If you’re not familiar with the phrase, this was one of the slogans of Magic the Gathering back in the early 2000’s. The gist being that by traveling to big MtG events, you’d be able to play the game you love and see major parts of the world in the process!

It’s been two weeks since Gencon and now seemed like the perfect time to reflect on why traveling to big events in TCGs (and Star Wars Unlimited specifically) is so great! Whether you’re new to TCGs completely or have never traveled outside your local region for a big tournament, there are several reasons I believe traveling to big events is an absolute blast. After we talk through these items, feel free to keep reading for my personal recap of Gencon adventures!

The Game

First and foremost, traveling is worth it because you get to play the game! With Star Wars Unlimited, all the big events (Sectors, Regionals, and the Galactic Championship) will be independent events (not at Gencon, Essen Spiel, other established conventions) that you can go to and focus solely on playing the game you love! Whether you enjoy competition or just playing casually with a dedicated group, there will be options for both types of players at these big events.

The big selling point is the large competitive event awarding exclusive prizes and earning leaderboard points (coming Season 1) to flex your play ability, but FFG has already stated there will be side events at these events. In past games, that included prize walls that you could earn exclusive prizes by playing in the big event and earning tickets or by playing in pods/side events.

Since these will be multi-day events, you have the flexibility to travel in for one or multiple of the days and enjoy as much Star Wars Unlimited as you so choose!

The Prizes

With big competitive events come big prizes! While we don’t know yet if FFG is interested in doing cash events for this game, we can count on them continuing to do exclusive alt-art cards, promos, playmats and more! As stated above, if you aren’t drawn to high competition, you also have the option of playing in lower stakes side events and gaining tickets to turn in for other exclusive goodies on the prize wall!

Collectors can earn the goodies they seek, and other players, not enticed by shiny things, can turn around and sell their winnings/earnings to fund their trip.

The Community

There are a lot of fantastic and awesome people the play this game. Easily my favorite thing about traveling to events is getting to hang out with friends, competitors, and new faces! Whether its doing SWU things (testing, Twin suns, drafting, etc), playing other games, or after hours hangs, it can’t be understated how great a time can be had with people that enjoy the same stuff as you. Whether you already chat in the Discords, debate on the Reddit threads, or lose your sanity in the Facebook comments, there is plenty of room for YOU when we all come together to play this game!

While I was able to do great in the big event at Gencon and got invited to the Content creator event, my favorite moments of Gencon were easily the times I was hanging with old and new friends, cube drafting, getting food and drinks, and just having a good time!

Galactic Champs

If you’ve made it this far, this is a friendly reminder that THE FIRST GALACTIC CHAMPIONSHIP IN SUMMER 2025 IS OPEN TO ALL! This 3-day event is going to be a BLAST, and I highly recommend doing what you can to put it on your calendar and plan a trip! With qualifying starting in Season 1 for future Galactic Champs, this is your only chance at the one event EVERYONE will be trying to go to! Jim Cartwright has said it will be a “Destination” as far as location goes and that only heightens the hype in my brain! Here’s to hoping you’ll join us to play some SWU games together wherever it is next summer, because we will definitely do everything we can to be there!

It’s only now that I realize my three points were directly correlated to the C3OP mantra from Fantasty Flight Games, Collect, Connect, and Compete! Well played OP…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Inception’s Gencon

GenCon was not something on my radar heading into 2024! It’s an event I’ve never had the pleasure of traveling to, despite a strong desire for. My family (5-year-old and 1-year-old) is in a tough season of traveling- being gone for long periods of time is a feelsbad for my Spouse. This year though, my wife planned her annual girls’ trip (with college roommates) the same weekend as GenCon. This lined up well and we had parent availability to watch the boys while both of us were gone, so I was able to start scheduling a GenCon trip in late April. Shoutout to John Tatta, Dusty, Trent, and Taelor Hostutler for letting me slip into their AirBnB late in the scheduling game!

We ran in to the Golden Dice guys who landed around the same time as us and refused to say hi (those jerks)! I flew in late Wednesday night and was originally going to be picked up at the airport by John Tatta and Mike Gemme driving in from Pittsburgh, but Mike’s flight was delayed so me and Richard took an Uber to the AirBnB. If you’ve been to GenCon before, you know Will Call is a trial by fire, and, unfortunately, I was not available when event tickets went on sale and had to count on a buddy buying my tickets via friends list. This meant that my Thursday event ticket was sitting at Will Call, and I would need to pick it up Wednesday night to ensure we weren’t waiting in Will Call when the event started Thursday! Thankfully it was about 11:30pm when we finally made it there, and the line sped through in about 15 minutes.

About 4 hours of sleep later, we begin day 1 of Gencon with my first large event. This is the list I played in Thursday’s large event.

It was pretty close to what most would call the “stock” Sabine Green list with a few variables. I knew from testing that I was definitely going the 3 Darksaber plan, and it won me many games on the day. With the uptick of annoying space stuff in the meta, I also transitioned mostly off of Alliance X-wing to Rebel Pathfinder late, but without really testing it went 2 and 1 as opposed to 3 saboteurs and 0 X-wings. The final last-minute change was throwing 1 Valiant Assault Ship into the main deck and 2 more into the sideboard. The theory was that if I ran into a Boba Yellow deck and they got too greedy with the Cunning, I’d be able to ambush in the ship to delete a buffed Seventh Fleet Defender. It also had some cool play into control decks that were ramping past me getting an extra 2 power.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the list, though the Valiant’s got sideboarded out most of the day as I played against 0 Boba Yellow somehow.

Round 1 vs Vader Green 30

It was nice to sit down Round 1 with nerves and play into a matchup I was pretty well favored into. Game 1 was how the matchup usually goes with a win before Vader could get out. Game 2 was a little more complex with Yularen and Crumb sticking around most of the game, he had enough healing to get to the 7 resource round. After playing a Vader unit to clear some of my board, he pulled a Motti with the When Played which signaled scary things to me with Vader leader about to deploy. Thankfully I had Timely to Ambush in a Wrecker defeating his Vader unit and overwhelming Motti leading to a scoop by my opponent.

2-0

Round 2 vs Han1 Green 30

I hadn’t played a lot into Han1 Green in set 2 but felt like I was probably going to be okay if I could dodge the Round 1 3 drop (Ezra on ground if I went ground, or Falcon if I went space). I was able to do that both games and these were over very fast (a common theme for the day). My opponent asked if I minded running back a few test matches and we actually finished 2 more games with him taking the 4th match. A couple of buddies walked over after we finally finished really confused why our match had taken so long when I let them know it had been a grueling 3-1 win!

2-0

It was at this point that I got a DM from my buddy on Discord that I had asked to try and periodically checkout a Convention Pack from his home. He had come through! As soon as we hit the lunch break it would be time to go find out if we had a glitch in the matrix or we won the lottery!

Spoiler alert…

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Round 3 vs Sabine Green ECL (Pair-down)

Shoutout to my new friend William who was also from Texas (Lubbock if I recall) and I will be seeing again at the Dallas Planetary Qualifier in October! He had an interesting Sabine build including Maz Kanata, and he had the Sundari Peacekeepers which can be really strong in the mirror. He played as the control each game, with game 1 being a fairly clean win and game 2 coming down to the wire. I was able to rebel assault to get both my remaining units attacks in and get him to 22 damage, but he actually had lethal on board (with 4 unit attacks) on his side. Fortunately for me, he attacked with the one unit that could clear a Smuggled Cassian first, so I followed up with the Ready Cassian to beat him to lethal.

2-0

Round 4 vs Sabine Green ECL

Two mirrors in a row! I opened A-Wing Round 1 and my opponent did the same (thankfully not using ECL). This allowed me to take the beneficial attack into his A-wing first action Round 2 and I got pretty far ahead. He was able to find 2 Bright Hopes to stall the game out, but I eventually closed it out. From what I remember of Game 2, he missed a Round 1 play and it was cruise control from there for me.

2-0

Round 5 vs Boba Green ECL (Pair-down)

An absolute tragedy. Not only was I paired down for the second time of the day, I got paired into fellow Garbage Roller Tyler (DJStormtrooper). He had pivoted to Boba Green last minute before the tournament, and we had played a couple quick games earlier in the day while waiting on the tournament to start where he swiftly 2-0’d me. This was a terrifying moment.

Game 1 he only drew space the first 2 rounds (Merc Gunship, 7th Fleet Defender) and I went ground. After deploying Sabine I was also able to drop Darksaber and he scooped Game 1 knowing it was over.

Game 2 was closer, but I was able to setup a big Rebel Assault at the start of the Boba deploy round to push him from 12 damage to 24 damage and the game was all but over at this point, so he scooped again.

2-0

There was still 51 minutes left on the match timer at this point! Several people around us looked at us quite confused as we got up and left so fast. At 3-2 he still had a shot to Top 16 if he could win out, and I knew I just needed to win 1 of my last 2 games as my strength of schedule with 2 pair downs likely wasn’t going to cut it at 5-2.

Round 6 vs Krennic Green 30

This was an absolute roadblock of a match. Earlier in the day he had faced John Tatta and had 3 maindeck Devastators. With this knowledge, I thought he was playing a super tall Krennic and I would probably have a good shot at Game 1 before games 2/3 got tight after he was able to sideboard out all the big star destroyers.

Unfortunately, my gameplan didn’t work out quite well, and I pushed a little too hard with an early ECL that was able to be punished by a Deathtrooper. I got him to the low-mid 20s before he was able to stabilize and I didn’t draw any of the big closer cards.

Game 2 he missed a round 1 play and played an Inferno Four round 2, so I thought I was in a pretty good spot after pushing damage. I hadn’t realized how much blue he was running in his deck though, and he was able to drop a 6/6 Childsen on 4 resources. I hadn’t drawn anything to deal with it, so I went into the next round with my board intact hoping to find Poe, Darksaber, or Heroic Sac that could deal with the Childsen and keep board advantage. I did not though and had to run a good chunk of my board into Childsen and he had removal for the rest of it. The game was over at this point, so I went ahead and scooped to reset my brain for the last round knowing I needed the win.

0-2

Round 7 vs Sabine Green ECL

Final round and I run into my 3rd mirror of the day! I can’t remember if it was the first or 2nd game, but I missed a play on the 3 resource round, so my goal was to setup a Rebel Assault win on 5 resources, which I was able to do and get the win. The other game was less close with us racing and me getting there ahead by about 8-10 damage.

2-0

I ended up finishing 6th with the next to worst tiebreakers of the 6-1’s (as expected with 2 pair downs) and earned this sweet Finalizer mat!

Corey Scott of the OP team picked this art as it was his favorite set 2 art. I wasn’t as excited when I heard what was on the mat, but when I saw it up close the art really does pop with a lot more detail!

Overall, I was happy with how my list ran, but definitely would change things before the next tournament I would play Sabine in. Since I earned my mat, I decided I’d rather make the most of the Con and sold my Saturday Large Event ticket Thursday night.

Initially, when I scheduled my GenCon trip, John asked if I wanted to join him and a few others for dinner at St Elmos on Thursday night. As we got closer to GenCon though, it turned out the whole KTOD Competitive team (8 members) was going to make it to Gencon Thursday night and that dinner had become a KTOD Team Dinner. Mike, John, and the team were kind enough to allow me to still join and be the fly on the wall!

Friday and Saturday consisted of a lot of drafting via Cube, boxes people had won in the large events, and even a few drafts with FFG employees who had some extra time and product! They’d come through the tables looking for people that tied down to an event and invite them to join in for draft. Shoutout to Lead Designer Danny Schaefer for absolutely crushing my soul in 2 separate drafts.

The highlight of the hangs was definitely playing with John Tatta’s FULLY HYPERSPACE CUBE! Every single card was of the hyperspace non-foil variety, and he had curated the cube to cut a lot of bad cards, so this was definitely the most unique draft experience I’ve had with this game visually and mechanically! My favorite part was definitely ruining dreams dropping a Fallen Lightsaber on Chirrut Imwe.

Shoutout to our friend Ophir (wooooo) who 7-0’d the Friday event on Qi’ra Green! His YouTube channel has a detailed video about the list if you want to learn more about the deck, he’s happy to share all he knows!

We also made it to the Content Creator event Friday night, where FFG gave us 6 SHD packs to draft with, a bunch of Gamegenic accessories and yet another sweet playmat! I’m officially on the collect all the event exclusive playmats train, so if anyone has a TwitchCon Maximum Firepower playmat they’d like to move, hit me up! That’s the only one I’m missing outside of the mega rare Overwhelming Barrage playmat.

Board games were played, drinks were had, and new friends were made. It was so great to see so many of my favorite people that played Star Wars Destiny back in the day again, and we all caught up right where we left off 5 years ago! The Star Wars Unlimited community is great, and I encourage you to interact with it as much as you can (but especially in person)!