Even if ImpArmy doesn't show up, so what? It is a half hour cartoon. They will go with stormies because they are readily recognizable. Not because the Imperial Army has been written out. This new villain, the Inquisitor, will probably have his own Star Destroyer and contingent of stormtroopers, much like Darth Vader has the 501st. So we may see only stormtroopers in the context of the cartoon.

I think it would be absurd to try to say there is an enormous Imperial army that is the true face of the Empire when such will never appear on screen or even be mentioned in the new Star Wars TV show.

Okay, Daleks versus the Empire - who would win.

Disclaimer: I hate these VS debates without structure or guidelines, so lets set the parameters. Palpatine is at the height of his powers, the Death Star is complete but not yet blown up, the Empire is full in control. A portion of the Dalek fleet, caught in the Time War, slip through a crack in the Medusa Cascade over to the Wars universe.

So, a handful of Dalek ships, no Doctor or Time Lords to stop them, a whole galaxy prime for total extermination. How does it play out?

(There, that should be good for at least four pages!)

A handful of Daleks can rebuild their race easily, and with time travel technology this isn't really a fight. Now, if you had posited the Daleks Pre-Time War, well then...that could be interesting.

Edit - Of course, now I am seeing Dalek sith with little red lightsabers in their suction cup hands. Adorable.

Even if you take the temporal manipulation technology out of the Dalek's hands, they're still got the upper hand. Palpatine's culmination of two thousand years of the Sith's Long Game is peanuts to the Daleks. They will lay in wait as long as it takes to rebuild, and rearm before unleashing the cleansing fire of total extermination upon the unsuspecting galaxy. The Emperor's only hope would be learning of this new threat early and stamping it out QUICK.

Sith Daleks? While cute with their sucker sabers - if the force is just powered by midicolrians (assuming the Kaleds originally had them), willpower and hate - egads, a Dalek with command of the force? Now THAT is some scary stuff.

No more absurd that anything you've implied. Besides, as I said, they will do whatever works best in the context of the half-hour cartoon. The movies will, in all likelihood be altogether different. They will have a much bigger scale to work with there. Just because they choose to just use stormtroopers doesn't mean the Imperial Army is gone. It can be written off as a special unit like the 501st directly under the control of the Inquisitor. Makes much more sense and means less character modeling for the cartoon.

Nice self-portrait!

I think it would be absurd to try to say there is an enormous Imperial army that is the true face of the Empire when such will never appear on screen or even be mentioned in the new Star Wars TV show.

So by this 'logic', and perusing your highly disrespectful picture, if I go on an African safari and make a wonderful movie about all the animals there AND then return 20 years later and chose to just focus on a pride of lions does that mean I am now saying that the elephants and zebra etc. were never there to begin with?

Of course the first time any Imperial vehicle shows up, you'll be proven wrong.

Imperial Army will definitely appear in the show. Filoni knows his stuff.

So, my players and I recently played a game of Star Wars, in which the Heroic Galactic Empire warred against the tyrannical, terroristic Rebel Alliance. Despite having brought order unto a chaotic galaxy, the stalwart heroes of the galaxy (those wacky Stormtroopers) find themselves constant opposed, sworn at, and mooned by, the villainous Rebels.

For a full hour, the mighty Stormtroopers and Imperial Agents brought hot, crimson justice down upon the cowardly Alliance - and looked epic whilst doing so. Blasting away at the Rebels, who drooled dappily behind their protective wall of Teddies (see: Ewoks), the Empire managed to bring peace back to the galaxy by kicking Mon Mothma (portrayed by ErikB in a dress) in the face.

Cheers and parties errupted everywhere, for the Heroic Galactic Empire had emerged victorious! Yay!

You could have just reprised Zero Dark Thirty .

I hope people are not going to be too hard on FFG when it turns out they both want and are contractually obligated to have their stuff share some kind of vague commonality with the new material being put out by LucasDisney. Or the silly fairy tale George Lucas made in 1977 for that matter.

Cite to the relevant contract provision. You have a copy of the FFG/Disney licensing agreement in order to accurately make these claims, right?

Imperial Army is depicted in the movies. You just choose to ignore it because it doesn't fit with your view of the setting. Even though it's canon and right there. Why all the mental gymnastics?

In any case, you make far-reaching, currently-inaccurate/disingenous assumptions as a matter of course.

How disappointed are you going to be when they come out with an Imperial sourcebook expanding the Imperial Miliyary and giving advice on running Imperial game?

And even if such an edict came down, what would it matter? How difficult would it be for me to run the game with competent troopers? How is this going to affect me? Maybe you should take your concerns to a Star Wars movie board where something like this might be an issue if it were even accurate.

Basic Stormtroopers in Rebels will probably be only slightly better than Battle Droid tier. And whenever the party needs to face a significant threat they'll throw out something akin to these guys

Likely in the form of some sort of specialty troopers.

Basic Stormtroopers in Rebels will probably be only slightly better than Battle Droid tier. And whenever the party needs to face a significant threat they'll throw out something akin to these guys

Likely in the form of some sort of specialty troopers.

... so, what's already in Age of Rebellion and has remained almost entirely unchanged throughout the beta, then?

I wasn't aware it did wear off. Ever. In fact, I'm pretty sure that, if it did, the clones in the 501st would have turned on Lord Vader. Odd that none of them did, isn't it?

The 501st was led by Vader himself wasn't it?

Therefore what reason would Palpatine have to issue Order 66 to them unless someone thought Anakin wearing a dark cloak would prevent the clones identifying him as a Jedi and shooting him too?

I assumed the Jedi Temple attack was done by troops indoctrinated to Palpatine's orders specifically and wasn't the 501st since being the elite unit would hardly be sent to kill kids...

I don't think I'm making any better case than ErikB to be honest!

Just to play Devil's advocate, there is very little evidence in the movies showing an imperial army that consists of more than storm troopers.

We have an officer in field armour which is an imperial officer uniform underneath a breastplate, some people sitting at consoles in black uniforms and two guys in grey jumpsuits on endor. You could also say the snow troopers are regular troops as a stretch.

The At-at pilot, TIE pilots and Stormtroopers all have very similar helmet stylings. The only stormtroopers that dont are the snow and scout.

So.. there could very well be NO imperial army other than those in stormtrooper armour - which could just be combat armour they don when going into combat situations. The other uniforms shown could be low-combat/support wear.

I doubt FFG just pulled the Imperial Army out of their arse, which suggests they did their research - and if they pulled such information from reliable, core sources (which I imagine they have), then there probably IS an Imperial Army.

I think the idea of a non-Stormtrooper imperial army is a WEG invention, and so probably not something LucasDisney prime will be using.

Perhaps they won't out-and-out SHOW it, but until I hear someone in the show specifically stating that there ISN'T an Imperial Army, I'll be going with the material that FFG has published - namely that there is such an organisation. In fact, even if they did say there wasn't such a group, I'd STILL use them: because that's what FFG have printed, it's what I've planned for, and it's what I want to do.

Of course, Disney is free to come and kick my door in for going against the Erik/Disney "love canon", but I doubt they would.

You can do whatever you want, but FFG are going to have to get past the approvals process which may well mean losing the non-stormtooper army, especially if LucasDisney are serious about trying to make things more cohesive than they have been in the past.

I think the idea of a non-Stormtrooper imperial army is a WEG invention, and so probably not something LucasDisney prime will be using.

No it wasn't. It was put forth as the back-story of the soldiers supporting the stormtrooper assault on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. They were also part of the toy lines for that movie and The Return of the Jedi. Information on them was in A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, a book out before WEG's game. This was all before WEG codified what was known and went forth. And they have been showing up here and there since then. Now Disney could try and retcon them out of existence, but that would be a tremendous undertaking considering how ingrained they've been since ESB. More than likely they will just stick to troopers and Star Destroyers, two of the more iconic symbols of Star Wars for the simple reason of not wanting to over-complicate a cartoon.

Many of the characters seen in the original movies have back-stories which were never known to the public until toy lines and early articles and books. I doubt very much that Disney is going to mess with so much history. The only thing I see them doing is making a better effort to keep the universe coherent going forward. At least until they reboot the franchise by redoing the original movies. Something I wouldn't put past any Hollywood producer.