A Frank Talk About The Bothan Invitational

“With the great relationships we’ve built across the competitive SWU landscape, our thriving Discord community, and our own desire to host a weekend tournament, we decided to go for it. We found a great partner in Cards HQ Atlanta and planned the event.” - Frank

The Bothan Invitational is less than a week away, so we took this moment to speak with Frank from the Bothan Network to learn more about how the idea started and what to expect from the weekend.

Frank (right) with teammate Daniel “Moophisto” at the Gamers N Geeks PQ.

We’re getting even closer to the start of the Bothan Invitational, which is very exciting. How did you decide that you wanted to run such an event?

When our competition team, the Bothan Network, grew to over 20 players, we began joking that some tournaments felt like a “Bothan Invitational” because we had to play each other so often. After a few tournaments of making the joke, we started taking the idea more seriously.

The primary motivation to host this fan-run event is our passionate love for Star Wars: Unlimited. Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) has evolved the trading card game (TCG) design space into something with the perfect DNA for competitive players. They’ve reduced draw variance by introducing the card-down resource system, coupled with the “Howling Mine” effect of drawing two cards per turn. The alternating action mechanic — without “instant” speed interaction — makes the game feel like chess. Given a board state and the information at hand, players can analyze and determine the optimal play lines. There hasn’t been a TCG with such strong mechanics for high-level competitive players.

FFG is a wonderfully creative game company that thrives in the casual game niche. However, it hasn’t found long-term success with any of its “competitive” games, and the competitive tournament structure for SWU has so far felt like an afterthought during Season Zero. As much as they’ve innovated on game design, they haven’t yet evolved into a company that fully supports a competitive scene. Some of this may be due to restrictions from their Star Wars intellectual property (IP) licensing agreements. We don’t know for sure, but what we do know is that, in the Internet Age of 2025, we don’t have to passively rely on a corporate game company — understandably driven by profit motives and licensing contracts — to determine how we have fun with their product. Our public, free-to-join Bothan Network Discord server has grown to 1,200 SWU players, all looking to connect and find competitive, yet fun, games of SWU. We built our team’s public Discord to be a place where chill but competitive SWU players can meet each other. It has also become a space where many content creators collaborate and engage with their audiences.

With the great relationships we’ve built across the competitive SWU landscape, our thriving Discord community, and our own desire to host a weekend tournament, we decided to go for it. We found a great partner in Cards HQ Atlanta and planned the event.

When we organized and announced the Bothan Invitational: Atlanta (The Battle at BIATL) in early January, FFG had no competitive events beyond the Set 3 Planetary Qualifiers (PQs) announced or scheduled. We looked at the FFG calendar and saw a large gap between the end of Set 3 PQs and what we guessed would be the start of Set 4 PQs. I say “guessed” because FFG has been consistently late in announcing event dates and locations.

There was also a gap in the Star City Games schedule—they didn’t have a Set 4 event until mid-April in Denver. We didn’t want to wait that long to have a major event with the new set releasing in early March. For Set 2, we had Gen Con; for Set 3, we had SCG: Columbus. But for Set 4, the calendar seemed wide open. We had no reason to expect any other major competitive events besides Star City Games’ cash-prize series. It was only after we had announced and sold tickets that FFG surprised us by announcing Sector and Regional tournaments. Honestly, it worked out for the better. Had FFG announced those tournaments earlier, we likely wouldn’t have hosted this event — but now that we see how incredible this weekend is going to be, I’m glad it happened this way.

The very first tournament of the invitational will be a 3v3 event. What made you decide to run it in that format and how have you handled the logistics for it?

TCGs are just better when played with friends. While SWU’s casual format hasn’t taken off  (pun intended) yet, we have high hopes for Twin Suns in the near future — and perhaps a new format that may be coming later this year. Competitive play, as set up by FFG, misses some of the “best-played-with-friends” aspects of TCGs. So, we wanted to showcase at BIATL how much fun you can have with friends while still competing. That’s why we’re running a $2,100 3v3 prize tournament.

As for logistics, we went with a double-elimination bracket. Like “March Madness” in basketball, we’re running a free online competition where people can predict the winning teams in the 3v3 tournament. Whoever makes the most correct predictions will win a free event t-shirt, and the runner-up will get a free swag bag filled with event goodies that all attending players will also receive. Anyone can enter at this link, which will also provide live updates during the event as matches conclude.

Even in the 3v3 space, we benefit from FFG’s excellent SWU mechanics. Before a game starts, you already know your opponent’s leader and base. So, I thought, why not incorporate that public information into a seat draft? Based on which team wins the initiative roll, players will take turns—like a snake draft—placing their leader and base. It’s a fun and high-skill interaction that leverages SWU’s core mechanics and reinforces our belief that SWU is the best competitive TCG ever designed. One of the 3v3 teams, the Galactic Gonks, even filmed us demonstrating the seat draft if you’d like to see how it works.

What’s been one of the more challenging aspects of planning the invitational?

The biggest challenge has been the lack of support from FFG. We assume it’s due to licensing restrictions related to the Star Wars IP, but they can’t support fan-run events. We accidentally violated their IP policy. After selling out both the 3v3 and the Saturday $6K event, we revealed an exclusive playmat that we commissioned from a SWU freelance artist. Unfortunately, this became an expensive mistake of their internal company policy concerning the IP, forcing us to change our event artwork and they suspended my wife Courtney’s Blonde Sabine YouTube channel from the FFG content creators’ program for at least six months. Lesson learned, and we corrected our mistakes as best as we could by replacing all the offending art work at our own expense.

What are you most excited about for this event?

The exclusive playmat art is still ridiculously cool. They’re serialized 1 to 25, and 23 of them will only be awarded to the top two teams of the 3v3, the top 16 of the $6K, and the winner of the Sunday $2K. Playmat #24 will be gifted to our amazing Tournament Organizer, Nick Fraser, and #25 will be auctioned to the highest bidder to benefit our designated charity, Our House, an afterschool and summer program in Auburn, Alabama, that works with at-risk tweens and teenagers.

But for me personally, it’s about the time we’ll spend together with friends. This weekend will be epic — almost 200 of the world’s best SWU players, many of whom I now consider friends, will gather to battle. Honestly, I don’t care how well I do, how our team does, or who wins the $2,000 first prize in the $6K. We’ll all win by spending quality time together, playing the game we love.
The 3v3 competition has also inspired many friend groups to form competitive SWU teams, which has been awesome to see. I’m excited to meet them all in Atlanta.

For those that aren’t participating, but want to watch the games, what are some of the ways they can observe?

Courtney will be streaming the entire event live on her YouTube channel, and Maclunky Gaming will be simulcasting it on their Twitch channel. The 3v3 bracket will be updated live at this link, where you can also join the “March Madness” prediction game for free.