On admirals and the changing meta.

And so, They are here. An unexpected twist for STAW. I'm talking Admirals, like everyones favorite or infamous Cardassian Dukat!James Tiberious Kirk himself also got the admiral treatment, but I'll go over him in a minute.

What are admirals in STAW? They are, for better sense of the word, additional captains for your ship, they do not take up any slots, but you can only assign one admiral to your fleet at any given time and out of faction costs for them are Tripled!! So, if dukat wants to steal Voyager you're paying 8 points for him.. That's almost the cost of a borg upgrade! You can also assign admirals as normal ship captains.

They have the ability called a Fleet action. One ship in lieu of any other normal actions they can take can choose to use the fleet action if they are within range 1-3 of the ship, so flying in formation is beneficial. This can open up a ton of possibilities, For example, say your Rav laerst is in range to use it's dissipator and you want the follow up attack to do a ton of dice. Use the fleet action as your action and your follow up to the dissipator is 5 dice! That's Koranak territory! Pop a flagship and that's 6 dice.. That's one helluva follow up attack when your opponent doesn't have any shields.

They can also protect your captain from things like Communications failure, and when your captain is not on the ship for any reason, they commandeer the ship and take over. In addition, they add +X to the captain skill of the captain of your ship as well as adding an elite talent slot. So, Damar goes from being a 6 to a 7 all because his "old friend" dukat is standing right next to him!

There are only 2 captains at this present time with more on the way. Federation and Dominion are the first to receive these. Admiral kirk gives any federation captain +2 to their captain skill value, so turning new captain spock from a 6 to an 8 or our old friend sisko into an 8, or hell turning picard up to 11!

So, how does this change the meta? Well, with borg being the key I see these as a huge benefit to running the multiple ship builds. With them being technically captains this means they are safe from assimilation tubes, and as a barrier to anything that might try and disable your captain for any reason.

Being able to have your one ship you need get that extra attack dice or in kirks case being able to disable a critical upgrade at range 1 (his fleet action ability) is amazing! You can be a lot more flexable in your list building and you can almost guarantee that action will go off when you need it. it's a nice little tool in the tool box to have.

I think admirals are a great addition to the game and can add to the game tremendously. Having to choose which dukat to use tho, will be an issue as a dominion player.. but, on my federation fleet, I'm always going to be using Admiral kirk instead of TOS kirk just because he's a lot more flexable.