Star Trek Attack Wing Wave 19 Reveal – IKS Rotarran

The second in the series of Wave 19 reveals by StarTrek.com for WizKidsStar Trek Attack Wing sees the Klingons get some love. The IKS Rotarran, a B’Rel class Bird-Of-Prey, is added to the arsenal for all Klingon players fleets. Taken from the DS9 episodes “By Infernos Light”, “Soldiers of the Empire”, “Blaze of Glory” and “A Call to Arms” the recurring IKS Rotarran was a Klingon Bird-of-Prey that was in service with the Klingon Defense Force in the late 24th century. The Rotarran served with distinction during the Dominion War, with General Martok using the vessel as his flagship. It had developed an unfair reputation as a ‘cursed’ ship whose crew had all been dishonoured. In late-2373, General Martok was assigned command of the Rotarran by the Klingon High Council and dispatched to locate the missing IKS B’Moth. Joining him as his first officer was Lieutenant Commander Worf and Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax as science officer. Both were serving on detached duty from Starfleet at the time. Plotting course for the last known position of the B’Moth, the Rotarran was forced to circumnavigate the Tong Beak Nebula in order to avoid the Jem’Hadar. Martok’s wish to avoid a fight struck a sour chord with his weary crew. On the way, Martok reviewed his crew’s personnel reports, which included remarks such as: “Dishonorable conduct,” “lack of respect,” “dereliction of duty,” “inattention to orders,” “unmotivated,” and “insufficiently aggressive.” This did not go over well with Martok nor Worf, Martok likening the report to a prison record. Together they vowed to restore honor to the Rotarran and make it a ship worthy of the Empire.

http://www.startrek.com/article/first-look-i-k-s-rotarran-for-attack-wing-wave-19

The “IKS Rotarran” is a standard B’Rel Bird-of-Prey with the named version having stats of 4-1-3-3. It comes with 2 Crew, 1 Secondary Weapon and 1 Tech upgrade slots on its bar and Actions of Evade, Target Lock, Cloak and Sensor Echo. At first the Rotarran sought to “avoid conflict” with the Jem’Hadar. This is reflected in the Rotarran’s special ability that, as an action, allows the ship to perform a second maneuver on the maneuver dial with a speed of 1 or 2. After taking that action, the Rotarran gets an Auxiliary Token and cannot attack this turn. This is nicely thematic and whilst reflecting the defensive nature of the ship it also can be used to bank or turn into arc and fire upon an unsuspecting ship that it normally wouldnt be able to attack. I like this ability as it is very Klingon and in keeping with this expansions theme. The Named version comes in at 22 points whilst the generic loses a shield and costs 20pts.

Obviously it would be remiss of Wizkids to not include another version of Martok in this expansion given his link to this ship and we are not disappointed. “Martok is a CS7 Captain costing 4pts who comes ready to equip with an Elite Talent. As an ability Martok can reduce the cost of all other Klingon upgrades by -1pt. Additionally, when attacking, Martok allows the player to take an action to roll 2 less attack dice to add 1 hit result to his roll, if all upgrades on this ship are Klingon, you roll only one less attack die to gain 1 hit result instead. If you have the Action economy to use this ability then this can really help you, especially in the faction pure environment and its nice to see Wizkids acknowledging faction purity even if unofficially.

So Martok can bring an Elite Talent to his ship but what options do we have here? Well this ship has not one, not two but three Elite Talents! “The Day is Ours!” is a 4pt discard allowing a player to add one critical hit result to the roll during the Roll Attack Dice Step but only if it is equipped to a Klingon Ship with a Klingon Captain. This is ok and may see some usage between Martok, the Torpedo upgrade (which I’ll cover later) and this you might be hitting for at least 2 Crits and a guaranteed hit.

“Alert Status One” is another discard action costing 3pts in order to place a battle stations token next to your ship. Not sure how I feel about this in honesty…….3pts to take a BS? Its a significantly weaker version of Defence Condition One but for 4pts I could take the Action Crew Drex or N’Garen who are better BS converters.

Finally, “Supreme Commander” is another 5pts Action discard that allows the player to give another friendly ship within range 1-3 a free action from its action bar. If the targeted ship was a Klingon ship it may perform ANY action…….not sure what this means but if it means as read then potentially Klingon ships could take Battlestation, Scan or even Regenerate Actions. That could make for some very interesting combinations.

With no other captains to review lets look at crew upgrades starting off with yet another version of Worf. “First Officer Worf” provides a +1 bonus to your captain skill, which increases to +3 if you have a Klingon Captain. Simulating the near mutiny on Rotarran if your captain is ever disabled or discarded, Worf becomes the new captain with a skill level of 5. Worfs special ability to boost a Klingon captain cannot be used on himself so no shenanigans there although it does in theory allow the Klingons to now deploy a captain with CS of 14 (Ch’Tang Martok (9) + Admiral Gorkon (+1) + Klingon Fleet Captain (+2) + Rotarran Worf (+3) = 14).

Next up is Jadzia Dax who joined Worf on leave from Starfleet to serve as Science Officer aboard the Rotarran. “Jadzia Dax” allows you to spend a scan token to convert 1 battle stations result on your die into a hit or evade result. This is really in keeping with the idea of turning the tide of battle and thematically Klingon. Considered to be one of their own, Jadzia Dax does not pay a faction penalty when assigned to a Klingon ship so gets added to the list of options we can use when considering Penalty Pure fleet lists. At a hefty price of 5 points and given that the only Klingon ship with a Scan Action is the Somraw this may be an upgrade you simply cant afford to build around or include. You will almost certainly need to use upgrades and other crew to acquire Scan tokens. Not sure she’ll see much play as a Klingon crew so its a good job she has a Federation icon.

This expansion is very crew heavy. the ship itself only has two slots and we’ve already seen two crew but there are three more included to boost the options available to you. First up we’ll look at “Leskit” the helmsman of the Rotarran, who allows you to convert a red maneuver into a green maneuver. If your ship is cloaked when you do this, you can perform a sensor echo as a free action. Hes a 3pt discard crew but I like this ability! Given the way Klingons joust and come about to hit you again the ability to swap a red come about for a green come about is amazing! No Auxiliary Power Tokens for doing so…..is this worth 3pts? Yes I personally think so. I can see this upgrade seeing table time in many Klingon fleets.

“Tavana” the ships Engineering officer allows you to repair 1 shield token by disabling himself. If your ship is cloaked you may also repair one damage to your hull but you roll -2 attack dice on all attacks this round. If you’re out of arc this is a decent enough ability. The fact you can repair Shields and Hull at the cost of a reduced attack is nice, sure its situational but it could really save you if needed. Considering this is the usual 5pt Klingon crew upgrade the fact he is only a disable puts him above current options of Bu’Kah (4pt discard to repair 2 to hull if you performed a green maneuver) and Konmel (3 pt Action, not cloaked and repair 1 shield). The ability to reuse Tavana and remain cloaked elevates him in my opinion.

Finally the Weapons Officer, “Kornan” allows the player to take an action to place a target lock on an enemy ship within range 1-3 and then perform another action on the ships action bar as a free action but not the Target Lock Action. Ok thats nice but thats where it ends, he is a 5pt Action Discard….c’mon Wizkids, give the pastyheaded rageoholics some love!!!! Im disappointed by this.

So we have 5 crew for 2 slots. What about Secondary Weapon options in this pack? The Rotarran packs a punch with a new “Photon Torpedoes” that utilizes the new Time Token mechanic. Instead of disabling the weapon when it fires the players places 3 time tokens on the card. During the end phase one time token is removed. When no time tokens remain on the card the weapon is ready to fire again. This is a standard Range 2-3 5 Attack Dice torpedo that allows you to convert 1 Battlestations result into a Critical result. If combined with an all Klingon crew and Captain Martok then you could roll 4 dice and get 1 autohit plus the BS to Crit conversion. Meh…….I’d rather a boost to a B’Rel firing as that precedent has been set on Negh/Var and Vor’Cha classes.

Oddly whilst this ship comes equipped with a Tech slot no Tech upgrades seem to be included in the pack. More unseen upgrades may be included but StarTrek.com are usually pretty good and would have revealed it. Such a shame.

So having reviewed everything Im going to try and build a Faction Pure vessel from this expansion built to Wizkids Suggested Rules Format limits of 50pts:-

IKS Rotarran – 22pts
Martok – 4pts
The Day Is Ours! – 3pts (4pts overridden to 3pts by Martok)
Worf – 1pt (2pts overridden to 1pt by Martok)
Leskit – 2pts (3pts overridden to 2pts by Martok)
Photon Torpedos – 4pts (5pts overridden to 4pts by Martok)

Total – 36pts

What do you think about how I built this ship? How would you build it? Go take a look and let me know….comment below.

‪#‎LLAP‬ ‪#‎qapla‬

Star Trek Attack Wing Wave 19 Reveal – RIS Talvath

So the last of the Star Trek Attack Wing Wave 19 retail reveals has been shared by Startrek.com and it is the RIS Talvath, a Romulan Science Vessel (or RSV) seen in the Voyager episode “Eye of the Needle”.

http://www.startrek.com/article/first-look-r-i-s-talvath-for-attack-wing-wave-19

The RIS Talvath was an RSV that was in service in the mid-24th century. In early 2350, the Talvath, operating under the direction of Dr. Telek R’Mor of the Romulan Astrophysical Academy, began an extended three-year scientific mission. In mid-2351, the Talvath encountered a micro-wormhole in Sector 1385 of the Alpha Quadrant that led to the discovery of the Federation starship USS Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, located in the year 2371. The Talvath was scheduled to complete its mission and return to Romulus in 2353. In the episode the Talavth communicated with USS Voyager via a 13cm micro wormhole too small for Voyager to pass through so signals and a test cylinder are sent through. Eventually it is discovered that the ships are actually communicating across space and time as the Talvath is in 2351 and Voyager is in 2371. In fact Dr telek R’Mor died four years prior to Voyager leaving the Alpha Quadrant. Now we know about the Talvath we can start looking at the ship and expansion itself.

Firstly the RIS Talvath is a standard RSV with stats of 1-2-2-2 for the named variant and 1-2-2-1 for the generic. It is significantly weaker than the Delta Flyer which is only a shuttlecraft and yet does not have the same limitations of requiring a “capital ship” to deploy it. Its never going to be used in a front line attacking role but it certainly does have uses. The named version has the following ability “ACTION: If you are within Range 1-3 of at least 1 enemy ship, roll 3 defense dice. For every Evade result place 1 Evade token beside your ship. You cannot perform any free actions this round.”. As a small evasive vessel this is a situational yet nice enough ability that allows it to be deployed and used without taking the serious hits from bigger vessels. Even if you were lucky enough to roll 3 Evades this ship could still be 1 shotted especially by something like a pimped out Enterprise-E, a Krenim Time ship or a Borg Cube at close range. With a primary weapon value of 1, agility value of 2, hull and shield value of 2, this ship is designed to get in and get out quickly without taking heavy hits. It comes equipped with 3 Tech slots to allow it to fulfil that primary function of scientific vessel. This also makes it an absolutely amazing Mine Layer for Romulans which ensures I’ll be buying enough to deploy the 16 sets of Cloaked Mines I have!!!

In terms of Captains in this expansion it was always going to include Dr Telek R’Mor, even Wizkids couldnt screw that one up! Conducting a three year mission of “Secret Research” Telek R’Mor is the Captain of the R.I.S Talvath. Telek R’Mor is a CS3 Captain costing a reasonable 2pts that allows your ship to roll one extra defense die if you have a scan token beside your ship while defending. Whilst Telek R’Mor is the Captain, you may also field the “Secret Research” upgrade even though he does not have an Elite Talent upgrade icon. We’ll cover more about this Elite Talent later. Firstly we’ll cover the second Captain in this pack, Alidar Jarok, or more specifically another new Admiral for the Romulans. We already have a version of this captain from the RIS Vo expansion. The previous version was a CS7 costing 4pts. This version is CS6 for the same price, both have an Elite Talent slot. Looking at the two abilities of each I think I prefer the newer version whose ability says “ACTION: Target a ship at Range 1 and remove 1 token (Evade, Scan, Battlestations or Target Lock). If you remove a Target Lock Token with this ability also remove the corresponding Target Lock Token”. As a Fleet Action for an Admiral I like this ability a lot. Fancy firing your Torpedos at me? Nuh huh, I’m removing that token. Fancy reducing my defence with a Scan? I don’t think so. Whats that Picard/Dukat, you have a Battlestations? Not any more you don’t. I think I’d take this version of Alidar Jarok over the other every day of the week. Great ability although we dont yet know what affect he will have on the corresponding Captain if deployed as an Admiral. We’ll have to wait and see for that!

Onto Elite Talents and this pack only has one “Secret Research”. Captain/Admiral Alidar Jarok can equip it as he has an Elite Talent slot but so too can Dr.Telek R’Mor whose ability allows his to equip just this upgrade. It is very thematic of the story of this ship. This Elite Talent adds the Scan Action to the Action Bar of your ship and the RIS Talvath doesnt have this Action already. In fact only the RIS Vo and Prototype Drone have the Scan Action so this is a great way to add this Action to your Action Bar on other Romulan ships. As a secondary affect during the Activation Phase you may also discard this card to perform a Scan Action as a free action. Ok, so thats kinda neat. The Romulans getting access to an Action they’ve previously not really had access to. It is situational because for the most part you’ll probably be Cloaking or Sensor Echoing so it has its uses but Im not sure how much play it will see. There may be combos that can be used to trigger off the previously unavailable Scan token you can now use. We’ll see.

As befitting a scientific vessel conduction secret experimental research with 3 Tech upgrade slots and no ability to equip Secondary Weapons or Crew this expansion is loaded with sneaky Romulan Technology. I’ll start with “Warp Core Ejection System”, every ship captain knows a Warp Core Breach is one of the most dangerous things you can face. Using this 4pt Romulan Tech Upgrade, you can take an action to repair 1 hull damage and flip any “Warp Core Breach” critical damage cards face down. For the rest of the game you cannot take any maneuvers with a speed greater than 1. However, you also cannot receive any more “Warp Core Breach” critical damage cards. If you do, you simply flip it over and treat it as a normal damage. Being able to eliminate the risk of losing your ship to a Warp Core Breach by using Warp Core Ejection System is something every captain will want to have at his finger tips, just in case. Its hugely situational and there are much better Tech upgrades for Romulans…..Cloaked Mines, Interphase Generators, Polarized Hull Plating, Advanced Cloak etc. These are my top tier Tech upgrades for Romulans.

Secondly we have “Test Cylinder” which allows you to take an action to target a ship at any range and disable this card, plus any crew upgrades on the targeted ship. Taking this action requires you to disable all remaining shields on your ship, but if done at the right time, disabling an opponent’s crew upgrade can be quite devastating. The fact that it can be done from any range gives you a very big tactical advantage over your opponent. At ANY Range so hide your little mine laying ship at the back before disabling one of those quirky undisabling cards the Federation have or remove those horrible Drex or N’Garen at a critical moment. There are plenty of Crew combos out there that could really wreck an opponents strategy by disabling one at the right time. This is nice but requires being used in a combo at the right time to really put the hurt on an enemy ship. It needs some experimentation to work well but could be a devastating strategy to deploy. This is a 3pt upgrade so not horribly priced.

“Temporal Displacement” yet another of the recent Romulan Technological advances, is the ultimate in Romulan defense. This upgrade allows you to discard this card to cancel ALL of the attacking ship’s hit and critical hit results. That’s right, cancel all hit and critical hit results! The attacking ship cannot make any other attacks during this round, but any cards used in the attack are returned to the state they were in prior to the attack, allowing the attacking ship to use them again in a different round. Think of this as a pimped out Interphase Generator that you do not need to be Cloaked to use. The ability to completely negate a whole attacks worth of Hits and Crits could swing a battle. Use a Chroniton Torpedo or Transphasic Torpedo against me? No fear I’ll discard this and bounce all damage. If youre using these little ships to lay mines then get up close, drop the mines and use this Tech upgrade to get away taking no damage. Thank you very much. Mine spamming fleets just got a little more solid, although for 5pts and a discard and the limitation of only working on RSV’s this is questionable as to whether you’d be able to make it const effective. Other attack negation strageties are equally as cost prohibitive so without doing some math I couldn’t honestly tell you if it was better than those on a case by case basis. the limitation of only RSV’s probably rules this out as a general widely used future upgrade.

“Advanced Scanning” allows you to add the Scan Action to your ships Action Bar. Whenever you perform the Scan Action you may place 1 additional Scan Token next to your ship at the cost of placing an Auxiliary Token next to your ship as well. Thats not too bad when you have a maneuver dial like an RSV which has no red maneuvers at all and quite a few greens. Double Scan tokens aren’t really so useful for this ship as its not a front line warship, its more of a support vessel so being able to reduce your opponents defense on a 1 or 2 dice attack might help but if its come down to using your RSV’s like that then you’ve probably already lost. Situational at best but can be used in conjunction with other Tech upgrades to really shine. Its another Tech that is best equipped to the RSV as it costs +5pts on any other vessel (+6 out of faction). When you stack this upgrade or the Secret Research Elite Talent with the next Tech upgrade is when things get a little interesting. Lots of scan tokens are nice but you have to be able to get mileage out of them and thats where “Signal Amplifier” comes in. Signal Amplifier is a 5pt discard that allows you to spend a Scan Token to either add +2 attack dice or +2 defense dice. Paired with Secret Research or Advanced Scanning, Signal Amplifier gives you the flexibility to choose a boost to attack or defense whenever it is needed most. At the cost of an Auxiliary Token you can take 2 Scan tokens, use 1 to boost your attack by +2 Attack Dice and the second to reduce defense by -1 Defense Dice. A little 1 Attack ship at range 1 out of arc is dropping 4 Attack dice against a ship with -1 Defense. Nice if expensive and dangerous!

Lastly we have our final Tech upgrade, the 5pt “Graviton Field Generator”. This is an action that allows you to either, disable this card and 2 Active Shields to immediately perform an additional forward maneuver with a speed equal to the number of shields you disabled with this action, OR if you performed a green maneuver this round, discard this card to place 2 Shield Tokens beside your ship. Ok so on a big beast of a ship like a Reman Warbird this can really make it super tanky! This is great, especially when you consider that this card is not unique so a ship can be equipped with more than one. Interestingly I cannot find any reference to removing these additional Shield tokens beside the ship. The End Phase rules do not mention the removal of Shield Tokens only Scans, Evades and Battlestations. So that could lead to some interesting abuse. Certainly worth further investigation.

So having seen this expansion and using the Wizkids Suggested Rules Format and Faction purity I’d probably build this ship as follows:-

RIS Talvath – 14
Dr Telek R’Mor – 2
Secret Research – 5
Alidar Jarok – 4
Advanced Scanning – 5
Signal Amplifier – 5
Temporal Displacement – 5

Total – 40

How would you build this ship? Comment with your build and let me know how you’d equip it.

‪#‎LLAP‬ ‪#‎jolantru‬

Gaming on a budget – The Challenge (Month 4 – Part 8)

Evening Mancavers!

So a few days into October and I can update the progress with my “gaming on a budget” article.  As followers of this blog will know I pledged to spend no more than £30 each month on a new game that I hadn’t ever played before.  I chose to invest in Guildball by Steamforged Games, a low fantasy medieval football game where each team is built up from Guild members.  The Guilds included the Alchemists, the Butchers, the Brewers, the Masons, the Morticians, the Engineers, the Union and the Fishermen.  I opted for the Fishermen a team all about movement and speed.

Last month saw Steamforged Games update their Season 2 information for Guildball and release information on some of the new players for each team.  My team, the Fishermen, will be getting Sakana.  Firstly he is a stunning looking render and with any luck when my Sakana arrives the miniature will be equally as impressive.

Sakana

Sakana Card Front

Sakana Card Back

Looking at Sakana in detail;-  Pros:

– Fast, even without influence

– Relatively durable (similar to Shark, just good DEF/ARM/HP).

– Actual momentous damage (hurray!)

– That push/dodge in column 5 could be very strong- if you can get Gut And String or a Knockdown on a 2+ defense player (even one with armor) you could get 8 inches of push on them for 4 influence. Pity it isn’t momentous.

Cons:

– Doesn’t really bring any control ability (knockdown, movement, debuffs)

– Poised means he’s gonna get knocked down a lot, which will probably get him killed

– Solves a problem that the Fish don’t really have in my opinion- I guess he can set up for a playbook result chain pretty well with Weak Point, but the best damage dealer the Fishermen can play at the moment is Gutter (Union) who already has Anatomical Precision and Fangtooth (also Union) could be pretty effective with it.

With all this in mind I was pretty much sold so Sakana was my first purchase this month.  He was £10-95 (in resin) and £8-95 (metal) directly from the Steamforged webstore but £8-05 from Element Wargames.  Both would incur me shipping of £2-95 so Element won out here.  Sure I’d love a resin version but as this is gaming on a budget I’d take the cheaper option.

Last month Andy Thomas and Mark Southerd put me onto a webstore called Blotz http://blotz.co.uk/ this website sold MDF scenery and had a rather good deal on some Guildball Goals in the form of some gibbets with a target hanging from them.  They looked fairly sturdy and nice little extras to add to my cheap pitch from a few months ago.  Looking at them I knew Id want at least 2 to paint up as basic goals and I;d also like to use one as the basis for a Fishermen specific goal to use with my team.

Blotz Gibbet with Target Guildball Goal.

Blotz Gibbet with Target Guildball Goal with miniature for scale.

You too can grab yourself a couple of these by going to the Blotz webpage on the link below.  At a very reasonable £3 each I thought I’d jump in and grab 3 for the reasons set out above.  I have plans to make Fishermen specific goals to compliment my team.

http://blotz.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=24_124_123&products_id=613

Lastly, having bought the bare bones of a Fishermens goal for a team specific project I needed to start gathering some fishy accompaniments to build it up.  I’d seen various goals by other Guildball players and thought I;d try some similar sort of styles.  Using the Blotz goal I wanted to hang some kind of trophy from the gibbet.  I hunted around and found a source of 28mm sharks from the Reaper Dark Heaven range sold by Noble Knight Games in the US.

Reaper Dark Heaven 28mm Sharks

The shipping was a little steep though.  I looked locally and on EBay for a similar deal but couldn’t find one so eventually after some umming and oooing and aaahing I went for them.  They were $11-95 with $9-10 shipping which totalled to £13-87 after conversion.  I’d love some cheaper source of them so anyone who finds them please do let me know.

Thinking I was nearly at my budget I stopped there.  This months spend came to a total of:-

Sakana – £8-05 + £1-00 (Shipping*) = £9-05

Blotz Gibbet with Target x 3 – £9-00 + £2-80 = £11-80

Reaper Dark Heaven 28mm Sharks – £7-87 + £6-00 = £13-87

Total – £34-72

Yet again this month shipping has killed my attempts to stay on budget and mainly that shipping from the States for the Sharks.  Hopefully next month things will improve in that regard.  This month I will be scouring EBay looking for Guildball deals especially on the five Union Team members I am able to ally with my Fishermens team.  If a good deal comes up on a whole team then I might invest in that so I have two teams to play with at home.  Who knows eh….the world is my oyster (fishermens joke!)!

Im hoping to have my team ready for use in time for Mark Southerd’s upcoming tournament in January 2016 “The Heroic Play Open”.  A link to this to buy tickets can be found here:-

https://www.tiebreak.co.uk/the-heroic-play-open-2016/feed

Happy gaming Mancavers!

Jase