Hello friend. I am top 10 in my fleet shard, also went with phoenixes. Do as I did and I am sure you will do great: 0. You dont need to buy anything, but if you wish to, I believe out of all the starteres, the kylo ship is by far the best
1. Everyone starts with the same starter ships. So no worries about somebody seriously outgunning you. Untill ship shards start coming in, you can probably win every fight by just outplaying the AI.
2. buy phoenix ships as soon as they appear in the shop. Galactic tokens should be focused on getting biggs, and after that you can alternate between biggs/FOTIE/TIE. Keep in mind TIE and FOTIE appear a lot less often as biggs (you will get at least 4 biggs shards every day, while TIE and FOTIE appear once every 2-3 days)
3. Mace is by far the best STARTER commander. The reason is that his taunt/frequent turns give you a big edge while your ships are low in power. Also his invincibility counters Moff ultimate. Ackbar is a very good midgame leader, while moff/chimaera hold the late game meta (Ackbar can still compete but he just doesn't have a wrecker ultimate like Moff).
4. You should farm KRU in Cantina (stage 3). His ship is very good early and midgame, and will probably be your first 7* ship. He can oneshot a lot of ships or cripple them very hard, and the droprate is one of the best ingame at the moment.
5. Always save 400 fleet arena tokens. The reason is that you NEED Vader TIE and Slave. Vader TIE is quite rare, and Vader shards are the rarest. So buy them in this order: Vader TIE >Vader>Slave>phoenixes. Slave is good but he is not Vader good.
6. Decide whether you want Ashoka/fives ship. The reason for that is that those 2 are the only early game dispells. Ashoka is more reliable, while fives has a better ship (Fives needs target lock to dispel). A lot of people lose fleet battles because biggs taunted at the wrong time or Mace keeps taunting you off those 10% ships. This is not as important as the rest for early, but it will eventually start to matter more and more. You should put Ashoka into your Galactic rotation (NOT FLEET SHARD) When you unlock biggs. Her ship is very common there, I've had 2 of her shards at once in my shop. Fives is also quite frequent, but not as much.
7. Farm FO tie fighter from hard nodes. You have 2 of them total, you will get at least 3-4 shards per day. I would also advise to farm Sabine, but that is entirely up to you. As soon as you unlock her, you can use her ship. FOTIE is one of the best damage ships in the game, his TM gains are insane as soon as you target lock someone and he has a double basic attack.
