Greetings!
Let me introduce myself. I am Queen Jawa, a student at the University of Florida. I acquired the "Queen Jawa Speaks" forum through my close relationship with Beakman. Although he is (by far) a better player than I am, I have the privilege of saying that *I* was responsible for bring SW:CCG into our lives.
It all started during the Christmas of 1996 when I bought the original two-player set for my youngest brother William without realizing that he already owned it (and how many of those cheezy Vaders does a nine-year-old boy really need anyway?). Since I was too lazy to take it back to the Wal-Mart in St. Augustine, Florida (my hometown -- look in a history book if you've never heard of it), I took it back to Gainesville and parked it on my coffee table. I probably would have just used the game as a coaster until the condensation that ran off mugs of beer and plastic tumblers filled with cherry-flavored Kool-Aid permanently plastered the waterlogged box to the surface of the table if Beakman hadn't come over to my apartment to watch the 1996 Sugar Bowl game. [Note: Just to refresh your memory, that was the game in which the Florida Gators slaughtered the FSU Seminoles and claimed the national title.] Although the 1996 Sugar Bowl was an incredible game, Beaks just couldn't stop staring at the box on the coffee table, and I finally offered to let him examine the box. Just as any male obsessed with Star Wars would have, Beaks didn't just look at the box; he read each and every word on the box and then held it up to the halogen lamp in my apartment to see if he could actually see any of the cards in it (OK, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but close enough). After watching the poor guy clutch the box for a while, told him that he could have the game. Two days later, Beaks and his roommate Brian spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to play by reading the rules in the box. I still remember them trying to figure out what the heck battle destiny and attrition is. Fortunately, Beaks was smart enough to head to the Internet to look the game up and he's been playing ever since.
I originally learned how to play the game because I wanted to be able to understand what the heck Beaks was talking about. I usually just played decks that he had put together. The only reason I ever bought packs was because I liked opening packs -- there's something about opening a pack and hoping for a good rare that I love. Later I started putting together decks for myself because I'm the most competitive person on the planet and wanted to win games using decks that I designed myself.
I've discovered that the SW:CCG game is built around a cyber-community of sorts that is generally polite, helpful, and supportive. The game itself is a nice diversion from my real life of gathering data for my thesis, grading papers for the writing course for which I am a graduate assistant, and my part-time job as a "publications assistant" at UF. I like this game, but it certainly isn't my whole life. I'm not a nerd, freak or a geek. I think Star Wars is very, very cool, but it's not my religion or my philosophical standard. I just want to shuffle my deck, draw my eight cards, remember to force drain, and pray that a Visage of the Emperor comes up when I need a decent destiny draw.
Queen Jawa