UNBOXING: What is Star Trek Attack Wing?
Phasers, Warp Speed, Spock and more. Its Star Trek Attack Wing!
Recently a new game has swept through my gaming club, gaining popularity as it goes, and paid for our local hobby stores rent for the month in the amount of sales he’s made. Star Trek Attack Wing forms the sister to Fantasy Flights X Wing.
And when I say sister I mean identical clone. Fantasy Flight licensed the game play mechanics of their X wing dogfighting game to Wizkids Heroclix, so anyone who has played X wing will be very familiar with the game. The means of revealing your move, shooting and evading is identical in every way.
For those of you who have never played X wing, the mechanics are simple. You move individual space ships in turn using a list of manoeuvres available to each craft. You then fire in your ships fire arks, and can try and evade damage. Its a simple game at its core that offers a great degree of tactics and depth.
The starter box costs the same as the X Wing starter box (£30 for us here in Blighty). That investment gets you three ships, representing the Federation, the Romulans and the Klingons. The Federation ship is not the Enterprise though…as the pictures below show, the Enterprise is a tiny model. You also get all your movement sticks, dice and playing cards.
Star Trek at its core is the same game as X Wing with slight tweaks. As you’re suddenly using capital ships of the Federation and the assorted alien races of the Star Trek universe instead of individual fighters there’s more firepower and more shields and hull points to deal with, but the base mechanics stay the same. There are a few significant difference between the two games though;
– There is a new upgrade slot for ships. You can buy captains for your ship, from generic captains to legendary commanders like Picard, Kirk, Khan and the rest. This works separate to the upgraded ships, which is what the pilots are in effect in X Wing. You can also buy bridge crew to improve your ship, launch boarding parties and a few things that match the shows and films, that weren’t thematically possible in X Wing. The closest X wing comes with are cards like R2D2.
– The models. What can I say about the models that’s nice….they’re durable? Compared to the high quality finish the X wing ships have, the Star Trek ships look like they come out as a free toy in a breakfast cereal box. Seriously the paint job quality on the models is pretty damn poor. They match the ships from the show to a decent degree, but don’t have the finish that X wing does.
– Upgrades can be disabled, or removed through the use of crew cards such as boarding parties or some weapons. These can take an action to repair and bring back online.
– Cloaking. Some ships can cloak. This involves turning off all your shields, but gets you an additional 4 evade dice when shot at.
The game is good fun though. With the success of X Wing, we know the rule set is strong. The extra customisation (there’s nothing that stops you having Picard flying a Klingon Warbird) opens up some more customisation in a list and deciding crew and upgrades is a bit more detailed than that in X Wing. But in general X wing is a higher quality physical product. The cards, spinners and movement sticks feel better in X Wing, and the ship are far more detailed.
Star Trek Attack Wing is a fun, tactical, fast paced dogfighting game for anyone who enjoyed X Wing and wants something similar. Or anyone who just prefers their Trek to their Wars. Their Rodenberry to their Lucas.
