Early Game, Late Game: Part 1 - Early Game

Star Trek: Attack Wing is almost equal parts list building and piloting. Certainly, some would argue that the List Building part is more important than the piloting part, since a good combo will often beat a good pilot with a bad combo. I've come into some criticism in the past since I have dismissed some cards as the refuge of a poor pilot. This got me thinking about the different phases of the game.

The Early Game:

At the start of a game of ST:AW you have all of your combos available, none of your discards have been discarded and few, if any (Jennifer Sisko withstanding) of your disables have been disabled. Certain upgrades seem somewhat less useful in the early game, since they don't really factor in until after the engagement has been made and after the initial joust has been completed. In the early game, positioning is important, as is piloting. Even if you have a killer combo, you want to make sure that you are in the perfect position to ensure that your combos go off. There are a number of cards that help to win the positioning battle in the early game that become less and less useful as the game goes on, like Lure.

Lure is currently my favourite card in the game, since it allows you to control when one of your opponent's ships enters the initial melee. I used it in one game at my last op to force one of my opponent's fleet out of formation, meaning I was only facing down 2 ships and 8 red dice instead of 3 and 12. Since my fleet was essentially 2 ships with 10 dice, the importance of being able to avoid the fire of one of those ships helped me to "win" that initial engagement in a way I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Lure is a quintessential early game card since it requires your opponent to be outside of range 3 when it is used. As the enemy advances towards you, the opportunity to use Lure becomes rarer and rarer. 

Another early game card is the aforementioned Jennifer Sisko (MU). In fact, Jennifer Sisko is so early game that its effects are both utilised before the game even begins. The added slot only works during fleet building, whilst the disable effect works after set up but before the first turn. Jennifer Sisko is also an interesting card that starts out as an early game card, before becoming fuel for a late game ability, a card like Sakonna or Voyager B'lanna Torres. Certain abilities, like Mirror Benjamin Sisko, allow you to discard upgrades in order to receive a bonus to attack or defence dice. Jennifer Sisko, Sakonna and Torres all have abilities that come into play in the fleet building or set up phase of the game. Once their abilities have been used they do nothing for the rest of the game, but become discard fodder (just to clarify, slots are only added at fleet building, and if the card granting the extra slot disappears later in the game, that has no effect on the slots that have been added. This also means that you can't transfer these cards to add extra slots onto a ship after the game has begun). Some of the perfect cards to discard with an ability like Mirror Sisko are cards like Jen Sisko, Sakonna and Torres (in my play-group, the act of using MU Ben Sisko to discard MU Jennifer Sisko is known as the "domestic violence" play). 

Most discards are also early game pieces - as are some disables. If you are planning to use Projected Stasis Field as a means of crippling an enemy ship in order to win the initial engagement, you aren't going to have PSF later on in the game. Similarly, using Interphase Generator to win the opening engagement means that you won't have that particular tech to deal with things that are going to happen in the late game. What cards like this do, however, and what you should consider from these cards in the early game, is allow you to be in a better position going into the late game. As an example, if you are using IG to cancel 2 hits and turn them into a single hit in round two, is that going to benefit you more than saving it for the late game? Maybe in the late game, your opponent will have an opportunity to attack you with more dice than they do in the early game (thanks to something like Biological Technology) and having an IG to stifle their plans then will be more meaningful than being able to save one hit at the early stage of the game.

This logic applies to disables too, especially when you have no easy way of recycling those discards - in my PSF build, I run a Tactical Officer (KLI) on each of my non-PSF ships, and essentially I use them as discards, since I have no way to re-enable them other than spending my action, which would be better spent on using Drex or N'Garen. Essentially, once they are used once, they are unlikely to be used again. This isn't always the case, and if you have cards like Phlox, Ogowa or the Doctor, you can re-enable those cards and use them multiple times. Consider this carefully before you do so though, as you have to ask yourself how important cards like this will be after the initial engagement. 

I should discuss briefly what I mean by "winning" the initial engagement: most fleets in the 50/3 suggested format (at 120 Sp) have either 2 50 point ships and a 20 point support ship OR 3 ships of roughly 40 points. I have seen some variations on this (50/40/30) but the two examples I've highlighted are the most frequently seen. In 90+blind, the variation is even lower, as mostly you'll see one ship at 50 and one at 40 or two at roughly 45 each. Assuming you are running the same or similar load-out, you should be looking to destroy one ship of 40-50 points in the initial pass without losing one of your own in order to be deemed a "winner". My PSF build (detailed here) works by isolating one ship to be hit by the PSF whilst my two heavy hitters can line up to destroy it. Most of the time, after PSF has disabled shields and Klingon Boarding Party has disabled all the upgrades, my opponent has between 4 and 8 hull to chew through. With the two big hitters rolling 5 dice with both re-rolls and BS conversions (one of which will be a crit) the statistics say that I'll succeed in swinging the odds in my favour. High CS is important in this situation since I want to be able to swing the odds in my favour before my opponent gets a chance to fire back at my weakened PSF carrier and swap one of their ships for one of mine. If you've PSF'd the right ship, you can avoid their incoming fire to such an extent that you should be able to survive the return fire even in your weakened state. Lure helps with this even more by moving one of their ships out of position: 3 ships, one is PSF'd and destroyed, one is Lure'd and out of position, at which point you are trading 3 of your ships' fire for one of theirs, and you "win" the initial engagement. 

There are tactics you can use to avoid this state of affairs; Movement upgrades like Forrest and In'Cha help to stop you from being out of position thanks to Lure whilst PSF can be similarly neutralised by keeping your ship at range 3 from the carrier ship. This makes cards like Quark and Tahna Los better, since if you are hiding PSF your opponent can't react to it, can't disable it with Jen Sisko and won't know that they need to stay at range 3. 

So to distil my long ramble:

• The early game is the first 2-3 turns leading up to and including the initial engagement. 
• A fleet built to succeed in the Early Game will "cash in" their discards and disables early on in order to ensure that they'll get a favourable result out of that initial engagement. 
• An "Early Game Fleet" is unlikely to rely on cards whose value increases as the game goes on
• An EGF will have high Captain Skill 
• An EGF will want the game to end quickly, since as the game goes on, their ability to use the combos they have designed in list building will disappear.

Next time I'll take a look at the mid and late game and how you can build a fleet to thrive later on, and increase your chances of winning as time ticks away.

Thanks for reading, I'm Not Picard!

The OP Elephant in the Room.

I have been playing staw for a lot longer than I’ve been able to attend OP events. I can remember Wave 2’s release with fondness – it was the first new wave to be released since I started playing the game and I was excited to see the game grow. Most of the time I played at a friend’s house and it was very thematic –We’d think up our own scenarios and missions builds and play through a campaign together (The Campaign is still going by the way, I may blog about it at some point). It wasn’t until I moved to Chelmsford in Essex that I found a relatively local store that hosted OP events, the first I was able to attend being Arena (the report of which is available here).

So I won the S’Gorn, a ship with cards I’d never seen before, from a race that didn’t have any retail releases at the time. I was hooked on a new drug- Limited Edition Ships.

It took a while for the next OP event to take place, and I was more than a little concerned when I didn’t hear anything because I feared that I wouldn’t be able to win any more Prize Ships. They’d given me a taste and then cut me off, a classic drug dealer trick! Also, I missed 7 Months worth of OP ships, especially the Sutherland and Ch’Tang. How was I going to make sure I had access to all of these wonderful cards!?!

So I started to trawl the secondary market looking for the OP ships that I’d missed out on. First I managed to get my hands on the Aj’Rmr, Additional Weapons Array and Romulan Pilot? Great! Then I splashed out for the Sutherland (3 times retail…) High Energy Sensor Sweep and Secondary Torpedo Launcher and the Ch’Tang DefCon1, Barrage of Fire and Synon. I absolutely loved have cards that not everyone else had. I loved being a completionist and having everything more though, and that meant that I shelled out on the secondary market for the Akorem, Krayton, Rav Laerst and Tholia One, not necessarily for cards (There are some great ones, Kira, Conditional Surrender, Invaluable advice and, eh, Plasma Torpedoes (!) respectively) but because I wanted to make sure I had the cards in case one day I needed them.

Since I started playing at OPs regularly I haven’t had to spend money online, with the exception of Resistance 1, I’ve won a prize ship at every event I’ve been to. Having been there in the past, though, I understand the anguish that people go through to get the OP ships. It’s a two pronged thing: They want the cards that make them competitive AND/OR they want all of the cards. I completely get that – on both counts.

I like the trend at the moment to release similar or expanded prize packs as retail packs. The way that the Gornarus, Tholia One and Kreetcha releases were done were all slightly different, but certainly helped to give the people access to some of the cards that are on those difficult to find OP ships from months ago. The trouble is, this isn’t enough. It’s great that I can get Faked Messages and Impulse Overload in a retail pack, but the named ships is the Gornarus, not the S’gorn. I can’t run a fleet with two named Gorn Raiders in it. Plus, if I was a Gorn superfan, I’d really dislike the fact that I couldn’t get Gorn Pilot or Gorn Commander in a retail pack. The competitive player may be satisfied with the release, (although no CS in the Kreetcha sucked) but the collector is still raging that he can’t get the other cards. In this way I actually feel that the Tholia One retail release, which contained everything from the prize ship –and more- was a better solution than the S’Gorn/Gornarus release.

I know some people have complained about the Tholia One release being too similar to the prize ship that they worked ‘so hard’ to get, but at the end of the day, I’d rather know that if I missed a prize ship, it’d be along in the retail version eventually; it’d certainly stop me scouring the secondary market before events to make sure that I had a backup plan should I fail to win one.

What do people think about this issue- Should Prize Ships be re-released in retail or would that be doing the OP winners a dis-service?

I'm still Not Picard,

D

Why I love the Reklar

I can't really write another breakout review for dominion but I love the Reklar so much that it deserves its own post. The reason I love the Reklar so much is because of the internal synergies in the pack. All the best expansions come with great internal synergy and one day I'll run a fleet just made up of expansions from one retail pack.

Anyway, on to the Reklar!

The Reklar itself is a Galor class starship, same as the Kraxon (and Trager) before it. The problem with both of those ships was lack of the Battle Stations action on their action bars, making them less effective at firing at cloakers and less flexible having to rely upon Target Lock for dice quality. The main advantage held by the Reklar over the Kraxon (Trager and Generic Galor) is that its ship action is like a "Battle Stations Plus!" action. Not only that, but should you feel so inclined (that is to say should Gul Dukat happen to be commanding the Reklar) then you could even have 2 BS tokens beside the ship AND gain +1 to your defence rolls. Whilst the stat split 4-1-4-4 is perhaps not as worthwhile as the Koronak's 5-1-4-3, the movement dial on the Galor class is, in my opinion, superior to the movement dial on the Keldon - I like to have as many options as possible to move at speed 1, and whilst the 4 banks are useful in certain situations, the Keldon loses its 1 banks.

Another reason for loving the Reklar is the combination of Captain and Admiral presented by Lemec and Madred. In general for Dominion the Keldon class is better than the Galor for two reasons: +1 PWV and BS on the action bar. The Reklar already has one of these problems solved with the ship's action, the second is solved by a combination of Madred, Lemec and (sometimes) Corak. Lemec allows you to roll an additional attack dice when attacking a ship whose captain has a lower skill number. Lemec himself is only skill 4, but Madred adds 2 to that and Corak potentially another 3 for a combined skill of 9! Most captains in the game (if not built for high captain skill) have a lower skill than 9. The one drawback here (which is easily solved if you don't follow faction purity) is that Corak costs an action whereas his federation equivalent, Nyota Uhura, is merely a disable (although she only give +2 not +3). Madred's ability, other than adding 2 to the captain skill, is to potentially kill off other captains. I see it like this: If Lemec+Madred are higher than the captains you intend to target for most of the game then you don't use Madred's ability (well, you might want to anyway if there is a particularly juicy target, just gives you the flexibility not to have to) and if there is a captain with a higher skill than Lemec then you can use Madred's ability to remove that higher captain from the game and gain the +1. Once the captain is gone, the captain skill drops to 1 and you get the Lemec bonus all the time.

The final thing I love about the Reklar is the Aft-Weapons Array. 4 dice for firing outside of the front arc at range 1-3 for the cost of a disable? Yes please! This is something that the Dominion faction have access to that the Federation don't - 360 degree firing at range 3 - and with 4 dice and BS, it can be potentially devastating! Also bear in mind that it works with Lemec, so you can have it at 5 dice - 5 dice 360 at Range 3? Almost the borg of old!

As I said at the start of this post, it is not necessarily how powerful an expansion is that causes me to like it - certainly both the Haakona and Koronak are powerful expansions that helped their faction immensely - the easiest way to make me like an expansion is to make it have really good internal synergy. When I can build a ship using only the upgrades from the pack it came with then I feel like it has been a good, well built and thought-out expansion. The Reklar is just that -

Play Testing for Q Continuum 1 – Encounter at Farpoint

After my victory at the last OP event I decided that rather than stick with that fleet (however successful it was!) I would work on a whole new fleet for the first Q event. The scenario itself is somewhat crazy, so I thought I’d start by running down what the Q cards do and adding some of my own comments on the implications (apologies for picture quality).

1.       Honored Judge

I get the feeling that this might just be the card that people worry about the most. My first idea for this event’s fleet building was to run dominion fighters with Galor Class Phaser banks and Aft-Disruptor Wave Cannons – I could cover a large area of board space with a ship that wouldn’t be concerned about having its captain disabled, would fire with between 4 and 7 dice depending on tokens left and range, and would be consistently firing at a higher captain skill than that of its opponents. The problem of course was that the second line of text on honored judge says that if you have no captain disable a crew upgrade, and if you have no crew disable another upgrade. This would mean that if Honored Judge came up, it would rob me of one of the upgrades that I’d bought, and so what might ultimately be worthwhile doing was to run the fighters without any upgrades at all, particularly when one considers the potential effects of number 2…

2.       Very Advanced

If one were to deploy within range one of the board edge and this card is drawn on the first turn, then one has to perform a 6 straight manoeuvre to escape the area of effect. This means that no ship will be able to avoid the 2 disabled upgrades unless a) it has a 6 forward on its dial, or b) it has no upgrades. The fighters I spoke about above have only a 4 forward and if this card was drawn (let alone Honored Judge) then they would lose both of the upgrades. I think that if this card does come up and you have no 6 straight manoeuvre, then the best bet may be to accept that you are going to have cards disabled, and put yourself into a position to escape the area of effect next turn, rather that barrel forwards as fast as you can just to be alpha struck (striked?) by a Voyager/Enterprise-E/Scimitar that can escape the area of effect on turn one. As far as my fleet building went, this card was the death of Aft-Disruptor Wave/Galor Class Phaser Fighters.

3.       Incredible Power

This card actually encouraged me to still take fighters, even though I’d have to run them without any upgrades. Manoeuvring is severely limited by this card, with most ships only able to do a 1 forward or bank without avoiding (the chance) of taking damage. I think most players are conservative and fearful of damage enough that they won’t risk taking damage. Fighters therefore become all the more valuable, since in addition to straight and bank manoeuvres, they also possess 1 turns and the federation fighters have a 1 come about (that is white). Whilst I had been thinking that Dominion was the way to go for this event, the fantastic manoeuvrability that the Federation fighter offers, may just swing me towards favouring them. (NB: It always bothered me that the Federation fighters were never named “Peregrine Fighters” as they are in-universe).

4.       A Powerful Mind

This one is less of a spoiler than it might first appear. Yes, taking an APT can be the death of some ships, and certainly I would rather not take one, but taking one to perform an action bar action is not necessarily the end of the world- particularly when you can take upgrade actions, ship actions or captain actions (if the captain is enabled) without penalty. The key here might be that most ships can survive taking one APT a turn but few can survive taking two. Cards like Positron Beam, Brunt (not-FCA) and (the almost forgotten) Borg Missile become all the more powerful when they add an APT to a ship that already has an APT. It also means, conversely, that cards that give out APTs for some benefit (Such as Reinforced Hull Plating, the Tal’Kir’s named ability and Gul Macet) are less useful when you already have an APT. I’m looking quite hard at both the TOS Enterprise and the Tactical Prototype tech from the Prometheus expansion as means of being able to take actions despite the presence of an APT.

All of this discussion leads me towards two possible builds, with a third hovering in the back of my mind.

Build 1 – Dominion

Resource – Officer Cards

Trager [Assimilated Vessel 64758] (26)

Gul Dukat [Battle Cruiser] (5)

Breen Aide [Gor Portas] (2)

First Officer [Officer Resource] (3)

Aft Weapons Array [Reklar] (4)

Total (40)

Reklar [Reklar] (26)

Gul Lemec [Reklar] (3)

Adm Gul Madred [Reklar] (5)

Boheeka [Koranak] (2)

Aft Weapons Array [Reklar] (4)

Total (40)

Hideki Class Attack Squadron [1st Wave Attack Fighters] (20) Total (20)

Hideki Class Attack Squadron [1st Wave Attack Fighters] (20) Total (20)

Fleet total: 120

In play testing this fleet has been severely hamstrung by drawing Very Advanced on turn 1. If that doesn’t happen though, this fleet works well. If Honored Judge comes up, then neither the Trager nor the Reklar drop to 0 skill, as the First Officer Breen Aide and Admiral Madred take over. Reklar’s ability allows for a BS token to be dropped despite that action not being on the action bar, hence avoiding the APT and the Aft-Weapons array (fast becoming my favourite weapon upgrade) gives pretty good coverage at 4 Attack Dice.  The Trager is pretty survivable itself (I love the named ability) and the fighters just add to that ability. Whilst the number of moving parts here could go wrong pretty quickly, the upgrades are there to start with in order to deal with the scenario rather than ignore the worst that the scenario has to offer. It seems more skilful from my point of view to be able to take what the scenario throws at you and build around those potential drawbacks, than it does to build a fleet that doesn’t have to deal with the drawbacks. That is probably why I prefer this fleet to the next one…

Build 2 – Federation (sort of)

Resource – Federation Attack Fighters

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22) Federation Captain [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (0) Total (22)

Constitution Class [I.S.S. Enterprise] (20) Mirror Universe Captain [I.S.S. Enterprise] (0) Total (20)

Suurok Class [Ni'Var] (18) Vulcan Captain [Ni’Var] (0) Total (18)

Hideki Class Attack Squadron [1st Wave Attack Fighters] (20) Total (20)

Federation Attack Fighter [Federation Attack Fighter Resource] (20) Total (20)

Federation Attack Squadron [Fighter Squadron 6] (20) Total (20)

Fleet total: 120

Whilst the previous build was made to deal with the worst the scenario had to offer, this build is designed entirely to ignore the scenario. Three fighters, three cheap 4 hull ships, one of which, the prime universe Enterprise, can take actions regardless of the presence of APTs. The only interesting thing about this build is that I’ve tried to mix up the factions to avoid falling foul of Salatrel and Picard 8’s ability. Otherwise it is more or less just a case of flying into range two with the fighters and letting them do their thing. I’m worried it’ll be a little boring.

Build 3 - Evade-ager

U.S.S. Voyager [U.S.S. Voyager] (30)

Flagship: Independent (Romulan) [Flagship Resource] (10)

Jean-Luc Picard [U.S.S. Enterprise-E] (5)

Admiral Maxwell Forrest [Enterprise NX-01] (3)

Computer Analysis [Sakharov] (4)

Tom Paris [U.S.S. Voyager] (4)

Hikaru Sulu [U.S.S. Enterprise] (3)

Pavel Chekov [U.S.S. Reliant] (3)

Ilia [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)

William T. Riker [U.S.S. Pegasus] (4)

Multi-adaptive Shields [U.S.S. Raven] (5)

Transphasic Torpedoes [U.S.S. Voyager] (10)

Transphasic Torpedoes [U.S.S. Voyager] (10)

Tactical Station [U.S.S. Stargazer] (4) Total (100)

Federation Attack Squadron [Fighter Squadron 6] (20) Total (20)

Fleet total: 119

This fleet is just mean, and takes full advantage of my venue’s lifting of the 50 point cap and resource retirement rules. Voyager is tough to take down, with Captain Skill 12 when Honored Judge is not in play and 7 when it is. Between the Transphasics and Tactical Station it puts out a heap of damage and does not really suffer from things being disabled thanks to Computer Analysis. The only weakness that immediately jumps out at me is that the ship’s ability 360 Primary Weapon gives an APT, and that might prove difficult to shake off if I also have one from A Powerful Mind. I think out of the three builds this one is by far and away the best, most competitive and most annoying. I’m not sure what I’ll run yet, but this is a distinct possibility.

As always, comments are welcome, so let me know what you think.

D

Testing for Peak Performance

I've been playing Star Trek: Attack wing for about 2 years now and have been attending Organised Play (OP) events for 9 months, starting with the "Arena" event. The venue that I attend most frequently runs  variety of house rules that mean I've experimented with a variety of builds over the past few months*.

During last month's event we were discussing the new changes to the Borg (for info see here) and the opinion was put forward that they may have been weakend too much (or "nerfed too hard" to use the common parlance), which I really don't think is the case. 

My issue with the Borg was that they were always the idiot-proof faction. They could move in any direction, shoot in any direction, and, if you can shoot them, then they can shoot you. The new rulings mean that even the Borg could accidentally fly off the board, that they can no longer side-step mines, and that now you can outmanoeuver them, by being able to shoot them without fear of retaliation.

Just to prove the point though, I agreed with the tournament organiser that, as the reigning OP winner, I would play Borg, with the new restrictions, at the next OP event in order to 'Stress Test' the new changes. This has led to my spending the last few weeks working out what is the best list with the new Borg changes with the new scenario. 

The next scenario is Peak Performance (rules to be found here), the main principal being that destroyed ships re-appear with one fewer shield and without any discarded upgrades (or stolen ones for that matter). This lead me to believe that perhaps the way to win would be to avoid using anything with too much of a reliance upon discard upgrades. That being said, and the house rules of my venue being what they are, I did think it might be fun to run one huge Borg Supercube.

List 1 - Lore's Supercube

Tactical Cube 138 [Tactical Cube] (46)

Flagship: Independent (Dominion) [Flagship Resource] (10)

Lore [Soong] (4)

Vulcan High Command [D'Kyr] (5)

Borg Ablative Hull Armor [Tactical Cube] (7)

Borg Ablative Hull Armor [Tactical Cube] (7)

Goval [Soong] (1)

Crosis [Soong] (5)

One [Scout 255] (4)

Subspace Distortion [Soong] (6)

Feedback Pulse [Borg Sphere 4270] (8)

Borg Missile [Tactical Cube] (6)

Magnetometric Guided Charge [Scout Cube] (5)

Full Assault [Tactical Cube] (6)

Total (120)

Fleet total: 120

Generated by Space Dock for iOS

http://spacedockapp.org

This build was based on two assumptions: First, that even though vessels could return to the field of play, the majority of OP games get at least near to the one hour limit, so discards may not be as much of a disadvantage as perhaps initially seen. Second, the ability to survive for a long time would be better than necessarily relying upon a smaller ship that would be killed quicker. Enemies that wanted the points from the Cube would have to pay for them, and the longer they spent attacking the cube to cut through al of the ablative hull armour and feedback pulses, One, and Goval, the more chance the Cube itself would have to kill the enemy ships.

In play testing I found that the issue with the cube was not necessarily that it died too quickly -it didn't- but instead that it didn't kill opponent quickly enough -especially those opponents with high evade and hull (scimitars, fednaughts etcetera).

This lead me to prepare a second version of the list designed to kill things quickly whilst retaining the survivability of the first list.

List 2 -Queen and Locutus together again.

Queen Vessel Prime [Queen Vessel Prime] (42)

Flagship: Independent (Klingon) [Flagship Resource] (10)

Borg Queen [Tactical Cube 001] (6)

Magnetometric Guided Charge [Scout Cube] (5)

Total (63)

Borg Tactical Cube [Tactical Cube] (44)

Locutus [Cube 112] (7)

Full Assault [Tactical Cube] (6)

Total (57)

Fleet total: 120

Generated by Space Dock for iOS

http://spacedockapp.org

This build has significantly less survivability than the Supercube, but there are two major benefits - 1. The high captain skill on both vessels and 2. the collective firepower is better (with the potential for a 5 dice Magnetometric Guided Charge). On playtesting I found this to be slightly more effective than the previous build, it was able to remove opponents more quickly, but the survivability was significantly lower, mainly due to the lack of any evade dice at all (I'm so used to using ships with high evade that the damage the ship took was worryingly high).

After some more thinking, and a look at the lists from the World Championships in Ohio, I came up with this third list (which will probably make hardcore faction purists cringe)

List 3 - Khan's hijack

Queen Vessel Prime [Queen Vessel Prime] (42)

Locutus [Cube 112] (7)

Adm Borg Queen [Queen Vessel Prime] (5)

Magnus Hansen [Queen Vessel Prime] (1)

Data [Tactical Cube 001] (4)

Magnetometric Guided Charge [Assimilated Vessel 64758] (5)

Total (64)

Scout 608 [Scout Cube] (24)

Flagship: Independent (Dominion) [Flagship Resource] (10)

Khan Singh [GenKhan] (4)

Research Mission [U.S.S. Raven] (2)

Full Reverse [Alpha Hunter] (2)

Dispersion Field [Scout 255] (2)

Sakonna [Gavroche] (2)

Improved Deflector Screens [Gornarus] (4)

Proton beam [Scout 255] (2)

Ramming Attack [Val Jean] (1)

Magnetometric Guided Charge [Assimilated Vessel 64758] (3)

Total (56)

Fleet total: 120

Generated by Space Dock for iOS

http://spacedockapp.org

This list is based on the idea of avoiding enemy firing arcs in order to survive as long as possible. The Scout Cube provides excellent manoeuverability whilst the diamond can move twice a turn so long as it is in range 1 of the cube. The second thing that this list does better than any other is the captain skill. By taking Locutus and the Queen on the same ship and by having Khan as the second captain, both ships have a captain skill of 11 as long as no drone tokens are spent. Data is an annoying enough trick that will allow the QVP's named ability to function whilst also de-activating enemy captains. If push comes to shove, the Fleet Action could be used by the scout to activate data for no drone token cost, and if not, then Magnus Hansen allows data to be activated for no cost.  

I've had two playtest with this list, the first one resulted in my opponent only getting to fire once, after two other ships had been destroyed, and whilst the QVP died in the second game, the Scout survived both games relatively unscathed.

So it seems that is what I will be running at the next event, hopefully it will prove that Borg haven't been excessively nerfed by the new rulings and hopefully i'll win a shuttle. Then I can mess around with shuttle builds for the next month's event!

* Our venue follows loose Ship Pure restrictions: All of the upgrades assigned to a ship must match the ship's faction but Independent Flagships can be assigned to any ship in order to make it dual faction. In addition to that, certain ailities and upgrades that are designed to allow cross-factioning are allowed - for example Lore, Khan, Borg Alliance. Also, we have decided as a group not to rotate out the resources, since we have quite a lot of excess resources from previous months to provide for new players if needs be, and we do not follow the 3-ship 50 Point suggested tournament rules.