If you’ve been following my blog the past weeks, you knew that the DMF Antwerp was held the past weekend. After all, I organized a trip to the event. Here are some bits about it:

Our drive couldn’t have gone much better. That is, considering that the holidays started on that very weekend for Nordrhein-Westfalen and there were some smaller traffic jams. And Antwerp being a pain in the ass for car drivers as it’s full of one way streets. If you’ve taken a wrong turn, you were often forced to drive around the whole block as there was just no other way and you had to follow one one way street after another until you finally got back to one of the few “bigger” streets. Anyway, the city was decent enough so we set foot in it on Friday evening and took a walk to the local game store… only to find out that everybody was leaving.

Well, that was almost that for Friday evening. I didn’t playtest a lot prior to the event and couldn’t come up with any fancy ideas, so I just stuck with the “best deck” that the Bootcamp playgroup came up with: Timmo Shadestep. The deck WAS good, however, I wasn’t. I made some misplays and started with a 0 – 2 record.

I was able to equal my score in the following 2 rounds, but already asked prior to the start of round 3 if I could help working on the coverage if I would drop out of the tournament. Carl Crook, the Organized Play and Sales and Marketing and everything Manager for Cryptozoic in Europe appreciated it, so I almost thought the tournament was over for me (as a player). After a mirror match I lost in round 5 (at least this time I made no misplays!), I dropped and set myself the goal of writing as many articles as the other writer Robbe. I love competition! Robbe was a nice guy, but had next to no experience, so I thought it could be possible to catch up despite him having had 5 more rounds to write articles.

At the end of the day, I was 2 articles short (9 compared to Robbe’s 11), but I think I still didn’t do too bad. You can check everything out right here: Live Coverage DMF Antwerp!

Fortunately, some members of the Bootcamp were a little better prepared than myself, so Ronny Schmertosch and Christian Kurze both stole a spot in the top 8, playing their respective versions of the Zaritha deck that Karl Rößler, another member of our team, has been playing and tweaking for quite a while now.

In the end, it was Christian who claimed the win for the team! He ended up with the better match-ups and took out each and every opponent this weekend without ever losing a single round, giving him a perfect 17 – 0 record in games (which translates to a 14 – 0 record in matches – the top 8 were all best of 3)! He’s rather new to the game, so for me this is a great example what an amazing community like the Bootcamp can do for an individual; you pick up the game A LOT faster and learn about some of the more advanced moves in no time! You end up with useful decklists that can help you earning a title like a DMF win!

Right after the event, we drove back to Berlin. This time without the traffic jams, so we were “only” on the road from 7 pm (Sunday) to 3 am (Monday). Thanks to some energy drinks, the whole trip went without any incidents! For me, it was a rewarding experience to do something for the German community by organizing a little trip to the event and also doing something for the community as a whole by working as a member of the staff.

Let me know what you think about the coverage and leave your 2 cents about the event! I’m looking forward to seeing some of the amazing guys again next year, either in Paris or in Cologne!