Any Romulan love?

[Totenkopf]

Haven't seen too many people running Romulans or talking about Romulans...so what's up guys where is the Romulan love?

If I were to play a Romulan fleet, I'd probably go with one that looks like this...

Fasthawk 235
King Eagle 175
2x Skyhawks 260
Snipe 120
2x K5 (?) 210

Lots of cheaper/smaller ships for expendable/init sinks. I like the Skyhawks because they're pretty solid for the price - TR 3, Agile, 20 shields, 4 Phaser 1s. The Kestrel Frigates are mostly there as sinks/harassment/throw aways. Snipe for a little bit of cheap plasma firepower. The King Eagle for the C 1, and the Fasthawk some a tactic I want to try out.

 

[MarkDawg]

I would think about it but I have not got my squadron boxes for feds and klinks yet so no romulans just yet. I do want to play them and stab people in the back with some plasma torps.

 

[Totenkopf]

I would think about it but I have not got my squadron boxes for feds and klinks yet so no romulans just yet. I do want to play them and stab people in the back with some plasma torps.

Let me know what you decide on, my one observation is that Romulan ships are good BUT expensive, so you can easily and frequently find yourself outnumbered.

 

[Flippy]

I've been playing romulans and loving it... though they're certainly not an easy race to play, nor am I a great player.

A couple of pointers. You can control the flow, sometimes the mere threat of plasma is enough to dictate where the enemy moves. Sometimes this can be more effective than firing the plasma itself.

You're knife fighters. If you're firing plasma beyond 8" you better have a good reason.

It's all about the alpha strike. Plasma's can be quickly weakened by phasers and low rolls can ruin your day. Both these problems can be solved by throwing more plasma at them (overwealm their phasers, larger dice pools are more likely to tend towards the average).

Ship wise I'd say the Snipe is a suprisingly strong ship. Conversely the War Eagle is... questionable. It's 20 points more than the Snipe, but turns slower, isn't agile and Under-Powered means it's arguably more fragile. It's only advantage is range, but see my previous comment about firing beyond 8".

Basically anything with command +1 is good. A fair few Rommie ships are glass cannons so you're going to want the initiative. The King Eagle is nice and cheap but I like to take the KCR since it has a fairly terrfying array of plasma. The one exception to this is the Condor.

Lumbering and Turn 9 are not condusive to getting things within your front arc and less that 8 away. It also means you can't turn while cloaked without coming to a full stop. These tend to severly limit the Condor's effectiveness.

 

[Spence]

I am playing Klinks but my opponent at my FLGS plays Roms. We haven't been able to play since last time, schedules and work seems to interfere with things. But Roms are very interesting to play against. I got my err.. handed to me by them :wink: But I have been thinking and I believe Dan will get a surprise next time :mrgreen:

 

[Nerroth]

One thing I wonder is how differently "pure" fleets of one particular series of Romulan ships (Eagle, Kestrel, or Hawk) might fly; both relative to each other, or to a more mixed fforce drawing from all three types of ship?

 

[Totenkopf]

I am playing Klinks but my opponent at my FLGS plays Roms. We haven't been able to play since last time, schedules and work seems to interfere with things. But Roms are very interesting to play against. I got my err.. handed to me by them :wink: But I have been thinking and I believe Dan will get a surprise next time :mrgreen:

What ships did he run against you?

 

[Totenkopf]

One thing I wonder is how differently "pure" fleets of one particular series of Romulan ships (Eagle, Kestrel, or Hawk) might fly; both relative to each other, or to a more mixed fforce drawing from all three types of ship?

To be honest I don't think "pure" fleets will for the same reason incest does not work, you're doubling down on all the weaknesses of each series. The Eagles are cheap but have horrible damage, mediocre Phasers, and Gorn-like nimbleness. The Kestrel series is a good in-between choice and offers you extremely cheap (for Romulans) ships, or one of the best Dreadnaughts in the game (and a point cost that reflects this). The Hawk series are solid ships that you could probably run by themselves except for one thing; they're too expensive.

 

[Captain Jonah]

One thing I wonder is how differently "pure" fleets of one particular series of Romulan ships (Eagle, Kestrel, or Hawk) might fly; both relative to each other, or to a more mixed fforce drawing from all three types of ship?

To be honest I don't think "pure" fleets will for the same reason incest does not work, you're doubling down on all the weaknesses of each series. The Eagles are cheap but have horrible damage, mediocre Phasers, and Gorn-like nimbleness. The Kestrel series is a good in-between choice and offers you extremely cheap (for Romulans) ships, or one of the best Dreadnaughts in the game (and a point cost that reflects this). The Hawk series are solid ships that you could probably run by themselves except for one thing; they're too expensive.

Yep.

I was thinking of "themed" era fleets with a small fleet of just early ships but as you say that means every ship has the same disadvantages. I may still try an Early squadron based around a king eagle as a sort of battle group from the most distance and peacefull border dragged back to fight sort of thing.

 

[Flippy]

To be honest I don't think "pure" fleets will for the same reason incest does not work, you're doubling down on all the weaknesses of each series. The Eagles are cheap but have horrible damage, mediocre Phasers, and Gorn-like nimbleness. The Kestrel series is a good in-between choice and offers you extremely cheap (for Romulans) ships, or one of the best Dreadnaughts in the game (and a point cost that reflects this). The Hawk series are solid ships that you could probably run by themselves except for one thing; they're too expensive.

I'm gonna both agree and disagree with Totenkopf here. Obviously, mixed-force, covering your weaknesses and all that is strong I think there's some milage in themed lists (always fun).

With Eagles the King Eagle is cheap enough that you can double up, and the series as a whole has a fearsome damage output. Take your preferred mix of snipes and battle hawks and accept that you'll take horrendous losses; the trick is to make sure you inflice equally horrific losses :lol:

The Hawk's can be expensive, but the SkyHawk and SparrowHawk are cheap enough that as long as you mostly take those your fleet size shouldn't suffer too much... and they're pretty competitive ships to be honest. You're probably only gonna have space for one of the bigger Hawk's, but that's probably always gonna be the case. Sadly I don't have the models or I'd be tempted to try 3x SkyHawks, 2x SparrowHawks, 1 x NovaHawk/RoyalHawk as a list. If anyone wants to play such a list I'd love to hear how it did.

Kestrels may well be the hardest. The KR9C and the KRC are both pretty strong ships, but you're paying for command and they're rugged enough, and expnsive enough, that doubling up is not nescesarily a good idea. The KF5R doesn't bring enough bang to the party for my liking, sure it has the same number of plasma for cheaper than the SkyHawk, but the Hawk backs that up with nearly twice the number of offensive, bleeds-through-shield crit-seeking phasers and is a fair bit more surviable. As for the KR itself, it's not bad, it just seems fragile. Since you're gonna be knife fighting the double front shields aren't as good as they are for the klinks.

Personally I think there's a certain joy of having each gen represented on the table (and it can help you get a handle on what they do). I've got such a list I'm aching to try, so I'll let you know how it pans out.

 

[plutonyum]

Ive been flying Romulans in two campaigns (one R Vs Fed, the other R Vs Fed Vs Kling)
I started out flying only Eagle class ships that what is what you see in ST:O, then spread out to using Hawks as well, and now am thinking that Kestrels are needed as well. subjects that are of note to Romulans: re-cloaking, Drones. the main reasons to recloak as i see it are to: run, reload in safty, and get better positioning and in all cases i have had much better results using stellar debris (particularly orbiting planetoids) so far i have had one ship successfully re-cloak, and reenter the battle. and then there are drones, with cloaking drones are not a major issue until the Romulan fleet chooses to enter the fight, but then the Romulans are quite vulnerable to drones. fighting drone heavy Fed fleets i am often devoting around half of my phasers to shooting down drones, and any round attempting defensive fire is another round not reloading the plasma, re-cloaking means no defensive fire, and while once cloaked you can reload in safety, surviving the cloaking process is often crippling if not fatal.

the Eagle class ships are made out of glass, every point of damage thought the shields is scary because of how light they are on hull, they are primarily plasma delivery systems once they fire that they probably wont last long enough to reload and fire again.

the Hawk class ships can get in a fight and stay in the fight, they have decent phaser loads and decent hulls, even after they deliver there plasma they can stick around with phasers and do it again later. though they pay heavily for this in point cost.

the Kestrels class ships have the Klingon shield that should not be underestimated! i have been neglecting Kestrels because "there Klingon, if i wanted to fly Klingon, id play Klingon" i think this is a bad idea with decent plasma and good staying power if you keep yourself pointed at the enemy, and the cheapest Romulan ship that can be used to bulk up your fleet, they should not be overlooked during fleet selection. also the KCR is the only Romulan with type-D plasma that can be used as anti-drone.

special ships of note:
War Eagles -- with only 1AD more plasma then a Battle Eagle (battle hawk if your picky) and 4 more hull, the same phasers and shields, but under powered. i do not think they are worth the 20 points more. yes a type-R plasma is scary but in that round they fire 3AD less if you count the phasor-1.
King Eagle -- cheapest command+1 ship by 55 points in the Romulan fleet, and plasma to scare anything of equal size, a nice addition when you dont have the points to spring for anything else with command+1
NovaHawk & RoyalHawk -- virtually identical, save 2 front-half type-S plasmas vs 1 front type-R
if you think you will be engaging at 12-16 inches, that looks tempting for the same price 4AD vs 2AD, but why are you shooting that far? and restricting your firing arc from front half to front?
(and then there is the Epanterias-M-class Medium Cruiser and its Epanterias-K Variant that costs 15 points less where the only change is turning 2 front-half type-S plasma torpedoes to 1 type-R plasma without mentioning any restriction to its firing arc...)
KCR Command Cruiser -- expensive, but nice. and the only Romulan ship with the type-D plasma that can be converted to anti-drone

 

[Totenkopf]

Nice review

 

[Keeper Nilbog]

as i intend to pick up small (1000pt :wink: ) fleets for each Empire, though concentrate on my primes (Gorn, ISC - as and When), the Romulan fleet planned is as follows :-

3 x Sky Hawk (have figures for these, and their almost painted) - 390pts
2 x Sparrow Hawk - 350pts
1 x Royal/Nova Hawk - 240pts

6 ships, Fleet total = 980pts.

 

[McKinstry]

We played a 1260 per side Space Control scenario, Feds v Roms. Not a lot of scenery rolled up, 2 dust clouds one corner and a density 10 asteroid field on a center edge. Feds won killing two KR's while barely having any paint scratched.

Feds 1 X BC, 2 X NCA, 2 X DW, 2 X FFB, 2 X FF
Roms 1 X Novahawk, 3 X KR, 5 X KFR

He started fully cloaked. Knowing I was fighting Roms I took a drone heavy fleet. In addition, for the first two turns every Fed ship slowed to 6" and launched suicide shuttles creating essentially a mobile minefield trailing my ships and preventing any quick decloak and dash towards my groups rear.

After turn two the fleet moved up to 12" moves for the next three moves and cut towards one of his flanks occupied by 3 KFR's. They backed up cloaked 4" at a time but the mass of Ph1's was taking a toll and at 6" movement for his cruisers in the center, the KFR's were looking doomed. He tried to decloak early (10") with the cruisers but the plasmas weren't terribly effective and with the drone heavy DW's stashed safely in back of the Fed formation, one KR was smashed and killed each turn in turns 6 and 7.

Observations.
- Drones are a problem that need to be addressed. Even with fleets of 9 ships per side, on a 4 x 6 table with the Roms moving just 6" while cloaked, the Feds could dance enough to stay out of Alpha strike range and an uncloaked Rom at a range between 9-18" resulted in one dead Rom per turn. The suggestion that drones do D3 or D3+1 might be worth a try.
- The giant moving cloud of suicide shuttles was very effective at discomfiting the Rom player but it feels like a cheesey exploit although as best I can tell, is legal. (may need a rule tweak to discourage that exploit?)
- Terrain - certain races such as the Romulans or Gorn do much better with lots of terrain. Possibly assume that whenever on a defensive scenario they get to pick the battlefield and terrain rolls up on a 5 or 6 instead of just a 6?

 

[Totenkopf]

How many games has the Romulan played?

 

[eldiablito]

I've played with my Romulans twice: once against Federation and once against Klingons. In both cases, my foe could anticipate the release of plasmas and were able to move outside of the 8" (in some turns, they were able to completely ignore the firing arc).

My current fleet is using entirely micro-machines so I'm playing with King Eagles, War Eagles and KR Heavy Cruisers. My last game was 850 points (2 King Eagles, 4 KR's). The Federation (1 Burke, 2 Constitution, 2 Kearsage, 1 Kirov), was able to stay in a tight wedge. As my ships approached, they just dropped the occasionally lucky shot on my cloaked vessels. Anyway, when I finally got in close, I decloaked on each of the Kearsages. That's when things went bad; Constitutions and Kirov did a full reverse so that my decloaked vessels were in the front arc. Then, the two Kearsages used all of their phasers to reduce my AD. Finally, the remaining plasmas rolled slightly low for damage. I NEARLY crippled both Kearsages (well, and destroyed the Burke, but that was little consolation)! However, the Federation was able to use their remaining firepower to take out 1 of the KR Heavy Cruisers. Next turn, as I decloaked my King Eagles to finish the job on one of the kearsages, I found drones, phasers AND photon torpedoes from the 2 ALMOST crippled ships destroying one of my King Eagles!!! So, after the second wave firing plasmas, I had taken out 1 Kearsage and 1 Burke, but lost 1 King Eagle and 1 KR. From there, I decloaked and tried to come around, but a 4+ Cloak turned out to be nearly useless (one more KR dead). Now, with 3 ships down versus only 2 down, I tried to come about, but the federation did an APTTE when they knew I could decloak and fire inside of 8". A few turns later, they even set up their last Kearsage as bait to let me destroy their now crippled ship only to take out 2 more KR cruisers. GRRR! I had tried to turn it around but with only 1 King Eagle left and they still had 2 Constitutions and 1 Kriov, it was time to go to warp. I really felt like I was playing against Kirk in "Balance of Terror" as they seemed to know when and where I would show up next. Perhaps, I could blame the slightly lower than average plasma damage, but I honestly think that poor playing and the 6" movement when cloaked really let my opponents know where I WOULD show up.

 

[Totenkopf]

Not to be a dick, good report and I'm glad you had the humility to admit to some poor planning/playing on your part...that said, sounds like you walked into the Federation's trap and played to his/her game plan. What was your game plan? How did you plan on drawing the Federation into plasma range? How was his two ships with turn rating 6 able to do a 180 on you? Did you use terrain to take advantage of your six inch decloak movement to pop out on the other side of a terrain feature unexpectedly? Also, as I theorized at the beginning of the thread, I think the only way to play Romulans effectively is with a properly balanced fleet list that includes KRs, Eagles, and Hawks.

Try the Fasthawk sometime, along with a few Skyhawks, then round out your force with Eagles and KRs. The Skyhawks have good Phaser coverage for the points and good survivability (shields and damage). You can decloak the Hawks at a distance or start them off decloaked behind terrain, maneuver the Hawks towards the enemy but behind your cloaked ships, jump the Fasthawk behind the enemy line with APE when opportune, from there you can either harass their rear while they focus on the rest of your fleet or if they turn to pursue APE away. You could also use the Fasthawk to tractor one of their ships that you want to slam with plasma (40 damage gives the Fasthawk an excellent chance to tractor most smaller ships). Just an idea I was going to try out with Romulans.

 

[McKinstry]

How many games has the Romulan played?

His first game as a Romulan. He had been playing Klingon before and doing well.

 

[Totenkopf]

How many games has the Romulan played?

His first game as a Romulan. He had been playing Klingon before and doing well.

Attribute it to a learning curve?

 

[McKinstry]

How many games has the Romulan played?

His first game as a Romulan. He had been playing Klingon before and doing well.

Attribute it to a learning curve?

Some but it was also my first game fighting against Romulans. He did not roll up much in the way of terrain and as I noted, launching 18 suicide shuttles in the first two turns while he was moving 6" at a crack while cloaked was certainly discomfiting for him. Add in the ability to toss 20 drones a turn at a single ship with no ADD or Plasma D made it a painful game for him and a relatively bloodless game for the Feds.