Friday 3 January 2014

More Lists!

For Friday and Saturday of this week, we'll look at some User Lists that were sent in by some individuals over the break, and then we'll resume next week on Monday with the Kronos One review.
The next list is a pretty beefy one from Rich, which I think is about as crazy as a Negh'Var can get:

IKS Negh'var (30)
Klingon Flagship resource (10)
Jean-Luc Picard (7)*
Montgomery Scott (6)*
Mr. Spock (6)*
Hikaru Sulu (4)*
63 points

IKS Maht-h'a (28)
Gul Dukat (6)*
Boheeka (3)*
37 points

100 points total
It's most definitely a rainbow list- take the best of everything and toss it into a list. I haven't taken a look at the Flagship resource yet, or really any resource, so now is probably a good time to take a look.
You get to take one resource in your list. They range from 5 to 10 points, and have been prizes that are given out at the Organized Play events. From my understanding, they are solely for use in Organized Play, so if you're playing a pick-up game with individuals you don't know, ask for permission. I don't think any of this really affects the game, but we're trying to build a community here, so don't be a jerk!
The text of the resource is as follows:

Flagship Cards (10 pts)
(Dominion War Month 4 participation prize)

1) Players receive a set of 4 Flagship Cards (with 2 options on each card) and choose 1 of those options to use during the Tournament. There are 4 Independent options and 1 option for each faction; Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Dominion. If a Federation, Klingon, Romulan or Dominion option is chosen, players must assign a ship of the same Faction as their Flagship. If an Independent option is chosen, players may assign any ship as their Flagship, and pay no Faction penalty.

2) Flagship Cards are oversized cards that are placed beneath your Ship Card. These cards will have additional stats that increase the abilities of your ship (Primary Weapon, Agility, Hull, Shields). In addition, Flagship Cards may add bonus text-base abilities, Actions, and Upgrade Slots to the assigned Ship Card.

3) Players may use the bonus text-based ability in addition to their Ship's normal text-based ability (if applicable) during the Battle.

4) If a ship card does not have the bonus Action in its Action Bar, that ship is not considered to have that Action in it's Action Bar. If a ship card already has the bonus Action in it's Action Bar, that ship may use this Action as a free Action every round.

5) If there is a bonus [Elite Talent] Upgrade Slot on your chosen Flagship option, you may choose an [Elite Talent] Upgrade even if your Captain does not have the [Elite Talent] icon on the Captain Card.

6) Players also receive a special plastic base and pegs that will show which ship is your Flagship at a glance. The color of the base and pegs is black.

Lots of stuff there, but in sum, it's 10 points for a number of upgrades to one ship, and if your ship already has the bonus action, it gets to perform that action for free.

Here is the Klingon Flagship mentioned above:

Klingon

Attack: +1
Agility: +1
Hull: +1
Shields: 0
When attacking, all other friendly Klingon Ships within Range 1-2 of your Flagship may convert 1 blank result into 1 [Hit] result.
Action: Cloak
Upgrades: Crew, Tech

I'm posting up this list because I haven't really thought of the Klingon Flagship for a two ship build, but it makes a lot of sense. Instead of focusing on the ability to affect a number of ships, we're focusing on making one ship VERY good. I get Rich's basic idea here. I think, however, that there are improvements that can be made. I think Scott is not that great in the list. 6 points for two extra attack is not that great, and I think we can find other uses for those points. I'd probably replace him with Alexander- getting free battlestations is always a really nice bonus on a Neg'Var, and it'll free up Picard to give us an Evade or a Target Lock. I like Spock, but the Neg'Var doesn't have Scan as an option, and I'd rather not commit too heavily to using Picard as a scan only. That's 12 points that we've freed up right now. Is Sulu great? Yes. Is he great in this list? I think he is! When the going gets rough, and you're going to face a lot of fire- Sulu will be there as a great action combined with Picard or Alexander's Battlestations.
Battlestations is what is going to keep the Neg'Var alive.
I'd rather play the Maht'ha as a Neg'var. No point change.
So with those extra 12 points, I think we can give at least one of the ships Engage. Boheeka is great with Dukat on the new Neg'Var. That's 8 points left over, but there isn't a whole lot to do with them given that we've filled up a lot of slots. Don't buy weapon upgrades in a list like this. I'd probably give Engage to Dukat's ship in order to keep it out of trouble. The Klingon cruisers have fantastic movement dials that really go well with Engage. That should bring it up to 99 points with Alexander.
Not to say that Rich's list isn't great, I just prefer to run my lists with less action redundancy. The Neg'Var with battlestations is going to tear a hole in almost any ship it encounters. I don't think it needs a lot of help in that department.

2 comments:

  1. It's not even close to a truly loaded flagship build. This would be my build for the "hero ship" concept:

    IKS Negh'var (30)
    Klingon Flagship resource (10)
    Jean-Luc Picard (7)*
    Cheat Death (6)*
    Interphase Generator (4)*
    Interphase Generator (4)*
    Dorsal Weapon Array (4)*
    Montgomery Scott (6)*
    Mr. Spock (6)*
    Hikaru Sulu (4)*
    McCoy or Uhura (4)*
    81 points

    Vo-class (14)
    Donatra (4)
    18 points

    99 points

    Good luck killing that Negh'Var, which is rolling between 6-8 agility dice on every defense roll, can effectively cancel two big volleys per game after the dice are all rolled, and Cheats Death if it does finally go down in flames. In tourney play it's also only got 18 points in other ships, which means the fleet can trade Donatra's ride for almost any one opposing ship and then play keep-away if need be till the clock runs out and you win on points. I had something like that pulled in OP1 and learned how hard it can be to run down an enemy who's actively trying to avoid you.

    Note that I experimented with Alexander in both forms of this build and found him largely useless. You shouldn't be taking damage on the flagship often (about twice per game with the first build in my playtests, and less than once for the full hero build) which renders him fairly pointless. I'd rather use Picard + Spock to maximize the offensive efficiency of Picard's free action, stacking it with Scotty if the odds say eight dice will get a kill or running Sulu instead when facing targets that won't die instantly when shot at. That "small" two-die bonus is a tipping point quite often, and killing 4-5 dice worth of enemy guns before they fire is arguably better defense than even Sulu provides.

    The trump to these sort of builds is the Ferengi EM Pulse, and to a lesser degree the Positron Beam. That's one reason I won't run Engage very often - the EMPs show up in my meta fairly often, sometimes in multiples, and the last thing in the world you want to do when facing them is to put Aux Power tokens on your own ships. That might be one spot Alexander's non-action BS tokens might be the best choice, as well as the Romulan Pilot from the OP3 kit.

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  2. I find that I love these super-builds but I have a hard time with cross-faction/species captains. I'm not trying to be a super nerd, it just irks me.

    That said, I have been using the Strike Force Koraga-Dukat/Kraxon-Martok list. I satiate my nerd rage by telling myself Martok is the changeling ;)

    I suppose I should just get over myself.

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