Back from Leave

So, it's been a while! This time of year means lots of work for me, and that means fewer posts.

I did manage to play in an OP event last weekend, and following an agreement I made last month I was honour bound to run Bajorans.

My first bajoran build was 2 scout ships and 3 interceptors, based on an alpha strike using phaser strike. I did get one chance to play it against a Ferengi build and whilst I did eventually win, it wasn't quite as effective as I hoped it would be on the first pass, so I had a bit of a rethink...

It wasn't long before I settled on the necessity of running DS9 in order to make Bajorans competitive. This was aided by the fact that our venue runs without the 50/3 format, meaning I Could stack upgrades onto DS9.

I also didn't really want to use the flexibility that DS9 offers to take federation upgrades, I wanted every card in the fleet to be Bajoran.

This is what I came up with:

Akorem [Akorem] (18)

Kira Nerys [Akorem] (3)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (3 overridden to 4)

Anara [Interceptor Five] (2)

Total (27)

Ratosha [Ratosha] (18)

Tahna Los [Akorem] (3)

Blockade [Akorem] (5)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (3 overridden to 4)

Total (30)

Deep Space 9 [Deep Space 9] (44)

Hazar [Interceptor Five] (4)

Adm Jaro Essa [Ratosha] (1)

Fleet Captain: Independent (Klingon) [Fleet Captain Resource] (5)

More Than Meets the Eye [Ratosha] (1)

Militia [Interceptor Five] (0)

Day Kannu [Akorem] (1)

Bajoran Militia [Ratosha] (2)

Bajoran Militia [Ratosha] (2)

Li Nalas [Akorem] (1)

Bajoran Militia [Ratosha] (2)

Total (63)

Fleet total: 120

The idea was that DS9 had a high enough captain skill to fire first, and with Kira and Militia, that alpha strike could be 11 dice with quality. Hopefully that would mean a dead ship before my opponent got to fire, and in subsequent turns I had Li Nalas and Day Kannu to keep firing with both Target Lock and Battle Stations. Thana Los was mainly there to hold my elite talent, blockade, which would make that alpha strike a little deadlier.

Game 1: 

Mike, Federation

Mike ran with an Evader Voyager, Torpedo Boat Yaegar and Fed Fighters. He chose not to advance to start with and engagement took a while. When it did I took out the Yaegar and the fighters quickly, evader voyager took much longer to take out, but she went down eventually. 

Result: me 156:0 Mike

Round 2: Mark, Borg/Romulans

Mark always runs interesting builds and this one was 3 scout cubes all with Mag Charges, and a scout vessel with Donatra and a flagship, for 2 extra attack dice.

This round was pretty straight forward, we both flew to the middle of the table and I was able to kill a cube a turn, although I lost both Scout ships in return. At the end of the game the Vo flew straight towards DS9, in an effort to end the game before I got the chance to farm the objective for points.

Result: Me 150:63 Mark

Round 3: Rich, Species 8472

Rich is a great player who has played at nationals in the past. He had taken the courageous decision of running the same fleet for all 3 of the Q series: 3 bioships, 1 named and 1 flagged. 

I wasn't confident in this game that I could kill a Bioship before he got to fire and that meant that DS9 was in severe danger of dying before all three bioship were removed. Unfortunately this ended up being the case, and Rich was able to take down DS9 before I had chance to sufficiently damage the bioships. Rich ended up winning for the price of two of his bioships.

Result: Me 84:142 Rich

Overall Rich ended up winning the event as the only player with 3 wins and I Finished 2nd. Having won Q1 and Q2 I ended up Grand Champion and was lucky enough to walk away with the Q pack and the Mirror D'Deridex!

For the Prophets!

One of the major criticisms of Faction Pure play is that the smaller factions have difficulty keeping up with the larger factions. Including blind boosters and OP prizes, the Federation Faction has access to 20 different expansions, the Borg 12, Dominion 13, Romulans 12 and Klingons 14. Even the Mirror Universe has 8 expansions to choose from, whilst (at time of writing) Ferengi have 2 (with one due soon) Bajorans and Kazon 3 and Vulcans 4. How on earth are these smaller factions meant to compete with the other factions when the other larger factions have so much more to choose from? 

One of the great things about faction pure play is that the character of each race really comes out in their fleet builds, all of the factions have strengths and weaknesses that can’t be mitigated by cross-factioned cards. Obviously the criticism therein is that in a truly competitive environment, people will ignore these weaker factions and they’ll never see play at all, whilst in a mixed faction environment cards like Li Nalas and Quark see play relatively frequently, proving that to get the most out of every expansion, you really should play mixed factions. I get this, and have enjoyed the (relatively few) mixed faction games that I’ve had in the past, but I wanted to try to make Bajorans playable in a Faction Pure environment. 

With Borg in fleet pure suffer from a low –and dropping- choice of captain skills to counter-balance their high durability and firepower, the Klingons do the Alpha Strike really well, but not much else, the Federation have access to the best crew and captains in the game and their sheer number of expansions means that they can tool a fleet to do whatever the commander wants it to do with little difficulty (NB: To start with the federation were plagued by low PWV and ships without much ability to effectively evade. As the number of expansions available to them has increased the number of faction defining weaknesses have become fewer and fewer to the extent that, rightly, some argue that Federation sit proudly atop the faction rankings in pure play) and Romulans have loads of sneeky abilities like interphase generators, cloaked mines and Muon Feedback pulses. Bajorans have only 3 named ships in their particular faction tool box (leaving aside Deep Space 9 for now) and all of them are fragile, low firepower and high agility. 

A brief look at what the Bajorans have to offer:

1. The Akorem

Kira Nerys (CS5), Tahna Los (CS5), Day Kannu, Li Nalas, Blockade, I am Kohn-Ma

2. Interceptor 5

Hazar (CS7), Lenaris Holem (CS3), Anara, Neela, Manoeuvrability, Warp Drive Refit, Phaser Strike, Militia

3. The Ratosha

Day Kannu (CS4), Jaro Essa (CS2), Krim (CS6), More Than Meets the Eye, Provisional Government, Assault Vessel Upgrade, Bajoran Militia

Others: 

Kira Nerys (CS3) (USS Defiant Expansion)

Deep Space 9

Some people have written some really interesting and potentially devastating builds based on Deep Space 9 and Bajoran Militia (5 attack dice basic and then potentially an additional 3 for Bajoran Militia with Kira on another ship to grant that attack a Target Lock and hence some quality) and that is an option available to you, but I decided when I sat down to write this post that I’d wilfully ignore the former-Cardassian space station in favour of looking at what the ships themselves had to offer.

As I said above, the fleet benefits are high maouveability and low cost, which makes me think the way to go maybe a swarm.

Ratosha [Ratosha] (18)

Kira Nerys [Akorem] (3)

More Than Meets the Eye [Ratosha] (1)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (4)

Total (26)

Akorem [Akorem] (18)

Tahna Los [Akorem] (3)

Adm Jaro Essa [Ratosha] (1)

Militia [Interceptor Five] (3)

Blockade [Akorem] (5)

Assault Vessel Upgrade [Ratosha] (4)

Total (34)

Bajoran Interceptor [Interceptor Five] (16)

Bajoran Captain [Interceptor Five] (0)

Phaser Strike [Interceptor Five] (4)

Total (20)

Bajoran Interceptor [Interceptor Five] (16)

Bajoran Captain [Interceptor Five] (0)

Phaser Strike [Interceptor Five] (4)

Total (20)

Interceptor 5 [Interceptor Five] (16)

Bajoran Captain [Interceptor Five] (0)

Phaser Strike [Interceptor Five] (4)

Total (20)

Fleet total: 120

The idea here is to keep the fleet together and trigger Blockade and Kira to allow the whole fleet to take a Target Lock, whilst gaining +1 attack and defence dice. The Interceptors then take the phaser strike action to attack at CS 10 with the benefit of Target Lock and blockade. Kira’s Ratosha gets BS (and Scan if needs be) whilst the Akorem has the TL and Militia. If everything clicks you get the following:

Ratosha – 4 Dice + BS and Scan

Akorem – 6 Dice + BS and TL

1st Generic Interceptor – 4 dice + TL

2nd Generic Interceptor – 4 dice + TL

Interceptor 5 – 4 dice + TL

That’s 22 attack dice with some quality; a potent alpha strike that could potentially cripple the main enemy ship before it has had a chance to fire. Not the best possible build in the world, but certainly not weak!

In the hands of a good pilot, with the right combination of upgrades, the Bajorans can be a competitive fleet, even if they don’t have all the tricks that the big 5 have.

As always, comments are welcome, it’s been an interesting time thinking about how to make Bajorans work.

I’m still not Picard,

D