Xindi Aquatic Cruiser Review

Straight from the Temporal Cold War, the Xindi Aquatic Cruiser!

It is a very nice looking ship, my personal favourite of the Xindi forces.

A quick look at the named and non-named ships:

Turns like a brick but with pretty good stats overall and a 180 front arc I can see this getting quite a bit of use.  The named Azati Prime can discard a token to force an attacker to roll one less attack die - I'm not entirely sure how useful that's going to be as usually you're going to want to keep that token handy.  An attack value of 4 means it can pack a nice punch at range one, and a combined defence value of 8/9 means it can go toe-to-toe with larger ships for a couple of turns.

Now on to the upgrades:

The Prototype Weapon is very interesting, it lets you launch a mini version of the Xindi weapon and fire in a straight line at all ships up to range 2, with each ship being attacked with 1 less die than the previous.

The Escape pod is quite useful, allowing a discarded crew member to be passed to another ship upon its destruction.

The next set of upgrades:

 The Aquatic Councilor allows you to disable it to roll an extra defence die, or two extra if you discard it.  Very situational but could be used to keep your ship around a bit longer.  The Ibix Dynasty is excellent if used at the right time.  Anything that can cancel an attack is usually worth its weight in gold.  An expensive card and ability but could be a game changer.

Next up - the Xindi generic captain:

Nothing to say here, other than SPACE MANATEEEE!

... Well.  On to the next captain:

This captain is fantastic.  His ability is good enough on the Azati Prime, if you play him cross faction though and put him on a cloaked Romulan ship however - he is priceless.

As a quick cross-faction build, for a single ship try this:

I.R.W. Valdore [30]
- Kaiphet Amman'sor 5 (Captain) [4]
- - Counter Attack [3]
- Mendak (Admiral) [4]
- Tom Paris [5]
- Amat'Igan [4]
Ship Total: 50 SP

Stay cloaked and this would give you 8 defence dice with battlestations and re-rolls on the blank dice.  There are not too many build that could even hurt this ship consistently.  In the current state of play that would still give you 80 points to play with as well... nasty.  I'll have to get hold of Tom Paris and try this out.

So to sum it up - a very nice expansion with some interesting cards, I think the ship looks fantastic and a 180 arc is excellent as it can pack a good punch.  Brilliant ship and I can't wait for the retail release!