Sulu and Styles

I'm Back! Well, it wasn't a long departure in any event. I'm finding it a bit hard to keep up my regular pace, but we'll see how it goes. I'll do a review of the Excelsior captains today. I think there's some interesting stuff here.

Hikaru Sulu (Federation/USS Excelsior Expansion) 

Captain Skill: 6
Action: Disable one of your [Crew] Upgrades to remove an opponents's [Target Lock] Token from your ship. Remove the corresponding token from the opponent's ship as well.
Cost: 4
Elite Talent Upgrades: 1

So, I think Sulu's captain skill is going to pretty much be a one-off use thing. Your ship is going to be pretty much on its last legs, and you're going to be looking for a way out of your predicament. This isn't the kind of action that you use every turn- and that's okay, IF the action provides a huge swing. Unfortunately, I don't really see this upgrade providing that swing. You already are going to have to disable an additional crew member to get anything out of Sulu's ability, and you have to burn your action. If another ship has the target lock and Quantums up, this is going to be the kind of action that is soooo clutch that it'll make you think you should bring Sulu in every game. To be honest, I think by the time you get around to asking yourself if its time to use Sulu's ability, your game is probably nearing its conclusion anyway. So, in sum- very clutch on the odd occasion, otherwise mostly useless.

There is also the fundamental issue of not being able to take Sulu pilot if you take Sulu Captain. Presumably, you've already evaluated whether you need Sulu Captain over, say, Sulu pilot, so this is probably a moot point. When compared to Sulu pilot, I don't think there's much of an argument in favour of Sulu captain, but maybe your local group is all torpedoes and no good sense. Who knows!

Okay, moving on- a man with........ Style?

Styles (Federation/USS Excelsior Expansion) 
Captain Skill: 3
Add 1 additional [Tech] icon to your ship's Upgrade Bar.
Cost: 2
Elite Talent Upgrades: 0

Fairly straightforward effect here. He adds a tech icon to your ship. Those tech upgrades are pretty awesome, so Styles is going to open up some pretty great options. Obviously the issue is whether you actually want to RUN Styles on a ship with any of those Tech upgrades, as he's a pretty crummy Captain, but if you find a particularly awesome federation/Tech combo and NEED to run it, Styles is your man. I'm Immediately thinking of the Ferengi EM Pulse, which would certainly combo well with Styles' lower skill. On a Reliant, it wouldn't be half bad!

So both of these guys have some merit, and Styles can be pretty good in a Reliant list or other low cost federation build. Pair him with another Reliant with Terell and you've got some TOS(Movie Era) goodness. When the Enterprise A comes out, it'll be a pretty thematic build with Sulu on the Excelsior, a reliant and an Enterprise A. 

At any rate, let me know what you think.

List Building Interlude Part 2

Today I'll continue my build request for OP5. To reiterate- Admiral's orders are in effect, the person generally plays Klingon lists, and OP5 has OWPs that are going to shoot at range 1-2, and can be blown up. 

I think we want 3 Klingon Ships, and we're going to want then to be completely faction pure, as we'll be using the Admiral's orders to get us 10 extra upgrade points. I obviously think that Vor'Cha is a fantastic ship, and I'm going to include two of them in the list. The Negh'Var is also a great ship for weathering a beating, so I'm going to include the Neg'Var as well. That brings us to a pretty standard 1 Neg'Var, 2 Vor'Cha build. 

The Klingon Flagship upgrade is something that I think we're going to want to put onto the Neg'Var, to ensure that it gets a free cloak action every turn, and every other ship makes their attack extra efficient. Here it is. 

Klingon
Attack: +1
Agility: +1
Hull: +1
Shields: 0
When attacking, all other friendly Klingon Ships within Range 1-2 of your Flagship may convert 1 blank result into 1 [Hit] result.
Action: Cloak
Upgrades: Crew, Tech

The upgrade costs 10 points. Remembering that we have 110 points to play around with, we are now at 90 points and have 20 points of Klingon upgrades left. 

For the Captain slot of the Neg'Var, we'll be looking at either LE Martok, or regular Martok. LE Martok will bring the attacks of both ships up to 6, but it'll cost you your action. You'll get a free cloaking action with the flagship upgrade, so LE Martok's usual downside is lessened. That being said, count me a sucker for regular old Martok. His ability to give another ship a free action is great. All of the other Klingon captains will be lower skill, and so it'll work on all of the Klingon ships. I'm going to use regular old Martok in this list. He costs 5 points. 15 points left!

Obviously, in any Klingon Attack Build, you're going to want Gowron. He's such a great combo with regular Martok. He costs 4 points. 11 points left!

The third captain is going to be a toss up between Nu'Daq or Worf, and if someone has the numbers on these bad boys, that would be greatly appreciated. Consider these 3 points up in the air. 8 points left. 

From here on out, we have to decide what we want to do with those final 8 points. I have a few ideas which I'll list below:

Once More Unto the Breach-5 pts- you would equip this onto the Neg'Var and get two attacks at 5 attack each. I'm not too fond of this plan, as you cannot modify the attacks, and the consistency is rather low. 

Double Drex- 8 points- I much prefer the Drex option on a ship with Picard or Dukat. I'm not sure that they would be all that great in this build given that actions are going to be at a premium. There is definitely an argument to be made here. 

Barrage of Fire- 5 pts- I don't like it, never have, but it could be good with two stacked ships just for the sheer weight of dice. When all stacked together, you'd be looking at about 12 attacks, which is pretty crazy. Unfortunately, it makes the final 3 points not as good. 

I really want to get the most out of every upgrade available, and the Klingon offerings at 3 points are pretty weak. Alexander is an option, but as Rich as pointed out previously, he's great on paper and not necessarily going to activate a whole lot throughout the game. 

I would also consider playing around with the Captains, as Martok may not be best on the Neg'Var. You may want to consider putting Worf on the Neg'Var, so that you can reroll blanks. I think that is how I will finalize this provisional list. In addition, Martok gets to shoot from a pretty buffed out ship. 

So the initial list looks something like this:

Admirals Orders- United Force

Resource- Klingon Flagship 10pts, attached to Neg'Var

Neg'Var 28pts

Worf 3pts

Drex 4pts

Vor'Cha 26pts

Gowron 4pts

Vor'Cha 26pts

Martok 5pts

N'Garen 4pts

Total- 110 points

And there you go. Your total attack dice possible (range 1), will be 21 attacks. I'm iffy on Worf on the Neg'Var over the Vor'Cha, and am iffy on whether only one Drex is needed. Let me know what you think.

List Building Interlude

My friend would like me to design a list for him. I'm going to take this opportunity to design a pretty badass Klingon Attack Build. 

The first thing we have to keep in mind is that this guy is looking to win OP5. He doesn't have a lot of time to win each match because the venue keeps the tournament very strict on time. At the location I play at, the matches are an hour and fifteen minutes long. I've only ever had one match that went to time, and that was mostly due to a horrifying error on my part that dragged out the game to excruciating lengths. 

The second thing we have to keep in mind is that my friend's location will be using the Admiral's Orders, so we want to get the most out of them as possible. 

We will take a look at what I think is the more important Admiral's Order for the purposes of a Klingon Attack Build, United Force. Essentially, you get 10 extra points to spend on upgrades, as long as all upgrades and captains on each ship are from the same faction. You can have a full Klingon Ship, a full Federation Ship and a Full Dominion Ship and still use United Force, as long as the upgrades on each ship are the same as the ship they are on. Got it? Good. 

We also have to take a look at OP5. Here's the link. 

http://wizkidsgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Month-5-Special-Rules.pdf

In this scenario, players place the OWP. They are going to be spread out in the middle of the field. If they haven't yet, I'd imagine that the OWPs are going to be errata'd to count as ships for the purposes of Cloaked Mines. Bit of advice- leave the Cloaked Mines at home. 

OWP will shoot at the closest ship within range 1-2. Your ships are going to take a LOT of punishment. You CAN blow up the tokens, which you may want to consider doing. I haven't tested the scenario yet, but I'd imagine that this is going to be a very viable strategy if you're playing for the long game. With a Klingon Build, it may benefit the Klingon player to go slow and blow up the OWPs asap. I don't think that the mine player is going to be able to blow up the OWPs AND lay the mines, but if you think that's incorrect, let me know.

Okay, apologies for the short article. Has anyone tested out OP5? Any thoughts? I'll return tomorrow with what I think is a decent list to go through this scenario.I don't think it's that big a spoiler to suggest that I'm going to think that most lists playing this scenario are going to need to be playing the long game OR blowing up OWPs.