There’s nothing more dangerous than a man with his back to a wall and nothing to lose

I think my favorite special units are the ones who are designed to specifically capturing AT-ST/AT and using them against the Imperials.

I would give the clothes off my back to have the rebel alliance Specforce back into canon. The infiltrators and marines are the coolest commandos in their ranks. Sick of the empire getting all the good stuff on the ground.

It occurs to me that even Spec Forces washouts might still have a slight advantage. They could teach other Rebels some of what they learned; sort of a "Pro tip-- try doing this" situation. 🙂

Let me clear the difference for Eck, my friend. SpecForces = Actual troopers. Military proffesionals. Commandos SpecOps = Your averaged randomly generated RPG party. One YT-1300 falling to pieces. A drunken Jawa. A Wookiee warrior with a Cyber-Arm. An old man that believes he is the reincarnation of Ulic-Qel Droma and a Fancy Smuggler lady with a heart gold (and spice). SpecOps were basically created to answer the question "Where the heck in the alliance hierarchy do my random-a@# rpg party fit in?"

I think the difference is supposed to be this, Special Forces are for when you have a planned out objective requiring a military force. An example being we know a location of a imperial factory and are planning a raid to destroy it. Special Operations are for less straightforward missions were going in the mission isn't obvious. An example being rumor places an Imperial bio-weapon being developed in a sector, so you deploy special operations to confirm the rumor, locate the facility, sneak inside the lab and steal the data, and then if you can't blow it up on the way out you call in the Special Forces to destroy the facility now that you know exactly what your dealing with. or TLDR Special Forces are soldiers, Spec Ops are spy/saboteurs.

Spec ops teams are groups like the Ghosts in rebels. They are the more "RPG group" types. As opposed to the professional military nature of special forces.

i'd love to see a short 'Star Wars: Infiltrator' where it plays out like Predator with an imperial garrison slowly being picked off one by one, we dont even -see- the rebels until the end and the only lines we hear from the Infiltrator unit are somthing like 'Mission accomplished, Exfiltrating now' as we see six shadowy shapes vanish into the brush - wind whistleing through an abandoned imperial garrison some where.

All praise to the folks at WEG for planting so many seeds from Legends. West End Games, Dark Horse, and Bantam content represents some of the best Star Wars has to offer.

Spec Ops is Captain Cassian Andor Spec Forces is his friend Sergent Melshi of the Pathfinders

Rebel Special Forces, for when that one Imperial target is both incredibly important and a complete asshole.

I kind of always thought of SpecForce as the elite troops of the Rebels that were part of the formal military oversight structure of the Alliance whereas SpecOps was the branch of the military that oversaw the coordination with and continued utilization of entities acting against the Empire but outside of the Alliance’s direct oversight/authority. Some groups would never fully join but having a component of the Alliance armed forces dedicated to utilizing such groups’ expertise through infusion of limited resources for key operations would have been useful.

Eck: ramen from America! Also eck: lives in Canada No shade that ramen is good

One thing I’m truly interested in hearing bout the rebels is how much it costed in terms of credits to get the ships, weapons, fuel etc necessary to build and maintain a full rebel cell, and also how they’d gain the money to do such a thing, like what andor did for example.

You should do a video on Twilight Company

I always looked at it like this: (Using Endor as an example) SpecForce: Han's team raiding the Shield Generator. SpecOps: The guy who stole the shuttle they used. I suppose this goes against what was said a bit in the video. The Scariff assault force would be SpecForce, but Andor himself would be SpecOps. To me SpecOps would be your deep cover man, your agent, your assassin. Able to work independently with little or no support, to maintain his cover even in tough situations, only sticking his head up to signal that his objective is complete. SpecForces are your ARC Troopers or, Republic Commandos, The Bad Batch... The people you call when you need the A-Team to get in wreak as much havoc as possible and out quickly. SpecOps might spend MONTHS undercover in an Imperial Ubiquitorate base to get one piece of intelligence. SpecForces might spend a day breaking people out of an Imperial Prison and kidnapping the warden. That's my view, like I said a bit different than established, but makes more sense to me.

When she shanked the ISB spy was that the first time that someone was stabbed with a normal knife like that?

I hope we get a tv show about the rebels special forces

I love the design of the Rebel Pathfinder commandos in Rogue One, I hope we get to see more of them in the future

Ah, another fine video brought to us by the generous noodle merchants. Just saying, but a Count Dooku themed Established Titles sponsorship segment would have been funny as hell.

The dab on Established Titles was great

Thumbnail art is magnificent!!! Great vid as always!

Ahhh, I do love the WEG stuff. They developed so many of the foundational pillars and worldbuilding of the EU.

What class of capital ship is that in the thumbnail?

I saw several comments already addressing this but the real world analog to better understand the Special Operations versus Special Forces is the CIA/NSA (Spec Ops) versus Navy Seal/Green Berets (Spec Forces), in the real world these different troop types often work together with Ops often doing more technical roles, and Forces being much more combat focus, naturally this is painting with a broad brush as Ops will have combat centric tactical teams and Forces will have more technical focused troops as well.

Highly recommend the old West End Games sourcebook: Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Outer Rim (or something close to that) for a good primer on SpecOps, you already have the Rebel Special Forces Handbook...both together provide a good look at the difference between Special Forces (elite military...the guys on Endor) vs Special Operations (skilled operatives who aren't military...the Rogue One team).

Brub what are those capital ships onthe thumbnail, they look like something out of halo, that's so cool

My dear Eckhard, I have to call your attention to a truly OPEN WORLD STAR WARS experience that was just released as a mod for the game Morrowind ( one of the all time best Elder Scrolls ), and it had been in development for SIX YEARS. It was released not long ago, and I think you would be thrilled to take a look.

Just started reading the X-Wing series again, so this video fits right in with the reread, thanks!

Did crix medine help organise amd train rebel special forces or were they already set up by the time he detected to the alliance?

Thanks Eck! I’m rewriting The Rise of Skywalker right now and this was huge insight into some inspiration. Keep up the great work!

Where would shock troopers fall into place in the rebel army? I'm guessing not quite special forces but more of an elite division of the conventional fighting force?

Video Idea: Post-War UNSC vs Pre-War Covenant(Halo)

How would you classify the New Republic’s Wraith Squadron?

I love theses books and i still got them and usethem for my actual RPG games, even if i have changed system for something more modern and homebrew, i still use books from the WEG era a lot. they are wonderfully explaining things modern books only touch on surface. Please do more video about the SpecForces Ecks.

What’s up ekharts! This was such a cool vid and honestly I think the rebel alliance is kinda underrated!

Scott did a beautiful job with all the sourcebooks at West End Games. COMPNOR in the Imperial Sourcebook is essentially a hybrid of the NSDAP and the CPUSSR, the artists at WEG were the first to envision and depict a Juggernaut, and so forth.

once again desiring to watch you do a full playthrough of the dark forces/jedi knight series and hear you talk about legends lore or whatever

Vite Ramen makes some good ramen. Honestly, I just have trouble justifying the cost...

I think the Bothan spies were some of the more interesting espionage agents in the Rebellion. Shame they are barely ever mentioned in lore. A Bothan infiltrator would have been a perfect addition to the Rebel faction in Battlefront 2

finally a video showcasing how badass the rebels can be rather than what next storm trooper model the empire was gonna use but failed to do so, ive watched star wars YT vids for years and never heard of these guys, besides the battle of Scarif i thought he mainly meant people like the bad batch maybe or monsters of soldiers along those lines

0:00 When I was younger with my best friend we were wanting to create a Star Wars Lore youtube channel, and that was the first quote of our first video about the Rebel Alliance, but in french !

I think they only differentiated spec ops and special forces to kind of mimic real life. Spec ops in the US military at least refers to just about any unit that falls under special operations command or "SOCOM". Green Berets, SEALs, Ranger Regiments, Marine Raiders, Pararescue, etc. Whereas Special Forces are a specific group being the Green Berets within the US Army. It's a confusing thing though because SF (Green Berets) still falls under special ops.

SpecForce are the type of ‘Non-Clone’ soldiers, that even Clone Troopers would deemed ‘worthy’ unlike the Stormtroopers.

I think a parallel of "what's the difference between special forces and spec ops" is the difference in the American military between special forces and special operations capable. Special forces like the Green Berets, Navy Seals and MARSOC are dedicated to special operations like: direct action, deep reconnaissance, sabotage, etc. Whereas special operations capable are normal troops with no dedicated specialized training that at any given time can be given orders to conduct a "special operation"

It's a pity that WEG didn't produced a lot more of SW minis, they should've followed GW's example and expanded the franchise, if you look how successful Legion had became, imagine how many people would've been catched by a SW game.

I never knew there was a difference between spec ops and special forces.

Got this when it first came out. Still have all the pieces (I read the cover off of it decades ago).

West End Games was the of best source of back ground information on the Star Wars Universe growing up. Also a fun game system.

Do more on these guys! Go into the specialties please!

There is also a bunch of information about Rebel Special Forces in the WEG RPG book Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim.

I think a cool video could be one of the Imperial Army. They've gotten a lot of recent screen time thanks to Andor and Solo and they do have some interesting lore like how the Warlords dressed their army troopers in stormtrooper armor which is why Storms tended to have a lower reputation in the Warlord/New Republic period.

Can you please make a video of the different types of armor that they use for the different environments? Because I’m always curious about that. Also, please Make more videos on these types of things, I’m a big rebel alliance person from Star Wars

Many Bothans died to bring us this video

Love this kind of videos

Eck, at 2:29, you taught me something new today: TO FERMENT = to incite or to stir up trouble or disorder. Thank-you! *snap-hiss* 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 🇺🇸🤝🇨🇦

I accept that SpecForce (when there were enough of them in-theater and when they could reach thev target location in time to fight) could mostly cut the majority of enemies to ribbons, or simply go around the enemy without being seen. But I would really like to seen fan fiction or a computer game about the Imperial Royal Guard. In US terms, they were the Imperial Tier Zero special operators, comparable to a cross between the US Secret Service Presidential Protective Detail and the Special Operations Group inside CIA Special Activities Division. Both an assassination unit AND a counter-assassination unit. Regularly rotated through every conceivable kind of stormtrooper duty, in order to keep their skills sharp. Peerlessly the most elite unit in the Empire, on whom absolutely no expense was spared -- improvisational and highly intelligent, each one the equal of more than a hundred ordinary soldiers. Skilled in disguises and undercover duties. Very ascetic. I would even go so far as to say that I visualize a character such as Kir Kanos or Grodin Tierce being evenly matched against Batman. To the extent that members of the IRG were killed, it would happen because of supermassive human wave attacks organized by the psychopathic IRG traitor, Carnor Jax -- who essentially sought to become the next dictator of the Imperial Remnant as well as to become another Dark Lord of the Sith. Or it would happen when many, many of the IRG were killed on the Death Star. Or it happened because most IRG were not allowed to be Force-sensitive people, since the Emperor almost always forbade that. You cannot just think “Oh, I will simply go and destroy one of the IRG.” It just doesn’t happen like that. Each has what to us would be Olympic-level skills with weaponry including blasters, melee weapons, martial arts, etc.. If someone tries to overmatch them with superior numbers, then the guardsmen will either pick them off one by one using stealth tactics, or plant a bomb and disappear. The IRG even had a wing of fighters for close protection duties, and they had their own constructed language so that nobody could understand them. Recall that Kir Kanos shot down a low-flying TIE fighter by shooting the pilot dead center with a single shot *from a sidearm*. Don’t mess with them, they will kill you before you even know what happened. I’d like to have interviewed one.They were similar to how Sam Fisher would be. How many survived the Galactic Civil War? I imagine less than can be counted on one hand. In a sense, it is extremely sad what happened to them.

So basically the different types of Rebel special forces can be roughly divided into: 1. Cassian Andor on a Monday; 2. Cassian Andor on a Tuesday; 3. Cassian Andor on a Wednesday....

Happy to see dark forces footage on here.

Infiltrators reminded me of Winter from EU lore- I bet she had some gnarly kills on her blaster belt too.

A shame that the new film don’t use and build on this. SF in Star Wars

Nice video. 👍Have you done any videos for WEG's "Pirates & Privateers" or "The Far Orbit Project"?

And, of course, there's Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron from the late Rebellion/early New Republic era

SpecFor: Han's strike team on Endor SpecOps: Spectres pre-Phoenix

OOOOOOOOoooooooooo that Allen Nunis art in the Rebel Sourcebook!!!!!!

Wow Eck, these guys seem like the real deal. But nobody is as fearsome as Dinner Squadron!

Great video

I'm surprised you didn't mention Wraith or Rogue squadron

Republic commandos were so cool. Imperial special forces was a cool concept also. Too bad it was absolutely wasted on the god awful battlefront 2 campaign.

I'd love more detail into the source book!

I think the empire trained their units and even their special forces to meet any enemy. The Rebellion trained their forces to meet only one: the Empire. They won because they trained exclusively to defeat one enemy and they trained very well. But it was a near run thing. Everything led to Endor. They won because they did almost everything right. The Empire lost because they thought they couldn’t lose and so did everything mediocre.

Just 2 orders of magnitude?!

Crux madine really pulled out all the stops

It is worth noting that most rebels tend to be brutal, regardless of whether they're elite soldiers or not. Nature of the beast.

2:28 it's FOMENT, not ferment. When change is a brewin', remember: to ferment is to cause a chemical change to food or drink, like turning grapes into wine, but to foment is to stir up trouble, like turning a group of people into an angry mob.

Love the dig at Established Titles xD

I can do one better and pick an unbeatable team in less than a minute, I would chose the Ones and Abeloth plus Anakin, Legends Luke, Starkiller, Palpatine, Yoda, Revan, Vitiate, Obi-Wan, and the Sith Triumvirate to give me the edge.

I think we can all agree that Rebel special forces have some of the coolest looking uniforms and armor in Star Wars.

Then the rebel special forces are more into direct action for a specific target like for example Delta Force or DEVGRU. The SpecOps would carry out long term undercover missions, potentially for destabilising a planetary gouvernment or conduct an uprising together with local disidents

I'm in an Organized Play that uses those rules. It's awesome. We've done some amazing adventures.

I love the vite ramen sponsorships

I wish we got to see more about how the rebel alliance trains it’s personnel. I’m sure some of them were ex-imperial/ pdf, but it’s not simple or easy to train people to do these things and I always wondered how they did it

What special forces division would be sent in when the revel alliance doesn't want subtlety? When they want overwhelming force in a surgical strike? And conversely which is credited with being the most subtle?

Where could you find the Westend books anyway?

Oh yeah it's playtime, Remember Alderaan!

Oh god, the Rebels have access to "Twenty Good Men."

Using Dark Forces 2 gameplay really brings back memories.

I really hope we get more infantry ground battles in Star Wars movies and shows

Hi eck, I had a star wars lore question that I think would make for an interesting video: why do star wars ships have the little greebles in lore?

Marines were called SpaceOps in the SpecForce Handbook: Rules of Engement, for some reason

West End Game "Rules of Engagement" Awesome sourcebook.

Peanut butter in your Ramen??? My son, you have lost your way.

When are we cracking a million? Eckhart to a million.

Regulars are like rifles , Long swords Spec ops are snipers , lightsabers Spec forces are machine gun , RPG( no swords)

I'm sure, that a great MANY was former Imperials or Clone War Vets probably helped a great deal as well

Carlos Lopez has it right. Special Forces soldiers are trained and picked from the best people out of selection. Special Ops are people with unique skills not commonly found. So it’s choosing the right person for the job, not just who scored the highest marks in training.

Ferment is how you make alcohol. Foment is what you do to get an uprising

Easy way to look at the difference between forces and ops. Special Forces = military SpecOps = intelligence

For the Start, to be honest, they really describe every Single special force as the best of the best.

Ferment uprisings??