Friday 26 June 2015

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 -


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