Next topic to help out we newer players:

What to do about a 3-4-5 ship Rieekan fleet as Imperials? It seems like there aren't many good options; if I fly in and double-arc, bringing down a ship with expert rolling and builds, they get the last laugh (and maybe a ram since I'm already at close range).

I've especially had trouble with the Rieekan MC30 spam for the reasons above; if I park in front of them, they hit me and then ram me since they're already dead and don't care. If I go to their sides, I get an MC30 broadside from the grave, so unless I'm just that awesome and can position to their back, I'm probably in a fair amount of trouble.

Wat do, friends? Wat do?

Kill Rieekan!

Also killing ships after they activated, I.e. delaying activation and forcing him to close, can negate the Zombies

Kill Rieekan!

Also killing ships after they activated, I.e. delaying activation and forcing him to close, can negate the Zombies

Fair point. He either has to move around me and hopefully not utilize his flagship or risk losing his admiral.

Rieekan Spam stays on your plate for a meal after you eat it.

I run Rieekan with 7-8 CR90Bs--sometimes I have very light squadron cover, sometimes none at all, depending on how froggy I'm feeling.

The thing I fear most is lots (5+) of Firesprays. Four can't kill a CR90 from 100% in one round without lucky crits; 5 might; 6 probably will, unopposed. The idea is to lie in wait where the ship will be going, and then pop over during the squadron phase and kill it right at the end of the round, basically negating Rieekan's bonus. The drawback, of course, is that by that time the ship has already activated for that turn--the advantage is that he doesn't get shots back at you, which can be a really big deal if we're talking about zombie Yavaris, for example.

Despite having Rieekan, going first is still pretty important for me. It helps me line up my shots to maximize my arcs, lets me drop an indestructible blocker in front of that ISD, or lets me escape one unscathed--contrary to popular belief, it does still hurt me to lose ships, even if it's delayed! So, still bid for first if you would normally do so, because, even though the impact to me is mitigated somewhat, it's still significant.

Crits are particularly devastating to Rieekan's ships, particularly the disabling ones--coolant discharge, blinded gunners, depowered armaments, etc. Even if the ship is zombified, if it's Salvation and was counting on that long range finisher against your ISD and you drop Depowered Armaments on it, you've effectively killed the ship already.

Running into your own zombies is definitely a thing Rieekan players have to consider, too. Try to set up situations where they have to hit their own ships, especially swarms of smaller ships like mine where a single card of hull damage is a significant chunk of the hull. If your ISD is going to take a ram from a Rieekan zombie anyway, may as well try to force him into a position where his second ship will have to ram his own zombie instead of you.

Also, yes: killing the Necromancer himself early will completely devastate the fleet. Though of course the same could be said of pretty much every general.

As an Imperial, dealing with Rieekan is a little harder, as you don't always have the manuverablity to avoid the arcs of the zombie ships, so the points others have made are very valid. However, I will add that careful maneuvering will definitely help minimize the damage Rieekan will do to you. Squadrons are also a powerful Imperial tool. If you can use Rhymer to kill ships before they close too far, the ships might not even get shots. Possibly a Rhymer ball that is activated and does some damage, and then some rogues (firesprays in particular) that activate in the squadron phase to finish a kill. Rieekan is a pain to deal with, but can definitely be beaten. Sometimes though, getting into a brawl is just what the Rieekan ships want, so playing a little more defensive and skirmishing at range could be better for you.

Also as a side note, if your opponent is just parking an MC30 in your ISDs front arc and letting you kill it, you just gained a large number of points. Yes you'll take damge in return, but if your opponent doesn't then finish the ISD you come out ahead! Rieekan gives utility, but I don't think players should get themselves killed so they can use his ability!!!

Also as a side note, if your opponent is just parking an MC30 in your ISDs front arc and letting you kill it, you just gained a large number of points. Yes you'll take damge in return, but if your opponent doesn't then finish the ISD you come out ahead! Rieekan gives utility, but I don't think players should get themselves killed so they can use his ability!!!

I see so many people--both Rieekan players and their opponents--who think "doesn't die immediately" == "doesn't cost points". The cruise missile archetype is predicated on this fallacy; its utter failure to perform exposes it.

Conversely, you don't take Rieekan in order to suicide yourself--you take him because you're probably going to lose some ships. This mindset is at the root of all the "but you can't get tournament-winning MoV!" objections that people throw out about him.

Also as a side note, if your opponent is just parking an MC30 in your ISDs front arc and letting you kill it, you just gained a large number of points. Yes you'll take damge in return, but if your opponent doesn't then finish the ISD you come out ahead! Rieekan gives utility, but I don't think players should get themselves killed so they can use his ability!!!

I see so many people--both Rieekan players and their opponents--who think "doesn't die immediately" == "doesn't cost points". The cruise missile archetype is predicated on this fallacy; its utter failure to perform exposes it.

Conversely, you don't take Rieekan in order to suicide yourself--you take him because you're probably going to lose some ships. This mindset is at the root of all the "but you can't get tournament-winning MoV!" objections that people throw out about him.

On a side note, I've lost one ship in two games with this guy in team tourny, and I'm wishing I had brought mon mothma. He's done jack diddly for me! Jack Diddly!

Also as a side note, if your opponent is just parking an MC30 in your ISDs front arc and letting you kill it, you just gained a large number of points. Yes you'll take damge in return, but if your opponent doesn't then finish the ISD you come out ahead! Rieekan gives utility, but I don't think players should get themselves killed so they can use his ability!!!

I see so many people--both Rieekan players and their opponents--who think "doesn't die immediately" == "doesn't cost points". The cruise missile archetype is predicated on this fallacy; its utter failure to perform exposes it.

Conversely, you don't take Rieekan in order to suicide yourself--you take him because you're probably going to lose some ships. This mindset is at the root of all the "but you can't get tournament-winning MoV!" objections that people throw out about him.

On a side note, I've lost one ship in two games with this guy in team tourny, and I'm wishing I had brought mon mothma. He's done jack diddly for me! Jack Diddly!

I believe this is due to you having such a huge bid! I've come to view Rieekan more as the admiral for a lower bidding fleet. Sure, you'd like to go first, so bid 8ish points. If a list out bids you Rieekan gives you that flexibility to play second with less of a disadvantage, but you if you have a 15+ point bid the odds of you not going first, and thus getting less utility out of Rieekan increase so much you could probably do more with a different admiral. Especially in the team tournament, where we can set your matchup to guarantee you get first player. In hind sight maybe we should have thought about this before the tourney, but we weren't sure how our matchups would look, and we kind of wanted one Rieekan list for flexibility.

I think this really speaks as to his balance with the other Admirals, even such a crazy ability has its drawbacks and weaknesses.

This mindset is at the root of all the "but you can't get tournament-winning MoV!" objections that people throw out about him.

I completely agree! I used Rieekan to win a store championship. I had first player two games, and Rieekan hardly affected the game, but my second match I was outbid by a Demolisher list, and Rieekan assured Yavaris got to activate, and did enough damage for me to pull out a victory in the end (though it came down to final round squadron shots)

On a completely different off topic note, in that game the Imperial player had quad-laser turrets on his ISDs since he was running no squads. The counter rolls, and AS shots he took killed nearly all of my squadrons, leaving 2 b-wings on 1 HP and Dutch at like 2-3. In fact, his AS was great early on, rolling above average, but on the final turn he missed all his shots on those B-wings, which let me finish off the ISD in the squadron phase (my carrier having been corralled and destroyed). So what I'm getting at, is quad-laser turrets may be something I need to look at a little closer...(Thinking on a Gallant Haven AF A, with Torrin Farr nearby to reroll all the blues? Can't kill the squads, Gallant bites back! Man, I'm getting jitters just thinking about it!).

Rieekan does very little for my corvettes, as most of the time they are too short range to do much after death anyway.

Rieekan disuades people from shooting Defiance as its seen as pointless as Defiance will still kill you. And Rieekan means that Tycho et al can be really really really really really annoying.

His biggest boost is to a few named fighters who look after the rest of your fleet.

However annoying Reeikan may be, remember he's an admiral who doesn't even affect the game at all until somebody dies.

Sure there are some uses for him but I've seen a lot of people quite happily using him to squeeze an extra shot/activation/order out of a ship, apparently not realising if they'd had Mon Mothma their ship would have still been alive.

However annoying Reeikan may be, remember he's an admiral who doesn't even affect the game at all until somebody dies.

Sure there are some uses for him but I've seen a lot of people quite happily using him to squeeze an extra shot/activation/order out of a ship, apparently not realising if they'd had Mon Mothma their ship would have still been alive.

I completely disagree with this. He has more impact on the game then anyone else because he forces your opponent to think twice (and many times overthink) their strategy. Demolishers, going first, is death sentence to most medium and small ships but not against Rieekan. He may kill them them but the threat of what that ship will do before it is destroyed is enough to make players make dumb mistakes against him. It is hilarious how scarred and hesitant players are against Rieekan. That psychological advantage is an extremely powerful edge in this game and in any game.

So essentially Rieekan is that can of SPAM from WW2 that you could eat after the apocalypse, correct? Now I want to play the guy!

Just kill the ships AFTER they activate.... Done.

Just kill the ships AFTER they activate.... Done.

Going to have to agree with the Master of Murder here. I played Riekan a few times and each time I ran him it made more sense to activate a ship to get value right now rather than wait and get value later. This general does nothing until he does something, and there is a pretty good chance that he'll just do nothing. Which means you spent 30 points doing nothing.

Remember a good rule of thumb is that on any given turn any upgrade card you didn't use is wasted points. On Turn 1 he's 30 points of missed Garm Tokens. On Turn 2 he's 30 points of missed red dice. On turn 3 he's 30 points of Mon Mothma Evades and missed red dice. On turn 4 you might have gotten 30 points of value letting a dead ship activate, or you didn't because they had activation economy so it would have been better to have Ackbar or Mon Mothma. Etc, etc. Every turn something doesn't die Riekan is 30 wasted points. I've played entire games where he didn't trigger once.

I've played entire games where Jan didn't trigger once. But Jan cost me 1/3 fewer points and I had 3-5 chances PER TURN to trigger him.

Yeah but I feel like if I can go six turns of 30 wasted points of Rieekan I'm in a pretty good spot anyway.

Yeah but I feel like if I can go six turns of 30 wasted points of Rieekan I'm in a pretty good spot anyway.

Right? 6 Turns with no dead ships means either you've lost a wonky objective game or you've kept everything alive.

Remember a good rule of thumb is that on any given turn any upgrade card you didn't use is wasted points. On Turn 1 he's 30 points of missed Garm Tokens. On Turn 2 he's 30 points of missed red dice. On turn 3 he's 30 points of Mon Mothma Evades and missed red dice. On turn 4 you might have gotten 30 points of value letting a dead ship activate, or you didn't because they had activation economy so it would have been better to have Ackbar or Mon Mothma. Etc, etc. Every turn something doesn't die Riekan is 30 wasted points. I've played entire games where he didn't trigger once.

I've played entire games where Jan didn't trigger once. But Jan cost me 1/3 fewer points and I had 3-5 chances PER TURN to trigger him.

I disagree. Simply by being on the board, Rieekan forces your opponent to make all of his decisions based around the fact that he cannot alpha strike. Even if none of your ships ever dies, you've gotten some advantage out of him. And if none of your ships died, either you've won or you've misplayed horribly.

I've played games where I never used Flight Controllers, or I never needed Lando, or I never got accuracied so didn't need ECM. Hell, I had one game where I never got to use Ackbar (learning the MC80 was a *****). Does that make those upgrades worthless, too?

Yeah but I feel like if I can go six turns of 30 wasted points of Rieekan I'm in a pretty good spot anyway.

Right? 6 Turns with no dead ships means either you've lost a wonky objective game or you've kept everything alive.

Or you activated the ship and then it died later in the round, which is the more likely scenario.

Remember a good rule of thumb is that on any given turn any upgrade card you didn't use is wasted points. On Turn 1 he's 30 points of missed Garm Tokens. On Turn 2 he's 30 points of missed red dice. On turn 3 he's 30 points of Mon Mothma Evades and missed red dice. On turn 4 you might have gotten 30 points of value letting a dead ship activate, or you didn't because they had activation economy so it would have been better to have Ackbar or Mon Mothma. Etc, etc. Every turn something doesn't die Riekan is 30 wasted points. I've played entire games where he didn't trigger once.

I've played entire games where Jan didn't trigger once. But Jan cost me 1/3 fewer points and I had 3-5 chances PER TURN to trigger him.

I disagree. Simply by being on the board, Rieekan forces your opponent to make all of his decisions based around the fact that he cannot alpha strike. Even if none of your ships ever dies, you've gotten some advantage out of him. And if none of your ships died, either you've won or you've misplayed horribly.

I've played games where I never used Flight Controllers, or I never needed Lando, or I never got accuracied so didn't need ECM. Hell, I had one game where I never got to use Ackbar (learning the MC80 was a *****). Does that make those upgrades worthless, too?

I thought about that when I wrote my post and I'll have to say no. I don't think flight controllers is very good, so I'm going to say just by bringing it you wasted points. But that's just me and my personal take on squadrons and the metagame.

On the rest of them what matters is the choice. Every time your ship got shot at you had the decision to use Lando. That means you had to analyze the board state and make a decision about the damage you were taking vs the likelihood of taking more damage later. You never got accuracied so you didn't need ECM. But presumably you got shot at a bunch. So there was a chance each turn that you were going to need ECM. That's an outlier - I don't think anyone is going to put forth the argument that ECM is bad. The one game you didn't get to use Ackbar was.... weird, and we're not going to talk about it. You lost that game because, by your own admission, you were learning how a thing works.

Rieekan though? The psychology argument has some merit I guess but I remain unconvinced by the value. He eliminates the value of an alpha strike? That's absurd. An alpha strike is still good. You still killed a thing. Your opponent just got to grind out a little extra value before it burst in to flames. If you have a Rieekan Yavaris and a Jan Yavaris, I'm going to alpha strike Yavaris because it being dead for 3 turns is only slightly less good than it being dead for 4 turns. I'm just going to remember "with strange eons even death may die."

If anything it makes YOU play differently. You suddenly lose the imperative to activate threatened ships first. But as I understand the game you only have a few choices.

Best Case: By activating your ship in the correct manner you can prevent it from exploding. (Either from evasive movement, killing the threat, whatever it doesn't matter). You get no value out of Rieekan.

Neutral Case: There is no way to save your ship. It's going to die. Nothing about your opponent's maneuvers is going to affect your ability to deal damage or affect the board so you can activate priority ships. Here you get value out of Rieekan. Your opponent just scored a minimum of 46 points - I hope your zombie got to do something relevant.

Bad Case : There is no way to save your ship. It's going to die. You also won't derive value out of activating the ship after it's killed. (You need to delay activation of something else, it won't be able to deal relevant damage in last position, etc. basically it will affect the game more activating while alive than as a zombie). So you activate it and get no value from Rieekan.

Worst Scenario: You activate your ship when it makes sense to and are shocked to see it explode from lucky rolls/unexpected bumps/whatever. You get no value from Rieekan.

In one very specific case do you get value from Rieekan, and your ship still got blown up so hopefully you were able to affect the board in a meaningful way. Otherwise the zombie activation didn't REALLY matter that much.

Now the exception might be the squadron game. Zombie Luke and Wedge are obviously nuts. Zombie Bombers are still a threat. So are Zombie Interceptors. But I'm not convinced that the benefit of Zombie Squadrons is worth a card that is always good. Ackbar is generically good - he always makes a list stronger. Garm makes carrier lists better. Mon Mothma makes your carriers a little more durable. Jan makes your bomber crits a little more dangerous. *shrug*

Remember a good rule of thumb is that on any given turn any upgrade card you didn't use is wasted points. On Turn 1 he's 30 points of missed Garm Tokens. On Turn 2 he's 30 points of missed red dice. On turn 3 he's 30 points of Mon Mothma Evades and missed red dice. On turn 4 you might have gotten 30 points of value letting a dead ship activate, or you didn't because they had activation economy so it would have been better to have Ackbar or Mon Mothma. Etc, etc. Every turn something doesn't die Riekan is 30 wasted points. I've played entire games where he didn't trigger once.

I've played entire games where Jan didn't trigger once. But Jan cost me 1/3 fewer points and I had 3-5 chances PER TURN to trigger him.

I disagree. Simply by being on the board, Rieekan forces your opponent to make all of his decisions based around the fact that he cannot alpha strike. Even if none of your ships ever dies, you've gotten some advantage out of him. And if none of your ships died, either you've won or you've misplayed horribly.

I've played games where I never used Flight Controllers, or I never needed Lando, or I never got accuracied so didn't need ECM. Hell, I had one game where I never got to use Ackbar (learning the MC80 was a *****). Does that make those upgrades worthless, too?

I thought about that when I wrote my post and I'll have to say no. I don't think flight controllers is very good, so I'm going to say just by bringing it you wasted points. But that's just me and my personal take on squadrons and the metagame.

On the rest of them what matters is the choice. Every time your ship got shot at you had the decision to use Lando. That means you had to analyze the board state and make a decision about the damage you were taking vs the likelihood of taking more damage later. You never got accuracied so you didn't need ECM. But presumably you got shot at a bunch. So there was a chance each turn that you were going to need ECM. That's an outlier - I don't think anyone is going to put forth the argument that ECM is bad. The one game you didn't get to use Ackbar was.... weird, and we're not going to talk about it. You lost that game because, by your own admission, you were learning how a thing works.

Rieekan though? The psychology argument has some merit I guess but I remain unconvinced by the value. He eliminates the value of an alpha strike? That's absurd. An alpha strike is still good. You still killed a thing. Your opponent just got to grind out a little extra value before it burst in to flames. If you have a Rieekan Yavaris and a Jan Yavaris, I'm going to alpha strike Yavaris because it being dead for 3 turns is only slightly less good than it being dead for 4 turns. I'm just going to remember "with strange eons even death may die."

If anything it makes YOU play differently. You suddenly lose the imperative to activate threatened ships first. But as I understand the game you only have a few choices.

Best Case: By activating your ship in the correct manner you can prevent it from exploding. (Either from evasive movement, killing the threat, whatever it doesn't matter). You get no value out of Rieekan.

Neutral Case: There is no way to save your ship. It's going to die. Nothing about your opponent's maneuvers is going to affect your ability to deal damage or affect the board so you can activate priority ships. Here you get value out of Rieekan. Your opponent just scored a minimum of 46 points - I hope your zombie got to do something relevant.

Bad Case : There is no way to save your ship. It's going to die. You also won't derive value out of activating the ship after it's killed. (You need to delay activation of something else, it won't be able to deal relevant damage in last position, etc. basically it will affect the game more activating while alive than as a zombie). So you activate it and get no value from Rieekan.

Worst Scenario: You activate your ship when it makes sense to and are shocked to see it explode from lucky rolls/unexpected bumps/whatever. You get no value from Rieekan.

In one very specific case do you get value from Rieekan, and your ship still got blown up so hopefully you were able to affect the board in a meaningful way. Otherwise the zombie activation didn't REALLY matter that much.

Now the exception might be the squadron game. Zombie Luke and Wedge are obviously nuts. Zombie Bombers are still a threat. So are Zombie Interceptors. But I'm not convinced that the benefit of Zombie Squadrons is worth a card that is always good. Ackbar is generically good - he always makes a list stronger. Garm makes carrier lists better. Mon Mothma makes your carriers a little more durable. Jan makes your bomber crits a little more dangerous. *shrug*

Context often defines our perceptions, and I know it colors mine in this case, so let me lay out the context I'm coming from (since it's how I usually play Rieekan), and then give an example.

I often play the CR90B/SW7 swarm with Rieekan. That's 8x 44-point ships (one with Rieekan), each one putting out 3 guaranteed damage out the front and 2 out the side (3 with CF). The tactical schtick of this list is to concentrate lots of fire on a target all at once, forcing them to exhaust their defense tokens taking 6-8 arcs of 3 damage each, which kills... virtually everything. This requires me to concentrate double arcs from multiple ships all in one round.

As you might imagine, this is challenging.

Unless you have an absolutely unkillable zombie ship parked in front of the ISD/MC80/AF2/VSD, preventing it from moving for a turn. The value of that corvette surviving is vastly disproportionate to the value of its own shots, in that it holds the quarry in all of those double-arcs for the whole turn it takes to die.

Mon Mothma's great, but she's not going to save a defensively-naked CR90 that eats the front arc of an ISD-2 plus activated squadrons. I often have these sacrificial ships going down with 9+ hull damage. Rerolling a bomber hit-crit at close range was never going to save that ship. I'm not saying MM is bad--I'm saying she's not a drop-in, always-better replacement for Rieekan. She's just a totally different commander. Mon Mothma is defensive; Rieekan is aggressively offensive.

This of course is just one example of how you can leverage Rieekan to dramatically better effect than "eh, my AF2 died, better ram an ISD as I go down in flames" that seems to be the prevailing nay-sayer position around here. The Yavaris example you dismissed is another very strong argument: one more round of Yavaris' B-wings at the crux of the battle can make a huge swing in the outcome, as basically anybody can tell you who has felt the blood drain from their face as their undamaged ISD is suddenly on the ropes after such an activation.

There's much more to the necromancer than "oops, died, guess I'll take a pot shot and fizzle out now."

So here's the struggle. You're right.

I also play M:tG. So let me borrow from there for just a little bit.

Turns out that when you build around a mediocre magic card, and you design your deck to function really effectively around that mediocre magic card, you can make a pretty good deck. Building around mediocre magic cards is really fun. I pretty much exclusively build goofy magic decks that follow a theme. I've gotten complements from friends that all my decks are fun to play against and none of them feels abusive. I've also gotten compliments from them that a few of my decks are "world class." So I'm a huge advocate of taking mediocre effects and making them good.

Here is the problem with that strategy: You can only raise the bar so high. A mediocre card is only going to be so efficient, otherwise it would be a "good card." You can do things to make that mediocre card good but it takes effort - you have to spend resources and tactical acumen. Or you could just play a good card and now you have extra space in your deck for other good cards. You made a sweet Rieekan fleet. It sounds really fun to play and I bet it wins you games. But you're spending time and effort to make Rieekan good. If you were using a better commander you would have more cards available to do more good things. I can pull off a similar trick with my Ackbar Spam corvette list that you describe above. But my floor for damage is significantly higher, and my margin of error is broader - I can screw up a little more without it costing me the game.

Rieekan is a mediocre magic card. If you build around him and play intelligently you are going to have a good fleet. But that doesn't make him a good General, that makes you a good player. It's a subtle but important distinction.

Let me be clear here, I'm not telling you that you're having badwrongfun or that you should only play good cards. I LOVE bad cards. I can't WAIT to fly my double pickle tractor beam list and one of the most fun games of Armada I've had is double pickle Engine Techs. But just because my pet cards are fun doesn't also make them good.

We aren't playing magic, and your argument assumed facts not in evidence.