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For those of a certain age, the original Star Wars movies premiered at formative moments in our lives—and thus stayed with us forever. I had only recently turned four when Star Wars came out in 1977, but I saw Empire and Jedi in the theater, and these movies fueled my inner geek for years to come.

We geeks needed lots of fuel, too, for it was a long slog between the Jedi credits rolling off the screen in 1983 and standing in line for The Phantom Menace premiere in 1999. We subsisted on Star Wars collectibles from action figures to Lego Millennium Falcons to LaserDiscs. Later, in 1995, some of us also played a ridiculously complicated but addictive customizable card game based on the Star Wars universe.

In fact, some of us even got good enough at the game—and spent so much money on it—that we made it to the World Championships.

Card games?

I fell particularly hard for the Star Wars card game, created by a company called Decipher. A friend, Brian Guthrie, and I had started playing Decipher’s Star Trek card game in 1995 when I was a senior in college at the University of Texas. When we learned of a forthcoming Star Wars version, we were both ecstatic.

Even back then, card games felt like an anachronism. In the college dorms we all played video games like the Madden and the Super Mario series on Super Nintendo; the nerdier among us also played Civilization and Doom on PC. Who had time for card games? Nevertheless, in 1993, Wizards of the Coast published the first trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, which proved a huge hit. Two years later, the Star Wars card game appeared, using some similar mechanics.

To play the game, players would each assemble a 60-card deck—including characters, locations, and effects—from their collections. And to build those collections, you had to spend money.

Star Wars: CCG was sold in individual packs of 15 cards at a retail price of $3 per pack. With 36 packs, a full box could cost nearly $100. Each pack contained several common and uncommon cards along with one rare card. Of course the rare cards were the most powerful, featuring main characters like Obi Wan Kenobi. (See card lists and images here). Cards were randomized, meaning that you could buy a box—or even a case of six boxes—and still not be guaranteed even a single Darth Vader.

For a graduate student on a budget, this proved most frustrating. Eat Ramen noodles for a week, buy a few packs of cards, and oh, hey, I got another Kitik Keed'kak and a Bantha Droid! I started collecting game cards as soon as they were released. And even though I had left Austin for graduate school in Missouri, Brian and I would play over the telephone. (Did I mention that we were geeks?)

I moved back to Texas in the summer of 1997. By then there was something of a competitive Star Wars: CCG scene, with tournaments most weekends around the state.

Before a tournament, you would design a dark-side and a light-side deck, typically playing three games with each. At this time, the best decks were so-called “mains and toys,” which meant having Darth Vader, his lightsaber, and Grand Moff Tarkin on one side and Obi-Wan Kenobi, his lightsaber, and Luke Skywalker on the other. People with money would stock their decks, for example, with six Vaders and six Vader's Lightsabers... and proceed to wreck shop. Those without money got shredded.

By the spring of 1997, Decipher decided to bring a little more variability to its game with its third expansion, “Dagobah.” This set brought some valid counters to "mains and toys" decks, including my favorite cards: Never Tell Me the Odds and 3,720-to-1. These cards allowed players with clever strategies but few rare cards a chance to upset the "multiple Vader" decks.

"Mains and toys" decks dominated the first World Championships that Decipher held in 1996, but 1997 promised to be different. The Texas regional was played at Texas A&M University in College Station. Brian and I both went, as did other like-minded friends we had made around Austin. I had only played a couple of tournaments before then because I couldn’t afford a competitive deck, but I decided to give this one a shot—and somehow, I won.