I made a thread a little while ago saying the rebels seemed so much better. I was wrong. I bought the tie bomber to add to my collection and now the only thing for the imps I don't have is the shuttle but the tie bomber is fantastic. It literally turned every game I've played with it on to a victory except for one close loss. Cluster missles on advanced proton torpedos nothing but a very lucky e wing at range three through a asteroid has a chance. I now like the imperials.

We'll let you off this once...

I love the TIE Bomber, but I generally feel that if it's the best imperial ship for your playstyle then you might be better suited to rebels. That said, I still fly imperial 99% of the time.

I've had mixed results with rebels. I don't know how to fluently build squads for them, they're so expensive.

I can crush most lists beneath my shiny, white, imperial boots.

The firespray is an unstoppable killing machine, or at the least stoppable attention holding machine.

You were right the first time, rebels are better, more forgiving, let you off with mistakes and fat Han loves the new tournament rules.

Small additions, here:

You were right the first time, rebels are better^{[citation needed]}, more forgiving^{[citation needed]}, let you off with mistakes^{[citation needed]} and fat Han loves the new tournament rules^{[citation needed]}.

Rebels aren't better. Some Rebel ships are more forgiving of some kinds of mistakes than their Imperial counterparts, particularly for inexperienced players, but the better dials and much more common repositioning actions available to the Empire more than make up for it.

And as for Fat Han and the new tournament rules, I think I disagree. Since Han will undoubtedly be your first target, it's just as possible that the rules will work against him: even if it costs me 49 points' worth of my list to take out the 61-point centerpiece of your list, it's going to be very difficult for you to prevent me from picking up a full win--particularly when I know all I have to do is play defensively.

But maybe that's what you mean: if Fat Han loses, it's typically close, and when it wins its opponent probably didn't kill anything. But that's an adjustment at the margins, and I'd still say the new rules are a drastic improvement over essentially arbitrary strength-of-schedule tiebreakers.

I think the Rebs are more forgiving for new players. Their shields, fairly mild maneuvers, and decent upgrades help out new players a lot. With Imps, you really need to learn to maneuver and focus fire- things that generally take time to learn.