Name: Stronghold
Number: 071
Planet: Legion
Style: Station
Point Value: 11
Atomic Power: 4
Weapon Range: L
Weapon Rating: 6
Crew: 4
Cargo: 20
Pods: 4

Carbon-7: 1
Newtonium: 1
Titanium: 2



The Stronghold is the Axis of Evil’s first joint-operations space station. Both Earth and Mars have been extremely judicious in assigning crew and ships to the station. Their caution is rooted in a desire to assign only the most loyal and committed Axis of Evil personnel available, in order to avoid unfortunate “friendly fire” incidents.

Stronghold Playtip:
Tired of having your opponent’s fleet rush across the table and board your asteroid base? Sick of having enemy ships loitering in your backfield? Spend some points on a Space Station like the Stronghold and you can now outfit your base with Shields and Arc Lasers in order to defend your supply lines. Plus, you can assign crew to the Station rather than just having them hanging around unassigned. Beyond the basic abilities it has simply because it is a Station, the Stronghold has a few bonuses of its own. First off is it’s excellent Weapon Rating of 6, coupled with L Range. Additionally, this Station doesn’t sport any fancy special abilities, so that including it in your fleet doesn’t break the bank. Although the Stronghold can’t move (it’s a bit too big for that) it does have 4 AP, so that it can either fire four Arc Laser pods each turn, or spend some AP on a crew ability and still be able to fire Arc Lasers. Speaking of crew, although many of the crew aren’t all that useful on a Space Station, there are some that enhance the already potent abilities of the Stronghold even further; a Weapons Officer will make sure that any Arc Lasers you place on the Station will be that much more likely to hit, while Marines will ensure that even if you don’t put up Shield pods, you stand a good chance of turning back all but the most determined of boarding attempts.

So, I'm wondering, how useful will Space Stations be? One third of your force is stuck in a large, immobile platform. It does have advantages over the standard asteroid base, but then, it has some negatives too.

For boarding, it gets the 'I'm a ship' extra boarding die, and can have a full compliment of pods. But if it's taken damage from ship to ship (or in this case, ship to station) combat. You do get the benefits of 'Base Defense', but that will come through maybe one time in three. You can't have unlimited crew, and apparently, only a few crew types will be useful on a Station.

And while you have this nice fancy station, your opponent may have 1-3 more ships to collect resources, harass, or just be generally useful. I suppose a Space Station might be useful in a blitz mining build, where you grab resources as fast as you can (the Lord's Justice seems to be made for that). But if your opponent does the same, you're still in the same position.

And I'm wondering what happens when both players have a Space Station, and in the process of trying to take the other out with the remaining fleet, both players are left with just their Space Stations. Who wins? No-one's left around to go out and destroy the other.

What are other people's thoughts?

I just realized something. Unless there are some special rules on specific crew cards, Martians cannot man this Space Station. The rules state that to assign crew to a ship, the faction (not alliance) of the crew must match that of the ship. Since the Space Station is a 'ship', it can only have Legion of Terra crew assigned. So much for the 'fluff' on the card.

I'd be more inclined to use a station as part of my reserve. "The asteroid's going to fall!" "Good thing we just finished the new space station! Everyone to the escape pods!"

---Dave