The Semi-Swarm

A few posts ago (many, many posts ago) I wrote about a Klingon Swarm build. It doesn't work primarily because it never gets to fire at full effectiveness thanks to the likelihood of high CS opponents trimming the low CS swarm ships out before they can fire. So I had a look at it again and came up with the following list:

THE KLINGON SEMI-SWARM

1. B'Rel Class, Martok 9, Kunivas
2. B'Rel Class, Gowron
3. B'Rel Class, K'Temoc, Fleet Captain (Independent Klingon), DefCon1, N'Garen
4. IKS Negh'Var, Kor, Alexander, Bu'Kah

The idea with this fleet is that you fly in close formation (which is a challenge, more on this later!) and use the following actions each turn. NB: NEVER CLOAK this just makes the whole fleet weaker, and you shouldn't ever be in a position to need the bonus Green Dice anyway)


Gowron moves and takes his own action
Kor moves and takes his own action
K'temoc moves and either takes N'Garen's action or (if the situation provides for it) takes DefCon1
Martok moves and takes his own action.

If you are positioned correctly, your opponent will have to fire at Kor, who'll have 3 green dice and a BS token on the turn that DefCon 1 is triggered. If you take any damage, you'll have a BS token from Alexander. Unless you are unlucky and your opponent is lucky, then you can survive the first round of engagement and then take a green manoeuvre and Bu'Kah to heal back some hull.

Kor fires with 7 red dice and a re-roll for one of them thanks to Martok, Gowron fires with 5 and a re-roll thanks to Martok, K'Temoc fires with 6, a re-roll from Martok and the BS conversions thanks to either N'Garen or DefCon1. Martok fires with 5 and with kunivas can add one once. Kor, Martok and Gowron all benefit from DefCon1 on one turn (usually the first engagement turn).

As I found in testing this fleet, you really benefit from having 4 ships as it gives you a wider field of coverage when chasing down opponent's ships. It also means that it'll take more turns for you opponent to clear you out (so you can run for cover and play for time if things go wrong). Not having to rely on cloak means you can mitigate some of the problems that the B'rel has, and mines are less of an issue than for a normal cloaked Klingon fleet.

I've really enjoyed playing with this fleet, and whilst I'm still experimenting with the best way to maximise its firepower (particularly dice efficiency for Gowron and Martok), it's been pretty effective.

As always, any thoughts welcome,

I'm not picard.

AAR: Year of Hell

This weekend marked my usually monthly excursion to Wayland Games to play in their Attack Wing tournament. I had a lot of trouble working out exactly what to take, as I wasn't sure exactly how the scenario would play. Eventually I decided on this:

NB: We do not enforce either the 50 point maximum or the 3 ship minimum, and no resources are retired.

Ship 1:
Scimitar
Shinzon
Tactical Officer
Interphase Generator
Cloaked Mines
Thaleron Weapon

Ship 2
Reman Warbird
Donatra
Fleet Captain (Independent Dominion)
Attack Pattern Shinzon Theta
Mendak
Tactical Officer
Interphase Generator
Cloaked Mines
Advanced Cloaking

The idea was to barrel forward as quickly as possible, drop mines and then use the superior firepower of the two warbirds to take down any ship before the wave hit. To be honest, I just wanted to try something a little different from the Federation Evader-naughts that I usually build.

Round 1:

Rich, Dominion


Rich was running double battleships, with one featuring Khan, Q and Quinn, whilst the other (named) one featured Dukat, Boheeka and Breen Aide. This whole game hinged upon the use of the Thaleron Weapon during the first engagement round, which with TL, Tactical Officer and BS managed to strip Khan's ship of all its useful crew and take down its shields. Without Q's Ship action to turn around, the battleships became easy prey for the two Reman Warbirds. Revenge for last month, where Rich's Species fleet clipped the wings of my Bajoran fleet.

Result 120 Me-Rich 0

Round 2:
Dan, Borg

Dan and I go way back, and he has been experimenting for a while with the Borg, hoping to make them competitive in the new post-nerf meta. Dan was flying two Tac Cubes (one with Locutus and one with the Borg Queen for skill 9 and 8 respectively). Once again the Thaleron weapon did its business and I was able to remove skill 9 Locutus from the game before his higher initiative became an issue. From there it was a case of keeping cloak up and dropping mines to ensure the eventual demise of the Queen's cube.

Result 120 Me-Dan 0

Round 3: Alex, Borg/Romulans

Alex had lost his first game to Dan but won against Rich, I was pretty sure that barring a major cock up I'd come out of the event on top, but was hoping for the clean sweep.

Alex was running a cube and Prototype 01, the Drone ship being designed to survive the worst of the wave thanks to its ship ability and tech. This game was certainly the longest of the three, with the Thaleron Weapon having little effect thanks to Alex's low number of crew. I completely forgot to drop mines this game, so it ended up being a slug fest, with my Scimitar having to create temporal shields twice. Thankfully, I did eventually win, without losing a ship, and took out the event overall.

Result 160 Me-Alex 20

Another good OP event there, and whilst I was unsure about the scenario to start with, I found it enjoyable and challenging. Roll on Balance of Terror next month!

Still not Picard though...

I'm not Picard, what if you are not Picard too?

It is a truth universally acknowledge, that a Federation player with a good fleet must be in want of Picard.

I recently asked a question on the ST:AW Facebook group in order to try and discern what the best single card in the game was, my choice was Picard 9. Picard 9 provides high CS, and great action economy all in the same 6 point package. The trouble is, once you get past Picard 9, in fleet pure play at least, you have to choose a second captain.

...and the truth is, the second best federation captain after Picard 9, is Picard 8. I love Picard 8, and probably make more use of him than Picard 9. Picard 8 is one of the most thematic cards in the game, and I often start muttering "call me Ishmael..." under my breath as I write his name down on my fleet roster. I really wish that Picard 8 WAS Picard 9, and that Kirk 9 had Picard 9's ability. As it is, both Kirk's have mediocre abilities, whilst all three Picards have top tier abilities.

Anyway, I digress, the whole point of this post was to discuss where to go next once you have a Picard as a captain on one of your three ships, and I suggest that your next port of call be "Picard-lite"; Mr Spock. Spock is CS6 rather than 9 and doesn't have access to the all-important BS action for free (which is why I'd rate Spock behind Dukat 7) but he allows you to do the same sort of thing as Picard, and with a few Upgrades (Pegasus Riker, Disobey Orders, HESS) he can do the same thing as Picard.

But what if you want to be different to Picard rather than a pale imitation of him? After Picards and Spock, the next captain I'd go for would be Sisko 6, from the defiant expansion. The single re-roll might not seem much, but being as it can be used on defence as well as offence, it's a pretty neat trick to have in your back pocket.

Following up swiftly behind Sisko, with an inexplicable CS of 8 (because Sisko never lost his entire ship to a race of people who thought that water was a rare commodity, did he?) is Kathryn Janeway. Janeway's ability to double up on actions goes really well with both the Enterprise (TOS) and Crew Spock and Valtane. She makes for some pretty nice combos, and can really help out with those hard to kill cloaked ships.

Next up is Jonathan Archer: Archer's named ability lends itself towards a ship with lots of crew that disable, and it isn't out of the question for Archer's ship to be swinging 8 dice a turn with BS and re-rolls at CS 9.

My last choice for top 5 federation captains who aren't picard is probably a little more controversial, as I'd go for Robert DeSoto. DeSoto lends himself to defensive builds, as he has a re-roll for each crew on the ship, up to 3. Not gamebreaking, and his low CS lets him down somewhat, but he's a reasonable choice for the 5th best captain in the fleet.

So that's what I'd do if you too are not Picard.


TOP FEDERATION CAPTAINS (that aren't Picard):
1. Spock
2. Sisko
3. Janeway
4. Archer
5. DeSoto

As always, ideas are appreciated, thanks for reading!

The Tiny-prise

Both the original series enterprise (or tiny prise) and the Refit are good solid ships. The ability of the Tinyprise to take action bar actions even when under auxiliary power makes it a solid ship, whilst the refit has 6 green manoeuvres on its dial, giving it a rare level of flexibility for a mid-size ship. 

So, this challenge is similar to the last: Build a constitution class USS Enterprise build of 50 points or less within the following restrictions:

A) must be captained by James T Kirk, Christpoher Pike or Mr Spock

B) must only include crew who have been shown on the ship in a non-MU episode of either the original series or the first 6 movies.

C) only technology present on a ship of the same or earlier vintage can be used (enhanced hull plating is fine, Multi-adaptive shields are not)

D) may use no resources, must be penalty pure and under 50 points.

My initial idea is a 'redshirt-prise':

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

Christopher Pike [U.S.S. Enterprise] (4)

Adm James T. Kirk [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (5)

Red Alert [Red Alert Talent] (2)

Cheat Death [U.S.S. Enterprise] (5)

Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (3)

Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (3)

Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (3)

Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (3)

Total (50)

Fleet total: 50

As always I'd be interested to hear other people's ideas!