GMG Reviews Void Admiral

Void Admiral, is an indie spaceship miniature wargame by Paul Bantock. Ash Barker of Guerrilla Miniature Games, sees it as a modernised alternative to Battlefleet Gothic, with cleaner mechanics, fewer table components, quicker army building, and support for scratch-built, 3D-printed, or old space-fleet miniatures.

Core pitch

Ash’s main framing is:

Void Admiral asks: what if Battlefleet Gothic were redesigned with modern tabletop mechanics?

The game is a 66-page self-published rulebook with:

• 9 factions
• 6 missions
• campaign rules
• map-based and non-map campaign options
• tournament advice
• a “kitchen table” mode for playing on a 2×2 table

He thinks it looks professional for an indie product, with good layout and art.

Historical comparison

Ash places Void Admiral in the lineage of classic spaceship games.

He mentions Star Fleet Battles as one of the original major spaceship combat games: highly detailed, almost more simulation than wargame, with massive rulebooks and extensive ship-design rules. He then contrasts this with Battlefleet Gothic, which popularised space fleet combat for many Games Workshop players through the Specialist Games line.

The point of the comparison is that older space combat games often had:

• heavy rules detail
• lots of physical markers
• torpedo markers
• blast markers
• fighter or ordnance counters
• table clutter
• more simulation-style tracking

Void Admiral strips much of that out.

Main modernisation: fewer components

A big theme is that Void Admiral removes a lot of the old cardboard/component burden.

Ash says older 1990s games like Battlefleet Gothic were component-heavy partly because cardboard was cheap and miniatures were expensive. Modern gaming has almost flipped that: 3D printing and alternative miniatures are common, while clutter-heavy rules feel less elegant.

In Void Admiral, many effects that would once have been represented by markers are now handled through dice rolls and ship stats. The result is a cleaner table with less tracking.

Ship classes

The game uses broad ship classes instead of lots of unique ship profiles.

Ash describes the ship scale as roughly naval-tonnage based. Ships are grouped by size/class rather than every vessel having a bespoke set of special rules. The classes he describes include:

• Galleon / battleship-scale ship: very large, around 10 Hull
• Cruiser / capital ship
• Destroyer: around 6 Hull
• Corvette: around 4 Hull
• Frigate / escort: around 1 Hull

He may slightly blur the exact naming while speaking, but the important point is that ships are grouped by broad size categories.

Core stats include:

• Hull
• Speed
• Armour
• Shields
• Flak

These are reminiscent of Battlefleet Gothic, but flattened and simplified.

Damage and armour

The game removes the old Battlefleet Gothic firepower table.

Instead, attacks are resolved more directly:

1. Roll attack dice.
2. Shields reduce the incoming dice/effect.
3. Remaining hits are divided by the target’s Armour value.
4. The result determines Hull damage.

So Armour works as a divisor. A heavily armoured ship does not need a separate lookup table; its armour just reduces how much incoming fire becomes actual damage.

Shields

Shields are also simplified.

They reduce incoming damage and then return each turn. Ash specifically likes that the game avoids needing blast markers or persistent kinetic-impact clutter on the table. You track shields as they collapse, but there is less physical bookkeeping than in older games.

Weapon types

Ash highlights different weapon behaviours:

Kinetic / impact weapons

These are the standard weapons where shields reduce the incoming pool, then armour divides the remaining hits.

Lasers / beam weapons

Lasers are handled differently. They effectively reduce the target’s armour value to 1, meaning that once they get through shields, each successful die can cause direct Hull damage. Ash explains this thematically as energy burning through the ship rather than being stopped kinetically by armour.

Missiles

Missiles replace older-style torpedoes. Rather than having torpedo markers travelling across the table, missiles are resolved as an attack roll. They ignore shields but still interact with armour like kinetic weapons.

This is one of the clearest examples of the game modernising older space-combat ideas: torpedoes become a direct mechanic instead of a moving tabletop sub-system.

Ship building and points

Ash praises the ship-building/force-building because it is quick.

Instead of tiny incremental upgrades and granular points, ships have flatter costs. He gives examples along these lines:

• small escort/frigate-style ship: 1 point
• corvette: 3 points
• capital ship: 6 points
• battleship/galleon: 9 points

Ships pick weapon upgrades within their class rather than endlessly buying small upgrades. For example, a destroyer might choose two weapon upgrades plus a basic prow weapon. This lets players define ship roles without making fleet construction slow.

Game sizes and table sizes

Ash gives several suggested game scales:

• 15 points: small game / kitchen table mode
• 30 points: average game
• 60 points: huge battle

Suggested table sizes include:

• 2×2 for kitchen table mode
• 4×3 or 4×4 for standard play
• 6×4 for larger battles

He likes that the book gives advice for scaling play from small games to large battles.

Command boards

Ash identifies command boards as the second major modernisation and one of the cleverest parts of the game.

Each faction has a command board that provides special abilities and buffs. He compares the feel to Warcry’s ability dice system. During the command phase, players roll a pool of six dice. They can keep dice from a previous turn or discard them, then assign dice to numbered slots on the command board.

Those dice fuel abilities. His example is Charge Shields: spending a die result of 1 when activating a ship or squadron lets it regain all lost shields.

This creates a rotating tactical hand of options. You may not always roll the exact die result you want, so there is uncertainty and adaptation.

Commanders

The fleet commander matters.

Ash says if the fleet commander’s ship is destroyed, the player’s command dice pool is reduced. He is not certain whether it drops to four or three dice, but the idea is that losing central command makes coordination harder for the remaining captains.

He likes this because it adds narrative and mechanical weight without adding lots of tracking.

Factions

The game has nine factions, and each has its own command board. Ash says the factions map onto the kinds of archetypes players would expect from a Battlefleet Gothic-like game.

The implication is that if players have old Gothic-style fleets, Grimdark space fleets, Star Wars-like fleets, Battlestar Galactica-style fleets, or homebrew sci-fi forces, they can probably find a faction profile that fits.

Miniature-agnostic appeal

A major strength is that the game is not tied to one official miniature range.

Ash says he has old miniatures he could use, but he plans instead to search Thingiverse and similar sites for 3D-printable spaceship models. He wants to test the game using free or off-brand printed ships.

He also mentions scratch-building and kitbashing. He specifically references the Super Cheap Wargaming Facebook group, where people make fleets out of cheap materials like clothes pins. He says fleets like that would be perfect for Void Admiral.

So the game’s appeal is not just rules. It is also an invitation to use whatever ships you have or can make.

Missions and objectives

Ash says the missions are more modern and more symmetrical than many older space games.

Older Battlefleet Gothic missions were often asymmetrical, such as pursuit, attack, or escort scenarios. Void Admiral still has some of that, including escort-style missions, but the core missions also support more balanced head-to-head play.

He notes that the game includes tournament advice and objective-style scoring using buoys. These work like control points, but he thinks they make more sense in a space game than arbitrary zones because they can represent navigational or strategic objects.

Campaign system

The campaign system sounds lightweight and practical.

Ash says it can be map-based or non-map-based. Players manage a stable of ships, for example a 25-point stable, then choose forces from that pool for individual games. Ships can be damaged, repaired, refitted, destroyed, and gain experience.

He likes that it adds narrative progression without overwhelming the basic tabletop game.

Kitchen table mode

The book includes a dedicated small-table mode for 2×2 play. Ash plans to start there, playing a small game with Jay the following week.

That matters because many fleet games assume large tables. Void Admiral appears to deliberately support smaller, more accessible games.

Final opinion

Ash’s overall reaction is positive.

He says it looks like a fun modern alternative to older spaceship games like Battlefleet Gothic. He also says it could be easily reskinned for other settings, including:

• Star Wars-style battles
• Battlestar Galactica-style battles
• Cylons versus humans
• Grimdark gothic fleets
• homebrew universes

He especially likes:

• less battlefield clutter
• fewer overlaid markers
• simple command-board management
• flexible faction archetypes
• scratch-build and 3D-print compatibility
• modern mission design
• accessible table sizes

Critical takeaways

The review’s main argument is that Void Admiral keeps the feel of older naval space games while removing much of the friction.

It keeps:

• ship classes
• armour
• shields
• arcs/facing assumptions
• fleet identity
• capital ship flavour
• cinematic weapons
• campaign progression

It removes or reduces:

• firepower tables
• torpedo tracking
• blast-marker clutter
• excessive ship-specific rules
• granular upgrade accounting
• heavy component dependency

Best one-line summary

Void Admiral is presented as a clean, modern, miniature-agnostic Battlefleet Gothic-style game that uses broad ship classes, direct dice mechanics, faction command boards, flexible missions, and lightweight campaign rules to make space fleet battles easier to play with old, printed, or scratch-built ships.