Independence Week- Khan Singh!

Smell the cheese!!!

Today we’re going to delve into the strange world of the independent faction, starting with Khan Singh. Khan Singh comes from the Reliant Expansion. Go watch the Wrath of Khan for a detailed look at why Khan Singh is a badass.

Khan Singh’s profile is as follows:

Khan Singh (Independent/USS Reliant Expansion) 
Captain Skill: 8
You may use any Upgrades without paying a faction penalty. During an attack, if you spend a [BATTLESTATIONS] Token, each of your [BATTLESTATIONS] results become a [CRITICAL] instead of a [DAMAGE].
Cost: 5
Elite Talent Upgrades: 1

First things first, don’t take Khan on a ship that can’t get access to a battlestations token. He won’t work on Klingon ships, but he’ll work great on Federation ships such as the Enterprise D, the TOS Enterprise and the Reliant.

Remember that you have to pay a faction penalty for putting Khan onto a factioned ship- Khan costs 6 points to put on any ship in the game currently.

Khan lets you change the battlestations action into a crit machine- you’ll probably be facing 0-2 battlestations results on dice per turn. You really want Khan on a Klingon ship but too bad really.

Are there any particularly good elite talents for Khan? Well, he’s going to pay the base cost for any of these things. He comes with Superior Intellect, which is as follows:

Superior Intellect (Independent/USS Reliant Expansion)
Action: Discard this card to target a ship at Range 1-2 that is not Cloaked and has no Active Shields. Steal 1 faceup Upgrade Card of your choice from that ship, even if the Upgrade exceeds your ship's restriction.
Cost: 5

Like I’ve said with other upgrades like this, either on this site or on the various forums, these kinds of upgrades are pretty weak and are generally overkill. Rare is the ship with no cloak and no active shields that is not prepared to die, but superior intellect actually lets you steal from a dying ship. You can’t steal Captains, but you can steal everything else. It’s a great way to hose a two ship build, but if you’re at the point where you’re using Superior Intellect- you’re probably winning.

I Stab at Thee is pretty interesting, and well costed. Combo it up with a ship with Suicide Attack, and you’ve got a great 11+ attack bomb. I wouldn’t want to pay the cost to throw away a ship like this, but if there were a way to get a battlestations token on a Suicide Attack ship… well… that may be something worth looking into- here’s looking at you- Gul Dukat.

So here’s my advice- leave Khan at home unless you’re running a Federation ship that you want to have a high skill captain and you’ve already taken Picard. If you’re looking to run a second big Federation ship, Khan’s your man. Otherwise, his main skill is going to be lost on most other ships. The Koranak is a big ship that looks really good for Khan. If you want to run Khan in a non-Federation list, the Koranak may be the ship for you.