Having come up against Rieekan Ace fleets in the last few tournaments, and struggled to get a significant win (no higher than 7-3) I had made a couple of Imperial fleets to try and be a good counter build, I kindly got my friend to play Rieekan, and while I did manage to defeat him, it was far far to close for my liking, if not for a subpar roll in round 6 it would have ended 5-5, 0 MoV win for me, as it was it ended with a 115pt win for me.

Second game I played the Rieekan fleet, my friend tried his counter build, I ended up tabling him, for the loss of Rieekan and the Mc80 he was on, for a 230pt win.

So I'm really struggling, yes I can get a win, but I think I am going to have a real issue getting a 8-2, 9-1 etc. Is there a counter for Imperials? and is there a counter for Rebels?

For me, its not that different... It really only makes a difference to the CR90 Swarm, which, honestly, I have a problem with regardless of who the Admiral is... Garm could be trying to token up a Fleet of CR90s and I'd still have an issue with it... But anyway.

1) Controlling Bomber Engagements - Spreading out so you have choice of who to shoot, as well as Intel Zones (To mitigate Zombie-Escort Shenanigans)

2) Aggressively targeting Ships who have already activated, as to deny Rieekan any utility with those ships.

Dras' #2 is the universal rule. It can be hard to accomplish against a good Rieekan player since they're actively looking to give you a bad choice, but it's doable with activation advantage.

Activation advantage and going second.

In addition to the above, if you destroy a ship that I haven't activated but can zoom away out of range (or at least limit my return dice), you've also limited the power of Rieekan. That might mean you need different positioning because the ship stays around, but it is still within the realm of the advantages of first player.

Going second can usually help slightly, especially if you've got a sick set of objectives with your fleet.

Destroy Riekeens' ship first?

Use Ackbar to blow his fleet to bits?

Have a really fat fleet so your ships dont die no matter how many times their rammed....

Rieekan likes killing little ships

Take a Rieekan to catch a Rieekan.

Nothing funnier than 2 already dead ships pounding each other into zombie dust.

The more you play against Rieekan the more you get a sense as to how he's going to be activating and what kinds of shenanigans to expect. You need to play with all that in mind.

I agree with Dras that ideally you should be trying to attack ships that have already activated. You should be obsessed with focusing fire on ships (even moreso than usual) because with Rieekan a ship that's barely alive at the start of the turn is going to exist all turn, so you can't chip it down to nearly dead then pop it at the start of the next turn. This doesn't mean absolutely disregard ships you can't kill in a given turn just... consider ignoring them when you can direct fire at a ship you've got a better chance of killing THIS turn.

The aces are a real bother and in general I find you will want/need to drown them in mook squadrons and/or (preferably) nail them with flak and/or use some auto-damage abilities (Soontir Fel, Mauler Mithel) to help get around defense tokens and Escort. Flak helps get around the Escort+Intel nonsense and can make those spent Brace tokens add up. I'm particularly fond of Raiders in this regard but you could achieve somewhat similar results with Ruthless Strategists and disposable cheap squadrons.

I think a lighter to him works well....

Ok. I have actually never played against Rieekan. That owes to my lack of play time.

Not played him yet......... so I need some time to get my head around how much difference he makes in the ship to ship game. I play a minimums fighter blocking game so would not generally be in a position to nail aces anyway.

I guess I should explain what I tried,

Obviously I play a lot of 5 ship builds, but after struggling against Rieekan, I thought to try a direct counter build.

ISD I : Admiral Motti : Wulff Yularen : Flight Controllers : Boosted Comms : Expanded Hanger Bays : X-17 TL : Relentless

Raider I : Ordnance Experts : APT

The problem with building a direct counter is you just spent 127 points on squadrons, 111 of them in squadrons that specialize in attacking other squadrons. That's not the kind of list you can bring to a tournament and do well with. If you want to overall improve your chances in a competitive event, you'll need a more balanced fleet that has tools available to handle Rieekan.