Justin: Good morning! In case you missed it, our full team was invited to attend the Star Wars Community Celebration this past weekend to talk to FFG, open packs early, get some swag, and celebrate the Community leading into the launch of the game.

We already recapped our dinner with Jim Cartwright in Monday’s article, which outlined a lot of why we’ve been saying for a while: “This isn’t the FFG we’re used to, and Star Wars Unlimited is going to be special!” The next day they gave us packs and we played Sealed during the event livestream, before turned us loose to draft/sealed/open packs/interview devs and make the most of the time! We then attended a “Celestial Celebration” (with a DJ!) before the Devs and Content Creators spent the rest of the evening drafting and playing Twin Suns in the hotel lobby.

Overall, there were lots of amazing moments and conversations that we wish we could completely re-create and share, but the weekend was an absolute blur. Instead, we’ll focus on each of our highlights.

Favorite moments of the weekend

Justin – Kicking off the weekend, we had early flights and ended up in Minnesota hours before we could check in to our hotel without paying a fee. After wandering around and grabbing food, we made the decision to bite the bullet and chip in to pay for one person’s early check in to give us a spot to drop off our stuff. While we were standing in line, a masked face walks up to us and asks, “Are you guys the Garbage Rollers?” We had no identifying shirts or anything on at this point and after an initial shock and confusion, we said “Yes!” Turns out Peter Day from TCG Player recognized us from our gameplay videos and after telling us how great they were, offered to let us leave our stuff in his room for the time being. Beyond Peter being an absolute homie, it was the most surreal experience being recognized for our little passion project in public.

Secondly, Jayson already highlighted the Friday night dinner with Jim, but it was such a blast to sit at a table with Jim Cartwright and Xander Tabler and pick their brains about anything and everything Star Wars Unlimited. From learning about the initial pitch of the game, to Jim’s dedication and devotion, we were treated to an amazing amount of great information.

Thirdly, on Saturday night after the festivities had concluded, several FFG Designers and employees followed us back to the hotel lobby and we sat on the floor and at random tables and drafted Star Wars Unlimited until 4am! It was such a surreal experience of a lot of people just passionate to play and have fun.

Tyler – The highlight of the weekend for me was the opening ceremonies on Saturday, just before the live stream. The nerd energy was palpable, not just from the attendees, but also the designers. Everyone there was eager to get to know each other and share the game as much as possible! It’s the kind of positive environment I wish I could capture in a bottle.

Jayson – Gosh, getting recognized in the lobby was an out of body experience. It’s a Star Wars blog. One of the more bizarre 15 minutes of fame I’ve heard of for sure.

I think my favorite thing about the whole weekend was…finally meeting Justin and Tyler. I know, I know, it’s sappy, but we’ve really gotten inside each other’s heads writing together over the past few months and it was just awesome, as the lone Houston member of a Fort-Worth based team, to be in the same place as these guys. They took a real chance on me letting me write for this site, and because they did, I got to be a part of something as special as Celebration Weekend. I owe them a lot, I think they’re amazing content creators, and as it turned out, they’re awesome hangs too. Thanks boys.

Favorite tidbit of info we learned

Justin – So many cool pieces of info came from this weekend, from snippets of OP info from Josh, to design answers from various devs about questions we had, to learning about the Card Printer for SWU in the USA. My favorite info though would have to be again from our dinner with Jim Cartwright Friday night, where he shared that the Star Wars Unlimited Community Celebration Event had begun planning 2 years prior! The Community Celebration was always on their radar as something they wanted to do to kick off the game, despite having no idea who they would be inviting when it begun. The real kicker was learning that everyone on the dev team had come together and pitched ideas for who to invite from the Community. Huge thanks to whoever actually enjoys our content from the team!

Tyler – I had the opportunity to sit down with designer John Leo during a quiet moment during the event. Outside of him graciously giving me a couple rare leader cards, he answered two questions I’d had in my back pocket for the event.

First, I asked why no character in Spark of Rebellion had the pilot trait- even obvious ones like Wedge Antilles. While he couldn’t say much, he left me with the distinct impression that this omission was intentional, and that we can expect pilot-based mechanics at some point in the future.

Second, I asked about a problem that has cut the life of many previous card games I’ve played short: complexity bloat. It’s easy to start a card game off simple and accessible for new players, but that gets increasingly more difficult as the game continues, and designers need to introduce new and exciting mechanics. The amount of text on cards tends to grow until the game eventually becomes unplayable for newbies. John told me directly that Danny Schaefer (the lead designer for SWU) was vigilant about this problem and that if the amount of text in a future set crossed their internal thresholds, it would be a “let’s have a meeting”-level issue. Music to my ears that they’re thinking ahead about solving this problem!

Jayson – My favorite nugget also came from Jim, who told us a detail that I mentioned in my article- that Asmodee’s initial answer was no, and they had to be convinced to green light SWU. I can only imagine it was the same passion, brilliance, and hustle we saw from the devs all weekend that convinced them to give it the thumbs up.

Favorite Pack Opening Experience

Justin – In my first draft of Saturday night, Sugi from TCGCast provided my 3 packs and despite his kindness in telling me to draft however I wanted, I intended fully to give him a return on investment. In my first pack I opened a Hyperspace Avenger that was my instant first pick. In the second packs of cards, my 2nd pick was a Foil Cunning that was passed over to me. It was just super fun to see several pretty cards, and return some goods to a buddy for passing on some kindness!

Tyler – In my initial six sealed packs, I had a TWO LEGENDARY pack. Next to the Avenger in pack was a hyperspace Devastator! Gonna be hard to top two Star Destroyers back-to-back in a pack.

Jayson – Who the heck passed that foil Cunning to Justin!? NAME NAMES. Insanity! I’ll never ever forget my first ever card that I opened in a real SWU pack- it was a hyperspace Sabine Wren. As a Hero junkie, it felt like it was just for me, and I promptly went undefeated in sealed play with the deck I built around her…running a hyperspace Command Center, of course.

Favorite Moment in a game we played over the weekend

Justin – Obviously my favorite moment was losing 0 games all weekend My favorite moment came from a new card that was played against me in my final game of our Sealed pods Saturday afternoon. Peter Day from TCGPlayer had sat down across from me with a Leia deck that had me worried. I was running Krennic Green and had whiffed on a Rd 1 and Rd 3 play, so going into round 5 I had 7 cards in hand I believe. Peter smirks and shows me Smokes and Cinders which forces me to discard 5 cards down to 2! It’s safe to say I will never forget that card after Peter gave me a quick lesson, but boy was it fun to discover in the moment (despite the pain). I did manage to fight back and win the game thanks to the AT-ST and Blizzard Assault AT-AT that I kept as my 2 remaining cards, but that was the one moment of the weekend I can’t stop thinking about!

Tyler – I was lucky enough to play a best-of-three against my nametwin, designer Tyler Parrott. I had drafted a very silly, mono-Red Sabine aggro deck and at the end of the second game, I needed a way to close out the game with my single remaining character- a Cantina Braggart. The problem was that I needed to both avoid his Sentinel AND buff the Braggart. The solution was to play Rallying Cry followed by Precision Fire. I don’t use any of those cards in much in constructed so it was fun to combo them together for the win in draft.

Jayson – Listen, I’m not a guy who enjoys causing people pain in card games, but I’ve got to say…I played my first game of draft against Fantasy Flight Organized Play Coordinator Corey Scott. He was playing a pretty tight game with his Sabine Yellow deck, and I’d drafted a Jyn Blue deck that was running Security Complex (It was a foil base, I’m only human). I can’t imagine he was upset about me spotting him 5 health to start the game, but the honeymoon didn’t end up lasting- at one point in about round 4, I put a Devotion on a Restored Arc, giving me a 3/4 Restore 3 in the space lane. I charged it in the next turn for that sweet 6 health swing, and watched sweet Corey kind of grimace and exhale as he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to keep up with that much healing. It was…it was outstanding.

Conclusions

Jayson: I had to leave Celebration early, flying out early Saturday evening so I could be back in town for my Sunday morning obligations. When I left, I was really bummed, and not just because I wanted to play more SWU and open more packs. I was bummed because the optimism and energy and Tyler spoke about above can’t be bottled. Mutual passion is powerful, intoxicating even, and I am so thankful to Fantasy Flight for letting us experience it with one another.

We laughed after we got our invite to Celebration Weekend that if nothing cool related to content creation ever happened to us ever again, it would still all have been worth it. That’s even more true now, on the other side of it. What a weekend. What a community.

What a game.

Be sure to keep an eye out on our YouTube for Pack Openings and gameplay from the weekend. The event was unreal, and we cannot thank FFG enough for inviting us out! This is just a small taste of what community events will look like for Star Wars Unlimited, and we can’t wait to celebrate more with the full community in the future at big events like the Galactic Championship!