Hello and welcome again from the country that is hated by most of Europe and is run by bigamous politicians. Actually that could be a bit ambiguous. Lets just try welcome from England. As I enjoyed writing last months piece so much (and from the responses I had, most people enjoyed reading it) I decided to write another one. I must admit to being a bit disappointed about the number of amusing stories I have been given. I thought people would jump at the chance to have their friends most embarrassing moments immortalised in print but clearly you are all nicer than that. What I did get were a lot of responses along the lines of 'You should come down to (insert location I have never heard of) and play in one of our tournaments, we have lots of laughs'. Given that I am not financially compelled to travel halfway around the world to play in a tournament you will have to send me specific stories via e-mail to get your local players stripped and humiliated in these pages. Another complaint I received from some players is 'why didn't I get a mention'. To all these people I say if you want coverage, go and do something worth writing about. If the most exciting this you have ever done in your life is played a deck without a Q's tent your unlikely to feature in an amusing story.
So anyway, I left you last month the week before the Gema IV regional. I received a lot of assistance with my deck from Ian 'DT' Vincent. I remember pretty much the last thing he mentioned before I left was not getting drunk the night before the tournament as it was a difficult deck to play. I whole heartedly agreed with him. So why was it that at 2:00 in the morning the day of the regional I was staggering around London looking for somewhere to buy a kebab? The answer to this can be traced to the 'accidental' events of the night before. On the previous day, the Young Jedi regional had taken place. With a passing interest in the game, I intended to go along and watch the final and maybe even the later rounds. Unfortunately instead I decided to watch England take on the might of Malta at football and so by the time I reached the venue, all I saw was a few players wandering off to the bar. With the intention of having 'one or two' I went along with them. However, midway through the tube ride the Iceberg of logic hit the Titanic of my good intentions. In the last 3 years I had played in 3 regionals and won 2. On the two I had won, I had spent the night before getting drunk in this very same bar whereas the one I lost, I was a hundred miles away spending a night indoors playing cards. A coincidence? I don't think so! So it came to pass that I arrived at Pages bar with a wallet full of cash that I fully intended to hand over a small amount at a time to the attractive barmaid therein.
I feel at this point that Pages bar deserves some bandwidth. It is a sci-fi theme bar in the middle of London and the spiritual home of all the London Star Trek CCG players. On a Saturday night it shows new episodes of Voyager and has toilet doors that go Eeeeerrrrrssshhhhhkkkk when you walk through them. Class! Anyway, naming no names, our crew this night consisted of (in order of importance) a decipher employee, 2 ambassadors, 3 tournament directors, half a dozen other players and a Star Wars player. After an arbitrary number of pints (possibly double figures) we were ejected with prejudice from the bar and were left with the dull but the none the less challenging task of finding our way to our respective homes. And so it came to pass that 8 hours before playing in the biggest tournament of the year I was wandering about London with Ed Downes (an old Warwick compatriot) trying to 'smell out' something vaguely edible. Not a good start to my campaign but at least I was upholding tradition.
I woke up feeling less than 100% and my cause was not helped by the fact that nowhere in Hatfield sold a cooked breakfast on a Sunday morning. We were honoured by the presence of what seemed to be the whole history of the British tournament scene. Firstly there was Marcus Sheppard who used to run tournaments in London so long ago that Joseph Stalin used to occasionally turn up with a Rogue Borg deck. He now works for Decipher Then there was Rik Thomas the rules guru who ran tournaments in the midlands until recently when he woke up and tragically realised he was Welsh. And then there was Ringo. There is always Ringo! 2 Ambassadors and 1 Decipher employee. Not going to get away with too many dodgy rules decisions then. Talk was decidedly non card related mostly centred around the previous days football match and how long Ringo's girlfriend had been handcuffed to the bed (don't ask). After 6 rounds, all was going hunky dory for my cargo running Ferengi. My deck was undefeated, playing well and strangely not Romulan. I was to play the final confrontation against Colm 'Bawdy' McFadden, a player I had already had a 45-45 true tie with earlier in the day. However seeing as my main tactic in that game was to have Leeta running around with a rifle killing Colm's Ferengi on DS9 (where is the Bajoran security detail when you need them) I wasn't over confident. The game took a while due to 4 consecutive draws at Paper/Scissors/Stone (the traditional way of beginning a game in England). Eventually my cunning play of paper outfoxed his normally reliable stone. First blood to me! Fortunately Colm was so scared of Leeta that he chose not to use DS9 which was a mistake as he had no card drawing mechanism. I cargo-ran my way to victory using Reflection Therapy for an extra Officer to get past the final Maglock. I was going to America, hurrah. Special thanks go to Marcus, Rik and Ringo for making it such a great tournament, all my opponents for being patient while I took my 20 minute turns and Ringo's girlfriend who eventually clocked in at 14 hours (possibly a new world record).
So it came to pass that I am on my way to my third world championships. Although going to deciphercon isn't a big deal for you American players, it's a big holiday for us and should be treated as such. As Rik won the Young Jedi the day before we decided we would make a bit of a holiday out of it so we will be going a few days early. I would be interested to know if anyone else is doing the same so we can meet up over there. I am hoping as many of the London crowd as possible will be able to scrape the money together to join me. As an army of Englishmen hasn't invaded the East coast of America for at least 150 years we might cause a bit of a storm. However I doubt a small team of cockneys with Union Jack shorts and cheap sunglasses will make it as far as the White House.
So anyway, armed with my new status of the best player in Britain I decided to start playing in a few more of the local tournaments. My cocktail of results since then has been 2 wins, a second and a third. Tragically my second place was with a Dominion cargo running deck that didn't have a ship that could legally cargo run. After 5 opponents including an ambassador (yes, Ringo again) and an ex regional finalist failed to notice that you can't cargo run with an Alpha Attack ship it took Steve Tobin to inform me that my deck was illegal. Yes, this is the same Steve Tobin who once gave up the game because his weird girlfriend didn't like him associating with rogues such as us. Although to be fair, we thought that him going out with an ex porn star who has a tattoo that approximates the image of Masaka Transformations on her posterior was fairly weak as well. My first win was at Hatfield the scene of my former glory. Ringo turned up (late) with all his hair shaved off. Apparently he had an agreement with his girlfriend whereby they would both shave themselves bald. However, those who have seen her confirm that she still has a full head of hair. Either she broke the bargain or the agreement isn't all that we thought. Anyway, my Romulan Kurley Wurley deck managed to win every game 100-0 and blow up many outposts along the way. Bring on the Worlds! My other win was slightly more amusing. It was with a deck that I don't even remember building because I went out the night before the tournament and after the drinking of much good ale, apparently came back and built a deck. Mind you it had a card drawing mechanism (10 Kivas') a report for free mechanism and 24 Dilemmas (it didn't seem I could understand the concept of other seed cards). Tended to take ages to win but my opponents could rarely get past my 4 card combos.
Only one more short story that I promised the other players I would mention to show I'm not afraid of embarrassing myself as well as others. On a further visit to Pages Bar I managed to win a date with another man in the raffle. Sad thing is, I have never bought a raffle ticket in my life and they were in fact Ringo's who was wither hoping to win a signed picture of some Babylon 5 actor I've never heard of or was trying to curry favour with the attractive woman selling the tickets. I think I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was the later. So anyway it came to pass that Ringo was in the toilet or something and I was left holding the raffle tickets. When the 'joke' raffle item at the end was being drawn and I was left holding the 'lucky' ticket, I was all for just keeping quiet but there was no chance of that with Tobes near me. Yes, I got a lot of stick for that but, as I pointed out at the time, at least I didn't go out with a porn star.
At time of writing we are patiently (most of the time) awaiting for the Tribbles release but until then we have plenty of other tournaments to keep us occupied. Instead of a general appeal this month I will go for the specific. Please send me the story if you have done any of the following (and include the full story) to iptaylor@dialstart.net
1) Have you ever turned up to a tournament having forgotten a vital component of our deck (e.g. missions)?
2) Have you ever not told your boyfriend/girlfriend that you play Star Trek: CCG in case they thought you were sad?
3) Have you ever tried to teach a famous person to play Star Trek CCG. Bonus points if you got them to play in a tournament.
4) Have you ever been so drunk you don't remember a round of a tournament? (bonus points if you later learned that you won it)