Love it or hate it each year the final table has always been a Reb vs Imp and it feels so star warsie. I'm hoping this year will be the same.Scum is great faction and all but for me it's not good vs evil it's good vs evil vs other.

What's your take? I've been busy and away so this is my attempt to provide a non petition/damage deck convo to the boards

The military ones.

Starviper V K-wing plz

I'm certain it will be a rematch between Heaver and KineticOperator. So Rebels v Rebels.

Imperial vs Imperial to make sure Imperial get a win this year

I think Scum could definitely make it to the finals table, with wave 7 out.

Although I would like to see Fat Falcon dethroned once, so I would like to see the empire win a worlds.

So Rebels vs Empire.

I don't want to see Rebels win 3 years in a row, so I vote Empire and Scum to guarantee a non Rebel list win.

I think Scum could definitely make it to the finals table, with wave 7 out.

Although I would like to see Fat Falcon dethroned once, so I would like to see the empire win a worlds.

So Rebels vs Empire.

No falcons at the top tables, it seems.

It wouldn't really be Star Wars if the Rebels don't win.

You just can't beat that plot armor

Ewoks vs Gungans.

NOBODY WILL EXPECT IT.

m3a vs generic yt1300s!

as long as it's no dash/corran or deci/soontir list, I'm quite okay with everything else

It wouldn't really be Star Wars if the Rebels don't win.

If you believe the terrorist propaganda...

Imperials vs Imperials. For so many reasons, no TLTs, no Fat Falcons, Imps finally get a win.......

Love it or hate it each year the final table has always been a Reb vs Imp and it feels so star warsie. I'm hoping this year will be the same.Scum is great faction and all but for me it's not good vs evil it's good vs evil vs other.

What's your take? I've been busy and away so this is my attempt to provide a non petition/damage deck convo to the boards

I don't think it's really good vs evil vs other.

I think it's more like well-funded disaffected vs bad-boss bureaucratic vs pragmatic opportunist .

We may have movies about the heads of the guerrilla faction, but in a war like this "Heroes" are very much a symptom of perspective.

Remember that:

And:

:

The mirror, is looking back at you my friend.

(Scum vs Rebs would be cool.)

(I nobbed the ships from JoeBoss's profile page. )

We may have movies about the heads of the guerrilla faction, but in a war like this "Heroes" are very much a symptom of perspective.

I think the clone wars were more a matter of perspective, the Empire was clearly evil.

We may have movies about the heads of the guerrilla faction, but in a war like this "Heroes" are very much a symptom of perspective.

"There are heroes on both sides."

I think the clone wars were more a matter of perspective, the Empire was clearly evil.

The Emperor was clearly evil yes, but the Empire?

I'm hesitant to pass judgment on "one and a half million member and conquered worlds, as well as sixty-nine million colonies, protectorates and puppet states" over the virtues of the Head of State.

Most of the member worlds were just war-weary from the Clone Wars, and wanted to buy some lasting peace at the price of the freedom that hadn't kept them safe in the past.

Bureaucratic, short-sighted, tyrannical? Yes.

Evil? Here and there, but mixed with good and all in the grey area.

Evil? Here and there, but mixed with good and all in the grey area.

There are many more examples. The pattern is that the various elements of the story are subservient to the role they play in terms of the archetypes. Once things do not make sense, they are assumed to conform to their roles as archetypes. Never mind the particulars of the Naboo political system, it is a just democracy that lives in harmony with its surroundings.

The same goes for the Empire. It is clearly meant as an archetypical force of darkness, but also an actual government ruling a society. These two views on the empire inevitably clash, but it would be a mistake to think that some kind of synthesis is reasonable, or that both views even offer different takes on the same thing. Star Wars is not science fiction, it is fantasy, myth and fairy tale.

On a mostly unrelated note: while I think 'guerilla' is a good term for the Rebels, 'terrorists' is probably not. As I see it, the most common definition of terrorism is the application of military or semi-military violence with a psychological rather than a tangible tactical goal; i.e. like bombing an airport to frighten travellers rather than actually crippling material infrastructure. The Rebels don't really do that. The Death Stars are clearly tactical targets, they are superweapons that must be destroyed to win the war. Only the death of the emperor could be characterised as terrorism, but even he is probably important in his role as commander. The destruction of Alderaan, however, hardly damaged the rebellion in a military sense, but was a serious blow to morale ("we feared the worst"). That could be called terror.

You raise many valid points, and I actually have answers for most of them.

However, most of those answers use Nazis and Nazi Germany as parallels; and since we all know the rules about using Nazis in public debates on the internet, I'll put down this nice video outlining my opinions instead!

(Oh yeah, if you'd like to continue the debate, chat-message me instead; gotta stay mostly on topic now don't we? )

It's not really good vs evil in the 'real world', more like 'dangerous vs safe'.

Anyway, how is this tread still going? Worlds is over and it was a rebel mirror match at finals.

For the rebels are terrorists part:

What if the president was visiting a missile silo where a new 'Cobalt' nuclear missile was being kept, a missile that could render a large part of the world uninhabitable for centuries. And the there's a group of dissidents, or radicals, that think the only reason any country would keep such a weapon is to eventually use it to completely wipe out any other country that just happened to stand in the way of the U.S. These people then mount an attack to destroy the facility and kill the president (who ordered the weapon to be built in the first place). Are these people terrorists? Is the president evil? Is the U.S. Evil for even possessing such a weapon?

It's not a perfect parallel, it isn't meant to be. Even though the U.S. Has used nuclear weapons in war before it was seen as just at the time in order to quickly end the war without the even larger toll of a mainland invasion. And I don't think the Death Star was meant to be an analogy of nuclear power either. The point is that in Star Wars one man manipulated an entire galaxy into accepting an inherently corrupt regime that had to keep its populace in check by fear when certain groups began to question and then outright rebel against the newly formed Empire. From the frame of reference we get with the story the Rebels are fighting tyranny and not terrorizing a population. If anything the crime syndicates like the Hutts are terrorizing many peoples and all without ligitamit authority other than a passive acceptance by the corrupt galactic government.

Wow this got long a preachy.

My definition of terrorism is not clear cut. Those who want specific demarcation should not expect it from me, and I don't think it's possible. Defining something by the intent or goal is always tricky. One could destroy a hospital to demoralize the country or to kill the soldiers and prevent a military unit from recovering. The first would be terrorism, the second would not, even if what actually happens is exactly the same in both cases. If this is a shortcoming of the definition, so be it. I still think this is better than defining terrorism ad hoc, just because it is politically convenient. And being frank about a definition is also much more useful than just shouting 'the Rebels are terrorists' and just leaving it up in the air what you actually mean by that.

Even though the U.S. Has used nuclear weapons in war before it was seen as just at the time in order to quickly end the war without the even larger toll of a mainland invasion.

It's amazing how few people know about this.

Yeah, I guess the thread is mostly here for the theorycrafting now; probably because a thread titled "Musings on the Relative Ethics and Morality of the Factions of X-Wing" might not get many readers.

You definitely raise a point with the Cobalt missile speech, and Lingula shares a similar view; different actions have subjective moral frames, and it is very difficult to find an answer that everyone would agree upon.

For example, the morality of creating weapons: I may think forging a sword or creating a death star to be a purely pragmatic act; the creation of a tool the act of which is morally neutral in itself. Another person may think more along the lines of "a weapon is made to be used", and may see the creation stage as an extension of the base evil of killing; whether for defense or offense the weapon is made with blood in mind.

It is entirely subjective; and even the morality of killing enemy combatants can be argued either way. What I want to see from the new movies, and stories in general, is that the author has considered this, and that even if the characters aren't aware of it, the fact that no-one considers themselves to be "the bad guys" still has an impact on the story.

I was just hoping for more scum represnetaiton in the top cuts. It's my favotite faction to play right now by far. Probably because I like to fly less conventional lists/ships/etc.

Evil? Here and there, but mixed with good and all in the grey area.

It seems you're running afoul of George Lucas' inconsistencies in storytelling. He tends to 'half-do' things. Like Queen Amidala. She is a child queen, but elected. This is a very odd contradiction that is the result of Lucas wanting to present a peaceful and just monarchy, with a queen who was capable of falling in love with the young Anakin. The details didn't really matter, even if it doesn't make sense.

I have a theory about that...

Suppose there' a high school applied Ethics/debate course with a competition for actual elected positions, with the highest seat being "Queen/King for a year." Amadala hapened to win it in time for the trade federation blocade- her responce got her a permanant goverment position as Senator (as long as the chain of high schol aged "queens" behind her continue to support her, but she's a heroine of naboo, so that's not an issue)