Apnex Upgrades!!

 

Something about Muons!

Today I'll go over the Tech Upgrades in the RIS Apnex expansion, including the Muon Token and the Interphase Generator. One of these tech upgrades is very good, and the other is very middle of the road. 

The Muon Feedback Wave works as follows:

Muon Feedback Wave (Romulan/RIS Apnex Expansion)
Action: Discard this card to place a Muon Token beside a ship at Range 1. This upgrade may only be purchased for a Romulan Science Vessel
Cost: 4

The Muon Token explanation is found below:

Muon Token (for the Tech: Muon Feedback Wave from the Romulan/RIS Apnex Expansion)
A ship with a Muon Token assigned to it follows these special rules:
1. A Muon Token stays with a ship until it is removed.
2. During the Activation Phase, after the ship moves, the ship takes damage to its Hull equal to the number of its current Maneuver -1. The type of Maneuver does not matter, just the number.
3. After the ship performs a Green or White Maneuver, it can spend an action to remove the Muon Token.

A few things spring to the mind the first time you take a look at this thing. It's really too bad that this is a Discard ability. I understand that a Muon Token is a pretty terrible token to have beside your ship, but I'm of the opinion that it is a bit obvious when it's coming, and you should be able to avoid taking any damage from it. That being said, you'll be restricting what your opponent can do in the movement phase, which is never a bad thing. The fact that the Muon token sticks around makes it that much better. 

I've used Muon Tokens a few times, and once an opponent gets used to them, their usefulness plummets. You'll club some baby seals, but you won't get much long term use out of the things. I think these things need a revamp, as they aren't really seeing much play. I'd probably take out the discard, and put in that it requires a target, instead of just hitting all ships in an AOE. That would certainly increase the usefulness of the science vessel, and you probably still wouldn't see more than 1 taking up space in lists. 

I'm rarely interested in this upgrade, but have found it to be decent when I play draft. 

The below is something a bit better, and definitely raises some eyebrows:

Interphase Generator (Romulan/RIS Apnex Expansion)
When defending while you are Cloaked, you may discard this card after all the dice have been rolled to reduce the damage from a single attack to exactly 1 [DAMAGE].
Cost: 3

To be honest, I would never put this on a science vessel. I would prefer to equip this onto a Klingon ship. The only other Romulan ship that it would be worth equipping onto would be the Warbird, and I honestly don't see too many of them or have too much love for them right now. If they had a rear arc, I think they'd be pretty fantastic, but as it stands, the Warbird needs some love. On a Klingon ship, this thing is bonkers. If you can find room for three in a 3 ship Klingon list, I think it is a decent investment. On the science vessel, however, you want something offensive in your tech slot, and this just keeps the ship alive- which is great and all, but what's it going to do? Probably nothing. 

Captain Mirok is actually not bad. Mirok gives you a fairly rare ability for cheap- it can repair shields without having to deactivate attacks to do so. Here's the profile:

Mirok (Romulan/RIS Apnex) 
Captain Skill: 4
After you move, if at least one friendly ship is within Range 1 of your ship, repair 1 damage to your Hull or Shields.
Cost: 2
Elite Talent Upgrades: 0

A relatively cheap captain that works well if you're running some smaller ships. It also repairs hull points, which is also very rare. This card could work well in a swarm build with a Valdore at the centre, or on a Dominion ship such as to Kraxon, surrounded by Jem'Hadar attack ships. I would run this upgrade in lists with a large centre ship, and multiple small ships, to increase the chances that there will always be a ship within range 1 of yours. You want this ability to go off, so it'll need to be on a ship that can weather the initial attacks. Very good captain with a nice passive ability. 

Next week- The Dominion Wave 0 reviews. Following that, I'll start in on Wave 1, and by the end of January should be on to Wave 2, at which point we'll be looking ahead to Wave 3! I expect that by the time Wave 4 hits i'll be all caught up lol!

Valdore Upgrades

 

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 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:

Photon Torpedoes (Romulan/IRW Valdore)
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.

Tactical Officer and Tomalak- working through the Valdore

Tomalak looks like he's on Thunderbirds

Today we're going to look at some of the upgrades from the Valdore expansion. We've already covered why Donatra is a fantastic captain. Passive abilities, in theory, are strictly better than abilities requiring an activation as they use up none of your action resource. If you look at your one action per ship per turn as a resource, then you should get to why passive abilities are just so much better than abilities requiring an activation.

Tactical Officer is a 3 pt romulan crew upgrade with the following ability: When removing your target lock from an opposing ship in order to reroll your attack dice, you may re-roll each attack die an additional time. 

An important thing to note is that you can't reroll a reroll unless you have text that explicitly allows you to do so. It doesn't come up very often, but people sometimes forget this particularly rule. Tactical Officer lets you play around with rerolls if you've already taken target lock. Don't use Tactical Officer on a ship with secondary weapons- that should be obvious. Tactical Officer is great if you like using target locks. Often, I find that Target Lock is the absolutely last action I'll take. If you're not going to get shot up, Target Lock is great- otherwise, I typically go for something else to hedge my bets. 

Tactical Officer is a fantastic passive ability that is situational- you need a target lock to use the ability. No real issues here, all passive abilities are situational- Donatra needs a friendly at range 1 to activate. Just remember that these 3 pts will not always be online, unless you're taking a target lock every turn. 

Is Tomalak the least played Romulan captain in the game? My goodness is he terrible. He's essentially Range 3 scan. Your Valdore doesn't come with scan, and Tomalak is a great way to get the basic ability, with non of the token shenanigans. He's also skill 3, so I guess he hasn't figured out how to translate his ability into a scan token. I've never seen him played in a competitive match. 

So the question for today is- which one of you wonderful people can come up with an innovative use for Tomalak? I haven't thought too hard about it, but maybe you guys are just wrecking face with an amazing Tomalak build. Let me know!

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.