its too expensive. Before going back and forth on it again and saying no. So it was very much to my surprise she had the gumption to go out and get this for me on her own. She got me the mega paint set last year so I guess she has the GW thing down.




















Very nice rulebook, comments on the game rules are again another beer and pretzels, random game that relies on dice, cards, a whole lot of luck and very little skill..things that GW seems to proud to hang its hat on with its own IP of late .

 

While I certainly dont have time right now to assemble this and get a game in, that will have to wait until next month. I did make the time to check it out and take some pictures. After reading a couple pretty negative reviews on the "game" itself I have mixed feeling on owning this, however examination of the box contents has gone along way to changing my mind.

The models in the box are really just great, same with terrain. GW again proves they are the king of plastics jamming so much on to sprue and not only labeling it for assembly but putting the assembly instructions on the box, which is nice touch. We all seen the sprue photos so I didnt post any here but all the images on the painted ships I though we freehand designed studio work, are actually all embossed on the sails in plastic so painting these ships and making them look great will be relatively easy for even the average painter. The game is jam packed with terrain and extras that can surely be used for any naval type game.





















The 5 x 3 game matt is very pretty is thin and printed on a silk like fabric, if you lay it on a textured surface such as your sand covered game table it will hold stretched nice and tight, if you are playing on a kitchen table or smooth surface invest in a 5 x 3 piece of lexan to drop onto it .



Now I have been looking for a smaller scale naval game personally for a while now, it always comes up in our campaigns and would have been great for Legend of the High Seas to add Sea Battles into the mix and they just arent possible at 28mm other than close boarding actions. Spartan Games Uncharted Seas has been on my radar, for some time, much more so with the crazy new awesome models they are putting with it re-release. Dreadfleet will probably serve my purposes well as bunch of Naval components for parts of other games in the future...As a beer and pretzels' occasional one off I might get some use out of it, but I am definitely going to enjoy painting and building these models, I know at least two other people who have the game so who knows. Overall my feeling is major props to my wife for getting this, the sentiment is not overlooked despite her not really knowing the complications of my feeling toward Games Workshop, (how they can release plastics of this quality and still ship Failcast crappy resins is a total head scratcher)

Anyways there you go, So I got Dreadfleet, whether I actually wanted it or not.