Ambushed! - Turin Report
By Ian Stickland

For those of you who didn’t make the trip across the Atlantic, don’t waste the opportunity to learn from the errors and successes of others as you prepare for Boston.

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80 Horde Priest - Tichondrius
80 Alliance Rogue - Icecrown

woh hoo first comment but seriously what is the difference between Europe And the US in playing styles

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well i wasn't on the site all summer what did i miss

In broad generalizations the european meta has developed around a strong defensive/lasting strategy while trading strong versatile attacks with opponents.  Using the most efficient attack/defense characters and just suffering incoming damage through high defense/rerolls and healing mitigation.  They generally don't care about debuff removal, or abc based buffs, and just tank, attack, and heal.  US style varies widely going from warlock dot and kite which is a patient tick control game to super aggro with Vashj and Zoo which crushes opponents with the sheer amount of threat per attacks and number of attacks respectively.  Tactically both styles can be complicated, but the strategic aspect of the european style is built on a proven simple concept of having both good offense, and defense.  The US style of strategy seems to gravitate to experimental strategies for its damage sources and defenses.  Supper vashj attacks, dots, buff aided attacks, and debuff style mitigation.  This is an overly broad generalization that may be influenced more by the timing of the DMFs comparative to the release of sets than anything else, but the appearance and popularity of the HTX band in the euro meta this far into the release of set 2 seems to support this.

What DClown said. Basically, the European meta is more conservative. They play what one might say are the all-around 'best' figs, all categories. HHT is a solid band on *all* fronts. Basically, they 'play fair'.

The North American strategy relies on degenerate combos that crank it up to 11 in one particular aspect of the game, but tends to fall apart against the wrong matchups because some other aspect of their game is weak. Warlocks, for instance, are hard pressed to beat a proper Hunter team due to range and efficient pets, but they'll just circumvent Haruka's 3 Armor/Resist + GotW reroll by pushing auto-damage all over them.

IMO that's why Americans have had such success when travelling to Europe (from chance alone you'd think less Americans would have made top 8 in past events). Playing 'the all-around best' strategy is fine as long as everybody is in a gentlemanly agreement not to bring some sort of degenerate play to the table. It's a Nash equilibrium. Whereas travelling NA players can expect they won't see too much of their bad matchups since everybody is playing the solid HHT band, so if they're the only ones bringing something degenerate that just folds to some other band they're bound to do well.

This, of course, is an exageration. Not 'everybody' is playing HHT, it's just a lot more prevalent in Europe. I'm also thinking that a 'solid' band like HHT should do well in NA since it won't really have a bad matchup in the lot, while a lot of its opponents will just draw the short straw and face a losing match up.

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"The beatings will continue until morale has improved."
- Standard corporate management technique

I think it's just that Europeans wants consistency while americans wanna burst and have fun.
Europeans rely on skill; while americans rely on matchups :D

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Best ranking at weekly draft : 4th (5 showed up and I got a bye :D)
Number of weekly drafts : 44 and counting.
0-4 drop at worlds (pairings suck)
Once won a game in DMF, my opponent didn't show up.

Europeans rely on skill; while americans rely on matchups

^ A laughably false statement. 

Its not about bursting and 'having fun' its about bringing the right weapons for the job.  Its about targeted threats and answers instead of generalized ones.  Generally speaking its an offensive strategy ( where you know what you are attacking ) instead of a defensive one ( where you don't know what you are attacking so you sacrifice efficiency for utility ).  It requires analysis of the meta, and in depth understanding of the strengths and weakness of the popular bands.  The US strategy lends itself better to team oriented play with a wider understanding of the field ( through online play, and information sharing from individuals attending battlegrounds in different locations ).

Weird, I get the notion that it may be the opposite in the tcg.  European decks, while tending toward the control, are more inventive, whereas american decks tend towards the "bread and butter".

I've also always believed that HHX are easy to play teams, since they have the durability to be more forgiving towards errors, but i guess you need good positioning and judgment to make your moves efficient enough to get you to your approx. 24 honor in time.

1193591:

Europeans rely on skill; while americans rely on matchups :D

You remind me of a tight passive poker player complaining about loose aggressives and their lack of 'skills' and 'card valuation'. ;)

At the end of the day, I know who wins poker tournaments, and it's not tight passives.

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"The beatings will continue until morale has improved."
- Standard corporate management technique

It obviously was a joke :)

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Best ranking at weekly draft : 4th (5 showed up and I got a bye :D)
Number of weekly drafts : 44 and counting.
0-4 drop at worlds (pairings suck)
Once won a game in DMF, my opponent didn't show up.

Saying something is a joke is not a valid excuse for having said it.  A statement can be inappropriate whether the person speaking it meant it as a joke or not.  Jokes about nationality, race, or creed are inappropriate in any setting and should be responded to as such.

Your joke basicly boiled down "Americans aren't skilled...hehehe" which is like saying Canadians are afraid of the dark, or the Polish make silly inventions, or Frenchmen are cowards.  Its not appropriate, joking or not.  Moreover it did not come across as a 'joke', but as a passive aggressive lash disguised as a joke.

from my experience in international events with Americans both  in Dreamblade and WoWMinis (but I've noticed the same playing cards too) and beeing testing/sharing feedbacks with Americans as well, I'd say that American players tend to be more aggro and to underextimate the benefits of not beeing aggro... on the contrary we (Europeans) tend to play more conservative sometimes underextimating the benefits of playing aggro ;-)

to be fair, the reasons why americans are doing well when travelling in Europe is that the americans travelling are part of the best US players circle... they are just stronger than the average european player... I know that some American friends of mine believe that if the best of us (Europeans) would travel to some US DMF they would probably be stronger than the average US player too. It's just the same... we just have less events, less money prizes so we can't travel that much. Especially with worlds incoming ^__^

Personally, I also believe that in the US there are more TIER1 players beacuse of the market: US is by far the biggest slice of market in the world, it has the highest number of players and I believe there are more efficient team there due to numbers.

To be even more clear, I felt that the average level was higher in Koln (Germany) than in Turin (Italy). This because Germany is well known for board games, it has a strong tradition and a strong selling market, the strongest in Europe for games and the strongest in the world for board-games. Numbers and tradition makes the average German player stronger than the average Italian player. It's just a apersonal opinion of course,  but I'll be interested to ear what my german friends think ;-)
This only to explain how market, numbers  and gaming tradition affect gaming skill.

ps: I believe my Italian friends won't appreciate my last paragraph HAHAHAHAH (joking ;-) )

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Stefano "B O T A" Rondolino
TOP8: DMF Koln, Realm Champ, Italian Champ, DMF Amsterdam
TOP4: DMF Turin, World Champ

Well, the larger the market, the larger the number of players, and the more top players there will be. There's a reason (beyond heavy state control pushing athletes) that China always has so many Olympic medals. You get a billion people in one country and you're more likely to find that one in a million mega-athlete than a country with less population...

OTOH, China isn't heavily penetrated by CCG/TCG games, so we don't have an endless procession of top Chinese WoW minis players. ;) But sports tend to have a whole lot more status in general, and while some sports are expensive to practice I would say the majority of the Olympics games are more accessible and have a 'larger market' in China than TCGs.

Personally I have a hard time thinking of the Americans as the aggro players in Turin when they seem to have preferred warlocks (except for Ben). The opposition of a conservative warband selection versus a more risky choice (due to wildly different matchup win percentages depending on your opponent) has nothing to do with aggro vs control. The first is about metagaming while the aggro vs control dichotomy plays out in-game, not as metagaming.

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"The beatings will continue until morale has improved."
- Standard corporate management technique

2088204:

To be even more clear, I felt that the average level was higher in Koln (Germany) than in Turin (Italy). This because Germany is well known for board games, it has a strong tradition and a strong selling market, the strongest in Europe for games and the strongest in the world for board-games. Numbers and tradition makes the average German player stronger than the average Italian player. It's just a apersonal opinion of course,  but I'll be interested to ear what my german friends think ;-)

To speak for myself, i grew up with playing Boardgames on the weekend with my family since an early age. I guess that i played more settlers of catan than wow-minis in my whole life. Then i started tournament chess and casual magic at the same time.
About the rest of Germany:
I remember how hard it was to get six Harukas for Köln as they were sold out on ebay and in every onlineshop. Most of our good players have played the wow-tcg and lots of other tcgs before but almost almost no one the MMO.

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"'Chapter Fifteen, Elementary Necromancy'", she read out loud. "'Lesson One: Correct Use of Shovel...'"

None but Oliver ? :D

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Best ranking at weekly draft : 4th (5 showed up and I got a bye :D)
Number of weekly drafts : 44 and counting.
0-4 drop at worlds (pairings suck)
Once won a game in DMF, my opponent didn't show up.

1811756:

Saying something is a joke is not a valid excuse for having said it.  A statement can be inappropriate whether the person speaking it meant it as a joke or not.  Jokes about nationality, race, or creed are inappropriate in any setting and should be responded to as such.

Your joke basicly boiled down "Americans aren't skilled...hehehe" which is like saying Canadians are afraid of the dark, or the Polish make silly inventions, or Frenchmen are cowards.  Its not appropriate, joking or not.  Moreover it did not come across as a 'joke', but as a passive aggressive lash disguised as a joke.

Europe > America!

(No joke!)

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Best ranking at weekly draft : 4th (5 showed up and I got a bye :D)
Number of weekly drafts : 44 and counting.
0-4 drop at worlds (pairings suck)
Once won a game in DMF, my opponent didn't show up.