Alright, I'll be the guy who disagrees, I always thought the battle on Endor was rubbish. The emperor says an "entire legion" of his best troops were down there. Now, what we saw didn't look to be no legion, so he may have been exaggerating to mess with Luke's head, but even still, I don't buy that they were so easily beaten. The stormtrooper corp, IIRC, is already the most elite infantry in the empire, not to mention an elite garrison of the already elite stormtrooper. They are essentially the seal team six of the empire, except even better because of the wider recruiting pool. The seals are the best of the 330 million in america, the stormtroopers are the best of the quadrillions and quintillions of the entire galaxy. They would have wiped the floor with both the rebels and the ewoks. Your explanation is pretty good from an in universe standpoint as Lucas made the actual movie, but Lucas did something with this battle that made no sense. Yes stormtroopers have weak spots on their armor, but the ewoks are using pre bronze age weapons, stones and wood. The arrowheads and spearheads are fastened to the tips with twine. If the ewoks were strong enough to thrust these weapons hard enough to do actual damage than one good thrust hitting stormtrooper armor would break the shafts, and dislodge the tips. No way I would believe that these weapons were even marginally effective against armored stormstroopers. The unarmored officers and auxiliary personnel would have some trouble, but they also would likely take extra caution to not get into hand to hand combat. Furthermore, the ewoks would have a considerable disadvantage in hand to hand combat due to their size. Given that they are deceptively strong, they still have virtually no momentum to put into their attacks, due to their lack of weight. Also their reach would be less than that of a stormtrooper even with weapons. In the shots we show some stormtroopers getting their butts kicked but if there were actually grown men with a pair between their legs in those suits, we'd see some ewoks getting pounded. For reference, hop on youtube and look up some people who do realistic medieval battles. They put on armor, use real steel swords, and beat the crap out of each other. Armor is HIGHLY effective at reducing melee weapons. You need a friggin war hammer to do the kind of blunt force trauma your talking about, and a war hammer probably weighs as much if not more than the ewok itself. The rocks and spears and arrows they used would be a useless gesture. Furthermore, the rebels neglected to bring any anti armor weapons. The AT-STs would have ensured victory, full stop. You can find no battle in all of history where armor has been defeated without anti armour weapons. The Vietcong could get AT mines, rpg's, the insurgents in Iraq were fond of IED's. But lets face it, tank > rifle. No amount of bullets will stop a tank, just like no amount of ewoks or rebels with blasters can stop an AT-ST. I will buy the few that they killed, with logs and such, and even the one chewy commandeered (though I highly doubt SOP calls for clearing your walkers roof of teddy bears), but they simply would've had no answer for the rest of them. If even one survived, the rebels would loose. I would wager even in enemy terrain, given these points I have made, the ewoks and rebels stood no chance of winning. Even heavily outnumbered, the ewoks simple wouldn't be able to inflict casualties on the stormtroopers in any way. Their armor would render their melee attacks useless and their small size would make them outmatched in hand to hand combat by battle hardened imperial troops. All the while, they would take MASS casualties in any attack on imperial troops due to blaster fire and imperial armor. Yes there have been examples of technologically inferior armies winning victories against superior foes, but lets look at some context. The gap has never been as exaggerated as Endor was. The VC had guns and explosives just like the US army did. They had guns that werent as good, and no airforce, but still had guns. Also think that they wouldn't win battles per se, but the war. They couldn't fight a ground war, but an insurgency. Hit and run. The ewoks openly engaged the imperials. The only real comparable example is the battle of Isandlwana, where 20,000 Zulus attacked 1300 british. The Zulus were fierce, kept their forces concentrated. They were armed with IRON spears and shields, as well as some rifles. The british made several tactical blunders, had only breach loading rifles and 7 pounder cannons. The Zulus won by sheer numbers, and took 3,000 casualties. The brits made them pay 3 to 1 even though they completely sucked it up, just like the empire. Now, the ewoks are nothing compared to Zulus, and the colonial brits are nothing compared to stormtroopers with semi auto blasters and several AT-STs. They would have made the ewoks pay 10 to one, at the very least even if they completely fell apart, like they did. I would venture to say they may even make them pay 20 or 50 to 1. There's no way in hell they would have the morale to fight the battle to completion taking these sorts of losses. This post has been long and likely borderline incoherent as I am writing it as I go with no plan, but this is what went through my head and the reason why the battle killed my suspension of disbelief. Had it been wookies instead of ewoks as Lucas originally planned, I could dig it. But wookies are a whole different story.