I'm using an AF list with a moderate bid to go second.

Commonly I've been using Opening Salvo (this ones really good I think), Hyperspace Assault if Shrimp or Fleet Ambush if not, and Intel Sweep (which is only marginally good).

Most of my opponents then choose Intel Sweep.

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The Problem:

The way I see it, ackbar lists tend to be light on squadrons. And I've seen that a large amount of squadrons flown well is one of the worst things to deal with as ackbar since you can't really buy enough squadrons to win any sort of dedicated squadron fight.

Yavaris shenanigans and Imperial fighter synergy is just much stronger than anything you can do pure Rebel with Ackbar: No Yavaris. And most of the time you want Gunnery Team over Flight Controllers.

Assume:

We then assume that the most common worst enemy to ackbar is bomber-fighter heavy lists.

Even without that assumption, against other popular lists, like ISD 2VSD etc, what are good obejctives?

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Assault:

Most Wanted - Okay - safest: Tends to be in your favor since you can concentrate long range fire. Doesn't affect squadrons after errata.

Precision Strike - Hell no. Just for chance of playing against even slightly stronger squadrons.

Advanced Gunnery - Hell yes / hell no. for Home One lists, awesome. For non home one lists, you ahve gunnnery team. And giving that enemy ISD double shot is a big NONO. Cuz even if you're good enough to avoid most front shots, eventually you will take one. And AFs do crumple under 16 dice +.

Opening Salvo - mostly yes. This seems to be the best option. Always good. You usually have the best long range fire power. Only time its really bad is against mirror Ackbar lists. And I've never played a mirror Ackbar. Anyone have any thoughts?

Defense:

These tend to suck.

Contested Outpost - NO. You want to be moving. Although in a pinch, I could see it working. Move speed 1 at the beginning then nav nav turns 3 or 4.

Fleet Ambush - no. This simply lets a squadron player place his stuff way closer to you. (Guys with experience, am I right about this??)

Hyperspace Assault - fun, if shrimp yes. I've been considering this one with a Flight Controller 3rd AF with some strong named squadrons. Looks like you could put in a serious flanking ship somewhere. Dunno how good it is though.

Fire Lanes - ??? No. Now this one is really weird. The way I read it, you don't get your ackbar bonuses for this, so youre still going to be outgunned by most things off of natural armament.

Is that right?

NNavigation:

Superior Positions - NO. Squadrons. Yuck. Also as second player and flying away, you tend to be shot in the back a few times.

Dangerous Territory - yes, meh. This gives you completely uninhibited flying through rocks, and also some extra damage. Its good but also a little low I think on giving an advantage.

Intel Sweep - Yes. This one is relatively easy to create a group of 3 tokens you will move to take. You simply to have to make sure you don't easily telegraph your route and make it easy to cut you off. I'm not telling how ^^, but I'll tell you its easily doable. Those 75 points I think go an okay way. Its basically killing a naked Victory for free. Or a gladiator.

Minefields - no? You probably could come up with a plan that avoids hitting them and makes engaging you difficult. But I could see it easily backfiring. Also a squadron player could potentially try and block your moderately obvious flight path.

A few things. First off is Fire Lanes: absolutely yes for broadside fleets. Your opponent gets to ask that fun question: how many points do I want to concede to second player.

Superior Positions: Ok, they have fighter squadrons. They also deploy everything immediately and let you leisurely deploy your fleet to blast the crap out of them.

Opening Salvo: Congratulations, you just gave 7 CR90As six red dice on their first attacks. Each.

A few things. First off is Fire Lanes: absolutely yes for broadside fleets. Your opponent gets to ask that fun question: how many points do I want to concede to second player.

Superior Positions: Ok, they have fighter squadrons. They also deploy everything immediately and let you leisurely deploy your fleet to blast the crap out of them.

Opening Salvo: Congratulations, you just gave 7 CR90As six red dice on their first attacks. Each.

Read Fire Lanes again. Does it actually add ackbar dice? Seems like no.

Would you play Superior Positions if he had TEN squadrons? And boosted comms? Or even 8? I played against a guy with 12.

Salvo is obvious as you say.

Yes, I am quite familiar with Fire Lanes.

Look at what I said again: a broadside fleet is great for Fire Lanes. And Ackbar wants a broadside fleet. In the space if three turns you add an MC80 or ISD to your score. Then, you get to fought the enemy fleet that comes to steal it with your Ackbar ability. But even that is not entirely correct: most players will completely skip over Fire Lanes because they already know this. Allowing you to make additional commitments in your other selections.

TL;DR, Fire Lanes is 90 free points to second player. The ships Ackbar loves most (AF2, MC80, MC30) are all well suited for it if equipped correctly.

I agree on superior positions. That's asking for trouble. Cactusman is correct about fire lanes, however. Great objective for a broadside fleet, Ackbar dice or not.

I had fire lanes backfire hard on me, albeit with a very gimmicky dual mc80/projection experts list that simply could not last long against those star destroyers. But he rushed dual ISD's and Demolisher up in my face lightning fast and I only got like a turn of points.

I had fire lanes backfire hard on me, albeit with a very gimmicky dual mc80/projection experts list that simply could not last long against those star destroyers. But he rushed dual ISD's and Demolisher up in my face lightning fast and I only got like a turn of points.

Very smooth use of that quote.

Yeah. I feel like fire lanes can be easily mitigated. Hmm.

Also you still don't get ackbar dice on the fire lane calculation. And that's how you tend to outgun another list.

Fire Lanes is good. You just need to place them close to you, get the early objective advantage, then if they try and stay there while you're off blasting them from afar, all the better.

So, based on my experience with my whale fleet:

• If you run an MC80, you would be insane not to pick Advanced Gunnery. It gives the mother whale the ability to double-shoot at the same target if someone is insane enough to pick it. It's even worse than when you have an AFII with Paragon. Given that the MC80 can't normally take a gunnery team, this basically solves the biggest weakness of your best ship. Take it always.
• Fire Lanes is another must-take. You will have more firepower reaching out to touch people early than anyone else unless you are playing a mirror match, and even then, you have more control over where the counters go. Take this always with a broadside fleet, none of the other yellow objectives come close.

I feel like those two are honestly must haves. I wouldn't take this fleet without them and they are obvious choices.

Picking Opening Salvo can be a disaster if you hit a swarm fleet, so I think it is an inferior choice, as it will actually be an objective your opponent gets more benefit from in many situations if you hit a CR90 or Raider swarm. You never want an objective where your opponent both gets to go first AND gets an advantage against you.

Of the yellow objectives, I think Fire Lanes is an obvious pick. Contested Outpost is an obvious disaster for this list, Hyperspace assault is a trap because you want your firepower on the board, at long range, from turn one onwards, so anything that disrupts that is a net negative at worst and a neutral at best. Fleet Ambush sounds good in theory until you hit a list with a VSD / ISD or GSD mix, and all it does is allows them to get the VSD forward, which is normally the piece that slows them down. It sounds good in theory, but again, it's not good for this list. The right list for Fleet Ambush is an alpha strike squadron list (like Rhymer Ball) where they have a real chance to kill the ship in the box on turn 1.

So this leaves you with the blue objective. First, I feel like Intel Sweep is a trap. You want to be at long range and you want to outmaneuver your opponent. The worst way to do this is having predictable fixed locations they can point things like Star Destroyers at. If you take Intel Sweep, you are playing into the hands of someone who wants to bulldoze your ships with large, brutal front arcs. Don't do it. It's a trap.

That leaves us with Dangerous Territory, Minefields, and Superior Positions. Don't take Minefields. Same problem as Intel Sweep: it closes off portions of the board to a fleet that wants to maneuver freely. Again, I don't think it is controversial to say that it's dumb to give a fleet like the Gencon Special a more obvious approach vector.

By process of elimination, we are now down to Superior Positions and Dangerous Territory. I dislike Superior Positions for the whale conga line because it's actually very easy for your opponent to get behind you and score points (as you want to be circling away from them). This is an objective that will either be neutral or work against you, because your goal is to broadside your foe, not cross the T from behind (which requires exceptional speed). I feel that Superior Positions is really the objective that a CR90 or Raider swarm wants to take (and I do sometimes take it with my CR90 spam list, as that is one where I can consistently get many small rear shots while denying them to my foes).

So this leaves us with Dangerous Territory as the last remaining pick. The fact that this closes off the board for the opponent, but not you means that it aids with the maneuver aspect of this list. It's also the one you should expect to get picked the most often. I've taken this exact set of objectives to two separate tournaments with Whale lists now (finishing first and third), and I've had DT picked 4 times in 5 games where I've gone second, and the other was Fire Lanes (once). Nobody has been dumb enough to touch Advanced Gunnery, and this was only with a Paragon whale. I can imagine with an MC80 it would be even less likely to get picked, so build your fleet to win the other two objectives.

EDIT: If you don't take an MC80, take one whale without a gunnery team, but with Paragon. This should be at the back of the Conga line as your cleanup hitter to double-arc anything that tries to disrupt the line. If anyone is dumb enough to take advanced gunnery, enjoy obliterating them with Ackbar and an extra black die.

EDIT EDIT: If I was playing against the objectives you mentioned above, I would be picking Intel Sweep against you as well, because it limits your movement. I wouldn't be playing to win the objective, either. I'd be playing to table your fleet, because predictable whales in fixed positions are dead whales. That's how you get double arced by glads, raiders, and MC30s.

I find people look at the Bomber keyword in Precision Strike and ignore the card after that. Personally I have found that the objective is strong when you learn the nuances.

For instance, a player with Gladiators and Assault Concussion Missiles or the like will want to activate that effect more than dealing a face up card. You would be surprised on how many Victory Tokens you can acquire when dealing 6 damage (dropping it to 5), or the like. Not negating the brace can actually be a boon in those cases.

I find people look at the Bomber keyword in Precision Strike and ignore the card after that. Personally I have found that the objective is strong when you learn the nuances.

For instance, a player with Gladiators and Assault Concussion Missiles or the like will want to activate that effect more than dealing a face up card. You would be surprised on how many Victory Tokens you can acquire when dealing 6 damage (dropping it to 5), or the like. Not negating the brace can actually be a boon in those cases.

I've considered Precision a few times when forced to pick... however, its always been against bomber heavy fleets: last one was 3B 3Y 2X. Eww. I don't think you can ever do it against that. Especially not as a Ackbar fleet trying to run away.

@Reinholt:

I pretty much agree with you.

So in your experience you find that even though Fire Lanes doesn't count Ackbar added dice, its still enough to give you an advantage?

There's two interesting things about this: If your opponent is smart, they will know that they only get SHOT with those dice, but the Fire Lanes is actually not calculated that way.

However, they still might not pick it cuz broadsides are strong in that objective.

As for Intel Sweep: Currently its my secret weapon ^^. I've found a way to make my movement unpredictable and its awesome.

But I came to the same conclusion as you: Dangerous Territory is safest. And really good still: One extra damage you dont need to do, and totally opens up the board for you and closes it off to your opponent.

I also agree with your Yellow calls: Hyperspace just screams fear. And I love it when opponents fear it.

On Fire Lanes:

Fire Lanes is great because you consider your range when considering dice. If you built a list with a ton of red dice, as you are intending to broadside with Ackbar so even without his effect, you still should have a ton of red dice, you will win Fire Lanes early.

That is good, because it forces your opponent to try to close with you in order to not lose. If they hang back, you score too many points with Fire Lanes. If they don't, they are playing the game you want them to play and/or what they were going to do anyways (in the case of things like Raider Rush and Gencon Special).

Or, put a different way: what non-Ackbar fleet will be significantly better than your fleet at fire lanes? A non-Ackbar whale list might beat you at Fire Lanes, but that will lose to you in the actual engagement as that's an inferior way to build the whale list right now. Carrier lists are terrible at Fire Lanes. Anything Imperial is worse than a rebel broadside list.

I like objectives that always play into my favor.

On Fear and Hyperspace Assault:

Never pick objectives that get worse the better the opposing player. Fear primarily impacts inexperienced and incompetent admirals. A strong player will know exactly how it works and rationally evaluate it. Those are the precise people you need the biggest edge against. Never pick an objective that gets weaker as your opponent gets better. It might feel nice to smoke n00bs, like Boba Fett, with it (SHOTS FIRED), but it won't help you improve your game or your overall results.

On Dangerous Territory:

I think the real value here is exactly what you described: people will either avoid it, or take extra damage you don't have to do. Either way, it is having a negative impact on their plan every single time it hits the board, and you are much more likely to score points with it than your foe. It's a small advantage, but it's a small advantage 100% of the time against all opponents. That's why I like it so much: no matter how good you are, the way the card is written means if you are going first, the card works against you always.

I find people look at the Bomber keyword in Precision Strike and ignore the card after that. Personally I have found that the objective is strong when you learn the nuances.

For instance, a player with Gladiators and Assault Concussion Missiles or the like will want to activate that effect more than dealing a face up card. You would be surprised on how many Victory Tokens you can acquire when dealing 6 damage (dropping it to 5), or the like. Not negating the brace can actually be a boon in those cases.

I've considered Precision a few times when forced to pick... however, its always been against bomber heavy fleets: last one was 3B 3Y 2X. Eww. I don't think you can ever do it against that. Especially not as a Ackbar fleet trying to run away.

On Fire Lanes:

Fire Lanes is great because you consider your range when considering dice. If you built a list with a ton of red dice, as you are intending to broadside with Ackbar so even without his effect, you still should have a ton of red dice, you will win Fire Lanes early.

That is good, because it forces your opponent to try to close with you in order to not lose. If they hang back, you score too many points with Fire Lanes. If they don't, they are playing the game you want them to play and/or what they were going to do anyways (in the case of things like Raider Rush and Gencon Special).

Or, put a different way: what non-Ackbar fleet will be significantly better than your fleet at fire lanes? A non-Ackbar whale list might beat you at Fire Lanes, but that will lose to you in the actual engagement as that's an inferior way to build the whale list right now. Carrier lists are terrible at Fire Lanes. Anything Imperial is worse than a rebel broadside list.

I like objectives that always play into my favor.

On Fear and Hyperspace Assault:

Never pick objectives that get worse the better the opposing player. Fear primarily impacts inexperienced and incompetent admirals. A strong player will know exactly how it works and rationally evaluate it. Those are the precise people you need the biggest edge against. Never pick an objective that gets weaker as your opponent gets better. It might feel nice to smoke n00bs, like Boba Fett, with it (SHOTS FIRED), but it won't help you improve your game or your overall results.

On Dangerous Territory:

I think the real value here is exactly what you described: people will either avoid it, or take extra damage you don't have to do. Either way, it is having a negative impact on their plan every single time it hits the board, and you are much more likely to score points with it than your foe. It's a small advantage, but it's a small advantage 100% of the time against all opponents. That's why I like it so much: no matter how good you are, the way the card is written means if you are going first, the card works against you always.

I like you. You get it.

That's exactly my thought on fear and who I want to play against. However, there are currently few players around who I would truly worry about yet.

Again, as I think, if your opponent knows he has to rush you anyways, Fire Lanes is going to get pretty tough as he rushes into closer range with all of his dice to bear. Over the 3 dice natural of the AF.

I'm not sure which ship you call the whale. (Sadly, its an incredibly not-useful nickname). The Guppy? The giant space potatoe?

Whale = AF2 for me. The MC80 will always be the flying turd to me (paint one brown and you will see why).

Fire Lanes against a rush list is interesting. I like putting the objectives in two blocks down the sides of the board, with one in the middle. That way, when he rushes, you break one way, and you have two of the tokens plus the middle one under you control if he went down one side or the other, or likely two to his one if he went down the middle (as most rush ships aren't sporting much in the way of red dice).

This setup is also the one time I will occasionally violate my own personal rule of not splitting my fleet, as leaving a single CR90 on the far side to force them to either come deal with it or give me those two tokens all game can be very useful.

Fire Lanes can change a lot depending on how you set it up. On rush lists, you want to force them down an edge/middle with a very even distribution of tokens that favors long range fire.

Think of it like water: they rush in, and slam into you, but instead of taking the blow, you flow out of the way into the empty space.

Hmm. Are you by chance able to draw a diagram?

On Fire Lanes:

Fire Lanes is great because you consider your range when considering dice. If you built a list with a ton of red dice, as you are intending to broadside with Ackbar so even without his effect, you still should have a ton of red dice, you will win Fire Lanes early.

That is good, because it forces your opponent to try to close with you in order to not lose. If they hang back, you score too many points with Fire Lanes. If they don't, they are playing the game you want them to play and/or what they were going to do anyways (in the case of things like Raider Rush and Gencon Special).

Or, put a different way: what non-Ackbar fleet will be significantly better than your fleet at fire lanes? A non-Ackbar whale list might beat you at Fire Lanes, but that will lose to you in the actual engagement as that's an inferior way to build the whale list right now. Carrier lists are terrible at Fire Lanes. Anything Imperial is worse than a rebel broadside list.

I like objectives that always play into my favor.

A triple ISD Player 2 with this is actually even better than the whale conga in some critical ways. Spread those tokens out and force your opponent to either run their entire fleet against a single ISD at a time or they have to break up to steal tokens from the ISD2s individually.

As for Superior Positions, people are overthinking the second mission rule but seem to be ignoring the first: Second Player gets to set up with full knowledge of the enemy fleet deployment. This is a huge advantage for a fleet looking at a tough opponent or a maneuverable fleet looking to flank the enemy. If second player has activation advantage they can dictate the entire flow of the match without either side firing at a single rear hull zone.

Yeah triple ISD might really like fire lanes.

Do you all think it's possible to hyperspace a shrimp into close range of a carrier list and combined with two AFs burn down a MC80 on the first shot?

Yeah triple ISD might really like fire lanes.

Do you all think it's possible to hyperspace a shrimp into close range of a carrier list and combined with two AFs burn down a MC80 on the first shot?

Build it right and position it right, and it's possible (probable, even) to hyperspace a shrimp into close range of an MC80 and kill it in one activation. I've done it to ISD's, MC80 is even more susceptible to it.

I mean one shot from the shrimp. Not just it alone. Haha. Cuz I know even if you happened to get double side arcs. You still need like about 2 to 3 ackbar AF shots to kill the thing.

Nothing that ends in a trap.

Actually, i think you almost have to trap an ISD to get it with the shrimp's hyperspace assault.

So on the layout for fire lanes:

| : . : |

That is how I lay it out when I am facing something like Gencon Special type lists. The dots are the tokens, the vertical pipes are the board edges. So consider:

If they come down the left, you have the middle and right for much of the early game. Advantage: you.

If they come down the center, they have mostly short-ranged guns and probably can't control the left if you go right, or the right if you go left, and especially not if you leave a single trailing CR90 over there. Advantage: you.

If they come down the right, you have the middle and the left for much of the early game. Advantage: you.

It's about knowing that kind of list doesn't have much long range firepower, so spreading the tokens wide with one mid and two bundles on either side forces them to start making choices early, and as long as you deploy with that in mind, it should be a structural advantage for you. Just don't put them so close together a player can wiggle them towards each other and get three in range of the short range guns.

On ISDs being good at Fire Lanes:

Only if you go really slowly and deploy it well. Side arcs are better than front arcs, as you don't get points if you run over the token and you would need to essentially park in front of it. I think you could do it, but you'd have to think really hard about the deployment, and a good opponent probably has more ways to mess with that than broadside lists. Ships move forward, so the geometry is harder for the ISD.