It wasn't really until the season 7 DS9 episode "The Changing Face of Evil" that we really got an idea of what the Breen could do. At the second Battle of Chintoka, the Breen used their energy dampening weapons to devastating effect, destroying the federation alliance fleet and swinging the war in favour of the Dominion. It's a pretty impressive first outing, but does the Gor Portas match up to that billing?
Ship: Gor Portas/Breen Battle Crusier
The named ability of the Gor Portas is an interesting one, meaning you can fire torpedoes and then use your target lock for re-rolls. On a ship with low PWV (3) and no BS action, that's a nice ability to have. At 26 points, the Gor Portas comes in at the same points as the Kraxon, but loses 1 red dice in favour of one green dice, for a slashline of 3/2/4/4. This in itself is not a worthwhile trade off, but the manoeuvre dial is significantly improved when compared to the Galor class (white hard 2 turns and a red come about compared to red 2 and 3 turns and no come about). The slots available to the named Gor Portas are 1 crew and a mighty 4 weapons. That's right, 4. Not having any tech slots is a problem, as is only 1 crew slot (as an aside, I'd currently ranks slots: Crew>Tech>Weapon). I'd happily swap 2 of the weapon slots for one each of crew and tech and the Kraxon's 1 crew, 2 tech, 1 weapon seems like a better deal. The Kraxon also benefits from a 180 front arc, whereas the Gor Portas only has a 90. As you can probably already tell, I'm comparing this expansion heavily with the Cardassian expansion from the same wave, which seems to make sense to me since they come in at the same points cost at the same time. In terms of firing arc, slots and stats, the Kraxon wins, yet the Gor Portas is better in terms of dial and named ability. It's a close run contest, but I think overall that the Kraxon is better.
Grade: C+
Captains:
Sar is a simple and cheap captain whose ability you can make use of every turn. Whilst green dice have never been the be all and end all of STAW, having an extra one can be useful and at 1 point, he isn't too much of an investment for that.
Grade: C+
Thot Gor seems perfect for the Gor Portas, his -1 cost to weapons works best on a ship with 4 weapon slots! Trouble is that there are many cost reducers in the game, so he isn't worth giving up a captain slot for that cost reduction. His captain skill is middling and he has no ET slot, so 4 points seems a lot to pay for him when compared to other options in faction. I'm not a fan.
Grade: D+
Crew:
Breen aide is one of my favourite cards in the game, allowing a passive conversion of 1 blank to a hit when you have a scan token. The drawback of this card is that you have to scan in order to activate him, and there always seems to be a better action than scan. I'd advise that you TL one turn, then scan subsequently, which is especially easy given the Gor Portas' named ability. Still, at 2 points and generic, this is a mighty fine card.
Grade: B-
Weapons:
Unlike most torpedoes the Breen Photon Torpedo can't be so readily overlooked. On the Gor Portas, the problem of Torpedo quality is somewhat removed, and the range restrictions on this torpedo (1-3) are better than the range restrictions on most torpedoes (2-3). Coupled with Thot Gor and the 4 weapon slots that the Gor Portas has, the action economy issues are somewhat removed, although I really wish that there was a time token version of this particular torpedo, since that would make it even better. Fingers crossed that a third breen ship gets released with time token dominion range 1-3 torpedoes. This ship was clearly designed as a torpedo boat, and the synergies that exist between these torpedoes, the Gor Portas and Thot Gor is clear. It's a tremendous shame that even with all this considered, the torpedoes aren't the best choice available.
Grade: D-
The key card in this pack is the Energy Dissipator, and so it's worth quoting the card text in full:
"ATTACK: Disable this card to perform this attack, If this attack hits, the target suffers no damage, receives 1 energy dampening token, and you may immediately attack with another weapons. This upgrade costs +5 Squadron Points for any non-Breen Ship"
And as such it is worth working out what an Energy Dampening Token (EDT) does too:
"As soon as the ship receives the EDT, disable all of its remaining shields and remove its cloak token, if any. While the ship has the EDT, it cannot attack or raise its shields.
During the planning phase the owner does not assign a manoeuvre dial to this ship.
During the activation phase the owner moves the ship as if it were assigned a White Straight 1 manouevre, removes all EDTs from this ship it may now perform actions and attack as normal"
That's an absolute wall of text to get through before you work out how this thing works, so to summarise, if your 3 dice attack hits, you get another attack for free, and the target ship loses its shields, until the end of the NEXT TURN (since disabled shields go back up in the end phase). The catch is that you rely on this initial attack hitting. In the age of cloakers (that preceded the age of Borg that preceded the current game age that we are now in (the 3rd Age?)) this was a difficult hit to land. However, now that evade dice are generally lower, this is a potentially brilliant ability. On the Gor Portas itself, you can follow up the EDT with torpedoes against the opponent's hull and get quality with the Target Lock that doesn't need to be removed thanks to the ship's named ability. The thought and synergy that went into that combination is admirable - the points cost to achieve it? Not so great.
The energy dissapator is probably best used, despite the exorbitant cost of running it on anything other than a breen ship, on something with a much higher PWV than the Breen Battle Cruiser. On the Dominion Battleship, Dominion Battle Cruiser or the Cardassian Keldon class, this is a high quality weapon. On the Breen ship, it is just okay.
Grade: B-
So there you have it - a bit of a mixed bag overall. The only card from this pack that sees regular use for me is Breen Aide, followed by Sar and the ED. Together with the Kraxon and lack of ship in the starter, the Dominion were certainly playing behind the other factions to start with. I'd go as far as saying that it wasn't until wave 2 that they began to achieve some parity, and the prevalence of cloaking in the early metagame made this ship in particular weak. As for its place in the game now - the ED should be used more than it is, although I'm still waiting for the completitive scene to shake itself down following the Borg Nerf and the new anti-fighter tech, so I'm not sure what is the number 1 build at the moment (I think it might be Federation Shield Spam, but I'm not sure); Sar and Breen Aide are still useful, but overall this is not a pack that has grown in utility over time.
Now, if wizkids would give me some dominion range 1-3 5 dice photon torpedoes with time tokens, then I'd be a happy not Picard.
No comments:
Post a Comment