Council of Elrond

We shall host ME:CCG World Championships 2007 in New York City, from Thursday, 26 July, through Sunday, 29 July.

We have arranged for a venue:

The City University of New York Graduate Center
5th Floor Working Lounge
365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th & 35th Street)
New York, NY 10016-4309

You can (and should!) find complete information at this website.

We now have a schedule that, while not set in stone, is pretty secure.

Also, pictures of (some of) the prizes are up, including the original art for the card Barliman Butterbur in a custom frame, as well as Nenya, Vilya, The Ring of Barahir, and (of course) The One Ring.

As a special enticement for the Germans, and players from all other beer-loving nations, we have created a limited-edition micro-brew just for the event. There are 60 22-oz. (.65 liter) bottles for this event. They are similar to the Belgian Golden Ale called "Duvel". They are 8.1% alcohol, so watch out!

Attached is the label to be found on each bottle.

The links for the rules for Crap Sealed and Country Cup are broken on the website. Can the links be fixed or the rules posted here?

Thanks for the heads up Krista. The links are fixed now.

i am so happy that i will be going there. awesome!! great work!!!!

Thanks for fixing the links Josh.

In Crap Sealed, I assume that once you've built the deck, you hand it off to someone else who's forced to play it. How does the scoring work? Do you only get tournament points by playing the deck you're given, or do you also get something when a deck that you've built wins?

Strange, that document doesn't have the most important part in it: how to win!

After you build your deck, you hand it off to someone else.
You get TPs in two ways at the end of each round: Your TPs for the game you just played as normal + the TPs of the opponent of the deck you built.

Thus, you are rewarded both for playing well with a crappy deck and for building a crappy deck that loses to its opponents. The most TPs you can score in a round are therefore doubled from 6 to 12. Make sense?

Absolutely. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Website updated again. Look at the Attendees tab for prize pix.

Dear Attendees of Middle-earth Worlds 2007 (and potential attendees),



Our WORLDS Tournament in New York is coming up fast, and we wanted to let you know about two key things:



First, for those of you who like to celebrate Meccg in style, the Council has prepared some lovely Worlds merchandise for you, including a Worlds T-shirt with our Gondor theme, posters, magnets, drinking game mug, and a special t-shirt just for Council of Elrond members! (In addition, if you are a part of the Judge Certification program, you will receive a free Judge badge as a thank you for your hard work.) We hope to see many of your sporting the shirts. You can look over these goodies by going to the following address:

http://socrates.bmcc.cuny.edu/jbisz/middleearth.htm



Second, the Virtual Cards Tournament will be held on Friday in lieu of the General Opponent Open qualifier. That’s right: we are canceling the Open qualifier, so any player who wishes may play in Semis on Saturday. Please take a look at the schedule page at the worlds website for the finalized schedule:

http://www.buonanno.org/MECCG/Worlds07/schedule.html

We are hoping to have a large turnout for the Virtual Cards tournament, and so we are giving up some rather insane prizes: 1) an incredibly rare Japanese Fatty Bolger, still factory-sealed in a guide to the game 2) Ten packs of English LIDLESS EYE 3) a $50 gift certificate for dinner and drinks over the tournament weekend (we’ll take you out, don’t worry) 4) a never-before released promo card: a Council of Elrond created, alternate-art One Ring.



Now that I’ve got your attention, you’re probably wondering what the rules are to compete in the Virtual Cards Format Tournament. Simple: your deck should try to “make significant use of one or more Virtual Cards.” That’s it. We’re flexible.



Pressed for time to design a whole new deck? An easy solution would be to look over the latest list (Version 0.8—just updated!), and figure out how an existing deck might benefit from the addition of a few cards. Even just adding a new hazard strategy (see The Nazgul Are Abroad (V), Half and Eye Open (V), Dwar (V) with wolves and animals) could be fun. At North American Nationals, many people thought the Virtual Cards Tournament was more exciting than the General Opponent Semis! But some of the V-cards offer brand-new resource strategies, so you should think about that option, too; and be prepared to see lots of imaginative, super-themed resource decks in July. Oh, and there will also be prizes awarded for the non-winning person whose deck “makes the coolest and most thematic use of the new Virtual cards.” THAT COULD BE YOU!!



Sincerely,



Mark Alfano and Joe Bisz

MECCG Worlds 2007 Organizers and Council of Elrond Representatives



*For more information about the Virtual Cards, please visit the Virtual Cards Showcase forum on the Council of Elrond website and read the sticky topics “Introducing the Virtual Cards” and “Ground Rules for Virtual Cards.” You can also download the newest PDF version of the card set here.

http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum/vi ... .php?t=126



*Virtual Cards Press Release Paragraph:

Virtual Cards are a way to produce expansions for the Middle-earth card game without publishing new physical cards. Essentially, we have taken 43 existing cards and invented new game texts for them that have utilize completely different strategies and open up the possibility of brand new deck types. Since these card texts exist in a downloadable document on the internet, they are called "Virtual." Have you ever wanted to play Pirate as a Minion player? Ever dreamed of defeating Sauron by keeping the One Ring and using force of arms? Well, both these decks are possible now. Think that Sauron and the Balrog are too powerful? Wish you could do something more about squatters and Fallen-wizards? We've added some cards that might come to your aid. This is an unofficial expansion to MECCG at present. However, it is our hope that Virtual Card tournament events will generate lots of player feedback, so that in the future an official expansion to the Middle-earth game can be seriously contemplated.