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
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