Fleet Strategy - start

Your first goal should be to get Tarkin's ship and 5 other Dark Side ships to 4-star. You will need these to upgrade Tarkin's ship to 5-star.

Your next goal is to get your 5-star Tarkin along with 8 other ships (can be light or dark ships) to 5-star for the ship ability material challenge. This is the challenge that drops Zeta mats.

After that you can worry more about a cohesive Fleet Arena strategy.

By the way, it makes sense to have those 4-star dark side ships pull double duty as some of the 5-star ships needed for the Zeta challenge.

Also note that there are not a ton of dark side ships, and even less that are easily farmable. I would suggest Slave 1 (Boba), TIE, First Order TIE, Sun Fac, and Geonosian Soldier ad your dark squad. Based on the characters you have Biggs and Jedi Consular have easily farmable ships to make your 6th and 7th.

Consider Ahsoka for your 8th: She fits into any fleet and you'll need a team of Jedi built up to at least 5-star with mediocre-or-better gear eventually. She is useful for Jedi needs, for almost any fleet, and she is farmed from Cantina Shipments.

So if you want to buy a starter pack you could buy Boba/Slave 1 (he is a good character anyhow), but you could also farm Slave 1 from the Fleet Shipments (It is a rare) and farm Boba from Cantina Shipments.

If it were me I would spend the 40 bucks (or whatever it is) elsewhere.

Thanks for your advice...bit of a bummer that the required characters and investments I have made so far does not coincide with the dark squad ships except for Boba as now I have to spread my character investments out with lots of characters. I was already investing in a rebel team as well for the Palpatine event (Lando(5*),Biggs(5*),Luke(5*),Ackbar(5*),ST Han (4*)).

I looked at the Executrix bundle and it includes for $69.99CAD ($49.99USD?) the following shards:
15 TIE Fighters
15 Geonosian Spy Starfighter
15 First Order Tie Fighters
15 Geonosian Soldier's Starfighter
25 Sun Fac's Geonosian Starfighter
40 Tarkin
50 Sunfac
25 FO Tie Pilot
and a whole bunch of gear materials and training droids.

Home one power up bundle ($49.99USD) has:
50 Poe Dameron's Xwing
15 Jedi Cons. Starfighter
15 Res. X-wing
15 Ahsoka Jedi Starfighter
15 Clone Sergeant's ARC-170
40 Ackbar
50 Poe Dam.
25 Ahsoka
10 Mace

Endurance bundle ($19.99USD):
15 Endurance
10 Ahsoka Jedi Starfighter
80 Mace
25 Ahsoka

You think the Executrix bundle is worth it?

Go with Ackbar as fleet commander. Don't buy the starter packs, but buy the slave1 + boba combo that will show up for you soon. Best ship I have IMO. I finish Rank 1 daily. Pick (4) Dark side ships and (4) Light side ships to get to 5 stars, and one other dark side to 4*. I was able to beat the tarkin challenge and the zeta challenge with a 5* tarkin G7 - Level 53, and his ship at level 50.

I would suggest:
Light Side:
Jedi Consular, Biggs, Fives, and Wedge or Ashoka
(Rex's ship is great, but it's a long farm, I'd rather finish off the zeta lineup before farming it)
Dark Side:
Boba's Slave1, Sun Fac, Genosian Soldier, and either the First Order Tie, or the TFP
(Vadar's ship is great, but also will be a very long farm that could hold you back)

I also bought Kylo's command shuttle and love it in combination with Boba, but I can't farm it currently, so it's stuck at 4*. Up to you if you want that.

And be aware that the total number of blueprints that you need to get to the Zeta mats is quite high. As soon as you hit 60 you should be carefully using Galactic War and Fleet tokens in a careful, planned out way to work on the ships you need for the Tarkin and Zeta challenges.

My strategy... Developed to deal with players with Maul as a reinforcement....


You must UNLEARN what you have learned...

Common strategy in Arena and other Toon battles is to focus attacks on one player at a time. This can prove counter productive in ship arena. Especially when the first Reinforcement is Maul.

Instead spread your damage out... get 2-3 targets to very low hps, Then kill them... Wait till after the capital ship has moved so you have more time to get your kill shots in. You will end up with 5 ships Battling 3, much better odds.

Vs teams with Maul as a reinforcement try to kill an opponent when Biggs is Taunting with an AOE attack. Biggs will keep not gain evasion and if he is wounded will not gain retribution.

Vs teams with Maul reinforcement try to have a Stun or Dispel ready to fire after you kill your first enemy.

Thanks for the advice guys! I decided not to buy the starter pack. I'll wait for the Boba and slave 1 pack instead. I suppose I'll start farming Ashoka and Gen. soldier.
I'll keep the strategy also in mind for fleet combats and facing Maul. Now have to make a decision on the jedi bundle packs that came out. The Anakin one seems appealing...