Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (The Dominion War – Part 5)

The last post was all new toys for the Cardassians. This time It’s the founders themselves.

This is a fairly small assortment but I think in terms of ships the Jem’Hadar are pretty well represented (and it’s almost flavourful to run a lot of generic unnamed ships here anyway) and the Vorta have at least an assortment of cards.

The Founders themselves are almost completely unrepresented in the game (except for the Odo cards). So here are some options for them, including some more variants on my spy card concept.

That doesn’t strike me as enough to justify a whole post though and I came up with another idea for a type of upgrade: Battle Formations. These are a selection of unique upgrades that go into any slot and provide a powerful fleet wide buff….but can only be purchased for a fleet which meets a minimum level of fluff. They all share a name to cut down on using up unique name space and because you should never have more than one.

The inaugural selection consists of an all bugship Jem’Hadar fleet, a triple-Galor patrol group and a Breen energy dampener fleet.

I plan to make some more of these for other factions in future posts. In my head I like the idea of these making some fluffy but otherwise impractical fleets playable.

Other ideas within the Dominion War theme include groups such as:

  • The Defiant and Rotarran.
  • The Defiant, Majestic and Sitak.
  • A trio of D’Deridex warbirds.
  • An all B’rel class Klingon fleet (not that that doesn’t already work).

That sort of thing.

The next Attack Wing post will probably be Breen and S’ona but it may be a while as Shadows over Innistrad is about to finish spoilers so it’ll be time for some deck brewing and cube upgrades.

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (The Dominion War – Part 4)

The various sub factions of the dominion don’t have many relevant canon ship classes (that I can remember there were 3 for Cardassian, 3 for Jem’Hadar and 1 for Breen) all of which appear in Attack Wing already. There are however plenty of beta canon ships you can draw from.

The Cardassian Hutet class was introduced in the old “Dominion Wars” PC game as the largest Cardassian ship class. I’ve made it here as a hulking great dreadnought which takes a few turns to warm up to it’s best offensive output.

Given there’s only one Keldon I’ve done another one. This one is designed to fly in the centre of a group of Galor classes.

Theres plenty of Galors but I made a new one anyway.

Enabran Tain is an extra admiral for the Dominion (I’m sure he’ll turn up in some wizkids release) and the Obsidian Order talent gives you some flexible options for either deployment or defence.

 

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (The Dominion War – Part 3)

Today we get onto the Klingons and Romulans. But first a last few Federation items I forgot to put up before.

The USS Odyssey is pretty much a Federation version of the assimilation target prime Enterprise-D card. Between this and captain Keogh the idea is you effectively minimise your shields and dump the power into weapons instead (much as in the Odyssey’s unfortunate battle with the Jem’Hadar).

As a last Federation addon I’ve done another Galaxy class, this time the oft-in-background USS Venture from DS9. This is the first of a trio of “Alternate Starter Box” ships intended to work as a single fleet. The Venture provides action economy to the fleet.

The Klingon Empire

The Klingons in Attack Wing (and in fact in the show) lack any real non combat ships. In Attack Wing this goes so far as not even having a scan action. Here we have something to fill that slot in the Fek’hlr class ship from the Armada games.

It gives up its target lock action for the scan action and has a pair of tech slots to carry useful upgrades, possibly including the “Ionic Generators” super weapon.

We have an extra Negh’var class to fill out the ranks. This one is meant to sit in the middle of a fleet carrying a captain like Martok 9 or Gowron, using their actions to buff the fleet and using the ship ability to pound away on a target.

Also, to fill out a long standing gap in the official list of ships here is an extra Vor’cha class. The ability on this one is the Klingon part of the 3 ship set of “alternate starter box” ships. The Vor’cha is the heavy hitter of the 3.

One last bonus item is a refit for the two major bird of prey classes to give them the extra defence dice I wish they had had since the beginning.

REFIT - BoP Thrusters

The Romulan Star Empire

The Romulans are getting their own ship from Armada. This one is a midrange ship (something they’re lacking, at least in the TNG era anyway) which gives up its target lock action for a battlestations action and a suitable support ability.

The romulans “alternate starter box” ship is the Genorex. It’s role in the trio is to buff defence across the fleet.

Also here are some extras. The D’Deridex warbird should never have had 3 attack dice. This refit goes to balance that out a bit. The Tal’shiar operative is just a nice crew upgrade that can sit happily in a romulan or multi faction fleet.

The Raptor class fills out a little of the Romulan fleet but only as a support ship. To give them a smaller ship, I’ve taken Star Trek Online’s cue and used the ENT era warbird design as a modern bird of prey.

 

Next up: probably some dominion faction stuff.

 

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (The Dominion War – Part 2)

Back again with some more Dominion War (and slightly related) homebrew.

Since I originally made these the Akira class has been released at retail so my USS Thunderchild has now become the USS Akira. This one is still a Torpedo boat and has, as in my original version, a hangar slot (to be explained later). The Akira class is one of my favourite so I was pretty please when wizkids gave it even better stats than my version, so this one has been brought into line with the retail one.

The Steamrunner class never had much more than a background role in the show, but in the game Star Trek: Armada it served as a long range artillery ship, a role which I’ve tried to replicate here.

The weapon can only be fired outside of range 3 and the ships range combat benefits are reversed, the idea being that this ship cruises around the outside of the battle popping off shots from range 3.

The Norway class sadly never appeared after First Contact (in alpha canon at least) due to the loss of the CG model (I don’t think the First Contact classes ever had physical shooting models like many older classes). I’ve given it the role of a screening ship or escort, taking fire for capital ships close by.

A little extra I made at the time was a ship which could conceivably have been fighting in the Dominion War (after some refitting along with the rest of the Miranda class phaser fodder). In Beta canon by this point Bateson was commanding the Sovereign class USS Bozeman-A which I might make at some point along with the USS Sovereign and some Bridge Commander bits.

Next time: some Klingon and Romulan extras.

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (The Dominion War – Part 1)

With the alternate timeline items finished it’s onto updating my other bits.

The bulk of what’s left before I can move onto new stuff is Dominion War era allied ships and characters.

Admiral Ross

The USS Bellerophon OP ship came with cards for Admiral Ross, but I rather prefer my original version (I like to think of the Bellerophon version as the Section 31 operative and this one the battlefield general). The idea was it incentivised you to run a combined Federation/Klingon/Romulan fleet.

The Nebula Class

The nebula class appears to some degree to be a modular ship which could be reconfigured to suit the mission, or at least which had at least 3 variants in service. The Secondary Torpedo Launcher upgrade which was included with the USS Sutherland OP ship sort of reflected this a bit but wasn’t really nebula class specific.

Atop the primary hull was a superstructure which could support a variety of modules, such as the inclusion of a triangular platform, fitted with torpedo launchers, an oval platform, or additional warp nacelles.

These upgrades represent the different pods the class can take.

NOTE: the text had to be truncated to keep these readable hence the incorrect templating…I’d rather they be non unique “max one per ship” upgrades but the text just wouldn’t fit.

Paradise Lost

I cant take credit for this weapon upgrade for the Defiant, the idea came from a poster in the mists of the past on boardgamegeek.com which I decided to make some minor changes to and include in the selection.

WEAPON - Pulse Phaser Cannons

This one is dual faction so it can go on the ISS Defiant. It can also go on the Sabre class, which I figured is comparable in size to the Defiant so could probably be outfitted with cannons. The achilles class is from the Dominion War game and can be seen using pulse cannons in the intro movie here.

The USS Lakota is another ship which has since come out in OP ship form. I considered making this one mirror universe but the Excelsior itself seems a better target for that.

The refit for the Excelsior class is meant to give it the extra punch the Lakota had in “Paradise Lost”. It also applies to the Enterprise-B which I’m including here out of completionism.

I recall Harriman having some involvement with the Romulans during the lost era, so I’ve given him an anti cloaking ability. Demora Sulu is a simple defensive card.

The Frankenstein Fleet

Some of you may have noticed these ships appearing in varying degrees of prominence in DS9 from background stock footage to the battle with the Centaur. While they never show up clearly in the shows (Centaur aside) this page on Ex Astris Scientia gives you a better look at them, and inspired some of the oddities on these ship cards.

These ships all have a -2SP discount to their cost in return for a second negative ability to represent their flawed designs/incompatible hardware etc. They also have no unnamed ship cards (with one exception) due to their unique designs.

The USS Yeager, perhaps the most grievously out of scale of all these kitbashes is pretty sturdy and has a decent set of weapons on it…but due to its incompatible ship components suffers from a lack of manoeuvrability…and the possibility of it simply flying itself apart if you get overexcited with the old move dial (look at all those tempting red moves….you know you want to).

The USS Elkins again possesses the bulk of an Intrepid classes weapons array…but has a number of components designed for far older and frailer ship classes.

Regarding the USS Curry I read a fan theory somewhere that the ships odd design was intended to allow the ship to separate/jettison the secondary hull and continue without it. I’ve given this one a hangar bay slot to imply its making good use of all that extra space (the hangar upgrade slot will be expanded on in future, it’s getting a rework since it’s last appearance).

The USS Aquarius (I don’t think that’s an official name but there’s a rather excellent ship modeller whose model of this class appears on this card and his is named the Aquarius) has a neat manoeuvring bonus from its additional nacelle but can overload its own power systems from the drain of running it.

Last up is the USS Centaur. Ive made an exception here to put in a generic “Centaur Class”. Its seen some beta canon appearances (STO, Legacy etc) and its just a cool little ship so I’ve ruled the USS Centaur a prototype and the only one of these ships deemed successful enough to get some additional units built.

That’s all for tonight. Coming soon: Klingons, Romulans and the First Contact ship classes.

Cube Archetypes – UR Spells/Prowess

Of all the parts of the cube UR is probably the part that’s changed the most since the earliest builds.

At the beginning there were the ill fated attempts at mono colour tribal themes (I could never make my mind up between merfolk and faeries for blue as I wanted [mtg_card]True-Name Nemesis[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Vendilion Clique[/mtg_card] to both make the cut, red was goblins which lasted longer but ultimately went too). Blue and red have both also had a pretty heavy artifact theme (this was in all the non green colours) at points in the past with cards like [mtg_card]Grand Architect[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Chief Engineer[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Megatog[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Pia and Kiran Nalaar[/mtg_card].

When the cube got its last big review and I decided to focus a lot more on the colour pair archetypes as the basis for the whole thing I was down to a choice of two real options for UR. Keeping and expanding the artifact theme (I might have gone this was had there been some more good thopter token cards in the style of Origins…maybe if we ever go to Kaladesh I might end up revisiting that decision) or going for a prowess style deck.

I settled on prowess as it worked better with a lot of the UR gold cards I liked ([mtg_card]Nivix Cyclops[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Hypersonic Dragon[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Melek, Izzet Paragon[/mtg_card] etc) and a few pet cards like [mtg_card]Talrand, Sky Summoner[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Young Pyromancer[/mtg_card] fitted better. [mtg_card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/mtg_card] in the three colour section, along with [mtg_card]Monastery Mentor[/mtg_card] in white were also a major motivator here as I’d like a jeskai Mentor/Pyromancer/Ascendancy deck to be a thing.

The backbone

Although this is the most spell heavy archetype in the cube (except possibly some builds of UW or Esper control) you are still reliant on creatures to stay alive and sometimes to win the game. The creatures are also the big indicators that this deck is viable in the cube.

[mtg_card]Young Pyromancer[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Talrand, Sky Summoner[/mtg_card] are probably the biggest draws to playing this deck. They turn all the cantrips and burn spells in your deck into board presence. [mtg_card]Monastery Mentor[/mtg_card] also fits into this deck, and it’s very possible to play a Jeskai version of this.

Spell recursion is also a significant component as keeping yourself from running out of gas, given that on average you have quite small creatures and may be quite reliant on prowess triggers. [mtg_card]Snapcaster Mage[/mtg_card] is, well…[mtg_card]Snapcaster Mage[/mtg_card]…enough said. The bombier version of this, in this cube, is [mtg_card]Charmbreaker Devils[/mtg_card]. As long as you can keep your graveyard intact you can keep triggering prowess and keep [mtg_card]Charmbreaker Devils[/mtg_card] big on the attack every turn.

The core of the deck though are the prowess creatures. Most of the good ones printed so far appear in the cube. [mtg_card]Monastery Swiftspear[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Abbot of Keral Keep[/mtg_card], are in red. [mtg_card]Jeskai Elder[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Jeskai Sage[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Jhessian Thief[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Mistfire Adept[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Sage-Eye Avengers[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Pearl-Lake Ancient[/mtg_card] (because you really need prowess on a 7-drop 6/7) are in blue. There is also [mtg_card]Soulblade Djinn[/mtg_card] with super prowess along with the aforementioned [mtg_card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/mtg_card].

The “creatures with prowess” section of the cube is probably going to get upgrades with almost every set from here on, with its new evergreen status. The 1R, 1/3, prowess vampire in Shadows over Innistrad is almost definitely going to make the cut due to being a good crossover card with BR vampires.

Spells

The other half of this deck is the spells (well DUH). You will generally want a few categories of spells.

  • Burn
  • Bounce and tempo
  • Cantrips and card draw

There’s plenty of burn spells in the cube and they are largely interchangeable. [mtg_card]Lightning Bolt[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Incinerate[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Lightning Strike[/mtg_card] aren’t THAT different (yeah, bolt is the best you can get and incinerate has a nice bonus…but strike is still 3 damage on a cheap card). [mtg_card]Mizzium Mortars[/mtg_card] is probably the most desirable just due to flexibility.

Tempo and bounce cards are rather interchangeable, there are a few cheap bounce and tempo spells which you can usually pick up fairly late. [mtg_card]Rush of Ice[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Clutch of Currents[/mtg_card] are recent additions which can give you a bit more board presence as well. The absolute best is [mtg_card]Cyclonic Rift[/mtg_card], but that is first pick good for any blue deck. It’s even worth splashing as the effect is that big.

The cantrip spells fit in here better than any other deck. [mtg_card]Brainstorm[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Ponder[/mtg_card], [mtg_card]Preordain[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Serum Visions[/mtg_card] are all good for getting prowess triggers while keeping your hand full, plus they’re good for just digging to your better cards. The fetchlands are also available to combo with [mtg_card]Brainstorm[/mtg_card].

Sample decks

 

[d title="UR Prowess"]
Creatures
1x Dragonmaster Outcast
1x Monastery Swiftspear
1x Abbot of Keral Keep
1x Augur of Bolas
1x Jeskai Elder
1x Jhessian Thief
1x Markov Blademaster
1x Prophetic Flamespeaker
1x Talrand, Sky Summoner
1x Thunderbreak Regent
1x Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1x Stormbreath Dragon
1x Charmbreaker Devils
1x Inferno Titan

Non-Creature Permanents
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Spells
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Incinerate
1x Lightning Strike
1x Searing Spear
1x Scatter to the Winds
1x Dig Through Time
1x Clutch of Currents
1x Treasure Cruise

Land
1x Volcanic Island
8x Island
7x Mountain

Sideboard
1x Battle Hymn
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Black Sun's Zenith
1x Blue Sun's Zenith
1x Coastal Discovery
1x Commune with the Gods
1x Crocanura
1x Deathbringer Regent
1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1x Eternal Witness
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Goblin Bushwhacker
1x Magma Jet
1x Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper
1x Pillar of Flame
1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
1x Slayers' Stronghold
1x Soldier of the Pantheon
1x Splinterfright
1x Tithe Drinker[/d]
[d title="UR Prowess"]
Creatures
1x Goblin Guide
1x Monastery Swiftspear
1x Abbot of Keral Keep
1x Augur of Bolas
1x Jeskai Sage
1x Snapcaster Mage
1x Young Pyromancer
1x Jhessian Thief
1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1x Mindsparker
1x Nivix Cyclops
1x Vendilion Clique

Non-Creature Permanents
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Bident of Thassa
1x Thassa, God of the Sea

Spells
1x Izzet Charm
1x Lightning Strike
1x Electrolyze
1x Volt Charge
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Pillar of Flame
1x Mizzium Mortars
1x Coastal Discovery

Land
1x Scalding Tarn
8x Island
8x Mountain

Sideboard
1x Brainstorm
1x Celestial Colonnade
1x Claustrophobia
1x Coordinated Assault
1x Crosis, the Purger
1x Cultivate
1x Faithless Looting
1x Falkenrath Aristocrat
1x Koth of the Hammer
1x Lightning Helix
1x Liliana of the Veil
1x Mortify
1x Nemesis of Mortals
1x Ninja of the Deep Hours
1x Rush of Ice
1x Shaman of Forgotten Ways
1x Sublime Archangel
1x Sunscorch Regent
1x Sword of Body and Mind
1x Think Twice
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
[/d]

Next up: Shadows Over Innistrad, cube alterations!