The second dual-affiliation ship, the Stolen Attack Ship is not as flashy as some of the other ships revealed in this expansion (such as the Dominion Battleship or Brunt's Shuttle), but still has a great deal of potential.

There are a few key points worth noting.  First, its attributes and staffing are equivalent to the generic Jem'Hadar Attack Ship.  A strength it already has is its dual-affiliation nature, allowing it to be more flexible: usable in multiple affiliations without the hassle of requiring a non-aligned crew member.  That nonaligned requirement, while more insignificant in larger ships, can be a much greater pain to ships with smaller staffing requirements, as they are usually used to either shuttle personnel around (usually requiring an extra personnel to do so if the ship is nonaligned) or get going very early in the game (ditto).  Of course, Defend Homeworld, Assign Support Personnel, AMS, etc. can give you this nonaligned personnel, but you're still relying on another card, if only temporarily.

What else?  It's got an Energy Dampener.  I've seen a spoiler for the tactic that enables this, but regardless of how reliable or numerous the sources, I won't discuss its effects until officially revealed by Decipher.  Even though the chance is very low, I don't want to stick my foot too far into my mouth. ;-)

// Editor's Note: remember that some of these were written before the spoiler list was revealed ;-) //

Oh, and it's got Invasive Transporters, too.  This makes Invasive Beam-In strategies more readily available to the Alpha Quadrant affiliations. Although possible before, there were many weaknesses to such strategies. Memory Wipe could be Kevined; getting a Dominion personnel into the Alpha Quadrant required a Devidian Door, In the Bag, Ketracel-White and facility to reset it and left you vulnerable to somebody killing or Mysterious Orb-ing your Dominion personnel, or other cards which reduced the efficiency and reliability of such decks.  Unfortunately, the species best at personnel battle besides the Dominion (that is, the Klingons) get much less mileage out of this ship.  To use it, they have to Treaty with the Federation, an affiliation with attack restrictions.  Not that it will matter too much, but using too many Feds will keep your attack force small, whereas using only one or two leaves you with the same problem with using the Dominion ships: if the Feddie gets killed, captured, or whatever, you can't move the ship until he's replaced, almost certainly a substantial delay.  No, the Cardassians are the real winners with this ability.  There is a method to get a fairly large benefit out of this ship, although it may not be as effective depending on what the new Empok Nor dilemmas are.  However, with the current three, only two of which (Friendly Fire and Sleeper Trap) are commonly seen, the following is almost guaranteed to work.  In your deck, stock each of the hand weapons the non-aligned personnel can use.  Seed Arandis at Risa Shore Leave (which is within six span of a universal mission where Empok Nor is seeded), enabling you to also seed a Husnock Outpost and Husnock Ship there.  Seed a Romulan/Cardassian Treaty or two.  AMS for Mopak and Tallus; Assign Support Personnel for Jasad.  Discard QIR for Elim, and report him to the outpost.  Move all personnel to the Husnock Ship, move to Empok Nor, and make a commandeering attempt.  You have the 2 SECURITY and 2 Leadership for Friendly Fire; and if a Sleeper Trap pops up, your opponent will be unable to initiate personnel battle because you have a Cardassian present.  If no Sleeper Trap, commandeer the station as Cardassian, and download all the hand weapons.  Flip Defend Homeworld to download Lore, who walks to the Security Office (so if your opponent wants to retake Empok, you can start using all the weapons).  Next turn, Ops-download the Stolen Attack Ship, move them all back to the ship, and you're ready to start killing personnel on the second turn with +40 STRENGTH to each of your personnel. If Sleeper Trap is seeded, depending on how the battle parirings work you might even be able to win the battle; even if not, with all the hand weapons in your deck and six personnel right off the bat it should only be a turn or two before you can start clearing out the Cardies in Ops.  (HQ: Defensive Measures will allow this).  You've got two Nonaligneds to enable the hand weapons, and two Cardassians to run the ship.  Unfortunately, the big problem is the ship's low RANGE.  It'll be tough keeping up with your opponent, which may require Distortions or Wormholes.

Also, personnel battle is IMHO less efficient than ship battle.  Why beam aboard and kill the personnel on a ship when you can simply destroy the ship via direct hit?  The former leaves your personnel aboard the opponent's ship for an extra turn, and your opponent can STP the ship -- and all your personnel -- back to his hand, unless you expend an extra seed slot. Similarly, why stick a few personnel on your opponent's outpost and kill anyone who reports... when you can destroy the outpost and prevent anybody from being reported there at all?  All on top of the fact that Invasive Beam-In can be Kevin-ed, necessitating stocking multiple Q2s to protect it (or Palors to retrieve it, or Oof!/TLMBDH to punish your opponent, but regardless you have to put more cards in to keep it safe).  Also, if your opponent has a large number of personnel on his ship, a direct hit is a direct hit.  They're all dead immediately either way.  With personnel battle, if they have a couple of stubborn high-STRENGTH personnel or hand weapons, it may take several turns to kill them all.  That's probably one of the reasons for Obelisk of Masaka, to try to increase the efficiency of personnel battle relative to ships.  I would still maintain that ship battle is more efficient.  With all the ways to get personnel into play quickly, Obelisk of Masaka might only slow your armada down a turn or two.  And Defend Homeworld is just as tough against personnel battle at homeworlds as it is against ships.

Oh, and as for use in regular decks?  It'll be really nice to Ready Room Door Kira to this ship, and this can be used with either of the ship's affiliations.  Just one more way to get personnel into play quickly, which seems to be a theme of this set.  More on this in later reviews.  However, its low RANGE keeps it from being a first-rate ship.  Speed is just as important now as it ever was, and low RANGE reduces your flexibility in attempting missions within a given period of time, and makes it difficult to evade opposing attack forces.  If I need a low-staffing ship, I'd take a Military Freighter or a unique Runabout over the Stolen Attack Ship unless my deck benefits heavily from its special equipment. Even though those ships only have one RANGE more, the jump is important because of the frequency of 3 span-4 span combinations.

The final verdict: I think of this ship much like I do the Cha'Joh.  It's more useful in specialty decks or for a download of its matching commander than for a regular, mission-attempting ship.  The Invasive Transporters are a benefit to some decks; but I would still argue that ship battle is superior to personnel battle.  The Energy Dampening thing (if the spoiler is accurate) looks to be powerful, but I'd like to verify its actual wording (and the answers to some gameplay questions) before making a statement either way.

Next: Keras

Steve "Sergei Rachmaninoff" Boyles