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Ruling Britannia IX
by Ian Taylor Government Health Warning: This article could seriously damage your health and may lead to serious
injury or even death if read in a swimming pool next to a high voltage
live cable with poor insulation. It should not be read by those under
21, pregnant, of a nervous disposition or those who find British humour
offensive and or tasteless. If your idea of controversial comedy
is an episode of Cheers then and go and read the other wonderful articles
in this magazine instead. Guaranteed they will help your deck design
more than this!
Ruling Britannia IX
Hello again! It seems ages since I wrote my last column, largely due to the fact that I have left it to the last minute again in order to squeeze in all the gossip from the last month. In fact effectively it’s all the gossip from the last 2 months because last issue was a little bit different. Well okay, lets be honest, I had absolutely nothing to write about so I recycled a lot of old stuff, mixed in generous portions of nostalgia and silly songs and tried to pass it off as a column. Apparently though it worked as from the emails I have received, it seemed that everyone liked last months more than usual. This is strange really because I thought that getting really drunk and then rewriting the words to famous songs was a hobby restricted to the London playing group. I may be wrong however given that I received a confession from Daniel Bell this month (Continental winner, 3rd place at the World Championships) that he often got drunk and spent time ‘trying to surf down a flight of stairs on a piece of wood’. Hopefully that is just the start of the confessions of players across the Atlantic. We don’t like to think we’re monopolising all the antisocial behavior. Anyway it seems that a spate of amateur song writing has started in the ranks. If everyone sends me their songs, I will print the best one each month starting with this month, which features an effort from Howard Kendrick at the end of this piece. Before I go on, I want to give you the results of last month’s competition.
If you remember, the question was ‘if you were banned from sanctioned tournaments,
what false name would you play under?’ Admittedly this was an open
invitation for all the private jokes about players that have stopped playing
to come out. As they are not funny to players outside that particular
region though, they are not going to win any awards. Those that made
the top 5 have done so not because of originality but because somewhere
along the line it would be really funny to see if they got away with it
or not.
5) Seymour Butts (by David Smith) Okay, I know it’s nicked straight out of The Simpsons but it’s certainly
a good starting point. I don’t think the issue would arise however
as by self-confession David ‘never plays in tournaments’. What a
waste!
4) Evan Lorentz (by Anonymous London player) ‘Just because I would like to destroy his ranking.’ Certainly
an entertaining idea. Loses marks for anonymity and the fact that
if Bruce notices that Evan has started to play tournaments in London he
might smell a rat.
3) Michael Scott – aka The Ninja Scott (by Ken Attwood) Because, and I quote, ‘On the grounds that as a New Reader of "Where No One Has Thingy" I've just ploughed through his articles in the archive and have formed the opinion that it is a safe name to use because he Cannot Be For Real... ’. Not 100% sure what he means by this but I’m sure Michael would not be
pleased to know he has a potential alter ego running around.
2) Titi Zute-Fordelads - (by David Hoskin) Probably the best of the Simpsons variations I received. Wins
second place not for any particular genius but because if you don’t get
the joke, Titi sounds like he could be starting a tournament scene in Nigeria.
1) Marcus Certa (Anonymous) Not much you can say about this really. I wonder how Decipher
could react to the news that their favourite outcast has started to play
Trek tournaments again. The person who sent this has asked to remain
anonymous for obvious reasons and combined it with a request to join my
newly formed club ‘The Bring Back Marcus Certa Society’
As the winner has decided to remain anonymous, the top prize of $10,000 will have to remain in my pocket. Shame really. One last update from last month, this time in the form of ‘The Race to 2000’. As regular readers will know, this is a competition between a number of the worlds top players (and me) to see who gets their ranking to 2000 first. Taking out the fact that the rankings haven’t been updated for ages (I think they do it just to annoy us I really do), it’s getting rather interesting. After looking in a very strong position last month, the British team has been having a bad time of it lately. I beat Ringo on his own turf (Littlehampton) and desecrated the shrine the locals had erected in his honour. DT managed to come 4th with what in his own words was ‘a very good deck’ and I have done okay but wasn’t very high to start with. We are currently trying to remember the words to star spangled banner but as far as I am concerned, from my College American Football days, the words go something like this. Oh say can you see
I hope that if team USA do win they give us song sheets with all the long words spelt phonetically. Although last month I said that nothing happened in December, this isn’t strictly true. Although we had no tournaments, the month was punctuated with a few good nights out. The first was with the nicest Decipher employee bar none (except for the cute one in customer service but that’s for entirely different reasons), Marcus Sheppard. Okay so all we really did was drunk a lot of beer and then eat copious amounts of Mongolian food (try it) but Marcus must have enjoyed it because the following morning he broke up with his girlfriend and decided to ‘spend more time with the lads’. I presume the two must go hand in hand because while walking the streets of Littlehampton late night, he said ‘do you know, it would be impossible to pull while on a night out with you lot’. I think he was just upset because the object of his affections that night was an off duty policewoman and he had no luck. Good job really or we would have had to hide all our copies of Ensign Davis. In fact being turned down by policewomen was a bit of a theme in December. James, Ringo and myself found ourselves confronted by a very attractive policewoman while on a Christmas bar crawl just coming out of a pub where a fight was going on. I’m not even sure she was a real policewoman! I mean she was about 5’2 and built like a model. I mean who exactly was she going to arrest, 7 year old children with 1 leg? I personally think she was a stripper on her way to a stag night although try as we might we couldn’t find it. Which of course brings us on to another New Year. Last New Year was fairly legendary by story and picture (email Ringo and ask him for the picture where he was face down in the bush). This year was obviously going to be a bit quieter but still provided it’s moments once the drinks started flowing. Ringo and I managed to get mooning James’ neighbours off to a fine art by 1 in the morning. One man who unfortunately chose that time to walk his dog got the fright of his life as Ringo for his finale decided to remove his trousers and pants completely and run down the street. Serves him right for walking his dog at 1 in the morning on New Years Day! When we got bored of this, we decided to return to the serious topic of poker and I got cleaned out by Ringo and Marshey. Note to self - Never gamble while drunk! Sorry, I’ve just remembered that this magazine is supposed to be about Star Trek CCG. Got a bit carried away there! Fortunately tournaments started again in January under the new jurisdiction of Unimatrix London of which I have dubiously been voted treasurer. We spent most of January looking for venues and trying to work out what to use for prize support now the box of boosters has been withdrawn. 2 foil cards don’t go very far amongst 20 players! We have now found a nice venue near Tower Bridge which America tried to buy once but bought London Bridge by mistake. I’ll never get bored with that story. We also managed to pick up a few cheap boxes of boosters, which will suffice as prize support for now. However, if you have any boxes of boosters going cheap ($60 or less) email iptaylor@dialstart.net or james.farmer@virgin.net and we’ll try to give them a good home. As the first tournament of the year attracted 24 players we think it has been time well spent. Actually it’s not technically true that it was the first tournament of the year. Although it was the first in London, the was another tournament a couple of weeks previous in Littlehampton, home of several keen players, a female TD and the Temple of Ringo. On tour on this particular day were me, Ringo and Howard Kendrick. Howard is someone I don’t see much of which is a shame because he comes up with some classic quotes every now and then like: ‘Some bloke gave me a paraglider the other day.’ Apparently the paraglider in question is currently sitting in Howard’s
bathroom doing very little apart from taking up a lot of space. The
other thing I can say about Howard is that despite being a very nice bloke,
when he gets annoyed, he gets REALLY annoyed. The victim of the Kendrick
rage on this occasion was none other that Jason Guzikowski. Really
avid readers (with a good memory) may remember Ruling Britannia 4 when
I said some fairly uncomplimentary things about Jason when at the time
I didn’t know him too well. In reality I still don’t but 3rd hand
accounts seem to suggest that my initial estimates were not too far off.
The sad thing is, if nobody from London went there he would probably win
all the tournaments. Some of his interpretations of the rules are
quite scary even by my standards. Take these examples from his game
against Howard for example, which Howard kindly emailed to me. Please
note that I have directly copied this entire section from Howard’s email
so don’t blame me if it sounds a bit disjointed. That’s just how
Howard talks (or writes) especially when he is reliving one of the most
traumatic experiences of his life to date.
Picture the scene: During Dilemma Phase, Howard has placed all his combos under Tirdburglars missions, Tirdburglar has not placed any under two of Howard’s missions yet: Howard "pass"
Or during Howard’s turn h "report Data & Picard to Office of Proconsul"
there were numerous examples, but these are the ones that stick out
in my mind...
In case any of you don’t get some of the references in that disjointed ramble, McTD is the name given to Janice because she works in McDonald’s. She once even turned up to a tournament in her uniform. We ask for McRulings at every opportunity. Tirdburglar is a believe Howard’s attempt at spelling Turdburglar which is British (and possibly American as well I don’t know) slang for a homosexual. I’ll forgive Howard on account of his rage but given that he is shagging the TD at the moment it wasn’t the best accusation in the world. Just think; this guy is shagging the TD and he still can’t get any rulings in his favour. Just goes to show that love can’t buy you everything. In fact it can’t even buy you one measly Q’s Tent in your opponents turn! So anyway, as for the tournament itself, I played a thief deck and won the tournament. Ringo came second with an ‘Emperor’s New Cloak’ deck. The game between us was a tight affair, which was eventually a timed result in my favour (largely because we were too busy laughing at the arguments coming from Howard and Jason’s table to play properly). I am quite proud to have inflicted Ringo’s first ever defeat in Littlehampton and maybe the locals might replace the gold plated statue of Ringo with one of me. However as I’m 6 inches taller and about 8 stone heavier than Ringo I hope they have some spare gold! It was about this time that I got in another load of trouble with our good friend Kathy, better known to the masses as Major Rakal. You may remember that last time I got into trouble because I accused the playtesters of being crap and used the word ‘hell’. As a result of which I was banned for a crippling 2 days from the BBS. Although slightly vexed on principle, in reality it was rather funny because it’s quite fun being banned from the BBS as you get a cool countdown timer and everyone thinks you’re a rebel. Besides, it’s Decipher’s BBS so I suppose they’ve got a right to ban who they want. This time I was on firmer ground because it was not a Decipher BBS but an independent strategy listing run by Colorado legend Brad DeFruiter. The incident occurred when I accidentally left my sig file on a posting to the list which at the time was an Eminem quote (use your imagination). The reply to this mildly offensive sig file was the following sent to the entire list (not just Brad and me) and read as follows. ‘If this kind of post is acceptable on your list, then I must ask you
to remove me from the list immediately, as I find it crude and offensive.
I signed up for a strategy list, not this.’
I have never seen toys leave the pram at such high speed before. In case you are wondering, Kathy is still on the list and so am I. My sig file however has been changed in case next time the same accident occurs, it’s when I’m emailing my boss. Hot on the heels of the rest of January came Superbowl weekend. Although you Americans like to think you’re the only ones who know what ‘pulling guards’, ‘side screens’ and ‘short traps’ are James and I also love the beautiful game. In fact it was a double whammy weekend because it was also Kelly’s birthday the day before which involved a large party. The only thing that spoilt it was the fact that the DJ didn’t have ‘Maria’ which we were dying to sing along to with our own words (see last months April song for details’. Oh yes and we also met Kelly’s previous boyfriend and put it this way. Tobes is a big step in the right direction! This of course meant the following day was spent largely moping around in tracksuit bottoms until we had the award winning idea of starting to drink again. Soon, groans and requests for a fried breakfast were replaced with requests for another beer and shouts of ‘come on the Ravens!’ I actually really enjoyed the game although because kickoff isn’t until about midnight here, the previous night caught up with us a bit and we both ended up having 3rd quarter power naps. Fortunately, unlike James, I woke up in time to see the 3 touchdowns. Oh well, no more gridiron until September now because we don’t get the XFL over here. Come on the Ravens! And so it was that the following weekend I had a mission. If an unfancied team who play in purple could win the Superbowl then surely an unfancied affiliation who played in purple could win one poxy tournament! Yes, that’s right; for the first tournament of the year, I was going to play Spoonheads! Having spent the last year drubbing them as the worst affiliation in the game by a street, I thought I had to give them a fair go, so I thought hard. What were the Cardassians actually good at? Well I suppose the only thing they really have going for them any more is Ore Processing. So despite the threat of Reactor Overload I decided to go straight in there with 2 Nor Ore Processing for 2 cards a pop. In fact I needed to because the purple team are so diabolical at Dilemma busting and completing missions, my draw deck ended up at 96 cards and even then most of my personnel were non aligned. The only way I made the deck vaguely viable was to have 15 Rogue Borg, 3 Crosis’ and Lore in the deck. Then I felt more at home! So anyway with this monstrous sad excuse for a deck I descended on our new home in Tower Bridge. I had never felt less confident going into a tournament before especially as there were 24 players including two guest Frenchmen. Now the most interesting fact I’ve ever heard about the French is that if all of them linked arms around the world, half of them would drown. In all fairness though, these 2 seemed quite amiable. One even finished second! // Editor's note: apparently nobody pointed out that you can't process ore at two nors on the same turn To start with, the tournament went exactly as planned. I drew Stuart Galloway in the first round. Stuart is a reformed Babylon 5 player so we all feel sorry for him. In fact, not to be too hard on the guy, he is not the greatest player in the world and he even gets put off when I start singing along to old Notorious B.I.G. records in the middle of games. This should have been an easy game. Stuart ‘All I need is 12 Dal’roks’ Marsh was playing on the next table well within earshot so I gambled and decided not to play any Rogue Borg all game in case I played him later. The result? A measly 100-25 win. Not a bad result by any means but I certainly could have hoped for better. Second game I was against Adrian ‘Poppa’ Cheeseman, the older of the Cheeseman father/son combo who has enjoyed a recent vein of form lately after letting Ringo help design his decks. With 5 minutes to go he was beating me 35-0 but fortunately I managed to fluke my way through Hunt for DNA program to win 60-35 in virtually the last play of the game. If there was a Dead End there, I would have lost! Third game I met Mr. Marsh himself. Stuart’s deck can only be described as ‘typically Stuart’. He sat around all game building up a fleet of alpha attack ships to blot out the sun and an army of Jemmies to match and then with 2 minutes to go finally decided to attempt a mission. I sat all game at my outpost feeling really sorry for myself and felt lucky to get away with a 0-0 draw. Fourth game saw me play against my arch nemesis DT. He said he was playing a strong deck so I really didn’t hold out much hope for any points in this game. Actually though I played a fairly intelligent game, slowing it down, turning it into a pressure game and really pissing DT off. Sometimes you just have to know how to play this game! Got away with another 0-0. 2 shutouts on the trot and having trouble scoring points. Was looking rather like the Baltimore Ravens after all with a bumbling Trent Dilfer as my personnel and a great big Ray Lewis of Rogue Borg… anyway, I’m getting carried away. Last game my deck finally worked right. I wiped out a Borg Cube full of people with Rogue Borg on turn 4 and then cruised to victory a couple of turns later with a 40 yard pass down the sideline to… Look okay, I’ll stop now I promise. Final score, 7 (+200ish) and 3rd in the tournament. If you learn 1 lesson from this tournament, make it this. If a good Cardassian deck is built by one of the top 5 players in the world, it has a chance of coming 3rd in the tournament. I rest my case. That brings us pretty much up to where we are now. I’m running
a tournament in London on Saturday (17th Feb) and all are welcome, please
mail me or check the web site for details. Just want to leave you
with a couple of humorous out-takes on life, starting with a song by Howard
Kendrick, inspired by Ringo and me singing the alternative lyrics to ‘Stan’
all the way back from Littlehampton.
Name: Tales of Littlehampton
Once I was afraid, I was petrified,
Oh no not I
Then down from London
Chorus...
Great effort Howard and in response to the email I had from last month, yes I realise that ‘It’s Raining Men’ has never been covered by En Vogue and was most recently covered by the West End Girls. Thank you Statto! I will leave you this month with 2 text messages I received from Ringo while he was on a bender at about 2 in the morning. These are copied out exactly as I received them. 1) Sent 01:21 THERE IS A BOOTIFUL CUTE B4T2H 4N HER UNDERWEAR DANCING ASOUND AND SHOW4NG IER MUFF IN BR4XTON SOSTED! 2) Sent 01:23 MJMKAMJAMJTJGTJMTGJW 4 AN P47SED
This weeks competition will be to provide a possible translation for either of the above especially number 2 which really baffled me. Entries allowed even from Ringo as he doesn’t remember sending them. Best wishes to all 
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