Tag: Attack Wing

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.

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

The last big alternate timeline bundle comprises the ships of the 2009 reboot universe.

This doesn’t include the Kelvin (and by extension Captain Robau and the Kirks) although I may make these up as Federation ships.

When it comes to the 2009 universe I cannot stand the oddly scaled hugeness of the ships so for the purposes of this assume that the new Enterprise is about the size of the original but with the stat line of the refit version to represent the technological edge. That puts the Vengeance in line with the bigger 24th century Federation ships (and not utterly ridiculous) so it’s stats fall roughly in the area of the sovereign class (with some downsides).

USS Enterprise

The Enterprise has the stats of the Constitution Refit, representing the alternate timelines seemingly higher tech level. The ship ability and move dial both let the ship push what a Constitution would normally be able to do (a 4th attack dice and a 5 forward maneuver) at the cost of auxiliary power tokens, after all a few scans of the Narada and a new arms race with the Klingons aren’t going to lead to fully developed and integrated tech.

The crew have had some changes since my original release. Captain Pike is now an Admiral. His ability remains largely unchanged but could be a shenanigan enabler given it can be fired off from any one of your ships on the Admiral side.

Kirk and Spock both have new templating courtesy of one of the many, many Riker cards (I THINK Pegasus Riker). Kirk is a pet favourite ability of mine, as I always wanted some way to use the two upgrade dice together (and fluff wise represents the ridiculous luck level of this Kirk).

The rest of the crew largely got minor templating changes and the obvious faction change.

Narada

The Narada breaks a few rules conventions. The named ship is the fleet killer we know from the movie while the generic is a lightly armed mining ship.

The logic here comes from the comics leading into the 2009 movie. The standard ship lacks any significant weaponry and has a terrible move dial. Once the stolen Borg technology is integrated into it it gains the Borg faction and upgrade slot, some more shields and a massive PWV. It does however lack any improvements to maneuverability or the agility value as the ship is still immense and bulky.

Nero’s original version had a restriction on where he could be used. I planned, in this version, to restrict his ability to being used on ships with a high PWV but that just wasn’t readable so now he just throws extra dice at point blank range (and grants a second reroll on top of any target lock or other reroll you may have).

Nero’s first officer Ayel has a shot at disabling each character on the enemy ship but it requires some dice luck. The Red Matter Bomb puts a token (I haven’t made this yet but basically a planet token sized object with an objective token in the middle) on the field which gradually destroys anything unfortunate enough to not be able to escape its gravitational pull.

USS Vengeance

The vengeance lacks any crew slots has a high powered stat block. To balance this it loses the 180 forward firing arc of most Federation ships of this era and gets a rather clunky move dial. It does however have a white forward 5 and a reverse 1 white (2 is still red). It goes fast…it just doesn’t turn very well.

Admiral Marcus also got the upgrade to Admiral and his action got a buff, basically allowing a ship to use old school disable torpedoes every turn.

Khan also got some alterations for readability reasons. His ability still functions the same but the text has been bumped onto a free (for him) upgrade card in the style of the NX-01 and enhanced hull plating.

And last but by no means least is Ambassador Spock, specifically Spock prime. I’ve made him dual faction Vulcan and Federation and given him an ability which, on a ship with the right upgrades, should have him working his usual magic.

There will likely be one more alternate timeline post (a few odd items like the Bozeman, Kelvin and Premonition plus anything else that comes to mind) and then I’ll get onto the Typhon and working out how to make a carrier work with the retail fighter rules. Well that or my Dominion War stuff.

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

Number 4 in the series of Alternate Timeline attack wing expansions is Yesterday’s Enterprise, including the Enterprise-C and a warlike variant of the Enterprise-D and crew.

The Enterprise-C (not mirror universe as it was a prime universe ship that just happened to end up in an alternate future…pay attention wizkids) falls into an odd spot gameplay wise between the Excelsior and Galaxy classes. There’s no spot between 3 and 4 attack dice, nor does the ship really justify a second defence dice like my earliest version.  Factoring in some feedback on my original BoardGameGeek post I settled on a massive-hulled flying tank with an unusual move dial focusing on low speed turns (in the DS9 opening the Ambassador class looks pretty nippy).

The named ability also factors into the floating tank aspect, giving you an extra defence dice against a ship outside your firing arc.

Captain Garrett can be discarded to prevent your ship from being attacked for a turn. I wanted this one to have a little edge over the usual attack cancellers so its outright NO attacks as opposed to cancelling a single attack.

Castillo improves your defence, as long as you keep performing evasive maneuvers actions.

The alternate Warship Enterprise-D is designed to discourage the normal attack wing opening joust. Attacking it head on will let it split its attack with potentially quite a few additional attack dice.  Alternate Picard gets stronger the worse the situation gets for you or your most damaged nearby ally and when you finally do get taken out (lets face it this ship would be a bit of a firepower magnet) you can throw one last shot at your attackers.

Riker is slightly underwhelming against a single target, but gets progressively better the more targets you fire on. Throw the named ship plus Picard and Riker, with 2 damage on the ship into a split attack against 2 ships at range 1 and youll be rolling 10 attack dice split against the two targets with a guaranteed hit against each.

Data lets you turn the ship around 90 or 180 degrees. This one is probably the most potentially broken of my things, although unlike Admiral Q he does only apply to a single ship. Wesley is another passive defensive buff with the option to trade in for an emergency reroll.

Tasha Yar is another attack canceler, this time preventing an attack against another ship rather than your own, the threat of which hopefully being enough to force the enemy to focus on Tashas ship first.

Lastly Guinan (now dual faction Federation and Mirror) is another time travel/alternate timeline themed card, this one letting you mulligan a set of dice rolls or a maneuver.

Next in the list is the new movie ships.

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

Second in this series of updating old Attack Wing homebrew to bring it up to line with current rules are the ships of “All Good Things”.

This is an interesting one as much of what I originally intended has already been release (namely Assimilation Target Prime included a mirror universe Enterprise-D and the Pasteur has been released to retail).

That in mind what we have here are some sections to fill the blanks (many I imagine will one day be obsoleted by a “Galaxy Dreadnought” release).

First up is a Federation faction version of the USS Pasteur. The stats have been changed from my original version to match the mirror retail one, but the named ship and captain Crusher have new abilities.

The ACTUAL AGT Pasteur exists in retail form along with Captains Crusher and Worf and crew upgrades for Ogawa and Chilton, however it lacked crew cards for old Picard, Geordi and Data.

The AGT Enterprise-D exists well enough as the mirror Enterprise-D from the Assimilation Target Prime pack, however it could do with beefing up to Galaxy Dreadnought status. Both upgrades are split faction to play nice with the Federation version as well.

Lastly I also originally made an Admiral Riker. While there’s now a proper mirror one (which I really like by the way) I’ve updated my old one and made him an elite talent to match.

This was of course originally made long before the Q Continuum card pack and Admiral Q and I wanted to represent Q himself in some way. I opted for a talent upgrade which originally let you reroll anything. In the updates I’ve changed it to Q faction and upgraded its power a bit, it now just sets a dice however you like. It does not come in cheap however if your captain doesn’t satisfy Q’s definition of interesting.

Next time…probably either Timeless (Delta Flyers for everyone) or Star Trek 2009.

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

Never content with just playing a game, especially a Star Trek one, I’ve taken to making up some additions to Attack Wing. My first batches went up in various themed posts on the boardgamegeek forums.

Since then however a number of the games rules and conventions have either changed (the addition of the mirror universe faction and what falls under that) or new features have been added (such as full rules for shuttles and fighters) as well as official versions of couple of the ships I made (USS Thunderchild, USS Lakota and USS Pasteur).

With all of that in mind I’ve decided to go back and bring my stuff up to standard where the new rules are concerned.

My first set of redesigns cover the Voyager finale “Endgame”.

The original rules predated the release of the shuttle Sakharov so I had my own shuttle rules. I had the range 2 limit but in place of docking and the capital ship rule I had some modifiers applying to range penalties and enemy secondary weapons to make them a little more survivable.

Also all of the cards were Federation and in keeping with the way the game has gone I’ve turned them into Mirror Universe (in fact MU will be getting a lot of the toys from these updates as they were primarily federation alternate timelines).

The USS Rhode Island

I decided to keep standard Nova Class stats and movement for the mirror version but to give the named Rhode Island an aggressive ability both to fit in with Mirror Universe faction and to represent soloing a pair of Neghvar class starships in a science ship.

Captain Kim provides a simple free scan action. A little unimaginative I know but it would make a perfectly reasonable science ship captain with an upgrade or two to trigger off it. His talent upgrade is suicide in the traditional head on attack wing joust but if you manage to get behind an opponents ships you could screw their entire attack for the round.

A new card type I introduced was the “refit” upgrade. These use no upgrade slots and cannot be disabled or discarded (functioning more like a flagship resource than an upgrade). They are not unique but only one can be assigned per ship. Each refit can only be applied to a specific class of ship, but a ship class may have more than one refit option.

The refits may grant upgrade slots, new abilities or improved stats.

The Nova Class refit can be used on either the prime or mirror Nova Class starships and bumps its attack and evasion up.

Shuttlecraft SC-4

Admiral Janeway’s shuttle also got moved into Mirror Universe. Some changes were made to the maneuvers to bring the ship closer into line with other shuttle classes.

The ships defensive ability also got a push to balance the loss of some of the bonuses shuttles got in my old rules.

Admiral Janeway uses advanced tactics to weaken an opponent. There’s also the, somewhat pricey, option to take Janeway’s Neurolytic Pathogen. It massively disrupts your enemies for several turns, but will cost you the captain/admiral it’s assigned to.

Miral Paris allows you to trade tech upgrades with your opponents…whether they like it or not lastly the chrono deflector allows you travel to a different part of the board at a time of your choosing.

That’s it for this time, next up is probably All Good Things.