Worlds 2013 Spain Llinars (Barcelona) September 20-22

MECCG World Championship discussion forum.
cram
Ex Council Member
Posts: 37
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:38 am
Location: Barcelona / Spain

Championship finally ended and I'm back home
Really tired but some news in advance.

Some advance:

1st - Mark Alfano (he wants his hand full of One Rings - just 2 missing)
2nd - Heiner
3rd - Alvaro Peris
4th - Karsten

A lovely weekend, tons of fun.
24 players at the main tournament, and it's the first time I habe seen no Drops and no byes in a tournament ike this. All 24 players played all 5 rounds!
16 players at the Drinking Game, and wolfgang won it (yes, that one who does not drink anything!)
Really pleased with everyone of the participants, you all helped a lot to make it easy. Thanks!

I'll write the complete reports in a couple of days.
marcos
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congrats to mark! glad to had been part of his playtesting phase :D
Sauron
Ex Council Chairman
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marcos wrote:congrats to mark! glad to had been part of his playtesting phase :D
You guys at worlds can blame me for suggesting what Mark should play in Worlds ;)
zarathustra
Ex Council Chairman
Posts: 671
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:26 pm

Thanks to Marc Roca and everyone who helped to make this tournament so fun! Thanks also (from me especially) to those who helped me prepare for the event.

For those who are interested, here are a few quick memories from the tournament:

* I was lucky enough to win semi-finals with 23 tournament points, despite losing 4-2 to Heiner in round 4. There was a four-way tie for 2nd place among Heiner, Alvaro, Karsten, and Pawel. At first, some of us thought that Heiner would lose the tie-breaker, but a careful reading of the rules showed that it was actually Pawel. I actually think this was unfair. Of the four people tied for 2nd place, Pawel faced the most difficult opponents. The community should consider whether to change the tiebreaking rules for future tournaments.
* In the semi-finals, I played minion. Against heroes and fallen wizards, I used a Lidless Eye deck with some Lieutenants and the Mouth (or Baduila) recruiting the great army of the north near Dol Guldur. Against minions, I used Akhorahil in Heralded Lord mode to influence dragon factions, while some faithless stewards prepared in Mordor for a last-turn run to Minas Tirith. I'm sick of playing Balrog against Balrog, so I figured I'd try this deck. It worked pretty well: against Kike's Balrog, I won 5-1, and against Heiner's I lost 2-4, but only because I rolled snake-eyes while trying to influence away his only faction, the Orcs of Moria.
* In the finals, I expected Heiner and perhaps also one of the other guys to again play Balrog (has Balrog won the last four championships?). And in my two previous championships, I played Balrog both times. It's boring to see the same deck all the time, so I tried a hero short rest deck. As it turned out no one played Balrog -- or even regular minion. Heiner had a very interesting Fallen Radagast deck, and the rest played hero.
* In finals, my first game was against Heiner. He used a heavy corruption strategy, which killed Cirdan (-3 MPs!), but I managed to kill off lone Faramir heading to Wellinghall with a cave worm on the first turn, which kept his points low. In the end, I won 4-2.
* Next, played Alvaro, who had beaten Karsten 4-2. I had never met him before, so I was unsure what to expect. Someone did tell me, though, that in semi-finals he played a Return of the King deck, so I put some agents in my deck and Your Welcome is Doubtful in the sideboard. What a good idea.... His time at Minas Tirith was a disaster. Elwen influenced away Arwen with Choice of Luthien, and a call of Home sent Return of the King packing. I doubled items because the Sapling was used up growing the White Tree, and won 6-0. Meanwhile, Heiner won 6-0 against Karsten, so I had 10 TP and he had 8. I would need to win 4-2 against Karsten to guarantee victory....
* Karsten played a short rest deck in Rohan/Anorien/Gap of Isen, so between us we had 6 short rests in the game. That made for some pretty wild turns. On one turn, for instance, I drew 23 cards just during the movement-hazard phase! On the first turn, one of my companies went to the Blue Mountain Dwarfhold while the other went to the Old Forest. Cirdan attempted to play the dwarves with a muster (4 DI + 5 - 2 because dwarves are racist), and I rolled snake eyes (the second time in the tournament that snake eyes ruined my faction-playing). Tom didn't materialize, so the other company waited. On the next turn, Karsten really surprised me by playing Snowstorm and Long Winter. Old Forest was now tapped (no tom, but I did get a noble hound), and I was stuck there. Indeed, I remained stuck there and at the Blue Mountain Dwarfhold for the rest of the game -- 6 turns. Meanwhile, I realized that with the crazy draws we were both getting, Karsten would be able to keep me in place indefinitely, so I played Radagast at Rhosgobel and used two chance meetings to bring in Gloin and Balin. They then ventured to the Dead Marshes (only 1 [-me_wi-] in the ste path) to play Orcrist, and Raiderhold (likewise) to play Durin's Axe and another hound. At this point, I had exhausted my deck, so I went back to the dead marshes to play Glamdring, and I redrew the Dwarves (blue mountain dwarfhold also has only one [-me_wi-] in its site path, so was unaffected by long winter) along with two musters to get them automatically. So I managed to play most of my points anyway, though very slowly. In the meantime, Faramir with two noble steeds had Karsten's only allies, so I kept playing Call of Home on him (I put two straight in the deck). He had 5 free general influence, so this was not a great strategy, but when I played CoH for the 7th time, he finally was returned to hand. I ended up winning 4-2, which turned out to be unnecessary because Heiner lost to Alvaro. (Of course no one told me... ;)
* It was, as expected, a great time. I hope to see all my friends again at LURE!
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marcos
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* It was, as expected, a great time. I hope to see all my friends again at LURE!
What!!! and i already told you what i am going to play! damn :lol:
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Mordakai
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Hi there everybody:

The Worlds have been just great. A lot of people, a lot of beer and very good atmosphere among all contendants. This have been my first Worlds, and I hope not the last. Next stop should be the Lure, let's see if real life does not screw my plans :wink:
My results, 2nd in Hero-only and 3rd in General Opponent (damned Elwen, Alfano!!), so way above my wildest expectatives.
I hope we¡ll meet again in the future, and we¡ll always have GCCG.
Cheers

Alvaro
C'mon, not the Elves of Lindon AGAIN...
cram
Ex Council Member
Posts: 37
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:38 am
Location: Barcelona / Spain

And the promised results.

Hero Only One Deck
1º Jordi Sorribes .- 16 ptos
2º Álvaro Pery .- 13 ptos
3º Antonio Flores .- 12 ptos

Lidless Eye Sealed
1º Pawel .- 16 ptos.
2º Mark Alfano .- 12 ptos
3º Codi .- 12 ptos.

World's Semi-finals
Mark Alfano .- 23 Ptos
Karsten . -21 ptos
Alvaro Pery.- 21 Ptos
Heiner .- 21 ptos
Pawel .- 21 ptos
Jordi Sorribes .- 20 ptos
kike .- 18 ptos
Antonio .- 18 ptos
Mario .- 18 ptos
Wolfgang .- 16 ptos
Marc .- 16 ptos
Iñaki .- 16 ptos
César .- 14 ptos
Albert .- 14 ptos
Imanol .- 14 ptos
Manu .- 12 ptos
Pablo .- 12 ptos
Codi .- 12 ptos
Alvaro .- 12 ptos
Jaime .- 11 ptos
Alberto .- 11 ptos
Pesudo .- 10 ptos
Ruben .- 9 ptos
Enrique .- 2 ptos

Hero Sealed
1º Antonio .- 16 ptos
2º Imanol .- 12 ptos
3º César .- 11 ptos

World Finals
1º Mark Alfano .- 14 ptos
2º Heiner .- 10 ptos
3º Alvaro Pery .- 8 ptos
4º Karsten .- 4 ptos

Congratulations to Mark Alfano and all the participants of this funny event.
Muad'Dib
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First big thanks for organizing this great event. Place was nice (my first time in Llinars), friendly people (like always).

2 cents about my games. I played in two tournaments - minion sealed and GO. I know i won that first one but thats all what remeber :D It was really late when we started, finished games i think around 4am and even dont remember my own deck.

After short night we started GO. First 2 games i won 6-0 with spanish guys, 3rd round gave me Heiner as opponent. Tough game, he got Balrog before me, Orcs of Moria and Stinker too and i really dont know how it happened but i won 5-1, just one missing MP to 6-0. In 4th round i had to face Jordi, another hard game, result was very close and something stopped working in my deck so i lost 2-4. Again missing 1MP to tie this time :( 5th round was against Alvaro. Here eveything worked very bad. Stupid dices completely stopped my deck, main characters wounded, some good Alvaro rolls vs Assassins and i lost again 2-4. Im not sure but result was also quite close, he probably had few more MPs. After all 5 games Mark was first with 23 and next 4 players were with 21TP. After carefully reading rules i took 5th place and didnt play in finals.

Anyway it was great time, nice to see some of you again and meet some new people for me (especially Mark ;) ).

Probably CU in 5 months ;)

Thanks Marc, you did great job.
IMustNotFear.FearIsTheMind-Killer.FearIsTheLittle-death ThatBringsTotalObliteration.IWillFaceMyFear.
IWillPermitItToPassOverMeAndThroughMe.
AndWhenItHasGonePast,IWillTurnTheInnerEyeToSeeItsPath.
WhereTheFearHasGoneThereWillBeNothing. OnlyIWillRemain.
Sfan
Ex Council Member
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Location: Königswinter, Germany

Congrats to Marc and good to see 2 Germans in the final.
I am sure you all enjoyed the weekend in Spain.
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Shapeshifter
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First of all I would like to thank Marc for organizing and hosting this great event. For me it was the 2nd time in Llinars and I really enjoyed to be there again.

Best thing of all for me was that I reached finals for the 1st time (due the tie breaker). It's hard to tell whether the tie breaker rule is unfair or not. Probably all in all the score of my and Alvaro's opponents was lower than that of Pawel's or Heiner's opponents. However, as Council of Lórien rules say the number of wins comes first. I'm a bit unsure whether this tie breaker rule should be changed as others propose. I think we should discuss it and then the Council of Elrond shall decide.

Anyway, here is a short report of my games. In semi-finals as well as in finals I played a Rohan-Gap-Anórien Short Rest deck, in finals against minion/fallen I switched to an Alatar in the South deck (Scroll, Southrons, Knights, Sapling) before getting to Anórien (Return of the King, The White Tree) because I was in fear of Heiner's Balrog deck which plays most resources in the Rohan area and could have easily initiated cvcc. Against hero I played with a Snowstorm hazard deck, against minion and fallen with a grab bag. It turned out that my choice to play the minion hazard deck vs. fallen wizards was a very bad choice because it was prepared in first line against squatter decks. Both in semi-finals as well as in finals I faced only moving fallen decks and lost both 6-0. Against heroes and minions/balrog my hazards worked very well, though. Both games against hero opponents in semi-finals I won 6-0, against minions it was 4-2 and 5-1, as mentioned above against fallen 0-6.

In finals my first opponent was Alvaro who played an Minas Tirith squatter deck. In this game I made a great mistake by not revealing Strider as 2nd character during draft when we both bounced Aragorn before. I decided that Thranduil was more important for my deck than Strider but didn't realized at that moment that Alvaro would have a big advantage with the chance to play Return of the King and me not. We would have bounced Strider anyway... During 1st turn Alvaro played the Sapling and a Steed a Buhr Widu. Nevertheless I was very confident to play the White Tree before him as I had both Doors and Snowstorm in my hand and was hoping to fasten him in Buhr Widu. Unfortunately Alvaro had a Twilight in hand while I had none. Thus he reached Minas Tirith which he wouldn't leave for the rest of the game. The game was quite close all the time until I lost my Wizard (Saruman). From that point on I had no real chance to win. In the end it was 4-2 for Alvaro (by 1 point no 5-1).

2nd game against Heiner's moving fallen deck (Radagast!) was devastating. Not only that my hazards completely failed and that I had a very bad draw with resources. Moreover I made another big mistake against Heiner's heavy corruption hazards when marveling a Lure of Nature instead of The Balance of Things. This all combined resulted in an easy and never endangered win for Heiner (6-0).

3rd game was vs. Mark. I don't need to tell more about this game as Mark already reported about it in detail. I just have to give my kudos to Mark for playing so well when he was stuck with his companies because of Snowstorm. It was a close but deserved 4-2 victory for him and gave him the tournament win. Congratulations Mark!

I hope to see all of you again. Maybe at Lure?

Cheers,
Karsten
Muad'Dib
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Here you have link to photos. If you also have some and want to share let me know, will put them in my gallery :)

Worlds Barcelona, Llinars 2013
IMustNotFear.FearIsTheMind-Killer.FearIsTheLittle-death ThatBringsTotalObliteration.IWillFaceMyFear.
IWillPermitItToPassOverMeAndThroughMe.
AndWhenItHasGonePast,IWillTurnTheInnerEyeToSeeItsPath.
WhereTheFearHasGoneThereWillBeNothing. OnlyIWillRemain.
zarathustra
Ex Council Chairman
Posts: 671
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:26 pm

As promised, a picture with the three championship rings...
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marcos
Council Member
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all this pictures and reports makes me wish it was march already!
Muad'Dib
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marcos wrote:all this pictures and reports makes me wish it was march already!
Check your flight again Marcos, because next year Lure is earlier 21-23.02 :)

Maybe Mark should write something funny about this ring...:P
IMustNotFear.FearIsTheMind-Killer.FearIsTheLittle-death ThatBringsTotalObliteration.IWillFaceMyFear.
IWillPermitItToPassOverMeAndThroughMe.
AndWhenItHasGonePast,IWillTurnTheInnerEyeToSeeItsPath.
WhereTheFearHasGoneThereWillBeNothing. OnlyIWillRemain.
marcos
Council Member
Posts: 2032
Joined: Sun Feb 18, 2007 5:41 pm
Location: Córdoba, Argentina

good i didn't book my flight yet ;)
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