Star Trek Attack Wing: Literally play X-Wing Instead

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Star Trek Attack Wing: Literally play X-Wing Instead

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Otisburg posted:

There is literally no reason to make an identical but strictly worse version of a card that can already be taken in arbitrary numbers, unless--and perish the thought--you're not bothering to research what cards even already exist when you design an expansion and you have no institutional communication/continuity/memory.

WizKids is terrible at game design. Both of their licensed flightpath games are absolute trash.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 13:04

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 10:50

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Otisburg posted:

In addition to the second one having an identical effect with 3 more restrictions (unique, positioning in relation to friendlies, position in relation to enemies), ignoring that the wording for the basic trigger and effect is entirely different.

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't trying to push it as a proper competitive game like MTG or WMH with regional and nationals and poo poo.

See: All the identically named photon torpedoes that do slightly different things.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 13:46

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Otisburg posted:

Yeeep. I mean how much effort would it have taken to append either the class of ship or "Type 1/2/3 etc" torpedo and tried to keep rough track of which type has what text?

The cherry on top is that not a one of them is worth taking 95% of the time.

To be fair, this is also a problem in X-wing, the torpedoes not being worth taking, and it's for the exact same reason, really, though WizKids went really ham trying to make that kind of weapon worth taking with 10 dice ordnance. Or maybe they just wanted to make something that fired 10 red dice because they felt like it. You can never really tell.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 14:23

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Moriatti posted:

Computer, make a set of house rules capable of making Attack Wing well designed.

Unable to comply.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 21:36

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Otisburg posted:

IDK the core game as it was released in 2013 is baaaasically "X-Wing, but we renamed the actions."

Most of the shittiness comes from the expansions which use sloppy wording and apparently zero playtesting of interactions with existing stuff.

Admittedly the really simplistic point costing formula breaks down when you start giving ships 6+ primary attack and 10+ durability, so maybe a little more thought into that would have been good. Like, you could have had the Borg as terrifying omnidirectional movement turret ships with 6 attack and 12+ hull/shields, if you'd factored it into the point cost and made a sphere like 65 points or whatever to account for the fact that it breaks the two most basic constraints of the Flightpath system... instead of just sum of stats X2 like everything else.

I don't think it was that good in the first place- I mean, the point costing was there from the start and fundamentally flawed for pretty much everything. X-wing had a formula, too, but it wasn't quite as simple and probably better reflected the value of different things on the stats as well as the dials. That being said, it still sucked, and most of the ships from wave 1 and 2 have gotten one fix or another to make them a lot better.

Picard was in the first set, for example. Oh, the development is dumb, too, but a lot of the problems were there from the beginning.

Some of the faction gimmicks were really, really dumb, too- hey, look, a faction with no battlestations/focus action. This is super interesting! Yeah!

That being said, I think the concept of it might be interesting. The idea of a game with more powerful/attackable upgrades, and more maneuvers(back maneuvers), etc, is cool and all, but I don't think Wizkids could've made it.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 21:51

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Otisburg posted:

I should have expected this going in.

Mechwarrior: Dark Age me, shame on you.

Star Trek: Attack Wing me, shame on me.

Could be worse- you could have D&D attack wing.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 22:05

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

It shares a lot of flaws with STAW but they added in gimmicks like ground units and most of them suck.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 11:56

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

The Lord of Hats posted:

That ship would be hot garbage in X-wing, and the numbers there are infinitely tighter. What the hell are they doing throwing it into the land of dice bloat?

Maybe if they made it 1 point, so you could just take a hundred shitships and hope that you could eventually plink them down through force of numbers, it would work.

The basic tie fighter would be 16 points while the X-wing would be 20 under WizKids system. Balance.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 22:23

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 10:50

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Honestly I think people who like STAW more than X-wing probably play it because the maneuvering's easier and it's way easier to make super-ships that roll 7 modified green dice every time. X-wing is much, much more restrained about what upgrade cards and ships can do. Interestingly, though, X-wing did implement the ability to attack upgrade cards very recently, though it's very situational. I think that was in STAW from the beginning.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 12:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Star Trek Attack Wing: Literally play X-Wing Instead