My thoughts on this version is this is a fun tactical space combat miniatures game, featuring ships from the Star Trek Universe. Players assume the roles of commanders who can customize, upgrade, and assign famous crew members to their fleets. Fleets have their special statistics, abilities, and unique maneuvers displayed on separate combat dials. Alongside these modified dials, the game utilizes the FlightPath maneuver system for its gaming mechanic. It is very much a in many ways a clone of the X-Wing game. And it is a good attempt to represent ship to ship combat. But it has its flaws as well. However, there are some strange decisions that I felt really hurt the game. There seems to have been some very rigid thinking involved in the design. The first thing I noticed, especially after buying a few expansion packs, is that almost all the ships have the same manoeuvres. This has the weird effect that a large cruiser ends up being more or less as manoeuverable as a small ship like the Defiant class. These same 15 manoeuvres are repeated over and over and I wonder why this is. Part of what makes the X-Wing ships feel so cool and different is each one moves in a totally different way. The Y-Wing is like taking your dads old Volvo out for a spin while your mates are throwing handbrake turns in their Tie-Fighters around you. Its really cool and fun and, frankly, the reason the system of dials and templates works so well. Its really unfortunate that its only occasionally Attack Wing takes advantage of this, as it really makes the game feel bland in the movement stage. Some strides have been made here with the newest Borg ships, but its too little too late and other ships are still coming out with these exact same manoeuvres. Another example of this rigid thinking is within the points costs of the ships. Theres a very basic formula at in play - add up the stats, multiply by two - and it just doesnt work. It completely fails to take into account the special abilities of the named ships like the Enterprise or the manoeuvre dials. I wonder if this is partly why the dials are all copy and paste jobs, to keep some strange balance with their devised formula. The game would have benefitted greatly from some diversity in this area, and individual points costs should have become apparent through playtesting. This a change from X-Wing which is definitely for the worse. Another thing is you cant have all the ships!!! Wizkids, in their wisdom, have decided to give some ships away exclusively as prizes in tournaments. Honestly, I think this sucks and also because of licensing issues they are not allowed to give the variety of the ships as in Star Trek Tactics game.This is particularly frustrating as a fan who just wants to collect all the bits of Star Trek lore and use them in the game. I think this is another area that X-Wing beats its Star Trek cousin in, as their prizes are just ships that are due to be released at a later time. Not Star Trek Attack Wing. Now that isnt all the game designer fault. As it is because this game was released under a limited licensing agreement. Whereas Star Trek Tactics wasnt. Its still fun, and worth a look if you love Star Trek. But its just good, not great, But I want to add it to my collection Star Trek Themed games list. I tend to like something about each version be it Star Trek Tactics,Star Fleet battles, or Star Trek Tactics.So in the end it is up to the gamer.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 01:13:28 +0000
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