The day before yesterday was deckbuilding day. As always I have serious issues about what to play. I balance between wanting to win and wanting to play something original. This is my weakness as it is my strength. The element of surprise is always there, giving me a head start regarding my opponent. This desire though of wanting to be original and the given chaos that occurs in my head now and then, leading to all cards being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, isn't very helpfull when it comes to finishing decks in time. Oh, and Anola, allthough he was very helpfull, didn't help either when it came to the time-issue. 2 AM I was heading for my bed, still thinking about decks and what to play.
Saturday, 6 hours after I went to bed, I was driving towards Groningen, to pick up Daniro. Then we set sail to Amsterdam. After a 2 hour drive and some metro/tram movement we finally arrived at the 2 Klaveren in Amsterdam. Olorin wasn't there, probably afraid of what I had to offer, but his brother was there,
Elrohir. After some friendly handshakes and deck preparing we finally started.
First round: movieblock without Reflections
My
Slaked Thirsts maneuver wounding/Moria vs Elves and Men/Twilight Nazgul.
I won the bid and played
Dunharrow Plateau. I got
Preparations and
Slaked Thirsts in hand. Because
Slaked Thirsts is an important card I didn't want to mulligan, and with little to no pool I was confident things would be allright. He played the Witchking and I thought I was screwed. Luckily I realised that he couldn't have played the Witchking and Enqeua wasn't to much of a threat. My moria did exactly what it was designed for. It cycled. Slowly I was building my fellowship and with the
Slaked Thirsts combo in play I could exhaust every nazgul each maneuver.
Terrible and Evil was the event Gandalf used and
Quick as may be was also very helpful. Nothing had to skirmish, especially when Aragorn and his bow and Legolas arrived and joined the possy. I had some initiative lose tricks up my sleeve as well, and
Deep in Thought was there to get rid of the possible shadowconditions.
My shadow was doing great, making it hard for him to do anything. Granted, he drew not very good, but I was doing great. Slowly his resistance broke, and at site 6 Frodo was swarmed. Good game, well I was at least happy with the result.
Full win
Second Round: movieblock without Reflections
My
Slaked Thirsts maneuver wounding/Moria vs Gimli and Elves/discard Sauron
Again I won the bid and off we went. His fellowship was badly crippled because he couldn't use the Reflections Dwarves. Therefor he went with the legolas gimli combi with
Final Count and
My Axe is Notched 
..this is a combo I always love, but McTono taught me not to depend on conditions
, for he is always on the verge of discarding them.....
His shadow didn't though my fellowship, again because the
Slaked Thirsts combo was set up early. He played some conditions, but because no-one came to skirmish, I didn't care. I'm not sure, but at site 4 or 5 I swarmed his Frodo, cause his
Paths didn't show up. Nice opponent, he hadn't played in years, and we enjoyed our game.
Full Win
Third Round: Austrian Format
My Dwarf/Gondor artifact deck/Balrog swarm vs McTono's Gondor/Corsairs
He was frightened by the idea of playing vs my deck, cause it is almost the worst shadow I can think of.
Power and Terror reveals any number of orcs from hand and then the
Demon of Might hits the table. Then you play the rest of the orcs and you have guaranteed disaster for the opponent. No maneuver, no archery so your orcs will last. This time luck was running out, because eventhough I was running a small deck the first Balrog was showing up at site 6
](https://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/Smileys/classic/wall_bash.gif "Brick Wall")
...By that time I was almost out of minions and he was able to withstand the Balrogs...pitty.
He was running faster than I did, so he won.
Full loss
Fourth Round: Austrian Format
My Dwarf/Gondor artifact deck/Balrog swarm vs Madgoblin's Elf archery/Evil men archery
Well, we both sort of 'accepted' the fact that, at another tournament, we had to play vs eachother. He was not making a lot of twilight, but I had the perfect shadowhand. At site 4 he made 8 twilight, but still was facing 5 orcs and the
Demon of Might. With 4 companions this was to big of a challenge, so I won
Full win
Fifth Round: you had to play either a deck from the 1st 2 rounds, or from the Austrian Format
My Hunter Elves mixed set-up/evil men archery vs his
Merry FtS rainbow fellowship/sauron hate
This was masacre. Horrible wounding on both sites. Brrr, shivers avery time I think back at it, haha. I bid too much to start, 1st error I made. I started with Gamling,
Orophin, Silvan Elf and Galadriel Ringbearer. Site 1 Prancing Pony, so Aragorn joined the party. With Gamling I got a horn, 2 followers and
Galadriel's Silver Ewer. This is great, but also generates quite some pool. He played
Dagorlad so I had 3 threats to start with. He played
Desert Lord, and 2 Sauron orcs. Havoc started in maneuver, with
Hate hitting the table. Gamling died, hence 3 threats were to be devided.
Desert Lord did some damage to Aragorn. I used
Nocked to get rid of the 3rd minion, so Galadriel exert as well. End of the turn and the dust was gone, I was facing an exhausted fellowship and we were at site 2. His turn started playing Gandalf and Aragorn. Made a lot of pool, with which I could do someting as well. I played
Ted Sandyman, Grima and
Mumak Commander. Saruman follower was also played. In maneuver I exert Merry twice and then in archery
Elevated Fire did some damage. His fellowship was almost exhausted, Frodo could have taken 1 wound, but you can understand what the theme of both shadows was: wounding!
I dragged my fellowship along the path, hoping, praying that nothing would happen
. Every turn my fellowship was taking hits and his was joining me. I felt like his was doing a little bit better, I needed more twilight before I could do some damage and I couldn't get rid of his conditions, because he killed my hunter elfes....
Site 6 I made the stupidest mistake of all. Played
Aiglos on Galadriel and forgot to transfer it to Gil-Galad. He used Grond in the regroup, and Galadriel died.
Full loss
Sixt Round: Standard Format
My Gandalf and Gondor/Forest Guls vs
Elrohir's hunters/besiegers
My first turn was awesome. After my fellowship turn my fellowship exsisted out of: Isildur RB,
Gandalf LoM,
Aragorn Thorongil,
Grimbeorn with Beorning's Axe,
Radagast and
Treebeard Enraged Shepherd. Woohoo. Oh and
Pallando was out as was Narsil. Well I walked and stood still. He played
Namarie, which was nuked by me. We went along and I ran. I wasn't in too much trouble, allthough I couldn't help the sites being controlled.
By this time
Shapes Slowly Advancing was on the table and his deck wasn't very helpful. At site 6 I was adding the 4th token, so Galadriel was instantly corrupted.
Full Win
Well, all in all it was a good tournement. Nice people and nice location. It is good to see different people enjoying the game and I hope they will continue to play. And hopefully this will lead to an other tournament somewhere in the future!
Thanks JW for organising, and too bad some people didn't show up.
Topic: GE's tournament report (Read 3292 times)
