Tarkin with a Star Destroyer and a VSD and anything else you want to throw in still give unparalleled flexibility. If you put a Weapons Liaison or a Defense Liaison, then you almost don't need to plan your command dials, and if you do plan them well, then you get awesomely effective commands with a command and a token. Upgrades like leading shots can get you some rerolls extra hits that you are missing by not taking Vader or Screed. Yes, he is expensive, but he's also awesome!

The Rebels can get close to this flexibility with Leia and/or the Tantive IV.

What do you think?

rebel flexibility is a bit different

with Akbar and/or Rogue, I can build a fleet in either faction that does nothing but spam navigate and still kick ass

that's flexibility for ya

Tarkin is good, there's no doubt about it, but his powerful ability is (IMO) well balanced by his staggering points cost and the fact that he naturally wants to be paired with high command ships. He's more friendly to a 2 command ship than say... Garm Bel Iblis though, so there's that.

Still, depending on the ship configuration you're running, it can make more sense to simply take Navigation/Engineering/etc Officers than buying the very expensive Tarkin and then paying 3 pts per ship for Weapons/Defense Liaisons.

I'm finding my love split primarily between Vader and Ozzel at the moment, myself.

Ozzel because the game is so positional in nature, and he's given me a level of positional control I've only ever dreamed of.

Vader because he basically chokes out one of my bridge officers, yells "Keep firing, A##holes!", and makes evade tokens worthwhile at close range.

Tarkin is indeed very good. Command economy is arguably one of the most powerful abilities to have in game; and Tarkin gives the bonus to the entire fleet.

Be cautious, Tvayumat. Ozzel is as clumsey as he is stupid.

As a mostly Empire player, I find that I need to take either Vader or Screed to minimize extremely poor dice rolls. Nothing is more frustrating than rolling lots of attack dice during an imlortant attack and getting little or no damage.

In a recent friendly match, my opponent had Rieikken and he was devastating. He had 3 small ships jammmed into the grill of my ISD and that was the end of the ISD. Ram ram ram ram ram ram ram dead ISD.

Tarkin is the man and it shows in his card.

Vader may be the Emperor's hatchet man but Tarkin epitomizes the Imperial commander. Tough, ruthless and authoritative. Self-sufficiency that degenerates into complacency.

Tarkin is great because he is so flexible. He can mimic Vader by passing out CF tokens (and Screed to a lesser extent), he can mimic Ozzel by passing out Nav Tokens (and in some cases such as Eng Team, its better than Ozzel), can mimic Motti passing out engineering tokens, and can do something no other Admiral can do and help squadrons (through squad tokens). He allows you to swap modes every turn, and repeat modes (unlike Garm). He's flexible, powerful, turns on certain upgrades, and adds to whichever element of the battle needs some help. He's my favorite Imperial.