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
Tuesday, 3 November 2015
Sunday, 1 November 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, 11 October 2015
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.
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