by Chris van der Meer
Apart from the organising committee consisting of Wim and Simone only three players showed up: Simon Kort, Ronnie Hekkenberg and me. While Wim worked on the demo department, showing several people the mechanics Decipher's new LOTR TCG, Simone joined the other three for a round robin sealed deck tournament. After unpacking the starter, UL booster and three dragons boosters I had nothing to complain about.
I had the Beorn starter set which also contained Ren the Unclean, and a couple of corruption cards. I also found Elrond in my UL booster, some dragon ahunts and had a couple of giant & lesser spiders to accompany Shelob, which was also in my starter.. I wasn't unlucky with the MP's either. I found an Orcrist, Narsil, Gollum and some other thingies.
All of my games I started with the same starting company consisting of Beorn with Cram in his pocket controlling Bard and Elrond controlling Ori carrying a little shield. First round was against Simon. We both roughly used the same strategy using two companies both consisting of a big bum with a smaller follower walking around in Middle Earth. Nothing happened much hazard wise. We both only managed to kill one of each others little guys (Ori bites the dust). Although my Wizard didn't even show up I just managed to gather a few more MP's than Simon (19-17) before the end signal.
The next game I played against Simone. Her Aragorn got Dragon-sickness early in the game. At some point in the game I managed to get a company containing Alatar, Gimli, Elrond and Ori with a fellowship played on it. A couple of creatures were slaughtered, Gimli called in his buddies from the Iron Hills and somewhere along the way someone stumbled on Orcrist too. Simone tried to race back after her slow start in the last few turns but the bad dice roll on Aragorn mentioned above proved to be the big winner for me. A 5-1 victory.
My final opponent was Ronnie who probably wasn't very happy with his deck as he found his first MP card, a meager gold ring, when he was almost halfway through his deck. On top of that the call of nature corrupted his Annalena. It rained corruption cards on Beorn. Lucky for me he wouldn't get lured away.
In spite of his last all or nothing attempt which gathered quite a few points Ronnie ended up losing his third game. I won the round robin with 14 tournament points. Simon ended up second with 10. Simone got 7 and Ronnie finished last with 5 points. I went home with a burgundy (some kind of purple-red really) plastic hobbit, The dutch Test of Form and Iron Crown promos, a Returned Beyond All Hope signed by Ted Nashmith and a couple of boosters. Quite nice for such a little tournament. Thanks Wim.
I hope the next tournament "around the corner" will welcome some more players.
Greetings,
Chris van der Meer