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Ruling Britannia XII
by Ian Taylor The management of WNOHGB takes no responsibility whatsoever for anything
that Ian says, has said, or may say in this series.
I hope you realise that reading this will not help you win games. It won’t tell you how to build an efficient STP drop battle deck or teach you the dark secrets of DT’s shuffling algorithms. In fact the people featured in this article are, on the whole, very bad role models and following their example will probably cause you to win far less games. Under 21’s please don’t read this; over 21’s, you have been warned…. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, we have a new expansion coming out any day now and Liverpool are in the UEFA cup final. What’s missing in this wonderful spring period? Oh yes, that’s right; I haven’t played in a constructed tournament since the beginning of March. It’s not that I have intentionally stopped playing or have decided that despite my previous assertions, Gay-Trek (Warp Speed) is the only format worth playing. It’s just that the universe has conspired against me to ensure that I am unable to make any of the London or Littlehampton tournaments of late. As a result my bid to become the first player to reach a ranking of 2000 has taken a bit of a setback. Well that’s not strictly speaking true. It just hasn’t been taking any steps forward. As a result Jason Drake is now world #1 (as Ringo can’t seem to string any results together and DT keeps losing against Rabbits) and we are starting to exercise the possibility that we may have to learn the words to Star Spangled Banner by October. In fact the whole World Championship, National and Continental thing has come around rather more quickly than I expected. It only seems a couple of months ago that I came back from D-Con with a suntan and that kind of misplaced optimism that I always have when coming back from the worlds. The kind that says: ‘I’ve just been playing against the worlds best players and have seen all the best new deck ideas some of which you have never even heard of. I’m going to stick a 100-0 cap in your bitch ass!’ By January this has always been replaced by: ‘Okay, so I’ve run out of original deck ideas but being an ex World Championship qualifier I should still be able to beat you with my run of the mill Romulan mission solver which has now been tweaked to perfection.’ Sadly by this time of year, this had degenerated into: ‘I haven’t got an original deck idea in my sad pathetic little mind and all the other players in my region are coming up with such good ideas that even the 12 year old kids with only 200 cards are holding me to timed wins.’ And it is with this mentality that a lot of good players enter the nationals. I must admit that the edge has been taken off them a bit this year. When you used to get a free flight (or even a free holiday) to America it was worth making the effort to win the regionals. Now with only a bye to day 2 of something or other on offer I never even turned up to the national as I had a football game on the same day (who decided that tournaments on a Sunday were a good idea?) I think I will go to the continentals instead and see if I can win something worthwhile. D-Con at any rate should be great this year. We have a large contingent coming over from the UK and no matter where it is held (except perhaps Cleveland) we should be able to make a good week of it. BTW, when you are making your plans for D-Con consider traveling up to a week in advance. Then instead of 10 drunk British blokes in a pub, we could be 50 drunk CCG players from across the globe in a pub. So I suppose you’re wondering what did happen in the nationals? Actually I wish I had gone, not from a playing point of view but the tournament was kind of like a reunion for players down the years. Running the tournament were Marcus (player since year dot, now Decipher staff), Ringo (player since year dot, ambassador and general nuisance to the universe) and Rik (Already a veteran by year dot although his only opponents were the enigmatic Martin Allen and Mark Woodward). Also present at the tournament was Matt Slade who is a couple of expansions behind everyone else but still a devious player when he remembers the basics like putting an outpost in his deck, as well as all the part time decent players such as Howard, Mike Shanny etc. Another notable entry was Jason in what may have been the first visit outside of Littlehampton for a tournament. He also managed to drag along pregnant missus Janice and a couple of the other Littlehampton crew. He even managed to win a couple of games and I wasn’t even there to see it. With me and Ringo both not playing, DT should have had an easy ride but was nearly upset by Howard who was playing one of Ringo’s decks. In a typically British game, DT eventually won the final 172-168 (timed) while Q’s Planet and The Big Picture affected both players. James (playing with my deck) finished 3rd for the second year running. One day he will learn what a final confrontation is. Meanwhile this month, Mike Shanny won the monthly Littlehampton bash and we had a booster draft tournament. Now no matter how bad I get at constructed; I can always rely on sealed deck to get me a decent result. The last time I lost a sealed deck tournament was GenCon 98 when I came 4th in a dodgy DS9 sealed deck event. The last time I lost any round within a sealed deck tournament was GenCon 99 when Stuart Marsh beat me in one round of the Blaze of Glory sealed (although I still won the tournament). I am GOOD at sealed deck. Coincidentally, this booster draft was held on the same day as the start of the NFL draft. I half expected to open the first booster and see a picture of Michael Vick on the top (although realistically I would have settled for a Horg’ahn). What I actually got was a Fed/Rom treaty which was good enough and I chose as my overall number one draft pick. Actually, I think it would be fun to introduce NFL drafting rules into booster draft tournaments. Say for example you drafted a decent card, lets say Bev Crusher on your first pick. You should then be able to trade that with someone else on your table for their next two picks or something. Okay so the idea needs some work but it could be fun. The rest of the draft went fairly well. The Fed/Rom treaty was a bit redundant because there were seven on the table all in all between five people. I was even left one as my 15th pick from a booster! I did manage to get a Q (although nobody hit it all day), a Vekor, a Bok and a few other decent cards although nothing game breaking. I also managed to draft a lot of decent Space missions including a couple of all-important 35 pointers. You don’t want to have to be doing 4 missions! In the first round I drew Howard Kendrick. He is a tough customer but by the end it was clear he didn’t really know the rules of sealed deck. He cleared out his own mis-seeds at my Secret Salvage before realising he could no longer do the mission. He then did the same at one of my other missions and I had to point out that he could no longer complete the mission. With 2 of my missions having no Dilemmas, the 100-0 victory beckoned. In the second round I played another old adversary Mark Radford. Without his usual 15 copies of each rare card to play with, he struggled a bit not really getting a good draw and I won 100-0 again. Now after two 100-0’s in a sealed deck, you don’t expect to come up against somebody playing a 3-way treaty but this was in fact what happened. Matthew Thomas, one of London’s up and coming stars, managed to win two games against decent players with a 3-way treaty. He managed to get it all wrong against me in a game that was all over after I stole his Pegasus Search (if you don’t think this is a big deal, work out how long it takes to get Integrity>40 with mainly Premier Romulans!) At this point I was wondering about a world record. Has anyone ever had a perfect record (all 100-0’s) in sealed deck before? It became immaterial as in the last game I only managed to beat Colm (who is an excellent sealed deck player) 100-25. I was a little worried when he acquired a Betazoid Gift Box (remember them?) but he couldn’t pull out anything more threatening that a couple of Rogue Borg which didn’t buy him the time to do any more missions. I would still be interested to know if anyone else has ever won their first 3 games in a sealed deck 100-0. And from my point of view that pretty much wraps it up. The other constructed tournament this month was won (for the first time) by Gareth Cheeseman, another one of those teenagers who, in a few years time, will probably be winning quite a lot of tournaments. London seems to be full of them by now, Gareth and Matthew Thomas to name but two. I suppose you wonder what I’m going to write about for the rest of the issue, and to be honest so did I for a while. However, you will notice that this is the 12th installment of RB, which makes it 1 year old! Therefore I have decided to run my own little awards ceremony for the people that make Ruling Britannia possible. That is the people who have continually put up with having all the bits of their personal and social lives that they would rather forget revealed to the world in this column. Some might argue that these awards are designed for no other purpose other that to dig up all the old stories and have a laugh at them a second time around. They’re probably right. Before the awards proper start a few meaningless statistics. In 11 issues, 72 different individuals have been mentioned, of which 30 are British tournament players, 16 are women, 5 are Decipher employees or ex Decipher employees, 2 are ex world champions, and 2 weigh more than me. Ringo has the most mentions, starring in 36 different paragraphs, followed
by James (29), DT (25), Rik (24) and Tobes (20). Angela (James’ other
half) and Danielle (porn star) both feature in 7 paragraphs making them
the most talked about women. Other notable mentions in the past have
gone to Joeri Hoste (8), Brad DeFruiter (4), Marcus Certa (3), Evan Lorentz
(2), Euan Blair (1) and Notorious B.I.G. (1). The later along with
Joseph Stalin are the only people mentioned who are now dead. Anyway,
now I’ve bored you to tears with that, on to the awards proper.
Most amusing story award:
Nominees are: 1) Steve Tobin going out with a porn star
who later stole his credit card number
And the winner is……. Mike Shanny getting pissed on by a stripper.
Although there was strong argument for the Steve Tobin porn star scoop
taking the honours, a lot of the saga didn’t take place strictly within
the last year. Can’t give the award to Ringo as he is proud of his
west coast antics which lessens the possibility for future piss taking.
Mike on the other hand has many more months of people bringing up this
incident to look forward to.
Best night out award:
Nominees are: 1) Boys on the town in Manchester at UK GenCon
And the winner is……. Marina Sirtis PA at Pages. This was a very
close run contest. Mike Shanny’s escapade with the stripper (which
is up for 4 awards) could not quite match the sheer alcoholic over indulgence
of Marina Sirtis night. Drinking for 7 hours straight before a hilarious
concoction of dancing, puking and nicking things from outside her Majesties
Parliament made this a truly top night. Tragically, only James, Tobes
and myself were there to enjoy it in its entirety.
Quote of the year award:
Nominees are: 1) ‘It’s better to be pissed off than pissed
on’ - Mike Shanny
And the winner is……. ‘It’s better to be pissed off than pissed on’ by
Mike Shanny. Mike wins his second award because not only was it a
perfect response to a very embarrassing incident but also it is easily
understandable without hearing the context. Just for the record,
Ringo’s quote was after going £100 down in a casino after our Christmas
bar crawl. Danielle’s was during a heated exchange of emails in which
she tried to explain why Tobes was better off going out with her than hanging
around with us. Our argument consisted of a) she’s a slag and b)
she’s a porn star. Maybe in retrospect we should have come up with
a better argument for Tobes’ sake. Angela’s quote came after she
became stressed about the amount of coverage she was suddenly getting in
Ruling Britannia.
Most likely to be the butt of jokes next year award:
Nominees are: 1) Mike Shanny
And the winner is……. Jason Guzikowski. Jason win through process
of elimination. We think Mike has learned his lesson by now whereas
Tobes seems to be too busy having sex and ensuring-the-Danielle-thing-doesn’t-happen-again
to do much else newsworthy. Kathy’s complete absence of any sense
of humour whatsoever (she actually deleted my post from the BBS for mentioning
tongue in cheek that a Voyager card had the word ‘hell’ in it the other
day) prevents her from being an amusing target for very long (at a time).
Jason has great potential however in so far as he has the potential to
say stupid things, thinks he is a better player than he is and is about
to become a father. Good luck Jason (snigger).
Song of the year award:
Nominees are: 1) The Martin Allen song
And the winner is……. Stan. All great, but for staying power the winner has to be our version of Stan, written before the single was released and sung at every opportunity ever since. Many a London tourist has been treated to a group of pissed locals walking by singing ‘Even if they did it would be to Klinks, or Ferengi or the Borg’ Or another part of this short but definitely catchy song. The race is already on to find next year's winner. And to start off that race and also to bring you this episode’s song
of the month, I bring you this. I have resorted to writing my own
largely due to the lack of quality material this month. Because of
the large number of submissions in recent months, this is the first time
I have put pen to paper on songs in a long time but I am quite pleased
with the result.
Name: That Don’t Impress me Much
I’ve known a few guys whose decks were pretty smart
Ooooh oh, you think you’re special
That don’t impress me much
I’ve never known a guy to carry a Carling in his pocket
Ooooh oh, you think you’re special
That don’t impress me much
You’re one of those guys who’s got a dozen Borg Queens
Ooooh oh, you think you’re special
That don’t impress me much
Please send everything you have for next months issue and lets make it a good one. My particular request for this month will be amusing stories about major tournaments. For example, what lengths have people gone to win, how have players been prevented from attending by freak circumstances and how have the best laid plans gone to shit. Until next time Ian Taylor
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