The Dirge class Raiders are extremely similar but trade a point in Lightning Arc offense and the loss of the Portal for an additional 10 cm of speed and a points decrease to 40. They play a similar role without needing to close the enemy fleet to take advantage of the Portal. Suffice to say, the Necron escorts are powerful for their size. The Tyranid Hive Fleets Why You Should Play Tyranids In addition to the Impaler, the Dark Eldar launch bays grant access to regular assault boats but with the typical Eldar difficulty of removal by enemy turrets. The torpedo tubes may be equipped with an alternate torpedo type called Leech torpedoes but these torpedoes do not cause any damage- instead a single hit reduces enemy movement by 10cm – and while it’s not cumulative, each additional hit must be cleared before the speed penalty is lifted. The remaining Dark Eldar weapon batteries, fighters, bombers, and torpedoes are otherwise similar to the Eldar Corsairs. I do want to take a moment and thank some of our dedicated readers for pointing errors in our previous article – we did not account for the BFG FAQ (which I neglected out of sheer laziness) that does apply some changes to things like Nova Cannons and max ordnance among other things. I make note of this now and state simply that for detailed rule breakdowns, please refer to the actual rulebooks and FAQs that were linked in the original article. Meanwhile, we are just overjoyed that people are reading these articles and have hopefully renewed interest in this fantastically fun game. Core Fleet Expansion Ships This cheeky little number is the Astartes version of the cobra-class destroyer. It has an extremely zippy 35cm movement and better armour (5+) but is otherwise the same… oh, except that boarding torpedoes. Insert sinister laugh here. There’s a reason why your piddly little destroyer costs 40 points. The Necrons are a fleet that was designed to be tough, aggressive, and more than a match for their opponents in a fair fight – something about being super old technological elitists. The caveat here is that Necrons are counter-balanced (maybe?) by always giving up victory points at any level of damage which then cascades from untouched, damaged, crippled, to destroyed or left drifting on the table. To get a feel for what this might mean, a Tomb Ship that is left as a drifting hulk may be worth up to 1,650 points to the opposing fleet and if you’re a Necron player you’d seriously struggle to overcome that kind of deficit short of utterly wiping your opponent – which is possible. For that reason a big part of playing Necrons is striking that balance between pounding away with your awesome weapons and preventing incoming damage via Brace for Impact (more on this momentarily).

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Now, weapon systems. You get broadside batteries with a respectable firepower of 12, and an equally respectable range of 45cm. You also have two systems in the prow: the capacity to launch 3 Thunderhawk gunships, and 6 torpedo tubes. The big draw with this vessel, though, is its dorsal battery of bombardment cannons. These chonkers weigh in at firepower 8, can fire left/front/right, and will dispense serious punishment to enemy capital ships. Make sure your target is within 15cm and closing or moving away for maximum effect, or you’ll be wasting a lot of your damage potential. If you’re planning a bombing run, the Night Shrouds will win you games. As fast and nimble as most other factions’ fighters, they sport the same Twin Tesla Destructors as their friends, adding some aptly-named Death Spheres to thoroughly obliterate ground targets. On the board, these are inexpensive, defensive, vessels that move fairly randomly. They always move 10cm in their current direction of travel but may automatically go on All-Ahead-Full at 2d6 in any direction. If you happen to roll a 10+ then the direction you go becomes the new direction of travel in the following movement phase. Blast markers and crippling does not impact movement speed for these big boys, and critical hits only add more damage. They essentially are up-armed Roks with an all-around 12 weapon battery. If trying to pronounce those names doesn’t cause small capillaries in your brain to burst I don’t know what will. The models are awful, and there just isn’t anything exciting about these ships. Some of them have special rules all their own, but for the most part, your capital ships only serve to bring more Orcas to the fight. The Kroot WarsphereAre these things great or even good on the table? Highly debatable. But are they awesome? Unequivocally. Basically everything in the Necron fleet is a special rule or ignores other special rules – it’s pretty cool. So let’s start right at the top. These are essentially Cobra class escorts but with a larger weapon battery and slightly more armor. Not a big ship who cares. The Traitor Fleets This is a pretty typical battleship chassis with 12 hull points and a turning circle that’s only just better than a straight line. Beyond that, everything else is at least somewhat different. Like all Astartes vessels it’s faster than its navy equivalent, and goes at 20cm a turn rather than the 15cm you’d expect from an Imperial battleship. It’s only got 3 turrets and 3 shields, but on the upside it’s got 6+ armour all round. That’s pretty epic, but it does mean that while you can laugh (or at least chortle semi-nervously) at enemy weapons batteries, torpedoes and bombers, the enemy’s lances are a serious threat.

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This is your workhorse gunboat, with the same stats as a sword-class frigate but with +5cm movement and a well-trained crew. In the lore, these things rarely have more than a single squad of marines on board, overseeing the human crew and gently expressing themselves all over anyone foolish enough to board it. Being a gunboat, this thing is of no use in a planetary assault, so weirdly is kind of the Astartes’ main line ship, despite being an escort. This says a lot about how little the Imperium wants Space Marines to have naval autonomy. By comparison, Ork Roks are miniature versions of Hulks that ignore critical damage penalties but instead take additional damage. They carry a fairly small but comprehensive set of all-around weapons and can be a relatively cheap escort to a Hulk that serves to augment its already formidable capabilities while maintaining orbit around it. On their own, their movement is rather restrictive and slow and an Ork fleet may find them lagging the rest of the formation or maneuvering erratically. They are however super easy to make with a trip to Michael’s and a couple of spare Ork gunz. The relatively inexpensive Light Cruisers are an alternative to the more common Dauntless class and provide some very focused support to the fleet as the Endeavor, Endurance, or Defiant designs trade capacity for hanger bays, lance batteries, or weapon batteries. Gravitic Hooks, which do absolutely nothing except dictate how many escorts you can bring in the fleet. The Orca escorts are fairly cheap and good vessels so the hooks are relatively important – but there’s an entire paragraph that tells you how meaningless they otherwise are in game terms but does successfully note that, yes, these exist. Out of the four core rosters, the Eldar received the fewest new options by far at only two light cruisers and a battleship. However, the Corsair fleet was already a dynamic fleet and it didn’t particularly need anything further for flavor, but did need something to anchor a line of cruisers that would enable a full fleet style engagement – and that’s exactly what they got. In fact, so perfectly suited to the fleet are these vessels that unlike the other entries in the Armada list, some combination of these ships will usually always appear in a fleet-sized game.

Similar to the Eldar Corsairs, a fleet must include a Dread Archon if it is over 750 points who provides all the same benefits and re-roll options as the Eldar Pirate Prince. The Dark Eldar Corsairs list can be comprised of up to 12 customized cruisers and any number of customized escorts – the customization helps to add some flavor to what is otherwise a single cruiser option and a single escort option. The single escort in the Dark Eldar roster is a customizable platform that for 50 points comes equipped with a base set of weapon batteries and can then be supplemented by one of: an increased battery putting them on par with an Eldar Aconite (but cheaper), a Phantom lance, a dual torpedo tube, or an Impaler module. Additionally, for another 20 points, the escort can be equipped with Mimic engines. While the roster entries are extremely limited, the customization options for the class give the Dark Eldar surprising flexibility in fleet construction. The 40cm move is amongst the fastest standard moves in the game outside of the Necron line…. The Necron Dynasty Fleets Why You Should Play Necrons Tyranid cruisers are not particularly fast or heavily armed, and they frankly have a low hull value for a cruiser, but they are cheap coming in between 90 and 130 points each and can easily swarm a board and overwhelm your ability to fend them off as they close to board and gut your ships from within. The Dark Eldar fleets have a lot of the same feel as the Eldar Corsair fleets but the differences in movement make them play much differently than their more nimble cousins. While still having some of the fastest vessels in the game with an excellent turning radius, the Dark Eldar do not gain a second move and cannot benefit from the same hit-and-run style maneuvering – instead they gain a slight armor bonus that gives them an understated but significant durability boost against weapon batteries while still benefiting from the holofield mechanics (here called a shadowfield) that protects them from other weapon types.

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The rules for both kits are included, so you can start playing with them in your games of Aeronautica Imperialis right away. Win a T’au Empire Manta A mid-tier escort that can be given either feeder tentacles or a small weapon battery – primarily serves to ‘highlight’ enemy ships that your cruisers or Hive Ship may want to target at range. Basically all Tyranid ships are all customizable with the aforementioned weapon options and they can be squadroned expansively at anywhere between 0 and 12 vessels. Tyranids also do not use shields or turrets, but rather use spore clouds that act similarly but with some minor differences. When squadroned, Tyranid vessels can combine their spore clouds similar to turrets but won’t gain any benefits to shielding. Chonky Leadership. Marines get their own leadership table that basically means you’re looking at a hench leadership of 8-10. Planetary assaults & exterminatus. Astartes vessels are literally twice as good in planetary assaults, earning 2 assault points per turn rather than the usual 1 when they spend their turn landing troops or bombarding the planet. In the Exterminatus mission, a battle barge can take the role of the exterminator without having to sacrifice its prow weapons and gains a +1 for its roll to exterminate the planet.

Space Marines get a whole pile of special rules, pretty much all of which can also be applied to Chaos fleet vessels crewed by Heretic Astartes: A unique weapon option is the Impaler module – a modified, much heavier version of a short-ranged assault boat. However, unlike a typical assault boat, if it makes a successful run on an enemy ship it rolls 2d6 for the result and applies the potentially much more damaging critical hit. It does gain some additional defense, as it gains a 4+ save from the first fighter squadron to intercept it, and can only be removed by ship turrets on a 6 – however, it is shorter ranged as it must be removed if it has not made a successful run by the Dark Eldar players next turn.

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The roster overall provides an extremely limited selection of vessels, but this is offset slightly by the customization options for each ship. However, the base of all vessels is a series of high-powered weapon batteries which combined with their increased speed and maneuverability makes the Dark Eldar fleet an exceptional counter to the Eldar Corsair fleets. Finally, each ship can can be provided with a mimic engine that provides the fleet with a first strike advantage. Special rules Similar to the Eldar, the Armada expansion brings a number of items to the Ork Roster that establishes it as an actual battle fleet vs just a raiding fleet. This includes massive Ork-infested asteroids, a series of battleships, and a BattleKroozer. The result is an Ork list that suddenly has a great deal of both character and depth. The Armageddon class is basically the Victory ships of the Imperial fleet and are meant to be mass produced. Largely refurbished or salvaged Lunar class vessels – they’ve been upgunned to provide some additional punch at longer ranges but are otherwise functionally equivalent to the Lunar class cruisers.

Sigh– I’m not going to lie to you, I do not have the energy or will to talk about the Tau Merchant fleets. Instead I’m going to 100% phone this in since GW did the same thing when they wrote these rules. I promise that I will make it up to you by instead reviewing the far cooler Tau Protector fleets in the final, expanded play article. There is one exception to this – and that is the awesomeness that is the Kroot Warsphere which we will discuss based solely on said sheer awesomeness.