The team at Gale Force Nine is back with their latest addition to the Star Trek: Ascendancy tabletop game: two expansions which let players step into the role of the imposing Dominion or the enigmatic Breen Confederacy.
Debuting originally in 2016, Star Trek: Ascendancy is a 4X strategy game where you steer a galactic power to explore the Star Trek universe, exploit its resources, expand your territory, and exterminate anyone who stands in your way. These two new releases bring the total number of player factions up to nine — plus an appropriately ‘automated’ Borg threat.
Such an extensive roster offers endless combinations of how you can battle for supremacy in the Alpha Quadrant — and with the Dominion expansion, the Gamma Quadrant as well!
The theming is strong for the reclusive Breen, who gain powerful advantages when defending their territory. Between chances to automatically destroy ships, reroll missed To-Hit rolls in combat, and deny opponents the chance to retreat from battle, the prospect of going toe-to-toe with the Breen on their home turf is a daunting one.
Players will still need to keep their weapons technology advancing steadily though, as all the advantages in the universe can still be stymied by powerful shields. And speaking of advantages out in the universe, the Breen’s new system discs offer a bevy of Culture and Open slots that offer a lot of value to savvy players while ships are exploring strange new worlds.
One-time allies of the Breen, the Dominion are not to be discounted either. This faction sports powerful combat abilities, led by their Ketracel-White ability to reroll failed attacks. The Dominion’s fleets are geared for battle as well, generating new ships while in flight and overpowering enemies with heavily-shielded armadas.
Their research opportunities highlight each of the three major components in the Dominion’s social structure: the Jem’Hadar generate Command tokens to trigger more combat rerolls, Vorta commanders help to resist Hegemony takeovers by enemy powers, and a novel mechanic allows for the Founders to infiltrate opponents’ systems and sow discord by moving ships out of position or making homeworlds easier to invade.
With the right advancements in place, the shapeshifting Founders can be very difficult to remove after they’ve infiltrated your territory and inflict costly losses — but it will take quite some time before they can put their full apparatus in place, so wise players will strike them quickly before it’s too late. The Dominion’s putative drawback, their inability to suborn another faction’s systems culturally, only means their fleets will be on the warpath all the sooner.
The arrival of the Dominion wouldn’t be complete without their native Gamma Quadrant. This expansion comes with rules for discovering star systems sequestered on the far side of the galaxy – and braving the wormhole can be added to games even without a Dominion player! The tile linking Bajor to the Idran system does a good job modeling the physical and conceptual distance that the Gamma Quadrant represents in the TV series; at the same time, it takes up a lot of real estate on the game area for relatively little value in play.
It’s perfect from a lore point of view, but if you use the Gamma rules at all you may want to leave it as a random event that might replace a phenomenon rather than forcing the Dominion player to start in their own private region.
The Dominion brings not only a new faction from beyond the wormhole, but a new game scenario: team play with the Dominion War. The rules introduce Alliance cards, which players can use to swing conflicts in their favor: deploying fleets, accelerating research, and rushing to the contested front to provide aid.
Several cards can also be used to directly assist your teammates by bolstering their forces or switching cards in your hand with theirs. This helps to add a level of meta-interaction that the alliance format otherwise reduces compared to a standard game. Conspiring with your allies to drop crucial cards beyond the normal flow of play is a nice injection of strategy and variety in what otherwise may feel like a more rote scenario.
The revised win conditions do require conquering at least one enemy homeworld, so a formidable military presence will be necessary in some aspect of your team’s plans. Turtling up and stalling for Ascendancy won’t save you, and there’s much less incentive to engage in table talk when Initiative is always random and there is no possibility of your current adversary becoming an ally of convenience in future turns: it’s a battle to the death.
This has pluses and minuses for different factions; aggressive ones like Klingons and the Dominion will always have a way to deploy their strengths. Others that focus on heavy peaceful interaction — like the Ferengi (limited to only one trade agreement) or the Vulcans (who peddle their ambassadors as helpful observers across a wide area of the boards) — will find their typical playstyle somewhat hamstrung.
On the other hand, Vulcans won’t have to worry about their ‘No Lying’ edict when it’s clear that they’re going for the throat. The Ferengi ability to add spacelanes without numeric restriction may also be particularly handy in a play area that is quite crowded from the start.
Another great addition that the Alliance rules bring is the Resistance deck. In the Dominion War, there is no player elimination. When a faction has their homeworld taken over by an enemy power, they aren’t erased from the map but rather become a sort of vassal to the faction who conquered them. Sending part of their resources off, allowing free passage — and all the while, plotting a rebellion and aiding their remaining allies!
The Resistance cards take the place of the player’s Alliance cards, and allow them to strike a blow against their conqueror, build ships for themselves or an ally, and even liberate themselves outright and rejoin the game with their full regular abilities again (with or without the assistance of their allies to free their homeworld).
The chance to support the team even when your faction is all but vanquished is a terrific addition that greatly suits this style of play.
The initial setup for the Dominion War does accelerate play right to the midgame, with mature empires turning their gazes outward among the other players, who have all made first contact at the start. Full fleet and Starbase complements are available regardless of Ascendancy, and extra starting resources can quickly enable you to spread your ships far and wide.
Removing some of the randomness in initial system draws prevents any one player from being significantly set back by bad luck in dangerous phenomena or resource-poor planets; this also takes some of the thrill of exploration away — and hobbles the Federation’s perk for generating Culture from new discoveries.
There’s less time on average for Research projects to be initiated and mature without the threat of enemy ships bearing down on you, so fewer signature abilities may be brought to bear in some games.
Playing Star Trek: Ascendancy with several first-timers — but long-time board gamers — I found that it hits the sweet spot with simplicity of mechanics while it also maintains enough strategic depth to be highly replayable, which is a great combination in a game that will occupy the better part of your day.
The components in the new set maintain the excellent quality consumers have come to expect from this product line, and the spot-on theming will please any Trekkie eager to turn their eye toward a tactical take on exploring their favorite fictional universe. Pick up the Breen if you’re eager to try a tenacious and insular faction that has the bite to match their slowly-growing ambition.
You’ll want to grab The Dominion for the alliance rules alone, but there’s great value in the introduction of a new way to build your galactic map with the Gamma Quadrant and a powerful faction armed with relentless assault ships and insidious spies throwing rival empires into chaos.
The Star Trek: Ascendancy Dominion War game expansion set and the Breen Confederacy player expansion set are both available in stores now, along with the base Star Trek: Ascendancy game set.