A Blast from the Past! The Conclusion

So, after 9 posts and countless hours spent writing about Wave zero and the starter set, my blast from the past series is complete. In this post I will conclude that series by writing about how the factions stood after Wave Zero, and how things have improved since then.



The first point to make is that Dominion started off behind the curve of everyone else. The Kraxon and Gor Portas are okay ships, and certainly the Kraxon has improved as time has gone on, but as it stood after wave zero, the dominion were a ship down on everyone else and didn't have access to anything that really gave them an edge over the other factions. It wouldn't take long for them to catch up, certainly by wave 2 they were at least on par with the other factions, but as it stood after wave zero they were a little undergunned.



As for Romulans, the Apnex and Valdore were good wave zero releases, but the starter didn't have all that much to offer and the D'Deridex remains a ship that is somewhat underpowered in the game. I long for a time when the Romulan faction get access to a Type 8 Phasers type upgrade that allows the Warbird to get the same kind of firepower as its Valdore equivalent, because with 3 crew slots and a tech slot the Khazara is a good base to build combos onto. As it was though, the D'Deridex is still the Romulan ship that sees the least play for me. The Valdore and Scimitar (especially the scimitar) are just out and out better.



The Federation didn't start out as the all conquering powerhouse that they would later become, and suffered to start with from low PWV, bad manoeuvrability, or both. Picard 9 is a piece still used in almost all top tier fed builds, but outside of that from the starter, little remains in the best builds. The Enterprise (tinyprise) gave us some great crew who would be seen in build after build, but even now the sun seems to have set on Mr Spock, Hikaru Sulu and Montgomery Scott. Good pieces at the time though, and the Federation seemed healthy as the game began.



Klingons were the big winners from the starter and Wave zero, and had been set up as the attacking faction. High PWV, good captains, Drex - the Klingons had all they needed at the start and were the Faction to beat in competitive play right out of the gates. Things got even better for them with the release of the Ch'Tang as a prize ship after Dominion War OP2, and it wasn't until the downfall of cloak with the release of the Koranak that the crown started to slip from the klingons. I'd even go as far to say that the Klingons are, of the bigger factions, the one I see the least in OP play today.



All this leads me to the one big change; Cloaking. I can vividly remember the discussions on BGG about how cloak was overpowered and broken at the start of the game. The argument went something along the lines of this "+4 defence dice is just too many, how can anyone score a hit against cloakers? " well, as we found out when the Koranak was released, 5 dice with quality is enough to burn through cloaking and those 4 extra green dice come with a significant downside. With Federation ships now able to run 6-9 defence dice with quality and still have the use of their shields, it seems the age of "cloak is broken" is long over.

So there you have it, Wave Zero then and now, a testament to how the game changes and how some things, Picard 9 and Martok, will always be the best.

Many thanks for reading, if you did read it all, and even if you didn't, comments would be most appreciated.

I remain, resolutely, Not Picard.