Ruling Britannia XVI

A couple of times now I have had months that have been so busy that not only has Ruling Britannia been submitted late (as usual) but I have had so much to squeeze in I have had to leave a lot of it until the following month. August was one of those months for me. 2 big events dominated the month, the first being the European Championships being held in Paris on the weekend of 25/26 and then of course UK GenCon which started on the 30th August. Both tournaments would give me a chance to get a bye into the second day of the worlds (something I have yet to do) and if I won the Europeans I would also get the trip paid for. Therefore I had to make a bit of effort with my decks and not just throw something together the morning of the tournament like I normally do. As expected, both of these events were very er... eventful and so this issue will mainly be devoted to them. For all new readers mail and general London gossip, please see next months issue.

First of all however I want to tell you about a day out that never quite made last months column. The plan was an audacious one. We would start at the far end of the London Underground Victoria line, and then at each station we would get out, find the nearest pub, have a pint and then move on to the next station. Now when the plan was initiated, 2 problems immediately presented themselves.

Now fortunately both of these problems have easy solutions. The second problem was solved when everyone who can't handle their beer (including Mike who made a crap excuse) wimped out. The first problem was solved because now all the slow drinkers had wimped out the remainder could drink their beer really quickly. The slight drawback was that the remainder now consisted of just me and Ringo with the final casualty being Snap who woke up ill on the morning of the bar crawl.

Therefore it was just me and Ringo who headed off to Brixton early (for us) in the morning looking for breakfast. Now for those that don't know London, Brixton is the most crappy area in the city both in terms of crime and general sluminess. Kind of the equivalent of St Claire in Cleveland or The Bronx in New York. When we finally found a local who would talk to us we quickly learned that there was nowhere decent to get breakfast. We had a pretty poor fry-up before waiting outside the pub for it to open.

Pub #1 - When the landlord finally opened the doors it was with great relief. We ordered some lagers and sat down to drink them. Because of time constraints, we worked out we would need to do the first few pubs really quickly as we were bound to slow down later on. Unfortunately the beer was so disgusting that it took ages to drink and Ringo managed to throw up before the end of the pint. Not a good start.

Pub #2 - We found our way to Stockwell station and had a small panic when we couldn't locate a pub. However asking at the local Post Office we were directed to a pub whose splendour and old-England look on the outside was matched only by it's dreariness and crap beer on the inside. After drinking a pretty crappy pint of Carling we moved on.

Pub #3 - Coming out of Vauxhall station, we found ourselves at a massive intersection. After walking around looking for a pub for about 5 minutes, we did the only sensible thing and asked some cops for directions. They directed us to a more commercial area where we were soon sipping Heineken in what turned out to be the only straight bar in Vauxhall. The taste of a decent pint finally got us on track (although Ringo still felt it necessary to puke up the remnants of the last 2) and we left the pub a lot happier.

Pub #4 - At this point the stations got too close together to warrant taking a train so we started to walk between them. We found a nice pub near Pimlico but to be honest, me and Ringo looked a bit out of place in amongst the flowers and snobby London folk. Had a pleasant pint, phoned a few people and left.

Pub #5 - Took the short walk up to Victoria and found a packed pub near the station. It's worth mentioning at this point that we had decided to drink a different pint in every pub. Here we opted for cider which I really hate. Struggled to finish it and then we left the pub.

Pub #6 - Felt a bit pissed as we walked past Buckingham Palace and across Green Park. Ringo, got caught short and decided to have a piss in front of all the tourists. We eventually found a quiet pub near Green Park where we risked our first pint of bitter. I am not really a bitter drinker and it took a bit of work to get through.

Pub #7 - Went to the heaving tourist trap that is Oxford Circus into the realm of Bar Logic (see RB VI for the last visit here). Had a nice pint of Stellar Artois before leaving for the next pub. Apparently me and Ringo defended the Walthamstow Hardcore Piggyback Championship about here but I don't remember this.

Pub #8 - On the way to Warren Street Ringo decides to play a game of 'bump the foreigner' in Regent Street. I remember looking forward to getting out of the West End and into somewhere more suburban. We decided to revisit an old London tournament venue called 'The Old Pie Shop' back from when Marcus used to run tournaments in London. Unfortunately there were no more pies, just a pub with decent food. About this time that was exactly what we wanted though.

Pub #9 - On to Euston where we stopped in an overpriced pub that I vaguely remember from when we used o have conferences back at school in central London. Naturally we used to skive off and go to the pub thinking we were really big because we were only 17. We worked our way through pints of Hoegaarden and Ringo found it necessary to puke again.

Pub #10 - Next was Kings Cross and I had my first real struggle to finish a beer, in this case a substandard pint of Caffrey's. Ringo's sage advice said that I really needed to throw up as this would make the rest of the bar crawl easier. Try and fail so finish my beer and head back onto the tube for the final 6 pubs.

Pub #11 - Emerging drunkenly from Highbury and Islington station, the only place we could find was a dubious continental looking café which didn't sell pints. To compensate we both had 2 bottles of Becks. At this point we started a long argument over the history of soccer player Martin Keown. Being pretty drunk at this stage, our method of solving this argument was to stop random people walking past and asking their opinion.

Pub #12 - The argument continued on the tube and then again in the Railway Tavern at Finsbury Park. This station was only 10 minutes walk from Arsenal football stadium so we found a number of people willing to express an opinion. We also watched a game of Gaelic football as the dark drew in and got a phone call from Tobes saying he would meet us in the next pub. About time!

Pub #13 - Seven Sisters also provided difficulties in finding a pub. When halfway through our pints Tobes called asking where we were. As we were too drunk to know or care, Ringo had to go and find him. Unfortunately he found Tobes and then forgot where the pub was so I had to finish my beer and then go and fetch them.

Pub #14 - Hitting Tottenham Hale station we headed up towards Walthamstow stopping in the Ferry Boat. Here we attempted another pint of bitter which I really struggled with. Determined not to be defeated, I took my quarter full pint with me out of the pub and finished it on the walk to the next pub. Tobes finished his first pint quite comfortably.

Pub #15 - Finally within staggering distance from home we attempted to get a beer at Blackhorse Road. Unfortunately the first pub we tried refused to serve us because we were too drunk. As if! We were therefore forced to stagger another 200 yards to the next pub where they were only too happy to serve us with a couple of pints of Snakebite. Ringo made a teenage girl cry by telling her she was inferior and I spectacularly puked up behind a Bouncy Castle with an audience of about 20 young children. Tobes and Snap comfortably managed their second and first pints respectively.

Pub #16 - The final leg had to be Checkers, it absolutely had to be. Unfortunately they also refused us access so we had to head for what we have come to know as 'The Stealth Irish Pub' on account of the fact it seems to evade all known rules on licensing hours. I somehow managed to squeeze down my 16th pint and collapse on the bar. Ringo finished his and ordered another. I admit defeat and head home.

Verdict - We must do this again sometime. We just about managed all 16 pubs in the time allocated and successfully finished 16 different beers (although in some cases very briefly). We are currently taking advanced bookings for the next underground challenge and Ringo is trying to get commemorative Rugby shirts made.

So anyway, back in the real world it was a big month for tournaments. Ringo and I were both determined to play in the European championships and get one last shot at a free trip to DecipherCon. DT wanted to come along and get some practice at YJ. Therefore on a sunny Friday afternoon, we all departed for a nine hour coach trip to Paris. We managed to drink a few beers before we left and a few more on the ferry before we all passed out in the back of the coach. DT woke us up briefly at 3:00 in the morning to tell us about a great new deck he had just thought up but I must have been half asleep because his original idea of Downloading 'The Gift' to escape 'Hide & Seek' somehow got translated in my brain as 'Do something or other with 'Beyond the Subatomic' to make Q-Bypassing faster. Fortunately I already had a deck. I had built a fairly watertight Ajur/Boratus deck that had the potential to win first turn. We eventually arrived in Paris at about 6 in the morning and then proceeded to get extremely lost following Marcus' directions (which were, of course, wrong). The fact that only one out of the three of us spoke any French certainly didn't help much. We also got our first taste of the locals when one of them told Ringo (who had asked for directions) 'Welcome to my Fucking Country' in pretty perfect English.

So anyway, we finally arrived at the venue where we ran into the one and only Marcus (Marcus Marcus) Sheppard. We also met Benelux top player , fat bastard and generally nice bloke Joeri Hoste and a player who I had known for probably longer than any other outside Britain, Alexander Bloemen. In fact I met Alex at the world championships in 1997 back when you could attempt space missions from your outpost and Barclays/Cytherians was original. Now if you have never played in a big tournament after having no real sleep for 28 hours you ought to try it because it is quite fun especially when it is over 30 degrees outside and you need a translator in a lot of your games. I won my first game after having a 15 minute discussion (no exaggeration) about the timing rules for 'Writ of Accountability'. I then managed to win my next 2 fairly comfortably before meeting Alex in round 4. After a topsy turvey game, he solved Q's Planet to make the score 155-115 to him (while he was affected by 'The Big Picture'). We called the TD over after the sudden realisation that we didn't really know who had won. Although he had more points, we had both met the necessary victory conditions at exactly the same time. The TD ruled that I had lost much to my disappointment although to be fair, it couldn't have been to a nicer guy. This made my position for qualification to the final day a lot more precarious. In the 4th round I played Salvatori, a bloke who I met at DecipherCon last year and seemed a nice guy. However, after half an hour of picky rules questions, whinging and accusations of stalling (after 25 minutes!) I am now inclined to think of him as a twat, at least during games. Probably my most satisfactory victory of the weekend. My last round was against a player whose name escapes me but has been universally christened 'dodgy German bloke' in a game that didn't matter as we had both already qualified. Fortunately though I managed to win the game and the tournament with 10 points and a good differential. Roll on day 2!

First of course was the small matter of 'hitting the town'. The locals were putting on a barbecue late night but that left us a good few hours to investigate the local drinking establishments. So gasping for a pint, Ringo, Marcus and myself headed down the high street in search of a pub. Half an hour later we were still searching for a pub. We found a bar that served beer in thimble sized glasses and eventually found a grotty bar frequented on a Saturday night by apparently nobody except a small very ill looking dog. We had a couple of not particularly nice beers before heading back to the venue. It's a good job the barbecue was on because, despite rumours of the delightful French cuisine, there was nowhere to get some decent nosh. It was quaint restaurants or croissants and that was it. Okay, I like to say I have something good to say about most places but Paris is shite. If you ever get the opportunity to go there don't bother. So anyway, they had beer at the venue which was good. They also had meat which was better as we hadn't really eaten since the previous day. After the food was long finished, most of the locals went to bed leaving only Ringo and Scottish ambassador Ron Senior to take a dip in the oversized paddling pool and then go to bed on the roof. Ron woke up the next morning in an ants nest while Ringo managed to leave his mobile up there.

So the following day I woke up fairly early as I was sleeping on the floor using my deck as a pillow. The previous night, me and DT had put together a deck for me to play because my original Kazon attack deck had been killed by a ruling the previous day. We built a Blood Oath Q-Bypass deck using 'The Gift' to avoid Hide and Seek. I absolutely hated myself for playing it. I really hate Q-Bypassing but given the cards we had with us there was no choice. Ringo played a Dividian/Dooby deck as did Joeri. Unfortunately in the first round I had the bad luck of drawing Salvatori again. He again accused me of stalling (again about 25 minutes into the game) and I again beat him with 35 minutes gone. This was extremely satisfying. My second game was against Bjorn, the previous years winner. He managed to Writ me which was rather annoying but it did mean I could go outside and enjoy the French sun, play a bit of football and know I still had a chance of making the final.

However, when my next opponent Writted me, I realised the game was up. I hated myself for not only playing a Q-bypass but playing a really flawed one. I would have been better off just using my deck from the previous day and hope nobody recognised it. I also lost the following game against Ringo destroying any mathematical chance I had of making the final. Instead I enjoyed the weather, chilled out, played a bit of football and laughed at Ringo's pornography which had been put on display with a bit of paper saying 'Ringo's Book' next to it. The only other event of note was in the last round when I played Vladimir Vrbata. Vlad was the only person to beat a member of Team Britannia (me) in last years world team championship so I was looking forward to a rematch. However soon after the match started, it became clear he wasn't in a good mood. He was mumbling to himself during the mission phase and then asked if we could block seed the dilemma phase. Obviously I said no but he proceeded to chuck most of his dilemmas under in one go anyway. I tried to keep up but it was clear he was in no mood to play properly. When the game started, I Q-bypassed on my first turn and then he complained that I had said I wasn't using Q! I said no such thing but I allowed him to remove his Hide and Seek from under a mission and reveal it. I used 'The Gift' to move away and bypass another mission but then he started complaining bitterly that it wasn't fair and that we should replay the match blah, blah, blah. I certainly didn't want to play another game against a whining Eastern European twat so I just said we would call the game a draw and walked off. I don't know what happened to the official results because I refused to sign a pad for that game. So just in case anyone didn't catch it the first time around, Vladimir Vrbata is a stupid twat who should be punched on sight and if you know him, tell him I said so.

So that pretty much concluded the Europeans for me. Despite the negative slant I put on a lot of the report, I did really enjoy myself. The French ambassadors were all really cool even if they did show way too much of their pants. It was good to see some old friends again and it was a laugh watching Joeri forget to take his cards off of 'Containment Field' and lose a turn because of it. The coach ride home wasn't that much fun but we did have a game of Football at Calais with DT's fluffy gridiron ball he had bought as a mascot. However it was so nice to be back in good old London. Me and Ringo actually kissed the piss soaked streets when we got off the coach at Victoria. Then we made up for 2 days of dodging croissants by buying loads of sausages and bacon cooking the lot and scoffing it down in sandwiches with extra grease. You can stick your French food up your arse!

After we finished out breakfast, we had about two and a half days before the start of GenCon. It was going to be great, 4 days of tournaments, 4 nights of drinking and half of GenCon sleeping on our floor. The first of these actually arrived on the Monday night when we got back from France. You have probably heard of Olav Rokne the Canadian ambassador? He contributed a story to RB a couple of months back. Well he was kipping on our floor. We went our for beers Monday night and Tuesday night. On Wednesday, we decided that we had to have a hangover for every day of GenCon so we went to the Purple Turtle to load up on orange shit. By the end of the night we had the bar staff well trained. One of the barmaids even gave us Orange Shit table service. Olav seemed strangely quiet when presented with our never ending stream of songs all of which were sung at top volume in the pub. He did join us for a couple of glasses of Orange Shit though. It was quite an education as we thought Orange Shit only came in jugs. Still, you learn something new every day.

So anyway we were all up bright and early for the first day of GenCon. It was due to be a Borg pre-release tournament and of course we were all looking forward to seeing the new set except for the playtesters who were just looking forward to pretending to be surprised by the new cards when in fact they were just feeling really smug. So while we are on the subject of playtesting, it seems that there is this kind of 'Fight Club' rule where playtesters are not allowed to say that they are playtesters. However, if somebody stops being a playtester for any reason that would therefore mean they are no longer bound by the playtesting rules and so can tell the world who all the playtesters are. So here is a big RB plea to all ex-playtesters. Send me a list of all other playtesters and I will publish it in these pages so they can be duly harassed by all the players in their region for spoilers. However it's not a bad deal in return for seeing all the cards about 3 months in advance of everyone else.

So anyway we were at this Borg pre-release tournament. I was initially sceptical about all these rules regarding trading. How it worked was we each got a starter deck of Voyager and five boosters of Borg and then we had 45 minutes to build our decks trading for cards with the other players if we wanted. Now before I go any further, I would like to add that me and Olav had a friendly rivalry going on about who was the best at sealed deck. Although I built a fairly good deck, this round was won by Canada as Olav beat me into second place. I built a kind of Hirogen armada but it just wasn't good enough to beat Olav's Vidiian speed monstrosity. Canada 1 - 0 UK. Having got the formalities of the tournament out of the way, we decided to go back to the Purple Turtle where lots more Vodka and Orange Shit was enjoyed by all. After a while, we experimented with drinking games. Steevie G seemed to be the worst of the players basically just drinking every time it was his turn. Scottish player Fraser also struggled a bit and got quietly but steadily more drunk while sitting in the corner. At one point he disappeared into the toilet, threw up and came back. We thought nothing of it. This is standard behaviour in the turtle. What was slightly more worrying was half an hour later when the bouncer asked us to leave as he had twice had to rescue Fraser from the floor of the Gents. Understandable annoyed yet amused we left the pub. Fraser spent the rest of the way home and quite a large amount of time once we got there vomiting. He eventually passed out against the cooker and awoke the next morning for more of the same. Hardcore!

Friday was due to be a Voyager constructed tournament. However, interest lay mostly with doing another Borg pre-release, so we did. We did another two in fact. I won the first one, largely thanks to pulling a DQSS in my Voyager starter and trading for the personnel to go with it. The second one was again won by Olav with me coming second with another Vidiian speed deck. Canada 2 - 1 UK. Yet another trip down to the turtle followed. The bouncer remembered Fraser (bad) but didn't remember Howard (good as he tried to buy dope from his last time he was there). There was a huge crowd from GenCon there and it is fair to say it is one of the best nights out I have had in ages. It is probably a good time now to list some of the many players that were there for the weekend who it was really great to see again. Sorry for anyone I miss, it isn't because I don't like you it's just that I have temporarily forgotten you.

Most of these slept on our floor at some point making our living room in the early mornings looking like a shot from Night of the Living Dead. The only notable absentees were Martin Allen who never showed up and Mike who could never be bothered to get his lazy arse out of bed. So anyway on Friday night, nearly all of these people were there plus more. After drinking songs, drinking games, Orange Shit, more drinking songs and a few early departures, a few of us set out to pull some women. We were a mixed group strutting our stuff on the dance floor each with our own set chance of pulling in our own particular fashion. The participants were as follows each listed with their own pro's and con's in the world of persuading females to sleep with them.

So anyway to cut a long story short, Noddy, Punchline and me all looked like getting lucky at some point although we all managed to blow out in spectacular ways. Noddy looked on to a dead cert until she told him that she had a steady boyfriend so she didn't want to have sex with him. Punchline probably could have got a shag but she was really ugly so he probably didn't really want to. I was doing okay but they all went to get the last train an all I could get was a kiss goodnight. It just goes to prove my theory from last years GenCon. Trek players just cannot pull when in a group.

All this added up to a pretty bad recipe for the open the following day, especially as I didn't really have a deck. Having no other option, I woke up at 6 in the morning and rebuilt my deck from day 1 of the European Championship. Well at least I know it's worked and it's been tested. After a good fried breakfast I felt a lot more optimistic about my chances, especially when a lot of the good players seemed to be a bit hungover. I think we finally broke Olav as he fell asleep on one of the tables before the tournament and had to be woken up to make way for the first round games. In the first round I played somebody for whom it was their first tournament. I felt a bit sorry for the guy really. I went first and beat him in the first turn utilising Ajur and Boratus. I know it was against weak opposition but it's always nice to start a tournament with a 100-0 win.

Second round I played London player Andy Dobson. Andy has a reputation as a pretty shrewd as well as cool headed player and had to be taken seriously. He got the first turn and started to assemble a Kazon armada and on my turn I managed to complete a mission for 55 points before I was hit by 'Mission Debriefing'. Andy then completed his armada, threw it aboard a Kazon Warship and then wormholed to my Outpost which he then blew up with a 4 card battle bridge. Fortunately, I still had Torres on a ship present so I was able to Palor Toff for my outpost and then complete the second mission for the win. Third round I played Mark Radford who was also on full points. He mistakenly seeded his Caretakers array under a mission which slowed him down by a turn and I was able to score 2 missions through his pretty scarce Dilemmas to win. Good job really as Mark could probably have won next turn. This left me 6 (+300) at the half way point which was about as good as I could have expected.

Fourth round was my inevitable confrontation with Olav. I was pretty certain he would be playing Dividian Dooby so I managed to out-seed most of his Ooby Doobies. I scored a mission on my first turn but he then Wormholed over to me and attempted a 'Drive-by Tierna'. Fortunately I was able to download Scotties phaser to give me enough security to pass the Kazon bomb. I was unable to complete a mission on my second turn so Olav went to work on his Ooby Doobies. He managed to get his deck going but was stopped at the last minute by a Friendly Fire preventing him from doing his first mission. I was then able to win on my 3rd turn. A great game which kept up my perfect record. In the fifth round I played a German called Christian. In a light hearted game I managed to win 100-0 against his DRAGS/DQSS deck on account of the fact I managed to discard all his Scows to Ajur and Boratus. With qualification a mathematical certainty I was looking forward to the final round against Noddy. I kind of wanted him to beat me as I had built his deck that morning and knew I could beat him in the final if I wanted to. I played fair however and sent his Q-bypass crew on a long trip to the other end of the spaceline using Hide & Seek before winning on the following turn. This gave me a perfect record of 12 (+600) which, to put it lightly, I was very happy about.

This gave me a bit of a problem. You see naturally I was in the final confrontation but at the same time, the England Vs Germany soccer match was just starting. Just to make things even more amusing, Christian had beaten Olav in the final round putting him in the final. This gave us two England Vs Germany matches going on simultaneously both of which were destined to be very good games. I lost the toss but Christian was unable to get much going on his first turn. I Boratused my first mission but then ran into a Garbage Scow and Mission Debriefing. He carried on building up some people and I then moved the Scow and completed for 50 points. The following turn Christian managed to draw a DRAGS and used it to nuke the existing Scow. He tried to scan a mission and I burned my QTR for a Panel Overload and Scanner Interference. The following turn, I tried to move to my second mission but was Wormholed to the Mirror Quadrant. Unable to access my OWR, I had to return the ship to hand and start rebuilding. In the next couple of turns I started rebuilding while Christian picked off a couple of missions. Incidentally, by this time we were getting a few reports of goals going in for England. I finally managed to squeeze out my other mission one turn before Christian won by doing his last mission. A quick score check realised that England had beaten Germany 5-1 at soccer. What a double!

Of course, after this we went out to celebrate the double victory. Marcus' attempt to take the product champions his a logistical crisis when about 15 other players decided to come along to the same restaurant. Faces with the nightmare of trying to work out who he was paying for and who he wasn't, Marcus ended up buying a Chinese meal for everyone. Three cheers for Marcus! Further celebrations had to be put on hold however as we committed the rookie error of trying to get into the turtle in a group of about 15. We were refused entry which was unsurprising after Ringo attempted to insight the queue to a nearby club into a football fuelled riot. The last night of Gencon was therefore quite a sombre one. We turned up the following day for yet another Borg pre-release which Olav won, we took one last look at the fit birds working for DCI, had one last admire of the cute Goth from the House of Atreides stand and said one last goodbye to all the players we probably wouldn't see for a while. And so ended GenCon 2001. Will be looked back at in years to come as a GenCon to remember.

So this just leaves song of the month for this rather oversized episode. I have to apologise because it's not strictly about ST: CCG but we like it anyway.

Next month you will receive all the latest gossip from London and the rest of the world. Until then, I would love to hear from anyone who has an interesting story or just wants to say hi.

PS At time of writing, the tragic news concerning the World Trade centre and the Pentagon has just been aired. I dedicate this months column to any players who have lost friends or family in the attack and I am certain that whatever action the US government decides to take, the UK will give any support they possibly can.