Last weekend, I went to GenCon Benelux, in Antwerp, Belgium, with a friend of mine. It was fun. We met a dutch fantasy writer/musician I had never heard of before (W.J. Maryson, or something like that) who had some interesting things to say, I bought a Planescape book for cheap, I won a lottery and got the "An Evening with Dracula" game (big box, looks quite expensive), we saw some Star Wars actors (didn't know what to say to them though) and a fat woman wearing a Xena outfit, and we had a french gentlemen explain the Legend of the Five Rings card game to us - nice game, but I think I'll stick to Middle Earth.
Now for the Middle Earth bit. There were two Challege Deck tournaments for new players and a general opponent tournament. I played the general opponent tournament. I think there were at about fifteen participants - correct me if I'm wrong, Wim. People had come from England, Germany, France and The Netherlands to participate, so it was a very international tournament.
Because I had just come back from a holidays, I didn't have the time to build a new deck, so I brought my "Cirdan & His Elven Buddies Visit The Seaside" deck, with Alatar, Sentinels of Numenor and Belegaer x3 (great card).
First round, I played against Kees Schipstra, who played a hero deck centered around Mordor. It was a fun game, exciting too, but I had a lot of bad luck with my dice rolls. At the end of the game, I thought he'd have at about twice the amount of marshalling points I had, but it turned out to be 32-28. So a 2-4 loss for me. Not too bad; I _could_ have won...
Next game, I had to play Gerard-Pieter Gooiker, who played a Fallen-Gandalf Gondor/White Tree deck with roadblock hazards (booh! booh!). Succeeded in wounding a lot of his characters during his second turn, later in the game I recycled Lost in Free-domains to slow him down, while I played a lot of the Gondor-factions he wanted to play. 6-0 victory for me.
The third game, I played against Steve, a friendly guy from
Belgium, who had a hero One Ring deck. His initial idea was, to
play Precious Gold Rings from Rumours of Rings. After I had
explained that wasn't possible, since the rings on Rumours should
be special ring items, not gold ring items, and after I told him he
couldn't play Radagast in Lorien, he thought his deck had become
so bad it was impossible for him to win. He DID win, though, so I
lost another game, 0-7 this time...
Fourth game, I played against Birk, a guy from Germany (the same
Birk as the one on this mailing list?) who played a Sauron-deck
with covert companies playing rings & Smoke on the Wind in
Gondor. Great deck. He was almost totally invulnerable to my
hazards (mostly drakes... not a lot of triple wildernesses in
Gondor...), so he could do everything he wanted to do with his
twenty-something characters, while I had a hard time just staying
alive (Alatar got wounded quite a lot of times). 1-5 loss for me.
A french guy with a fallen-Pallando deck (booh! booh!) won, he got
a bunch of boosters, a signed print of the Healing of Nimrodel
artwork and a Rangers of the North-sweater. He also won some
promo cards of his choice. Steve had succeeded in dunking the
One three times, so he got second place. Don't remember the
exact order of the other players. (I do remember the dutch players
all hadn't done too well. Of course, most of the really good dutch
players weren't present.) I won a Dark Minions booster and a
Schwertmeister-card. Nice price for someone who lost three out of
four games...! Gerard-Pieter got the consolation price (is there an
english word for that?): a limited edition starter deck. It contained
four rares!
Thanks, Wim & Simone, for the organization! It was good fun and
you did a good job. Middle Earth lives! Thanks, Steve & Tommo &
GP, for the trades.
Yours,
Jean-Paul "The Sly Southerner" Keulen
All in all, excellent price support!