Clone Wars The Essential Guide To Warfare: The Clone Wars Edition

I should've complained to Tommy Lee Edwards instead for the artwork.

Rob, that's awesome! Come to think of it, I remember reading that issue of SW Insider I got when I went to meet Rachel Maddow at B&N in NYC, and they had an interview with the guy who made the Essential Guide to Warfare, and he was talking about going on SW forums as part of his research and mentioned TFN by name. It all makes sense now.

I actually love a lot of the original art in there, much like with the Atlas. We get to see a bunch on characters we've never really seen before which is always a bonus. The art with the Jedi/Sith alliance vs Abeloth is really cool even if the book wasn't

Just spoiled all the art for myself on Wookieepedia.

I like the Revan and Alek one.

Yes, but what that image on the Wook doesn't show is the top half, which shows the two as they look when they're Sith lords.

Anyway I thought the segment on the evolution of the Trade Defense Force very interesting. Certainly puts the TF in a whole new perspective. That image of the members of the TDF hugging family members definitely adds depth to them. It actually makes the whole Seperatist Senate thing make a bit more sense, since organizations like the TF had humble beginnings, and not everyone was corrupted by Sidious and Dooku.

What about ROTS makes the army suddenly gigantic?

The army size we were given in Attack of the Clones was one million. Subsequent Clone Wars material placed the working size of the army at 3 million, with more being grown daily, but not enough to expand at a speed capable of sustaining the war effort.

Enter Revenge of the Sith, where the opening battle alone has approximately a thousand Venators and god knows how many support craft. To crew a Star Destroyer takes around 37000 people. That's 370 million clones manning the Coruscant fleet alone, without going into the giant armies fighting in the outer rim. Traviss explained this by Palpatine holding back a reserve army of Clones on Coruscant's moon of Centax 2. Once the endgame with Coruscant was put into motion, the Centax clones were unleashed, having more than enough manpower to overwhelm the CIS holdouts, and more importantly, to ensure that there would be enough clones to occupy the galaxy for the coming reorganization.

Love the picture of the Battle Droid blowing off the other Battle Droid's head.

Where are you getting this number from?

Wookieepedia. Battle of Coruscant page lists the army composition as having 1000+ Venators, not counting other battleships.

Sourced to what? In any event, this isn't a number established by the film itself, which shows a far smaller number of ships on screen. If Wookieepedia doesn't give a source, for all we know the number is an invention of some anonymous person.

I admit I've always been good with not knowing actual numbers. A lot covers it well enough for me.

That's dated to 2009, so it came out after anything Traviss did regarding the issue.

Order 66, the book that involved the Retcon came out in September 2008. By that time, the Starships and Vehicles Collection was probably still being written. Maybe they took some cues to work with the Traviss Retcon.

Either way, even before that, there were still hundreds of Venators at the battle at least. That is still millions of clones that miraculously appear when compared to the 3 million and one million marks.

The film doesn't show any such thing. You referred to Traviss needing to retcon the "suddenly gigantic army" in ROTS. But there is no suddenly gigantic army in ROTS.

Which source gave us the 4 quadrazillion battle droid number again?

While TCW's shows us Clones crewing Capital ships I think we can still incorporate the idea that at least some crews were non-clone. For instance the Leveler had a non-clone crew as best as I can tell.

If the EU says each Jedi Cruiser ( ) holds 370,000 clones, and Ep. II says there are a million clones with a million more on the way, than even if they have all 2 million by Ep. III, that would only be enough for 6 cruisers. There are definitely way more than 6 cruisers in the opening of Ep. III.

I always hated the numbers given in Ep. II. About 1% of the U.S. serves in the military which would be about 3 million people (although I've also seen numbers as low as 1 million...which still isn't low compared to Ep. II), and that's historically low. Lower numbers than that for a galactic conflict?? I never got how GL missed that. I'll hold out hope for a change in Ep. II 3D.

It was the one that expanded on the Story of General Grevious

The line in AOTC, is that there are 1 million "units" ready IIRC. This is kind of ambiguous, and could mean anything from individual clones up to battalions. Obviously the EU went with individual clones, because they do so love to minimize and downsize.

But,them's the breaks, and the real question I guess is how big the Judicial forces were when they were merged with the GAR