Tuesday 25 February 2014

Post OP5 Thoughts

I've got a few minutes here to draft an update. I attended at my OP5 yesterday at 401 games in Toronto and as usual had a great time. The guys there are great to play with and everyone is getting along nicely. As you can probably tell from my lack of updates over the last few weeks, I hadn't done too much testing (mainly because my testing partner has a case of the "real lifes") and just brought my usual Engage Build with Chekov in the pilot seat on the Valdore- (UGH).

Of course, without proper testing, I got my deployment all wrong in the last game. Usually when I deploy with the Engage Build against non-independently moving ships, the key is to separate deployment. This is why I didn't take the flagship upgrade, because the bonuses generally apply to ships in formation. The spread deployment forces the opponent to make a decision on where they are going to focus their fire, and then Engage lets me get out of arcs and attack their rear. That's how it's SUPPOSED to work, when I'm not being a goof. I also underestimated my opponent and he played a KILLER game. He had a very interesting build that in my opinion was perfectly situated for bringing down my Engage Build.
1. He used a stacked Gor Portas with an Energy Dissipator, Scotty, Picard and a Flagship. It's not hard to bring down IF you have initiative.
2. 98 points!!!! FUUUUUU... Part of the Engage Build is ensuring Initiative. You need to see where your opponent is going prior to using Engage, so that you can use it to maximum power. It's very difficult to play an Engage Build against an opponent with a higher initiative than you. I've done it to great success on most other occasions, but on this occasion my opponent correctly guessed all of my moves.
3. If the Enterprise gets hit with an Energy Dissipator it's goodbye Enterprise. HOLY MOLY.
The Command Tokens were MVP as usual- saving my ass on more than one occasion. The game I lost came down to movement 100%. Most games come down to movement, but this was very clearly a movement centered games- he made all the right moves, and I made all the wrong ones.

You HAVE to read this article by Clint over at the Metal Bikini:

http://www.themetalbikini.com/2013/02/maneuvering-as-formation-part-1.html

That's part one, and I'm sure you can follow the links for part 2 and 3. I went up against a really tough Dominion list, but my opponent wasn't too familiar with the consequences of tight formation and issuing the same movements. When someone is moving in tight formation ALWAYS get them to measure out the moves. If you're planning on running a tight formation, those articles are essential.
I won 2 games and lost 1, but the loss doesn't put me off the Engage Build. I've got a few tricks in mind for future games. What I'm seeing a my local store is a very varied mix of lists, and a lot of crazy and fun tactics. I also haven't seen another Engage Build pop up yet- maybe it won't!

There's a crazy combo that came up in my discussion with the Tournament Organizer. It involves the following:

Flagship that allows elite Talent, original Weyoun and Conditional Surrender, with a crew member.

From my understanding, you discard the crew member to pop conditional surrender, and then use Weyoun to keep your crew member from being discarded. If it hasn't already been FAQ'd, I anticipate that Conditional Surrender will have a condition placed on it that the crew member must actually be removed from the ship before it works. Something like- Conditional Surrender checks to see if the crew member has been actually removed from the ship prior to activating. I don't think it's a game breaking combo, but it certainly is weird enough that I'd like a FAQ saying that it can't be done. The potential for abuse is not particularly bad at this point, but I don't like what it could potentially do on the Dominion Cruiser coming out, or even the potential for it making a Borg Cube invincible.

So those are my thoughts post-OP5. OP5 itself was not a very good scenario, as it just involved turtle speed play to make sure that you could wipe out the OWPs. Not very exciting or interesting.

18 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. The Conditional Surrender/Weyoun/crew combo has been around since the Attack Ship came out. Not sure it needs errata. The costs of taking it (both points and opportunity) are fairly high, and it really hurts your maneuverability badly since Weyoun will almost always be at skill 1. Makes one ship very hard to kill but does very little to improve offense - the Romulan flag card is maybe the best of the lot for that. If you want a pure-defense point-denial build for trying to eke out tourney wins on timeouts it rocks, but unless you're killing the whole enemy fleet most rounds you'll still lose the tourney.

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    1. Weyoun doesn't have an elite talent so no, it has not been around since Attack Ship came out just since Flagships allowed Weyoun to have an elite talent.

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    2. I think I bought the Attack Ship at the same time flagships hit, didn't remember they weren't concurrent. Everyone here had been proxy-testing with flags from the minute they got spoiled on youtube anyway, so it wasn't like the OP tourney was the start of playtesting weird combos.

      Nice to see they patched the Admiralty cards to one-only.

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  3. yes, the 'real lifes' are terrible lol.

    i liked OP5 scenario, as did most of the people i played with. many of the previous OP's ended with roll-offs, but this one had a lot of action and several games were over before time ran up. i played a variation of rich's suggestion a few weeks ago, and it performed very well. the only time i lost a ship was when a crit snuck through - of course i get warp core breach, and of course the next turn i roll a crit!

    i'm really stoked for OP6. it has come down to me and one other player, and i really want to win that one! new wave is available today at my flgs, so i'll be picking up one of everything on my way home!

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    1. Sadly, the game's died locally, and we couldn't even get enough people to run OP5. Glad someone else is getting some mileage out of that crazy hero ship build. Very hard not to like a big Klingon flagship with Picard, Scotty, and Spock running.

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    2. sorry to hear that! yeah, the two ship hero build was quite something. i play tested a few times and tweaked slightly, it preformed very well. i'd be curious to see what you have cooking for OP6 (assuming you get to play it)...

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    3. I'm out of the game, sold all my stuff off while I could. Think I made a wise choice - the limited Borg Sphere preview makes me think that Attack Wing is going in a very bad direction. 360 degree firing arcs are a terrible idea in a game that should be about careful maneuvering over raw firepower and agility. WizKids fixation on sticking to the cost = (total stats x2) is also very worrisome, it falls apart badly when the numbers become too large (eg attack 6 is a lot better than twice as good as Attack 3).

      Between the drop in popularity locally and grave doubts about balance issues, I got out while I could still make a little money on the game. Still going to keep an eye on the meta and new releases online - but I'm afraid it's going to be a bit like watching a slow-motion train wreck.

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    4. Sorry to hear Rich. I think I'm going to take a break after the last OP event, although I still really enjoy the game and don't think it's too unbalanced ...

      If you were to run a list for OP6, what would it look like? (can't blame a guy for trying!)

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  4. "98 points!!!! FUUUUUU... Part of the Engage Build is ensuring Initiative. You need to see where your opponent is going prior to using Engage, so that you can use it to maximum power"

    To make the opponent move all of his ships first you'd want to not have initiative. With multiple skill 9s the one with initiative moves first. That's why I like that my Romulans are low on the initiative scale. :)

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  5. Wait what? I've got to read that again!

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  6. Ugh, formatting issues won't update properly.

    It looks like we were playing it wrong. I've reviewed the rulebook and where there are multiple ships with the same captain skill, the ship with initiative moves first. HOLY MOLY. Well, chalk that up to not playing for two months. Won't happen again.

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    1. lol, we need to play a few games in March before OP6!

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  7. I frequently play with Engage and/or Uhura and I *HATE* it when I get initiative in the roll-off. :P

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  8. Are there going to be more posts soon? I enjoy the blog and was sad to hit the end!

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  9. Ben! Thanks for reading the ramblings of a person in the throes of an Attack Wing addiction!
    I stopped playing after OP6 (which I didn't win but still got the DS9 model!). That model is languishing in a box until I get a bigger place with some room to display it. I got a bit burned out on writing a daily article and got less interested in the game as the pace of ship release increased. I had also achieved my goal of winning the big DS9.

    I'm writing a board game column at Flockofnerds.com currently. The site is in its infancy, but we're writing more and putting up videos- but nothing about Attack Wing/X-Wing yet.

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    1. Well I enjoyed your write ups. Im kinda new to it all but found your style good to read!

      If you fancy it again why not try weekly or something? Attack wing lacks card summaries and reviews it would good to see more!

      Our only difference is I tend to play faction pure

      Hope you're doing well

      Ben

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