Played in JP's tournament last thursday in Leiden and became 3rd. It was a sealed deck with 1 wizards starter and 3 dragons boosters and no extra sites. Tough format. With no wizards boosters, some cards (commons) you just don't get at all. Good thing is no region cards. I got the Beorn/Gimli fixed set.
My resources were very limited. I got only 7 characters total. Luckily I played no same fixed
set. Playable MPs were also very limited:
2 factions (fixed)
1 Sword of Gondolin
1 Enruned Shield playable with Dwarven Hoard (got no hoard sites at all)
3 ring items
1 magic ring (never got to test it)
1 dreams of lore
1 rescue priosoners
1 ent ally playable with that resource card
Best hazards were dragons/drakes and dragon manifestations. Liked the call of home and muster disperses as well. The rest was crap.
Building a deck was easy: just separate the crappy cards and I barely made it to 25/25.
First 2 games were 4-2 and 6-0 wins. My deck seemed to work pretty well, as long as i stayed away from dragon country. My opponents did the same so my hazards usually were useless, apart from muster disperses.
Final game against GP Gooijker would decide who would win the tournament. He had 4 corruption cards and 2 rivers, which left me without MPs for a long time (Beorn got corrupted). In his last turn, he had no factions yet and was at 11 MP (me at 10). I tapped out his company except for Peath and played a Call of Home on her with no free GI left. He needed a 10 and rolled it. He then played his faction and won 14-10 (instead of losing 12-11 if he had failed), winning the tournament.
I had a good time and JP did a great job again. I got a Adunaphel miniature; for 3rd place-cool. The 1x wizards starter/3x dragons boosters format is not very recommenable: characters, good resources and hoard sites are a problem. I would at least include 1-2 wizards boosters. But when dragons boosters are cheap, why not.
ME is definatly alive in The Netherlands.
Arco