Much less impressive than Khan |
Rounding out our look at the independent faction, we turn to the two individuals who were helping Khan out with his dastardly plans: Following of Khan, and Joachim.
Follower of Khan is
almost nothing to write home about, except that she costs 1 point for
something that costs one point in every other faction. I've never seen
Follower of Khan in any build. I've never seen any of these cards in any
build- AND THEY COST 1 pt. Imagine if any other card cost 1 pt? How
good would Sulu be if he cost 1 pt? Heck, Chekov would be busted if he
cost 1 pt. The fact that these guys cost 1 pt is an indication that the
playtesters didn't think much of these cards. They're so bad, that the
have to cost the absolute minimum pts, but not zero, because they'd be
pretty darn good at 0 pts.
You know what, there may be an argument here about
looking at how many crew slots you have left over, and throwing these
dudes into your remaining crew slots for 3 pts. Even then, they take an
action and just remove opposing crew members- how many of those do you
see that aren't named Data, Sulu or "tactical officer"?
So okay, the Follower of Khan is pretty terrible. So
is Klag, so is Bochra, at the very least, Follower of Khan isn't
unique, so she's strictly better than Klag, but only in combo with Khan,
who is quite bad on any ship without battlestations.
The brain power expended in trying to come up with
the silver lining on Follower of Khan is too much. Don't use her. She's
weaksauce.
Moving on, Joachim! He is as follows:
Joachim (Independent/USS Reliant Expansion)
Each time you inflict a [CRITICAL] on an enemy ship's Hull, you may draw 2 Damage Cards (instead of 1) and choose which one to place beside the enemy's Ship Card, discard the unused Damage Card.
Cost: 4
Each time you inflict a [CRITICAL] on an enemy ship's Hull, you may draw 2 Damage Cards (instead of 1) and choose which one to place beside the enemy's Ship Card, discard the unused Damage Card.
Cost: 4
On first glance, not terrible. In order to
cost 4 pts, you have to run him with Khan, who turns hits into crits
with battlestations. Combo anyone?
You will get
to choose which cirt card of the two you want to put onto the opposing
ship. This can be great if you pull Warp Core Breach or those damage
cards that throw two damage on the opposing ship. The relative power of
each of these damage cards is pretty flat, with the exception of Warp
Core Breach. It's a nifty ability that doesn't require a an action. Is
it worth 4 pts? It does seem overkill on Khan's ability. Joachim is a
bit of a bullseye- your ship is going to be targeted quite heavily.
You're going to want to balance out your relative threat against your
other ships, or go balls to the wall with a big nasty ship. Decide what
your build needs and go for it.
One neat use of the Miranda, Khan and Joachim could be as follows:
USS Reliant
Khan Singh
Joachim
Quantum Torpedoes
Don't
use the regular photons with Khan- he can already use his ability to do
what they do. Use Quantum Torpedoes and get more Oomph!
This thing costs quite a lot of points, so be sure
that it's something that can fit into your list, but it doesn't need to
fly straight at a ship to be useful, and you can still take other
actions such as Target Lock (needed for those torpedoes) or scan.
Give it a go and let me know how it goes!
The 1-cost crew options do provide minimum-cost grist for the mill for abilities that require you to disable or discard a crew upgrade to do something cool. There aren't very many of them as yet, but Conditional Surrender is pretty good already and there will probably be more coming eventually. They were also semi-useful in OP month 1 if you intended to do a cheap Away Team - and I'd expect to see that mechanic reappear in future events, as it seems like a clever way to encourage the use of your crew slots.
ReplyDeleteFeds don't have a 1-cost crew, but the do have Pike and some 2-pointers that are actually quite handy, so the field is still level if they really want to compete for cheap warm bodies on board ship. :)