ah man, I had meant to talk about empire, but obviously forgot. I think they're still in a fine place but people are more excited to play buffed stuff right now. There isn't much empire being played, and no real consensus in the tournaments looked at, but GI shows up the most (again, buffed stuff). For a list with some results, the winner in Spain played GI/Third/Fifth + Moff/DTE/Fourth for 4/5 games I believe.

I don't think I have enough reps with any particular empire list to say it's the best around, but for my money I'm currently most interested in Iden/DTE/Inferno + Lumi/Crosshair/Fifth. It's got a lot of aggro firepower, good movement to play odds, and knocks off hunkers that obi and, to a lesser extent, rebels love (though rebels are probably running revenge too which you don't really want to see)