|
|
Close Help | ||||||||||||||
I've finally decided, it's official. Decipher do not read Ruling Britannia. . I'm not even sure they read 'Where No-one has Gone Before' as they recently e-mailed our beloved editor asking if WNOHGB was an anagram for something. Even if they do read the magazine however, this column is obviously considered too mundane to be worth attention. How do I know this? Well, given the amount of dirt I have dished on Decipher ambassadors, I think it is inconceivable that, if anyone did read it, there would have been no enquiries made as to the truth of these rumours. This is great news for me as it leaves me free to publicly humiliate James, Rik and Ringo without feeling responsible for threatening their future as ambassadors. The only exception to this rule is European Marketing guy Marcus Sheppard who does read this column religiously every month. However, I have known him since before he got the job and hopefully he will not pass on anything I happen to say about his superiors and tell me if I say anything that gets a bit close to the mark (and I might even listen). Anyway, this month is going to be a little bit different. You may remember that last month I left you a week or two before DecipherCon and it was simply such an eventful week that a feel I must dedicate a whole issue to it. So this will be the DecipherCon special. Next month I'll get you updated on what's been happening in London of late.
DecipherCon for me started the minute I left work on 29th September. Not least of which because the guys had decided that we should have a 'going away' night out. Well okay, I think it's fair to say that we all just wanted to go to Pages and get drunk and the fact it was three days before I went to DecipherCon was merely a coincidence. Sadly because there was no tournament beforehand there our group was limited to myself, Ringo, James, Tobes and 2 girls, Kim and Kelly. Guaranteed to provide a fair percentage of the entertainment were Tobes' overly subtle attempts to get Kelly to go out with him. He had been trying for about the last month and in his own words he was 'taking it slowly' probably with memories of his 'Wham, Bam, there goes your credit card' escapade with Danielle 6 months earlier (see previous issues for the full story). Anyway, our first mistake of the evening was trusting James' navigation. Now over the course of time James has built up a sturdy reputation for knowing his way around London (and believe me this is much harder than American numbered streets). On this particular night, while following James from Oxford Street to Pages (2 places he had been many times before) after walking for twice as long as it should have taken, we found ourselves by the Albert Hall quite a way from where we should be. Anyway James reputation is now totally gone and we ended up taking a record-breaking hour and a half to travel the one mile between the two locations. And in answer to your next question, James still never found it we had to get the cab. Anyway, it was an enjoyable night especially for Tobes who finally got together with Kelly much to the relief of the rest of us who were starting to think he was gay. Unfortunately they have since moved onto the 'can't keep their hands off each other' stage which means Tobes as a social entity has just about been eliminated if you don't count staring vacantly into space smiling; bless him. James and I spent the night improving our lyrical genius by changing the words of songs on the jukebox. The following is probably our best effort (which says quite a lot) to the tune of 'Angels' by Robbie Williams.
I look aroundAs you can see, it needs a bit of work but it's probably better than our Kylie Minogue cover 'I'm spinning around, showing my arse'. By the way, I'm actually thinking of compiling all of our drunken songs (including our new favourite 'Tobes is in the girls team') into a little song book. Let me know if you think there will be a market for this.
So anyway, where does this leave us, oh yes, Saturday. The plan was that Rik and DT would come around to my house for a couple of days where we could work on decks. This went awry when Martin Allen out of the blue phoned and asked if we would like to go out for a 'quiet drink'. Unable to resist a 'Team Warwick' reunion we agreed. We were hoping for a large contingent coming from the tournament but as James won it, most of them were admitted to hospital in a state of shock. It is worth noting that James won his first tournament in 18 months immediately after ditching the Cardassians. Roll on DecipherCon 2001 for James. So in the end it was just myself, Rik, DT, Ringo, Martin and Martin's mad redheaded girlfriend Hannah who descended on the drinking establishments of London. Our plans for a quiet night went totally out the window and everyone except ended up wasted except for DT. I must admit that even I was impressed by Hannah's knack of taking the piss out of everyone in Pages. My tactic of 'go up to the guy in boots and tell him he looks queer' somehow lacked the finesse of her 'chat up that bloke because he looks like a geek'. She only found her limit with one bloke of whom she said 'talking to him is like having your skull drilled through and you soul sucked out through a straw'. Anyway it became clear that Martin's absence from the tournament scene was more to do with too much sex than any loss of interest in the game. The night ended up with me triumphantly puking up on the train and phoning Tobes to ask (well, slur at) him why he wasn't with Kelly. Just the night I needed to start my campaign to become world champion.
What is it with crappy t-shirts, tracksuit bottoms and bare feet? It seems to be the attire of hungover people everywhere and sure enough was what Rik and I donned the following morning. DT was okay of course. He was actually up at 6:00 in the morning building a deck much to my amusement. We did actually make a good effort to play a few games although this was disrupted slightly but mine and Rik's desire to vegetate in front of the TV. One amusing moment came when my Federation speed deck that I was planning to play on day 2 had its entire crew wiped out by a Sheliak (hence it's eventual name 'Look out for that Sheliak!' DT had built a nice Q-bypass deck that was eventually used in the team competition but in the end we stuck with the Fed deck which was good because after the previous night we all just wanted to go to bed as we had an early flight the following day. However, I did take the time to post Ruling Britannia V which, for the first time ever, someone other than me and the editor saw before it went to print. Rik and DT got a sneak preview and Rik kicked up a fuss because I mentioned that he hadn't played in about 2 years. Just to keep him happy, for the record he has been running a lot of tournaments and doing general ambassador things in that time. Happy Rik?
And so it came to pass that we were at Heathrow airport at about 5am trying to wake ourselves up and hopefully catch a plane. Strangely we all had very different ideas about what we actually wanted from the trip. DT wanted to win the Young Jedi world championships, for me to win the Trek and for England to win the Trek team event. Rik had basically qualified by accident with borrowed decks and his aim was basically to have a holiday in Florida and go to the Magic Kingdom. I was somewhere in between, looking forward to a holiday but also wanting to do well in the cards. Obviously this started to lead to a bit of friction. Rik tended to start looking really bored when the topic of cards came up and for the most part tended to agree as the tournaments didn't start for 4 days. Me and Rik spent most of the flight thinking of silly things to do while in America from pretending to be traditional English public school boys to calling as many people as possible 'guv'. DT spent most of the time talking to an ex-Senator who was sitting next to him on the plane but rumours that he taught him the mechanics of a Cargo Run deck are apparently unfounded. And so eventually we found ourselves on the other side of the world in the middle of the afternoon with our body clocks telling us it was time to go to bed. I would like to say that we took a couple of pro-plus, found a bar and celebrated our first night in the states but what we in fact did was check into our hotel (that looked a bit like Butlins but turned out to be very nice) and went to bed around 9ish.
It was a good few days before DecipherCon actually started so we spent the next two jetlagged days exploring the local scenery. We found it quite good to explore British culture from an American perspective. On the first day we were treated to an advertisement that said 'Kappa - Europe's top sports brand'. It's worth pointing out that Kappa is just as crap in England as it is in America except with 16 year old girls from Essex. Also the Magic Kingdom has a different perspective for us. You can always spot a group of British tourists in the Magic Kingdom. They will be standing around the castle commenting how ineffective it would be in the event of an invasion. 'It's not even at the top of a hill!' However, even Rik and I, sceptical Brits that we are, couldn't help but be impressed with the place. Meanwhile, back out of Fairyland, DecipherCon was all ready to go. All the Decipher crew were pretending to be stressed while trying to cover up the fact that they were spending most of the time in the bar. I don't know if they have bars up in Virginia because most of them seemed totally incapable of holding their drink. Top in the list has to be the attractive girl from customer services (name escapes me) who spent most of the time falling over and hugging people. In amongst this revelry was a strange bunch of people known as British Star Wars players. They also spent most of the time in the bar, not drinking but playing Star Wars. I might also add that with the exception of Rob Bowles, who is a great bloke, they are the most unsociable people in the entire world. Individually they are okay but as a group they are very clique and I want to take this moment to publicly announce that we don't like them.
Eventually D-Con started. I had nothing much to do for the first day as I had already qualified for day 2 of the worlds so I caught up with a few old friends who had arrived. Todd Soper had grown up a bit from the kid with a baseball cap I remember from 1997. He spent the whole week taking the piss out of my accent which I suppose is justice given I spent the week taking the piss out of everyone else's. Brad DeFruiter was also there as per usual. Unfortunately he was disqualified in Day 1 for filling out his deck list wrong which, no offence Brad, was one of the funniest things that happened all week. He ended up watching from the sidelines on day two surrounded by followers of the church of Brad. This is the only man in the game at the moment who can rightly be called a legend. One thing I was really impressed with was the number of women playing. As well as the two well known TD's Kate and Sheri (quiet and not so quiet respectively) there was also an impressive number who just turned up. One even made day 2. Anyway I played 2 tournaments on the day. First of all I played a DS9 only tournament and won a box of 'Trouble with Tribbles'. Only 2 people entered the tournament and I won the game 10-0. In other words I won 3 packs of Tribbles for every point I scored in the entire tournament. Incidentally when I got back to Blighty I sold the box for £45 so along with the limited addition foils which also got cashed and the free flight, eventually I probably paid for my entire holiday. After this I played an Enhanced Premier sealed deck or, as we in Britain have started to call it, 'Gay Trek'. This game is pretty low effort to start with hence the name and this was made extra funny by the fact that some of the best players in the world were playing as they had already qualified for day 2 and wanted something to do. I eventually rolled in 5th out of about 20 after 4 dull rounds. I would recommend this format to any 9-year-olds that happen to be reading. No seriously, I suppose it's good for getting people into the game but that's about it really.
So after another big steak and a reasonable night sleep it was time to take on the world. I must be honest and say that I hate 8 round Swiss. You feel really drained by the end and it was for this reason that DT and I decided not to play Cargo Running as this involves more thinking than most. My deck was a Federation speed deck that planned on doing 'Reignite Dead Star' and 'Runabout Search' for 50 points each. I was fairly confident about this deck as we had put a fair bit of work into it but you never know at the worlds when every deck is good. I worked out that you would probably need 10 points to get in the top 12 and qualify for the next day so you could only afford to drop 6 points. My first game was against Johnny 'Time Out' Ohlsson who took the phrase 'mechanical Swede' to new meaning. Unsurprisingly we timed out. He shot me to pieces but was unable to overcome my monstrous 50 point early lead. To be fair though he was the only person I saw playing Cardassians all weekend so he probably had it coming to him. DT told me later that he had hardly changed his deck since the European Championships. Still it meant I had an easy game the following round and sure enough I won 100-0. At this point I got a revenge game against David Bowling. In the 1997 World Championships he beat me 100-0 in round 2 and I was determined to turn it around. Besides, playing an ex world champion is always a good opportunity to make a name for yourself. Well, to cut a long story short, he blew me up and I got a timed win. I was starting to see a bit of a weakness in this deck. If people try to blow it up they tend to succeed. Still, after 3 games I was 4 (+160ish) which wasn't too bad. If you want to see an interview of David and me after this game, it's amongst the DecipherCon video clips although I wouldn't say it's one of my best performances in front of the camera.
What followed was strange. In the next round I played another Swede. I saw from the missions he was going to be Q-bypassing and so I took a risk and passed in the Dilemma phase. As he had first turn he also passed. Unfortunately I never got quite the hand I wanted so I couldn't win on my first turn. He beat me 100-50 in his second turn. At this point things were looking pretty bad. I had already dropped 4 points, which meant I could only lose 1 more game at the most in the next 4 games. Amazingly, in the next round I drew ANOTHER Swede. There were only 4 in a field of 70 odd and I had drawn 3 in the first 5 rounds. This game totally mirrored the previous one insofar as we both passed in the Dilemma phase and I won on my first turn thanks to inspired use of a space time portal. I had finally broken the Swedish curse and got a full win but more importantly I had given myself a sporting chance of making the 3rd day. For the next 2 rounds I have to, for the first time ever, thank Stuart Marsh. He bored us to death with Captured/Prisoner Exchange decks for so long that when I faced two on the trot I knew how to deal with them. First Wes Victory, then Steven 'Skippy' Livanes lost to my skulking around on a cloaked ship tactics which meant that after 7 Rounds, I had 10 points and a good differential, which I calculated should be enough to qualify. At this point I hadn't had anything to eat all day and was grateful when DT and Rik came back with a McDonald's. They had got me, wait for it, a McSalad! I don't know if this was supposed to be ironical as Rik gave me the nickname 'the Salad Dodger' but needless to say I was still starving after the next round (which incidentally was a light-hearted game which I won 100-0).
This actually put me second overall, easily qualifying for the final day. After playing 8 rounds of Star Trek, I did the obvious thing and went for a game of Austin Powers. I'm traditionally crap at this game and needless to say I lost although DT cheered me up by telling me that 2 people had cheated in the tournament earlier on. I mean cheating at Austin Powers? That must make them statistically the saddest people in the entire world. It was now getting on for midnight and I didn't have a deck for the following day. DT in a remarkable act of unselfishness given that he had qualified for the final day of Young Jedi stayed up until 3 in the morning building my deck. This 3 hour session can be summed up in the name of the deck 'Sod it, it's 3am lets play Romulans'. It was actually a Rascals/Ooby Dooby deck with a PNZ twist. In random drawing I was very impressed with it's speed and thought that I probably had as good a chance as any the following day. Although to tell you the truth I was more interested in a nights sleep than any designs on the World Championship at that point.
In fact in the first round, I played Daniel Bell using probably the most revolutionary deck of the tournament. He used 'The Issue is Patriotism' to trigger a Defend Homeworld download of a zillion people. Fortunately I won in the next turn before he could do anything. I must admit that at this point I was pretty optimistic about my chances. All this optimism vanished in the next round though when Eric Johnfauno beat me with a 105 point PNZ mission before I had even had a turn. I knew I could still technically make the final but it would be difficult. My hopes were totally eliminated in the following round when an STP drop that I didn't see coming blew up my ship and all my people. I tried to Regenerate but it was Kevined and my opponent got a comfortable 100-50 win. I must admit to quite enjoying my final round. I was once again against 'Time Out' Ohlsson. Somehow he had finished enough games the previous day to warrant making the final. I managed to make worlds history by being the first player to leave a game on the final day. Picture the scene. It's dead quiet as the 12 best players in the world are pitted against each other. All of a sudden with a weird choking noise, I run towards the bin to spit a horrible black substance into the bin. I imagine the judges were pretty confused. Anyway what had happened is that Johnny had given me some black salt liquorice. I sat there munching during the seed phase but in the end could stand the taste no longer and had to run and spit it in the bin. Needless to say the game timed out with another slim win for me. I eventually came 7th which I suppose is respectable in the world championships.
In a way it was a great weight off my shoulders. We could relax for the remaining couple of days. After watching the final of Trek and YJ and seeing DT win the world YJ championships (big congratulations to him), Rik and I headed for the swimming pool where we invented the fantastic time wasting game of swimming pool volley ball. Relaxing in the pool was probably the best thing we'd done all week and we were wondering if there was some way we could make a version of Trek that could be played in the swimming pool. Okay, the missions and objectives would have to change (Investigate Revealing Bikini or Commandeer Beach Ball might make an appearance) and the interrupts would be a bit different (Going to the Bottom?), providing we could create waterproof card sleeves we could be on to a winner. Eventually I reluctantly left the pool to go for a meal with all the other finalists. I spent most of the night taking the piss out of Americans with Skippy but too be honest I was too tired to even play in the free sealed deck afterwards. I went back to the hotel room where Rik was perfecting our time honoured tradition of 'Watching the game, having a Bud' but I soon dropped off to sleep when I remembered how crap Baseball was.
In fact I was so tires that I failed to remember about the team event the following day. Now we had been giving a lot of talk on various groups about how we were going to win the team event and we only remembered when DT woke us up the next morning an hour before the start. We only had two decks made up (my worlds decks from the previous 2 days) and we had a bit of a problem. We quickly made up the Q-Bypass deck again and because Rik sportingly decided to give the other teams a chance by staying in bed we now had enough decks. We arrived about 20 minutes late with only 3 players instead of 4 but given you could drop your worst result this was not a major problem. Our 3rd member was of course Joeri 'Weeeeee're Going to the Pub' Hoste who had been a shadow of his former self because he had been stalked all week by a woman. The price of fame eh? I finished 3-1 playing the deck I had used the previous day and was fairly happy. Strangely though, DT and Joeri could not put a foot wrong winning all of their games and giving us the team title in the process. It was funny watching 'The Big Goodbye' getting beaten into second. They were such strong favourites and three knackered Europeans came over and beat them with no preparation whatsoever. They must be really pissed. Rik turned up just before the presentation and, as he was technically the 4th member of the team, won a trophy for sleeping. Mind you by the end of the day he had accidentally stabbed himself with it 3 times. As he had spent most of the week complaining of minor ailments anyway I christened him 'trivial injury boy'. To celebrate our unlikely win, Rik and I introduced Marcus and DT to the world of swimming pool volleyball and we then had one last big steak before calling it a night. The only thing I can say to anyone thinking about coming to DecipherCon next year is this. If you do, you will never regret it.
Anyway, next month I will be more or less back to normal. I have not yet shared any of the news from London this month and so you'll get 2 months worth next time. As always I love to hear from anyone that reads this column. If you want to relate an amusing story for the article, answer any of the numerous pleas for help I give over the months or even just want to say hi, mail me at the below address. This month I am especially interested in stories about this years worlds finalists. For example, did you introduce any of them to the game? Have they ever done anything embarrassing that only you (until now) know about? Do you remember a time when they got their ass kicked every week by just about all the other players? I want details people!
Until next month
