5th Wing Patrol Ship Review

Watch out, moderately bland ships incoming...

Today, I'm going to look at the 5th Wing Patrol Ship. I think this ship could have been better, but I still think it's a pretty great ship. Let's get right to the stats.

5th Wing Patrol Ship (Jem'Hadar Attack Ship)/ Dominion Starship (Jem'Hadar Attack Ship)
Front Firing Arc: 90° Rear Firing Arc: NA
A: 3
E: 2
H: 3
S: 3(2)
Action: When attacking this round , gain +1 attack die. When defending this round, roll 1 less defence die.
Actions: Evasive Maneuvers, Target Lock, Sensors, Battle Stations
Upgrades: Tech, Weapons, Weapons, Crew
Points: 22 (20)

I would have preferred if it had two's across the board. That would have brought it in at 16 points, making it a very decent swarm ship. I think we would have seen quite a few Dominion swarms as a result. Instead, we got this middle of the road hybrid that doesn't fit in to either the large ship camp, or the small ship camp. That leaves the 5th Wing Patrol Ship looking for an identity that it does not easily find.

The action is not particularly impressive at all. I don't think it makes up for the two points, and instead, you'll be really looking to get some mileage out of that shield for the two points. I don't think this particular ability should have been an action and instead should have been a once per turn ability, but then, I'm not designing the game- or playtesting!

Otherwise, the movement dial is decent, but not great. I don't get why the most nimble of these ships don't have much better movement dials. It probably has to do with the large ships having movement dials that are way too good. I have a feeling that going forward this will get worked out, but these ships from the initial line are all out of whack. The Valdore shouldn't have a better dial than the Attack Ship.

The actions are fine, battlestations is always good. The upgrade bar is what makes this ship shine. You should be looking at tooling out these ships with an upgrade or two, as they will not get the job done on their own. This is the problem that I referenced at the beginning. In order to make these ships competitively viable, they need some beefing up, but then you'll probably bring them to about 30ish points, and at that point, you have to ask yourself why you aren't just running Klingons or Romulans? If you're self limiting to the Dominion then fine, but I still think that there are better Dominion options at this point.

We'll look at some of the upgrades as we progress through the week, but I just don't think this ship does what the Dominion needs this ship to do.