I actually wanted to build a battle deck for the next tournament in Vienna. Now I set my eyes on the cards and rules in detail, I must say the following:
jadziadax8 wrote:The main problem with battle decks (both combat and engagement) is that battling your opponent has a high cost compared to the rewards you get out.
Actually it doesn´t. It costs me exactly 1 turn to destroy about 4 turns of my dear opponent. I need a cheap ship with weapons 5 or 6, so I get to weapons 9 or 10 with the maneuver event. With the assistance of my dilemma pile there will be one or two damage markers on my opponent´s ship. I can easily play 2 maneuvers in one turn and suprise my dear opponent with a loud boom.
jadziadax8 wrote:Costs
[*]You must play events that cost counters. Most of those events cost 2-3, plus what you need to draw them. That's 1 or 2 personnel in many decks. There are missions that help mitigate this cost, but you have to solve them first before you get the reward.
[*]You must go to opponent's missions to engage with them, costing you range you could otherwise use to go back and forth to your own missions
[*]If you want to also be solving missions (the main game objective), you need at least two ships and crew, which costs time to build up
[*]You are stopped after battle, unless you spend resources to unstop your personnel and ships afterwards. Currently only three cards allow this and they all cost 3.
[*]Opponent can turtle at their HQ to keep you from battling; not really a cost, but definitely a hindrance to engagement, though I don't mind this one too much
- My events then cost a total of 5 counters VS 4 turns of my opponent which spent around 20 points on personnel and his ship. A good deal!
- Being stopped after battle sucks, but its worth the costs if I can slow my opponent down for about 3 or 4 more turns.
- While my opponent hides at his HQ I can go on and solve missions. I don´t need skills or attributes for battling. Just Events and staffing icons. So hiding just slows him down before I blow him out of the skies.
jadziadax8 wrote:Rewards
[*]You could try for the two-mission win, but usually you need to engage with your opponent 3 times to score the points (unless things are Just Like Old Times). This seems alright on the surface until you realize that this means at least 3 turns away from solving missions, unless you get a 2nd ship and crew out for mission solving. This is a big cost in addition to the cost of the engagement cards.
Or I could cripple him in 1 engagement and invest the rest of my time in solving the third mission.
jadziadax8 wrote:[*]You can deny your opponent of their resources by killing personnel. There are lots of Assault and/or Maneuver cards that do this, but the main problem with these is all you manage to do is slow down the game, making it more likely that you at best will get a Mod Win.
If my opponent makes mission attempts, THAT will cost my time. If he is only trying to play another ship and personnel in 3 turns that gives me 3 turns in which ONLY I will make mission attempts while he is recovering. So I even win time!
jadziadax8 wrote:[*]You can deny your opponent resources by blowing up their ships. This is difficult to pull off because it's tricky to get three Damage markers on a ship in one turn. There are ways to do it (get lucky and hit them with a Tillman pile combo then engage on your next turn or get the Prometheus to hit), but they are not totally reliable. And again, you still end up with the problem of the mod win. I've played against Prometheus decks that managed to blow me up but also never completed a mission
The plan is actually to put on 1 or 2 damage cards in your turn and deliver 1 or 2 on my turn. If I need two, I will have to work on my timing. But with just one, no problem. And as stated above, I will even gain time as playing cards is way faster than watching my opponent attempt missions with ships and personnel he shouldn´t have by now.
jadziadax8 wrote:What to do?
[*]More cost-reduction for Assault/Maneuver cards?
[*]More cards that allow you to do other things after an engagement?
[*]Rules changes?
[*]Alternate win conditions?
- cost reductions are imho not needed
- things to do after battles? A yes from me, but nothing too powerful
- maybe a Leadership skill needed to initiate battles? What about Borg?
- A BIG NO to alternate win conditions! Never mess up with the game engine ! ! ! As luring as it might be, I´ve seen a lot of games getting destroyed if you mess up with the game engine.
Now, I only took a look at engagements, because on most occasions people try to solve a space mission first. Comments on ground battle I would like to leave to somebody with more experience.
Cheers
Nerdo