Drazi Redux: Reimagining the Drazi in A Call to Arms, Part 1
The Drazi are an aggressive and belligerent species who are members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. Every problem is a nail and every solution is a hammer. They are a playable faction in A Call to Arms and you can take them as a standalone faction, as part of a League of Non Aligned Worlds fleet, as part of the Army of Light and, quite fittingly, include them in a Raiders fleet.
Their ship selection is quite comprehensive and skewed towards the lower end of the spectrum with the majority of their ships being Patrol or Skirmish level. They are a faction that is meant to overwhelm their opponents and do so fast. Their ships are fast and agile.
They have some massive disadvantages though. Their weapons are almost all boresighted which means Drazi ships have to be pointed straight at their enemies to fire at all. In most cases this means that you will have only a single ship you can shoot at with each of yours every turn regardless of whether they are in range or not. there may be some cases where you can line up 2 enemy ships, but this will be rare. The usual tradeoff for a boresighted weapon is that they are highly effective to compensate for their limited firearcs but the Drazi ships tend towards the weaker end making them not only a weak faction but also one where its incredibly difficult and not very fun to play. They are far more unforgiving than any other faction.
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| Warbirds Intercept a Centauri Raiding force |
If I was to guess at a cause I suspect the Drazi, and even more so the Pak'ma'ra, were something of an afterthought as far as the factions go. It was five minutes before the end of the day on a friday and it was going to the printers first thing on Monday. In a Non-aligned fleet where ships of other races are present the Drazi weaknesses are reduced since you will simply move ships with fire arcs first, and the Drazi ships last. Since the game has been discontinued for some time, and we can do what we want we decided to re-work the faction and make it more fun while keeping to the general feeling of the faction.
Redesigning the Drazi
When looking at the faction as a whole there is a massive amount of potential for cool ship designs and there is a treasure trove of ships from Babylon 5 Wars. Agents of gaming put a lot more thought into their designs than Mongoose did. I set myself some rules to follow with the faction.Drazi ships should be fast, agile, reasonably tough for their size, have dodge as a universal trait and they should reward you for getting into an optimum position but not punishing you unduly for failing to do so. They should have limited fighter support and lack proper carriers but still be able to bring fighters to the field carried by their ships. These general rules can be summarised as follows
- Speed 12+
- Agile
- Hull 5+
- Dodge 5+
- Main weapon will be bore-sighted
- Secondary weapons will be Forward arc
- Limited fighter support
- Limited anti-fighter
With these in mind I looked at all the weapons the Drazi ships carry and made some alterations. I also looked at the ships Agents of Gaming had published and re-ordered the priority levels somewhat. The Warbird is the older less capable ship and the Sunhawk is the more modern more capable one. You will no doubt notice this is a complete reversal of the Mongoose version. Changing the weapons to fit the rules above and to match the new priority order.
Drazi ships will therefore have 2 different weapon types, the beams and mini-beams provide the anti-armour punch and will require you to boresight your enemy to use them, while the secondaries with the much better fire arcs are optimised for engaging more lightly armoured opponents. One major change I made was to change the Particle Cannon to be a mini-beam. with the numbers of them you will be able to take and the damage potential beams have, even if runaway hits are rare, I think its a little excessive to have so many of them available on a patrol level ship.
Warbird-class cruiser
The Warbird is a very old design and is still in service with the Drazi fleet. The Versatile Warbird has been constantly upgraded over its life and the version here is the most current iteration put into production following the carnage of the Dilgar war when the Drazi lost a massive number of ships. Slightly smaller and slower than the Sunhawk and weaker than a lot of other ships in its class it is intended to be used in squadrons where it will be able to overwhelm much more capable ships.
*This takes the place of the sunhawk as the Patrol level ship. The official sunhawk is an absolutely very weak so I made changes to bring it up to par with other patrol choices. Its still very middle of the road when it comes to overall firepower and the boresighted Mini-beams complicate maximising its potential somewhat.
War Talon-class escort carrier (Warbird Variant)
First of the variants of the Warbird, the War Talon is a dedicated escort ship capable of keeping pace with Warbirds and providing anti-fighter cover as well as bringing fighters of its own.
*With the Drazi not having a proper dedicated carrier and lacking anti-fighter on their ships, the War Talon fills both of those roles poorly. Its also not well armed meaning it is a useful support ship but not great at any particular thing
Sleekbird-class assault cruiser (Warbird Variant)
The Sleekbird is designed to deliver troops to enemy ships, planets and stations through the use of its Shallana-class Breaching pods and assault shuttles. It has a much shorter ranged armament than the Warbird to give room for additional shuttle bays and troop quarters, but the mass saved has been used to add some armour to the hull and add additional compartmentalisation.
*This ship is largely unchanged from the official version. The only modifications I made was to make it a little tougher than the Warbird above, but less tough than the official version. It also carries Shallana Breaching pods rather than the standard Breaching pods, because Drazi are insane.
Strikehawk-class battle carrier (Warbird Variant)
This conversion of the Warbird is designed to carry a single Sky Serpent heavy assault fighter into action. The only way to achieve this was to remove some of the Warbirds armament in order to fit the incredibly large fighter on to the relatively small Warbird.
*I tried to match the weapons load out to those in B5W while keeping the ship itself less capable than the Warbird.
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| 'Customs enforcement' |
Strikebird-class light carrier (Warbird Variant)
The Dilgar war was a trial by fire for the Drazi and they suffered heavily at the hands of the excellent Thorun Dartfighters. What was needed was the capacity to carry more fighters into battle. Entering service after the Dilgar war the Strikebird is a simple conversion with the addition of hangars on the Warbirds wingtips, and an overall reduction in firepower
*With 2 Star snakes being the same cost as 1 Sky Serpent it would have been easy to just have the ships hulls being identical, rather than do that I gave them different ranges on their secondaries to add a bit more of a difficult choice to picking between them. The Strikehawk is the more capable ship, but the Strikebird has a more useful (Imo) fighter complement
Star Snake light fighter
The most common Drazi fighter is the Star Snake. Fast and Maneuverable the main failing of the fighter lies in the fact that Drazi ships, being small, cannot carry many of them. They will either be present in small numbers, or if the Drazi bring lots of Strikebirds, their formations will have much reduced firepower.
*The only change I made was to increase the speed at the cost of some armour. Drazi fighters are very quick being able to outpace most of their opposition.
Sky Serpent super heavy fighter
The Sky Serpent is a very large, very well armed fighter and perhaps the smallest warship fielded by any race. Almost as large as some small frigates the Sky serpent is surprisingly agile and more than able to handle itself against enemy fighters. Its only real failing is its short endurance requiring a converted Warbird to carry it on extended patrols.
*The Sky Serpent in the official rules is an absolute turd of a fighter, while heavily armed it is incredibly easy to kill. My version is very close to the EA thunderbolt in capability with a little more firepower at the expense of getting fewer per patrol point. Its also a surprisingly quick ship, there is no reason why a fighter should be slower than the ship carrying it.
Shallana armed breaching pod
The Drazi are crazy, and the Shallana is proof of that. While many races make use of Breaching Pods to deliver boarding parties the drazi take this one step further. The Shallana is an incredibly agile, and armed, breaching pod that can, once its boarding parties have been delivered to their target, continue to harass the enemy with its main weapons. The thrusters the ship possesses in order to approach enemy ships makes it able attack enemy fighters and capital ships
*Breaching pods are usually awful, and the Drazi are insane. in B5W the Shallana is unique in that it can also act as an expensive (and weak) fighter.
That wraps up the Drazi Warbird variants and fighters . In part 2 I will look at the Sunhawk and its variants.
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