MIGHTY JABBA SAILS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC
Francis K. Lalumiere

This morning, Thursday, October 5, was held the first ever Jabba's Palace Sealed Deck tournament, which ended in a final confrontation between two European players.

Twenty-four players showed up in one of the smaller tournament halls - a respectable number considering that 170 competitors were (and still are at the time of this writing) hard at work in the main tournament hall, fighting for a spot in Day 2 of the Star Wars CCG World Championship.

Players had access to one brand new Jabba's Palace Sealed Deck box, which contains twenty exclusive premium cards and six Jabba's Palace expansion packs. Out of those, participants were asked to build 40-card decks, and they were allowed forty minutes to complete every game. The two new objectives were everywhere and many of the new premium cards made recurring appearances, including Mighty Jabba and Lando With Vibro-Ax who kept coming back for an encore.

Throughout the tournament, the Light Side dominated. "When everybody was done with their first game, only one Dark Side player (Yannick Lapointe) had earned a victory," says Tournament Director Jeff Weitkamp - Gold 40. Weitkamp attributed the Light Side's strength to the fact that many World Class players, already qualified for Day 2 of their Championship and playing for fun while waiting for tomorrow's big event, had been assigned the "good guys."

After four games, the two top players got ready for a final confrontation. They were Koen Meijssen from Holland, with a score of 8 (+69) and Martin Akesson from Sweden, who had cumulated a score of 6 (+17). A very chic European duel! Both opponents played a deck based on Tatooine, with a strong presence on the ground. :) The game lasted for a full hour and ended with Meijssen claiming the match by 3 Force.

Congratulations to our winner, who went home with a special Lord Vader T-shirt - DecipherCon 2000 edition - and to everybody who participated!

Apart from my witnessing the new cards in action, the most interesting aspect of the tournament for me was the fact that in the final game, the two participants played in English. And English is a second language for both of them, the only one they had in common. It made for a very vivid illustration of Star Wars CCG bridging the gap between people with quite different backgrounds.

Francis K. Lalumiere
The Juggler