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| Eternally rocking the shoulder pads... |
Coming at you today with some more upgrades on the Romulan side of things. I'm going to ask the eternal question- if an upgrade never gets played in a game, does it even exist?
All Forward Disruptor Banks works as follows:
All Forward Disruptor Banks (Romulan/IRW Valdore)
Action: Disable this card to add +1 attack die to an attack in your forward arc this round.
Cost: 4
Action: Disable this card to add +1 attack die to an attack in your forward arc this round.
Cost: 4
Action
AND Disable. It better be pretty good right? Unfortunately, it is not.
This is an elite talent, that requires an action, so you're using up two
valuable resources to be able to use the upgrade- your action resource,
and your upgrade resource. Upgrade resource is generally valued very
low- I rarely play with all my upgrades equipped, but Elite Talent is a
bit more valuable than, say, Crew. Elite Talent is only unlocked via
Captains, and then only unlocked through high skill ones. It is a more
rare upgrade slot that needs to be seriously considered when it is
available. I contend that there are elite talents that are so good that
they change up how you're going to play your fleet in a fundamental way-
Engage and Counter Attack are great examples of this. All forward
Disruptor Banks costs as much as a non-faction Engage, and provides
significantly less greatness. It's a bit like comparing apples and
oranges, but they're both fruit, and one is sooooo much better than the
other. Leave it at home.
The
Valdore comes with Romulan Photon Torpedoes, which actually aren't SO
bad, just moderately bad. Here they are in all their glory, with their
cousin, the Plasma Torpedo:
A: 5
Range: 2-3
Attack: (Target Lock) Spend your target lock and disable this card to perform this attack. You may convert 1 [BATTLESTATIONS] result into 1 [CRITICAL] result. You may fire this weapon from your forward or rear firing arcs.
Cost: 5
Plasma Torpedoes (Romulan/IRW Valdore and Starter)
A: 5
Range: 1-2
Attack: (Target Lock) Spend your target lock and disable this card to perform this attack. You may re-roll all your blank results one time. You may fire this weapon from your forward or rear firing arcs.
Cost: 5
As
I've said before, replacing innate attack value with secondary attack
value is a waste of points. Furthermore, on the Valdore, a ship with 4
attacks, this makes even less sense. They would be great on the Bird of
Prey, though, so keep that in mind. One of the great uses of the Bird of
Prey is to equip it with some Torpedoes and send it on its merry way.
It's very hard to kill and very maneuverable and those torpedoes are
going to scare people. I'd also recommend them with Toreth, as you'll be
able to convert 1 Battlestation result AND 1 Hit result into two
critical results. It's not all that bad, and will be particularly
threatening. This would work nicely on an unnamed Warbird. It would work
a lot nicer on a ship with a rear arc, but that's not how the Romulans
roll.
So generally, the Valdore doesn't need any of this
stuff. The Valdore needs one of either Picard or Dukat, and Engage
(because if you haven't noticed, I love that card). That's it. Combined
Cloak, and free battlestations from either of the good captains, with
the occasional Engage and Sensor Echo, your Valdore should stay alive
well into the end of the game. This is a ship that's already good enough
on its own- don't bother bogging it down.
I've been considering buying a second of this ship simply because it's so good. WIth wave 2 including the Vo while all the other factions get combat-capable ships I am pretty sure the Romulans in my collection will be happy to add another Valdore instead.
ReplyDeleteA second Valdore is not a bad buy.
ReplyDeleteToo right - the unnamed version isn't as awesome as the unique, but it's still a very solid way to spend 28 points.
ReplyDeleteAll Forward Disruptor Banks is a solid contender for the "Worst Card In the Game" award. Really quite bafflingly awful. If it was "disable as a free action" it might be worth thinking about, although even there the cost is a bit high. In its current form, it's useless.
I find the Gor Portas with Thot Gor rather likes Plasma Torps - they punch quite a bit harder than the Dominion Photons do, and can provide a nicely lethal second strike after a successful Energy Dissipator hit. Probably still a waste to tool up the ship to that degree, but it's worth the extra point if you want to experiment with using those weapon slots.
Wish the designers would make a secondary weapon that had variable attack dice based on range - maybe 4 attack base, +2 at range 1, -2 at range 3. Be something different instead of just another flavor of photon.
I have had good luck will all FWD Distuptors. More attack dice is good and with a faction pure list I like it better than counter attack. If you are using counter attack with Rolumans I would say you are using them wrong. I fight a lot of Klingons and after I get behind them the extra firepower is welcome. I think Engage is the best elite talent but FWD Disruptors is good.
ReplyDeleteGaining one attack die with an action gets you .5 extra hits, barring some kind of interaction with another order or upgrade.
DeleteTaking that same action to Target Lock improves all of your dice to slightly over .75 hits per die (the "over" due to the possibility of a crit with a 2-damage draw). If you're rolling even two dice, you're getting an equal benefit, and anything over two dice is strictly better than Forward Disruptors.
There will be times when you can't take Target Lock, either because it's in place already or you're out of range when you act initially or your target started cloaked. You might also desperately need the ability to score that one extra damage for a kill, which will require an extra die from somewhere or insane luck with crits. Outside of those corner cases I can't think of an instance where Disruptors is better than the action bar offensive orders.
Do those corner cases come up often enough to justify using an elite slot and four points, plus the requirement to disable the card itself? If you think they do, we are playing radically different games. Dead card when you do the math on what it actually offers.
ITarget locking cloaked vessels can be difficult. I can use disruptiors whenever I have a shot. They is plenty of way to reroll dice in this game too. Also they is plenty of times where you can use both a Lock and Disruptiors in the same turn. You both need a shot on an target to lock them. Later you can use the best of both worlds. I find myself with plenty of times where I have or can't target lock, no need to evade and am cloaked or out of LOS of the enemy. Time to drop the distuptors. Also Distuptors work with secondary weapons, a nice combo with torpedoes on the scout bird.
DeleteYou are starting to remind me of the guy at my shop that saw the leafblower list and then said it sucked.
Keep it cordial. I agree that +1s to attacks are great, Disruptors cost too much, and the disable stipulation makes it even harder to justify. Sure, in a faction pure list they may be worth taking, but I still think I'd rather use the points for other upgrades.
ReplyDeleteThey'd actually be pretty decent if they had slightly fewer restrictions. If they were just disable to use and not an action they'd be worth thinking about as a 4 point elite slot. If they were a weapon upgrade that required an action but didn't disable, they'd also be interesting, although maybe a bit too pricey. The combination of action+disable+elite+cost is just too steep for me. You can buy Engage for the same cost.
DeleteOn a related note, I wish we'd see some weapon upgrades that modified your primary attacks rather than always being secondary weapons. That sort of thing is currently the domain of crew and tech upgrades, but it seems like an uncalled-for limitation. Not like we haven't already seen a tech upgrade card that's effectively a weapon in Cloaked Mines, so havinga tech function in weapons would just be reversing the concept.
I think the IRW Valdore may be the best ship in the game. Enough attack to get past a cloak, enough evade & cloak to defend itself, and plenty of hull to live after that unlucky defense roll while cloaked. I can't think of a reason I wouldn't put one (or two!) of these in every Romulan fleet. And most mixed-faction fleets too. It's only drawback is lack of a tech upgrade slot.
ReplyDeleteThey are great, but tat tech slot's a big deal, owing to Cloaked Mines and Interphase Generator. Still, the little ships can deploy your mines for you, and like you said, the Valdore class has the hull to survive a whiff without Interphase.
DeleteMaybe the Romulans will get a decent captain who grants a tech slot - the Fed one's a bit unskilled to be driving a 28-30 point ship. :)
I am a big fan of the Valdore. I took three of them in a recent OP event. I took the THE Valdore and 2 other Valdore class ships. It left me with 14 points for upgrades which I used to buy captains: Donatra, Valdore, and Mirok, skills 6,5,and 4. Instead of a weapon, I brought Elite Attack Die. I managed to win all three games and never lost more than 1 Valdore. This force defeated 2 Klingon forces, and a combined Picard/Dukat force. Next month (January 2014) when we can bring an additional 10 points with Admiral's Orders, the force will get better. The nice thing about this force is that The Valadore gets +1 Atk die for a green Maneuver (Capt Mirok), then CAPT Valdore gets +1 Attack Die when firing outside an enemy Fwd Arc. Then I have Donatra giving out +1 Attack die. Combined with the Elite Attack Die, I had lots of firepower.
ReplyDelete