I think as a pure combat game, X-Wing beats Attack Wing, hands down. Attack Wing is more min-max abusable, IME.

I think in scenario play, Attack Wing wins. Some of the scenarios (at least the Dominion War ones) seem biased toward ships with cloaks, but overall they are fun, provide a great alternative to straight fighting, and give a great feel of the shows and movies from which they are pulled.

That's why I like them both so much. They have their similarities, but man are they different games!

Any game is Min-Max abuseable. The only reason STAW seems more so than X-wing is because Min-Max in STAW is contrary to source material.

No, it's mostly because of the ability to mix and match pilots and ships.

Wait... what?

All I've heard from those who defend that the game mechanic to mix captains and ships is completely in line with the source material.

Folks are always going "I've got Picard in this Klingon ship because in episode 24xr567@&$34 of the twenty- elevententh season he did just that in a dream sequence with gerbils for a crew."

Hyperbole, of course, but the above is not far off.

Yeah, I think that on the one hand, you want the flexibility of mixing and matching ships, captains, crew, etc. because it does allow for creating all sorts of interesting situations, and whether the specific set-up you design appears in an episode or not, Star Trek is obviously no stranger to bizarre "what-if" scenarios. So mix-and-match fleet building in that sense is in the spirit of the setting. There's no accounting for player intent, though, and so in allowing players to pick and choose very freely, you're opening the game up to both the aforementioned thematic builds and to min-maxing.

Obviously some people would prefer that WK had limited fleet building options to cut back on what they see as cross-faction abusability, but I think that in the interest of allowing thematically interesting builds, the relatively open build format is still a better choice. And besides, some gamers, WK gamers especially, are really into list-building as a part of the whole thing, and this gives them a lot to work with.

I see a lot of reasons for the cross captain builds so I get that, and I agree with them being easily adoptable and interesting for those familiar with heroclix as well.

But what about the other side of that coin? Meaning themed teams. Is there a themed team like option for attack wing yet (honest question, I really don't know)? I mean doesn't that make sense that as captains that have been trained in the same environments on ships we're all familiar with and maneuvers and tactics we all know that we should share some tactical advantage?

Seemed to work for Nelson's navy (which a lot of Star Trek is based on the age of sail). I'd like to see it represented in this game.

That's a good idea. There's a (slight, nearly meaningless) penalty for cross-factioning, but if they really had wanted to encourage faction-pure builds they probably should have done something like theme teams. A crew upgrade for free? One re-roll a game? One free action per turn?

Though if we don't get anything like that I'm fine with it. A decade plus of having this same discussion HeroClix-side has pretty much rendered me apathetic to it any more. Play what you want, as well as you can, and be prepared for whatever happens.

The Admiral Orders are a start.

Unified Force plays along the lines of what you reference above: 10 points of additional upgrades and a free reroll per round if each of your ships is stocked with matching upgrades.

That's cool. I figured they'd start working things in with admiral orders (love the "test" system for those as well!).

I'm not very familiar with the OP resources, because I haven't been playing it. But isn't their also a flagship thing that only buffs ships that match your flagship's faction?

Outside of the OP, there's Gowron for Klingons. His buff only works on friendly Klingon ships. I kinda wish all the support captains worked that way. It would be one way of encouraging faction pure fleets without forbidding mixed fleets. It would also cut down on some of the potential for min-maxed builds.

Only kind-of-sort-of, at the moment.

One of the Admiral's Orders cards can only be taken by a fleet that maintains faction purity on a ship-to-ship basis. Other than that, there is no bonus for faction purity, but there is a penalty for captains, crew, weapons, and tech that are not the same faction as the ship to which they are assigned.

There are a total of 8 (I think?) flagship cards, one for each of the main factions and 4 Independent flagships, so each faction really has access to 5 flagship cards (this from memory, I could be wrong).

Relatively few upgrades, like tech and weapons, can either only be used on a certain ship class, or suffer an additional points penalty for being played on other ship classes.

So, faction purity within each ship is loosely encouraged, but there's nothing to encourage fleet-wide faction purity. The faction penalty (1 point per upgrade that doesn't match the ship's faction) is pretty arbitrary, and kind of a joke IMO. It just feels like it was tacked on as an afterthought. Sure, it would begin to add up after a while if I was doing a lot of faction mixing within my ships, but in terms of curtailing min/max list building, I don't think it does much.

If WK actually wanted to encourage faction purity, then they should have implemented more specific fleet-building restrictions.

Heck, even a 2 point penalty would encourage more pure builds, without hamstringing folks who want to recreate "that one episode where Picard dreamed he was the Captain of a Breen ship".

On the FFG boards there has been much discussion about the viability of the Tie Advanced versus the other ships. Based on some really in-depth analysis, the consensus seems to be that it's one of the worst ships in the game, because it's overcosted by 2 points. Whereas in STAW 2 points isn't that significant because there's not much you can get for 2 points, in XW it's a pretty big hit. There are some NICE 1-2 point upgrades in XW.

A lot of players have a hard time running a Tie Advanced that's not piloted by Vader, because of the perception that they are giving up a pretty good upgrade to do so. In contrast, giving up a point to put Picard on your ship of choice feels like a no-brainer in STAW from a pure cost-benefit perspective.

Giving up a point to put Picard on a Valdore is a good deal. That is because Picard is currently one of the best captains in the game, if not the best. Giving up a point to put Kirk on the Valdore is nowhere near as good a deal and Kiera Nerys even less of a deal.

You are almost making it sound like you have plenty of points to spare when building a fleet in STAW, although I don't think that is what you mean. Let me assure you every point counts. One point is the difference between carrying Photon Torpedoes and Quantum Torpedoes. Two points is the difference between getting the named version of a ship and the generic version of a ship. You have to save every point you can and use every point as wisely as possible in STAW just as you do in SWXW.

The fact that Picard is such a no-brainer is more an indication that he is too good than the faction penalty is too small. How many other cards are no-brainers for any ship?

Picard was just an example. I chose the most obvious example for brevity, but it seems to have been confusing, so I apologize. The "problem" is not Picard...with a +2 point cross-faction penalty, Picard becomes an efficient choice for Fed ships (which is not a bad thing, as the Feds can use all the help they can get), but he becomes something that is worth considering but not a no-brainer for other ships.

If the issue was just Picard, we wouldn't see other captains and upgrades crossing factions. I've seen Martok, Terrell, Data, and Donatra used on the ships of other factions. A number of weapon and tech upgrades are great even with a 1-point bump. I think we see Picard most often because he upgrades ANY ship, and in fact upgrades some of the non-Fed ships better than Fed ships, because he gives actions that may not be on their bar. But he's far from the only card that is very good when used on ships of other factions.

As far as "plenty of points to spend", I can usually find a point or two pretty easily in STAW. That's not as easy to do in XW, IME, so I think using a couple points ineffectively is really significant in that game (and that seems to be the consensus on the FFG boards). Having said that, I didn't mean to imply that 2 points in STAW is insignifcant (bad wording on my part). If I thought 2 points in STAW was insignificant, I wouldn't suggest bumping the cross-faction penalty to 2 points. I just think 2 points in XW is a bit MORE significant. Heck, in XW even burning a point to underbuild is better than wasting it on an inefficient upgrade or ship.

More to the point, I don't think 1 point in STAW is significant enough to make players really think about cross-faction ship builds. This issue may go away if there are better bonuses to pure faction builds. I'd really like to see a bonus to pure FLEET builds. There should be more synergy between ships of the same faction; if all your officers and crew have the same military training (and in some cases, the same cultural reinforcement), it makes it easier for them to work together. It would (IMO) be nice if this was reflected in the rules a bit better.

This is all very subjective obviously, and YMMV.

Picard was the perfect choice as an example. He gives us some common ground. I agree a penalty of 1 point seems too small for him. The only reasons not to use him are you are a faction purist or you want to challenge yourself to win without him. I actually think he should be a 3 point faction penalty.

There are some who don't want there to be faction mixing at all. They would propose penalties so harsh you couldn't mix factions. I don't know if you fall into this category or not. Here is the thing though, the developers made the call to allow faction mixing. They gave it a 1 point penalty that works for 95% of the cards or more, in my opinion. I see no reason to increase the out of faction penalty on all cards. Of the cards you mention I have seen Donatra and Terrell used out of faction, but not so much lately as the card pool has increased. I have never seen either Martok used out of faction and I have never seen Data used. I could see Donatra with a penalty of 2 points. I could also see Gul Dukat needing a Penalty of 2 points.

My point was that I don't think the whole system needs an overhaul because a small handful of cards are used out of faction too much, that speaks more to those cards being under costed. I would welcome your list of cards you think are used out of faction too much as every meta is different.