II need a bit of help on this one and probably the obvious pointing out.

So tonight I tried Rieekan for the first time, I ran him with 3 MC30 torpedo frigates and an AFmkIIB plus some YT-2400 and dash (full list below). I came up against a 3 ship (ISD, VSD & Glad) plus mini Fireball.

I chose to go first (now this may have been my first mistake but this is why I need help). I made this decision because I have learnt from flying Mon Mothma MC30 and you need to get them in close and activate first to get the full potential from an MC30. The scenario I choose was minefields and my opponent set up a funnel.

First round I moved all MC30 forward at speed 3, keeping them out of range of the on coming front arc.

Second went well as the first MC30 destroyed the Demolisher and positioned in front of the VSD for some future shots. And i positioned the rest for a run at the ISD

Then it all fell apart.

i essentially ended up with a massive pile of ships in the front arc of both the ISD and VSD and because they stayed on the board they ended up getting in my way. I have no idea what went wrong but I just could get any value out of Rieekan's ability. I managed to get the ISD down to 1 hull left but could not get the killing shot before I had nothing but the three squadrons and heavily damaged and now trapped AFmkIIB.

What I took from the game was that 2 x YT-2400 and Dash are excellent at dealing with squadrons when activated with a ship with flight controllers on. But for the life of me I could not see the value that Rieekan added to the list. What is probably worse is that now after analyzing the game I still cannot see the value in Rieekan.

I know from this brief description of a game that you are not going to be able to tell me where I went wrong but please can some one point out the blindly obvious about how to use him, because I cannot see the wood for the trees here and I dont want give up on what I am sure is a very good general.

Thanks in advance

Rebel list

Commander: General Rieekan

Assault Objective: Opening Salvo
Defense Objective: Hyperspace Assault
Navigation Objective: Minefields

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Assault Proton Torpedoes ( 5 points)

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Assault Proton Torpedoes ( 5 points)

[ flagship ] Assault Frigate Mark II B (72 points)
- General Rieekan ( 30 points)
- Wing Commander ( 6 points)
- Flight Controllers ( 6 points)
- Boosted Comms ( 4 points)
- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Assault Proton Torpedoes ( 5 points)

1 Dash Rendar ( 24 points)
2 YT-2400s ( 32 points)

Imperial List

Commander: Admiral Motti

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery

Defense Objective: Hyperspace Assault

Navigation Objective: Minefields

Victory II-Class Star Destroyer (85 points)

- Boosted Comms ( 4 points)

[ flagship ] Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)

- Admiral Motti ( 24 points)

- Relentless ( 3 points)

- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)

- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)

Gladiator I-Class Star Destroyer (56 points)

- Demolisher ( 10 points)

1 Major Rhymer ( 16 points)

1 Dengar ( 20 points)

1 TIE Advanced Squadron ( 12 points)

2 Firespray-31s ( 36 points)

Rieekan takes the impetus away from you needing first player with those Fragile Ships... Because you can scoot them in close at the end of your Turn, knowing that even if they get fired upon, you'll be able to activate it (even if Dead) and still Shoot...

Ideally, your best bet is to go Speed 4 Straight down a Star Destroyer's Throat at the end of your Turn... That way, on his turn, he's not able to move, or get away, and even if he unloads his ungodly front arc into you, you're still there to Shoot back. Plus its additional damage if you set it up in such a way that he rams you, unable to get away, and then you ram him on your move... Because your ship stays there, as an obstruction, as a movement impediment, until the end of the turn...

Rieekan also really shines with Named squadrons with Escort. You're able to fly them in with something else, and the enemy has to Shoot the Escort. Even when the Escort has been killed 20 times by 20 engaged squadrons, they have to keep shooting at it until the end of the turn.

If you're expecting to be activating Squadrons with Ships, then you're probably better off sticking with Wave 1 Squadrons... X-Wings with Flight Controllers throw 5 dice on the attack... If you want the Speed, then A-Wings... They're ~30% cheaper than YT-2400s, and hit like X-Wings with Flight Controllers on their side... Wedge with Flight Controllers can potentially throw 7 dice, and then take every bullet the enemy has, even when he's dead, and then some, until the end of the turn.

Honestly, the list seemed to be built and made without concern for the benefits that Rieekan gives you - That is, ability to activate when you do not have activation advantage, or even firepower advantage...

God - I want too try a Reikan MC30 list now! Smash an ISD in the face with the first one, then with the ISD unable to move smash another in the side with a double arc shot, I'd love to pull a move like that off !!

First of all, everything Dras said is spot on.

Remember to build and play your list with Rieekan's ability in mind. You want to capitalize on the fact that he can keep even flimsy hard-hitters around through the end of the round. The biggest mistake I see people make when playing him is forgetting his ability in planning their activation order. If you can trade that CR90B or MC30 for an ISD, but save an AF2 by moving it first, you don't have to worry about whether the heavy hitter will still be around when it goes to activate. It's a little bit of a paradigm shift from the way you play everything else, especially if you've been playing for a while and have a pretty good grasp on the decision-making associated with activation order.

The other big issue I see a lot--and am still far from perfect with myself--is exactly what you laid out: parking-lotting your own ships. If you run swarms/a lot of ships often, you're familiar with this issue, but you get used to losing a couple/three ships in the round the clash happens, and then not having to worry about where they all end up afterward. My specific experience is with an 8-CR90B swarm Rieekan list, and I do this to myself all the time. It just takes a little bit of time and some planning to learn how to avoid this (flying super-bendy corevettes don't hurt, either ). I worked out a pretty good staggered formation that gives me flexibility of movement while still allowing me to concentrate my ships reasonably well--I suggest you spend a little bit of time with your fleet on a tabletop or the kitchen counter and work out something similar for your own build. Particularly with the wonky maneuver profile of the MC30 between speeds 3 & 4.

You also want to learn how to leverage Rieekan well--there are a lot of things you can do with that ability that are... not exactly unintuitive, but they take some practice to learn how to execute. One of my favorite Rieekan tricks is dropping a CR90B in the front arc of whatever I want to kill and knowing it'll still be there when whatever I want to kill goes to move, trapping it in place. This allows you to force double-arcs with anything you can position appropriately the preceding turn, without too much worry of losing out on those shots by not activating in the right order.

On the squadron side, Dras nailed it: Luke and Wedge can make life miserable for enemy squadrons if you leverage them as unkillable zombie escorts. Zombie Yavaris is just the worst, because one of the easiest ways to counter Yavaris normally (alpha striking her before she gets the double-tap) simply isn't an option. Dash can be pretty awesome if you can rogue him into the middle of the **** at the end of the squadron phase, cause you know he'll still be there through the whole next round making life miserable for that Rhymerball.

In summary: keep practicing with him! I guarantee that, the more you play him, the more you'll see his value.

Riekaan does allow you to mitigate the activation advantage, but I agree with the OP that taking the initiative is the smart move here. Essentially, what Riekaan does it that he allows you to actually position 2 light ships into the most dangerous firing arcs, and make sure the one you don't activate first still gets to activate.

With Riekaan, don't plan to lose ships, but use him as a contigency in case they do go down. It's better to have a ship still on the table capable of throwing and drawing firepower than not having it. Riekaan helps to ensure that he still goes down in a blaze of glory.

It seems that you had 5 principal problems :

1) You should not have taken minefields because your ships don't have the hull for that. In essence, it forces you to be in the most unoptimal spot. And, even with Riekaan, a ship dead is still a ship dead (so I look him more as a back up plan in case things go south).

2) You definitely had a navigate problem, which is to be expected with so many short range ships piling up on the same target (and I'll keep that in mind for my Raider/Gladiator combo !). More Nav Commands and a less risky flying should do the trick (but don't cut your exit routes short with minefields !)

3) I think your list lacks 1 ship. If you search around, I made a post about what I call the "Motti Scale", meaning the minimal repartition between number/size of ships for a list to not be tabled easily. If small ships count for 1, medium count for 2 and large ships count for 3 points (to scale their resilience, and ironically it is the same values as Motti which is why I named it after him), I had estimated a minimal Motti Scale of 6 for 400 points games in Wave 2. Your list counts 5 and the opponent counts 6 (to be fair, all the Wave 2 games that I've played and I've lost I had a fleet with a Motti Scale of 5 too), but it's going to be hard to fit in more ships when points are short. Which leads me to my next point...

4) I think you spend too many points on upgrades and I know it's tempting due to all the slots available. Your AFMK2 (which wants to stay at long range) is geared like a carrier, but you're spending 16 points on purely squadron upgrades (4% of the list) to make sure you get the ability to activate the YT-2400 and Dash at long range and get the benefit from flight controllers, and yet you pay a premium for ships that can activate on their own in the Squadron phase. Neither Dash nor the YT-2400 need boosted comms to activate, and if you want to pay for the opportunity to activate before your opponent I can dig that but do it with squadrons that cost less per blue dice thrown Regarding your MC30s, you are also paying 9 points each (so 27 points total, or 7% of the list total) to ensure that the APT go through but without taking as much advantage of the card as a Dodonna or a Screed would do (not saying that it's not a good upgrade). Trimming down the fat on your ships and squadrons would give you more points to fit a CR90B, perhaps with Overload Pulse, just to take advantage of that extra utility by Riekaan. (Compare that to his list with 1 upgrade per small/medium ship up to 3 upgrades for the Imperial, exclusing the Admiral)

5) Finally, from being a primarily Rebel player, my analysis is that the Rebel fleet seems to be designed to work best as a group of specialists that work together in a combined arms approach (if the enemy can defend well against one type of attack, he'll be vulnerable to other types of attacks), while the Empire is better at a supporting arms approach (throw more of the same to overpower the enemy's defenses). However, the same could be said for small ships/medium ships in general. With ships with such a high specialty as the MC30, that yet don't have the base staying power of Imperial ships, you're basically throwing all 3 under their guns and hope more than one survives to do the job. It's even more apparent when they are all the same variant and all with the same gear. So, it's easy for an Imperial player to analyse what your plan it and dismantle it even with Riekaan.

Now, picture a fleet where you throw 3 MC30s (2 Torpedoes, 1 Scout), a CR90B with Overload Pulse and an AFMK2 with Gunnery Team and Boosted Comms managing 2 A-Wings and Tycho. One Torpedo Frigate with Admonition and Redundant Shields (for tanking the attack runs), one with APTs and Rapid Reload, the Scout Frigate maybe with TRCs. (Just an example of the dynamic).

Now, between the CR90b and the APT Frigate, which one will he prioritize ? One that can completely wipe his shields off and burn away ? Or one that will completely burn his shields off through weight of fire and deal that extra critical with a high chance ? He's not bothering too much with Admonition yet because it's tanky enough that it will be useless to shoot at it now.

And how to deal with that pesky Scout Frigate that's burning at Speed 4 in a wide flank hoping to get behind ? Should he angle one ship to protect its rear, but at the same time exposing its rear to the Torpedo Frigates that slashed through the lines ? And what about these annoying A-Wings who have been throwing annoying black dice at my shields or taken down my TIE Advanced and are now annoyingly going for Dengar.

That's the kind of thing you want to do with the Rebels, rather than overpowering your opponent it's more about dancing with him and exploit the mistakes he makes to full effect, as well as presenting him with only bad choices

Thanks guys, some great advice there and I knew I was really missing something. This has given me a lot to think about. I am now looking forward to trying Rieekan with your input and unlocking his potential.

I think it's also worth mentioning that some Admirals might just not fit your play style, and it's not worth building for them if you suffer every frustration when trying to understand them.

The reason I wouldn't be hot to take Rieekan myself is because I don't know how often I'd forget his ability. That, and to make the most out of him you need to play recklessly... but not too recklessly. You need to be willing to push an MC30 in between two Star Destroyers to get the most damage out of it before it's ultimately gone, but rushing headlong into a fight intending to kamikaze might give you only the front arc to attack with for several turns before your ship dies, under-utilized.

Rieekan can be rewarding for the reasons the other players have listed above, but don't be afraid to jump to another admiral (like Mon Mothma to help all three of your MC30s) if Rieekan isn't working out for you.