fleet battles

[Admiral Breetai]

Admiral Akbar and the fleet from the battle of Ednor (including Nadine and Lando) battle takes place in and around saturn

vs a fleet of 2 Sovereings 5 Defiants and 2 Ambassadors

Jean Luc Picard in command backed up by Ben Maxwell and Edward Jelicho

which team has the better tacticians? and who wins the over all fight

[Picard]

Picard, Jellico and Maxwell take a nap/coffe in Ten Forward while UFP fleet obliterates Rebels by virtue of heavier firepower alone. Ignoring that, while Ackbar is implied to be good tactician, we never saw it, and he seems to be pretty 'conventional', althought able to understand and accept unconventional tactics when presented to him. On the other hand, Picard is good at improvizing, has first officer who is as good as him in that field (or maybe even better), and while we don't know about remaining two, Maxwell at least is implied to be extraordinarily good tactitian, and has shown quite good strategical understanding of situation with Cardassians, unlike Picard who is always diplomat (and quite idealistic one, too) first, soldier second - althought, to be fair, he had no way to know about Dominion at that time, and I doubt Cardassia would try to attack Federation head-on without some serious help from outside. But Maxwell implied that Cardassians never took Federation very seriously - at least not until he took time to teach them a lesson, so it may or may not be true.

Book fleet is implied to have few hundred corvette class or heavier hulls among its ranks, but in that case Federation ships use their range advantage to gradually kill off Rebel fleet.