Previously Tactician was too conditional / avoidable to work consistently. With the release of the Flechette Cannon, however, I wonder if there isn't a decent way to employ the combination to lock out your opponent's fleet (especially in this era of 2 ship builds).

???

No it wasn't

Tactician can certainly be played around but the range 2 restriction is far worse on paper than on the table-top. Just slap them on a pair of Bs or more and let them do their thing, they are incredibly effective if you give them the chance to be.

I personally don't have much faith in 3 B-wing squads, they just don't seem to be enough given that they still die like 22 point B-wings no matter how many upgrades you load them with. Unless you're running a very mobile farlander (SoT, Sensors, B/e, Int Agent), it's generally not worth piling upgrades on them when you could get more ships instead.

If you want more guarantees on setting up a devastating stress stack, I'd recommend looking into R3-A2. It stresses without rolling dice and can actually stack, unlike the cannon. Flechette Nera is another good option, but not so much against the large ship portion of 2 ship builds for obvious reasons.

Option 2 is blockers, because you will always know where the opponent is if you force him to be there. A-wings are great for this, but it's hard to beat a Yt-2400 with Intelligence Agent. That size and barrel-roll with foreknowledge of where the enemy is going is just silly.

Option 3 is ion, for obvious reasons.