I really like the basic rules for fielding a Zenian League or Alliance of Karak fleet. You have two main options at the moment: field a regular (core) fleet, with the option of taking a few Marauders. Or, field a mixture of races built around a backbone from a single core fleet, and your maximum hand size is reduced by one card to offset the extra flexibility in choosing your list.

Obviously there aren't too many minor race ships available yet (especially for the Zenians), but I've been a bit worried looking over all the new stats. Does anyone else feel that the playtest versions don't seem to fit alongside the ships from the original book?

Most new ships seem to have some combination of better firepower (more dice, more flexible firing arcs or both) or better defences (DR, CR, HP, PD) than their core fleet counterparts. The two RSN ships are fantastic... The escorts cover point defence and boarding support roles, adding 4PD and 2AP each, and can mark targets for their parent ships - the Zenian core fleet escorts really don't compare at all. The Destroyer is a 5HP cruiser with solid firepower at range bands 2, 3 and 4, and the Hidden Killer rule that forces the enemy to close with them.

I like all the new ships - Spartan learned a lot from their earlier sets of rules, and the new ships fill some really interesting roles. I'd rather see the core fleets re-done (the MAR rules alone don't fix the gap) than have the new ships downgraded to match the (fairly plain) core ships.

Hi,

I have extensively playtested the new ship, and many are quite powerful, but with tighter fleet restrictions on "support" fleets, the synergies aren't scary. Check out my analysis on



new ship performances


I played pretty much every single new ship available (at least all the ones who have decent stat lines), comparing them to some of the book ships, Sorylian cruisers as the benchmark for best cruiser, etc, there are only 2-3 ships I think are OP, and like I said earlier the fleet limitations are greater, plus sometimes a particular class has very few good options.

Gaming wise the most powerful way to deploy the new ships is with an "Alliance" fleet, and if you play with cards it has a reduced max hand size and limited fleet MAR to hamstring the "alliance" fleet's ability to cover racial weaknesses.

I am interested in other's experiences.

I hadn't really considered how restrictive the fleet composition %'s are before now - I guess I'm still looking at most ships in isolation (comparing ships or squadrons). That's thread is a great read, though - lots of detail to read through. Thanks for posting the link

Zenian League fleet, start with a Banshee DN + Tactics point.
Removes the downside of the Alliance fleet card hand size and gives you card control over your opponents hand, you will know what they have in their hand almost all the time, removing any real chance of them actually playing key cards because you know what to save counters for.
It also helps that the Banshee isn't that bad statwise and with DR 8 smaller attacks that could normally ping a Large class mostly just bounce off.

For the Relthoza, the alliance fleet MAR of improved torpedoes is at least as good as the hull terare ammo. I'd rather have improved torpedoes than special ammo on the broardsides.

I think the advantage of the allicance fleet is that you can pick a squadron of ships from within the league or other primary race to add colour or potentially fill in holes in your fleet.