Geordi LaForge- The beginning of something special

Butterflies in the Sky... Geordi flies twice as high!!!

I wanted to take an opportunity today to focus on a crew upgrade that doesn't get a lot of love. So far, I've never seen Geordi used in any build at all. Maybe there's a reason, or maybe everyone just has a thing against the blind.

Geordi LaForge costs 4 pts and does the following:

If your ship has a [SCAN] Token beside it, you may force one ship you attacked this round to re-roll one defense die of your choice.

I recently posted up an article on Spock. Geordi LaForge is an interesting character, in the same vein as Spock. Both characters' abilities are passive and rely upon Scan. For one point more, Spock allows you to affect your entire attack roll (depending upon the number of battlestations). Geordi, on the other hand, is a primarily defensive ability. 

Spock is the upgrade that I think is immediately understandable. Spock is a twofold improvement on a base attack. He reduced the defender's dice by 1, AND turns the attack battlestations rolls into hits. Your attack is made into something very efficient with Spock on your ship. You get two actions for the price of one when utilizing Spock.

On the other hand, LaForge takes a scan token, and turns it into a reroll of one defense die. For the most part, you're only going to ever attack one ship per turn, so the restriction is mostly irrelevant. For one point less than Spock, you can maybe jam through a crit/hit onto the opposing player's ship. The best part about LaForge, is that your opponent has already been forced to roll one less defence dice and now has to reroll one of his evades. LaForge's ability is less easily understood than Spocks. LaForge does something that is not really connected with another action or upgrade in the game. As such, it's hard to value LaForge.  

The way I see it, I still want Spock on my ship instead of LaForge, although I'd need someone to crunch the numbers. Spock has the potential to affect more dice than LaForge. On my Enterprise D, I need every shot to count against a Klingon Fleet. I need the opposing commander to start sweating when he sees his hull points dropping and start making mistakes. LaForge doesn't make your attack roll any better, he just makes the defence roll worse. In some cases, that's enough, but I need my 360 arc to do as close to max damage as possible every turn.

For one point more, the psychological threat of Spock is bigger than LaForge. I see the potential rewards of Spock to be significantly higher than the rewards of LaForge. 

If someone has crunched the numbers on this, I'd be happy to discuss the matter, but I still see Spock as having a bigger impact on an individual game than LaForge would, but this probably merits some further testing. 

Ultimately, I want Spock on my Enterprise D. I'd consider putting LaForge on another ship, as time goes on, but at this point, I don't see him fitting in nicely anywhere else. Perhaps he'd work well on a Defiant captained by Picard, but I'd still rather have Sulu boosting me up to 4 defence dice. 

LaForge is one of those cards that adds a nice ability, but is outclassed by other upgrades. He will shine best against cloaked ships (since they have so few ways of mitigating defence rolls), but Spock already shines against cloaked ships due to the volume of possible battlestation rolls. A Target Locked, Scanned Spock shot from the Enterprise D is going to be very close to 5 hits. A Target Locked, Scanned LaForge may be less hits, but has a higher possibility of making one of those hits count. I'd still rather have Spock, but LaForge adds something to the mix that is interesting and will likely take your opponent off guard. Take him for a spin and let me know how he works for you. This is really something that needs to be analyzed further.

The Warbird- IRW Khazara

An Idea of the scale of the Warbird

So today I'm going to conclude the reviews of the first three ships released with the starter package. We can then move on to reviewing a few of the more interesting upgrades that come along with the starter set, and then start on the expansions. There are plenty of things to discuss in Attack Wing, and the release schedule pretty much ensures that we won't run out of things to talk about for a long time. There are also the Organized Play events to discuss, so I don't plan on running out of topics in the near future. If you're keeping up with me every day, thanks a lot. Leave a comment, tell your friends etc.,

Okay, the Romulan Warbird. Originally intended to be a ship that would dwarf the USS Enterprise D, in both weapons and size, the Warbird does neither of those on the field of play. Let's take a look at the stats:

Weapons: 3

Agility: 2

Hull: 6

Shields: (3)4

If you initiate and attack while cloaked add +1 attack die. 

Evasive Maneuvers, Target Lock, Cloak and Sensor Echo

1 Tech, 1 Weapon, 3 Crew

30 pts Named, 28 pts Unnamed

The attack value is weak, the agility is great (2 is always better than 1!), the Hull is IMPRESSIVE and the shields are just there to make sure that you can keep your cloak up. 

The Maneuver Dial on this thing is VERY impressive. It's the most maneuverable ship in the base set. There is no come about, but that is offset by the white Turn 2 and Turn 3. It's a very forgiving ship for a new player, and has a nifty backwards red, which you should only be using when it's very obvious what your opponent is going to do on the next turn, and you can get a good firing arc on them. Don't use the backwards 2 just to be tricky- use it to deliver the final blow on a crippled ship. 

Is the named upgrade worth the 2 pts? Well, let's take a look. As I've said before, and is very apparent, each point in a ship's profile is worth 2 pts. Weapons 3 is worth 6 pts. The Unnamed ship has 14 pts across the various categories, and costs the player 28 pts to include on their ship. 

Now, take a look at the named ship. It has the extra shield point which is worth 2 pts. That brings it up to 30 pts. The special ability adds one attack dice if you are cloaked when you attack. Like I said with the Vorcha, you always want to be cloaked. You have no other way, aside from evasive maneuvers, to mitigate incoming attacks. There's even more incentive on the Khazara to be cloaked, since it's essentially like getting a 32 pt ship for 30 pts. If you're able to keep your cloak up every turn and fire every turn, you're going to get the full value of this ship. It will be like you're running a 102 pt list, and if you're like me, the efficiency of your 100pt list will already be pretty high. 

Lots of people prefer the Valdore to the Khazara because of the extra attack die built into the cost of the ship- it's consistent. Every time I look at the D'Deridex, I like it a bit more. The tech slot allows you to take the newly released, and very controversial, cloaked mines, as well as other interesting upgrades. This would be a great ship to put Captain Valdore on. I'll do a longer write up on Romulans as the weeks go on, but I'm recommending that you take another look at the D'Deridex- Galaxy class price with Miranda Class Maneuverability!

Spock- The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems

Spock Scanning Spock

So today is a bit of a conclusion in my brief and unnamed series on equipping the Enterprise-D. I've looked at Picard, the Enterprise and Sulu, and now I want to look at one of the last pieces of the puzzle, albeit the most optional one.

Spock is, in my opinion, one of the absolute best 5 pt upgrades in the entire game. He will NOT work on every ship and, in fact, probably only works on one.

Spock works as follows: If your ship has a (Scan) Token beside it when you attack, you may convert all your (Battle Stations) results into (Hit) results. 

You get all that for 5 pts.

First of all, the temptation will be to pair up Spock and Kirk. That's a really thematic and interesting thing to do, but most of the time you'll just be wasting one of the two's ability. See, Spock and Kirk are not very synergistic. Kirk is only ever going to have one action on his ship (at this point in the game! Maybe a second action with McCoy, but even that's not a good option). Kirk wants to be equipped with expensive pilot upgrades that surprise your opponent. Spock, on the other hand, wants you to scan every turn. He's a science officer, and wants to know what's out there in the abyss. Kirk wants to surprise you with tactics and innovation, Spock wants you to take a cautious road, and will reward you with efficiency.

Spock is what every good upgrade is- PASSIVE. Look at that card. It requires no activation, no action, nothing from you but scanning. Normally, I don't scan. I'm sure there's a math hero out there who will show that scanning is actually not that bad, but unless the opposing ship has 1 agility and I need it to die THIS TURN, I'd rather Cloak/Battlestations/Evade in that order, adjusted for situation. Scan is very situation. With Spock, scan becomes your number one pick. You don't want a 5pt upgrade sitting around doing nothing. If you're paying 5 pts for an upgrade, you want it active each and every turn. If you're going to take Spock, you need a ship that will benefit from his presence, and won't need to do other things with its action, outside of critical dire moments.

Let's look at the basic Enterprise-D build.

Enterprise D

Captain Picard

Hikaru Sulu

That ship has great defensive capabilities- half a romulan cloak with dice manipulation. You're going to want to Sulu up every single turn. This ship is going to survive based on your ability to keep it out of firing arcs and Sulu's excellent pilot skills.

But what about the ship's offensive capabilities? if you're outside of the other ship's arc, chances are that you are not facing it head on (if you are, more power to you, but the D is a COW of a ship). You need to make every single hit count, because you need to bring those cloaks DOWN. On the Enterprise D, Spock fulfills two roles quite nicely. Firstly, he reduces the effectiveness of the opposing ships cloak; you're going to scan anyway, and scanning is great against cloaked ships, mitigating their defensive capabilities, which are already non-manipulable in most cases. Secondly, he gives you a battlestations action. He allows you to offensively take both scan and battlestations.

Adding spock to your Enterprise D, allows you to take mini cloak with mini defensive battlestations, offensive battlestations, and scan, each and every turn. That makes the ship not only one of the most expensive, but much more effective in offensive output than almost any other ship in the game. The Klingons got NOTHING on the Enterprise D with Spock.

Spock won't work on every ship. Heck, Spock won't work with every Captain. But, in the right setting, Spock is one of the most efficient machines in the game. He won't outright win you games, but if you're getting to the point where you can maneuver your ship like a pro, Spock is going to give you a devastating edge on your federation ships.

The Klingon Vorcha- Ship Review #2

The Klingon Beatstick

Alright, so let's take a look at the Vor'Cha.

Vorcha Class
Attack- 5
Agility- 1
Hull- 5
Shield- 3
Special- Any ship attacking you at Range 1 rolls 1 less attack die
Actions- Evasive Maneuvers, Target Lock, Cloak, Sensor Echo
Upgrade Bar- 1Tech, 1Weapon, 2Crew
Pts- 28/26

First things first. I'm going to review the ships in their order of release, so bear with me while we work through the initial game.

What should strike you immediately, is the attack 5. This thing can dish out the beats HARD. Sure, if it's not cloaked it's a sitting duck, but you should be cloaking at every opportunity. The Hull is robust and as strong as the Enterprise D. The shields are low, but shields on this thing are there to keep the cloak up, or as a last resort when you're low on hull points. This thing won't last very long without its cloak.

So you want to be able to keep the cloak up every turn so that you can get your +4 defence dice. Fair enough. You've already got your actions taken care of. My argument against a lot of upgrades on the Vorcha is going to be that you have to be able to cloak whenever possible. See, when confronted with a lot of choices, there are a lot of opportunities for mistakes. Should I activate Drex, should I target lock, should I use my Gowron? No. First and foremost- you should cloak. Are you cloaked? If not, you're doing it wrong.

Should you take weapon upgrades? No. My goodness, don't do that. Look at the attack on this thing. Every heavy weapon upgrade brings you to where you already are. Leave the weapon upgrades at home. This thing is threatening enough as it is.

Should you take the named upgrade? I'm a bit torn on this one. To be honest, I run my Vorcha's nameless. In the early turns, a good opponent will attack other ships instead of your Vorcha. In the later turns, if your opponent is attacking your Named Vorcha, you've probably lost. It's 2 pts that affects your opponent's strategy, so if you feel like you need your Vorcha to survive at another ship's expense, add it on. So far, I've wanted those points elsewhere.

Who should captain your Vorcha? This will depend. I'll get into Klingon Captains in a few posts, but so far, I've found Gowron or Martok to be great Captains for the Vorcha. Klingon Captains are VERY deep right now. Take a look and we'll get back to this topic in the future.

Crew? Is Drex on your Neg'Var? No? Then toss him on your Vorcha.

So far, I've been running nameless Vorcha's captained by Gowron in my lists. The thing about the Vorcha is that it's good on its own. It doesn't need upgrades. My list building philosophy is that you want to minimize the opportunities for errors. There are going to be ENOUGH errors in the movement phase. You also want your ships to be efficient- I generally want to be able to use every point I spend, every single turn. Most of the crew members requiring activation will not be used, as you'll be trying to keep your cloak up. Don't bog this thing down in crew upgrades. Don't take weapon upgrades either.

The Vorcha is a capable ship, with a fantastic movement dial, that can be anywhere it needs to be on any given turn. Keep it cheap and keep it simple and you'll find that it'll punch above it's weight.

Deep Space Nine- Sunday Extras

It'll always be Tarok Nor to me...

So on Sundays, I'm going to take a look at some of the odder aspects of the game, some of the stuff you won't usually see on the field of battle. Deep Space Nine was the first OP Event prize. It came with two cards, representing DS9 and Nor Class Space Stations. It also came with a big DS9 token, about a foot in diameter. Talk about HUGE!

Aside- Anyone ever wonder how on earth Ore processing facilities were able to fit into the station? Look at that picture of the defiant there. The station was big, but not ORE PROCESSING big!

So, DS9 has the following stats

Attack: 5
Agility: 0
Hull: 8
Shields: 8
 Actions: Target Lock, Scan, Battlestations
Upgrades: 3 weapons, 3 Crew
When firing any torpedoes, do not disable the torpedoes
44 pts

There are three pylons, each with a 90 degree firing arc at range 1-3. The main body has a 360 degree arc, at range 1-2.

If you're playing a game with DS9, I recommend playing at 200+ pts. It shouldn't take anyone with reasonable people and problem solving skills much hassle to figure out initiatives in a bigger game. I've toyed around with whether DS9 should be able to move a straight one around its axis. I haven't made up my mind yet.

Running this thing, you're going to want to equip it with at least some torpedoes. DONT put more than one set of torpedoes on it. Quantums are probably your best bet, because why not pay the most for the best stuff if you're running a big game?

Captain and Crew are next. DS9 should have Sisko on it... but Sisko's not that great for the task. You want DS9 to be a big, buffing, support ship. So, let's look at some other captains for the station. I'm going to want to Target Lock as often as possible to take advantage of my torpedoes, so why don't we look at captains with passive abilities.

I say, why not give Kirk a try?

Captain Kirk's main ability, besides wooing the ladies, is that he has two pilot skills, and if they're federation based, he gets to hide what they are. In this case, we want to tool up Kirk for some tricks.

How about Corbomite Maneuver as your first pick? Not bad right? They'll be flying right at the station, won't be able to attack it, and will have to figure out how they're going to avoid the station next round, while your backup ships are closing in. They probably won't see it coming either. With Kirk, you'll be using your actions at the end of the movement phase and if they are out of range, you don't have to use it! They will also probably try to fly outside of the station's pylons. If you activate this at the right time, you'll ensure that they have to adjust their plans, and maybe get in range of the pylons.

Second pilot upgrade? Once More Unto the Breach (You don't have any agility anyway).

Should you bring along some crew? Maybe a Tactical Officer, or if you want to keep it Federation pure, take Insurance Worf (Base set Worf).Otherwise, I'd be tempted to take Defiant Miles O'Brien, to charge up the shields while your backup ships go toe to toe with the invaders.

Let me know how you run your DS9!

The Two Worfs

THERE ARE THREE.... WORFS!!!

Alright. So right now there are two Worfs. What do they do?

The base set Worf costs 3 pts, and is disabled when attacking to reroll all attacks. Essentially, what you want to do is roll your attack dice, and if you whif, or roll only one hit, reroll the whole thing.

The Defiant Worf costs 3 pts and eats up an action to target a ship at range 1 to cause it to roll 2 less attack dice this turn. You can do this every turn, and as I read it, can target any ship at range 1, 360 degrees around your ship.

So which Worf is the real Worf, and which Worf is going to the Bat'Leth Tournament in a parallel universe?

Well, to be honest, on paper, Defiant Worf seems like a decent upgrade for a support ship, and base set Worf seems like an okay upgrade on your shooty federation ship. So, you gotta pick the Worf for the job. Are you tooling out a ship to take a lot of damage? You probably want Defiant Worf. Are you tooling out your ship to dish out a lot of damage? You probably want base set Worf.

I'm not really impressed with Worf in any incarnation right now. Defiant Worf will be best used on a ship that already has access to multiple actions, but why would you pick him over another upgrade like, say Sulu or even Data? Maybe you're looking to create a support ship like a Defiant, with Sisko a cloaking device, and Worf, making sure that key opponent ships are kept at bay. I don't like it as a strategy, but no one will see it coming, and you can use the maneuverability of small ships to mess around with your opponent's plan.

Ultimately, I think we'll still see base set Worf more than Defiant Worf, mainly because base set Worf is easier to understand. If you're building for a big ship, base set Worf is a decent upgrade and doesn't take up an action. He can be saved for a critical moment when you absolutely need to have all your attack dice count. Base set Worf is insurance, and Defiant Worf adds disruption. Decide which one you need, and build accordingly.

Data Vs. Sulu: A Critical Review

TLDR: Sulu is amazeballs

I think it should be pretty clear who I think is the winner here, but let's delve into these fantastic defensive upgrades.

Data- Action: Place 2 {EVASION] Tokens beside your ship and reduce our total attack dice by 2 this round. You cannot perform an [EVASION] Action this round, even as a free Action. 

Sulu- ACTION: Add 2 to your Agility for the rest of this round. Each time you defend this round, you may convert 1 (Battle Stations) result into a (Evade) result. 

Both are three pt federation crew members. 

There are a few things you want to consider when adding crew members:

1. Is the crew member mainly passive, or do they require an action to activate?

2. If they require an activation, is it better than one of your stock actions i.e. is it worth paying X points to give up your regular action to use this upgrade?

Number 2 gets to the heart of the upgrade issue. Most of the time, activation upgrades require you to forgo your action. Unless you want to jam Picard or Martok into every single build, you're going to have to ask yourself this question in every instance where you're thinking of adding a crew member. 

When asking the question in relation to Data and Sulu, your answer will vary, but it will more than 50% of the time be yes if you need the ship to stick around, and it needs a defensive boost. 

When reviewing the cards, it should immediately spring to mind that the designers thought that Data was a bit too good for what he did. Data breaks two of the fundamental rules of the game:

1. You can't perform more than one action per turn; and

2. You can't perform the same action twice per turn;

Data is therefore a very interesting card. His ability comes with drawbacks, in the form of 2 less attack dice. Data isn't an upgrade you want to use every turn, and is most useful in a situation where you aren't going to be attacking this turn. 

Sulu, on the other hand, has no drawbacks. Unlike Riker and Counter attack, both of which only can be used once per turn in response to one attack, Sulu can be used against every incoming attack because he boosts your passive agility for the turn. Furthermore, you get the added benefit of getting to turn a battlestations into an Evade. Essentially, you get half of a cloak, plus dice manipulation.

Data, on the other hand, gives you two evades, but they are only good against two hits. Suppose you have two Enterprise D's, both captained by Picard, one with Data and one with Sulu. Both are facing down more than one Klingon attacker. Data is going to cancel out two attacks, and get 1 agility dice for every attacker that fires on him. Assuming each Klingon ship is going to hit you for 5 dice, it's 1 dice for every ship, +2 evade tokens. Sulu, on the other hand, gets 3 dice for every attacking ship, and a mini battlestations during every attack. Oh, AND Picard can use his action to get another evasive maneuvers token. 

In the scenario above, Sulu is way better than Data. The scenario above, btw, is the scenario that every Federation Commander is afraid of right now. 

IMO, Sulu is a better choice over Data at this point in the game. For 3 pts, no drawbacks and the issues raised above, Sulu is a better buy.

I have no idea why Data has a downside and Sulu does not, especially given how close in time they were released/developed. Sulu is my first choice for defensive upgrade. The first time your opponent runs into him, he'll do a double take. It's that good. 

I'd love to hear from the individuals who thing that Data is better than Sulu. Send me your thoughts!

ACTIONS!

ACTION!

It's still early days for the blog, so if you're following, keep with me. I have plenty of articles already in the queue. I plan on updating once per day.

So I figured I would get a bit more basic than some of my previous posts. Let's talk about the actions in the game.

For those of you familiar with X-wing, here's a quick guide to the actions that are exactly the same, with brief commentary on their differences, if any:

Evade = Evasive Maneuvers: Exactly the same. You get a token that allows you to add one evade result to your dice rolls. 

Target Lock = Target Lock: Exactly the same, with the caveat that in Attack Wing, you cannot Target Lock a ship that started the turn with a Cloak Token. 

Barrel Roll = Sensor Echo: Exactly the same, except that only cloaked ships may perform the Sensor Echo. 

Focus = Battlestations: Change eyes to either evades or hits, change battlestations to either evades or hits. 

Sensors= Something new for Attack Wing. If you have a scan token, your opponent rolls one less defence die than they normally would. This is actually a very underused but great action.

Cloak= While Sensors are new to Attack Wing, Cloak is the change that makes this game significantly different than X-Wing. Cloak adds +4 defence dice to your defence roll. You turn a 1 agility ship, into a 5 agility ship. A cloaked, Sulu''d, Terel'd Defiant gets to roll 9 defence dice in response to every single attack. This change significantly affects the game and how ships are valued. Of course, if you cloak, you have to drop all of your shields- any hit or crit that you can't shake off goes directly to the hull. This is the big balancing factor with respect to Cloaking and it's HUGE. 

Typically, if you have a cloakable ship, you're going to want to cloak it on the first turn, since it's one of only two actions that provide you with an action that lasts past the cleanup round at the end of every turn. Your shields are down, but you now have significantly more defence dice than you did previously. This is a good thing- in the opening rounds. As you start to take hits on your hull, you'll probably want to drop the cloak entirely and try to hobble around on your shields. The big factor here is that most ships that can cloak CAN'T use Battlestations. They will typically have no way to affect their defence roll aside from Evading or Echoing out of the way of attacks. This makes cloaking a very consistent, but moderately swingy action. You're relying on straight dice rolling instead of dice manipulation. 

The Federation has across the board access to Battlestations. Generally, the other factions get access to Battlestations if their ship doesn't have cloak. It's a very effective trade-off. 

I've been reading people talking about the overpowered nature of the Cloak action. Generally, I think that these people haven't played much. After a few games, a beginner will come to realize that Cloaking is a useful ability, but is balanced off by the non-manipulable dice rolls and the lack of shields. 

That being said, there are still ways to get Battlestations on your Cloaked ships. There are some cards like Drex, that let you change your battlestations to hits. You can always put Captain Picard on your cloakable ship for access to Battlestations. Captain Picard is an amazing captain, but he's unique, and when the going gets tough and you're running into other ships, and losing his actions, he's a 7 point upgrade that does nothing. 

So, I think Cloaking in and of itself is a complete game changer over X-Wing. The number of attack dice across ships has increased dramatically. There are ships that can easily attain 7 attack dice. There are ships that can also attain 6+ Defence dice per turn. All this means is that Attack Wing is more dice heavy than X-Wing, but the Attack Wing ships are generally more robust to begin with. There are a number of tradeoffs that make Attack Wing, in my opinion, a bit more dramatic, but your mileage may vary. 

For those of you bemoaning Cloak, I recommend that you play a few more games before coming to a final conclusion. I think you'll see that Cloak is good, but not overpowered and that the Federation and other non-cloaking builds have some serious counters to a full cloak strategy.

USS Enterprise D- Ship Review

A third post coming at you!

The U.S.S. Enterprise D was the flagship of the Federation before Counsellor Troi rammed it into a planet. I don't know why they thought it would be a good idea for her to pilot the ship, but the Federation has a track record of letting randos do whatever they want on their ships. 

I couldn't find a pic that didn't have a beard in it!

So a few things to talk about here. The Enterprise D (I'm going refer to it as the Enterprise from now on) has a reverse 1. No other ship in the game has a reverse 1. Other than that, you'll notice that there are no white or green turns, and no come about. The Enterprise is very difficult to maneuver. 

Before we get started talking about the nitty gritty, let me preface this all by saying that I have played some X-Wing and have read extensively through the blogs on that game. I'm pretty knowledgeable on the mechanics, especially on the Rebel side. At this point, I think it's fair to compare the Enterprise to the Millennium Falcon. They're two of the only ships in the systems with a 360 degree arc. 

In X-Wing, the Falcon has either 6 Hull points or 8, with either 4 or 5 shields depending upon which pilot you take. The Enterprise has 5 Hull points and 4 Shields. So it's considerably more vulnerable than the Falcon. The Falcon has an expansive maneuver dial in comparison to the Enterprise. 

The 360 arc on the Falcon is unrestricted. The Enterprise shoots only to Range 2, and at -1 attack die. 

Overall, if one were to compare the two ships in the same system, the Falcon is a much better ship. Of course, it's also priced significantly higher than the Enterprise, but that's a matter for the differences between the system. Basically, what I'm trying to highlight is a few basic differences between ships across the system. If you're used to piloting the Falcon, you're going to have a much tougher time with the Enterprise, even though it's the most comparable ship. 

Beginners will want to take a crack at the Enterprise, and they'd be right to want to do so. It's an iconic ship, and the shooting arc makes it very forgivable. That being said, I don't think the Enterprise scales that well with experience. It's a great Beginner ship, but as players gain more experience with maneuvering the other ships, especially the Klingons, they are going to start leaving the Enterprise at home. Where I think the Enterprise will ultimately shine, is in the hands of an expert player (although I don't know how many there are at this point!). If you've got a really good handle on the maneuverability of all of the ships, and have a good idea of your opponent's plan, you could keep the Enterprise out of everyone's firing arc and just take potshots with your 360 arc. 

I've run the Enterprise as follows:

Enterprise

Captain Picard

Sulu and Spock

I'm not going to get into why I chose Sulu and Spock just yet. I intend on writing them up in their own posts. For now, I just want to highlight that This build is costly, but efficient. The Enterprise needs to make every shot count against cloaked ships. Spock ensures that you can activate Sulu and Scan every round, and still be very efficient in your shooting. 

So, if you're a beginner looking to get the most out of the Federation, give the above build a try. It's expensive, but I think you'll find it a great way to get into the game, while using some of the most iconic characters from the series.

RIKER!

Second Post here.

I really wanted William T. Riker, the Captain, to work out. It's kind of like watching TNG. You expect Riker to get his own command, but the few times that it happens it's weird and doesn't really work.

If they were looking to replicate that feeling, then Cpt Riker is well designed fluff.

Use your action, and Riker gets an extra attack against an enemy that attacks him. He's essentially counter attack.

He costs 4 pts and is captain skill 6.

If you really want to run Riker, make sure you don't bog your ship down in upgrades. You want this ship to be simple. I like him on the Reliant. Give that a go. You'll probably think that it's pretty Meh, and you'll be right.

But WHY is he so meh? Pretty much, I think Riker is weak because he requires you to burn your action. Riker's ability isn't something that you want to activate every turn, as there will be other targets for your opponent to focus on during the early rounds. This is a late game action, which means that he could be targeted early and you'll never get to use his fancy ability. There are a lot of simple strategic counters to Riker's ability, which is why I think it's so weak.

If you're having success with him, let me know. So far, I haven't really seen him in many builds, but he could possibly work in a combined federation Romulan Fleet where every captain utilizes Counter Attack.

Opening Post

If you're like me, when you heard about Attack Wing, you were as elated as Picard up there.

Beginners are going to be asking "Who's the best captain in Attack Wing right now?"

The answer is Captain Picard. Beginners should be using him in most of their builds.

One of the fundamental restrictions in the game is the one action rule. You want to try to get around this rule as often as possible within the restrictions of your build. Captain Picard is a 6pt (7 on a non-faction ship) work around for any ship. He allows you to take an extra action, either scan, evade, battlestations or Target Lock. He's like Darth Vader in X-Wing, except that he can be put on any ship in the game. Yeah. He's pretty amazing.

There's not much to say about Picard except that a Beginner is going to find the game a lot easier using the good Captain. While it won't teach you action economy, or movement fundamentals, it will teach you the importance of actions and how they can swing the game.

He's also a good barometer of what to expect out of a 6pt captain, and what you should expect out of lesser captains. I don't expect there to be many captains that will be better.

Anyway, this is just the beginning. I'll keep posting up my thoughts on the game as the weeks go on!