On behalf of the Council of Lorien, I would like to announce that the North American championship will be held at the Middle Earth Gaming Festival August 9-10th, near Washington D.C. in northern Virginia, U.S.A.

We want to make this year's CoL Nationals more appealing to beginners. In fact, we're calling it the Middle Earth Gaming Festival, "featuring" the MECCG NA championships. There will be beginner-only hero-only tournaments. And, there will be lots of other Middle Earth gaming. (All the new games of the past couple years plus many good old ones.) It actually begins on the evening of Friday, August 8th.

The Washington D.C. area 'Council of Wellinghall' will be hosting. We thought that weekend was as good as any other. Maybe some Americans and Canadians will go to our tournament and then to Worlds the next weekend. On the web page for this tournament we will actually encourage people to go to worlds the following weekend if they can only make one or the other. If any of you Americans and Canadians can make it to one or the other, go to Austria! Worlds this year will be unbelievable. Trust me. But, for those of us who can't make it to Austria, we're going to make this fantastic.

Our page is www.treebeard.com/nationals. It will be under construction for about a month I guess, but we already have our schedule of events up. Thank you Antonio! All Norte Americanos, please check it out. Check back in a couple weeks also for more content. (Hotel info, venue info, much more.)

YOU WANT TO GO TO NATIONALS!

I hope to make flyers to hand out and the summer conventions. We want to have a great turnout. Help us by coming and telling your friends to come.

-Patrick Karcher