Alright folks, I’m off to Madrid. Gotta catch a plane to arrive at the hotel in time for some pre event briefing and other preparation stuff.

You can check out the live coverage of the World Championship Qualifier: European Championship on the official Konami website. Additionally, there’s a chance I can keep you posted on Twitter, but don’t count on it!

For feedback regarding the coverage, you can reach me via ICQ (#44734926), the aforementioned Twitter, maybe Facebook (guess I won’t have the time to be active there), even less likely Google+, but most certainly on eTCG.de (although I might not reply immediately, I WILL read your feedback there)! See you in Madrid!

Google learned from their past mistakes with Google Wave and Google Buzz – both products that never took off as people were simply not able to use some of the cool features of those products – and launched a new product that seems to be destined to take the social world in a storm: Google+.

Not surprisingly, I wanted to be one of the early adopters, so I joined the network. After all, I’m rather active on the various social media sites floating around the web. If you’re interested in my first few thoughts about Google+, check out the blog post on nexTab.de. If you simply want to add me to your circles, head over to gplus.to/soulwarrior.

As you will certainly know by now, there’s another European YCS heading your way. At least if you’re living in Paris; if not, it’s time to get going and make your way to the French capital (and before you get lost, be sure to check out my little travel guide)!

We expect plenty of players, 800 or more will most likely make the trip and spend some days (and nights – pun intended) in Paris. To handle all of those people, we’ll have a fantastic staff team on site, with more than enough judges to answer your every question. You might have already guessed it (as I’m speaking of “we”): I’ll be a member of the staff team as well. Once again, yours truly will be doing coverage together with some amazing people from Konami and last, but certainly not least, my good friend PJ Tierney.

As always, our coverage will feature

• Quick Questions
• Deck Features
• Feature Matches
• Pictures
• Statistics (metagame breakdown, etc.)
• and more!

So there’s plenty of stuff in it for you. You can find the coverage at TCG.Konami-Europe.net/Coverage.

In case you want to provide us with feedback or care to share your ideas with us, you can reach me via ICQ / AIM (ICQ #44734926), e-mail (soulwarrior@soulwarrior.net) or Twitter (@soul_warrior – you may also follow the feed on the right hand side of this page). It’s also possible to get a hold of me while the event is actually taking place (it’s most likely I’ll reply fast on ICQ, then Twitter and expect me to need some time to realize an e-mail just came in).

One last thing: We’re very much interested in crazy deck ideas (preferrably those of the successful kind). If you’re playing in the YCS and you’re running something we’ve never seen before, be sure to send us a copy of the list prior to the event (please make sure it’s formatted correctly; that means proper English card names) – like NOW! This will raise your chance of getting a deck feature AND make our jobs easier, so it’s a win win! You don’t have to explain the whole strategy of the deck, but we would like to know what makes your deck so special, so give us a little heads up.

That’s it for now. Expect the live features to go up on Saturday at around 11 AM. I hope to see you at the YCS or hear from you during / after the event!

P.S.: Check out the official Konami site for the latest information about the event.

A big dream of mine has come true: I founded my own company, which means I’m self-employed!

The name of the company is nexTab, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you can learn more about it over at nexTab.de. I will explain the meaning of the name in a post in the company blog soon, so I don’t want to spoil it all just now.

The company is the equivalent of a Swiss army knife for Web Services. I offer the following:

• Webdesign
• Content Management
• Community Management
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Live Coverages
• Affiliate Marketing
• Translations

That basically means I can fulfill your every wish when it comes to your / your company’s web presence. As the company was just founded and I want to draw some customers in, the prices for all those services are very cheap by comparison. If you know me a little better, you’ll be aware that I always try to beat expectations and give the projects I’m involved in my all! So the quality of the work I’ll provide is extremely high and it’s only a matter of time until I’ll eventually have to raise prices. So better ask me for my services sooner than later!

No, seriously, I want to thank all you great people that helped me along the way so far as well as everyone who will continue to support me in these last stages of setting everything up. I would be very happy if you could recommend my services to anyone in need of them – a friend of yours who is trying to set up a nice looking website for their business, someone who needs help managing their community or a marketing person who wants to try out something completely new for their company like a live coverage of a company event, etc.

So head over to nexTab.de, comment on the first blog post (that says “we’re live!”), follow @nexTab on Twitter or LIKE our Facebook Company Page!

Yesterday, the “Epiphany Tournament 2011″ (that’s a literal translation, the German name is “Turnier der Heiligen Drei Könige” or just “HDK”) was held. I was live on site and thanks to the help of Ronny, I was able to provide all you crazy duelists out there with a live coverage until 10 pm. Then Ronny (and the internet in his pocket) left, so the rest got uploaded today.

The final result is quite cool. We got a number of Feature Matches, Top 8 Decklists, a little Blog as well as some Deck Features. On top of that, I posted a few updates on Twitter and uploaded a Playlist on YouTube.com with 6 videos! Take a look and let me know what you think: Live-Coverage of the HDK 2011.

There’s a follow-up story to last week’s ‘interesting’ announcement (you might remember, promo cards that were only published in the US were banned outside of the US): These promo cards WILL BE legal for the YCS Milan (which will take place 1 week from now – talk about last minute). This has been communicated in a judge e-mail that the volunteers helping out at the event received (+ maybe some other judges).

I don’t quite agree with the way the information has been published and think there’s some room for improvement. I summed it all up in this week’s article: Unter den Hut geschaut: The right Information Policy.

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!

This is it! The YCS has finally made its way over the Atlantic Ocean and will make its European debut this very weekend in Bochum, Germany! We’ll be LIVE on site, providing you with all the updates of what’s happening at probably the biggest European tournament this year.

To be a little more precise: We’ll have 3 writers on site – PJ, Anh Huy and myself -, an upgrade to the team of Birmingham. Together with some of the great guys working for Konami, we’ll make it our mission to give you the best coverage experience possible! Let us know what you think and get in touch – the easiest ways would be Twitter (PJ, Huy and soul) or ICQ (#44734926). You may also post here or in one of the popular message boards, but I guess I won’t find the time between writing articles to check my blog and / or those sites.

Alright, that’s it for now. I’m looking forward to the weekend, seeing and working with some great people! Be there or be square!

As you all probably know (at least the people who ever took the time to scroll all the way down to the footer and read it), this site is using WordPress as the Content Management System of choice together with the Fusion theme that makes everything look so sleek. Additionally, I’ve been studying computer science some years ago. While I’m not really into programing anymore or at least never felt like I could create cool stuff with my skills (save for example my own coverage script back in the days…), I still make use of the little knowledge I have left to tweak this site here and there.

With the latest update of the Fusion theme came a Twitter widget. It’s looking pretty cool (it almost looks like the feed on the right) and I was happy to get rid of the plug-in I used before to mirror part of my Twitter feed as my theme brought this functionality now with it and it looked better. However, one thing bugged me about the widget: there was no link to Twitter, so if somebody felt like replying to one of my tweets, he had no chance to do so with little hassle. This is where my rudimentary programing skills kicked in!

Now, the feed also features a little Twitter-icon in front of every tweet and if you click on that icon, you’ll be forwarded to the tweet in particular. Then, you can easily retweet or reply to the tweet. In case you’re also using the Fusion theme on your WordPress site or are simply into programing and want to take a look, here’s the code snippet.

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.