I'm a fan of both series. And all of the Wizkids efforts at Trek space battles have been so disappointing. Totally agree with the poster above who said neither Armada nor X-wing are the best fit for how the Trek ships should move.
what do you guys think of the star trek miniatures?
See Attack Wing is Duplo compared to the Starfleet Battles I used to play. It had shield allocations, boarding, jamming, power management.
Edited by XerandarNo-one plays Starfleet Battles.
You experience it.
Like Homework.
Its something you do to occupy time.
because Occupy time, it does.
...
and I only say that as an almost-20-year vet of it... >.>
This tells you all you need to know about the difference between X-Wing and Attack Wing:
X-Wing was released in 2012 and has had eight waves and six other expansions in that time.
Attack Wing debuted in 2013 and just hit Wave 27.
Apart from the sub par minis and lack of balance, the biggest thing against it is that it's just the wrong system for capital ship battles. It actually had a bit of promise at one point, but it seems like it's really come apart at the seams. The OP limited edition cards really didn't help.
What would be cool is a wing commander version of x wing, or a Warhammer 40k version of armada.
Star Trek Attack Wing feels like it has similar mechanics because they have licensed the mechanics from FFG
Sadly, they jumped the gun by a couple of years. The X-Wing game mechanic is entirely ill-suited to Star Trek. The Armada mechanic is what the Star Trek theme is begging for.
As others have said, they also have con and tournament exclusives that are almost always overpowered and out of balance
IMHO, actually, I don't even think 'Armada' is the right fit for it. While I think WizKids whiffed badly using X-Wing as the model, I feel kinda like Armada would be equally wrong - in the other direction. Ships in Star Trek don't generally 'zoom around' like X-Wing fighters, but neither do they basically saddle up next to each other and slug it out like in Armada.
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Well to be fair it is really hard to fit Star Trek to a combat game because with the exception of a few episodes and that blasted Dominion War Star Trek was never about combat. It was about finding a solution to a particular dilemma. Even the battle scenes were more of a dilemma that needed a solution that was more based around discovery than tactics. The Picard Maneuver, the unorthodox strategy against the Borg, heck even in the dominion war the weapons platforms that got tricked into destroying their own power generator.
However Armada does fit closer to "tall ship battle" than X-wing as X-wing was more "dogfight combat". Thus Star Trek has more "Tall Ship Battles" than "dogfight combat" As for Star Wars it was more "dogfight combat." Yes the first scene in Star Wars was a "tall ship" one but it wasn't as interesting on the outside.
As for a tactical battle game of Star Trek it could be done but the federation never won a battle by tactical methods. Me personally I would like to see a tactical battle but one where attacks may not be allowed. However to make such a convoluted game mechanics and still have an accessible rule set might be too much to do.
Edited by Marinealver
Also, Star Trek is dumb
First, don't start that nerd war.
Second, by Star Trek, do you mean STAR TREK or JJ Trek, huge difference.
And third, Babylon 5 is the best.
But really we are all fans of spaceships here (or at least Sci-Fi) can't we all just get along and support what little Sci-Fi media we get.
Babylon 5 was my favorite Star Trek series.
Star Trek Attack Wing feels like it has similar mechanics because they have licensed the mechanics from FFG
Sadly, they jumped the gun by a couple of years. The X-Wing game mechanic is entirely ill-suited to Star Trek. The Armada mechanic is what the Star Trek theme is begging for.
As others have said, they also have con and tournament exclusives that are almost always overpowered and out of balance
IMHO, actually, I don't even think 'Armada' is the right fit for it. While I think WizKids whiffed badly using X-Wing as the model, I feel kinda like Armada would be equally wrong - in the other direction. Ships in Star Trek don't generally 'zoom around' like X-Wing fighters, but neither do they basically saddle up next to each other and slug it out like in Armada.
Have you played 'Sails of Glory'? Here's an overview vid...
...IMHO, how the "crew actions" are assigned feels a lot more (to me) like how Star Trek handles energy. So I could see energy allocation to shields that way...or boosting a phaser attack...or repairing damage. And I like how the ship has a damage track that reflects gradually reduced capabilities as it takes hits - that DEFINITELY feels like Star Trek, to me (and something else Armada basically lacks). So...if WizKids were to have licensed a system, that one would have been my choice.
I would rather have pirate battles than star trek battles.
Here is a link to a free site full of ship control sheets and a link to rules for a fairly effective trek gaming system for those so inclined. Similar in feel to SFB, but power allocation is much less involved, and gameplay is less predictable. Damage is distributed in volleys that can blow out entire systems at once, or sheer off sections of the hull. Based on B5Wars rules, with mods for Trek. It plays well for things like the Dominion War.
Have to admit, Babylon5 was awesome. Problem is, its one of those plot stories rather than universe series. Cant really expand upon it without either ignoring **** near all of the series or causing some weird "wait...what?" reaction from everyone *cough Rangers cough*
I kinda feel Star Wars is that way, though it isnt terrible persay. Kinda wish they'd focus more on the old republic since thats not locked on the Trilogy events.
The miniatures look like they were painted by 5 year olds at day care. The quality is god awful.
The miniatures look like they were painted by 5 year olds at day care. The quality is god awful.
This is what turned me away from the game before i even saw the rules or a game demo. I know how to paint pretty well, but part of the reason i got into xwing/armada is because its a game i can get into and be lazy and not need to paint for once (my 7000pts of tau is almost fully painted lol). Those ships are not only horrible scale-wise, but the paintjob is just sickening. The windows are flat and sometimes not even on a window, theres no shading (not even a wash), and wtf are the borg ships suppose to be lol they dont look like borg!
im not going to pay extra for "prepainted models" that i have to repaint because theyre horrifically painted by a professional company.
If there was a miniatures ST game that truly captured the spirit of the shows it would have one ship on the mat and some weird space anomoly or lone alien ship. And they sit there at range one for like 45 minutes, then each ship/whatever takes an action or attacks, and the episode is over.
Fun stuff.
Thats the plague of any startrek game, though Startrek Online somehow did a good job imo.
Its Capitol Ship combat, which is really hard to put in a game because people dont like the slow, drawn-out combat and thats what capitol ships would cause. Even in the movies/tv series it was quite rare for a ship to explode immediately unless it was a shuttle or something barely bigger.
If they were to actually try and capture that, it would be a system-hunting game rather than outright kill. Take out the shields then specifically target certain weapons, scanners, deflector arrays, etc etc and try to keep doing that faster than they can repair, or cause damage they cant repair at all. Not many people would like that kinda gameplay though.
Even Armada doesnt do it, and technically they should too. Ive seen Imperial Star Destroyers blow up in a single **** round...yeah its baller dice and anti-defense token shenanigans but that just shouldnt happen to a ship that massive lol.
what do you guys think of the star trek miniatures?
I think there are no TIEs in it.
What's Star Trek?
It's a good space series, arguably better than that Firefly tripe that completely ripped off Cowboy Bebop's premise.
Those are both fighting words and patently incorrect.
Are there Acewings or fat turrets in Attack Wing?
What is the Super Dash or pre-nerf Whisper of the game?
Are there Acewings or fat turrets in Attack Wing?
What is the Super Dash or pre-nerf Whisper of the game?
Worse. Much, much worse. The Borg put to shame any turrets we've had in this game. And how would you like it if every ship had Vader's PS and ability available to them.
It's what happens when little things like dials or arcs are not part of the point cost formula.
Thematically, the game also fails; in the shows/movies, it took fleets to successfully engage a single Borg Cube. In Attack Wing, when they put out the full version of a Cube, complete with Locutus, if you went after it with three ships of roughly equal point value, the Borg were doomed. I tested this; three Klingon ships not only destroyed the Borg Cube, but they only took shield damage, and that was playing faction pure without any of the overpowered prize ships/upgrades. Where FFG wisely came up with modified mechanics for Epic ships, Wizkids just put a bigger model on a bigger base, and applied almost exactly the same rules to it as to the one and only large based ship there was in the game at the time. In fact, the stats for the $100, 8" across cube are almost a match for the $20 Tactical Cube which measures around 2.5"-3".
There's really almost nothing good to say about STAW; all of the good parts are either a.) directly related to the good parts licensed from X-wing, or b.) the tiny amounts of Star Trek flavor drizzled over the top of a game that boils down to obscene card combos. On the other hand, its a shame that the maneuver templates are slightly different from X-wing's, since Wizkids put out official acrylic templates which we still haven't seen from FFG...
I think part of it comes down to scale, and not in the sense of the miniatures. X-wing deals in a fairly narrow scale of mostly fighter style ships, with a few ships that effectively could be considered "heavy fighters" (i.e., the large based ships) and a total so far of 4 Epic ships which play by different rules. Meanwhile, STAW deals with ships anywhere from 70-80 meters long up to over 1000 meters, and thats not counting the Borg. On top of that, these are ships that cover a technological development of 200 years, and the cultures as shown on Trek were still very much in progress. The ranges described in the shows suggest drastic changes from the 22nd to the 24th century. On Enterprise, in the 22nd century, combat occurred in the thousands of meters, while 40,000 km was noted as very close range by Next Gen, in the 24th Century. The idea that not only could you apply the same weapons and movement scale to NX-01 as to the Enterprise-D, but that NX-01 could offer a competitive opponent to the 200 year more advanced ship is ridiculous.
And, yes, I am a total geek, and I've spent too much time watching Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly and a bunch of other geeky shows, as well as reading technical manuals for non-existent ships. However, my geekery does not extend to forgiving ideas that I find stupid, which includes a large number of novels set in both the Trek and Wars story worlds, as well as a number of episodes and a couple of movies from the Star Trek end, and massive parts of an entire trilogy from the Star Wars side. (I liked parts of the prequels, but they had many unforgivable flaws, too.)
Bottom line: I think it was a mistake to let Wizkids touch Star Trek. They almost had some success with Fleet Captains, but for all of its flaws, everything went downhill from there.
Since there seem to be a few people here who gave actually played STAW, I was wondering if someone could explain how it handles cloaking? They had to have come up with a cloak mechanic before FFG did, given the Romulans, so I assume it is noticeably different than the TIE Phantom, but I have never heard exactly what it is.
Since there seem to be a few people here who gave actually played STAW, I was wondering if someone could explain how it handles cloaking? They had to have come up with a cloak mechanic before FFG did, given the Romulans, so I assume it is noticeably different than the TIE Phantom, but I have never heard exactly what it is.
Cloaking disables all shields (they offer no protection), adds 4 green dice, and opens a new action as long as you're cloaked: sensor echo, which is basically barrel roll with a 1 or 2 template. Decloaking occurs when you choose to fire, or choose to decloak, but decloaking is not an action.
Apart from the godawful paint jobs in the core set, the point that put me off this game when I saw it first hit the shelves here was the scale. They seem to have decided the ships had to be the same size, regardless of canon or even type. The moment I saw the Defiant was the same size as the Enterprise, I was out. Everything I'd heard since confirmed that was a solid choice.
I wish this licence was just handed over to FFG to do at Armada scale. I'd love to see it done properly, playing out Borg invasion or Dominion war scenarios.
Are there Acewings or fat turrets in Attack Wing?
What is the Super Dash or pre-nerf Whisper of the game?
Borg, 360 arcs with obscene firepower and movement from what I've heard, which is a shame because Borg is the faction I'd be tempted by most.
I've played STAW and I thought it wasn't too bad as a game. When I was looking at X-Wing and Attack Wing and trying to decide which one to go with, it came down to the quality of the models in the end, and STAW just don't have quality models. The models are poorly produced out of inferior plastic, poorly painted and usually in the wrong colours, and there's no such thing as scale. Later releases are clearly coming out of a different factory than the earlier ones, but now they are favouring producing the model in coloured plastic and applying minimal detail painting. This gives an even crappier end result than before, but does give the gamer a pretty clean baseline if they want to do a repaint - no stripping required.
As a dogfight game, it's the same type of move and shoot as X-wing, but considering the ships are supposed to be much, MUCH, larger, it doesn't really translate all that well. As a fleet game, it doesn't cut it either. So overall, it's in some kind of limbo in between, neither a good dogfight or fleet game. As for a "beer and pretzels" Friday night fill-in game, I don't think so. It's got all the complexities of X-wing with the squad building requiring weapons and crew upgrades to make a particular ship work well. It's not an easier game to play, as it's almost the same as X-wing, but with different ships from a different franchise.
Could it have been better? Absolutely! Especially if FFG had managed to secure the rights to do it first! The models would have been all the same scale and the quality would have been excellent, and the paint jobs would have been correct.
Poor TREK... but you can fix it.
