Worlds 2011 Warsaw reports etc

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Muad'Dib
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Atm i give you the result of finals. Details next week.

1. Enrique
2. Manuel
3. Dominic
4. Pawel

Congratulations for Enrique, now he is the new champion :)


PHOTOS

Friday

Saturday

Sunday
Last edited by Muad'Dib on Sat Oct 29, 2011 10:10 am, edited 3 times in total.
IMustNotFear.FearIsTheMind-Killer.FearIsTheLittle-death ThatBringsTotalObliteration.IWillFaceMyFear.
IWillPermitItToPassOverMeAndThroughMe.
AndWhenItHasGonePast,IWillTurnTheInnerEyeToSeeItsPath.
WhereTheFearHasGoneThereWillBeNothing. OnlyIWillRemain.
marcos
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congrats!
Beornd
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The year of Enrique - after winning Lure GO - now a worthy winner and a really champ. GRATS [-me_eye-]
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Bandobras Took
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Reports! Alignments! Decklists?

I get hungry for information. :)
The game is flawed, but this does not mean it cannot be loved.
Muad'Dib
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Bandobras Took wrote:Reports! Alignments! Decklists?

I get hungry for information. :)

You will get them but im waiting for mail from Highwayman, because he took tournament sheets :P
IMustNotFear.FearIsTheMind-Killer.FearIsTheLittle-death ThatBringsTotalObliteration.IWillFaceMyFear.
IWillPermitItToPassOverMeAndThroughMe.
AndWhenItHasGonePast,IWillTurnTheInnerEyeToSeeItsPath.
WhereTheFearHasGoneThereWillBeNothing. OnlyIWillRemain.
Balin
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Spain rules! :D
__

Let them come! There is one dwarf yet in Moria that still draws breath!
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Manuel
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Thanks a lot to everyone attending, to Pawel for so good organising, and especially to the whole polish community of players because they were so nice people! =)
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Ciachu
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Manuel wrote:Thanks a lot to everyone attending, to Pawel for so good organising, and especially to the whole polish community of players because they were so nice people! =)
Sounds great from You, Manuel :-)
From my side: thank all of You to visit us in Poland :-) This was a nice weekend :-)
Muad'Dib
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In the first post you have photos.
IMustNotFear.FearIsTheMind-Killer.FearIsTheLittle-death ThatBringsTotalObliteration.IWillFaceMyFear.
IWillPermitItToPassOverMeAndThroughMe.
AndWhenItHasGonePast,IWillTurnTheInnerEyeToSeeItsPath.
WhereTheFearHasGoneThereWillBeNothing. OnlyIWillRemain.
Muad'Dib
Posts: 372
Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2008 10:41 pm
Location: Warsaw, Poland
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Ah i forgot to write about prizes :) I think they were cool. Enrique, as the winner, got original artwork of "The Evenstar" (hope he will post the picture in his topic with MECCG stuff), and Manuel left Poland with special sites set from Hands of Healer. Thanks to Robert Hadam who did again great job and he colored sites from the last ICE book (yes, he is the author of sites from A Long Expected Party and Northern Waste).
IMustNotFear.FearIsTheMind-Killer.FearIsTheLittle-death ThatBringsTotalObliteration.IWillFaceMyFear.
IWillPermitItToPassOverMeAndThroughMe.
AndWhenItHasGonePast,IWillTurnTheInnerEyeToSeeItsPath.
WhereTheFearHasGoneThereWillBeNothing. OnlyIWillRemain.
domse
Ex Council Member
Posts: 171
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Dear community,
we had a very lovely weekend in Warsaw, this asks for some reports to make everybody want to go to the next tournament! Thats why I here ask the spannish guys to not only post their (very detailed) reports on the spanish forum - the international community wants to hear about it too!!!

Let me first say "Thank you" to Pavel and the polish community. We didnt really know what to expect before the weeknd, as we had only met Pawel at Lure and the reports from Polish Nationals always seemed like you have your very own way of playing the game (House rules, I mean). you made this weekend a blast, on and off the gaming table, thanks for that.

I wont spend much words on the sealed tournament, I usually suck at playing sealed and see it more as a warm-up program.

For saturady I had brought the deck, which I have played in all tournaments this year. It managed to score 20 TP in 5 games of this years Nations Cup - an alltime record for me. It sucked during german nationals (12 TP of 4 games), but there was some really bad luck included there. I had no time to prepare something new (this takes me weeks!), so I gave it another chance. It is a Fallen Radagast Squatting Deck with squatting sites Old Forest, Bree, Blue Mountain Dwarfhold and of course Rhosgobel. The design principles summed up:
- 3 mischiefs and a ton of stage cards straight in deck to potentially play it first turn (I once played 2 of em first turn, but of course this doesnt always work), above all before opponent plays heart grown cold (in the old forest case)
- Friend of secret things is starting stage cards to allow the play of Tom, Goldberry, Lobelia, Bill, 2 Noble Hounds in any order.
- Blue moutain dwarfhold company consists of threlin with myrmidon and dror with a thrall ring. By that you can play balin and gloin under DI there. They play the faction. Additionally, they play a liquid fire at the minion site late game. Use plotting ruin for that.
The deck can score a ton of points, is quite slow though unless you are on a flow (which unfortuantely doesnt happen so often). It is vulnerable to any sort of first turn roadblock and early assassination.

Now for the games. Pardon me if my game reports are not very detailed, I usually forget most details about my games. This isnt the case when I play online once in a while, but 8 tournament games in 30 hours is too much for my brain.

FIRST GAME: Highwayman
He played a refreshingly different balrog. the balrog was supposed to move with region movement and do cvcc, while some guys went underdeeps for cheap points. His hazards were mean: Morgul Night, Foul Fumes etc. I was lucky to arrive first turn because afterwards I dont care about those. The Balrog came to Bue Mountain Dwarfhold and ate my dwarves... not very good. During the end game he even came to rhosgobel and played 3x crowned with storm. I was not sure whether this is legal, so we rolled it first to see whether it has an effect or not. It didnt, and I was very relieved not to enter a very strange rules discussion (soon on the rules board :P). I was able to delay him with my hazard play and when time limit got called i had neither faction nor item (dwarves eaten), Highwayman had no allies (and too much item MP). during his last turn he went underdeeps for the ally, which would have made it a sure win for him. But I was able to discard the Underroads with Many Sorrows befall and then play The Way is shut to keep him from doing so. So it was the strangest win ever 36-34 with neither factions nor items...

SECOND GAME: Balint
Balint told me on friday evening he is more the casual kind of player and is not very much into highlevel gaming. As I see it now, my deck is easy to beat when you are experienced with Anti-Fallenwizard-Strategies. However, if you are not it looks like unbeatable magic. So, balint really had a hard time against me. He played a classic walking around hero deck, which my grabbag hazards can manage very well and his hazards didnt hit me at all. I called after 5 or 6 turns and it was a 6-0.

THIRD GAME: Heiner
I think third game is worse in a 5 round GO. Its just when concentration is rock bottom (at least for me, thinking back I think I always lost game 3). This time it turned out, that my concentration wasnt the worst at the table. I had a hard start with early assassins on faramir. I didnt have ready to his will hand yet, so I relaxed and told Heiner: I've learned from you how to handle this. and bamm! 8-8-8! kill! Faramir did the very same thing again on a later turn. I really had heavenly rolls. My ressource draw was very strange and I only slowly gathered points, Heiner was scoring okay, but not overwhelming either. He constantly kept me busy with heavy corruption. This let to another awkward dice situation during my last turn: I needed the Blue mountain dwarves, dror was tapped out, so threlin needed an 8. done. lure of power onguard => cc8. done. Now the most important thing about the this game: Heiner didnt have an ally, and he didnt notice himself when he called. This is maybe the worst mistake to happen against Fallen Radagast. He later told me he threw away the ally in a moment of mental absence. Also, there was no need to call at that point. Time would have been running out during my turn giving him another turn. He later said, that he didnt want to risk me playing a 3 minutes turn and therefore getting another, but given the fact he had no ally, this REALLY was a crucial error. It stillwas lucky from my side, but he deserved the tie for that. 3-3.

FOURTH GAME: Jaded
Jaded played a hero deck in the rohan area. It was welldesigned and did score good points. My hazards didnt really bit him hard if i remember correctly. Its the strange thing about grabbag - one game you smash your opponent, one game you are always that important step behind. Still I had some delaying moves with lost at sea/freedomains. On the ressource part things were going very smooth. I had an early mischief on old forest with tom played... and then bamm! He came to influence faramir away. I tried everything to stop him, but he had cancellers, untappers and stuff. And he even revealed faramir from his hand!!! So it was like a 10 MP swing on turn 4 and i was really, REALLY pissed. Blue mountain dwarf old company was once again not able to score both faction and item and it ended with a very, very lucky 4-2 win for me.

FIFTH GAME: Kikeeee
So after four games I had 17 TP, I felt that it really was possible to reach finals this time. During earlier rounds I had always drawn the "weaker" opponent, when pairings had to be done randomized, now I got the strong one, the one dominating the tournament of the day. I knew kikes deck very well. It has 2 faithless Stewards going to easterling camp, shagrat + 2 orc scouts doing an underdeeps trip, some 2 guys mordor-shuffling and a lieutenant in dol guldur. As I have lost against all sorts of stewards decks in previous tournaments, I had thought a lot on how to beat them. This resulted in 3 seized by terror in the sideboard. Unfortunately I had a low concentration moment on turn 1, when I sideboard some crap instead. And after that, I didnt have sideboard access for the whole game, as kikeeee really was fast as hell. I should mention though, that I thought that you cannot lave the limit against sauron. My ressource part was okay, but just not fast enough for kike. In the end it was a 1-5.

After the game I had a good feeling about the tournament, 18 TP is a very good result (I had scored 18 in 2008 too). I didnt even think that it might be enough for finals. As more and more results came in (kike and I had played with online style pace) I realized that maybe this ocould work out. In the end there was some lengthy tie breaker discussion to determine whether Antonio or me will enter finals. We both were very relaxed about this and congratulated each other for 4th/5th place. In the end it was me to win on opponents TP tiebraker (ties dont count as half wins for the number of win tiebreaker!). So the final consisted of eactly the people I bet on on Friday - except that I was replacing Heiner. The bad thing about playing finals was that asturday evening was sort of ruined. The spannish armada left to prepare decks at the hostel and I asked heiner whether he'd go through hazards with me. I didnt bring another ressource deck, so I knew my chances of winning were very low. So I was ready to some really hard metagaming and set everything on one card. We decided for each of the players for one deck which we expect him to play and built hazards against it. I expected Manuel to play hobbits, either as fallen or as hero. I expected Pawel not to change (he was playing boardgames with the polish players instead of metagmaing), but I didnt exactly know what kinfd of balrog deck he had played on saturday. And I also expected kike not to change a lot, because he had won so much with that deck, and it sure is his deadliest weapon.

Sunday morning it all came different. Of course. It always does. I guess one should stop tuning hazards on saturday night. well, in the future I wont do that mistake again to not bring just 1 deck. But I was so far away from the game during the last weeks that I simply didnt think of putting together something else.

FIRST GAME: Pawel
Pawel played minion ringdunk. that was a surprise to me. My hazards sucked, he got to roll several tests. He missed them all. Uuuuf. He alsopplayed Black rain, me a Fallen radagast deck. You have so mcuh characters in a fallen radagast deck thats really hard not being hit by black rain. I mean I know that I am supposed to play it onguard. But even that was not always possible. He got 2 extra rolls from black rain... he missed them. Well and thats game of course. He played the iceorcs to maybe sneak a point of it, but it was no use, my ressource deck had done well. Pawel said - already during the game - that he much more enjoys this game than all his games on saturday with a very competitive deck. I did say nothing then, but I didnt believe him. I know Pawel as a very ambitious player, that wouldnt throw away the opportunity to play worlds finals. Also, his minion dunk is the very best I know and he had some surprising successes with it in LURE GO. I think - correct me if I am totally wrong, Pawel - that he chose this deck wisely as sort of a surprise momentum Russian Roulette option to become world champion.

SECOND GAME: Kikeeee
Kike changed the deck and now played an eastside balrog burner deck. It was a very solid deck but absolutely nothing special. He scored his points, me mine. I didnt have the best draw, so he was a bit faster than I was. I had put redoubled Force, Troll Purse and unabated in the deck. Kike saw it, understood it and stepped back from Playing the Axe at Underleas. A wise choice, this way he won 4-2. I know this is not much of a description of a worlds finals game, but honestly, I dont remember much from it.

standings after round 2:
Kike 9, me 8, Manuel 5, Pawel 2
So i needed some sort of help from pawel. I was not sure whether he played dunk against minion too. If yes, this was possible! For the first time I realized, that there was a chance to actually become world champion (well also after round 1)!

THIRD GAME: Manuel
Manuel had done brilliant metagame. He expected both others to play minion (that wasnt very difficult after all, i havnt seen Pawel playing something else in the last 4 years, and kike got smashed in worlds 09 finals with a hero deck) and designed the other one against me. He knew I have not much of a repertoire and expected me to play the deck again, maybe also because I had playedt against both in Round 3 and Semifinals of this years nations Cup. He chose Eriador Express - laying the finger in the wound. He also put 3x Echoes of the Song, 3x Stench of mordor in. Uuuf. I had a very strong starting hand it looked like I am able to completely block him on first turn. But thrain was still able to play chance meeting, balin, tom bombadil. I was really mad, because I had just drawn my tom and the game would definitely have been different story with tom being on my side. I was playing okay, but it is hard to play an early mischief against 3 echoes and its hard to play allies in rhosgobel with stench of mordor (btw, I have only seen that trick from manuel until now). He managed to make it a 3 turns call and I was in the bad situation to not have drawn the great Patron. 3 of his cards in his hand still made it a 1-5, but the title was out of reach. It would have been in vain anyway, as kike won 6-0 against Pawel.

In comparison to Rome 2010, where I also placed third, I was dropping to that 3rd place instead of getting there by a late win. It really did feel different. I was fond of how the tournament went, I once again had learned a lot and gotten a lot to think about for future tournaments.

Congratulations to kike! Also to all other finalists!

Thanks to all players for participating and making this another nice middle earth trip! thanks Pawel for organization and cooking! thanks heiner and Wolfgang for saturday evening consulting! thanks spannish guys for the easy hangout at the airport, which was just what I needed after that intense gaming experience. Thanks kike for a surprisingly pleasant waiting at the gate and flight :D (we realized at the airport that we were booked on the same flight - kike changed plane in frankfurt)

Dominic "domse" Kempf
Smaug
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Heiners Report of the semi finals in warshaw on saturday

First Round against MAG:

MAG, a polish player, played a hero Beorn/Dain deck with Perth. First round it started a bit strange because he was able to kill Adunaphel with Beorn. Nevertheless he was more or less unprotected against my corruption strategy combined with slayers and assasin and finlly plost 6-0 (45-0). Good start in the tournament.

Second Round against Root:

Root, again a polish player, played a minon hunter deck with Glorfindel, Elladan and Annalena and daggers as starting items in order to use Biter and Beater for cvcc. This guys are completed by Elrond and Pallondo in later rounds. Interesting idea. In round one started glorfindel manage to kill Uvatha (remenber body 10!) and played orkrist. Not to good start for me. More threatening was that he was definatly stronger than my as well strong company at red hills so it need to run away and burn border holds out of reach from his main company. Interesting game, I enjoyed the running and therefore better deck cycling and finally won 4-2 (33-26). Ten points after 2 rounds, until now things develop like expected.

Third round against Domse:

Domse played his Fallen Radagast at free and borderholds. When I looked at my hazards pitty hard game for him corruption combined with assasins and slayers and the danger of beeing attacked by cvcc. Things develop like expected. Even domse started I could call after round 4 rounds and even he stopped my balrog company to play 7 points at underleas i had 29 points (and he only characters and 2 allies) and called. This was not only stupid because I did not realize that I had no allies (against fallen radagast!!!) and no items but even more beause very probally his turn would have been his last one and so I gave away my last turn with sense. Did not know what was going on in my head, may be it was because I had very good hazards in hand on was thinking with that I would win 5-1 or 6-0 in any case. Can not tell you, complete blackout not seeing that I had no allies (and no items)! This was punished by domse and the exceptional good dice rolls he had during the entire game (e.g. beretar killed two assasin and one slayer without any enhancer cards during our game!). He manages to play the blue mountain dwarfs needed a 8 (means my faction where not doubled any longer) and after that he survived the cc (lure of power on guard) that was doubled to 4 points. As well he played one meanshif (?) and/or an ally (?) therefore his poor looking MP stack before that round where doubled on allies (6 +6) and fitting to dice luck he survice several cc at council. Finally by my surprise it was a 3-3 (29-29) instead of a 5-1 or even 6-0, what would have been the probable result if I would not have called and how it looked like the entire game. So instead of 15 or 16 MP after Round 3 I had (only) 13 MP. Still I was on straight course to the final but may be that really poor play was the beginning of the end. Can not remember when I ever made such a big mistake in a serious game in the last years :-(.
I thought in my minds: „Pride goes for the fall, you sated and complacent idoit!“. Congrats to Domse, he never gave up during thst game, that looked quite desparate a long time for him, so he earned that tie, that brought him to finals at the end!!!

Four Round against Highwayman:

So it was not so easy going to reach the finals that I may have thought before semi finals and like often in such a situation it turns against you if you too self confident and lazy in not taking your chances like in the last game. Highwayman plays as well balrog and fitting to the situation he got him out first. It was a good game, with his roadblock strategy he managed several rounds to keep me away from Moria to influence away the Orks of Moria which gave him a close 4-2 (23-20) victory. Furthermore I missed a lot of BC, espacially two against his Balrog (redoubled force could hurt even the flame of Udun :-)) and 3 against his 3 main characters in the last round (each successful one would have brought at least a tie or more :-(.
Anyway good game from both sides, I lost but chances where intact with 15 MP.
Nevertheless I got the feeling that today may be might not be my day, in the last years I had (too) often luck in the deciding situations, today seemed different (That feeling started in Round 3 and got stronger after the 5 missed bcs, normally at least one should have been successful??!!


Round 5 against Manuel:


That fits to the last two rounds. Manuel is a very strong player and it is definitly hard to win higher than 4-2 against him. That would have made 19 MP with uncertainty to reach the final. Great :(, but what I had expected after the last 2 rounds!
Manuel played a Taladhan + Orc scout deck scouting „going ever under dark“ in dragon land. Good deck, hard to tackle due to the cancelers and the low hazard limit.
But exactly the type of deck (dragon country with low hazard limit) I metagamed before the semi final and builded therefore a hazard with 3 unabated and 3 tidings straight in the deck. For that reason I was quite confident to win, but as you know things came different, even Manuel only played one item, one faction and one ally during the entire game he won 6-0 ! This was partly due to his nasty hazards in the later rounds (he as well metagame good and played DON with awakened earth fire (turns shadow to dark hold), allowing not to burn at worthy hills and to play not great bats, but much much due to the stupid card drawing and last but not least due to my cowardish and uninspired play in that game. This was not champion like, may be the last two rounds left his marks on my confidence?! To the game:
:
In the start hand I had both of may two tempest of fire straight in the deck but no of the 3 no i´ll report you or other mp cards (Problem 1 of the red hill deck, not much Mps cards and some of them hard to play!) Tempest are somehow a key card an therefore hard to discard (nevertheless I did so with one of them) or to burn without enhancers at red hill (without enhancers it is something like needing a 4, 4, 5 on the main power 8 characters). I decided not to burn even I could have a try. Mainly this was because I thought my hazards would be good enough to stop Manuel ( had 2 unababted already in hand!). Additionally because it was something like a coin flip with only 3 MP to win and a lot to loose. Looking backward it was a mistake! But how should I know by then that I draw until the end of the game NONE Great shadow (2x) NONE I´ll will report you (3x) , NONE Faction (2 few recruits, Orks of moria). Unbeleaveable on the one hand but this happens. A real champion should handle this lasted after round 2 or 3 by sending 3 mind characters for card drawing to side giving 2 cards and may be leaving as well the worthy hills either for burning to bree or makers map to wethertop, white towers. Of course this is not the standard plan of the deck but hoping to draw the right cards in that relatively slow deck is definitly poor play. Reason as mentioned was that I relied on my hazards doing the job. But Manuel managed that with careful slow play and a lot of canclers. More or less the same careful way I played but his mp and cancler draw was better! On the last turn i made a despaired attempt to win. I still had no orks of moria in hand that i needed definatly for win, manuel had 22 points (3 faction point +1 ally doubling at the moment, so 26 at the moment.) I was at 15 but 10 with characters, so i needed at least a faction for 3 (orks of moria, if i would draw them 100% sure because of voices and foe dismayed in hand, and and ally (great bats) (+ makers map + blasting fire or few recruits). Alternatively one time buring plus ally and orks of moria.

Because I did not have the orks in hand and as well no ally (2 bats in deck) I decided to move with hill troll to a shadow hold. Because I only draw one additional card from doth travelling to underleas I decided to travel to mount gundabad to draw 2 cards instead of 1 if going to mount gram . A decision that made it a 6-0 instead of a 4-2 defeat. I went to Mount Gundabad first and Maunel just draws with his one card the baduila, bang!!! This fitted to the entire game. So no points at worthy hills that round (makers map and Few recruits where more or less 100% sure if it travel to mount gram to loose 2-4 (18 – 23). Additionally I did not draw the orks of moria, but this did not matter to much anyway. Baduila won the game in the last round even before the round started. Last cancels of reaching the final for the seventh time in a row disappear. In contrast to the wc before this time luck was really not on my side. In addition I must admit I really had not my best gaming day, both combined crush me!!!

The game ended and so 2 of manuels categories where doubled while my points where downseized at the end to 10 points. 6-0 (26-10) the result was on the top a bad joke, but that fitted of course to the whole story of that semi final.
A night mare game, I do not want to sound too much like a bad looser but I if I would have played with my normal speed balrog (that is mucher faster and more flexibel in making Mps I would have won that deciding game, especially because my hazards where a real treat for him, but only slowed him seriously down :-(.

Anyway shit happens, so I stayed at 15 MP and finally only got 11, bah! I admit that I was not expecting not to reach the final even not playing my „best“ deck. That teached me a lesson, that is for sure!!!

Thanks again Pavel for organising the good WC and Kufel for having lots of beer with me after the semis in order to better forget about this nightmare semifinals.


To say it with the words of pink panther:
„Today is not all days, I will come back, no question!“ :-)

Cheers

Heiner
Alter Tuk
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Location: Germany

Thanks for the good reports, highly appreciated! And congrats to everybody who participated!
[url=http://gccg.sourceforge.net/]Come to GCCG or die a lonely death.[/url]
Smaug
Posts: 279
Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:30 am
Location: Germany

Hi guys,

I just reviewed my report and want to excuse me for written it just top down without any check. So some words, half sentenses are misssing and in general the spelling and grammar is a night mare.

Sorry for that!

Cheers

Heiner
aleena
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:36 am

nice pictures & congrats to the participants :)
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