SELA’S ROMULANS occupy an interesting position in Star Trek: Away Missions. They are more combat-oriented than the Federation, but more mission-oriented than the Klingons, and outnumber either of them. They are way more subtle and sneaky than the Borg, although they don’t have quite as many characters. They are a great choice if you like a bit of everything in your away team.
Their biggest strengths are their numbers, their technical proficiency, and their ability to gather intel on the opposition and use it against them.
Individually, the Romulans aren’t very powerful, the technicians have a similar profile to a Borg drone with just one Attack dice, two Defence dice, and three Skill dice, but they move twice as fast as the Borg. To offset their fragility, you start the game with five characters: Sela, Taibak — her tough chief security officer, and three technicians. That gives you more actions and more scope to score multiple missions than the opposition. If you do need more combat capability, you can pair up to get the backup bonus dice, making your toughest fighters as good as anything the Federation can put against you and capable of taking on a Klingon (especially if you make sure the odds are stacked in your favour).
Where your Romulans really shine is their technical ability. Not only do they start with three Skill dice, but they all have a range of specialities granting them a bonus die when working on the right types of mission. That’s four dice as a starting point, making them almost certain to pass any sort of skill test, even when challenged by a skilled opponent. This is important as a lot of Romulan missions can be challenged by opposing characters at the right type of terminal, turning the skill test into a form of hacker combat.
Perhaps the best use of this technical proficiency is to gain intel on your opponents. Many of their missions give them intel tokens. You can use these to boost their event cards and you have some permanent events that stay in play and allow you to to pull tricks like extra defence dice whenever you need them. With enough intel and the right cards, you can move your characters where you need them (or move opposing characters right where you want them, or your opponent doesn’t), make deadly attacks, dodge attacks, avoid damage, cancel opposing events, or gain bonus actions. Pull these tricks at the right time, and you can easily foil your opponent’s best laid plans.
At the start of the game, you’ll want to gather as much intel as you can, even at the cost of scoring a few extra points if necessary. Try to get your permanent events out early, and you’ll have plenty of things to spend that intel on, often while gaining additional intel tokens at the same time.
Their biggest weaknesses are that they need to spread out around the ship to find the right terminals to score their missions, and that they are potentially weak in combat.
You can overcome both to a degree with your numbers and clever tricks. Whereas scattering weak characters hither and tither sounds like a recipe for getting picked off one-by-one, your ability to move quickly and avoid attacks using event cards and intel, can keep you safe. Your opponent might have thought they had a perfect shot lined up, until your Romulan ducks out of sight, or distracts them off in another direction. Then, before they can regain their wits, the Romulan moves off to a different terminal to continue their intelligence gathering.
While your default attacks are quite weak, if want to attack with Sela’s crew, you have a bomb and two disruptor rifles in your equipment (along with the disruptor rifle carried by Vox), along with several sneakier attack events. Throw in a Spy Network, an Ambush, and a Calculated Shot, and you have a very deadly attack, capable of bringing down an unwary Klingon.
As you can see, the key to victory with Sela and her agents is the indirect path rather than direct confrontation. Keep your opponent on the back foot and off balance while you run rings around them, then strike hard when the moment is right.
How do you defeat Riker and his Federation away team? The key here is disrupting their plans while enacting yours. If you leave the Federation alone, they can score well and quickly, so don’t.
Riker’s crew will need to be at terminals around the ship to score their missions. You can use Feedback Surges and Sabotaged Terminals to make that hazardous for them and Misdirection to move them away from where they need to be. You can use Countermoves to hack their attempts, turning their scoring attempt into victory points for you,. You can use Always Watching and Fill in the Blanks to gain intel and victory points by watching them score missions. There are lots of ways to make a Federation player nervous about attempting to score a mission.
If that’s not working, there are other, more aggressive, ways of slowing them down. A good old assassination will hurt your opponent and possibly gain you a few victory points as well. All the while, the rest of your crew are doing their bit, gathering victory points and intel across the ship.
Riker’s likely to object to your interference, and he has a powerful tool in his arsenal — his phasers. Unlike your disruptors, they don’t deal damage, instead they stun your characters, costing you valuable actions. All they need is one hit and you’re stunned and out of action for a while. Make sure you’ve got a good supply of intel and a couple of clever cards available to get out of the way or to generate some bonus actions to recover.
Riker is a tricky foe. You need to balance your scoring against the need to interfere with his plans. Get it right and you can tie the Federation in knots. Get it wrong, and you might need to get ‘kinetic’ in an attempt to stop them and open up your own scoring opportunities.
The sheer violence of Gowron’s Klingons can be intimidating to your fragile Romulans. But they aren’t the smartest and can be outwitted.
The Klingon player is going to try and neutralise your Romulans, preferably in melee combat. To withstand their onslaught, you are going to need plenty of intel, so focus on this at the start of the game, burning cards for re-rolls to keep your characters operational if necessary. Don’t get too discouraged if they do neutralise a character early on. You have the numbers and acceptable losses are a part of any mission.
Once you get a good supply of intel and a few good cards in your hand, you can make it very difficult for the Klingons to land their blows, or even to attack you at all. Focus your resources on defeating their attacks, while using your natural technical ability to score missions and rack up points. Since the Klingons are not very technical, their ability to challenge your skill tests with hacking is minimal, so you only have to worry about physical attacks.
If your opponent is getting too cocky, you can always build an assassination deck focused on combat. Set up your attacks where they aren’t expecting them and slip away from their attacks, and watch the Klingon’s frustration level rise. Be careful though, one slip and they can quickly neutralise your characters, scoring points in the process, while your combat focus may limit your scoring potential.
Overall, the key to tackling Gowron is misdirection and tricks. Avoid playing the Klingon’s game while racking up victory points of your own.
Locutus can be a challenge for the Romulans. Their Borg are numerous and technically skilled, so can often effectively hack your attempts to score points.
The Borg often won’t engage with your attempts to harass them. No trickster likes to be ignored, and your Romulans are no exception. Worse, the weakness of your individual Romulans can open them up to a sneaky assimilation attack.
This means your tactics have to be similar to those you’d use against the Federation, but even more carefully orchestrated. You need to complete your own missions to gain intel and victory points as fast as possible, while keeping your eyes open for the opportunity to slow the Borg down. If you are going to assassinate Borg drones, do so early in the game, and from a safe distance. Nothing is more disturbing than zapping a drone, only to find its replacement advancing on your would-be killer who can’t do anything, having already activated!
Later in the game, a missing drone won’t matter so much, and your opponent is more likely to have the means of replacing them. So, if you’re going to attack the Borg to slow them down, get your strike in early (possibly reversing polarity to stack your hand at the start of the game). Once there are lots of them, avoiding assimilation and racking up victory points are your top priorities, while doing what you can to hack their assimilation of the ship will help keep you with the upper hand.
Locutus and its Borg are a dangerous foe, so don’t underestimate them. Careful play will keep them in check, but carelessness could quickly spiral into a defeat.
GO FORTH AND PUT YOUR NEW TACTICS INTO ACTION!
