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Some stores released them early.

Actually, I picked up the Soong Borg ship myself just the other day.

Stupid me though, my mind was so set on finding X-Wing ships that it didn't even occur to me to even look for the other STAW new releases. The Soong ship caught my eye because of its unique look.

Another thought for my 150 point build:

Generic Tactical Cube
Borg Queen
Assimilation Tubules
Seven of Nine

Generic Borg Sphere
Tactical Drone
Assimilation Tubules

Generic Borg Sphere
Tactical Drone

This allows me to assimilate cards at a potentially high and low Captain Skill level. General strategy would be to fly in formation, try to fly behind enemy's (useless if they are Borg) and concentrate a lot of firepower. The Assimilation Tubules would hopefully be used to take out any Transphasics, PSFs, etc. The first Sphere would only use the attack re-roll once or twice. I assume I will not be able to assimilate a lot of things (1 turn to Assimilate, 1 to re-enable the Tubules, repeat unless I want to re-enable what I just stole). This would be the favored ship (damage-dependent) the Borg Queen would fall back to if the Tactical Cube was destroyed. She would respawn with 8 drones and could keep on assimilating.

Now that I think about it, I may forgoe Seven of Nine to upgrade the Tac Cube and a Sphere to the named ships. 8 drones seems like plenty for assimilating.


Edit:

Doesn't seem like it has much offensive firepower. May need to playtest a Klingon fleet against this

So, what did everyone think of my build for Arena?

I liked it. You made good use of the Raptor class. It irritates me that the raptor, which was in one episode, is more useful than the iconic D7. It really is stupid that the D7 comes with progeted stasis field and only the named ship can take it But you can put it on all of the raptors, which is a ship that is 70 years older. There really is no rhyme or reason to some of the ships upgrade bars or action bars.

Maybe we'll see another D-7 sometime, I mean, we can still get the Sleeper Ship from TNG.

There was also a D7 in an episode of Voyager that could cloak. The Klothos in the animated series is a D7 too if IRCC.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
There was also a D7 in an episode of Voyager that could cloak. The Klothos in the animated series is a D7 too if IRCC.

The Klingon ship in Voyager is the B'moth, a K'Tinga Class cruiser, D-7s couldn't cloak.

 PlaguelordHobbyServices wrote:

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
There was also a D7 in an episode of Voyager that could cloak. The Klothos in the animated series is a D7 too if IRCC.

The Klingon ship in Voyager is the B'moth, a K'Tinga Class cruiser, D-7s couldn't cloak.

No, the B'moth is from the DS9 eposode "Soldiers of the Empire"

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Soldiers_of_the_Empire_(episode)

The cloaking D7 is from the Voyager Episode "Prophecy"
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Prophecy_(episode)

Tuvok specifically states that the Klingon ship is a "D7 class cruiser"

So, thinking about faction pure dominion build for Arena OP. I wonder about Dukat, Weyoun (7) and Cardassian (1) on 3 suicidal attack ships as a starting point; I was considering a triple galor threat but don't think it's viable for format. Wave 6 won't be legal, btw, and can't guarantee a Damar/3rd wing ship . This is just roughly, in my head for now, as am away from my toys. I know a triple threat Picard/Dukat/Khan would be scary but I'm determined (read: bloody stubborn) to stay pure. Initial thoughts? Is this a viable idea?

On further consideration, I came up with this list:
Jem'hadar Attack Ship 20
Weyoun 5
Phased Polaron 4*
Toman'Torax 4*
Kudak'Etan 4*

Jem'hadar Attack Ship 20
Thot Gor 4
Phased Polaron 4*
Suicide Attack 5

Jem'hadar Attack Ship 20
Luaran 2
Phased Polaron 4*
Ixtana'Rax 0*

Elite Attack Die 5

100 on the nose.
1 solid captain, 1 reasonable and 1 fair, a mix of ships with counter, sacrifice and aggression, and the elite die for captain battles too. On paper, at least, pretty happy with it. Thoughts?

For the Arena you either need a lot of mediocre captains or a few really good captains. My friend did well with Dukat, Khan, and Weyoun 7 on 3 Keldons. Luaran is a bit of a bust for the Arena. 4 attack ships with Dukat, thot gor, thot Pran, and weyoun 7 is 99 points not bad 27 points for the captains battle.

I was thinking luaran's generally such a good buy, but I see where you're coming from - sod the upgrades, captain to the Max. That triple threat keldon is scary as. If i can get a 4th attack ship (or a 3rd fleet one, rather ) then i might go for broke there.Is it worth sticking the 1 pt breen captain in too, or take the fact that you're under the 100?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Being dumb.
Dukat C7 5sp
Weyoun c7 5sp
Thot Gor c7 5sp
Thot Pran c6 4sp

Yrah,that's vicious.

Is this the only thread we're allowed? I have questions as am considering buying into this game, but don't want to interrupt this thread's list building etc.

Well, a general query could go into the other Star Trek thread. But I guess tactical questions are more for this one.

I've got a pseudo tactical question while I'm at it. - I've been demoing the game a lot at my gaming clubs recently and I'm wondering what the best way to demo larger / more normal games is.

Usually I start off with 1 ship V 1 ship at 40 points for the basic rules. Then I move on to the Kobayashi Maru scenario with me playing the Enterprise. After that, I'd be looking for running a 100 point 'normal' game with my collection.

Currently I have:

Starter Set
Federation - Excelsior, Enterprise NCC-1701, Voyager, Equinox. The Defiant is also on order.

Dominion - Koranak, Kraxon, Jem Hadar Battleship, Jem Hadar Attack Ship, Gor Portas.

And I'm looking at trying to make a few lists up that are balanced against each other pretty well, showing off the range of the game but don't get too weird, or require something super tricky or crazy to play out properly.

For example, a Federation fleet I tried out was:

USS Enterprise D with Picard
USS Voyager with Janeway
USS Equinox with Ransom, Tom Paris, Photon Torpedoes (5)

Whereas, a matching Dominion fleet was something like:

Kraxon with Sar, Tetryon Emissions
5th Wing Patrol Ship with Luaran, Photon Torpedoes
Koranak with Gul Dukat, Captured Intelligence, Boheeka, Dorsal Weapons Array and a Cloaking Device

But I'm sure I can do more entertaining fleets. - Perhaps a 2 ship fleet with Picard and Janeway in the Enterprise / Voyager? With the right upgrades that might be more comfortable for a new player than trying to stop 3 ships flying into each other...

I find a good way to get people started is 1 ship 40 point builds. When you move people up to 100 points I have found it better to have fleets with one big ship and 2 little ones with plenty of upgrades. I find this helps people with maneuvering because they have to think about where their other ships are. A decent amount of upgrades also helps the work on how different cards interact.

From what you have there enterprise D, a constitution class, and a Nova class with some upgrades allows for some nice diversity to a new player.

well,

just won the arena OP tournament we put on here.

This time I played with my newly painted klingons,

fleet was 125 pts

4 brell class ships, with koloth, somraw commander with def condition one on the named brell, worf, and the lvl4 captain that lets me change a BS to a hit, un named raptor class with projected stasis feild and generic captain.

admirals pips for my resource.


played against borg twice, and feds once, won all three.

not hard to see what strategy I am going for there, disable one of the enemies ships, and either kill it easily with the 16+ target lock Battle station shots I can pump out, or kill the other ship if I think thats tactically sound. all my captains shoot first on borg which is the main thing, feds will alpha strike me anyways, so I made sure to run the pips to get re rolls on my defence dice, more BS tokens, so that I am reliably ignoring most of the hits on the first pass (though with cloak and sensor echo, everything that didnt have a 360 was having a hard time getting me in arc)

the other nice thing is that this gives me 5 captains for the battle, so even though the fed player had kirk picard and sisko for more hit points, I was getting 15 attacks to his 9 (before adding bonus from RMT) after including the bonus, i got even more since he was busy using actions to survive instead of helping find tokens.


very happy with the list, will play a modified 100pt version again tonite.

so far I have several builds for fed that do well against borg + everyone else, some DOM builds and a few klingon builds,
but this particular klingon build seems to shut EVERYONE down, borg in particular since they rarely have more then two ships.

Very nice, but out of curiosity why 125 points

So I had a great night last night, using the 3 jemhadar ship build above against a weaponised sphere and fed fighters.

I got completely monstered by the borg, although it was a lot of fun and only narrowly went against me. I misjudged my suicide run on the borg sphere by 1mm so only managed to lay into with my polaron beam. Although between them 3 jemhadar attack ships seriously dented it, he toasted me. By his own admission though, it was seriously close and had he been running a drone based sphere I'd have also had him. The borg are scarily nasty, but not unstoppable if you approach them right - also, I hadn't specifically meta'd vs Borg, so was really happy with how I coped.

A follow up. I was looking again at the Rav Laerst. Is it me or is the EDW pretty nasty vs Borg? You could run something like:
Rav Laerst, EDW, Thor Gor
Breen Battleship, EDW, Sal
Jem'Hadar attack Ship, Suicide Attack, Thot Pran

For 100 pts? EDW's not magnificent ordinarily, I appreciate, but Borg ships are such a massive points sink that this could potentially be scary as.

Isn't the problem with Borg, you're not going to get into range 1 with them unless they want you in range 1?

Hmm. Well, I'm assuming that I can maneuver pretty effectively. I think that's always going to be a trade-off.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
Very nice, but out of curiosity why 125 points

we mix it up a bit, we are even allowing "ship pure" builds for those that want them,

IE you can bring multiple factions, but a kligon ship has only klingon upgrades and captains ect. we tend to allow independant stuff to mix and match too.

95% of people still just bring faction pure anyways!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Compel wrote:
Isn't the problem with Borg, you're not going to get into range 1 with them unless they want you in range 1?

borg only can move at the 90's, once you learn how to take advantage of this and cut the 45 degree angles, it gets a lot easier to set up a guaranteed first pass. just have to have a way to cover your rear flank afterwards

 easysauce wrote:

borg only can move at the 90's, once you learn how to take advantage of this and cut the 45 degree angles, it gets a lot easier to set up a guaranteed first pass. just have to have a way to cover your rear flank afterwards

Yup, hence the second Breen Warship

I had a further thought on the 4 captain jem'hadar attack ship arena build: Cruiser Dukat/Weyoun are both 8/5. So with Thots Gor and Pran that's 29 points of Captain

So what's everyone bringing to Collective OP1?

I've run it twice now. First as Romulans, which did horribly, then as Dominion, who fared better but still ran into trouble.

Romulan Fleet

PWB Aj'Rmr
Flagship (Independent Klingon)
Donatra
Bochra
Tactical Officer
Cloaked Mines
Polarized Hull Plating

IRW Valdore
Toreth
Parem
Romulan Pilot

USS Yeager
Federation Captain
Reginald Barclay
Photon Torpedoes

Lucky me, I pulled the Yeager. I got manhandled by a Dominon/Federation Cross Faction fleet, a Federation Fleet (boned myself early by flying a ship off of the board), and a Klingon Fleet. I had good maneuverability, but the hitting power just wasn't there.

Dominion Fleet

4th Division Battleship
Weyoun (8)
Dorsal Weapons Array
Ixtana'Rax
Shroud

Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser
Gul Dukat (7)
Amat'Igan
Boheeka
Shroud

IRW Vorta'Vor
Liviana Charvanek
Advanced Cloaking
Plasma Torpedoes

Did a lot better with this fleet, though my dice were hateful all night long. Bad rolls kept me from mopping up a decent Federation build in round one. In round two I came up against a Voyager that was loaded to the gills. I was trying to down his Yeager while keeping my ships intact, but in the last turn he downed my Battleship for the win. During the final round I beat down another Dominion fleet, with an assist from the Borg Cube Token.

The B'moth seems to be the clear front-runner among the Blind Booster ships, as it actually has the stats to remain competitive after losing its upgrades to the Borg Cube Token. The Yeager was a big disappointment (mostly because my opponents picked on it), and the Vorta'Vor was really quite good...until it started losing upgrades. I don't think that it's a big swing either way, but I know that from a competitive stand point I'd be most excited about pulling a B'moth in this event.

So I've now played a half a dozen games of STAW and I've decided upon Dominion. I've out together a few models and am now building my first actual competitive fleet. We play 125 around here and this is what I've come up with for my first game with MY models

Dominion 125

2nd Division Cruiser
Gor Portas (6)
Battle cruiser photon torpodeos
Volley of Torpodeos

Koranak
Gul Dukat (7)
Dorsal Weapons Array
Remata'klan
Shroud

Gor Portas
Weyoun (7)
Proton Torpedoes
Amat'igan
Lamat'ukan

The battle ship move forward slowly and unleashes both of its torps on the two most dangerous ships in (hopefully) the same turn Dukats ship is able to discard the shroud to give +2 to attack dice and piloting skill to give a split fire or 5 dice a piece (6 if I can find some way to drop 10 points and make it a fleet commander) 12 and 11 dice on two separate ships should put a nice dent in the opponent. Weyoun's job is to act as a deterrent and gap filler rolling a minimum of 3 defense dice to help mitigate it's damage.


Well what do y'all think?

Had the Arena event this weekend. I ended up taking:

Borg Tactical Cube
Jean Luc Picard
Breen Aide

Romulan Science Vessel
James T. Kirk

Romulan Science Vessel
Martok (LE)
Interphase Generator

Elite Attack Dice

Round One:

My Opponent had

Borg Tactical Cube 138
Independent Scan Flagship
Jean Luc Picard
Admiral Gul Dukat
Transwarp Drive
BAHA
BAHA
Attack Pattern Omega
Once More Unto the Breach

My venue still doesn't have Wave 6 ships in so I was surprised to see Admiral Gul Dukat here. His strategy was Picard would get beamed down and then Admiral Dukat became Captain and he got two captains beamed down from one ship.

He had a good build but he made the mistake of trying to take down my RSV's first. This allowed my Borg Tactical Cube to get some good hits in. With Picard, Scan, and the Breen Aide I consistently rolled 5-6 hits; sometimes 7. I won the Captain's Battle only having lost Martok. In the end I had lost both RSV's but I took down his MegaCube.

Round Two:

USS Reliant
Battlestations Flagship (I forget if Fed or not)
Jean Luc Picard

IRW Praetus
Donatra

D7
Koloth?

Somraw
Dukat

This was close and could have gone either way until the atermath. I was able to take down Donatra and got a critical on the Reliant before the Captain's Battle. The Captain's Battle was bloody. I lost it just barely. In the aftermath he cornerd my Cube and had its way with it.

Round Three:

This was a speed round since my opponent didn't have much time before he had to go work.

Vorcha
Gowron

IKS Koraga
Koloth?

B'rel Class
Martok (standard)

I was able to take out the B'rel in the first shot and damage the Koraga before the Captain's Battle. I easily won the Captain's Battle (the only time the Elite Attack Dice actually worked in the Captain's Battle) and I cornered the Vorcha and took it out. The Koraga lasted a little bit longer but I kept my Cube behind it. This was over in 30 minutes.

We had 4 people show up and the top 3 all had 2 wins and 1 loss. The winner won by 26 fleet points. Can't get much closer than that.








Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have my DS9 tournament in 2 weeks. It is 150 points, faction pure ships, and 1 resource allowed. I am thinking of the following:

Jem'Hadar Battlecruiser
Independent Scan Flagship
Khan (standard)
Breen Aide

2nd Division Cruiser
Gul Dukat (orignal flavor)
Boheeka

USS Voyager
Jean Luc Picard
Montgomery Scott
Pavel Chekov (ToS)
Miles O'Brien (Transporter Chief)
Transphasic Torpedoes

Basically its a high attack generating offense.

Another option is to ge rid of the Flagship and Transphasic Torps and put in some fighters. I would have to trade Khan out, but its doable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I saw someone's proposed build for Voayger Warship in The Collective OP1. I liked the concept and modified it...

USS Voyager
Khan (Reliant version)
Admiral Kirk
Independent Battlestations Flagship

Boheeka
Breen Aide
Janice Rand
Romulan Pilot

Transphasic Torps
Transphasic Torps

Counter Attack
Disobey Orders

High Energy Sensor

88 points (still thinking about those last two points)

Strategy:

Khan will have a captain skill of 10. I hope to be placing last.

First Turn:

Move Forward 6
Janice Rand activates Counter Attack
High Energy Sensor gives free Scan Action
Flagship gives free Battlestations Action
Romulan Pilot to move forward 3 and get another Scan Token
Disobey Orders to change one Scan into a 2nd Battlestations Token
Ship performs a Target Lock on opponent

With Battlestations, Boheeka, Breen Aide I should roll close to 10 hits on my opponent. Hopefully with a Captain skill of 10 this will before they fire on me.

Then I should be able to roll close to 5 hits with my Counter Attack.

Second Turn:

I hope to be able to fire Transphasic Torps again with close to 10 hits rolled.


If my opponent has two ships, I hope to take out one in a First Strike. If they have a loaded Tac Cube, that may prove difficult. But It may be the best way to fight it; just pound it as hard and fast as possible.

I had my first game against the Borg on Sunday, and I have to say, they aren't as broken as I was led to believe.
I know if you are going for properly optimum build, with no qualms about mixing captains, ships and upgrades etc, they can be made into some horrific things but as basic ships, I am nowhere near as worried as I once was.
My almost pure Cardassian fleet was able to take one on and come out on top - thanks a lot to bad dice and poor judgement, but I'm taking the win non-the-less.

Although I have to say the way the borg have been the most played fleet at the last few op's I have attended is a little bit sad.

So my local store ran our mixed faction Collective OP1 yesterday. We had a good turn out not as many as usual but I think that was because the store didn't get the blind packs in. They had some distributor troubles. However they modified the rules and we played on. We still had to bring a 90pt build, but instead of the blind pack we just bought a ship off the self and built it up to 30. We could add other stuff from outside the pack but had to use the ship itself. For my 90 I flew:


26 Koraga
10 Klingon flagship
07 Picard
08 Admiral Kirk
05 In'Cha
06 Cheat Death
05 Tom Paris
06 Scotty (new version)
03 Li Nalis
04 Transwarp Drive
05 Advanced Weapon System
05 Photon Torpedoes
90 points total

For my 30 points I bought a Preatus and made:

14 Praetus
03 Captain Syles
04 Additional Weapons Array
03 Cloaked Mine
03 Cloaked Mine
03 Cloaked Mine
30 total

First game was against a friend of mine. This is what I remember he had.
Vorcha
Klingon flagship
martok 9
klagg

Negvar
ducat
cloaked mine

constitution refit
spock (captain)
checkov

The game started as a joust. Until I realized and awesome trick with Transwarp Drive, Incha, and scotty. I got be hind my opponent before he expected and I picked on enterprise. He had to try and turn around in my mine field and had some bumps. I used the praetus to bump and lure the cube away, it worked once. My koraga took out the Enterprice and Vorcha the cube took out the Negvar. Once he lost his captains the cube but a hurting on him. He never used the resistance tokens. I did and lost 2 mines on the praetus, and the advanced weapons system on the Koraga.

Game 2 was against:

Enterprise D
Picard
Worf
Geordi
anti matter mines

Khazara
Toreth
plasma torps
something else

USS Enterprise refit
Spock
Something

This game I got really lucky. We started jousting, he decided to scan with the fed ships and go through my cloacked mines and risk it with the Khazara. I did my Transwarp, In'Cha, Scotty trick to get behind the his ships stripping the shields off of the D. Next turn I moved the Praetus in forced the big D to bump. He was just out of range to drop his anti matter mines on the Koraga, big time lucky for me. The Koraga was able to take the D down to 1 hull. The lucky Praetus was able to survive rage 1 attacks from both the D and USS Enterprise. It had one hull left and smaked the D with the Additional Weapons array. I think he took out the Praetus the next turn, but he was left with 2 ships that couldn't come about, with no rear weapons and me behind him. I stayed at a good distance so he could back up and force me to bump. The cube stayed with us down the side as I peppered him. He was down to 1 hull left on Enterprise and I started in on Khazara. I think Enterise only had Spock left. My opponent didn't see anyway of turning the game around so he conceded.


3rd game was against a great guy and one of the best players we have. He had

Jem Hadar Fighter
Picard
admiral ducat
Ometa Klan

Koranok
independent flagship
GenKhan
Boheeka
Breen Aid
Dorsal Weapons Array

Jem Hadar Battle Cuiser
generic captain.

This one was sticky. We started Jousting, he decided to go through the mines. I took a few shields off but relatively very little damage from the mines. I Did my tried to do my transwarp trick but realized I could come about so I used In'ch for a 4 instead and shot at Khan with aft torpedoes. He didn't expect that or that I would break the Preatus out of the Joust to lure the cube away. He split his formation up sending Picard to hunt down the Praetus. The Cruiser came about but that big 4 come about put it out of range and Khan misjudged the cruiser and bumped. It also did't help that the cube moved in on hime and with 2 ships loosing actions he started loosing cards. Next turn the Mines and Koraga got my did a lot of damage to the Cruiser, he lost it to the cube because he did't see any point in resisting and it had already lost its captain. After that Picard and Khan unted down the Praetus. I got behind Khan and his dorsay weapons array counld't get trough my defense and I took him out. I was going to go for the Jem Hadar Fighter but the cube beat me to it.

So in the end I had 3 wins which netted me this


It's a nice little ship, glad I could get one. I don't really see the need for more than one of it so I will take it easy at the other OP1s I have coming up.

I did realize that a souped up Koraga was very slippery. I was rolling 8-9 defense dice pluse I usually saved my Battle stations for defense. I think one stacked ship is the way to go in this one. I saw too many people start to take a pounding from the cube once the upgrades were gone. I think the faction pure events I go will be a lot different though, we shall see. In all fun day great opponents, however I still don't like these borg OPs. They are too brutal.

Cool build. I'm surprised to see how little Borg you faced. I'm not sure how good that trick would do against them. You could also use the Aux Control Room from the Vulcan expansion. I'd like to try that trick out but I'm pretty sure I'll be facing at least 2 Borg builds.

Yeah, it wouldn't work against the borg. When I was building the list I took scotty to dicard tomget back 2 hull after I used cheat death. The move just occurred to me while I was playing my first game. As it turned out I never had to use cheat death.

At that store we don't have a lot of Borg players. Only 2 lists had them at all. One guy missed the 1st round because he was late, but he had 2 Soong and something else. He as only been coming the past few months but always plays faction pure. We had a new guy show up with Picard on a Flagship Cube and Interceptor 5. He won his first round and lost the 2nd to the guy with Genkhan. On the whole Borg are not very popular atmthat store and I am ok with that