Hi people

There has been a lot of talk of anti Ackbar tactics in general on the forums of late but for this thread I would like to discuss tackling Ackbar (and in particular Ackbar alongside mass AF2’s) specifically with Rebels.

Of particular interest would be actual tactics to deal with Ackbar rather than the endlessly circular exercise of list building (I’m sure a list can be built to beat any other list which can in turn be modified to beat the counter……and on and on we go).

This topic stems from a recent tournament where in the final round I ran up against an Ackbar list that I couldn’t figure out a counter to, and haven’t made a lot of progress since either!

So the lists were:

Me:

AF2b (Ackbar, flight controllers, boosted coms)

AF2b (gunnery team)

CR90a (TRC)

CR90a (TRC)

4x B-wing

2x X-wing

1x HWK

Vs

AF2b (Ackbar, gunnery team, intel agent, ECM)

AF2b (gunnery team, intel agent, ECM)

AF2b (gunnery team, intel agent, ECM)

6x A-wing

1x Tyco

I was second player and opening salvo was chosen.

Looking at these fleets I really don’t think I can win a capital engagement even with bomber support. Two CR90’s have a very hard time against a single AF2 unless they can get into and stay in the front or rear arcs. Getting into the rear is fairly easy, however it has to get really close or the target AF2 simply moves out of range as the first activation of the next turn…..and while getting really close its really hard to stay out of arc of the remaining two AF2’s. Getting into the front faces the same problem but swaps the problem of maintaining a shot for the problem of staying in arc. You come in fast to avoid the ‘no mans land’ of broadsides which means I generally then overshoot the front arc after spending one turn there. Its also hard to avoid the arc of the other two enemy AF2’s unless going very wide, but then they can turn ‘through’ my formation and negate the effect.

The B-wings do good damage, but are probably only getting one turn of shooting (the HWK can’t cover that many A’s, and 80 points of enemy fighters are going to kill my two X’s and HWK in a round and a little….then the B’s get ground down, or a best locked out of the capital engagement even if they eventually win). I don’t think one solid round of bombing is enough to tip the capital fight in my favour.

Assuming the two CR90’s are going to have a tough time of it then that leaves two AF2’s facing two better AF2’s….also a losing prospect for me.

As a result I decided to play 100% avoidance and play sqadrons vs squadrons only. Sadly this isn’t a clear fight at all either. 80 points of fighters vs 100 point of fighter bombers with intel tricks is far from a cut and dry win, I’d say the odds are in my favour (mostly thanks to boosted coms and flight controllers), but this is a dice game and the odds are not far enough in my favour to be a reliable strategy. Suffice to say as the game panned out I actually ended up losing the squadron battle and also left a CR90 in range of an AF2 for a single shot and lost it as a result. I ended up losing by 100 points.

The question is what can I do differently? I think the key is working out how to deal with the AF2 as rebels……..and I am not there yet! Its easy to say make them crash into each other, but assuming both of us are flying fairly well this is a big ask. As an example I have played this person five times now (currently at 3:2 to him) and organising crashes hasn’t really done a lot for me. The AF’s are always run in a staggered but tight formation, thus if on stops moving the others do not crash, they also have a little wiggle room for turns to react to where the CR90’s are coming in from thus ensuring that while a crashing CR90 might be safe from one AF2, it isn’t safe from the others. While in this formation they are close enough that isolating part of it is difficult without isolating just as much of my stuff.

I think this matchup was fairly fascinating since we have similar points in capitals and squadrons. Matt basically takes his points saved in squadrons and invests them into intel officers and ECM’s. I could do something similar but I hit the problem that the AF2 appears to be more efficient at applying those upgrades. If I dropped a B for two intel officers the effect would be pretty minimal. Each enemy ship only gets to brace once a turn anyway and the damage output from each shot in my fleet is fairly comparable…….so the target ship will just brace against a CR90. I would need four intel officers to actually force some hard choices and at that point my bombing force is basically irrelevant (2 B-wings) and I may as well just run fighters.

Since the game I have been contemplating how to tackle a well flown blob of Ackbar AF2’s with solid fighter support. The best ‘solution’ I have come up with is to simply beat them at their own game….field more points in capitals with a more specialised set of upgrades (maybe something like 1x MC80, 2x AF2, intel and XI7 on the lot) while maintaining a lighter screen (5ish A-wings), or field a dedicated 100+ points in fighters and firmly kill the 80 point wing while avoiding any capital engagement……..this really isn’t the point though because we end up in the cycle of list trumping.

A core part of the AF2’s effectiveness is use of gunnery teams…..so if we can prevent there use that would be good. This requires a load of one vs one engagements with ships capable of out shooting an AF2…….so for the rebels that’s basically another AF2 with more specialist upgrades or an MC80 (the magical double broadside of an MC30 would also do the trick, but those are seriously hard to engineer as player 2 – margin of error against a speed 3 AF2 would be tiny if possible at all).

There’s my problem, how have you other rebel generals successfully dealt with mass Ackbar AF2’s without simply fighting fire with fire (which would probably be a really fun game….or really boring if they just coasted up alongside each other and let the dice decide).

I think Mon Mothma and Riekaan both act as solid counters to Akbar by virtue of reducing or negating the value of his dice additions. MM in particular makes it possible to drastically reduce incoming damage from red dice.

First off your force is set up to fight in close and he wants to stay at long and pound you and he has the ships and fighters to do it, try CR90 Bs with over loaded pulse attacks first, then use your heavy ships. also the B wings are to slow to face a fleet that will stay at long range, use more X wings.

I think Mon Mothma and Riekaan both act as solid counters to Akbar by virtue of reducing or negating the value of his dice additions. MM in particular makes it possible to drastically reduce incoming damage from red dice.

I agree. Even with Intelligence agents staring down your CR-90s' redirects, you have evade tokens up to close range to use against nasty dice rolls. I think if you fly CR-90s as a good portion of your list there's a very valid point to taking Mon Mothma over Ackbar. Especially with this list, where half of your ships do not rely on broadsides to be effective.

Moreover none of your ships have ECM. Without Mon Mothma or ECMs to protect your ships, any weakness in your list is going to hurt when he fires at you.

One way to deal with fighters is to try drawing them closer to your capital ships to use some anti-fire firepower against them. If you were to drop the CR-90s and take an Escort Yavaris for instance, your bombers get that double-tap for AA attacks (taking hits from counter, but leaning on Jan for defending against their attacks) and you can follow up with an attack out of the front with two-dice AA barrages that cannot be countered. You can even steer Yavaris to put itself between the A-Wings and your fighters to clear them out and serve as an obstruction when the A-Wings attack.

I wish I had practical experience to give you, but most Ackbar rebel lists I've fought recently took MC80s instead of massed Assault frigates. I've also been trying to make the Empire succeed against lists like this, so all I have is theory. Sorry...

Thanks for the game.
From a high-level view of the game, your fleet benefits more from being close up and I wanted a longer range engagement, and we got the long range engagement when you turned away. I am not saying that turning away from combat in turn 1 was a bad if you thought you'd have a better chance to win by keeping it to squads vs squads, but it did give me what I was hoping for.

Suffice to say as the game panned out I actually ended up losing the squadron battle

As I recall the main reason you lost the squadron battle because you went for Tycho first, costing 4 squadron activations to put 1 damage on him, and then the Awings retaliated en masse on all the fighters he had injured. I expect you to go for easy kills next time

The question is what can I do differently? I think the key is working out how to deal with the AF2 as rebels……..and I am not there yet! Its easy to say make them crash into each other, but assuming both of us are flying fairly well this is a big ask. As an example I have played this person five times now (currently at 3:2 to him) and organising crashes hasn’t really done a lot for me. The AF’s are always run in a staggered but tight formation, thus if on stops moving the others do not crash,

That's the impact of playing on Vassal - it's really easy to test formations, see what works and doesn't, and rewind to adjust and do it again. The result is formations of ships that keep looking like they are about to crash, but usually have an angle of escape even if one is blocked or tractor-beamed.

(Right up until I accidentally nudge one off by a couple degrees and they all plough into each other lol.... Vassal doesn't prepare you for that )

You should give it a try!

I faced one traditional Akbar list at the last tournament (2x MC30, AF, MC80). Threw a Kamikaze MC30 into the snout of the conga line where it wiped out one MC30 and put the hurt on the AF before finally vanishing into dust. Won 7-3, would have done better had I remembered to use my Opening Salvo token on one of my AFs and not rolled ONE FLIPPING DAMAGE off the front arc of an Opening Salvo'd Salvation.

- Throw a brawler at their nose (also at the front of the conga line)

- XI7s negate the massive shields

- Mon Mothma means I'm removing incoming damage faster than my opponent can add to it with Ackbar

Norshound – I don’t think the lack of ECM matters much since the intel officers counter them so effectively. Matt’s fleet is similar to mine where all his attacks are of comparable power, so I usually get to brace sooner or later on the ‘secondary target’ (the one not being focussed down by intel officers)…….against the ‘primary target’ I also get to brace once since not every volley will contain an accuracy but all of them are backed by intel. The ECM helps most against spikes in damage, or big attack pools without intel officers (I’m more than a little surprised that these exists – intel officers are my first upgrade on a large ship), or against home one clusters. Having them vs the spikes is nice, but I’m not convinced they are worth the investment for helping against a spike that may or may not eventuate.

Drawing fighters into supporting fire of my ships would be an excellent way to stack the odds in my favour…….but how do I do that when Matt has no incentive to engage my bombers unless they are within strike range of his ships? To have B-wings within strike range of his ships, within command range of my ships, out of AA range of his ships, but where my ships will be able to shoot incoming fighters is one hell of a precarious position to maintain……..maybe if Matt agreed to fly in a straight line all game this could be pulled off.

Mon Mothma is an interesting idea – I can certainly see the CR90’s benefiting more from her than Ackbar (particularly in a mirror match where the kiting ability Ackbar adds to CR90s is less relevant), but I would think the AF2’s would fall behind faster with Mon Mothma than with Ackabr? Rational being that a gunnery team AF2 is throwing out an extra 4 reds per turn with Ackbar, but only cancelling (at best) two damage with Mon Mothma (which is maybe one more than normal – assuming a normal medium range evade turns a double hit to a single). Maybe a Mon Mothma fleet with foresight and multiple CR90’s would work fairly well but I don’t think it’s as simple as Mon Mothma > Ackbar in the mirror match.

Ouzel – why do you say my fleet is set up to fight in close, is it just the inclusion of the bombers? I was actually trying to design something that could play the typical kiting game against imperials, but could also use squadrons effectively from long range just in case there was something I didn’t want to get close to.

I do agree that the B’s are too slow. This makes me very sad since I like them a lot and they are really handy for gluing to the front of an MC80. I like the concept of a few X’s alongside A’s. Throw the A’s in as a first wave, get hit back for some counters, then bring the X’s in to escort the most damaged A’s.

Matt – Yes focusing on Tyco was a horrible mistake – I was entertaining delusions of significant squadron superiority at the time. Once I got home I played our fighter battle out again another 6-7 times……even ignoring Tyco its depressingly close. I shouldn’t lose too often, but getting the magic MOV of 31+ is fairly shaky.

I really should get on vassal…….but there are so many other things to do with spare time!....and its not that long until the field season starts up again and at that point any internet based activities become a lost cause.

Some ideas I have had are:

• In an Ackbar off keeping your Ackbar alive while killing the enemies is very important. Ackbar is safest on the periphery of the engagement….this usually develops when one side turns one way or the other depending on how the fleets are set up opposite each other (weighted off-centre maybe?) Having something nasty (like an MC30) on the side Ackbar wants to turn into might persuade the enemy turn the opposite way leaving the enemy Ackbar more exposed.
• Often in an AF2 fight where neither side brings XI7’s one shield facing gets left behind. If a line starts turning one way and then turns the other to cut through the enemy line it should be able to bring its ‘other side’ into play allowing those shields to be used slightly more effectively (maximum engineering in shield recovery rather than transfer). The problem is if this engagement happens in the centre of the table the enemy can turn the other way as well………this really needs diagrams, I’m sure it makes no sense at the moment.

Hey Boothy !

So, there are several options for dealing with Ackbar as a Rebel player, and it all has to do with picking a strategy and building a list around it. I'm not saying that list build is the only way to win a game, but fleet tuning goes a long way to allow tactics to be executed. If you have to run away or your fleet has no means of bringing its power to bear, then it's a wasted opportunity unfortunately.

Now, on how to beat Ackbar using Rebels :

- Outgun him with your own Ackbar : Have a fleet geared for long range combat, bid low to choose to go second and skirt along the edge of the red range and play for the objectives (Fire Lanes, Advanced Gunnery, Dangerous Territory to force him to move up and deal damage to him).

- Go for a fighter build with Dodonna : Carriers want to be up close to escort their fighters, so make sure that when you deal a crit, it's a crit you want. Crits are less useful against smaller ships but can really cripple large capital ships.

- Go for a fast brawling list with Riekaan : You'll want to bid to keep initiative so you can choose which ship you activate, so that you can keep your MC30c out of harm's way, then move them in last after Ackbar has activated and activate them first next turn. You'll dictate the terms of the engagement this way.

- Defensive long/medium range build with Mon Mothma : Use the Corvette's ability to Evade and Redirect to be as slippery as possible, and use their speed to position most of your fleet into his front arcs. Use a few CR90Bs with different roles (Dodonna's Pride, Tantive, Overload Pulse) to help out the war effort, but not more than CR90As. As with Riekaan, because you'll have small ships, it's better to bid for initiative. Maneuvering is key here, and you'll want to choose objectives that favour you (Most Wanted, Hyperspace Assault, Superior Positions).

- I have no clue on what to do with Garm Bel Iblis... Maybe a AFMK2 A spam with a few fighters and bombers. AFMK2As because you'll still be able to tank, and go up close with speed 3 and bring your front and side arc on Ackbar. I haven't ran such a build, so I can't help.

Norshound – I don’t think the lack of ECM matters much since the intel officers counter them so effectively. Matt’s fleet is similar to mine where all his attacks are of comparable power, so I usually get to brace sooner or later on the ‘secondary target’ (the one not being focussed down by intel officers)…….against the ‘primary target’ I also get to brace once since not every volley will contain an accuracy but all of them are backed by intel. The ECM helps most against spikes in damage, or big attack pools without intel officers (I’m more than a little surprised that these exists – intel officers are my first upgrade on a large ship), or against home one clusters. Having them vs the spikes is nice, but I’m not convinced they are worth the investment for helping against a spike that may or may not eventuate.

Unless I'm certain to face Intel officers in every opponent in every game in the immediate future, I always take ECMs. Intel Officers have to exhaust to be used, so they can only kick once out of their attack. If you approach from one angle, you're going to get three attacks from Intel officer out of the six possible out of a ship. There's nothing you can do against Intel officer otherwise, unless you're cancelling dice or have a very good redundancy in defense tokens (Like running Neb-Bs or MC30s). Worse comes to worse level the playing field with your own intel officers.

Lose the HWK, Boosted Comms, and downgrade from Ackbar to Mon Mothma and give everyone Intel officers on both assault frigates and the CR-90s. Now you have more intel officers on the board than he does and can cancel nasty dice into medium range. Since your B-Wings aren't fast they stay close to your capital ships and two turns before you suspect they'll engage, spam fighter commands on your Assault Frigates to have them attack first to wipe out the As, then start bombing. Flight controllers mean your B-Wings hit like Xs, and your Xs can trash stuff easily while his As are only throwing three dice. Sure, counter, but what else are you going to do? Both your ships with FCs now can one-shot his A-Wings.

You do have the alternative of switching out Gunnery teams or those Flight Controllers to stick Gallant Heaven on one of the two assault frigates. At 400 you have objective control which can give you a number of advantages. Advanced Gunnery lets one of your A/Fs hit the same arc twice, Fire Lanes lets you rack up a disgusting amount of points by dropping all three objectives on top of your intended flight path, and so on.

Drawing fighters into supporting fire of my ships would be an excellent way to stack the odds in my favour…….but how do I do that when Matt has no incentive to engage my bombers unless they are within strike range of his ships? To have B-wings within strike range of his ships, within command range of my ships, out of AA range of his ships, but where my ships will be able to shoot incoming fighters is one hell of a precarious position to maintain……..maybe if Matt agreed to fly in a straight line all game this could be pulled off.

You do this because there are some great titles to kick with fighters at range 1. Gallant heaven removes 1 point of damage before its applied to your fighters at range 1 (making B-Wings that much more resilient, especially when paired with escorts and Jan Ors). Yavaris allows fighters to attack twice if they do not move (like B-Wings double bombing, or attacking fighters Then bombing). If he closes with his fighters outside of his ship range, then you attack the fighters with your ships to clear them out, then you have fighter supremacy. If you engage at the same time then that's more things to shoot at and the chance to lock down his A-Wings with a single fighter or two while the rest go on bombing runs.

Mon Mothma is an interesting idea – I can certainly see the CR90’s benefiting more from her than Ackbar (particularly in a mirror match where the kiting ability Ackbar adds to CR90s is less relevant), but I would think the AF2’s would fall behind faster with Mon Mothma than with Ackabr? Rational being that a gunnery team AF2 is throwing out an extra 4 reds per turn with Ackbar, but only cancelling (at best) two damage with Mon Mothma (which is maybe one more than normal – assuming a normal medium range evade turns a double hit to a single). Maybe a Mon Mothma fleet with foresight and multiple CR90’s would work fairly well but I don’t think it’s as simple as Mon Mothma > Ackbar in the mirror match.

Half of your list is unprotected CR-90s, which is why I suggest Mon Mothma. It lets the CR-90s close to medium if they have to and still cancel dice. The assault frigates can also still cancel dice at medium range with their evades and force re-rolls into close, so any double-hits can still be re-rolled away (or cancelled at medium), in some cases making it as powerful as a brace.

MC30s especially love Mon Mothma for the protection she provides. Also, since MC30s don't rely on a single defense token they cannot be easily targeted by the likes of an accuracy or Intel officer. Their titles can make up for the lack of a brace though, by outright cancelling dice through Admonition (Which you can back up with Wallex), or by super evading or damage spreading with Foresight (back up with Lando).

It’s starting to sound like a very important part of competing against an enemy Ackbar is having precisely the right ships paired up with your commander. Perhaps where my fleet falls down is in too much mixing of ships desiring different commanders (specifically the CR90 and the AF2 – while I have half my number of capitals as CR90’s they still only represent 25% of the fleet so I think Ackbar is still the better commander given that 40% of my fleet is in AF2’s).

I play most of my games against imperials, and in these matches the CR90 appears to pair very nicely with Ackbar. Imperial ships typically have three weak arcs so the CR90 can generally hide in them quite effectively, adding in Ackbar gives it very flexible firepower so that it can focus on being where it needs to be to stay alive rather than where it needs to be to stay alive and fire effectively). In the mirror match the CR90 under Ackbar has a harder time. Most rebel ships only have two weak arcs, and they are generally small arcs at that……much harder to hide in. As such Mon Mothma would help them out more than Ackbar by straight up boosting their survivability.

As such a Mon Mothma fleet comprised of CR90’s and MC30’s sounds like it would have a decent chance against an Ackbar fleet comprised of AF2’s, MC80’s, and MC30’s (all broadsiders already, and most have access to gunnery teams)…….in theory. I’d love to see some matches to make sure the Ackbar firepower doesn’t completely overpower the Mon Mothma defences.

I think a fleet mixing too many elements from both may be at a disadvantage compared to its more focused counter parts in the blue on blue match. Hopefully someone like JJ will end up facing Matt or Green Knight at some point in the vassal tournament and we can see how things pan out.

I’m tempted to drop the bomber component of my squadrons and add more fighters and use the saved points to change one of the CR90’s to an Admonition with gunnery teams (haven’t been impressed with Foresight outside of Mon Mothma builds…..in those its epic!) This retains the irritating CR90 for nipping round Imperials, but means I don’t have to rely on the CR90’s doing too much work in a mirror they aren’t perfectly suited to (hiding one CR90 in blind spots should be much easier than hiding two – lol ground breaking observation there!)

Good brainstorming sesh people – high fives all round.

Not sure on the squadron gambit. It moves into a situation where it is badly outgunned in the capital game so has to win the squadron game really fast……which wasn’t happening in the trials I did. Focussing all my squadrons and commands into fighting squadrons it was taking 3-4 rounds to clear all the A-wings out (one is tyco after all). Obviously if you throw Yavaris into the mix and start using capital firepower on squadrons this all changes but it’s one very bloody mess and I’m not sure from theory who comes out on top.

Matt – You up for round 6 next week? NWS on Weds maybe?

Preface - I'm not a good enough player to say I could have done any better....

That said, I'm a pretty strong believer in Armada games being more certainly decided by the specific deployment and play decisions by the players on the day than the fleet composition itself.

Your fleet is fairly "balanced", and obviously not optimised to face what you did. I find it very difficult to write a list that I feel can compete both in this type of fight and against a typical Imperial fleet that will come straight at you hard. Then again 4 Bwings is pretty heavily weighted for defensive engagements - chasing down shrimps, whales or corvettes would be hard in any case, not just this list.

By my count you had the bid - maybe being first player would have been better - you would have had far more chance of getting hits on an enemy trying to stay at range.

Other comment - lately Ive been thinking that in a high ECM environment, heavy turbo lasers might actually be a good investment.

Don't know if this helps.

With 4 ships you would benefit GREATLY from 1st player.

R: N

You

him

You

him

You

him

You

R: N+1

You

etc.

It also helps tons vs. Demolisher and those new shrimp-rushy fleets.

I'd also say that Bs are a very, very bad fit for this fleet. You're all about mobility and focusing long-range fire on one target at a time. Bs don't fit here at all.

When it comes to upgrades you're fighting an uphill battle. He's got 3 Afs with GT and ECMs and Intel officers vs. your 2 AFs with 1 GT. With skillful flying from both sides that's not a good matchup for you.

To sum it up: given equal player skill you SHOULD lose most of the time. If you go 2nd player you should probably lose every single game.

Hope this helps.