Emperor Revan
Most Powerful Sith Lord
Can somebody without any force powers talk several hundret Jedi into following him ? No. Could Revan do that without force powers. No ! Does that count in the term of "tactics" ? No.
(My response) He did it mostly through tactics, some he lured to Malachor V which corrupted them, he made teams of people designed to capture Jedi and send them to a place to break them, according to Master Vrook some of the Jedi left because of Sith promises of riches and power. No, it wasn't all tactics but some of it was. Listen to how many ways HK-47 knows to kill a Jedi, those are all tactics and they all came from Revan.
Even the veterans in the imperial army are sometimes stupid as hell. And please think of it: The Empire had far greater troops than the Alliance so they won't have that much people left with battle experience (Not if you think of how easy they go down.)
(My response) They had far more people than the Rebels so more chances of tacticians, who created the Sun Crusher? The galaxy Gun? World devastators? The Eclipse star destroyer? All imperials. Now granted imperials were often rather stupid but we have no way of comparing that to either of the forces in Revan's time either.
Oh great. One ship being 40 % more effective ? What does that decide ? And Thrawn hadn't been in too many battle before Joruus ? Well he had to become Grand Admiral somehow now doesn't he ?
(My response) First, it wasn't just the one ship. It was the whole battle and it was totally because of Joruus. How many Grand moffs were there? About 4 in the stupid kid books which are unfortunately canon and Tarkin of course. It's just a rank and obviously he had to have been good but we don't know anything about how he got there or as many battles as Revan. So Thrawn was a Grand Admiral. He wasn't even at the battle of Endor. Revan had direct control over a third of the Republic fleet within a couple years of fighting.
That is no tactic...it's persuation or diplomacy and Thrawn hadn't even the opportunity to do so.
(My response) No Thrawn didn't have the opportunity to turn jedi, but it's much harder than regular troops and Revan did use some tactics to do this as previously explained.
Abandon whole worlds...well...for being brutal and ruthless: Did you ever came across the "Ghorman Massacre" ? Tarkin landed a spaceship on a group of protesters killing hundrets of them. Reason: They were protesting against Imperial taxation.
And there was also that nice thing called "Tarkin Doctrine": "Rule through the fear of force, rather than force itself." That is the standard operation procedure of the Imperial Navy (result: the Death Star).
(My response) The movies sorta say it's the geonosians who made the Death Star but I liked the EU version more too.
Now...just think a little bit. Thrawn rose threw the ranks of the Imperial Navy fast. He was a heir to the Tarkin Doctrine but had greater tactical abilities than anyone else in the Imperial Navy.
(My response) Yes, so? you yourself said how stupid the imperials were. Revan was the greatest tactician of his time just like Thrawn.
When it comes to "ground combat" Revan might be actualy better in tactics than Thrawn is but in a space battle I would bet on Thrawn.
(My response) You might be right there, we don't know much about Revan's space tactics but surely during the two wars there were some space battles and Revan's tactics are spoken of highly throughout both games by everyone who mentions them so there's really no reason he would be bad at space tactics either IMO.
Darth Somebody: In addition to what I said in my previous response to you, Revan is really good at just about everything he does that has any correlation to power or might. Whether it's his power, potential, tactics, abilities, knowledge, or combat experience he excels greatly at it and we have seen no real flaws from him which is a big factor why I think he's so great.