Friday, 29 November 2013

D7 Upgrades! Another Review!

There's a lot going on in this picture, and very little of it is worth defending
 
So, again, you should take this advice with a grain of salt. I have played with some of the upgrades from the D7, but this is mostly a paper review. It's one of the only ships I don't own, and I think for good reason. I'd be interested in running a Tribbles List, since I think it looks fun, but I don't know that it's a particularly competitive strategy.
On with the show. Koloth is my favourite picture in the whole game. Take a look at his stats:

Koloth (Klingon/IKS GrOth Expansion) 
Captain Skill: 7
Each time an enemy ship attacks you, you may force that ship to re-roll 1 attack die of your choice.
Cost: 4
Elite Talent Upgrades: 1

He costs as much as Gowron. Right away, I can tell you that Koloth is not going to make a whole lot of lists. He's got an odd ability that reflects his surviveability. You probably won't get critted a whole lot, and he comes with an Elite Talent. If you are hard up for a third Klingon Captain, either because of your own internal restrictions or because of a tournament organizer's, Koloth wouldn't be bad. 

As an aside, I first ran Koloth in one of my games that came out of a draft. He was a later pick captain and I put him on the Enterprise D. He wasn't that great, but I would never have played with him had it not been a draft game. Take a look at my previous article on limited play- I think it affords a decent opportunity to use odd captains that you wouldn't normally use. 

Moving on, Krell is a captain that I think fills a niche quite nicely:

Krell (Klingon/IKS GrOth Expansion) 
Captain Skill: 4
When attacking, you may re-roll 1 of your (Battle Stations) results.
Cost: 2
Elite Talent Upgrades: 0

He's a pretty simple to use Captain, and would be great in a D7 or K'Tinga Swarm- although I think 4-5 ships really pushes the definition of a swarm. Rerolling battlestations results on a Klingon ship is a pretty big deal- since the Klingons can't take Battlestations as actions on any of their current ships. 

So, the two captains have their uses, although they are outclassed completely by Goworn and Martok. I don't see many scenarios, outside of restricted ones, where I'd rather have either of these loons over the two Klingon powerhouses of Martok and Gowron. Their low cost make them good options for a 3rd captain, but I still think that Nu'Daq has the advantage on both of them. Nu'Daq costs 3 pts, and automatically converts Battlestations into damage- which is strictly better than a reroll of the battlestations result. 

After Wave 0, the captains can be ranked as follows:

Martok (because extra actions are fantastic)
Gowron (only if you're running 100% klingon ships)
Nu'Daq
Krell
Koloth

Let me know if you agree.

6 comments:

  1. Koloth's photo is fantastic. http://bit.ly/1hqHHyn

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  2. I personally put Koloth higher than Krell. He has a Skill 7, so will be firing before everyone but Martok, Khan, Picard, & Kirk. His ability is really nice in practice too. I don't remember exactly why/when I flew him but he was very effective at avoiding hits. I know I picked him for his high Skill though. He's a great 3rd captain in an all Klingon fleet.

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  3. Agreed, between shooting early, reducing average damage, and making you nearly immune to crits, Koloth is very good. Krell's a bargain, though, which is helpful in swarm builds.

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  4. Guys, the best third klingon captain is Picard.

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  5. He arguably isn't, simply because he doesn't combo well with Martok. If we're talking cross-faction, Donatra is probably a better choice if like tight formations, and Gul Dukat (who can be affected by Martok) if you don't.

    And yes, Martok will usually be busy shouting at Gowron - right up until Gowron dies with his ship. If you take Picard as third, Martok's text is null after Gowron drops - barring a "lucky" communications failure dropping Picard's skill to zero.

    Funniest crit I ever saw was Martok getting a comms failure from a single fluke mine crit. He couldn't even boss around a generic captain after that. Gowron wasn't thrilled about it either, since he'd made the mistake of boosting attacks already with his standard action and was cloak down. :)

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  6. Fair enough, I was being a tad flippant with my remark. You're right about Donatra and Gul Dukat is going to be a beast in Martok builds. THREE ACTIONS!

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