I hadn't really thought about it before but my kids know next to nothing about the military. When I was their age I watched war movies and read about military weapons and such things. They really haven't had exposure to such things. They know I was in the military when I was younger but they don't know much else.

Yesterday I was watching the Clone Wars show with my sons and the first time Captain Rex showed up I mentioned h lead a company of the 501st. My oldest son said "what's a company?" Then I realized that he knew nothing of militray organization.

With AoR coming out soon (as least the beta) I guess I should educate them on military organization, rank structure and things like that.

Sounds more like a supplement to me.

The d6 version had both an Imperial and a separate Rebel Alliance sourcebook, might be the subject of several articles in the meantime though!

The Rebel Alliance is a strange beast. There are so many different ways to view them and their methods, but for a group who is ignorant of or not interested in the more military approach, let me paint a picture.

The Rebel Alliance is a terribly inefficient, but surprisingly effective, system of heroes with support. The heroes are almost fully autonomous and undertake daring missions to ensure the continuation of the Rebellion or even the end of the Empire altogether. The support die to make these missions possible. The rank of these heroes is almost entirely irrelevant. We never see the main heroes have to navigate the command structure of the Rebellion in the movies. All of their orders come from the top generals/admirals and the civilian leader. The support are the ones who care about that, not the heroes.

Lots of examples of this. How many people died on Yavin? Most of them. The Rebels were thoroughly trounced and had to fully evacuate their home base. Who cares, that's background noise. Now let's make the support stand there while we put medals on these heroes here.

Or Rogue Squadron. Every member has a rank, sure, but they are an autonomous unit, and the only one who has to navigate command structures is the CO, and even he received most of his orders from the very top.

My point (sorry if that was a little rambly) is that military structure matters as much or as little as works best for your group.

Also, that's not a critique of Star Wars above. I like the idea that the Rebellion was oddly managed with a lot of their decisions being based on whatever happens to be working at the time. It adds to the desperate and underdog feel.

Eh, it's already a wall if text, let's edit in some more. The exact opposite approach has EU support as well. Mon Mothma was a fan of parading the heroes about to help her recruiting efforts and expansion of the Alliance. With that in mind, it could be seen that the heroes were the means to achieving the ends of a larger military force.

The thing about the Rebellion was that it was spear-headed by people who knew nothing about war, other than what they experienced during the Clone Wars. That was mostly controlled by the Jedi/Clone Troopers and Palpatine and no one else really.

However, according to Leia, Obi Wan did serve Bail Organa during the Clone Wars (not that we ever see this in the films as he's basically just a background character in them) so that does hint that Bail may have some military strategy experience of some kind as he was smart enough to lead efforts to not only organise a group of people to steal Death Star plans, but also assemble powerful X-Wing ships under the Empire's Radar.

The Rebellion's strength came from Bail Organa's political influence at first, rather than raw military victories.

Definitely. That's kind of what I was saying. The Rebel Alliance is a political organization first (which is why it is an Alliance in the first place and not organized as something more cohesive) and their military know-how comes either from Imperial defectors or is 20 years old from another conflict that overvalued the input of politicians.

The Rebels were thoroughly trounced

Nah. The Death Star represented a hefty chunk of the Empires industrial output for almost a decade, and even more importantly the symbolism of its destruction so soon after its use to destroy Alderan is widely regarded as the turning point in the Empires fortunes. Well worth the sacrifice of a few dozen Starfighter pilots.

As to the abilities of the Rebellion, it must be remembered that shortly after taking power the Empire purged almost everyone in its ranks with connections to the old regime, Khmer Rouge style*.

The Empire promoted based on commitment to the ideals of the New Order, while the Alliance was firmly a meritocracy.

As such, the Empires ranks were soon filled only with political zealots, with anyone with any talent for anything other than infighting quickly ending up dead or fighting for the rebellion.

* The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese , ethnic Thai , ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham , Cambodian Christians, and the Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution. As a result, Pol Pot is sometimes described as "the Hitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant." ^[4] Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era."

Estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million.

The judicial process of the Khmer Rouge regime, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar , the government of Cambodia under the regime. People receiving more than two warnings were sent for "re-education," which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity; having had contact with a foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, international relief or government agency; or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean." This meant being taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.

The executed were buried in mass graves . In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees . The rationale was "to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents' deaths." ^[17]

Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families.

If you are part of the rebel alliance military you need to be concerned with rank. Promotions come to players as a reward or the death of a superior.

Overall most of the rebels operated in cells. Be a small group, squad, platoon, squadron, usually less then a couple dozen beings. All answering to someone in contact with a sector command.

If you are imperial then you need to be more concerned with organization and orders of battle.

yavin base supported two squadrons of fighters. Hoth only supported rogue squadron and some troops. Both lead by generals

The Rebels were thoroughly trounced

Nah. The Death Star represented a hefty chunk of the Empires industrial output for almost a decade, and even more importantly the symbolism of its destruction so soon after its use to destroy Alderan is widely regarded as the turning point in the Empires fortunes. Well worth the sacrifice of a few dozen Starfighter pilots.

As to the abilities of the Rebellion, it must be remembered that shortly after taking power the Empire purged almost everyone in its ranks with connections to the old regime, Khmer Rouge style*.

The Empire promoted based on commitment to the ideals of the New Order, while the Alliance was firmly a meritocracy.

As such, the Empires ranks were soon filled only with political zealots, with anyone with any talent for anything other than infighting quickly ending up dead or fighting for the rebellion.

* The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese , ethnic Thai , ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham , Cambodian Christians, and the Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution. As a result, Pol Pot is sometimes described as "the Hitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant." ^[4] Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era."

Estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million.

The judicial process of the Khmer Rouge regime, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar , the government of Cambodia under the regime. People receiving more than two warnings were sent for "re-education," which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity; having had contact with a foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, international relief or government agency; or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean." This meant being taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.

The executed were buried in mass graves . In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees . The rationale was "to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents' deaths." ^[17]

Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families.

The movies really do suggest that the Rebel losses were limited to a few dozen starfighters, doesn't it? They obviously weren't. Following the destruction of the Death Star was the Imperial landing and occupation of Yavin 4. The evacuation was about as successful as the Hoth evacuation. That is to say, about as good as it gets, but terribly bloody. Not to mention the loss of Yavin 4 itself was a terrible blow, and the months that followed where the Rebellion was without a home were not terribly productive and led to further losses.

The loss of the Death Star was undoubtedly a terrible blow to the Empire. The fact that the Rebellion was trounced stands, whether said trouncing was costly or not.

As to the zealotry of the New Order, I was talking strictly about the Rebellion, and not the Empire. Regardless, the Imperial military maintained some competency, and the political system of the Empire radically changed at the onset of ANH. Sure, it was a system by which the Emperor and Vader chose favorites, but at this point they rewarded competency (or more accurately fatally punished failure) more than zealotry. Devotion to the New Order was a condition of attaining a Moff title. It was not the condition by which one kept it.

Anyway, the only real on-topic (and not even really then, because I went quite a bit off-topic myself) point of the competency of the Empire is that most of the notable top Rebel leaders were Imperial defectors.

If you read the novel Death Star (not recommended) you discover that the first Rebel attack against the Death Star was a few hundred X-Wings flown by idiots.

Seems that there's nothing in the Beta about a purely tactics skill. Though from talking with Jay Little at length last night, I'm inclined to think that it's something they don't think is needed, and could be covered with a mix of existing skills, either in coming up the plans (Knowledge skills) or getting them carried out (Leadership)

Seems that there's nothing in the Beta about a purely tactics skill. Though from talking with Jay Little at length last night, I'm inclined to think that it's something they don't think is needed, and could be covered with a mix of existing skills, either in coming up the plans (Knowledge skills) or getting them carried out (Leadership)

I actually agree with that entirely.

If you read the novel Death Star (not recommended) you discover that the first Rebel attack against the Death Star was a few hundred X-Wings flown by idiots.

While the book wasn't that bad, I'll fully agree that bit was ridiculously stupid.

For those not in the know, the Death Star was attacked by a Rebel held trade federation battleship and dozens and dozens of X-Wings well before the Battle of Yavin - and was a complete slaughter. Okay, putting aside the whole "Its a secret weapon and nobody was suppose to know about it" thing - what the hell was that suppose to accomplish?

Even assuming that the Death Star sat there, totally inert and didn't fight back in any way, if it was just a big ball of metal hanging in space, they didn't bring enough firepower to do it damage. Even if the attack lasted a hundred years, there is just simply no way to blow up a moon sized ball! There was no battle plan other than "Shoot it until it blows up!"

Seems that there's nothing in the Beta about a purely tactics skill. Though from talking with Jay Little at length last night, I'm inclined to think that it's something they don't think is needed, and could be covered with a mix of existing skills, either in coming up the plans (Knowledge skills) or getting them carried out (Leadership)

For the most part, I'd just go with that. I mean, there already is a talent, Field Commander (Hired Gun/Merc Soldier, 1st column, 3rd row), that is very tactics-esque.

I'm assuming that AoR will have some other talents that build upon that idea and give more tactical options in the field.

-EF

It should also be noted that a lot of Rebel heroes (in the EU) came from the Imperial military/navy

Leadership could influence the number of minon groups you can lead. Perhaps setback dice to their actions if you are commanding more minion groups then your Leadership skill. That makes it a passive skill, but you could use Leadership in active roles such as rallying a routed group or an inspiring speach before battle.

Knowledge (tactics) of leaders could work great as a substitute for Vigilance/Cool when rolling initiative at the start of mass combat.

eta: Field Commander and Command are both talents that could be used in Mass Combat to lead minion groups.