Being a look back at cards from the Star Trek CCG, and what I thought of them back when they were fresh and new... in EPISODE order. Time to make that trip back in time, where Decipher snatched this shot...
PICTURE: A shot of it on Vulcan or in Earth's atmosphere would have been cool, especially since they chose to highlight its Federation tour of duty over its Klingon career (with the title at least). Instead, we get something from its stalemate with the Enterprise while Kruge was captain (reused in ST IV and therefore here). Unfortunately, that makes this bird-of-prey look just like a dozen others. (I don't think think one border color is necessarily better than the other.) Can't go above 2.5.
LORE: Two matching commanders, making the lore suffer from the burden of using as many different words to mean the same things as possible. I do like the rechristening story, though I don't see why the semi-colon was necessary. Telegraphic lore usually takes us across the history of a personnel or ship. It didn't have to be associated grammatically with the Admiral Kirk phrase. A 3.1.
TREK SENSE: A B'rel-class bird-of-prey in Star Trek IV, I have to say I thought it looked much bigger in the space battles against the Enterprise in Star Trek III. But if it's gonna be called the HMS Bounty, it's clearly more of a ST IV ship than a ST III one. The title doesn't cover both versions either, so seeing Kruge's name on the matching commander list may seem strange, but we really do have to ignore the title when considering this card. We don't know what Kruge called it, but he's a more convincing matching commander for it than Admiral Kirk. Kirk wasn't aboard long enough to get the bonuses in my opinion. Then again, Kirk IS a legendary captain. Another small point of contention is that it's a Federation ship first, the Klingon border being the variant. Chronologically, that's wrong, but it's right for the card title. Cloaking Device, Tractor Beam and no shuttle bay, that works fine, as does the single staffing icon. Looking at other B'rel-class ships, I see it's got one point more invested in Weapons, and after all, it was evenly matched with the Starship Enterprise. It's meant to be faster than that ship, getting to the Genesis Planet, Vulcan and then Earth rather quickly. Nothing too cool, like say, time travel (too bad, it played a great role in ST IV), but everything else checks out. A 3.9 because of the details that don't.
STOCKABILITY: Both the Klingons and Feds, in particular CF ones, can use this ship to good effect. The Klingons will put Kruge aboard (with Ready Room Door, perhaps), a good personnel with ties to a lucrative Genesis Device strategy. The Feds, on the other hand, will use Admiral Kirk, who's a good personnel with an interesting card management ability. Since he's a version of the Captain Kirk persona, you can switch to the OS Captain Kirk to download its Captain's Log and make the ship a very good 7-9-9 (9-9-9 if you throw a Plaque in). Not bad for a CF ship requiring only one staffing icon. Kruge will have to get the booster cards some other way, but the result's the same. Kruge could even use Ch'dak to add another point of RANGE, and Krase to add 2 more to SHIELDS. It's a rare Cloaking Device for the Feds too. A fun ship for the CF lot, but vessels with downloads are a little more useful, though of course Crew Reassignment'll turn the ship into a reporting station for Classic Film personnel regardless. Clocks in at 3.5.
TOTAL: 13 (65%) Mutiny!
Comments
I don't think I agree with this. Kruge himself says "they outgun me ten to one" during ST III. I think the implication is that if they were going up a regular fully staffed Constitution class ship rather than a damaged, patched together, jury rigged, under resourced vessel, they'd have had no chance.