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I thought it would be good to have a collated strategy and tactics thread of people's experiences from OPs.

For example: Arena requires maximised captain skill, minimum 3, if you want to win the captain battle.
Collective OP1 is about controlling the movement of the bct to your advantage.

And so on!

As someone with no experience but a view to a local store possibly running this soon, I'd love a full breakdown of each event and suitable tactics for them.

I won my local Arena OP Event with:

USS Enterprise-D captained by Picard
USS Voyager captained by Spock, Admiral Kirk
USS Enterprise (Original) captained by Janeway

The way it works is, your highest captain skills get beamed down first, equal skills, you choose. This happens for the first 3 turns.

So, the idea was. Picard beams down first (obviously). Then you pick Spock or Janeway - as Spock is 8 thanks to Kirk. Due to some weirdness of the scenario rules, you pretty much HAVE to pick Spock at this point. Picking Spock flips Kirk over to his Captain side. - So, all well and good, plus it means you have the 3rd round with 2 high captain skill folks still in it.

Then, at the end of the 3rd round, all remaining captains beam down.

If you had picked Janeway, instead of Spock, Kirk would never have had the opportunity to flip over to Captain, so wouldn't count... Allegedly. However, some people might count this as a good thing in certain situations (I didn't find one).

With 4 'Captains' on the planet, with skill 9, 8, 8 and 6, I found that no-one could even really come closer to winning the captains battle against me.

As for the Captains battle, it's pretty obvious, but... The key is to assign the maximum possible damage to one of your dudes without killing them. So, someone does a really good round and gets 5 damage. - Assign that to Spock, who has 6 'health' Then don't assign any more to him until you absolutely need to. - And, truth be told, I'd be killing off Kirk before Spock in any case.


So, once the captains battles out of the way, your enemy should all be pilot skill 1, while you're your normal range of levels. Again, probably stating the obvious here but...

I put all my enemy ships in different corners, facing the corner. I put The Planet in an awkward position near the meanest enemy ship, so they have to have a slightly harder time thinking about turns and moves with it.

Now, even though the ships facing the corners can be turned 90/180 degrees by your opponents before the game resumes, it's still something they need to think about doing, so it's just another thing to think about.


Deploying your ships after the Captains Battle

Even your ships need to be range 1 away from each other. I found the best way to do it was. Pick the ship I'm wanting to kill and could possibly do it in 1 round. It might be the toughest ship, it might be the weakest, it all depends on the enemy fleet. What I found key was picking a ship that had very good odds of killing in one round, but was expensive enough that I wasn't *over*killing it by too much. And, if I didn't kill it in 1 round, wouldn't do masses of damage to me when it fired back, letting my kill it in round 2 - Thanks to 360 firearcs on 2/3 ships, then 180 degrees on the Tinyprise.

I then find the halfway line on the board, opposite that ship (which is in a corner).
Then I deploy 1 base length back from the halfway line. Whoever is most damaged out of Voyager or the Enterprise-D, starts within Range 1 of the board edge on the halfway line. Then the other of the two Deploys along the line, range 1 from that. Then, finally, The Original Enterprise deploys at range one from that ship, which is *probably* near enough the exact middle of the board.

My first maneuver as the game resumes. - Every single ship goes 2 forward. Possibly 3 forward if it's a slow cloaked ship your picking on, but I never tried that, 2 forward always works for me.

This should mean, that no matter which manoeuvre an enemy ship picks (Except possibly borg? - Didn't fight them during Arena)), you will always have all 3 ships within range and firing arc (which is why the Tinyprise is on the end), of the enemy ship. Probably at range 2. Maybe range 3 if the enemy ship is being clever.

Then, you just hit the ship with Target Locks and Focus from Spock And Picard and a focus from Janeway. Baring any true disasters, that should kill the ship in 1 round.

At that point, when you've got all your captains and are now a ship up, with you in formation.... It should be a cleanup exercise.

In saying that, I didn't come against borg during the tourney, so I couldn't help against them.

When I first read about the Arena and it's use of Captains, from a fleet pure perspective, it did immediately sound like a Federation love-in.

I'd be hard pressed to mount anything like that using a fleet pure Roms list I think. Perhaps I should just get a fleet of each for these things.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
When I first read about the Arena and it's use of Captains, from a fleet pure perspective, it did immediately sound like a Federation love-in.

I'd be hard pressed to mount anything like that using a fleet pure Roms list I think. Perhaps I should just get a fleet of each for these things.

Admirals are the only thing that puts feds over the edge. That's why a lot of places banned them for late Arena OPs. Romulans can actually do well in the Arena. They have a lot of 6&7 skill captains and some very cheap ships.

Played the Borg Collective OP1 scenario last night.

I had a tank of a named Jem'Hadar Battleship (Weyoun 6, Admiral Dukat, Photon6s, Volley, Omet'Iklan, Amat'Igan, shroud, Invaluable Advice) , Hideki fighters and my random was a Jem'Hadar attack ship (which is awesome, as it triggers the named Battleship's ability).

Here's some fun pics:

We are the stroopborg, resistance is foo-tul...

Closing on erithromycin's fleet (Martok his ship, a gorn raider and a random Maquis fighter)


Brutal firefight, in which I forgot to use one of my Invaluable advice to make my volley of torpedoes take out both his little ships - a careless error that cost me the game.

Much fun was had, and much learned: I need to learn to hang back with the Dominion and let the fight come to me, Hideki fighters are lethal - really hard to blow up and allow you to effectively shepherd the borg cube (it goes after the nearest target), and always take dorsal weapons on a battleship for when Klingons sneak up your tailpipe. Boo

Yup those Klingons can be sneaky. The Battleshipnis better than its internet reputation, but the big fellow does need the dorsal weapon.

I like your choice of the Hadeki fighters. I am surprised more people have not been using the fighters in the Collective, because it is impossible for the borg to one shot them.

PS, Klingons don't like Dominion EM pulses, -1 attack die is annoying to them, but the -1 defense die hurts bad.

Hidekis are amazing, and so so good in the OP. Yeah, we had a lot of chat about em vs Klingons, given my op2 plan is double breen! I think I should've taken the generic battleship and dorsal, rather than the named version. Live and learn, I suppose. Oh, and the resistance action, while undoubtedly useful, is not really relevant to this build. My opponent used it a couple of times and it gave no real benefit.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
When I first read about the Arena and it's use of Captains, from a fleet pure perspective, it did immediately sound like a Federation love-in.

I'd be hard pressed to mount anything like that using a fleet pure Roms list I think. Perhaps I should just get a fleet of each for these things.

I placed second in our Arena with this Romulan fleet

Valdore - Romulan Commander
Gal Gath'Thong - Toreth - Plasma Torpedoes
Praetus - Jarok - Additional Weapons Array
Science ship - Donatra

I won all the captain's battles, including versus a Federation build. I defeated the Federation fleet too, but hard a hard time versus the two Borg fleets I faced.

It's the Collective OP-1 on Sunday for me.

I decided to go with crazy Voyager of Craziness because, well, it seems sensible, fun and a tiny bit crazy.

USS Voyager
Flagship (Independent Romulan)
Jean-Luc Picard
Cheat Death

Crew:
Scotty (TOS)
Tom Paris

Weapons:
Transphasic Torpedoes
Transphasic Torpedoes

Tech:
Ablative Generator

Alternatively, I can replace Scotty with Sulu TOS and O'Brien starter.

As far as I can tell, it's one of the more common Voyager lists out there at 90 points. However, to be honest, I'm still not sure what it's supposed to do against a potential Borg Tactical Cube with double Ablative Hull Armour. Or, even worse, a Feedback Pulse. This will be my first OP event, so I haven't got any blind boosters to help, so no Elizabeth Shelby for example.

Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions?

Miles O'Brien to disable any feedback pulse

Yeah, I'm leaning towards that build now. - Feel a bit freaked out by not having any shield restorers, but considering that borg cube flying around, it's not like I've got the luxury of time to regenerate them anyhow.

Yeah, Miles and Sulu seems the best combo.

OP1 list (only 80pt builds allowed, not 90)

Bioship Alpha
Romulan-independent flagship
Picard
Quantum Singularity x2
Feedback Pulse
Miles O'Brien

The idea is to get your opponent to run at you, then singularity off the table and appear behind them meaning the cube will only hurt his ships. I made one mistake that cost me the OP, came in second.

OP2:
"the federation shuffle"

Enterprise (TOS)
Flagship - Independent Romulan
Gorn Commander

U.S.S. Sutherland
Rudolf Ransom

Nebula Class
Clark Terrell

I have 2 Nebula class ships but can also be done with Galaxy class ships, just costs more points.
The idea here is to move into range 3 and then move back and forth every turn so you stay at range 3. with the +1 def of the flagship and Terrell plus ransom your fleet will take quite a beating, especially with a minimum of 6 ships on the board it will take a long time before you get more then 5 attack dice thrown at you.

easily won this op scoring over 100pts each game.

What confuses me with the 'federation shuffle' idea is, I've seen some builds with torpedoes, how do they have time to re-enable and re-targetlock with them?

Something the primary weapons don't have an issue in your build with, I guess.


I had my Collective OP-1 event today and I used Voyager with Sulu+Smiley, picking up the IKS B'moth as a booster. - I went with the K'tinga Class, K'nera as captain, the Elite Talent and Crewmember. - I used K'nera a couple of times during the tournament, but the talent/crew were pretty much cube fodder.

8 Players, 3 games.

First was up against 90 points of Jem Hadar Battlecruiser (including 4 weapon upgrades) and a boostered Jem Hadar attack ship. The Borg cube was a massive pain to the both of us equally but ultimately Voyagers extra captain skill meant that the ship won the day.

Second game was against a Borg Sphere with a Weyoun / Varel build. Fortunately Varel got himself assimilated relatively early on - A good thing too, as Smiley was my first to go too. Due to me pretty much running away like a coward from the cube (though I did manage to kill off the warbird while doing so), the game ended up going to time, with points in my favour due to Varel being Cube'd (For the OP, it was ruled that assimilated counted as killed, as opposed to discarded).

It was a pretty even game, however at time. Voyager was still hanging on to a single set of transphasic torpedoes and Cheat Death, while the Sphere was just down to Weyoun with the cube bearing down onto it. - So, a win to me!


And, my third and final game... Borg Sphere with Picard, Conditional Surrender, double Ablative Armour and a Gavroche booster. - Sometimes it's nice to know pretty much every stereotype about the games balance issues was present. - I can't wait to see how many Tactical Stations are fielded in a Resistance Is Futile OP... 'Future' resources and prize ships aren't available for use.

In any case. I went in expecting a horrible, horrible death... And wasn't really disappointed. I actually launched a whole set of Transphasics at the Gavroche, reasoning, well, I'm going to get *some* points from this game and, I did manage to do just enough damage to one-shot it, thanks to literally every dice rolling battle stations and the free flagship upgrade.

So, with the Gavroche dead, it came down to focusing on the Sphere and, to be honest, things worked relatively well. Miles managed to disable 'Conditional Surrender' and the Cube got rid of the Spheres only crewmember (While also Assimilating my Sulu for the 3rd time this tournament, without him managing to defend against any attacks. - At least Miles worked this time).

my second Transphasic round managed to blast through both the spheres ablative armours and even cause a point of shield damage. It was pretty much range 1 / 2 warfare at that point. Sphere kills my ablative, I kill its shields, Sphere kills my shields, I do a bunch of hull damage. - The Sphere kills me, I cheat death, do a couple more hull damage in return. The Sphere kills Voyager yet again, but as I'm the same captain skill with my Picard (he was a point down, so had initiative), I get to fire back, finally finishing the darned thing off and leaving my K'Tinga class as the only player ship standing on the board, which as about to get 9 diced by the Cube... So, well, I'm glad the game ended there.


So, with 3 wins, albeit with 2 by narrow margins - < 25 points between us, I managed to win the day and the Ti'mur.
I also swapped the B'moth for a Jem Hadar attack ship with one of the other players, so I'm quite happy about that. I know there's still 2 OP's to go and I do actually have a Klingon fleet (plus K'nera was quite handy), but I wanted Damar dammit! Because, well, he's Damar.


Truth be told, though.... The Ti'mur looks like an awesome little ship and I can see why everyone loves Koss - Though, is it "opponents", as in, multiple players, or "opponents", as in, "Upgrades belonging to your opponents?".

In any case, Wizkids, really? I mean, really?


So, take-home thoughts...

The scenario is great. - I've played through the Dominion War scenarios in a campaign, plus the Arena OP at an event and genuinely COP-1 was the best scenario I've played. The tension, the excitement, the relief when they cube turns away, it was just great. Especially when both players end up cursing the cube. I'm disappointed I didn't get a set of map elements home, as I'd love to have sat that in the middle of any 200-300 point 6' by 3' games I play. Though, I supposed a D6 for movement (or a scatter) and the mini cube templates from Voyager going out to range 3 would do in a pinch.

All the complaints about the Borg Sphere and Tactical Cube seem completely valid, especially with Cross-Factioning. I didn't feel massively brilliant using a double Transphasic Voyager either, to be honest. At least I didn't end up playing the more casual players, so didn't feel too horrid. - In saying that, I played against the exact same 3 people as last time. This isn't amazing.
.
the game is starting to feel like a giant hour long game of Rock, Papers or Scissors. This is not fun for me.1

Now to start thinking about The Collective OP-2. It seems 180 degree fire arcs are the order of the day, perhaps? Possibly the Tinyprise, Excelsior and maybe the Reliant, if I have points?

Or, alternatively, a pure Cardassian fleet. - 2 Keldons, perhaps? I doubt I'd be able to fit a Galor in too, would the Keldon's cloaking devices help in this match much?

I found 2 keldons and a flagship galor class to be perfect for the op2, even though I pulled the useless rom ship again. Won all 3 of my matches.

We had our Collective OP1 on saturday and I won (finally!) with the following

Tactical Cube 138
Tactical Drone (re-roll)
Ablative Armour
Assimilation Tubules
Feedback Pulse
Full Assault
Four of Twelve

Reinforcement Sideboard
Queen
Subspace Distortion
Borg Missiles
Torsus

I drew the USS Yeager as my blind

First game I fought a Voyager dreadnought with 2 transphasics plus USS Yeager. I defeated it by feedbacking and stealing the transphasics and grinding Voyager down over the hour. Borg missiles hugely helped.

Second game I lost to a Sphere & Soong duo backed by the Jem'Hadar ship. I could have won but suffered really bad hit rolls

Third game I defeated a twin Jem'hadar battlecruiser list with the Vorta'Vor. Borg missiles inflicted FOUR auxiliaries on his cruiser which struggled to return to the fight and then he made the fateful mistake of choosing a red maneuver at the table edge. I flew him off for the win. I won the USS Raven (because our venue had received the wrong prize pack) but I felt very dirty running the Borg.

Borg missiles are very overpowered

Yeah, I got Borg Missiled in my first game as well.

Wizkids do seem to just go beyond taking the mick with the borg to be honest.

"Receive auxiliary tokens for every hit you do, the non target lock requiring, disable only, 360 degree fire arc weapon" - "Ouch, that's nasty."

"Destroys shields" - "Frikking heck, that's horrifying, it does that AND damages me too?"

"You may not roll defence dice." Well, I was tempted to put the 'rage face' here. But basically, that requires too much emotional investment. Lets just say, it makes me sincerely doubt whether I want to play the game anymore.

Yeah my opponent said "That's gotta be a discard right?"
"Nope, just a disable"
"But you need a target lock?"
"Nope"
"But I get defence dice?"
"Nope - sick isn't it?"

So, I've started thinking about Collective OP2 now and I'm considering a pretty traditional cardassian fleet.

I've got to admit, I've never won a game when I've brought both my Kelson's out to play but still...

Hideki Attack Fighters (Been using flagships a lot recently, wanted a change)

Keldon Class
Gul Dukat
Boheeka
Tetryon Emissions

Keldon Class
Gul Evek
Amatlgan
Cloaking Device
Tetryon Emissions

The hope being that Dukat gets to throw in the quality hits from safety, with first the hideki's and the Evek tanking the hits, with hopefully a few badguys in the way too

I'm pretty sure that two Borg Spheres and two Borg missiles could win many thing. Might have issues fighting a cube, but with a TL and all the Aux tokens, the 360 arc and the movement it just so simple and mean

Are Tetryon emissions and the cloak worth it?

Tetryon emissions is a great card. I always try to fit it into a Dominion build. Cloak is trickier because of the extra cost when not on a Keldon and the risk due to shields being down

Yeah, that's why I'm figuring for Collective OP2, just take the emissions on both Keldons and only the Cloak on Evek, because Evek makes cloaking awesone.

I just wasn't sure whether it was worth taking them at all.

I quite like the emissions as well. It's nice when I can take two so I get more than one round of use out of them.

So, Collective OP2 tomorrow (Why couldn't the suggested tournament rules have come out earlier, at least we'll have them for COP3).

I think I'll stick with my Cardassian fleet. Though I'm wondering if I should replace Amat'lgan with Miles O'Brien on the off chance he's needed to disable something.

However... I genuinely can't see a reason why in this event, anyone would want to take anything except a Weyoun/Varel flagshipped cube with Ilia and possibly a tractor/cutting beam (or I imagine feedback pulse is better).

Surely that'd just let you cause pretty much infinite damage until the time runs out?

Op2 is made for the cardassian conga line of doom straight up on side of the cube and around the top. 180 firing arc means you will always have a shot with little effort. 15 attack dice a turn plus whatever the blind ship is works well.

At one of Collective 2 events I went to a guy had 3 keldons with Donatra and the independent flagship that gives the attack bonus and he had Kira that gives everyone target locks. I think his blind was the beetle. He was racking up 120-160 a round.

Yeah, I figured out the 'fly up the side' of the cube tactic by my 3rd game.

The first two I tried being clever by flying diagonally across it. Which just caused a mess and didn't help at all.

It also didn't help that I pretty much constantly whiffed with Gul Evek.

However, overall I did quite well. I lost to the tournament winner in my first round. He was running 3 Scout Cubes with Flagship, Martok, Donatra and Clark Tyrell. He basically just stayed at Range 3 and let everyone else take all the fire from the cube.

I won my second game against a random independent fleet, which was pretty fun. My main mistake was still trying the diagonal line thing.

3rd game, everything fell into place. It was a Dominion fleet with a random Sutherland thrown in too. I finally flew up the side, with my fighters staying in the middle alongside the dominion fleet and my Yeager. Surprisingly, there were no actual casualties during the game, despite managing to get the enemy Battle Cruiser a Warp Core Breach the moment its shields failed.

I won this one quite handily, only being a few points off getting the 20 point lead, annoyingly. - Should have rolled faster!

My Keldon's weren't shot at all and my fighters were doing a great job making a nuisance of themselves by 1 turning into the other ships, causing them to lose actions and all that jazz.

Overall it went well and, most importantly, I got my USS Yeager! And, I did come away with a set of map elements too, so that means I have a suitably imposing looking Borg cube to insert into any 200-300 point Attack Wing games we play, using rules from Collective OP1 (it's far easier to roll a dice for its movements than using the counters from COP1 anyhow).

There was a Borg cube with a cutting beam, but it didn't take Illia. This ended up losing against the triple Scout cubes when it continually got itself trapped on Debris tokens.


So... Now onto Collective OP3 in a months time (assuming I get in, it may be oversubscribed...) As my odds of Assimilation Target Prime are rather low now... I'm thinking of going for something fluffy that isn't totally terrible either. - It helps things that we're using the new tournament rules too.

Admittedly, it does also depend on the Enterprise E turning up too. However...

USS Defiant
Captain: Worf
Crew: Hikari Sulu, Elizabeth Shelby
Photon Torpedoes (4)
Cloaking Device

USS Enterprise-E
Captain: Jean Luc Picard (6)
Crew: Lojur, Beverly Crusher
Weaponry: Quantum Torpedoes

So, that'll be the Enterprise, firing torpedoes potentially 3 times in a row without disabling them, with me having Worf as a lower pilot skill to hopefully get a good killing blow as well. It's also 41 and 49 points, so that's good.
However... I've not picked a resource, which is a bit odd, really. However, I can't really think of anything I'd want to lose to help. - Maybe the torpedoes off the Defiant? Anyone have any other thoughts?