Last night, I was playing with a friend who has some experience with Attack Wing and someone learning for the first time. The friend with experience was playing the Kraxon and Sutherland. I was playing the Koraga and loaned the newbie the Negh'var. The experienced friend started complaining that cloaking (which both of our ships did) was "broken" and that the forums were full of complaints about how unbalanced it was. Personally, I hadn't seen any posts on forums. The guy we were introducing the game to kept repeating him,"man, cloaking is OP!!!!"

While cloaking opens up a lot of great strategic options, I feel the cost of actions to recloak and the lack of shields when you get hit, make up for the advantages.

Thoughts?

Switch sides and let them play the cloaked ships.

Drop some Antimatter Mines directly on a cloaked ship while activating Montgomery Scott and a Spock/Scan combo. Then ask them how OP cloak is...

My first thought is that the experienced friend isn't experienced enough. That's not a light against him, it's just that he seems to be on the early stages of strategy, compared to what we've seen overall. Many, many newer players say that for the first while of play.

Cloaking is risk/reward.

You are risking direct damage to your hull (and game changing crits!) for the ability to dodge. Not avoid damage, mind you. Dodge. Those are two different things.

Cloaking makes you easy prey for mines (Antimatter, Cloaked, and Nuclear Warheads now), as DS pointed out. Mines don't let you roll defense (without tech upgrades)


My local play environment was cured of the 'I have to cloak at every chance' very early on as started trying out Engage/Antimatter mines from the get go.

Cloaking is a tool, and in the right circumstances a very good one, but has serious drawbacks. To me that is one definition of game balance.

We're all pretty new to the game. To me, I immediately saw the drawbacks of cloaking and was wondering where he was getting this "its all over the forums how 'broken' cloaking is" stance from. I think that my attitude was different because I started playing Klingons from the start and have seen my ships go down quick from a lucky shot in my early games. I immediately had experience with the down-side of cloaking and am not very careful of when I decide to cloak and when not.

Another thing to keep in mind is the new wave stuff. 5 or 6 evasion dice might seem daunting when you're only rolling 3 or 4 attack dice, but the new Dominion Battlecruiser has 6. Additionally, the Gal'Gathong can now fire Plasma Torpedoes without a target lock, and combined with the starter set torpedoes, can attack with 5 attack dice that you can arbitrarily re-roll. Again, all direct to the hull where a single crit can quickly change the game.

Also, because no one else mentioned it, just keep in mind that evasion dice have slightly less successes than the attack dice.

I think DS has the best suggestion though. Next time they complain, offer to let them use your ships, and then just tear them apart.

Cloaking was rough when the game was brand new. In a game with heavy hitting fast damage, being able to double or triple the number of defense dice you roll is golden. But there are a lot - ALOT - of solid counters to cloaking out there these days. Scanning hurts when played correctly, and there are ships and characters that can do it for free. Antimatter mines, though expensive, can also mess with the cloaking strategy (though truthfully you need 2-4 to make it work, which right now means more starters).

The best, dollar-value answer to cloaking for the Federation are
Riker
Jochim
Attack Pattern Omega

You can't put APO on Riker, obviously, but with Jochim every crit you deal lets you dig through the deck for the best crit options.

A fleet like this would offer a great cloak counter:

26 Excelsior
06 Jean-Luc Picard
03 Attack Pattern Delta
03 Dmitri Valtane

26 Sutherland
01 Clark Terrell
05 Mr. Spock
05 High Energy Sensor Sweep

18 Miranda Class
04 William Riker
03 Photon Torpedoes

Between the Excelsior's ability and Picard, you can get a token of each type every round. Use the High Energy Sensor Sweep to drop a scan token onto the Sutherland, and fly in close with the Miranda to range 1 so you can pop Riker's ability to dish crits against cloaked vessels that damage you. In the turns leading up to that, use a TL and your Photon Torps to soften up with a slight chance for crits along the way.

Keep your other ships at ranges 2 and 3 as much as possible.

Meh...I've built Dominion pure fleets that deal with cloak pretty well. The Koranak is ideal. Anti-proton scans is a nice addition. Then I flank with 2 of the Patrol ships each with a Phased Polaron Beam. The Koranak gets 6 dice against cloak and can usually land enough hits to force the opposing ship to drop cloaks and raise shields. Then I finish them off with the Phased Polarons.

Hmmmm. I really like that build. I may have to try that soon.

Personal experience:

When my opponents use cloak: I Lose
When I use Cloak: I Lose

I'm not a bad player by any means, I just can't seem to get the Cloak to work well for me and in order for me to beat Cloaks I need to build specifically to beat them (although I did one-shot the Defiant while cloaked once...once)

I swear I'm cursed when it comes to playing Klingons. I usually cannot for the life of me roll well enough while cloaked to keep myself alive. I cannot tell you how many times poor Kurn has been one shotted while flying a B'rel class.

On the flip side, watching the Vo blow up in one shot from my new Dominion Battleship was very satisfying.

The Federation Flagship is a cloaked fleets best friend. If you play faction pure, that really only means the Defiant, if you play pure ships or mixed faction ships, then the possibilities really open up. The new Deflector upgrade that came with the Equinox gives these builds the protection that they had so desparately needed, but at a whopping 5-6pt cost per ship, plus the action to re-enable the upgrade (when you need it again). Actually, I shudder to think what shenanigans are possible with Barrage of Fire, Deflectors, 2 Negvars w/ Martok and Donatra and flagship Reliant plus Terrell.

Starting to think that Anti-Protons will show up more often in my builds.

Oh and for DS:

Koranak
Gul Danar
Anti-Proton Scan

5th Wing Patrol
Dukat
Captured Intelligence
Boheeka
Phased Polaron

generic Patrol Ship
Gul Evek
Long ranged Tachyon
Breen Aide
Phased Polaraon

100pts

Danar's re-roll makes the Koronak slightly more accurate and you can still take Battle Stations if you don't face cloaked ships, or aren't going in for the kill shot against an injured ship.

Dukat allows the 5th Patrol to use its +1 attack die/-1 defense die special, plus Battle Stations, Boheeka, Phase Polaron. Captured Intel because it doesn't cost an action and this is actually the most deadly ship on your fleet, though its disguised by the low 3 dice attacks.

Evek gives the other ship survivability while the scan token can be used at range 3 for Tachyons (because you won't be using the Phased Polarons anyways) or it can be used at Range 1-2 with the 3 dice phased Polarons and Breen Aide.

There are enough upgrades to add up to exactly 10pts so you can add United Fleet AND a Flagship, or United Fleet + 10 more pts of upgrades.

If you do run this build with changes and staying pure faction I'd be really curious to see your build. Otherwise, I'm still curious to see how it does for you (or anyone else that tries it out).

This "friend" wasn't a guy named Karl was it




Ran the Battlecruiser in a Dominion pure fleet this past weekend and in the first round played a Klingon Fleet. First time we engaged I one shotted his first cloaked ship. Next round one shotted another cloaked ship and severely damaged his third one. It was a very quick match and the Klingon's didn't fare well. Next round was much closer facing two Federation non cloaking ships. Managed to pull out a squeaker. Third round I played two Klingon ships supported by Donatra sporting two cloaked mines. Took out his big Klingon ship quickly and made a critical error that lost me the Battle Cruiser. The remaining 45 minutes of the match I spent chasing his damaged Klingon ship around the board while he flew in and out of the mines while avoiding engaging me. I managed to take out Donatra but never could catch up with the damaged Klingon ship before time ran out. Sadly I took a lot more damage from the mines then from my opponent.

DANG IT CSI!

I was drinking when I read that. Now I have to get another drink.

Not I. I haven't touched AW since then and I never will.

I don't have the card in front of me, but I'm pretty sure the Federation Flagship only grants the reroll on defense dice to other Fed ships. This does make the Defiant especially hard to hit, especially with Sulu at the helm.