Mark was different.  I first met Mark in 1996 when I was an innocent wide eyed freshman at the University of Warwick.  He was President of the resident Science Fiction society.  He owned every episode of Star Trek ever on video; he ran a website dedicated to Bajorans and Bajoran culture (you can still find this at http://www.shakaar.demon.co.uk) he was just like your average Sci-fi geek except that instead of black jeans and Blake 7 t-shirts, his preferred attire was pastel waistcoats and beige trousers.  I suppose by industry standards he was the best dressed Sci-fi fan ever.

He also played a game called Star Trek: The Next Generation Customisable Card Game.  Those with a long memory will remember that this is the cumbersome name the game was lumbered with before it secured the DS9 and Voyager licenses.  The other regular members of the card gaming group were Rik Thomas, Martin Allen and of course me, the green newbie.  Mark is the one person in this group I am not still in touch with and so is, as such, my oldest CCG acquaintance who qualifies for a biography.  Apart from a few mess around games with my mates at home using my cards, Mark was my first ever ST:CCG opponent.  Given how varied and widespread my opponents have been since, this in itself means he will always be an important person in my book.  He played a Federation bridge crew deck and I played a Fed/Rom treaty (I didn’t have enough personnel to play with only 1 affiliation).  He beat me 100-30.

Some may find it interesting that this was the last time he ever beat me at the game.  Those who knew him will not be surprised at all.  The fact is that Mark was a terrible Star Trek player.  Down the years I have considered there to be three types of Trek players.  At the top of the scale you have the top level players who have a good grasp of all aspects of the game including the metagame, rules, deck construction and tech.  At the bottom you have the kids and newbies who turn up with badly constructed decks and lose.  The newbies and the kids both hope to move into one of the other two categories one day and most do.  Finally in the middle you have the run of the mill Saturday club players who are reasonable at the game but don’t really have the skills to compete in the big tournaments.  They tend to go 3-2 a lot and are always trying out new deck types and combos and stuff.  Mark was the exception to the rule.  He landed in the mythical fourth category known as TPDC.  Terrible Player, Doesn’t Care.  Every Wednesday afternoon he played the same Federation deck.  It had no speed, no card drawing and no tricks, it had nothing.  Every turn he would play a bridge crew member and draw a card.  When he had enough he would put them on a ship and go and attempt some missions.  When we had tournaments, he played the same deck.  He was a banker to finish last.

At the time, I found Mark a very difficult person to understand.  When I arrived, the social scene amongst the Sci-fi crowd was pretty pitiful.  After Friday night video showings, a handful of people, would trot along to the bar where they would discuss, amongst other things, what the best episode of Star Trek ever was and who had seen the trailers for First Contact.  Naturally I felt we could do some improving.  I set about creating my own private army of drinking Sci-Fi fans prepared to go to the Students Union, get wasted, make laughable attempts to pull, buy a kebab and then go home.  Looking back on it, we weren’t exactly the coolest gang around but we had more fun than the guys who sat in the clique circle in the bar.  As head geek, Mark was considered to be the enemy.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like him; it’s just that he stood for everything I hated about Sci-fi fans.  Looking back on it, he probably didn’t like me that much although he was always very pleasant to my face.  When a night out for you consists of a couple of whiskey and sodas, people sitting there during your favourite episode of Next Gen playing drinking games was probably quite disturbing.  From his point of view I had probably destroyed paradise.

As my 3 years at university went by, Mark drifted more and more into the background.  He still occasionally turned up to CCG sessions and tournaments but was clearly not too comfortable with the new way of things at Warwick.  He has been quoted as saying that the society became too ‘ladish’ for his liking.  The last time I saw him play Trek was at a tournament in about 1998.  Although we were at opposite ends of the draw as usual I always remember his deck.  It was all the cards and personnel from the TNG episode ‘Gambit’.  I think he came last.  Mark loved the game because it was an interactive interpretation of the show he loved, not for the competition.  The last time I saw Mark was at GenCon 2000.  He was helping out at the Decipher stand and was still the same old Mark feuding with Rik as usual.  Those two have never got on for some reason and Rik could never see Mark’s point of view on anything.

Probably because Mark was different.