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Greetings! Last weekend I had the opportunity to play what amounted to my first "full-speed" game of Star Trek Attack Wing (STAW). By that I mean I got to play with all the rules against an opponent (MBS member Creon) who was also an experienced gamer. I have to say, I really enjoyed it, and it gave me a lot to think about. So, I thought I might share a few of my thoughts with all of you here on the blog.

http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2016/11/06/star-trek-attack-wing-ponderings/

The Lists

We played at 100 points. I didn't write down exactly what each of us was using, but in general Creon went with Klingon list that emphasized running as many ships as possible at the expense of having a bunch of upgrades. He had a total of 4 ships; 2 D-7s, a Vor'cha, and a Negh'var I, on the other hand, took two large Federation ships (the Enterprise-D and the Sutherland) and packed them to the gills with upgrades, auxiliary weapons, and crew cards.

The Game

The game was very suspenseful, as we jockeyed for position to try and get our ships lined up for the best shots. In general, my fleet was very defensive in nature, as I took crew cards that allowed me to repair damage and/or reduce the incoming attack dice pool. Creon also used cloak effectively, making it difficult for me to land hits. Ultimately, it came down to which one of us could get two (or more!) of our ships lined up on the same target at the same time; with only one ship firing on a target, the result was typically that the target would lose its shields, but not suffer much, if any damage. In this, the Klingons had an advantage, as their ships were all much more maneuverable than mine. However, thanks to some dice luck, I was able to kill off enough of Creon's fleet to get the win!

Observations

So, here are some things I noticed as well as some random musings from the game:

-Both of our approaches to list building seemed to be perfectly valid, which is cool I think. I enjoy it when a game rewards players who are creative with their list building and tactical thinking.

-The game lasted a fair bit longer than I expected! Granted, both Creon and I are not the most experienced STAW players around, but even so there was a lot more maneuvering than I'm used to seeing with other games like Firestorm Armada.

-Aft-firing weapons are pretty awesome. I should have upgraded the Sutherland to have them, as I would have had a lot more shot opportunities that I wound up having.

-Just like with X-wing, there is a lot of fun to be had here with trying to out-guess your opponent when it comes to maneuvers!

-I can definitely see how someone who is very well versed in what all the upgrade cards are and how they can combine would have a distinct advantage. There is a lot of possible rules interactions that can be used to your advantage! I managed to stumble into a few when I selected the cards I used for the game, and it really made a difference.

Conclusion

I had a great time playing STAW with Creon! I'm definitely looking forward to my next game. I will have to sit down and get a little more familiar with the available cards so that I can plan out my list a little better though! Thanks for reading.

Glad you had fun, and I hope you continue to explore fleet builds!

With that being said, in Fleet Pure, Federation > All. Cloaking by itself is almost pointless these days when ships can throw 6+ attack dice with quality (convert them all to hits and/or crits). A hit die has 3 hits, 1 crit, 2 battle sations, and 2 blanks. An evade die only has 3 evades and 2 battlestations. The rest are blank. That would mean you need to get 6 evades, and if you don't have any way to convert all your cloak dice (and there isn't any in the game), that would mean you would need 16 evade dice rolling evades. Romulans get around that by using Interphase Generators (cancel all hits and take 1 hit). klingon's have nothing comparable to the Interphase Generator.

There are also some Federation Defensive builds that will get you 5-7 evade dice with quality. So yeah, there are ships out there that get as many evade dice as a cloaking ship without cloaking. So 5-7 evade dice, 3-4 shields, and then hull on top of that. And they are less then 50 points. It's kinda cool and sick at the same time.

Side note: Most secondary weapons really suck unless they are 360, can shoot more then once, or have a special effect (target gets an Aux Token or you add dice to your primary attack value).

 Tamwulf wrote:
Glad you had fun, and I hope you continue to explore fleet builds!

With that being said, in Fleet Pure, Federation > All. Cloaking by itself is almost pointless these days when ships can throw 6+ attack dice with quality (convert them all to hits and/or crits). A hit die has 3 hits, 1 crit, 2 battle sations, and 2 blanks. An evade die only has 3 evades and 2 battlestations. The rest are blank. That would mean you need to get 6 evades, and if you don't have any way to convert all your cloak dice (and there isn't any in the game), that would mean you would need 16 evade dice rolling evades. Romulans get around that by using Interphase Generators (cancel all hits and take 1 hit). klingon's have nothing comparable to the Interphase Generator.

There are also some Federation Defensive builds that will get you 5-7 evade dice with quality. So yeah, there are ships out there that get as many evade dice as a cloaking ship without cloaking. So 5-7 evade dice, 3-4 shields, and then hull on top of that. And they are less then 50 points. It's kinda cool and sick at the same time.

Side note: Most secondary weapons really suck unless they are 360, can shoot more then once, or have a special effect (target gets an Aux Token or you add dice to your primary attack value).

Thanks for the info! I didn't realize that there were card combos out there that were that nasty! I'm not sure I have any of them,yet. I'll have to go through my collection again. Interesting on the secondary weapon thing. From the game I mention above, it seemed like just having even an aft arc weapon would be good, but 360 would be more handy. It seemed like Photon and Quantum torpedoes worked fine...what do you mean by shoot more than once? Is that two attacks in one round, or just not needing to be re-charged or re-establish a target lock?

There are secondary weapons, elite talents and even a fleet admiral that allows you to attack more than once with the same weapon. There is a combo out there that allows a ship to attack three times, with the third shot at -1 attack die.

I hate to post the combo's used because it feels so dirty.

 Tamwulf wrote:
There are secondary weapons, elite talents and even a fleet admiral that allows you to attack more than once with the same weapon. There is a combo out there that allows a ship to attack three times, with the third shot at -1 attack die.

I hate to post the combo's used because it feels so dirty.

No worries!

Thanks for the info, it is a great eye-opener for the power level that is achievable in the game.

There are such combos but they usually require a large investmemt in points, they also cost a lot in action economy. I the case of Mirror Universe Admiral Worf, he can only use his ability on a ship with a hull of 3 or less. So there are some crazy combos out there but there are also restrictions on them. The WK suggested tournament format cuts a lot of that out, playing faction pure on top of that makes it even better.


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It's sad, I wanted to enjoy this game, but now I just have a ton of stuff collecting dust.

Glad others are having a great time with it, though!

Is STAW starting to wind down? There seems to be two unreleased ships with no future release date assigned, and the last few releases have been just reprints of earlier ships. I've also noticed my FLGS hasn't been restocking the line.

The production isn't winding down. WK pushed back about 6 ships to fit in the repaints. The repaints were done to satisfy players who have been saying they couldn't get certain ships and for new players so they don't have to go through scalpers. They also responded to customers by moving the release schedule to every other month, but that has been something people have been asking for since 2014 when it went to every month. The ships that were pushed back will probably show up in 2017, WK starts announcing stuff for the year in January, so that is when we will hear something on them.

We know there are OP coming after the Klingon Civil War. Distributors have announced and are taking orders for Yesterday's Enterprise. WK will keep STAW around as long as it makes money. I play at 2 different stores and they always sell out of the new ships. Not all of those people play OPs but they are buying. STAW is performing well above WK expectations. At the GAMA trade show last year WK said that STAW acounted for 17% of their business and it was only projected to be 10% tops. Clix is their cash cow but STAW is just fine. Don't believe the doom anf gloomers.

Unfortunately, there are no STAW events in my area, just one of the local stores carries/carried the retail ships, so I don't have a pulse on the state of the game.

I've been through the rise & fall of Mageknight, Mechwarrior, and Pirates, (is D&D attack wing dead?) so when I saw things slack off for STAW at the local store, it got me wondering.

As long as they keeping putting out retail ships, I'll keep buying. Maybe one day I might even get to play.

It's a shame that the local scene has dried up for you. Mine would have dried up if it weren't for me and 2 other guys keeping on the store to order stuff. Some retailers are fairly reasonable if you approach them right. You could always ask them if they would order the OP kits and let you buy them, as long as you promise not to scalp them. If you did that you could run the OP yourself to draw people in. Even if it is just you and one other person to start, more might join in if they see you playing. Last time I checked stores can still buy up to 3 kits from distributors and they are less than $10.

I didn't really want to comment on the overall state of the game, just because the OP is a "new" player and seems to enjoy it, but...

I recently moved to the Portland, Oregon area, and the STAW scene is good. There are a couple game stores running events just about every month, and one store has a weekly "league". I've played in three events so far, and, well...

1). I've played in four different metas- St. Louis MO, Spokane WA, Pullman WA, and Portland OR. They all think they are playing the game "right" or according to the rules, and yet every meta played the game in subtle, different ways that affected how the game plays. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but it just amazed me how "Oh, they were playing that wrong! It's supposed to be like this," I have encountered. Even at Gen Con 2014 when I played in those tournaments. So... yeah.

2). One of the venues here plays anything goes. No retired resources (hello Flagships, hello Officer Exchange Program), no "suggested tournament format"- if you want to bring one ship in the 130 point game, you can. So yeah, I haven't played there since. The other venue is ship pure. And I've played in two events there, and I'm so sick of the stupidity of the Hathaway build with all the officers, free actions, 6+ evade dice, 6+ attack dice... it's just stupid. Equally stupid is the Equinox build with 8 shields, and if you don't take them all out, they all come back. Three Fed players basically field the exact same list, and it's just... You can't beat them, so more and more of the local players are joining them. Our next event is 20 Nov, Klingon Civil War Month One and I fear seeing more and more Federation players with the Hathaway/Equinox build. The really frustrating thing to me is that I could build a fleet to take them out, but then I'm building a fleet in response to their fleet, and I'm taking stuff I usually don't build or play with to specifically "Head-Hunt" those fleets. In other words, I'm not playing the fleet I want to play. If I want to win that is, and yeah, you can only play so many games getting your teeth kicked in by such a cheesy build before you get frustrated and want to quit.

3). There is far, far too much chaff in this game. "useless" ships, captains, weapons, tech, crew, and elite talents. I know it would be almost impossible to make a "balanced" game with so many factions and ships, but it's getting to ridiculous, ludicrous levels now. I have just about every ship in the game (prize ships too!) and I'm at the point now where all the "extra" cards are in a card box, and I have a small, premium card holder that holds 360 cards, but has maybe 100 in it that I use for fleet building. What is so, so sad to me that I there are over 1600 unique cards in this game, and only about 100 of them are what I would call "useful" or "viable".

4). I like Star Trek, and I like STAW. If this was the only game I played, then I would probably be much like Mr. S. Baldrick, following all the FAQ's and Erratas, making meaningful and productive posts and suggestions, and I'd probably be a driving force for the game in my community. But I'm not.STAW to me started out as a fun, semi-competitive game in the Star Trek universe that required little buy in. Now... yeah. I play too many other games. Right now, I'm getting into Dropfleet Commander, and so I think unless STAW 2.0 comes out very soon, or there is some kind of HUGE shake up, then STAW for me will be a once in a while game. Once in a long while. I just can't justify to myself buying repaints, or ships I know will never get used, for 1-2 cards that will probably get errated out of usefulness a week after release, and paying $15-$25 for a tournament that I know I will lose because I'm not playing the Hathaway/Equinox combo.

I'll continue following the game, and I'll enjoy reading about it here, and especially Mr. S Baldricks insights into the game, but I guess what I'm saying is... this Admiral is retiring.

I can understand that frustration. There is a lot to keep track of with STAW. I have been all in with this game since it started. Tamwulf is right this is the only game I keep track of these days. I have no interest in the current versions of WH & 40K. GW lost my support years ago. I play the occasional game of old hammer or retro video game (love me some Castlevania ), but I'm all about STAW.

As with many games venue or play group is the most important thing with STAW. The "anything goes" venues, like Tamwulf talked about, I would avoid at all costs. There are lots of ways this game can be exploited and that method of play doesn't do anything to promote or ensure that everyone has a good time. The 2014 Nationals were the worst games ever to watch, two Tac Cubes circling for an hour waiting to see who would play Crosis first, The WK suggested format was implemented for a reason and balances out the game. I say take it a step further and make it fleet or ship pure with the suggested format for a well balanced game.

I would agree that there are a large amount of bad cards in the game. However I would say that is because most of them are probably not designed with OP play in mind. A lot of them can be fun in much larger games or specialized scenarios. That is an important thing we must keep in mind. All of the retail packs are made more for theme rather than OP play. Now, that said I wish there was a change in the design theory of some of them.

There does need to be some more diversity in the cards released. By that I mean, more useful cards for factions other than the Federation, less of the over taxed cards (Action+disable/discard+aux). I have hopes that since WK has been doing the repaints they have been spending time working on these things for next year. Some of the more recent releases have been better than ones in the past. So I'll wait and see what comes next year.

The best way to alleviate frustration is to reach out to the community. If you have a question, concern, or need help with a build, post it up and there are lots of folks that will help.