Author: mordred

Hello there all you people!

With the Dominion War stuff pretty much done (barring any extras appearing in my head) I wanted to do something a bit different before getting into some more themed expansions (I’ve got some more ideas on this front).

It’ll take quite a bit more work to get the whole thing ready to publish BUT here are a couple of little teasers:

The “Civilian Freighter” class has 2 attack dice and a 360 firing arc (limiting it to range 2 like the Borg). The logic here being that the freighters weapon systems would be fit for little more than taking pot shots at light ships like Maquis raiders and Orion pirates. The Reverse is more to get it (slowly) out of any horrendous manoeuvring errors you may make).

Now, who in their right mind would possibly want to run an ability-less ship with terrible stats and a top speed of 2? Well who says you’re going to get a choice…

OK, it’s blatantly obvious this is for SOME form of scenario play…but I have something special in mind, so play along will you.

Now that’s far more like it. This will obviously require some sort of token along the lines of the OP DS9 token, but I’ve yet to make that up…got to brush up some skills I don’t in fact possess for that one.

“Earth Spacedock” is awfully specific isn’t it. Why yes it is…yes it is…

Until next time…When I might explain what the hell I’m getting at…or might just post more fun things.

 

With a lot of the major faction stuff done I wanted to go off a slightly different way, so this post is a kind of “Rogue’s Gallery of the Dominion War” kind of thing.

A ship I expect to see at some point in official form is Gul Dukat’s stolen Klingon bird of prey. The ship name is from the card game (ahh memory alpha/beta you’re so helpful) and the ability is intended to represent Gul Dukat raiding convoys and generally preying on weaker ships.

Gul Dukat is intended to be a very directly good captain without being a simple free action. In a faction pure environment (how I tend to play most often) he would be pretty limited in which ships he would be useful on.

Kira is intended to turn whichever ship she’s on into a guerrilla raider style ship. While she only gives you a certain amount of bonus with a skill 8 captain she could conceivably be useful with some of the independant factions lower skill captains with interesting abilities.  Damar and Ziyal are both designed to keep the relatively squishy B’Rel alive in a prolonged fight (two attack dice less vs a cloaked target may very well prevent all damage and repairing a shield could restore your ability to cloak in a pinch).

The whole thing is designed to be run as a single ship with all the crew cards in a casual/scenario game. NOTE: I was a little unsure what sort of ability to give Ziyal, I settled on an engineering style ability given she spent time as a miner.

Second we have another independant ship, the USS Defiant as stolen by Thomas Riker. This Defiants ability encourages you to throw it into the middle of an enemy fleet. Captain Riker supports the same idea but fits nicely on pretty much any ship, and stays useful as long as you are up close and personal with some enemies. I’ve given up and made the old Pulse Phaser Cannons factionless as the template (for good reason) doesn’t have a space for a third faction (federation, mirror, indy) and I wanted to keep this on a single card for all Defiants so when I eventually print these I can just have a few copies of that one.

Kira from the Naprem also fits this ship both from a story perspective and works better with rikers lower captain skill.

Third is a Beta canon ship, namely the Sovereign class USS Sentinel. The Sentinel was destroyed the year Voyager returned during the Hurq invasion (see Star Trek: Invasion on the PS1…the Typhon will be coming back soon too), this version is meant to be prior to that. While the Enterprise-E seemed to be occupied primarily with diplomacy my headcanon version of the Sentinel spent the latter parts of the war engaged in solo strike missions against the Dominion, hence this ones lone wolf style captain and heavy hitting ship ability.

NOTE: I THINK Captain Brennan appeared only in audio in the game so I’ve opted to represent any future imageless characters with faction logo’s unless something appropriate comes to life.

Last up is something that was brought to mind at the last OP I was at discussing all Ferengi fleets with the local Ferengi fanatic (seriously, I doubt anyone on earth has more attack wing D’Koras). I’ve gone for recreating some of the episode “The Magnificent Ferengi”. I’ve omitted Rom and Nog as the versions of them that came with Quark’s Treasure work perfectly well here.

The shuttles name is another card game concept. The ships ability is intended to make it slightly useful in a real game, where it shoots around making a nuisance of itself putting aux tokens on other ships. Quark and the assorted Ferengi crew are just a mix of utility crew and can all be run on the spoils along with Rom and Nog.

Finally as a little silly bonus heres one more Ferengi ship. While this could have been called “Quark’s Marauder” in the fashion of some of the other D’Koras I’ve gone for a sillier name which sprung to mind given these are also often called Marauders.

The ability is a little too text heavy for my liking but I couldn’t think how to shorten it but it’s quite Quark.

Although they never featured prominently in Deep Space 9 the Son’a from Insurrection were heavily implied to be associated with the Dominion.

I’ve set them up as fast ships with movement based abilities (in the movie they outran the Enterprise).

 

For captains we have the obvious Ru’afo and one of the minor characters (the name comes from one of the star trek card games). There’s also a crew upgrade to screw with enemy captains and crew. The star I think though is the subspace weapon which piles aux tokens on every ship within range 3 of the target.

Running out of Dominion War stuff now but there’s still a few little gems left. Gul Dukat’s independant faction B’Rel springs to mind…perhaps some more stations for scenario games and things like that.

Just a short one today, a third Breen ship, mainly to allow an all Breen fleet at 120 points.

This one is intended to carry the revised time token Energy Dissipator. The captain and the crew upgrade both work towards this same option.

The field emitters are just to give a Breen ship (possibly a flagship) a bit of extra toughness.

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

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.