In the thread on the Polish 2012 National Championship Kaine82 mentioned that the rush seemed strong in his area. The North American Championships were won by a Call the Brayherd rush, which is a common enough archetype that its success might have surprised some people: If you know you are going to face a Call the Brayherd deck, why not build against it? Is the rush so powerful that it destroys everything else? I have a book from when I was a small impressionable child about Magic cards that said "Rush decks have a lot of appeal to new players". It's true, and it seems really powerful when you can throw down 10 power by turn 2 with some badass goblin deck. What is an Invasion player to do?
Kaine's comment on indirect damage's success at the Polish tourney:
Looks like there is a lot more indirect damage going on over there. In my area at least, rush seems to dominate. How fast do these High Elf decks take off? I've played against a similar build once, but it seemed a little slow.
Below is what I wrote in response to this quote, which I moved over here so as not to kill that thread:
Stopping a rush deck, or a "swarm" deck, which is probably a more accurate word for your Warrior deck that gets buffed off warriors and other units (I have no idea if that's a real term, I might have heard it somewhere or made it up), is probably the first thing you should test a deck against if you are going to a tournament. Pleasure Cults, for example, really slows down a rush (h/t to Mallumo for opening my eyes to that card, I used to be a hater), Offering to Hekarti is awesome as we all know. Flames of the Phoenix gives you more time, Plague Bomb / Sorceror of Tzeentch help you kill weenies, Troll Vomit / Smash 'Em do similar cool things. Lots of decks have tools to deal with the rush, the key is finding balance, and that is a seriously annoying key to find. I'm guessing that if rush is seeing a bunch of success in your group, then people aren't building against it in a way that makes it pointless to play anymore.
Let's look at the first place deck DaRKeR posted : fledgling chaos spawn sac to daemon prince kills rush guys with 1 hp, ungor raiders to D-Prince blows up devs which means units can enter the battlefield corrupted if Den of Iniquity is in play (descrated temple blows up devs on the sac too), seduced by darkness works in a pinch, plague bomb, warhounds, sorceror, unleashing, branded + other damage doing stuff, spoils of war seems weird but I guess it tempts someone to attack a burning zone (?)… Anyway, we all know Chaos has the best killing power in the game, but all of these cards together means that stuff will be dying on the other guy's side. The question is whether the kill rate is greater than or equal to the rate at which the other guy can play cards if he commits to a rush, which requires annoying levels of playtesting that a lot of groups just don't want to do. In my group it's common to switch decks after 2 games, which means rush decks look awesome, because we never refine decks to the point of deciding whether I want 2 or 3 plague bombs to make room for another raiding camps. You mentioned indirect, well the second place deck has flames, judgement, master rune (which is devastating if you flames the guy on your turn, his units did nothing), and v-mage, which lets you dig for any spell you might need if you realize you are playing a rush deck. Now, you aren't guaranteed to beat a rush every single game, but you have all the pieces you will need. If someone puts down a Chaos board across from you, you can mulligan for the mage and some supports, then try to draw up a bunch of useful cards.
Story time: My friend here (Rzarectz, our glorious champion) had this annoying High Elf deck that kept injuring and healing the dreamer of dragons until he hit for 12 power. I made a DE deck with Eye for Cruelty in it, a very specific card that never gets played, and it annihilated his combo. The only reason I played that deck was to make his HE deck was less effective. I made that deck to ruin his fun, it was mean, but it had to be done. Similar action needs to be taken against rush-style decks if they are seeing a lot of success in your group. In the super-advanced rock-scissors-paper of a meta, if you beat the dominant archetype you win. It may not be the best deck ever, but it wins all the time until people stop playing rush.
It's really easy for me to just sit back and list off cards that kill units and say "That's how you stop a rush", but coming along with that is play style. Knowing how to be patient, when to act, whether to put that 1 power into your kingdom or quest zone, those are all tough decisions that I used to think could be easily solved with an internal set of rules. As I play more I realize it's all contextual and hard to make those decisions. So on top of all that stuff I just said, knowing to play a deck is part of stopping the rush, and if your play style is to rush, then it will seem very strong. Being a simple man I enjoy simple things, like throwing lots of power in the battlefield. Better players realize that there are ways around this if you exercise some finesse… which I never do… my avatar is an orc.
Also keep in mind that metas evolve, and when they do, there is always the possibility that someone playing a straight rush deck might sneak in and steal a bunch of wins. Maybe a rush is awesome, then a slight change beats all rushes, then through evolution we have decks that almost neglect the rush, in which case rushes make a massive comeback. Sunrise, sunset. It's really good that we can see examples from giant tournaments that win, as they presumably had to beat rushes. Just take a list off the internet and try it out against some local decks until you get a feel for it.