This seems not that great for the second player as it has them splitting their squadrons from the main force, making it easier to deal with them piecemeal before the ships can support them, ships can flak them before the enemy ships arrive, and doesn't allow 2nd player to use their squadrons to delay deployment. I have played against this twice and my opponents squadrons felt like they were less effective than normal, how do you abuse Fighter Ambush as 2nd player and would you be better off with something like Fleet Ambush?

It's good for points?

Just unleash your bombers and hammer their ships for 15 points per damage card inflicted. You don't have to set up in the field if you don't want to, the objective is still good. It kind of screws up your deployment advantage but deploying fighters after everything else and gaining extra options helps mitigate that.

Also I've heard of Yavaris using Relay to give Luke and Keyan round one attacks on the back of a VSD, so that's actually pretty magnificent. If enemy fighter coverage is light enough it might be worth risking the fire from ships to put a lot of early damage on them.

Relay and alpha strikes....

A good rhymerball can sink a small size ship round 1 or leave medium/ large heavily softened by first engagement.

Plus those sweet delicious victory points.

It's a fun one for fighter heavy builds.... they rarely take it though lol

1 hour ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Plus those sweet delicious victory points.

It's a fun one for fighter heavy builds.... they rarely take it though lol

Works both ways though - tempted to pick it for my RLB list but against another 134pt squad list not sure it'll do much better than Hyperspace Assault and possibly considerably worse if they can get air superiority and start racking up their own points against my ships.

Might well try it in testing though as Yav/Relay/Adar B-wings on turn one are 'fun'!

17 hours ago, Tvboy said:

This seems not that great for the second player as it has them splitting their squadrons from the main force, making it easier to deal with them piecemeal before the ships can support them, ships can flak them before the enemy ships arrive, and doesn't allow 2nd player to use their squadrons to delay deployment. I have played against this twice and my opponents squadrons felt like they were less effective than normal, how do you abuse Fighter Ambush as 2nd player and would you be better off with something like Fleet Ambush?

It's an easy way to rack up points as the second player provided you've got squadron superiority. The extra-long deployment option is a bit of a trap: it can be useful with Relay or (more often) by setting up at medium range of your carriers when deployed rather than at distance 1-2. It's a little bit further out and it allows you to pounce on enemy ships that are careless (especially with Rhymer balls).

Fleet Ambush is usually a trap for the second player (as the first player can bum-rush you if you're not careful) and thus I recommend avoiding it whenever possible.

I see, it's a way to drive up your score and get more tournament points, but it seems risky if your opponent has a bunch of squadrons too.

2 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

It's an easy way to rack up points as the second player provided you've got squadron superiority. The extra-long deployment option is a bit of a trap: it can be useful with Relay or (more often) by setting up at medium range of your carriers when deployed rather than at distance 1-2. It's a little bit further out and it allows you to pounce on enemy ships that are careless (especially with Rhymer balls).

Fleet Ambush is usually a trap for the second player (as the first player can bum-rush you if you're not careful) and thus I recommend avoiding it whenever possible.

Yeah, but only half their list can bum rush you right, so it's your entire list against a part of their list which should be good for you right? Tactically I'm always looking for ways to split up my opponent's forces and keep my firepower united.

7 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

I see, it's a way to drive up your score and get more tournament points, but it seems risky if your opponent has a bunch of squadrons too.

You generally don't take Fighter Ambush unless you've invested hard into squadrons, usually near or at the 134 point squadron limit. You'll come across the occasional other squadron-heavy fleet, in which case it can be a bit of a wash. That's not uncommon with squadron-favoring objectives overall, really.

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Yeah, but only half their list can bum rush you right, so it's your entire list against a part of their list which should be good for you right? Tactically I'm always looking for ways to split up my opponent's forces and keep my firepower united.

The thing is that it's not your entire list versus part of theirs, as a good first player can wait out the deployments (and all the ships need to deploy first from both players) and then deploy something like Demolisher or a heavy carrier last in the ambush zone and hammer a flank. You can deploy squadrons distance 2 from the ambush zone ships so you can get pounced on first activation of first turn by either of those kinds of threats, which can remove a ship or at the very least cripple it before you get a chance to go. I love seeing Fleet Ambush as an enemy objective because it is very easy to use against the second player this way. Usually it's better to take a defensive objective like Fire Lanes or Contested Outpost if you want to disadvantage slower fleets or go for Hyperspace Assault if you want to open up vulnerabilities in aggressive fleets.

I talked about it at length in the blog if you're interested.

2 hours ago, Snipafist said:

I talked about it at length in the blog if you're interested.

Thanks, that was very informative.

One of the lists I'm trying out is a triple Assault Frigate Ackbar gunline list. To me it seemed the other yellow objectives (from the starter) weren't that great for this type of list, but now I'm reading that Fleet Ambush is universally bad so I'm not sure anymore?

6 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Thanks, that was very informative.

One of the lists I'm trying out is a triple Assault Frigate Ackbar gunline list. To me it seemed the other yellow objectives (from the starter) weren't that great for this type of list, but now I'm reading that Fleet Ambush is universally bad so I'm not sure anymore?

Assault Frigates (just like all red dice broadsides ships) love Fire Lanes. Absolutely love it. The same article talks about that as well.

I'm personally not an Ackbar Assault Frigate conga line/gunline fan, though. It's a very predictable fleet and it's easy for faster fleets or bomber-heavy fleets to give you a hard time. Which is probably for the best, given it's kind of boring.

Sorry I'm not much fun when it comes to Ackbar Assault Frigate conga lines.

Remember that you can deploy inside the obstacles with Fighter Ambush, your BWings can still shoot a black die from there, and cannot be engaged. The Rhymer Firesprays still have a blue medium range attack which can also work. Your other bombers can jump out at the right moment to get a good attack run on a vulnerable ship... Good opportunities can come from the objective, but I don't think I have it allvfigured out so far...

The only time I've gotten it to work is with a hardcore Mustache Ride and the ability to reach out and activate your forward squadrons on the first turn. It's not easy. You're basically trying to lure other squadron heavy builds into taking it thinking they can alpha strike you hard enough to tip the squadron balance early. What happened instead is Biggs+Wedge+a YT-1300 supported by Jan were enough to absorb the alpha strike and then I punched back using both Flight Controllers and Yavaris double taps. Ask @CaribbeanNinja about it.

4 hours ago, Tvboy said:

now I'm reading that Fleet Ambush is universally bad so I'm not sure anymore?

Here's the thing: it's not universally bad. The problem is that, while there are fleets out there that it's pretty good against, there are others that it not only doesn't hurt but actively helps . Not only that, but those tend to be the popular types of fleets anyway: Demolisher , heavy bombers, Yavaris , ISDs, all love this objective in most matchups, and are all pretty popular. That's not a great risk to run, generally speaking.

It can be awesome in Corellian Conflict when you can substitute it in with spynets in good matchups, though.

I use it with Relay bomber fleet, and no one ever takes it.

I also have Yavaris, Adar, and Mustache ride

Thank you, this has been very helpful.