YMMV / Thrawn's Revenge

• Demonic Spiders: All varieties of Super Star Destroyer. Every single one has an absolutely ridiculous amount of hitpoints and firepower as well as large fighter complements. The Eclipse and Sovereign classes really take the cake though; in addition to the above they also have one-hit-kill superlasers and gravity well generators to prevent the enemy from retreating into hyperspace.
• Game-Breaker:
  • During 2.1, arguably the Empire of the Hand. They have an impressive array of space-based heroes, start with all their planets connected to each other (unlike the Empire and New Republic), and lack the glaring weaknesses of those two factions (weak starfighters and Crippling Overspecialization in large ships for the former, and an initial lack of very capable capital ships for the latter). Their only real weakness are their small starting territory (limiting the amount of forces you can start conquest with), lack of an equivalent unit to a Super Star Destroyer (something they share with the New Republic in most eras), and no buildable defenses (like ground-to-space Hypervelocity Guns or Ion Cannons, or ground-based Turbolaser towers or base shields). But their ground buildings all have shields (which no other faction does) and some of their ground units, particularly their airspeeders, absolutely shred anything they come up against. If you can overcome the small territory disadvantage (which the AI does through cheating), they can easily be the most powerful faction in the game.
    • Taken further in the sequel mod Ascendancy, the Empire of The Hand is described as the Glass Cannon when in reality, their ships sit at the middle of the road between the New Republic and Imperial factions in terms of health and shields while outgunning *both*, and to top it off, social policies that spread their culture like wildfire - which means if you don't lose your planets to a fleet of Lightning Bruiser ships, you will to culture creep.
    • The Empire of the Hand is particularly nightmarish when playing against the AI, since the final mild balancing factor to the Empire of the Hand is the high pricetag on a lot of their units. The AI, naturally, ignores this.
    • The Megamaser tank takes this up to eleven. Combine a cannon with a decent rate of fire and the ability to take out most vehicles (including aerial ones for some reason) in two hits, a very large HP pool, and a relatively cheap price (only 100 credits less than an AT-AT, which it can easily beat one-on-one) and you get a unit that can single-handedly take on an entire invasion force. Its only weaknesses are a lack of splash damage on its otherwise-ridiculous cannon, meaning it can be overwhelmed by large numbers of infantry, and a bug that gives it abysmal accuracy against build point turrets.
  • The Dark Empire's Eclipse and Sovereign dreadnoughts also qualifiy as this. In addition to an ungodly amount of heavy weapon batteries, both ships carry a superlaser capable of one-shotting most ships, making them virtually unkillable in the hands of a semi-decent player. It's also very easy for players to jump in a dreadnought, superlaser an enemy ship, retreat, and repeat the process until the enemy fleet is gone.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Ground battles, just like in the standard game, but they seem to be even worse due to the system heavily favoring the defender, in both active play and auto-resolve. The Empire of the Hand, as ever, is particularly brazen about it; a well-fortified Hand planet with minimal garrisoning won't be conquered by anything less than a dozen AT-ATs, and the AT-ATs won't come out of it looking too good either.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Go ahead, try playing the Imperial Remnant in 2.1, advancing to Era 7 as quickly as possible, then conquering the galaxy.
  • With later patches having added the ability to choose one's starting era, certain starts, such as the Eriadu Authority from Eras 3-6 and Greater Maldrood in Era 7, have you starting out with a single planet and a handful of heroes while surrounded by much more powerful neighbors. Conquering the galaxy from that position, especially on Admiral difficulty with Cruel AI on, is a popular challenge run.