French championship part 2

Now I am to focus more on a mostly generic approach of 3-days tournament [I have already covered that but you never speak too much on how you have to deal on big tournaments] and more specifically on French championship and its evolution towards the years.

Concerning French championship this year, first remark was that there were only few people gathered in Caen {38 all in all} which results often in giving a better edge to the best players who have natural skills in paying attention to what is happening in the tournament and have a generic good idea to how many victory points will be needed to enter the final.

Therefore, in my opinion, it is not a surprise to see generally considered good players filling the top 10 of the tournament. On a side note, there is something surprising also. In 2005, 2007 and 2009, finals was gathering really very good players or so, while in 2006 and 2008 the final was more surprising. The reason seems to be the number of victory points needed to enter the final. In 2006 and 2008, it was rather low due to lot of time limits, so favorizing random players. Interesting, isn't it?

This year, the level was very high among the 38 players which shows that, in my opinion, the current qualifying system is rather well balanced. However, most of the players still don't understand what a French championship and play random decks just because they "feel" so, a common mistake I also did in the past. It is very important to determine your goals and take a deck able to achieve them. I cannot blame people for thinking that their ravnos illusions of the kindred coma amaranth is the best deck around, but if they had considered it for a while, they would have seen it was probably not a great idea to bring it.

Concerning the metagame this year, there was less intercept than usual, except for the classical weenie auspex that many French players like. Strangely, weenie animalism seems to have jumped to the bottom of the decks people like to play while we have seen everywhere during this year. The deck were rather agressive, resulting of three of them entering the finals at 3rd to 5th spot while intercept decks were claiming the 2 1st spots [carna and ahrimane] due to the level of the players as well as their decks choices.

Can we except a similar change to the European scene? I am enclined to think so. With generic masters such as ashur tablets, even defensive decks can present a much more agressive profile. I am expecting to see bleed decks of our favourite intercept clans in Palma. I am also expecting lot of Laibons, as the latest tournaments prove Guruhi and Osebo to handle the job very properly.

If there is something you need to know about finals in major tournaments, it is that people generally approach them under two different ways: either they want to survive, or they want to try be agressive and kill preys. The players who manage a final are the one who manage to play their usual game that brought them to the final table, adding a slight shrewdness concerning using the other players behavior against themselves. 

Finally, we are one week away from Palma so I am telling it to everybody, TEST YOUR DECKS! SPEAK ABOUT THEM WITH YOUR PLAYGROUP! DO YOUR BEST!

and see you in Palma, obviously, where I will be shamelessly selling cards at discount prices during three days :)