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I just recently decided to get into STAW with a few buds and want to play Romulans. As a newb, I am looking for advice on what kind of tactics I should be using, what to buy, and decent lists to play. From what I've heard on DakkaDakka so far, we're probably going to do faction pure stuff to cut down on all the . WIll that lead to balance problems, or is that a good option?

I'd like to hear your opinions and advice, Dakkalites!

Faction pure is actually the best way to keep balance in the game. Each faction has strengths and weaknesses and withmthe exception of the borg all the other factions play well together. If you cross factions the differences between factions become diluted and it becomes a deck building game instead of a space combat game.

Romulans are fun in faction pure. They will on average get more defense dice than the others plus they are good at moving out of the opponent's firing arc. They have great tech which is mitigated by so so crew. They have solid captains and some interesting talents. They don't have any middleweight ships it's either the big boys or the lightweights. Also the Scimitar will be out next month and hopefully it will bring more new toys.

Get yourself the Khazara from the Core Set first. Your second 'go to' ship will be the Valdore.
After those two I'd say the Gal Gath'Thong.
The Apnex will give you the Interphase generator, the Praetus will give you Cloaked Mines.

Thanks for the advice! I will start working on my fleet.

If you weren't going completely faction pure, I'd say get 5 science vessels and Martok (Klingon from BoP OP kit) and watch hilarity ensue as your little science vessels build up a ton of attacks. Martok in Valdore, btw. Only because I'm going with 40pts or less after ship is fully costed.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
If you weren't going completely faction pure, I'd say get 5 science vessels and Martok (Klingon from BoP OP kit) and watch hilarity ensue as your little science vessels build up a ton of attacks. Martok in Valdore, btw. Only because I'm going with 40pts or less after ship is fully costed.

Meh, do it anyways and give everyone cloaked mines. 6 ships dropping mines? Priceless. Don't even shoot/decloak. Just run around all game dropping mines and laughing.

Where do you get cloaking mines? I'm pretty sure with that being the case, I'd drop Martok and just use a lot of science vessels.

Faction Pure, or at the very least Ship Pure (you can freely mix ships, but all of those ships must be faction pure) will go a long way towards keeping the game interesting.

For Romulans, I would suggest first getting your hands on two D'deridex class ships (one comes in the starter, and you can usually find extras on eBay), and one or two Valdores. That will give you a very respectable base of ships to draw from. Outside of those two, most everything else that the Romulans bring to the table is support oriented. The Praetus, Gal'gathong, Apnex, and Vo are all worth picking up (in that order) for the cards included therein, but the ships themselves are a bit too weedy to be of much use. Fortunately, next month the Romulans are getting the Scimitar, which should be a pretty beefy battleship.

Welcome to Attack Wing, and to the Romulan Star Empire. Jolan tru!

The Gal Gathong makes a nice flanker with 5 shot plasma torps and Valdor as captain. It is better if you can manage to get advanced cloaking on it.

Also, don't be afraid to sometimes run your Romulans de-cloaked. Yup, a shocking idea but the D'deridex and Valdore have the shields and hull to do it. I recently defeated a Dominion battlecruiser fleet using two Valdores and a D'deridex without cloaking once. Left me free to target lock (which is GREAT with Tactical Officer) and use the Chief Engineer resource. My opponent had expected typical Romulan tactics

 emperorpenguin wrote:
Also, don't be afraid to sometimes run your Romulans de-cloaked. Yup, a shocking idea but the D'deridex and Valdore have the shields and hull to do it. I recently defeated a Dominion battlecruiser fleet using two Valdores and a D'deridex without cloaking once. Left me free to target lock (which is GREAT with Tactical Officer) and use the Chief Engineer resource. My opponent had expected typical Romulan tactics

*GASP* Uncloaking?!

Regarding picking up a second D'deridex, I wouldn't pick up a second starter set D'deridex. There's are a couple of D'deridexs out there, the Aj'Rmr and the Avatar of Tomed. Now, those two are ships that you get from OPs so they are trickier to get but they do come with new cards and pilots. They are also releasing the IRW Haakona, which is another D'deridex, although that won't be until Feb 2015.

Personally, I wouldn't bother buying duplicate named ships, unless you really want a specific card. Some people bought multiple Praetus' just for the Cloaked Mines card but it seems like such a waste, especially since the ship itself isn't all that amazing. If you're playing casually, you can easily skip that.