www.audibletrial.com/EckhartsLadder You can support the channel by getting a free month of Audible! Listen to Thrawn's genius by downloading the Outbound Flight (or other awesome Legends books like the Thrawn Trilogy, Plagueis, the X-Wing series...)!
Sit down, let me tell you a story, there was once an AI called Offensive Bias, it has a small fleet of ships and was outnumbered 3986 to 1, yet, after 8 hours of fighting it decided to go to the offense, in just under 3 minutes, 3 MINUTES, it had his enemies outnumbered 3 to 1
@@komradeyuri5548 What offensive bias did against Mendicant bias is even more impressive when you think that only something like 1:1000th (or a minimal portion I don't remember exactly how many) of his fleet contained actual capital ships designed for battle
also noone thought of just jamming the carriers before they can launch their droids. its not a brilliant tactic, its just dumb lore altering and making plot holes that let thrawn win this one
So remember, the trade federation said their encryption is very advance because that means not a single in the galaxy could break into it. Then you have the Chiss, a very advance empire already and The Glorious Tactician, Thrawn. Only he could do it because he’s a genius and had advance technology.
"You have to understand the situation, Mara, to fully appreciate it." Admiral Parc commented. "On one side, you had handpicked units of Palpatine's personal army utilizing sixteen top of the line warships. On the other you had Commander Mith'raw'nurodo and a handful of insignificant boarder patrol ships." Mara Jade felt a shiver crawl up her spine. "I understand the situation just fine. How badly did Thrawn devastate them?" Parc smiled. "Utterly."
Because he is Thrawn. Put him on a planet that has a survivable environment that has rich resources and then wait a few decades and he'll have taken of the galaxy. Also don't give him a bodyguard that would conveniently betray him.
@@anayaweick7964 that was obviosly plot armor since he had to loose but it wasnt insane in fact his strength was knowloege his weakness is not knowing something, *he doesnt know the force* which is why i think his defeat makes sense.
@@anayaweick7964 that wasnt plot armor... I don't think you know what plot armor is. Ezra being very good at beast control(a power that has existed for at least 2 decades) had been set up extensively. The existence of the purrgils had been shown 2 seasons earlier. What exactly was plot armor?
The impressive thing is that despite things like the large group of smugglers that did take Thrawn by surprise, he was in the process of re-rallying his forces when his bodyguard--whose name I forget--killed him. Very adaptable; I'm dying to see a good crossover with Legend of the Galactic Heroes, given that Reinhard and Yang are, within LOGH, the foremost strategists/tacticians out there.
Thrawn is more the result of writers exploiting obvious flaws in the stars wars tech/lore not so much "clever" strategies. His brand of cleverness doesn't look so clever after you see it. Inside the scenario it is extremely brilliant, however. He is in many ways a deus ex machina for which ever side his on.
And that's just one battle. His tactics are extremely unpredictable in all his battles because he constantly adjusts it according to the enemy's psychology.
Perky Bellsprout how it was pulled off using a relatively smaller amount of assets and deadly efficiency is what makes it impressive and pretty scary. Look at his other battles as well:
Rev BladeZ His point is that, that doesn't matter. They BOTH have enough firepower and starfighters to simply rush the three ships, damage the cruisers with overwhelming fire, even ramming if need be. It's honestly just silly how dumb the Trade Federation is even when it comes to being at least intelligent with brute force when they ABSOLUTELY have an advantage.
Ramming isn’t really an option if you’re fighting faster, more maneuverable ships and lasers (even quadlasers) aren’t exactly ment for ship to ship combat. They would easily win a prolonged shootout, yes, but I rever you back to my previous point. Why would a faster enemy stay still while you bombard them?
Athi Bi See, reality stays in this for the whole fight. In space, if you have thrust capable ships, you can definitely catch up or even outpace smaller ships if you're thrusters are more capable concerning acceleration. There is no reason to think that just because the cruisers are smaller and more agile, that they would not be susceptible to ramming by a massive vessel going just as fast or faster. Everything is possible, however.
The Trade Federation were primarily merchants. They finally fought actual soldiers, which is really indicative of the entire clone wars; the trade federation were simply outclassed in the command department, and relied on sideous's manipulations, and the occasional competent, to remain a threat.
"You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down. (c) Memoirs of Admiral Thrawn, Battles in the Unknown Regions
@@stellathefoxgirl3648 Presumably in case they experience an error and start killing the wrong people. If the bot has a hard limit on the number of people they can kill, that helps limit the losses that can arise from an error.
Actually he's better. Hannibal's great failing was his inability to grasp Roman culture. His aim was to win a few battles and then just wait for them to come over and accept that they'd lost. This is not how the Romans did things, it was win big or lose everything with nothing in between. One of the first things we learn about Thrawn in his very first showing (Heir to the Empire) is that he does base his tactics somewhat around the culture and psychology of his enemies. In other words, if Thrawn had been fighting the Romans he'd have stormed right into Rome proper instead of sitting around on the beach for ages. Conclusion: Hannibal vs Thrawn = Thrawn wins.
@@Tahkaullus01 The thing about Hannibal is that while, yes, he did underestimate the Roman will to fight, he was limited by the fact that his mercenary army would likely mutiny if he tried a prolonged siege of Rome, better to win glories and booty on the field and hope to wear Rome down. He didn't expect the Romans to have near-endless manpower and will to fight however and that would prove his undoing.
@@Tahkaullus01Hannibal lost a lot of soldiers, he wanted to surround Rome but simply couldn't because the reinforcements from his brother didn't come ever being stopped immediately
Idea: do an episode where you describe your “perfect fleet”, with access to ships from Star Wars, Halo, Mass Effect, and/or other sci-fi universes. (19th try)
Thrawn knew that information is the key to victory. So when he faced an overwhelming enemy that he knew barely anything about, he simply went and got the information he needed to win the engagement.
I think the reason a lot of people love Thrawn (myself included) is that he isn't a fighter himself, he is a pure tactician, who would be an invaluable roll in any warfare, is willing to take calculated risks. He is purely calculations, and very rarely if at all would we see him last out in anger. He doesn't whine or complain about what he has or is given, he doesn't look at the near impossible hand he is given and says "Wow, this is a really bad hand" instead think "How do I win?"
Can we take a moment to appreciate that this guy basically said "I care enough about your experience with this story to not spoil it for you. Stop watching this" lol I love this channel. Truly puts experience over itself. Much love.
And that they weren't changing their encryption codes regularly, and that they were using the same encryption code for each fighter, somehow the conning-nets work in space despite the vast speeds and distances involved (imagine trying to hit a fly with a pistol as it's flying around), full spectrum jamming also jams your own communications, not to mention the "dust and debris" interfering with the laser control systems... again that's like saying a bunch of flies getting swatted at the other end of a football field is distracting, also the redirecting the missiles towards the ships and somehow hitting the weakspot despite it homing onto the fighters or being tangled in the nets is improbable in the extreme, also while all this was going on the interdictor was close enough to block the ships without getting vaporized by the dozens or turbolasers and laser cannons equipped on the lucrehulks, not to mention surrendering what's the equivalent of a heavily armed space station armed with more guns than that fleet had by several factors is farcical.
This battle is one of my favourite in all Star Wars and I think it would be great to see it animated one day. I always liked the hints of it given in Vision of the Future when Mara Jade and Voss Parck are discussing Thrawn's history and his first encounter with the Republic, and then seeing the battle realised in Outbound Flight.
A single starfighter hacking security algorithms engineered to be very secure, all the while a giant space station is doing nothing about it? yea right, if it was that easy, imagine what a capital ship can do to an entire army
It wasn't the starfighter. He just picked up the signal and relayed it to the cruisers. And maybe the cruisers relayed it to Csilla where the supercomputers figured shit out.
He didn’t have to decrypt it. The encryption’s on the startfighters’ computers took the commands and made them impossible do anyone without a decryption to read. Thrawn just looked at which portions of this encrypted mess kept getting activated when he came within range and sent those to the fighters to send them off flying. Also, those fighters were at the edge of their operation range, meaning that the Trade Federation has maybe 10 seconds max to realize that their ships were just flying past the enemy before they couldn’t communicate with them any more.
I love how you post a lot and I know how hard it is but you make such good videos and you are my favorite UA-cam and I have been watching you for a long time and I love what you are doing keep it up
He is your favourite You Tube? There's more than one You Tube? YOU TUBE IS AN ENTITY NOT A WEBSITE?! YOU'RE BLOWING MY MIND, MAN! Sorry. Feelin really sarcastic and I had to let it out.
Have his limbs ripped off? I'll have you know I haven't done that to a person for a whole... carry the two, subtract the four... three and a half days.
i saw so far ive been trying to catch the audiobooks on youtube but like, well, uploads are slow and kinda well, low quality or use some background audio or something Downloading Thrawn with the credit and i preordered the sequel too~ The only things im actively liking about the new star wars since disney is the stuff featuring thrawn. Funnily enough, it was because of how much i hated TLJ i really got into legends and got caught up with Thrawn
I like Thrawn's tactics but the explanation of having limited encrypted signatures seems off-putting. The Trade Federation could just make a dynamic encryption, changing codes every second (given futuristic hardware it is possible; similar to how IT companies now handle it nowadays) to prevent slicing. Also, given that the communication range is limited, it can divert the Lucrehulks' power from shields to boost the signal temporarily giving the Trade Federation a slight edge. They could also just press the attack and move a bit forward.
Ian Joshua Santos it was just a easy way out for the writers to make Thrawan look genius in a impossible situation. If they had written it differently, then it might haves looked better as a story, but the writers really cornered them self with giving Thrawn such a small fleet.
Hit the nail at the end, there. Why would a fleet with a massive advantage sit back and wait for their plucky opposing force to fuck around with their control software like that? Fly forwards and steamroll them. They can't surround you, flank you, or overpower your numbers advantage. They're forced to retreat, so even if they want to try the same tactic, it's much more risky, as the operating space of the droid fighters continues to expand towards them. You could even bait them into overextending by advancing slowly at first and then speeding up when they dip into your effective range. The sit-and-wait approach was a gross misconduct of the CIS commanders, especially when you're operating in hostile territory. What the fuck did they think was going to happen?
Well that was a trade federation mistake and I guess they learned from them.. (they were lazy because at that point there were no millitary that could oppose them) this happened after Naboo too.. you can argue about that why didn't they just gave some self avare for the droids why did they need a command ship which if was destroyed then their whole army was disabled.. after Naboo they "changed" their entire army and they did not need a command ship for the droids anymore.. all of their droid could operate independently until they ran out from energy (well ofc if they did not get a shut down command)
I suspect Thrawn wold have beaten the new republic if he'd had assistance from Daala and/or Isard... in fact i would love to see someone do a story about that
Sean McGrath If only Isard called Thrawn back and gave him full military command when she first took over, I imagine the duo could've beaten the New Republic. Daala's a really pathetic leader who continually squanders valuable assets for little gain and Thrawn was already dead when she took over the Remnant.
I know this would be difficult, but can you breakdown what is by far the largest space battle in the entire franchise? *The* *Battle* *of* *Yuuzhan'tar!* I have made this request: thirty times.
Might I suggest the Keys move from halo. It was a strategic victory for the UNSC above Sigma Ocatnus IV late in the human-covenant war and would result in the destruction of 2 covenant cruisers, a destroyer and the retreat of a super carrier with only 1 UNSC ship. The tactical and strategical brilliance of the Keys move may only be matched by non other than Admiral Thrawn himself. But this is my 2 cents and your the man who makes the videos.
It’s called the Keyes Loop and that was done only because the Covenant were only interested in an invasion of Sigma Octanus. The battle that occurred afterwards once his reinforcements came by was a Pyrrhic victory simply because the UNSC as a whole managed to lose substantially more ships and even an entire crew of a refit ship. Also that victory cost the UNSC Reach, the citadel of the UNSC which put humanity on the brink.
@@TheGeoCheese a pyrrhic victory was still much better than the constant cycles of defeat. Excellently written lore as it shows keys as a brilliant military strategist while also continuing that humanity didn't stand a chance
Would love to hear more about the Chiss. What they were doing before coming into contact with the wider galaxy, what they did when Thrawn fought to restore the Empire, and what happened with them after that. But also talk about their tech and ships, as well as the tech and ships used by The Empire of the Hand
Seems like more plot armor than anything with thrawn with this victory. The federation seemed to have a semi-good strategy. I understand he is a genius but sometimes it just seems like he is too perfect or everything goes perfect for him you know?
I had a good chuckle at a command ship detonating due to poor communication software and droid programming. You’d think the vultures would be smart enough to fully deploy to outside the ship. But nope. Cheap software and predictably let Thrawn win. The easiest way to win this fight would be to advance with the intention to overwhelm, and to keep the fighters within offensive operating range.
1: If the Droid fighters have a limited range which Thrawn's forces were taking advantage of, why didn't the Lucrehulks just....move up? They could've kept up pressure, and take far more advantage of their fighter's numbers, or at the very least not have them be basically thrown to the side where they aren't useful at all. 2: When Thrawn deployed his Full Spectrum Jamming on one 'hulk, why didn't the other 'hulk assist AT ALL?! It wasn't being jammed like the first one was, and it wasn't surrounded by enemy ships at the time, at worst they had a few enemies in the general area that weren't near the deployment zone of the fighter. It could've deployed fighters without a hitch since one ship isn't enough to hold back a whole hoard of fast small ships. 3: Why haven't we heard about this limited signal jamming before? I've watched almost the entirety of the Clone Wars, Watched almost all of the PT movies, and listened to some general lore on star wars both in Canon and Legends, and have seen mentions of various theories and such related to Republic and CIS in the comment sections of said videos. I haven't heard or seen a single *WORD* mentioned about this supposed limited signal range that droids have. This just seems like some ass-pull from the writers to make Thrawn look smart. This fight is a load of bullshit that relies more on thrawn's opponents being conveniently stupid and thrawn relying on convenient technological advantages and hindrances more than actual strategy that takes more than a few seconds to come up with. I don't see why people are gushing about this fight.
I do find thrawn in general in legends was just, handed victories with serious plot holes in them just for the authors to go "look at how smart he is!!"
Sometimes the best strategy is not overexerting yourself in the face of an inferior opponent that fights to win a battle he has already lost. Flexibility as it were.
@@CommanderNissan the new books are a lot better about, where thrawn is actually smart, not just a goddamned plothole - i really domt get why he's so hyped up in legends
It's hard to write genuinely smart people as a writer if you aren't a genius yourself. Because if you were able to understand genius enough to put it on a page you'd understand it enough to be a genius. As a writer you have to essentially have the genius act in a way that would reveal the knowledge you yourself already know. However some writers are terrible at the hiding aspect. In this and a lot of the thrawn lore he just inexplicably knows things and does simple stuff no one ever considered for no reason. If there had been some clever nuance to thrawn working out the fighter range thing then it could make sense but as it stands you'd expect that across a galactic war at least one retreating person would have noticed the fighters range. Also the jamming thing is total bullshit. That is without a doubt the most crazy effective weapon against the droids and would end the war in days
Jacob Gale it captives why Thrawn is not grounded in reality, just relies on plot armour and the enemies being incompetent. Would have been a better story if the writers know how to make such a story.
I do find it strange that the trade federation submitted. 1 lucrehulk should have the fire power to out gun the chiss cruisers, and from there launch fighters to mop up his forces.
I loved reading the inventive tactics Thrawn employs in the Timothy Zahn trilogy. Any discussion of those tactics, and the counters employed by his adversaries (when there is one) would be much welcome. Thank you for yet another fascinating video!
Half of this victory was due to the fact that the droid fleet just stood there and waited. If the carriers had advanced with the fighters so that thrawns fleet was forced to fight or flee they would not have had the time to device this strategy. Plus the fact that he did not loose a single ship just screams plot armour to me, if he had lost a hand full of fighters and a cruiser the victory would still have been impressive but not unbelievable
Just sounds like two kids on the playground having an imaginary fight, where each one yells increasingly crazy gadgets to have an "advantage" on the other. Quite frankly this was just: let's make up a weakness so the other can exploit it.... Nothing extraordinary tbh, no interesting maneuvers, etc.
really that often how thrawn is written. He happens to be right about a lot of things like Sherlock. In this how did he break down a heavily encrypted program, written in a programing language they had never seen before, made by people that speak a language they had never heard before.
Alex Nistor I agree. You can give some of that stuff, but if the entire battle is made off of that, and no where else are these gadgets mentioned, it becomes kinda.,. Unbelievable. That's kinda why I like Rebels Thrawn.
King Gojira Yeah. Sometimes his plans actually make sense, a couple times in the Thrawn Trilogy (it's good books, but Thrawn is, as people said before, a plot device) but most of the time he makes plans and assumptions out of nothing. At least he failed once or twice. That's why I like Rebel's Thrawn, his assumptions and strategies aren't so odd.
You are simply wrong here. The Chiss were allies to the sith empire and therefore chiss have seen all of republic space, including worlds not even most of the higher ups in the republic new of, like Balmorra. The germans in Word War II thought their enigma code was unbreakable too, yet, with a technology the germans didn't know about, the brits broke the code. Plus, we are in a fantasy universe and have a Sherlock Holmes like character. The language, despite propably known by the chiss, is irrelevant, since only the programming language counts. And it is easier to decrypt it when you pick up the signal, look at the code, which was allways the same, thanks to it being a programming language that can't use different wording to convey the same orders. So he could just observe the fighters behaviour after each picked up signal. Also it's quite possible that there was more than one attempt to send a signal to the fighters that did not work. Also he ordered the fighters to just fly off. Not to attack each other, not to self destruckt and not to attack the enemy ships indicating that he just figured out little parts of the code. Not fancy maneuvers, just "keep flying forward". But why include that in the story? It is not really relevant. The only reason to include it, is to make everything more realistic... in a fantasy universe.
Some of this seems extremely contrived. Especially getting the missiles to hit the ships that fired them. (not only that, but you get a missile to hit the ship that fired it with such pinpoint accuracy that it ends up right in the weak spot?) I mean, the initial test of the droid control system also seems farfetched. Only the wide spectrum jamming seems like something that might work... Of course, this all hinges entirely on the droid ships being 100% centrally controlled with no independent capabilities at all. Which, while not entirely inconsistent with what we know about trade federation droids, is certainly a colossally stupid design flaw. By all means, if they need centralised coordination to function effectively, that's one thing. But having them completely incapable of acting at all without that central control? Plus how is a jamming signal penetrating INTO the hull of a large cruiser? This seems a rather contrived set of circumstances, that while somewhat impressive in terms of someone identifying and picking apart the weaknesses, relies on some extreme contrivances to be viable in the first place.
now look, if anything were going to get him it would have to be something not even he could've anticipated coming. And who would ever expected tentacled space whales attacking your fleet?
DerpyTurtle 076 Thrawn could easily beat that. There's simply way too many ships circling around the Malevolence (or any other Subjugator, but let's go with the Malevolence) for it to not use its weapons on them. Especially the Lucrehulks. How I think the battle would turn out? First, fleet positions. I'm not sure how Grievous (or any commander) could effectively put all those ships into play. Also, I dunno if this battle's gonna be 2D or 3D. I guess on the front of the ship is the Providence, leading. On it's left side is a Lucrehulk and 2 Munificents, and on the right is the other Lucrehulk and the Recuscant. At the back is the last Lucrehulk. So, Thrawn has his ship (like the ones in the video), a cargo vessel, and an interdictor, the 9 fighters, and a troop transport ship. His main force is Strike Group 1, which comprises of his ship, the transport docked in the ship (with it's own hyperdrive), and a fighter. They're on the left of the Malevolence, facing the Lucrehulk, Munificents, and its Ion Cannon. His cargo ship (loaded with asteroids) will be Strike Group 2, and the 8 fighters (they'll have hyperdrives) will be Strike Group 3. Both of these won't be present yet; they won't jump in till a later time. The last ship, the Interdictor, will sit back, waiting to use its gravity well for a Thrawn Pincer move. So, on the left, Grievous sends in both of the Munificents and around 20 to 40 fighters to deal with SG1. SG1 is attempting to draw them out. Once again, toying with the fighters, they're disabled. This time, they command the fighters to ram into the Munificent's bridge and its hangars. Not able to react or realize what's going on in time, the droids in its bridges are destroyed, and the ships are crippled. The Munificents are effectively out of the battle, and the Lucrehulk moves in. Thrawn uses the Full Spectrum Jamming, disabling the fighters before they launch, and after a minute or 2, they explode and destroy the Lucrehulk. But here's the juicy part. The debris of the Lucrehulk effectively damaged the Malevolence, including the left Ion Cannon, breaches on its hull, and debris constantly strike at the bridge. With the Providence and 3rd Lucrehulk at the front and backs not able to react in time, SG1 has a clear shot at the Malevolence. This is where the cargo ship comes in. Grievous, who isn't about to lose his most prized ship, orders the Providence to move out of the way and engage SG1, while he prepares to jump into hyperspace. As the Providence is moving into attack position, the Interdictor actives and, with the Pincer move, allows the cargo ship to get close enough to its SUPER EXPOSED BRIDGE (SERIOUSLY, WHY DOES NO ONE GO FOR THE BRIDGE). They dump off their cargo of asteroids, heavily crippling, and destroying the Providence. Grievous, upset with the loss of another ship, orders all cannons to destroy the cargo ship, in the hopes that it doesn't have more asteroids. Getting out of range, SG1 and the cargo ship regroups and prepares for round 2. Having destroyed half of Grievous's fleet, with no casualties, the odds are in their favor. The 2 munificents, the Providence, and a lucrehulk is down, along with much of the Malevolence, and a recuscant and 2 lucrehulks are all that's left. Thrawn, simply toying with the droids, allows the 3 ships to get in position, protecting the fleeing Malevolence, and is now in motion to decapitate the head of the droid forces: Grievous, in the Malevolence's bridge. Thrawn's fleet uses the asteroids, debris, and disabled munificents and providence as cover from the heavy turbolaser fire, and utilize the Connor Nets to disable the starfighter resistance. A lucrehulk gets disabled, having gotten too close to the asteroids. Distracting the fleet, the 8 starfighters plunge out of hyperspace, above the pursuing battle, and, also using the debris as cover, head straight for the Malevolence's bridge. Ok, now, this is where things get retarded. The troop transports, docked with Thrawn's ship, launches and heads for the bridge. The pilots set the ship to go into hyperspace, and abandon it. With a path cleared by the fighters, it jumps into hyperspace and completely obliterates the Malevolence's bridge. With their general gone, and the Chiss still suffering no casualties, the droids go nuts and start questioning their next moves. Meanwhile, Thrawn simply gathers all his forces, and watches as the asteroids and debris collide with the remaining ships, wrecking havoc on them, they officially surrender. Idk, it sounds 100% retarded, but that's because Thrawn has a brain and the droids don't.
Purrgill are not impervious to turbolaser fire. It makes no sense that they just plowed through the Imperial blockade without getting shot to pieces, especially considering Star Destroyer's weapons are optimized for taking out starships much larger and more heavily armored than a Purrgill.
Recusant Class Light Destroyer vs Something (Almost every video you’ve ever made has this suggestion, not giving up. Ever!) And kickass vid Eck, Love your channel.
If full spectrum jamming was so effective before fighters took off I feel like that would have been something the Republic tried to utilize. IE come out of hyperspace right on top of / in front of,the enemy fleet and immediately start spectrum jamming giving their fighters relatively no opposition except for point defense systems The immediate reaction would be to launch all fighters and as which not having time leave the ships the republic would only have to hold out for four minutes until the larger enemy ships were blown up from the inside and then the smaller frigates could be mopped up or even targeted during the four minute window
Don't think so. It's like saying Iulius Caesar was a Gary Stu. He has his own flaws, but he knows how to hide them very well. Besides, he's a military elite. Of course he's superior to most other beings.
Not at all, there's multiple books that explain and express his achievements, and Thrawn often discusses his logic after the fact, so that his crew can reach the same tactical conclusions he did, improving his leadership qualities. I'd argue that in actuality, never in any other character have we ever had such a glimpse into his psyche and we are regularly getting tactical insight into his ability. Wanna talk Gary Stu? Try Boba Fett.
I don't know if you saw my comment about the the battle break down of the battle of umbara but I have been requesting it for some time, thank you for finally taking it into consideration. (Love ur vids keep it up, especially the battle break downs)
This was an interesting scenario. What I find quite interesting here, is that Thrawn was still an excellent leader and commander but the use of his tactics by his standards are quite disjointed which worked in this instance. Later on when he served in the empire though, his tactics are often more stable and he has more of a go to set of tactics he uses. This makes sense as he had developed more experience by then and also learned about the empires tactics and ship capabilities.
The bit about repeatedly doing the same thing to figure out droid encryption was pretty smart. With the full-spectrum jamming thing, actually, I kind of figure that with the droids being disabled while launching, they'd crash into the opposite hangar arm. That is, if you accept full-spectrum jamming as a thing.
Thrawn might be the best fleet commander the galaxy has ever seen, but I think in that fight he is just to good. He is such an good commander, because he truly understand his enemy, but such an complete victory against an unknown enemy.. I don't think that would be happen. An victory could be possible, but not such an perfect one.
There are many Real Life commanders that would put Thrawn to shame Besides, Thrawn didn't defeat the Rebellion within a few days (Which any competent commander can easily do)
Thing is with Thrawn is that he keeps doing unrealistic tactics from assumptions he really should not do. He is measly a plot device from the writers, where he gets the classic plot armour. He would be a lot more appealing, if he did realistic assumptions and made choices out of them instead of relying on the enemy being incompetent. Bad writing, that is all it is.
Batou3 he was betrayed and backstabed (quite literally) by his own body guard. In an actual battle (without that particular body guard) Thrawn would easily win
"Failed negotiation." Vicelord Kav, in classic nemoidian arrogance, gave orders to dispatch the droid fighters, after ignoring Thrawns repeated attempts to raise them over the comm's, and annihilate them. Kay described the Chiss as primitive and back wards, and he didn't change his attitude even after Thrawn entered the bridge of the flagship.
The only reason Thrawn won was because of the bogus physics of the Star Wars universe. If not for that, he would not have been able to get rid of all the fighters of the first attacking wave, and he would have lost without a doubt. There's no way that there would be some kind of distance limit to communication between the droid fighters and their motherships; that's not how wireless communication works. If not for this silly limitation on the droids, Thrawn wouldn't have been able to get all those fighters to just fly off into space.
Given that the first wave of droid fighters already outnumbered Thrawn's total number of fighters, they would not have stood much chance against the superior droid numbers unless Thrawn's pilots were all hardened aces, and I highly doubt they were. Keep in mind that these were the only assets Thrawn could use during the battle, so once he lost his fighters, his three cruisers would have been done for, taken down by droid fighters and bombers. If by some miracle the the first wave was defeated, it would have been defeated at high cost and the second reserve and equally large group of droid fighters would move in and finish the job. No sort of maneuver exists that Thrawn could use to ensure the defeat of the numerically superior first wave of droid fighters, as fighters are the most maneuverable things in the Star Wars universe. Thus, it's highly improbable that Thrawn could defeat this fleet without using some sort of asymmetrical strategy.
Big Daddy Boom Boom idk Ive read some pretty impossible feats from this guy but I'm not thrawn so I wouldn't know what rabbit he could pull out of the hat
Blackplant, WiFi is different because you have interference from multiple sources, including the atmosphere. Aircraft can be remotely controlled from the other side of the world and people can talk over the phone across continents, in an atmosphere, and you’re telling me that in an interference free area there’s a limit to the distance of wireless communication? Give me a break.
Dude... Thrawn is a boss. -(Not that we didn't know that already) -Also imagine a star wars game where you could create and execute maneuvers like that.
www.audibletrial.com/EckhartsLadder
You can support the channel by getting a free month of Audible! Listen to Thrawn's genius by downloading the Outbound Flight (or other awesome Legends books like the Thrawn Trilogy, Plagueis, the X-Wing series...)!
Please make a Star Trek Battle Breakdown!
EckhartsLadder question is Definitely show some more of Thrawn battle he had some interesting victories
I'm personally interested in how the Covenant from Halo would do against the Human Alliance from Mass Effect (without Council Space support).
can you do the flood vs the zerg (halo vs star craft) 97th attempt
EckhartsLadder Outbound flight isn't available on Audible on the UK it seems :(
Reminds me of that one quote in Halo:
“They have us three to one”
“Then it is an even fight”
Sit down, let me tell you a story, there was once an AI called Offensive Bias, it has a small fleet of ships and was outnumbered 3986 to 1, yet, after 8 hours of fighting it decided to go to the offense, in just under 3 minutes, 3 MINUTES, it had his enemies outnumbered 3 to 1
@@komradeyuri5548 What offensive bias did against Mendicant bias is even more impressive when you think that only something like 1:1000th (or a minimal portion I don't remember exactly how many) of his fleet contained actual capital ships designed for battle
@@marcofava The AI was a beast
"You're outnumbered 4-1! I like those odds..."
Except with thrawn it is still an uneaven fight because three times the amount of enemy’s will get crushed by him
Trade Federation: We have an army!
Chiss Ascendency: We have a Thrawn!
Sith: We have the Senate
@@neptun2810 And the courts.
@@randomstuff8149 Star Wars: We don’t want marvel here
Trade Federation when Thrawn sends their droids into space…
Hey he* can’t do that! Shoot him* or something.
No, you didn’t LOL!!
So... Thrawn abused a programming limit to the droids. And, the whole of the clone wars, no-one thought to do that?
So this is where the Emperor recruits Thrawn.
BlackEpyon after taking down a couple units and ships, allowed his capture, and telling His Majesty of his knowledge of the Unknown Regions, yes.
DeltaBeetle the droids had been upgraded by the clone Wars
also noone thought of just jamming the carriers before they can launch their droids. its not a brilliant tactic, its just dumb lore altering and making plot holes that let thrawn win this one
So remember, the trade federation said their encryption is very advance because that means not a single in the galaxy could break into it. Then you have the Chiss, a very advance empire already and The Glorious Tactician, Thrawn. Only he could do it because he’s a genius and had advance technology.
"You have to understand the situation, Mara, to fully appreciate it." Admiral Parc commented. "On one side, you had handpicked units of Palpatine's personal army utilizing sixteen top of the line warships. On the other you had Commander Mith'raw'nurodo and a handful of insignificant boarder patrol ships."
Mara Jade felt a shiver crawl up her spine. "I understand the situation just fine. How badly did Thrawn devastate them?"
Parc smiled. "Utterly."
What's this from?
@@ArchAngel119 the novel Visions of the Future by Timothy Zahn
Separatists: “You’re outnumbered!”
Thrawn: “I like those odds...”
"Trade Federation"
Thrawn: You are outnumbered.
Droids:Wait a minute.. one.. two.. three.
Because he is Thrawn. Put him on a planet that has a survivable environment that has rich resources and then wait a few decades and he'll have taken of the galaxy. Also don't give him a bodyguard that would conveniently betray him.
I agree. Also, don’t give anything on that planet some insane plot armor like they did in Rebels.
@@anayaweick7964 that was obviosly plot armor since he had to loose but it wasnt insane in fact his strength was knowloege his weakness is not knowing something, *he doesnt know the force* which is why i think his defeat makes sense.
@@anayaweick7964 that wasnt plot armor... I don't think you know what plot armor is. Ezra being very good at beast control(a power that has existed for at least 2 decades) had been set up extensively. The existence of the purrgils had been shown 2 seasons earlier. What exactly was plot armor?
The impressive thing is that despite things like the large group of smugglers that did take Thrawn by surprise, he was in the process of re-rallying his forces when his bodyguard--whose name I forget--killed him. Very adaptable; I'm dying to see a good crossover with Legend of the Galactic Heroes, given that Reinhard and Yang are, within LOGH, the foremost strategists/tacticians out there.
Also don't give him any idiotic subordinates (looking at YOU Constantine)
Alright. I'm starting to understand the insane volume of praise you give Thrawn. This was some absurdly clever shit he pulled.
You should see how he affects a months long blockaid on coruscant rendering all defenses ineffective
Jam the enemy, stop them from retreating with an interdictor. Wasn't really that clever tbh.
Thrawn is more the result of writers exploiting obvious flaws in the stars wars tech/lore not so much "clever" strategies. His brand of cleverness doesn't look so clever after you see it. Inside the scenario it is extremely brilliant, however. He is in many ways a deus ex machina for which ever side his on.
And that's just one battle. His tactics are extremely unpredictable in all his battles because he constantly adjusts it according to the enemy's psychology.
Perky Bellsprout how it was pulled off using a relatively smaller amount of assets and deadly efficiency is what makes it impressive and pretty scary. Look at his other battles as well:
Battling Thrawn is like playing chess against the computer
At level 10
No infinite
Like playing chiss would be more appropriate
@@whatudoingbro6618 I appreciate that reply.
On the hardest difficulty
a testiment to the trade federations stupidity the had more than enough traditional firepower on the 2 lucrehulks to win an engagement.
Rev BladeZ
His point is that, that doesn't matter. They BOTH have enough firepower and starfighters to simply rush the three ships, damage the cruisers with overwhelming fire, even ramming if need be. It's honestly just silly how dumb the Trade Federation is even when it comes to being at least intelligent with brute force when they ABSOLUTELY have an advantage.
They thought that more Chiss ships are coming. They have met a patrol, not an entire fleet so it was obvious they will call for help.
Ramming isn’t really an option if you’re fighting faster, more maneuverable ships and lasers (even quadlasers) aren’t exactly ment for ship to ship combat.
They would easily win a prolonged shootout, yes, but I rever you back to my previous point.
Why would a faster enemy stay still while you bombard them?
Athi Bi
See, reality stays in this for the whole fight. In space, if you have thrust capable ships, you can definitely catch up or even outpace smaller ships if you're thrusters are more capable concerning acceleration. There is no reason to think that just because the cruisers are smaller and more agile, that they would not be susceptible to ramming by a massive vessel going just as fast or faster. Everything is possible, however.
The Trade Federation were primarily merchants. They finally fought actual soldiers, which is really indicative of the entire clone wars; the trade federation were simply outclassed in the command department, and relied on sideous's manipulations, and the occasional competent, to remain a threat.
"You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down. (c) Memoirs of Admiral Thrawn, Battles in the Unknown Regions
Honestly, I feel like that quote is dumb af, why do they have a limit?
@@stellathefoxgirl3648 Presumably in case they experience an error and start killing the wrong people.
If the bot has a hard limit on the number of people they can kill, that helps limit the losses that can arise from an error.
Ahhhhhj good ol'Zapp Brannigan
This man is a hell of genius!
Darth Vader who, Thrawn or Eckhart?
Thank you, my Lord. I am most grateful to receive such praise from an accomplished warrior such as yourself.
Parzival Watts obviously he’s talking about Jar Jar Binks
Not really... He just pulls insane tech that nobody else has out of his ass every battle. Like the interdiction.
Grand Admiral Thrawn Darth Vader hated you
It's like Ahsoka Tano once said; droids are a little slow.
Now there is another character that I want Disney to bring back!
well, she's got a good chance of doing so, given she managed to survive Clone Wars and Rebels.
@@Grubnar Rebels and the clone wars are both still cannon, if I'm not mistaken
Thrawn And you are horseshit
Nitai Cappelletti rebels is litterally made under Disney, of course it’s canon
To think if the Empire or the Republic had more Thrawns, their enemies would have likely ceased to exist within such a short time span.
Meh, the CIS would win regardless if Palpatine didn't control them. They vastly outnumbered the clones and Jedi and were going to overwhelm them.
The rebels technically did, because if you think about it, Thrawn = plot armor.
Clone thrawn?
If there was more Thrawns he wouldn't be special or a genius in his own right though.
He would only last one day against a fleet of the Imperium Navy of Man
(Though that is certainly much longer than any other Star Wars Admiral!)
Thrawn is basically a Hannibal of Star Wars universe.
His tactics, ability to understand enemy and use it's tactics against him.
Every Hannibal Has a Scipio...
Oddly enough he's also decidedly fond of Fava Beans.
Actually he's better. Hannibal's great failing was his inability to grasp Roman culture. His aim was to win a few battles and then just wait for them to come over and accept that they'd lost. This is not how the Romans did things, it was win big or lose everything with nothing in between.
One of the first things we learn about Thrawn in his very first showing (Heir to the Empire) is that he does base his tactics somewhat around the culture and psychology of his enemies. In other words, if Thrawn had been fighting the Romans he'd have stormed right into Rome proper instead of sitting around on the beach for ages.
Conclusion: Hannibal vs Thrawn = Thrawn wins.
@@Tahkaullus01 The thing about Hannibal is that while, yes, he did underestimate the Roman will to fight, he was limited by the fact that his mercenary army would likely mutiny if he tried a prolonged siege of Rome, better to win glories and booty on the field and hope to wear Rome down.
He didn't expect the Romans to have near-endless manpower and will to fight however and that would prove his undoing.
@@Tahkaullus01Hannibal lost a lot of soldiers, he wanted to surround Rome but simply couldn't because the reinforcements from his brother didn't come ever being stopped immediately
Idea: do an episode where you describe your “perfect fleet”, with access to ships from Star Wars, Halo, Mass Effect, and/or other sci-fi universes.
(19th try)
Warden - get this to the top!
12 death stars that flank fire in an 360 degree movement.
Do it with Death Star III (aka Starkiller base)
- RIP Universe
I don't know if the empire could realistically gather that many resources lmao (no joke)
I second this notion
Thrawn knew that information is the key to victory. So when he faced an overwhelming enemy that he knew barely anything about, he simply went and got the information he needed to win the engagement.
I love the new series of battle breakdowns, thanks for being a great youtuber
ITS A TRAP
I think the reason a lot of people love Thrawn (myself included) is that he isn't a fighter himself, he is a pure tactician, who would be an invaluable roll in any warfare, is willing to take calculated risks. He is purely calculations, and very rarely if at all would we see him last out in anger.
He doesn't whine or complain about what he has or is given, he doesn't look at the near impossible hand he is given and says "Wow, this is a really bad hand" instead think "How do I win?"
Thrawn is awesome!
I approve of your profile picture.
Lank the Dank isn’t it the best?
Duke? Is dat you
Doge Fishron the Author is awesome, not Thrawn.
Um... yeah, but there’s more to thrown than this book, thrawn is a collection of stories with books, the author is creative, Thrawn is the awesome one
Can we take a moment to appreciate that this guy basically said "I care enough about your experience with this story to not spoil it for you. Stop watching this" lol I love this channel. Truly puts experience over itself. Much love.
Lucky for Thrawn those vulture droids still had a control ship, the new ones no doubt would of have gave him some problems
And that they weren't changing their encryption codes regularly, and that they were using the same encryption code for each fighter, somehow the conning-nets work in space despite the vast speeds and distances involved (imagine trying to hit a fly with a pistol as it's flying around), full spectrum jamming also jams your own communications, not to mention the "dust and debris" interfering with the laser control systems... again that's like saying a bunch of flies getting swatted at the other end of a football field is distracting, also the redirecting the missiles towards the ships and somehow hitting the weakspot despite it homing onto the fighters or being tangled in the nets is improbable in the extreme, also while all this was going on the interdictor was close enough to block the ships without getting vaporized by the dozens or turbolasers and laser cannons equipped on the lucrehulks, not to mention surrendering what's the equivalent of a heavily armed space station armed with more guns than that fleet had by several factors is farcical.
This battle is one of my favourite in all Star Wars and I think it would be great to see it animated one day. I always liked the hints of it given in Vision of the Future when Mara Jade and Voss Parck are discussing Thrawn's history and his first encounter with the Republic, and then seeing the battle realised in Outbound Flight.
A single starfighter hacking security algorithms engineered to be very secure, all the while a giant space station is doing nothing about it? yea right, if it was that easy, imagine what a capital ship can do to an entire army
It wasn't the starfighter. He just picked up the signal and relayed it to the cruisers. And maybe the cruisers relayed it to Csilla where the supercomputers figured shit out.
maaaybeee .... or maybe not
He didn’t have to decrypt it. The encryption’s on the startfighters’ computers took the commands and made them impossible do anyone without a decryption to read. Thrawn just looked at which portions of this encrypted mess kept getting activated when he came within range and sent those to the fighters to send them off flying. Also, those fighters were at the edge of their operation range, meaning that the Trade Federation has maybe 10 seconds max to realize that their ships were just flying past the enemy before they couldn’t communicate with them any more.
@Pretzelbomb
It is still a plot device though.. also not how encryption work, at least until it isn't unbelievably shitty.
@dark zeratul Yes, sound in space, etc. My point is that it is still a plot device.
I love how you post a lot and I know how hard it is but you make such good videos and you are my favorite UA-cam and I have been watching you for a long time and I love what you are doing keep it up
He is your favourite You Tube? There's more than one You Tube? YOU TUBE IS AN ENTITY NOT A WEBSITE?! YOU'RE BLOWING MY MIND, MAN! Sorry. Feelin really sarcastic and I had to let it out.
Have his limbs ripped off? I'll have you know I haven't done that to a person for a whole... carry the two, subtract the four... three and a half days.
Thrawn is mister Ex Machina. When lever he’s involved, everything falls into place juuuust right.
you can have money, going to grab myself some audiobooks!
Thanks dude! Lots of good Star Wars stuff on there :)
www.audibletrial.com/EckhartsLadder
i saw
so far ive been trying to catch the audiobooks on youtube but like, well, uploads are slow and kinda well, low quality or use some background audio or something
Downloading Thrawn with the credit and i preordered the sequel too~
The only things im actively liking about the new star wars since disney is the stuff featuring thrawn.
Funnily enough, it was because of how much i hated TLJ i really got into legends and got caught up with Thrawn
Just get a free trial on audible over n over from amazon=unlimited powa
Alex same
Alex the Thrawn trilogy on audible are unabridged and Marc Thompson narrates. You will greatly enjoy them
I like Thrawn's tactics but the explanation of having limited encrypted signatures seems off-putting. The Trade Federation could just make a dynamic encryption, changing codes every second (given futuristic hardware it is possible; similar to how IT companies now handle it nowadays) to prevent slicing. Also, given that the communication range is limited, it can divert the Lucrehulks' power from shields to boost the signal temporarily giving the Trade Federation a slight edge. They could also just press the attack and move a bit forward.
Ian Joshua Santos it was just a easy way out for the writers to make Thrawan look genius in a impossible situation. If they had written it differently, then it might haves looked better as a story, but the writers really cornered them self with giving Thrawn such a small fleet.
Hit the nail at the end, there. Why would a fleet with a massive advantage sit back and wait for their plucky opposing force to fuck around with their control software like that? Fly forwards and steamroll them. They can't surround you, flank you, or overpower your numbers advantage. They're forced to retreat, so even if they want to try the same tactic, it's much more risky, as the operating space of the droid fighters continues to expand towards them. You could even bait them into overextending by advancing slowly at first and then speeding up when they dip into your effective range.
The sit-and-wait approach was a gross misconduct of the CIS commanders, especially when you're operating in hostile territory. What the fuck did they think was going to happen?
@@TheSolitaryEye Agreed, now you know why I got rid of the whole Separatist leadership...
Well that was a trade federation mistake and I guess they learned from them.. (they were lazy because at that point there were no millitary that could oppose them) this happened after Naboo too.. you can argue about that why didn't they just gave some self avare for the droids why did they need a command ship which if was destroyed then their whole army was disabled.. after Naboo they "changed" their entire army and they did not need a command ship for the droids anymore.. all of their droid could operate independently until they ran out from energy (well ofc if they did not get a shut down command)
LMAO All of thrawns victory's were sheer brilliance
Chara Implying that Thrawn's insane and flawless brilliance is not a form of plot armor.
Actually, many Real Life commanders are in Thrawn's level or higher
Thrawn didn't defeat the Rebellion after all
I suspect Thrawn wold have beaten the new republic if he'd had assistance from Daala and/or Isard... in fact i would love to see someone do a story about that
clearly you haven't seen the season 3 finale then.
Sean McGrath If only Isard called Thrawn back and gave him full military command when she first took over, I imagine the duo could've beaten the New Republic. Daala's a really pathetic leader who continually squanders valuable assets for little gain and Thrawn was already dead when she took over the Remnant.
I know this would be difficult, but can you breakdown what is by far the largest space battle in the entire franchise? *The* *Battle* *of* *Yuuzhan'tar!*
I have made this request: thirty times.
If you're required to make the request 30 times, perhaps your wish will not be granted.
Entitlement noted
Maybe Trawn was the Sith lord Mace Windu was looking for?
Holy shit, can you imagine how devastating Thrawn would be as a Sith Lord?
@@SolarDragon007 so much nope
Might I suggest the Keys move from halo. It was a strategic victory for the UNSC above Sigma Ocatnus IV late in the human-covenant war and would result in the destruction of 2 covenant cruisers, a destroyer and the retreat of a super carrier with only 1 UNSC ship. The tactical and strategical brilliance of the Keys move may only be matched by non other than Admiral Thrawn himself. But this is my 2 cents and your the man who makes the videos.
It’s called the Keyes Loop and that was done only because the Covenant were only interested in an invasion of Sigma Octanus. The battle that occurred afterwards once his reinforcements came by was a Pyrrhic victory simply because the UNSC as a whole managed to lose substantially more ships and even an entire crew of a refit ship. Also that victory cost the UNSC Reach, the citadel of the UNSC which put humanity on the brink.
@@TheGeoCheese a pyrrhic victory was still much better than the constant cycles of defeat. Excellently written lore as it shows keys as a brilliant military strategist while also continuing that humanity didn't stand a chance
Would love to hear more about the Chiss. What they were doing before coming into contact with the wider galaxy, what they did when Thrawn fought to restore the Empire, and what happened with them after that. But also talk about their tech and ships, as well as the tech and ships used by The Empire of the Hand
Thanks Eck! I just bought the thrawn book on audible!
Awesome dude, enjoy!
CIS: "We have an army!"
Thrawn: "It's big brain time"
This whole time everyone thought he was a genius but in reality the trade federation was just incompetent.
Thrawn is like napoleon but in star wars.
Or Thomas Cochrane
Except Thrawn is really tall.
@@hellfire286 Napoleon was 5'7" which at the time was average height
@@Peoples_Republic_of_Devonshire and Thrawn is still really tall.
@@hellfire286 true. He's what 6'3"? Something like that
“Shipmaster, they outnumber us 3 to 1.”
“Then it is an even fight, all cruisers fire at will. Burn their mongrel hides”
We have you 21:6
Thrawn: i like those odds
Seems like more plot armor than anything with thrawn with this victory. The federation seemed to have a semi-good strategy. I understand he is a genius but sometimes it just seems like he is too perfect or everything goes perfect for him you know?
Washington_PC really bad writing. He relies on impossible things to happened and the enemies being incompetent.
Yeah, this battle just seemed...
Stupid. :/
Too perfect, hmm last time in rebels I remember a huge hyperspace animal bringing him to a godforsaken island.
Yeah it's bullshit...
I had a good chuckle at a command ship detonating due to poor communication software and droid programming. You’d think the vultures would be smart enough to fully deploy to outside the ship. But nope. Cheap software and predictably let Thrawn win. The easiest way to win this fight would be to advance with the intention to overwhelm, and to keep the fighters within offensive operating range.
Ha
Admiral Yi of the real world in Korea during the invasion of Korea in 1500s took down 300 Japanese ship with ONE Korean ship
Yi sun shin :|
SPESS the Samurai fanboys will get mad at you.lol
Do a top five of thrawns victorious
Ahh i love your channel... its just perfect fr
1: If the Droid fighters have a limited range which Thrawn's forces were taking advantage of, why didn't the Lucrehulks just....move up? They could've kept up pressure, and take far more advantage of their fighter's numbers, or at the very least not have them be basically thrown to the side where they aren't useful at all.
2: When Thrawn deployed his Full Spectrum Jamming on one 'hulk, why didn't the other 'hulk assist AT ALL?! It wasn't being jammed like the first one was, and it wasn't surrounded by enemy ships at the time, at worst they had a few enemies in the general area that weren't near the deployment zone of the fighter. It could've deployed fighters without a hitch since one ship isn't enough to hold back a whole hoard of fast small ships.
3: Why haven't we heard about this limited signal jamming before? I've watched almost the entirety of the Clone Wars, Watched almost all of the PT movies, and listened to some general lore on star wars both in Canon and Legends, and have seen mentions of various theories and such related to Republic and CIS in the comment sections of said videos. I haven't heard or seen a single *WORD* mentioned about this supposed limited signal range that droids have. This just seems like some ass-pull from the writers to make Thrawn look smart.
This fight is a load of bullshit that relies more on thrawn's opponents being conveniently stupid and thrawn relying on convenient technological advantages and hindrances more than actual strategy that takes more than a few seconds to come up with. I don't see why people are gushing about this fight.
I do find thrawn in general in legends was just, handed victories with serious plot holes in them just for the authors to go "look at how smart he is!!"
Sometimes the best strategy is not overexerting yourself in the face of an inferior opponent that fights to win a battle he has already lost. Flexibility as it were.
Yeah. He wouldn’t stand a chance against actual military commanders. It may be a science fiction story, but there’s a limit to what is plausible.
@@CommanderNissan the new books are a lot better about, where thrawn is actually smart, not just a goddamned plothole - i really domt get why he's so hyped up in legends
It's hard to write genuinely smart people as a writer if you aren't a genius yourself. Because if you were able to understand genius enough to put it on a page you'd understand it enough to be a genius.
As a writer you have to essentially have the genius act in a way that would reveal the knowledge you yourself already know. However some writers are terrible at the hiding aspect.
In this and a lot of the thrawn lore he just inexplicably knows things and does simple stuff no one ever considered for no reason.
If there had been some clever nuance to thrawn working out the fighter range thing then it could make sense but as it stands you'd expect that across a galactic war at least one retreating person would have noticed the fighters range.
Also the jamming thing is total bullshit. That is without a doubt the most crazy effective weapon against the droids and would end the war in days
When you got a 3 stars general in your tiny kingdom in EU4
Luv ur vids, thank u for the knowledge, half of my star wars knowledge is from u
General_Cheese6 same here
never get tired of watching this
Great vid! Perfectly captures why Thrawn is a tactical genius, one of my fav Characters next to Ackbar!
Jacob Gale it captives why Thrawn is not grounded in reality, just relies on plot armour and the enemies being incompetent. Would have been a better story if the writers know how to make such a story.
I absolutely love this battle. It encapsulates so much of what I enjoy about Star Wars. Probably one of my top ten moments in all of the fandom!!!
It is bullshit
I do find it strange that the trade federation submitted. 1 lucrehulk should have the fire power to out gun the chiss cruisers, and from there launch fighters to mop up his forces.
The whole video I was thinking: "Why didn't the enemy actually use their capital ships once?"
Yeah the whole fight sounds very contrived.
More Thrawn. His tactics are phenomenal and always insightful.
“That’s our Thrawn!”
*Seinfeld theme plays*
Welcome back to another episode of why it's OK to have a crush on Thrawn
You should do the battle for holy terra from warhammer 30K (Horus heresy) (second attempt)
John Feliciano Agreed!
30k?
I loved reading the inventive tactics Thrawn employs in the Timothy Zahn trilogy. Any discussion of those tactics, and the counters employed by his adversaries (when there is one) would be much welcome.
Thank you for yet another fascinating video!
Check out my video on Garm Bel Iblis vs Thrawn
More Chiss!!!
And he liked my comment so my day has been made😭
Half of this victory was due to the fact that the droid fleet just stood there and waited. If the carriers had advanced with the fighters so that thrawns fleet was forced to fight or flee they would not have had the time to device this strategy. Plus the fact that he did not loose a single ship just screams plot armour to me, if he had lost a hand full of fighters and a cruiser the victory would still have been impressive but not unbelievable
Yes, more on Thrawn, please. Especially the principles behind his thinking
Just sounds like two kids on the playground having an imaginary fight, where each one yells increasingly crazy gadgets to have an "advantage" on the other. Quite frankly this was just: let's make up a weakness so the other can exploit it.... Nothing extraordinary tbh, no interesting maneuvers, etc.
really that often how thrawn is written. He happens to be right about a lot of things like Sherlock. In this how did he break down a heavily encrypted program, written in a programing language they had never seen before, made by people that speak a language they had never heard before.
Alex Nistor I agree. You can give some of that stuff, but if the entire battle is made off of that, and no where else are these gadgets mentioned, it becomes kinda.,. Unbelievable. That's kinda why I like Rebels Thrawn.
Agreed. Thrawn is not so awesome, he just plot device half the time.
King Gojira Yeah. Sometimes his plans actually make sense, a couple times in the Thrawn Trilogy (it's good books, but Thrawn is, as people said before, a plot device) but most of the time he makes plans and assumptions out of nothing. At least he failed once or twice. That's why I like Rebel's Thrawn, his assumptions and strategies aren't so odd.
You are simply wrong here. The Chiss were allies to the sith empire and therefore chiss have seen all of republic space, including worlds not even most of the higher ups in the republic new of, like Balmorra.
The germans in Word War II thought their enigma code was unbreakable too, yet, with a technology the germans didn't know about, the brits broke the code. Plus, we are in a fantasy universe and have a Sherlock Holmes like character.
The language, despite propably known by the chiss, is irrelevant, since only the programming language counts. And it is easier to decrypt it when you pick up the signal, look at the code, which was allways the same, thanks to it being a programming language that can't use different wording to convey the same orders. So he could just observe the fighters behaviour after each picked up signal.
Also it's quite possible that there was more than one attempt to send a signal to the fighters that did not work. Also he ordered the fighters to just fly off. Not to attack each other, not to self destruckt and not to attack the enemy ships indicating that he just figured out little parts of the code. Not fancy maneuvers, just "keep flying forward". But why include that in the story? It is not really relevant. The only reason to include it, is to make everything more realistic... in a fantasy universe.
I really like how open you are about the sponsorship! I'll give it a shot :)
Some of this seems extremely contrived.
Especially getting the missiles to hit the ships that fired them. (not only that, but you get a missile to hit the ship that fired it with such pinpoint accuracy that it ends up right in the weak spot?)
I mean, the initial test of the droid control system also seems farfetched.
Only the wide spectrum jamming seems like something that might work...
Of course, this all hinges entirely on the droid ships being 100% centrally controlled with no independent capabilities at all.
Which, while not entirely inconsistent with what we know about trade federation droids, is certainly a colossally stupid design flaw.
By all means, if they need centralised coordination to function effectively, that's one thing.
But having them completely incapable of acting at all without that central control?
Plus how is a jamming signal penetrating INTO the hull of a large cruiser?
This seems a rather contrived set of circumstances, that while somewhat impressive in terms of someone identifying and picking apart the weaknesses, relies on some extreme contrivances to be viable in the first place.
Problem with wide spectrum jamming as well is it also jams your own communications. It'd be the blind fighting the nearly blind.
Read the Outbound flight, Youzan Vong wars, and Joiner King series as a kid and loved everything about the Chiss and Thrawn.
Decepticons vs Covenant (Ground battle)
Emperor: HOW?!? HOW DO YOU KEEP WINNING??!?!?
Thrawn: I'm Admiral Thrawn Sparrow, mate.
In the end he was beaten by spirit wolves, a kid, and space tentacle monster whales. GJ Disney AAA story telling.
Well after years of hack writers giving thrawn unexplained omnipotence they had to move away from the explainable
now look, if anything were going to get him it would have to be something not even he could've anticipated coming. And who would ever expected tentacled space whales attacking your fleet?
@@Lorkanthal Some one who would study the forbidden art of hentai...
I think they did a good job of portraying him in rebels. Wasn't thrilled at the end but he was the only reason I got there at all. Thrawn is brilliant
But could he defeat a Subjugator, Providence, heavy Recuscant a pair of Munificents, and three Lucrehulks??
Of course, because… Thrawn. He might get a scratch on one of his fighters though.
DerpyTurtle 076 comon even to Thrawn would be to much
Marius J. MacGyver do you know what a Subjugator class heavy cruiser is?
DerpyTurtle 076 one Like the Malevolence?
DerpyTurtle 076 Thrawn could easily beat that. There's simply way too many ships circling around the Malevolence (or any other Subjugator, but let's go with the Malevolence) for it to not use its weapons on them. Especially the Lucrehulks.
How I think the battle would turn out? First, fleet positions. I'm not sure how Grievous (or any commander) could effectively put all those ships into play. Also, I dunno if this battle's gonna be 2D or 3D. I guess on the front of the ship is the Providence, leading. On it's left side is a Lucrehulk and 2 Munificents, and on the right is the other Lucrehulk and the Recuscant. At the back is the last Lucrehulk.
So, Thrawn has his ship (like the ones in the video), a cargo vessel, and an interdictor, the 9 fighters, and a troop transport ship. His main force is Strike Group 1, which comprises of his ship, the transport docked in the ship (with it's own hyperdrive), and a fighter. They're on the left of the Malevolence, facing the Lucrehulk, Munificents, and its Ion Cannon. His cargo ship (loaded with asteroids) will be Strike Group 2, and the 8 fighters (they'll have hyperdrives) will be Strike Group 3. Both of these won't be present yet; they won't jump in till a later time. The last ship, the Interdictor, will sit back, waiting to use its gravity well for a Thrawn Pincer move.
So, on the left, Grievous sends in both of the Munificents and around 20 to 40 fighters to deal with SG1. SG1 is attempting to draw them out. Once again, toying with the fighters, they're disabled. This time, they command the fighters to ram into the Munificent's bridge and its hangars. Not able to react or realize what's going on in time, the droids in its bridges are destroyed, and the ships are crippled. The Munificents are effectively out of the battle, and the Lucrehulk moves in. Thrawn uses the Full Spectrum Jamming, disabling the fighters before they launch, and after a minute or 2, they explode and destroy the Lucrehulk. But here's the juicy part. The debris of the Lucrehulk effectively damaged the Malevolence, including the left Ion Cannon, breaches on its hull, and debris constantly strike at the bridge. With the Providence and 3rd Lucrehulk at the front and backs not able to react in time, SG1 has a clear shot at the Malevolence.
This is where the cargo ship comes in. Grievous, who isn't about to lose his most prized ship, orders the Providence to move out of the way and engage SG1, while he prepares to jump into hyperspace. As the Providence is moving into attack position, the Interdictor actives and, with the Pincer move, allows the cargo ship to get close enough to its SUPER EXPOSED BRIDGE (SERIOUSLY, WHY DOES NO ONE GO FOR THE BRIDGE). They dump off their cargo of asteroids, heavily crippling, and destroying the Providence. Grievous, upset with the loss of another ship, orders all cannons to destroy the cargo ship, in the hopes that it doesn't have more asteroids.
Getting out of range, SG1 and the cargo ship regroups and prepares for round 2. Having destroyed half of Grievous's fleet, with no casualties, the odds are in their favor. The 2 munificents, the Providence, and a lucrehulk is down, along with much of the Malevolence, and a recuscant and 2 lucrehulks are all that's left. Thrawn, simply toying with the droids, allows the 3 ships to get in position, protecting the fleeing Malevolence, and is now in motion to decapitate the head of the droid forces: Grievous, in the Malevolence's bridge.
Thrawn's fleet uses the asteroids, debris, and disabled munificents and providence as cover from the heavy turbolaser fire, and utilize the Connor Nets to disable the starfighter resistance. A lucrehulk gets disabled, having gotten too close to the asteroids. Distracting the fleet, the 8 starfighters plunge out of hyperspace, above the pursuing battle, and, also using the debris as cover, head straight for the Malevolence's bridge.
Ok, now, this is where things get retarded. The troop transports, docked with Thrawn's ship, launches and heads for the bridge. The pilots set the ship to go into hyperspace, and abandon it. With a path cleared by the fighters, it jumps into hyperspace and completely obliterates the Malevolence's bridge.
With their general gone, and the Chiss still suffering no casualties, the droids go nuts and start questioning their next moves. Meanwhile, Thrawn simply gathers all his forces, and watches as the asteroids and debris collide with the remaining ships, wrecking havoc on them, they officially surrender.
Idk, it sounds 100% retarded, but that's because Thrawn has a brain and the droids don't.
I enjoyed hearing about pre empirial Thrawn. Any lore videos about the career of Thrawn would be appreciated.
There's multiple books by Timothy Zahn. Look for the Thrawn ascendancy novels.
Thrawn is so amazing he could win if a whole battle with nothing but a box of Saran Wrap and a toothpick
He'd win because the enemy would be too stupid, and find some way to let him win.
no you are thinking of John Wick
the title of this video is pretty close to the entire plot of any ace combat game (one psychotic mute in an F-22 destroys entire military)
When you look at this battle, it makes it all the more ridiculous that Thrawn was defeated by Ezra and his animal friends in Star Wars: Rebels.
Aurik Kal-Durin The plot armor was not on Thrawn's side.
in fairness, Purrgills are fucking huge hypercapable force-sensitive animals.
Purrgill are not impervious to turbolaser fire. It makes no sense that they just plowed through the Imperial blockade without getting shot to pieces, especially considering Star Destroyer's weapons are optimized for taking out starships much larger and more heavily armored than a Purrgill.
Recusant Class Light Destroyer vs Something
(Almost every video you’ve ever made has this suggestion, not giving up. Ever!) And kickass vid Eck, Love your channel.
All Notification wings, report in! Notification Leader, standing by!
Hastur, the King in Yellow Notification 2, standing by.
Anooba Leader standing by....
Holdout squadron standing by
Are you typing this from Carcosa?
MR. Red tie Indeed, my child.
“Admiral thrawn, they out number us three to one!”
“Then it is an even fight”
Could the First Order in Star killer base defend themselves from a 318 meter tall Godzilla Earth? 128th attempt.
+Godzilla Earth
One day. One day.
Um the gojira is in the starkiller base or on the other planet?
Satria Khadafy Setiyadi in Starkiller
Pepe's Kebabs You mean stupid as an insult or an idea I made?
It's possible if the firs order is smart enough to kill it btw they have a ren
Hearing Stories about Thrawn Doing Crazy Stuff is always so Interesting.
He watched out for those wrist rockets
Fighting Thrawn is like playing against Matt in Wii Sports
Thrawn is so dumb, should of just went light speed into the enemy with one big ship.
is this sarcastic or genuine?
If full spectrum jamming was so effective before fighters took off I feel like that would have been something the Republic tried to utilize. IE come out of hyperspace right on top of / in front of,the enemy fleet and immediately start spectrum jamming giving their fighters relatively no opposition except for point defense systems The immediate reaction would be to launch all fighters and as which not having time leave the ships the republic would only have to hold out for four minutes until the larger enemy ships were blown up from the inside and then the smaller frigates could be mopped up or even targeted during the four minute window
As much as I love Thrawn, he's basicly a Gary Stu at this point.
I highly disagree with that part “Gary Stu”
Also i dont think he is a Gary stu
Don't think so. It's like saying Iulius Caesar was a Gary Stu. He has his own flaws, but he knows how to hide them very well.
Besides, he's a military elite. Of course he's superior to most other beings.
Not at all, there's multiple books that explain and express his achievements, and Thrawn often discusses his logic after the fact, so that his crew can reach the same tactical conclusions he did, improving his leadership qualities.
I'd argue that in actuality, never in any other character have we ever had such a glimpse into his psyche and we are regularly getting tactical insight into his ability.
Wanna talk Gary Stu? Try Boba Fett.
@@SuperG3cko just because he explains his logic afterwards doesn't make him a "not Garu Stu".
I like how much detail you get into. This is great.
I love Thrawn
Inspiring,powerful,genius,and badass
love, yellow yess I’ll love to see it 😍
More Thrawn! Outbound flight is one of the greatest star wars books out there. Read it years ago. Have it love it
I don't know if you saw my comment about the the battle break down of the battle of umbara but I have been requesting it for some time, thank you for finally taking it into consideration. (Love ur vids keep it up, especially the battle break downs)
This was an interesting scenario. What I find quite interesting here, is that Thrawn was still an excellent leader and commander but the use of his tactics by his standards are quite disjointed which worked in this instance. Later on when he served in the empire though, his tactics are often more stable and he has more of a go to set of tactics he uses. This makes sense as he had developed more experience by then and also learned about the empires tactics and ship capabilities.
Replicators vs a Unified Star Wars universe (256th try now, *_I._** WILL NEEEEVER EEEVER GIVE UP!!!)*
coming up on infra-red NEEEEEEEEEEEEVEEEEEEEEEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dude that would be an awesome episode.
EU Star Wars included?
would be tricky tho because the replicators will have to have spread a certain amount before being able to go toe to toe with the whole galaxy
Might as well say the same thing with the Borg or Cybermen lol
The bit about repeatedly doing the same thing to figure out droid encryption was pretty smart. With the full-spectrum jamming thing, actually, I kind of figure that with the droids being disabled while launching, they'd crash into the opposite hangar arm. That is, if you accept full-spectrum jamming as a thing.
Thrawn might be the best fleet commander the galaxy has ever seen, but I think in that fight he is just to good. He is such an good commander, because he truly understand his enemy, but such an complete victory against an unknown enemy.. I don't think that would be happen. An victory could be possible, but not such an perfect one.
There are many Real Life commanders that would put Thrawn to shame
Besides, Thrawn didn't defeat the Rebellion within a few days
(Which any competent commander can easily do)
Christian Dauz it's the limitation of the writers imagination if thrawn was real he would be doing shit no one would have ever thought of
Plot armor protected the Rebellion, or else they would of been extinguished.
That and superior weaponry.
Thing is with Thrawn is that he keeps doing unrealistic tactics from assumptions he really should not do. He is measly a plot device from the writers, where he gets the classic plot armour. He would be a lot more appealing, if he did realistic assumptions and made choices out of them instead of relying on the enemy being incompetent. Bad writing, that is all it is.
A Chiss empire would be terrifying. Imagine thousands of Thrawns instead of just one.
(this is a joke, but seriously, the thought scares me lol)
Oh God. Everyone lives in fear knowing damn well there are red-eyed, blue humans that can defeat them easily.
The real impressive thing is the ammount of plot armor and plot impulse Thrawn always seems to have
I loved this book and Thraws brilliance really shines within it.
Thrawn vs Ackbar
Thrawn
I think that with all things being equal, Thrawn would win ... but if Ackbar has even just one ace up his sleeve, he would win, or at least not lose!
PlainX Thrawn wins hands down.
uh which of them died at Billbringi?
Batou3 he was betrayed and backstabed (quite literally) by his own body guard. In an actual battle (without that particular body guard) Thrawn would easily win
"Failed negotiation."
Vicelord Kav, in classic nemoidian arrogance, gave orders to dispatch the droid fighters, after ignoring Thrawns repeated attempts to raise them over the comm's, and annihilate them. Kay described the Chiss as primitive and back wards, and he didn't change his attitude even after Thrawn entered the bridge of the flagship.
The only reason Thrawn won was because of the bogus physics of the Star Wars universe. If not for that, he would not have been able to get rid of all the fighters of the first attacking wave, and he would have lost without a doubt. There's no way that there would be some kind of distance limit to communication between the droid fighters and their motherships; that's not how wireless communication works. If not for this silly limitation on the droids, Thrawn wouldn't have been able to get all those fighters to just fly off into space.
Big Daddy Boom Boom pretty sure he would have thought of something
Given that the first wave of droid fighters already outnumbered Thrawn's total number of fighters, they would not have stood much chance against the superior droid numbers unless Thrawn's pilots were all hardened aces, and I highly doubt they were. Keep in mind that these were the only assets Thrawn could use during the battle, so once he lost his fighters, his three cruisers would have been done for, taken down by droid fighters and bombers. If by some miracle the the first wave was defeated, it would have been defeated at high cost and the second reserve and equally large group of droid fighters would move in and finish the job. No sort of maneuver exists that Thrawn could use to ensure the defeat of the numerically superior first wave of droid fighters, as fighters are the most maneuverable things in the Star Wars universe. Thus, it's highly improbable that Thrawn could defeat this fleet without using some sort of asymmetrical strategy.
Big Daddy Boom Boom idk Ive read some pretty impossible feats from this guy but I'm not thrawn so I wouldn't know what rabbit he could pull out of the hat
"That's not how wireless comunication works." Please tell me about that wifi in the Gobi desert you got from your home, chap.
Blackplant,
WiFi is different because you have interference from multiple sources, including the atmosphere. Aircraft can be remotely controlled from the other side of the world and people can talk over the phone across continents, in an atmosphere, and you’re telling me that in an interference free area there’s a limit to the distance of wireless communication? Give me a break.
If Thrawn was commander of the First order fleet the Resistance would have been destroyed before the end of the force awakens
Dude... Thrawn is a boss.
-(Not that we didn't know that already)
-Also imagine a star wars game where you could create and execute maneuvers like that.
5:09 top notch edition xD
love your videos man, keep it up!