Worlds 2016 Tournament Report

MECCG World Championship discussion forum.
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Patric
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2012 11:57 am

I played with my well known Fallen Radagast, which scored 36, 20, 38 and 36 points. Mainly because I know how this decks works and also what the opponents can play against it, so I al-ways have a good alternative on nearly everything.


Round 1 Henrik (Balrog) 6:0

He couldn’t play very much on the hazard side and I was able to stop him with The Way is Shut and with my Maias/Elf-Lords. I could play My Precious as an Agent and was able to prevent him to play the Orcs of Moria. So again the Maia-Elf-lord combo proved to be very effective against Minion. Final MP Score 36:12

Round 2 Karsten (also Fallen Radagast) 5:1

We both played Fallen Radagast, but I was lucky enough to draw him on my first turn. This was really good because everything is a little bit easier then. ;-) But the main reason for winning was my hazard deck. I use the same hazard deck against Minion and FW, so he had to face all my Maias and Chilled Dwarves. His Fallen Radagast plays all the resources in the free-holds and therefore he had a hard time. Nevertheless he was able to score enough points to avoid a 6:0; which is quite good if you don’t have your Wizard and are facing a hazard deck which can attack you most of the time. He had two companies at free holds and you can’t always tap everyone. And of course I could never wound one of his characters – you have to play let’s say two Maias each round and sometimes one character stays untapped, too, because he rolls very well. But I won’t complain on that; he just has a very good Deck. You can see that in the fact that he made it to the Finals, even if he lost 1-5 to me.
Final MP Score 38:21


Round 3 Pawel (Balrog) 2:4

I knew that this would be a difficult game and therefore I was surprised that until round 3 I was quite a lot in the lead. I could play my Maias quite well and also was able to wound his Buth-rakaur in round 1 (too bad that he had a foul smelling paste). But he avoided the double wilder-ness pretty well, so I couldn’t play my Elf-lords on him. My deck worked very well and I had an item, three or four wolves and also my fellowship at Rhosgobel worked pretty nicely.
At round four everything changed…I played Hiding and he played Blind to the West to discard my Hiding. I thought with all my wolves I still can face two or three cave drakes…but he played Minions Stir (Doors of Night was already in play) and an Uruk-Lieutenant. I played in response a Marvels Told and he canceled this card with Ire of the East, too. So I had to face 3 strikes with 11. After that he played an Orc-Lieutenant (3 strikes with 16) and Mouth of Sauron and for an-other 3 strikes with 16. So he kept this 6 hazards just for the right moment to crush my compa-ny. He killed nearly all of the characters and nearly every ally. I was able to concentrate on Rhosgobel but I had to forget the Scroll. And I needed one Item because otherwise he would have won easily (he killed my guy with the dagger and everyone was wounded). At my last turn I calculated the points and I was quite confident to win the game. I moved with two Dwarves from Rhosgobel to Dwarven Mines and played my item there. Somehow I made a mistake when calculating the points, because maybe I should have risked a little bit more. I thought it would be enough to win the game. He played an Assassin on my second company, with Faramir. I decid-ed not to risk anything because I thought I already had enough points and canceled the attack with Farmer Maggot. I was moving to Old Forrest, which also turned out to be a mistake, be-cause now I had to beam to a different site and I had WhctK, Tom and another Character in my hand. So I should have tried to face the attack. At the end he could play 1 card for -1 MP and he won with 21 to 20 MP. This was a very close and interesting game where I had my chances and he also played really well. I have never seen an attack with 6 hazard cards timed together so well.


Round 4 Mario (Hero) 6:0
I played my corruption deck vs. heroes, so he was quite busy with tapping his characters to re-move the Lure card or to play Marvels Told. I saw that he also was playing in the Arthedain area and suspected, that he would surely play Tom Bombadil. Obviously, my first Sideboard card was Tom and I was able to get him before Mario. I also attacked his Wizard with an Assassin while he had Forewarned is Forearmed in play. He killed my first Assassin, but my second As-sassin was able to kill him on the second body check. I could play my game without any big problems. So I ended up with a final MP Score: 36:12

After 4 games we had the following placement:

1. Pawel 20 Points – Balrog
2. Patric 19 Points – Fallen Radagast
3. Karsten 14 Points – Fallen Radagast
4. Roland 13 Points – Minion
5. Heiner 12 Points – Balrog
6. Mario 12 Points – Hero
7. Mark 12 Points – Hero
8. Eric 12 Points – Fallen Wizard
9. Henrik 11 Points – Balrog
10. Wolfgang 10 Points – Hero?
11. Nicolai 6 Points – Maybe Dream Cards ;-)
12. Christian 3 Points - Hero

And as you can see it was really close to become fourth this time…and surprisingly Heiner and Mark didn’t make it to the finals. There were not that many players but the level was very high and each game was against a decent opponent. Heiner’s comment was “oh my dices”, which Mark can imitate very well ;-)

At the evening we got a really great tour from Bernd through the Greisinger Lord of the Rings Museum. But it took quite a while and I knew that I had to adjust my One Ring Deck. Meanwhile my Family had arrived also in the hotel, and I built my deck until 2 o’clock. In the morning I had to prepare myself and my kids for breakfast and after that I walked with them together to the Museum. They supported me with all the luck which is necessary if you play a One Ring deck. ☺

I changed my Fallen Radagast deck to One Ring…The main reason was: Of course I thought Heiner and Mark would also make it to the finals and they would be well prepared against my Fallen Radagast. At the European Championship last year in Munich I had played Fallen Radagast in the qualifier and in the Finals. Heiner was angry because he always had to discard hazards that he could play against me. Of course he could play nearly every single hazard card in his deck against me…so I had no chance to win this game and therefore I became second.
So this time, I wanted to surprise them and therefore for the first time again (the last time I had done that, was long ago) I built a new deck ;-)

The idea was to play it with a lot of characters – and a friend or three at Mount Doom. For card draw I played with Radagast, Stealth and Bridge or Master of Esgaroth. I wanted to get a card advantage and tried not to use the Easterling Camp combo. The new thing was that I wanted to play the Scroll in Cirith Ungol because I was looking for a card that could do something against Seized by terror, which can be really ugly if you get Seized two or three times. So I played with Gates of Morning and Quiet Lands. I made one test game using this new deck against Hans-Werner Milpetz and I lost, because of the time limit. I had a really bad draw, too, but I was think-ing too long where to go and what to play in which order. Thank you, Hans-Werner, for this test game, it was really good to understand the weak points of this deck. And I must say I haven’t had any game in which my opponent was about to call the council, so in most of the games the limiting factor was the time. With that in mind, I tried to play as fast as possible in the whole tournament on hero and on hazards side. Even if you play not the best way and you miss some-thing you have at least one turn more to correct that problem. And often something goes wrong and you have to do it in a different way, which is longer than the normal 4-5 rounds. Maybe you can dunk in 4-5 rounds but not with a Scroll and three Gold Rings and all necessary cards to dunk. And I don’t believe in the perfect opening hand like Radagast, Stealth, Bridge, Gold Ring etc. Even if your opponent has the 25 points, then he also must be through with his whole deck. Because of Radagast I should be faster in this case, so I can concentrate more on my resources than on my hazards.


Round 1 Roland (Minion)
I have changed my hazard deck and I knew that Roland and Pawel still are playing Minion. Ro-land played a Sauron deck, so I added 3 Pukel-men and some other nice cards, but of course mainly against Pawel, because I thought that this would be the toughest match. So I could slow him down quite a lot and I had enough time to dunk in 6 rounds. The reason why it took so long was, that I got my Radagast in round 4 and I drew my first gold ring also in round four. Then I moved in round 5 to Lorien with my two companies and then with Bridge to Cirith Ungol for the Scroll. I also tried to play really fast, because every turn more was good for me. At the end I had one gold Ring and two Brooches plus the Scroll and was able to dunk.


Round 2 Pawel (Balrog)
Pawel won 6:0 against Karsten, so I knew I had to dunk against him if I wanted to win the World Championship. And the funny thing was if Karsten dunked against Roland, then I also would have to dunk against Karsten…so my goal was to dunk every time even when I thought two times would be probably enough. ;-)
I could slow Pawel with my hazards quite well, even when I was not only going for the hazards.
I added three Gates of Morning in my deck because I knew his Doors of Night hazards and I also wanted to avoid him always cycling two cards back into his deck with Unexpected Outpost. Which will of course be one Outpost and maybe a Rolled Down…The problem in my game was, that I had two Gates of Morning right in turn 1. So I played one even when I preferred to play it in response to his DoN. So later in the game I was not able to compete against his DoN, therefore some of my Dwarves died because of his Minions Stir Orc combo. In turn 4, I moved to Cirith Ungol to get the Scroll. I decided not to enter the site even though I had a cram, because of the Orc attack pushed by Minion Stir. Then I took a wrong decision... I had one Gold Ring and two Leaf Brooches and two Gold Rings in my hand (for Rolled down). I had to discard one of my resources and it could be either a Wizard’s test or a Gold Ring. I was greedy and went for the Gold Ring. But Pawel of course managed to play Rolled down three times against me, so there was only one Gold Ring left. Now I had only two instead of 4 checks if my decision would be to discard the Wizard’s test instead. Only Radagast, Faramir and one Dwarf were left at Mount Doom. I knew I had only two rolls for a 10 or more and I knew I could have lost this game. First roll was 6 and the second a …yes a 10! ;-)
I jumped and thought oh yes you did it, and now you are World Champion, because Karsten was not able to dunk against Roland. But Pawel said I had to make the corruption check. I played two A Friend or Three and tapped two characters in support used a cram for another one so no snake ice.

Round 3 Karsten (One Ring)

In this game I could play quite easily because I had already won…but of course you want to win anyway. ;-)
He has a very interesting deck which plays everything directly on Mount Doom with Lucky Search and Enduring Tales (you are allowed to discard on top of your Deck). Because he also moved to Easterling Camp and Mount Doom I was allowed to draw a hell of cards including my own draw engine with Radagast. So this was my fastest dunk, I guess it could have been round 4. I was lucky to get the Scroll right away and played it in Moria in turn 1. But Karsten also man-aged to play at least two Gold Rings at Mount Doom. I couldn’t play my Rolled down against him successfully because of Enduring Tales and somehow I wasn’t able to play it twice in one m/h-phase. He played a Wizard’s test in turn 4, luckily for me it was no 10. But I was a bit afraid this time, so I decided to dunk as fast as possible, as well. I discarded both of my Cram’s in Lorien and moved straight to Mount Doom. I was pretty confident but Karsten still wanted to know how much hazard limit he has. While I was moving with 7 characters and he was discarding Daelomin for a total of 11 Hazard Limit, I became a little anxious. He tapped one of my rangers with Adunaphel, played two rivers and thought I couldn’t do anything in my Site phase, but he didn’t notice my untapped Oin. So I was there with one ring, two Leaf Brooches and the Scroll and could easily dunk. But after the game Heiner told me that he would have been able to stop me. He would have had Kahmul in hand, and if he had played him twice probably my whole hand would have been discarded. But Karsten didn’t think about this because he had played Enduring Tales and I would have drawn everything after the m/h phase again. Moreover, he also had Many Sorrows Befall to cancel his own long event. Maybe I could have tested the One Ring in response…who knows how this would have ended.

At the end I want to thank Christian and Alex for the organization and Bernd for the great location and the museum tour. And for letting my children take a look into the hobbit hole ;-)

I will keep this weekend in fond memory and am looking forward to the Lure!!!

Best regards,

Patric
panotxa
Posts: 81
Joined: Mon Apr 28, 2014 12:35 pm
Location: Vic/Barcelona

Great report! It's a pleasure to read these detailed experiences and learn from the insights beneath the story of every match. I've never played a dunk deck, but after reading about your's and Karsten's, I'll not hesitate to build one :D (btw, It would be great to see these decks listing :P ).
Thank you, and congratulations!
Alter Tuk
Ex Council Member
Posts: 453
Joined: Sun Aug 27, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Germany

Congrats Patric! Well done! You proved all the people who thought you can play only one deck wrong.

One minor thing:
Patric wrote:I had one Gold Ring and two Leaf Brooches and two Gold Rings in my hand (for Rolled down). I had to discard one of my resources and it could be either a Wizard’s test or a Gold Ring. I was greedy and went for the Gold Ring. But Pawel of course managed to play Rolled down three times against me, so there was only one Gold Ring left.
According to the CRF:
The item being replaced by the Leaf Brooch being discarded must be in play to satisfy any targeting restrictions.
[url=http://gccg.sourceforge.net/]Come to GCCG or die a lonely death.[/url]
Patric
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2012 11:57 am

I know there has some time past...but in my Company they wrote an article about the World Championship 2016 in Jenins. If you want you can take a look ;-)
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panotxa
Posts: 81
Joined: Mon Apr 28, 2014 12:35 pm
Location: Vic/Barcelona

Great report Patric, and a nice/interesting detail from your company! I wish all the companies and wives of the world could understand the importance of meccg :lol:
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Mordakai
Council Member
Posts: 314
Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2013 10:38 am

hear hear!!
C'mon, not the Elves of Lindon AGAIN...
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