The Semi-Swarm

A few posts ago (many, many posts ago) I wrote about a Klingon Swarm build. It doesn't work primarily because it never gets to fire at full effectiveness thanks to the likelihood of high CS opponents trimming the low CS swarm ships out before they can fire. So I had a look at it again and came up with the following list:

THE KLINGON SEMI-SWARM

1. B'Rel Class, Martok 9, Kunivas
2. B'Rel Class, Gowron
3. B'Rel Class, K'Temoc, Fleet Captain (Independent Klingon), DefCon1, N'Garen
4. IKS Negh'Var, Kor, Alexander, Bu'Kah

The idea with this fleet is that you fly in close formation (which is a challenge, more on this later!) and use the following actions each turn. NB: NEVER CLOAK this just makes the whole fleet weaker, and you shouldn't ever be in a position to need the bonus Green Dice anyway)


Gowron moves and takes his own action
Kor moves and takes his own action
K'temoc moves and either takes N'Garen's action or (if the situation provides for it) takes DefCon1
Martok moves and takes his own action.

If you are positioned correctly, your opponent will have to fire at Kor, who'll have 3 green dice and a BS token on the turn that DefCon 1 is triggered. If you take any damage, you'll have a BS token from Alexander. Unless you are unlucky and your opponent is lucky, then you can survive the first round of engagement and then take a green manoeuvre and Bu'Kah to heal back some hull.

Kor fires with 7 red dice and a re-roll for one of them thanks to Martok, Gowron fires with 5 and a re-roll thanks to Martok, K'Temoc fires with 6, a re-roll from Martok and the BS conversions thanks to either N'Garen or DefCon1. Martok fires with 5 and with kunivas can add one once. Kor, Martok and Gowron all benefit from DefCon1 on one turn (usually the first engagement turn).

As I found in testing this fleet, you really benefit from having 4 ships as it gives you a wider field of coverage when chasing down opponent's ships. It also means that it'll take more turns for you opponent to clear you out (so you can run for cover and play for time if things go wrong). Not having to rely on cloak means you can mitigate some of the problems that the B'rel has, and mines are less of an issue than for a normal cloaked Klingon fleet.

I've really enjoyed playing with this fleet, and whilst I'm still experimenting with the best way to maximise its firepower (particularly dice efficiency for Gowron and Martok), it's been pretty effective.

As always, any thoughts welcome,

I'm not picard.