After I reinstated my weekly column, became the host of the eTCG.de Podcast and even started to pull some strings of the eTCG.de magazine recently, I decided it was about time to enter active duty as administrator of eTCG.de again. I have some great things in mind for the site and I think I can really contribute to its success.

I’m looking forward to the things that lie ahead of us and am grateful for every community member that welcomed me back! Here’s the forum thread with a few more details.

Last weekend, the World Championship Qualifier: European Championship 2010 took place. I was part of the live coverage team and tried to give you a good impression of what was happening on site. The last time I did an English coverage was roughly 2 years ago, it was the first time we worked with this team (PJ Tierney was the other writer) and everything went live on a brand new site. Still, we overcame the odds and were able to produce a good result; the website even crashed temporarily under the load.

In the end, it was Rodrigo Togores Moli who overcame more than 180 other players to win the title of European Champion 2010! He piloted the notorious Frog OTK deck, feared by a lot of Duelists, but often considered not consistent enough to win a larger tournament. Rodrigo proved the competition wrong, mastering it and taking it to a superior finish!

While the tournament couldn’t have been run much more successful from an organizational point of view, I was not entirely satisfied with my own performance. It was a little frustrating having to go over articles several times with the language barrier causing me slight problems. Even though my English is certainly not bad, it takes a lot more time to polish up an English article than a German article. The coverage system also took some getting used to and further slowed me down. I’m positive that we’ll find some ways to master these challenges in the future so my “articles per round” ratio will go up again.

Speaking of the future, the next big European Yu-Gi-Oh! event will be the first stop of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series outside of North America. It’s rather likely that I’ll be a part of the coverage team there as well and keep you guys up to date. Alright, that’s pretty much it for the moment. Just one more thing: As our editor on site had to face the same problem I did with English “only” being his second language, there might be some awkward phrases, typos or spelling mistakes in the coverage. It would be nice if you could point these out to me so I can improve and produce even better results in the future! You can find the live coverage here.

All the impressions I was able to collect in Paris last weekend are slowly settling down. I have to say I felt a little overwhelmed right after the tournament. There was excitement – I had done well, in fact, better than expected if you would have asked me a day before, but then again there was also a lot of frustration. If I only would have played a little better in that one match, I could have made top 8. Top 8!

Seems like it wasn’t meant to be this time. In a way, the whole tournament now feels like a huge déjà-vu of the German Nationals last year. I was two wins away from claiming a top 8 spot there as well and it was the first larger scale tournament I participated in. Now, after being used to playing in DMF’s and Nationals more or less, it has been the first time that I participated in an even bigger tournament – the Continentals. Thankfully, I learned a couple of things and therefore, I’m rather positive that I’ll do even better next time.

Speaking of next time, I’m not entirely sure if I can make it to Worlds. Last year, I didn’t have the days off, this year, it’s ridiculously expensive. It seems like a neverending story to me and there’s no happy end in sight yet. I really don’t know what to do, as spending 1500 € on the trip is not an easy decision.

Then again, I feel confident that I can do well there. While I have not been playing on a competitive level for even a full year (German Nationals were my first bigger event and they took place last August) yet, I learned so many things in this short amount of time. The game is just so much more than what you can grasp at first and it’s an amazing experience to dig deeper and deeper into the inner workings of it. You get a “feeling” for certain moves and know when to play which cards. I would love to show off some of these skills at Worlds.

If you would be in my position, what would you do? I’m really curious and can’t wait to get some feedback!

Alright, we’re all set up for the coverage of the German Nationals the upcoming weekend! Many things will look familiar, however, a lot of things will still be different. We’ll rely on WordPress as our Content Management System and I’m quite excited to see it live and in action. I’ve been working with this CMS for quite a while already (this page also relies on WordPress), but never used it for a coverage before, so this should be interesting.

You’ll be able to find the coverage at http://event.amigo-spiele.de. Like I wrote last week, we’ve done a lot of testing to make sure the coverage will deliver. We’ll certainly have cool featured matches, an analysis of the metagame that will provide you with a complete overview as well as creative deck features. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to blog about whatever’s on my mind, but I’m certain that we’ll find a way to show you how much fun everyone on site is having, e.g. with the help of videos.

In case you have some questions about the coverage or want to let me know about some articles you’d like to read, please get in touch with me – write an e-mail, contact me via ICQ (#44734926) or simply comment on this post.

After my judge comeback last weekend, I thought I could also do some coverage again. The event in question is BB Land’s Grand National Qualifier Berlin and more than 100 players are expected.

Thanks to Matthias Dirksen who will most likely lend me his UMTS USB stick, we should be able to pull of a live coverage (the Multimedia content will most likely go live a little later, the data transfer rates of these sticks aren’t too great). More information about the event can be found in the tournament thread on eTCG.de

Last but not least, this will most likely (a lot of “most likely”s in this entry…) be my final test before the Nationals where I intend to do coverage as well. My preparation program is really starting to take shape and I’m looking more and more forward to the event.

Update: A link to the Coverage of the Grand National Qualifier Berlin.

These days, there’s not that much I can or want to share on my blog, however, I got a cool announcement to make: I’ll be judging at a Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG tournament tomorrow. I expect it to be fun; heck, if I’ll be overly enjoying myself, I might even set a new goal for myself like head judging next year’s German Nationals. You should be able to learn a little bit more of what’s going on tomorrow in my Twitter feed as part of a mini live coverage.

Speaking of events, I’ll also be part of this year’s German Nationals’ team. I applied for the coverage team, so I hope I’ll be able to give all the great people that can’t make it to the event a good impression of what’s going on.

Alright, that’s pretty much it for the time being. Don’t worry if the blog updates aren’t coming in that regularly, I’m doing great.

I just took the time to add a couple of books to the… well… Books section. Among them are some must reads if you ask me, so go check them out!

Last weekend, the Realm Championship Season 5 took place. Or at least it was supposed to; due to the licensing situation between Upper Deck and Blizzard, no official tournament could be held. Instead, the tournament organizer from Reutlingen, Matthias Jedele, took it into his own hands to run a tournament.

The “inofficial Realm Champs” attracted 53 players and pretty much all of the better German, Swiss and Austrian players showed up (well, OK, only 1 Austrian showed up). I was lucky enough to make it to the tops, but lost in the quarter finals.

You can read a lot more about the tournament in my tournament report that will be published as part of my weekly column (that’s taking a break from its break): Suppe für den soul – Realm Champs tournament report.

Thanks to the amazing WordPress plug-in WPtouch, my homepage now also features special support for mobile devices. In case you’re one of the many iPhone / Android / some other smart phone users out there (or you found some miraculous way to get your hands on an iPad early – in which case tell me how you did it!), your viewing experience of the page should be dramatically increased now!

WPtouch displays the page in a smart phone friendly format, reducing page load time while increasing usability at the same time. I didn’t really find the time to test the plug-in, but it appears to me that it works like a charm. In case you’re expecting some issues, please let me know.

This week, the historical issue #100 of Germany’s oldest magazine about Trading Card Games has been released. Unfortunately, it will also be the last issue of it.

It seems the ever changing market for TCG magazines has hit a downward swing – also thanks to the growing importance of the internet where players can find information often faster and, more importantly, cheaper. Nevertheless, it has been quite a ride for the Kartefakt. The magazine was about to be discontinued before, but found a way to make it to the 100.

The final issue features an interesting article about the history of TCG’s on top of the regular features you should all be familiar with by now. Additionally, #16 of the Kartefakt Virtual has been released. I’m not entirely sure if it’s also the final issue, but you might find out rather quick once you take a look at it. You can find it together with some more information about the final issue of the Kartefakt on the homepage: Kartefakt.de.

I would like to thank the amazing team of the Kartefakt for the long lasting work relationship we had. I enjoyed providing the Yu-Gi-Oh! and World of Warcraft content for the magazine and wish the whole team all the best for the future!