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
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