I fly mostly squishy Interceptors and Phantoms, and have started putting upgrades on them that'll increase their survivability on the table. My weakness is usually HSF builds or anything with turrets and lots of HP. I've not really gone against Decimators just yet but I can imagine 2 of them would be quite scary. Most of the time, I'm against a Falcon built along the lines of MF+C3PO+various upgrades with two other ships, sometimes Bs, Zs, etc.

I've always heard the advice of going for the big ship first, but I cannot see the point of wailing into it while allowing the smaller ships to survive and shoot back. I've always tried to take down the lower-HP ships first, then focus on the Falcon later on. I think I understand the idea of concentrating fire on the big ship while I have my full squad's firepower still available, but I cannot see why I should do it and give the smaller ships 2-4 turns of free shots at my ships.

If someone would kindly explain why I'm such a n00b at this, I'd be very grateful!

I fly mostly squishy Interceptors and Phantoms, and have started putting upgrades on them that'll increase their survivability on the table. My weakness is usually HSF builds or anything with turrets and lots of HP. I've not really gone against Decimators just yet but I can imagine 2 of them would be quite scary. Most of the time, I'm against a Falcon built along the lines of MF+C3PO+various upgrades with two other ships, sometimes Bs, Zs, etc.

I've always heard the advice of going for the big ship first, but I cannot see the point of wailing into it while allowing the smaller ships to survive and shoot back. I've always tried to take down the lower-HP ships first, then focus on the Falcon later on. I think I understand the idea of concentrating fire on the big ship while I have my full squad's firepower still available, but I cannot see why I should do it and give the smaller ships 2-4 turns of free shots at my ships.

If someone would kindly explain why I'm such a n00b at this, I'd be very grateful!

Time limits are a huge reason. If you play tournament games, the clock ticks precious seconds away from you at every moment. The reason you should (often, admittedly I don't ALWAYS think so, but usually) focus on the main ship first, is because of 2 reasons:

You may not have time to clear it off should you lose a ship or two in the process of clearing the escorts. So, you will continue to take damage, and his highest-cost ship is still on the table, leading to his likely win should the game go to time. Or, he will clear you, and his heavy ship will limp away with 1-2 hull remaining. In fact, this is highly likely, because of the Falcon's high automatic damage cancellation. You have to be able to deal at least 3 damage to most, 4 to some, to even guarantee he will keep the hits. If you lose an attack or two before you turn on the Falcon, you can't keep up with the cancellation.

Margin of Victory and ship cost. More expensive ships should be higher priority targets, because their cost is relevant in current tournament scoring. Before Wave 4 and the advent of MoV in tournament rules, your strategy was absolutely viable. A way to beat Han Shoots First in 60 minutes was clear the escorts and then run the time out. That simply isn't a competitive strategy anymore, because even if you should win without clearing his largest ship, the score difference will be quite small and you will be seeded low among the players with the same win/loss record.

With fat Han builds the big issue is the guaranteed 2 evade tokens each turn. If you kill everything else first you may end up with a single, 3 attack dice ship vs a falcon that can guarantee avoiding 2 booms each turn. It can result in you literally not being able to damage the falcon, at all. So the conventional wisdom in thos circumstances, is that you have no choice but yo throw everything you have at the fattie from the start, while you still have enough attack dice to actually damage it.

depends on the escort ships

I generally ignore talas when I'm rolling with 3 agility ships, because 2 red dice is just rough to work around and fat han deserves eternal damnation

If it's Bs, though, they'll drop like a sack of potatoes to concentrated fire and are actually a threat. If you see the squad split and you're closer to the Bs, don't be afraid to run them through.

Yeah, the last time I went up against a Falcon, he had two Bs with him and the Falcon was actually shielding the Bs. I should've gone for the Falcon.

Thank you for the explanation especially the time concept. I did not consider this before.... maybe because I'd always win or lose before the time was called. IIRC, I only went to time 2x so far and those lists had nothing to do with Falcons.

I've never, EVER played Rebels. While I have a rough idea of "how they work" when some cards are paired with some ships, maybe my unfamiliarity with the ships/cards are a disadvantage? Anyway, I will revise my strategy and try to kill the big ship first and see how that works.

Thanks!

Something else to consider, now take this with a grain of salt because I witnessed it, If you are playing high agility ships and can get most to all arcs on a big ship with foc and/or target lock on your ships, you stand a decent chance of causing it high damage in a single round. For example I witnessed someone playing interceptors against fat han and corran, block corran, who then caused han to crash into corran and give 4 interceptors a range 1 shot at Han with no actions and they took him off in a single round. Leaving corran, but still a single e wing, against 4 interceptors making the game near hopeless at that point. So consider how much actuall damage your full and/or close to your full squad can do against a single target with 1 agi. In addition when playing high agility ships dont be afraid to block with them. Maybe not with a tooled out phantom, but I have done and seen many players game wrecked because they didn't expect an interceptor to block. Also remember a piece of advice that has helped me a ship with 1 hp is still capable of delivering its full damage.

I've never, EVER played Rebels. While I have a rough idea of "how they work" when some cards are paired with some ships, maybe my unfamiliarity with the ships/cards are a disadvantage? Anyway, I will revise my strategy and try to kill the big ship first and see how that works.

Play the Rebels sometime. Familiarity will always be to your advantage.

If for no other reason, you'll get to use the dials firsthand and get an idea of, "Oh, I was in a position like that before. I wanted to do this maneuver. They might do something like that, then."

I fly mostly squishy Interceptors and Phantoms, and have started putting upgrades on them that'll increase their survivability on the table. My weakness is usually HSF builds or anything with turrets and lots of HP. I've not really gone against Decimators just yet but I can imagine 2 of them would be quite scary. Most of the time, I'm against a Falcon built along the lines of MF+C3PO+various upgrades with two other ships, sometimes Bs, Zs, etc.

I've always heard the advice of going for the big ship first, but I cannot see the point of wailing into it while allowing the smaller ships to survive and shoot back. I've always tried to take down the lower-HP ships first, then focus on the Falcon later on. I think I understand the idea of concentrating fire on the big ship while I have my full squad's firepower still available, but I cannot see why I should do it and give the smaller ships 2-4 turns of free shots at my ships.

If someone would kindly explain why I'm such a n00b at this, I'd be very grateful!

In the current meta, you have your work cut our for you. You HAVE to kill the fat turret first because if you don't you simply don't have enough punch to kill it in the endgame. If you are going to fly TIE ints in this climate, you must a) maintain R3 vs the turret and b) avoid arc on support ships. The extra die at R3 helps you way more than the turret, and if you can fly well then he only can shoot with the turret. That means one ship takes fire once. Then all your boys return fire. Maybe one or two hits are evaded and the rest melt him. After he goes down mopping up is all but a foregone conclusion.

Having said all that, autothrusters are going to make it significantly easier for interceptors to stay alive long enough to kill something.