I have been watching a ton of battle reports and playing games against anyone I can find. I am worried though. In all my games I am seeing a disturbing trend. I am noticing that Ackbar's Whaling Fleet appears to be uniformly wrecking people, even if the Rebel payer flies poorly. I have watched close to 30 battle reports from Wave 2 and with out exception, every time Ackbar is played with at least 1 AF2 it is a Rebel victory. I am having a hard time understanding how Ackbar is balanced. Rebels already have an easier time bringing their guns to bear because of their higher concentration of Red dice fire power and huge broadsides. When Ackbar then allows Rebel ships to out gun Imp ships how is that fair?

The Whaling Fleet appears to be so simple to use and yet so effective, with not equally simple/effective Imp counter.

I play Rebels but this trend has left a bad taste in my mouth about the game recently when I watch other Rebel player use this. For now, I am avoiding getting an MC80 because of it. Ackbar looks like Armada Easy Mode to me.

What is the Imperial answer to Ackbar? Surely there must be an answer to this "Drive in circle till I win," approach to the game.

Unfortunately, most rebels lists that I face now include Ackbar. Maybe wave three will include Admiral Piett who might give two blue dice to imperial ships or something. Regardless, I hope people continue to use a variety of rebel commanders, not just Ackbar.

I don't like Ackbar as it makes Rebel gunlines so much more powerful than Imperial gunlines which strikes me as wrong thematically. And yes, everyone and their mum uses Ackbar. I don't think he is really overpowered though, most imperial players just go into matches with this "my ships are invincible" attitude, and if you screw up your positioning vs Ackbar you don't get second chances...also most Imperial lists don't use many squadrons. I'd like to see a squadron-heavy imperial list commanded by a decent player vs a decent Ackbar player.

An imperial counterpart that gives 2 blue dice would be powerful and an auto-include for many which may not be the best way to introduce new admirals. Personally I'd rather see more cheaper, less powerful admirals rather than an arms race between admirals.

I actually expect to see an errata some time in the future specifying the Ackbar dice may only be added to the first attack a ship makes per round, so AF-II's with gunnery teams are less dominating with it.

I don't like Ackbar as it makes Rebel gunlines so much more powerful than Imperial gunlines which strikes me as wrong thematically. And yes, everyone and their mum uses Ackbar. I don't think he is really overpowered though, most imperial players just go into matches with this "my ships are invincible" attitude, and if you screw up your positioning vs Ackbar you don't get second chances...also most Imperial lists don't use many squadrons. I'd like to see a squadron-heavy imperial list commanded by a decent player vs a decent Ackbar player.

An imperial counterpart that gives 2 blue dice would be powerful and an auto-include for many which may not be the best way to introduce new admirals. Personally I'd rather see more cheaper, less powerful admirals rather than an arms race between admirals.

I actually expect to see an errata some time in the future specifying the Ackbar dice may only be added to the first attack a ship makes per round, so AF-II's with gunnery teams are less dominating with it.

But that's the thing, Imperials were never meant to be a gunline army. They're an upclose brawling fleet and it's good at that. Rebels aren't an assault army thematically, and when they do, they send small ships and squadrons on a flanking maneuver rather than taking on an ISD head on. Ackbar still doesn't change things, it's still a game of "catch me in you can" for the Imperials with Rebels.

What makes Ackbar powerful is the fact that you just keep strafing without much worry on your angling, compared to other fleets that require more finesse in their use, which makes him easy to use or build around, much like Imperial ships were easier to use in Wave 1 due to them having good dice and good defense so they were forgiving enough.

In any game system total balance is impossible. At the moment Akbar is far and away the best subjective choice for the Rebels - baring some odd-ball builds.

He's not OP. Just very easy to use effectively.

Both sides have their very good things - Ackbar, 'that' title on the shrimp, Demolisher, Rhymer.... there are others but you get the point.

At least as Imperials we get to choose from 4 good commanders

What makes Ackbar powerful is the fact that you just keep strafing without much worry on your angling, compared to other fleets that require more finesse in their use, which makes him easy to use or build around, much like Imperial ships were easier to use in Wave 1 due to them having good dice and good defense so they were forgiving enough.

Which is why the Imperial Player these days, needs to be mindful of the same things that the Rebel Player had to be mindful of in Wave 1...

... Which is "How can I take/use Objectives in order to put the Rebel player where I want him to be, outside of where they want to be..."

Its not all about the Killing unless you make it all about the Killing...

I keep seeing these threads and thinking that the imps just need to learn what rebel players are forced to learn in wave one. Imp players also need to get it out of their heads that there ships are indestructible and have a little more of a battle plan. This doom and gloom inps can't best ackbar is just symptom of not thinking outside the box with builds

Ackbar is kind of like Motti that the best counter strategy is go head hunting. Keep in mind that Ackbar doesn't actually add more dice to an attack in a well flown fleet, but effectively just clamps the front red dice to the sides on most ships. That means if you kill him your opponents fleet will all of a sudden be positioned poorly to bring their front arcs to bear. Sometimes it's a little harder to pull off in practice than in theory (ok it's a lot harder) but a lot of wave 2 is hard to counter like the Fireball.

I don't like Ackbar as it makes Rebel gunlines so much more powerful than Imperial gunlines which strikes me as wrong thematically. And yes, everyone and their mum uses Ackbar. I don't think he is really overpowered though, most imperial players just go into matches with this "my ships are invincible" attitude, and if you screw up your positioning vs Ackbar you don't get second chances...also most Imperial lists don't use many squadrons. I'd like to see a squadron-heavy imperial list commanded by a decent player vs a decent Ackbar player.

An imperial counterpart that gives 2 blue dice would be powerful and an auto-include for many which may not be the best way to introduce new admirals. Personally I'd rather see more cheaper, less powerful admirals rather than an arms race between admirals.

I actually expect to see an errata some time in the future specifying the Ackbar dice may only be added to the first attack a ship makes per round, so AF-II's with gunnery teams are less dominating with it.

But that's the thing, Imperials were never meant to be a gunline army. They're an upclose brawling fleet and it's good at that. Rebels aren't an assault army thematically, and when they do, they send small ships and squadrons on a flanking maneuver rather than taking on an ISD head on. Ackbar still doesn't change things, it's still a game of "catch me in you can" for the Imperials with Rebels.

What makes Ackbar powerful is the fact that you just keep strafing without much worry on your angling, compared to other fleets that require more finesse in their use, which makes him easy to use or build around, much like Imperial ships were easier to use in Wave 1 due to them having good dice and good defense so they were forgiving enough.

Imperial ships have always been portrayed as massively outgunning Rebel ships. The edge Rebels had were their superior starfighters and their tactics. Capital-ship wise they had access to the converted Mon Calamari ships which were always portrayed as undergunned, but quite tough with multiple redundant shield systems etc. When a MC cruiser outguns/equals my ISD-II in armada at long/medium/short range that's not thematic. Other than that I agree with you.

I just watched two videos WWPDSteven posted where the two Ackbar whale fleets lost.

Ackbar is great but he is in no way overpowered. I think the thought that he is OP is what is OP. I just don't get it. Imperials have Demolisher, Rhymer, Firesprays...things that are darned good (and will be the subjects of the next is "X is OP" posts.) All of the Rebel commanders are pretty amazing. As an Imperial player I think that what they do in a proper fleet setup is so good.

If you attack three whales/MC 80s with Ackbar directly at their broadsides you are probably going to die. The Conga-circle-toilet-spin telegraphs where they are going. Use that to your advantage. Cut it off in the front or chase down the rear. The ISD and Gladiators excel at this.

Also as Dras pointed out, use the objectives:

What makes Ackbar powerful is the fact that you just keep strafing without much worry on your angling, compared to other fleets that require more finesse in their use, which makes him easy to use or build around, much like Imperial ships were easier to use in Wave 1 due to them having good dice and good defense so they were forgiving enough.

Which is why the Imperial Player these days, needs to be mindful of the same things that the Rebel Player had to be mindful of in Wave 1...

... Which is "How can I take/use Objectives in order to put the Rebel player where I want him to be, outside of where they want to be..."

Its not all about the Killing unless you make it all about the Killing...

I actually think Cluster Bombs are OP.

I think Ackbar is like the Tie Phantom. As is, he is an easy commander to use and exploit, and not easy to overcome his insanely good ability. FFG has a habit of making mistakes, for a lack of better terms, in their games. Ones that I've experienced are the Phantom before the errata, and the scoundrels in the LCG. I'd imagine they will come up with some Erratta that will fix it/ make it more balanced. Demolisher was "broken" before wave 2, after Wave 2 I feel it's fragility is much more recognized.

I don't think Ackbar is necessarily OP, but he is on the cusp. I've always ranked things on an OP level if a new player can beat a much better veteran player with whatever is OP. And while its close, I think Ackbar falls just under that. I do feel like he could use a slight Nerf though.

Ackbar isn't OP, but his ability has a very high efficiency/simplicity ratio which makes even "bad" lists strong just because you can output more damage than your opponent for less points.

I find this kind of hard to answer, but if push came to shove would say probably. Here is my thought for why,Enhanced Armament adds one red dice to each side arc for 10pts and counts as your one modification. Ackbar adds two red dice to each side arc for the minor inconvenience of not being able to shoot out the front or side for we will round this to 40pts. So if you have two ships (and start with at least one red dice) in your fleet they each effectively got two enhanced armaments, every ship after that you are getting them for free. So if you are playing a 400 point game and went with Ackbar and eight CR90A, you are getting 16 extra red dice. Yes I understand that you are putting all (but 10pts) in to ships, and this does leave you vulnerable to fighters somewhat. I say somewhat as they have two anti-fighter dice and are fast agile ships and that short of squadron commands may be hard to get fighters into range.

So in small game, probably not, in a standard game, maybe very easy for a rebel player to abuse him. Larger than standard, yes. This is also probably compounded by the fact that Rebel ships are cheaper then the Empire ones, this added to the above and the fact that initiative can make such a difference, so having more ships can make a fleet more powerful than the stats would be other wise by controlling the initiative. Each by them self would be hard to say 100% is OP, but when you combine them together than I think it is so.

Set up a proper Minefield and guide the Rebel into your Imperial Brawlers and watch those AF's melt.

Honestly, I mostly play imperial and while Ackbar is a challenging opponent for sure it's not really unbeatable, not by a long shoot. I personally find him boring and I'll explain why, simply put it shift the burden of maneuvering from 50/50 to get decent result to like rebel 20% and Imperial 80%, which make to Imperial opponent work and maneuver for it's point rater dearly. The other reason why I find him boring in that the most effective counter are really infuriating for him. Personally so far the best result I had was with Imperial 1 and Victory 1 both with boosted com and expanded hangar bay on the Imperial, use rhymer and lot's of tie bomber and tie advance, to taste put Dengar and some firespray for good mesure, that way your threat range is the whole ruler plus up to blue dice to sink is flagship, I tend to put Tarkin and go for 10 squadron activation a turn in turn 2 and 3 maybe 4th as needed but by then Ackbar is usually dead and then the ships can just move forward and start engaging, or you can keep maneuvering to stay outside gun range and just activate squadron until the game ends. Either your bomber will eat him up or he will have to charge directly at you to close the distance, either way his side are will not be a treat for some time.

I also had somme manner of success with raider's and gladiator with Ozzel, But this take some fines and good planing and above all else perfect maneuvering, but I find this more challenging to play then the carrier build, which I totally love as it take some fines to get the most out of your squadron. But mostly the objective choice is really critical in have good odds, I was lucky with hyperspace assault let's just say a victory point blank in Ackbar rear arc kinda did it. But anything that limits movement option is going to work for you.

I also gave it a shoot at playing Ackbar myself and found it really boring exactly because since you don't need to close and even try to get the most out of your ship because you can simply stay at range and enjoy it good, Personally my big question isn't how to beat him with the imperial. But how to beat him playing rebels without the game being a straight up dice game of who is lucky that day. Because the rebel squadron game is, in my very humble opinion, not as good as the Imperial for this task. Take only rogue squad and run a single CR90 away the entire game? GWAD the monetary cost of that, tho it would probably be hilarious to see Ackbar's face.

Does Ackbar make the game play on kiddie level with training wheels, I think so, is it a bad thing, not necessarily if it force the level of the other player to go up. But I would much rater play other option if I was rebel, because they are some killer thing that can be done with the MC30's and Mon Mothma. Double remove red dice at medium range, reroles at close with all those black dice, with ordinance expert, that sounds more fun and challenging to play. At any rate I'm rambling but yeah not broken and the pendulum will swing back eventually I'm sure.

Oh yay, this topic again! No, Ackbar is not overpowered. He's not even that particularly hard to beat. I play Rebels using Garm and Mon Mothma. I will never touch Ackbar because I see him as overpriced. A well flown fleet does more with double arcs. All he does is allow you to fly is an easy, and frankly lazy, way. It also makes you very predicable. I've never have a particular problem against him. Boxing remains the best way to take him on. Set a ship out wide and come at the prow. Most Ackbar fleets have minimal squadron cover, so a healthy bomber wing makes life easy, especially with those Boosted Comms.

If you want an easy counter, take a Fireball or a Rhymerball. You out range the supposed range king by a mile, especially if you throw in Boosted Comms.

What makes Ackbar powerful is the fact that you just keep strafing without much worry on your angling, compared to other fleets that require more finesse in their use, which makes him easy to use or build around, much like Imperial ships were easier to use in Wave 1 due to them having good dice and good defense so they were forgiving enough.

Which is why the Imperial Player these days, needs to be mindful of the same things that the Rebel Player had to be mindful of in Wave 1...

... Which is "How can I take/use Objectives in order to put the Rebel player where I want him to be, outside of where they want to be..."

Its not all about the Killing unless you make it all about the Killing...

Exactly !

From my experience, unless a fleet is extremely poorly built and a player doesn't know what he is doing, what I've noticed is that the key pivotal moments of the match are : Deployment/Turn 1/Turn 2. I played today with a full Wave 1 Rebel fleet and an Imperial Fleet with full Wave 2 (2 ISD 2 + 1 Gladiator and no squadrons), and I lost simply due to the deployment which put my flagship in an awkward spot (and its Neb Escort as well). It was a 10-0 (should have been 7-3, except for Keyan Farlander rolling 2 blanks, then 2 blanks again on the reroll for the flagship...), but 1 ISD had no shields and 10 damage (**** you Keyan !) and the other had 33% shields and 7 damage.

What I wanted to illustrate is that even with subpar Wave 1 stuff, it's actually relatively balanced, but deployment and maneuvering early games are what makes or breaks the game. And with Ackbar, he has an easy time deploying and maneuvering Turn 1.

But like you said, and like Hero said, Ackbar telegraphs his movements due to his build, so it's pretty easy to get ! Also, in a Conga Line-ish deployment, he is forced to activate the ship in front, so if you manage to mess up this activation order, you're golden !

I have played four games against Rebels in wave two. Three of those games had Ackbar, and one of them had Dodonna. In those four games I have wreaked Ackbar three times, and Dodonna once. Is Ackbar OP? If so I haven't seen it.

Ackbar gives an advantage to the rebel side that I don't think they should have had. Home One makes it worse. Empire strategy seemed to me about clinching a win if you deploy properly and crush your opponent with your massive firing dice. Rebels win by being crafty with their superior upgrades, better fighters, and fleet synergy. Now the rebels still have all that... in addition to firing like Empire and guaranteeing accuracy for every friendly ship in a range stick of their big ship.

Ackbar isn't a guaranteed win button but he does make lists more powerful for those who know how to run Armada lists properly. For the Empire Vader was supposed to do this (by making every roll out of an ISD more dangerous by being more efficient), but it seems the meta favors the re-roll upgrades (like leading shots) over Vader, so he doesn't compete as highly as Ackbar's free dice do.

FWIW I have yet to win against an Ackbar list with Empire and I struggle to find an Imperial list I *KNOW* will defeat Ackbar. The only trick seems to be bombers..... which... Rhymerballs appear to be the Only imperial advantage in the face of Ackbar builds. I don't want to believe it.

But for all his firepower Ackbar isn't the only option in the Rebellion. Mon Mothma loves MC30 and CR90 lists for instance, and Rieekan can be painful to fly against because every ship can go on a kamikaze mission.

For the Empire, it seems it's Screed or Ozzel these days. Vader is never used, Motti is there only if ISDs are the primary heavies in a list, and Tarkin vanishes to the cheaper admirals.

I've tried Akbar. He's ok. He works great when your opponent flies obligingly into your side arcs. Other times, not so much. I've seen entire lists where the goal was "force opponent to fly in a certain direction and then put B-Wings there." With Akbar, that's a cakewalk & it makes his defense tokens much less useful when there's ~6+ attacks against a single ship in a turn.

I run Mothma now, my ships live much longer (and boy is my opponent's face great when I make them reroll a double into a blank).

Oh yay, this topic again! No, Ackbar is not overpowered. He's not even that particularly hard to beat. I play Rebels using Garm and Mon Mothma. I will never touch Ackbar because I see him as overpriced. A well flown fleet does more with double arcs. All he does is allow you to fly is an easy, and frankly lazy, way. It also makes you very predicable. I've never have a particular problem against him. Boxing remains the best way to take him on. Set a ship out wide and come at the prow. Most Ackbar fleets have minimal squadron cover, so a healthy bomber wing makes life easy, especially with those Boosted Comms.

If you want an easy counter, take a Fireball or a Rhymerball. You out range the supposed range king by a mile, especially if you throw in Boosted Comms.

No one forces you to fly a conga line with Ackbar, in fact there are time shouldn't do that for the reasons you outlined. Also, double arcing is NOT always better Ackbar'd AF IIB's with gunnery team prove this. I also don't think you can make generalized statements about squadrons. I've got an Ackbar list with health fighter cover. Let try to avoid generalizations, K?

I'm an imperial player. Ackbar is always fun to play against. Not OP at all. Two extra reds isn't the end of the world. Ackbar tends to have predictable strategies since their limitations are well known. Definitely not that hard to out manoeuvre. If you're getting creamed, it's probably less about your/their list and more about how you attempted to solve the issues given to you.

I find mothma generally a harder admiral to play against as the tactics involved are much more flexible.

I just played tonight against someone who had never played before. I did win, but only because two things, first he did not pay attention to the objective (contested outpost), and second he flew one of his two assault frigates off the map. The fleets were his side, two AF, and one Corvette all loaded for bear, and Luke, Tyco, one extra X-wing and A-wing, his commander was Ackbar. On my side I had two Victory 2, one with expanded hanger (my only upgrade), and two Raiders. For fighters I had Rymer, Boba, IG, Dengar, and a firespray, I went with Monti. The mission as stated was contested outpost, I was player two. It was very close, I am one of the most experienced empire players in our group, and this was his first game with borrowed units and a fleet that he was handed. So if not overpowered, he makes it super easy for the rebels, I guess either that or I really suck.

^ Well actually I did beat an Ackbar player in a tournament... an Ackbar player that constantly forgot Ackbar's abilities, his second attack, rushed in his fighters into my flight ball with no backup from any of his ships... He had nothing but Ackbar MC80, two AF/II(Bs?) with enhanced armament each, and a small swarm of fighters to fill out his list. I didn't think it counted because he was, well, a newbie.

There's another player in our local meta who crushed (nearly) everyone with an Ackbar Home One MC80 + Assault Frigate + 2MC30 list with a variety of TRCs and Slaved Turrets. SomeKittens stopped him with his rebel Mon Mothma build, but that's the only time I've heard of it being defeated, and that player wants to retire the list because it is boring to win with.

To clarify even further on my previous post; just because it doesn't take immense amount of skill to run Ackbar doesn't mean he's this OP crazy Admiral. It's a fallacious argument to say that "because it was his first time and still kicked my ass it must be OP".

Tactics vs. Ackbar

• Aim to be in front/back arcs of ships. completely nullifies the commander.
• Try to be obstructed vs. long range ships like corvettes. They only sport 1 red dice in some arcs so their attack gets cancelled completely if they are obstructed.
• Construct your fleet to have objectives that will affect their movement. Contested outpost, minefields, fleet ambush, dangerous territory, etc. give them hard decisions, and capitalize on it.
• Focus your efforts on the flagship (not always best strategy, but a good thing to keep an eye out for). Once that's down, the other ships will be running with their tail between their legs.
• Use bombers/fighters effectively. They're unaffected by the bonuses of Ackbar. Force a situation that benefits you.
• Place obstacles effectively.
• Placement (of ships, squadrons) at the beginning of the game matters. Use deception.

That's just a short list. Armada is all about understanding your opponent and outwitting them. Obviously they'll try and stop you from doing any of these, that's where skill comes in. In some ways yes, Ackbar is easy mode. It's easier to understand than other rebel commanders. But it's not "god mode".

The thing I love most about this game is that decisions are what affects it most, not lists. Ackbar just asks that you get a little bit more creative and meticulous in your approach.

Honestly when I build lists i'm more worried about that double ISD. those are lethal!