Ruling Britannia X

'How am I supposed to be positive when I don't see shit positive?'

I seem to remember those lyrics from a song once, can't remember what the song was called, who sang it or even how the rest of the song went although if anyone knows please tell me. However it is quite an appropriate way to start this article because it's how I've been feeling in the last couple of weeks. I'm not saying that I've gone into a depression or anything but there is no denying that there is a lot of doom and gloom within the game at the moment at various levels. First of all there was this whole prize support thing with the foils, which isn't particularly popular especially given the other stupid money saving schemes that have come out of Decipher HQ in the last few months. Then there has been the difficult to ignore tendency for Ambassadors to resign lately some of them high profile, others less so (anyone remember Mark Woodward?) Then last of all we have had the announcement that Rob and Ben Lacey have stopped playing. I must admit I have never met Rob Lacey but apparently he is a nice guy. Ben I have had a brief introduction to. In the last round of the world team championship he was drawn against DT in a match that could decide the outcome. However, after half an hour, Joeri and I had both won our games securing the team championship for Team Britannia regardless of the other result. I don't think this message ever reached Ben and DT however as an argument broke out in the game over alleged stalling by DT, which reached the Star Trek bitching equivalent of DefCon 3. Anyway, it turned out that in the end the alleged stalling was in fact DT Rogue Borging Ben's ships when, in Ben's opinion, DT could no longer score points. Seems perfectly legal in my opinion. Therefore on my very limited experience, Ben Lacey is a twat! Not because his interpretation of the rules is different from someone else's (I mean that would make everyone in Littlehampton twats) but because he

Anyway while I think that the game is going through a rough patch at the moment, I don't think that it is dying as some people are saying. In fact despite all the doom and gloom, tournament attendance has actually been up in the last 4 months in London. We are also getting new players start the game despite many people saying this is impossible. Just goes to show doesn't it.

I have also managed record responses to my competition this month as the world rushes to decipher (geddit?) Ringo's drunken text messages. There will be no winners and losers this month, instead I'll just print some the more insightful and amusing replies for you to ponder.

First attempt is by Michael van Breeman aka The Ninja Scot. After assuring us that he is 'for real' (see last issue), he had a crack at both translations. The first was probably about as accurate as we could hope (considering a lack of knowledge of the districts of south London) and the second was imaginative to say the least.

The second attempt at number 2 was by Britain's own Leo Jenster and to be honest, I don't think we will get a better explanation than this as Leo took into account the perplexing world of Nokia mobile phones word predictor.

If this can be considered the definitive version of the second text, then Fraser Cumming probably gave us the correct (if a little dull) version of the first. Unlike Michael he does indeed seem to have a good knowledge of South London geography and slang and has deciphered it as followed. He has even thoughtfully provided an American translation at the end.

For this months competition I really want to get everyone thinking. I want everyone to write a short paragraph (100-200) words describing what they think might happen to the game in the next year. Most imaginative and way out answers (no awards for feasibility here) will be printed next month. To get you going, here is my effort.

Warren Holland and Chase Masterson patch up their differences and start dating again. However, Chase soon becomes obsessed with the fact that not enough people use the 'Leeta' card. In the way only women know how, she forced Warren to make radical changes making Leeta the central character of the game. First came an ultra powerful version of Leeta with all ten affiliation icons to ensure any deck could use her. When this didn't satisfy, it was followed up with the Leeta side-deck, the Leeta card type and finally the two expansions 'A Fistful of Leetas' and 'Leeta Swimsuit Expansion'. Strangely sales didn't drop off and actually increased, albeit mainly among young men and girls with short hair and dungarees. You could even get free foils if you collected the wrappers from special editions of playboy.

I'm sure you can do better than that, so get writing. So anyway onto the UK tournament scene of late. We seem to have settled down into a three tournament per month routine, one at Littlehampton and two in London. The Littlehampton tournament this month was highlighted by the news that Janice is pregnant by long term boyfriend Jason 'Howard's best friend' Guzikowski. Actually, Jason has a new favourite ruling. After last month's game against Howard where they both passed but he thought you had to seed all the Dilemmas anyway he tried to bend the same rule again against Mike Shanny. Now Mike is one of our fast improving players who has never been to Littlehampton before and he looks, and lets be fair to him, like a bit of a pillock. Jason must have thought he could pull a fast one on him so after they both passed, he tried to convince him that both players need to pass twice on the trot before the round is ended. Personally I would have disqualified him as he has been told this rule before, however, that would have saved him the humiliation of Mike beating him in one turn. BTW, I am interested to know will Janice's baby be the first to be born to 2 active trek players? Any one who knows of any others let me know.

Back in London, we had a go at Galactic supremacy, which I was running. This is strange in itself as, because of my legendary lack of knowledge of the rules, I haven't run a tournament since August. So anyway, over half of the players who turned up were playing Federation which in fact made It a more interesting tournament as nobody could quite work out how many points the Federation had! The Federation did eventually win despite a strong surge by Mark Radford who abandoned his usual Scows in favour of the Borg. This tournament also caused Colm's ranking to collapse on account of the fact that he played Cardassians. He didn't exactly help matters along by turning up to the next tournament 3 rounds late. For the first time since the worlds, I actually tried playing with someone else's deck. Having rather liked the look of James' deck from Littlehampton, I took it, removed about 20 cards and added 20 new ones and gave it a go. It was enjoyable to play but unfortunately a timed result against Howard and a 100-0 loss to DT's computer crash deck left me with a mediocre 3rd place.

So where does this leave the race to 2000? Well the UK still occupy the first three slots, albeit in a slightly different order. I am not World #1 after Littlehampton although all of our rankings have actually gone down of late. An interesting dark horse for the title would have to be Belgium, whose favourite son Joeri Hoste has started to win a lot of tournaments lately. Looks like we'll all have to get our act together before we have to learn the Belgian national anthem. The problem is, in London there is no such thing as an easy game anymore. Even the people finishing in the bottom three in tournaments have pretty competent decks that 18 months ago would finish in the top five. As many of the players are still under 18, this bodes well for the future of the game.

On the downside though, our old favourite after tournament haunt has gone thoroughly downhill. Pages bar, once home of cheesy music, entertaining sci-fi episodes and, if not pretty, at least enthusiastic women has totally lost its edge. First of all came the abolition of the BBS on their website. Then we went there after the tournament last Saturday to find it totally dead. We stayed around for a beer, watched an episode of Voyager and then made a half hearted attempt to get a song going before we were asked to shut up by Bent Bob the landlord because 'this isn't a Rugby club'. Therefore we are looking for a new pub to go to after tournaments in the London area. Requirements are that they sell beer (preferably moderately cheaply) and allow us to sing (especially if Angels, Maria or Stan come on the jukebox). Attractive women, somewhere to dance and a tolerance to people talking about Martok Empok decks and Timing Rules are more or less optional.

Which brings us nicely on to this months song of the month. Most of the London crowd have been firing blanks on the sing front this month (I think we lost the plot when Snap tried to create new words to 'We Didn't Start the Fire' by Billy Joel). This effort by James is this months winner. He insists that all the words fit but I'm not so sure. If they don't, take it out on him.

Good effort James! My last item this month concerns a game that has taken up a large amount of our time since the advent of Q-Continuum as prize support. As nobody really cares what is in their packs of Q, we have devised a great game to be played with the unopened boosters. First of all, one player declares himself the 'bookie' and hold up an unopened pack of cards. Any player may then place a bet as to what the rare will be in that pack. The bookie offers odds to the player and he can decide whether to place the bet. Typical odds are 25/1 for getting the rare right. This might sound tight but bare in mind the amount of money you could win or lose. The great thing about this game is that you can create loads of great rules from this simple framework. Innovative bookies in the past have come up with good ideas such as the 'Uncommon Yankee' and 'The Big Ship spread bet'. All you need is a slight flare for maths and not being called Snap (he lost £40 at this game one Saturday). The downside of this game is that it's completely illegal in the US and (we suspect) many other countries so we wouldn't advise playing this game outside Britain where, okay it's probably still illegal but nobody really cares and sometimes random people in the pub who have never seen a Trek card before start to play.

That's pretty much all for this month except to quote a review of the site on www.decktech.net. Written by a person known only by the name of 'Tim'

'Most of the content is ...the Europeans trying impress the little kids with stories of going to the bar'

Oh yes, by popular demand (from just about everyone), a large portion of next months column will be devoted to embarrassing stories about me. If anyone has any stories about me, send them to the address below and I will print them pretty much unedited. This is a chance for anyone who has been a victim of this column in the last year to get their revenge and hopefully for me to show that I am a fair guy.