-insert parental advisory here-
 
 

Ruling Britannia XXVII
 

 We got talking about Trek last night.  In fact it's  happening more and more lately.  Stick three ex Trek Players into a house; leave them alone for a couple of months and eventually they get back to talking about Star Trek.  Although a lot of the talk was about the 'good old days' reliving old decks, old tournaments and old friends, there was kind of a hint that maybe we would like to start playing again.  In fact, I got an email from Andy Dobson a few days back saying that he is trying to get sanctioned tournaments going again in London.  Apparently he has 8 or 9 people interested.  Maybe I'll dust off my cards and give it a go.  Unfortunately, last time I saw my Trek collection it was scattered in various pieces around my parents' house so this could be easier said than done.  Meanwhile in Amsterdam last weekend, nearly 40 people competed in the European Trek continental, which, if memory serves me correct, is more than last year.  Maybe Trek isn't as dead as I thought it was.  Maybe it's making a revival with the  announcement of second edition.  Lets hope so.
 
 I am in trading card limbo right now.  Three months  ago I was fairly certain what the future would hold.  I was going to become quite good at Lord of the Rings, get to learn all the metagame, all the decks and all the rules.  I was going to go to all the big tournaments and finish second to DT.  I tried to insert LOTR exactly into the big gap left in my life since I stopped playing Trek.  3 months on, guess what?  I have stopped playing Lord of the Rings!  I'm not quite sure what happened really.  I bought a load of Mines of Moria when it came out and played a couple of tournaments including the big regional thing at Warwick.  Sometime after that though I realized that I didn't actually like the game much.  The idea was good, the feel was good, and the interaction was clever but net result?  Just don't enjoy it anymore.  At least I realized this before I spent too much money of it.  Anyone want one of my 4 Enduring Evils?
 
 So as a result, I stopped playing LOTR and started looking around.  I played a bit of Netrunner (very enjoyable game, shame it's dead), I downloaded Magic Online (about 22 hours over my crappy dialup modem) I started looking nostalgically at Trek and then I looked at Trek Second edition and wondered if it would work.  Now my main complaints with Trek towards the end were that there were too many broken cards, too many half arsed fixes to broken cards and too many ambiguous rules.  It seems that Second Edition might fix all of those problems.  Other interesting ideas are getting rid of the seed phase and handling mission attempts differently to prevent redshirting.  Decipher have been making games a long time now.  Looking back on Star Trek: CCG when it first came out, it was laughable.  It was shallow, one dimensional and only had one good deck (fed bridge crew speed).  At the time it was the absolute dogs bollocks though and we loved it!  Our inexperience (only other CCG around at the time was Magic) meant that we were not really looking for broken decks or combos or stuff like that, we just wanted to have fun.  Since then, Decipher have grown and so have we.  Lord of the Rings showed that they can produce balanced well thought out games and hopefully Second Edition can reflect this.  The only real question I have is will there be a market for it?  Although the Star Trek license still has good value, will collectors lap up yet another card game?  Will players for that matter?  Will the existing player base stay with the original game, move to the new one or decide that now would be a good time to give it up altogether?  A mix of the three I would imagine but in what proportions I have no idea.  In the next few months I will look at this issues in more detail as I attempt to come to terms with the most interesting development in Star Trek since First Contact.
 
 But anyway onto the main topic of this month, which is that I have recently returned from Scotland where James held his stag party.  As I write this there are 20 days and counting until the day of the wedding.  James' last holiday as a single man was a trip up to Glasgow to go drinking.  Oh we did other stuff as well but mainly drinking.  Here is an approximate diary of events.
 
 
 Thursday:
 
 James arrived round our house from where we would travel up the following morning at around 20:00.  After playing a few games of Super Monkey Ball on the Game Cube (starting a trend for the week) we went to the pub and had a pint or three.  After getting bored with the underage girls in our local (and I mean underage for sex not for alcohol), we went for a curry before arriving back at our place and going to bed way too late.
 
 
 Friday:
 
 We got up at about 4:15 in the morning and got ready to go to the airport.  We arrived at the airport with just enough time to buy some beer and get the Trouble With Trekkies picture for 'Duty Free' before we got on the plane.  It was a bright hot sunny day and we fancied a beer to cool ourselves down.  Not wanting to appear like alcoholics, we waited until the plane had taken off and it was at least seven o clock before we got the beers out.  Unfortunately, the cabin crew had other ideas.  For no clear reason (although possibly in the hope we would buy their own beers at about five quid each) they wouldn't let
 us drink them.  Selfish bastards!
 
 So anyway in no time at all the plane landed.  What was a bright sunny English day had turned into a fairly typical Scottish day (wet, cold and crappy).  After drinking a few beers on the train, we met up with Scottish director of operations Sam De Smith and booked into our hostel before going back to the station to pick up Ringo.  After this we went for a couple of beers and some fodder before Tobes caught up with us at the pub.  A quick look at Big Brother on the pub TV showed that while it was still crappy and wet outside, in London it was still bright and sunny.  You just have to wonder why anyone would want to live in Scotland really!  After walking round a number of rubbish Sci-fi shops (well I thought they were rubbish, I guess Sci-fi fans might like them) we went back to Sam's to get ready for our first big night drinking.
 
 The venue for the night out was to be the Cathouse, Glasgow's rock club.  I had heard a lot about this place from James and was looking forward to it.  First of all we had a couple of quick ones in the pub where we met up with my enigmatic ex-housemate Snap and his other half Rozi (who has had a couple of shouts in RB recently but this is the first time I had actually met her).  Rozi took this opportunity to tell me that she would kick my arse at Lord of the Rings (of course she would, everybody does) and in our increasingly drunken state, we debated how fun it would be to have a naked Spacehopper race around the M25.  At this point we moved onto the club for our own safety.
 
 After getting in the club we had a few more beers before setting out on the worthy goal of getting James as drunk as possible.  Given that we had been drinking since 8:30 in the morning this was hardly going to be difficult.  Eventually the goal was achieved as James emerged from the toilet with his T-Shirt covered in vomit following 2 Strawpedos, a number of beers and a lethal cocktail from a whip round.  As an unfortunate side effect, I was also wasted and my memory is a bit hazy from this point but I remember the following snippets.
 
 - Noddy going on the pull and failing (quite unusual for him)
 - Sam, Snap and strangely Rozi trying to talk me into grabbing Rozi's tits.
 - Dancing to 'You can do it' by Ice Cube forgetting I couldn't dance
 - Failing to pull a fit goth bird with no underwear on (possibly due to above)
 - Going back to Rozi's house and watching porn while Ringo, Matt and Snap played poker.
 
 By the time we left Rozi's at about 5 in the morning it was getting light and so we headed back to the hostel.  I had sobered up by this stage.  Matt got us lost but we found our way back eventually, going to bed and probably waking half the hostel up in the process.  Ringo woke up the other half by telling Matt in a loud voice that he has 'had his mum' after it finally got quiet.
 
 
 Saturday:
 
 After staying up for 25 hours straight, we naturally slept in fairly late.  After emerging from our bunks I went and got showered where I met a girl who I christened 'Fit American Bird' (I never did find out her real name).  Everything you need to know about her is in that nickname.  Oh yes and she had a nice personality as well.  We wandered over to Sam's to find the crew in various degrees of hangover.  Not wanting to think about booze just yet we planned a mini-expansion of 'Trouble With Trekkies' called 'The Trouble With Stags'.  Then we got our appetite for beer back and went to the pub.  After getting back we then put on our best suits and headed out to an American theme restaurant (where Tobes' staff discount card worked wonders) before heading onto
 Vegas, a 70's style swing club.
 
 Vegas was great, I had a great time.  First we met up with loads of people I had never met before.  I would like to mention them all but I can't.  All the crowd from the previous night were there and also some of Lucy's (Sam's other half) fit mates and a lovely couple whose names I can't remember but he was a pharmacist and she used to play soccer.  Oh yes and he paid some bird to kiss me.  Props!!  Also present was Rozi's friend Fiona.  Apparently she was on the pull.  I don't really know anything more than this so maybe Rozi can send me a fuller story (I'll print it if so), however as far as I can make out it was predetermined that she was going to pull Tobes.  Obviously Noddy had a go but he was predestined to fail (apparently).  So to cut a long story short, Tobes got sex for the second time in..... er.... well ever.    He took his time though.  Managed to kill all evening on small talk and general 'getting to know you' drinks before finally pulling.  Quote of the evening had to be from Matt.
 
 'Why didn't he come down for some drinks with the lads and just meet up with her later on?'
 
 Because Matt, he's Tobes!  Anyway I just want to publicly point out at this stage that she was wearing a very small cocktail dress, which may not have quite fitted right.  Tobes, you may have got sex but I saw her nipple first!
 
 As far as the rest of the night went, we drank a fair bit of beer (although not too much after the previous night).  Ringo thought someone had spiked his drink and decided he would drink it anyway on the proviso that I would get him to hospital if he got seriously ill.  I managed to pull one of the locals who was, to be honest, not that good looking although she gave me her number and made me promise I would call.  I loved this club, although it was basically a shed floating on a river it really rocked!
 
 
 Sunday:
 
 The call of nature woke me at about 5:00 the following morning.  On my way back to my bunk I noticed that Fit American Bird was sharing her bunk with some bloke and was also topless (although facing the wall).  Now brain wasn't operating on all cylinders at this point but I got back to bed and started looking at her thinking how good it would be if she turned over.  Guess what?  10 minutes later she did!  And boy did she have the nicest pair of breasts going!  So anyway, she was lying there breasts exposed to the 10 or so other people in the room and I was the only one awake to enjoy it.  It occurred to me that I should spread the wealth a little so I decided to wake Ringo up.  Now for a man that claims he never sleeps, only takes 'hardcore naps' he is very hard to wake up.  I stabbed him in the head with a magazine, threw dirty socks at him and he would not wake!  It was with great regret that I had to stay up and enjoy the breasts all by myself.  45 minutes later I got bored and went back to sleep.  About 4 hours later I woke up again and while still topless she had covered herself up in a duvet.  I was worried that none of the guys would believe me but fortunately they did.  It was really hard not to say anything to Fit American Bird when I saw her later in the day but I was hoping for a repeat performance at some point.  I never got one.
 
 
 What I did get was some more beers later in the day before heading out to some pubs.  Our first stop was Pizza express.  I have never really been a fan of Pizza Express as it sells small, expensive thin pizzas that never quite have the toppings on that you want.  This trip was made better by the fact that what we spent most of the time doing was finalizing the card list for 'The Trouble With Stags'.  This took up most of the meal so we barely noticed Tobes and Fiona slip off together.  After this we headed for the pub where we had a few more pints and a couple of games of pool.  James wasn't in the best of moods so we started a few drinking games to get things going.  Just as this was getting going, our surprise for James turned up.  Sam had arranged for a stripper to turn up in a Beverley Crusher uniform (a James fetish apparently).  She was a redhead and she had the top and a tricorder, it was cool.  After a decent striptease and victimizing James with a lot of shaving foam, she was on her way leaving us only with a very good set of photos and a naked James covered in foam.  After spending a while in another pub, we headed off home.  Noddy was horny after the stripper and desperately wanted to go to a club.  Unfortunately even Glasgow doesn't have many clubs open late on a Sunday night.  We arrived back at the hostel to find Fit American Bird frustratingly not naked.  Went to bed and sulked.
 
 
 Monday:
 
 Everyone was suffering from a bit of burnout on Monday.  We spent the vast majority of the day round Sam's house playing Super Monkey Ball.  We did stop off at the pub and said goodbye to Tobes and Ringo who had to leave a couple of days early.  Eventually we went for an all you can eat curry and finalized the card text on all 18 cards in 'The Stag Collection'.  A good evenings work.  The plan at this point was to go on a barcrawl but the consensus was to go back and watch Coupling with a mug of cocoa.  Noddy and I got bored and went to the pub anyway.
 
 
 Tuesday:
 
 We wandered round town for a bit.  James and I discovered NFL Showdown CCG and loved it!  James also bought Sam and Lucy a Game Cube with Super Monkey Ball as an engagement present.  If the week we were there is anything to go by, Lucy has probably been playing it non-stop ever since.  There was a broad discussion about where we should go for dinner.  It was one of those discussions based on apathy, which went something along the lines of.
 
 'Where do you want to go?'
 'I don't know, where do you want to go?'
 
 Eventually we settled for a Mongolian Barbeque (our third all you can eat in 5 days).  The problem is with a Mongolian Barbeque is that, once you start eating everyone thinks they are Jamie Oliver, forgetting that in real life they can't even reliably cook toast.  Soon after we got there, we were spouting retrospectively stupid statements like:
 
 'Hmmm, the Tarragon really brings out the flavour in this lamb'
 'Taste this chicken, the chestnuts have tenderized it delightfully'
 'Our barbecue beef dishes are similar but vary subtly in flavour.'
 
 I mean please, what the hell were we talking about.  Anyway, the true purpose of this evening was to go to The Truffle Club, which is supposed to be the best strip club in Scotland.  There is something about strip clubs that appeals to men at a genetic level.  It's kind of like 'If you don't like strip clubs then your gay'.  I am going to challenge this assertion.  Near enough as soon as we got in and bought a round of drinks there were strippers at our table making crap small talk.  Yes, they were extremely attractive.  Noddy had never been to a strip club before and was totally sold on this.  In reality though, all they were after however is £10 for a private dance.  We watched a couple of the free shows which were pretty good before another round of strippers came over.  This pattern repeated before eventually James, Sam and Matt gave in and started parting with their hard earned dosh in order to get to see tits up close.  This was disruptive to our interesting game of 'see if between us we have slept with a girl whose name starts with every letter of the alphabet'.  We are missing about 5 by the way although we do have X (go Sam!)  We drank more beer, more strippers pestered us and James, Sam and Matt got through more and more of their money.  By the end, they had probably done over £100 between them just on private dances.  For that price they could have got a couple of hookers.  As they say though, no stag party is complete without a strip joint.  Hooray for porn!
 
 
 Wednesday:
 
 This was officially the end of the party.  We spent the day saying goodbye to people and playing a last bit of monkey ball for good measure.  Had a quiet night in (only 3 or 4 beers) and flew home the following day.  I spent the rest of the week vegetating in my bed letting all the poison leak slowly out of my body...
 
 
 A couple more things before we finish this rather long article.  Firstly I challenged anyone who cared to write a bio on John Corbett.  Total number of words in the replies I got?  28.  Then came in a single reply from Olav.
 
They say that the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. We're looking forward to playing STCCG against John for many more years to come.
 
 
 One more thing I would like to address before we finish on a song.  It has been brought to my attention recently that certain members high up the Kedanya Station hierarchy don't like RB.  In fact they hate it.  I am not a bitter man however and am not going to go on about hating Kedanya.  In fact, in the interest of peace and brotherly love I am going to extend an olive branch and say all the things I like about Kedanya.  Maybe this could be the start of a wonderful friendship.
 
 
 1) They ban people.  This makes me very nostalgic about the good old days on the Decipher BBS.
 2) They sometimes list the chatroom message number to cite why they banned people on the BBS.  It's fun to go along and watch yesterday's argument unfold.
 3) They have an amusing swear filter that replaces your swear words (even minor ones) with less offensive alternatives.
 4) They have a caption competition, which is updated every 4 months.  Gives you plenty of time to think up a good caption.
 5) They have just about enough infighting to allow healthy competition through social Darwinism.
 6) There are never many people in the chatroom so you are never overwhelmed with too many messages coming at you.
 7) You sometimes find Olav in there
 8) Eeeeeerrrrr a load of other stuff which I can't remember
 
 
 This month's Song of the Month has been around for years.  We were singing it the other day.  However, looking back through the issues I don't think it has ever been printed in RB, which is a travesty.
 
 
 Name:                 Compute Crash
 Based On:             'Tragedy' by The Bee Gees
 Revised Lyrics By:    Ed Downes
 
 
 Computer Crash!
 When it's all gone bent and you can't Q's Tent
 Computer Crash!
 Your chance is poor with Empok Nor
 It's just not fair
 With no way to download you're having a mare!
 
 
 I'll be back next month with more on Trek type two and everything else that goes on between then and now.
 
 Peace out
 

Ian
iptaylor@dialstart.net

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