For the last six months I've played Dominion pure pretty much exclusively. I've learned a lot about fleet building, about what the dominion does well and what they struggle to do over those last few months but one of those lessons stands out more than the others: The Jem'Hadar Battlecruiser (JHBC) is awesome.
I know that many people won't agree with me, and the JHBC will come as a bit of a left field choice, but in 2 of the 3 tournaments I have played in over at Freemont Reformation, the JHBC has been the star of the show.
So what makes it so good?
The Generic JHBC comes in at 29 Points, which is a pretty hefty cost, all things considered, but for that cost you get a slashline of 5/1/6/4, two weapon slots, a crew slot and a tech slot. 10 durability makes this a big ship, similar in size to the generic bioship and reman warbird, as well as the named D'Deridexes, named Sovereign-class and Regent's Flagship.
But what makes it special isn't the size of the ship, or even the 5 attack dice it throws, but the combination of durability, attack power and manoeuvrability. The JHBC boasts white hard turns as well as a 4 come about.
I know what you are thinking now, that's nothing special really, the generic Bioship is a 6/2/5/5 with white 2 hard turns and a 3 come about. Except the difference is that the generic bioship costs a massive 36 points and comes with 3 tech slots and one weapon. That lack of a crew slot really hurts, and the greater cost (a 7 point difference) is 7 points fewer to spend on upgrades, captains and admirals.
Also, the Generic Bioship swaps the ability to take Battlestation Actions as default for the much less useful Regenerate. Sure, you can chuck Picard-9 or Dukat-7 on the ship to take a BS action for free each turn, but that represents 6 or 7 of those precious 14 points you have available for captains and upgrades- putting Dukat on the JHBC means it is still 2 points less than a captain-less generic Bioship.
Even having only one crew slot is somewhat annoying, but thankfully, the dominion have a couple of ways of adding new slots, most notably Legion Crew Module, a 2 point tech card that adds 2 crew slots, and Weyoun 7, who adds two crew slots, both of which enjoy a -1 point reduction if the crew in those slots are dominion crew. My most recent build didn't end up using more than one crew, and i'll explain why in a minute.
How I built my JHBC and why:
With the JHBC I really want to "lean in" to the idea of it being a heavy-hitter with manoeuvrability, so I wanted to make it as action independent as possible whilst keeping it faction pure - you can do some very interesting things if you play the standard version of the game, and I'll talk about them in a minute.
Dominion Starship (Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser) [29]
- Gul Dukat 7 (Captain) (Koranak) [5]
- Cloning Facility (Jem'Hadar Attack Ship Card Pack) [4]
- Tactical Command Reticle (Jem'Hadar Attack Ship Card Pack) [2]
- Omet'Iklan (5th Wing Patrol Ship) [5]
Ship Total: 45 SP
The idea here was that I could activate the Command Reticle, Target Lock and do BS for free, whilst also getting 2 copies of Omet'Iklan to convert two dice to hits (note that this is any type of dice, not just a blank - this is important later) On the first pass, this meant that I'd be rolling minimum 6 dice with 2 guaranteed hits, and a high efficiency on the other dice (most of the time it was rolling 6 hits or crits). Unlike some of the builds I've made previously though, this ship could then perform it's 4 come-about manoeuvre and still hit with some quality, thanks to the action independent nature of the quality that came from Cloning Facility and Omet'Iklan. This captain and action independent quality would pay off consistently to give the fleet a really nice second-strike capability that just wasn't available with other ships i'd run previously - and the combo only really works on a JHBC, since Omet'iklan is locked onto Jem'Hadar ships and cloning facility will only clone Dominion crew.
If I were to build a cross-faction version I would probably aim for something like this:
Dominion Starship (Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser) [29]
- Tomalak 8 (Captain) [6]
- - Legion Crew Module [2]
- - - Boheeka [2]
- - - Gul Damar [2]
- Cloning Facility [4]
- Omet'Iklan [5]
Ship Total: 50 SP
Tomalak is the only out of faction card here, but by adding him I gain a couple of things: An extra tech slot, so I can take Legion Crew Module and the extra crew it grants, as well as more non-action dependant quality (In addition to my two guaranteed hits from Omet'Iklan and his clone, I also get two re-rolls from Tomalak's ability. The addition of Boheeka gives me an extra blank to hit conversion with a BS token (and frankly, why would I take anything else) and Damar increases my captain skill to 10, allowing me to fire earlier in the turn and potentially before being fired upon (Dukat often takes a hit before returning fire). There are quite a few Dominion cards that increase the firepower of other ships (Preloc, Gul Toran, Gul Bocra) so the loss of the optional extra dice from Tactical Command Reticle is only really a problem once initial engagement has happen and broken up the fleet.
But it doesn't end there, there's potential for the JHBC as a defensive ship too!
Dominion Starship (Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser) [29]
- Gul Evek 4 (Captain) [2]
- Legion Crew Module [2]
- - Duran'Adar [3]
- - - Shield Adaptation [5]
- - William T. Riker [4]
- Hikaru Sulu [4]
Ship Total: 49 SP
Evek is the king of evading, so Gul Evade fits well here, and Sulu really adds to the amount of evading that the ship can do, as does Riker. The inbuilt quality of those two upgrades helps to mitigate the cost of having to take Sulu's action every turn. Duran'Adar helps for turns you need to come about, but the real key to this build is Shield Adaptation, reducing the amount of fire coming in and making the 4 evade dice with quality more than enough to survive in most situations. All this being said, there are probably better places to abuse Shield Adaptation, (like the Reklar, another old favourite of mine) and in this circumstance, the named 2nd Division Cruiser is probably a better fit here (thanks to more upgrade slots and an additional shield, as much as its ability) and the JHBC is probably better as an attacking ship than a defensive one, but that flexibility is there, which wouldn't be the case elsewhere.
So there we have it, my ode to the Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser, probably my favourite ship in the game right now, and a staple of all my future Dominion Pure Fleets.
