How was your EC experience?

A general thread about how it went.

First of all, I met a lot of great people and had lots of fun. This is the most important part, I think. A big thanks to the organizers - it was smooth and nice and I liked the venue (though I wish they had opened the downstairs bar during the evenings).

No one ever broke a deal with me. I had heard how the French have no conscience in VTES but twice I was in a situation where a Frenchman breaking his deal with would've resulted in obvious gains for him yet he resisted.

MMPA was everywhere. I played on one table (out of nine total) that didn't feature MMPA and Ashur Tablets. On one table, there were three decks doing MMPA, Liquidation and Ashurs. Two tables didn't have Anson in them yet he was never contested.

During the first two days I also had only a single table without Animalism (or Nana ani+pot) combat.

FCQ had far, far more interesting decks than the previous days. There were lots of cool designs that I really liked - an especially welcome surprise when I had already consigned myself to seeing only the same old archetypes all weekend long. During the first two days I had seen two interesting deck designs, during the FCQ I saw seven(!).

I was dead last in EC day one after having qualified for it five times
My excuse is that twice my prey was a wall deck and on the third table my grand predator Parity Shifted five pool from me to my prey (I was ousted a bit later). But yeah, apparently Nocturns wasn't the right choice that day. I did qualify on the FCQ so we shall see what happens next year.

Finally, a great big thanks to team Finland - you were awesome to travel with!

French are called breakdealers because they make more deals than other nations, or at least used to.
But in terms of %, I know several nations who break more deals,plainly

Lemminkäinen wrote:

No one ever broke a deal with me. I had heard how the French have no conscience in VTES but twice I was in a situation where a Frenchman breaking his deal with would've resulted in obvious gains for him yet he resisted.

Well, I had two. One was French, but on the other hand it was Kamel... I'm not sure if I've ever been in a game with him where he didn't break a deal with somebody. So it was no surprise, more like "sadly predictable". The other one I don't recall specifics on, but the situation was much more understandable (it was about a game win and not some general "table balance") and the player was quite apologetic about it. I told him I would have done the same thing in his shoes, I had no chance at an extra VP anyway at that point .

Generally, the atmosphere was very relaxed and pleasant, less confrontational bullshit (and constant dealmaking) than on many previous years -- though I've missed the last 2 ECs, my previous one was Paris which was also quite pleasant.

Lots of interesting decks. Lots and lots of animalism. Heavy bleed very commoṇ. Nothing surprising, as such.

I enjoyed the FCQ the most, I think; my deck worked at least somewhat, and I feel there was more deck variety going around -- though that's a bit hard to say, of course, it depends on random table seating luck too.

Overall, lots of fun and I enjoyed myself quite a bit.

well it was my first EC so I don't have anything to compare it to, and I'm not even gonna try to compare it with tourneys back in Portugal. leagues apart.

met a lot of good people, fun people and amazing people. hope I can manage to attend again.

despite being horribly murdered in day1 and not making it to day2, almost had 3GW in the FCQ >_<

Things were good.