So first thing I would do is drop spinal armament. The front end of an ISD2 is already pretty darned impressive. Dropping that and both skilled officers will let you put reinforced blast doors on each Arquitens, greatly improving their survivability.

Dropping Relentless in turn will let you upgrade one of those Tie Advanced squadrons to Strom, who does the job better because he has 2 braces, and fits the vader theme strongly with damage for rerolls.

I run a nearly identical list to what you ran, with the stuff above. For the red objective I go with Blockade Run- rebels rarely want speed 3 imperials barreling at them on a longwise table.

That being said, I put Vader on the ISD, and run a Coms Net on the Gozanti for the repair and nav tokens as needed.

I also really like running either ISW7 ion cannons on the ISD for more damage potential late game OR IX7 Turbolasers to restrict redirect tokens. Alot of problematic ships, like the MC30/80, live or die on those redirect abilities, and in imperial mirror matches its a killer.

Go for DTTs on the Kittens as you save points and get most of the effect of enhanced armament. It can be used from the front if Vader's rerolled side shot gives no blanks or just use it anyway and fish for a better crit/double hit/accuracy.

I love Needa and TRCs on one Arquitens but with Vader you don't really need(a) it but it can be fun when the enemy have no evade tokens.

XI7s on the ISD is a great idea and terrifies flanking MC30s. I don't reckon much to SW7s as Vader can just reroll unwanted blue accuracies meaning a 15/16 hit/crit chance. High capacity Ion turrets can be good if you aren't going for spinals. Enemies will try and avoid the front arc so why not meat them there with 6 dice including a CF dial. That's the firepower of a VSD-II front arc!

I like both of these suggestions... Here's what I got now... CnC. Am I correct in assuming DTT happens after you roll your initial pool? So I could essentially reroll one dice from my arc?

Badger Escort
Author: Buffalufacus

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 399/400

Commander: Darth Vader

Assault Objective: Blockade Run
Defense Objective: Hyperspace Assault
Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 25 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)
- Darth Vader ( 36 points)
- Relentless ( 3 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)
- X17 Turbolasers ( 6 points)
= 179 total ship cost

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
= 59 total ship cost

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
- Hand of Justice ( 4 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
= 63 total ship cost

1 TIE Advanced Squadron ( 12 points)
3 TIE Defender Squadrons ( 48 points)
1 Tempest Squadron ( 13 points)

14 hours ago, Buffalufacus said:

Am I correct in assuming DTT happens after you roll your initial pool? So I could essentially reroll one dice from my arc?

Yup! You roll your initial dice, and then decide whether to add the DTT. If you do, you roll the dice, and then remove one, so it's slightly better than a reroll, as it gives you more certainty and allows you to fish for stuff without losing a good initial roll.