So were there qualifiers to get to the World Championships at indy? Or was the only qualifier airfare and a badge and entry ticket for the event?

I see people (person) spouting about what won/loss at the Championships and have to ask: what was the qualification to get into the tournament?

Regionals/qualifiers, good, then there's a spread of good players guaranteed to enter. Airfare and badge? It's just like any LGS tournament, except with a few more players.

I think FFG is smart enough to track data from more than one event when deciding if a card needs fixing, either way.

Just wondering how valid the argument is about how unitless decks stacked up at the "Championships" and the kneejerk reactions to a good errata call.

There were not any qualifiers for Worlds. Several of the top 8 were people I had met at the FFG Super regional earlier in the year. Honestly at such any early stage with a mostly casual game limiting entry into a tournament would probably not be a good idea.

TL

Heidelberger does a qualification for the German Championship at Essen.
And many players participate (not in the forum, but in the tourneys ): http://forum.hds-fantasy.de/viewforum.php?f=133

That's what I thought. Thanks, good to know that when folks cite the results of the tournament where there wasn't any sort of qualifications to enter.

What would qualifications have done for the tournament? Just because players who may have been weeded out by a qualifying tournament were allowed to play alongside the more hardcore players doesn't mean that any of the poor players made top 8.

keltheos said:

I can tell you that I've played in several large CCG tournaments in the past (MTG Pro Tour Events, Spoils Nationals, Some large AGOT events etc) and this event was very difficult to win. I did not play anyone that didnt give a hard fought match. I'm sure that at least a few of the best players of invasion in the world might not have been there but many of them were.

I understand where you are coming from somewhat as it's not really reasonable to hold this event up as an ironclad statistical example. However, I do not appreciate how you seem to be insinuating that this event wasnt legitimate. All of the people I played against were terrific players and great sports. They dont deserve to be dismissed in this manor.

Just because it's called "Worlds" on the boards doesn't make it any more or any less that it would be if it were called "The Jellybean Event". Everyone would be saying "Well, this deck beat all the others at Jellybeans" and it would mean that this deck did well in a highly publicized event where good players participated.

It would be awesome to have data from all sorts of regional tournaments, and deckbox.org is doing something similar to that where you can look at decks that won regional tournaments as long as those tournaments are added to deckbox... However, we shouldn't be bashing the "World Champion" or any of the participants just because the event wasn't exclusive. I didn't play in Worlds, or any tournament, but that doesn't mean I am going to write-off all the decks there as equal to those of my local gaming circle.

I am not taking anything away from the winners of any event. I'm sure they worked hard at their victories, congratulations to them.

but, citing the "Jellybean Event" as canon for what is right/wrong with the play environment as a few folks have been doing quite vocally on the boards doesn't take into account there was no actual qualifier to be there. Good and not-so-good players participated, but what if all players had participated in regional qualifiers of some sort? Maybe the ratio of exploitative metadecks to 'not so good' decks would have been lessened.

That's all, just pointing out the rantings about what the WC showed/didn't show need to be tempered with this knowledge. It's the 'grain of salt' everyone should take the posts with.

Ah, I see. A valid observation that we all need to chill when citing the Jellybeans as the be all and end all of W:I play testing knowledge.

I would think that because James Hata was at Worlds, watched the games at the top tables all day, talked to many of the players about their games and decks, and played a lot of folks throughout the weekend, we can not worry so much about what happened at some other events. Bolt thrower didnt need to destroy countless players at countless events to get banned, it just needed to demonstrate a certain level of brokeness to the right people (or person) and apparently it did. I played UFS at the same time as Hata and he never missed an opportunity to play a broken deck. In other words, he knows them when he sees them. I'm willing to take his word on it being over-powered, unbalanced, game deforming, whatever, since I've seen him make those same evaluations correctly in so many other cards so many other times.