Kenzies' Tabletop Gaming Blog: August 2014

Sunday, 10 August 2014

my new obsession - Star trek attack wing

My new obsession...

Over the past few months i have been playing Star Trek Attack Wing (STAW). I started because i play X-wing the Star wars version as i am a big SW fan and the fact that STAW uses the same rules system (Flightpath system) was a huge bonus to me, it saved me learning another set of rules. Also with the painting list getting bigger and bigger, pre painted miniature was a very welcome bonus.

Starter set

Before i started playing this game, i can honestly say that i wasn't a star trek fan. Don't get me wrong i enjoyed the original movies, when i was growing up (Star Trek IV The voyage home was always a favourite) but i didn't watch any of the series in the star trek franchise. It took a friend to persuade me to buy the game, and i'm glad i did.

After getting a few of the expansion ships i started looking for the episodes the ships where featured in to get a bit of context for the ships and crew. The ships come from all corners of the star trek universe from the Klingon D7 I.K.S Gr'oth ship from the Trouble with tribbles , an original series episode to the U.S.S Equinox from Voyager.

Klingon D7 class I.K.S Gr'oth

Nova Class U.S.S Equinox

Each of the expansions come with a mission card so you can play a mission that usually has relevance to its involvement in the story. For example the U.S.S Reliant has the mission card that lets you re fight the battle against Khan in the Mutara Nebula. This is one of the appeals for me, that is to replay all the battles in the original films.

Fleet Building
The massive choice of ships and captain's gives you great flexibility as the captains don't have to stay with the ships that they came with, they can even cross faction. So you can have Jean-luc Picard on a Borg tactical cube can be locutus of borg, or Kirk onboard the Klingon bird of prey with his crew.

Kirk onboard the Klingon bird of prey with his crew in Star trek IV

The upgrades are my favourite part of the fleet building. Each ship as different upgrade slots depending on the class. These vary from crew, tech and weapon upgrades. Some captains have access to elite talents.

Crew upgrades

Weapon and a tech upgrade

Compared to X-wing there is a lot more factions you can use if you wanted to play pure non mixed forces.
I prefer to play with pure single faction forces.

The choices available are

Federation
Klingon
Romulan
Dominion
Borg
Species 8472
Kazon
Bajoran
Ferengi
Independents
Mirror universe
Vulcan

Each ship comes with a card that has a named version of the ship and default stock ship of that class. The named ships tend to have +1 shield and a special rule.

The Miniatures

The miniatures are good and detailed, but the paint job is what lets everything down. the range as a whole is a bit hit or miss. Some ships look fantastic like the U.S.S Equinox and the U.S.S Excelsior. but others look bland and are in need of a details like the Borg Tactical Cube, i had to add a few patches of bright green and a dark wash to make it look less plastic.
.

Gameplay

The Flightpath system is a very good system but what set this apart from the x-wing game is that the game is more about the crew and upgrade actions. This you have to make a choice of which actions to use, not just out pilot them. So in the end it does capture the feel of a star trek battle, instead of a dogfight which x-wing does very well. Compared to X-wing the ships hit hard but dodge very little and all ships will have shields, helping to reinforce the cruiser type conflict.

The Missions cards in each expansion is a very good idea for refights with different ships, like the Kobayashi Maru mission with the Enterprise-D or the Voyager.

The multiple factions available leads well for Multiplayers games, the starter set promotes it further with three factions included.

The large variety of crew and cross faction upgrades, makes each battle feel like its own mini episode.

My collection

Federation