Murphy Mania 2k1
Murphy Mania 2k1
by Jean-Paul Keulen
Last Saturday (September 29 2001) there was a Middle-earth tournament
organized by Marco and Natasja Aarts at the Murphy Mania gaming convention in
Delft,. The format was 1-deck general opponent (i.e. quick decks of all
alignments). I didn't have the time to build something new so I just browsed
through the files in my DeckMECCG directory on Friday night to see if there was
some cool old deck in there I could use. A file called "Elves Speed.dck"
sounded promising, so I clicked on it, glanced at the deck listing, mumbled
something like "yeah, that one was pretty good" and built it. I
constructed two hazard decks (one vs. heroes, one vs. minions) while watching
Scream 2 on TV (a rather weak movie in my opinion by the way - Peter Jackson's
The Frighteners which was on last week was much more fun! I'm glad Wes Craven
isn't directing the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie). The deck features a
starting company consisting of four elves (e.g., Glorfindel, Elrohil, Elladan,
and Annalena) armed with two potions of prowess. As soon as I play my wizard (preferably
Radagast), one of the elf brothers joins him and the two of them start gathering
marshalling points on their own. The resource part was based on Gates of Morning
with Star of High Hope, A Short Rest and Echo of All Joy. The hazards were
nothing special -- the usual compromise between hazards that can actually hurt
your opponent, easy- to-play hazards that speed up your deck and hazards that
can be effective against certain decks but won't do an awful lot against others.
There were 13 participants, some of whom I'd never met before: All in all a pretty good turn-out!
First round, I played Chris van der Meer, who played his first Balrog deck ever, unfortunately designed for 2-deck games. He moved his companies around an awful lot in the Under-deeps with Gangways over the Fire but he didn't manage to play a lot of MP cards, apart from the obligatory Orcs of Moria and some other orc faction, and The Balrog didn't even show up. Meanwhile, I'd played Radagast and two A Short Rests with Echoes of All Joy on them, so I drew tons of cards, which not only gave me all the resources I needed but also allowed me to recycle The Way Is Shut effectively (even though slowing Chris down wasn't exactly necessary as he seemed to do a pretty good job of not getting points himself without me playing cheezy roadblock cards on him). (6-0)
My second opponent was Robert van Grieken, an excellent and experienced
player whose ranking isn't nearly as high as it should be. His starting company
consisted of Thranduil and Strider. My Pallando influenced away his Thranduil on
turn 2, leaving Strider on his own in Lorien. Robert changed his plans and
decided to come after me with Gandalf and Strider instead of sending them to
Mordor. A wise choice, as he managed to steal 7 MPs worth of cards from me...
After that, I sideboarded in a Wizard's Laughter, which ended up in my hand just
in time to cancel his attempt to influence away my Tom. I was going to win 5-1,
but unfortunately his wizard failed his corruption check at the Council, so it
became a 6-0 victory instead.
And of course, if you do that well during the first two rounds, you know who you're going to face during round 3: Yup, Wim. Still frustrated by being utterly humiliated by me at nationals and the most recent tournament in Leiden, Wim used every trick in the book to beat me this time: Playing cards without actually showing them to me, using the infamous "German MP Counter Scam" (i.e., you pretend you're keeping track of your score but you "forget" to administer at least half of your marshalling points until the Free Council so you can lull your opponent into a false sense of security), and on top of that, after all his other attempts to intimidate me had failed, he started using his horrendous fake Belgian accent on me (shudder). My only chance of winning was when Wim was about to be dragged out of the building strapped to the chest of a woman half his height, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. Another thing that didn't happen was me getting any factions (bloody Rivers) so Wim's doubled and with a final score of 19-29 he won the game 5-1. (For those intested: Wim played his Unexpected Party/Dragon-country deck.)
During the fourth round I played against me old mate Rogier "Rogrog" Ensing, who played a Sauron/The Lidless Eye minion deck with two troll lieutenants getting orc factions in the north-east. It worked pretty well, but the accompanying hazards (wolves) didn't so I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to do. During his last turn Rogier bravely split up his company in a desperate attempt to get as many marshalling points as possible, but I wounded all but one of his characters by playing the same Ice-drake three times in a row. His last unwounded character tried to get an item by entering a dragon's lair all by himself, but didn't get past the auto-attack without being eaten by the watch-dragon. My ten item points doubled and I won 6-0.
Wim had gathered 20 tournament points, so he got first place
(AGAIN!), I came
in second with 19 tournament points -- I don't remember the rest of the results.
I ended up with some very neat prizes, including the ME:RP realm book on The
Shire (280 pages!), a golden hobbit and a cup that says "Murphy Mania 2K01
MECG Tournament, 2nd Place"! The first cup I ever won in my life! (Middle-earth
is the only competitive thing I'm good at, I'm afraid.)
In the train on the way home Rogier, Ard and I discussed what we'd do if Wim died on us. Eventually we decided to give away your ashes as a prize at the first Middle-earth tournament after your demise, Wim! "We are sure he would have wanted it this way."
I'd like to thank Marco and Natasja for organizing the tournament, Wim for prize-support and for kicking my arse and Chris, Robert and Rogier for allowing me to kick theirs! ;-)
Yours sincerely,
Jean-Paul "The Sly Southerner"