Alderaan was a tragedy, The peace moon's deep core mining laser was never meant to destroy the planet, only retrieve valuable unobtanium from the planets core, revitalizing Alderaans Economy.

True dat.

If it had been Naboo, no-one would have cared...

I play the game in both Medium (Empire) and Hard (Scum) difficulties. The other faction is filled with too many cheap and obvious power combos to really give me a challenge when list building. I can understand why the majority tournament entrants are Rebel players though: you want something easy to use if you're going to playing a full 8 hour day so you don't burn out.

I think it's mostly money. Most non-hardcore players don't want to buy a ship they don't like the look of just to get a single upgrade. Personally I'm a collector and have almost every (non epic) ship. Just missing Rebel Z-95 & Tie Punisher. My wife mostly plays Rebels but we both dabble in the other factions from time to time.

Scum is my faction of choice. There's no all powerful force controlling MY destiny. Just cold, hard credits.

Now where's my Scum Han Solo & Dash Rendar?

I'm not sure I would call rebels the easy mode just because some of the top lists are rebels. Only thing really hard about scum right now is lack of ship diversity but once wave 8 hits, all is game. Even then a good scum list is easy to make and they have the current "easy" list of TLT Ys with unhinged.

I've played imperials mostly for the past 3 years, now that the advanced fix is out and the prototype on the way, we have a slathering of options for all range of points now, thankfully that 21-23 point hole got fixed up.

I play the game in both Medium (Empire) and Hard (Scum) difficulties. The other faction is filled with too many cheap and obvious power combos to really give me a challenge when list building. I can understand why the majority tournament entrants are Rebel players though: you want something easy to use if you're going to playing a full 8 hour day so you don't burn out.

So what you are saying is you only play Terran Republic or Vanu Sovereignty but never touch the New Conglomerate, right?

I play the game in both Medium (Empire) and Hard (Scum) difficulties. The other faction is filled with too many cheap and obvious power combos to really give me a challenge when list building. I can understand why the majority tournament entrants are Rebel players though: you want something easy to use if you're going to playing a full 8 hour day so you don't burn out.

That is one of the most generalizing and uneducated statements I have seen in a long time. Don't act like Brobots, TLT Unhinged Y-Wings, Double Deci or RAC/Fel are any harder to build/play than the usual Fat Han/Sad Horn. True rebel-synergy lists are among the hardest lists to make work in this game. K-Wings are a big challenge (unless you play Miranda, she is more of a traditional ship) to integrate into your builds.