by Mark Alfano

What a great event!

Wednesday: I traveled to the airport in the afternoon. I called Brian Min, who was planning to meet me in Frankfurt (I fly from New York, he from Atlanta). My flight is delayed over an hour (nothing like poor Akira Komachi, whose flight was canceled!), but eventually Lufthansa got off the ground and headed for the Old World. I dozed, read some of my homework, and watched a little bit of a terrible movie called "Marie Antoinette"....

Thursday: I arrive in Frankfurt, just in time to run to Brian Min's arrival terminal and greet him. We depart on a train, traveling to Bacharach via Mainz. Last year I missed the connecting train because the track to Bacharach is set apart from the rest of the tracks, but this year I caught wise

We arrived in Bacharach around noon on Thursday, with plenty of time to relax, and then take a trip into town. What a beautiful... scenic... EMPTY town! We walked through the entire place and found only two stores open. No problem, though! As crude and stupid Americans, we felt entitled to bang on the doors of a winery (weingut) until they opened up. We were ushered in to buy some lovely Spätlese und Auslese. While there, we stared goggle-eyed at the cashier when she told us that the winery had been in business for over 100 years. To Americans, this is forever! She of course laughed at us and informed us that the other weinguten in town had all been operating since the middle ages....

We trudged our way back to the castle and sat down to relax over a game of White Mithril. Brian and I had been "plotting ruin" as we say for over a month -- planning to take 1st and 2nd prize in the WM tournament. During this time, Wolfgang Penetsdorfer and some other Austrians showed up. We went to dinner with them and chatted until bedtime. Brian snored all night, so I got up at 6 AM to read some more....

Friday: Players arrived throughout the day. Birk Pfeiffer, Marc Roca (and the whole Barcelona crew: hola para kikeeeee, antonio flores, marc de frutos murgadella, et al.!), Patric Laxander, Heiner der Grosse, Dominique Bergeret, and many others. I apologize to all whose names I did not mention! There were so many people to meet and to say hello to for only the second time. As players arrived, I gave my best compadres bottles of Barliman's Brew, of which I had 12 bottles. This is the special micro-brew that I made specially for Worlds 2007. A picture of the label is available on this forum. Everyone seemed very happy to have the beer and to see each other again.

Friday afternoon I played in Nico's firstborn/dwarflord tourney. Unfortunately for me, my opponent (Mario) had a constructed deck, while I was using a challenge deck.... Well, at least I was able to turn his boosted Awakened Plants against him and kill Gil-Galad with Old Man Willow (2 strikes of 16).

Friday night we played, among other things, a dragon hunt. My first opponent was Sergio, the great Italian player and current national representative. He was playing a hero deck, and I had retro-fitted my AkhoraKILL deck to slay dragons with 3x Bitter Cold. On his very first turn, he had a lot of bad luck. I played three hazards against his main company of Pallando, Glorfindel, and Beorn. The first was a drake, which Glorfindel faced. I used dragon's blood, and the body check killed the valiant elf. Then I played a Lure of Nature on Beorn, who was bearing 2x Black Arrow.... well, you can guess what happened to him! Pallando entered Ovir Hollow, but he was unable to slay Bairanax. In fact, the measly dragon wounded the wizard. On my turn, I sent Akhorahil to Ovir Hollow, killed the dragon, and then initiated CVCC against Pallando. Well, you can guess what happened to the hapless Wizard after I played a Morgul Blade.... The rest of the game was very fun -- Sergio played a lot of Rivers, which slowed me down, and I decided to chase Elrond around trying to Malady him, rather than kill more dragons. In the end, I managed to Malady Fram Framson to death, but Elrond killed 2 dragons, and Beorn (returned from his lure of nature) killed another. It looked like Sergio would win, but then he rolled some very bad corruption checks at the council. I mean... VERY bad. Elrond had 4 corruption points from Wormsbane and some other card, and he rolled... 4. Beorn had only 2 corruption points, and he rolled.... 2. What can I say? Sergio needs new dice! In any case, I doubled my character points and won 5-1.

The next game was against Harmutt Lipp, the co-inventor of the Dragon Hunt. He was playing a minion deck, and this was just perfect for me. With Akhrahil, I can usually play between 5 and 6 Bitter Cold per turn, so if my opponent influences dragon factions, I am able both to kill his faction and slay an at home dragon on the same turn. As it turned out, Hartmutt had very bad luck at the start and never really got his deck off the ground. After most of his characters were slain, hurt, or corrupted, he conceded the match.

Meanwhile, Marco Fregonari, the great Italian collector and player, had racked up many TPs. I faced him in the third round for the Dragon Hunt championship! He was also playing minion, using Khamul with Bitter Cold to kill the worms, just as I was using Akhorahil. He also was influencing them with Elerina and some other covert characters. On his very first turn, despite getting 2 of his three characters wounded, he was able to get Smaug Roused into play. No problem, right? Smaug is only 2x17/8, so I sent Akhorahil to kill him and then Itangast at Home..... I played 5 copies of Bitter Cold to reduce Smaug to a pathetic strike of 12/3 against my 9/9 ringwraith.... and then I rolled 2! Sergio's bad luck was catching up to me! Fortunately for me, Marco was unable to kill my wraith, so on the next turn, I bounced off Dol Guldur with Leg it Double Quick, back to Itangast, and was able to score 5 points from Smaug Roused and 18 from Itangast. Despite being wounded, Akhorahil did not need to make a roll against either Smaug or Itangast. Now that's power! In the end, I won the dragon hunt, but not by much.

I slept much better that night, having drunk much beer and gone to sleep around 3 AM. In the morning, it was time for the 2-deck general opponent. I had previously volunteered to run this event, but 29 people signed up, so I also played. This was very difficult for me, since I had not brought and deck and did not plan on playing. I ended up borrowing and slightly modifying Brian Min's deck from the pairs tournament (which he won with Mikko). It worked pretty well for the first match, which I wont 6-0 against Antonio Flores. He was playing a Hobbit Dunk deck, and my 3x Seized By Terror sent his hobbits to every site except the one he wanted.

In the second game I faced Martin "Peregrin" Teofanovic. He was playing a fallen wizard deck that squats at the Ettenmores to play the 3 factions there. Well, since I invented that trick, I also knew how to stop it! I played Foolish Words on the the Troll-Chief almost every turn. One turn I even put a Shut Yer Mouth on him as well. I called after my third turn, and was able to secure an easy victory (5-1 I think).

The third match was against Mikko "Bane of Spain" Vihtemaki. He was playing an original fallen Gandalf deck which was quite surprising and interesting. However, I had a fast deck with Short Rest, so I was able to dominate the first three turns. By the end of the third turn, in fact, I had 24 marshalling points and exhausted my deck.... And then I didn't score a single point for the rest of the game. That'll teach me to use a 1-deck hero deck in the 2-deck general opponent tournament!

After game three, players started to drop out, so I did too, since I would have forced someone to take a bye if I kept playing. Wanja was doing very well with a retrofitted version of Akhorahil (18 TP in 3 games!), but when he faced Mikko he had some trouble. I still recall the words that uttered his mouth when Mikko played Freca -- "F*** YOU!" Wow! One rarely hears such language in meccg at all, and so to hear it from the honorable WANJA in response to the play of FRECA was more than I could handle. Other players nearby can attest that my jaw actually hit the floor so hard that it left a dent....

In the end, Mikko won the tournament with 27 TP. Brian Min came in second with 22 (4 wins, 1 tie, and a stolen deck). Kris v. B. took third with 22 TP (4 wins, 1 loss, original deck). Antonio Flores managed to dunk three times after my crushing defeat of him in the first round: he had 21 TP. And Wanja, despite dropping out before the 5th round, managed 5th place with 20 TP. Nice tournament indeed!

We ate some quick dinner, and then I headed downstairs to participate in White Mithril. My first game was against Timo, who immediately asked me, "So, are you still playing that squatting deck at Moria?" I said, "My deck is very different... especially the hazards...." And then I proceeded to squat at Moria all game.... He had a very bad time: all of his characters except 1 were wounded at one point (Glorfindel merely because he rolled a 2 when he needed a 3). And the only non-wounded character was Gandalf, who was force-tapped by Vein of Arda.... What a pity. I won 5-1.

The second game was against Brian. We had played a number of games as the time for LURE approached, and we were about 50%-50%. He suggested that we roll dice to determine the winner.... I said no, but he went first, and that pretty much determined my fate. I was able to torch Moria with Tower Raided and slay Big Red, but brian got Houses of Healing and influenced away two of my main characters. In the end, he won. Now I was hoping to score big in the last round and see Brian lose -- or at least win by very little. The first part came true: against Bernd I was able to fulfill all three victory conditions (Houses of Healing at Moria, kill the Balrog, and store Mithril), but Brian won his game with no problems, and in the end we both had 13 TP. Since he beat me head-to-head, he won the tourney. Fun times nevertheless!

That night I stayed up with Mikko, Kris, Martin T., Antonio, Marc, Kike, and a few others (sorry if I forgot your names! I drank many liters of beer that this point!). We didn't even go to sleep -- just talked and talked until morning. During that time I also traded away a good number of beautiful promo cards, but I ended up with some loot of my own, including a Japanese Fatty Bolger! This card (and the book it is still sealed into) will be a prize at Worlds 2007, probably in the Virtual Card Tournament, so if you're interested....

Sunday was a slower day... I was very tired, and so were many others. But it was a lot of fun just to hang out and chat with people. I left for Frankfurt at noon, and arrived home in the evening to be greeted by my beautiful wife Veronica.

So, as always and as expected, a wonderful event! Thank you Wolfgang and all others for organizing such a great time for all. I only hope that Worlds 2007 will be as exciting and fun!

Mark Alfano