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.