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| She's a Beaut! |
Okay so we're back with yet another preview. I know the ship has been up for some time on Board Game Geek, but I figured I'd wait and space this out a bit, instead of blowing all these previews in one go.
The Excelsior is a fantastic ship, although don't expect the ability to go off every turn, unless you're using something like Engage or Transwarp Drive. It has a 180 Degree arc with a rear torpedo arc as well. This is definitely a ship that is crying out for good torpedoes.
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| That's CAPTAIN Sulu to you! |
Is Sulu any good? No, not really. It's a really flavourful idea, but I don't see it working very well. The cost to use it is too high, and unless torpedoes are huge in your area, I wouldn't bother with Captain Sulu. Plus, you will lose out on taking crew Sulu- an upgrade that is waaaaay better than this.
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| This guy looks like such a jerk... |
The big thing about Captain Styles is that you can use him in conjunction with the Sideboard to get a Cloaking Device onto the Enterprise D. Meh. I'm not sold on Styles' ability, and evidently neither are the designers given the cost of this guy.
This thing is so good it hurts. Your torpedo ships just got a heck of a lot better. If they can survive the first round of fire, the enemy cloaks will be down, and you should be able to get to Range 2-3 using this bad boy. Unleash your Torpedoes from your rear arc and you'll be laughing. Anything that lets you manipulate the movement phase is amazeballs- for this price, I expect to see this upgrade a lot.
Of the crew upgrades, Valtane is the top. Valtane is the mini-spock. If you don't feel like spending 5 points on Spock, but figure that you'll be doing some scanning... you should.... PROBABLY STILL TAKE SPOCK- but if Spock won't fit, Valtane is coming to the rescue. Part of why Spock is still better than Valtane has to do with rerolls- Suppose you're attacking with the Enterprise D. You have a Target lock on your opponent. You roll a crit, a battlestationns and two blanks. With Spock, you'll grab those two blanks and even if they turn out to be battlestations, you'll turn them all into hits. He can seriously turn around an attack. Valtane- not so much. His ability is great on a secondary ship, but for two more points, Spock is just sooooo much more efficient.
For the rest of the upgrades, I wouldn't expect to see them get too much play in standard federation builds. Lojur and Rand are very odd cards, and I'll have to see them in action before I give my opinion on them. Feint is... okay... I guess... It's a super scan at range 2-3, but doesn't give you a scan token, so you can't use any of the fun Scanning Crew. Positron Beam is really less good than the Ferengi EM Pulse since it needs to be used in the planning phase, and not as an action - see- screwing with your opponent 101.
Will I buy? Absolutely, but I buy all the Federation stuff. I'm on the fence of the long term playability of most of this stuff outside of the Transwarp Drive. Remember that the Drive isn't unique, so you'll be able to equip it on multiple ships.
This and the Dominion gun-boat are the two ships I'm most looking forward to in wave 2. Not that the Excelsior will be great, but I like the idea of being able to field a full TOS-era (yeah including the movies) fleet with more than two ships in it.
ReplyDeletei'm looking forward to everything BUT the romulan ship! can't wait to get my hands on the Koraga!
DeleteI may have underestimated valtane. He actually may be quite good.
ReplyDeleteLooking at Valtane, he's probably about as good as Spock when rolling 4 attack dice. The perfectly average result of 4 attack dice is 2 hit/cit, 1 BS, 1 blank. Spock would let you change the 1 BS to a third Hit. In the same situation, Valtane would let you reroll the BS and blank. The average result of those rerolls would be a third Hit/Crit and equal chances for a BS or a Blank. Valtane has the added ability to take further advantage of a BS token on a ship that could both scan and BS (the Excelsior itself or a ship with Picard). On the other hand, Spock can take added advantage of a Target Lock that would not help Valtane further.
ReplyDeleteWhen shooting more than 4 attack dice, Spock will be slightly better because he will likely have more BS results to upgrade to hits, but Valtane will be rerolling a smaller proportion of the attack roll.
I think you're too quick to disregard both Lojur and Rand. Both are very cheap and offer direct action efficiency boosts, Lojur by preventing you from needing to reload torps once and Rand by granting a free action with an elite talent (albeit only once, barring some weird combo with Weyoun). Paying two points for a second back-to-back torp shot is decent enough, and it isn't a huge cost to let you do (say) Engage as free action once per game.
ReplyDeleteHmmm - here's some shiny new tech enabled by the new ships:
ReplyDeleteExcelsior (26)
Picard (6)
Spock (5)
Scotty (5)
Lojur (2)
Quantum Torps (6)
Kraxon (26)
Gul Dukat (5)
Romulan Scout Ship (14)
Donatra (4)
99 points for initiative edge, or 100 if you want the Romulan 1-pt boarding crew for scenario use or emergency crew removal. If using Admiralty's Orders, dropping to a two-ship Strike Force with Donatra and some stuff cross-factioned on the Kraxon might be worthwhile, perhaps with the attack die or command bar resource. Alternately, stay with the current build and use United Force for a die reroll per turn and a free 10 points of in-faction upgrades - which could let you get an independent flagship card by buying some of the existing cards for free. The one that lets you give another ship a free move is obscene for letting the Excelsior position for a torp shot and fits fine on the Kraxon, or you could just put a +attack one on the Excelsior herself to further buff the quantum strike (max at ten damage per shot, two turns in row?)
Basic idea is to advance everything obliquely within range 1 of each other, with the Excelsior dodging under Sulu + Evade every turn until you can get a target lock, then using Scotty + Target Lock + Scan + Donatra + Quantum Torps to one-shot just about anything. Lojur lets you rinse and repeat that once before you have to race off to re-enable stuff and repair shields. Kraxon provides a 4-shield defensive bubble for at least the first strike turn, which should keep the Excelsior alive for a second shot (possibly from the rear arc after an overflight or bank away), and Gul Dukat makes her a quite solid secondary attacker, good for finishing anything lucky enough to survive the uber-quantum volley.
If you're competent you shouldn't need to weather more than one turn of the full enemy fleet firing (probably at range 3) before you can get that first kill, and even a Klingon Attack Fleet shouldn't be able to wreck anything more important than the Kraxon in that time frame. Against uncloaked targets (or ones that just cloaked that turn), they won't even get that - 8 die quantums with full battlestations conversion and agility debuff from scan will kill almost any cloaked ship reliably, and mangle even the toughest shield-user to the point where Kraxon with Dukat should finish them.
Just watch out for someone playing the same build. Whoever shoots their Excelsior at the other first in that matchup will win hands down.
Whoop, forget the Sulu reference above, that was different build. You'll have to be a bit more careful not to get the Excelsior gunned by the whole enemy fleet before it can get lock, but the 180 arcs on your ships should make tricksy maneuvering to accomplish that a bit easier.
DeleteIf you want the more defensive option (much safer against a full-on attack fleet, but not as deadly on back-to-back turns of shooting) it would be:
Excelsior (26)
Picard (6)
Spock (5)
Scotty (5)
Sulu (3)
Quantum Torps (6)
Kraxon (26)
Cap'n Generic (0)
Vo (16)
Donatra (4)
Cloaked Mines (3)
99 points, or 100 if you want the 1 point Romulan boarding crew to sacrifice-kill an opposing crew or board DS9 or something..