Having played and organized a few Middle Earth Tournaments, I got the feeling that success depends not so much on luck and clever play, but more on the ability to construct a killer deck. I find deck construction to be a pretty hard and boring activity. When my friends and I started out playing METW we used to just add all of our cards together (forming a massive pile sometimes) and draw cards from there. Strategy was based on what we drew.
So, when Jean-Paul announced his sealed-deck tournament, I was anxious to join. No preparation and equal chances for nitwits like myself! So off I went to Leiden University one thursday night and after surviving the traffic jams of The Hague (cool subject for a new cardgame; imagine facing a Volvo Revealed in Full Wrath...) and driving around the campus for a while (someone up there was playing a roadblock strategy) I finally found the right building. Upstairs I was pleased to find more new faces than regular tournament-goers (these three familiar ones ended up at 1st, 2nd and 3rd place... so much for sealed deck's equal chances!). All in all there were 14 players. Jean-Paul handed out a starter and three dragons boosters to each player and soon we began building our decks.
I had reasonable cards. Enruned shield, wormsbane (!) and some dragon at home for the dragons boosters, and one of those nazgul,the nazgul are abroad and stone of erech for the starter. Of course, the stupid erech stone didn't make it into my deck. The nazgul cards also stayed out since they didn't fit in well with my other hazard cards. I had the choice between orc hazard creatures and more general-purpose ones (slayer, ambusher, dunlending raiders etc.) so I chose the latter (some of these orcs are pretty lame, especially without any orc boosters). As for the resources, I had quite a few items (sword of gondolin, glamdring, wormsbane, enruned shield) but could only play one greater item really (moria being the only greater item site). Using dwarven hoard, this could have been enough for the enruned shield. As for characters, I had the glorfindel starter deck (probably the best for sealed deck?), with Brand and Bard as supporting characters. This meant the dunlendings (Peath) and rangers of ithilien (Faramir) for factions.
So off they went. First 'Against the Arco' (they should make an expansion set based on playing against this guy). As for the trip to ruined signal tower: don't try this at home folks, these spiders are bad. Somehow, it took a very long time to get the major item there. Using muster, the dunlendings were no problem. Moria served for a major item as well (Wormsbane was sitting comfortably at the bottom of my deck). Still, I had no ally and Arco (with the Beorn starter) succesfully played 'here there or yonder' on one of those annoying ents! When I finally had his wiz cornered with some foul hazard creature, he played a true fana and lived to tell it! So in the end, I got double faction points, Arco got double ally points, and he had loads (five) of kill points by which he won the game (4-2).
My second game was against Dirk, a Magic player who occasionally enjoyed a game of METW as well. He had the same starter Arco had, so no double characters during the draft. During my first round (great road to the ruined signal tower) I ran into a lot of hazard creatures and decided to go for the kill points, tapping all characters. 4 kill points in the first round are better than a potential 2 for the major item. The company decided to use the great road option to return to the haven for reinforcements (gandalf). In the end, Brand joined the company (for 2 MP!), the company found some major items (Wormsbane was once again beaten to it by a major item at Moria) and some dunlendings and beat up some more creatures. The Rangers of Ithilien were too far away (I hardly had any sites east of the mountains). Meanwhile Dirk, while playing lots of creatures and corruption cards, had no luck with his resources, drawing no resource points at all, so this turned out a 6-0 victory for me!
The last round (there were only three) I played against Rogier, who had a Thranduil deck. He got those Wood-Elves on his first round and hung around The Wind Throne most of the time. He managed to cancel some of my niftier hazards (such as one of those ahunt dragons) with Marvels Told and did pretty well on his resource strategy. Still, his party was so strong that I didn't grant him any kill points. My Peath had some bad luck with glamdring, 4 corruption points and The Balance of Things. Three checks at 6 CP are no fun. When Rogier got another faction I got worried about him getting double (that's 12) points for factions and started drawing like mad using Radagast's special ability. So on the last turn, one of my companies sped towards Ithilien and got those rangers despite the Times are Evil. And even though Wormsbane again remained comfortably at the bottom of my playdeck, I had 19 MP vs. the 15 that Rogier had, so it was a 4-2 victory.
The first prize (two German MP counters and some other cool stuff) went to GP, who won with 16 points. Jean-Paul placed second, choosing a Lidless Eye Companion as his trophy. Arco came third with 12 points, and picked up a cool Adunaphel miniature. With 12 points, I ended up at fourth place, respectable enough to be one of the major prize winners. So I picked a Limited Edition starter and a Dutch Test of Form promo (no logo). All in all, a very cool and easy-going tournament. And for 12,50 guilders it got me a limited and an unlimited starter, 3 dragons boosters and a sought-after Dutch promo! Oh, and one of Wim's infamous 'Mini-Boosters' containing Ash Mountains and one of those cool region cards! As for Wormsbane, I quickly traded it with someone who really wanted it (good luck!).
Thanks to Jean-Paul for another great tournament!