Worlds 2018 in the Netherlands

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Shapeshifter
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As promised, here is part two of my tournament report:

Saturday night the meta-gaming began. I was pretty sure that either Patric or Heiner would play Fallen Radagast in the finals. While I had only a vague idea about what Mark would play, I guessed Hero Short Rest. These decks in mind I decided to stay almost with the same deck from the semi-finals because both the resource and the hazard part can deal quite well with those kinds of decks. Because Patric has a very good Hero One Ring deck I also put some anti-One Ring cards into the sideboard and Rolled Down straight into the deck. I was so wrong…

Game 1 of the finals vs. Heiner: He didn’t change his resource deck from the semi-finals and went with the Balrog again. He did some major changes to the hazard portion of his deck, though. Heiner played the same hazard deck against minion and fallen wizard, which was Undead and lots of anti-fw cards (like me he guessed that Patric would play Fallen Radagast and Mark would not play minion again). His hazards, however, didn’t do too much harm to me, although the Blinds and Ires straight in the deck were quite annoying. His resource deck performed better than the day before, mainly because I didn’t draw the right hazards at the right time. Even the chilled Master of the House didn’t wound anyone this time. It was a safe 4-2 win for Heiner.

Game 2 vs. Patric: To my surprised he neither played Fallen Radagast nor a dunk deck. Hero Short Rest it was, with many small companies. What I didn’t get was why he played it with all of his GI used up the whole game! So, Call of Home and Muster Disperses would be nice, I thought. Unfortunately I exchanged my only Call of Home from sideboard with an anti-dunk hazard the evening before. Muster Disperses wasn’t a good idea either because Patric didn’t manage to influence any factions before his last turn, mainly because of my hazard play: Foolish Words and some Arthadan Rangers protecting The Worthy Hills prevented his joining with the Petty-dwarves for a long time. Despite of that Patric was progressing quite well. On my resource side nothing, really nothing worked. All of my MP-resources, except for characters, have been in the second half of my deck. Not good at all against a Short Rest deck! At the beginning of turn four (I think) Patric was confident to call at the end of this turn because he had something like less than ten cards in his deck and a Short Rest out. I decided to cancel the Short Rest with Many Sorrows Befall. This turned out to be the right choice because thus he didn’t got through his deck and among the only two or three cards left in his decks at the end of all movement/hazard phases were Marvels Told (to be used against Foolish Words) and Lordly Presence and Patric still had no faction out. This meant two more turns for me but I still had no MP resources in hand. The next turn Patric influenced the Petty-dwarves faction, finally! At the beginning of my last turn I still had neither item, nor faction or ally MPs. Thus I decided to move to Bree with Gandalf were Patric’s company of Radagast and Fram controlling Tom Bombadil was present. My plan was to play Rangers of the North and try to influence away his Tom Bombadil revealing Tom myself. The faction was no problem. When I announced the influence attempt on Tom, however, Patric surprised me with a well timed Wizard’s Laughter!!! The roll on Tom would have been hard anyway because I didn’t have drawn my Wizard’s Voice, yet (it was the next card on top of my play deck). In the end Patric doubled item and ally points. A clear 0-6 loss for me.

Game 3 vs. Mark: He didn’t change his deck from the semi finals thus I knew what was to be expected. This knowledge didn’t help very much, though. Although I managed to attack his company once with Radagast the Tamer and even wounded one of his Lieutenants this was more to Mark’s advantage because I didn’t kill that Troll and he had a Paste… Once I made a wrong decision when I discarded Baduila from hand while Mark’s company was in dragon country. I should have known that he would visit Mount Gundabad sooner or later. When he moved there I wanted to retrieve Baduila with Mouth of Sauron. Mark then reminded me that Baduila is a character, not a hazard for Fallen Wizard players. Ouch!
Mark also roughly knew from semi finals what to expect from my deck. That is why he prepared for my expected last-turn-run to the deep mines the whole game (in semis I played Dragon-helm there); he kept two Nameless Things in hand. This game I decided, however, not to move downstairs because I anticipated that Mark would be prepared. Moreover my deck worked better than in semis. Thus I was satisfied with a planted White Tree and a stored Sapling for item MPs and didn’t want to take that high risk for more, rather unsafe and corruption heavy item MPs. On my last turn, Mark had called already, I was a lots of MPs behind. I don’t remember what I played exactly but I made many MPs so that I was only 3 MPs behind. I was even confident that I might win this game. I had 4 more MPs in hand (The Warg-king, Belegorn) and was thinking about entering Ost-in-Edhil with a lone and wounded Beretar. Somehow I was under a misapprehension that I could play Belegorn with A Chance Meeting and then let him play The Warg-king. A Chance Meeting allows characters to be played under direct influence only, though, and Beretar (with Wizard’s Myrmidon) had only 2 DI – not enough for Belegorn. Moreover I realized that I had 4 points of free GI only. Also, Mark would have had Blind to the West in hand. Thus I lost 2-4 again but only with 3 TP difference.
On a sidenote: Mark was confident to get rid of my stored Sapling (being my only source of item MPs) with Neither So Ancient Nor So Potent. He was not aware of the new CoE Erratum on NSANSP, unfortunately. If he would have known, he probably would have fetched a better hazard from sideboard instead.

Many thanks go to the organizers, Mark and Eric, for this excellent weekend.

[Edit 2018-12-26]
Last edited by Shapeshifter on Wed Dec 26, 2018 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Vastor Peredhil
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Illegal to cancel a resource Long Event with Many Turns, rather Many Sorrows Befall
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Shapeshifter
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Vastor Peredhil wrote: Tue Dec 25, 2018 8:01 pm Illegal to cancel a resource Long Event with Many Turns, rather Many Sorrows Befall
Yeah, that's the card I meant. Thanks! Edited my post accordingly.
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Shapeshifter
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Finally, all decks from the 2018 finalists are accessable here. I have no confimation yet for Patric's decks, though, but I think the linked decklists are the ones he used (more or less at least).
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