Well MacrossMartin, there is nothing to stop anyone playing "faction pure" as it were, and for some OP games I have done, usually fully Dominion. In fact 3 of the 5 OP events I've been too I ran entirely Dominion, not one single card out of faction, and I did win two of them.
When you play friendly games there is no real reason to play out of faction either – but when you attend an OP event such as the one listed above, you have to give yourself the best chance of winning and sometimes that means running things that are out of faction.
I can well imagine that people would get irked at the thought of Khan commanding a Klingon Vor'cha – I do myself! But when the chips are down and you really want to win, why would you purposefully tie one hand behind your back?
Looking at the fleets that were used at this recent event – one was entirely Romulan, one was entirely Federation, one was 3/4 Klingon and the other two fleets (both mine and the swarm) were the only ones that were well off it.
There is nothing in the rules to prevent people mixing factions and you do pay a penalty for using them out of faction, sometimes swallowing your pride and saying "I need to use this card for my strategy to work" has to be done.
For most OP events the event rules themselves often dictate how you need to build your fleet – the Wrath of Khan OP event for example wanted you to use ships with 360 arcs and high hull as whilst in the nebula your range was limited and your shields were useless – so the Enterprise-D with Picard or the Regent's Flagship with Regent Worf and Mirror Garak would have been perfect for it and were in use on the day.
Every single ship has its own use and sometimes expansions are perfectly playable by themselves – the Alpha Hunter for example, if you use Karr (the Hirogen captain that comes with it), Stalking Mode (one of his elite talents) and the data network (used by the Hirogen in Voyager), you have an absolute deadly ship that is exactly what is was in Voyager.
Most ships are like that, you can use them with the cards that come in their own expansion and be perfectly viable and most of the time we do.
The prize ship for this OP for example is the USS Hood. It comes with the Hood itself, Robert DeSoto as the captain, Will Riker as a crew card and a few others, such as upgraded phasers/upgraded shields etc.
I'd use that ship as it is from the pack and have everything be spot on to the show – DeSoto is the captain of the Hood, the version of Riker included was his first officer and during the Dominion war it did have upgrades after a systems upgrade – all perfectly "canon" and usable in game.
The fact that the Hood prize ship is exceptionally hard to get hold of where I live meant that regardless of my own irratation, I had to give myself the best chance of winning. We had a couple of players turn up from over 50 miles away just to try and win the Hood, they were very open about it as well. No problem with that from my end, the greater the challenge the sweeter the victory.
I went through about 15-20 variations of lists to use for this OP alone, some of them faction pure, some of them not – the list I choose in the end gave me the best chance of winning and at the same time having an enjoyable day.
When it comes to attack fighters, yes they are powerful but you have to have a large ship in order to run each set of them – one of the cheapest ships this is possible with just happens to be the Constitution, which in and of itself is no slouch. It was one of the lists I considered for the day itself, along with 3x Galor & 2x Hideki squadrons, 2x Vor'cha & 2x Hidekis – so many variations can be done you sometimes just have to go with what feels right.
As it was, in the last game Vs the attack fighter heavy list, I had wiped half of it off the board before my opponent damaged me – one of the Q effects then whisked my captains off the board which allowed him to fire first and rip apart my Reman Warbird, had that Q effect not happened then the game may have ended differently.
Every list can be beaten, every game can be won or lost at several different places: the fleet building stage, the manouvering, the roll of the dice during attack/defence, even the timing used for upgrades – there are so many different combinations and variations that no fleet can account for every type of enemy.
I could have run 3 D'Deridex, all fully faction pure Romulan, that would have fired first each round and three times at every ship in front of them – that would have decimated the fighter heavy build but against the others wouldn't have lasted 4 or 5 turns.
In the end, he ran the correct fleet for the event and came out on top.
My fleet wasn't designed to combat that many fighter squadrons – that was the one type of fleet I couldn't build for – had the other players all brought fighter heavy fleets I would have been mauled. As it was I was lucky that my strategy for the day worked against the majority of my opponents.
One of the reasons that I enjoy that game so much is because of the sheer variety of the builds you can make – every time you play you see something new, something you hadn't encountered before or a new way to use that upgrade you've always discounted as useless. Each player learns from each game, each loss teaches you, each victory teaches you.
It's a wonderful game, even more enjoyable than X-Wing in my opinion and I do enjoy X-Wing.
If you want a more balanced look at things, check out the OP reports that I've previously put on my blog – you'll see plenty of faction pure, era pure fleets in play.
That's the fun of it – the strategy, the tactics, the actual playing of the game – give it a chance, stick to faction pure/era pure if you feel that you need to and enjoy!
