Anaerian wrote:Howdy People of Dakka!
I have played X-Wing many times and really enjoy it, but I am at heart a Trekkie. I am very interested in taking up STAW. I have a couple of questions and any help/ advice and info would be hugely appreciated.
One: Can you have generic ships? I love the idea of having a full federation fleet and probably a Dominion fleet too.
Two: How easy is it to re-paint the ships, since the factory paint looks awful.
Three: How balanced is the game?
Four: Has anyone give me a comparison to X-Wing? how does STAW compare?
Thanks in advance
I play both games, STAW more than X-Wing (mainly because most of the X-Wing players in my area are competitive
bags). Let me try and answer your questions with my experiences:
One: Can you have generic ships? I love the idea of having a full federation fleet and probably a Dominion fleet too.
Each expansion pack (or "Wave") comes with a ship, bunch of tokens and cards just like X-wing. The cards are broken down into a generic ship and then a unique ship and upgrade cards. For example, "Federation Galaxy Class" and a generic captain (usually a throw away picture of an actor from somewhere in the series) and then a unique ship card like "USS Venture" and typically some crew, tech upgrades, weapon upgrades, maybe an elite talent. The problem with the generic ships is that they are cheaper then the unique ship class, but they have no text ability, and in STAW the text ability of the ships is not included in the points cost of the card. In other words, you add up the Primary Attack Value, the Agility Value, Hull Value, and Shield Value, multiply by 2, and that's the point cost of the ship. The unique text abilities and maneuver dial of the ship has no impact on it's point cost. Generic ships are typically 2 points cheaper because they lack one extra point in shields that the named ships have. Some of the unique text abilities are very, very powerful and to not take them hurts the effectiveness of your fleet. I'd say Federation has mediocre ships, but the best crew and tech upgrades in the game. They have 1-2 key weapon upgrades (Dorsal Phaser Array and Systems Upgrade), but mostly pretty blah. Dominion have pretty mediocre ships as well, and they used to have parity for Feds when it came to crew. Not so much anymore- I can't remember the last time a new Dominion ship was released with good crew cards. The Dominion tech and weapons were outstanding, but again, the Dominion have kinda been left behind in the overall arms race of STAW. That doesn't mean you can't make a good fleet with them, just that they won't have any new shiny Dom stuff.
Two: How easy is it to re-paint the ships, since the factory paint looks awful.
Very easy. Some people strip the models, but I just use a spray sealent like Testor's Dull coat, then primer the ship and paint over that. You probably just primer the ship and then paint from there. Wizkids have recently started to re-release the ships with upgraded paint jobs that are not all that bad.
Three: How balanced is the game?
OK, there are several different approached to how some people play STAW. From the rulebook, you can mix and match all cards and ships to your hearts content. You can have Capt Picard onboard a Romulan Bird of Prey with a Dominion crew firing Klingon Photon torps. That's the no holds barred, play whatever you want. Then there is "Ship Pure" and "Fleet Pure". Ship pure is that every ship and it's upgrades must come from the same faction, though you can have several factions in your fleet. I.e. Capt Janeway on the USS Voyager with Tom Paris, Federation Trans-phasic torps, and Upgraded Shields, Martok on a Klingon Bird of Prey with Klingon Cloaked Mines, and Drone Captain on a Bork Scout Cube- and you declare what faction your fleet represents. "Fleet Pure" is an extension of the Ship Pure, but to the entire fleet. If you play Fleet Pure and your fleet is Romulans, that it can only have Romulan ships and upgrades. My old meta was Fleet Pure, as it's the most "balanced" with less "ganky weird" rules interactions of Lt. Worf's text ability while he is on an Orion Raider being captained by Khan shooting aft disrupter beams. 90% of the
FAQ's and Errata in the game are for all the weird rules interactions you get when playing "Anything Goes". The downside to fleet pure is that some factions just have all around better cards- typically, the Federation comes out as the winner in Fleet Pure when it comes to fleet building. That's not to say they are the best, just that they have the most customization in Fleet Pure.
When you ask "How Balanced is the game?" what do you mean? There are some ships that are just flat out better then others, and some captains are head and shoulders above everyone else (I really, really hate Captain Picard from the starter set as he is the most powerful captain in the game and you ALWAYS see him. But he has two other versions from the Enterprise-E and the Stargazer that are very good and fun to play, but not even close to how powerful his starter version is). The point costs of ships is 99% consistent except for the big, oversized Borg Cube, but the ship points don't take into account the text abilities of unique ships nor the maneuver dial of the ships. This goes back to number 1 above where you don't really want to take a generic ship, ever because you will lose out on the "free" abilities of the unique ships. Ship Pure and Fleet Pure moderate this somewhat, but again, some factions have advantages over others. Wizkids did implement a "Suggested Tournament Format" that limited the amount of points you could spend on a single ship, and they severely curbed/nerfed the
out of the Borg. There are a lot of upgrade cards and ships (and I have just about every ship in the game) that I never use. My personal take is that the most fun, most open for play style of game would be using the Suggested Tournament Format for making your fleet, and that you play ship pure.
Four: Has anyone give me a comparison to X-Wing? how does STAW compare?
There have been many, many comparisons made between the two games. I'd suggest Googleing it. In a nutshell, X-Wing is all about maneuver and mitigating damage. STAW is about upgrades to shoot first, and shoot hard. I've managed to take a ship with a primary attack value of 3, pump it up to 8 attack dice with a target lock and battle stations, and another card that converted battle stations into crits, and allowed me to generate extra hits on the ship for every crit that went through the shields, at Captain Skill 12, and I needed another card that allowed me to attack first. Of course, I more than doubled the cost of the ship in upgrades, and it was just for fun to see if I could do it. STAW is more about synergy and combo's then X-wing. A typical ship in STAW has a Primary Attack Value of 4, Agility of 2, 4 Hull, and 3 shields. That's a (4+2+4+3=13x2=26 point ship). It's very easy to get a ship up to 6+ attack dice with "quality" (re-rolls, change all blanks to hits, etc. etc.), and it's easy to get 4+ Agility Dice with extra Evades. I'm aware of only two cards that increase the hull value of a ship, though there are several repair cards that do so, and there are a lot of shield upgrades. Finally, there are a ton of crew, tech, weapons, and elite talent cards that can really affect how well your ship operates. STAW allows you to customize your ship in ways that put X-wing to shame.
The major strength of STAW I believe is the Organized Play and Tournaments ( collectively called
OP). These are a series of linked tournaments based on episodes or movie plots from the Star Trek universe, and they include "Fleet Resources" that you can only get by playing in the
OP, and the winners of these
OP's get a prize ship. Now here is where some people really get rubbed the wrong way because the
OP Prize ships are usually really, really good and they are not available for retail sale, so you either have to play and win an
OP to get one, or buy it off e-bay. I bought the Mirror Universe Enterprise-D/Assimilated Enterprise on eBay for $65. I actually won it after playing in a couple different
OP's in my area. It was a very sought after ship because at the time, it had some of the best upgrade cards in the game (and the Assimilated Enterprise with Borg tech is one of the best ships in the game
IMHO). You can't even find one anymore. However, just because someone has all the Prize Ships doesn't mean they auto win. They just have a better ship and upgrades then you, but you can still defeat them. In other words, the Prize Ships are nice to have, but not necessary to win anymore like they were back around Wave 10 (we are on Wave 25 right now). Oh- and we are on a bimonthly release schedule now, so Wave 25 just came out in August, so Wave 26 will be out in October.
Hope that helps!
Both games are fun for different reasons, and while they play similar to each other, they both have "Gotcha!" rules. The only negative thing I'd say about STAW is that it seems to be on the decline right now with little support from Wizkids. They are still producing new ships and repackaging repaints of older ships, they are still producing Organized Play events, and rumors abound of something else coming down the pike for STAW from Wizkids.
