Saturday 27 June 2015

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


No comments:

Post a Comment