Tournament Report 10/25/04

I went to my first tournament in months if not years last night. It didn't sanction with only 4 people showing up, which was fine by me as I was only curious to see what the Meta had changed to since I'd been gone.

I was playing a Dwarf/Besiegers deck with Bearer of Grudges, Gandalf, Leader of Men and two Dwarf Guards in my starting fellowship so that I could play Saved from the Fire to grab my Reflections Dwarves and their rings. It worked out all right, but I think a Bearer of Grudges with another of the dwarves and Durin III start would be more effective. Durin III is a beast.



I played twice against the nasty Elven/Gollum deck that won Worlds. That deck is absolutely horrendous; it's hard to think of a single down-side to playing that deck. I really hope that the Shadows set does somethign to curb it's power. I lost to it both times, by being corrupted of all things (Gimil's low resistance is such a crutch).

I also played against a fairly new player who had a Wraith/Wounding Nazgul deck. I beat it pretty quickly with my besiegers (he couldn't get his wraiths out fast enough).

I'm off to another tournament this Wednesday. I probably won't make too many changes to my deck due to time constraints, but I would like to make a Moria Archer deck to try and take down the elves. Keep on gaming!

Welcome to my Lord of the Rings TCG Blog!

Welcome to my blog everybody! I thought this would be a fun and original way to do something related to one of my favorite card games of all time: Decipher's Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game (http://www.decipher.com/).

A little about myself - My name is Ray Liu, many of the players from back in the day may recognize me from various conventions as well as my internship at Decipher during the summer of 2002. I'm also Psy-Jedi on sorcery.net's #lotrtcg chatroom.

I've been playing card games most of my life beginning with Magic back when I was in the 7th grade. I was introduced to Decipher CCGs for the first time with Star Trek CCG at the same time. I didn't enjoy the intricacies of that game as much as Magic at the time, so I sold my cards and faded away from card games for a while.

Then in the summer of 1999, I was at the San Diego ComiCon when I walked by the Decipher booth and was drawn in by their latest CCG, Young Jedi. Though simple, I really enjoyed the game play. I was also a huge Star Wars fan at the time so the game was a perfect fit for me. After dropping gobs of money into the game, I got back in to Star Trek CCG, and then into Star Wars CCG.

One November night, a month before Fellowship of the Ring had hit theaters, I was at a Star Trek tournament and thought to myself, “Liv Tyler is hot, I’m going to buy some packs of this new Lord of the Rings game and get her card.” Amazingly enough, I ended up pulling Gwemegil out of my first 3 packs. From that point on I was hooked.



I met a whole force of great people during my college years playing Decipher’s games (especially during my internship between my junior and senior years). During my senior year, I started to move away from gaming and took up poker (and other various college activities).

Now, I’m one of those responsible adult types with a job and I don’t have as much time to sit around and think of deck types as I used to. But I’m sure going to try. This blog will be a chronicle of my journey back into TCGs. Shoot me an email at psyjedi@gmail.com if you want to get in touch. See you at the next tourney!