The Battle of Watling Street

by Kevin Jaeger, Staff Writer

22nd November 2014

If there is a truism about history, it's that the names and dates may change but the facts remain the same.

In A.D. 60, a Roman army, really the Borg of their day to quote future historian Thomas Eugene Paris, of approximately 10000 well armed, technologically superior, and vastly more coordinated Roman soldiers were met with resistance from 400,000 britons.  Like the Borg, the Romans knew their enemy and were more tactically sound. The Britons, like the Federation fleet in A.D. 2367, were a hastily thrown together force with no other plan than to resist. In both battles, the result was the same: the much larger force just tried to slam into the enemy, but the smaller force won the day by staying resolute behind a superior defense and lashing out with a more finely tuned offense.

Now, you can simulate feeling of recklessly throwing personnel to their death with this latest card in the 20th Anniversary Collection. Celebrate history on many levels by sending your fleet to Wolf 359 and provide resistance to the Borg. If you do it right away, you shall be rewarded with half the points you need to win, and half your win condition in the bag. Wait too long to resist future Romans, and your reward is not nearly as good: a full 15 points less of worthwhile to be precise.

So lets focus on why sometimes great sacrifice now can lead to greater reward in the future.  

To complete this mission, you need Cunning greater than 32. Normally, a player would need likely six personnel to do this. However, if you let Leonard McCoy lead your forces, you can bring that down to five. He's old and really only at his peak at the first mission anyway. So who else shall follow The Cantankerous One into the mouth of hell? Benjamin Sisko, the acting head of starfleet security. If you can command a paranoia event and USS Enterprise-J, and bring at least one other Federation security personnel - you can now complete this mission with only four personnel!!! The last piece of the puzzle is how to come up with greater than 10 weapons. This is actually the easy part and it goes hand in hand with who your fourth personnel is.....U.S.S. Valiant. Now take a second to think about that!

Admiral McCoy + Head of Starfleet Security Ben Sisko + any natural Cunning 5 Fed security with a staffing icon + Karen Farris OR Nick Locarno OR Tim Waters = 6 + 6 + 5 + 5 + McCoy bonus  of 6 + Sisko bonus of 1 + Enterprise-J bonus  of 4 = 33 Cunning + Valiant with one cadet aboard = all requirements to solve...and they do staff the ship. Blow it up and the never look back.

So what if you don't want to dump 18 counters that early in the game? Then solve two forty point missions like Practice Orbital Maneuvers (you are playing cadets anyway) and The Siege of AR-558 with your stronger Feds and/or McCoy bonus and just let six guys die at Wolf 359 for 20 points because at that point who cares?

Remember to take this history lesson to heart; its better to be prepared and have a plan than it is to just throw bodies at the problem...or as Sun Tzu would say: "A victorious warrior wins first then goes to war, while defeated warriors go to war first then seek to win."

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