Editors Note: Star Wars Celebration II (the biggest Star Wars Event of the year aside from Episode II) was the location of the first large event for the Star Wars TCG and of the first Star Wars TCG sanctioned tournaments. Below are the experiences of one of the attendees, who calls himself "Scooby Dew".

Day 1 - Friday: Not a whole lot happened with the TCG area on Friday. The area had quite a few tables, but on Friday, they were mostly used by people to sit and rest or eat. I stopped by quite a few times looking to pick up a game or two, but no dice. The only thing I caught was a couple of WOTC employees playing a game, with 2 advanced starters.

Day 2 - Saturday: Saturday was definitely TCG day. Most of the morning, people were opening packs and putting decks together, but I did get a couple games in. Then at 1 PM, the Skirmishes started. What's a Skirmish? In terms of the TCG, it's basically King of the Hill, they just paired people up to play. If you won, you played the next person waiting to play. If you won two in a row, you were allowed to play in the "Final Battle" (a.k.a. the tournament) at 1:00 PM. Also, whenever you played a game, you got a free 11 Card Booster, a Zam Wesell Promo, and a raffle ticket.

The rules for the Skirmishes and the Final Battle were pretty relaxed. You only had to have one deck, Light Side or Dark Side. If two people were playing the same side, you rolled to determine who was Dark Side. Since a good portion of people were playing Light Side, it was a significant advantage to get to be Dark (although I won't get too much into that here).

At about 4:00 PM, they had the raffle, and gave away a lot of boosters, T-shirts, and advanced starter decks. Then about 4:30-5:00 PM, the tournament started. They announced that this would be the first sanctioned tournament, and had everyone that didn't have a DCI number sign up for one (free, of course).

There were 27 people that made it in, so a few got byes. I believe the tournament went to around 9:30 PM. I made it to the final four and I won a complete set. The prizes were as follows:
1st Place: Master Replica of Han Solo Blaster (retail value: $449) and a complete 180 card foil set of the game.
2nd-4th: A complete non-foil set (There was talk of also giving second place a booster box, but I'm not sure if that was done or not).
5th-8th: A box of 11 card boosters.
9th-16th: Eighteen 11 card booster packs.
17th-27th: Nine 11 card booster packs.

Day 3 - Sunday: Sunday there were a lot of people playing. They again ran Skirmishes, and gave out the same stuff. No tournament, but a whole lot of people still playing. I had a great time, playing against all sorts of decks. The whole Star Wars TCG experience was incredible. I met and played against people from around the world. Pretty amazing for a game that's only been out just over a week. I saw some things that'll never be seen again in normal tournaments (like my Anakin striking down Padme.... that was just evil ;) )

A picture of me at the tournament can be found on the offical site, in the Celebration II picture view, picture number 119. I'm sitting down on the left with the cap.

07 May 2002