Relatively new to the game and am still learning the nuances of building. When i build a rebel fleet, i am a fan of using four ships. With that in mind, other than low PS, what are some positive and negative critiques for this build:

Garven=26

Gold + Ion turret=24

rookie=21

Blue + HLC=29

100

Also, would i want to get into a jousting match with this build?

First, Gold w/ ion turret is 23pts, not 24pts. How you spend that last point gives you some options. You could stay at 99pts to grab for initiative. You could change the Rookie into a second Blue Squadron Pilot. You could put a R2 or an R5 on Garven, the Gold or the Rookie. Or you can swap Gold w/ ion turret for Roark w/ ion turret.

Of all these I like the Roark option the most. You trade a little of the durability of your turret carrier for a weapon to help your otherwise low PS squad combat high skill opponents. The HLC shooting at 12 could force pilots higher than Garven to use focus on defense, weakening their attack that round. You can also bump Garven to 12 so he can ship his focus off to whoever you think is going to need the extra defense before the enemy starts shooting.

If by joust you mean a head on attack / k turn pattern?? You can. Your original list has enough firepower to try it. Just be aware that unlike a list like 4 rookies w/ shield, the turret ship doesn't need to k turn and the Bwing wants to hang back so there are some sublties to your maneuvering choices you shouldn't overlook just because Kturning is 'simpler.'

Looks pretty nice, I'd suggest using Dutch instead of garven for the following 2 reasons.

-Due to having a turret he is harder to bumb or bump into things, also with a turret you do not need to make , so he uses his target lock ability more often. Than garven would use his focus.

-He shoots first in this squad which is a good thing as you know if the target is Ioned. Now you can make better target priories with your heavy damage ships.

You could probably criticize and critique this build but it would probably be more like "how can we come to the same boring conclusions about maximum efficiency builds that we have done hundreds of times before" rather than really tweaking the build.

As a list, it is well varied and has a fair amount of hull and firepower and Garven is always useful in a list. If I made any criticism it would be that the B-wing is the obvious target with the HLC and its meager 1 agility die. If you are concerned about pilot skill the HLC is probably the best place to start cutting and distributing those points elsewhere

That said, it's not as if the list falls apart if you lose the B-wing so maybe just give the squad a try as is and see if you like it. A few games should at least give you an idea of where the squad does or doesn't seem to work or at least whether it meshes well with how you like to play, and get you a better idea of what direction you might try to go with it. Otherwise it is a perfectly good starting point and even if it is not 100% optimal it is by no means a weak selection

It's a good fleet, mate. At this point, the tweaking comes to our personal preferences, rather than anything being objectively better.

I would do as suggested above and change the Gold to Roark. Even though I don't think Roark synergizes well with Garven (or at least the way I like to use Garven, which is as a poor man's PTL to stack TL+F) it would still allow your HLC to shoot first, or the rookie (or even Garven, though I would only recommend that if he was at 2 hull or less, or against an elite 3 list) if you wanted to save the HLC for TL+F. 5 health w/ 2 dice vs. 8 health w/ 1 does slightly decrease the survivability, but not by much. So the main thing is +2 PS, +Ability, -Dial.