An old cowboy and a young buckaroo were workin’, ridin’ fence
The old hand was testin’ the kid on his skill and common sense
He said, “Son, if you seen three men in a pick-up truck
Dressed alike from boot to hat
Could you tell which one was the real cowboy just from where he sat?”The kid scratched his head awhile and then he said
“Well, there ain’t no way to know”
The old hand grinned and then he said
“Kid, you’ve still got a ways to goThe real cowboy’s the one in the middle
He ain’t there just by fate
Cause first he don’t have to drive
And then he don’t have to mess with the gate”“Cowboy Logic” – Michael Martin Murphey
On Saturday I got to go on a 23 mile mountain bike ride through the beautiful mountains around Park City, UT. The trail we were following was a former railroad bed. It had been converted to a bike trail under a program called “Rails to Trails.” The benefits from the Rails to Trails projects are great for bikers. The grade is gradual and there’s a solid foundation for the trail. Also, typically there is already a right-of-way set up and very few obstructions. Trains did best with long stretches of uninterrupted track.
The trail we followed might have been a former train route, but there were a few changes since the locomotives used those rails. The biggest difference was the gates. There were numerous gates as we made our way through miles of cow pasture.
The gates were obviously built for mountain bikers. They were easy to open and once open there was plenty of room to ride a bike through. The gates were there for a very important reason. To keep the cows in.
Cows are typically docile and have no interest in people. However, they also weigh 2000 lbs and could outrun a mountain bike and crush you like a bug. There’s no danger in riding through a cow pasture aside from the occasional land mine in the middle of the trail. But, if you’re not used to being around a large animal, they can be intimidating.
The gates are to keep the cows in. I’m not sure what they did when the trains ran through there. Pretty sure the conductor wasn’t getting out to open and close a gate.
As is usual on our trips, I was the sweeper. I was the last guy on the trail. My job was to make sure that no scouts got behind me. I’m a slow hiker and a slow biker. Each time we finish an outing, either on foot or on wheels, as I join the group at the end point, I say the same stupid joke.
Once again, I have cleverly tricked you all into finishing before me.
On Saturday as we transitioned into the cow pasture portion of the ride, I came upon an open gate. Next to the gate was a rancher’s pickup and horse trailer. I was momentarily confused. Did he leave it open? Was he going through it? Was there a reason it was open? Should I close it, or leave it be?
At this point, anyone who has grown up in a rural environment knows the answer. I closed it. You always close the gates. It doesn’t matter if you cannot see a cow within miles. In ranch country, gates are supposed to be closed. Always.
It made me think a little about “gates” in my job. We recently had our client come through one of our centers and do a security audit. We guard our member information very carefully and both the client and my own company do periodic audits to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep the information secure.
Surprisingly, we didn’t do a lot of preparation for the audit. Sure, we wanted to make a good impression, but we have a habit of always closing the gates. Our security processes are not a sometimes thing. They are an all the time thing. Our engineers, and our agents have been taught to close the gates when they go through. While we can always improve, we scored very well on the audit.
Remember to always close the gates. Of course, as Michael Martin Murphey points out in the lyric at the beginning of this post, if you sit in the middle you an make the other guy do the getting out.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I was supposed to be on a work call. Well, actually I was on a work call but I was also barrelling down a former railroad track that had been turned into a mountain bike trail. A careful use of the mute button kept those on the conference call from hearing the wind whipping by.
Because I couldn’t leave well enough alone, I actually teased my coworkers a little by sending them a picture of the trail I was on.
Here’s my office for today.
They were appropriately jealous.
At this point, some of you are thinking that Rodney is playing with fire a little in terms of my job status.
Not to worry. I’m fine. In fact, my boss was happy that I was taking that call while on what turned out to be a 23 mile mountain bike trip with our Boy Scout troop.
See, my trip was on Saturday. It was a beautiful day in Utah. We loaded up the boys and bikes and headed into the mountains around Park City. This was the final ride needed to earn the Bicycling merit badge. The troop had done two rides that were two miles long. Then, they did two five mile rides and then two eight mile rides. This was the final trip and it had be be 22 miles long. (We ended up doing 23, because we could.)
We were a little worried taking a ride this late in the year. November can be unpredictable in Utah. But, the weather could not have been better. Clear skies and highs in the 60s.
I actually had two work calls on Saturday. The first one was at 8:00 as I started to leave my house to meet the boys and other leaders at our designated gathering spot. As my phone rang, I had a decision to make. I could see from the Caller ID that it was one of my call centers. And the only reason they would call me on a Saturday morning was if something was broken.
I hadn’t even left my house. I could easily turn back around, go back inside and log in from my home office. My job requires me to be on call 24×7 and we take calls around the clock. It was a pretty easy decision to keep riding. I strapped my apple earbuds down under my helmet and made sure the mute button was easily accessible.
That first issue resolved itself very quickly. In fact, I was done with the call before all of the boys arrived. I was feeling pretty good about my decision to not drop from the bike trip.
One of the leaders showed up with a bum elbow. He was going to drive and pull the trailer, but he wasn’t going to ride. Without me, we wouldn’t have enough leaders. Even more validation that I’d made the right decision.
We drove from Pleasant Grove to Park City through the beautiful Provo canyon. The morning air was cool, but certainly not cold. As we mounted our bikes and set off, many of the boys shed extra layers of sweatshirts and left them with the vehicles.
About 5 miles into the ride I got another phone call. This one was going to be much longer. My cell phone can handle two calls at once. On one line I was talking to my team on the other I was calling the client for updates. All the while I kept riding. Occasionally I had to stop and read or send an email.
You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up.
I have to admit I was guilty of texting and riding on several occasions. The issue got worked on the client side and I happily passed status back and forth from the client to my team. And I had an absolutely wonderful ride along the way.
I’ve wondered if I was working while I was playing or was I playing while working? The difference is immatrial to me.
Do what you love and you’ll never have to work another day in your life.
This quote as been attributed to everyone from Confusious to Marc Antony to Steve Jobs. It’s both completely false and absolutely true.
Work is work. I work so that I can get paid. If I didn’t need to get paid, I would probably do something completely different. I was absolutely working on Saturday. And given the choice, I wouldn’t have. And if it bothered me, I can certainly go out and get a job that doesn’t require me to work on a Saturday. However, I also love what I do. I provide real value to my company, my client and the people I work with. I enjoy doing a good job. I like the fact that my account is considered the model account within my company.
And so, it’s worth it to me to share some of my personal time with a work call. I still went riding. I still got to go out into the Utah mountains and feel the wind in my face and immerse myself in God’s creations. Work didn’t keep me from that.
I totally got to play while I was at work.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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My daughters got up and posted flags around the neighborhood yesterday. They do it every holiday as a church service project. The problem is, yesterday was not a holiday. Sure, it was the day we observed a holiday, but the holiday is today: November 11.
It’s an official government holiday, meaning the post office was closed. And some people had the day off. But, my daughters are neither the post office, nor employers. It bothered me a little bit that they posted the flags yesterday. They could have just as easily posted them today, the date of the actual holiday.
November is one of the “birthday months” in our house. I have three kids with birthdays in the first week. Two of them are on the same day. Celebrating on their actual birthday is sometimes hard. I was travelling during one child’s birthday. They are teenagers now, but they still want dad at the party. We celebrated a few days later when I was home.
The twins will often pick different days than each other to celebrate their birthdays. It doesn’t hurt anything and it makes sure that each child has a day just for them that they don’t have to share with someone else.
Today’s holiday though, is different. In my mind. Veterans’ Day isn’t just a day to celebrate those who have served in the military. It also commemorates an important event. A significant event that happened on November 11 ninety-nine years ago at precisely 11:00 AM.
When the Armistice of Compiègne was signed it effectively ending the First World War. Except, at the time, they weren’t calling it the First World War, or WWI. They were calling it The Great War. But not with any degree of admiration. It was The War to End all Wars. The Great War was so terrible, so horrific, so devastating, that people believed (perhaps they only hoped) that it would be the end of war.
The war saw the introduction of weapons of mass destruction. The use of poison gas was so horrible, that civilized countries eventually decided they would avoid using it in future conflicts. WWI wasn’t the future. It was terrible. The war saw the weaponization of the airplane. At the beginning of the war, the planes were unarmed. The pilots from opposing sides were actually not trying to kill each other or even kill those on the ground. They were observers. Literally flying above the fray. And then someone brought a shotgun with him and soon, ‘dog fights’ entered the venacular. And those early pilots didn’t wear parachutes.
The war saw the evolution from cavalry to tanks. The charge of men on horses was replaced by the rumble of steel tracks moving mobile fortresses. Nearly all forms of killing are enhanced and improved during warfare. The War to End all Wars some more advances than most.
And it ended on “the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour.” So, while I enjoyed seeing the flags out yesterday, and I certainly want to show all respect to the military, my father, my brother and my daughter all having served or currently serving in the United States Army, Veterans Day is and always will be on that unique day notated by four ones.
Next year will mark 100 years since the world thought it had put war away forever, 11/11/1918. If only their optimism had been justified.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, ‘You’re gonna have to move, you’re blocking a fire exit.’ As though if there was a fire, I wasn’t gonna run. If you’re flammible and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.
– Mitch Hedberg
The late Mitch Hedberg is one of my favorite comedians. I thought of this joke recently as I made my way back from Shreveport, LA. I have an unfortunate travel schedule. I travel enough to be what I would call an “experienced” traveller, but I don’t travel enough to earn my way into the airline rewards programs. So, upgrades are rare for me.
I recently took a trip to Shreveport. Our corporate travel coordinator chooses seats for me based on my preference for the window. As I looked at the return flight, I was a little disappointed. The flight from Shreveport to Dallas was on a small jet. You either had an aisle seat or a window seat and if you were in first class, you had both. I had a nice window seat back around row 18. It’s a 45 minute flight.
The longer leg, from Dallas to Salt Lake had me sitting in a middle seat. It’s a four hour flight. I made a mental note to try to change my seat. As I checked in the day before my return flight I notice that there was exactly one empty seat in the entire plane. It was a window seat in row 22. Score!
I quickly gave up my middle seat and selected seat 22F. My luck is not normally that good. The trip was a huge success. And I was already feeling good, tired, but good for the return trip. I normally don’t check my luggage. Sure, the company would pay the $25 fee, but it’s just easier to pack light and do a carry on. However, I will check my bag at the gate if the flight is full.
PRO TIP: If you want to check your bag, wait until you get to the gate. Ninety percent of the time they will check it for you for free.
The plane for the trip from Shreveport West to Dallas was too small to accomodate my rollerbag. I did a gate check. But, not to my final destination. I would pick it up on the jetway in Dallas. But, there was a chance I’d be able to get them to carry for it from Dallas to SLC in the cargo hold.
It might seem contradicatory to refuse to check my bag, but then hope I could check my bag. It’s not. It’s really all about convenience. I paid the $85 to get TSA Precheck. That means that if I have my boarding passes already, I can go straight to security when I get to the airport. I don’t have to pull anything out of my bag, and typically it’s nearly a non stop walk from the time I hit the airport entrance to the gate. But, I’d rather not have to hassel with finding overhead space for my bag. Like I said, convenience.
Once I got to Dallas, I approached the gate agent to ask about checking my bag.
Do you think you’ll need to check bags today?
Let me see. . .sure, I can check your bag.
Great. Thanks.
By the way, my exit rows are completely empty. Would you like me to upgrade you to an exit row?
Really? Sure. A window seat would be great.
Anyone who has crammed themselves into what the airlines call a seat knows that having the extra space in exit row is like going from a Smart Car to a Limo.
The airlines figured that out too and if you choose to upgrade to the exit row, it will typically cost you about $40. However, if the flight is not too full, and it’s full of people like me who are willing to live life as a human pretzel for four hours rather than upgrade, the seats remain empty.
I figured I’d save them having to ask me the required question about my willingness to help others in an emergency.
And I’m willing to help anyone in the event of an emergency. Do you actually have some people who say they wouldn’t help?
Oh sure.
Do they not realize that “in the event of an emergency” really means, “You get to be the first one out of the potentially burning airplane?”
Apparently not.
Maybe those people have never listened to Mitch Hedberg.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I should have been impressed. I wanted to be impressed. I was prepared to be impressed.
Instead I was frustrated.
Like many international companies, we have layers of management. We have management layers in our own company, and then their are more management layers in our parent company. And these guys were pretty high up in our parent company. They were IT vice presidents and senior project managers and guys with no titles just pedigrees.
And they were in our building to talk about our client. We’ve managed to turn our client into a bit a darling. It’s not only one of the biggest clients for my company, it is one of the most satisfied. We work very well together.
The room was full of my coworkers and teammates from account management and opersations. The big shots from corporate were IT. I’m the only IT guy on my team. Like I said, I should have been impressed that the corporate guys came to our house to talk about how they could help with our client. It was a listening tour, and my company does not do a lot of listening tours. People said this was the first one they could remember.
So, why wasn’t I impressed? Because I wasn’t paying attention. I really wanted to pay attention. I wanted to be fully engaged in the give and take of the discussion. And I did to an extent. But, I kept one eye on my email. . .and my phone. . .and an ongoing Skype meeting. . .and chat.
I know, I hate that guy in meetings. It’s like, “Dude, put it away. Be in the moment.” And now I was that guy. It wasn’ t my fault. The fault was a dead server in Cincinnatti Ohio and a Citrix login issue across three states. I’m a team of one when it comes to outages. This one started at 6:00AM for me. (It started even earlier for my engineering team.) A server that provided a key monitoring program wasn’t working. We were trying to fix it. I was working with the Outage Management team.
And then the start time for my meeting rolled around. I didn’t want to push it too far by actually having headphones on. I compromised and told the Outage Team to reach out via Skype’s chat feater if they needed me. They needed me. We had two outages going during our executive briefing. I found it ironic that as they were talking about what would make us more effective, I was struggling with my own ineffectiveness. It was a weird meta-experience.
The meeting went great. They spent much more time talking about reporting and operations than they did IT. My team let them know that,
If there’s an IT issue, we just pick up the phone and call Rodney.
And they were right. That’s pretty much how it goes many days. Today was one of those days. We actually managed to resolve and close one of the outages while I was in the briefing. I was surreptitiously sending emails and typing in the chat window. By the time the meeting was over, all our agents could get logged into their programs and were taking calls. My analysts were still broken, but I’m grateful for small miracles.
Maybe by next year, I’ll have a mini-me that I can get to run the outage calls. Until then, I’ll have to continue to send the subtle message that my time is more valuable than the person running the meeting.
“Sorry, but I really need to take this call.”
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I’m good at what I do. I’m actually really good at it. Like many people, I have a terrible time owning up to that fact.
Early in my management career, I was working for Microsoft as a kind of peer leader. Technically, I was a peer with everyone else on my team, but by virtue of experience I was looked to as the lead. Naturally, I wanted to move up in the organization. During annual review time, I wrote a fairly glowing review for myself. We did 360 reviews, so one of the newest members of the team, a woman who was very experienced in our industry but new to Microsoft, read my review.
Well, do you have any feedback?
Um. . .
Go ahead, I really want to know what you think.
You do kind of give yourself an oversized helping of credit for much of what I did last year.
I’d help train her and I was taking credit for a good share of the work that she did. It was uncomfortable feedback because it was true. It was also effective feedback because twenty years later I still work very hard to make sure I’m not taking too much credit. In fact, I’ll sometimes (often times?) go too far the other way in sharing credit.
We just hit a major milestone in a big work project. I’m the project leader. Executives from my company and our client company personally asked me to take on this project. It’s been more than 13 months and thousands of hours from a whole team of people, project managers, engineers, analysts, testers, and more. Last week we rolled the project out to our first group of agents.
It went fantastic. It could not have gone better. We scheduled the rollout to take three days. We completed in a day and a half. Everyone was very happy and very relieved. Lots of email was being sent congratulating the team and individuals on the team. I have deflected much, if not most, of the credit; to my project manager, to my engineers, to my vice president.
I know that I was key to this project. That knowledge means that I don’t have to tell people I was key.
But, there’s a problem. Two problems in fact. The first is “humble-bragging.” I have a great relationship with my manager and my team. If I deflect praise, they are all the more likely to insist I take credit. I found myself in a situation where my manager was trying to convince me how valuable I was to the project. This conversation took place in from of my team. As I identified what was happening, we all laughed at what essentially turned into a “Say more nice things about Rodney” session. I finally shut up, took the praise and the conversation moved on.
Don’t be so “humble” that you end up making others overcompensate and shower you with even more praise. If your effort really is to not take too much credit, you need to take your fair share, or you put others in an awkward situation.
Go ahead and be the hero if you really were the hero.
The second problem is one of using that influence. As a result of the work we’ve accomplished, our team has attracted some well deserved attention. I was meeting with my boss to prepare for a meeting with a senior IT executive in the company when my boss delivered some disturbing news.
I’m not going to be in the meeting with Luke from corporate.
What do you mean? I thought you were here all week?
Yeah, but I’ve got a client meeting at the same time. He’s really here to talk to you. You’ll do fine on your own. Don’t be afraid to ask for some of the things we went over. You’ve done a fantastic job. This is your chance to tell him how much more we could accomplish if you get some of the additional resources we discussed.
The problem is that without my boss in the meeting it falls to me to make sure the executive knows just how critical I was to the project. We have turned out client into the most valuable client for my company. But, it comes at a price. As the IT guy on my extended team of account managers and business analysts, I’m the guy who has been responsible for the technical aspects of our success. Often I’ve been the only guy. Fifty or sixty hour weeks have not been uncommon. Fourteen to eighteen hours days have been needed occasionally. My family has just accepted the fact that I’m not going to be available often.
And the sacrifices have paid off. And, if I’m honest about it, they have paid off because “Rodney” put in the effort to make sure they did. My boss went on,
I don’t think the rest of the team realizes how spoiled we’ve been. We can just ‘call Rodney’ when we have a technical issue or question. We are the only big account that has that privilege. Your IT peers for the other large accounts don’t do for those accounts what you do for us.
While it’s great to hear those types of compliments, when it comes time to claim them, I hesitate. Even typing them now, I get just slightly embarrassed. “Hey guys, I’m great! Did you hear? I’m pretty fantastic!” Yeah, that’s not naturally me. But, in the meeting with the senior executive, I need to make sure I communicate that. Because what our team really needs is a second Rodney, and some dedicated IT resources so that I (and the second me if we can get him or her) can spend less time chasing down the right people and even more time building up the account.
Taking a false modesty into the meeting with senior management would actually hurt the team and make my job harder. I need to be the hero of the story.
I’ll let you know how it goes. The meeting is tomorrow.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Sherlock Holmes had a brother. Not only did he have a brother, but his brother was smarter than the great detective. Mycroft Holmes appears in four stories by Arthur Conan Doyle: “The Greek Interpreter”, “The Final Problem”, “The Empty House” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans”.
Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one.
The difference between the two is that Sherlock will go out and work to find the answer to a problem, Mycroft will reach the same conclusion based on nothing more than hearing a description of the problem.
My car broke last week. Now, typically when my car breaks down, it makes a weird noise, or a gauge shows an issue, or it flashes the CHECK ENGINE light and I use a code reader or pull it apart to find the issue. Not this time. This time the car refused to start and when I opened the hood I saw this.
Those ignition modules send power to the spark plugs in the six cylinders. You might have noticed the middle one is cracked.
When I opened the hood, I couldn’t help but notice the middle one. It was shooting sparks out. Then, that little plastic blob oozed out and then it started smoking. It’s as if my car were trying to tell me something.
Hey! This part, yeah ME, RIGHT HERE!! I’m broken!
Unfortunately, simply replacing that module didn’t fix the car. Although, I did get a new tool out of the process. The bolts that hold those modules down are 5.5mm. I’d never see a fraction of a metric size. I now own a 5.5mm socket. But, that didn’t fix it. So, we towed it home and it sat in my driveway for a week while I went off to Louisiana on business. I got back last Saturday and it was still broken. I couldn’t work from home today. I had visitors coming in from our client. I had to be at work. I work 40 miles from my house.
It was time to call in some reinforcements.
My cousin Nick is much younger than me and a much better mechanic.
Hey, Nick. This is Rodney. Remember, when you said you’d be happy to come help me work on cars? Are you available tomorrow?
That’s the nice thing about family. They might grumble if you call them Saturday night to come over on Sunday, but they’ll show up.
Nick very quickly diagnosed the issue that while this ignition module was fried, it was actually caused by a failed master ignition control module. That’s the piece that runs under the three of these modules. We tested it and it was definitely shorting out. When we pulled it out of the car it looked like this.
It’s a $138 dollar part that our local auto parts store just happened to have in stock. I spend a lot of time there. The frequent shopper discount knocked $8 off the price. We also discovered, after putting it back together that we had fried the replacement module. Fortunately, they exchanged it “under warranty.”
And just like that, a couple of hours and my car was running again. I was pretty impressed with Nick’s quick diagnosis of the problem.
Well, I had an idea it might be that, so I talked to my dad yesterday and described the symptoms you told me. He was confident it was the master control module. All I did was verify what he’d already suggested.
The man who figured out how to fix my car, didn’t talk to me. He didn’t need to look at the car. He didn’t even really need to know what kind of car it was. (It’s a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix.) He heard a second-hand description of the symptoms and that was enough.
His name is Paul, not Mycroft, but maybe someone should write a story about him.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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The last several days my blog has been focused on Star Trek Attack Wing. I thought you might find it interestings to see where people are checking in from.
There is no guarantee that all of these people were here to read the STAW posts, but many of them were. The countries are ranked in order of popularity. The top country each day was the United States, of course.
Thanks everyone for reading along.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. . .and occasionally on Saturday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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This post assumes an understanding of Star Trek Attack Wing (STAW.) See an introduction to it here.
Question: Which would win: a great player with inferior tools, or an inferior player with great tools?
For many of you, you’ve already decided if you think STAW is a Pay-to-Play game. You’re reading this to figure out if I agree with you, or see where I’m wrong if I don’t. Pay-to-Play is the idea that if you are wiling to spend enough money, you can win even if you are not very good.
Star Trek Attack Wing is absolutely a Pay-to-Play game.
To understand why, we need to go back and read the posts from the last two days: Chronological Chaos OP: An Unbeatable Build?and Throwback Thursday: Winning the Klingon Civil War OPs and more unbeatable builds.
We talked about four specific builds
- The Rabbit
- Romulan Science Vessel Swarm
- The Build Complex Version – Developed by Fletcher, Van Der Jangt, Cobey
- The Build Pure Version – Developed by Tucker Cobey
Each build was more or less unbeatable. Some, like the Rabbit and the Romulan Science Vessel Swarm were designed to win a specific OP. The last two, examples of The Build, are pretty much unbeatable in a head to head battle. Let’s dive in a little more and look at these builds in another way.
- The Rabbit:
Ships: U.S.S. Raven, U.S.S. Stargazer, Enterprise NX-01, U.S.S. Enterprise E, U.S.S. Reliant, U.S.S. Excelsior, U.S.S. Prometheus, U.S.S. Yeager, U.S.S. Lakota, U.S.S. Constellation (2x), U.S.S. Hathaway, Deep Space 9, U.S.S. Intrepid, H.M.S Bounty, U.S.S. Montgolfier
Cards: Emergency Power - Romulan Science Vessel Swarm
Ships: Apnex (12x), I.K.S. Drovana (2x) - The Build Complex Version:
Ships: U.S.S Pasteur, Val Jean, U.S.S Dauntless, Scout Cube, I.R.W Haakona, I.R.W. Praetus (x2), Sakharov, Ti’Mur, Krayton, I.S.S Defiant, U.S.S. Hood (2x), U.S.S. Hathaway (6x), U.S.S. Grissom, Reklar, S’Gorn, Akorem, Dreadnaught (2x)
Cards: Admiral Q, Diplomacy - The Build Pure Version:
Ships: Assimilated Target Prime, Val Jean, Soong, Scout Cube, I.S.S. Enterprise, I.S.S. Defiant, U.S.S. Duantless (2x), Delta Flyer II, Ti’Mur, Gavroche, DS9 GenCon Promo, U.S.S. Hathaway (6x), Starter Set (2x), Denorios, Akorem, U.S.S. Intrepid, S’Gorn, Dreadnaught (2x)
Cards: Full Reverse
The Rabbit requires 16 total ships, including a prize ship that is only awarded for winning an OP, and a blind booster that is randomly awarded for attending an OP, and a ship that was awarded at a convention.
The Romulan Science Vessel Swarm requires 14 ships.
The Build (Complex version) requires 25 ships plus a couple of special cards awarded for attending an OP.
The Build (Pure version) requires 23 ships, plus two copies of the Starter Set, and a special card for attending an OP and a ship awarded at a convention.
The retail version of a typical ship costs $15. Rare ships, typically those that were only available at an OP cost much more. The U.S.S. Lakota, for example sells on eBay for over $120. The Deep Space 9 model retails for $100.
My point is that each of these fleets would cost a lot to build. The cheapest is probably the Romulan Science Vessel at about $200 if it was purchased at retail. The versions of The Build not only require a lot of ships, but many of them are rare or prize ships. You could easily spend $400 to $500 dollars for those builds.
We have already established the fact that each of these builds gives a player, even an average player, an advantage almost impossible to overcome. Spend enough money and you too can win: Pay-to-Play.
I mentioned in the title that STAW being Pay-to-Play is a good thing. How could that be? Who would want to play a game where the rich get richer and the poor have no chance of winning? In a word: you should.
Pay-to-Play conjures images of some rich kid with $1000 sneakers being able to beat Lebron James. It’s not. It’s the acknowledgement that better equipment gives you an advantage. Magic, The Gathering is a game that is often compared to STAW. And yet, in Magic, players acknowledge that cards have value and you can buy a great deck that will give you an advantage.
Do you know a game that is not Pay-to-Play? Monopoly. And Risk. And dozens of other games. But, those games do not have a community. They do not have tournaments. They do not have regular updates that people want to buy and add to their collection. They don’t have world rankings. They don’t have people who write articles about them.
The way that STAW is designed virtually guarantees that some players will have better fleets. But, having a lot of ships doesn’t ensure that a player will be able to put together a superb fleet. Naturally some players will be better than other players at building fleets. Some will be better at flying fleets. Some will be better at strategy.
But, the fact that STAW rewards players who have more is not a symptom of a problem. It’s an indication of a living, breathing, growing community. Don’t complain about the Pay-to-Play nature of Star Trek Attack Wing. Instead, enjoy the fact that STAW has created a community that continues to grow and evolve.
This is the final in a series of posts about Star Trek Attack Wing:
Tuesday: An introduction to Star Trek Attack Wing
Wednesday: Chronological Chaos OP: An Unbeatable Build?
Thursday: Throwback Thursday: Winning the Klingon Civil War OPs and more unbeatable builds
Friday: STAW is DEFINITELY Pay-to-play. . .And players should be grateful it is
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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(Edit: Updated with two versions of The Build)
This post assumes an understanding of Star Trek Attack War. Read an introduction of it here.
Yesterday I presented an example of an “unbeatable build.” (Chronological Chaos OP: An Unbeatable Build?) Is it truly unbeatable? The STAW Facebook forum offered several alternatives. While no one could offer a solution that would for sure beat it, several strategies were suggested that might “give it a difficult time.”
Today I want to talk about unambiguous unbeatable builds.
Klingon Civil War
First let’s talk about the Klingon Civil War OP (KCW.) KCW was a series of three OPs.
Through a series of good, but not great builds, and some lucky dice rolls, and some innovative strategy during The Battle of Mempa (The Deep Space Nine Space Station) I found myself in the lead at my Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) going into Baiting The Romulans.
The KCW series awarded prizes for winning each month. The overall winner of the entire series won a prize as well. I was determined to win KCW3 Baiting The Romulans. I devised a fleet that could not be beat. It wasn’t that my build might not be beat. It was unbeatable. I certainly wasn’t the first to come up with the strategy, but I ran it to perfection.
KCW3, like most OPs, had some special rules. First, it allowed any Romulan ships to start cloaked. In fact, your build had to include at least one Romulan ship. Romulan ships that were Cloaked could use a 1 or 2 [Bank] maneuver templates when using the [Sensor Echo] Action. Each time you made one of these moves, you earned 5 victory points.
KCW3 was essentially a battle to the death. If one side destroyed the other side, the victor won the game. That’s pretty straight forward. If both sides survived, then the winner was determined by points. Destroying your opponent’s entire fleet earned you 130 points. The actual points for destroying a ship were based on how each ship was equipped.
I used the Romulan Science Vessel Swarm. The fleet was deceptively simple. You simply loaded it with Romulan Science Vessels. Science Vessels are cheap ships.
KCW gave you a “discount” on Romulan ships. They were two points cheaper. So, a Romulan Science Vessel was 10 points. That meant that armed with a captain that was Skill 1 and cost 0, you could field 13 of them. In my case, I opted for 12 of them and a couple of Cloaked Mines.
Why is it unbeatable? After all, at a measly Primary Weapon value of 1, and a lightweight single Shield and Hull value of 2, the Science Vessel isn’t strong enough to do damage to anything. It wasn’t designed to. In fact, combining the +4 Defense Dice that a vessel got for cloaking with the Evade value of 2, so long as the Science Vessel stayed cloaked, it was a difficult ship to kill. And that was the key.
My entire strategy was to line up my 12 Science Vessels and have them dance around the playing area using the Sensor Echo. During an evening of STAW, typically a player will play three games. Each game is an hour long. A typical “turn” takes 10 minutes or so. An entire game can be five to seven turns.
Using the Romulan Science Vessel Swarm, each turn I earned 5 victory points per ship. It generally takes a couple of turns to get your ships across the board to engage the enemy. By the time my opponent got within range to fire his first attack, I had already racked up 120 victory points. My opponents were able to destroy at most 3 of my ships during a game, earning them 30 victory points. In the same amount of time, I had earned 250-300 points. My highest point total was 350 points, more than double the amount of points he would earn for destroying my entire fleet.
Why was it unbeatable? Because, suppose that on turn three my opponent were to destroy 11 of my 12 ships (an impossible feat, but typically a condition that would win any game) he would only earn 120 points, I would have still earned 180 points in the same amount of time thanks to my Sensor Echo dance. And given that my opponents were running three ships, the most they could destroy in a single turn was 3 ships and that would take very lucky rolls. There literally was no way to lose. (I actually had some issues with that as I wrote about here.)
The Romulan Science Vessel Swarm was unbeatable because of the unique rules for the KCW3 OP. But, there’s another build that is unbeatable in all situations. It’s called simply The Build
The Build
Credit goes to Tucker Cobey, and his podcast State Of The Federation for exploring The Build and why it’s unbeatable. The Build is not a specific fleet. It’s a strategy that exploits a specific card: Warp Jump.
Warp Jump lets you remove your ship at the beginning of the Combat Phase and return it at the end of the Combat Phase. Obviously if your ship is not on the board during the part of the game where ships are shooting at each other, it’s going to survive. The Build requires one additional card. One of the rules of STAW allow you to score victory points if you steal technology from your opponent.
Here are two versions of The Build. This first one is more or less what they did on the show. The math’s a little off because they were assuming Captured was 2.
U.S.S. Pasteur [U.S.S. Pasteur] (22)
Calvin Hudson [Val Jean] (3)
Captured (1)
Adm Q [Q Continuum Cards] (1)
Lure [U.S.S. Dauntless] (4)
Second of Five [Scout Cube] (3)
Romulan Helmsman [I.R.W. Haakona] (2)
Cloaked Mines [I.R.W. Praetus] (3)
Cloaked Mines [I.R.W. Praetus] (3)
Total (42)Sakharov [Sakharov] (14)
Vanik [Ti’Mur] (3)
Conditional Surrender [Krayton] (3)
Captured (1)
Jennifer Sisko [I.S.S. Defiant] (4 overridden to 2)
Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (3)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (3)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (3)
Total (34)U.S.S. Grissom [U.S.S. Grissom] (14)
Gul Madred [Reklar] (6)
Faked Messages [S’Gorn] (6)
Li Nalas [Akorem] (2)
Diplomacy (5)
Systems Upgrade [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (5)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (5)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (5)
Total (50)Senior Staff (2)
Fleet total: 128
(Fleet developed by Robert Fletcher, Tucker Coby and Joseph Van Der Jagt)The second, developed by Tucker Cobey, in many ways is worse than the above; while it has to trade down from Cloaked Mines to Antimatter Mines (which are a little harder to kill time with), it:
– Has a ganking strategy that only a couple of cards can deal with
– Uses three of the worst ships in the game just to further the point
– Is ship pureGalaxy Class (MU) [Assimilation Target Prime] (28)
Calvin Hudson [Val Jean] (3)
Transwarp Conduit [Soong] (5)
Second of Five [Scout Cube] (2)
Agony Booth [I.S.S. Enterprise] (2)
Jennifer Sisko [I.S.S. Defiant] (2)
Quantum Slipstream Drive [U.S.S. Dauntless] (5)
Captured [Dreadnought] (1)
Total (48)Delta Flyer II [Delta Flyer II] (20)
Vanik [Ti’Mur] (3)
Full Reverse (2)
Sakonna [Gavroche] (2)
Quark [DS9 GenCon Promo] (2)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (3 overridden to 0)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (3)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (3)
Antimatter Mines [Starter] (3)
Antimatter Mines [Starter] (3)
Captured [Dreadnought] (1)
Total (41)Denorios [Denorios] (12)
Tahna Los [Akorem] (3)
Adm Matt Decker [U.S.S. Intrepid] (1)
Faked Messages [S’Gorn] (5)
Lure [U.S.S. Dauntless] (5)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (5 overridden to 3)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (5)
Warp Jump [U.S.S. Hathaway] (5)
Captured [Dreadnought] (1)
Total (40)Fleet total: 130
(Fleet developed by Tucker Cobey)
The Build requires at least two ships each of them equipped with 3 or more Warp Jump upgrades and an upgrade that allows you to steal technology. The strategy is steal a single upgrade from your opponent and then run away from your opponent until the time runs out. Normally, the run away strategy doesn’t work because as you run, your opponent will chase you and he will be shooting at you the entire time. But, if you use Warp Jump, you can constantly stay out of range.
While strategies exist to combat The Rabbit, I talked about yesterday, or the Romulan Science Vessel Swarm, no strategies exist to beat The Build. Tomorrow I’ll talk about the idea that while STAW has the ability to build unbeatable builds, it comes at a cost.
This is the third in a series of posts about Star Trek Attack Wing:
Tuesday: An introduction to Star Trek Attack Wing
Wednesday: Chronological Chaos OP: An Unbeatable Build?
Thursday: Throwback Thursday: Winning the Klingon Civil War OPs and more unbeatable builds
Friday: STAW is DEFINITELY Pay-to-play. . .And players should be grateful it is
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
