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I'm thinking of having a go at playing my Dominion again for the upcoming Resistance Is Futile 1. - Specifically, using 2 Battle Cruisers.

I was considering something along the line of:

2nd Division Cruiser (50)
Gul Dukat
Boheeka
Seskal
Dorsal Weapons Array
Ion Thruster

Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser (40)
Gelnon
Dorsal Weapons Array
Ion Thruster


My maths is pretty poor, but it seems to me that Gelnon is actually pretty darn good for a midrange, midcost captain. Generally speaking, a Target Lock or Battle Stations at range 1 will get you an extra 1.5 hits with a battle cruiser, that can be defended against. Gelnon can give you, on average, an extra hit, that can't be defended against. - Then the 'battle stations' or the extra criticalness would seem to make up the 0.5 difference to me.

However, I'm now wondering whether it's worth putting a counter attack die in, or fleet captain, or some other sort of cheap resource, probably replacing the Ion Thrusters - they're a bit of an indulgence because I figured 'I have 2 COP attack ship boosters, might as well use something from them'. On the other hand, Luaran would shave some points off

Seskal is also a bit of an indulgence too and may be better off living on the other ship in any case - the one with less shields.

Anyone got any thoughts?

I've used a similar build before, 2 battle cruisers with dorsal array's is a pretty solid build.
Gelnon is a good mid level captain, but taking too high level captains might serve you better. If you come up against the all too common two sphere build you really want to be shooting first all the time.

My local store is finally getting RIF OP1 and I was planning on bringing this Dominion List

Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser (39)
Gul Dukat
Boheeka

1st Wave Attack Fighters (31)
Escort
Flanking Attack

Hideki Class Attack Fighters (resource) (20)

Was it ever FAQ'ed whether the 'ship with a hull value of 4' also retroactively applied to the resource fighters too?

It might be worth checking with your TO about that beforehand.


Hmm, I'm wondering if I can squeeze in a fleet captain, in which case, could it be worth giving it to Gelnon as opposed to Gul Dukat? If not, which alternative Dominion captains are popular? (Ignoring My Disabling Weyoun, cause I'm not that type of guy )

I cannot find anything in the FAQ or rules forum about if the resource fighters require a hull 4 ship as well. I guess the resource fighters could also count as a fighter squadron??.

9. For each Fighter Squadron -OR- Shuttlecraft assigned to your fleet there must be 1 ship with a hull value of 4 or
more.
10. Fighter Squadrons may not have Admirals or Resources assigned or deployed to them.

 crazyK wrote:
I cannot find anything in the FAQ or rules forum about if the resource fighters require a hull 4 ship as well. I guess the resource fighters could also count as a fighter squadron??.

9. For each Fighter Squadron -OR- Shuttlecraft assigned to your fleet there must be 1 ship with a hull value of 4 or
more.
10. Fighter Squadrons may not have Admirals or Resources assigned or deployed to them.

It is in the rules forum, resources have the same requirements. The very first question on this thread:
(http://www.wizkidseventsystem.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2775)



Automatically Appended Next Post:
It is kinda buried in there, will probably be added to the FAQ when it gets updated.

Thanks for posting the link. Back to the drawing board.

I think I've updated my list now, the tournament is due on Saturday:

A Cardassian Bromance

2nd Division Cruiser (for the extra shield)
Gul Dukat
Boheeka
Amat'lgan
Dorsal Weapons Array

Jem Hadar Battlecruiser
Gul Damar
Seskal
Dorsal Weapons Array

I figured, I might be seeing a lot of mines and dorsal weapons, so Damar might earn his points cost. Moving Seskal to the other ship, with less shields, might mean I get more mileage out of his ability too.

As good of a plan as one could have for the Dominion, if your seeing alot of Cloaked Mines. I hate mines. I have 2 ideas that may or may not work.


Do you have access to Garek? Damar and Garak essentially eliminate strength 3 mines altogether. -2 from Damar, and should that 3rd mine roll a hit disable Garak for an evade. Mines say no defence dice and as far as I know you can still use evade counters and mines do not eliminate a modify defence step.

This one I'm just spit balling here how about Ion Thrusters? Maybe you can be used to close the gap on your enemy making it tougher for him to place cloaked mines in between you. maybe move 2-3 first turn then 4-5 if he doesn't lay the mines out. That way you can close the gap and force hime to deploy the mines behind himself or to your side? Sounds good not sure if it will work.

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:
As good of a plan as one could have for the Dominion, if your seeing alot of Cloaked Mines. I hate mines. I have 2 ideas that may or may not work.


Do you have access to Garek? Damar and Garak essentially eliminate strength 3 mines altogether. -2 from Damar, and should that 3rd mine roll a hit disable Garak for an evade. Mines say no defence dice and as far as I know you can still use evade counters and mines do not eliminate a modify defence step.

This one I'm just spit balling here how about Ion Thrusters? Maybe you can be used to close the gap on your enemy making it tougher for him to place cloaked mines in between you. maybe move 2-3 first turn then 4-5 if he doesn't lay the mines out. That way you can close the gap and force hime to deploy the mines behind himself or to your side? Sounds good not sure if it will work.

Save some points on Garek, just take a scan action. Damar -2 dice, scan -1 die, then laugh through the mines. Because you will be using scan drop Seskal for a Breen Aid and turn a blank into a hit.

humm I did not know that about Scan

We had our RIF1 this saturday. I placed second with a Klingon fleet of
Vorcha - Martok
K'Vort - Gowron - PSF
K'Tinga - Worf
Blind buy was D'kyr - Solok - Power Grid

I defeated Feds by using PSF against Voyager and then taking out the opposing Prakesh and Sovereign

Second game I was creamed by a Sphere, Type03 and D'Kyr

Third game I defeated 2 Valdores and a D'kora

Borg are still dominating our OPs. The guy who plays them is a nice guy and a good captain but there's really no weaknesses to them. The only way I can beat him is by using Borg myself

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:
humm I did not know that about Scan

Yeah it is part of the cloaked mine text, I you immediately perform a scan the mines are -1 die. So Gul Demar on a scanning ship has no worries from mines.

I've got an alternative list now too (though I'm still probably going to go with the Cardassian Bromance)

Voyage of the Bellerophon

USS Voyager
Jean-Luc Picard (9)
Pavel Chekov (Operations Officer)
Tom Paris
Hikaru Sulu

Intrepid Class
Admiral: Maxwell Forrest
Captain: Mr Spock
Deanna Troi
Quark (Dorsal Phaser Array)

----------------

Quark is pretty much entirely there for the points saving. - Truth be told, if someone has a spare crew slot, I can't see why someone would ever NOT choose him... *grumbles about game balance*

But yeah, it's a simple concept, I think. Speedy, sneaky Federation squad being sneaky and dorsal weaponing peoples.
On the other hand, perhaps Forrest is a bit of a waste of points, even though he does boost Spock to 7. Anyone got any thoughts for alternatives for the 3 points?

Forest is good for this build because with the WORF ruling allows a ship to usenthe fleet action even if its not on it's dial. The Intrepid class has no 1 straight so if you get a Warpcore Breach you are stcuk with 1 banks. Forrest helps with that and that 1turn is crazy good to have. I say keep the admiral with the 2 captains you have you can still use the fleet action and take an action.

I wasn't too sure about him for this one, because of the 360 arcs, it didn't seem to be that important to think about forward arcs.

- I'll have a go, I was mostly making the build to practice against anyhow.

 Compel wrote:
I wasn't too sure about him for this one, because of the 360 arcs, it didn't seem to be that important to think about forward arcs.

- I'll have a go, I was mostly making the build to practice against anyhow.

I say use him to fly close to borg space. Lead your opponent in and use that 1 hard to pull out as they fly into borg space and hit them with you 360.

Sounds good!

The only other thing I can think for you is it would be nice to have some defense for Spocks ship. You could take Troi out but I can't think of much to take. Hmmmm...

I had a dry run through with the two fleets. I've got to say, the Federation one seemed to perform light years ahead of my cardies.

Voyager was especially nasty with the Sulu/ Picard/ Ops Officer combo.

Even though I really do want to make my twin battle cruiser squad work, I think this OP isn't the one to do it.

I've been looking at the blind boosters too and, I've got to say, its really hard trying to make good ships out of them.

 Compel wrote:
I had a dry run through with the two fleets. I've got to say, the Federation one seemed to perform light years ahead of my cardies.

Voyager was especially nasty with the Sulu/ Picard/ Ops Officer combo.

Even though I really do want to make my twin battle cruiser squad work, I think this OP isn't the one to do it.

I've been looking at the blind boosters too and, I've got to say, its really hard trying to make good ships out of them.

I would save the double battle cruiser for RiF 2, see
(http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/624715.page)
For some building blocks there.

The RiF blinds prove surprisingly resilient, but the are higher in points than Collective blinds so keep them simple. Use low captain skills on them, use move with big banks, as 3 of them have 180s, and 1 has a 360. Use them to force your opponents high skill captains to bump. If your blind winds up at point blank range of you opponent's super ship who cares if you can get them to bump and lose their action. Most of them won't be one shotted. Also use your blinds to finish people off or take out their blinds.

MU
26 Prakesh
02 Tasha Yarr
02 Dorsal Weapons Array

Kazon (between ship ability you will ruteanly be throwing 5 dice, plus battle stations, save the beam weapon for rear attacks)
26 Relora
04 Particle Beam

Vulcan (named ability gets you an evade, and weapon covers your rear)
26 Named Ship
04 Photonic Weapon

Ferengi (use this a a support ship to finish people off. Thought maker is nice but too expensive for one use, especially when you are limited to 30 points)
24 Bok's Marauder
04 Bok
04 Photon

Borg ( I can't remember everything about that this one but with 3 evade a 360, and One it is a pain in the to take out unless you use focus fire)
22 Named cube
?? One

The best ship hands down in the Resistance blinds is the Kazon ship Relora-Sankur. It turns like a big, unwieldy banana- not to mention it kind of looks like one and has the same color, so around my parts, its affectionately called The Banana Boat. All it's hard turns are red, but they are hard 2 and 3 reds, and it can go backwards.

Action bar is awesome with Evasive, Target Lock, Scan and Battle Stations. The named ship has "If you performed a green maneuver, you get +1 attack die". It's greens are 1, 2 straight, 1 easy turn. Once it gets into range one, you have the potential to throw 6 attack dice.

Because it's a Banana Boat for maneuvering, I suggest the Particle Beam Weapon. Range 1-2, but it throws 4 attack dice from the forward or rear arc and does not require a target lock. It only has 1 defense die, but that is more than made up for by 3 shields and 8 hull.

The Relora-Sankur, generic captain, and Particel Beam Weapon all come to 30 points. It's a great blind ship.

The second best ship, and some would argue better ship, is the Mirror Universe Prakesh. It has excellent action economy when it gets into range one, and is also built like a brick with 4 shields and 4 hull, and with a similar maneuver dial to the Kazon ship, though it trades the red rear 1 for a white 5. Tasha Yar ensures some revenge when the ship gets blown up (she allows you to make a free attack when you blow up). Dorsal Weapons Array is the other option to put on this ship as a blind, because it's cheap and allows a 360 degree shot. However, the Prakesh itself has a 180 degree firing arc, a pretty big advantage.

The Ferengi ship, Bok's Marauder is good, but it's all about the Thought Maker card with that ship. You can get up to 7 attack dice with this ship (by using Bok's Maruader ability of maneuver 3 or better giving you a +1 attack die and aux token, and being within range one of a enemy ship. You can add upto +2 more attack dice for a total of 7, BUT you will suffer 2 points of damage for the extra 2 dice you rolled thanks to Vengeance.

The Borg 'Sugar Cube' is, well, it's a Scout Cube. Awesome maneuverability, and the named version Scout Cube 255 will be almost impossible to hit- 4 defense dice + scan token. On the other hand, it's only got 4 shields and 2 hull. Oh, and don't expect it to hurt much with it's 3 attack dice. The cards it comes with are very good for the rest of your fleet, just not on this Sugar Cube.

That leaves the Vulcan ship, Tal'Kir. It's a brick- maneuvers like one, has 4 shields and 5 hull, but only 1 defense die and 3 attack dice. It comes with great cards for use by the rest of your fleet, but sucks in the blind. They are all expensive, and you can really only use one of them on the Tal'Kir. Basically, it can soak up a lot of fire power. That's about the best positive thing I can say about it for a blind ship.

There you have it! The five blind ships in order of desirability for a blind draw. Unlike the last seasons' blind ships, they all come with cards that I like and can use outside of the OP's.

I ended up using my Federation squad, Voyage of the Bellerophon. And... it worked really well!

The ship I ended up drawing was, of course, the Tal'kir. I went with Kov as the crew, which wasn't the most awesome idea in the world to be honest. He did get to do his repair thing in 2 out of 3 games though. Generally speaking, however, he spent pretty much the entire game [strikethrough]stressed[/strikethrough] with an auxiliary power token. So he did do the tanking thing quite well and I got rather lucky with his dice when I did get to fire him...

I did end up losing a few mission tokens throughout the tourney, usually by going a bit too fast in turn 3 or 4 and not turning around quickly enough, but it was no real biggy, I never really got to less than 2 on a single ship.

Game 1

Borg Scout Cube, Federation Resource Fighters, Worf and Nu'daq in 2 Vorcha's.

Lots of firepower in that fleet, I managed to take the Scout Cube out in the first exchange but it ended up coming down to the fighters against a shieldless Voyager. I managed to sneak out of their fire arcs a few times and killed them off!


Game 2

Space Banana, Voyager with Fleet Captain Worf and Admiral Forrest, Enterprise D with Jean-Luc Picard, opponent had initiative.

I don't really know what to say about this one, it was a weird fleet with a lot of points invested into getting Worf up to skill 7.
Yeah, I'm just not sure what to say about this one. I focussed down the Enterprise-D, then the Banana and then Voyager. I got lucky enough to not lose a ship in this one. Mostly because the Tal'kir spent the entire game turning around and not a threat, despite just having a couple of hull points left.

Game 3

Scout Cube, Bioship Alpha with Gul Dukat, Bioship with Toreth.

Not a bad fleet at all to be honest, they kicked out a hellish amount of firepower. The game ended up being Picard on 2 hull up against the Scout cube on 1 hull left. With less than 2 minutes to go, we managed to get the last round in with Picard taking the ship out.

So, with 3 wins out of 3, I won the tournament and took home the prize ship, owning neither a Romulan nor Borg fleet.

In any case, it's a massive improvement over my disastrous loss in COP-3 where, not only did I come in last place, I may very well have had negative points... I may be better at games based around blowing up your opponents than a piece of cardboard.

In any case, this is looking like it's my last Attack Wing OP, especially as the next 2 OP's seem to be the perfect storm in, 'reasons why I'm not a fan of Attack Wing.'

Other fun facts about this tournament. There was only 1 Borg player (Sphere and a Diamond) and only a single Cloaked Mine (2 drone ships, Scimitar). The most popular ship would instead appear to have been Voyager, present in 3 out of 8 squads.

3 Federation
1 Borg
1 Klingon
1 Romulan
1 Independent (Gavroche, Hirogen, Gorn, something else)
1 Species 8472
0 Dominion