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I was playing a couple of games at my FLGS and to round off the evening, we picked one ship and built it up with 60 points. I played the Dominion Cruiser while my opponent played the Enterprise E. Now, we didn't try to make insanely powerful ships and kept it faction pure but we found that even though the ships were fairly powerful, they were able to absorb quite a few hits before exploding. Which seems in-line with what you would see on the shows.

I was wondering though, how often do you see ships getting one-shotted; blown up with a single attack? Basically I'm thinking of the horror stories you read of tournaments where people cobble together an insane build and pretty much decimate their opponent's ships.

Voyager can get a torpedo that does 10 shots. Now, that's not gonna one-shot everything, but if a ship is cloaked and you hit it, it'll probably vaporize. At least without cloaking the ship will have shields (assuming the "one shot" thing). But once crits start going through...expect death.

That depends on the attacker and the target, really.

The horror stories out of tournaments usually involve ships that can't be killed, not ships that can vaporize their opponent with a single salvo.

So would it be fairly safe to assume that people don't seem ships getting vaporized in a single shot on a regular basis? And I'm talking about similar ships attacking each other. Having a Borg Cube vaporize a dinky ship in one shot or nuking the Praetus with transphasic torpedoes is understandable.

The reason why I'm asking is because I was curious if a houserule of maxing attack bonuses to say 3 or so dice would make a big difference or if it is necessary at all.

I often play a super Voyager in tourneys and I can tell you there have been more than a few times with the modifications to dice that I can easily land 12 hits with a Transphasic torpedo. The best I ever did using everything I could was 14 dice for 13 hits. but I burned half my upgrades to make it happen.

I've knocked out several ships in one shot. Its not common but I know it can be done. Mostly as has already been said, it happens against cloaked ships that have a total whiff on defense die or small ships with little to know defense/hull. More often than not, its a good solid hit but doesn't knock out a similarly equipped ship. I go up against super cubes all the time and its really disheartening to land 10-12 hits and watch them smile as they say ' oh darn, 4 to ablative and 8 to the shields...well just one more shield and 9 hull for you to go"

It's an issue that has only gotten worse over the last couple expansions as we see more and more ships get higher and higher attack values. As I said in another thread, it would not surprise me that by next spring, we have a ship with a base Primary Attack Value of 8.

Consider: Primary attack value 5 (not the best, certainly not the worst right now). Flagship resource. +1 attack die (AD). Some upgrade that adds another die or two (pretty common), +1 AD. Ship Captain's ability or elite talent. +1 AD. Range 1 +1 AD. That's 9 attack dice. On top of the attack dice, there are all kinds of conversions to ensure all those dice hit (Target Locks, Battle Stations are the easiest ones, but there are many, many others). If you have a ship with a combined shield/hull value of less then 9, you are potentially going to get one shotted. Cloaking, as has been found, is very deficient. If you are rolling 5 defense dice against my 9 attack dice, prepare for some hits/crits to your hull at the very least. It is far, far easier to get hits/crits in this game then evades. I mean, look at an evade die! 3 evades, 1 battle stations. Attack die: 3 hits, 1 crit, 1 battle stations. And this is just my meta, where it's "Ship Pure" (you can take what ever ships in your fleet you like, but the upgrades on those ships must be the same faction as that ship). I've been on the receiving end of a 12 attack die Borg Cube before. No, it was not fun. Was he cheating? I have no idea. I'm pretty disgusted with the Borg and really don't want them in the game.

One shots have pretty much meant you don't dare take a ship with less then a combined 8 shields/hull. Heck, I've had my Defiant one-shoted on multiple occasions even with Sisko and an Evade token on it. I've one shotted more then a few ships myself with my Dominion Battleship and Cruiser builds!

Depending on defense dice to protect you will only delay the inevitable. That's why we are seeing all these builds that stop a player from being able to attack in the first place. Offense > Defense in this game.

Actually, that's another thing; resources.

Do you find that resources can throw the game out of whack?

It's also no fun having your smaller ships get outrun by, then outgunned by a Borg Tactical Cube with Full Assault... I'm trying to get in range 2 to use PSF, and they stay at range three, and manage to one shot BOTH my raptors... Really?!?!?

Redeemer31 wrote:
Actually, that's another thing; resources.

Do you find that resources can throw the game out of whack?

Resources? Not at all. You are only allowed one resource for you fleet in the OP events. Some of those resources are too good- Admiral's Order's. These have been banned at all the venues I've ever played at, and reading online, a lot of other meta's as well. The Captain's Cards and Flagships are good, but I think the Officer Cards need some tuning (can I really take all 4 officers on one ship, not use up any crew upgrade slots, and have it count as only one resource?). The attack die and counter attack die are nice little perks that should not be a resource. The fighters (Fed and Dom) should not be a resource. The Command Tokens are borderline- the only thing that keeps them in check is the availability of other, more attractive resource cards (Flagship). I don't think I've ever seen the reinforcements sideboard- could be useful in a large tournament with more than 3 rounds, but lets be honest here- if you build your fleet to be anti-Borg, you won't need the ability to swap cards out for other factions. Anti-Borg is also good versus everything else. The Come About maneuver shouldn't be a unique, and... I'm trying to remember the rest, but...

What it comes down to is that you will see Flagship cards the most (they are that good, but pricy at 10 points), followed by the Fighters, though I'm seeing more and more Officer Cards, and then everything else.

Do resources throw the game out of whack? Nope. Not at all. I actually like them, as they add another layer of customization to your fleets.

Just to point out something a lot of people seem to be confused on, the Admiral's Orders were NEVER resources. The orders were their own thing.






Number 1 on the reference card clearly says they are not a resource. That is part of what made them broken. Andrew Parks the designer even stated in the FAQ that the fighters counted as a ship for Strike Force.


Sorry to soapbox here, but I just want those that did not live through those months to truly understand how broken the Orders really were.

Admiral's Orders =

My meta said nothing about Admiral's Orders, so imagine our surprise when one of the players showed up to Dominion OP5 with the Admiral's Orders and a 110 point Voyager Dreadnaught (in a 100 point build list). Yeah, he swept the event. A lot of use where VERY unhappy. So much so that immediately after the event, we banned Admiral's Orders.

 Tamwulf wrote:
My meta said nothing about Admiral's Orders, so imagine our surprise when one of the players showed up to Dominion OP5 with the Admiral's Orders and a 110 point Voyager Dreadnaught (in a 100 point build list). Yeah, he swept the event. A lot of use where VERY unhappy. So much so that immediately after the event, we banned Admiral's Orders.

I can understand that feeling. I played 2 Dominion War OP 4&5 against them and it was a pain. I manage to win the events without them but it was insane the with all of the extras the gave.

Another place I played as soon as we explained how they worked to the owner he poled the players and they were permanently banned.

The never should have existed in the first place. It was a knee gerk reaction to a problem that didn't exist. In the early months they were introduced as a stop gap because a lot of people complained about the dominance of the Klingon alpha strike and that no one was playing federation & Dominion. But wizkids took so long to release the orders that by the time they came out the Excelsiors and Koranok were released solving all of the original problems.

I think the overall displeasure with the orders is why there has beeen no WK intervention with the borg. They realized that the last time they got too involved it didn't work out. There were people who rage quit over the orders, so I think they are letting TOs judge the meta of their groups instead risking going overboard with changes.

 Tamwulf wrote:
My meta said nothing about Admiral's Orders, so imagine our surprise when one of the players showed up to Dominion OP5 with the Admiral's Orders and a 110 point Voyager Dreadnaught (in a 100 point build list). Yeah, he swept the event. A lot of use where VERY unhappy. So much so that immediately after the event, we banned Admiral's Orders.

I was in that exact position when they first came out. Before the event I quickly found out I was the only one who knew about them, however I handled it better. I Talked to the TO and when he verified it, I sugested he print a bunch out and give people. Oly took a few minutes to place 9 pictures of each onto a sheet of paper and print. he gave everyone 5-10 minutes to adjust builds if they wanted to use them. No one had a problem with it because it was avaliable for all to use.

I guess your guy was overly compettive and was happy to exploit everyone. In my opinion he really didn't win and he's just fooling himself if he thinks so.


They were a Dominion war only item weren't they? At least thats how we are handling it here. Done and gone