Blizzard has announced that a StarCraft 2 tournament will take place during this year’s Worldwide Invitational event in Paris, on the 28th and 29th of June. The 2 versus 2 tournament will pitch WWI visitors against each other and give them a chance to win prizes.

To enter the tournament, players must have a ticket for the WWI event, and sign up here. A qualifying competition will be held by GosuGamers, where hopeful participants will compete in a 2v2 StarCraft: Brood War single elimination tournament.

The Prizes are:

• First Prize: A Frostmourne Replica
• Second Prize: Logitech G51 Surround Sound Speaker System
• Third Prize: Logitech G15 Keyboard and a Logitech G5 mouse

In summary:

1. Have a 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational ticket and have StarCraft: Brood War
2. Before May 13th 00:01am CET: Sign up on the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational site
3. Before May 23rd 00:01am CET: Confirm attendance in the qualifiers run by GosuGamers
4. May 24th and 25th: Be one of the best 16 teams at the qualifiers
5. June 28th before 11:00am CET: Confirm attendance on-site at the 2008 Worldwide Invitational in Paris

Check out the rest of the details here.

Don’t have StarCraft: Brood War and want to participate in the tournament? You’re in luck! Blizzard has launched a new online store which now offers most of Blizzard’s games for download. For 14.99$, the StarCraft Anthology, featuring StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War, can be downloaded straight into your computer.

Creating an account for the store also allows those of you who own physical versions of Blizzard’s games to register them on the site and have digital access to them indefinitely, from any computer.

Another bonus to creating an account, even if you’re not planning on purchasing a Blizzard game in the future, is the beta-test eligibility. Signing up and requesting to join the beta-test lottery gives you a chance to participate in future Blizzard beta-tests - perhaps even for StarCraft 2!

The official StarCraft 2 website has bee updated, and now includes a brand new page dedicated to the StarCraft Board Game. Most of the details about the game have been unveiled several months ago during BlizzCon and GenCon conventions, and pre-ordered game sets have already been delivered to customers in October 2007.
The game doesn’t seem to suffer from any availability issues, as more than 600 people have already rated the game, and plenty of sets are already available on eBay.

Including a total of 180 plastic figures with dozens of unit types, StarCraft: The Board Game features an innovative modular board which guarantees a new experience each and every game. An exciting card-driven combat system allows players to modify and upgrade their faction with a wealth of powerful technologies. Players can unleash a Zergling rush, use powerful Protoss shields to halt an enemy invasion, or even dispatch cloaked Ghosts to guide nuclear missiles to their target.

The StarCraft Board Game is published by Fantasy Flight Games and there is plenty of detailed information about the game available at the publisher website, along with an interesting piece covering the artistic challenge of creating the highly detailed graphics for the game’s cards.

While the sites do provide a healthy amount of information about the game, if you are serious about buying one, you should definitely read the following documents (PDF) first:
Download the full StarCraft Board Game rule book
Download the full StarCraft Board Game FAQ