[ENG] Recap: Gwent European Championship

The European Championship has a Champion! The best European players were challenged to see who was the strongest, all on the final day of the championship organized by Gwent Europen Projekt.

We have been following the many national leagues for many months, including our beloved Phoenix League, which have qualified four players each for the finals on Saturday 23rd February. The long journey in which we have accompanied you has seen the formation of the Italian team under the ESC Card Gaming wing, and the whole Italian Gwent community; to be honest there was a certain excitement in seeing such a large-scale event in Gwent. Also when the finals were disputed after the release of the new leaders, and after that, a different meta from the last months.

Statistics

The tournament was developed along a series of Best of 5, a single elimination conquest format that saw all the factions represented.

With the leaders choices we can notice the current situation of the Pro-Rank. If the overwhelming power of Morvan and Crach in their respective factions leaves nothing to comment, very different speech for Brouver, very used not only because perhaps it is the most solid leader currently in the game – his potential remains unexpressed only because the bronze package of Scoia’tael does not live up to other factions – but also because it is very strong if thought against Northern Realms. In this regard, the constant presence of Meve instead of Foltest, is surprising – now she is the engine queen -. A choice that allows you to have long rounds more intriguing, but, compared to Foltest, leads to be more prone to bleed and unfavorable short rounds. Monsters, probably the strongest faction in this moment, shows a good distribution of the leaders: with a top-level bronze package pool where you choose from, it is possible to experiment more, not totally depending on the sure value brought by the leader. But now let’s see how it went and who took home the long-awaited title of European champion.

 

The Polish school confirms itself as one of the most prepared in the competitive landscape of Gwent: Pajabol is the first European champion. Prophet in his country, who had a clear path to the semi-final where he had to pull out the best of himself in the national derby against kams134.  In the other semi-final, the Spanish eltroco defeated our native Santtu2x, a Finnish who qualified for the European Championship through the Italian national league. Destroying all the Santtu2x strategy that had focused everything on lists strongly designed to counter Monsters and Northern Realms. However, In the final battle, he had to surrender to the domain of Pajabol while Santtu2x grabbed the third place recovering immediately from the bad blow taken in the semi-final. Congratulations to all the semi-finalists but, of course, to Pajabol who proved to be a player of top-level.

Below are the decklists of the tournament winner.

Let’s talk with our heroes

After the tournament we could not avoid asking our four players a few questions: Clauz86, EdBun, ilprimo and the already mentioned Santtu2x.

Santtu2x

Congratulations on your third place in the European championship! How did you deal with deck preparation? Have you tried something new? What was the opponent you were most afraid to face after seeing their decks?

Usually in these community tournaments I like to try unique and particular lists, rather than just going with the strongest ones in ladder. This time I wanted to try to limit Northern Realms and Monsters by using a pack of two Spears in three of my decks. In fact, i was very afraid when I saw I was going against Fillow, since he was going to play artifact removal in each of his decks. I struggled to get by, but then I lost against eltroco that, not surprisingly, he was also running artifact removal in all his decks.

How did your lists go during the tournament? What went wrong that did not allow you to get to the final?

My lists did better than I expected. Somehow I managed to win against a counter line-up compared to mine and the only game I played exactly against what I specifically wanted to block was a 3-0. I did not expect players to take so many artifact removal, or at least I expected them to come out early in the tournament, so I could not get to the final.

Clauz86

How was the preparation for the European Championship once the opponents were known? For your line-up have you trained on something new in particular or you have relied on your favorite and best performing decks?

For general preparation I talked with Santtu2x, that I consider one of the best European players, to discuss together the lineup to bring. Initially my plan was to ban Scoia’tael to avoid inserting cards for artifact removal and traps, trying to push Skellige in round 2 if eventually I had noticed they played artifacts and keeping all the provision for pure value on the cards, then I decided to ban Monsters to avoid being punished by bad hands, especially if my opponent wanted to push round 2, also i adapted my own lists on this avoiding “big removal” and instead pointing to tech cards like Bomb Heaver.

In general, however, the choice was a  solid and performing deck because, in my opinion, the tech-decks that you can find in the ladder are the most performing. I have to give a special thanks to Edbun who helped me a lot to test during the last week before the tournament.

How did your line-up perform during the tournament and what did not work? Was it your first biggest tournament you participated in? How did it feel to you to play with other international players and what did you learn or would you like to improve from your performance?

The lineup in general has performed well, unfortunately the ban was on Eredin, it was the one in which I bet more trust. Despite everything I started with an easy 2-0 but then I lost two in a row with the Nilfgaard deck that I brought more by necessity than by choice (I had to choose between Nilfgaard and Scoia’tael and I don’t like the Scoia’tael decks that are strong at the moment). Despite my 15 years experience with both physical and online card games, I failed as I would have to keep my mind clear and my opponent has easily recovered his stats, also the fact I haven’t seen Shupe for 2 consecutive games wasn’t helpful. In the final game I managed to draw Shupe but against a mirror Shupe deck (mine was Nilfgaard, his was Scoia’tael), I could not find the right spot for our lovely Shupe and this made me tilt all over the game, in fact I made a bad missplay with Peter that made me lose the game by only 1 point.

But I must say that being my first big tournament of Gwent I thought I was still incomplete as a player and not being able to compete with good international players, but I have to say that despite the unsatisfactory result I had fun and I realized I could play quietly on a par with the top-players from all the Europe. Like all card games you see the skill of a player in the long run, so a single tournament means a little, so I’m not gonna be discouraged by this unsatisfactory performance and I hope to have many other opportunities to play against the best players in the world. Now I will focus on staying in top 50 in the proladder and I will do all the Italian tournaments possible, because testing against other players is the main source of improvement.

ilprimo

How was the preparation for the European Championship once the opponents were known? For your line-up have you trained on something new in particular or you have relied on your favorite and best performing decks?

I had to change the way I created the decks and only rely on the “pure” value decks, without having a particular final move to win the match.

How did your line-up perform during the tournament and what did not work? Was it your first biggest tournament you participated in? How did it feel to you to play with other international players and what did you learn or would you like to improve from your performance?

Very well, in the tournament the line-up worked very well, the only thing were the open decklists, for me was awkward. Playing against such strong people was fantastic, a good experience and a lot of fun. To improve my performance I would like to continue playing against top-players, it could be a training for future events organized so well.

EdBun

How was the preparation for the European Championship once the opponents were known? For your line-up have you trained on something new in particular or you have relied on your favorite and best performing decks?

Actually, knowing the names of the opponents did not change my preparation too much. It was probably the preparation itself to be wrong, I’m now starting to approach the world of tournaments and I still have to understand the differences between the ladder-decks, tournament-decks and also the tournament  preparation. Basically, the preparation was mostly play a lot of games in pro ladder and then several training games with the other guys in my team, which i must thank them for the support they gave me. The used decks were therefore the ones that were giving me the best performances at the moment even though here, unfortunately, I was initially using not particularly smart decks. I added Adda pretty much to the last second, preparing with her in less than a week.

How did your line-up perform during the tournament and what did not work? Was it your first biggest tournament you participated in? How did it feel to you to play with other international players and what did you learn or would you like to improve from your performance?

Unfortunately I played only Nilfgaard (Shupe Morvran) cause i lost 3 – 0. Here, too, dictated by inexperience, I used the same deck after the first lost, even for the remaining two games. Probably this one was a big mistake. However, despite the result says the opposite, I do not think I played badly, Shupe is Shupe. If the roll from Shupe was the 9 points of damage I would have tied game 1 but when you use this kind of deck you know it can happen. In none of those games I never saw Blue Dream!

It was the first big tournament I participated in, so I knew I could not expect too much from myself, but even if I only played a single match I think I learned a lot from this single experience and from all the previous qualification. Comparing with international players and seeing their tournament decklists was very educational and exciting. I had a lot of fun and I thanks the whole organization and in particular I would like to thank IBabaYaga that allowed me to use one of his accounts, in order to participate and play tournaments and for the duration of the preparation (I’m a console player). I learned that I have to be more aggressive, manage the tension better and play as if it was a normal game in ranked, this is what I have to improve in general as well as obviously thinking about further raising my level of play, not dwelling on the first deck that it gives me results but continuously tests to find what really can be more performing at the moment.

The minds behind the European

As we said in the introduction, none of this would have been possible without the organization of the Gwent European Projekt and their coordination work between the other national communities. For this article we have the honor of being able to ask a couple of questions to two of the organizers: Dharmainside and MGwent.

Since the birth of the Gwent European Projekt, the European Championship is the first of your most complex projects. How did you find yourself in this massive organization experience?

It was certainly a challenge from the beginning, to agree 6 (including us 7) communities was not at all easy. A totally new experience for us, we had already dealt with other communities but doing it in this way was very different from what we did before. Many highs and lows to be honest but, I must say, that to be our first “big event” went wonderfully because the feedback from the players (and also the spectators) was very positive. I would also like to say that it is true that we have organized ourselves with our team, but this can only be achieved through the “European unity” that has been created between us and the various communities; for this I will never cease to thank this “extended team” that has been created between us and the other nations, also the friendship that has been created.

Where did the idea of a European Championship come from? How did you manage and how was your relationship with the national communities?

The idea of a European championship flashed in our minds for several months, first we wanted to wait until the beta comes to an end, then we started the conversation with the other communities and slowly went to form a very nice project and satisfactory for everyone. The relationship with other communities, or at least the admins of them, was immediately excellent, despite the “invisible barrier” of the various languages we understood each other right away and, as I said, a small (but big) team was born; a team of fans of the game and, a fan of doing something for the community in general. So basically, we had a great time with everyone, and for this and for the great success that the first one had, we are already organizing the second European Championship.

 

 

We just have to say goodbye by inviting you, if you have not already done so, to watch the recording of the semi-finals and finals you can find on the GEP YouTube channel. You can watch a bit of high-level Gwent embellished with an excellent technical commentary of KingChezz93 and Weevil895 hosted by the good Ozymandias. See ya in the next European Championship!

Here all others links where you can follow Gwent European Projekt:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GwentProjekt
Discord: discord.gg/aGVqjPQ

Traslated from italian by Lorenzo “DharmaInside”  Roggi, GEP’s admin. Thank you!