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Of Ships and Sealing Wax
by Tom Sarachan Without doubt, one of the most important decisions made in the deck-construction process is the selection of which ships should be included. Does the protection and power afforded by massive ships-of-the-line outweigh the easy staffing of shuttlecraft? Is quick progress across the spaceline more important than thick shielding to protect the crew? Are the "frills" offered by unique vessels more important than being able to download ships with a Spacedoor? The answers to these questions depend heavily on the deck one is playing. A combat-oriented deck will benefit more from "frills" than a simple mission-solver will; a Q-Bypass strategy will win fast enough to obviate the need for protection from attack. Some strategies, such as Borg Swarm, have virtually no choice of ships at all. However, some ships fit more neatly into certain strategies, and sometimes the ships themselves can suggest a deck theme - or, at the very least, a valuable trick that might lend an edge. With that in mind, let us examine some of the new starships in Blaze Of Glory and see what secrets we can uncover... "We have engaged the Borg." The Borg’s complement of ships is small relative to most other affiliations. Only the Bajorans and the Dominion have fewer ships to choose from. However, the quality of the Collective’s stable makes up for its lack of numbers, a theme reinforced by the introduction of: Locutus’ Borg Cube [DQ] {BOG}
All Borg Cubes have one overriding advantage over the vessels of other affiliations - their unbelievable WEAPONS and SHIELDS. This latest Cube is no exception to the rule - in fact, it makes a good thing even better with a very valuable frill. For the Borg, Wolf 359 is the place to be. It can be targeted by Salvage Starship without the bother of actually destroying something. The mission there - Secret Salvage - can only be attempted by two of the nine affiliations, and is not game-breakingly valuable. With Population Nine Billion-All Borg, Wolf 359 becomes the second part of a two-mission win for the Borg (assimilating Earth for 40 points and then completing Salvage Starship for 60). All in all, Wolf 359 is a great place to park a Cube. The trouble is, the battle dominance of the Cubes grows smaller with each new expansion. WEAPONS and SHIELDS enhancements have proliferated, and BOG only ups the ante with the new Battle Bridge side-deck and cards like Attack Pattern Delta and Dolak. The average Cube’s SHIELDS of 24 is still a powerful barrier against attack - but it is no longer impenetrable. Locutus’ Borg Cube, however, offers something of a solution - +3 SHIELDS for nothing at Wolf 359. No need to waste a card play on Nutational Shields, no need to use a Q’s Tent to retrieve Captain’s Log. Just being at the place where the Borg won a glorious victory gives the Collective that warm, fuzzy, safe feeling. It is not a huge bonus - not as large as Nutational Shields would be with skill-sharing - but it requires no additional effort on the part of the player, and so it becomes quite valuable in tight games where each card play counts. Of course, all of this ignores Locutus’ Borg Cube’s RANGE of 10. With the best RANGE of any Borg vessel, this Cube can make great headway on even space mission-heavy spacelines. There are two unfortunate side-notes about Locutus’ Borg Cube. The Cube features what should be a useful bit of text - "Locutus of Borg commands." Unfortunately, matching commanders just are not as useful to the Borg as they are to other affiliations. Ready Room Doors are miserable probe cards, and so they generally do not make the cut in Borg decks. Although the Cube can still benefit from Captain’s Log while Locutus is aboard, it is not likely that a Borg deck will be able to take full advantage of its abilities. In addition, the Cube suffers greatly from not being universal. Most Borg Cube decks can get by with very few Cubes, using a Spacedoor to retrieve one and then most likely never worrying about deploying another ship. This allows the Borg to use that space for vital Adapts, Changes of Plans, and so forth. Playing Locutus’ Borg Cube requires either a Tent (which could otherwise be spent on a Borg Queen or a We Are The Borg) or stocking it in the draw deck and hoping for the best (and, if it does not appear quickly, putting up with a useless draw late in the game). All in all, Locutus’ Borg Cube is a valuable ship, but one that relies fairly heavily on luck. It is powerful, but not so powerful that it warrants waiting for. Play with it...but be prepared to play without it. "If my people have returned to the old ways, then no one is safe." The Klingons make out like bandits in BOG. Not only do they get several spectacular personnel and the long-awaited Bat’leth, they also get three excellent ships: I.K.C. Koraga
I.K.C. Lukara
I.K.C. Negh’Var
The I.K.C. Lukara is, at first glance, the simplest of these vessels. It has moderate attributes across the board, and its staffing requirement and "extras" are those normally found on Birds-of-Prey. What makes the Lukara exciting is that it sidesteps the usual penalty for being unique: it can be downloaded. It should be pointed out that the download is nowhere near as easy to accomplish as "Spacedooring" a vessel. Two of the "You Killed My Brat" Pack (Jadzia Dax, Kang, Kor, and Koloth) must be in play, as must Blood Oath. However, the Lukara’s master (Kang) can download Blood Oath, and once in play the Oath cannot be nullified. Hence, the process might go something like this: Turn 1: Q’s Tent for Kang. If your opponent uses Computer Crash, simply report two personnel to The Great Hall and wait. (As a side note, being able to download a ship with Blood Oath makes The Great Hall much more appealing, as it is no longer necessary to use an Outpost expressly for a Spacedoor.) Use Kang’s special download to retrieve and put into play Blood Oath. Turn 2: Tent for, say, Koloth, using his special download to retrieve a Bat’leth. Turns 3 and 4: Download Dax and Kor with Blood Oath. You should now have at least four personnel with high attributes (thanks to the Bat’leth and Dax's and Kor’s special skills), plus a number of redshirts reported free via The Great Hall. Turn 5: Report your last redshirt, download the Lukara, and be on your way! At this point, you can either a) solve missions with your many multiple-skilled personnel (A Good Day To Live is worth 50 points and can still be protected with Fair Play!) and redshirts or b) wreak havoc by downloading more Blood Oaths to hand out Nemesis icons and wipe out key members of your opponent’s crew. This ability to either win fast or slow your opponent considerably helps make up for the delay incurred in setting up. Alternatively, one can Tent for the Lukara first turn, using a Ready Room Door to retrieve Kang and so on. This cuts the set-up to four turns, but requires the use of Ready Room Doors. It is probably better in most decks to accept the extra turn’s delay in favor of more cards to slow the opposition - Brain Drains and the like. The I.K.C. Lukara’s seemingly unimpressive attributes are amply made up for by its subtler advantages. The I.K.C. Negh’Var, on the other hand, has virtually no subtlety to it whatsoever. It is, quite simply, one of the most powerful ships in the game, a fair match for the "Advanced" ships in The Dominion and the "futuristic" vessels from Alternate Universe. The Negh’Var is at its best when used to simply batter down and destroy the enemy. It is, after all, rather unsuited to mission-solving. With four staffing requirements (even though those requirements are relatively easy ones to meet), losing even a single crewman (crewKlingon?) risks "stalling" the ship. Dilemmas that can kill multiple personnel at once, or that kill repeatedly (such as Aphasia Device, particularly deadly against the MEDICAL-impoverished Klingons) doom the Negh’Var. So, we must look to other quarters to understand the Negh’Var’s power - and what power it has! WEAPONS 10 is all but unheard of, and the Negh’Var’s RANGE and SHIELDS are most definitely respectable. Plus, the Negh’Var has two top-quality matching commanders - Gowron and Martok. Although a ship can only receive a Captain’s Log bonus from one of them at a time, having two matching commanders still allows you to download both of them with Ready Room Door. With Assign Mission Specialists, it is entirely possible to have the Negh’Var ready to fly and fight on the second turn of the game! At that point, either cloak the ship and use Engage Cloak to pounce on the enemy or simply cruise on over to where your opponent is - it might be even more effective if they can see their end approaching! Appropriately enough, the Negh’Var is a solid flagship for an Armada deck. Martok increases the WEAPONS of every other ship present by two. Assuming that the other ships in the armada are Spacedoored K’Vorts, that means that you will have a WEAPONS 13 ship and a horde of WEAPONS 8 ships - almost as good as having a fleet of Captain’s Logged vessels!
Perhaps best of all, however, is that the Koraga has a built-in method for dealing with both its own plodding nature and another ship’s dragging - the Rotarran, which is another quality ship just slow enough to strongly suggest the use of the Defiant Dedication Plaque. With both the Koraga and the Rotarran on the table with their commanders and a Log, their stats are 8-13-9 and 8-12-11, respectively! Although their total WEAPONS is impressive, the best thing about this little fleet is that both the individual ships are dangerous. Unlike most armadas, your opponent cannot simply pick off one of the ships (say, by stopping it with a Rogue Borg Mercenary) and expect that your armada is now toothless. Even after such trickery, or even the destruction of one of the ships, the other can still be expected to put up a solid fight! Regrettably, there is no way (aside from Visit Cochrane Memorial, unlikely to appear in most Klingon decks) to download the Koraga. However, with Q’s Tent, Empok Nor, and other card-drawing engines available, it is reasonable to hope that it will find its way into hand quickly. (Editor's note: There is, however, Empok Nor to accomplish this feat...) "Never say die!" The Federation is not known by any means for battle-dedicated vessels. However, Star Trek: First Contact exposed viewers to Starfleet’s new men-of-war, ships expressly designed to fight - and win. One of those new ships appears in Blaze Of Glory: U.S.S. Thunderchild
Ironically enough, although the Thunderchild was portrayed as a warship in First Contact, it is not particularly frightening in the ST:CCG. WEAPONS 7 is uninspired, although having Fleet Admiral Shanthi aboard raises that total to a respectable 10. The Thunderchild does have excellent RANGE for tracking down the enemies of the Federation and a Tactic card (Photon Torpedo) made especially for it, but the U.S.S. Enterprise-E and the Future Enterprise both have equal or superior RANGE and more powerful Tactics that apply to them. So, is the Thunderchild limited to service as a "poor man’s FE?" Not at all. Apples, after all, do not fall far from trees - and the Federation’s tree is rooted in mission-solving. The Thunderchild’s 10 RANGE lets it hurry across space mission-heavy spacelines. Its Holodeck allows it to use personnel like the E.M.H. and Albert Einstein (remember those space missions?). Perhaps best of all, its SHIELD bonus against Borg vessels allows it to survive a hit from a Borg Ship, that nastiest of dilemmas. In First Contact, we saw the Thunderchild pounding away at the Queen’s Borg Cube. Put that image out of your head - it will only distract you from this marvelous little ship’s true strengths. "In the name of the Praetor!" Blaze Of Glory offers a Romulan player both a massive Warbird and a petite shuttlecraft: Goraxus
v Romulan Shuttle
The Goraxus almost looks like a ship from the Premiere set. Its attributes are in line with the ships of that era, and its frills are, for the most part, old news. Even its matching commander is from Premiere. However, the Goraxus is an old dog that has learned two new tricks, and one of those tricks makes it an interesting vessel, indeed. Most obvious is the Goraxus’ Special Download for Romulan Ambush. Unfortunately, however, the Goraxus lacks the WEAPONS necessary to make effective use of Romulan Ambush. Only the tiny Federation Shuttlecraft (and now the Romulan Shuttle - but that ship will not be easy pickings, as we will see) is likely to be vulnerable, and few players use such ships with equally easily crewed Runabouts available. It is possible to damage a ship until it is vulnerable, but more often than not the ship will just be destroyed. In most games, Romulan Ambush will never even have a legal target. (Editor's note: Using Target Shields will help out a bit, though.) Hence, it is not the exciting Special Download that makes the Goraxus useful, but rather the addition of a humble Holodeck. The Holodeck allows a Romulan player to use holographic personnel, most notably the new Chief O’Brien, who provides SECURITY and ENGINEER as well as boosting capturing strategies. Offering an alternative to the overwhelming power of ships like the Goraxus is the unassuming Romulan Shuttle. With attributes remarkable only for how low they are and lacking even the ubiquitous Tractor Beam, the Romulan Shuttle seems like common-box fodder. In other words, it is easy to misjudge - and that is exactly what the Tal Shiar want. Just as the Romulan secret police hide their power behind plans within plans, the strength of the Romulan Shuttle is not found on its own card, but on another - Senator Vreenak. Vreenak is one of the best Romulan personnel in the game, and a case can be made for him being in the running with Dr. Telek R’Mor as the best, period. His Tal Shiar x2 allows him to complete Espionage Mission alone, as well as reporting the necessary Espionage card free and preventing it from being nullified. His ability to download a Romulan treaty means that the Romulans can work with a select group of personnel with needed skills from another faction - say, a Treaty: Federation/Romulan for those super-ENGINEERs and dual-MEDICALs. The only problem with him is that he can be hard to get into play - it will probably be necessary to Tent for him, since it is unlikely that a given player will have enough to stack multiples in the draw deck. The Romulan Shuttle changes that. It presents the chance to have Vreenak and a ship for him to travel on first turn, by Spacedooring the Shuttle and then using Ready Room Door to retrieve Vreenak. Even better, the Shuttle can be cloaked to protect Vreenak from attack. Best of all, having Vreenak travel cloaked and separately from your other Romulans means that your opponent will have to choose between a) going after the large crew and leaving a great personnel free to do as he pleases or b) going after Vreenak and letting the main body of your Romulans run rampant. Although the Romulans’ ships in BOG are very different, they are both quite useful. Although they seem to pale before such behemoths has the D’Deridex Advanced, both ships are quietly competent and easy to underestimate... "Contact Central Command." The Cardassians, like the Romulans, get two new ships in BOG. Regrettably, the new additions to their fleet are rather less inspiring... v Keldon
Kraxon
The Keldon is, ironically, the precursor to the Keldon Advanced found in The Dominion. It is also far inferior to that vessel. The Keldon Advanced had astounding attributes (with a penalty that was easy to work around - most Cardassian decks will have Obsidian Order by accident if not by design) that made up for the fact that it could not be downloaded to a Nor. The Keldon, however, lacks those marvelous attributes. 8-8-8 is quite average, and although the ship has no glaring weaknesses, it suffers greatly from not being able to report at Nors. The Keldon Advanced made Cardassian players perk up and go to the effort of using a Spacedoor; the Keldon will not. The Kraxon is similarly unexciting. It looks much like the other unique Galor-class vessels, with enhanced SHIELDS instead of better WEAPONS. However, 8 SHIELDS is not all that much protection against modern ST:CCG vessels, and the Defiant does not see enough use to make the Kraxon’s special ability especially important. All in all, it is little more than an addition to the stable. The Cardassian ships in BOG are not necessarily bad; they are simply not up to the standard set by the other affiliations’ ships. With neither spectacular attributes nor exciting special abilities to recommend them, most Cardassian players are probably better off staying with their existing fleets. "As of this moment, we are all dead." The last ship in Blaze Of Glory, the Alpha Attack Ship, opens up strategic considerations that make it deserving of an article all its own. Even without examining that ship, however, it is evident that Blaze Of Glory has ratcheted up the importance of starships in the ST:CCG. Most affiliations received powerful new vessels that could fundamentally change both how ships are viewed and the priorities of deck construction. No longer can a few universal craft and a Spacedoor be thrown in as an afterthought; BOG has presented the canny player with powerful new options in the realm of starships. In a game full of secrets, the hidden advantages of starships have long been the least explored; now, they are being revealed as some of the most important. Tom "Phalanx" Sarachan
The author welcomes feedback on this article, be it comments on the strategies therein, opinions on the relative quality of the vessels, or any other related correspondence. |
The final Klingon vessel in BOG is the I.K.C. Koraga. Another Bird-of-Prey, the Koraga’s attributes set it apart right from the start. Like the I.K.C. K’Ratak, it has 8 WEAPONS. However, unlike the much-maligned K’Ratak, the Koraga has 7 RANGE - enough to give it a reasonable shot (no pun intended) at catching up to its prey. Even better, the Koraga has a top-flight matching commander, in the form of Worf, Son Of Mogh! No need to include a questionable personnel in your deck just to enhance a ship, as is the case with the K’Ratak and its matching commander, the less-than-stellar Voktak.