Wow the year 2006 is proving to be a milestone for so many reasons.
This weekend yet another came to the surface, and was thus celebrated. It was nearly nine years ago (technically in Dec) that the Star Trek Card gaming community was born. Reminiscing on these times gone by Dave, our intrepid once upon a time tournament director (which means basically referee), decided to organize a reunion…
What an interesting experience it was. All kinds of nostalgia to go around...
It was a good turnout. Mostly us “kids” though who showed up. Half of whom I hadn’t seen since the 90’s (our gaming group collapsed just short of the 2000 mark. Man have we all grown up since then… well sort of LOL
(I can't get the group photo to upload... but image such a photo here)
The Trek game as we knew it has been dead for a good 5 years. The company that once sold it has been on the verge of bankruptcy for a nice chunk of that time, and as of such you can find the cards themselves for stupid cheap. Dave picked up what back in the day would have amounted to a treasure trove of cards for just over $100. In prime of the game this would have been worth well over $400.
We decided to play a sealed deck (which means you get a bunch of packs filled with 15 random cards and have to play with just those… where as in constructed you can grab whatever cards you want from your collections). The price was $12. In the long ago land of yester tournament that might have got you a started deck (a bigger pack filled with 60ish cards). Today that amounted to 6 packs, a starter, a special tourney kit filled with 5 more packs. A teenage me would have fainted…
The tourney itself went three rounds, and would have gone more except I hadn’t slept since before work the day before (again my graveyard shift… got up at 6pm worked till 7am, got to the reunion at around 10:45am played till 5pm… it was a LONG day!). As of such I sadly forced an end to the tournament. The good news is I won… Out of all three rounds I not only went undefeated, but I also had full wins in all my games (as in they didn’t time out… but I always seemed to win right on the last minute warnings)
Funny part is I wasn’t that into the competitive side of the day, and hardly noticed the victory… More the flashback effect that was enjoyable.
Perhaps seeing the cards and their packaging was the most interesting part of the whole day. I hadn’t seen a wrapped pack of Trek for at least 5ish years. Man what a flood of emotion and memory just at the sight of the packs in the boxes
It also ran home how long I've known some of my better friends...
Dave and me go back the whole 9 years. We're both founders (funny reference for a trekkie as the head of one of the badguy races are called founders...). This as a sidenote is a unique instance of a photo being taken of Dave... I only have 3 others...
Alex emerged on the gaming scene about 6-7 months into the gaming crowd existence just after the release of the Deep Space Nine expansion...
Putting him at just under the 9 year mark.
A sidenote about this picture used this is indeed Alex trying to eat
cards... He somehow over those years built up a mythos of eating cards in games. Granted he did it twice, once in fact was game with me, but it somehow blow out of propotion. It was always for comedy. Not rage as the legend tells...
Mike showed up also around the Deep Space Nine era. Thus meaning I've known him for just under 8 years. However unfortunently unlike Alex or Dave I didn't hangout with him a lot till just before the death of the Trek game...
Fortunently we've made up for that lost time since then.
So there's that. The origins of "modern" Craig are celebrated just in time for my departure into possibly a whole new life again. The Trek Game really marked my exiting the public school system, and my uptill then friendless existence.