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        * World Championship Report - Team Tournament *
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Hey all,

Since I finished 88th at the individual worlds competition (last of the
french and last Legion member), I thought that a report about team
France's performance was much more interesting. :)

THE FRENCH TEAM

1 - Fabien "Sliver Boy" Demazeau: the french national champ .. we were
kinda worried about him because he was inexperienced and ed about him because he was inexperienced and also there were
no slivers in 5th edition :)

2 - Manuel "Poulidor" Bevand: yep, that's me. I am an ok player, but I
can't write decklists. I told everyone before the tournament, about 5
times in a row "give me the blue/white deck". Talk about skill
flexibility :).

3 - Marc Hernandez : the only truly good player in the team. Marc has
skillz and he uses them. We told him that, because of that, he was going
to play whatever the other team members would refuse to play :).

4 - Pierre "Caribou" Malherbaud : a strong canad.. err french player :).
The french King of sligh. 

PRETOURNAMENT PRACTICE

There is not much that I can say about that, since Marc was in the US,
Pierre was in Canada, I was in Lyon and Fabien lived 500 km away from
me. We had no chance to meet before Worlds, and even in Seattle we were
all too much concerned by the individual formats to care much about 5th
edition sealed deck.

So, no practice. Only some theoretical discussion about possible decks
and color strength.

Before the tournament started, individual performances put us at 4th
place (behind Finland; Germany and the US). We were sort of handicapped
by the bad things that happened to us... Marc could not use his
sideboard during the type 2 portion. I lost two matches in type 2 due to
a decklist error.  

However, we had a psychological advantage over everyone: we had a stuffed
hedgehog that made grunting noises when you sq made grunting noises when you squeezed it, loaned by Cathy
Nicoloff. Nothing resists the Hedgehog. 

DECKBUILDING

Our card pool was not amazing, but it was still cool. Highlights were
definitely the 2 nightmares. Monoblack is a common deck choice in team
sealed, but it was obvious here. :) The blue was alright with 2 rays of
command and 2 binding grasps (no counters though), and white had geddon.
We only had 1 x spell (disintegrate) though. I wonder how it is possible
that we get 5 enervate, 6 bog rats, and no fireball/1 disintegrate ...
it's all about commons distribution. :) Green had a good share of huge
creatures (two craw giants, wow) and stampede.

So we built:

A monogreen deck with a touch of white (for COPs and disenchant). Fabien
Demazeau played it.

A Blue/white deck with the good blue cards and defensive creatures (4
shield bearers for example). I used this one.

A monoblack deck with the ba-roken nightmares, but not many creatures.
Marc Hernandez played it.

A monored deck with lots of goblins and direct damage, which was taken
by Pierre Malherbaud.


NOW, ON TO THE ROUNDS!  

ROUND 1 - VS FINLAND

I win my match quite easily. Each time I play enough shield bearers and
stuff to compromise my opponent's red/green attack, and steal a big
nasty creature of the kill. The funny part was when my opponent played
too wisely, fearing a counterspell or a damage prevention spell, he
fireballed my creatures twice in two sireballed my creatures twice in two subsequent turns. If he had just
fireballed me twice, I was dead and there was nothnig I could do about
it. :)

Pierre and Marc win the matches, so we stay to watch Fabien and the
incredible ending of his match.

He had lost the first game to the finnish champ, then won the second,
and time is running out on the third. His opponent was slightly
manascrewed but now has a lot of mana, COP green and deathgrip into
play. Fabien has lots of big creatures, 2 craw giants, 1 craw wurm and 1
scaled wurm. The finnish champ is at 14 life, and we think there's no
way Fabien can win, even if he has stampede in hand...

Fabien attacks with all 4 big monsters, while his opponent has 5 mana
untapped. I guess he did that just to be able to cast something. There
were like 3 minutes remaining. For some obscure reason, the finnish
champ has the bad idea of tapping out to cast Broken Visage ... he kills
the scaled wurm, blocks a craw giant, block the craw wurm with a 1/1 ..
and is supposed to take 6, but our favorite sliver boy casts stampede and
does EXACTLY 14 damage. Do the math if you dare! 

I guess it's all about suggesting your opponent to tap out to cast a
rare homeland card. :)

Result: France 4 - Finland 0


ROUND 2 - VS U.S.A.

Ah, the big USA team, eventually. 

While Fabien is overrun by Matt Linde's WW, and Marc loses to Currence,
Pierre beats Finkel (who's obviously not having a good tournament
against having a good tournament
against the french :). 

I am paired againt Mike Long. I win a very long first game, because we
are both playing control decks, and I just count the decks. because Mike
memory lapsed me twice, I am able to cast armageddon by surprise and
deck him.

Second game is more tense, as I get him down to 1 life, he goes into
topdecking mode and I make a mistake by allowing him to powersink me
while he shouldn't be able to... Time is called, he screams for
stalling, but the judges determine that I didn't stall and therefore win
the match. Oh my god, I got a ruling in my favor! :)

Result: France 2 - USA 2


ROUND 3 - vs GERMANY

I am paired against Janosch Kühn, who is playing monoblack. I win the
first game because sacred boon kinda beats drain life, and Binding Grasp
beats Greater Werewolf. I win the second game due to a funny move:
Janosh plays Erg Raiders. I respond with Aysen Bureaucrats. Then I lay
another defensive creature and armageddon before he can kill my
creature. He fails to draw 2 lands to terror my bureaucrat in time, and
dies to his own raiders.

I was impressed by Janosch's playing style. He seemed unshakeable. It's not
cool to die to your own creature.

Meanwhile, Fabien loses to Dirk Hein (blue beats green) and Marc stomps
on his opponent with huge nightmares.

Pierre's game is one of the most interesting I saw at worlds. His
opponent, fellow legionnaire Daniel Brickwell, plays red/white. They Brickwell, plays red/white. They
both are in a stalemate, Pierre is low on life and Daniel summons a Keldon
Warlord. Pierre goes into thinking mode for 10 whole minutes and, at the
end of Daniel's turn, INCINERATES him, putting him down to 8... ?? That
took us completely by surprise, and kinda threw Daniel off balance and
forced him to play conservatively, while Pierre went all the way with a
cave people/ambush party combo.

Magic is half about your cards, half about psychology. Luck is a bad
excuse (but a convenient one :). 

Result: France 3 - Germany 1


ROUND 4 - vs CANADA

Playing against the canadians was cool, since they were all cool guys
and even spoke some french. 

Fabien loses again (he's paired against the other team's blue deck all
the time) to Pete Radonjic. Marc and Pierre stomp happily on their
opponents. 8/8 nightmares do beat Lord of the Pit. :)

My opponent is playing monored. He casts Jokuhlaups in the first game, 
but I recover first, cast creatures and then Armageddon. I didn't 
expect to see many sealed deck games with Jokulhaups and geddon 
followed by each other :).

He casts Jokulhaups again in the second game and this time I do not
recover, and lose.

In the third game, I play Justice, which kinda annoys him since he's
still playing monored. He's forced to Jokulhaups AGAIN (I wonder if he
had 2...) but this time I have kept enough reserves. Time is running out
when my opponent, at 4 life, decides itmy opponent, at 4 life, decides it could be good to summon an Orgg
to block my offense. On my turn, I find it a good idea to ray of command
the Orgg and win the match. It's all about 6/6 tramplers.

result: France 3 - Canada 1


ROUND 5 - vs NORWAY

Norwegians are cool.

It was time for revenge when I saw I was to play Nicolai Herzog, who had
beaten the crap out of me at Eurochamps.

I win the first game, but this will stay in my memory for being one of
the most awesome sealed game I played. Nicolai attacks with a 3/3
Mindstab Thrull, I band-block then he rituals out a Pestilence and
kills all my creatures. Wrath of God. The turn after, I ray of command
his thrull, and use it on him him to avenge my dead troops. Pestilence
is buried. This is not 5th sealed. This is type 1! :) We eventually 
end the match in a draw because he's running 3 Pestilences.

All my teammates win, so we cheer, make the hedgehog snort like a mad
animal and move on.

Result: France 3.5 - Norway 0.5

ROUND 6 - vs DENMARK

Unfortunately for them, my opponent presents me a 39 card deck. So I
call a judge, and to my surprise he gives them a match loss. I felt
sorry for the danes, but the rules are the rules.

Fabien loses while Marc piles up Nightmares and Pierre wins again.

Result: France 3 - Denmark 1

Final result: After the swiss, we're first seed. We came back from 15
points behind to be 29 points ahead of the US team. Must be that World
Cup syndromS team. Must be that World
Cup syndrome. :P


THE FINALS vs Team USA

I have to play Mike Long again, this time in Rath Cycle. I'm using Team
Legion's 5C anarchy deck (our version of a living death deck) and Mike
Long is playing Sligh.

Well, I am very low on lands in the first game and he outplays me with
the bombardent/spike feeder trick. Then I can't draw a forest despite a
mulligan in the second game and lose. 

Actually, the US beats us 4-0 in the constructed finals. Not much we
could do... Our pairings were pretty bad, and the problems Marc and I
had in constructed terribly limited our deck choices. Marc would have
gladly played type 2 and Pierre would have played Rath with no
hesitation. Our happy champ didn't care since he played slivers
anyway...

So we end up second place and earn $12,000 for our efforts. That was
great, but next time, WotC better think of some sort of advantage for
the team who finishes first in the swiss.

That's all for now folks,


Manuel "Poulidor" Bevand (yeah, second .. again)
Eternal Emperor of Black Knights
Team Legion