Star Trek Into the Unknown

31st December 2024

Barry

5 mins

This is something I’ve been waiting to be released for a while. There are only a few Star Trek games that I think captures what happens on the screen really well. One of them is Ascendancy and the other is Star Trek Alliance as mentioned in my previous post.

Attack Wing generally feels awkward due to its lack of scale and strange combos that linger around it that deprive the game of feeling thematic. The models of Attack Wing have improved over the years but they have always dragged that game down visually and placed it clearly second to X-Wing regardless of any other traits the game brings with it. Armada then showed what a game with capital ships would be like further agitating that wound (even if scale isn’t really a thing in Armada).

That’s where this game shines – scaled, beautiful models that rival Armada easily for their detail and the paint jobs exceed anything Wizkids have made to date. The game is set during the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine period of conflict between the Federation and Dominion – similar to Star Trek Alliance. For ships the Federation have the Defiant, Hathaway and the Enterprise while the Dominion have a Jem Hadar Battlecruiser and two Jem Hadar fighters.

The Enterprise-D model is amazing.

I’m not going to go through all the phases of the game, Jim and Mundo worked through the setup and the first few rounds, progressively getting the hang of the actions and skills checks that need to be done. The result is that the game is borrowing from D&D to create stakes with each of the decisions you make. The phases influence the narrative over the course of the game making further influencing what you do next through a combination of the mission setup, and the complication provided for each faction.

It must be said: there is a lot to this game and this was just the introduction.

An imposing looking ship on the table.

That’s not meant to be negative, it’s just extremely front loaded. There’s a lot of iconography and keywords to navigate, skills checks to decipher which is all very different to something that on face value seems comparable to Armada. Managing a ship is exactly that, from your alert status which influences what systems have power (and how much), crew positions around the ship and their abilities. And timing all of these things to get the objective is key.

Mismanaging your crew activation, refresh or position can really set you back – as Jim discovered having moved crew to engineering and the cargo bay, only to realise he only had his nameless Captain on the bridge of the Enterprise to do everything else. This limited him to moving the ship and not much else. The movement is unique, but altogether appropriate to reflect how ships move in the Trek universe, selecting between impulse movements where they can pivot position and move or vice versa. Warp is the opportunity to just get across the board at high speed and get to the objective or into the fight.

How they avoided direct combat I’ll never know…

That brings us to the combat – which is not the sole point of this game but conflict has always been a part of Star Trek. Jim and Mundo somehow avoided a direct fight with their ships but still had to engage in combat over objective points as they sought to take control over planetary systems, but combat appears brutal with ships taking damage and consoles exploding killing crew members.

It’s not really possible to “one shot” a ship the way damage is calculated, and there are no specific combos to be sought – it’s just how effectively you use what you have and with who that matters.

Except for the Jem Hadar fighters, which seem incentivised to ram into the Galaxy Class specifically which is kind of cool. So are torpedoes, which are represented by a token that is actually launched into an area which can create area denial (lest it explode) or force an opponent to move on.

This is only a brief glimpse into Star Trek: Into the Unknown and I’m keen to cover the game more as we get into the campaign that comes with the core set and better understand the nuances of the different ship and crew interactions.

I’m also really excited to see what else is going to be released in the future, as Wizkids have announced other expansions as the rules discuss a lot of different unit types – a lot of which are not present in the core game (that we’ve seen so far) such as specialist ships, creatures, and space stations. The rules also discuss other factions like the Klingons, Romulans, Bajorans and Cardassians – and there could be more given the timeframe the game is set in.

Future expansions (called Exploration Packs) announced include, “Rising Tensions”, “Glory and Zeal”, and “Scars of Occupation”. What’s included in them isn’t yet known though I’m really keen to get my Romulan Warbird in the future – if it fits on the table.

Keep an eye out for the game and give it a go.

Cheers,

Barry