Followers of SKoST will know that I'm rather keen on Attack Wing, its expansions and beyond. I've played it for a fair few years but in a pandemic it's somewhat difficult to get a group together to play a physical game.
I've tried Zoom calls but it's a fiddly situation and less than perfect. Now you'll also know that Wizkids (the guys behind Attack Wing) have been working on another version for some time; Alliance. As long awaited as the Federation, Klingon, Vulcan and Cardassian Union faction packs, Alliance is, forgive the pun, game changing, when it comes to Wizkids' Star Trek offerings.
But in some respects you have to take Alliance as an entirely new product. It comes with its own manual - a lot of which is Attack Wing content updated - plus a Mission Book to start you off. Note too that this is the Dominion War Campaign which will become more evident shortly.
So as a new product the box is filled with everything you'll need to start off and for those scrabbling for a copy of Attack Wing's long sought, never seen Starter Pack, this will be the immediate go to as long as it stays in stock.
There's also a new set of maneuver strips, new dice, a torrent of Evade, Battle Station, Scan, Cloak, Target Lock, Time and Disable tokens to keep track of events. Wizkids have even chucked in some new obstacle pieces and a shiny new planet PLUS a new set of Damage cards. It really is the whole kit in one box which is good since Alliance does mainly rely on this single carton for all of its tweaks and tricks.
Sure, you can supplement tokens from Attack Wing if you need to but the Jem'Hadar Fighters here are totally unique because the Game AI plays as them against the Federation and their bases are used to help work this out. The two Federation ships are their generic versions with an initial Captain Skill of 2 however you can swap these out for other ship types after the first "test" mission so I might be dropping on the Defiant or a Nova Class just to change it up.
Take the introduction mission that sees players picking up Mission Tokens to represent successful scans. Add in an asteroid field, spawning Jem'Hadar and suddenly it's a tense scenario to get in and out with minimal damage or cause a major galactic incident. I would however recommend that if you are one player definitely take both ships in as I only just made it out with the Akira and a single hull point.
There are teething issues in there too with a couple of the moves from the Jem'Hadar placing them in near peril or a collision situation. Also a few poor rolls (not on purpose) meant that my escape to Federation space was more down to luck than actual skill - but I'll still take the win thank you very much.
On Mission 2 I realised that as a 1 player scenario you're supposed to use both Federation ships so I activated the Excelsior Class. It made a huge difference, cutting the time to around 45 minutes and lasting just four rounds rather than 10. In, out, done.
The biggest challenge though is what's next. The Dominion War campaign is a great idea but once you've completed the six parts to the story (set after the destruction of the USS Odyssey) there's not exactly much to do unless you replay with different people and Federation ships. The next wrangle is that there's nothing saying there's going to be anything more in the future and as of now Alliance is a one shot. The £49.99 price tag might not be to everyone's taste or affordability but it does have absolutely everything in the box and ready to go right down to maneuver dials and stands for your little ships.
Fingers crossed it doesn't go the way of one box and one expansion Frontiers that lasted all of five minutes a few years ago. While still available, that fizzled super quickly. Alliance has the benefit of Attack Wing's back catalogue to mine and with a crafty conversion kit, this could be the Version 2.0 that's needed to re-ignite the passion for the game and get us all back playing.
Part 2 of this review will take us into a deep look at the new cards included!
You can check out all our Attack Wing reviews over on the Gaming Section!
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