Let me first start off by prefacing this with: I do not own the second edition version of this book. I only own first edition, and I must admit that the quality of the book could have been better. It’s a paperback book, and the pages are threatening to fall out. I had the same problem with the Imperial Sourcebook, but I went and bought the second edition version of that one, which is a hardback book. Second edition of this, the Rebel Sourcebook, is also in hardback, so that is an immense improvement on the version that I’ve got.

Now, on to the review.

This book starts off with the birth of the rebellion. It presents thoughts and ideas on the people that play a key roll in the rebellion. Sadly there isn’t a whole lot of specifics as far as who those people are…you learn about Mon Mothama, but no stats for her. They’ve got a fairly interesting political structure breakdown (if you like that stuff). It’s not highly exciting, in my opinion, but it’s good to know if you’re going to run some extensive rebel campaigns.

Next is the alliance intelligence section. They’ve got some information about the rebel cells, and provide a network breakdown so you can see how the rebel cells work. This is actually fairly useful, in my opinion, as most rebel cells will deal with some small aspect of this. They also mention the different branches in the intelligence section. Intentions, Cryptology, Interrogation, and nine others are mentioned, with little blurbs about each one. Quite informative really.

The alliance military is next, showing the command structure and various commands such as Fleet, Ordnance & Supply, Starfighter and others. There are details on fleet command, what they do, and on Special Operations. This is the first glimpse we get into the wondrous world of the sourcebook “Rules of Engagement”. There are some generic special forces listed here to use in your games, and a write up about each type of special forces. I always find this section to be a treat. Next in line they have a section on a place called the Atrivis Sector. This is one of the more active rebel sectors, so they go into detail on what the sector is like. There are various NPCs listed, with stats, and a whole lot of write up on them all.

Starship combat is next, containing information on both capital ships and starfighters. There are tactics listed for both types (capital and starfighter) and the capital ships have a composition of a battle line, which really gives you an idea on what the rebels use for tactics against the empire. There are ship specifications for the major rebel capital ships, including the Rebel Assault Frigate, the Modified Bulk Cruiser, the Nebulon-B Frigate and the two Corellian ships. There’s also a size comparison chart, so you get an idea of the size of these craft. The fighters are done about the same, with all of the major fighters used by the rebels having specifications done on them. Various fighter missions are also detailed, so you get a pretty good idea of how to run games with rebel fighter pilots.

Following the ship sections is a section on ground combat. There are tactics listed, as well as some standard equipment used (though there’s not a whole lot equipment in this book, which is part of it’s downfall in my opinion). They have a nice picture that shows the various uniforms worn by the alliance, and they have some stats (as well as pictures) for some blaster weapons used by rebels. Then they have the vehicles. Honestly, this is where the book has some useful stuff. They detail 9 different rebel vehicles that I’ve never seen in any other book. This includes the ULAV Speeder, the KAAC Freerunner and others. There’s even a little “out of place” information about rebel above-ground sensor types. All in all, this is a fairly useful section.

Finally, there are three rather small sections. One details druids, having some stats and pictures for 6 different druids (some of these are seen in other books), another details Support Services—which deals with creating safeworlds in Star Wars and containing a couple of space transports. The last section is about Recruitment and Training, and I personally feel they really dropped the ball on this. It’s tiny in size and lacking a lot of information about things that I think a lot of people want to know about.

So all in all, this book has some quite useful information about the rebel alliance, but it also leaves some holes that they really should have filled in. There’s stuff in this book that you can’t find in other books (to my knowledge), and there’s all of the basic information you need to run a game filled with rebel soldiers or pilots. While it’s good, it’s not really a great book. Get this book if you really want to know about Rebels and you don’t want to make it up yourself. I’d suggest going to the effort to find the Second Edition book over the First Edition, (and pay that extra money) so you can get a nice quality hardback over the rather cheesy paperback (it was before West End Games really figured out how to make decent paperbacks).

My rating:

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