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As I have mentioned, wife and I are embarking into this game, I'll be taking Romulans, wife taking Dominion. We now have a friend who is keen to play (possibly more to follow) and wants to run Borg (we've tried to get him onto Klingons or Feds, but he's quite keen on the mechanized zombies...). He has said if there's not a way to get them toned down, he'll take something else, but I'd like to give him the opportunity to take what he likes.

If we're talking fleet-pure, what kind of things should we remove or restrict to enable this fleet to be both balanced with other fleets and still enjoyable and thematic for the player?

As long as you are playing faction pure or ship pure, the Borg are manageable.

However, you are going to find that it's not about what cards or upgrades you want to restrict or throw out; it's the Borg ships themselves. Each one has awesome maneuverability (just about the best in the game), with a 360 degree firing arc. Combined with awesome base damage, you just can't compete.

Keeping it faction pure means that you won't have to worry about some of the more insane combo's out there right now on Borg ships. They have few upgrade cards, but some are pretty powerful. Assimilation Tubules, Borg Tractor Beam, and the Borg Cutting Beam are all very, very nasty. The most common upgrade card you will see on a Borg ship though is Ablative Armor. 10 points to convert all crits to hits and add 4 "virtual" Hull to a Borg ship? Yes please. Of course Feedback Pulse can be really annoying when you build the anti-Borg ship with 10 attack dice and he plays that card.

Still, the Borg are not that bad when you keep them faction or ship pure. It's when you see a Borg Sphere with Picard, Tribbles, and AssTubes that turn my stomach. The thing is, you pretty much have to build a fleet to take on the Borg, and it really helps when you get some of the newer "anti-Borg" cards like Elizabeth Shelby, or the Vulcan V'Las that disables crew.

Good luck!

Of all the things I associate with the Borg, maneuverability isn't one of them... A cube should be less maneuverable than a Dom Battleship. It's a shame they've been given that. Perhaps we can look to houserule their movement somehow.

You'll still struggle versus Borg in faction pure. Especially as Romulans.

Two things to tone down Borg have been suggested 1) their 360 fire is only range 1-2 (just like Enterprise D/Voyager/DS9)
2) their spin maneuver takes place AFTER movement and not before

In faction pure the Borg really aren't too bad, especially if you know your facing them and can build a list to suit.

While they may be the easiest faction to play with, you can soon learn a few tips and tricks against them. Their biggest strengths are their movement and 360* firing arch. Once your in range it's very hard to get out of it, and there will be some turns where your out of arch to shoot them back. Keeping this to a minimum is what will win you the game.

"The Borg: How to make them fun and fair?"

Take the sphere place it on the ground, grab you 7 iron and tee off

The borg are kind of the anti fun of Attack Wing. Two hull armours on either the sphere or cube is insane. Also borg missiles are disgusting. If you guys are just playing for fun limit it to the scout cube and soong ship. Leave the big dogs on the shelf.

The borg are the one faction that I feel no guilt in throwing down 6 cloaked mines against.
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I agree with Emperorpenguin.
If you tone down their 360 primary attack and have their spin maneuver take place after they move, that should make it a lot more balanced.

If you're actually playing scenarios rather than plain old "kill 'em all" then you should see the Borg having some difficulty. I've played in several organized events where Borg had a very hard time since they normally only had a single ship and scenario rules either stripped ships of some key ability (like pulling captains off of the ships on turn 1 ) or required some sot of resource management/collecton that a single ship just couldn't keep up with when facing 2 or 3 ship fleets. In our last event, for example, players were on the same side attacking an indestructable Borg cube and it all came down to who could dish out the most damage. Players were not allowed to attack each other. As great as the cube is at dealing damage it could not keep up against my fleet (which had 5 ships total).

Losing the captain on turn 1 is the Arena scenario and we recently played it. It doesn't hurt Borg at all really.

A Borg player won our Arena tournament, he just wiped the floor with opposing ships, not having a captain didn't matter one jot.

Another Borg player who had never played before, came 4th, only missing out on 3rd or maybe even 2nd because I hid my Romulan Science ship and won on fleet points

Faction pure or increase the penalty of mixing different factions together. The current ruling of +1 penalty is simply wrong.

The fact that the Admiral penalty is +3 shows a glimmer of awareness of this, though I'd really like them to faq that across the board.

One suggestion I've read is to treat this as standard game rules.

That's not a bad idea, sucks though for rear firing torpedoes.

Also penalises dorsal weapons arrays which need disabling anyway

 emperorpenguin wrote:
Also penalises dorsal weapons arrays which need disabling anyway

I'm ok with that. I don't think it should have ever been range 1-3 to begin with. The new one in the Resistance booster will only be 1-2 for 2 pts.

I think the easiest way is to give them a front arc instead of 360. you do not need to modify the movement or anything. The spin lets them be effective with the arc, but still requires planning.