Transcript
Truthiness: Welcome back to the Big Unknown, everybody. With you, as always, is your fearless Captain Truthiness, and I am joined by our art medical hologram, Biggs. Biggs, say hi. All right, we're finally getting into our last of our evergreen episodes, and we are finally talking Federation and Fleet Buildings.
Biggs: Hi.
Truthiness: Can't do a Trek episode without, you know, that.
Biggs: no
Truthiness: its You've all been waiting for it. We're all getting into the ships that everyone has that that horrible, horrible nostalgia for. We're talking Galaxy class.
Truthiness: We're talking Defiant class. Yeah, Starcazer's there too. But then we're also talking all your favorite characters. It's going be a good time. You ready to get going, bigs?
Biggs: you know it this is why you bought into this game
Truthiness: All we're done with Eclipse now, I swear. All right, so tonight we're going to talk over the big named officers, do our usual, now usual, ah lower decks and MVP, talk a little bit about the the ship some more, um and then really focus in on those those strengths, weaknesses, um and just some incident fleet ideas.
Truthiness: So, Biggs, you want to kick us off with ah the man, the myth, the legend himself?
Biggs: Jean-Luc Picard. um He is hard to leave behind. Real hard.
Truthiness: So hard.
Biggs: ah but But he is also very pricey. He's 14 points, so he's taken up quite a bit of your budget.
Truthiness: That's what? Like, not even, that's, that's what, I'm terrible percentages. What is that?
Biggs: That's um a little more than a little more than...
Truthiness: and my God, it's over 25%. It's 28%. God.
Biggs: Yeah, a little bit more than a quarter of your budget. going to just the one guy. ah With that in mind, oh he makes ah he makes your ship sing.
Biggs: you've got You've got Diplomacy 3. you're just If you decide you want to win the hail, you win the hail. You just do.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: um Culture 1. Discipline 1. ah For security, you've got Fieldcraft 1. ah For engineering, you've got biology one and logic two.
Biggs: He is inspiring in every way possible.
Truthiness: Every single category.
Biggs: Every single category. If he's in his captain's chair as a reaction after an opposing unit at sensor range performs an aggressive or hostile act, increase this ship's alert status from any green to any yellow.
Truthiness: So that let's let's break this down here. So you already talked about the diplomacy thing. He has the best diplomacy in the game. You cannot beat him. and And it makes for a a three social skill. So he is just he is fantastic in that category. There's just no beating him.
Truthiness: um And so if you want to win the hail, you will win the hail with John Luke Bacardi. Just throw down that four. He wins. you Tie break goes to him. So if you absolutely have to,
Biggs: Mm-hmm. No one can compete.
Truthiness: No, no. Everybody else highest right now in the game is two. um So there's no competing with him at all, um which, you know, you can probably play some games with that. You know, maybe try and pull out that four knowing you're going to lose no matter what.
Truthiness: So you're like, yeah, I'm not going to play game. I'll throw out my my two, ah you know, if you or or even the one if you initiate the hail or something like that rather than refuse it.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: But I mean,
Biggs: I mean, you're not going to win you're not going to win if you throw out the one. That's the that's the thing, because...
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah. But you can make the, the, the resulting test from the hail harder to accomplish if you're just kind of low balling Picard knowing you're going to lose.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: So and yeah there's ways around them, but like, you absolutely have to win a hail Jean-Luc will win the hail.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: um And yeah, just like he's, he's not just at home in that captain's chair. You want him for the Commodore chair because good God, inspiring on everything
Biggs: on everything, every test that he leads.
Truthiness: That's you can, you can, yeah. So he leads a test with another ship at comms range and well, Hey, look, he inspired them just, Oh my goodness. He's just, he's so good in a common worse chair.
Truthiness: Um, and don't sleep on that reaction either. Cause, um, if you really dig into the galaxy quest dial, you'll notice that it takes quest.
Biggs: the galy Did you say the Galaxy Quest dial?
Truthiness: I did. I did say quest. Oh my God. well Never give up. Never surrender. Oh boy.
Biggs: ah But yeah...
Truthiness: um The Galaxy Class dial. um You'll notice that that yellow takes a long time to scale through to where you want it for combat.
Truthiness: So, know...
Biggs: And you want you want that yellow three.
Truthiness: Yeah, you really do.
Biggs: That yellow three is look that yellow three looks real nice.
Truthiness: ah yellow 3 is fantastic, and the Galaxy Class largely comfortable sitting at that 3, but... but Oh my goodness, it takes a long time with standby orders just to cycle through that thing.
Truthiness: And it even takes a good while to do it with dedicated orders. So, you know, if you're willing to take, you know, deal with the aggressive or hostile act first, you can react and get everything back up to working on in that cloud on that galaxy class.
Truthiness: um But, you know, it's just critical. Yeah.
Biggs: So good.
Truthiness: Oh, man. He's so good.
Biggs: So good.
Truthiness: He's so good. He should never leave that captain's chair. um So, like, even, you know, field craft, he's leaving a field craft test. Do it from the Commodore chair. Like, he just, he lives in that Commodore chair.
Truthiness: There's really just no other way about it. Like, I can't, he is so good in that chair, and I have a really, really hard time leaving him alone at home.
Biggs: Exactly. Well, given how good he is, let's take a look at, uh, The person most likely to also be sitting in a captain's chair, Benjamin Siskoe.
Truthiness: Yeah, so Ben Sisko, and I have a feeling with his title here, Reluctant Emissary, i suspect we're probably going to end up seeing another version of him. um ah like It almost just feels ready and raring to have you know whatever you know Dominion War era Ben Sisko with another, because yeah I think this is supposed to represent even his commander, because it's only what, three pips on him?
Biggs: ah three and a Three and a half.
Truthiness: Three and half, yeah.
Biggs: So you've got... I've been calling it Commander Plus.
Truthiness: Yeah. So, yeah, he I think this is like early DS9 Cisco um before he's fully embraced the emissary role in Dominion War. So I would not be surprised at all to see him come again in another package. All right, so.
Truthiness: He's 11 points. He can hit your command and ops roles. um He has Culture 2, Diplomacy 2, I'm sorry, Diplomacy 1, Discipline 2, Mysticism 1.
Biggs: Diplomacy one.
Truthiness: yeah I'll get to that in a second. and ah Ordnance 1, Skirmish 1, and Navigation 1. He is inspiring on command. And while another officer in the same unit leads a test, you may spend...
Truthiness: one advantage, or commit Cisco to add a blue die. um So, this is a one straight up. um No, you're not missing anything. it doesn't do anything right now. um Unless you found something I haven't, Biggs.
Truthiness: a
Biggs: No.
Truthiness: Yeah. So, hey, future thing. Cool. um But, you know, he's not the diplomacy guy. he is much more... he's yeah He's... Honestly, he's just kind of the discount commander. i don't...
Biggs: With that in mind, there are some gimmicks that you can do with him to add more die. with the With the spend an advantage or commit him to add a dice...
Truthiness: Yes, that is true. Especially if you can get your advantage token rocking and you don't have to commit him. um that that can be That can be real good.
Biggs: yeah If you can win some Federation baseline hails, get some extra...
Truthiness: Advantage tokens, yeah. Yeah, so that's that can be pretty nice. Especially when you know it comes weapons time, adding another blue die to an attack or adding another blue tie to you know a test, if you got those advantage tokens, you throw an extra dice around.
Truthiness: That's, that's solid. That's really not a, yeah, that's really not a bad ah bad thing.
Biggs: It's pretty good.
Truthiness: It's got to be in his own unit. So he's either got to be, you know, with an away team or on his own ship to do it. um But overall, he's still an overall um improvement over, you know your average generic captain.
Truthiness: ah But he's still not Picard, which, you know, it really,
Biggs: with the amusing with the amusing fact that he does not outrank the generic captain.
Truthiness: That's true, he doesn't. All the more reason, I think we'll see another version of Cisco down the road at some point. I feel like we gotta have Dominion War Cisco at some point.
Truthiness: Alright, so um since we're on the DS9 crew, actually DS9 crew is the bulk of this release, isn't it?
Biggs: Very well represented.
Truthiness: Yeah, so why don't we head to Cisco's First Officer?
Biggs: So Kira, she comes in at a score of at a cost of 10. And she is the first card that we see that is dual faction.
Biggs: Doesn't mean much yet, but we've got...
Truthiness: Not mean much for a while. Who knows when we're going to get to the Bajorans.
Biggs: Who who knows? But we've got the dual Bajoran... she we've got the dual bajoran and Federation, and we've got an awful lot of sway in the bottom.
Biggs: So we've got Bajoran and Federation sway. Again, doesn't mean much at the moment. um But with that in mind, she can do command, she can do ops.
Biggs: She's got your discipline one, empathy two, fieldcraft two, and skirmish one. She's inspiring on operations.
Biggs: And when she leads a hail, if you're persuasive, you can inspire a unit at comms range.
Truthiness: That's not bad, especially the inspiring ops.
Biggs: Not too bad.
Truthiness: Yeah, you she she seems like you're, you know, kind what you expect from a first officer. And what she does in the show is she's, you know, leading the away teams. um She's leading pretty much any kind of like ops test um with that inspiring.
Truthiness: The hail thing is interesting. And I'm not entirely, you know, you just she's not the greatest diplomat. So, you know, you don't want to get her into a tiebreak situation.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: But, you know, inspiring is worth something.
Biggs: But if you know you're going to win the
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah. Like you already pulled, drew out the four and you know, you're up next and there's no way you can, you know you still got your four in, I suppose you can, yeah, it's a, it's an easy way to get inspiring. You don't have to take a test. You don't have to roll any criticals. Like it's, it's really reliable.
Biggs: And you don't always necessarily want the diplomatic one to be taking the hail if you're trying to do like a mutual, avoid a mutual loss or something like that.
Truthiness: um
Truthiness: No, no. Yeah.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah, and then Fieldcraft 2 and Skirmish 1, she definitely integrates well with away teams. um I can't really remember if there's much with empathy, but discipline tends to come up every so often.
Biggs: ah Empathy can still work with like, ah there's, There's some things that say like ah use the highest personnel or you know use the highest, ah ah what's what's the thing called? That that category, use the highest ah
Biggs: personnel category.
Truthiness: Okay.
Biggs: Is it personnel? I'm drawing a blank here. I know it's, maybe it's command or,
Truthiness: I got not sure. Sorry. I'm drawing a blank too. Yeah.
Biggs: ah Too many new, so many terminologies to remember.
Truthiness: There is the little thingy with the stuff.
Biggs: the The top symbol that looks like a person in a box on a view screen.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah. That thing. Social. Did we call it social before?
Biggs: Social. Yeah, that's it. The top social.
Truthiness: yeah There we go. Yeah.
Biggs: The top social level.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: Yeah.
Truthiness: Yeah. All right. So going into yet more of the DS9 crew, let's talk Jed Z and Dax. She comes at 10 points, can do an ops or a science role.
Truthiness: She has Klingon and Ferengi away. So that's, that's a thing. um She has no social skills, which is a bit odd for, for Dax, but,
Truthiness: um She's got Fieldcraft 1 and Skirmish 2, Biology 1, Mechanics 2, Navigation 1, and then the real money, I think, is ah that whole representing her past lives, which is just so cool.
Truthiness: um I really think they nailed this card. So while Jadzia Dax leads a test for which she has no skill levels, if her unit has no disadvantage tokens, she counts as having that skill at level 1.
Truthiness: She is really stinking flexible.
Biggs: That's not too bad.
Truthiness: That is really stinking flexible. yeah you
Biggs: That's not too bad at all
Truthiness: Especially for someone who specializes in in science already, something that the Federation does well, you can, any random category science, I mean, she's got biology already, but If there's something else that comes out that she doesn't happen to have, or even a social test. like She doesn't have social skills on her card, but she has a level of it.
Truthiness: um you know and I think that goes for... I wouldn't really go for hails, because that's on not a test yet. um But like anything that tests in the social category, she she has a level 1 skill in it.
Truthiness: Really flexible card.
Biggs: Assuming, assuming no peril.
Truthiness: Assuming no perils. So keep yourself peril free.
Biggs: And you know, at four, at four points, she's a good candidate to like take as a flex officer.
Truthiness: But I,
Truthiness: yeah, she's not a bad in the transfer pool. She's just so flexible to have period. um You know, absolutely deserves to be in your, your flex pile if you don't have her in your primary list. And i really, i really hate leaving her home just because of the flexibility, but,
Truthiness: So 10 points is a lot to ask for, especially in a faction where it's... Man, I feel like half these cards are at least 10. Yeah, every single every single name card is at least 10 points except for Julian.
Biggs: Speaking of Julian, I think he's who we're talking about next.
Truthiness: It's me, Julian.
Biggs: So as as a fellow medical officer, ah Julian comes in at merely nine points. He can fit the science role.
Biggs: um And ironically is maybe one of the characters that you want to have sitting in engineering for some reason, because his biology three
Truthiness: Biology and logic apparently makes the power go.
Biggs: technically counts. Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: but Makes the power go.
Biggs: Well, what I think of it is he's he's in there, you know, ah passing out stims or whatnot to keep the engineers ah well ah well attentive.
Truthiness: with There you go. That sounds like it. There we go.
Truthiness: I'll do it. I like that.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: you know, keep them on their feet.
Biggs: Keep them on their feet. So, whoo. So, Biology 3 and Logic 2, a rare source of logic in the game.
Biggs: Um... Augmented one, so you when he leads a test, you can replace one intuition die with an expertise die.
Truthiness: e
Biggs: So that that's kind of neat. It's not amazing, but it's neat. um He's got medic one, so you can test science plus biology with a difficulty two
Truthiness: During your ready phase.
Biggs: during your ready phase. ah to To heal a grand total of one trauma from personnel. ah so that So that's trauma from officers or team units on your team or in your area.
Truthiness: I mean, that's that's basically getting an incapacitated officer back. So, like, it may not sound like much, but it's it's the difference between, you know, Cisco on his feet and not, or, you know, Picard on his feet or not.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Biggs: Mm-hmm. And there's there's not a lot of officers that can take a that can take a hit here. um
Truthiness: And, you know, what the way team...
Biggs: In fact, there's only there's only two officers that can take a hit and stay on their feet.
Truthiness: Well, in a way, teams only like scary teams only have three health anyway. um
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: you know the The survey teams are only two health, so you like getting you know even a health back is pretty dang important.
Biggs: Yeah. And that biology three, if you're doing if you're doing mission tests that require biology, whoo-hoo! Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: Oh yeah, he's good. Did we read through his special text?
Biggs: Oh, no, his special text. when While another officer in the same unit leads a test, if Julian Bashir has no levels in that skill used, and he probably doesn't, you can change one blank result to a um ah What's that?
Biggs: and in Oh, ah shoot. i right so one that moves the the one that moves the um
Truthiness: ah observed um Observe. the observ The observation thing. ah moon.
Biggs: yeah The one that moves the complication track result.
Truthiness: yeah yeah
Biggs: So here's the thing. That combines really well with Inspiring. Because when you have...
Truthiness: It's true.
Biggs: With Inspiring... He gets you half of the way there. Oh, it's analysis results.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: He gets you half of the way there if you roll a blank. So if you roll one more analysis result, you're inspired.
Truthiness: Yeah, that's true. That's an excellent point. ooh
Biggs: And he just it just has to be the same unit. So he just has to be sitting on that galaxy class.
Truthiness: That's nice. o
Biggs: And you're partway there.
Truthiness: and that's that sense That's not too bad at all.
Biggs: Not too bad.
Truthiness: Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, um I'm going to skip over the one we have next the list because I want to talk about... the one and only Klingon the game right now.
Biggs: all right.
Truthiness: Worf, son of Moog. ah The only Federation officer with Oh no, holy crap, I just noticed that. Okay, um one of two Federation officers with two health.
Truthiness: um He is both Klingon and Federation aligned, and he has Sway, one of each for Klingon and Federation. He comes in 11 points, can do command and ops roles.
Truthiness: ah He has Culture 1, Discipline 1, Fieldcraft 1, Ordnance 1, Skirmish 2, and the big thing to take away is Kapla.
Biggs: Ka-plah!
Truthiness: i I this is ah love this mechanic and I cannot wait for more Klingons because you know this is coming. um So after this officer leads an action that scores one or more victory tokens, you may bank up to one of those tokens on the card.
Truthiness: While that officer has one or more banked victory tokens on their card, they gain the bracketed abilities, skills, or other gain techs in the bracket. At the end of the game, en unless this officer is captured, scored all banked victory tokens on them.
Truthiness: His Kapla is plus one Ordnance, plus one Skirmish. So he, as long as he has led a test that got a victory point, Worf suddenly becomes Ordnance 2 and Skirmish 3.
Biggs: Kapla!
Truthiness: Kapla! And then his special text, when Worf leads an attack, you can resolve the following during the post-outcome effects ah analysis in Spire Worf's unit.
Truthiness: So, good lord...
Biggs: Kapla indeed.
Truthiness: Worf is here to fight and to win and be inspiring while doing so. here e is a powerhouse. at I feel like 11 points is a steal for him. like You put him at a weapon station and you don't look back.
Truthiness: Maybe you send him on an away team, um especially if it's early the game, you're not ready to shoot yet. um You send him with the away team or have him test that ops, ah lead that ops test so that you know he can get the Kapla and then...
Truthiness: Oh, man. as soon as it gets to be go time, just inspiring as he leads these these weapons attacks. Like, oh, so good.
Biggs: So you'll notice that it's, he leads a test that score, he leads an action that scores one or more victory points, right?
Biggs: um Remind me for a bit what the ah Federation's
Biggs: exploration card says explore strange new worlds
Truthiness: Let's see here. Explore a strange new worlds. um
Biggs: f it's after one of your um
Truthiness: Auxiliary teams or probes ah succeeds and an objective test or exposes a anomaly score a victory token for a maximum of two this way.
Biggs: That is a way to do an action
Biggs: and score a victory token.
Truthiness: Mm-hmm.
Biggs: Worf can, uh, you can, you can set Worf on one of your, ah
Truthiness: Got to be an auxiliary and away team, though. It can't be on the ship.
Biggs: yeah, you can, you can, you can send him off on a roundabout, uh, go exploring some strange new world, ah You know, scan scan yourself an anomaly.
Truthiness: it
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: I mean, to be completely honest, there are so many ways to get Kapla on Worf. I don't think I've played a game without him where he doesn't.
Biggs: Yeah.
Truthiness: ah he
Biggs: the point is The point is, you can comply yourself somehow, and you should very early.
Truthiness: And in in in fact, in fact, and this is going to go, we can't talk about the details of it yet, but it has been spoiled that we're getting Gowron.
Truthiness: And when earlier episodes, you heard me talking about a character I am dying to talk about. It's Gowron.
Biggs: oh
Truthiness: Galron is so good. I cannot wait to talk about him um and how how he interacts with with you know other Klingons.
Truthiness: And I feel like because Worf can complace so easily, ah feel like he feeds off of Worf really easily. So Galron and Worf together works really stupidly well.
Biggs: Excellent.
Truthiness: And I love it. And I cannot wait talk about Galarion's ability because good God, did Gerns nail this character. said that throughout testing. He was like, you got this guy perfect.
Truthiness: And I'm sorry if i'm I'm overhyping it for everybody, but i I really love this character. I told Gerns, like, you got him perfect, man. He's like, thanks. Like, I watched Way of the Warrior and bunch of other episodes just to make it look right. Yeah.
Truthiness: So good to hear. what Yes, yes. Oh, so Galron's coming.
Biggs: Well, I am very excited.
Truthiness: Great. We were talking about another Klingon though, right?
Biggs: Yeah. um Unfortunately, no more Klingons to talk about, but we're moving on to the we're moving on to the next best thing, which is Odo.
Truthiness: right.
Biggs: He's going to be your ah So,
Truthiness: What does the stern constable do?
Biggs: he is ten points
Biggs: He comes in with only being able to go in the Ops role. has Has a little sway to him. But more importantly, you've got your Discipline 2.
Truthiness: Cardassian sway, that's interesting.
Biggs: yeah h You've got your Fieldcraft 2 and Skirmish 1. You've got Logic 1. You've got Changeling 1.
Truthiness: Which is already, ooh.
Biggs: hu
Truthiness: Mm.
Biggs: So he's adding Peril.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: when he leads a test. and a oppossing team in Opposing teams in Odo's location increase all their the difficulty of all the tests they make by one.
Truthiness: which combined with Changeling is just it just mean.
Biggs: Mm-hmm. It's very mean.
Truthiness: to
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: Big old stern meanie head. yeah He's got some great levels on on social and and ops.
Biggs: He's...
Truthiness: Just 2-2-1 is really solid. um Makes him not great in the flex pool ah because he's five points flex pool. That's...
Biggs: But still, he can do he can do quite a few things, but he really shines being on a team, being down on a ah down on a planet, just making everyone's life there difficult.
Truthiness: o
Truthiness: Yeah, that's that's sort of for you.
Biggs: and And if you're fighting the Dominion, remember, if he gets injured, they lose a victory point.
Truthiness: Oh my god, you're right. I never count i never thought about that. I love it! um I love it!
Biggs: Yep.
Truthiness: That's perfect interaction.
Truthiness: yeah God, the more we talk about it, the more I just love the layers we peel back and just showing how well that the the game designers just get these characters. I mean, I don't even know if the Odo interaction was intentional, but you know what?
Truthiness: It works. It's perfect.
Biggs: It's got to be intentional because it says you or your opponent.
Truthiness: I don't care if it's intentional or not.
Truthiness: You're right. Yeah. Oh, I love it. All right. I think our last name character... ah Lower Decks described as the most important person in Starfleet history, Chief Miles O'Brien.
Truthiness: So he is coming in at a lovely 12 points. The only other Federation character besides Worf to have two health, which, um okay, um that was a choice. This is the guy who, you know, tore his rotator cuff picking up but a mug of ale.
Truthiness: ah But sure. um But anyway, yeah um you're bringing him for, let's see, we got culture one, empathy one, ordnance one, skirmish one. So the chief can fight. Chief's got pretty in okay social skills, but you're really bringing him for that mechanics three and handy three.
Truthiness: Why am I...
Biggs: Woo!
Truthiness: So while this officer leads a repair test, you may re roll up to three dice. That's, oh man, there's there's no better mechanic. Which, you know, considering the man cobbled together a Cardassian junk and Federation technology together for for years on end...
Truthiness: Best engineer in Starfleet. Works perfectly here. And then a special text leading back to his next-gen days. While Miles O'Brien leads a test to transport personnel, reduce the difficulty by two to a minimum of one, which is pretty nice if you want to try and get an a away team and kind of get your dominion on and do some boarding actions ah through some shields.
Biggs: And his title, his title even tells you what you're supposed to do with him, which is take him as your chief of operations.
Truthiness: Yeah, because that's his only role. So he's your ops officer. I suppose he'd be your specialist too, but, know, he's the chief. He's the chief. He should do that.
Biggs: And the only the only non-officer, or the the only non-commissioned officer we have so far.
Truthiness: Yeah, so he's not he's not commanding anything, but that's okay. All right, I think it's time.
Truthiness: All right, who's our Lower Decks MVP? Who is our our favorite generic out of all the Federation generics?
Biggs: that is yeah This is going to be a little surprise here.
Truthiness: Little hot tank, little hot tank?
Biggs: cause you might yeah You might think are our intrepid captain is a honorable mention here.
Truthiness: We've lost our minds.
Biggs: Because yes, our intrepid captain is inspiring.
Truthiness: Yes.
Biggs: But know our true lower decks champion is our line officer, the reliable commander.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: Yes, that's right, the line officer.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah. you You really can't ask for much more in a totally free card. Like, you know got one discipline, one field graph, one one navigation.
Truthiness: So it doesn't matter.
Biggs: Doesn't even matter what the skills are.
Truthiness: It's one, one, one. It's one, one, one. It can do anything.
Biggs: You can do anything that you need them to do.
Truthiness: You need to be a commander a ship? Boom. They're good in the captain's chair. need them at the helm? Great at the helm. You need them to lead in action? You know what? They got some decent stuff to to lead to discipline, field graft.
Truthiness: You got one. It's good. You know, get an extra.
Biggs: probably Probably shouldn't be leading a team, but hey, you're not taking the...
Truthiness: But get in.
Biggs: They're supposed to stay with the ship. They're they're not supposed to be leading teams. It's fine.
Truthiness: Yeah, yeah. I just, you can't ask for something better in the freebie card. lay it I think we debated this one a lot longer than we did the the Dominion one. I think we just looked each other and went, Gemidar second?
Truthiness: Gemidar second. And that was the end. But this one, like it took us a while. I mean, the Entrepid Captain is is excellent. Definitely a good honorable mention. you know, inspiring out of a generic officer, um, especially with diplomacy to, you know, leading those tests really, really good, uh, especially for seven points, but man, ain't nothing's going to beat free.
Truthiness: Um, and it's just so head and shoulders, so head and shoulders above the board of supervisor, uh, that it's just hard to, to pass over.
Biggs: No, no it is not.
Truthiness: man. All right. So let's talk about the ships a little bit. Um, You know, we we've we've talked over the stats and all that for the gout for all these ships, but what about the Galaxy class really stands out to you?
Biggs: the board presence of the Galaxy class, the The Federation's whole gimmick is board presence, and nothing exemplifies it more than the Galaxy class.
Biggs: Because you've you've got probes.
Truthiness: So what do you mean by that?
Biggs: You've got shuttles. You've got the ability to inspire other units nearby you. You've got really...
Biggs: really ah I mean, really good sensor range, admittedly ah in a cone in front of you, but again, in a pinch, you can even ah separate the saucer section and have two different ships, effectively, covering two different areas. You can exert your influence in a large
Truthiness: Yeah, yeah like yeah.
Biggs: part of the board.
Truthiness: They don't even need to take the probes upgrade. That's a huge bonus to not have to spend points on that. just has it. The detachment, I mean, think it's something that you don't really play with early on.
Truthiness: um Just, you know, it's an extra bit of complication. you know, you're starting to learn the game. It's not really something you want to you want to mess with, but it really is a very big advantage to be able to, um you know, detach that saucer and the saucer stops draining energy.
Truthiness: When it takes hits, it starts just, you know, taking those so shields per turn, um really making it very effective. And then at, you know, combat stuff, you're adding an extra thing that can shoot. Like, ah think you really nailed it. as it Between the shuttles and the probes and the saucer section and the star drive, you can have up to...
Truthiness: geez uh five units on the board just from the galaxy class and you can throw a probe out there to you know extend your range
Biggs: You can throw up to two probes from the Galaxy class.
Truthiness: oh god that's right again man it's just yeah you can have such a huge swath around the board any do you see any weaknesses in particular i think we already talked about one of them but
Biggs: I mean, the biggest weakness ah is how long it takes to spin up that um alert dial and get it
Truthiness: Yeah, it's just snow so, so...
Biggs: and get it to the point where it's effective in a fight. Again, Picard can help mitigate that, but, um,
Truthiness: Yeah.
Truthiness: Yeah, and I'm not even sure what to... You know, you but what do you start the game on, even? Like, do you start on green, too? Then you got some some weapons power, so you can actually shoot a little bit initially, but you're limiting yourself on your impulse speed significantly, and you get no recharge power. You know, and...
Truthiness: yeah i just Yeah, that dial is is the roughest part of this thing by far. Because once combat starts, you want to be at yellow three. You're not shooting torpedoes until you get there. um your're really your Your weapons power is not great. Your recharge is at its best at that yellow three. like It's the best recharge rate, and you really want that for when you start taking shield damage.
Truthiness: um So yeah, like that...
Biggs: it's It's also officer hungry in a faction that is officer hungry.
Truthiness: Oh, yes.
Truthiness: Yes. I mean, yeah all these actions we've talked about, like launching the probe, ah making those shuttles, um you got to either spend some energy on them or, you know, with your standby action or you got to dedicate an officer to it.
Truthiness: um So it's. um It's yeah, it is. it wants all of your officers. You can, you can put all freaking five. You can put six officers on this dang thing.
Truthiness: And I think you'd be using every single one of them in every opportunity. Hmm. Man. Yeah, man, I like its it's crew dial is really good too. Like once you hit inspire, oh man, that first step up plus one to every single category.
Truthiness: i mean, another inspiring doesn't do quite as much, but that first inspire taking you up to five command, four ops, and three so are four science. So five, four, four.
Truthiness: Yeah,
Biggs: that's That's real nice.
Truthiness: yeah. yeah You know, its resilience ain't bad either. You know, it takes three criticals to, you know, force a card on it beyond its step dial. You know, it's got eight haul. It's got eight starting energy. You know, it's really solid. I think it pales in comparison to the Dominion Battlecruiser as far as pure combat ability.
Truthiness: um It just, but it should be.
Biggs: But it's it's the Federation. You're not built for pure combat.
Truthiness: Yeah. It is so flexible, and it really is, yeah, but like you said, I think you covered it best your opening statement. It's all about, you know, reach on the board. All right, well, let's take a look at the Constellation class next.
Truthiness: um I think I have had the least amount of board time with this ship out of everything in the Federation lineup, so I'm curious what your thoughts are on it.
Biggs: So my primary thought on this guy is that
Biggs: it can fight. It doesn't want to, but it can.
Truthiness: Yeah, he's not horrible at it.
Biggs: And it and it fights better if it's launching shuttles to to to use the shuttles to add a little extra punch. Strip some extra energy, strip some extra shields so that it can do what it needs to do.
Biggs: It has some dead zones for its phaser emitters.
Truthiness: Yeah, that's not good.
Biggs: in the in the rear right and rear left. there's There's places where its phaser emitters can't see you.
Truthiness: Mm-hmm.
Biggs: With that in mind, it's it's self-sufficient.
Truthiness: Yeah, don like
Biggs: you can You can inspire yourself,
Truthiness: yeah it's got that same address action that the Galaxy class has.
Biggs: except that you can't inspire other units with the with the address, which isn't terrible.
Truthiness: Yeah,
Truthiness: yeah it's self-sufficient.
Biggs: So... Yeah, this guy can go off by itself, accomplish objectives on its own, doesn't want to be threatened while it's doing that, but it can, again, this ah this fits in with the Federation's ah reach across the board, where it can contest things
Truthiness: and
Biggs: pretty effectively all over the place. It's got Science 4 at its baseline.
Truthiness: That's the big one. like It doesn't really care about inspiring. Well, it really gets a huge step at the second step of inspiring.
Biggs: Yeah, if you can if you can double inspire, that's real nice for your command and your op stats.
Truthiness: Yeah. But man, if you just need to...
Biggs: You you can't really improve your Science stat, but Base 4 Science is pretty good.
Truthiness: And to be honest, that's probably why you're bringing it anyway. So, you know, inspiring is nice, but not really needed on this guy.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: ah You're bringing him for, you're bringing it for the the science of it all. You know, that's the best science.
Biggs: bringing it for the science, you're bringing it to launch some probes and use your good comm range to let the to let the probes use your science stat.
Truthiness: Yep.
Truthiness: Yeah, I mean, especially since it gives you three extra points for for your your officer list. You know, it's... or Wait, I'm getting this out of the order.
Biggs: Yeah.
Truthiness: Yeah, so it gets you three extra points for upgrades.
Biggs: Yeah, it's it's giving you... hu
Truthiness: Yeah, so it...
Biggs: Those upgrades can be your flex pool for for officers.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: your transfer pool.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah, and what does it look like when it starts reducing? um Yeah, it starts getting hit pretty hard on the crew dial with each step.
Biggs: It does not have a lot of steps on its crew dial.
Truthiness: No, like immediately it immediately gets.
Biggs: So if it starts taking damage, you can still recover from one lost crew member. By the time you've lost that second crew member, your medical care is looking a little iffy unless you've got a doctor on board.
Truthiness: Yeah. know
Biggs: And any lower than that, and And you're, yeah, you're 011 and then you're incapacitated.
Truthiness: Yeah. Alright, on to the best ship in Starfleet, the Defiant Class Escort.
Biggs: a weird way to pronounce Cerritos.
Truthiness: Look, most awesome ship in Starfleet will go to Cerritos. Best ship is going to go to Defiant. Can we agree to that?
Biggs: Okay, fair.
Truthiness: No? Yeah. yeah yeah is This ship is, as you know you expect, it's an escort. It comes to fight. It's what it does best. um It's the lowest science value of the Federation at starting at two.
Truthiness: um Even inspiring, it doesn't get past three. um It definitely likes that first step of and inspiring, getting plus one to command and ops and science.
Truthiness: um But on the other hand, If it loses crew, it actually keeps the same ops value and science values. The only thing gets hit on that first crew dial is command. And it keeps a pretty healthy ops value um down to two steps down, like that 131.
Biggs: who
Truthiness: You know, you still got decent ops value there. um i mean, this is a ship that's meant to fight. Just plain and simple. It's here to fight. It's here to have a good time. um And good lord, it is just packed with weapons.
Biggs: It is loaded for bear.
Truthiness: Oh, man. So, yeah, you really want to get this sucker. I think you're you're comfortable At yellow and you can get to yellow fast. That's the big advantage it has over the galaxy class in particular.
Truthiness: um You can you can go up one step with a standby action be on yellow alert and then you've got yourself, you know, two shields, either directions, three weapons power, three regen. You're fine there.
Truthiness: Um, if you want to step up to red alert, uh, one, you know, that increases your weapons power at the cost of your recharge, um, by one a piece. And then got three on your shields.
Truthiness: I feel like, um, unless I have an officer in the engineering section, i probably stay on yellow. Um, cause weapons power three is, is enough, especially if I have an officer, you know, leading the attacks and, you know, we can dump some energy into it.
Biggs: with that in mind With that in mind, it is it can be, with ah with officers dedicated to it, a very efficient ship to letting you dump more ah energy into into the shots.
Truthiness: Uh,
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah.
Truthiness: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it does really well with three three officers. You just got one in engineering, one at tactical, one in the captain's chair that can hop over to the helm, um depending on on where you are.
Truthiness: It's, yeah, you get a lot out of it with just those three officers. But honestly, you get a lot out of it with just two. um If you don't have space for engineering, I feel like it does well with just that, you know, helm slash captain's chair and then tactical.
Truthiness: Yeah. because yeah, it, it packs such a.
Biggs: Maybe it's the place that you park your emergency repair team. ah emergency repair team
Truthiness: Yeah, exactly. That's actually my, my first thought for that engineering section is like the emergency repair team, you know, you don't lose much taking that first step down.
Truthiness: so you know, if you can't inspire, do that real quick, you know, and, then you know maybe you do your your medical care test. um you know It's a little tough, um but maybe you try and heal yourself on standby action or something like that to get the crew dial back up. But even if you don't, just having that repair crew and engineering and just being 242, that's a nasty combat ship.
Biggs: And you can always fold that engineering team back into the ship if you if you drop too far.
Truthiness: Yep. Yep.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, it's got the, Let's see. What does it have unique? It's got that evasive maneuvers. That's not bad. Removing sensor lock. But yeah again, you're... Oh, it can launch shuttles too, man.
Truthiness: Everything is launch shuttles.
Biggs: Yeah, it can launch shuttles, but it can't do probes natively.
Truthiness: No, no, it can't. but That's fine. That's not what here for. um It's here for those three friggin' phaser emitters, the two phaser cannon batteries, the three quantum torpedo tubes, natively bringing quantum torpedoes.
Biggs: wo
Truthiness: Right now, the only one in the in the game that does that. And man, when those hit home, oh my goodness, they hurt. So that's why you're bringing the Defiant. you know it's just It costs you three points, but like it's kind of nice.
Biggs: You've decided... You're bringing it because you've decided that you want to fight.
Truthiness: Yeah, it's time it's a go time. And it balances with the the Constellation class. um you know Minus three, plus three. Galaxy class is zero. Yay, you're even.
Truthiness: It's the starter set.
Biggs: Yeah.
Truthiness: Woo!
Biggs: Well done.
Truthiness: All right. So what's your overall thoughts on the fleet here? What are the what are strengths? What are weaknesses? um you know What's your idea for some of your incident fleet's
Biggs: So the big, like I said before, the, the idea with the Federation is that it is there to play the game the way the game heres designed from the box. like It's there to play the objectives, succeed at the objectives, especially if those objectives are science.
Biggs: It's there to be able to influence those objectives in various ways by getting ah shuttles out, getting probes out, um just having that board presence everywhere.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: And to transition into a weakness, it sacrifices having a...
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: sacrifices having that big punch somewhere.
Truthiness: Wow. That's what the device for.
Biggs: because Because you're choosing instead to spread out everywhere.
Truthiness: Yeah, yeah. Well, and you've got a lot of flexibility in those officers, a lot of versatility, you know, that just like you already said, like tons of options for objectives and just completely schools the dominion in science.
Truthiness: um Best Commodore in the game in Picard, by far.
Biggs: My goodness, not even a question.
Truthiness: Not even a question.
Biggs: I mean, the only way that you could have a better Commodore than Picard is to make the mistake of putting Picard somewhere where the female changeling can get to him.
Truthiness: um
Truthiness: Yes, that's actually an excellent point. like The only way to beat Picard is to be Picard. um Repair teams, just hanging out in engineering, just you know that's a pretty nice advantage. But ah on the weakness side, like what stands to me is like that peaceful side of the combat directive.
Truthiness: It is very unforgiving, especially compared to the Dominion. that just you know All they have to do to be hostile is just be a little behind and a disadvantage, and then they can just go ham on you.
Biggs: who if you're but If you're behind, you can't do anything about it but not be behind anymore.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah. So like yeah they have to wait for hostilities to be initiated by the, by the opposing faction more or less, unless there's something in the objective ah that flips some of them hostile for some reason.
Truthiness: um Security teams, you know, are noticeably weaker than their Dominion counterparts. It's what one health difference um shrouded for the, the, the gem in our teams is, is pretty good.
Truthiness: ah So, you know, veterans is just not as good at fighting with the with the glaring exception of the Defiant, which is just the the offensive powerhouse that it is in the background.
Truthiness: All right, so what's what's your prefer... what's What's your idea for a fleet here, Biggs?
Biggs: Okay, so I have a fleet that I've been considering for ah shameless self-plug here, but we are hosting
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah.
Biggs: a ah star Trek Into the Unknown World Cup, hereafter known as the Unknown World Cup. ah This is going to take place using the Star Trek Into the Unknown Discord or our own Blissfully Ignorant Discord.
Biggs: as well as tabletop simulator that was, um, tabletop simulator that was created by crazy Vulcan.
Truthiness: Yeah, mad shout out to Crazy Vulcan. He dove into this TTS module before the game was even released. You it was just pulling clues from all over the internet, just trying to figure out how to get everything set up. He did a massive amount of work.
Truthiness: And if you haven't seen the module yet, it's great. It really is fantastic. Very easy to use. um And then while we're we're plugging the Unreal World Cup, we're also goingnna I'll also talk about what our plans are for content past these inner green episodes uh so biggs and i are gonna yeah so just yes exactly that's why i'm bringing it up now um so biggs and i are gonna uh stream a playthrough stream playthroughs each week of campaign missions so we're gonna play through the campaign on tts uh we'll be streaming it on our youtube channel yes we have a youtube channel that doesn't really get used much but
Biggs: Here's a hint We're using tabletop simulator for it. pacific
Truthiness: hey that's what it's there for to stream things um and then we'll kind of do a one week on one week off thing where we do the live stream um and then we'll come on the podcast and talk about it talk about the you know what what happened during the the the scenario yeah what our thoughts are on the scenario what we're you know what we're thinking going forward in the next part of the campaign um So that's what we'll do next as we walk through. So that'll give us a good amount of content for you all ah going forward.
Truthiness: So yes, back to the rest to the unknown World Cup. If you are unfamiliar with Star Wars Romana, the first online play with that was with a free program known as Vassal.
Truthiness: So Biggs, I think this was like the first year of the game's life, maybe the second
Biggs: ah it was It was just after the very first year of the game. So was 2015, believe.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: January 2015. Last year. Last year.
Truthiness: Yeah. So big story.
Biggs: was january twenty fifteen
Truthiness: started that uh the vassal world cup for armada huge tournament for many many years uh he just handed over the reins to the community um last year ah so you know plenty of experience and he's come up with a great some great ideas on how to score especially um mutual losses and mutual victories which i think i i gotta say you you really i think
Biggs: last last year
Truthiness: took a great direction there with with that. So we're going be spinning that up soon. um And hopefully you'll join us. No, I'm going to be playing. Biggs, you're going to be playing and running, right?
Biggs: Yep, playing and running. This is this is all for fun.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: So ah it's the inaugural year. I'd hate myself if I didn't take the opportunity to play.
Truthiness: Darn right.
Biggs: maybe and later Maybe in later years I'll just sit back and TO it like I did with the World Cup once the once the Armada World Cup got big. But the Unknown World Cup is still in its infancy and i want to get ah ships on the virtual tabletop such as it is.
Truthiness: All right, so what are you thinking about Federation for that tournament?
Biggs: So... For that tournament, because you're using the same task force throughout, I wanted something that would be tactically flexible.
Biggs: Something where, yes, my task force, my my five core officers are set, but where I could spend the flex points in ways that would benefit um whatever I'm up against at that time.
Biggs: ah whatever the actual objectives would be. And to that effect, I have for my ah command liaison, an intrepid captain.
Biggs: I have Miles O'Brien, chief of operations, as my chief of operations. I've got the scholarly doctor as my science officer. I've got Worf, son of Moog, as my ah first specialist officer.
Biggs: and I've got the daring first officer as my second specialist, and then I've got Picard, Sisko, Bashir, and Odo in my ah flex pool with two vigilant security chiefs that I'm calling the... ah Oops, I'm not taking a... um I'm not taking a transfer pool this turn if I draw them.
Truthiness: Okay.
Biggs: That gives me
Truthiness: Old move, putting John Luke in the prancer pool.
Biggs: Yeah, but that gives me eight flex points available. So that's enough to take Jean-Luc if I need to take Jean-Luc. If I take two Constellation classes, I can even take Jean-Luc and Benjamin Sisko and replace those old reliable commanders, which admittedly are really good, but you've got to admit you'd rather have Jean-Luc Picard and Benjamin Sisko than two reliable commanders.
Truthiness: Fair. Fair.
Biggs: So... This gives me a lot of flexibility to play what i need ah what I need to play.
Biggs: I can take two Defiance if I need to take two Defiance because I got the eight points available to me. I can take two Constellation classes and some upgrades if I need to if i need Constellation classes. I can take a Defiant and a Constellation if...
Biggs: um I want exactly eight points for, say, Odo and Bashir, or just Picard and maybe the Enterprise title.
Biggs: But it it really keeps that flexibility open to decide what the heck I actually want to do when the mission when the missions actually get started.
Truthiness: yeah Okay. That's
Truthiness: interesting. That's an interesting approach. like that's ah That's a large but transfer pool. yeah and It kind of shows off the flexibility you could we could potentially have in a tournament scene. is you know you You set your core officers, but you flex your ships and your upgrades ah depending on the scenario. Sorry for the buzzing in the background.
Truthiness: The laundry's going off. Sorry.
Truthiness: I will not be cutting that. Just, you know, I'm too lazy. Okay. um Yeah, just so much flexibility there, man. i dig it. I dig it.
Truthiness: All right. So mine, i kind of went the opposite direction. i started with the ships. And ah love me my Defiant. So i basically started with, I want two Defiants.
Truthiness: I don't care. i'm i'm ready to fight if I need to. And I'm going to lean hard on the Galaxy class. and and just the na native federation advantage and a lot of these a lot of these um yeah objectives.
Truthiness: ah So for my crew, i went with John Luke. I just I cannot leave him at home, especially with just so good in that galaxy class captain's chair. um I also took Worf is because Worf is just Excellent at objective play and weapon stages. He's all around.
Truthiness: hard to leave Hard for me to leave him around. But unfortunately, because I'm planning on spending six points on Defiance, that leaves me with nothing but generics for the rest of it. So I got a redoubtable engineer.
Truthiness: He's going to join Worf and Jean-Luc and a reliable commander on the Galaxy class. And then I've got two vigilant security chiefs, ah which will each go over to the Defiant classes to fill those weapons slots. And then I'll lean on the reliable commanders for those ships as the the helm and and captain's chair officer.
Truthiness: So, you know, it's all about, honestly, all about acting like the Dominion. I feel like I accidentally made a Federation configuration. ah i guess that's the advantage of having, know, a demo kit where I can do this with the second Defiant class.
Truthiness: ah But I did, I did, I flew this fleet a couple of times and I just, I really like Defiance, especially, you know, I was doing a lot of testing against Klingons since we, you know, now I can say that.
Truthiness: um And yeah, there's some fighting that happens and the Defiance are, or you know, you need them.
Biggs: I imagine there is against the Klingons.
Truthiness: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's really, it's fun. i gets the It leans into the combat aspect of the game, um but the galaxy class, especially his ability to split off,
Truthiness: um and just kind of be that you know that home base for a lot of those auxiliaries, I feel like covers enough of the objective play that I can lean into a little bit more of an aggressive approach.
Truthiness: All
Biggs: Very good.
Truthiness: right. Well, let's see. We've already plugged the Unknown World Cup. We've already plugged our plans for the future. um So I think that's it for the night.
Biggs: Yeah, come come and join us on the Blissfully Ignorant Gaming Discord, or ah hop on into the Star Trek Into the Unknown Discord, which also has stuff for TTS and its own channel for the World Cup.
Truthiness: It's been very active.
Truthiness: Which, I mean, hey, I know this is supposed to be an evergreen thing, but hey, why don't we talk about some of the stuff that got spoiled the other day?
Biggs: Yes.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah.
Biggs: Yes.
Truthiness: Yeah, let's do it.
Biggs: Let's do it.
Truthiness: Let's do it. Hey, it's over're already in hour. Who cares? you know, they'll stick around.
Biggs: I mean, it's for spoilers. Let's do it
Truthiness: It is. It is. Let's do it. Spoilers. All right. So if you are not aware, there is a, in addition to the core, WizKids has now announced that there is also ah a new, i forget forgot what they're calling these things, campaign pack, narrative expansion,
Biggs: I think it's like campaign. Hold on. Let me let me find the actual thing here. ah Rising Tensions Expansion is what it's called, and they are calling it
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: um A exciting follow up to the core set brings the Klingon Empire into the conflict playable as a standalone faction or as allies for Federation or Dominion forces.
Truthiness: Yeah, so we'll probably finally get to see that sway option in action because we still know what that does. ah but Because, you know, it's there, you know, it's a stat.
Truthiness: But no one has any idea what it does. So we'll we'll definitely see that in there. um Man, and then we get the Klingons. We get the Klingons, man. we get the Klingons.
Truthiness: We get a bird of prey.
Biggs: We get the Klingons.
Truthiness: get a Vortia.
Biggs: ah So yeah, there there is quite a bit... ah There's quite a bit spoiled. You've got your... You've got your Vorta-class attack cruiser.
Truthiness: That looks so...
Biggs: You've got your Burel-class bird of prey.
Truthiness: Critical question for you, what size base does that look like to you?
Biggs: um That looks...
Truthiness: For the Vorja.
Biggs: So... That looks suspiciously not like a large to me.
Truthiness: Yeah, that's that's what my eyes look like too.
Biggs: that looks that looks That looks like it's a medium size. So when they... ah My hope, knowing nothing else, is the... As allies for Federation or Dominion forces, my hope is that there's either new...
Biggs: um new ah conflict cards that let you that that have you not taking capital ships in or there's a way to get one of the two existing two existing capital ships as ah with like sway but still keep your Klingon primary
Truthiness: Yeah, that'd be nice. And then we obviously got that...
Biggs: But we will have to see what the rules are before we know more on that.
Truthiness: Yeah, so we also got a Borel Bird of Prey. and then Federation's the other half of this. So we got a Miranda-class cruiser, which is definitely on a small. And then we get another Defiant class. The close-up pictures have the old Defiant, but if you look at the big box, it's zoom in real good.
Truthiness: That looks like the Valiant to me. And I think they confirmed that on Facebook, um that this is the USS Valiant.
Biggs: i I believe so. if you If you zoom in real close, you can kind of make out USS Valiant, or as I joked around, the Uevalio.
Truthiness: Yeah.
Biggs: ah But yeah, no, they did they did confirm on Facebook that it is that the Defiant Class ship and Rising Tensions is the USS Valiant with a different name, with a different whole number. So you'll finally be able to have two Defiant classes that don't look exactly the same.
Truthiness: yeah Man, I think I'm ordering two of these anyway because I want two birds of prey and two vortia just to have.
Biggs: Yeah.
Truthiness: i
Biggs: Yeah, I mean, why wouldn't you?
Truthiness: Whatever, I'm to have four Defiant classes. No big deal. it Just, you know, whatever. yeah
Biggs: i mean, i'm ah I'm a Klingon at heart.
Truthiness: Oh, God.
Biggs: I...
Truthiness: So, yeah, officers. um We see Galron. He's got two health, ah diplomacy two, ordnance one, skirmish one, nav one. And then he's got something to do in the ready action.
Biggs: Something ready. You may blank your calm directive to, I'm guessing, hostile in this blah, blah, blah, blah blah combat.
Truthiness: Hostile.
Truthiness: hostile
Truthiness: So he's got some kind of ready action. I've got a total line here because I know what this actually is. But he's got some kind of action that allows your calm directive to be hostile.
Biggs: But which calm directive Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: and yeah, it looks like yeah you there's the combat one's definitely there. and You can see that one front and center.
Biggs: And then Gowron, and then there's Gowron, Leeds, Persuasive, Friendly, Unit, and Them.
Truthiness: So yeah, yeah.
Truthiness: It's in them.
Biggs: ah
Truthiness: We're reading like one line. this This is like a five line paragraph.
Biggs: m
Truthiness: Crazy eyes needs to.
Biggs: Dear God, we won he's oh i want...
Truthiness: Oh, we need
Biggs: I want Crazy Eyes so bad.
Truthiness: crazy eyes. needs to oh we need crazy. eyes
Biggs: And we've got our first Romulan.
Truthiness: but need Yeah, who's got Federation and Rombulant allegiance, so sub-commander to roll. We've got her completely spoiled at eight points. She's a science officer, discipline one, fieldcraft one, mechanics two, and she's got remodulate cloak, which tells me that there is going to be some way to get cloaking in the Federation.
Truthiness: so yeah um I think the Defiant...
Biggs: There wouldn't be much much a point of her being Federation if there wasn't.
Truthiness: Yeah, right. um So yeah, I think the Defiant's getting his cloaking device it's some in some way, shape, or form. And then we've got at least an extra situation and an extra complication.
Truthiness: Klingons have their shuttle fully spoiled. I won't really go over that. um We also have...
Biggs: Yeah, it's it's it's a shuttle. It's a more shooty shuttle than the previous shuttles, which is neat.
Truthiness: yeah And then we got Riker, um who is hilariously somehow better in engineering than Geordi.
Biggs: to
Truthiness: Because of his navigation three in in the the the the science skill. He's got Fieldcraft 1, Skirmish 2. He is inspiring on ops.
Truthiness: um I can't really make out what his stuff is in the special text.
Biggs: Something about auxiliary units.
Truthiness: Yeah, and then another action of some kind. It's Cowan. Defonacy 1, Dispin 1. So he seems like kind of almost like Kira in that he one still he's a first officer that wants to lead away teams.
Truthiness: um Very good. it It looks like it's Skirmish. ah Decent Fieldcraft. Navigation 3.
Biggs: Really good at navigation.
Truthiness: Yeah, Navigation 3. And then we got Geordi fully fully spoiled. So he's 11 points. He is doing empathy one, craft one, mechanics two, nav two.
Truthiness: He's perceptive two, ah which is yeah while he is leading a test, ah treat their unit's instruments stat power as increased by two. Yeah.
Biggs: But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Yes, you're increasing unit stats by two with perceptive, but look at his free text.
Truthiness: yeah So reaction, when Geordi LaForge's unit takes an action, choose one of its alert stats, treat the value of that stat as one higher while resolving that action.
Biggs: When he...
Biggs: So yes, he can art he's already with perceptive two raising that value, ah that instrument power stat by two. but you can also use his free text ability to raise the value by one more to three.
Biggs: that's that's a lot of That's a lot of reach out and scan something.
Truthiness: Yeah. Yeah. Or just, you know, it adds to comms too. Like it's just an, it's an extra three inches, which ain't nothing.
Biggs: But the the other thing is, it's ah it's a reaction and it happens when his unit takes an action. He doesn't have to be the one doing it.
Truthiness: That's true.
Biggs: So, yes, when you're using sensors, the sensors are increased by one. When you're shooting weapons, your weapon value is increased by one.
Biggs: When you're... um
Biggs: When you're using impulse, your impulse value is increased by one. Maybe even your turning radius... Or, yeah, that that's pretty much what you're doing.
Truthiness: All right. And so the final thing that's been spoiled is most of the directive cards. And I'm sure this is going to disappoint some folks, but guess what's still very much there on the Calm Combat Directive?
Truthiness: A big giant penalty if you are the first one to shoot. well yeah Sorry, Klingons. You're going to get negative two victory points if you shoot first. ah Oops.
Biggs: That's okay.
Truthiness: Demons looks like the same thing after opposing unit performs a hostile act. Looks like you can set it. Boisterous demeanor. That one's interesting. You are read that one?
Biggs: Yeah, so Exchange boasts.
Truthiness: Yeah, that's going to be Klingon.
Biggs: um The persuasive unit tests three difficulty ah with trust and the highest ah combat or the highest security stat of its leading officer And minus one if all the hailing units are at the same location.
Biggs: So if you're down on the ground yelling at each other, it's just easier.
Truthiness: Klingons are loud.
Biggs: inspire if On a success, inspire the persuasive player's unit and each other hailing unit whose player's trust value was three or higher.
Truthiness: I mean, i kind of encourages you to get along with Klingons for for a hail, because you get it.
Biggs: So... Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: um Inspiring is not a bad result from losing a hail.
Biggs: No, not too bad at all. You, you kind of, yeah, you kind of want them to succeed. And then, ah for two breakthrough successes, in addition to the success, instead of inspiring the unit, the persuasive player scores victory point.
Biggs: And then, ah you can also, ah the persuasive player can set, uh, with a analysis, the persuasive player can set their exploration,
Biggs: um
Truthiness: to hostile and then there's might be something after that but that sentence alone um cool cool cool yeah then that gets you into
Biggs: To hostile.
Biggs: That's pretty fun. That is pretty fun. i'm guessing I'm guessing what is behind it is that ah if you refuse a hail, set your thing to hostile.
Truthiness: oh yeah good point Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's that right there starts getting into more Klingon-y type stuff. Very easy way to get yourself into
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: a a hostile... yeah What's the one below this? I'm forgetting the names. um
Biggs: ah
Truthiness: The Star?
Biggs: there's Exploration.
Truthiness: Is that exploration that's next? The Glory Awaits?
Biggs: Yeah, The Glory Awaits.
Truthiness: Yeah, so glory awaits. Let's see. After one of your auxiliary team or probe units succeeds as an objective, there is an opposing unit within four inches.
Truthiness: Score victory token. You can score maximum two this way. You get an honor guard or boarding party, an honor guard, and repair team for your basic teams. But like we just talked about with the hail, um this is the directive that can flip hostile with just an analysis result on that hail.
Truthiness: um And that gets you to boarding party, boarding party, under guard or repair team. um So, and
Biggs: Deeds worthy of song.
Truthiness: deeds worthy of song. After one of your units team units destroys an opposing team unit or disables an opposing ship, score victory token.
Truthiness: If a capital ship is disabled this way, score two victory tokens and you get a maximum of two. um After an opposing unit performs a hostile an aggressive act, if one of your ships a common range of that opposing unit sets your combat directive to hostile. So let's go over this.
Truthiness: Forster's demeanor, open the hill, get an analysis result, turn this one hostile. Start attacking sir said opponent with deeds worthy of song, and when they retaliate, you now have It's a Good Day to Die.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Biggs: Mm-hmm.
Truthiness: So, after opposing ship, kapla.
Biggs: ah
Truthiness: After your opposing ship is destroyed by your hostile axe, score a victory token, and then if it was a capital, get two. And then the last one, which is the what is that that's the diplomacy objective or directive, ah you can't open hails, you can answer hails.
Truthiness: If one of your units incapacitates an opposing officer, score a victory token. Maximum one victory token.
Biggs: no no longer No longer do you need to capture officers. All you need to do is incapacitate them.
Truthiness: and Yep, yep. Dominion wants capture. Klingon's good with just maiming.
Biggs: Mm-hmm. We don't want to take prisoners.
Truthiness: And after you refuse a hail, your opponent who opened it may set their combat directive to hostile.
Biggs: You crazy?
Truthiness: So that's pretty normal text. um So you gotta jump through a few hoops to get there with Klingons. to To be aggressive and do the full good day to die. But you start with taunting.
Truthiness: Seems very Klingon. That gets you to... Shooting on the ground and with you know, hitting people with bat lifts a a a bet a bet a bet God damn it. I don't have that damn cue from lower decks Cued up. Oh damn it. I missed my cue.
Truthiness: oh well Oh God, I missed it. I missed it bigs. I'm so sad at myself.
Biggs: Shameful.
Truthiness: No.
Biggs: Shameful. you have
Truthiness: Oh God Yeah, yeah, what can I say?
Biggs: You have multiple jobs, but that's one of them.
Truthiness: right, well better late than never
Truthiness: There we go I got it.
Biggs: Oh, it's so good.
Truthiness: I got the cue eventually.
Truthiness: All right. So, yeah.
Biggs: it's so good
Truthiness: So then you do that and you, you know, they're your opponents, you know, responses, they're going to be shoot back with their teams, in which case you get to go full aggressive or don't. And they just take a pounding from what I'm guessing are going to be some very good teams.
Biggs: Hmm.
Truthiness: Oh, Klingons. They need to get here.
Biggs: Oh, Klingons.
Truthiness: They need to get here soon. i need crazy eyes, man. and need the crazy eyes in my life.
Biggs: ah
Truthiness: ah
Biggs: So excited for Klingons. that i've been waiting I've been waiting for Klingons since the game was announced.
Truthiness: It's going to be.
Truthiness: i know we all want to.
Biggs: its
Truthiness: we We all want it
Truthiness: Did that even come through? Let's try it again.
Biggs: Yeah, it came through. A little soft.
Biggs: Glory to you and your house indeed.
Truthiness: You know what? that's Let's just cycle through all the Klingons. Let's just, let's do it all.
Truthiness: Okay. I'm going to stop playing with the soundboard and let you new people go on with your merry night. Thank you for joining us. We're looking forward to having you in the Vassal World Cup or geez, Unknown World Cup switching games now.
Truthiness: um And please join us on stream.
Biggs: who
Truthiness: It'll probably be somewhere around 8, 8.30 Wednesdays, Eastern that time. um I'll be sure to have the chat up so you can tell us how much we're screwing everything up. And then we'll be back on this podcast every other week to talk about it.
Truthiness: Until next time, have a good night.
