I'm looking for suggestions on how to make my list better. A bit of a back story to how I came upon it, I hadn't played Armada for awhile, and needed a list for Gencon, so I started with the list I was most familiar with, my Gencon2017 list... And made some changes to make it better.
Gencon 2017:
ISD2 w/ Jerry, GT, RBD, LS, Spinals, Relentless
GSD1 w/ SFO, OE, ET, APT, Demo
R1 w/ ExRacks
Goz w/ Comms
Goz w/ Jamming
HR
TIE/ln x4
Most Wanted, Contested Outpost, Superior Positions
400pts
Gencon 2018:
ISD Kuat w/ Jerry, SA, BT, ECM, LS, ExRacks, Avenger
GSD1 w/ SFO, OE, APT, Demo
R1 w/ Brunson, OE, ExRacks
Goz w/ Jamming
HR
Mauler
JM5K
TIE/ln x3
Advanced Gunnery, Contested Outpost, Solar Corona
385 pts
So the biggest changes between the two is the bid for first player, almost exclusively made by dropping the second Gozanti for SA, saving 21 points. And then a bit heavier of a squad presence (though I’m still not satisfied with it) and a bit better of a Raider. It was pretty successful (by my standards). I ended up playing a friendly game afterwards, and I went 5-6, 4-7, 8-3, 5-6, 6-5... And I'm not a particularly good player. Remembering I had a nav dial would have changed that first 5-6 to a 8-3 in my favor, but oh well.
But I know there are some changes that could make the list better. I'm not particularly happy with the squadron aspect of it... It's obviously designed to pretty much die, but slowly. Thus the Jamming Field (which I still maintain is one of the best small squadron support upgrades). But I feel like I could come up with a better 67 points of squadrons to fulfill that - perhap Soontir and 4 TIE/x1? Force them to shoot at the Escorts while Soontir does auto damage? Seems like with 5 health, the TIE/x1 are better meat shields than the TIE/ln. It's very difficult to one shot 5 health, but pretty easy to one shot 3 health. And with Escort, Soontir's ability seems better than Mauler's for just 3 points more. Plus one of the things I found myself doing was overextending my squadrons, activating them first to get the damage from Mauler and to hopefully kill one before they activated, and then tie them down so they can't attack my ships. But that's absolutely the wrong move. They end up just decimating my folks, I'm out of jamming range, and then get flakked.
Besides the squadrons though, do ya'll see any easy upgrades to the ships that I'm overlooking? I'm pretty intent on Jerry, but if you can make a strong case for a different Admiral, I'll try it out. ETs are nice, but I'm not sure they're worth the bid, though maybe they are. And maybe I drop the Jamming to make a bigger bid then. Obviously most people would recommend Comms instead of Jamming, but I find that the Goz actually needs its commands. The first turn I give it a squadron token, the second turn I normally activate 3 squads with it, and the rest of the time I use it to push 2, so Comms wouldn't get that much use. It'd probably end up giving a single token to the ISD turn 1, and then take a squadron token for itself turn 2, and then push them on turn 3.
Thoughts?