Rogue Review - Star Trek Attack Wing

It’s hard to say for sure, but I think at my core I’m more of a Star Trek fan than Star Wars. Star Wars is fun, full of adventure and story. While, when it’s done right, Star Trek means something. Part of this is just that Star Trek is set in our future, where as Star Wars is a completely made up universe. It’s easier to mean something when you’re talking about us actual humans verse coincidental humans. So it’s kind of surprising that I’ve been playing X-wing for almost a decade and just now tried out Star Trek Attack Wing. And only because I got it as a gift.

Unfortunately, this meaning makes it difficult to do Star Trek in our capitalist world. It is hard to stick to Star Trek ideals and make a fun game or sell merchandise. And, come on, is there anything less fitting the ideals of Starfleet than calling it Attack Wing?

But nerd rant aside, how does it actually function as a game?

Gameplay- B+

At its core, Star Trek Attack Wing is X-Wing 1.0. Set a maneuver, move ships, roll dice and fire. Each ship has all of its stats printed on the card, including what upgrades it can take and how much it costs in squad points. Many things have a Star Trek coat of paint (stress becomes Auxiliary Power, Focus becomes Battle Stations), the mechanics are the same. So the foundation is solid as a game, though it works far better in the dogfighting setting of X-Wing than it does with the capital ships of Star Trek.

STAW has a number of variations from X-Wing that help it stand as its own game. First, there are almost no reposition actions. X-Wing makes heavy use of Boosts and Barrel Rolls to push the “game of positioning.” Aside from a few upgrades (Jadzia Dax for example enables a boost like mechanic) the only major way to reposition a ship is through the Sensor Echo action. Cloaked ships can move to the side, like an X-Wing barrel roll.

Speaking of the cloaked ships, the implementation of cloaking is much more interesting than in X-Wing. Which is good, since cloaking is a major part of Star Trek lore but just kind of mentioned in Star Wars. All Klingon ships have this action so it’s not rare. Ships that cloak, disable their shields and gain extra defense dice. They can decide to fire whenever they want but if they do, they will lose their cloak at the end of the round. This means, while it’s hard to do, you can hit cloaked ships. If you do, you’re doing damage directly to the hull. So cloaking is a risk vs reward consideration.

Cloaking isn’t the only different action. There is also Sensor Scan, which allows a ship to force their target to roll one less defense die when attacked. This is a nice option because it does not require you to select your target.

Another major variation from X-Wing is the separation of Captain and ship. Captains serve much like Pilots in X-Wing, offering an ability and setting the activation order. But unlike X-Wing, they are not locked to a particular hull. Want Captain Picard in command of the Defiant? You can do that. I always liked the idea of this mechanic for X-Wing, though I’m not sure how much of a balance headache it would cause.

Another major difference with X-Wing is the inclusion of a four speed bank and six straight templates. These are maneuvers not available in X-Wing. Unfortunately, none of the ships in the three packs I’ve gotten make use of these maneuvers. Using Geordi LaForge as a crew card, you can change the speed of some maneuvers, potentially using these, but no ships have it natively. Additionally, like X-Wing 1.0, STAW lacks any turn around maneuver besides straight ahead (K-turn in X-Wing parlance).

Torpedoes, and other additional weapons, function far better than X-Wing 1.0 versions did. For most, at least in the boxes I have, either become disabled or generate Time tokens. Disabled upgrades can be reenabled via an action, which is a nice compromise to fire and gone. Photon Torpedoes do require you to have a Lock and spend it, but allow you to turn blanks into Focus. If you can be doubled modded, your precious torpedoes will hit hard.

Time tokens work different, in that they decay one per round. Phaser Cannons, a Defiant only upgrade, generate three time tokens, effectively working like X-Wing 2.0 reoccurring charges. There are some other upgrades which can manipulate Time and Disabled tokens.

Production- C

The ship models do not hold a candle to the X-Wing models. They look like Star Trek ships. Unfortunately, they also look cheap. This was always my biggest hangup about trying the game out. X-wing ships look good. These look like game pieces. Bare minimal level of detail to convey what they are. The old micro machine Star Trek minis look lightyears better. If they would sit on the pegs better, I would gladly swap those in. Fortunately, the Klingon ships look better than the Federation so its only half the models that are disappointing.

To make matters worse, several of the ships I got sit on their pegs wrong. One Bird of Prey and the Akira point almost 30 degrees off so they look like they are drifting instead of flying straight. This speaks volumes about the quality control of the product.

The rest of the components are adequate.

Theme- B+

Aside from the obvious juxtaposition of “Star Trek” and “Attack Wing” together, this is the entirely wrong kind of game for Star Trek. Mechanically, these are big ships. They don’t dog fight and have weapons arrayed around for 360 coverage, though many non Starfleet ships do tend to have their strongest attack forward. The ships not having reposition actions helps, but it also undermines the core X-wing mechanic of positioning. You can only move based on your dial. This makes games feel far more like a joust than most X-Wing games. Armada would have been a better baseline of a system to steal. Ships having arcs, which offer different weapons and different shield facings would fit the Star Trek feel more.

Beyond mechanics, the upgrades do work well to offer the Star Trek feel. Most of the upgrades fit the setting. They are either people or things you’ve seen in an episode. Beyond just a familiar name, they do well in capturing the essence. For example, Dr. Bashir’s crew ability aids other crew. O’Brien’s helps keep the ship running. Even better, the two crew play off each other especially well if you can take both.

Expansions- A-

I’ve picked up the new Core box, plus the Federation and Klingon faction packs. Each box came with four ships, leaving me with six Federation and six Klingon ships. This makes for a pretty decent spread of ships, cards and upgrades. These faction pack boxes are quite reasonably priced. You can usually find them for $30, so $7.50 per ship. Granted, the ship models aren’t the greatest quality, but that makes it so you feel like you’re getting what you paid for, rather than feeling cheated.

There are several other expansion packs you can readily find, which also fit this four ships in a box pattern. Unfortunately, the plethora of ships that have been released before are fairly hard to come by. It does look like they might be silently canceling Attack Wing and moving to a new system called Star Trek Alliance. One set is available under this name, some Federation vs Dominion ships, and the models from STAW are supposedly compatible with this.

Conclusion- B-

It’s an okay game. It didn’t grab my love like X-Wing did but I can’t honestly say whether that’s the game’s fault, or the fact that I’ve played X-Wing for years now and these mechanics feel like going backwards. So I’m giving it some leeway. The new packs are nice, getting several ships for a reasonable price. It’s not a bad deal for a casual game among Star Trek fans.