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We're now in the process of looking into building our secondary fleets, wife's going klingon, I'll be going Feds and as a big fan of DS9, want The Sisko and The Defiant commanding my fleet, however I'm told that both captain and ship lack the teeth they should have, so what's a good, faction pure, way to make this into the little psychokiller ship it was in the series?

Ideas for faction pure builds on Defiant, with whichever version of Sisko is best?

If you play with proxies or get your hands on the Hood there are some good cards in there that make the defiant what it should be. Sisko is a good captain the way he is, he gets over looked a lot because he doesn't give you an extra action like Picard and Spock but his ability is very useful.

24 Defiant
04 Sisko
02 Systems Upgrad (+ 1 shield and tech slot)
02 Type 8 Phasers (+1 to primary weapon)

For 32 points it is nimble and can throw out some dice.

At my last OP I threw Riker from the Hood, Tom Paris, and Multi Adaptive Shields and no one scratched it the whole time. If you are just playing casual you could leave that stuff off and just use O'Brien to keep the shields up. It is a good ship, all it really needed to make it playable is the extra attack. In this game there is a staggering difference between 3 and 4 attack dice. The Alpha Hunter has the same stats except +1 attack and is very playable.

When I first saw the type 8 phasers with the hood the defiant was the first ship I thought of, your right about the huge difference between 3 and 4 attack dice. And with captain Hayes and Donatra on nearby ships the tough little ship is looking good.

I'm hoping that the upcoming Valiant ship pack will be an improved version of the defiant, and will have some sort of pulse phaser weapon upgrade to make it more like the show.

For me I think the Type 8 Phaser is the perfect upgrade for it. I wouldn't want it to have more than +1 attack. The Galaxy Class only has 4. aAs much as I love the Defiant it shouldn't have more firepower than a Galaxy. Sisko said it was over gunned for a ship "its size".

As a Romulan player I can certainly attest to the difference between 3 and 4 attacks.

As to it outgunning a Galaxy, I'm not sure, they were certainly stately pleasure barges in TNG with science labs and families and theme parks aboard... Only thing that ever bothered me about WKs version was the lack of a tech slot... Jem Hadar ships suicide ran the Odyssey and were very difficult for it to take on yet the Defiant one-shot (burst) them.

To be fair when the Odyssey took on the Jem H'Dar the Dominion could shoot through Federation shields. The Feds learned a lot when they captured the Robinson, which probably allowed the Defiant to tear them apart. Weyoun even remarks in "A Call to Arms" about how they used to be able to shoot through Federation shields when they attack DS9.

In faction pure or ship pure, I kinda like the ISS Defiant better. The MU have better captains/crew to make it a wonderful "Pocket Battleship". Step out of "Pure" builds, and they are both mean little ships.

There is a huge difference between 3 attack dice and 4 attack dice. The rule of thumb is that you want to roll 1/3 more evade dice then attack dice to have about even chances of evading the attack. If your opponent is rolling 3 attack dice, if you roll 4 evade dice, you should have even odds of only taking 1 damage or none. Step it up to 4 attack dice, and now you need at least 5, though 6 evade dice are better. Getting 4 evade dice on a non-cloak ship is difficult, but not impossible. Any more than that, and only the Fed's can really do it with crew and tech. Other factions have to cloak. 5 attack dice should have been the maximum in this game with the attack/evade dice the way they are. When you start stepping up to 6 or more attack dice, there really isn't anything you can do to evade it, so you have to use other methods (attack cancellation, discards to reduce the damage, and just bigger ships that can take the hit). The only faction in the game that can evade well enough without a cloak, use discards effectively, or reduce/absorb hits are the Federation. A close second is the Romulans with cloaks, Interphase Generators, and Reinforced or Enhanced Hull Plating. No other faction even comes close. Dominion has one big attack cancel, but there are enough disable/discard crew effects out there to make it iffy to use. The Klingons have the Projected Stasis Field, but it's a Discard, and it's almost a suicide mission for that ship. It becomes the #1 target of an opposing fleet too.

As a side note, with the USS Hood out, I think every Defiant will be running around with a Type 8 Phaser Array and Systems Upgrade. +1 attack die and +1 shield for 4 points? Sounds like a bargain!