Sunday, August 3, 2014

Deck Building or Maneuvers.... which is most important?

Capts Log Stardate I like to move it move...

To begin the opinions expressed here and well thru out this blog are mine and mine alone. While I am often correct and rarely wrong :) :) :) :) these remain simply my opinions :) Now go forth and make my words the gospel of STAW...  no seriously this is just one players opinion so feel free to disagree. Even comment on it and we can discuss it. As long as you keep it civil. Now on with our regularly scheduled blog post.

Okay so there is a bit of a debate among STAW players about the most important part of the game. Deck Building seems to have a clear lead based on my totally non scientific manner of research. But oddly the general leanings tend to be toward the cards being more important than moving your ships.

This makes no sense to me. I have seen this happen on both sides of the table. A ship that is just stacked to the gills with as many roll modifying cards as they can get. Re-rolls, Free Battle stations, etc. Basically a ship that when it shoots is pretty much guaranteed a 75% or better hit rate. Only to see that player not ever get to use the ship because it has a 90 degree fire arc and they can never bring it to bear.

Part of this leaning I think is the nature of the way I see a lot of pick up games going. No obstacles to fly around, no planets to block line of site. Just an open killing field. This sort of playing field heavily weights the game into the stacked deck camp. Its is a whole lot easier to stay in firing position than when you have a clear field than when you have to go around planets or can get the bonus for hiding behind obstacles.

In a recent game I managed to save a ship and get a few more shots in by ducking behind and going around the planet on the map. Of course I have also managed to remove a ship I needed from a game for several turns because I choose wrong at the start about where my opponent was going to go and ended up with a planet between us for several turns. So yea it works both ways.

My main point though is ALL the great cards in the world will not help you if you can never get an enemy in the cross hairs. Being able to move your ships correctly and outguess where your opponent will be is far more important than having an unbeatable card combo. Because you never get to use the thing.

I have seen more game decided by good flying than I have broken combos. Thankfully.  But in reading what I can find online it varies from region to region. Everything varies from region to region. In the shop where I am currently playing there is a pretty active group that shows up for OPs, while just four hours down the road they are about to run their last OP and just stop because they don't have enough players.

Once again however I digress...back on topic!

One thing I have noticed the power players doing is finding ways to get around this goal. Using ships that have a 360 degree fire arc, which makes maneuvering far less important. And on the aforementioned open table makes those ships far far deadlier because now you can't get away.

I like to use open tables for teaching games the first time, or tables with only a couple obstacles, or one planet. Enough to give them a chance to see how those objects function in game. And fleet testing can be good on an open table. But at the same time you cannot see the real value of your build if you don't test it under all types of conditions.

In the end so far I have seen that maneuvering is still far more important than having the killer combo of cards. In fact some of the most successful builds don't have a lot on them at all. So choose wisely and in the end play the game, make up your own mind, and see what works for you.

As with all posts this months for more bloggy goodness on many topics check out the Blaugust Initiative

Until next time May you never face Picard on a Tac cube!

And don't forget Blaugust!!

shadoe42

1 comment:

  1. I fully agree with you. The choice of ship is far more important than what upgrades you put on it.

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