Star Trek Attack Wing Wave 16: All Sides But Starfleet?

The dust from trials of the Wave 15 ships has barely settled and Wave 16 is upon us.

These releases are suddenly coming thick and fast with waves 17 to 21 confirmed and arrival dates pinned until January 2016. One thing you do notice with the latest trio is the lack of a Federation vessel. Well...sort of.

Out of the box first is one of my favourite starships of all time, the USS Dauntless. Indeed a Starfleet ship that turned out not to be a Starfleet ship in a great Voyager episode. It's also the first expansion where you can get away with not applying a captain and instead using the Auto-Navigation option. 

As with the episode, Hope and Fear, your only captain option otherwise is sneaky vengeance-seeking Arthuris. Should you stick him on the Dauntless then you get a captain skill of eight but if you drop him onto any other ship he's a three. While the Doctor on the Prometheus relied on your die rolling to up his captain skill, this one sticks at that figure for the game duration making the Dauntless one to watch. Also Arturis allows you to target a ship within ranges two to three and disable either their captain card or two crew upgrades. Definitely one to have packed if you're going up against a Federation fleet.

Big point to note with the Dauntless is that it only has tech upgrade slots. Four if you're playing the unique class ship and three if you're playing the generic "class" ship and they are pretty cool in fact I'm looking at combining her with the Krenim Timeship as part of an independent fleet. She's also quick with a forward of five and some nice tight turns which might help you out in the pack's scenario.  

Those tech upgrades kick off with the unusual Auto-Navigation. It does bottom your captain skill out at two but once you reveal your maneuver you can change it over to one of the four green maneuvers available. Beyond that there are another five in this pack. The four point Navigational Deflector isn't new, being used in the game before most notably with the USS Equinox and works exactly the same, allowing you to discard the card to cancel a damage result or be disabled to roll a defence against obstacles and minefields. Costly for a discard but useful if you get someone who likes to drop a few surprises if you're in pursuit. Power Distribution is a turn on Arturis' skill allowing you to change your maneuver and perform a hard right or left turn (speed of three only) which are of course red and will incur an auxiliary power token. Being a speedy little thing I'm not sure if you'll need this however with very little defence it might allow you to get out of trouble quickly - although not as quickly as Quantum Slipstream Drive. 

As the most cost heavy upgrade with the Dauntless you know it's a serious piece of kit and certainly keeps with the theme of the Hope and Fear episode. If you're in danger of heavy damage this tech allows you to step out of the game and then go back onto the board out of range of any other ship. It is a discard and doesn't rid you of auxiliary power tokens but might allow you to regroup especially if coupled with Particle Synthesis which allows one hull damage or up to two shields to be repaired if you disable the card and discard one of your tech upgrades.Probably an essential for the ship and one that can only be used on a Dauntless Class vessel. I'll certainly be sticking that in my selection. 

Rounding out the tech options is Force Field giving players the chance to defend against an enemy attempting to disable or discard one of your upgrades. It can be used at the cost of additional five SP on another vessel type but most players will keep it on the Dauntless and avoid that waste. 

Just so you don't feel short changed on the options here you do get two new Elite Actions. Emergency Shutdown is neat for a discard to allow you to ignore your chosen maneuver and stay still at the cost of your round. It's OK but Lure is pure genius and one that I've heard a lot of players out there wanting to use in various combinations as it lets you change an enemy ship out of your range and change their chosen maneuver. It will backfire on you if that move takes them off the board or into a collision. In a one-on-one scenario you'll be lucky to get the chance to use this unless your opponent is super-slow but it means you could drag that ship into range and then hit it with an attack from yourself or another ship in your fleet or push it away to buy some regeneration time. Combine it with Quantum Slipstream Drive and Particle Synthesis and you could be back to full strength pretty quick.

The season four finale also provides the scenario for the pack named Revenge which I have actually played (yay!). A straight-up chase to Borg space the Federation player must save two crew from the Dauntless before it's too late. I chose Voyager and stuck Janeway, Seven and Harry Kim onboard. You do need a quick ship to keep up with the Dauntless but nothing that has a hull value higher than a four - hence my choice which it kinda indicates you should use since you also can't have any upgrades of five SP or higher. A nice introductory mission where you can play about with upgrade combos and also change the distance you have to cover to Borg space which will increase or decrease the difficulty of the game. 

You can also see this ship reviewed over on our YouTube channel now.

This ship has made me consider switching my fleet plans from Federation (good starter for anyone) over to the Independents. While they are last on the initiative scale, there is some serious hardware available and much less leaning on the crew upgrades bag which has made me think a little more about how to create an effective fleet. Think it's also pushing me to purchase either the Borg Soong, Vidiian Fina Prime or the Hirogen Hunter.

Second into the line of fire is the Ferengi Marauder, the Kreechta. Whoopy! For those of us who can't get to competitions it's the first retail release for the big-eared latinum lovers and will soon be followed by the Quark's Treasure which I suspect will include Quark, Rom, Nog and Odo as your crew and captain options. It also looks damn tiny. Anyway, drifting here. 

The Kreechta unique named ship costs a few points less than the Dauntless (26 versus 22) but not having a huge number of ships to pick from does mean it may be sitting in your storage box for a few months waiting for some friends if you're a Faction Pure kinda player. If not then it's a low cost option that's certainly a little cheeky. If you choose the generic Marauder you will lose a shield and a tech upgrade as well as the unique action as always.

Foregoing Battle Stations, you only get three options with the ship - Evade, Target Lock and Scan and it does give a slight nod to the Ferengi's less than combative nature. She also lets you re-roll the number of dice up to the amount of damaged shields (if applicable) on your opponent's vessel during the Modify Attack Dice step. Seeing as the Kreechta only has one defence die, knocking the opposition down quickly is going to be a good option here.

The Marauder does have four hull and three shields to remove before she's eliminated with a steady three for attack and your options aren't quite as limiting as the tech-heavy Dauntless we've already looked over. She's also no slouch with the reverse maneuver giving you the chance for a sly escape and hard turns at both speeds two and three giving you good opportunity to evade any hard action. 

For one there's also three captain options; one being the generic zero SP-er and then too low skill choices of Bractor who lets you add an extra attack die if you're attacking a ship with an auxiliary power token and Tarr who gives you a better chance to survive an attack from a ship coming at you in your forward firing arc by popping on a Battle Stations token and not using your Action. Tarr is certainly a useful defensive option but Bractor is a little too situational for me and not something you're going to see very often I suspect. Nice cock-up by WizKids in using a picture of Letek from The Last Outpost rather than Tarr for his card. Probably just so they could have Armin Shimerman show up twice.

There are two weapon upgrades available to your Ferengi brethren in the form of the almost always present Photon Torpedoes which work in exactly the same way as they always do but here they do mean you are gaining an extra two attack die which is a big jump for such a vessel. Missile Launchers is perhaps more useful letting your ship punch out two attacks from its forward firing arc  with critical results going straight to the hull. A big upgrade this one even though it costs less than the torpedoes there's something a lot more agile about it.

Your one crew upgrade comes in the form of a rather slimy little weasel of a Tactical Officer  whose ability lets you perform a three or four forward maneuver at the end of the Activation Phase. Certainly a benefit to either put you close to a target and pound them with a target lock and Missile Launcher or get the hell out of there before you end up as a debris field. Slimy yes, arse saving; absolutely.

Three tech upgrades have your interests covered and let's take Maximum Shields first. I reckon this could be good alongside that Tactical Officer as you can add two more shields onto your ship which will soak up damage but are only available for one round as they have to be removed in the End Phase and this is a discard not a disable. Ferengi Probe offers a "jackpot"-esque double bubble on your combat range bonuses if you chose to scan as your Action so that could - as I understand it - mean more dice at range one and less at range three? If I'm wrong here, please let me know but I think that sounds about right...?!

Both that and EM Pulse come with their own reminder tokens for your game with the latter letting you drop an auxiliary power token onto a ship within range one/two that's not in your forward arc and also forces it to use two less attack die in the round. Further proof right there that the Marauder is a ship worth dropping into a fleet just to mess up the opposition tactics and play around with their attack and defence rolls if nothing else.

Closing out the options with the Kreechta we have two Elite Actions. The less expensive is Marauder giving you Battle Stations as a free action only for a Ferengi ship with a Ferengi Captain. Very generic and I'm sure I've seen something very familiar in other expansions. The one which is more useful is Acquisition which allows you to discard the card and steal a non-Borg or weapons upgrade from an uncloaked and un-shielded ship at range 1-2. Nice because you can have anything even if it exceeds ship restrictions and there's no specification that it has to be an enemy ship so you could effectively trade upgrades between your fleet (Ferengi only ships can carry the card though).

The mission included in the pack follows the overall theme of The Next Generation's second season episode Peak Performance in that your Ferengi Marauder takes on two Federation ships which are unprepared for its attack. As the Ferengi commander you have twelve rounds before the Federation ships' weapons come back on line to take the opposition out. Should be a synch. Not tried this one yet but I think it'll be a lot of fun to try the odds. You can check out the vid on the Kreechta here.

Finally there's the USS Pasteur - a Starfleet ship! Yep - but here that's totally ignored and she's firmly added to the ranks of the Mirror/Alternative Universe faction. Why this couldn't have had a dual faction option as with the Soong Borg ship or the Krenim Time Ship I'm a bit puzzled because a lot of fans will want to play this as part of their Starfleet squad.

If you're a fan of mix-and-match it won't matter too much as you're going to be more interested what the benefits of using her will be. Tactically the Pasteur is a nippy little thing with a forward of six and a reverse of one plus some hard right and left turns at speed three. While the Marauder has a fair spread of stats across attack as well as hull and shields, the Olympic Class medical ship is limited in its offensive capabilities out of the box with some sturdy basics to keep her in the action for some time. Unusually she also loses Target Lock as an Action, has no weapon upgrade slots and has just two crew and two tech slots available for personalisation.

So to the pack and once we discount Captain Generic there are three new options. First you have Beverly Crusher. In All Good Things... she is referred to as Beverly Picard but I can understand that keeping the Crusher surname will stop players from having two versions of her. Although, with this being the mirror version that might not even be a consideration as you can field a Prime and Mirror version of the same character in the same fleet.

Beverly takes advantage of your green maneuvers in that if you use one you can convert a Battle Stations into an Evade should you need to defend - and you'll be doing a lot of that given your fairly decent hull and shield values versus your poor number of die for repressing attacks.

The only actual captain in the pack, Crusher comes with the lowest skill of five with Worf fielding a six and Riker a seven. Why we get Worf as a captain I'm still wondering but he does make your attack and defence a little more impressive for the sake of an auxiliary power token and he doesn't need discarding or disabling to use.

However, he does cost the same as William T Riker who gives you one more Captain Skill point. The future Riker gives you a Scan token and then either Evade or Battle Stations as a free action. This captain can also be flipped to act as your fleet Admiral allowing other ships on your team to benefit from his action.

Two new crew join your ranks here with the Parallels version of Alyssa Ogawa letting you remove a disabled upgrade token and then perform the Scan or Evade actions for free. Nor does she need to be disabled to do so which means this card could be invaluable. Cleverly you can't re-enable any weapons upgrades with this one. Secondly there's Nell Chilton who was the helm officer for the Pasteur in All Good Things... . Her action gives you the chance to escape with a green maneuver if you suffer one hull damage. This does recognise the rather fragile nature of the Pasteur and the likelihood that she'll be an opponent's first target.

One option for tech upgrades here is the Impulse Drive. At first it seems a bit "meh" however on closer inspection it does mean you can perform those red right and left moves and not receive an auxiliary power token and if you choose a white maneuver at speeds one, two or three they act as a green maneuver. Good choice to make this a disable rather than a discard so you can keep on using it making the Pasteur super-nimble.

The other tech choice comes directly from The Next Generation's finale in the form of the Inverse Tachyon Pulse which forces your opponent to defend with one less die should you have the Scan token active. Not too bad and probably more effective against smaller ships than your 30 or 40 pointers which will still have a chance to cancel out your minimal hits.

The Pasteur does seem a bit of a lame duck if I'm honest with low costs and fairly low return. Potentially this is going to be your first ship to go boom given her light armament and low to medium defensive capability. Her saving grace is the movement but I wouldn't want to rely on that too much if you last to the later stages of a game. Continuing this sense of avoiding doom is the Elite Action, Yellow Alert. While not important enough for a Red Alert, the Pasteur can discard this card and drop an Evade or Battle Stations token next to the ship even if there's one already there. Effectively it's a free action but one that might help cover your retreat. Starfleet Intelligence allows you to re-roll either any number of attacking or defending die at the cost of the card and it just doesn't get me away from the sense that this pack is all about covering yourself from damage.

Not a bad thing as there are ships which will provide you with ample attacking ability and it's nice for a switch to one which isn't weapons reliant but I still have that nagging feeling this is cannon fodder from the first move.

Finally, if you're looking to test out your medical ship before taking her into a more competitive situation, try out the Anti-Time Eruption scenario. Using the Pasteur and A. N. Other ship you get to take on two Klingon ships in a 70 point squadron with your second ship slightly delayed on arrival a la USS Enterprise-D from the finale. The overall idea is for your Mirror/Federation fleet to establish a tricky static warp shell while repelling those grumpy future Klingons with the whole game timed to six rounds. A dangerous mission? Given the stats on the Pasteur absolutely and one that will get players thinking about best tactics.

OK, an interesting trio of lighter ships this month. No 30+ pointers and certainly each with its own specific theme be it  tech, defence or evasion in the case of the Marauder. Would I play them? Yes to the Dauntless without question and would use a lot of the upgrades she comes with. Just need to add a ship or two to my independents! The Pasteur is a possible if I went Mirror Universe but I wouldn't be jumping to select her. With the Ferengi it's going to be a wait and see what comes with the Quark's Treasure and beyond. My biggest disappointment is that with the arrival of future Riker and future Worf we may not see the triple-engined Enterprise-D in this series. However...we still have Picard, Data and Geordi to mine if it does happen.

Wave 16 is available right now from numerous retailers but what's your take on these new ships? Are they worth adding into your fleet?

Like our page on Facebook 

Follow us on Twitter

+1 us on Google+

Add us on Tumblr

Add to to conversation on Star Trek: Risa

Don't forget we're also live on YOUTUBE now with selected reviews and articles to complement this site including Wave 16!

Profit and Pace

Opinions are certainly split down the middle with the Eaglemoss Official Starships Collection as it nears 18 months since it's arrival on UK shores.

Issues 16 and 17 were previewed on startrek.com recently but now we can give an even better evaluation of the crab-shaped hull of the Ferengi Marauder and the sleek lines of the USS Dauntless.

The Marauder is not one on my Must Have List but the result from Eaglemoss is actually pretty decent. The mold is good and the hull nicely detailed even to the level that the underside has the imprint of the shuttlecraft conceived back in the early days of The Next Generation. This is a good contrast against the poor belly detail on the Bird-of-Prey from Issue Three so it gets a big thumbs up from us here. Colour-wise there is a whitened/dusty effect to the rear of the cargo hull that doesn't appear on the preview images you might have already seen. Not a big complaint but it does show that these models are being updated even up to publication.

The hull colour and markings have been painted excellently although there does seem to be some detail discrepancy between the illustration in the magazine, particularly around the impulse engines when compared to the rear of the model. I suspect this was fiddly to sculpt hence its "omission" from the lower, plastic hull. Oddly the ventral view of the Marauder is very sparce in detail compared to the model itself. The display stand is another car-crash disaster if you follow the magazine's display instructions and reminded me straight away of the instability experienced with the Romulan Warbird from Issue Five. Slip the clear clip around the front section rather than the rear and it's a lot more stable. 

The Marauder might not be the most often seen starship in the franchise but it's one that couldn't be missed. I would have hoped however that the underside of this model had received the same detailed treatment as the metal upper section. It is perhaps one for the completists rather than the casual fan.

The accompanying magazine does provide some, brief, history to the craft but is more focused on the Ferengi. Significantly for a race that appeared in every generation except The Original Series and the movies, this is their only entry into the collection and as such there's quite a bit to get covered in just 16 short pages. Creation of their look, the change in their motives and characterisation are all here but there's nothing new to add to what fans will already know about the profit-hunting Ferengi that hasn't already been written elsewhere.

That's also the line that we can level at the USS Dauntless which arrives in Issue 17. Hands down I love this ship; all seven decks of her. The design is a classic and while not officially a Starfleet vessel there's hints of what might be in those sleek, bullet-like lines. Damn cool.

If you're familiar with the 1990's book Star Trek Action! then the design history of the Dauntless will be worth a skim read at best. For a ship that appeared in a single episode there isn't going to be much more to add and the content here is just the same as I read all those years back. If you get a chance, it's a good book to get if you can find it (minor plug).

The curve ball in the magazine is that we get a line on the creation of Seven of Nine and the difficulties of that silver catsuit that was just about everywhere you looked when her arrival was announced for Scorpion, Part II. OK, I have to say that some of the tidbits here were interesting and I didn't know a lot about the costume design or the thought processes behind her introduction to Voyager. It's perhaps more of a draw than the details on the ship itself and that troubles me.

While this makes a fascinating read, it does blow a huge hole in the Eaglemoss Starships Collection mission perhaps - it's about the ships not the characters and having a significant section dedicated to a main character wasn't what I expected. It also emphasises how little information there is on the Dauntless in the first place. Mind you, the Seven of Nine story does nicely tie into the episode Hope and Fear which rounds out her integration/origins story started at the beginning of the same year. 

For those of you that are passing fans and liked the ship in it's sole outing you won't be disappointed with this literary addition to your Collection library. Certainly even for the most ardent of fans it'll give you a nice easy to flick-thorough reference point.

Enough about the magazine; let's talk ships. I am massively jaded by Hope and Fear being one of my favourite Voyager episodes. The whole concept of a way home that turns out to be a total load of bull just to get revenge is great and I fell in love with the "alternate" Starfleet designs we see implemented on the bridge and throughout the Dauntless in an instant.


Sadly Eaglemoss won't be providing us with replicas of the interiors (future series perhaps...) but what we do get is the tightly packaged hull and nacelles of the faux-Starfleet ship. Admittedly missing the USS Dauntless moniker across her back end (which is shown on page two of the magazine) I am still giving the result a solid thumbs up. The upper hull alone is in metal this time with the lower hull (incorporating the blue light of the quantum slipstream drive) and the nacelles are rendered in plastic.


One complaint is that the blue strip on the outside of the nacelle isn't flush and I've caught my thumb a couple of times on it (awwwww). No blood drawn but it's annoying and sends a shiver down my back every time! Also there's a bit of sloppy painting on the outer edge of the primary hull where some darker grey has flaked into the lighter grey of the hull - is demand causing issues of accuracy? Well one of my other colleagues also received Dauntless this week and wasn't thrilled that it seemed to be badly fitted together. 

Their concerns over the maintenance of quality in the collection was the first topic of our conversation. So, Eaglemoss, please take note that some of these ships are getting to collectors in the less than perfect condition that we were seeing with the earlier issues. However, it's not all doom and gloom as the paint job is excellent, harking back to the aztec schemes we saw on the Enterprise NX-01. The hull detail too is great to examine, showing up all the lifeboat hatches, panelling and windows which is mainly thanks to the size of the ship in the first place.

It's a great recreation of the ship and I'm very pleased that it's come out well considering how much I was looking forward to this one. It hasn't disappointed and I feel in some ways relived and not as apprehensive looking ahead to the Enterprise-E and Prometheus for example. There were a lot of rumblings about the quality and while, yes, there are some slight missteps overall (and considering demand) the results are still good.  Overall? Two nice additions and a great effort although neither is a patch on the detail and quality of the NX-01. That is still the firm benchmark and the challenge has to be laid down for Eaglemoss to rise to it and hit that mark once again. 

Next month's issues feature the Bajoran Solar Sailor from Deep Space Nine's Explorers and the USS Stargazer fromThe Next Generation's The Battle. Both are single episode vessels (although the Constellation class was reused in other episodes) and again it might be a challenge to fill the accompanying 16 pages. In some respects though it's not a bad thing that we're left in suspense as to how the content will be made up beyond designing the ships. Bajoran mysticism? The Emissary? More on the Ferengi or perhaps the Picard Maneuver? We wait to see.

The Eaglemoss Official Starships Collection is available from newsagents priced £9.99 (UK) every fortnight. You can also subscribe by clicking on the link in the sidebar and head there now to secure your ships.

Did you know you can now join up with us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter or even +1 us on Google+? If you didn't why not drop over there now!

All model images supplied by +Hayley Atherton 

You can also look back through all of our Eaglemoss posts by clicking right HERE

The Finest of the Fleet: The Makings of a Great Starship

Should we rate Starfleets ships by the amount of firepower they pack and how big the explosions they cause are? In my opinion; No. There are better ways to measure a great craft and thanks to reading a recent piece on What Culture, I think I'll take up the challenge and have a look...

The article in question, while massively overusing the word "badass" did make me think of a couple of things as I clicked through the pages. While I have mixed feelings about the choices on the list, it got me thinking about what makes a great starship? Is actually being "badass" such a great thing when referring to Star Trek which, fundamentally, is supposed to be about exploration, seeking out new life and boldly splitting infinitives for five years (or three if you get axed)?

What makes a starship something that you look forward to seeing on the screen in an episode or a movie? Is it firepower that makes them memorable or is it something they did or were involved with that makes them simply awesome.  I've run down some examples to help me along the way to see if we can access the greatest starships in the history of the Federation (that we know of).

Straight away lets get back to our roots as there can be only one "great" design if we're honest with ourselves. That honour has to go to the original Matt Jeffries designed Constitution Class vessel that took the crew through 79 episodes of The Original Series. It's the design that influenced everything after it. The basic principles would be revamped in the movie era Enterprise as well as the later Excelsior, Ambassador and Sovereign Classes, to some degree the Galaxy Class and even in the style that formed the basis of the USS Vengeance in Star Trek Into Darkness. Of course JJ Abrams would have the original updated as the central vessel for the 2009 reboot just for good measure proving just how important that style was to the franchise.

It's a brilliant concept that also brought about the transporter to avoid landing her among other things. It was the backbone of Starfleet throughout The Original Series (namely because it cost less to reuse the model or buy kits from AMT) and survived a few fairly lethal encounters. Whatever generation of Star Trek we're watching there's always something in the styling of a Starfleet vessel that brings you back to the beginning. Impressively the upgrade that the class received in the movies made it even better many would argue, confronting even more serious threats from the Reliant and Khan and later a cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey. Inside the style of the bridge reflected the slightly militaristic direction of The Original Series and the films where reds and whites were replaced with metallics and greys - with the exception of Star Trek V which looked as though the Enterprise had jumped about 75 years of decorating evolution. A true classic and an icon of science fiction. There's one in the fleet museum y'know (Relics) so it must be important!

While it is physically similar, the Excelsior Class we first saw ready for field tests in The Search for Spock is truly one of the landmarks of the whole of the franchise. While the Constitution Class bowed out in The Undiscovered Country "The Great Experiment" would become the 24th Century workhorse as the Constitution Class had in the 23rd. It would show up in numerous episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine as well as three movie appearances. The last of these, with some additional bodywork, would be as the Enterprise-B. Altered so as not to damage the fabric of the original Excelsior model, this silhouette would  only appear again in the Deep Space Nine episode Paradise Lost as the USS Lakota. 

Minus the controversial transwarp drive it turned out to be a pretty decent starship and hinted at the shapes of things to come with its larger, more streamlined hull and advances in technology. In her day the Excelsior Class was the sign of the future and the first in the chain to link the designs of The Next Generation to The Original Series.

Staying with a theme, the Enterprise-D chalks up on my list not because of its design but because of its purpose. The shape of the ship harks back to the classic saucer, secondary hull and nacelles that both the Excelsior and Constitution classes displayed but they were flying in more hostile times when the threat from the Klingon Empire and other species was a lot more severe. Times changed and the Galaxy Class reflected this. The smoothed styling belayed a certain calmness in the fleet but inside was the clear distinction that made this a seminal Starfleet craft. Reflecting the more explorative and apparently less dangerous nature of The Next Generation, families were now onboard and the ship was designed around more luxurious desires and requirements. Effectively a spacebourne city where its crew wanted for nothing it mirrored the time in which it was designed in the real world - the 1980's and the affluence of the period. Fitting that it's replacement would be a much more compact battleship as the 1990's evolved and in the Star Trek universe the threats that appeared to have faded away returned and new ones arrived. 

The Galaxy Class was limited in numbers. According to early reports and the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual there were only six constructed but over the years we would see more than that number in the battle scenes of Deep Space Nine alone. To date we've seen Enterprise, Yamato, Odyssey, Venture, Challenger (Timeless) and there must be a Galaxy somewhere. According to Memory-Alpha there are 10 Galaxy Class ships in the battle to retake Deep Space Nine featured in Sacrifice of Angels which suggests the initial six were supplemented at some point with another batch of at least seven. Looking back, the class was far from perfect, suffering shield failures, dodgy holodecks, warp core breaches and three of the class ended up destroyed in the space of seven years - and if it was such a safe universe with a ship for exploration filled with husbands, wives and children for the long journey ahead why would you need to make it separate in two and have a Battle Bridge? Would you want your kids on here given the safety record?! 

Anyway, it seems that the realisation that families in space was not a good idea with the Galaxy Class vessels used to act as lead ships for battle groups in the Dominion War. This belays that they could easily be switched to different roles however their styling continued to announce that this was not their best suitability. A factor that the Sovereign Class clearly mirrored in its more military, minimalist, family-free concept. The reason for omitting that class? It's an evolution of form and also the Sovereign Class never really had anything unique about it in the big scheme of things - and can you recall ever seeing a second ship of this class on the screen?

The Constitution Class is a great because of its classic and influential design, Galaxy Class opened up the path to long exploratory missions but if we were to look back at the blog which inspired this piece, I would have to agree that the USS Defiant is definitely a "badass" - and I promise that's the last time I'll use that word here. Simply an awesome ship that went against every single concept of design and form that the Enterprise of the original show had laid down and started from scratch. It was compact, heavily armoured, fast, overgunned and overpowered and built for war. Cleverly a line of dialogue in The Search, Part I covered that minor issue, noting that the Defiant had been built to counter the Borg threat and had been mothballed once it had passed. It's firepower was soon on show and totally different to anything before. 

The phasers punched holes in the opposition from the first time she decloaked in anger and the Defiant also received quantum torpedoes to deal with whatever came in its way. There would be at least two other escort-class vessels seen in Deep Space Nine - the Valiant and the Sao Paulo which would be renamed as the Defiant when the original was destroyed by the Breen. It came close to an equally strong pummelling at the only encounter it ever had with the enemy it was designed to beat - the Borg. For me this is one of the ultimate starship classes. Unique, unusual and one of the selling points that made the third Star Trek series a cut above.

If we're sticking with unique, the USS Prometheus was certainly that. Featuring in just one episode of Voyager and also glimpsed in the final shot of the final episode of the final season of the same show, I would add it to the list of great starships because, like the Defiant, it pushed the boundaries. The quad-engines were nothing new because we'd seen them before on the Stargazer in The Battle during The Next Generation's first season and neither was the more elongated shape. Aside from the fact it managed to get stolen by the Romulans it's the only Starfleet ship that can split into three distinct vessels during Multi-Vector Assault Mode. The Enterprise-D could separate into a battle section and a saucer section lifeboat but these three ships were all controlled from the bridge of the primary hull. The bridge was somewhat spartan in comparison to other Starfleet vessels but additional sets were never the most detailed or "crewed" during the TV shows. The fact Message in a Bottle was one of the finest Voyager episodes certainly helped ensure that this would be a highly memorable ship that remains utterly unique across over 700 episodes. 

Talking of Voyager I begrudgingly have to add it to this list of the best starships in Star Trek's history. Why? It adapted. Over the seven seasons the Intrepid Class ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant it underwent some serious modifications, gained a super-shuttle and got blown to smithereens more than once. Let's not forget that Voyager was a test bed for a lot of new technology including bio-neural gel packs, variable geometry (folding) warp engines which, apparently, meant that it could get away with going above that clumsy, plot-killing Warp Five Speed Limit and received the odd Borg upgrade along the way. Not only did the ship end up with Borg alcoves in a cargo bay but also used the technology to develop an astrometrics lab. The ultimate upgrade however had to be the ablative armour and transphasic torpedoes she received in Endgame. 

Small she may have been but Voyager did well to survive seven years in the wilderness and encountered situations that even a Galaxy or Sovereign Class ship might have cowered at. Add to that time travelling  the odd fleet of Borg cubes, being stolen or boarded and even facing off against another similar Starfleet vessel, the Equinox. Voyager actually hints at the future designs of Starfleet vessels (which the Equinox and Enterprise-E also indicate) - more compact, efficient, saucer and secondary hull directly connected without the "neck" section. Certainly more sleek than its predecessors but still able to pack a punch the Intrepid Class . Also it had the neat trick of being able to land which almost trumps the ability to separate into lots of bits. For adaptability there can be no question that this class and one lone ship in particular easily win. They probably also win the award for losing the most shuttlecraft ever.

So there we have a fairer selection perhaps - a legendary design, the workhorse of the fleet, the explorer, the warship the one-of-a-kind and the Boy Scout starship. Each includes features which mark it out against the rest and also are present in many respects in later vessels - especially in the form of the Constitution Class. These vessels in my opinion are the best examples of Starfleet design and operation across the whole franchise. I had considered adding the Steamrunner Class in here just because from a design point of view it's a complete break from anything else. No other ship even comes close to its design but aside from that and appearing in a few battles in the background it's not made its mark. Surprised I didn't include the NX-01? While it was "the first" it's design in the Real World was due to the nature of the original Enterprise of Kirk's era and therefore I skipped it. Sorry if you were looking for it!

I would have liked to include the Dauntless due to its quantum slipstream drive and just cool design but that wasn't really a Starfleet vessel (grrr) although it pretended to be. The Vengeance was a beast in every sense of the word and considering how much it was lauded it lasted barely an hour of screen time before taking a plunge to Earth. That's not good in terms of future development!

Again though you can see the design links which would "suggest" the Starfleet heritage of the Dauntless in her lines and even while stupidly big, angular and overgunned, the Vengeance is merely an adaptation of the alternative universe rethink of the original Constitution Class design. In comparison to the ships on the blog that inspired me, I think this is a better reflection of abilities, function and style rather than focusing solely on how much firepower a ship has which was not the point of Star Trek. Hopefully I have provided a good range of the "greats" and why they stand out above the rest.

So is there a class or ship I've missed that had a big impact on the Star Trek universe and deserves a place here? Is there one I've missed or is this a fair reflection on the various incarnations of the franchise?