The game benefits from Games Workshop’s grimdark lore, of course, but also from mechanics that draw upon the hobby game industry’s generations-long love affair with naval wargaming of all kinds.
Just a handful of ships is all that’s required to represent crews numbering in the tens of thousands. While traditional 40K miniatures battles are fought by ground forces representing the squad or company level, Gothic is a game of space-based naval warfare. The original Battlefleet Gothic is a tabletop miniatures franchise from Games Workshop, first published in 1999. Games set in the 40K universe are a dime a dozen these days, but the moment-to-moment gameplay in Armada 2 has so far exceeded my wildest expectations. The team at Tindalos Interactive sells the dream of Warhammer 40,000 combat on a galactic scale. After just a few hours with the game’s pre-order beta, I’m legitimately blown away. This time around, I vowed to make time out of my busy spacefaring schedule to check out its sequel, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2. To hear some tell it, that means I missed out on one of the best strategy games of that year. When the original Battlefleet Gothic: Armada came out in 2016, I decided to skip it.
