German Championship Report (long)
Daniel Brickwell
Hi,
I bring you this Report from Tobias Boes who went with me to Ratingen,
where The German Championships took place last week, as I am still too
depressed. As you will see the Magic Dreams Team did really
quite well taking 1., 5. and 6. in the Constructed Deck Half of the
tournament.
On to the report:
Last weekend, on June 1-2, the German National MtG Championships were held in
Ratingen near Duesseldorf. 100 participants had been selected in regional
tournaments as well as several leagues throughout the past months and were
now invited to battle it out for the title of German Champion, as well as a
spot
on the national team which was to fly to Seattle in August to participate in
the Worlds. The championship was organized and administered by AMIGO Games,
Wizard's German distributor, with some staff support from WotC Belgium.
Though I personally did not manage to qualify, I nevertheless decided that
this was an event I simply *had* to participate in, and so I did what was
second-best: I secured myself a place on the team of judges which was to
referee the tournament. In this position, I told myself, I'd have a far
better insight into what was going on behind the scenes than I would as a
pure spectator.
So on Friday, May 31, the day before the tournament started, I found
myself packing my camera and tape recorder (for mental notes and interviews
with participants) and hopping into a car with my friends Daniel Brickwell,
Stefan Funke and Matthias Nagy aka Darkpact. The former two had qualified for
the championships and Matthias was also going to judge.
After a fairly long drive (made even more arduous by the fact that we took
a wrong highway and lost several hours in the backwaters of former East
Germany...), we finally arrived in Duesseldorf and checked in at a local
youth hostel, where we also met Martin Luedecke, a friend of Daniel's, who,
just like him, had participated in the Pro Tour 1. Together, we prepared for
the upcoming tournament.
I should add to this that the German Championship was divided into two
parts: A Sealed Deck event using Ice Age starters plus a Fourth Edition, a
Homelands and a Renaissance booster on Saturday and a Type II event on
Sunday. Both tournaments were to be held in a 7-round Swiss format with match
scoring, the match points for both events being added up at the end of the
weekend to determine the overall winner. A quick discussion showed that none
of us was very happy with this system. We all found that it was unfair to use
a Sealed Deck tournament, which is dependent to such a large degree on pure
luck of the draw, as part of the championships, and were especially
infuriated by AMIGO's decision to give equal credit to the Sealed Deck and
Type II match points.
But there was nothing we could do about this, and so we pulled out some
starters and boosters which Daniel had brought along (this man *believes in
practice* and had bought cards by the display to get as much Sealed Deck
experience as he could) for some final games, before going to bed early.
These quick games showed what our instinct had already told us - that the
contents of the Renaissance boosters, with their large chance of containing a
Land Tax, Mishra or heavy flyer such as Tetravus and Triskelion, would make
the difference between a good and a bad deck.
On Saturday morning, we drove out to Ratingen and found the convention
center without any problems. We arrived pretty early, and while Daniel,
Martin and Stefan joined the other players, Darkpact and myself headed right
in to find Frank Jaeger, the head judge of the tournament.
The tournament was held at the "Stadthalle Ratingen", a large and very
modern place, and was part of the "Ratcon I", basically a role-playing and
table-top convention organized by several large German RPG companies. It
wasn't very well attended, though, and for the most part, the other events
were drowned out by the championships.
After the preliminaries, Darkpact and myself went to check out the place,
which we found to be ideal for the purposes of a MtG tournament. All players
were seated atop of a podium in the main hall, where judges could keep an eye
on them at all times. The seats were comfortable, the tables (fairly) clean
and there was enough space for everybody.
After this preliminary inspection we had a brief meeting of all referees.
It turned out that we had far more people than we actually needed, but this
proved a benefit throughout the tournament because it allowed us the luxury
of having two or three people immediately come to the aid of anybody with a
rules question, which effectively eliminated misrulings by any individual.
All in all, my first impression of the judges was that they were all very
knowledgeable, and that this should be a well-administered event.
Without further ado, the players were let in and registered for the
tournament, receiving their DC Mana Membership package if they didn't already
have it. In the meantime, we prepared for the Sealed Deck. All necessary
packs had been opened under supervision the day before the event and all
spells had been marked with an AMIGO stamp, to prevent people from smuggling
in their own cards. Unfortunately, Frank Jaeger, the head judge, did not deem
it necessary to also stamp the basic lands, a grave mistake in my eyes, since
these are by far the most important cards in any Sealed Deck.
But it was too late to complain, and so the decks were administered and
the construction phase began. 92 of the 100 eligible players had shown up and
were now busy sorting through their cards. Throughout the next hour, my basic
job was to walk around and watch out that no trading took place - probably a
hopeless task, but we all did our best. While watching the players unpack, I
noted a particularly lucky individual who pulled three red X-spells and two
Blood Lusts from his starter and boosters. I told Darkpact to mark his face,
as this was a top candidate for winning the Sealed Deck - and I should be
right; the guy, who I later learned was Dr. Oliver Wehrmann, should indeed
finish 5th in the tournament.
In the meantime, I made use of the fact that everything was quiet to find
out which members of the German "Magic jet-set" were present. From Team
Germany 1995 I spotted Christoph Bilshausen (the still-reigning champion) and
Norman Wagner. Gunnar Refsdal and Martin Trummel, the other two members,
apparently didn't qualify. Pro Tour participants Frank Adler, Stefan
Murillo-Reetz, Daniel Brickwell and Martin Luedecke were also present. On the
negative side, I did not spot a single woman among the crowd. It turned out
that only one had qualified, but hadn't shown up.
Without further ado, the Sealed Deck commenced. Going into the details of
what happened this day would not be very fruitful, and can hardly be of
interest to anyone. I'll thus skip directly to the final score, which looked
as follows:
1) Daniel Kreimer, 7-0, 55 points
2) Oliver Krebs, 6-1, 48 points
3) Peer Kroger, 6-1, 48 points
4) Christoph Luhrs, 6-1, 45 points
5) Dr. Oliver Wehrmann, 6-1, 45 points (the guy with the Blood Lusts) 6)
Norman Wagner, 5-1-1, 45 points
7) Thomas Hermann, 5-2, 51 points
8) Henning Rimkus, 5-2, 45 points
I should add that the final match between Daniel Kreimer and Oliver Krebs
was ended in a fashion characteristic of Sealed Deck (at least in my eyes):
with an Orcish Lumberjack/Channel/Lavaburst combo on the part of Daniel (in a
later interview, he told me that he had in an earlier game deliberately
forced a draw with a Hurricane because his Channel was at ante and he could
not risk to lose it). By the way, both finalists had had enough luck with
their cards to be able to play a two-color R/G burn deck, and though Oliver
Krebs didn't not have the luck of drawing a Channel as Daniel did, he *did*
have a Stormbind... I'll leave it to you to judge how much of this tournament
was already pre-decided during the deck construction phase...
Anyhow. After the first day was over and people prepared to go home,
Darkpact and myself met up with Daniel, Stefan and Martin to head back to the
youth hostel. None of the three players were satisfied with their match
record; Daniel and Martin had managed a 4-3 score, while Stefan had fallen
back to a 3-4. Because the two tournaments were handled separately from each
other, it was impossible to accurately predict what final record a player
would have to have to make it to the team, but we all tentatively agreed that
the cut-off point would be at around 11 won matches, meaning that Stefan was
effectively eliminated from the race and Daniel and Martin would have to
sweep the next day. Perhaps I should add at this point that all three of them
were using exactly the same mono-black Necropotence deck, which Daniel, a
Necro player almost from day one who has been messing around with this idea
since long before it became the dominant tournament force, had developed.
Stefan took this particular deck to a 7-0 win at the Berlin qualifiers, and
the three were confident that one of them would have good chances of sweeping
the Sunday event.
Darkpact and me spent the evening at a steak restaurant in Duesseldorf
together with some of the other judges, who turned out to be TCG store owners
here in the area. All in all, we got some extremely interesting insights into
WotC's distribution system.
The next day, I left it to the other judges to handle the deck
registration process and went around exploring the convention center, taking
plenty of pictures in the process. While doing this, I ran into Pete Venters
and Liz Danforth, the two guest artists, and had a long and extremely
interesting talk with Liz about her work. I also got a sneak preview of the
artwork they did for Mirage and let me tell you: if the cards in this set are
only half as good as their illustrations, then this is gonna be the best
expansion ever!
In the meantime, the Type II had started and I headed back to the
tournament area. While the players were battling it out at the tables
(Martin, by the way, had drawn 1995 Championship finalist Norman Wagner as
his first opponent - a tough challenge, but he went on to master it), I took
a look at the deck registration forms the players had handed in, and did some
statistical evaluations. What follows is a list of the most popular deck
themes at the German Nationals. Keep in mind that I had to sort through 86
(six players from yesterday had dropped out) deck forms, and didn't have much
more time than maybe 10 seconds each to analyze them, so this will be just a
rough take, but it should be enough for a general overview. So, without
further ado, I counted the following deck themes, in order of popularity:
- Willowgeddon: 12
- Millstone and other W/U passive decks: 10 - Necrodisk: 9
- White Weenies/Sleightweenies: 9
- Black/Red decks (mostly direct damage and land destruction): 7
- Red/Green decks (burn and/or heavy creatures, some with Jokulhaups): 6 -
Red/Green/White decks: 5
- Red/White decks (mostly heavy creature): 5
- Mono-Black decks without Necropotence (mostly Discarders): 5 - Land
Tax/Land's Edge decks: 5
- Winter Orb decks: 3
- Mono-Red Burn decks: 1
- Mono-Green Weenie: 1
Other decks that defied categorization: 8
After a couple of rounds of Type II had been played, I started comparing
the records of the top Sealed Deck finishers with their Type II performance.
I wasn't very surprised to find out that not many faces that were seated at
the first five tables yesterday made it anywhere close to that position
today. My suspicions against Sealed Deck grew...
This matter having been settled I went to look for my three friends from
Berlin. Daniel had lost his very first match and was thus well out of the
competition. Later on, he would also lose a match against Norman Wagner,
enough to throw him way back in the field. Martin had had a good start, but
lost two matches later on, bringing him on par with Daniel. The only one that
was winning left and right was Stefan, who fought his way up to table number
1 where he remained for the rest of the tournament, swatting off all
opponents like flies. He would go on to sweep the tournament, just like he
had hoped yesterday, but ironically, this did him no good due to his poor
performance in the Sealed Deck.
The refereeing, in the meantime, was going extremely well, despite the
fact that all possible problems which can arise in Magic did arise - we had
complications with the "play as written vs. play according to newest version"
controversy, we had problems with the new Recall ruling (which went in effect
the day of the tournament)... you name it, we had it. But as I said earlier,
we had some very competent judges (and no, this is not meant to be deliberate
back-patting on my part...<g>), and thus throughout the entire weekend not a
single misruling was made that I am aware of. One ugly incident occurred when
a player contested a referee's decision *after* the match was over (and he
had lost) and demanded to get a reversal from the head judge. We all agreed,
though, that by playing on the competitor had lost his right for an appeal,
and that he should have protested immediately when the situation occurred.
The player got so angry about this that he dropped out of the tournament for
a whole round, but frankly, we couldn't care less.
But back to the game. By now, five rounds of Type II Swiss had been
played, and we judges prepared a list ranking all players according to their
performance on both days. This list wasn't made accessible to the players,
however, in order to prevent unfair deals from occurring.
So, after 12 rounds total (7 Sealed and 5 Type II constructed), the field
looked like this:
1) Oliver Krebs, 10-1-1, 76 points
2) Daniel Kreimer, 10-2, 82 points
3) Peer Kroger, 10-2, 81 points
4) Henning Rimkus, 9-1-2, 78 points
5) Bjorn-Oliver Falensky, 9-3, 78 points 6) Dr. Oliver Wehrmann, 9-3, 78
points
Stephan Valkyser, 9-3, 78 points
From looking at this statistic, you might be able to guess why I'm so
suspicious of Sealed Deck. Daniel Kreimer, who played an (in my eyes) pretty
mediocre R/G burn deck only managed a 3-2 match record in Type II, but was
still rated at the number two spot, because he swept the event yesterday. And
my friend Stefan Funke, despite having a 5-0 match record in Type II didn't
even come close to having a chance to make the team. But of course, I
shouldn't be too hasty in my assessment, after all, the above record was
produced using 7 rounds of Sealed and only 5 rounds of constructed, and thus
isn't very objective.
As you can see, though, none of the "big names", such as Pro Tour
competitors or members of last year's time made it to the top of the field.
Indeed, Christoph Bilshausen, last year's champion, did pretty poorly, and
was way down in the field. It was already getting clear that this year's
champion would be someone who had as yet not drawn any attention to himself.
Which brings me to the next statistic. After round 13, things looked as
follows (I unfortunately didn't write down the exact match break-up for every
person). To give you an insight into what these players were playing, I'll
also include a brief deck description:
1) Peer Kroger; R/G/W Willowgeddon variant
2) Henning Rimkus; U/W/G/R (4 colors!) centering around Winter Orb
3) Dr. Oliver Wehrmann; R/W with Armageddon, Wrath of God and lots of direct
damage
4) Oliver Krebs; B/R with Hippies, Sengirs, Ihsan Shades, Foul Familiars and
direct damage
5) Daniel Kreimer; R/G burn
6) Stephan Valkyser; classic Willowgeddon 7) Hardy Trzenschiak; Willowgeddon
Note that this does not mean that Willowgeddon decks proved to be the most
successful at the Championship! The only undefeated deck at this time was
still Stefan's Necro deck.
Now the final round was drawing near, and the players were getting visibly
anxious. Though we did not release any information on how they were standing,
most people that still had a chance were well aware of it, of course, and one
or two players looked like they would be feinting any second due to the
pressure. Of course, it is the nature of Swiss that the best people are
seated across from each other, and so at several tables we had matches where
two players were battling each other directly for a seat on the team. To make
a very long hour short: Stefan Funke defeated his final opponent and made a
very good ninth place. Daniel Kreimer, the Sealed Deck winner, lost his last
match and finished with a 3-4 match record.
The top eight, finally, looked like this (drumroll...):
8) Andre Konstantov (not sure about the name) 7) Daniel Kreimer
6) Norman Wagner (last year's championship finalist) 5) Dr. Oliver Wehrmann
And the team:
4) Henning Rimkus
3) Stefan Valkyser
2) Oliver Krebs
1) Peer Kroger
Frank Jaeger of AMIGO Games handed out plenty of prizes, including
Alliances and English Legends packs, but I was too busy taking pictures and
getting the last tournament information on my tape recorder to note what
exactly it was the players got.
After the whole affair, I managed to meet with each of the four players
for a quick interview. This posting is long enough as it is, so I'll spare
you a detailed account of what they all had to say about the tournament and
settle for some quick profiles:
Henning Rimkus, 26 years old, from the area around Munich. Currently at
university studying computer sciences. Qualified at Freising, and then again
in Hof. Has been playing for about two years, but has almost no Type II
experience as he vastly prefers Type I.
Stephan Valkyser, 31 years old, from Aachen. Is a professional mathematician
working for an insurance company. Qualified in Wesel. Has been playing for
more than two years and has won several local tournaments, but never
something comparable to this one. (A side-note from myself: Stephan is one of
the most considerate and polite players I have met in the game, a true
"gentleman player". I'm very happy that he made the team).
Oliver Krebs, 19 years old, from Aschaffenburg. Is currently undergoing
professional schooling to become a mechanic. Qualified in Hof. has been
playing for about two years, won several Moxen and a Lotus in tournaments,
but has sold them all to devote his time to Type II.
And the champion:
Peer Kroger, 21 years old, from Hamburg. Is currently busy with, in his own
words, "doing absolutely nothing". Qualified in Berlin (hurray!). Has been
playing for two years, but doesn't like Type II very much. He greatly prefers
Type I, Sealed Deck and Two-Headed Giant. Peer, by the way, is the only
player of the four who openly embraced AMIGO's decision to have a Sealed Deck
portion at the Championships.
Well, that's about all from me. The rest is a fairly quick story. After
Daniel had brought Martin to the train station, the four of us jumped into
the car and drove back to Berlin. Obviously, Stefan was a little depressed,
but he took it remarkably well. I would have thrown some serious tantrums had
I been in his shoes... We spent the way back talking deck strategy, mostly
about Necro and how to defeat it. After getting back to Berlin, Daniel
dropped us off at home and we called it a day. But that doesn't mean we've
had enough of Magic. Next stop: The PT3 qualifier in Frankfurt..
Sofar to Tobias'es Report, now for my little tirade against Amigo:
1) I would have not weigthed Sealed Deck and Constructed Deck 50/50.
2) On the second day the players were not matched up by previous records.
The arguement for that was that the top players had already played against
each other and that the next day was a new tourney.
This proves to me that Amigo knows nothing about the principles behind Swiss.
(Maybe they are not Australian :) If you suppose that Sealed Deck is a equal
test of skill to constructed deck and if you add the records up in the end,
then in my opinion you have simply 14 rounds of swiss for 100 people, you
can't stop after 7 rounds and do new pairings! Swiss is supposed to give a
fair representation of the quality order of the decks. This is only possible
if you continue to pair the best players against each other.
Am I right or am I right? (David, Steve, Craig?)
3) Amigo did not stamp/mark the lands, did not even check a single deck
during the day and not on the second day as far as I know. Infact Stefan has
found a unstamped Dark Ritual in his cards which he won in Ante. This
could be an oversight or it could have been someone improving his mana
percentage, we will never know as no decks were checked.
Ahh well, till next year!
Friendly Greetings,
Daniel
Ceterum censeo Orbem Zurensem esse interdicendum.
(And otherwise I think, that the Zuran Orb should be banned.)
Stephan Valkyser
> I bring you this Report from Tobias Boes who went with me to Ratingen.
First of all a big thanks for your effort.
> On to the report:
> In the meantime, I made use of the fact that everything was quiet to find
> out which members of the German "Magic jet-set" were present. From Team
> Germany 1995 I spotted Christoph Bilshausen (the still-reigning champion)
> and Norman Wagner. Gunnar Refsdal and Martin Trummel, the other two members,
> apparently didn't qualify.
It's a shame that the semifinalists didn't get a free spot on this year's
tournament.
> The only one
> that was winning left and right was Stefan, who fought his way up to table
> number 1 where he remained for the rest of the tournament, swatting off all
> opponents like flies.
I have to protest. I think my match with Stefan wasn't that one-sided. Ask
him. ;-)
> 1) Peer Kroger; R/G/W Willowgeddon variant
> 2) Henning Rimkus; U/W/G/R (4 colors!) centering around Winter Orb
> 3) Dr. Oliver Wehrmann; R/W with Armageddon, Wrath of God and lots of direct
> damage
> 4) Oliver Krebs; B/R with Hippies, Sengirs, Ihsan Shades, Foul Familiars and
> direct damage
> 5) Daniel Kreimer; R/G burn
> 6) Stephan Valkyser; classic Willowgeddon
'Willow'geddon? I had just one Autumn Willow in my sideboard and never
used it the whole day!
> 7) Hardy Trzenschiak : Willowgeddon
Hmm, when I met Hardy in the last round, he definitely played R/G with no
White in it at all, and definitely neither Armageddon nor Autumn Willow.
> Stephan Valkyser, 31 years old, from Aachen. Is a professional mathematician
> working for an insurance company. Qualified in Wesel. Has been playing for
> more than two years and has won several local tournaments, but never
> something comparable to this one. (A side-note from myself: Stephan is one
> of the most considerate and polite players I have met in the game, a true
> "gentleman player". I'm very happy that he made the team).
Thanks a lot, I'll really appreciate this!
> Sofar to Tobias'es Report, now for my little tirade against Amigo:
> 1) I would have not weigthed Sealed Deck and Constructed Deck 50/50.
>
> 2) On the second day the players were not matched up by previous records.
> The arguement for that was that the top players had already played against
> each other and that the next day was a new tourney.
>
> This proves to me that Amigo knows nothing about the principles behind
> Swiss. (Maybe they are not Australian :) If you suppose that Sealed Deck is
> a equal test of skill to constructed deck and if you add the records up in
> the end, then in my opinion you have simply 14 rounds of swiss for 100
> people, you can't stop after 7 rounds and do new pairings! Swiss is supposed
> to give a fair representation of the quality order of the decks. This is
> only possible if you continue to pair the best players against each other.
>
> Am I right or am I right? (David, Steve, Craig?)
But if you think that a top ranking after the Sealed Deck portion had to
be credited mainly to the luck of the booster contents, then it would not
do very well to pair the top players from the first day, as this would
just guarantee some possibly weak Type II player a win against some other
weak Type II player and thus keep weak Type II players at the top of the
field.
Stephan
Ceterum censeo Orbem Zurensem esse interdicendum
(And otherwise I think that the Zuran Orb should be banned)
**************************************************************************
* Stephan J. Valkyser email: ste...@valkyser.tng.oche.de *
**************************************************************************
David J. Low
Br...@ccmailer.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de (Daniel Brickwell) writes:
>2) On the second day the players were not matched up by previous records.
>The arguement for that was that the top players had already played against
>each other and that the next day was a new tourney.
>This proves to me that Amigo knows nothing about the principles behind Swiss.
>(Maybe they are not Australian :)
My God, it's reached Germany :-) Decades from now, innocent Aussies will
visit Tunisia, and get assailed by questions about Swiss :-)
>If you suppose that Sealed Deck is a equal
>test of skill to constructed deck and if you add the records up in the end,
>then in my opinion you have simply 14 rounds of swiss for 100 people, you
>can't stop after 7 rounds and do new pairings! Swiss is supposed to give a
>fair representation of the quality order of the decks. This is only possible
>if you continue to pair the best players against each other.
>Am I right or am I right? (David, Steve, Craig?)
You're asking *me* to comment about a system which included Sealed Deck
and paired by matches??? :-)
Let's just say that if I were forced to pair by matches, and weight
Sealed and Constructed equally, I'd not make that assumption. Hence, I'd
pair like your organisers did, separately (since I regard them as at
least tests of different things....). Also, there are reasons for
preferring two sqrt(2)log2p tournaments to one 2sqrt(2)log2p tournament
(you want to maximise top-8 or so matchups, and if you have too many
rounds, your top players are now starting to play bottom players...well,
middle players).
I've snipped the lines aobut how many people there were, but given
logistics, two 7-round events with 64 players is better than one 14-round
event with 64 players, especially if you make the assumption about
"same-test". Assuming you have a Gaussian distribution of players :-)
Regards,
David.
--
{ David J. Low | dl...@kurasc.kyoto-u.ac.jp }
{ JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow | http://www.kurasc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~dlow }
{ Radio Atmospheric Science Center | "I'd rather be lost in the Darkness }
{ Kyoto University, Uji, Kyoto 611 | than blinded by the Light" }