I'm seeking advice on how I should set-up and fly in the early game with a Rey crew (on a Ghost, in my case, but I'm guessing this advice would apply to any ship with Rey crew).

I've been having trouble with various Ghost+Fenn lists in the early game - I know I need to stack a focus tokens on Rey before I get into combat, but I'm having trouble setting asteroids, setting my ships, and piloting them to allow me a few unmolested turns. I typically find myself engaged in combat in turn 2 or 3, leaving me with a tiny focus stack.

Any tips on the optimal setup and early game for maximizing my focus stack on Rey?

For any type of slow roll, stacking ability/ship, I find it best to set up facing sideways along your own board edge, and then going 1 forward a long as you can. Will give you a good few turns of stacking unless your opponent just screams 5-forward for the first few turns (which isn't always going to be the best for them).

Rebel ships are great at just going 1-forward for a bunch of turns, take advantage.

Many of your smarter opponents are going to press you hard to keep you from stacking those tokens. This counterplay is really the only thing balancing this card at 2pts.

You can try to could counterplay the counterplay by setting a trap with your wingman to flank them as they press in to deny you Rey tokens.

12 hours ago, InterceptorMad said:

For any type of slow roll, stacking ability/ship, I find it best to set up facing sideways along your own board edge, and then going 1 forward a long as you can. Will give you a good few turns of stacking unless your opponent just screams 5-forward for the first few turns (which isn't always going to be the best for them).

Rebel ships are great at just going 1-forward for a bunch of turns, take advantage.

Basically this.

Another thing I like to do sometimes is to set up with your ship in the corner, facing in at a 45° angle. That way, your opponent doesn't know if you are going to turn up and go straight at him or turn down and skirt along your board edge. You can use this to your advantage to give yourself a few turns to stack up on Rey. Plop Rey's ship in the corner, and then...

• If your opponent set up on the same board edge as Rey in an attempt to rush her, then you do a 2 or 3 bank away from them and run away along your board edge, stocking up on focus tokens before you engage.
• If they set up on the opposite corner from Rey, you can play the "I know you know" game with them and try to guess which way they'll go, or (if you set up the obstacles far enough away from the corners) you can do a 1 straight, see which direction they turned, and then turn and run the other way.
• If they split their forces into two sub-squads, setting up one of them directly across from you and the other on the opposite corner, trying to catch you in the middle of a pincer move, then my advice is to not even worry about Rey and try to rush and kill one sub-squad before the other sub-squad can get close enough to engage. You'll have to judge the two sub-squads and decide for yourself which one to engage. Keep in mind things like which sub-squad is more likely to catch up to your forces, which will be easier to kill, and which position will be better for you if your opponent is faking you out and is trying to lure you into a trap by chasing one of his sub-squads.

This type of set up works well in a variety of situations, like when you have a ship toting bombs and/or turrets and/or a rear arc and you want to bait the opponent into chasing behind you, or when you simply don't want to telegraph what your attack path is going to be.

It's also worth noting that in my experience with Rey, you only need maybe 3 or so tokens stored up before you're ready to engage. Any more than that and you're probably just needlessly delaying the game.

I'd deploy the ghost in a corner, facing in at 45'. That way, a fast bank can take you either up the neutral board edge, or along the enemy board edge, as needed, if you need to clear out.

And yes, 2-3 focus tokens banked away should be all you really need unless you're burning them at a ridiculous rate. If that's the case, maybe recon specialist would be a better choice than Rey?

You shouldn't really expect more than 2, MAYBE 3 tokens stacked before you are forced to engage. If you're routinely getting to that level, you're already doing it right.

Rey with Dash and Poe is fantastic. Send Dash sideways and stack. Send Poe off to engage whoever.

Sorry for my poor MS paint skills but eminem explains my biggest problem with running Rey; forgetting her trigger timing and missing the opportunity.

Repetition, repetition, repetition! That's the only thing I found to help me when crewing Rey so that I didn't miss using her banked focus.

After you screw up a few rounds that would have/could have gone your way of you hadn't forgotten Rey's focus, you will start remembering. Talk the steps out loud as you're supposed to do them too.

Good luck!

I stack mine in a single layer, vertically.