Star Trek Attack Wing - Dominion War months 1 and 2

Star Trek: Attack Wing is the first game I've bought into in quite some time that has any kind of tournament or organized play program. With each expansion ship coming with an included scenario to play, I'd probably be happy playing the game without the OP, but I do have to admit that I've enjoyed having an event to go to for the game. Not only does it allow me to get use out of the game components I've purchased but I also get to play against other interested folks, rather than me foisting the game onto my friends. I'll sadly admit however that I have not actually played any of the ~16 scenarios that I have from the booster packages...

The current play program is a six month long campaign recreating the Dominion War which took place during the Deep Space Nine television show. I'll admit to having not watched all of that series, so my knowledge of the actual story is rather limited. However, I have had the chance to play in an event for each of the first two months.

In the first month event I played a Next Generation pure Federation 100 point build. The fleet was comprised of:

- Enterprise D w/ Capt. Picard & Engage, Data and Photon Torpedoes

- a Miranda class ship captained by Riker w/ Worf and Anti-Matter Mines

- a Constituion class ship w/ Capt. Jellicho (generic captain) and Photon Torpedoes.

We had four players but due to some late arrivals we were only able to play two games. I ended up coming in second place and was able to take home a LE Ferengi Marauder ship, the "Krayton." I've since tried using the Krayton in a Dominion build...with no success yet. I've only played that list once and want to try it again before I write it off as not being very good.

In my month 2 event I decided to try out a Klingon fleet. In all the games up until now I had only used one Klingon ship. It had previously filled the slot in the Dominion fleet above. Wanting to stick with a TNG-era fleet was a little hard this time and I had to squint a little bit to make it work. For month 2 I ended up with this 100pt pure Klingon fleet:

- IKS Negh'var w/ Martok & Once More Unto the Breach and Advanced Weapons Systems

- IKS Maht-h'a w/ Gowron and Klag, and

- a K't'inga Class starhip w/ generic captain.

This time I was able to play three full games. The layout of the scenario meant that everyone was sticking to the outer edge of the map to avoid the orbital weapon platforms, and in the first two games I played the entire game took place in a quarter of the map along one edge.

Game one pitted me against a Romulan fleet of two ships, shored up with some Federation crew members. The Romulans took heavy fire from the weapons platforms and I was able to take advantage of my extra ship to destroy all of the enemy ships.

The second game put me against another pure Klingon fleet. The same ships and two of the same captains. Some minor load out differences in captains and tech upgrades, but very similar. It came down to my Negh-Var against his K't'inga, and I was in place to use "Once More Unto the Breach" but was downed by fire from the weapons platform to lose the game. A tough pill to swallow, but a good match nonetheless.

My final match was against a two-ship Federation build...sort of. It was the Enterprise D w/ Picard and the Reliant captained by Khan and some tribbles. We started out on opposite sides of the board and I ended up flying my K't'inga close to the planet in hopes of catching up enough to get some damage in before the enemy ships could turn around. I took substantial damage, surviving a warp core breach for several rounds and taking down the Reliant's shields.

Both Federation ships kept tight to the board edge, but my other ships were closing the gap. A navigational miscalculation put my K't'inga off the map edge, which was really quite a disappointment. The Maht'h'a closed the gap and downed the Reliant while the Enterprise floundered in the corner. As time was called I rolled I had the Enterprise down to two hull. In points I was ahead, having lost 22 to my opponent's 43. Gowron's ship had two shields and one hull left, uncloaked. I had an evasive token but was within range 1 of a weapon platform which landed two hits. I rolled my one defense die and...rolled nothing. Shield down but not destroyed I won the match!

I came in second place, but since first was taken by the organizer I won the prize B'rel class Klingon ship, along with everyone getting the participation prizes. I'm really looking forward to playing again soon, it was good fun.