Council of Elrond

No reports yet? Let's start.

My kids and I had a wonderful time on Castle Stahleck. We arrived late in the afternoon on Friday, since we all had school until noon. We checked in, met Jobsti and his family for dinner and reserved a table in the big room. There we basically spent the whole weekend playing ARDA with Gert Jan, Michael and Thomas while the kids had a good time playing various board games, card games or just hide-and-seek in the castle.

On Saturday I joined Jürgen and Andreas for a few rounds of LotR-LCG. We failed spectacularly against the Balrog, but managed to accomplish the Sarn-Goriwing scenario, which Andreas had downloaded. A great use for the Dol Guldur cards from the basic set.

I played some more introductory rounds of the LCG on Sunday with Michael and even had time for some casual 1vs1 games against Jobsti.

I didn't participate in any tournaments this time (not even Cool Play, sry Alex), so I was free to deal with the kids the whole time. That way the whole weekend was very relaxing and fun.

Honorable mentions:
- Jobsti managed to eliminate 3/4 of my starting-company 1st turn with his Dwarf/Eastern/Spiders deck.
- If you go to Carn Dûm playing ARDA, someone WILL have a Nazgûl. Usually me.
- Nobody likes playing Saruman.

A big thanks to Wolfgang, who did not only organize the whole thing, but who also always had the time to hang around and chat. And another big thanks to all our friends there who made the weekend perfect.

Greetings friends of the Lure of MECCG,

looking on software and on the times you made it to Lure you
notice how time runs by. It was my 10th Lure of MECCG and it
was overwelming once again.
The preperations started long befor the Lure. So I had to craft
some special rings for the Unitied Drinkers of Middle Earth but
that details will follow in my Drinking Game Report, that I
still have to write and upload in the CoE.
On Thursday Wolfgang picked us up and we drove with a car
full of prices and gaming support gear to the Castle. Arrived
there we unloaded the stuff we needed for the 1st night.
We meet David and Markus from Dresden as well as Paweł from
Poland and Dominik and Lisa. Also Heiko with his familie was
in another room, I meet him at the reception in the castle.
Then we went for dinner. It tasted good and the castle staff
in the kitchen still know me well and I got a double meal
Heiko was so kind and we played a game of Hamburg Szenario.
It was pretty cool, without time pressure, and we both exhausted
our decks in likely 2 hours. I am not sure about the marshalling
points anymore, but we both fulfilled our scenarios. It was a
great joy. Later I went to bed and looked for the two women
cleaning up the rooms. After a quick chat, they both went and
cleaned 1st our old room and the new one we had to use
So we didn't had to wait till the rooms were ready and could go
for breakfast.
In the morning there were only 5 players for Hero One Deck
Tournament, that would have ment no Tournament since it needed
6 to be played. I used my Into the Smoking Cone Deck and took
part.
1st Round I had to face Patric, he was running wizardless and really
quick. He called the council in the 3rd turn with 23 marshalling
points. I had my scenario half way done and had the last turn.
It was clear to me that I couldn't make it to Mount Doom and back
to Lorien to store my mission card. So I went for a big faction in
the Easterling Camp and some Noble Horses together with a
Chance Meeting for a 5-minder to score a total of 21 points.
4:2 lose
2nd Round I was playing Mark Alfano. He was pretty fast too and
called far to fast for my taste. I annoyed him with slavery jokes
since he is from the US I really started to like this dude, he is
friendly all the time and smiles a lot. He has an open mind and
he didn't mind my wrong grammar or pronounciation. I lost to him
again 4:2.
3rd Round Roland was my opponent on the table. I saw his tournament
sheet and saw a sad zero point in round one and another zero in
round two. I know from my experiance how pretty shitty that feels
like. He was really friendly and deserved a 6:0 victory in his last
round to end the tournament with a good feeling.
In the end I was last of the 6 players but damn proud of my deck.
And it was lunch time. Yum yum yum yum ...
In the evening the famous Drinking Game took place. Heiner got me
two bottles of red wine, David brought his Patraxana from the Basque
land and Mark Alfano a fine scottish whisky. This mix was quite
deadly .. but I will write that in my Drinking Game Report later.
But one thing lets point out. Mark really thinks America got better
beer than Germany. The whole world (except the little spot where
Mark lives in America) knows, German brew the best beer.
I had to go to bed, my head started to spin as I closed my eyes and
I was gone till 10 a.m.
The speech of Wolfgang in the morning I missed like the breakfast.
But I found Heiner who still sleepd in his bed the sleep of the brave.
He also missed the breakfast. So I went to the kitchen and got some
leftovers that was guarded by the kitchen dragon, but I flattered
the foe by telling the story of the two bottles of wine Heiner got
the evening befor and we simply were too drunk to wake up more
early. The kitchen dragon was warm hearted and gave me access.
Heiner was happy to get something to eat, but for me the 1st
bites tasted like alcohol. I went for some chat.. and waited till
the comeing dinner after Heiner left for his sking vacation in
Austria at 10:30 a.m.
After lunch I feeld better again. So I went for a walk in the narrow
mountains. The fresh air did well too and the burden of Drinking
Game fell off my shoulders. Time for the Cool Play Tournament.
Well, of course that will follow in my Cool Play Tournament
Report later, need to write it and upload it to the CoE.
On sunday, after breakfast I got a nice gameing round with my
french and belgian friends in a casual Cool Play Gameing round.
My Carambor returned from France and left me again with
Hervé towards Japan. Follow his story in the spanish forum in
this post: http://www.meccg.es/foro/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4614
I was exhausted after the Lure week-end and we left the castle with
Wolfgang. After arriving home and meeting again my big heaven-bed
I was really happy again
Befor going to bed, I found out that among Wolfgangs pens at the
castle I mixed up a Ballograf I thought was worth 5 € was in deed
a Ballograf of the 4000er serie and worth 25 €! I had to call him,
what I did. You simply can't mix up cheap give-away pens worth
20 cent till 50 cent a piece with such pens since you simply can't.
I finaly went to bed and had a long slumber ...

10 times LURE for me.

As I wrote a report on my first LURE ten years ago - I think this is a good time to write another one.

10 times LURE - and for the first time I had to come all the long way from Austria on my own – unfortunately Bernd couldn´t made it. The german-roadconstruction-secretary played a "road-block" on some bridges across the river Rhein - but due to my early flight time, I had plenty of time to get to the venue. For the first time ever I even had some off-time before the tourneys started - how luxury.

No Cosplay this time - I travelled light. Pawel even asked me what I would do in case I win some large prices … well this would have been my least problem to worry of .

….

On Friday afternoon I played those challenge decks which weren´t lost with Birk (all the best) and in the evening some casual Arda with my fellow Tri-Buddy Thomas and other good company. I didn´t want to play some competitive games that night due to my packed timeline on saturday. Worse - I even couldn´t enjoy some cool "Weizenbier" due to pain-killers. How awful .


Saturday - part 1 - french
As some kind of reminiscence to my first Lure I joined the Hamburger Szenario. 4 rounds - 7 french speaking players and me. Fortunatly for me nobody had the same szenario "Heirs of Yavanna" so at least no problems at the character draft. I can´t remember exactly how each game went in detail but …
My men/dunedain rangers faced to 90% only dwarves - where are all the elves gone ? Where is Arwen ?
Three times a no-go for "FIREWORKS" influence roll WITH the wizard - the rain outside must have had some side-effect to my cards
A pukelman is a pukelman is pukelman and agents well there are plenty of those
Khamul likes to be in company with many other nazguls
My scenario went quite good and in the end I could made third place (3pts behind 1st). Although one rule-suggestion - a bye should count more than a loss when the szenario is fullfilled.


Saturday - part 2 - Cool Stuff
As we played 4 rounds with longer playtime per round I asked Alex not to start his cool play tourney without me. For this I had to skip dinner. A great hug to Alex as he provided me with some nutrition "Wurstsemmeln mit Grünzeug" in the last round of the Hamburger venue. "Panem et circenses".
At the cool-play-tournament itself Stefan provided us even with some colored hard boiled eggs - so no lack of food ,-)

This year only six players were participating in this well organized event from Alex. At the end it paid-off for him. First time on the podium in a tourney - he was radiating at the prize-given ceremony. I myself went fourth due to the new CP counting scheme which I have underestimated in its outcome. Hans Werner won and so the trophy bounced back to him.

After a long and exhausted day I somehow managed to reach my bed.


Sunday - home.
A relaxing Pool Sealed to round up that well spent weekend - you remember that discussion folks ? (lure is never wasted time)

After saying "bye-til-next-year" I took off with Pawel to the airport. "I hope you don´t fly from Hahn" he asked me 1hour before leaving -> this would have been hilarious )

23:30 and I could quote Sam "<insert well-known quote here>" to my wife back home.



I hope we will meet again next year

Thomas S. aka "i gwanunig"

P.S.: This report is the same as the on that will be placed at the official LURE-site.

Here I wrote a (very) short report on this year's "Dream Card Firstfolk only General Opponent tournament".

Arda has become one of my favourite games at Lure events, so no wonder I played it a couple of times. The bigger the play deck the greater the number of possible game situations. This year, I remember some remarkable situations that I will briefly sketch here. Our Arda play deck consisted of almost all cards from the TW-AS editions, with a ~35:65 ressources:hazards ratio and non-unique hazards contained up to three times. Keep in mind that drawing a certain unique card is quite improbable!

In one game (involving also Timo, Juliane, Markus and Daniel) one of my companies (3 fit-for-fight characters, one of them was Thrain, the second my wizard, the third unknown) went off to Moria. It was at a later stage of the game, but there were few hazard permanent and long events out, anyway, it didn't seem to become too dangerous. Anyway, the company was immeditealy attacked by Durin's Bane. Having no cancelling card on hand this would have resulted in wounding 2 of the characters which I hoped to avoid by testing a gold ring Thrain was carrying. The wizard tested the ring in response to the declaration of the attack, and it turned out to be the One! Thrain as the ring hero (12/10) impressively defeated one of the strikes, but my wizard was killed. Then the gaze of the roving eye fell on Thrain and it lured him to death (=eliminated). What was left at Moria was a sole tapped or wounded third character unable to do anything sensible. I ended at the bottom at this game's tournament point list with a proud number of 1.

In another game (same players, but Dieter instead of Markus) Daniel intended to make his way to the comparably safe area of the north west sea regions. One of his companies decided to go to Himring. A good choice if you think that the dangerous regions in Arda are the ones in the east. Not this time. Starting his crossing Daniel got attacked by a boosted Fell turtle, followed by Drowning seas (ever seen this before?) and, finally, a sea serpent. Although almost all survived the attacks, he was left with only one unwounded character. After some rounds of laziness (not entering Himring due to auto-attack enhancing long events) he finally tried to withdrew from the island. Needless to say that someone had used Uvatha by that time only to release the sea serpent a second time In contrast, we had almost no Dragons ahunt or comparable cards during that game, but, however, the east was avoided as a much too dangerous region

On Saturday I played along Stefan, Robert, Markus and Thorsten. Thorsten managed to play quite a cool thematic combination of cards. First he had a company (A wizard, Gimli and other characters) playing Earth of Galardriel's orchard that seemed to be his only playable ressource in the first round. Luckily, Galadriel showed up in Lorien and joined the company. This company went to Bag end to store the Earth - and maybe in hope that also Mallorn would appear. I didn't, but the Hobbits came up, and another Bag End ressource (forgotten which one, maybe the pony). Thorsten had good luck on his way to Bag end but was waylaid by the agent Lobelia deciding to attack Galadriel. The Lady pulled out her ring twice convincing Lobelia that it was better not to meddle in the affairs of glorious heroes. So playing the Hobbits was no challenge and was also rewarded with the Three Golden Hairs Galadriel could offer to Gimli (I think the chance of playing this true-to-the-story-combo in a 600+ cards Arda deck is close to winning the lottery). Later on, also the Palantir of Elostirion showed up, but only in Thorsten's hand as the game ended before he could ultimately play it.

- Lure of MECCG XV -
Drinking Game Report*



*Read it on your own risk!