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After playing the game for about a year now, and seeing the new stuff coming out, looking back at the previous releases, I realized something...

I could probably do a better job in a week than this guy does in a 3 year run.

I have my own ideas as to what needs to be tweaked to fix the game, what ships should be as far as stats, etc. but I'd like your thoughts on the issues.

That is a bit. I have been playing since the game was released and this is how I see it.

1) Primary weapon values have been too high since day one. If values were lower then torpedoes in their current form would be worth it.

2) Too many free actions floating around. There isn't a lot to think about when you can have a ships doing 3-4 actions even in the 50 point limit. It is far too easy to get BS and TL every turn. Picard 9 was a big mistake for the starter set.

3) The Borg are nothing like they were on screen. In show they never attacked until you were a threat or had something they wanted. All borg were linked in the hive mind and they adapt. So in game they should have had a lower primary and an action call Adapt that gave them a token, they could then spend that token to reroll attacks or make the opponent reroll attacks. All borg should be the same captain skill, they think as one.

4) Factions should have been separate with steep penalties for mixing, it didn't happen that often in the show. As much as people love it, lets face reality nobody quits X-Wing because they can't put Vader on the Falcan, but people do quit STAW because of crazy mixing combos.


Those are my biggies but I could come up with more.

Personally, I feel that the Borg are wrong one SOOOOO many levels:

1) Strip away their shields, give them a 50% increase in hull, and have them regenerate during the end phase 1 point.

2) Leave the Tactical Cube alone, but decrease firepower, and Hull by a bit more for the Octahedron, give it agility 1, decrease the hull and firepower for the Sphere and increase its agility to 2.

3) Give them a firing arc, to allow for the use of secondary weapons in ONLY that arc.

But enough about the Borg...

I agree, the combo-ing issues are insane. I have a friend who has combo's that grant him 9 defense dice... WITHOUT cloaking. He has what feels like seven actions in a single turn. Something that placed a limit of Action +1 free action would balance the game soooo much.

And I can get behind the attack values as being too high, but at the same time, certain ships are too LOW of attack value (in comparison). Stats in general feel arbitrary, and not in line with the universe at all.

Prime example: The Kling on Bird's of Prey. They should be agility 2 AT LEAST, if not three.

I've only been playing for about three months now (it hasn't been a big thing in Australia) but here is my opinion on the matter.

1) I agree Primary weapons are OP and the torpedoes are under strength in the current format.
2) locking target. I think that once you get out of range three the target lock should be removed as they are out of range.
3) all ships should have at least 1 agility ie the Borg.... I like the benefit of the extra hull and shields but not rolling any defence dice.
4) I think the game should be pretty much faction pure except in two cases, 1- the romulon hijack crew from the Prometheus ship is pretty fun and 2- the Borg just so it fits with he whole Borg fluff of assimilating ships etc..
5) probably look at increasing the max spend on a ship and probably include a minimum spend as well. just something I have thought of.
6) the federation ships (TOS onwards) should all come with the dorsal phaser array since the vast majority of them had a 360 degree firing arc.
7) and this one is more fluff wise, they should look at redoing the DS9 stats. it is sooooo underpowered to what it was in the show (currently rewatching the series and have just gotten past the Dominion war).

anyway that's my two cents.

A lot of good points already raised, especially about Primary weapons being too high.

One thing that I would have liked them to do is to have ships released with multiple named ship cards in the pack, like what they do with X-Wing. That way they could have released some ships a little quicker with more variety. It is pretty ridiculous that the only Vor'cha is in the starter set.

I am still not a big fan of the prize ships. I really like how in X-Wing the prizes were alt cards or tokens (and they go for surprisingly crazy prizes!). Another alternative would be to have the prize ships be different sculpts, like a cloaked version. That way it is visibly evident that you have a prize ship but everyone could at least purchase the 'regular' ship and cards.

Here's the thing with the Borg, they never actually had shields to begin with, They never dodged any attacks and took everything head on, only after they'd been hit do they begin to adapt.
Also, they *do* have 360 firing arcs, you just never saw it in the TV show, but in First Contact, we got to see it. The Cube firing in all directions, etc. Here's how I would've tooled the borg:
Army wide special rules - Each time your hull has sustained damage for the first time, place an adaptation token next to your ship.
ADAPTATION TOKEN - If this token is next to a Borg ship, all damage results are reduced by 1 (If the only result is a critical hit, it is cancelled) [since reducing damage always starts with the lowest form first]

:Enemy ships gain the following action - ACTION: Your ship's attacks may ignore the Adaptation Token's effects. Place an Auxiliary power token next to your ship. [this is to show ships "remodulating" their weapons to penetrate the Borg force fields.]

And here's how my Borg Sphere would look.
Primary Attack - 4
Agility - 0
Hull - 10
Shields - 0

Ability - Split fire (same as current) 360 arc, 30 points. (breaking the stats x2 mould)

Also, regeneration would be - Action - repair 2 damage to your hull, you cannot attack this turn, place an auxiliary power token next to your ship (In the show they slowed down to regenerate)

I think they would've been much less degenerate and more fluffy this way.

Obviously I have more problems with the game and gameplay, but I'm too busy to write them all down.

I would have liked WK to make OPs faction pure from the beginning. Mixing in OPs should have been part of the scenario. Such as for Matter of Honor allow one out of faction officer in a fleet. The most disappointing thing when trying to get more people into you OPs is to have someone walk by the table and go "Picard on a Borg ship, why would I want to play that?" And then they walk away. I realize a lot of people love thinking up combos but from my personal experience I have seen unrestricted mixing drive more people away than pull in.

I have only one venue locally that allows mixed faction fleets, but it's faction pure ships from up to 2 factions (So a Klingon ship and a Federation ship). I liked that a lot, since there are some good combos, but mixing crew, tech, and weapons on not faction pure ships gets insane, FAST.

The OP Prizes are kind of annoying, and I personally am not a fan of the resources. They are interesting, but I feel like they weren't well thought out.

That actually is my biggest issue: the game feels under tested, like no one bothered to thoroughly play test the game, or review how new upgrades can influence the older upgrades. Its very frustrating to watch chains of un-ending actions go off.

I could fill a couple pages up with how I would do things differently. My "biggie four"
1. Primary Attack Values too high
2. Ship points: OMG, the abilities of named ships, fire arc, and maneuver dials should have been included in the cost of ships
3. Should have been "Ship pure" or "Faction Pure" from the very beginning.
4. Picard 9 from the starter set was a huge mistake. He is auto-include in any/every fleet, and when you have a card like that, then it probably shouldn't be in the game.

As far as I know, there was only two guys that were working on STAW up until late last year when they both moved on to D&D Attack Wing/other projects. Since then, the game's development feels like design by committee, with no real direction for factions or play. WORF was much needed, but it's obvious that they are not communicating with the developers about the intent of cards and how we "should" be playing them. Instead, we get off the cuff rulings that make no sense. It's looking like they are introducing Time Tokens to make the game more like D&D Attack Wing and maybe differentiate itself from X-Wing.

What really, really needs to happen is STAW MK II with a complete re-write of the rules.

The game is stumbling right now with no Captain at the helm.

Andrew Parks was the lead designer from start through wave 4. Christopher Guild worked with him and took over the lead when Parks moved over to D&D. Guild was less active with the community and some time after the Borg OPs he has faded out of the picture bit we don't know where he went. Rumors from the Worlds Tournament are that staff said there is one guy (un-named) developing STAW and working on WORF.

I will say with this one exception things have been getting better from my point ov view, but I am sticking with my theory from the beginning that ships are only playted and developed with their scenario pack and WK leaves it up in the air how it balances with everything else.

That's exactly how it feels: they didn't do any thorough play testing.

Excellent points and I agree with most of it.

Primary weapon values are indeed too high.
Too many free actions.
Federation can be built to have more evade dice (and with conversion) than Romulans but still have shields.
Game should be Faction Pure with thematic card exceptions (eg a Dukat who can go on a Bird of Prey for no penalty).

I'd have capped Primary attacks at perhaps 4. I'd have made most secondaries as "Seeking" weapons. They could be fired at out of arc targets, provided you'd spent the action to target lock.
No shields on Borg, they'd regenerate instead.
I'd have cloaked ships have to decloak to fire.

Just a few ideas

Oh and fighters should be a nuisance, not the dreadnoughts they are

What are the fighters like? No one locally has them...

They work differently than normal ships. The have tokens for their stats each time they take a hit they loose a token. When they loose a token their attack goes down and their evade goes up. What makes them tough is no matter how many hits they take each attack can only destroy 1 token so if the fighter has 4 stat tokens you have to attack them 4 separate times.

There is a guy on YouTube called Trueflightsilverwing that reviews all of the ships and does a great job. Check out his video, he does a better explanation than I and he has all of the cards in the video.

One set of fighters in a fleet isn't terrible but fleets running 2-3 are a pain in the Fleets are limited to 1 fighter for every ship with a hull of 4 or higher. However you can run 3 constitution classes and 3 fighters, 3 keldons and 2 fighter, even 2 borg spheres and 2 fighters.

A word or two more on fighters:

They are kinda slow. Best speed is a 3 forward on the Feds, and the Dom have a 4 forward. What they lack in speed though, they make up in maneuverability. White hard turns at 1 or 2, and white come about at 1-2 (it's a red 3 on the Dominion fighters, but...) What it means is that fighters have insane maneuverability.

This great maneuverability is limited by only being able to fire their primary weapons at range 1-2. Their primary attack value on the highest stacks are 5 and 6 dice, and they can use target locks and evades. They have their own upgrade cards (Fighter Upgrades) which are pretty meh, unless you are running the Dominion Hideki with Flank Attack. It's a discard upgrade that allows you to skip the fighter's attack to add a number of attack dice equal to your stacks to a friendly ship within range 1. What's so sick about this card is that the only requirements for the fighters is that they haven't attacked this round and the enemy ship is in their forward firing arc. So you can trail the Hideki 1st Wave Attack Fighters behind one of your ships, and then discard Flank Attack to give that ship +5 attack dice... very brutal for a 3 point discard.

Fighters have a number of special rules and exceptions that you'll have to read about in the STAW FAQ at the Wizkids website. As a rule of thumb, Fighters are NOT ships, and anything that buffs or nerfs a ship doesn't affect Fighters. That is just a rule of thumb. There are exceptions.

Fighters are ruling the meta right now, and the only thing keeping them in check is the requirement to have a capital class ship with a hull of 4 or more for each fighter stack in your fleet. Typically, in a 120 point game, this means two capital ships and two stacks of fighters. When building your fleet, if you have 20 points worth of upgrades in your whole fleet, take a step back and think about adding a fighter stack instead. The only reason not to include a fighter stack would be because you are running a gimmick fleet that requires all the upgrades. However, look at your upgrades and think: Do all these upgrades give me a fighter stack that does 5-6 damage, insane maneuverability, pretty much ignores all damage past 1 hit, has actions, can target lock or evade, and is not a disable/discard?

Anti-Fighter Tactics:
1. Mines. Yes, the bane of all ships works just as well against fighters as it does against ships. This becomes important as fighters usually get 4+ evade dice when they get down to their last stacks.
2. Anything that allows multiple attacks. The attacks don't have to be very strong either. If you do 5 hits and 3 crits or 2 hits on a fighter stack, it only removes one stack (out of 4-5).

When using Flanking Attack the fighter Squadron has to be within range 1-2 of the target, so they can't hsng back behind the redt of the fleet.

(http://www.wizkidseventsystem.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2740)


Fighters also have a few more trickd. The Feds have Coordinated Attack, for 3 points it can be disabled to give a BS. So the 1st turn they sttack they can have TL & BS. Hidekies can take it for 4 points.

Hidekies have Galor Class Phaser Banks which is expensive at 7pts but it allows them to fire at range 1-3. It pretty much takes away gighters only draw back.

Aft Disruptor Wave Cannons are also good because they let the fighters fire their primary weapon through the rear arc.

Even without these upgrades fighters are nasty.

OK, now see? It would be really nice if WORF had some kind of searchable database for crap like that. Last week, I played against a Borg player that did exactly the scenario I described: His fighter moved within range one of his Tactical Cube which was just within range 2 of my Scimitar. That 'Cube rolled 10 attack dice against my Scimitar.

It's like that that really irritates me about this game and almost makes any kind of meaningful discussion worthless. I just spent 15 minutes typing that post and looking up fighter stuff, and with one sentence, Mr. S Baldrick wrecked my entire post. So! Why should I bother, because I'm not going to spend anymore of my time digging through the pages and pages of WORF rulings just to make a proper topic of discussion for this game.

Useless waste of time.

-Tamwulf

I completely feel your pain. I used to feel really fed up with skimming through page after page looking for stuff not in the FAQ, until I found an easier way. Try doing a Google search for the card name and "attack wing". The WORF rulingbis usually on the firstbpage of results. Works 90% of the time to find it fast

 Tamwulf wrote:
OK, now see? It would be really nice if WORF had some kind of searchable database for crap like that. Last week, I played against a Borg player that did exactly the scenario I described: His fighter moved within range one of his Tactical Cube which was just within range 2 of my Scimitar. That 'Cube rolled 10 attack dice against my Scimitar.

It's like that that really irritates me about this game and almost makes any kind of meaningful discussion worthless. I just spent 15 minutes typing that post and looking up fighter stuff, and with one sentence, Mr. S Baldrick wrecked my entire post. So! Why should I bother, because I'm not going to spend anymore of my time digging through the pages and pages of WORF rulings just to make a proper topic of discussion for this game.

Useless waste of time.

Especially now that the revelation of WORF being one man who doesn't actively play the game coming to light... It's a Heroclix guy making AW rulings.

Biggest issue for me is that every ship remainsfully combat effective until destroyed (barring the odd crit) . Once a ship is down to one hull it should not be able to still bang out all it's primary weapon shots..

I understand that the reason for faction mixing was because there weren't enough ships to play faction pure to begin with.
I would love future OP's to go at least ship pure going forward.

I think something to make torpedoes worth taking would be good. At the moment it is rare to see anyone take ships with less than 5 attacks with their primary, which make torpedoes useless.

I was thinking of have a bonus for defense for your speed. Such as any ship moving 4 or faster gets +1 defense dice, but torpedoes ignore this the same as the range bonus's.

Or just make it so while they have to spend there target lock to fire the topedoes you can also re-roll your dice with it as well.

Also I hate the ships builds that give them more defence dice than cloaked ships.

I agree with rocket Launcher, I think this could be fixed with a new or updated crit damage deck. At the moment a lot of the cards don't seem to do much, and your always looking for just one or two "good" damage cards to come up when you get a crit in. Cards that give -1 to primary attack, or stop you preforming any actions next turn etc.

For cloaking I like the way it works, and I find the main advantage of it is stopping your opponent target locking you and getting re-rolls on there attacks.

Actually i nearly lost a ship to the damage card that says if you roll a damage or crit in the planning phase your ship is destroyed. My opponent managed to knock the last hull off with his next ship.

I think i might try and find some fighters and have a bit of fun with them. Do they start on the field or do they get launched from the cap ship's?

Fighters are placed just like normal ships.

Has anyone had issues with TOs playing in the OP events?

This happened to me last week, so I dropped and walked out. I just feel that a TO needs to be a judge, not a player.

I'm the TO for my group. I've always been fair and impartial. The trouble is how do you get a judge who is interested in the game but doesn't want to play it? For us there's simply too small a player base for one person to always miss out

Faction pure with heavy penalties for cross.

I'd have set the game up around 10 as the golden stat basis for the 'big 3' in the starter, rather than down around 4 as it is now, to give far more dramatically different scale of power between a galaxy and a bajoran system fighter.

Borg would have been slow and hugely armored/regenerative, instead of the zipping death machines they were on release.

Rear arcs would have been a standard to deviate from instead of a rarity.

Fleets would be added to with a sense of all of them being as large, as capable as the others, with regards ship releases and accompanying cards.

I would have tapped into ships from computer games ranges, such as the Ferengi fleet in BotF, to allow far greater range of models.

I'd have found out who does the ships for the X wing game and signed them on.

I'd have upped the scale of the original ships to slightly larger than the MF for Xwing.

Factions:

Fed/Bajoran/Vulcan

Ferengi

Klingons

Romulans

Borg

Dominion/Cardassians

Independents Alpha

Independents Delta

Mirror - all ships or cards with the option to use in the 'prime' faction best suited to them.



Also timeline specific scenarios and possible rules/expansions.

 Corpsman913 wrote:
Fighters are placed just like normal ships.

Has anyone had issues with TOs playing in the OP events?

This happened to me last week, so I dropped and walked out. I just feel that a TO needs to be a judge, not a player.

One place I go to the TO will play whoever has the bye round, but it still counts as a bye. Basically it just gives the TO and the other person a chance to play instead of sitting around for an hour with nothing to do.


The other place I go the TO plays but he doesn't keep a ship for himself. He doesn't really settle disputes either, we work things out by group consensus and he just keeps track of the scoring for the store. 1st place gets a ship, the other 2 go to a random player. The poor TO hasn't got one yet.

I don't have a problem with TOs playing as long as they are still fair. Now what I would have issues with is if the TO was getting a ship for running the event AND playing for a ship.

Yeah, turns out that the location I was playing at has a reputation amongst the other shops as having serious issues.

Recently the TO incorrectly applied the rules for winning Q OP2 (points for the mission tokens are totaled then applied to the final points) and deprived a player of a win that he instead gave to a friend... who is infamous for bending the rules past breaking point to win.


BUT, Back on subject: I am kind of bothered by the way the ships aren't reflecting their fluff counterparts: The Akira, the Galaxy, the Sovereign... these ships are all prime examples of the deviation. The Galaxy should be a firepower of 5, easy. The Sovereign should have an agility of 2. The Akira is all kinda of F***ed up: the Firepower is ok, the Agility is good, the Hull is obscenely high (at MOST a 4) and the shields are low. The dial is slow as hell and hands like damn freighter... And of course, all of the federation ships should have a 180 degree firing arc at minimum, if not a 360.

The Borg are basically all the same ship, which REALLY erks me off, since the Sphere is a freakin' destroyer-esque size, and the Octahedron is a Cruiser. There should also be a few generic crewmen, since its the freaking Borg...

The Klingons got shafted with the Birds-of-prey, since the Berls and the K'vorts should easily have an agility of 2, if not 3, and should move at least at a five. The cruisers should have a rear firing arc.

The romulans were done well I think, balanced and fair.

Mirror Universe as a blanket singular faction is dumb and infuriating... Asside from the Alliance and Imperial ships, the rest of the so-called mirror universe ships are either hybrid faction (but labeled as Mirror only) or Independent.

Making Species 8472, the Vulcans, and the Ferengi all their own factions was a wasted opportunity to expand the Independents in a really fun way.

ok, I think I'm done for the moment...

Sooo many things I would have changed.

1) Use the heroclix rule of 3. All ship stats may only be increased to a +3 max.

2) Use similar card method to X-wing/Armada generic ship with cards that purchase unique titles, example the NX Enterprise expansion could have had both a upgrade for Enterprise and Columbia. also unique ship abilities would not be so varied from useless to OP they'd be marginal.

3) LE prizes would be more basic and not hold critically powerful card avaliable to a select few. I.E. they'd be nice to have but not absolute must buy.

4) Factions: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Dominion, Cardassian, Ferenghi, Independant, Borg, MU. also order means nothing to who goes first, its all about captian skill so lowest points first if equal roll of to who has int. Most Independant stuff may only be deployed on X ship class, allowing only a few cards per expansion to be deployed on any ship. Example: Tholian Tricolbalt device could be deployed on any Indy ship but energy web may only be deployed on a tholian ship.

5) Ship Pure builds...allow mixed fleets but no cross faction mixing on same ship, cards like Worf can be federation but say 'may be deployed on a klingon ship'. these type of cards should be rare.

6) Fighters: Either I would not have developed them or I would change the way they work, primary weapon 5 and 6 is way to high more like 3 and 4. Max number of tokens is 3.

7) Evade: these are big ships and do not evade very well, Defiant size to NX-Ent: Evade 2, Ent-A to Romulan Dex class: Evade 1, Scimitar to Negh'var size: Evade 0.

8) Primary Weapon: Should have been adjusted based on era; Enterprise era: 1-2 a 3 power reserved for Xindi Aquatics and Borg, TOS: 2-3 a 4 power reserved for things like the V'ger, ENT-DS9 3-4 5 being reserved for Borg.

9) Cloaking: forces TL to be removed. Only grants 3 dice (rule of three) or 2 dice and BS conversionsfor evade only. Strikes first reguardless of skill, losing cloak and allowing other ships to fire at it.

10) MINES: Either I would have never released any or would have made them or made them all like Cloaking mines only no range modifier.

11) Borg I like the Borg current nerfs, Primary weapon value as I stated above.

i have more but ill let it alone at that

I still feel that the Ferengi aren't worth their own faction... With quark's treasure, we will be getting a total of 2 classes of ship.

 Corpsman913 wrote:
I still feel that the Ferengi aren't worth their own faction... With quark's treasure, we will be getting a total of 2 classes of ship.

If the current game wasn't about maximizing huge amouts of attack power and evade dice, you could do something with the ferenghi like special rules for acquisition. They could be the only full on cross faction...faction using acquistion points per ship to buy tech and weapons from anyone except Borg, but alas the game is developed with the power gamer in mind.