Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst

Aside from preparations regarding travel & accommodation, I am currently preparing my VtES related stuff for the VtES European Championship 2010, which is now less than 3 weeks away. This includes:

• I'll decide what decks I will take with me to Paris for tournament play as well as some casual games. For the later there's always time for these, either during the Welcome Party, or in the evenings after (or during the finals), or just on Monday morning when waiting for your transportation (for leaving Paris). I remember that we played some games (at least three) with Hungarian, Swedish, French and German players on Monday morning in Palma in the bar area last year.


• I'll decide now which decks I want to play for the three major tournaments (Last Chance Qualifier, Day 1 Tournament and Day 2 Tournament (or more likely the Last Chance Qualifier). For these I will (most likely) take only decks that have been proven to make Game Wins on a regular basis. I prefer decks that I know (at least to some degree), and especially how I have to play in different game constellations and against different preys/predators. (Note to myself: No Nephandi deck this year .. I mean it)!


• I will fine tune these decks one last time by adding (and/or removing) a few selected cards. Cards always to consider are the usual suspects (Heart of Nizchetus, Direct Intervention, Carlton van Wyk, Dreams of the Sphinx), but also some hoser cards like Aranthebes, Uncoiling, Scourge of Enochians.


• At the same time it must be goal to downsize all (or at least almost all of the decks) to reasonable size, in my case the target size for tournament decks are 75 cards. There are some exceptions, and I try to do this anyhow, but there one or two decks left for which I need to cut some cards


• As in the previous European Championships, deck lists will be mandatory. So for saving me the hassle of writing the deck lists just minutes prior to the tournament, this year I want to finalize the decklists in the week before the tournament, and make printouts from the decklists at the same time.


• Lastly, I need to buy some fresh (opaque!) card sleeves. During last year's EC I had non-opaque card sleeves for my Ventrue Lawfirm deck, and one of the card sleeves (I think it was some master card) was from a different manufacturer (due to switching cards between decks). So indeed, when looking closely, you could recognize the difference when looking at the backside of the cards. Most embarrassingly this was discovered by my predator in the first game of the last chance qualifier. Not gonna happen this year!

This little piece I found a different blog when someone describes for bicycle tour through southern France. I can only agree wholeheartedly:

The execution can only be as good as the preparation, if not worst. Because one can only prepare for the known problem, and known-unknown problem. However it is the unknown-unknown problem that always get me. Thing that I don’t know exist. The best I could do is to narrow it down and dear Buddha – I always would try my best to. I know too well how bad it can get when things go wrong and worst when I am alone. To make it more challenging, the extension of my French goes as far as "Parlez-vous anglais?"

"Parlez-vous anglais?" .. hmm, I should remember that phrase, even I am not really sure if that helps in France ..