A Blast From the Past! Wave Zero: USS Enterprise

Star Trek Attack Wing is a game that is in almost constant shift. With each new wave the game re-invents itself. Whether or not you like the rapid release schedule that Wizkids has blessed/cursed us with, the game moves so quickly that it is often easy to forget old expansions in favour of new and shiny new releases.

So what I thought I would do, over a series of reviews of individual expansion, is go right back to the start and have a look at some old expansions to see what they still have to offer. Maybe some cards won't see much use, maybe some cards have been overlooked by the new releases and still have some uses even though they have been replaced (it's worth noting that some releases contain new and improved versions of old cards, but the advantage therein is that you can now take multiples of similar cards!).

To start with I thought I'd take a look at the ship that started it all, the USS Enterprise!

Ship:
USS Enterprise/Constitution class

The constitution class spaceframe has a slashline of 3/1/4/2 (3 shields on the named version) which means that it can be a pretty cheap fighter carrier craft. 3 attack isn't great but federation have couple of tricks for solving that particular problem: Type 8 Phasers and Upgraded Phasers. For just 5 points, the pillow-fisted USS Enterprise can become a 5 dice monster (well, not monster, but still, 5 dice is nice). What really makes the named Enterprise stand out is two fold: Its named ability, allowing actions to be taken regardless of the presence of an APT, and its available upgrade slots: an unmatched 4 crew, and 1 weapon. There are so many cards that synergise well with this ship it is untrue, but the two notable mentions are Kathryn Janeway, who allows you to double up on actions at the cost of an APT (so what!) and Enhanced Hull Plating, which allows you to take up to two Aux tokens to cancel hits. The 22 SP base cost and all of those available slots means that the USS Enterprise can be a great ship to build combos on, and makes it still a viable choice even in the modern metagame.

Grade: B-

Captains:
James T. Kirk is skill 9. I often choose captains entirely based on their CS, so having a skill 9 option (one of very few base CS9 cards in the game, in a club with Shinzon, Picard 9, Locutus, Borg Queen 9 and Martok 9) is in itself an advantage. His named ability is okay (having 2 elite talents face down for 3 SP each) but given that elite talents themselves aren't all that game breaking (with a few notable exceptions) and being limited to Fed talents only, makes it situational at best. Most frequently I've seen him deployed with double Cheat Death, which makes his ship more survivable, but isn't perhaps the best use of points.

Grade: B-

Christopher Pike is a card that I love, because of its combo building potential. When coupled with Indy fleet captain klingon, Pike allows you to take crew at -2 SP, which in the 50/3 meta can make things really interesting. That being said, with Fleet Captains about to go to the great resource retirement home in the sky, his utility is limited somewhat.

Grade: C

Crew:

Hikaru Sulu is still a staple in defence focused builds. He isn't action friendly, but having an extra 2 agility and getting a free BS conversion can significantly improve the survivability of a ship, especially when coupled with his near twin, Hood Riker. Still useful.

Grade: B-

Mr Spock now competes with Captain Spock for a place in most builds, but his ability, basically allowing you to take BS and Scan every turn, is nothing to be sniffed at. He synergises particularly well with the USS Enterprise since that scan action can be taken every turn regardless of the APT by the ship. I like to run Spock with Valtane on the Enterprise with Janeway in command. This gives you great dice quality (2 re-roll, BS conversions and 2 scan tokens) without having to worry about APTs.

Grade: B-

Montgomery Scott is a utility piece that can be used either to heal or create extra damage potential. When coupled with Type 8 and Upgraded Phasers, Scott can boost primary weapon attacks to 7 per turn, at the cost of some survivability. There are a lot of attack boosting card available now though, so he isn't perhaps as useful as he once was.

Grade: B-

Nyota Uhura offers a CTRL+Z action in that you can change your manoeuvre at the cost of a discard. A good helmsman should never need to use a card like this, and at 3 points she is expensive. I literally have never seen her used.

Grade: D-

Leonard McCoy is another discard, this time to allow you to take a crew action for free. Useful in some circumstances, McCoy suffers from being expensive, but still has some utility. Honestly, there are now much better options for extra actions, namely in the shape of William 'E' Riker, but since Riker is so in demand, McCoy can be a reasonable substitute if you are desperate.

Grade: D+

Weapons:

Photon Torpedoes - Nothing to see here, move along.

Grade: F

Elite Talents:

Cheat Death is the obvious stand out here, 5 points (or 3 under Kirk) is a hefty price to pay for a discard, but if it keeps your ship alive at the key point of the game, it's a cost worth paying. I like taking Cheat Death as my free ET with Fleet Captains, when I have no better option, but with Fleet Captains facing retirement, it isn't that fantastic an option anymore.

Grade: B-

Corbomite Maneuver is fun, and often a great alternative to a second cheat death to hide under Kirk, but it is situational, and it costs you the ability to attack. I have used it to blunt the effectiveness of an alpha strike, but it is highly situational

Grade: C

Cochrane Deceleration Maneuver is good for playing the turn after Corbomite Maneuver to turn around and target that Klingon fleet that just flew past you, synergises well with the Enterprise since the APT doesn't rob you of an action, but is so situational and expensive (5SP and discard) that it will rarely see play.

Grade: D+

I have two builds that I like to run with the USS Enterprise, the first is a little janky:

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22)
Christopher Pike [U.S.S. Enterprise] (4)
Fleet Captain: Independent (Klingon) [Fleet Captain Resource] (5)
Cheat Death [U.S.S. Enterprise] (0)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Enhanced Hull Plating [Enterprise NX-01] (4)
Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Total (49)

Fleet total: 49

This is a very annoying ship to deal with since it just doesn't die easily. Unfortunately it doesn't have much life left since Fleet Captains disappear soon (I'm annoyed about that, can you tell?)

The Second is more traditional:

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22)
Kathryn Janeway [U.S.S. Voyager] (5)
B'Elanna Torres [U.S.S. Voyager] (4)
Dmitri Valtane [U.S.S. Excelsior] (3)
Mr. Spock [U.S.S. Enterprise] (5)
Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Enhanced Hull Plating [Enterprise NX-01] (4)
Upgraded Phasers [U.S.S. Lakota] (3)
Type 8 Phaser Array [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Total (50)

Fleet total: 50

You'll need a lot of APT tokens for this one, but it has some survivability for a ship that pumps out 5 attack dice a turn on a 180 arc, with pretty good quality too - BS Conversions and Re-rolls on two dice, with the scan tokens to drop an opponents defence. I know you can do more than this with officer cards, but not using a resource makes this version future proof.

Having done these builds, it did give me an idea for a full 120 build:

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22)
Kathryn Janeway [U.S.S. Voyager] (5)
B'Elanna Torres [U.S.S. Voyager] (3)
Dmitri Valtane [U.S.S. Excelsior] (2)
Mr. Spock [U.S.S. Enterprise] (4)
Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Enhanced Hull Plating [Enterprise NX-01] (4)
Upgraded Phasers [U.S.S. Lakota] (3)
Type 8 Phaser Array [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Total (47)

U.S.S. Intrepid [U.S.S. Intrepid] (22)
Christopher Pike [U.S.S. Enterprise] (4)
Adm Matt Decker [U.S.S. Intrepid] (1)
Fleet Captain: Independent (Klingon) [Fleet Captain Resource] (5)
Cheat Death [U.S.S. Enterprise] (0)
Eric Motz [U.S.S. Pegasus] (0)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Enhanced Hull Plating [Enterprise NX-01] (4)
Type 8 Phaser Array [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Upgraded Phasers [U.S.S. Lakota] (3)
Total (49)

Fighter Squadron 6 [Fighter Squadron 6] (24)
Total (24)

Fleet total: 120

So in summation, there are still some interesting things to be done with this particular wave zero expansion, I'd be interested to hear other people's ideas about how to build the USS Enterprise almost 21 waves later...


...and I'm still not Picard (or GenKhan)

Top 5: I only have 4 points, and I haven't chosen a captain yet...

It might seem like a moot point, but I've been thinking about a comment I made on my last post about "the best 4 point captains" and I thought I'd expand on that. Often my strategy when choosing captains is based first and foremost on Captain Skill (I have been known to take Shinzon or Locutus just for CS9) but assuming I only had 4 points, what are my options?

Bajorans:
Krim is a good choice here, since his extra crew slot can be easily filled with a bajoran militia. The other part of his ability is of limited utility, mainly thanks to the Bajoran faction having low hull values to start with...but when you consider DS9, it gets a whole lot more interesting.

Shaakar Edon is also another great choice, the free re-rolls in a faction with access to BS actions? Yes please!

Borg:
Korok is fun, and can make matters worse for a ship you managed to sneak a hit through on.

Dominion:
Gul Damar is lovely, particularly as he nullified cloaked mines when combined with a scan- and the dominion have so many upgrades that trigger off a scan token (Breen Aide anyone?)

Weyoun 6. If you don't know why, I envy you.

Federation:
Mr Spock the free action captain? TL and BS every turn? Yes please.

Hathaway Riker is great on low hull ships, like the Defiant. Wish Sisko had this ability...

Ferengi:

Nope.

Independent:
Alpha Hirogen gives a great ability that offers good dice quality without having to use an action.

Gen Khan is perhaps the rarest card in the game, but offers cheap high CS.

Lore adds a crew slot, and allows you to take Vulcan High Command. He's a great combo building card.

Kazon:
Cullah has game, adding defence dice onto a faction of low agility ships

Rasik also adds action economy at the cost of disabling crew

Klingons:
Chang 7 makes the ning'tao a really annoying ship.

Gowron is a good captain for swarm (or semi-swarm) fleets

Kargan offers good action economy when paired with Drex or N'Garen

Kor 6 is great for drawing fire

(It's interesting how many good 4 point captains the Klingons have, that may be worth another look at in a separate post)

Mirror Universe:

ATP Riker was the king of Mirror Captains for a long time, but his battery ability is still good

Romulan:

Donatra is standard issue for most Romulan Builds

Mendak is probably better as an admiral than a captain

Taris gives Romulans access to 360 fire

Liviana Charvanek pairs well with Romulan Security officers.

Valdore 6 gives a tech slot, which is so useful for Romulans

Vulcans:
Solok is an action economy captain, although he pales in comparison to most of the other options

Sopek is brilliant for combo building, much like Weyoun, but is better in cross faction play.

So there you go, a quick run down of the 4SP captains for each faction. Nothing too detailed or in depth, but an interesting exercise in spending 4 points.

Think I've missed something or am rating something too highly? Call me out! I always welcome comment and criticism.

Top 5 4 SP captains (in faction pure play):

1. Mr Spock
2, ATP Riker
3. Gen Khan
4. Alpha Hirogen
5. Hathaway Riker

No Picard though, his 5 and 6 SP versions are lightyears better.

...and I'm not Picard.

Hunting Season is Open

Star Trek is full of warrior races: Klingons became honourable at some point between TOS and TNG but remained a warrior race; Kazon were the overwhelmingly war-like race of the first 2 seasons of voyager; the Jem'Hadr were a race bred for war in season 3-7 of Deep Space Nine, the list goes on. One thing that was touched on in Deep Space Nine, and then expanded on in Voyager, was the idea of a hunter-race. The Deep Space Nine version appeared in one episode (Captive Pursuit) and was never mentioned again (the episode isn't well thought of amongst fans of DS9); but the Voyager version, the Hirogen, appeared in 9 episodes including the fantastic 2-parter "The Killing Game". (Sidenote: One thing that Voyager did very well was the two part episode, there are some fantastic episodes like Year of Hell as well as the end/opening of season double headers, like Scorpion and Equinox).

In terms of ST:AW, the Hirogen are represented by the Alpha Hunter expansion pack - a pack that has seen quite a lot of negative press, but one that I like a great deal.

Ship:
Alpha Hunter/Hirogen Warship.

The slashline of 4/2/3/4 is an interesting one - mainly because of the low hull value and slightly above average evade. when you consider that 4/1/3/3 is the slashline for a named B'rel, it isn't hard to draw comparisons with the Klingon fleet. The difference here is that it has the standard federation action bar (EM/TL/Sc/BS) as opposed to the Cloaker action bar (SE/Cl/TL/EM). This makes it better, since green dice are rightfully notoriously inconsistent, and 2 evade dice with BS conversions works out as only half an evade worse than a 5 dice cloaked evade roll with no quality, and you still have the use of those shields, can use BS as an attacking modifier and have access to scan for those minefield games. In addition, the usual advantage of having a cloaker's action bar, the ability to sensor echo, is countered in the case of the named alpha hunter with the ship's own named ability. Whilst limited to range 1, the ability to do a sensor echo as a free action, makes the Alpha Hunter a very manoeuvrable ship, with many of the advantages of a cloaked ship, whilst suffering few of the disadvantages. Having only 3 hull also gives opportunities to use some interesting in-faction tech, notably Improved Deflector Screens. Overall though, it's an expensive ship given how fragile it is.

Grade: B-

Captains:

Karr is truly one of the best independent faction captains. CS 8 is, in itself, a good starting point, but having 2 Elite Talent slots and a named ability that takes advantage of that high captain skill (Karr is one of few cards in the game with the ability to re-roll dice more than once) make Karr a fixture of independent builds. Effectively, Karr's named ability bumps the Alpha Hunter up to a slash line of 5/2/3/4, which is not to be sniffed at, and being on a 3 hull ship means he could benefit (in cross faction play at least) from Mirror Admiral Worf's additional activation phase attack. 

Grade: A-

Alpha Hirogen is another solid captain: CS6 is not to be sniffed at, he has a talent slot, and the named ability is one of the better named abilities (Converting a blank to a hit is the statistical equivalent of a re-roll on a 4 dice attack) - but what makes the Alpha Hirogen truly fantastic is his non-unique nature. If you fancy putting him on more than one ship, you can! Few 4 point captains are better, in any faction.

Grade: B

Crew:

The only crew in this pack is Turanj, who has some uses but isn't fantastic. Swapping a crew slot for a weapon slot is sometimes useful, but ultimately doesn't seem that worthwhile, particularly with the much better Sakonna in faction. The second part of the card is very situational, and almost forces you to play Turanj on a ship with a generic captain, so that you can make the captain switch at any point. 

Grade: C-

Weapons:

Photon Torpedoes are pretty standard fare, and aren't even of the more useful timed variety.

Grade; D-

Subnucleonic Beam is an interesting card, that allows damage to have the additional effect of disabling crew. Unlike the much more expensive Thaleron Weapon, though, the crew are not discarded and the captain cannot be affected. For 5 points and a disable this card become too situational to use in OP play.

Grade: C

Tech:

Montanium Armor Plating is a much underused card, in the author's opinion. Having this 3 point upgrade on your ship gives you a 75% chance of avoiding an opponent's target lock, thus robbing them of both an action and dice efficiency. Often, people will say that if this is the case then they'll choose a BS action instead, but when you consider that this isn't an option for Borg, Cardassian Galor Class ships, Romulans and Klingons (in the majority of cases) the value of MAP goes up. It goes up further when you consider that it essentially stops people from using Transphasic Torpedoes, Chronoton Torpedoes and other Target Lock requiring secondary weapons. The second effect that MAP has is to allow you to remove a TL from beside your ship at the cost of an Action/disable. This means that, even if you fail the roll, you can remove the target lock in your own activation, should you activate after your opponent. 

Grade: A-

Sensor Network is less useful than MAP, and competes for a tech slot with other in-faction goodies, like Improved Deflector Screens. Dial peeking cards have some utility, and this one is better than most since it allows you to alter your own manoeuvre too, but a good pilot doesn't need them, and even a bad one only needs them situationally.

Grade: C

Elite Talents:

Full reverse is a lovely cheap talent that allows you to swap your own manoeuvre with a 1 or 2 reverse as a white manoeuvre. Whilst only situationally useful, being able to pull a trick like this can really alter the game in your favour if triggered at the right time.

Grade; B

Intercept Course is a little too expensive for what it is, but having a BS action as a free action is useful, and a more reliable use for the card than it's manoeuvre changing ability - which is situational. 

Grade: C+

Stalking mode may be the best card in the entire pack. One of few cards that has a continuous effect upon the entire game, it can be used to lower an opponent's CS and gain an additional attack dice when targeting said ship. Combined with Karr's ability to gain a dice when attacking an opponent with a lower CS, this could boost the attacking power of the Alpha Hunter to 6 dice a turn - nothing to be sniffed at! This is a fantastic hard counter to builds that rely on high CS to alpha strike an opponent, and when deployed to the same ship as Karr, it makes CS 9 captains worried.

Grade: A

So, if I'm building a fleet based on the Alpha Hunter (and faction pure Independent) I might consider something like the following:

Alpha Hunter [Alpha Hunter] (26)

Karr [Alpha Hunter] (5)Full Reverse [Alpha Hunter] (2)Stalking Mode [Alpha Hunter] (5)Improved Deflector Screens [Gornarus] (4)Monotanium Armor Plating [Alpha Hunter] (3)Total (45)

Hirogen Warship [Alpha Hunter] (24)Hirogen [Alpha Hunter] (0)Turanj [Alpha Hunter] (3)Improved Deflector Screens [Gornarus] (4)Monotanium Armor Plating [Alpha Hunter] (3)Total (34)

Hirogen Warship [Alpha Hunter] (24)Alpha Hirogen [Alpha Hunter] (4)Intercept Course [Alpha Hunter] (4)Improved Deflector Screens [Gornarus] (4)Monotanium Armor Plating [Alpha Hunter] (3)Total (39)

Fleet total: 118 with 2 points to use as you feel fit.

As always, I'd be pleased to hear people's thoughts,

I'm still not Picard though.

Support Ships

Many people writing, blogging, podcasting, posting, vlogging etc about Star Trek; Attack Wing tend to focus on producing ships with high PWV and quality. I've noticed it in my own writing. Yet having said that, I often run ships that aren't primarily designed to nuke opponents, ships that provide a benefit to other ships in my fleet, that do something that other ships do not, that help to ensure that my fleet has access to a certain type of action/ability/archetype that the big bruisers in my fleet do not provide: These ships are the much maligned support ships.

Support ships are perhaps even more difficult to produce in a faction pure environment, simply because the best support captains and upgrades often come from different factions. So when I sat down to write this blog I wanted to be clear (for myself as much as anyhting else) what I considered a support ship to be.

1. Support ships cost at most 30 points, but are more likely to hover around the 20 point mark
2. Support ships do something to support the rest of the fleet, by providing buffs to other ships in the fleet, either offensively, defensively or in terms of movement
3. Support ships are not minelayers. Yes, minelayers often fit into the same 20-30 point bracket as support ships, but other than helping the fleet by laying mines, mine layers tend to do nothing else to benefit the fleet as a whole. There is some cross-pollination here, since often a mine-layer will have another upgrade on board to aid the fleet, but I'm really trying to stick just to support at the moment.


So, on with some ideas:

1. Romulans
Possibly the easiest support ship to build...

Romulan Science Vessel (Romulan Science Vessel) [12]
- Donatra 6 (Captain) [4]
- Mendak (Admiral) [4]
Ship Total: 20 SP

Donatra buffs red dice whilst Mendak provides quality for another ship. If you think the RSV is too squishy, then I suggest:

R.I.S. Vo [16]
- Donatra 6 (Captain) [4]
- Mendak (Admiral) [4]
- Interphase Generator [3]
Ship Total: 27 SP

In this case, since you will rarely shoot anyway, you stay cloaked the entire game and use the ship's ability to take a free evade, the ship's normal action is Mendak's BS and you have the interphase generator to ensure that your opponent needs at least two shots at you before you go down in flames

2. Federation
Again, pretty easy to fill the brief here...

Enterprise NX-01 [16]
- Clark Terell 2 (Captain) [1]
- Hayes (Admiral) [3]
- Enhanced Hull Plating [0]
Ship Total: 20 SP

+1 Attack, +1 Defence with Enhanced Hull Plating for the extra survivability.

3. Borg
Much more difficult but in the 50/3 fleet pure meta, a little more interesting than the other fleets...

Scout 255 [24]
- Tactical Drone 2 (Captain) [1]
- Vinculum [5]
Ship Total: 30 SP

Viniculum gives out drone tokens whilst the counter attack tactical drone makes people pay a price for attacking your scout ship. I've used the named version simply because I'm after the extra shield.

4. Klingon
Lots of cards that benefit nearby ships, but not any great synergy between them. I went for this in the end...

I.K.S. Gr'oth [18]
- Gowron 6 (Captain) [4]
- Kurak [3]
Ship Total: 25 SP

Kurak for the survivability, Gowron for the benefits of his own action. Not happy with this one at all, I suppose thematically the Klingons don't lend themselves to support ships!

5. Dominion
Possibly the most difficult faction to build a support ship for from all of the Big 5...

Dominion Starship (Jem'Hadar Attack Ship) [20]
- Keevan 4 (Captain) [2]
- Ikat'Ika [5]
Ship Total: 27 SP

The idea here is to take heat off the other ships in your fleet by getting ships to attack Keevan. Ikat'ika helps to survive that shot (admittedly with little consistency). This ship just flies around annoying people and that is enough, hopefully, to benefit the rest of the fleet.


So just a few ideas from me really, and in working out the different benefits of this kind of ship, it seems obvious to me that both Klingons and Dominion don't really benefit from support ships in the way that Federation and Romulans do. The Borg are a bit of an unknown really...Since the 50/3 ruling and the Nerf, it can be difficult to work out what to run in a Borg Pure Fleet, maybe a support ship like that is the way forward?

Until next time,

I'm not Picard

Why I Love the Enterprise NX-01

A while ago I wrote a post about why I loved the Reklar expansion and I wrote another post where I lamented the lack of internal synergy in the USS Voyager expansion.

The Enterprise Nx-01 expansion is a middling expansion in terms of card utility. It does have some brilliant cards, like Phlox and Enhanced Hull Plating, but in general the ship and cards are not at the level of the Enterprise-E, Hathaway or Delta Flyer (it speaks volumes that two of those expansions are A) Recent and B) unavailable in the UK for another couple of months). All that being said, I am a big fan of the Enterprise NX-01 expansion because it has that thing I always look for in terms of expansions: Internal Synergy.

Voyager is a fantastic ship and there are some good (not great) cards in the expansion, but I rarely see Voyager run at OPs with a majority of its upgrades from its own expansion. The Reklar, on the other hand, is not the most fantastic ship (the Koronak is better) but on the two occasions I've run it at an OP, I've run it with almost all of the cards that came from that very same expansion (Most often I'll use Gul Madred, Gul Lemec and Aft Weapons Array, with Breen Aide or Boheeka as the lone out of expansion upgrade). The NX-01 can be run as a competitive ship using the majority of the cards from its own expansion.

Enterprise NX-01 16sp
"You may equip the Enhanced Hull Plating (tech) upgrade to your ship for free even if it exceeds your ship's restrictions".

As far as stats go, the 2-3-3-0 remains incredibly fragile and nothing to ever invest heavily into points wise, but the ship's ability is essentially worth 4 points so as a support ship, it's a pretty good spaceframe for a support ship. Certainly, until the advent of shuttles, it was the cheapest Federation ship, and can happily be fielded with just a captain and admiral as a support vessel to fill out the last 20sp in a 50/3 meta. NOTE: I suggest the NX-01 piloted by Clark Terrell ably assisted by Admiral Hayes for the attack and defence bonus that would offer, but it doesn't fit with my internal synergy brief, so more on that in a later post!

Captains:
Jonathan Archer, J. Hayes, Admiral Maxwell Forrest
Hayes is the only real dud here, since his ability damages the already weak hull of the NX-01. Archer has fantastic synergy with the ship and Forrest is one of the best admirals currently available in the game. Both work well on an NX-01 build. Archer has synergy with the ship because he adds an extra crew slot, which is fantastically useful for the disable-for-ability upgrades that the ship has in an abundance. Those extra two crew slots are great to put crew on the ship that you can then disable for Archer's own ability, and 2 red dice, suddenly becomes 4 red dice.

Elite Talents:
Tactical Alert
Essentially a 2 point discard that allows you to convert a BS action into a Target Lock (when attacking) or a one-use re-roll on Defence. It is more useful that you might think, primarily for use on offence, and becomes better when you consider the potential meta-altering power of Hathaway Worf.

Tech:
Enhanced Hull Plating
One of the best tech upgrades available in the game, or it was before the may ruling. I still think it is a good upgrade, although not quite the superstar it used to be. If you are getting it for free (which the NX-01 Enterprise itself does) then go for it.

Weapons:
Aft-Phase Cannon, Photonic Torpedoes
Both aren't great, but aft-phase cannon is an interesting way of improving your coverage (and adding an extra attack dice for your rear arc, bizarrely). They stand out in this pack because they give you cheap discard fodder for Malcolm Reed's Abilities...

Crew:
Malcolm Reed, Charles Tucker III, Hoshi Sato, T'Pol, Travis Mayweather, Phlox
6 crew for 4 slots (with Archer) means that some choices have to be made. Reed and Tucher both have interesting abilities in their own right, whilst Phlox is ever so useful for combo-building. Sato is okay, but situational and T'pol is a scan enhancer in a faction of great scan enhancers. Mayweather is cheap, and adds some manoeuvrability to a ship that already has pretty great options in that area.

So, why do I love the NX-01? Let me show you...

Enterprise NX-01 [16]
- Jonathan Archer 5 (Captain) [3]
- - Tactical Alert [2]
- - Phlox [2]
- Maxwell Forrest (Admiral) [3]
- Aft Phase Cannon [2]
- Malcolm Reed [3]
- William T. Riker [5]
- Charles Tucker III [3]
- Seven of Nine [4]
- Enhanced Hull Plating [0]
Ship Total: 43 SP

Fleet Total: 43 SP

On turn one, you move, then disable Riker to grant Archer his action for free. Archer then disables Tucker and Seven with his action. Reed disables to discard Aft-Phase Cannon and then the ship performs a Battle Station Action. That gives you 6 attack dice with quality (either BS or TL depending on whether you want to discard Tactical Alert or not).

The next activation, you disable Phlox to re-enable everything else, then disable Riker to activate Archer's action. Seven disables to give BS then Archer can disable Reed and Tucker (since Reed's utility is significantly reduced by this stage) and take a TL action as the ship's action. 4 dice with fantastic quality.

If you are still alive by this stage, your next turn's ship action is to re-enable Phlox, who almost instantaneously disables to clear the disabled tokens from everyone else. Then you disable seven for a BS, mainly for defence.

The next turn you may wish to use Tucker to heal, or Forrest to get out of arc, or re-enable phlox again. To be honest if you've survived this long, then you are doing pretty well.

I like the expansion because so much of it works together to provide for an interesting, if not an amazingly competitive ship - with only a flavour of out of expansion cards (seven of nine and William 'E' Riker in this example).

So that's it for this time, I'm happy to take comments and criticism, and as always...


I'm not Picard.