A friend of mine and I are going to play Armada for the 2nd time tonight. He has 2 cores and nothing else. We'd both like to try 300 point lists, but feeling a little overwhelmed by all the choices. Are the officer and weapon upgrades worth it? Or just pack as many ships as possible?
If there's a thread that already discussed this, then I'd be happy to read through it. 
I think you'd pretty much need to take upgrades to get a 300 point list, wouldn't you? With 2 cores the Imps can get as high as 228 with Vic IIs, and Tarkin.
I'm not sure how much the Nebs cost exactly, but I'm pretty sure the rebels need upgrades, too.
But yes, upgrades can often be worth it.
With Two cores i would expect both sides to use all thier ships. Fighter wise i would expect 4-6 xwings and maybe 6-8 ties for a good game.
Wulff and Leia are pretty cool upgrades from the core game.
Points wise the upgrades are pretty well balanced. there are a few stinkers but no auto includes really (beyond Demolisher and thats not in the core).
Edited by CorverOkay, starting with Imperials. Keep in mind my goal for this is to give you a chance to play around with different toys from the core set and in general a full fleet shouldn't necessarily be designed this way:
Your flagship is your gunship. Abuse Wulff and Tarkin together and when in doubt Navigate or Engineering with it . You'll want those Engineering tokens to keep feeding Dominator. Your Victory-I is a cheap carrier there to help your TIE Fighters out. Don't neglect to remember it packs a wallop at close range if you can get it there (coordinate your two VSDs together and it's not as bad as you might think). TIEs are... well, TIEs. Shoot up those X-Wings as best you can and keep your VSD-I within range to give them Squadron commands when necessary. The Weapons Liason on the VSD-I is there so you can use Tarkin tokens to Squadron when you need it. It's often difficult for new players to know when to Squadron vs. when to do other things, so this allows you to do other things and then Squadron on a dime when necessary. If you don't feel that's required, please drop the Weapons Liason for another TIE squadron.
I'll let you choose your own objectives, though. I'm sure you can find some you think are fun. I could do it for you but I'm sure you'll manage 
Time for Rebels
These lists work well vs one another:
To reduce the Imp fighter advantage you can drop 2 TIEs and add Overload Pulse and Enhanced Armaments.