A Blast from the Past! Wave Zero: IRW Valdore

The next in my series of retrospective reviews goes back to the Star Trek: Nemesis to take a look at the IRW Valdore. The point of these reviews is both to give readers an idea of how effective the old expansions were, but also to see how the effectiveness of certain upgrades changes as time goes on...



Nemesis is not my favourite film, by any stretch of the imagination. The first time I saw it, I was so disappointed that I gave up on Star Trek for years. It wasn't until the original motion picture series came out on Blu Ray that my interest was piqued again. One thing that Nemesis did give us, though, was the Valdore. The Valdore was the first Romulan Battleship to appear in Trek Canon since the D'Deridex. Overshadowed somewhat by the Reman Warbird Scimitar on the same film, let us see what the Valdore has to offer to STAW...

Ship: IRW Valdore/Valdore Class

At 30 SP the Valdore costs the same as the named D'Deridex from the starter set (Aside: I'm planning to do a review of the Starter Set at some point, bear with me), in fact it costs the same as any of the 645 Billion named D'Deridex ships currently in the game. There is, therefore, a meaningful comparison to be made between the Valdore and the other ever-present Romulan Warbird. The named Valdore has a slashline of 4/2/6/3, losing a shield and gaining an attack compared to the named D'Deridex. The Valdore also loses the red full astern manoeuvre of its predecessor in exchange for a red 3 come-about. That's a trade off I'll take willingly. Whilst the Valdore has red 3 hard turns, the D'Deridex has white 3 turns, but the D'Deridex has white 2 banks whilst the Valdore has green 2 banks, which is a huge deal. Having the option of 6 green manoeuvres with the ship's named ability is very useful, especially since the Valdore has that come about. Where the Valdore falls down a bit is that it doesn't have a tech slot. In fact, where it comes to slots in general, it's a little bit on the skinny side (2 weapon, 2 Crew). Romulan ships really need tech slots, so not having a tech slot is a big deal. There are a couple of ways in faction, and a couple of (soon to be retired) resources that get around this though, so it wasn't as big of a deal as it once was. If the Valdore had a single tech slot, I'd happily give this ship an 'A' grade, but as it doesn't and you have to build around this limitation, it'll be a little lower.

Named Grade: B+

Generic Grade: B-

Captains:



Donatra is a staple in most of my Romulan Builds, since she has an ability that you'll use almost every turn, doesn't take an action and offers something to all other ships in the fleet. Captain skill is middling, but not so low that it stops her being useful. With so many ways of improving CS, this is not the limitation it once was, and Donatra pairs up well with Mendak as a support ship pairing. 

Grade: B

Tomalak disappoints me on a number of levels. First, Tomalak was one of the most interesting antagonists on TNG and his CS deserves to be better than a lowly 3. In addition to that, his ability is not something you'll use every turn, essentially meaningless when using secondary weapons, and so much worse than most other captain's abilities. Captain slots are the rarest of all slots, so wasting one on Tomalak seems beyond stupid.

Grade: F

Crew:

A staple of most early Romulan builds, and something that still plays well today, is the Romulan version of the Tactical Officer. Target Lock provides you with 75% attack efficiency, TL and BS provides you with just under 94% efficiency. BS on its own gives 75%. Tactical Officer provides similar efficiency to both TL and BS together, but only at the cost of one action. That's fantastic for both dice efficiency and action economy. There are some drawbacks though: 1. It only works if you have a target lock and you are using that TL to re-roll attack dice. This means that if you are firing a secondary weapon, you don't get to re-roll twice (even plasma torpedoes) and if you are getting a re-roll from somewhere else, you don't get to do it twice. 2. You have to have a target lock to use it, so it can be pretty useless against a permacloak fleet.

Overall though, it's a fantastic card that is in almost every Romulan fleet I write. 

Grade: B+

Weapons:

Photon Torpedoes: YAWN.

Grade: F

Plasma Torpedoes are actually a better bet than Photon Torpedoes because they provide you with some efficiency when you attack with them and they work at range 1. They do stop you from using the Tac Officer, but they offer a boost to PWV for some ships (although not significant enough of a boost on this ship) they work well on the Gal'Gathong, but even then, the Time Token versions are better.

Grade: D-

Talent:

Many people have said that if there was an action on every action bar that allowed you to roll one extra red die, that it would still be worse than TL or BS. This card is an Action/Disable that allows you to roll an extra attack die. It's terrible and for 4 points criminal. I see no reason why you should ever take this talent.

Grade: F

In summary then, buy it for Tac Officer, Donatra and the Named ship itself, but it isn't the powerhouse it once was (I once declared this the best ship in the game). 

Again, I'm not picard.

A Blast from the Past! Wave Zero: Gor Portas

The next in my series of retrospective reviews goes back to the Dominion War to take a look at the Gor Portas. The point of these reviews is both to give readers an idea of how effective the old expansions were, but also to see how the effectiveness of certain upgrades changes as time goes on...

It wasn't really until the season 7 DS9 episode "The Changing Face of Evil" that we really got an idea of what the Breen could do. At the second Battle of Chintoka, the Breen used their energy dampening weapons to devastating effect, destroying the federation alliance fleet and swinging the war in favour of the Dominion. It's a pretty impressive first outing, but does the Gor Portas match up to that billing?

Ship: Gor Portas/Breen Battle Crusier

The named ability of the Gor Portas is an interesting one, meaning you can fire torpedoes and then use your target lock for re-rolls. On a ship with low PWV (3) and no BS action, that's a nice ability to have. At 26 points, the Gor Portas comes in at the same points as the Kraxon, but loses 1 red dice in favour of one green dice, for a slashline of 3/2/4/4. This in itself is not a worthwhile trade off, but the manoeuvre dial is significantly improved when compared to the Galor class (white hard 2 turns and a red come about compared to red 2 and 3 turns and no come about). The slots available to the named Gor Portas are 1 crew and a mighty 4 weapons. That's right, 4. Not having any tech slots is a problem, as is only 1 crew slot (as an aside, I'd currently ranks slots: Crew>Tech>Weapon). I'd happily swap 2 of the weapon slots for one each of crew and tech and the Kraxon's 1 crew, 2 tech, 1 weapon seems like a better deal. The Kraxon also benefits from a 180 front arc, whereas the Gor Portas only has a 90. As you can probably already tell, I'm comparing this expansion heavily with the Cardassian expansion from the same wave, which seems to make sense to me since they come in at the same points cost at the same time. In terms of firing arc, slots and stats, the Kraxon wins, yet the Gor Portas is better in terms of dial and named ability. It's a close run contest, but I think overall that the Kraxon is better.

Grade: C+

Captains:
Sar is a simple and cheap captain whose ability you can make use of every turn. Whilst green dice have never been the be all and end all of STAW, having an extra one can be useful and at 1 point, he isn't too much of an investment for that.

Grade: C+

Thot Gor seems perfect for the Gor Portas, his -1 cost to weapons works best on a ship with 4 weapon slots! Trouble is that there are many cost reducers in the game, so he isn't worth giving up a captain slot for that cost reduction. His captain skill is middling and he has no ET slot, so 4 points seems a lot to pay for him when compared to other options in faction. I'm not a fan.

Grade: D+

Crew:

Breen aide is one of my favourite cards in the game, allowing a passive conversion of 1 blank to a hit when you have a scan token. The drawback of this card is that you have to scan in order to activate him, and there always seems to be a better action than scan. I'd advise that you TL one turn, then scan subsequently, which is especially easy given the Gor Portas' named ability. Still, at 2 points and generic, this is a mighty fine card.

Grade: B-

Weapons:

Unlike most torpedoes the Breen Photon Torpedo can't be so readily overlooked. On the Gor Portas, the problem of Torpedo quality is somewhat removed, and the range restrictions on this torpedo (1-3) are better than the range restrictions on most torpedoes (2-3). Coupled with Thot Gor and the 4 weapon slots that the Gor Portas has, the action economy issues are somewhat removed, although I really wish that there was a time token version of this particular torpedo, since that would make it even better. Fingers crossed that a third breen ship gets released with time token dominion range 1-3 torpedoes. This ship was clearly designed as a torpedo boat, and the synergies that exist between these torpedoes, the Gor Portas and Thot Gor is clear. It's a tremendous shame that even with all this considered, the torpedoes aren't the best choice available.

Grade: D-

The key card in this pack is the Energy Dissipator, and so it's worth quoting the card text in full:

"ATTACK: Disable this card to perform this attack, If this attack hits, the target suffers no damage, receives 1 energy dampening token, and you may immediately attack with another weapons. This upgrade costs +5 Squadron Points for any non-Breen Ship"

And as such it is worth working out what an Energy Dampening Token (EDT) does too:

"As soon as the ship receives the EDT, disable all of its remaining shields and remove its cloak token, if any. While the ship has the EDT, it cannot attack or raise its shields.

During the planning phase the owner does not assign a manoeuvre dial to this ship.

During the activation phase the owner moves the ship as if it were assigned a White Straight 1 manouevre, removes all EDTs from this ship it may now perform actions and attack as normal"

That's an absolute wall of text to get through before you work out how this thing works, so to summarise, if your 3 dice attack hits, you get another attack for free, and the target ship loses its shields, until the end of the NEXT TURN (since disabled shields go back up in the end phase). The catch is that you rely on this initial attack hitting. In the age of cloakers (that preceded the age of Borg that preceded the current game age that we are now in (the 3rd Age?)) this was a difficult hit to land. However, now that evade dice are generally lower, this is a potentially brilliant ability. On the Gor Portas itself, you can follow up the EDT with torpedoes against the opponent's hull and get quality with the Target Lock that doesn't need to be removed thanks to the ship's named ability. The thought and synergy that went into that combination is admirable - the points cost to achieve it? Not so great.

The energy dissapator is probably best used, despite the exorbitant cost of running it on anything other than a breen ship, on something with a much higher PWV than the Breen Battle Cruiser. On the Dominion Battleship, Dominion Battle Cruiser or the Cardassian Keldon class, this is a high quality weapon. On the Breen ship, it is just okay.

Grade: B-

So there you have it - a bit of a mixed bag overall. The only card from this pack that sees regular use for me is Breen Aide, followed by Sar and the ED. Together with the Kraxon and lack of ship in the starter, the Dominion were certainly playing behind the other factions to start with. I'd go as far as saying that it wasn't until wave 2 that they began to achieve some parity, and the prevalence of cloaking in the early metagame made this ship in particular weak. As for its place in the game now - the ED should be used more than it is, although I'm still waiting for the completitive scene to shake itself down following the Borg Nerf and the new anti-fighter tech, so I'm not sure what is the number 1 build at the moment (I think it might be Federation Shield Spam, but I'm not sure); Sar and Breen Aide are still useful, but overall this is not a pack that has grown in utility over time.

Now, if wizkids would give me some dominion range 1-3 5 dice photon torpedoes with time tokens, then I'd be a happy not Picard.

The Rise and Fall of the Borg

Sphere 4270 changed the game perhaps more than any other expansion. The Borg arrived on the scene with high PWV, great manoeuvrability and fantastic durability. In cross faction play, they could easily get access to the BS action (that wasn't on their action bar) and action economy for 6 red dice with both TL and BS every turn. Things only got better for the Borg for the next few releases: The Tactical Cube dreadnought was the star of the dreadnought era, with Weyoun 6 and Varel/Conditional Surrender for attack cancellation that could, before the "may" ruling be used multiple times per turn with cards like Li Nalas. The Queen Diamond came out just before the 50/3 ruling, but people were ready planning unkillable ships with Koss/Dispersion Field, Li Nalas, Weyoun, Varel and Conditional Surrender.

The first thing that really stopped the irrepressible rise of the Borg was the aforementioned 'may' ruling. Well, I say stopped, when I really mean that it slowed it down. The may ruling, and the 50/3 ruling combined killed off the Borg dreadnought as a strategy in official rules play, but it did not really slow the Borg down all that much. Borg Missile and Tactical Drone 4270 still made the Borg dangerous in even faction pure environments, and when the Borg Missile was errata'd to be 1 APT rather than 1 APT per hit, MGCs ably took their place. Even as late as the US nationals, the Borg were the faction to beat in mixed play (and pretty good in some variety of purity).

The next step in the fall of the Borg was the "Borg Nerf" forcing their ships to perform the spin manoeuvre after movement rather than before and limiting primary weapons fire to range 2. Thematically, the first change makes sense: The Borg were always depicted on screen as a slow and relentless enemy, so the balletic antics of Borg ships in the game always seemed a little odd. The second change only makes sense in terms of game balance - No matter how good a pilot you were, you could never be in a position where you could shoot the Borg and they couldn't shoot you. Both of the changes look good on paper, either thematically or in terms of balance, but both together were perhaps too much of a heavy handed change. Personally, I'd have preferred the change to primary weapon range, but not the change to movement. Both changes contradict the rules on the cards in the ship packs themselves (although this may have changed - if anyone has bought a cube, sphere or diamond recently, and the additional rules cards in the packs have changed, then please let me know) but the change to the spin manoeuvre is more difficult to explain that the change to PWV range, and I like the change to PWV range, since it rewards good piloting. Having played 6 months (I think) with the rules changes I now think that the combination of both changes was too much.

The final thing that really put the nail in the Borg coffin for me was the increasing number of anti-borg upgrades that you can take. It started as early as the first Collective OP event, with Elizabeth Shelby (who gains a green die and a heap of re-rolls when facing Borg) but lately it has gotten much worse. The Thunderchild expansion gave us Hayes (+2 instead of +1 when attacking Borg) and Persistence (4 instead of 2 dice when targeting Borg) but the real tipping point was Unimatrix Shielding (2 extra shields, but when defending against Borg, you can disable these shields to cancel a hit). I can't see many reasons not to take Unimatrix Shielding for Fed (2 extra shields are always useful) and given the borg's relative lack of dice efficiency (No BS natively) they really hurt the borg player's ability to damage federation ships.

We played a 1 ship no points limit game to celebrate Christmas last weekend, and there were 3 federation ships and 2 borg ships. In game 1 (we played the game twice) the Borg ships were the first and second ships to go down. In game 2, they went down second and third. Having played as one of the borg ships in the second game, the abundance of monotanium armour plating and unimatrix shielding made the borg's damage negligible. That particular card combination (Unimatrix Shielding and Monotanium Armour Plating) is anathema to the borg. It robs you of quality and essentially reduces the damage you do by 2 each turn (for those watching at home, Hathaway Worf does similar things).

Don't get me wrong, I think it is good that there are cards specifically designed to work differently against different factions, and the Borg were massively overpowered at one point, but the combination of the 'Nerf', 50/3 standard and these new upgrades make the borg almost unplayable now.

Or do they...

The Borg are certainly not the powerhouse that they once were, but my thesis is this: The Borg are now a finesse fleet, that are forced into playing more in character now than they ever were before.

As I've written above, the Borg can't rely on Target Lock for efficiency any more, which renders cards like the extra-action Borg queen somewhat less effective than she was. As I'm only too fond of reminding people though, there are other ways to get re-rolls on attack dice. In the case of the borg, tactical drone 4270 allows a re-roll at the cost of a drone token. This means that cards like Hathaway Worf and Monotanium Armour can't stop you from taking that re-roll. The drone token cost is annoying and limiting, but being able to add quality to dice without needing a Target Lock is a great ability with so many cards around that limit the effectiveness of Target Lock. With protocol about to become the go-to resource for many non-OXP venues, this means that you can spend your action on other things, like scan. The ability of the QVP allows you to spend a scan token from beside your ship to increase the number of attack dice you roll, so a doubled up scan token (thanks to protocol) can be especially useful on the QVP, as it both adds attack dice and limits defence dice.

In universe, the Borg rely quite heavily on assimilation to weaken their enemies, and with actions now free for cards like second of five and BATS, the power of ganking cannot be underestimated. With Unimatrix Shielding such a big issue for the Borg, using BATS or similar to get rid of it before you fire seems like a decent tactic to ensure that your hits don't get cancelled.

Tactical Cube 001 came with a Borg Faction version of Data who might just be the key to ensuring that opponents don't get any dice quality either. Use Data to disable the likes of Picard 9 and Captain Spock, and into the bargain you get a free scan token. Then use Tactical Drone 4270 to re-roll those attack dice, that can be boosted by the QVP. Seems both effective and in keeping with the Borg in universe.

A card that still carries with it a great deal of weight is Magnetometric Guided Charge. Permacloak builds or federation defence stacking builds can be seriously hampered by the liberal application of MGCs, and it also gives you back range 3. Sure, at 5 points it isn't cheap, but 360 range 3 attacks make the most of those borg firing arcs.

Whilst the movement of borg isn't what it once was, having the ability to fire in any direction makes it tactically astute to get behind your opponent at the first opportunity in order to make their life difficult. The Borg player doesn't need to turn around to fire their weapons whereas your opponent either does, or has to use secondary weapons with reduced quality to do so. The federation dorsal phaser array is an issue here, but the answer is simple: Just steal it, discard it or disable it.

To summarise then:

1. 50/3 hurts the borg due to their high cost
2. Anti-Borg upgrades rob you of attack strength and dice quality
3. The 'Nerf'' stops you from Manouevring quite as effectively and stops you firing at range 3.

but, you can do some things about this:
a. Ganking can get rid of that anti-borg tech, and no faction does it better than borg
b. There are other ways to get dice quality for borg, that don't rely on Target Lock
c. Borg still have some ships (QVP) and upgrades (MGCs) that allow you to work well within this restrictive environment.

Don't give up on the Borg just yet, just don't be too disappointed when then aren't as point and click as they once were.


Picard knew how to beat the borg, and how to command the borg - but i'm not Picard.