Normally on Fridays we would scour the holonet and post a detailed list of all the Content put out for the game in the past week. Instead, we decided to start pointing you over to SWUHolocron who does a much better job than us keeping track of all this content posted daily! You can check this link for videos and this link for articles! They also have a comprehensive list of all Content Creators that have posted content for Star Wars Unlimited found here. There’s a ton of other great resources on their site that I encourage you to look around!

Where’s that leave us for Fridays? Well I do like having a weekly post dedicated to the community, so going forward we aim to highlight a Content Creator, Resource Creator or Community Member! Given the opening paragraph here, it made sense to bump our friends over at SWUHolocron to the top of the list! Keep reading to learn more about them.

SWUHolocron

Tell us about yourself! What are your hobbies?

Hi, I’m Jake, Though in many places across the internet you’ll see me go by Aahzmandius Karrde (or some variation). I’ve been a lifelong “geek” and have been into various forms of tabletop gaming for almost as long. When I’m not gaming, I’m building LEGO, watching movies, or just getting into Blacksmithing.

What is your background/experience in the TCG world?

I’ve been into TCGs at various levels since almost the beginning. I can remember that fateful day when I went into my comic shop and saw Magic: The Gathering Revised starter decks on the counter. I sprung for two, brought them back to my RPG group and the rest is history. I still have boxes of dozens of dead games from the 90s. Games like Jyhad, Sim City, Illuminati, etc, etc. I would dive in and out over the years due to work, kids, or other commitments but kinda kept my eye on the pulse. I was a proponent of the LCG transition when FFG started that and thought I’d never go back. I almost got sucked back in just before the Keyforge announcement, but that satisfied the itch at the time. The combination of Lorcana and SWU announcements led me back fully into the space.

What drew you to Star Wars Unlimited as a game?

The simple answer is Star Wars. It’s the one thing that almost always brings me back to TCGs. I have the CCG, Young Jedi, Jedi Knights, and Destiny in those dead boxes. The more in depth answer is the way FFG has approached the game. I’ve been an FFG fanboy for a long time, but the last few years have been disappointing. I didn’t last long enough in Destiny to feel the burn that many players felt at the demise of the game, but plenty of other things had tarnished their name for me. Many things I would probably lay at the feet of Asmodee. But right from the get go FFG was showing a new leaf. Like I said, Star Wars is what drew me in, but that pull might have only lasted a few months. When we were originally 7-15 months out from potential release dates I cooled quite a bit. But every Livestream or in depth interview the team has put on has increased my confidence in their direction, and heightened my desire for the game to see what’s next.

What led to you creating SWUHolocron for Star Wars Unlimited?

I’m a rules guy, and static rules documents don’t do it for me for games I love. So, for a game like this I break out a wiki. I first started with a local wiki file but realized quickly I wasn’t going to get the results I wanted. I mentioned earlier my involvement with Keyforge. Well I happen to be a long time friend of blinkingline at https://archonarcana.com/ and even did some work on the site with them before the pandemic. So I picked his brain a bit about backend and hosting and SWU Holocron was born.

What is your favorite piece of SWUHolocron.com?

It’s kind of a geeky thing, but that’s who I am. It has the be the automatic rulings linkings for cards. It’s one thing to have a block of rulings, but who wants to read a wall of text. The nice thing about how I’ve designed things, if you have a question about a card you can go to that card’s page and the rulings will show up there. Whether the ruling was specifically about that card or something more general like the cards type or a keyword on the cards, etc. There’s still work to be done there like being able to key off action triggers, but these things are always a work in progress. And the great thing is that once it’s in place most of it’s automatically built. I’m not hand editing every page, lots of scripting in the background.

When you initially set out to create SWUHolocron, you probably had a group of ideas for what all you wanted on the website. What pages on the website did you decide you wanted to create that you didn’t plan to originally?

It was originally about the rules, so those and the cards were the basis of the site. I quickly decided that some references of the rules were probably going to be in articles and livestreams put out by FFG so I might want to be linking to those items. Then I got this crazy idea into my head… What if I cataloged *ALL* of the articles and videos, not just from FFG, but anybody that wrote about the game? What could possibly go wrong? As I write this we are close to (and by publication will have exceeded) 1000 Transmissions from 99 creators in 7 languages that make up the SWU community. Considering we’re still two months away from release, that’s amazing. My only regret is I can’t keep up with all the content personally.

What is your favorite data you keep track on the website?

It would be easy to say the rules, but we’ve talked about that. Second I’m a collector, so it’s important for me to know every thing that’s out there. While it seems I may never have a copy of the demo deck for myself I did get Xander to let me take photos off all 70 unique cards from it to have for posterity. They’ll be there soon when I have time to process all the photos. But ultimately the thing that makes me a collector of TCGs in particular is the Art, so I’m glad to track all the artists and seek out their portfolios online and have links available. I hope that list continues to grow every set.

What is one thing you hope to host on SWUHolocron in the future?

One thing that is lacking on the site right now is Events. Both the large scale ones like Gen Con or Spiel and the smaller ones like the Discord server’s first tournament. I’ve started some of that, but it has been more complicated that I first envisioned and time has been limited. Games are built on community, and events are the heart of that community. They need to be represented just as much as the rules.

What are you personally most excited about for Star Wars Unlimited?

I’m excited about that community. I’ve spent the last two decades shepherding my local board game community from 12 people in my living room to 50-70 people meeting every month for a whole game of gaming (*not* in my living room thankfully). I can only hope that I can have a similar SWU community at some point in the future.

What has been your favorite community experience in Star Wars Unlimited thus far?

I’d have to give it to PAX Unplugged. That was a whirlwind for me. Back in the summer I had chatted with a friend about going. This was long before we knew FFG was going to be there. That had kinda lain fallow for a few months, but then FFG made the announcement. I initially though, I can’t make it. Then the discord get together was announced, and I thought, Maybe I could come up for the day. After thinking more, I checked with that friend and we were set to go for the whole weekend. I then decided to make a P&P Draft cube at the last minute. And then I get there and Xander springs on me that I get to interview Jeremy or Tyler!!! I spent a lot of time at the FFG demo tables, met a lot of great people both in the community and with FFG, and the draft was a blast. Again, it’s all about the community and so far we have a great one here. Here’s to 20 years of it just getting better. And the offer always stands, whether I’m wearing the T-Shirt or not.

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Be sure to check out the Q&A page for SWU Holocron here, which does a great job of compiling official and unofficial responses to rules questions. Jake was also able to sit down and interview Senior Designer Tyler Parrott at PAX Unplugged. You can find that interview here! You can also checkout how to support their work here.

That’s it for today. We hope you got a good introduction to Jake from SWUHolocron and learned about some of the pages and information you can count on their site to deliver!