Ol' Reliable

The very first ship I ever used in the game, was the Enterprise-D. I'd grown up on TNG and having that oversized saucer staring out of the box at me was one of the reasons I picked up ST:AW over X-Wing.

So the point of this post is to try to get the most out of the Ol' Reliable Enterprise-D.

First, some rules:

1. The Enterprise-D must be captained by either Jean-Luc Picard, William T. Riker or (should a card appear in future) Edward Jellico.

2. Only crew that appeared on the enterprise at some point during the run of TNG or the movie Generations may be used. This includes Montgomery Scott, Mr Spock and Leonard McCoy.

3. Given the Enterprise is the 'Best Ship in the Fleet' any federation Tech or Weapons may be used freely, as long as it doesn't pay a penalty for either faction or ship (i.e. Unimatrix Shielding is ok, but regenerative shielding isn't)

4. The D never skewed towards Offence or Defence, so try to avoid making a glass cannon or brick.

5. It should make no use of resources, and should be limited to 50 points.

Here's my own entry:

U.S.S. Enterprise-D [Starter] (28)

Jean-Luc Picard [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (5)

Mr. Spock [U.S.S. Enterprise] (5)

William T. Riker [U.S.S. Hood] (3)

Elizabeth Shelby [U.S.S. Yeager] (2)

High Energy Sensor Sweep [U.S.S. Sutherland] (5)

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

Total (50)

Fleet total: 50

That's a free scan for Spock every turn, a  TL or Evade from the ship, 3-4 Defence dice with re-roll(s) and a BS conversion. Quality 360 offence, passable defence and 2 actions a turn, makes me feel like running the Big-D all over again!

Thoughts and comments are appreciated,

Still not Picard tho :-(

Coping with change

I first started playing this game back between Wave 1 & 2. Seeing as we are now expecting previews for Wave 19 any day, I've seen the game change a lot!

Recently we've had prize ships, 3 new ships a month, and reinforcement boosters, so there are lots of new ships to deal with. I love this paradigm, it gives me lots of new cards to play with and lots of combos to think about. I know this isn't a view universally shared, and some people struggle to buy all the new ships and use them effectively.

Part of the reason that I like the speed of release is that I'm in the lucky position of being able to buy one of each of the new ships each month, but I think another part of it is playing fleet pure. 

The store I play in has an odd set of house rules (no 50/3 or retired resources, penalty pure with cards like mirror soval and Khan 8 allowing independent faction cards only to be deployed to any ship without penalty) and it is my choice to almost exclusively play Fleet Pure, but it does help to deal with change. 

For each OP I first decide on a faction to play, then I build a fleet to fit with that OP scenario. This really limits the number of cards I have to consider for each event (usually the chosen faction plus independent) I don't really like OXP (I've never used it) but this also helps. Most of the time I play federation, so I have the greatest familiarity with those cards. All this means that each wave gives me only 1 or 2 new ships to consider when fleet building, and when I do switch factions, I have the ships from preceding waves to consider afresh. It's almost like I get a wave entirely of one faction to consider in my builds!

The other thing that helps to deal with change is that I have a set build for each faction, and my first way of looking at new ships is to consider how their upgrades fit into my standard build. With Klingons, for example, my standard build is 3 high quality high attack vor'chas and with each new wave I'm looking for upgrades that help to make that build better. Over time I've swapped Gowron for Kargan and then Kor 8, since those cards have helped to make the fleet better at what it does well.

Playing fleet pure also limits the number of intermix combinations that I have to consider with new expansions. Which means that I can deal with new expansions more effectively and  see how to use them quicker. This makes every new expansion wave or prize ship a n exciting time for me where I don't get quickly overwhelmed.

I'm not criticising people for a second who play mixed and I understand that for many people, finding the stand out upgrades in each expansion is an important factor in deciding whether or not to purchase an upgrade, but my method of dealing with change leaves me excited for each wave, each preview and each prize without feeling overwhelmed!

I'd be interested to hear the process that other players go through when considering which expansions to buy and how to use the upgrades therein.

As always, I'm not Picard.

Back from Leave

So, it's been a while! This time of year means lots of work for me, and that means fewer posts.

I did manage to play in an OP event last weekend, and following an agreement I made last month I was honour bound to run Bajorans.

My first bajoran build was 2 scout ships and 3 interceptors, based on an alpha strike using phaser strike. I did get one chance to play it against a Ferengi build and whilst I did eventually win, it wasn't quite as effective as I hoped it would be on the first pass, so I had a bit of a rethink...

It wasn't long before I settled on the necessity of running DS9 in order to make Bajorans competitive. This was aided by the fact that our venue runs without the 50/3 format, meaning I Could stack upgrades onto DS9.

I also didn't really want to use the flexibility that DS9 offers to take federation upgrades, I wanted every card in the fleet to be Bajoran.

This is what I came up with:

Akorem [Akorem] (18)

Kira Nerys [Akorem] (3)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (3 overridden to 4)

Anara [Interceptor Five] (2)

Total (27)

Ratosha [Ratosha] (18)

Tahna Los [Akorem] (3)

Blockade [Akorem] (5)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (3 overridden to 4)

Total (30)

Deep Space 9 [Deep Space 9] (44)

Hazar [Interceptor Five] (4)

Adm Jaro Essa [Ratosha] (1)

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

More Than Meets the Eye [Ratosha] (1)

Militia [Interceptor Five] (0)

Day Kannu [Akorem] (1)

Bajoran Militia [Ratosha] (2)

Bajoran Militia [Ratosha] (2)

Li Nalas [Akorem] (1)

Bajoran Militia [Ratosha] (2)

Total (63)

Fleet total: 120

The idea was that DS9 had a high enough captain skill to fire first, and with Kira and Militia, that alpha strike could be 11 dice with quality. Hopefully that would mean a dead ship before my opponent got to fire, and in subsequent turns I had Li Nalas and Day Kannu to keep firing with both Target Lock and Battle Stations. Thana Los was mainly there to hold my elite talent, blockade, which would make that alpha strike a little deadlier.

Game 1: 

Mike, Federation

Mike ran with an Evader Voyager, Torpedo Boat Yaegar and Fed Fighters. He chose not to advance to start with and engagement took a while. When it did I took out the Yaegar and the fighters quickly, evader voyager took much longer to take out, but she went down eventually. 

Result: me 156:0 Mike

Round 2: Mark, Borg/Romulans

Mark always runs interesting builds and this one was 3 scout cubes all with Mag Charges, and a scout vessel with Donatra and a flagship, for 2 extra attack dice.

This round was pretty straight forward, we both flew to the middle of the table and I was able to kill a cube a turn, although I lost both Scout ships in return. At the end of the game the Vo flew straight towards DS9, in an effort to end the game before I got the chance to farm the objective for points.

Result: Me 150:63 Mark

Round 3: Rich, Species 8472

Rich is a great player who has played at nationals in the past. He had taken the courageous decision of running the same fleet for all 3 of the Q series: 3 bioships, 1 named and 1 flagged. 

I wasn't confident in this game that I could kill a Bioship before he got to fire and that meant that DS9 was in severe danger of dying before all three bioship were removed. Unfortunately this ended up being the case, and Rich was able to take down DS9 before I had chance to sufficiently damage the bioships. Rich ended up winning for the price of two of his bioships.

Result: Me 84:142 Rich

Overall Rich ended up winning the event as the only player with 3 wins and I Finished 2nd. Having won Q1 and Q2 I ended up Grand Champion and was lucky enough to walk away with the Q pack and the Mirror D'Deridex!