Submitted by Tribble on Mon, 05/14/2007 - 15:00
Written as part of the coverage for the Big-Event "EC 2007".
Written as part of the coverage for the Big-Event "EC 2007".This News article was written by openCards user Tribble at May 14th, 2007.
After Johannes Klarhauser was introduced with an interview, we decided to put a priority on interviews with international players instead of our writing team. We will now shortly introduce those other three members of the writing team.
At the Grand Prix 2005 in Celle (Germany’s most prestigious annual STCCG-gaming event - at least during the pre-EC-era) all three were honored with awards.
Christian Zipper was declared “Newcomer of the Year” (and that at the ripe age of - then - 36). Albeit Christian had been around some years at that point, he only recently had developed - you may say “blossomed” into a player of national renown.
Sebastian Kirstein at that point was already universally accepted as one of the five to seven best German STCCG-players and was knighted by a special “Pulsfort award”, as the Pulsfort brothers saw him as one of very few players in Germany even they feared as an opponent.
Thomas Vorwerk wasn’t celebrated as an especially talented player, but for his tournament reports, for which he was declared “STCCG writing artist” (a similar award went to Johannes Klarhauser in the year thereafter), and last - but not least - Sebastian and Thomas also were voted by the whole STCCG-community assembled in Celle as “favourite players”.
While all three are well known for their funny remarks during games (not all opponents find them funny), their playing styles differ decidedly.
Sebastian likes fast solvers, his favourite three deck types are Kirk-, Borg- and Voyager-solvers, even though he also likes the Ferengi, if only for nostalgic reasons (Sebastian still holds up the flag for the first edition!). His favourite personnel card is Cavit.
Christian likes to play affiliations known to disturb the opponent’s strategies, for example Borg assimilation, Klingon battle (and now capture) and of course Maquis who are just dastardly annoying. His favourite personnel cards are “Hoshi Sato, Empress” (to look at) and Kruge (to play with).
Thomas is known throughout Germany for his *huge* decks. He doesn’t mind to lose every other game if he can try out different strategies with the same deck depending on the cards he draws (which makes him somehow unpredictable). But his favourite decks are discard and other lockout machinisms, be it Dissidents, “At an Impasse”-annoyances, the still top secret deck idea that will put the fear of God back into Voyager players at the Hamburg TOC - or his most famous invention involving his favourite personnel card Borath (from Fractured Time), the “Screwy Squirrel”, infamous as one of the most elaborate set-ups in STCCG-history - but astonishingly working more often than not.
Thomas’ recent report on the regional in Magdeburg showed interested readers how these different deck types and playing styles compete with each other.
All three have jobs (or future jobs) connected with writing. Christian (38 ) works at a lawyer’s firm, Sebastian (25) studies to become a history teacher, and Thomas (39 - also still studying) works as a film critic (check out www.satt.org).
This should suffice to introduce the three quarters of our writing team from nothern Germany. Watch out for their reports, strategy articles and other nice - and not so nice - things in the following weeks on www.open-cards.com …
