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DONE! (Discussion and reflections on worlds 2006)

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 5:34 pm
by zarathustra
And the Chairman is the world champion ;)

I guess we should open a forum to discuss next year's worlds. In the meantime, please everyone post in this thread what they liked / did not like about this year's worlds, what we might want to change in future, and what should stay the same.

I'll start:

Pros:

(1) Venue of event is same place people eat and sleep.
(2) Cheap accomodations.
(3) Nice prizes for the winner. ;)
(4) Great hospitality from the host.

Cons:

(1) No prizes for most non-winners
(2) always felt like there wasn't enough time:
(a) because we only had friday night, saturday, and sunday morning.
(b) because players were allowed to take more than the allotted time per round.
(3) No drinking game (well, at least not for those who didn't come to the hostel with Martin and Marc and Wolfgang and me... ;))


And again, thanks to Marc Roca for hosting such a great event!

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 8:46 pm
by thorondor
and the head judge is the world champion!! ;-)
good job, and well deserved! and thanks for making it very close and entertaining for the watching crowd.

in general: it was a wonderful event!!! it will never be possible to top spanish hospitality!! thanks a lot to marc roca!!!!

pro:
- games and sleeping in the same building. makes it very pleasant for the players.
- cheap location
- vegetarian food (that made meat eaters envious ;-)
- the organizer (marc) not playing too much. so he was always available for questions and other stuff.
- the after-worlds program (marc accompanying 3 other players for another 3 days)
- the spanish players: though many rules have not been known to them (thanks to the spanish copmany, that made a terrible translation of cards and rules!!), they just accepted, what they have been told.
- coming one day earlier, what made it very pleasant not to hurry into the first tourney.

con:
- the schedule had some minor flaws (three tourneys at the same time on saturday evening)
- judges need to be strict, when announcing the last round.
- there was no real starting point. it was difficult for marc, since he was still bringing players to the site. and also many came after the first tourney started.
- too many left before the ending ceremony.


@mark: there have been prices for all players. marc distributed lots of rares during the weekend. but there were special prices only for the finalists of the main tourney.

Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:44 pm
by zarathustra
Which Marc/k is which above? :(

Can you edit the post so it's clear to everybody who's who? ;) My name is spelled with a 'k', and Senor Roca's is spelled with a 'c' ;)

Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 9:14 pm
by thorondor
fixed

Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 9:57 pm
by zarathustra
Ah, I didn't see him handing out prizes... I guess then my Con should have been that there weren't fun official prize ceremonies at the end of each day :D

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 12:18 am
by Manuel
Heh, I have been reading some of the topics here and finally found one I can contribute easily =)

In general terms, I'd say the event was really enjoyable to everyone attending. Sportmanship ruled through the entire event, too.

My pros and cons:

Pros:

*I must agree completely with Marc Roca being such a great organiser and devoted to the game and community.

*We spanish players, enjoyed a lot playing and watching foreign's games, whose play-level was sensibily higher than ours. Somehow I managed to win 3 of the 4 games in constructed format against them, but most of that was due to really good luck in some of my games (Heiner, for example, losing 3 characters in his only move in the surface due to Veils Flung Away played twice) and overall was such a great experience - and a good chance to improve everyone's english, which is not really fluent at the moment ;)

*Of course, huge props to Mark for winning his 2nd One Ring, which he really deserved. Huge props as well to all of the other non-spanish players for making so many good showings of sportmanship and respect, especially to Wolfgang (game which I really enjoyed and it was curious to see me playing the cards I had purchased from his store a week ago) and Martin (next Lure's Cup of Nations is ours!!!!)

Now some cons:

* I would rate the food and rooms quality low for the price; yes, it was kind of cheap, but my spanish stomach is used to better food AND the room Aurora and me were using didn't had its lamp working so we couldn't use any light at night during Friday. Of course, nothing of that did matter much since we were there mainly for games and good times, I could have slept in a tent and be happy with all those fine gamers I met (and Aurora allowed me to eat some of her vegetarian food, which, as Wolfgang points out, was WAY better than the regular one)

*I also had always the feeling that there was no time. Apart from some of the things not being too well thought out, there was no physical time to do everything we planned to do. Actually, only the main tourney ran properly - the sealed minion was some kind of a mess and many people drop during it (and I couldn't win being tied with Mark for 1st place!! =) Not only that people left before the Ceremony, but also the Cup of Nations, which was a really appealing choice for those who couldn't play the finals (and especially for the ones that were so close to play it) couldn't be played at all due to lack of players. Dragon Hunt couldn't be played as well.

* 3 of 4 players using Balrog during finals, and the other one being Ringwraith, not good :( and most of them being squatter decks didnt help at all as well.

* Not allowing people playing qualifiers to switch his deck for the next day, therefore not playing under the same circumstances as pre-qualified players did -> they can have a shot of the meta game before the semifinals (although I'm pretty sure all of you had your decks ready way back before the tourney) Of course I wouldnt have asked for people not being allowed to watch games, but having the chance of playing something absolutely different the next day would have made it much funnier and surprising. For example, I knew exactly what my opponent for 2nd round in semifinals was playing because he had played the same deck during qualifiers against my girlfriend -> not good, especially because we were playing very similar decks and I knew what characters he would start and which factions, items etc he would play so I could bend my strat accordingly. I mean, unless you are facing an stereotype deck, sometimes you need one turn or even two to realize what's your opponent playing; for example, Martin's deck was helped by surprise element due to his confussing start, but none of the players that played qualifiers could rely on surprise element in certain games --- Pedro was using a similar deck that relied on surprise element (dunking the ring after having played a faction so theorically opponent relaxes and doesn't look for all his anti Dunk tech in sb) but in some of his games during Semifinals, he just couldn't count on that anymore. Perhaps it is not the best strategy, but it has to be respected.

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:21 am
by zarathustra
[Note to other members of CoE: Manuel is the representative from Spain to the CoE, since David Baillon is so incommunicative. He's also an incredibly good player, a musician, and an all-around great guy. Welcome, Manu!]


If I may respond to just one item above, I think it would clarify things. Manuel: you said that you were not allowed to switch decks between qualifiers (on Friday) and Semifinals (on Saturday). Unfortunately, that was a bald mistake on the organizer's part: in any multi-day tournament, the players are allowed to switch their decks entirely each day. While I'm on the topic, I should also mention that there seems to be a misconception about the balrog alignment among Spanish players: the Balrog is just another rw, with some special goodies attached. One player attempted to use the avatar Sauron against me when I was playing as the Balrog, and I heard that Spanish players were informed before the tournament that -- if they played Balrog vs. one alignment -- they must play it vs. the other alignment as well. That is simply not true :( It seems there were a few rules mix-ups like this at the tournament, though I hope it didn't ruin anyone's time completely....

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 10:43 am
by Manuel
Although some of us already knew that Balrog players had to be considered only as minion, the fact that tournament sheets were written with things like "Balrog" caused confussion. I mean, if you are a newbie in tournaments and playing a hero deck vs Mark Alfano, and in his tourney sheet it is written down "Balrog" and then he brings his dragon-land Sauron/Morgul Night deck, that causes confussion ;)

I even remember Marc Roca asking me when doing the sheets for qualifier:

Marc: Manuel what are you playing?
Me: Minion
Marc: But regular minion, Balrog, Sauron or something especial?

I guess that was the mistake. However, I don't think that ruined anyone's time at all.

Btw, thanks for introducing me, I completely forgot.