Exclusive Web Reveal on IRW Haakona cards on The Hairy Gamers

SHIP – IRW Haakona Named Version

SHIP – Generic D’Deridex Warbird

MANEUVER – Maneuver Card.

SHIPS – Ship cards group pic.

CAPTAIN – Subcommander Taris

CAPTAIN – Centurion, Named Captain.

ADMIRAL/CAPTAIN – Admiral/Captain Mendak.

CAPTAINS – Ships Captains group pic.

WEAPON – Plasma Torpedoes.

WEAPON – Disruptor Pulse.

WEAPON – Disruptor Beams.

WEAPONS – Ships weapons group pic.

CREW – 3 x Romulan Security Officer.

CREW – Romulan Helmsman.

CREW – Romulan Sub Lieutenant.

ET – Make Them See Us

As revealed exclusively on The Hairy Gamers Facebook page moments ago the full card list and images for the latest Romulan D’Deridex Class vessel, the IRW Haakona (from the TNG episode “The Contagion”).

Firstly lets look at the ship itself, the stats are unremarkable seeing as they are standard Named D’deridex stats.  It has the standard two Weapon slots that all other DD’s have but no Tech slot as the others have.  This has been replaced with an extra Crew slot upto 3.  Useful since this pack is super heavy with useful and non-unique Romulan crew.  This isn’t a huge issue as this can be rectified with the right Fleet Captain Resource or Valdore 6 or T’Rul.

The Named version has a really nice ability that will see it shoot to the top of the list of available D’Deridex’s.  “When attacking with your Primary Weapon while cloaked, gain +1 attack die for every other Romulan ship in your fleet (max (+4)”.  Wow!  So that Science Vessel Swarm suddenly became a viable tactic.

The Generic loses its Tech slot too and gains a crew slot giving players who run a Generic D’Deridex an option of taking crew heavy variants.

Also worth noting that a lot of the crew included here are disable to use which means Liviana Charvanek may see some use now.

Speaking of Crew we’ll start with them first.  This pack includes 3 x Romulan Security Officer, 1 x Romulan Helmsman and 1 x Romulan Sub Lieutenant.  They’re all non-unique which means you can take multiples of each and given the Romulan Security Officers ability you may very well want to. “For each Romulan Security Officer equipped to your ship (including this one), your Captain’s Skill is +1 (max +3).  When defending, you may disable this card to re-roll one of your blank results.”  Thats nice, and he will see a lot of play boosting Romulan captains but also we may see a rise in play of Liviana Charvanek (from the IRW Vorta Vor expansion) who can stop disable crew being disabled on the roll of a die.  So whilst its chancey there are more options for her now.  This takes me to the Romulan Helmsman, another disable to use crew card.  Given that some of the most necessary moves our Romulan fleet can make are Red he is a welcome addition.  “During Activation, if you reveal a Red Maneuver, you may disable this card to treat that maneuver as if it were a White Maneuver.  No ship may be equipped with more than one Romulan Helmsman”.  Hes a little situational but when you need that come about or reverse he will save you!  Plus he also works with Liviana and can be disabled by Admiral Hiren for extra attack dice.  All in all two very solid crew.

Lastly we have the Romulan Sub Lieutenant, this fella is a discard and an Action too.  Hmmm…..me no likee.  However his ability is ok if a little situational.  “ACTION: Discard this card to target a ship at Range 1-2.  If the target ship has a Hull Value of 6 or greater, that ship must disable 2 of its Active Shields, if possible.  Otherwise, that ship must disable 1 of its Active Shields, if possible.  This upgrade may only be purchased for a Romulan ship.” .  So its good against those hard hitting Dominion or Borg ships but given how Action starved the Romulans are at best its not an upgrade I would be choosing unless I knew I was facing the Borg and even then for 4pts there are better out there, even in the Faction Pure environment.

The Romulans get a decent Admiral finally……Admiral Mendak makes an appearance.  Firstly I love his ability to bits.  “FLEET ACTION: Target a friendly ship at Range 1-2 (including your own) that has no Battlestations Token(s) beside it and place a Battlestations Token beside that ship.  The target ship cannot perform a Battlestations Action this round.  This card may only be purchased for a Romulan ship.”. Finally some access to Battlestations for Romulans, plus he adds +2 to your existing Captain skill making Shinzon a hefty 11!!!  He also comes with a Elite Talent slot.  He’s expensive for an Admiral at 4pts but could recoup that value very quickly.  His Captain skill if used as a Captain is a solid 6 so he’s up there for competing for a place in my fleets.  He’ll probably see more action as a Captain than as an Admiral.  I like Hiren (from the Scimitar) for his ability to disable cheap crew for an extra Attack Dice.

You get two unique Captains in this expansion, Taris and Centurion.  Taris is kinda amazing with this expansion as she makes use of those disabled Crew Romulan Security Officers.  He ability is as follows “When attacking with your Primary Weapon, during the Declare Target step, you may discard one of your Crew upgrades to target a ship that is not in your forward firing arc.”.  Well i do like that, hmmm…do I re-eanble my Romulan Security Officer or sacrifice him to fire in any direction?  Gee thats a toughie.  What a great ability, especially with cheap Crew upgrades.  Centurion is a cheap unique captain that grants us Romulans the ability to finally modify dice via Battlestations.  “When attacking, you may re-roll one of your Battlestations results.”.  Hes no Mendak but stack him up with  a Tactical Officer and Target Lock and you have some pretty potent dice modification going on there.  Certainly worth a punt when you need a 1pt Captain, even without other cards.

Penultimately we have the Weapons upgrades included in this pack.  You have you usual Plasma Torpedoes included which are Range 1-2, 5 Attack Dice and re-rolling all of your blanks one time.  Pretty standard stuff there.  The two gems of this pack are Disruptor Beams and Disruptor Pulse.  Both are useful and do not require Target Lock, which leaves plenty of ships and options to deploy them on.  The Disruptor Beams are pretty awesome and can turn your little 1 or 2 Attack into a complete beast dealing upto 6 Hits.  Its also Range 1-3 so I figure this will become the new Additional Weapons Array as the must have Secondary Weapon of choice on little Romulan ships.  The Disruptor Beams is mentally good.  Again its only a disable but wow….I mean, thats meta changing if done right!!!  So its a 3 Attack Dice Secondary Weapon used at Range 1-2, nothing remarkable there but the second paragraph makes this card so amazing “During the Declare Target step, target every enemy ship that is in your forward firing arc and within range and perform a separate attack against each of the target ships with this attack.”.  Well swarms of Romulan Science Vessels spamming 72 attack dice in a initial attack just became a thing.  Even better that with its +5 Sp for non Romulan ships we wont be seeing our precious used against us often.  A great expansion weapons wise!

Lastly we have the cloud to counter balance the silver lining that is everything else in this expansion.  The Elite Talent Make Them See Us!.  Firstly, any card that needs a wall of text like that is going to raise some eyebrows and a lot of questions.  Secondly its one of those very situational Elite Talents that us Romulans seem to have a lot of….so Shinzon may use it but when you read what it does you won’t choose it……ever.  It is only usable by a Romulan Captain on a Romulan ship which already limits its usefulness in the bigger picture.  Ok here comes that wall of text:

“While Cloaked, during the Activation Phase, before revealing your dial you may discard this card to target a ship that you already have Target Locked.  Remove your Target Lock from that ship.  If you do this and your ships base or maneuver template overlaps the target ships base during the Execute Maneuver step, inflict an amount of damage equal to the current speed on your maneuver dial to both ships (max 4).  The ships whose Captain has the higher Skill Number rolls a number of defense dice against this damage equal to the difference in your Skill Numbers.  This upgrade may only be purchased for a Romulan Captain on a Romulan ship.” 

Personally Im not a huge fan of this Elite Talent as it shackles a High Skill Captain to an expensive Elite Talent which may or may not cause damage.  Its very situational and expensive to setup.  Much like Ultiritium Explosives from the Praetus expansion.

So thats it.  Let me know what you think.  Comment below.