Star Trek : Attack Wing - Unboxing and Review

I was recently introduced to Star Trek : Attack Wing by a friend of mine after a conversation about space combat games and the lack thereof...or should I say the lack of ones that are either any good or are still actually supported by their manufacturers...

The fact that you don't (in theory*) have to paint the models or assemble them (other than attaching them to a flight stand) was also an appeal.

*We'll discuss the quality of the painting in a bit...

The game also uses Fantasy Flight Games's 'Flight path' system used by their own Star Wars : X-Wing game so that aspect of the game-play has already been tested thoroughly.

A brief introduction to the game itself can be found here.

The starter set comes with everything you need to play the game itself with three ships (Federation, Romulan and Klingon) so you can have a basic game straight away for 2-3 people though more ships are definitely needed should you want to play at the usual points value of a 100. You also get a number of upgrade cards for each faction allowing you to use the ship as a named version or a more generic one so if you have 2 Galaxy class ships one can be the Enterprise and the other an 'ordinary one'. This same concept is used by the expansion packs as well so though you might (for example) buy yourself the USS Reliant you could also use it as a standard Miranda class vessel. The named versions usually have a statistic that's one higher than the normal version and a special ability of some kind.

Anyway...as I said earlier the game contains everything you need to start playing including instructions, ships, upgrade and damage cards, tokens, markers and all the templates you need to use the 'Flight path' system.

There is a 'quick start' guide...

As well as a full instruction booklet. I've included a few sample pages here as I doubt Wizkids would be particularly happy with me showing the whole thing...

Lets look at the other bits and pieces then (we'll have a proper look at the ships in a moment).

The templates, tokens and ship manoeuvre dials all come in sturdy cardboard that needs to be pushed out from a sheet. These are double sided so I've shown pictures of both sides.

 Here are the ship and upgrade cards divided by faction.

As well as damage cards. These are used to mark how much damage your ships hulls have taken as well as marking any critical damage that may have occurred so will be by your ships stat card either text up or text down.

All the cards are of a decent quality and the cardboard counters are sturdy enough. The ships themselves are also of decent quality though in some cases the paint-job leaves something to be desired...

Here's them on their flight stands.

The clear flat piece at the bottom of the stand holds the ships information while the slots in front and behind the flight stand hold a piece indicating the captain of the vessel. Most people I know tend to re-paint their ships to a higher standard but some don't bother. If you're planning to enter tournaments with your fleet though it's worth checking with the organiser as some 'official' events don't allow ships that you've messed about with, lol. Even if you've improved them.

So in the above picture we have the I.K.S. Maht-h'a (A Vorcha class Klingon vessel) being commanded by Captain Nu'Daq. As the vessel is a named one it has one more shield than a standard version as well as having it's own special ability. The captain also has a special ability of his own though each ship usually comes with at least one 'generic' captain who costs you no points but has no special abilities and a low captain skill (the number in the bottom left hand corner of his stat card).

For those of you who are interested in the game then there's an introduction to the game that can be found here as well as containing some useful links at the bottom.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.