It's funny how just when you think the world is on your side, Larry Life comes along, slaps you around a bit, dips your head in the proverbial toilet bowl of the world and shows you that while the world might indeed once have been on your side, salary cap problems forced it to move to your arch rivals in a multi-million dollar deal. At one point this month I thought this was happening to me. I seemed to be getting into trouble at every turn and at one point I thought I might be turning up to DecipherCon 2001 with a false beard and thick glasses so as not to get lynched. It's strange because it should have been a great time for me. I had finished 7th at the worlds (see last issue for full story) and I had discovered that this column has somewhat of a cult following among some playing groups. Not only have requests for the Marina Sirtis JPEG reached double figures I have also been getting what can only be described as fan mail from some readers. It's great that people from all over the world are laughing along with us here in London. For all the people that have asked, no I have no plans to stop writing any time soon, no I don't remember why I hugged the tree and yes I would love to come to Germany to see your attractive female players.
I must admit that just after D-Con I did get in trouble with James' arguably better but definitely more assertive other half Angela for revealing to the world about her puking in Leicester Square but given that 6 hours later she was in Pages bar falling on people she deserves everything she gets (including James). However, the big problems started after a period of a few weeks where I kept getting screwed over by Garbage Scow decks. The pioneer of this deck, Mark Radford, has more cards than sense and quickly acquired 6 Combo Scow Dilemmas. For the next 3 tournaments I was having to complete all my missions to win games which was really annoying. One night I was really annoyed and so I posted an unsubtle post on the Decipher BBS asking how in the universe this card got through playtesting. After a couple of fairly agreeable responses I was firmly deposited on the e-doorstep ™ by Mr and Mrs Green Writing and banned for 48 hours. I must admit I was quite chuffed about this because believe it or not the BBS is more fun when you're banned. To start with you can see all the people replying to your illicit post without feeling tempted to respond. I was turned from someone who accidentally used the word 'hell' forgetting it was banned to someone who may have used the f-word in cold blood (a string of stars can be so misleading). Secondly you get a really cool countdown timer. When you try to post you get a message along the lines of:
'your ban expires in another 27 hours, 15 minutes and 4 seconds.'
Presumably this must be because some people actually sit there with sweaty palms counting down the time until they can post again. Maybe at the end they get a group of friends to stand around the monitor and shout 10.....9.....8.....7.... etc. I think a whole banned people subculture could emerge especially as the number of such bans are going up. I am currently working on a proposal to make the process even more fun where by players could wager their remaining ban time on games of chance such as 'who can guess the next interpretation of the cumulative ruling'. If a player was unlucky he could run up huge 'gambling debts' whereby he ends up banned for about 11 years. Think about it, it must be worth suggesting.
Anyway I digress. As a result of this ban I ended up having long non constructive conversations with the little green men (and woman) about things I won't go into and also managed to offend Brad DeFruiter who accidentally got hold of the message and took umbrage presumably because he is a playtester. I have not yet issued a formal apology and this is the closest you will get:
"I, Ian Taylor otherwise known as 'The Piemaster' or 'The Salad Dodger', being of sound mind (i.e. I don't understand the cumulative ruling) hereby declare that not all playtesters are crap. Some are in fact quite good."
So anyway this set up the month to be quite an interesting one. It was compounded a few days later by a Star Wars player taking offence at the comments I made about them in the last issue. You see one player took my off the comment that 'we don't like you' (the UK Star Wars players) to mean that I was speaking on behalf of all the London Trek players. Now this incident I do regret as it was an off-the-cuff comment taken out of context and it was unfortunate that the person who took offence is not a regular reader otherwise he would have known that nothing I say here should be taken as representative and should definitely not be taken seriously......at all...... ever! Anyway this friction was ironed over by good will on both sides and I apologise for any misunderstanding caused. Anyway in the resulting heated exchange of e-mails, Rob 'Smelly Wars Player' Bowles reminded me of an incident at DecipherCon that I forgot to mention in the last issue. Rob, who is to put it nicely, a (very) casual Trek player decided to enter a Reflections Sealed Deck after getting knocked out of the worlds. Unfortunately I don't have the opponents name handy but lets just call him a recognised Trek player flipped when Rob managed to win a game getting his last 10 points by...wait for it.... nullifying a Parallax Arguers with another Parallax Arguers. This is a blow for amateur trek players everywhere. Maybe I'll set up a sealed deck tournament for have a go Star Wars players. Maybe Rob should be recognised as the most innovative Trek player ever..... maybe.
All of which brings us not too neatly on to the London tournaments. In the last couple of months we have been trying to set up a games club so we can organise the comings and goings of prize support etc. This idea was the brain child of James and a pint of lager shandy, a relationship that has already brought us the really funny tournament deck that can't get to 100 points, setting up Tobes with Danielle and a stern lecture on why, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, Cardassians are in fact the best affiliation. To launch the club we managed to organise a tournament attended by 36 people which was a fantastic effort from all involved. However, as we only had time for 4 rounds I managed to win all my games (3 of them 100-0) and still managed to only finish second to DT who at the moment is fairly untouchable. To top it all off he was playing a Garbage Scow deck (although to be fair to him, this was more to prove a point to game designers than to win the tournament). We managed to secure an amazing amount of prize support including a 34th Rule foil, a 7 of 9 foil, a box of Reflections and goodness knows how many videos and books. Oh, and the obligatory box of Q of course. In fact speaking of boxes of Q there is an interesting game you can play to make opening your boosters more interesting. I don't endorse this game because it is of course illegal in most countries/states but I have heard that what some people do is do take bets before opening each pack what the rare will be (offering odds of 20-1). This (apparently) is very excited and were it not illegal I would probably try it (and lose £20 to Tim betting on Mortal Q).
The rest of the tournaments this month I have been playing decks using ideas from various D-Con decks. I tried the Dominion Speed deck but accidentally left out the Masaka Transformations' so it didn't work. I tried the Klingon AU drop 4 card battle bridge deck that kind of worked were it not for the fact that it was useless at scoring points. Finally I saved my personal favourite, Todd Soper's Establish Relations deck, for when Ringo, Mark 'The Scow' Radford and myself returned to the scene of the crime in Littlehampton. The crime in this instance being crowds of London players going down there and winning all their tournaments. You might remember (from Ruling Britannia IV) that this playing group is unique as it is run by the iron (well actually, to be honest not particularly iron) fist of Janis, Britain's only active female TD. Not to be sexist about this, the main difference when playing in a female run tournament is that someone clears the empty beer glasses off the tables in between rounds. Actually these tournaments have smartened up a bit since I was last there. The rulings are better and we know a place that sells us Steak at lunch time. Strangely, Ringo has developed some kind of God status down there. Because he always seems to win the tournaments there they think he is invincible. Me and DT meanwhile who LIKE to consider ourselves good players are just 'those blokes that turn up with Ringo'. I'm no jealous, not at all. Well, not much, a bit I suppose. God damn it Ringo, stop hugging the limelight!!!! Oh and this tournament? I finished second to Ringo. Can't seem to break this curse. We like Littlehampton tournaments, keep it up down there!
Meanwhile, tournaments have been made all the more sweet by a new competition called 'The Race to 2000'. It all started with Ringo becoming world #1 in the rankings. Ringo managed this by turning up to tournaments all over Gema IV at a rate of approximately 1 a week, winning most of them and showing the locals 'the London way'. Meanwhile, me and DT have also worked our way up the board, currently sitting 4th and 3rd respectively. Actually DT is still coming to terms with the fact that he is consigned to being branded a Young Jedi player for at least another year after winning the world championships. In fact, upon making it into the World top 3, his first comment was 'at least my Trek ranking is higher than my YJ one now'. If he turns up to D-Con 2001 with really useless decks in YJ don't let him tell you he has lost his touch. He just couldn't bear to win the worlds again and not play in the Trek regional for the 3rd year running. Anyway, our US cousins were a bit peeved (they won't admit it but they were) about 3 or the top 4 places in the world being taken up by British players and so after much posturing on both sides somebody suggested a bet on the nationality of the first player to reach 2000 points. On balance, I decided that ritual humiliation was far better than monetary loss for the losers so I suggested that the losers should have to sing the winners national anthem in front of everybody at DecipherCon 2001. Surprisingly everyone agreed and currently 4 nations (America, Britain, Belgium and Australia) have agreed to join in. This should make for an interesting spectacle and we are trying to make it an official D-Con event (I say trying because Decipher's only input on the subject so far was to say that the conversation is off topic). Anyone who is interested in taking part should e-mail John Bergman at jwb@cdc.noaa.gov. You never know, we could end up all having to learn Japanese or something.
So anyway, the gaming season (January to November in London) has now drawn to a close leaving only large amounts of Turkey and a very intoxicated new year to look forward to for now. Just one shameless plug before I finish. Anyone who wants to join the new London playing group 'Unimatrix London' should contact either myself (iptaylor@dialstart.net) or James (james.farmer@virgin.net). Meanwhile I still want amusing stories or comments from anywhere in the world, the funniest of which will get mentioned in future issues. Contact me, as usual, on the address below.
Meanwhile, I wish you all an intoxicated Christmas and a paralytic New Year
Ian