Type1 Gen Con Europe 03

This is my tournament report of my experiences at this years Gen Con Europe 03 type 1 championships.

Well it all started on Friday the 18 March 03, I arrived at the Door at around 12.00ish with the main objective to register early for the Type 1 tourney and buy a few remaining cards that evaded by purchase until now. As usual the event was massively disorganised and was mostly dominated by queues of people for the PTQ and other such tripe. Finally after making a killing at a few card stands, (I certainly do drive a hard bargain) we, myself and 3 cardy friends managed to work out the registration process.

The event was scheduled for 14.00 on the Monday; I bought my ticket and paid my five pounds. Then headed downstairs to have a chat with the DCI staff.

Now this is my experience of DCI representatives, they constitute the bunch of most lazy, patronising condescending geeks I have had the displeasure meeting. For the most part them seemly ignored us for as long as they could, only eventually answering a few of our questions with a total lack of effort or manors.

Anyway I go home, get some final playtesting and turn up Monday morning at 12.00ish, that's 2 whole hours before the start of the event. One of my friends who did not register on the Friday try's first thing only to be told they have sold out of places in a 999 place event?. We continue downstairs to see if we can sneak my friend a place via the DCI desk. When we get down there, sock horror the Tourney had already started. When confronting the DCI staff, which again ignored us while they seem to take a social call for five minutes said in a moronic tone " oh we didn't realise that this place shuts at 16.00, so we moved to 10.00, sorry we only just found out"

Yes you read correctly they moved the starting time 4 hours back with no notice what so ever, yes I said 4 hours. I was not impressed and after demanding my money back on a non refundable pass and succeeding went and drowned my sorry In a pint across the road in a very convenient public house whilst cursing the DCI staff.

So again DCI have failed to support the Type 1 format, last year the event started at the unholy hour of 21.00. Not only does rescheduling events like this inconvenience people like me it could adversely effect the DCI rating of players, plus does nothing to promote the format to new players. Could you really see DCI doing that with the PTQ's? The said truth is that Type1 is not supported because the player base isn't big enough but because there is not any money in it for DCI, no rotation no spending money on new sets.

Well that's my tourney report for Gen Con Europe 03, hope you enjoyed the read, I would be interested to know if any of you made it to the event on time, or if anyone has had similar experiences.

(I apologies if this is not posted in the correct forum, I was considering posting it in the community forum, but I thought a spot of irony was required)