Different Ways to Play 4: Multiple Movement Upgrades

Welcome to the fourth edition in my series of articles encouraging you to find different ways of playing STAW. I started with the obvious High Quality Attacking (HQA), before moving onto the less popular (and less effective) Defence Dice Stacking (DDS) and Repeated Attack Cancellation (RAC). I don’t think either DDS or RAC are tactics that will consistently beat HQA, mainly because of a) the cost and unreliability of DDS in a 50/3 meta and b) the difficulty of creating multiple reliable RAC ships. For the record, both DDS and RAC get better outside of 50/3 and in scenario play.

The question this poses seems to be “is there a way of beating HQA that isn’t just better HQA?” and the answer is “yes, usually”. DDS is a very obvious and straight-forward way of playing the game (so is HQA) and whilst RAC takes a little thought, it is still a way to play the game that relies almost entirely on list building as your main source of victory. The glorious thing about STAW, what discerns it from other similar games, like M:tG, is that it is not just a case of comparing lists or decks to see who wins (and yes Magic players, I know that you don’t just compare decks and that there is more skill than that involved) you have to actually fly the fleets against one another to see who wins.

So the fourth way to play tries to maximise your ability to fly right, at the cost of perhaps creating weaker combos: I call that style “Multiple Movement Upgrades” (MMU for short).

The Basics

The list is based on a number of relatively simple ideas. First, there is the principle that in a 50/3 game you are likely going to be facing 2 or 3 other ships with your 2 or 3 ships (Shuttles docking account for it not being 3 all the time) and as such you want to engineer a situation in which you have more of your ships firing at their ships than can be fired back upon. Secondly, in order to engineer those kind of situations, you want to purchase upgrades that allow you to move more than once per turn, preferably after you have moved yourself in order to guarantee that you stay out of range or arc. Third, given that your ships are likely on the fragile side, you are forced into making the choice of moving out of a position where you can fire into a position where you cannot fire if staying in a position to fire would cause your ship to be destroyed. Ideally you want to be able to move last and fire first, so high captain skills are a must with this kind of list. GenKhan is a particularly good choice since he will tie the highest CS on the board and if he is on a relatively low initiative ship (Borg, Species, Mirror) then he can guarantee moving last. For clarity, if given the choice between moving last or firing first you want to take moving last in MMU.


With a few important caveats, I’d consider the 2015 World Championship Winning build to be an example of MMU: the two main ships involved were Scout 608 (the now infamous Scout 608 that could potentially move 3 times per –activation) and the Queen Vessel Prime, with Weyoun 6 and Romulan Pilot, allowing potentially 3 moves per activation). Joseph Van Der Jagt’s second place build also had two ships with movement upgrades (in this case Admiral Forrest coupled with the now retired Indy Federation Fleet Captain) – whilst both of these fleets did MMU in as much as their fleets could move multiple times per turn, they also had High Quality Attacking (either Mag Charges or Picard 9) and high durability (Borg Ocatahederon or Bioships) too, so it wasn’t an ‘all-eggs-in-one-basket’ affair.

As with a lot of the other different ways to play, if you want to skew fully in this direction, I'd suggest cross-faction:

I.K.S. Ning'tao [I.K.S. Ning'tao] (22)
Chang [Chang's Bird of Prey] (4)
In'cha [I.K.S. Negh'var] (5)
Synon [IKS Ch'tang] (5)
Total (36)

Scout 608 [Scout Cube] (24)
Khan Singh [GenKhan] (4)
Full Reverse [Alpha Hunter] (2)
Dispersion Field [Scout 255] (2)
Sakonna [Gavroche] (3)
Improved Deflector Screens [Gornarus] (5)
Proton beam [Scout 255] (2)
Magnetometric Guided Charge [Assimilated Vessel 64758] (3)
Total (45)

U.S.S. Hathaway [U.S.S. Hathaway] (22)
Benjamin Maxwell [U.S.S. Yeager] (4)
Adm Maxwell Forrest [Enterprise NX-01] (3)
Cochrane Deceleration Maneuver [U.S.S. Enterprise] (5)
Thruster Array [U.S.S. Montgolfier] (3)
Type 8 Phaser Array [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Total (39)

Fleet total: 120

The Ning'Tao gets its manoeuvrability from sensor echoes that thanks to Chang 7 it gets twice a turn and can come about after doing one of them. Synon allows you to do a "3" sensor echo too if the need arises. It is a very fragile ship, but the flexibility it has with movement allows you to get out of arc until you are in a really good position to fire. 

Scout 608 is a toned down version of the World Championship Build, but retains a lot of the movement shenanigans that it had previously. Gen Khan guarantees that it'll move last. 

The Hathway is probably the weakest of the three ships here, but Forrest's fleet action allows for extra movement as does the Thruster Array. Cochrane Decelration Maneuver gives you that one shot come about if you really need it and Ben Maxwell lets you change your dial if you mess it up one turn.

None of these three ships are particularly hardy or shooty, but the firepower is enough that if you can outmanoeuvre your opponent it will cause him problems if all three ships fire on the same target. 

Tactics:

As with many of the other builds in this series, if you take away the upgrades then the fleet becomes a lot less tricky to deal with, the scout in particular would be an ideal target for activation phase attacking or Decker damage. You want to try as much as possible to get shots in when you can, since this fleet will dance and dance and dance to deny you a firing solution. The upside is that this is a complicated fleet to play with quite a high skill ceiling. If someone doesn't know what they are doing, or takes a wrong move with this fleet, then you can make them suffer.

As always all comments are welcome, so thanks for reading!

NEXT TIME: Durability and Repairing

Different Ways to Play 3: Repeated Attack Cancellation

For a long time attack cancellation, particularly Repeated Attack Cancellation (RAC) was the bogeyman of Star Trek Attack Wing and was frowned upon. Before I get going it is worth mentioning the recent Wizkids Online Rules Forum (WORF) errata of Conditional Surrender so that the card now reads "When your ship is attacked, before any dice are rolled, discard all of your (Crew) Upgrades and this card to cancel the attack. You must have at least 1 (Crew) Upgrade on your ship in order to use this ability". This makes a huge difference to the viability of RAC as there is only one way to do it multiple times (namely Varel) rather than the two that there used to be. 

The Basics

As I discussed last time, those green dice can be fickle, and because they can be fickle you need a more reliable way of avoiding damage. The way to do this, certainly before either the "may" ruling or the 50/3 ruling was to have a ship that could cancel multiple attacks in order to stay alive. One of the ways to do this was to combine Weyoun 6 from the 5th Wing Patrol Ship, who can disable to stop a crew card from discarding or disabling, and Varel from the RIS Apnex, who was discarded upon being targeted by a ship, before any dice were rolled, to cancel that attack. Back in the pre-50/3 dreadnought meta one Borg Tactical Cube with Weyoun and Varel was a regular sight and a pretty successful build to. After the 50/3 ruling RAC was still seen, mainly by having a second ship with Sopek (from the Ni'Var) and Conditional Surrender (or a combination of Weyoun, Varel, Sopek or Conditional Surrender). The Conditional Surrender Ruling above has rather put the kybosh on that though, so as it stands at the moment, repeated attack cancellation is difficult to do.

At least it is difficult to do on the same terms as it used to be, there are still ways to limit the damage coming into your ship without necessarily guaranteeing attack cancellation every turn. There are a number of different upgrades that allow for limited attack cancellation with some degree of repetition, such as Kurak, One, Interphase Generator and Feedback pulse, and a number of cards that stop discards/disables, such as Centurion (crew), Li Nalas, Beverly Crusher (crew), Shroud, Goval and Temporal conduit. This means that if you are all in on RAC, you can still do it although it won't be every turn forever any more. 

This tactic doesn't really work in faction pure, but here are some cross-faction ideas:

Prakesh [Prakesh] (26)
Miles O'Brien [I.S.S. Defiant] (3)
Adm Worf [Regent's Flagship] (2)
Conditional Surrender [Krayton] (4)
The Benefactor [Temporal Cold War Cards] (5)
Breen Aide [Gor Portas] (2)
Temporal Conduit [Temporal Cold War Cards] (5)
Shroud [4th Division Battleship] (2)
Total (49)

Regent's Flagship [Regent's Flagship] (32)
Weyoun [5th Wing Patrol Ship] (3)
Varel [R.I.S. Apnex] (11)
Julian Bashir [I.S.S. Defiant] (2)
Goval [Soong] (2)
Total (50)

I.S.S. Avenger [I.S.S. Avenger] (16)
Gul Macet [Assimilated Vessel 64758] (2)
Boheeka [Koranak] (2)
Total (20)

Officer Exchange Program (0)

Fleet total: 119

The idea here is that the Prakesh can use Conditional Surrender once, and save Breen Aide from the discard with shroud. After that, Temporal Conduit can be used to reclaim Conditional Surrender and The Benefactor can make that reclaimation instant.

The Regent's Flagship can discard Varel to cancel attacks and then save the discard with either Weyoun or Goval. Julian Bashir makes it so they have to attack the Flagship when the Prakesh isn't in a position to attack cancel, whilst the Flagship can cancel an attack every turn.

The Avenger is in the list as an annoyance but the combination of Macet, BS action and Boheeka would make the ship a 5 dice attack with quality. Not bad for 20 points!

The other idea has been covered on State of the Federation, but the idea is to use officer exchange programme to get repeated uses of One:

Tactical Cube 138 [Tactical Cube] (46)
Sopek [Ni'Var] (3)
Goval [Soong] (1)
One [Scout 255] (4)
Total (54)

Suurok Class [Ti'Mur] (18)
V'Las [Ni'Var] (3)
Adm Borg Queen [Queen Vessel Prime] (4)
Total (25)

Koranak [Koranak] (26)
Weyoun [5th Wing Patrol Ship] (4)
Varel [R.I.S. Apnex] (11)
Total (41)

Officer Exchange Program (0)

Fleet total: 120

V'Las is added to give some protection against gankers, and the Weyoun Varel combination on the Koranak is fairly self explanatory. 

Tactics

Since a build like this relies so much on its upgrades and discard cancellers, being able to mess with that is key to defeating a build like this, especially with captain killers like Madred and Tantalus Field. Outside of that, having more ships to shoot with, and hence more attacks to cancel can also be a good tactic. This build is nowhere near as effective as it once was, since Conditional Surrender was errata'd and the 50/3 meta forces you into 3 ship builds. Also, a lot of venues have specifically banned the Weyoun/varel combination. An alternative to Weyoun/Varel is Weyoun/Odo, since the Odo card from Quark's treasure allows you to copy a card and use it's ability. In that case I'd probably go with Weyoun/Odo on one ship and Sopek/Varel on another.

Next time: Movement Upgrade Spam

Different Ways to Play 2: Defence Dice Stacking

Just a short prefix to all this: I'm English and the game of STAW is an American production, hence some of the wording is in American English and by virtue of my writing in British English there may be some inconsistency with spelling. Hence the title of this post is Defence (the British English version) rather than defense (the American English Version). Please don't take this inconsistency as evidence of my inability to spell, just difficulties with auto-correct on a British English computer when writing about an American game. 

Last time I spoke about the standard tactic in STAW: Quality attacking. It seems only reasonable to talk now about the opposite of that tactic, Defence Dice Stacking. Up to Wave 2, defence dice stacking seemed to be the most popular way to play the game - this was mainly because of the strength of cloaking in opposition to low PWV/poor quality that existed in the early game. The idea behind defence stacking is that you make it so difficult to kill your ships that eventually your attacking, which may be low in dice and quality, will break through your opponent's defences. It is the quintessential "Attrition" strategy.

As I've already alluded to above, this tactics used to be better than it is now. The two main reasons for this are the gradual power creep that has seen higher numbers of red dice being rolled (with increased quality) and the loss of the dreadnought thanks to the 50/3 format change. At Regionals last year, before the 50/3 format change, the 90 point Federation dreadnought with 8-9 defence dice with quality was a legitimate (and winning) strategy.

The Basics
Unlike with High Quality Attacking (HQA), Defence Dice Stacking (DDS) doesn't require High CS captains. The main reason for this is that HQA relies upon killing your opponent before they get a chance to hit your weaker defence whilst in DDS winning only requires survival. For this reason, DDS prefers captains with abilities that aid defence. Some examples of this are Robert De Soto, Gul Evek, Rudolph Ransom, Sar - all of whom have lower CS but also Ahab Picard, Jayneway, Koloth and Letant, who have higher CS. The point is when choosing a captain for DDS you are choosing based on the ability that captain has, rather than their CS. The other reason for wanting to fire last is that you will have weathered enemy fire to the point that it's safe to spend that BS conversion on attacking since you won't get attacked again and really regret not having that BS token to convert into successful evades.

The Second factor in DDS is that you want to maximise the number of upgrades that give you bonus defence dice. Federation are overburdened with these type of upgrades: Hood Riker, Tinyprise Sulu, Tom Paris, Multi-Adaptive Shielding, etc. Other factions have some of these too, Amat'Igan and Tetryon Emmissions from Dominion for example. Some factions are heavily lacking in DDS upgrades (I'm struggling to think of a Klingon example).

Next, you need a ship that both has the slots to put these upgrades on, and a good native agility ability, like the USS Voyager (3 crew slots, 1 tech slot, 2 native agility) or the RIS Vo (3 native agility and Cloaking). The USS Voyager is the archetypal spaceframe to build DDS onto.

Finally you need a way to get quality on those dice. This can be via upgrades like Romulan Security Officer (that allow a re-roll for a disable), Ship Text (the IRW Belak allows re-rolls of BS results) or captains (Gul Evek allows you to re-roll all blank results). It is better if these abilities are passive, since then you can take either a BS or Evade token. Before anyone says anything, yes, High CS action economy captains are good in this build, but you may want to avoid them because you want to spend that BS token at the optimum time, and that might not always be by firing first (but it sometimes will be).

A Cross-Faction example:

U.S.S. Voyager [U.S.S. Voyager] (30)
Robert DeSoto [U.S.S. Hood] (3)
Pavel Chekov [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (3)
William T. Riker [U.S.S. Hood] (3)
Hikaru Sulu [U.S.S. Enterprise] (3)
Multi-adaptive Shields [U.S.S. Raven] (5)
Total (47)

U.S.S. Bellerophon [U.S.S. Bellerophon] (30)
Rudolph Ransom [U.S.S. Equinox] (2)
Tom Paris [U.S.S. Voyager] (4)
Amat'Igan [Battle Cruiser] (3)
Total (39)

R.I.S. Vo [R.I.S. Vo] (16)
Liviana Charvanek [I.R.W. Vorta Vor] (4)
Admiral Mendak [I.R.W. Haakona] (4)
Diplomacy [Ti'Mur] (6)
Romulan Security Officer [I.R.W. Haakona] (2)
Distress Signal [R.I.S. Pi] (2)
Total (34)

Officer Exchange Program (0)

Fleet total: 120

The two Federation Ships have 6 dice and the Vo has 7 whilst cloaked. Voyager get 2 BS conversions for free and 3 re-rolls from De Soto, the Bellerophon gets an Evade token and can take the BS token from Mendak's fleet action too, as well as being able to cancel a hit by disabling 2 of its 5 shields. The Vo's named text allows for you to take an evade token for free as long as you don't attack and with distress signal you can add 2 extra dice when needed. The RSO gives you a re-roll for a disable and Charvanek's ability can save you from the disable. Diplomacy can even act to reduce incoming fire on a key turn to save one of the larger ships (and as a side effect, save the Vo too!).

Federation can do a similar build, which isn't quite as effective:

U.S.S. Voyager [U.S.S. Voyager] (30)
Robert DeSoto [U.S.S. Hood] (3)
Pavel Chekov [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (3)
Hikaru Sulu [U.S.S. Enterprise] (3)
William T. Riker [U.S.S. Hood] (3)
Multi-adaptive Shields [U.S.S. Raven] (5)
Total (47)

U.S.S. Bellerophon [U.S.S. Bellerophon] (30)
Rudolph Ransom [U.S.S. Equinox] (2)
Tom Paris [U.S.S. Voyager] (4)
Data [Starter] (3)
Dorsal Phaser Array [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (5)
Total (44)

Enterprise NX-01 [Enterprise NX-01] (16)
Clark Terell [U.S.S. Reliant] (1)
Admiral Maxwell Forrest [Enterprise NX-01] (3)
Elizabeth Shelby [U.S.S. Yeager] (2)
Enhanced Hull Plating [Enterprise NX-01] (0)
Total (22)

Main Power Grid (3)

Fleet total: 120

With this version of the build you get 7-6-3 dice, although the NX has enhanced hull plating to cancel two hits and Shelby potentially gives you an extra dice. The Bellerophon loses a native green dice but gains an extra evade token and increased coverage from dorsal phaser array. Forrest gives you extra manoeuvrability, and boosts the NX to skill 3. The Main Power Grid resource allows you to cancel two hits incoming against one ship for the cost of an APT although you lose the opportunity to attack if you do this, interestingly, the NX-01 could cancel up to 4 hits a turn against it, for the cost of 3 APTs. 

Tactics

When facing a fleet like this the one upgrade that absolutely destroys it is Magnetometric Guided Charge. Having invested so much in defence, and upgrade that just ignores all that is just brutal. Whilst MGC is the best way, you could use any other scan enhancers or agility reducers to cut through those defence dice and also because it is so reliant on its upgrades, using any gankers to remove key upgrades, like Sulu or Diplomacy will be significantly irksome. The truth of the matter is, ultimately, that even the best defence is unlikely to stop a really good offence, so a 6 dice attack with both TL and BS could burn through a 6 dice defence with both re-rolls and Conversions. If the dice are on your side though, DDS will beat HQA eventually - that's a big if.

Anyway, there you go, another tactic you can use in your STAW games, something to try out and test. Any comments are welcome, especially if you've had experience running this type of build!

Next Time: Repeated Attack Cancellation

Different Ways to Play 1: High Quality Attacking

Recently I've been getting into Privateer Press' Warmachine and Hordes game system as a more complex miniatures game to go with ST;AW. With a long history (20 years) of Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 behind me, I've found it interesting comparing the different ways that those systems allow you to play (although GW can burn in hell for eternity for killing off Warhammer fantasy). It got me thinking about the different potential ways that there were to play in ST:AW and that really got me thinking about the elephant in the room: That there is only one way to play ST;AW effectively. Is that even true? That's what I'll try to cover in this post.

From the point I started playing STAW at OP events, to the point that I regularly won OP events was about 6 months for me. In the last year I've won 10 out of 12 OP events and I feel I have a pretty good grasp of how the game plays. I still ask questions and sound out other people on lists and ideas precisely because I feel you get to know the game better by bouncing off other people's expectations and ideas. I don't claim to be the world's foremost expert on top level competitive play, as I've never had the opportunity to play at that level, and my local OP scene plays with some pretty funky house rules, so your mileage may vary as regards these ideas, but please don't discount them out of hand.

Way 1: High Quality Attacking
It's a relatively simple paradigm that seems to dominate discussion at the moment; the basic idea is that you have at least 2 ships rolling 5+ red dice with both re-rolls and BS conversions. It's helped by high CS captains and Federation plays it best, a sample list would be:

USS Enterprise-E [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (30)
Mr. Spock [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)Picard Maneuver [U.S.S. Stargazer] (5)William T. Riker [U.S.S. Pegasus] (4)Dorsal Phaser Array [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (6)Total (49)

U.S.S. Prometheus [U.S.S. Prometheus] (30)Jean-Luc Picard [Starter] (6)Dorsal Phaser Array [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (6)Total (42)

Fighter Squadron 6 [Fighter Squadron 6] (24)Coordinated Attack [Fighter Squadron 6] (3)Total (27)

Fleet total: 120



Both the Enterprise-E and the Prometheus fire 5 dice with both TL and BS. The Fighters have 6 dice when undamaged, and at least one turn of TL and BS thanks to Co-ordinated attack. The CSs are 9, 9 and 6, so against most opponents you will fire first. The dorsal phaser arrays give great coverage and between Picard Maneuver and the Prometheus' ship action, you should be able to close really quickly on your opponent and get that alpha strike in quickly. The fast closing speed allows for TL against Cloakers first turn, and even though the dials aren't great, the DPA allows you to keep firing every turn. The fighters are a reasonably priced offensive support ship at 27 points, and this build also shows that the build out is two big ships and one smaller support ship, a pretty decent build in most circumstances, and one of the two most frequent combinations I see (the other being 3 ships all roughly the same cost). 

It works mixed faction too:

Scimitar [Scimitar] (38)
Jean-Luc Picard [Starter] (6)
Total (43)

Reman Warbird [Scimitar] (36)
Gul Dukat [Koranak] (6)
William T. Riker [U.S.S. Pegasus] (4)
Advanced Cloaking [Vorta Vor] (4)
Total (50)

Fighter Squadron 6 [Fighter Squadron 6] (24)
Coordinated Attack [Fighter Squadron 6] (3)
Total (27)

Officer Exchange Program (Federation/Romulan)

Fleet total: 120

CSs are 9-10-6 and the advantage of this build over the fed pure build is that you have 2 ships rolling 6 dice each with both TL and BS, and the Benefits of Permacloak from the Two Scimitars. The fighter squadron is as before. The downside is loss of the DPA meaning worse coverage and although this is somewhat made up for by the Scimitar having a come about, the APT you get from firing whilst cloaked means that you'll probably not be able to use it when you really need it.

So there's the first way to play, both in faction and cross-faction, you can get high PWV attacks with quality in a 3 ship build and in the 50/3 format. Easy enough to fly, little tactical input needed as most turns you move forward, TL and BS, then fire. Concentrate that fire to destroy the most threatening enemy ship and fly in formation to maximise the damage.

To beat a fleet set up like this I'd want to limit its ability to concentrate fire power. If you can engage one of their ships with all three of yours then that really limits the damage that the high quality attack can do. Obviously there are difficulties in causing that to happen, but with enough movement upgrades and with proper use of terrain (if there is any) you can outmanoeuvre the fleet. A good player isn't going to let you do this though. A tactic that I usually use in most builds is ganking to combo break, but there isn't much to gank in these fleets, so a better but similar tactic is to kill off the extra-action captains. Both Gul Madred and Tantalus Field will cause this fleet problems, although Riker provides extra defence for captains and that shouldn't be forgotten. Another key to defeating fleets like this is finding ways to stop them from taking actions, since this will stop them taking free actions too. In this case, upgrades that hand out Aux tokens are golden, particularly against the permacloaked Scimitars, since they are likely to already have an APT thanks to their own desire to stay cloaked. 

This is a good build, and it's relatively easy to build for most factions or cross factions, but it does have some weaknesses, and those can be exploited by good counter-builds to make it easily defeated. 

Next time: Defense Stacking Builds

Caveat Emptor: A Buyer's Guide to Borg

Resistance IS futile - you are eventually going to want to buy some Borg ships, even if you never intend to, the pull of playing the game in a completely different way to everyone else will draw you in. Multiple Generic Captains, Drone Tokens, 360 fire as standard, orthogonal movement - With the Borg everything you thought you knew about the game is a lie. Whilst the Borg are not as powerful as they once were in competitive play, they still offer a lot to a player who is interested in playing the game in a different way. If you do decide to make the jump into the Borg as a faction, here's a quick run-down of what you might want to get (if you can find it). 

Part of the problem with making a Borg shopping list is that many of the upgrades are duplicated across expansions; A lot of the choice about which Borg upgrade to purchase comes down to ship preference.  As such, in making this list I've tried to weight it more heavily towards ships rather than upgrades, although obviously upgrades play a big part. Another thing worth mentioning here is that for casual play, or in an OP environment that is heavily house-ruled away from the Wizkids suggested format, the choice of ship that works is going to be radically different to the choice you would make in a 50/3 standard environment. Please bear those caveats in mind when judging the credibility of this list.

Within the 50/3 format, a Borg pure fleet is going to struggle to pay the huge cost of Borg faction upgrades, so it makes sense to start from a low ship cost, since a low ship cost allows for greater flexibility in choice of upgrades. Therefore I'd start with the Borg Sphere 4270, mainly because at 38 points for the generic it allows you some room for captains and upgrades in 50/3.  It also comes with many of the tricks that Borg have, since many of them are generic: Borg Ablative Hull Armor, Borg Assimilation Tubules, Borg Tractor Beam and Borg Cutting beam are all pretty standard Borg fare, and are all too hideously expensive to even consider in 50/3. Of the four upgrades I've just listed, the only ones worth running before the 50/3 suggested format came out were BAHA and BATS, the Tractor Beam and Cutting beam were always a little OTT. There are a couple of non-unique upgrades in this pack: Seven of Nine and Feedback pulse. Seven of Nine works in a similar way to another upgrade, Borg Alcove, and is a way to re-gain drone tokens at the cost of an Action/Disable, whilst feedback pulse is a great way to soften your opponent's alpha strike. The best card in the pack though, and the reason (other than the ship itself) that you may consider multiples, is the Tactical Drone. The Tactical Drone here allows for re-rolls without a target lock, so great for a cloak-hunter, and frees your action up for other things, namely ganking. 

After the Sphere I'd next go for the retail scout cube. The named ship is the much feared Scout 608, which, for those of you who don't know, is essentially the ship that won the World Championships last year. With a slash line of 3/3/2/4  for 22SP, it certainly appears to be fragile, and it is, but its unmatched ability to arc dodge makes it much more survivable that it first appears to be. There are quite a few upgrades here that also help in the 50/3 meta since they are cheap. Borg Alcove works in a similar way to Seven of Nine, although it is half as effective but then doesn't cost the disable. Scavenged Parts is a good way to re-cover drone tokens, as for 2sp you can recover a drone token for each upgrade you discard. As a captain, 3rd of 5 is nothing special, a drone token for a single extra defence dice seems costly, but the crew version shines for 5 sp you can disable all an opponent's crew, through shields and cloak at range 2. All of the ganking upgrades on this ship have their place - 2nd of 5 and 4th of 5 work in slightly different ways to 3rd of 5, but are equally useful. In the current meta where I find Federation shield naughts all over the place, being able to disable or discard those shield granting upgrades is a good thing. There are other cards in the pack, but the one I want to focus on for the moment is Magnetometric Guided Charge. For 5 SP Mag Charges might seem expensive but the ability to ignore evade dice is magic, and also bizarrely solves the Borg's problem of poor attack dice efficiency (since it has a BS to Crit conversion built in and with a few exceptions, those dice are getting through). It's almost worth getting multiples just for this card. 

The QVP would be my next purchase since in many ways it is a better a ship than the Sphere. WIth a good named ability, good dial and a better selection of slots than the sphere, the QVP also benefits from having a few cheap upgrades that help in the 50/3 meta. Power node, Magnus Hansen and Transwarp signal are all worthwhile cards (although Transwarp Signal less so since the "at any time" nerf), and the Borg Queen admiral is, in the opinion of the author, the best of the Borg Queens. On the expensive side of the upgrades you have Shield Matrix, the two Elite Talents and Multi-Kinetic Neutronic Mines - I'm not certain how much I would have used these upgrades in the pre-50/3 meta, but with 50/3 in play, I'm almost certain I never would. 

My next choice may come as something of a surprise since I'd next buy the Soong/Borg Type 03. Yes, not all of the cards are Borg and Yes, the ship isn't great but Crosis is one of my favourite cards in the game at the moment and Goval is no slouch either. Card like Transwarp Conduit make me smile, even if they aren't great in the game. 

Finally, of the 5 current retail borg expansions I'd go for the once mighty Tactical Cube 138. The ship itself is real expensive at 42/44 and doesn't come with that many upgrades you can't get elsewhere. Okay, the extra action Borg queen is fun, especially on the QVP and Borg Missile used to be one of the most feared cards in the game, but given the game state at the moment, 50/3 really limits the ship. 

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

Okay I'll admit it, I forgot about the Oversized Cube. It has an overcosted ship and Locutus in it. Meh. Don't bother unless you have a spare £60/$70 sitting around. 

As for non-retail expansions, I'll go over them briefly, since you can't buy them per-se: the stand out of the assimilated ships is the Bird of Prey, but the other two are a good change up in game terms vs the orthogonal movement 360 Borg that proliferate the faction. Tac Cube 001 has Borg Queen 9, that I like since it adds a Borg slot, but suffers AGAIN from the 50/3 rule. Scout 255 has a few fun things with it, not least Proton Beam, and is relatively easy to get hold of, Assimilation Target Prime is better for its Mirror Universe parts than its Borg parts. 

So the Borg Shopping list should be:

1. Sphere 4270

2. Scout 608

3. QVP

4. Another Sphere

5. Soong

6. Tactical Cube 138

7. Cube 112

It's a shame all these pieces seem difficult to find at the moment, because the really great thing about Borg, even in the 50/3, post-Borg nerf, WORF world, they still offer a player a different way to play the game from the other factions, and that's nice, since eventually having another faction with ships that 'move like Klingons' and upgrades that are similar to but not quite as good as federation won't be fun anymore, and barring a new faction coming out, Borg will always be a little unique. Isn't that a nice thought...