R.I.S. Vo- What's going on here!!!

A great picture... of the neck of the ship...

Interrupting our Regularly Scheduled Independent Article is a look at the newly spoiled R.I.S. Vo. We're getting deeper and deeper into the Romulan line and it looks like the developers are pushing a Swarm or Monster mentality with these things. I'm getting a little concerned that the design team may not have known exactly what to do with the Romulans. The Federation is clearly supposed to have the best captains and is generally supposed to have the best defensive upgrades, the Klingons are supposed to be the heavy hitters, and that leaves the Romulans to have- the smallest ships? The craziest tricks? I don't know. I'm looking at the Vo and am not particularly impressed.

Why didn't they use a picture of the whole ship??? Ah well, the art department continues to astound.

The movement dial is fantastic. Take look at that thing in the picture above. A white come about is nothing to scoff at. These things were made to maneuver around the board effectively. 

The rest of the details of the ship are less than impressive. Agility 3 is a good combo with the 4 extra cloak dice, so it'll be difficult to blow to smithereens. Throw Sulu on the ship and you can get that up to 9 agility. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. 

But why would you want a near invincible ship? To drop one cloaked mine? I can see it becoming useful in a scenario where a ship needs to make ferry runs, or transport a resource to a part of the board. If capture the flag ever becomes a scenario, this ship makes a great flag runner. I'm just not convinced that this space wasn't already covered by the science vessel. I understand the desire to reuse the sculpt, and can see how this ship is somewhat better than the science vessel, but I didn't buy a science vessel to begin with, and I'm not convinced that this is a must buy either. 

I'm not sure what the theme evokes here- some kind of cowardice?

The captain is a high skill romulan captain, that has a mini corbomite maneuver for when the going gets tough. It's encouraging to see elite skills get some love. The problem is the elite skills are mostly going to be more useful than this ability, if you've built your list properly. If you're convinced that a ship is going to attack yours, and you have a counter attack on this guy, why wouldn't you just use your counter attack and get some more damage in? It's REALLY situational. 

The Northern Lights becomes Death

Massacre isn't THAT good. See Attack Pattern Delta. There's a potential for 3 damage with some of the damage cards, but I still don't see 3 pts as being worth it for this card- AND you have to discard it. Not the best use of three points, especially with counter attack floating around. 

There's no good pic of Selok. Here's her profile:

Selok: Unique Crew, 5 points
Action: Discard Selok to target a ship a Range 1. That ship cannot attack your ship this round

Nope. That's not good. 5 pt crew members should be insanely good. See: Spock. This should be 3 pts. You have to discard it, and you're not guaranteed that the opposing ship was ever going to attack yours in the first place... or maybe you were, and now you get to make sure that doesn't happen- for 5 pts. I don't see this making a lot of lists in the foreseeable future. 

This picture is a bit too... nonchalant

For two points, this isn't half bad. You could equip one of those already terrible 1pt romulan crew members and use them to inflict a crit outside of the attack phase. Would you pay 3pts for an insta-crit? It's interesting and may have its uses. While normally these kinds of upgrades are overkill, it's the good kind of overkill- it actually kills. 

So there you go. Not so hot. The Explosives though are probably enough to justify the price tag, but you can always proxy them and try them out in a build before you commit the $15 it costs for the expansion. You'll almost never use Selok or Massacre, but that 7 skill captain might be good backup for Toreth and Donatra. 

One list of the top of my head is as follows:

Valdore

Donatra

4 Scout Vessels, 1 Cloaked Mine on each. 

I think that's about 100pts. You get 4 cloaked mines that can be dropped almost anywhere given the great maneuverability of these ships, and Donatra ensures that you're getting 12 shots a turn. It's not bad- it's probably about as good as this gets, until there's a scenario calling for an unkillable ship.