Bilbo’s Reflections on MECCG 2023 Sealed Tournament

The Draft:
I would say that my draft was above average but still nothing extraordinary. I do believe that minion cards were stronger than hero but obviously I lacked the experience of a minion player given the last time I played minion was back to my fist days of meccg, some 20 years ago! When it comes to hero my best cards were strider/Aragorn/Palantir of amon sul and radagast which naturally led me into building an Eriador deck, whereas with minion I relied on the considerable number of men factions which I had, alongside cards such as necklace of girion, crept along cleverly, that’s been heard before tonight and faithless steward. My Fallen cards were an absolute no-go and since my first meccg days, Balrog was the avatar of my best friend (and ofc my rival :D ) so another no-go there as well.

The Strategy:
So I was faced with the dilemma on whether should I remain within my safe zone or should I try something new. I have to say here that after some research with the TP modifiers I got to realise that achieving distinctiveness within the same alignment was an almost impossible task for me (simply I didn’t have enough MPs for two hero or minion decks), so the best thing I could do if I wanted to utilize any of the modifiers was simply to switch between alignments and therefore my decision was to play 2 times my minion deck and another 2 my hero one (achieving a 27% modifier). Knowing that my strength lies on my hero side, I also decided to start with minion in order to make a strong finish with my hero deck.

The games:
1st game VS shapeshifter: if I wanted to avoid something that was my first game with minion to be against a strong player but given that it was just me and shapeshifter who played minion at this phase, that was inevitable. During this game I made lots of rookie mistakes ( not even using my RW’s skill for example) till I get used to the minion rules, while Shapeshifter’s combo with the dwarven traveller’s + maiars had a strong effect on my game. On top of that, my agent (Ivic) was corrupted the round he was about to store the faithless steward and as you can imagine I was encountering a dire situation. Thankfully, shapeshifter didn’t let me surrender, and following that he lost an easy CC, whereas my Thief helped in discarding an additional item. My double foolish words also helped in delaying almost all my opponents (including shapeshifter), but finally he managed to play a faction and called the council, during which he’s leader got corrupted while carrying am item and as result I managed to lose by only 3 MPs. Given the fact my graveyard had 5+ people and against such a strong player, I considered this a small success and hoped that I register a win with my minion deck in the next game.

2nd Game: Vs Lake Town Geezer: this game proved to be less adventurous for me. Given I was playing against hero with a minion deck, I decided to change my minion deck and utilize some undead creatures on top of these men hazards I already had in there. Also, this time round, I played more carefully (started to utilize my RW’s ability for starters), used more weapons to protect my weak players and as a result I minimized the effect of Geezer’s hazards to my companies. Corrupting his Glorfindel quite early in the game was quite a strong blow against his strategy and following that I was limited delaying his game with the rest of my Corruption cards and foolish words. Meanwhile I managed to bring in play a considerable number of factions south of Mordor and stored a couple of information events from lake town which gave me a safe difference to claim my first win.

3rd Game: Vs Adam
Although I registered another win there, that game was much tighter than the score might reveal. So, first surprise was that Adam was playing Fallen Raddy (which was also my wizard). As a result, I had to switch my wizards to Pallando/ Gandalf. What made this game interesting was that both of us made a strong start so it was becoming more and more evident that the one who will register one strong blow to the enemy will be the winner. I had managed to form a strong big company with two fellowships (and pallando included) whereas Adam had played a number of allies with his squatting Raddy (I had only one ally – noble steed which given the fact I was playing an eriador deck it was on sb) and had already played a faction in carndum. On some point raddy decided to leave the safety of rhosgobel, so I took the opportunity and stated attacking his allies reducing them from 3 to 1, and reducing the danger of him doubling a considerable amount of points due to his allies and also his chances of playing Radagast’s girdle (ofc foolish words helped on this front as well) whereas my Wizard had survived a critical CC. However, the game was far from decided as Adam was also preparing his last blow as the main weakness of my deck was the fact that I had only two factions in my deck and until the last turn I had played only one. So it all came down to the last turn, during which he tried unsuccessfully to discard my only faction with muster disperses and at the end of my turn I managed to play my second one, so it was game over.

4th Game: Vs Damien
Notes before the last game: After two consecutive wins I had reached the third place and what’s more surprising was that by taking into consideration the modifiers, If I won this last game even by one less TP point than gkg or sfan would win in the other game, I’d claim the first place. So, priority of my game was to win even by a 6-3.
And that’s what happened. I managed to register some early kills against Damien and as a result his game was delayed considerably which gave me the chance to get a safe difference. However, Damien proved to be a tough nut to crack and gradually he started registering MPs while adapting his hazard strategy against me by SBing a considerable number of hazards (I’m pretty positive that he SBed at least 5 cards most of which during the last turns). But while realising his well-planned counter-attack, I started playing more conservatively, and focused my efforts on stealing with my thief his one and only item, which I managed to do successfully. However, around the same time, I failed a fairly easy infl. Check with Aragorn in Bree, which got me thinking that worse things can come next. So as in with Adam, it all came down to the last turn of the game during which he played against me the unforgettable combo of call of home / neither so ancient / muster disperses as a result of which I was left without any factions (and without an ally already). Thankfully for me, my opponent was without items which balanced the situation on my favour and left me waiting the result of the other game… I knew already that only a 9-0 could take the gold away from me, but with Middle Earth you can never know and finally GKG came strong with a 9-0 win to get the tournament! 

To sum this up though, what can I say about these MECCG cardnum tourney’s … the mix of feelings, the excitement, everything was perfect and I really feel grateful for being part of this guys. Special thanks ofc go to the organiser of this, Theo! We can’t wait for more similar events! :)