Admiral? Admiral!

They weren't in the game to start with, but Admirals are becoming an increasingly important part of people's builds. Most factions have them, and since they are limited to one per fleet, choosing your admiral has become an important part of list building. Trouble is that there are good, bad and downright useless admirals in the game, so how do we go about choosing them?

Federation

As with most things, federation have access to a variety of them. They also have a pretty good mix of good, bad and downright useless captains:

Admiral Kirk (+2)

Kirk was (I think) the first Admiral to be released (at the same time as Admiral Dukat) and his fleet action is somewhat useful, allowing you to disable an enemy upgrade at range 1. Kirk also provides an elite talent slot. Having said all of this I don’t find myself using him all that much, the ability is useful and the CS bonus nice, but there are better options available in faction, like our next guy…

Admiral Forrest (+1)

Forrest was in the final round at worlds, and that’s because his feet action is brilliant. Allowing additional movement is good at the best of times, but Forrest’s ability allows you to perform a white 1 straight, turn or bank, even if those manoeuvres aren’t on your dial. This is especially useful for the Federation, whose bigger ships tend to have downright awful dials, even Voyager, which is supposed to be a nimble ship, has a pretty dreadful dial. Forrest gets around that and gives you a way to mitigate even the worst dials. The CS bonus is nice, but you run Forrest for the Fleet Action.

Admiral Dougherty (+1)

At 3 Sp, Dougherty costs the same as Forrest, offers the same CS bonus, but at the cost of having one of the worst Fleet Actions going (not the worst, oh no, more on that later). At the cost of an action and a disable, you can use Dougherty’s fleet action to roll an additional Defence dice each time you defend. That’s like 0.375 of an evade! Unless you are coming under really heavy fire from a lot of weak ships (and even then…) you are better off taking an evade action that using Dougherty. It’s no surprise to me to see him never played – but he isn’t the worst Federation admiral..

Admiral Pressman (-1)

…because Eric Pressman is! For one point fewer than Dougherty (and Forrest) you get -1 to your captain skill (that’s right, -1) and the ability to disable/discard tech upgrades for extra attack dice – but only for your primary weapon. The diable version of the action gets you a 50/50 chance of doing extra damage and the discard gets you an extra 75% chance. You may as well Target lock or Battle Stations as your action, since that will improve each dice you already roll by 25%, won’t cost you a disable/discard and you won’t feel quite so hollow inside into the bargain. Some people have said that Pressman’s -1 CS makes for some interesting shenanigans with captain skill, but I just don’t see it. 

For Federation, Forrest is the stand out choice, and the Admiral who most often sees plsy in my builds.

Klingons

Klingons had to wait a while to get an Admiral and to this day they don’t really have any admirals of  the same calibre of Forrest. 

Admiral Gorkon (+1)

An odd ability that is essentially the same as an evade token, but will sometimes be better and sometimes worse. Gorkon’s real strength is in adding command skill to Martok 8, who will be able to give his extra free action onto virtuallly any other ship. The only situation in which this is a valid tactic, in feet pure pay, is when Martok is in the same fleet as young Kor from the Ning’Tao expansion, otherwise Gorkon is an expensive evade action.

Admiral Martok (+1)

True dice quality has not been as immediately available to Klingons as it is to some other races – With one exception, none of their ships has an innate BS action and upgrades like Drex, Aexander and N’Garen have been the staple alternatives. Martok’s Fleet Action gives you +1 Attack Dice at the cost of a Defense dice and an Action. Also into the bargain you get a conversion from a Hit into a critical hit. As with Pressman, you’d be better off just taking a Target Lock action or Drex to achieve more or less the same effect without suffering the cost, both of having one fewer defence dice and not being able to take Martok 8. Opportunity cost is often the biggest consideration for admirals.

So as far as Klingons go, there isn’t really an Admiral I’d choose to take. 

Romulans

Early on in the game (Certainly before the Scimitar and Haakona) Romulans really strugged from a lack of captains (they still don’t really have an out and out Tier 1 captain) but both of their admirals now see some use.

Admiral Hiren (+1)

Hiren’s fleet action is nothing special and similar to Pressman’s action. The two reedeming factors for Hiren are his low cost (1 SP) and CS boost. There are many occasions where I have a point to spare and boosting a captain’s skill by 1 for a point isn’t a bad use for that point. Taking Hiren does stop you from taking the alternative though, and he is pretty badass.

Admiral Mendak (+2)

Mendak’s fleet action is downright nasty – especially in a fleet that otherwise struggles to get access to BS. The fact that the action can be used to place the BS token on another ship makes him even better. Add into the mix the high CS bonus, and Mendak is 4 SP well spent.

It depends how many points I have to spend and whether or not Mendak is being used as a captain, but 9 times out of 1 Mendak commands my Romulan fleets.

Dominion

Admiral Gul Dukat (+1)

Of all the Fleet Actions that increase the number of attack dice rolled, Dukat’s is the best because it doesn’t come with an associated cost. Unfortunatley, the fleet action is not great and Dukat’s biggest draw back is that he stops you from taking Dukat 7, the best Captain the Dominion have to offer.

Admiral Gul Madred (+2)

Madred is downright awesome. I’ve spoken about his synergy with Lemec on the Reklar before, but even without that bonus, Madred can be the scourge of any build that relies upon a captain for a brilliant combo (Like my Archer combo that just plain stopped working thanks to Madred!) Add to that the +2 CS bonus and Madred sits in the same group as Mendak.

I’ve never taken Admiral Dukat ever, and I doubt I ever will. Madred features in most of my Dominion fleets thought.

Borg

The Borg faction doesn’t have many named unique captains, and only the one admiral. I rarely take her, but her ability is somewhat useful.

Admiral Borg Queen (+2)

In my opinion, the key to a good admiral is the ability for a ship other than the one taking the fleet action to benefit from the fleet action. The Borg Queen’s fleet action does just that, and makes building a support ship a little easier. The CS boost is not to be sniffed at, but the real downside is that you can’t take either of the other 2 Borg Queens if you take her. I have run her with Locutus in the past to have a Borg ship with a really high Captain skill, but it isn’t worth it in most situations.

More often than not, the collective does not require an Admiral.

Mirror Universe

For some reason, the Mirror Universe is overrun with admirals. When Admiral Riker is released on the Pasteur expansion they will have access to as many as the Federation. Like the federation they have a pretty mixed bag though.

Admiral Worf (+0)

Worf follows in the mould of Mendak and the Borg Queen where the ship taking the action is not the one to benefit from it. In ST:AW the most scarce resource is the ability to attack. There are very few abilities in the game that allow someone to attack more than once, and when that additional attack takes place in the activation phase, rather than in combat, it is even better (since most defensive bonuses don’t function in the activation phase) Worf does just that. There isn’t much in the way of opportunity cost either, since crew Worf is rarey seen in MU fleets.

Admiral Black (+1)

The first of two admirals that came with the same expansion, Black is a neat little card that allows a ship to sensor echo. Extra movement is king at the moment in STAW and Black allows you to do that, not to be sniffed at!

Admiral Gardner (+0)

Similar to Hiren and Martok, Gardner’s fleet action gives bonus attack dice at the cost of both -1 defence die every time you defend and the inability to take any free actions, giving you any kind of quality on that boosted attack. He doesn’t even give you any CS bonus. Avoid.

Worf is perhaps not as in vogue as he once was, but he still has intra-faction synergy with the ISS Defiant and ISS Avenger, so he’s the candidate for admiral from amongst these 3, if one is to be taken.

Bajorans

Just one here….

Admiral Jaro (+1)

In a similar mould to Hiren, Jaro costs jus the 1 SP and gives you a bonus to your CS, in addition, he also gives an Elite Talent slot, and whilst I don’t think his fleet action is all that good, for the two reasons above, he’ll see play in most of the Bajoran fleets that I run.

Vulcans

Again, flying solo, it’s V’las

Admiral V’las

A similar flleet action to Kirk’s, although only targeting crew upgrades and working out to range 2, V’las is cheap enough to make the bonus CS and ET worhtwhile. I have literally never run a Vulcan Fleet without him!

So there are some choices there and Admirals do have a part to play in fleet building, but they aren’t always a must take addition. I’d rank them as follows-

Top Tier-

Worf, Mendak, Borg Queen – All able to use their fleet action to aid other ships in the fleet, perfect on support ships.

High Tier-

Madred, Kirk, Forrest, Black – provide interesting abilities to the ship that uses their action

Mid Tier-

Jaro, V’las,  Hiren, Gorkon – Mainly for the CS bonus

Low Tier-

Dougherty, Pressman, Martok, Dukat, Gardner – Less than useless.

Any comments and feedback either here or on FB welcome as always,

I’m Still not Picard,

D

For the Prophets!

One of the major criticisms of Faction Pure play is that the smaller factions have difficulty keeping up with the larger factions. Including blind boosters and OP prizes, the Federation Faction has access to 20 different expansions, the Borg 12, Dominion 13, Romulans 12 and Klingons 14. Even the Mirror Universe has 8 expansions to choose from, whilst (at time of writing) Ferengi have 2 (with one due soon) Bajorans and Kazon 3 and Vulcans 4. How on earth are these smaller factions meant to compete with the other factions when the other larger factions have so much more to choose from? 

One of the great things about faction pure play is that the character of each race really comes out in their fleet builds, all of the factions have strengths and weaknesses that can’t be mitigated by cross-factioned cards. Obviously the criticism therein is that in a truly competitive environment, people will ignore these weaker factions and they’ll never see play at all, whilst in a mixed faction environment cards like Li Nalas and Quark see play relatively frequently, proving that to get the most out of every expansion, you really should play mixed factions. I get this, and have enjoyed the (relatively few) mixed faction games that I’ve had in the past, but I wanted to try to make Bajorans playable in a Faction Pure environment. 

With Borg in fleet pure suffer from a low –and dropping- choice of captain skills to counter-balance their high durability and firepower, the Klingons do the Alpha Strike really well, but not much else, the Federation have access to the best crew and captains in the game and their sheer number of expansions means that they can tool a fleet to do whatever the commander wants it to do with little difficulty (NB: To start with the federation were plagued by low PWV and ships without much ability to effectively evade. As the number of expansions available to them has increased the number of faction defining weaknesses have become fewer and fewer to the extent that, rightly, some argue that Federation sit proudly atop the faction rankings in pure play) and Romulans have loads of sneeky abilities like interphase generators, cloaked mines and Muon Feedback pulses. Bajorans have only 3 named ships in their particular faction tool box (leaving aside Deep Space 9 for now) and all of them are fragile, low firepower and high agility. 

A brief look at what the Bajorans have to offer:

1. The Akorem

Kira Nerys (CS5), Tahna Los (CS5), Day Kannu, Li Nalas, Blockade, I am Kohn-Ma

2. Interceptor 5

Hazar (CS7), Lenaris Holem (CS3), Anara, Neela, Manoeuvrability, Warp Drive Refit, Phaser Strike, Militia

3. The Ratosha

Day Kannu (CS4), Jaro Essa (CS2), Krim (CS6), More Than Meets the Eye, Provisional Government, Assault Vessel Upgrade, Bajoran Militia

Others: 

Kira Nerys (CS3) (USS Defiant Expansion)

Deep Space 9

Some people have written some really interesting and potentially devastating builds based on Deep Space 9 and Bajoran Militia (5 attack dice basic and then potentially an additional 3 for Bajoran Militia with Kira on another ship to grant that attack a Target Lock and hence some quality) and that is an option available to you, but I decided when I sat down to write this post that I’d wilfully ignore the former-Cardassian space station in favour of looking at what the ships themselves had to offer.

As I said above, the fleet benefits are high maouveability and low cost, which makes me think the way to go maybe a swarm.

Ratosha [Ratosha] (18)

Kira Nerys [Akorem] (3)

More Than Meets the Eye [Ratosha] (1)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (4)

Total (26)

Akorem [Akorem] (18)

Tahna Los [Akorem] (3)

Adm Jaro Essa [Ratosha] (1)

Militia [Interceptor Five] (3)

Blockade [Akorem] (5)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (4)

Total (34)

Bajoran Interceptor [Interceptor Five] (16)

Bajoran Captain [Interceptor Five] (0)

Phaser Strike [Interceptor Five] (4)

Total (20)

Bajoran Interceptor [Interceptor Five] (16)

Bajoran Captain [Interceptor Five] (0)

Phaser Strike [Interceptor Five] (4)

Total (20)

Interceptor 5 [Interceptor Five] (16)

Bajoran Captain [Interceptor Five] (0)

Phaser Strike [Interceptor Five] (4)

Total (20)

Fleet total: 120

The idea here is to keep the fleet together and trigger Blockade and Kira to allow the whole fleet to take a Target Lock, whilst gaining +1 attack and defence dice. The Interceptors then take the phaser strike action to attack at CS 10 with the benefit of Target Lock and blockade. Kira’s Ratosha gets BS (and Scan if needs be) whilst the Akorem has the TL and Militia. If everything clicks you get the following:

Ratosha – 4 Dice + BS and Scan

Akorem – 6 Dice + BS and TL

1st Generic Interceptor – 4 dice + TL

2nd Generic Interceptor – 4 dice + TL

Interceptor 5 – 4 dice + TL

That’s 22 attack dice with some quality; a potent alpha strike that could potentially cripple the main enemy ship before it has had a chance to fire. Not the best possible build in the world, but certainly not weak!

In the hands of a good pilot, with the right combination of upgrades, the Bajorans can be a competitive fleet, even if they don’t have all the tricks that the big 5 have.

As always, comments are welcome, it’s been an interesting time thinking about how to make Bajorans work.

I’m still not Picard,

D

Why the USS Voyager isn't so great...

In my last post I discussed why I liked the Reklar expansion so much, today I'm writing about an expansion that i'm not so enamoured with - The USS Voyager.

Don't get me wrong here - Voyager is a great ship, and some of the uppgrades regularly see play in my competitive Federation pure builds, but it doesn't work together as well as some other expansions do.

Let's start with Voyager itself: The ship has a really good stat split 4-2-4-5 for 30 points and a decent named ability - allowing fire at range 1-2 in 360 degrees at the cost of an APT. It is perhaps the standout federation ship and certainly when it was first released it went straight into most Federation builds, mainly paired with the Enterprise-D from the starter set to give two ships with 360 fire. The problem with the expansion is not the ship itself - it is the way that the expansions work (or don't as the case may be) work with it.

The first culprit for this is Janeway. Janeway has a good CS (8) and a good ability allowing duplication of tokens for the cost of an APT; it just doesn't seem to work so well with Voyager itself. If you are using Voyager's 360 ability then you are going to have an APT next to the ship when you come to moving, if you perform a green manoeuvre to get rid of the APT, which is difficult to do with voyager's lack of a green 1 straight, then use Janeway's ability, you'll still have an APT next to you - making it all the more difficult to use the 360 fire when it comes to attacking. Essentially, with Janeway on Voyager you are making a choice of whether or not to take an action the turn after if you expect to be firing using the ship's named ability. That kind of foresight is a tricky and risky thing to attempt, since actions can so often be the difference between victory or death. Janeway has fantastic synergy with the USS Enterprise from wave 0 - where an action can be taken regardless of the presence of an APT - but not so great with Voyager's limited green manouevres and APT-giving ship named ability.

All of this would be fine if Voyager came with a way to remove APTs, like Chekov, Refit Scotty or a federation version of Power Grid - but it doesn't. Of all the crew that come with Voyager the only one that really sees much play for me on Voyager itself is Tom Paris. Of the other crew upgrades in the pack, The Doctor sees some play, although never on Voyager and B'elanna Torres sees play infrequently - the others (Harry Kim, Seven of Nine and Tuvok) I have never seen used in an OP. 

There is some synerrgy there though: Both Seven of Nine's ability and Harry Kim's ability are action discards, meaning that unless you use an action in alternate turns to re-enable them, you'll be left with multiple crew to re-enable at some point and The Doctor will show his worth. Trouble here is that if that is the case, you are almost better off using Leonard McCoy from the Enterprise Refit - who renables 2 crew upgrades as an action and costs a point less than the Doctor. 

Another example of some in-pack synergy is Chakotay. Chakotay allows you to perform 2 actions listed on a crew upgrade simultaneousl at the cost of having to disable him. Not a bad ability to pair with the Doctor's ability since you could disable Chakotay to perform the actions listed on Seven and Harry in turn one, use the Doctor to re-enable both of them in turn two then renable Chakotay in turn 3 so that the whole merry-go-round could be started again in turn 4. Having read that you probably think it isn't that great and that would be because it isn't really all that great. Harry Kim is one of the worst repair upgrades in the game (only allowing you to repair one shield at the cost of an action disable - compare to Trip in faction and Glinn Daro out of faction to truly see how terrible that is) and Seven is situational at best. As I've also said above, The Doctor could easily be replaced in this sequence by McCoy or Phlox.

As for the tech upgrades, Ablative Generator is a double edged sword, whilst you get extra hull, it costs you your shields making the ship vulnerable to gankers and critical hits and an action. There isn't anything in the pack that either mitigates that or provides you with an extra bonus for using it. Bio-neural circuitry is good but expensive and situational. Bio-neural circuitry could have been great if it had been a way of dealing with APTs, and would have made the whole pack mesh together better without sacrificing theme.

Weapons are your standard fair, and whilst I love Transphasic torpedoes (I have been known to take two copies!) and they do have some synergy with Tuvok (an extra attack dice at the cost of a disable) he is an expensive upgrade to use in order to improve your damage output potential by 10%.

When i started writing this i was convinced that there was no synergy to be seen in the Voyager expansion, and having written about it I know see that there is some synergy in the pack - the trouble is that it they aren't very beneficial synergies and other packs offer cards that give better synergies with the things in the voyager pack.

U.S.S. Voyager [U.S.S. Voyager] (30)

Chakotay [U.S.S. Voyager] (3)

Seven of Nine [U.S.S. Voyager] (5)

Harry Kim [U.S.S. Voyager] (4)

The Doctor [U.S.S. Voyager] (3)

Bio-Neural Circuitry [U.S.S. Voyager] (5)

Total (50)

Fleet total: 50

The alternative - but similar - is...

U.S.S. Voyager [U.S.S. Voyager] (30)

Benjamin Sisko [U.S.S. Defiant] (4)

Seven of Nine [U.S.S. Voyager] (5)

Leonard McCoy [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (2)

William T. Riker [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (5)

Charles Tucker III [Enterprise NX-01] (3)

Total (49)

Fleet total: 49

Why I love the Reklar

I can't really write another breakout review for dominion but I love the Reklar so much that it deserves its own post. The reason I love the Reklar so much is because of the internal synergies in the pack. All the best expansions come with great internal synergy and one day I'll run a fleet just made up of expansions from one retail pack.

Anyway, on to the Reklar!

The Reklar itself is a Galor class starship, same as the Kraxon (and Trager) before it. The problem with both of those ships was lack of the Battle Stations action on their action bars, making them less effective at firing at cloakers and less flexible having to rely upon Target Lock for dice quality. The main advantage held by the Reklar over the Kraxon (Trager and Generic Galor) is that its ship action is like a "Battle Stations Plus!" action. Not only that, but should you feel so inclined (that is to say should Gul Dukat happen to be commanding the Reklar) then you could even have 2 BS tokens beside the ship AND gain +1 to your defence rolls. Whilst the stat split 4-1-4-4 is perhaps not as worthwhile as the Koronak's 5-1-4-3, the movement dial on the Galor class is, in my opinion, superior to the movement dial on the Keldon - I like to have as many options as possible to move at speed 1, and whilst the 4 banks are useful in certain situations, the Keldon loses its 1 banks.

Another reason for loving the Reklar is the combination of Captain and Admiral presented by Lemec and Madred. In general for Dominion the Keldon class is better than the Galor for two reasons: +1 PWV and BS on the action bar. The Reklar already has one of these problems solved with the ship's action, the second is solved by a combination of Madred, Lemec and (sometimes) Corak. Lemec allows you to roll an additional attack dice when attacking a ship whose captain has a lower skill number. Lemec himself is only skill 4, but Madred adds 2 to that and Corak potentially another 3 for a combined skill of 9! Most captains in the game (if not built for high captain skill) have a lower skill than 9. The one drawback here (which is easily solved if you don't follow faction purity) is that Corak costs an action whereas his federation equivalent, Nyota Uhura, is merely a disable (although she only give +2 not +3). Madred's ability, other than adding 2 to the captain skill, is to potentially kill off other captains. I see it like this: If Lemec+Madred are higher than the captains you intend to target for most of the game then you don't use Madred's ability (well, you might want to anyway if there is a particularly juicy target, just gives you the flexibility not to have to) and if there is a captain with a higher skill than Lemec then you can use Madred's ability to remove that higher captain from the game and gain the +1. Once the captain is gone, the captain skill drops to 1 and you get the Lemec bonus all the time.

The final thing I love about the Reklar is the Aft-Weapons Array. 4 dice for firing outside of the front arc at range 1-3 for the cost of a disable? Yes please! This is something that the Dominion faction have access to that the Federation don't - 360 degree firing at range 3 - and with 4 dice and BS, it can be potentially devastating! Also bear in mind that it works with Lemec, so you can have it at 5 dice - 5 dice 360 at Range 3? Almost the borg of old!

As I said at the start of this post, it is not necessarily how powerful an expansion is that causes me to like it - certainly both the Haakona and Koronak are powerful expansions that helped their faction immensely - the easiest way to make me like an expansion is to make it have really good internal synergy. When I can build a ship using only the upgrades from the pack it came with then I feel like it has been a good, well built and thought-out expansion. The Reklar is just that -

The Problem with Klingons

After writing about the “breakout” expansions for both Dominion and Romulans I set to doing the same for Klingons. I went through the release schedule expansion by expansion and tried to figure out exactly where Klingons had become a viable competitive faction in fleet pure environments. The trouble is, there hasn’t ever been an expansion that fills in the holes for the Klingon faction. In fact, many of the expansions have given the Klingons more of the same. Herein lies the problem with Klingons.

Starter Set-

Maht’h’a, Nu’daq, Konmel, Klag, Advanced Weapons System, Photon Torpedoes, Tractor Beam

Not a bad haul for Klingons in the starter set, certainly viable and when played against the other Starter set ships perhaps even a little overpowering. The Maht’h’a, Nu’Daw and AWS are all serviceable cards that gave the faction early on the feeling of being the “Cloaked Alpha-Strike” faction.

Wave 0-

Gr’oth, Koloth, Krell, Sabotage, Korax, Projected Stasis Field, Magnetic Pulse, Photon Torpedoes

Negh’Var, Martok, Gowron, In’Cha, Drex, Klingon Boarding Party, Tractor Beam, Photon Torpedoes

Some very good additions to the starter set for the Klingons here, Drex gave access to Battle Stations for offence whilst Martok provided Action Economy. Projected Stasis Field was the Faction’s first ‘trick’ whilst In’Cha, Magnetic Pulse and KBP all had their uses. The problem with klingons doesn’t seem immediately apparent, but is already setting in, Tractor Beam is a repeat card.

At this stage of the development of the game, my fleets looked something like this:

1^st Klingons:

I.K.S. Maht-H'A [Starter] (28)

Nu'Daq [Starter] (3)

Total (31)

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Martok [I.K.S. Negh'var] (5)

Drex [I.K.S. Negh'var] (4)

Total (35)

I.K.S. Negh'var [I.K.S. Negh'var] (30)

Gowron [I.K.S. Negh'var] (4)

Total (34)

Fleet total: 100

Wave 1-

Kronos 1, Chang, Gorkon, Once More unto the Breach, Kerla, Stex, Photon Torpedoes, Concussive Charges. 

There are some nice things here, notably OMutB and Concussive charges, but nothing that fundamentally changes the faction. Klingons still rely upon the cloaked alpha strike. Given the cards already available at this point, there is nothing that was released with the Kronos One that would alter my choice of build.

Wave 2 –

Koraga, Worf, Kurn, N’Garen, Alexander, AWS, EM Pulse, Photon Torpedoes

Worf, N’Garen and Alexander are all good cards that would instantly receive consideration to enter my lists, trouble was that Worf was a better, but similar Nu’Daq whilst N’Garen was a carbon copy of Drex with Alexander being very similar. This expansion did change the content of my build, but didn’t really affect the play style.

2^nd Klingons:

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Worf [I.K.S. Koraga] (3)

N'Garen [I.K.S. Koraga] (4)

Total (33)

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Martok [I.K.S. Negh'var] (5)

Drex [I.K.S. Negh'var] (4)

Total (35)

Negh'var Class [I.K.S. Negh'var] (28)

Gowron [I.K.S. Negh'var] (4)

Total (32)

Wave 3:

Somraw, Somraw Commander, Klingon Honor, Bu’Kah, Tactical Sensors, Shockwave, Photon Torpedoes

Whilst Bu’Kah is a nice enough card (Repair 2 Hull as a discard as long as you have performed a green manoeuvre) there was nothing in this expansion that changed the way I built Klingons at all. Everything stayed the same.

The Prize Ships:

Ch’Tang, Martok, Synon, Secondary Shield Emitters, Barrage of Fire

For a while, Barrage of Fire and the Ch’tang itself were potentially great ships. The 3 Hull of the Ch’tang made it weaker though, thanks to the advent of Borg, and Barrage of Fire was Worf’d. Nothing in this pack that makes me want to change my list.

B’Moth, K’Nera, Qapla’, Kunivas, Tritium Intermix, Photon Torpedoes

As a blind booster this was a great ship, and a lot of the upgrades have medium utility. Qapla’ and Kunivas both help with damage output and Tritium Intermix is one of the better repair cards in the game. When the jump was made to 120 points all three upgrades would see some play –although at 90 or 100 SP there is nothing here to displace what the faction already had.

Wave 9:

Chang’s Bird of Prey, Chang, Kerla, Gorkon, The Game’s Afoot, Cry Havoc, Azetbur, Prototype Cloaking Device

It wasn't for almost another 6 months that the Klingons had anything to add to their arsenal from a retail release, and that came in the form of General Chang’s Bird of Prey. Chang himself is an interesting card that can have some applications, but he isn't good enough a captain to make me want to dethrone Worf, Gowron or Martok. Apart from that this pack only really offers Gorkon, not for his ability, but as the first Klingon Admiral.

Korok’s Bird of Prey, Korok, Warrior Spirit

Warrior spirit is absolute trash. Korok is okay and the Bird of Prey suffers the same problem as the Ch’tang - nothing worth adding here.

Pagh, Kargan, Phaser Array Retrofit

I know a lot of people like Phaser Array Retrofit, but I’m not the biggest fan. The Pagh also has a nice little ability and as a K’Vort class, doesn’t suffer the same issues as the B’rel class ships of low hull, but the stat split on a named K’vort 4-1-5-3 is worse than the stat spilt on a generic Vor’cha 5-1-5-2 for the same points. The interesting card here is Kargan, whose ability works really well with Drex or N’Garen and therefore becomes a replacement for Gowron in most builds.

3^rd Klingons:

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Worf [I.K.S. Koraga] (3)

N'Garen [I.K.S. Koraga] (4)

Total (33)

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Martok [I.K.S. Negh'var] (5)

Qapla' [I.K.S. B'Moth] (2)

Total (33)

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Kargan [I.K.S. Pagh] (4)

Drex [I.K.S. Negh'var] (4)

Total (34)

Fleet total: 100

AND

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Worf [I.K.S. Koraga] (3)

N'Garen [I.K.S. Koraga] (4)

Advanced Weapon System [Starter] (5)

Total (38)

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Martok [I.K.S. Negh'var] (5)

Fleet Captain: Klingon [Fleet Captain Resource] (5)

Defense Condition One [IKS Ch'tang] (0)

Alexander [I.K.S. Koraga] (3)

Tritium Intermix [I.K.S. B'Moth] (4)

Total (43)

Vor'cha Class [Starter] (26)

Kargan [I.K.S. Pagh] (4)

Drex [I.K.S. Negh'var] (4)

Projected Stasis Field [I.K.S. Gr'oth] (5) Total (39)

Fleet total: 120

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking “Hey Dave, you’ve just spent 1000 words talking about Klingons and you;ve shown us some builds but you haven’t really said what the problem is?” and I get that. Klingons are a good faction, a fun faction, one that hits hard and has pretty fun manoeuvring. The trouble with klingons is that’s what they’ve always been like. Right from wave 0 they’ve always been hard hitting, manoeuvrable and with a few nice tricks. Unlike the Dominion, who have had a number of changes in play style caused by different expansions (Koronak, Reklar, Dominion Battleship and Cruiser), the Romulans (who were wholly transformed by the Haakona expansion after having been significantly altered by the Scimitar expansion) and the Federation (whose sheer number of expansions give them access to loads of different build options) the Klingons just seem to keep doing the same thing but better.

I know that there are other builds out there (Swarms etc) and I’m yet to explore the viability of the Ning’Tao expansion (the 3 hull worries me) and I still enjoy playing Klingons, I just wish there was something else to them, an expansion like the Koronak or Haakona that threw all of the old staid choices up in the air and made me re-think the entirety of my build. When half the cards in your list come from the first two waves, you begin to think that the faction may be getting a little stale.

I’m still not Picard,

D

Breakout Expansions: The IRW Haakona

For a long time in the history of the game the Romulans have been seen as a bit of an underdog faction. They had a few nice tricks (Interphase generator and Cloaked mines to name but 2) but they didn’t seem to be a faction capable (in faction pure at least) of competing with the likes of Federation, Dominion and Borg. In my opinion there were 4 main problems: a) Poor action economy b) Low PWV c) no defence dice efficiency and d) narrow fire arcs.

Then came the Haakona, filling more than a few gaps in the Romulan Arsenal and seemingly making the faction viable overnight.

First, the Haakona itself doesn’t seem too over-powering. The D’Deridex class of ship is a little under-gunned at only 3 PWV and whilst agility and hull are high (2 and 6 respectively) it is unlikely to benefit all that much from the 4 shields, given that it will spend most of the game cloaked.

(As an aside, I’ve often thought that the Vor’cha class was perfectly designed and pointed as a cloaker with only two shields; it’s enough to make dropping cloak and raising shields when damaged a viable tactic, but also makes the damage point ‘cost’ of cloaking not too hard to stomach. The D’Deridex, on the other hand, has 4 shields, making the ‘cost’ of cloaking very high)

Where the Haakona begins to become more than just a run-of-the-mill D’Deridex class is with the name ability to add 1 to your PWV for each friendly Romulan ship, up to a maximum of +4. With the 50/3 limit, this makes the Haakona at least +2 in a Romulan pure fleet, if not higher when built around. It’s a nice little ability that makes the ship a little punchier; although it isn’t at the same level as some ship’s abilities (It’s no 360 Arc, for example).

Talking about 360 arcs, the first captain in this expansion is Taris, whose ability allows you to discard a crewman in order to fire your primary weapon in any direction. This is a nice ability and whilst it can be costly (losing a crewman is sometimes a big deal) if it is built around, it can be a good ability, (especially since it is not going to be an ability that you use all the time). It is worth noting that Taris is 4 SP and skill 5. Usually a skill 5 captain costs 3 points rather than 4 and captains that cost 4 points tend to be skill 6 or 7. If captain skill is something you particularly care about (as I do) then Taris might not be your woman. The reason that Taris contributes towards the Haakona being a breakout expansion for the Romulans is that it gave the Romulans the ability to fire in 360 degrees for the first time, an ability that Federation and Borg had since their inception and Dominion had since the Koronak.

With Romulans relying on Cloaking as their main source of extra defence dice, there had been calls for a long time for Romulans to be given some ability to improve the quality of those defence dice. The other cloaking fleet (Kilngons) had access to Battle Stations in a number of ways (Def Con 1 and Alexander) whilst up until the Haakona, Romulans had nothing. There are two cards in the pack that helped with defence dice efficiency. The first is Admiral Mendak, whose ability allows the placing of a BS token beside the ship. The benefits of BS on offence are well documented, but on defence, the ability to convert BS results takes the chances of success from 38% to 63%. If that still isn’t good enough for you, I suggest you take a look at another card in the pack (in fact there are three of them!) the Romulan Security officer.

Good old generic Romulan janitor Security Officer has two benefits. The first is that you can disable a RSO to re-roll one of your blank results. When rolling 6 defensive dice, as the Haakona (and most Romulan Ships) does most often, this increases your efficiency to around 44% without BS and 73% with BS. That’s if you re-roll one blank. The increase in efficiency is greater when using 2 or 3 RSOs to re-roll multiple blank dice.  The second ability of the RSO is that the Captain’s captain skill is improved by 1 whilst the upgrade is active. This has two nice synergies with Taris – First, that Taris’ CS 5 doesn’t seem so much of a letdown and Second, that once the card has been disabled for its blank re-roll on defence, the card can then be discarded by Taris’ ability in order to fire the primary weapon  360 degrees. 

The other nice crew card is Romulan Flight Attendant Helmsman, who allows you to treat red manoeuvres as white at the cost of a disable. There is some use for him on the Haakona (you could potentially reverse forever) but he is a card that seems more suited to the Scimitars and Valdores of this world (Universe) who have access to a come about manoeuvre.

The final thing that made the upgrade pack a breakout pack for the Romulans were the new secondary weapons: Disruptor beams and Disruptor Pulse. Disruptor Beams are a nice upgrade for those low PWV ships, like the Gal’Gathong and Vorta Vor, not requiring a target lock gives them pretty good dice efficiency, whilst the Disruptor Pulse could do damage to a number of ships simultaneously. Both these upgrades helped to overcome the problem of low PWV.

After talking through the good bits of the upgrade pack, I came up with this list:

I.R.W. Haakona [I.R.W. Haakona] (30)

Taris [I.R.W. Haakona] (4)

Adm Mendak [I.R.W. Haakona] (4)

Romulan Security Officer [I.R.W. Haakona] (2)

Romulan Security Officer [I.R.W. Haakona] (2)

Romulan Security Officer [I.R.W. Haakona] (2)

Disruptor Pulse [I.R.W. Haakona] (5)

Total (49)

 With two other Romulan vessels on the table, this could be an interesting ship to play with, a good balance of attack and defence and even a support ship if the situation arrives (what with Mendak’s fleet action).

Thoughts and comments as always are most appreciated,

Until next time,

D

Breakout Expansions: The Koranak

I remember a time right at the start of Star Trek: Attack Wing when the dominion were weak. They didn't get a ship in the starter set and their first five expansion (the Jem'Hadar attack ship, Gor Portas and Kraxon) didn't set the world (Universe) on fire.

Then came the Koronak and in one expansion they suddenly became a powerful faction. What was it that made the Koronak such a big deal? I thought I'd write some of my thoughts down to see if I could work it out.

Koronak 5-1-4-3

Instead of making a normal attack, you may spend a [SCAN] Token to attack 2 different ships with your Primary Weapon at -2 attack dice each.

The ship itself has a lot to do with the strength of the expansion. At the time only Klingons had 5 PWV ships, with both the Negh'var and Vor'cha. The cost with taking these though was that you couldn't get battle stations on the ship and so your dice quality relied upon Target Locking your opponent, which was not always possible with the then prevalence of Cloakers. The Koronak was good because it was the first ship that gave you 5 dice with BS. This meant that you could fire at cloaked ships with some quality and was the first time perhaps ever that cloak wasn't always the best option.

This was somewhat exacerbated by the inclusion in the pack of Gul Dukat. 

Dukat was only the second captain in the game that allowed his own ship to take a second action. Sure, Martok let another ship take an additional action but Dukat allowed your own ship to take the BS action (which seems to be what he chooses most often) and do something else at the same time, be it target lock, scan or re-enable on of the upgrades on your ship. At the time only federation had the additional action captain in Picard and the best attack he could get was 4 PWV on his own Enterprise-D. 

A further cherry was added in the shape of Boheeka.

Boheeka gave the Koronak even better dice quality and synergised oh so well with Dukat. With a five dice attack, Bs and Boheeka there was a pretty good chance that all of your dice would hit, making it the perfect ship to engage Cloakers. As you can probably tell, this is the ship that broke the cloaked fleet meta-game. 

In addition to these cards, the pack included a number of other useful if not overwhelmingly good cards -the dominion cloaking device, Gul Evek, tetryon emissions, and captured intelligence all boosted defence and made the dominion a faction, finally, to be reckoned with.

Ship Build ideas:

1. Offence

Koranak [Koranak] (26)

Gul Dukat [Koranak] (5)

Boheeka [Koranak] (2)

Total (33)

Fleet total: 33

2. Defence

Koranak [Koranak] (26)

Gul Evek [Koranak] (2)

Captured Intelligence [Koranak] (3)

Elim Garak [Deep Space 9] (4)

Tetryon Emissions [Koranak] (3)

Cloaking Device [Koranak] (4)

Total (42)

Fleet total: 42

Until next time,

D

Play Testing for Q Continuum 1 – Encounter at Farpoint

After my victory at the last OP event I decided that rather than stick with that fleet (however successful it was!) I would work on a whole new fleet for the first Q event. The scenario itself is somewhat crazy, so I thought I’d start by running down what the Q cards do and adding some of my own comments on the implications (apologies for picture quality).

1.       Honored Judge

I get the feeling that this might just be the card that people worry about the most. My first idea for this event’s fleet building was to run dominion fighters with Galor Class Phaser banks and Aft-Disruptor Wave Cannons – I could cover a large area of board space with a ship that wouldn’t be concerned about having its captain disabled, would fire with between 4 and 7 dice depending on tokens left and range, and would be consistently firing at a higher captain skill than that of its opponents. The problem of course was that the second line of text on honored judge says that if you have no captain disable a crew upgrade, and if you have no crew disable another upgrade. This would mean that if Honored Judge came up, it would rob me of one of the upgrades that I’d bought, and so what might ultimately be worthwhile doing was to run the fighters without any upgrades at all, particularly when one considers the potential effects of number 2…

2.       Very Advanced

If one were to deploy within range one of the board edge and this card is drawn on the first turn, then one has to perform a 6 straight manoeuvre to escape the area of effect. This means that no ship will be able to avoid the 2 disabled upgrades unless a) it has a 6 forward on its dial, or b) it has no upgrades. The fighters I spoke about above have only a 4 forward and if this card was drawn (let alone Honored Judge) then they would lose both of the upgrades. I think that if this card does come up and you have no 6 straight manoeuvre, then the best bet may be to accept that you are going to have cards disabled, and put yourself into a position to escape the area of effect next turn, rather that barrel forwards as fast as you can just to be alpha struck (striked?) by a Voyager/Enterprise-E/Scimitar that can escape the area of effect on turn one. As far as my fleet building went, this card was the death of Aft-Disruptor Wave/Galor Class Phaser Fighters.

3.       Incredible Power

This card actually encouraged me to still take fighters, even though I’d have to run them without any upgrades. Manoeuvring is severely limited by this card, with most ships only able to do a 1 forward or bank without avoiding (the chance) of taking damage. I think most players are conservative and fearful of damage enough that they won’t risk taking damage. Fighters therefore become all the more valuable, since in addition to straight and bank manoeuvres, they also possess 1 turns and the federation fighters have a 1 come about (that is white). Whilst I had been thinking that Dominion was the way to go for this event, the fantastic manoeuvrability that the Federation fighter offers, may just swing me towards favouring them. (NB: It always bothered me that the Federation fighters were never named “Peregrine Fighters” as they are in-universe).

4.       A Powerful Mind

This one is less of a spoiler than it might first appear. Yes, taking an APT can be the death of some ships, and certainly I would rather not take one, but taking one to perform an action bar action is not necessarily the end of the world- particularly when you can take upgrade actions, ship actions or captain actions (if the captain is enabled) without penalty. The key here might be that most ships can survive taking one APT a turn but few can survive taking two. Cards like Positron Beam, Brunt (not-FCA) and (the almost forgotten) Borg Missile become all the more powerful when they add an APT to a ship that already has an APT. It also means, conversely, that cards that give out APTs for some benefit (Such as Reinforced Hull Plating, the Tal’Kir’s named ability and Gul Macet) are less useful when you already have an APT. I’m looking quite hard at both the TOS Enterprise and the Tactical Prototype tech from the Prometheus expansion as means of being able to take actions despite the presence of an APT.

All of this discussion leads me towards two possible builds, with a third hovering in the back of my mind.

Build 1 – Dominion

Resource – Officer Cards

Trager [Assimilated Vessel 64758] (26)

Gul Dukat [Battle Cruiser] (5)

Breen Aide [Gor Portas] (2)

First Officer [Officer Resource] (3)

Aft Weapons Array [Reklar] (4)

Total (40)

Reklar [Reklar] (26)

Gul Lemec [Reklar] (3)

Adm Gul Madred [Reklar] (5)

Boheeka [Koranak] (2)

Aft Weapons Array [Reklar] (4)

Total (40)

Hideki Class Attack Squadron [1st Wave Attack Fighters] (20) Total (20)

Hideki Class Attack Squadron [1st Wave Attack Fighters] (20) Total (20)

Fleet total: 120

In play testing this fleet has been severely hamstrung by drawing Very Advanced on turn 1. If that doesn’t happen though, this fleet works well. If Honored Judge comes up, then neither the Trager nor the Reklar drop to 0 skill, as the First Officer Breen Aide and Admiral Madred take over. Reklar’s ability allows for a BS token to be dropped despite that action not being on the action bar, hence avoiding the APT and the Aft-Weapons array (fast becoming my favourite weapon upgrade) gives pretty good coverage at 4 Attack Dice.  The Trager is pretty survivable itself (I love the named ability) and the fighters just add to that ability. Whilst the number of moving parts here could go wrong pretty quickly, the upgrades are there to start with in order to deal with the scenario rather than ignore the worst that the scenario has to offer. It seems more skilful from my point of view to be able to take what the scenario throws at you and build around those potential drawbacks, than it does to build a fleet that doesn’t have to deal with the drawbacks. That is probably why I prefer this fleet to the next one…

Build 2 – Federation (sort of)

Resource – Federation Attack Fighters

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22) Federation Captain [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (0) Total (22)

Constitution Class [I.S.S. Enterprise] (20) Mirror Universe Captain [I.S.S. Enterprise] (0) Total (20)

Suurok Class [Ni'Var] (18) Vulcan Captain [Ni’Var] (0) Total (18)

Hideki Class Attack Squadron [1st Wave Attack Fighters] (20) Total (20)

Federation Attack Fighter [Federation Attack Fighter Resource] (20) Total (20)

Federation Attack Squadron [Fighter Squadron 6] (20) Total (20)

Fleet total: 120

Whilst the previous build was made to deal with the worst the scenario had to offer, this build is designed entirely to ignore the scenario. Three fighters, three cheap 4 hull ships, one of which, the prime universe Enterprise, can take actions regardless of the presence of APTs. The only interesting thing about this build is that I’ve tried to mix up the factions to avoid falling foul of Salatrel and Picard 8’s ability. Otherwise it is more or less just a case of flying into range two with the fighters and letting them do their thing. I’m worried it’ll be a little boring.

Build 3 - Evade-ager

U.S.S. Voyager [U.S.S. Voyager] (30)

Flagship: Independent (Romulan) [Flagship Resource] (10)

Jean-Luc Picard [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (5)

Admiral Maxwell Forrest [Enterprise NX-01] (3)

Computer Analysis [Sakharov] (4)

Tom Paris [U.S.S. Voyager] (4)

Hikaru Sulu [U.S.S. Enterprise] (3)

Pavel Chekov [U.S.S. Reliant] (3)

Ilia [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)

William T. Riker [U.S.S. Pegasus] (4)

Multi-adaptive Shields [U.S.S. Raven] (5)

Transphasic Torpedoes [U.S.S. Voyager] (10)

Transphasic Torpedoes [U.S.S. Voyager] (10)

Tactical Station [U.S.S. Stargazer] (4) Total (100)

Federation Attack Squadron [Fighter Squadron 6] (20) Total (20)

Fleet total: 119

This fleet is just mean, and takes full advantage of my venue’s lifting of the 50 point cap and resource retirement rules. Voyager is tough to take down, with Captain Skill 12 when Honored Judge is not in play and 7 when it is. Between the Transphasics and Tactical Station it puts out a heap of damage and does not really suffer from things being disabled thanks to Computer Analysis. The only weakness that immediately jumps out at me is that the ship’s ability 360 Primary Weapon gives an APT, and that might prove difficult to shake off if I also have one from A Powerful Mind. I think out of the three builds this one is by far and away the best, most competitive and most annoying. I’m not sure what I’ll run yet, but this is a distinct possibility.

As always, comments are welcome, so let me know what you think.

D