First there was X Wing.
Near perfection in a predictive, rock-paper-scissors style head to head (or many heads) combat game with a theme. It set the scene and did a pretty good job of owning or creating this space.
But what about the other side of the coin, something for the “Trekkies”?
Star Trek Attack Wing (AW) came along not long after, mashing two licenses, Star Trek and the “Flight Path” system used by X Wing (XW), a concept also shared loosely by games like Wings of Glory, Sails of Glory, Blue Max etc, but closest in philosophy and style to X Wing (if they were any closer they could be mixed together).
In a lot of ways it was a better game (holds breath for thrown shoes), but not in others (releases breath, but warily).
Lets look at why.
The starter sets tell some of the story.
The XW starter is just that. Many bought two sets, just to have small basic squads, but that still fell short of the recommended 100pts and some of the pilot and upgrade abilities did not even work with only one ship (Biggs).
You knew there was more to come and we (not actually me because I was late to the game) grabbed it all with glee. The basic starter just did not cut it, it was obvious from the start you needed more.
The AW starter on the other hand is actually enough. The big difference is the depth of each ship. The AW starter gives you three of the many factions (another advantage), each ship capable of being a 50pt+ build, usually enough for the provided scenarios.
Even the original series Enterprise, a weak ship at the start can be built out to 60 odd points. You also have the option of three player, which is just fun.
Even the lowly Enterprise “NX” from the earliest period, a pre Original Series ship in the official time line, shares identical stats to a Tie fighter (2-3-3-0), the “cannon-fodder” of X Wing and they even have similar starting point costs. It does however have several crew, weapon and tech upgrades making it a very different proposition.
The Enterprise NX can take some hits, repair, avoid, dissipate, up-arm, swap crew, play tricks, add armour. The Tie just flies until it “pops”.
Add a single other ship to each faction and you add a huge variety of options, even if you stick as I do to faction and period limited fleets. A Nebula class, Klingon Bird of Prey and a Romulan Valdore class and each faction can easily field 100pt squads with plenty of options held aside.
One expansion pack feels substantial.
One solid all-rounder Galaxy, One techie Nebula, One militant Akira with some fighters and you have a flexible multi-scenario set. This is my little kept fleet, hopefully left just as is and capable of filling 1-200pts.
If you mix and match factions and timelines (which I hate) then the options are exhaustively extensive.
This is the key difference.
The AW ships are designed to be upgraded with multiple crew, tech and other upgrades, where some XW ships seem like a money grab (Mining Guild Tie for $35au!). When you build up a fleet of 8 weak Tie fighters with their limited build options just to see them evaporate all too easily (sometimes even when they collide) you will get it.
XW has ships like the Falcon, Ghost etc, but they are larger, slower, far more point and real money expensive and hog the standard 3x3 table.
The same money spent on a single faction of AW ships covers basically the whole offer of a faction. With X Wing it is all about how many ships you can cram into a 100 point ceiling (using 1e terminology), AW is more about best builds of a few or even one ship to get the job done.
Scenarios.
XW has never been strong here. It is tweaked for tournament play, so many do their own thing.
AW on the other hand gives you a scenario with every pack, one that mimics a movie or TV series episode with all their problem solving angst. You can actually win a scenario without even damaging an opponent. Immersion can be very high and smarts rule over kill or be killed. Hunt the Scimitar, deal with the unknown Gorn, team up against the Xindi or Borg are all awesome and very different challenges.
Simulation and feel.
In my opinion, AW does a very good job of giving you Trek without the common heaviness of Trek games*. It also does it better than XW. XW as a game has better balance, and often cleaner application. It feels to me a good game but less connected or possibly less connecting to the subject. You can have Luke and R2 vs Vader, but until you field the Falcon or a squadron, you lack that “everyone has a role” feel. There is nothing like using Spock, Scotty, Bones etc to do their thing in the face of adversity. Win or lose, they all work together and it feels like a story.
AW has also managed to avoid the hole that XW went down, of introducing EPT’s, Mods etc that stretch cannon and change the ships fundamentally (I drop these out of my 1e games). If it was in Trek, it is in AW.
XW on the other hand allows cannon stretching “cheats” that let you to make everyone potentially act like everyone else. Tie has no Boost? Then add it. Interceptor with no Target Lock, then add that. Action economy is all in XW.
XW ships are more varied and manoeuvre/action economy is king, but AW shows it’s deeper versatility with much less “exciting'“ ships managing to do the job (Wings of Glory even gets by without anything but the plane as is).
A comparison of dials is eye opening, with many AW ships looking much the same. They are on the whole less agile (3 is a rarity, 1 most common), tend to be quite slow, especially in the earlier periods although speed 6 ships are possible and some lack any form of turning ability, but this lets you concentrate on the action. It is about captaining a capital ship, not piloting a nimble fighter****.
Balance.
XW was for the most part balanced well into its growth path, which was important because its tournament circuit was a world wide phenomenon and all seemed bright for the game for several years, but over time it grew out of its shoes and lost that all important balance. The biggest shame and the reason the game developed a second edition was the name-sake ship and many other older favourites were pushed aside by vessels many had never heard of.
AW did also do a second edition, but few noticed, although annoying point cost changes on newer ship cards were frustrating.
AW has always struggled with balance, especially when anything-goes builds are allowed (yuk!), but if played to scenarios, it is almost balance irrelevant (play one game each way and see who does better if you need perfect balance). As an old school war-gamer, I have never been overly bothered with perfect balance, which is often nearly impossible to achieve anyway. I much prefer a scenario based game, even one deliberately lop-sided. Kobayashi Maru anyone? Gets me every time.
So, what went wrong?
The balance thing first meant the tournament circuit was a less realistic proposition. Mixing factions and timelines really annoys me personally, but even if accepted for tournament play, so many upgrades and ships got lost behind the clear and often over used winners like Picard in a Borg ship vs Picard in a Romulan one. Suspend your belief at your peril.
Without a healthy tournament circuit, it is hard to keep the game in the spotlight.
Many strange encounters, asymmetrical by design, so how does the little Enterprise survive?
By applying the many upgrades intelligently. How very Trek. You may notice a few extras in there from the “live long and prosper” faction pack, a no-brainer for an Enterprise era gamer, but with some handy extras across all eras.
The actual model ships were inconsistent, even poorly painted** and the scale choices were sometimes odd to say the least. If you do not like the Trek universe as much as Star Wars, the ships alone can be the best reason to avoid AW.
It is accepted that if you want to use pretty much only one base size, then the massive size difference of the Scimitar to the Delta Flyer or even less odious comparisons like the Galaxy class compared to the much bigger D’deridex are a visual stretch, but some choices like the Xindi Aquatic ship being the smallest Xindi model, when it should at least be the biggest as it is many times the size of it’s own allies is still frustrating.
XW managed four size groups keeping things good to the eye even if there is still a little fudging (the bigger ships are a slightly smaller scale), although Armada suffers from some odd stretches. If AW had even added a “medium” size for more than one ship (the Borg Tac Cube), some voices would have been silenced. In contrast they did a few truly massive ones, so there was obviously potential.
I partially fixed this problem for myself, by splitting the TNG collection into TNG battle and DS9 skirmish sub-sets with Voyager separate (but a good mix with the DS9/skirmish set). In the skirmish set, the smaller ships give you a game closer to XW with 3 agility common, but generally slow ships. In the battle set, ships get faster and tougher, but considerably less agile. Importantly the scale gods are happier.
Too many factions and sometimes poor attention paid to important details. The early ships and characters were well designed thematically as were the early XW offerings. As time went on, new factions were introduced, many points values were amended and some odd choices made. Some factions were missed (Suliban) and many were not fleshed out fully, while others got a lot of attention.
The Enterprise series for example, which sports some of the nicest and most consistent ships as it goes, was plagued with poorly thought through characters and showed signs of design fatigue.
My personal gripe is a lack of logical Captains for the NX ships, several of whom were mentioned in the series including half the bridge crew. Instead of T’Pol or Hernandez (actually in command of NX-02 Columbia) they went with the Mako officer Hayes, who was not even Star Fleet and to my memory did little bridge work. He would have been a much better crew upgrade.
*
Personally, I have just sold off the bulk of my collection, but possibly sparked a resurgence of interest just the same. Less in this case is actually more.
The happy buyer got a bargain and was not interested in the two series I most liked, “Voyager” and “Enterprise” so I kept all things related to these two and built small fleets for the other periods with my many duplicates. Voyager in particular had many possible hypothetical fleet building options like the Dauntless, Val Jean, Equinox or even the Klingon T’Ong and in the end the powerful Promethius came into the frame (a Voyager alternative?).
I actually ended up with a decent little 100-200pt fleet for the clever Feds, sneaky Romulans, bolshy Klingons, paranoid Cardassians, brutish Dominion, scary Borg and enigmatic Species 8742. Each has more than its regular upgrade allocation, because again, duplicates.
Along with this I held back one or two TOS series ships from each faction (I did have to re-buy the Gr’oth on clearance as I only had one), an Excelsior, Ent-B and BOP and Kronos One for the movie period and also have the one-off Kelvin timeline pack.
All the ships are used in named versions (with some options) as this adds more upgrades and +1 shield factor over generics (something I still struggle to rationalise), as well as more immersion.
There is enough here to field hypotheticals also like the Tholians, Borg, Sp 8742 or even time travelling Kremin popping up all over the place, always a Trek option.
The Bajorans slipped everyones attention (no DS9 love) so I kept them and the Marquis fleet with a few other ships to make for a decent little skirmish set vs the Cardassians, really an excuse to keep my extra Mirror Universe Defiant, with an optional Fed crew from a duplicate Robinson and the Voyager on its original mission.
I am actually more excited about AW now than before! I am so happy in fact that I cancelled an order for a lucky find Fed faction pack as it would just start things up again and I am happy with the balance.
AW is battling on with better re-paints and faction pack re-releases, often better painted than the older packs (but different again!), but I am done.
Now what to do with XW?
*Star Fleet Battles, Fed Commander, FASA’s Tactical Simulator, ACTA Star Fleet etc.
**Wizkids could not even decide on a colour and stick to it. The Enterprise-D started light blue, went silver with yellow, then silver with black and white. These then do not even match the other Fed ships.
***As an example, the Feds have the Enterprise (Galaxy), K’Tumbra (Nebula), Thunderchild (Akira) and a squadron of fighters. This represents a tech, general-crew, military and exotic option. Each faction is about 100-120 points of ships and about the same in upgrades.
****Star Wars does offer Armada, another cash sink, which has an even “bigger” feel, but lacks much of the immersion and ease of AW. My preference in Star Wars is Armada and in hind sight, I would have done that instead of X Wing, or just stuck with AW, but hindsight and all that……. .