Cloaking – How to do it, when not to do it and how to get the best from it.

Yesterday I posted about defence and the problems and solutions to the problems of defence in the game at the moment. I briefly mentioned that one way of boosting defence was by cloaking and said I’d cover cloaking as a tactic later on. This is my follow up post on the problems and benefits of running a fleet of cloakers in ST:AW.

There are 7 Action Bar Actions in the game, Battle Stations (BS), Target Lock (TL), Sensor Echo (SE), Scan (S), Cloak (C), Regenerate (R) and Evade (E). These actions are usually matched together into a set of actions that defines the type of ship that it is, for example, most non-cloaking non-borg ships have an action bar of BS, TL, E & S; Borg tend to be TL, S & R and Cloaked Ships tend to be C, SE, TL & E. There are ways of getting a cloaking device onto non-native cloaking ships, but most of the time this is a) expensive and b) action intensive (The USS Defiant’s cloaking device, for example, costs 4 points, fills the all-important tech slot and is an action/disable to use). The first problem that cloakers encounter is that their action bars aren’t really tuned up to get the most out of the cloak action.

The ‘Cloak’ action gives the ship a massive 4 additional defence dice and, as long as you don’t attack (or have a way of attacking and keeping it) cloak is one of the few actions in the game that carries over from one turn to the next. You don’t ‘spend’ the cloak token to roll those extra dice, you get it on every defence roll you make every turn! In addition to this, you get the added bonus of being functionally immune to TL on every turn after the one in which you cloaked. It seems like a pretty awesome deal, all in all, extra defence, both in terms of dice and denying the opponent dice quality, great action efficiency (cloak turn one and don’t worry about it afterwards) and you benefit from this multiple times. The big drawback of cloaking is that you have to lower your shields in order to cloak, in game terms this means that you disable all of your shields when you choose to take a cloak action, and that is a major cost. Disabling shields means that any damage that you take goes straight to your hull, and since critical hits are cancelled last, any critical hits that get through your bonus cloaking are going to damage your hull, and could cause anything from a ‘stunned helmsman’ (no attacking for you!) to double damage or the dreaded warp core breach. In addition, you have paid two SP for each shield that you won’t benefit from whilst cloaked.

The other benefit that being cloaked gives you is that you can perform the “Sensor Echo” action. Sensor Echo is a fantastic action that allows you to keep the same facing as you currently have and move laterally either 1 or 2. Lateral movement is amongst the most difficult things to come across in the game, and being able to move out of an opponent’s fire arc whilst keeping them in yours is a sensational ability when used properly. The issue with sensor echo is that it is an action and as such you can’t use it on the same turn as the one in which you performed the cloak action, unless you have some action economy present (best example of this is Klingon fleets with Martok 8 - most of the time when I fly Klingons, Martok’s additional action is used to sensor echo).

The major cost of the Cloaker’s action bar, though, is that you don’t get access to the BS action. Battle Stations is an action most often used to improve the quality of an attack, but it is ideally suited to helping cloaked ships get the most out of their 4 extra green dice. To re-cap from my last post, green dice have a 37.5% chance of success on their own, but this is boosted to 62.5% when BS conversions are also included. At point of writing, no ship with Cloak also gains access to BS natively on their action bar (Cloaked Keldons and the Defiant do have access to BS but only get cloak by spending SP on a cloaking device). This means that those 4 extra dice are only averaging out an additional 1.5 successful evades. Klingon ships tend to have 1 agility basic, hence they are rolling 5 dice most of the time (1.875 successes) and Romulan ships tend to have 2 agility basic, so 6 dice and 2.25 squiggly tokens (my fiancée calls them “defensive sperm” which is both adorable and disgusting). A 4 dice attack with BS will average 3 hits (with approximately a 50% chance of one of those die being a Critical Hit). 3 hits vs around 2 evades means that even at this low level of quality you are facing a hit to your hull every time you defend. When you consider that there are many ways to get re-rolls in addition to BS on attack rolls even without a target lock (Klingon Tactical Officer, Kor 8, Worf 5, Refit Chekov etc.) then you could potentially be facing 4 clear hits from four dice, and with no way to modify those dice, your cloaked ship could be taking 2 damage per attack.

There are ways to add quality to the defence roll of a cloaked ship: Romulans have Admiral Mendak and Romulan Security Officer, Klingons have Defense (sic) Condition One (DefCon1) and Alexander – but as I said in my last post, Defence quality is expensive, both in terms of number and opportunity. Spending that BS token from Mendak on defence means that it isn’t going on attacking, Alexander only gets BS tokens to use his ability with *AFTER* his ship is damaged and DefCon1 is a 5 point action/discard. To re-iterate the conclusions I came to in that last post, it just isn’t worth spending points trying to improve the efficiency of those green dice.

The other problem with cloaking is that it blows apart the ideal 4/4 hit point balance that I keep at the centre of my thinking when list building. When your shields are disabled, a 4/4 balance turns into a 4/0 balance and a one shot kill is a very real danger. If you are looking at building a cloaked fleet, then you need to throw out the 4/4 paradigm and think more in terms of Hull=Good, Shields=Bad. Ships like the Vor’Cha class (26 SP), with 5 Hull and 2 shields are a better (more efficient) points investment than the PWB Aj’Rmr (30 SP) with 6 Hull and 4 Shields, if you intend to run them cloaked. Amongst the best cloakers are the Klingon’s Negh’Var Class (28) with 6 hull and 2 shields and the Romulan’s Valdore class (also 28) with 6 hull and 2 shields. Neither is ideal (an 8 hull 1 shield ship would be an ideal, if unlikely cloaker) but both avoid spending too many points on stats that aren’t going to be useful.

So if I can’t rely on cloaking as a defence, how do I make sure my squishy cloakers survive and why should I bother cloaking at all? The answer to both of these questions is simple: Sensor Echo. Sensor Echo should be used as much as possible by cloaked ships with one main purpose – to stay out of your opponent’s firing solution. With a fragile cloaked fleet, you should only ever stay in arc when you are a) firing first and b) have enough of your ships in an opponent’s firing arc to ensure that you can reasonably rely on destroying your opponent’s ship before he has a chance of returning fire. Let’s imagine 2 cloaked Klingon Vor’chas with a single Cardassian Galor class in arc. The Galor’s 180 front arc makes it difficult (but not impossible) to manoeuvre out-of-arc, but in this situation, if the Klingon’s have the right captains on board (and I can’t stress enough how valuable high captain skill is) then you can reasonably ensure that with the right combination of upgrades and actions, the two 5 PWV attacks from the Vor’chas will take down the Galor before it takes its opportunity to fire, with the added bonus that if it does get chance to return fire, your cloaks will have stopped the Galor from acquiring a target lock on you and you’ll be well placed to weather that return fire when it has little efficiency (perhaps a scan and Breen Aide for an average of 3 hits in return, 2 hits with no efficiency at all).

Which brings me to the elephant in the room (there are a lot of elephants in the ST:AW room) – the Borg. Tactical Cubes, Spheres and Diamonds all have a 6 attack primary weapon that fires in 360 degrees at range 2. If a Borg ship get a cloaker in its sights it has a reasonable chance of taking out the defending ship in one shot (especially with the 3 SP Tactical Drone who allows re-rolls without the use of a Target Lock). In this situation you are better off echoing out of range of the Borg, even if it means losing your own opportunity to attack. The problem is, that if the Borg player is toting a Magnetometric Guided Charge to attack at range 3, you are almost certainly going to take a critical hit to your hull thanks to MGCs’ ability to convert BS results to Critical Hits. So my advice to Cloaked Admirals when facing the Borg is quite simple: Don’t Cloak. Cloaking is going to make things *WORSE* against the Borg and your sensor echoing is at significantly reduced utility thanks to 360 arcs. You are better off having the shields up to avoid taking Critical hits to the hull than you are having shields down and failing to evade the full Borg onslaught. Thankfully, the Borg’s two highest skilled captains, Queen 9 and Locutus, are rarely used (don’t really know why, I’d always have to find a pretty good reason NOT to take the highest skilled captains a faction has to offer, but that’s another story for another day), so you will probably be firing first and as the game goes on, Borg CS tends to drop, allowing you a better chance of firing first. Firing first is even more important to cloaked fleets than it is to fleets more able to weather fire and respond in kind.

I’ll finish this article by having a go at building fleets designed to make the most of cloaking, for the two factions most likely to run all cloaker fleets: Klingons and Romulans. Klingons have very little access to defensive upgrades, which entirely makes sense given their faction identity, so would only cloak to benefit from using Sensor Echo to get into position to make the most of their high number of upgrades that improve attack efficiency.

Klingons

Ship 1:

Negh’Var Class

Kargan

Drex

Kargan’s ability allows a Target Lock to be acquired after an upgrades action has been taken at the cost of an Auxiliary Power Token. This gives his ship’s attacks a good quality when paired with Drex, whose ability works in a functionally similar way to BS, with the added bonus of converting one of these results to a Critical Hit. On the Negh’var’s 5 Dice attack, this almost guarantees 4 hits and one critical hit every turn. 

Ship 2:

IKS Negh’Var

Kor 8

N’Garen

Kunivas

Klag

Kor’s ability allows a re-roll on an attack dice for each un-disabled crew upgrade on his ship. Whilst not quite as effective as a full TL, it works on ships that are not cloaked and doesn’t fall into the trap of Monotanium Armour Plating. Realistically, most of the time, you aren’t going to need to re-roll all of those dice, and with 3 crew aboard the Negh’var, 3 re-rolls should be sufficient to guarantee great dice efficiency each turn when coupled with N’Garen and it only requires 1 action each turn. Martok on this build’s third ship can grant an extra action to this ship allowing a sensor echo each turn when needed. Klag is on the ship to fill a crew slot whilst Kunivas is present to first fill a crew slot and second push the damage from this ship up to a level where it cannot recover. Kor is CS 8.

Ship 3:

Negh’Var Class

Martok 8
Klingon Fleet Captain

Bu’kah

Martok is first CS 8, 10 with the fleet captain meaning that he can hand out his 2 additional actions at the best time, after the other ships have moved. This can be used to allow the sensor echo on another ship or another action if needed. Since Martok’s value to the fleet is mainly support, Bu’kah will keep the ship alive a little longer allowing Martok to hand out free actions. The Klingon fleet captain boosts allows him to take an action from a crew upgrade for free after moving each round. This combines with Kargan’s ability to allow TL, Drex and a sensor echo each turn on that ship.Martok’s own ship can take the Sensor Echo action to evade firing arcs, or an ‘evade’ to survive an incoming attack a little better if getting out of arc entirely is not possible.

The whole fleet is designed to hit hard, hit first and hit often, with Sensor Echoes to avoid any incoming fire. On turn one it flies forward 1 and cloaks, before engaging. At this stage it almost seems like the best plan is to allow the shields to come back up rather than re-cloaking as with Klingons, if the first pass isn’t successful, no amount of cloaking will save you. This fleet also does not like cloaked mines.

Romulans

Ship 1:

Reman Warbird

Toreth

Massacre

Independent Fleet Captain (Dominion)

Advanced Cloaking

Interphase Generator

Toreth’s CS is boosted by 1 with the fleet captain which also reduces the cost of Tech and adds the tech slot needed to run both Advanced Cloaking and Interphase Generator. This Romulan fleet is less manoeuvrable than the Klingon fleet above, so Interphase Generator helps to reduce the damage that comes in on one round. The Ship can stay cloaked for the entire game and then choose to take Target Lock or Sensor Echo depending upon the situation. With a 7 dice attack, Hit to Crit Conversion and Massacre, the ship can lay some hurt on opponents when needed.

Ship 2:

Scimitar

Shinzon

Full Stop

Attack Pattern Shinzon Theta

Double Back

Make Them See Us!

Interphase Generator

Shinzon is mainly here for his high CS, but his talents are chosen to allow versatility in manoeuvring (Full Stop, Double Back), as well as some bonus damage to opponents (MTSU!, APST). Interphase Generator is again used to ensure a turn of fire can be weathered relatively unscathed and each turn either TL or Echo can be chosen based on the situation at hand.

Ship 3:

Romulan Science Vessel

Donatra

Admiral Mendak

Another skill 8 ship, this time in a support role to follow the two Reman Warbirds around granting an extra attack dice (Donatra) and one of them a BS (Mendak). If needed, Mendak’s ability can be used as a fleet action freeing up this ship’s action to sensor echo out of arc. In really desperate situations, Mendak’s BS token can be placed on this ship to improve the efficiency of its 6 defence dice.

This fleet hits really hard and has enough tricks to keep opponents guessing. All three ships have high CS and the two big hitters can attack head on at least once without fear of reprisals. As with the Klingon fleet it doesn’t like Cloaked mines, but unlike the Klingon fleet it will probably spend the entire game cloaked, hence not worrying about Target Locks.

So that’s it as far as cloaking goes, but in case you’ve skipped to the end of another mammoth post, here are (not) Picard’s tips for cloaked fleets:

1.      High hull values are your friends

2.      Make the most of Sensor Echo

3.      Make sure your captains have a high CS

4.      Know when to come out of cloak.

Thanks for reading, comments and criticism are always welcome and…

I’m still not Picard.

The power of…err….6: Why defence is broken and how to fix it.

There were many reasons why the Borg were so good for so long -the high PWV at 360 degrees, the best manoeuvre dials in the game, their high hull and shields- but perhaps the most significant of their advantages could actually be seen as a disadvantage –their low agility.

“Hold on Dave; that makes no sense, why would you want them to have low evade?!” I hear you cry. The answer is perhaps one of the less spoken about truths of ST:AW – Defence sucks. A single green evade dice has 3 evade side, 3 blanks and 2 Battle Stations. A 37.5% chance of rolling an ‘evade’ compared to a 50% chance of rolling a hit (or crit) on an attack dice. Added to this simple statistical fact is a cavalcade of additional unfortunate facts that make defence a much more costly investment to get right than attacking.

Let’s take federation as an example (since it is by far and away the easiest faction to min-max in fleet pure), 5 attack dice with both TL and BS is easy done - Prometheus, Captain Spock, job done…Picard, Sovereign as an alternative, or additional ship with the same benefits - even when paying for the extra captain and the costly 5 PWV space-frame, you can still manage it on a budget (32 points). Dominion can do it even cheaper (Keldon and Dukat – 29 Points), even Klingons manage similar (Kargan, Vor’cha and Drex – 34). Target Lock re-rolls and BS conversions are about 94% efficiency, meaning that more often than not, you’ll be hitting with 5 out of 5 shots.

Defence, by comparison, is much more expensive, to get up to 5 dice you are having to either cloak (and that comes with it a whole heap of issues that I’ll go into another time) or rely on upgrades. No ship currently available in the game has an agility value higher than 3 – and even then they are invariably low hull/shield ships like the NX-01, Bajoran Interceptor or RIS Vo (combined hit points of 3, 3 and 4 respectively). The most survivable 3 evade ship in the game at the moment is the Prototype 01/Romulan Drone ship, and even then it has only 6 hit points. So to get up to 5 (or better 6) defence dice you are spending points that you could have spent elsewhere – unless you are a cloaker.

So how does one boost their defensive abilities? The first way is to increase the volume of the dice being rolled and (bearing in mind my earlier post on the need for a 4/4, or as close to it, split on hull and shields) often the ships that you are using as a base aren’t going to have a defence that is that high. Let’s take the Cardassian Galor class as a base, since the 3 named versions (Trager, Reklar and Kraxon) have 4 hull and 4 shields, you are looking for a way to increase the number of dice that you are rolling on defence. The most obvious choice in faction is Amat’Igan, who gives you an extra defence dice and helps you to protect other, potentially more important, crew. Shove Amat’Igan onto your ship and you have reached a mighty 2 green dice. That, as should be obvious by now, isn’t going to really make any difference, and the second (and expensive) option to boost defence using an upgrade is Cloaking Device, which lowers your shields thus reducing your durability to 4. There is another option in faction though – Tetryon Emissions. There are massive issues with this (it is an action/disable and takes a valuable tech slot) but putting it onto your Named Galor will boost your evade, along with Amat’Igan to 5. There is also Sar, a Breen Captain who, in faction, will increase that total up to the all-important 6. The Dominion faction fleet captain resource will add 2 to your CS (bringing Sar up to a *mighty* 4) and allow you to take Tetryon Emissions as a free action each turn (you can use your ship’s action to re-enable it each turn if needs be). So there you have it, a 4-6-4-4 ship; and all for 38 points. That’s 9 points more than Dukat’s 5 attack dice with TL and BS from earlier – and it is nowhere near as worth the points.

Perhaps more than attacking, defence relies upon quality rather than numbers. Let’s take that last ship and then change the captain from Sar to Gul Evek. Gul Evek’s (passive) ability is to re-roll blank defence dice each time. This takes the 6 dice that Sar’s ship had, reduces them by 1 and allows re-rolls. This means that on those 5 dice you are likely to have around 2 blank dice, when re-rolled, they are more likely to produce an extra evade result rather than the extra dice without a re-roll. Sar’s ship averages 2.25 evade results (for sake of ease let’s call that 2) whereas Evek’s ship, with the re-rolls, averages 2.625 evade results (again, for ease, let’s call that 3). Fewer dice with better quality results in better results.

Taking this paradigm a little further, let’s imagine that instead of tetryon emissions and Dominion Fleet captain, you take the ship action of the Reklar. This allows you to roll one additional defence dice and to place a BS token beside the ship. With Evek as captain and Amat’igan on board, this ship only rolls 3 dice, rather than the 6 that Sar’s ship in the above example was rolling. The difference here, is that you get a BS conversion on one of the occasions that you defend. This averages out at 2.8 evades a turn. Sar’s ship was 38 points, the Reklar with Gul Evek and Amat’Igan is 31 points. You save 6 points and get a better return in terms of defence, and you can still use your resource elsewhere. The problem that this version creates, is that it can only spend the BS token once, and once it has gone, the ship’s evade drops down to an average of 1.55.

So perhaps the Reklar isn’t the answer, but BS conversions certainly seem to help. Another thing that helps with defence is any ability that helps to cancel opposing attack dice. This can range from cancelling an entire attack (Feedback Pulse, Varel and Conditional Surrender) to reducing the effectiveness of an attack without cancelling it entirely (Improved Deflector Screens, the ship ability of the Trager or Bellerophon). Abilities like this are key to surviving in ST:AW. A single, automatically cancelled Red Dice is the statistical equivalent of 3 extra Green Dice (and so is an evade token too, although it can only be used once). The Trager, for Dominion, has an ability whereby it can cancel one hit or Crit result by disabling a shield. This does reduce the 4/4 shield/hull approach from its optimum value, but is essentially the same as having rolled an extra 3 Green Dice once a turn. Even with only Amat’Igan and Evek on it, taking an ‘evade’ action, the Trager averages out at 2.25 evade results if it is only defending against one attack a turn.

The truth is, throughout this little thought experiment, nothing really offers a concrete answer to the problem of defence. Even when stacking as many dice as possible, with conversion and cancellation, you are going to struggle to come out unscathed from a 4 dice attack with quality, since most of the time this will mean that you are suffering 4 points of damage. That’s why the 4/4 standard is so important; the defence just helps you to survive even longer.

That is unless you consider the Federation, who do defence better than anyone.

U.S.S. Defiant                                                                 2

Jean-Luc Picard (Enterprise E)                                     +1

Cheat Death

Independent Fleet Captain (Klingon)

Elizabeth Shelby                                                            Re-Roll (Re-rolls and +1 vs. Borg)

Hikaru Sulu                                                                    +2, 1 BS Conversion

William T. Riker (Hood)                 +1, 1 BS Conversion (+2, 2 BS Conversion w/DA Captain)

Multi Adaptive Shields                                                  +1 (Defence vs. Mines)

Specialized Shields                                                         Re-Roll

Systems Upgrade

This ship rolls a mighty 7 green dice, with 2 BS Conversions and a minimum of 2 Re-rolls. The efficiency that this provides means that you are averaging out at around 6(!) successful Evade dice per turn against non-borg, and 7 vs. the Big Bad Borg themselves (although not so big or bad at the moment, I’ll post about that later). That’s worth the investment of points itself, since the ship comes out at 50 points with all of those upgrades on it. Add in Cheat Death, for when it all goes wrong, and systems upgrade for a reasonable 3/5 damage balance and you have an extremely survivable ship, that causes almost no damage to you opponent!

Therein lies the crux of the problem: Any ship with reasonable defence upgrades, within the 50 Point limit, will struggle to also maintain a reasonable damage output, especially if BS tokens are spent on defence rather than offence. So how does one ‘solve’ the problem of defence? It’s a relatively straight forward answer – The best defence is a good offence.

The best way of ensuring the lengthy survival of your own ships is to kill your opponent’s ships before he gets chance to fire back. With federation this is easy (I’ll take Picard 9, Kirk 9 and fighters please) and with Dominion it is also relatively easy done (Dukat + Madred, Weyoun 8 and Fleet Captain) it’s also becoming easier for Klingons (Old Kor and Martok). Manouevre into position, fire your 4+ dice of modified goodness onto an enemy ship and then don’t worry about defence since you have destroyed the enemy ship.

So this bring me back to the start of this (now particularly long) diatribe – the Borg. The Borg have high primary weapon value, high hull and shields (in some case doubling the 4/4 balance) and no agility. This means that the Borg’s ship cost is not paying 2 extra points for an ultimately superfluous stat. Before the Borg errata, Borg were the absolute masters at manoeuvring into a position where they would suffer no return fire and could make the most of their high PWV (admittedly Borg do not, in fleet pure play at least, benefit from both TL and BS, so that 6 dice primary attack is only likely to average out at 4.5 hits assuming a Target Lock). With the Borg Queen and Locutus, the Borg have access to two high CS captains, meaning that they can also do the tactic described above, manoeuvre into position, concentrate fire and avoid return fire.

So to summarise my main points about defence here I’ll say the following:

1.      Defence is an expensive stat to boost,

2.      Efficiency is almost always better than extra green dice,

3.      A good offence is the best defence,

4.      High hull and shields are better than high agility.

As always comments are most welcome, and I’m sure that there are dodgy maths in there somewhere,

I’m still not Picard,

D

The Power of Four – Hull and Shields

I’ll start this post by admitting that 4 isn’t really the magic number here, 8 is, but at least on average, 4 hull and 4 shields are a nice balance between the two. I’ve seen a post on BGG (BoardGameGeek.com) that argued that shields were better than hull and I do somewhat agree with that, but there are situations where it is better to have the hull than it is to have the shields.

So 8 is the magic number when it comes to damage and the reason is pretty simple – Outside of a build deliberately designed to boost attack beyond the realms of normality (Archer, Tactical Station, Malcolm Reed, for example), the most attack dice you are likely to face at range 2-3 is 7 (note: The Queen Vessel Prime’s ship ability could be used to boost a range 1 attack to 8 dice, but is unlikely to have any quality in fleet pure play, maybe a target lock but even then, that’s only 75% efficiency). Even with boosted attacks, 7 seems to be the top end of damage production you are likely to face on a regular basis.

If you do suffer 7 damage, after evading and spending tokens and cancelling attacks, then 4 hull and 4 shields is a sweet-spot because that means that, barring the double damage critical hit, you will survive to get a shot back. I put quite a lot of value on having high captain skill, and part of the reason is that I’d hate to have my ship shot out from underneath me before I get a chance to shoot. The other way around this problem, is to never be in a position where you can take more than 7 damage before you are capable of returning fire. The trick is to make sure that you are in a position where only 1 enemy ship can shoot at each of your ships when you can respond with at least 2 ships back. All of this must make sense, and seem like good tactics, but what does it have to do with the Number 4?

4 hull 4 shields is a good balance between the two stats to get you to 8 simply because of the number of shield ignoring weapons currently flying around. Just for the sake of completion, Proton Beam, Phased Polaron Beam and Chroniton Torpedoes all ignore shields and go straight to hull. Usually, shields are a better investment than hull simply because a critical hit and a hit have exactly the same effect on shields – but with the shield ignoring secondary weapons going around, you want to be able to avoid these weapons Having 4 hull means that you can avoid the worst that these weapons have to offer without dying in one shot (disclaimer: there is a 4 dice Phased Polaron beam that would cut through this entirely, but this is only range 1 and if you are in range to be shot by this, you’ve probably been taking 6 or 5 dice primary weapon attacks from the Jem’Hadar Battleship or Cruiser on the way in, at which point the 4 hull becomes moot).

So when I’m building a fleet, I always look at having ships with a 4/4 balance between hull and shields, sometimes this means that you have a 5/3 ship (the Maht’h’a) or a 3/5 ship (The Defiant with systems upgrade). Anything less than this is a support ship, which needs to be kept safe by other means than just hull and shields alone, anything more than this is good, but it means that you are paying 2 points per stat more than I think is absolutely necessary.

Defence is a different matter of course, defence doesn’t really follow the power of 4, 6 is a much better number, but even then, 12 or 18 would be better. With defence it is less about the number of dice you are rolling and more about the abilities you have to modify those dice, add to those dice or otherwise reduce the impact that the dice would have on whether or not you survive an attack. More later, so if you are interested, then please check back then!

I’m still not Picard.

D

The Power of 4: Attacking

Four is a key number in ST:AW because in most situations, 4 is what you want to achieve in terms of attack dice, hull or shields (Not evade, since 6 is the magic number here – I’ll write more about this later). Attack (red) dice in STAW are split 1 crit, 3 hits, 2 Battlestations and 2 blank, so when you roll four attack dice, just based on basic probability, you are likely to roll 2 hits (which may or may not be critical hits) 1 BS and 1 Blank. If you have dice efficiency of any type, this means that 4 attack dice, more often than not, result in 3 hits. (If you have both re-rolls, from whatever source, and BS, you can almost guarantee 4 hits, since the average on 4 dice with both TL and BS is 94%, or 3.9ish hits). The more dice that you have on an attack, the less useful the increased efficiency becomes, primarily because you have more dice to re-roll. Certain cards like Dimitri Valtane and (young) Kor, allow you to re-roll a specified number of dice, (2 in Valtane’s Case, more often than not 2 in Kor’s Case). These limited re-rolls allow you to increase the efficiency of a 4 dice attack to around the same level as a full re-roll would, as long as you don’t have too many dice. It’s one of the reasons I like 4 dice Photon Torpedoes, since the one BS to Crit conversion that it allows you is functionally the same as a BS on 4 dice anyway (You just need to find a way of getting the benefit of re-rolls too, since the TL is used to fire the torpedoes in the first place). A 4 dice Photon Torpedo roll would hit or crit twice (on average) with the BS being converted into another Crit, thanks to the torpedoes’ written ability. When you go to 5 dice on Photon Torpedoes, you would ultimately be better off with a standard attack with BS rather than the no BS crit conversion that Torpedoes offer. There are other issues with Torpedoes (the main on being action efficiency on every turn after the Torpedoes are fired) but in terms of damage output, a 4 dice attack with Photon Torpedoes is a little better than a 4 dice Primary Weapon attack with BS conversions. As soon as you get beyond 4 dice this advantage disappears, and you would be better off just firing primary weapons, also, the lack of a BS token means that such an attack would not be able to benefit from Boheeka and his ilk. A 4 dice Photon Torpedo attack on a ship that has a primary weapon value of between 1 and 3 is a tactic that many players eschew given the cost of the torpedoes themselves as well as the action economy cost of using them multiple times, but for that first alpha strike, they shouldn’t be discounted out of hand. A tactic I’ve considered using is a small Federation ship (think the Pegasus, Equinox or similar) with 4 dice Photons and Malcolm Reed. In the first turn of an engagement, use the Photon Torpedoes for on average 3 hits (including 2 crits) and then in the second turn of your engagement use Reed’s ability to discard the disabled Photons to add 2 dice to your PVW, and take a BS as the ship action for a similar quality attack. Depending on captain (I’d suggest Sisko, for the extra re-roll per turn to add even better efficiency) this ship is a potent, manoeuverable little ship that doesn’t cost all that much.

For example:

U.S.S. Equinox [U.S.S. Equinox] (20)
Benjamin Sisko [U.S.S. Defiant] (4)
Malcolm Reed [Enterprise NX-01] (3)
Photon Torpedoes [U.S.S. Excelsior] (3)
Total (28)

Fleet total: 30

For 30 points you get a 4 attack Photon Torpedo attack with the BS-Crit conversion the first time that you fire (with a re-roll from Sisko), a 4 Dice Primary Weapon Attack the second time that you fire, with a BS action and a re-roll for Sisko and hopefully by that point you are in range 1, so you get a 3 dice Primary Weapon attack with a re-roll from Sisko and BS. If someone shoots this ship then they aren’t shooting something else in your fleet, meaning you have a relatively reliable 4 dice of damage each turn – It’s great for taking on Borg, since they don’t generally roll any evade dice or have the evade action. It also pairs well with the Yaegar Torpedo boat that gives you similar efficiency:

U.S.S. Yeager [U.S.S. Yeager] (22)
Mr. Spock [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)
Photon Torpedoes [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)
Total (30)

The torpedoes used on this ship are not disabled and are of the 5 dice variety. Since they don’t disable and Spock gives you the free TL every turn, you can fire torpedoes every turn (as long as you keep in range 2-3) and take a BS Action. These two ships together pack a good punch for 60 Points, meaning you can fill the rest of your build out with 60 points of tougher, harder to kill ships (or a single ship if your meta allows) or even a carrier and some fighters. I’ll try the second option for now:

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22)
Christopher Pike [U.S.S. Enterprise] (4)
Fleet Captain: Independent (Klingon) [Fleet Captain Resource] (5)
Cheat Death [U.S.S. Enterprise] (0)
Phil Wallace [U.S.S. Pegasus] (0)
Elizabeth Shelby [U.S.S. Yeager] (0)
Kyle [U.S.S. Reliant] (0)
Hikaru Sulu [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (1)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Type 8 Phaser Array [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Total (38)

Federation Attack Squadron [Fighter Squadron 6] (20)
Coordinated Attack [Fighter Squadron 6] (3)
Total (23)

The Enterprise is designed to survive, and the Fleet Captain resource along with Redshirts, Shelby, Pike and Sulu means that you are going to take a lot of damage before you do die. This is exacerbated by Cheat Death. Type 8 Phasers means that you are rolling those all-important 4 red dice each turn, and Phil Wallace and Kyle provide some flexibility to heal and manoeuvre. With all the reductions in play, you actually get the Equinox down a point and can still afford to take a set of Federation fighters, with coordinated attack, so they also benefit from BS conversions. It’s an interesting little fleet that I may have to try out sometime and it’s all based on the power of 4.

I’m going to come back to the power of 4 again, to look at hull and shields, but for now, I’m still not Picard.

D

Play testing for Q Continuum OP2

Upon reading the rules set for Q2 my first thought was that the ship with Q on board would be useless. Having read the clarifications on WORF (Wizkids online rules forum) I don’t necessarily think it is useless, but waiting a minimum of 4 turns for a ship to enter the fight could be a huge deal. So my first thoughts on Q2 were to make a list that had a high hull ship that could be the Q ship (NB: Old naval term for heavily armed merchant ships used as decoys) and whose offensive power I wouldn’t miss, so that I could do the rest of the fleet designed to kill my opponent. The q ship itself could still head for the moon and try to complete the mission whilst the rest of my fleet engages the enemy. Enter the Olympic Class…

Olympic Class [U.S.S. Pasteur] (20)
Mirror Universe Captain [I.S.S. Enterprise] (0)
Total (20)

I.S.S. Defiant [I.S.S. Defiant] (24)
Flagship: Independent (Romulan) [Flagship Resource] (10)
William T. Riker [U.S.S. Pasteur] (4)
Adm Worf [Regent's Flagship] (2)
Strafing Run [I.S.S. Defiant] (5)
Rebellion [I.S.S. Defiant] (5)
Elim Garak [Regent's Flagship] (3)
Jennifer Sisko [I.S.S. Defiant] (3)
Julian Bashir [I.S.S. Defiant] (2)
Improved Deflector Screens [Gornarus] (4)
Dorsal Weapons Array [Prakesh] (2)
Total (64)

I.S.S. Avenger [I.S.S. Avenger] (16)
Mr. Spock [I.S.S. Enterprise] (5)
Starfleet Intelligence [U.S.S. Pasteur] (3)
Alyssa Ogawa [U.S.S. Pasteur] (2)
Hikaru Sulu [I.S.S. Enterprise] (4)
Enhanced Hull Plating [I.S.S. Avenger] (4)
Plasma Cannons [I.S.S. Avenger] (2)
Total (36)

Fleet total: 120

The idea with this list was to have Q on the Olympic whilst the Defiant and the Avenger did their thing. The Defiant is flagged for +1 Attack, Defence and Shields, and gets access to Improved Deflector Screens (Since it is dual faction Mirror/Independent thanks to the flagship bonus). Riker’s battery ability makes the first few actions of a game worthwhile, and can mean that I’m attacking with 5 dice, BS and TL every turn, with an ability to cancel one hit or crit due to IDS and another due to the ship’s ability (at the cost of an auxiliary power token). With 3 evade basic, hopefully the now 3 hull 4 shield defiant will last long enough to hold onto those points, because 64 points is a huge investment in a potentially fragile ship.

Another fragile ship is the Avenger, which also has a multi-action captain in the form of Spock, whose ability each turn will grant the APT needed to trigger the ship’s ability (+2 attack dice), meaning that the ship will again fire with 4 dice, TL and BS.

The thing that worries me most about this list is that it is really quite fragile, and a few poor defence rolls, coupled with an opponent running high skill captains, could mean the end for the fleet in pretty short order. I do like the idea of running a Mirror Universe fleet for this event, but I don’t think this is quite the ticket.

Idea 2: Federation

Having read the clarifications on the Wizkids Online Rules Forum (WORF) I see that a ship’s secondary weapons are not negatively affected by Q. This got me thinking that a torpedo boat may be the right path to go down. Enter the Excelsior…

U.S.S. Excelsior [U.S.S. Excelsior] (26)

Mr. Spock [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)

Tuvok [U.S.S. Voyager] (4)

Dmitri Valtane [U.S.S. Excelsior] (2)

Lojur [U.S.S. Excelsior] (1)

William T. Riker [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (4)

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

Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)

Quantum Torpedoes [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (6)

Total (52)

Federation Attack Squadron [Fighter Squadron 6] (20)

Squad Leader [Fighter Squadron 6] (4)

Total (24)

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22)

Jonathan Archer [Enterprise NX-01] (3)

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

Cheat Death [U.S.S. Enterprise] (0)

Nyota Uhura [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (2)

Phlox [Enterprise NX-01] (1)

Jack Crusher [U.S.S. Stargazer] (1)

Phil Wallace [U.S.S. Pegasus] (1)

Beverly Crusher [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (2)

Pavel Chekov [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (2)

Eric Motz [U.S.S. Pegasus] (1)

Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)

Type 8 Phaser Array [U.S.S. Hood] (2)

Total (44)

Fleet total: 120

This list relies upon a lot of crew and as such taking the Klingon Fleet captain seemed like a good idea. The Excelsior herself fires Quantum Torpedoes every turn with 1 extra dice thanks to Tuvok, BS as the ship’s action and a free scan thanks to the ability. Spock makes the Torpedoes lock on, and Lojur stops them from disabling. Valtane allows two re-rolls meaning that the final load out is 6 dice, bs conversions and 2 re-rolls for almost 90% accuracy. If any of those hits get through, I add another hit making it potentially 7 damage a turn.

The Enterprise uses Archer’s action to disable 2 crew (usually Motz and Wallace) to add +2 CS and +2 Attack. With Type 8 Phasers this makes it PWV 6 and CS 7, disable Uhura to add another 2 to the CS to all but guarantee that first strike at CS9. Chekov disables to give re-rolls and if the fleet is positioned correctly, then the fighter squadron can support the Enterprise with squad leader so that Archer’s action is free, allowing the ship to take BS too. At the beginning of the next turn, Phlox disables to take all of the disabled tokens from the crew, with Crusher disabling to stop that from happening, meaning that ever turn, all of those crew can be disabled over and over.

Fighters are fighters, but they give the extra action to Archer that helps the whole fleet to work, and two ships firing 6 dice a turn should do some damage, especially when the opposing fire coming back is potentially reduced due to Q.

Once Q is gone, both the Excelsior and Enterprise are free to engage at will, the only problem I forsee is an opponent using a cloaked fleet, where the Target Lock from Spock will be difficult to achieve in the first place.

So there are some ideas I’m working on at the moment, comments are welcome

I’m still not Picard.

D

After Action Report: Q Continuum OP1 - Dominion

When I first got into ST:AW I wanted to play Federation. The 'good guy syndrome' rests strong with me (in Warhammer Fantasy, God rest its soul, I played Empire, in X-Wing rebellion and even in Twilight Struggle I prefer USA to USSR) so off I went to buy a federation fleet.

Before too long though I was tempted by the other factions and began to play Klingons, Romulans and then Dominion. Deep Space Nine is my Favourite ST series and the option of having Gul Dukat (one of TV's most multi-faceted villains) fly my ships was too good to miss.

So with OP 1 I decided to play Dominion, and you can see my testing process elsewhere, eventually I settled on this list:

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

Many have counselled me that I have too many upgrades and may struggle to deal with the quixotic nature of Q, but practice games have taught me that as soon as you reach the central area (outside range 3 of a board edge) the effects of Q are easily dealt with. Having captains disabled might be annoying, but with an admiral and first officer in the fleet, I'd probably have a higher captain skill than my opponent.

So I rocked up to Wayland Games on Sunday ready to take whatever the worst Q had to throw at me was and was faced in round one with Borg.

Round One: Dan - Borg

Assimilated Vessel 80279 [Assimilated Vessel 80279] (26)

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

Third of Five [Scout Cube] (2)

Advanced Weapon System [Starter] (5)

Total (43)

Assimilated Vessel 64758 [Assimilated Vessel 64758] (30)

Drone [Borg Sphere 4270] (0)

Total (30)

Soong [Soong] (38)

Drone [Borg Sphere 4270] (0)

Feedback Pulse [Borg Sphere 4270] (8)

Total (46)

Fleet total: 119

Dan and I often bounce list ideas off one another so when I was drawn against Dan round one, it was reassuring to know I'd be in for a good game. Dan and I go way back too, having known each other first of all through playing Warhammer fantasy (rest in peace). 

This first game was characterised by only being able to move 1 ever, and whilst all of my upgrades were disabled in turn one, by the time we made contact with each other everything was re-enabled and my captains were in play so I was able to take out the B'rel first and then the Galor. The Soong did offer some resistance, but went down to fighter fire soon enough.

The main lesson from this game was that having a captain skill higher than 1 was key, as it allowed me to concentrate fire and remove a key threat before I came under fire.

Result: Me 120-0 Dan

Round Two: Rich - Species 8472

Rich is the venue's TO and only plays when an odd number of people turn up. He'd played at nationals and is no slouch as a commander, we've played twice before, the first my scimitar killed his J'H battleship and the second my Klingons killed his Tholian. For this event he'd also gone down the no upgrades route with this list:

Species 8472 Bioship [Bioship Alpha] (36)

Species 8472 Captain [Bioship Alpha] (0)

Total (36)

Bioship Alpha [Bioship Alpha] (38)

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

Species 8472 Captain [Bioship Alpha] (0)

Total (48)

Species 8472 Bioship [Bioship Alpha] (36)

Species 8472 Captain [Bioship Alpha] (0)

Total (36)

Fleet total: 120

This game was a similar game to the last- by the time we were in range of one another all of my upgrades were operational and I was able to concentrate firepower on the flagship and take it down before it had chance to fire. Afterwards, the fighters did their thing and I came away again unscathed.

Result: Me 120-0 Rich

Round 3: Mark - Romulans

Mark had the only fleet that really scared me, since he had 3 sets of cloaked mines  and a lot of upgrades too. 

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

Miles O'Brien [I.S.S. Defiant] (2)

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

Tasha Yar [Prakesh] (2)

Brunt [Regent's Flagship] (1)

Cloaked Mines [I.R.W. Praetus] (3)

Total (42)

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

Donatra [I.R.W. Valdore] (4)

Jennifer Sisko [I.S.S. Defiant] (3)

Romulan Pilot [P.W.B. Aj'Rmr] (2)

Interphase Generator [R.I.S. Apnex] (3)

Total (42)

Prototype 01 [Prototype 01] (24)

Gareb [Prototype 01] (0 overridden to 3)

Shinzon [Scimitar] (6 overridden to 0)

Counter Attack [Starter] (3)

Cloaked Mines [I.R.W. Praetus] (3)

Cloaked Mines [I.R.W. Praetus] (3)

Total (36)

Officer Exchange Program (0)

Fleet total: 120

The first turn saw Incredible Power and Very Advanced from Q, which nullified the effectiveness of Jennifer Sisko, since that card would have caused me to disable all of my upgrades anyway. In the second turn the movement limiter came up again, and whilst my captain was captive of an Honored (sic) Judge, I was able to re-enable Boheeka and Breen Aide. A third turn of limited movement allowed me to re-enable both Aft Weapons arrays, meaning that by the time I engaged, all of my initial upgrades were re-enabled, and I was firing at a higher captain skill that my opponent.

The middle of the board was peppered with cloaked mines, and whilst I was relatively sure that in the end the mines would get me, I was confident that I could remove the enemy before that happened. The first round of firing got rid of the Valdore before I received any return fire, and the second round of shooting got the Prototype too. All that was left was getting the Haakona, which has considerably less firepower once the rest of the fleet are gone. Flying through the minefields hurt me a lot, but I was able to kill the Haakona before my whole fleet died.

Result: Me 120-80 Mark

So 3 games, maximum points from all three games and what did I discover? Aft Weapons Array with some quality (Boheeka and BS) is brutal, as are fighters. Whilst mines do damage fighter builds a great deal, I was still able to eek out the win thanks to some 8 HP carriers.

I'm still not Picard though....

D

The OP Elephant in the Room.

I have been playing staw for a lot longer than I’ve been able to attend OP events. I can remember Wave 2’s release with fondness – it was the first new wave to be released since I started playing the game and I was excited to see the game grow. Most of the time I played at a friend’s house and it was very thematic –We’d think up our own scenarios and missions builds and play through a campaign together (The Campaign is still going by the way, I may blog about it at some point). It wasn’t until I moved to Chelmsford in Essex that I found a relatively local store that hosted OP events, the first I was able to attend being Arena (the report of which is available here).

So I won the S’Gorn, a ship with cards I’d never seen before, from a race that didn’t have any retail releases at the time. I was hooked on a new drug- Limited Edition Ships.

It took a while for the next OP event to take place, and I was more than a little concerned when I didn’t hear anything because I feared that I wouldn’t be able to win any more Prize Ships. They’d given me a taste and then cut me off, a classic drug dealer trick! Also, I missed 7 Months worth of OP ships, especially the Sutherland and Ch’Tang. How was I going to make sure I had access to all of these wonderful cards!?!

So I started to trawl the secondary market looking for the OP ships that I’d missed out on. First I managed to get my hands on the Aj’Rmr, Additional Weapons Array and Romulan Pilot? Great! Then I splashed out for the Sutherland (3 times retail…) High Energy Sensor Sweep and Secondary Torpedo Launcher and the Ch’Tang DefCon1, Barrage of Fire and Synon. I absolutely loved have cards that not everyone else had. I loved being a completionist and having everything more though, and that meant that I shelled out on the secondary market for the Akorem, Krayton, Rav Laerst and Tholia One, not necessarily for cards (There are some great ones, Kira, Conditional Surrender, Invaluable advice and, eh, Plasma Torpedoes (!) respectively) but because I wanted to make sure I had the cards in case one day I needed them.

Since I started playing at OPs regularly I haven’t had to spend money online, with the exception of Resistance 1, I’ve won a prize ship at every event I’ve been to. Having been there in the past, though, I understand the anguish that people go through to get the OP ships. It’s a two pronged thing: They want the cards that make them competitive AND/OR they want all of the cards. I completely get that – on both counts.

I like the trend at the moment to release similar or expanded prize packs as retail packs. The way that the Gornarus, Tholia One and Kreetcha releases were done were all slightly different, but certainly helped to give the people access to some of the cards that are on those difficult to find OP ships from months ago. The trouble is, this isn’t enough. It’s great that I can get Faked Messages and Impulse Overload in a retail pack, but the named ships is the Gornarus, not the S’gorn. I can’t run a fleet with two named Gorn Raiders in it. Plus, if I was a Gorn superfan, I’d really dislike the fact that I couldn’t get Gorn Pilot or Gorn Commander in a retail pack. The competitive player may be satisfied with the release, (although no CS in the Kreetcha sucked) but the collector is still raging that he can’t get the other cards. In this way I actually feel that the Tholia One retail release, which contained everything from the prize ship –and more- was a better solution than the S’Gorn/Gornarus release.

I know some people have complained about the Tholia One release being too similar to the prize ship that they worked ‘so hard’ to get, but at the end of the day, I’d rather know that if I missed a prize ship, it’d be along in the retail version eventually; it’d certainly stop me scouring the secondary market before events to make sure that I had a backup plan should I fail to win one.

What do people think about this issue- Should Prize Ships be re-released in retail or would that be doing the OP winners a dis-service?

I'm still Not Picard,

D