JediWars.com

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There And Back Again: A history of JediWars.com
shnar	Some personal and site background info for anyone who cares: I created this site a long time ago, back when Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight was about to be released. This was in the late 90s and the internet was in its infancy. One Friday, I discovered "jediknight.com" was not yet registered, so I tried to register it. Someone beat me to the punch by minutes! I failed to get it, and whomever got it never did anything with it, probably eventually sold it to LucasFilm. So, instead I saw "jediwars.com" was available, so I grabbed that one. The original incarnation of jediwars.com was going to be new, custom missions for X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and the Jedi Knight games, wrapped up in stories that were hosted on the website. You would make simple choices, and then based on what you chose the next mission could be downloaded. We didn't get very far, had an initial X-Wing mission and the start of a Jedi Knight mission. Then the site just sat. For a long while. Then, Imperial Assault came out. I loved Doom: The Boardgame when it came out, so reminiscent of Space Hulk (one of my all time favorite games), and so really enjoyed Descent (1st and 2nd Edition). I even tried creating a custom "Advanced Campaign" for Doom, similar to Descent's Road To Legend (check out https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/502/and-hell-followed ). When Imperial Assault was announced, I was in paradise. A game system I absolutely loved in a setting that I've loved since I was a 5 year old. And then I remembered, I owned "jediwars.com". Opportunity! After playing the game a lot (I was even invited to FFG's beta testing team on future expansions), I knew I had to put jediwars.com towards something Imperial Assault related. Many ideas came about, a "campaign tracker", a way to track your campaigns (other than the sheets the game came with)? custom missions? Tournament tracker for the skirmish mode? But the first thing that just seemed like a perfect fit was a tool to help build your squads. Squad Building isn't very complex, a certain number of points in two decks, that's about it, and my programming skills were vastly improved from the 90s (I'm a programmer by profession these days), so I decided to create the website you're seeing now. Fast-Forward to about 8 years ago, my personal life went through a lot of turmoil (the biggest of which, my wife of 22 years passed away). Through that, I shifted hosting domains. In the process, jediwars.com was effectively shut down, mainly because 1) I failed to backup the production database and 2) I never took the time to get the new hosting platform to host jediwars.com. As things have settled, I decided to throw this back up. I don't have the old DB, but I have most the assets and files and code, so it's relatively back the way it was. It does not have ALL the expansions, so to get this truly functional, I have to get images of all the missing cards. But otherwise, everything else seems to be working the way it was. So now that the site is working, here's a very high level list of goals (a roadmap if you will): - Get Things Up To Date: my first goal with this site back up is to get any and all missing cards into the database. There are a handful of images I don't seem to have anymore and need to recreate from my original scans. - Add missing expansions: When I originally ran the site, not all the expansions were released. I need to get all the cards from all the remaining expansions added - Better Settings: Mainly filters. You should be able to enter in how many copies of which games you have, and the cards will be limited by that. - Custom Cards: On thing that inspired me to get this site running again is the IA Continuity Project (https://ia-continuityproject.com/). Love that this game is still finding life after FFG failed to give us that RotJ expansion. Once I have all the official stuff added, I'm very tempted to add these cards. - Tournament Tracker: I do want have a way to create tournaments and track them online. Lots of fun design work needed for that. - Campaign Tracker: A way to start a campaign, have all the components you own/use added, and players, and stats, etc. This one would be rather complex, mainly lots of data, but would be a fun project, so I have it as a dream goal. TLDR: We're back, and I'll slowly get all the missing cards. -shnar
0	Posted: Oct 31, 2025 12:22 AM Reply Quote

There And Back Again: A history of JediWars.com

shnar

Some personal and site background info for anyone who cares:

I created this site a long time ago, back when Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight was about to be released. This was in the late 90s and the internet was in its infancy. One Friday, I discovered "jediknight.com" was not yet registered, so I tried to register it. Someone beat me to the punch by minutes! I failed to get it, and whomever got it never did anything with it, probably eventually sold it to LucasFilm. So, instead I saw "jediwars.com" was available, so I grabbed that one.

The original incarnation of jediwars.com was going to be new, custom missions for X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and the Jedi Knight games, wrapped up in stories that were hosted on the website. You would make simple choices, and then based on what you chose the next mission could be downloaded. We didn't get very far, had an initial X-Wing mission and the start of a Jedi Knight mission. Then the site just sat. For a long while.

Then, Imperial Assault came out. I loved Doom: The Boardgame when it came out, so reminiscent of Space Hulk (one of my all time favorite games), and so really enjoyed Descent (1st and 2nd Edition). I even tried creating a custom "Advanced Campaign" for Doom, similar to Descent's Road To Legend (check out https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/502/and-hell-followed ). When Imperial Assault was announced, I was in paradise. A game system I absolutely loved in a setting that I've loved since I was a 5 year old. And then I remembered, I owned "jediwars.com". Opportunity!

After playing the game a lot (I was even invited to FFG's beta testing team on future expansions), I knew I had to put jediwars.com towards something Imperial Assault related. Many ideas came about, a "campaign tracker", a way to track your campaigns (other than the sheets the game came with)? custom missions? Tournament tracker for the skirmish mode? But the first thing that just seemed like a perfect fit was a tool to help build your squads. Squad Building isn't very complex, a certain number of points in two decks, that's about it, and my programming skills were vastly improved from the 90s (I'm a programmer by profession these days), so I decided to create the website you're seeing now.

Fast-Forward to about 8 years ago, my personal life went through a lot of turmoil (the biggest of which, my wife of 22 years passed away). Through that, I shifted hosting domains. In the process, jediwars.com was effectively shut down, mainly because 1) I failed to backup the production database and 2) I never took the time to get the new hosting platform to host jediwars.com. As things have settled, I decided to throw this back up. I don't have the old DB, but I have most the assets and files and code, so it's relatively back the way it was. It does not have ALL the expansions, so to get this truly functional, I have to get images of all the missing cards. But otherwise, everything else seems to be working the way it was.

So now that the site is working, here's a very high level list of goals (a roadmap if you will):

- Get Things Up To Date: my first goal with this site back up is to get any and all missing cards into the database. There are a handful of images I don't seem to have anymore and need to recreate from my original scans.
- Add missing expansions: When I originally ran the site, not all the expansions were released. I need to get all the cards from all the remaining expansions added
- Better Settings: Mainly filters. You should be able to enter in how many copies of which games you have, and the cards will be limited by that.
- Custom Cards: On thing that inspired me to get this site running again is the IA Continuity Project (https://ia-continuityproject.com/). Love that this game is still finding life after FFG failed to give us that RotJ expansion. Once I have all the official stuff added, I'm very tempted to add these cards.
- Tournament Tracker: I do want have a way to create tournaments and track them online. Lots of fun design work needed for that.
- Campaign Tracker: A way to start a campaign, have all the components you own/use added, and players, and stats, etc. This one would be rather complex, mainly lots of data, but would be a fun project, so I have it as a dream goal.

TLDR: We're back, and I'll slowly get all the missing cards.

-shnar

Posted: Oct 31, 2025 12:22 AM

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