-+@ It's the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year @+-

And the LotR bandwagon rolls on...



I like this series of cards and I can't wait to look forward to them. Those of us playing online would of course get to play with these cards 2 weeks early...! I got that confirmed by Scott Martins, the lead guy in charge of Worlds Apart (which apparently is based in Denver, CO).

Apparently the cards are being spoilt just after I post my blogs so some of them are really 24 hours old, but oh well... I wonder what will be shown today... probably a bunch of minions.

I was on the engine earlier when this happened:

[wolfen] hello
[Novelty] guten tag!
[wolfen]
:) i'm french not german pal!
[Novelty] lut! :)
[wolfen] cool un français ;o)
[wolfen] novelty tu joues a quoi
d'habitude? (je débute là)

To which I replied something like... "Erm... parlez vous anglais?" Heh :)

Churned out the numbers for September and got Bug to fill in the blanks for the featured games for next month as well. So that's another month that's finished. Was rather surprised that the number of Shadowfist games fell. Hopefully they have gone on to play other games.

Martin got the new version of Abduction up today and was rather excited by it, he even played a game with Kev. I glanced through the AvP rules though and am very surprised to see that a lot of it is very similar to Abduction. That might be interesting...

I finally printed out the VS rules and can't help but notice that it's WS with a few bits and drabs bolted on to form a game. I can even use my current WS cards to play VS, although I doubt that would be tournament legal. I wonder how different the power levels are...and it might be fun to adapt a version of WS for use with VS rules.

The other thing I finally saw are the HumAliens and the TMNT pictures that Billy took, apparently sorta for me. They were a bit dark, but one could make out what they pictures were of. One is a dead game, the other will probably follow the first and die after one expansion. Oh well, such is the life of a CCG.

Well, go Ursuppe in Urland!

-+@ It's Hard to Sleep at All @+-

Yes I know, this seems to be turning into a LotR site by the day as I continue to post the spoilers... but I'm excited about them and I figure out that people who read this has put up with everything else, they'll just have to learn to put up with the spoilers as well.


Well, it's a site of course, but it's also the first (sorta) Hobbit card to be shown, so I guess I'm a tinsy bit excited about this. The new site path seems to be going back to the Middle Earth thing where you get to move around on the map in any direction you choose. There were 3 other cards spoilt today, but I'll be merciful and not post everyone of them here.

Yes, I did play some LotR today, nothing special... People are still awed by my fellowship/hobbits which is a good sign that the copycats have gone back to their own styles of play. After all, I don't think there are many Johnny swarmers out there (or enough of them that would take a risk) with the kind of deck I play.

The only thing I did for CCG Workshop was the monthly report dated the 27th, which was when I started drafting it... apparently the blog treats the date that it was created as the time that it was published. Oh well. Quite a lot of things happening there I guess as I try to get back into the coding "lifestyle" next month after a rather relaxing September. Hopefully, it'll give me the "oomph" to get Bowling public and Portable Adventures done.

Tomorrow, of course is the last day of the month, which would mean I'd be busy calculating the statistics of the games being played and suggesting to Bug which ones to make featured. I guess that would cut into coding time so I doubt I'll do much coding tomorrow. Oh well.

I was opening my Sim City boosters today... I must say the cards are bad, but the idea of the game is... intriguing. I guess one either love it or hate it and in my case, well, I haven't seen enough of it yet, but I'm tending towards the "like" part of the spectrum of emotions.

B5 had another busy day today as people hung out in the B5 room and taught newbies how to play, etc. etc. etc. The game has really jumped in the games played stats and it's starting almost a mini-revival. The last time this happened was when Anla'shok was added, so I guess this is a good sign. I'll give them a month or two (and that's being generous) before they tire of it and move on to something else in life.

MND seems rather dead by comparison. The players are back in college, but they haven't been showing up to play. I guess schoolwork and real life are probably more important at this point in time. A recent conversation I had with Stephan seems to confirm that his playgroup too hasn't met in a while.

Gotta run... oh and more Shadows tomorrow (hopefully)!

~ Novelty's September ... and plans for October ~

This is the second time I'm doing this, you should know the drill. If you don't take a peek at what was done at the end of August... I'd like to it, but I'm lazy.

Without further ado:

Mentoring
Didn't pick up anyone new to mentor this month as well. I think celebrations are in order.

Tournaments and Leagues
Nothing here to report as well, it's been quiet.

Shepherds
We lost a shepherd over the last month, but he really didn't have the heart anymore since the games he wanted to play were gone and free games were worthless to him. Yes, we do see quite a few of those. Nobody new signed up properly though (i.e. with 3 weekly tours on 3 different days), which got them all kicked off quickly.

gNet BOT
The questions have slowed down which is either because people got bored with the novelty value of it or it's actually answering most of the questions or people haven't been asking questions. Either way, it's still being expanded and it's growing slightly more "clever" by the day...months?

Games
Like last month I'll only report the games that had an update this month:

Aliens vs Predators
This is the new game for the month, the first of the "no frills" games to be done in a long time. As the engine has progressed, games have become more and more complex adding in layer after layer of automation. This game was made initially without automation. Should the need arise in the future to add automation, and when the traffic demands it, automation will be added. It is rather encouraging to see some people trying out this game after its public release.

Borders
A minor update was required to update the game slightly. The Skip card has been switched to Quartet.

Go Fish
Another game wih a minor tweak and a cleanup. Some new cardbacks were added.

Hamlet
The errata that was published on the site has now been incorporated, and some minor cleanup of the file has been done. The game won't let you carry out more actions than you actually have, so beware!

Kings
It was possible to play 2 cards onto the same area. Not anymore. Cards are now fixed as they are played. Also the displayed languages have been touched up slightly.

Magi-Nation Duel
The usual background change for the month were added and some custom cards were updated. Two more GenCon 2003 cards were added.

Portable Adventures
With the exception of Linda and the Encounter cards, Adventure cards are all automated now. Haven't yet found the time to include the next/pass buttons ala Mythos, but those will have to wait until I have more time so that I don't mess up the game.

Quartet
Like its sibling games (Borders, Concentration, Go Fish), Quartet had a minor tweak this month and some minor substutions were made.

October 2004 Plans
PAD has been moved back slightly to October (unless I can finish it between now and the end of the month, which is still a possibility, but I seriously doubt it somehow). Two things remains for the game that I forsee at the moment and hopefully, those 2 things will be added in October. Then at some point in the future, the encounter cards can be automated.

MND needs its usual beginning of the month update and the WS setup update is to be carried out this month as well. Borders needs to have the reverse card added as a minor update. Hopefully these three minor updates won't take up too much time. Of course MND still has custom cards being playtested and created and is ongoing.

Bowling is the distraction for October (just like AvP was for September) and hopefully it could be made public by the end of the month. This would be my first Dice game and I'm really looking forward to it.

Optionals this month will include updating B5 The Vorlons, which was completed 2 months early. I'll update it if I can squeeze in some time. Triple Triad and Hyborean Gates could also be done this month as well. Let's hope the scanner doesn't break down on me. And of course, Go Fish will continually have modifications as things move around and get added.

So, in list form, with priority from highest to lowest:
1. PAD - Add Pass/Next buttons, automate Linda - by 31st October.
2. MND - change background by 7th October, custom cards ongoing.
3. Wildstorms - Complete setup automation by 10th October.
4. Borders - Add Reverse card by 5th October.
5. Bowling - game to close testing 16th October, public 30th October.

O. Add Go Fish cardbacks when available.
O. Start Hyborean Gates scans. (Optional)
O. Complete Triple Triad scans. (Optional)
O. Update B5 The Vorlons (Optional)

Remainder of 2004 Plans

Aliens vs Predators - It's "low tech" and "no frills" and it's out there. There are no plans to develop it any further unless the player pool can demonstrate that it can have about 100 games played a month consistantly for 3 months. It's also the first of my "no frills" games up for offer to any AvP fan who'd like to become a Project Lead (or a Co-Lead).

Babylon 5 - The rest of the year would be to figure out automations for Babylon 5. Still on the list of things to do is the automation for replacement and the automated influence tracking and automated initiative determination. Those would take quite a lot of time that I'll have to schedule to be set aside.

Also, The Vorlons was finalised 2 months earlier than usual, but I haven't been able to slot in time for it to work on it. The cards change colour from olive/gold to blue. Also, the schemas all need to be tweaked to make them as close to the real cards as possible... and the cost "football" icon needs a better scan IMO. Another thing to look out for would be bold text on the cards. I have an idea of how that could be done, but it'll need some work.

Borders - The addition of the Reverse card should be the last thing to be done here. People have requested for icons or something... that's something I'll think about, but it's more fun not knowing which of the cards are the "specials".

Elemental - The tidal wave automation has long been outstanding. I think it's possible to do this now, but the script is going to be rather complicated. No schedule for this. Not a high priority since the game works well without the automation and I don't want to introduce something that would introduce errors. It will be done when I can find the time and the motivation.

FastBreak - The game is beginning to feel a bit "low tech" now, eventhough it did have a few innovations (when it was first made). Could do with more playtesting and more inprovements, but until I find the time and the motivation, this isn't going to be done anytime soon.

Go Fish - What do you do when the game plays well and is bug free? Nothing I suppose. However, it'd be getting a minor facelift soon - a tiny crab will be added which will allow an 5 more players to play the game simultaneously. I doubt we'll ever get 13 players into a Go Fish game, but who knows? The schedule is undermined at the moment, and it's not high priority. It could be this year, it could be the next. As usual, cardbacks will continually be added to this game.

Hamlet - There really isn't much to do on this simple game except more playtesting... and perhaps a tournament or two. Hamlet is one of the few of my licensed games I'll consider ready for Now Playing status.

HumAliens - The game is dead, but there's still work to be done. Hopefully, the New Order would be an Online only expansion and the schedule has been moved back to December, due to low gameplays of the game.

Hyborean Gates - Work is scheduled to start in October. This is still going for a public by November, preferable on the anniversary of the engine to keep the "tradition" of having a new game every anniversary alive. It will probably be a "no frills" game.

Magi-Nation Duel - Custom cards are still ongoing and I think people are rather used to the gameplay. The only other thing that can be done is to track how energy is gained and used up. However that is a monumental task since every card does it differently and there are many modifiers... which means it's not going to get done. I think I might also add in something to shuffle all creatures back into the deck for Dream Rift. That's as much automation as I'd be doing...but not this year.

Portable Adventures - After the adventure automating, the other major area would be Encounter cards. I have a rough idea of how to automate these, but they seem rather inconsequential to the whole game, so they might not get done until I get the time and the motivation. In addition, there are two card sets that will be added near the end of the year so those will get priority.

Quartet - More playtesting is needed on this game. Not much improvements will be made until further playtesting is carried out.

Reversi - nipa needs to add a left click to place piece ability, but that's of extremely low priority.

Triple Triad - Scanning has started, but I have no idea when I'll have the time to do this. Hopefully it'll all be scanned by November. I only have 1 - 90, so if anyone wants to scan in the rest of the 18 cards, for me, they are most welcome. Please PM me for more details.

Urland - It could use some scoring automation at some point in the future, but not this year.

Wildstorm - Complete automating setup. Watch out next year when I add my custom StormWatch expansion.

Wildstorm: Set 1 - The WSS2 update is still planned, although it hasn't gone ahead. The game also needs and auto-score if the defender wins. This will be done with the WSS2 update. ETA: Next year.

You Need Drew's Truck - I'd like to automate moving the truck, and automate the initial placements of the donuts. Not this year though, unless I get the time.

Yukk - This game feels rather low tech. After working on Portable Adventures, I think it's possible to put everything in one view... but again not this year.

So a monthly summary:

October - BORD, BOWL, PAD, WS
November - B5, TRIAD, GATES
December - HALN, TRIAD.

Wildstorm: Legends Solitaire (CCG) is still one of my hopefuls. Kings was built just as a demo platform to show that it's actually possible to do this game. I have most of the cards, but time is the limiting factor. Maybe next year, I'll put it on my plate.

No more new licensed games for me this year, unless it's the Urland Expansion or the 2 Portable Adventure Expansions - Firestorm and Iron Maiden - or an Interactivities Ink game. I've a full load for the rest of the year. I have actually decided on which of the licensed game I'll do next year, pending approval from BugLaden. Of course, I'm not going to approach him about it now... at least not until after I've done what I've wanted for PAD.

Quarter 1 2005 Plans

Just pencilling in for next 3 months of 2005 for planning purposes:

January - PAD, WSLS, URLND
February - B5, WS, YNDT
March - WSS1

-+@ Something's Wrong In Heaven Tonight @+-

Well, I don't want to leave people high and dry, but there really isn't much to say. I've been busy with real life (and just for those who know, it's the mid autumn fastival today, which I suppose is the equivalent of the American Thanksgiving) and haven't had much time for CCG related stuff.

Having said that, they did release this today:




The other 5 rings available are also there in the above. Notice that this is the first ring to give resistance, a new mechanic in Shadows. Also note that this will probably get called the "earth" ring, after the "fire", "water", "grass" and "snow" rings. All LotR needs is a "wind" and "heart" and it'll be able to summon Captain Planet.

I had a talk with Bug last night and he agreed in principle to adapting lesser played abandoned games as "no frills" so next on the list would be Hyborean Gates. I wasn't really looking forward to working on a full version of HG, bearing in mind the mechanics are a bit ... silly, but a "no frills" version will allow the players themselves to play whatever variant of house rules that they wish to play.

I probably won't finish what I was suppose to do for Portable Adventures this month, and that would cascade down next month. Bug doesn't mind, since the game is already fully playable, and it's just minor refinements that I'm making. It'll have a huge impact on the October schedule though - HumAliens will probably be pushed back even as Babylon 5 will be brought forward to be on standby. Bowling is scheduled for public next month. Triple Triad will probably be pushed back further to December... I'll have to post the progress report at some point.

What's next after this? Well, there's still that poll running on the new games request - Scooby Doo seems to be in the lead although I doubt I'll be able to do it since I lack the base set worth of cards. Also I think I've decided which license game to take up (first) next year, but it would probably be like one of the two licensed game I'm picking to work on, if for nothing else to keep my coding skills sharp. Next year would probably see more "No Frills" games coming out of the pipeline and they'll sit dormant till some attention is lavished on them by the player pool.

Oh, almost forgot I got my Sim City boosters today... they cards look interesting, but people have told me the CCG is only barely OK, so I have no high expectations. I can't wait for Aaron to get it onto the engine... hmm... maybe I'll tell him "No Frills" is OK :) And if you need to move your stuff around the city... look for a truck...

-+@ And in My Mind I Live a Life that Chills Me to the Bone @+-

Spent today talknig more than anything else.

Talked to Greeder and discovered most of the Dark Eden players were Polish, which shouldn't be too much of a surprise since they've probably reprinted every CCG into Polish. His English was rather good, but I didn't talk much with him. nipa was around and built rapport with the guy.

Goofed with Kapa about some finnish pronounciation today. He can be good if he's given a task to do, but I guess someone would have to tell him what to do and supervise him a bit. Heh, I guess that's where nipa comes in.

And poor nipa would have quite a bit of catching up to do. First there was the huge (OK, I exagerrate) Mythos complaint and over the last 24 hours the Access Denied fixes. Heh, I should have told him it's his homecoming present... or is that homecoming punishment? Those 2 games will feature on his priority list, but he's got his hands full with his other games as well. I don't envy him.

Well, this is the first time that I've checked and there are no more Babylon 5 games in progress on the engine. It must have lasted over 24 hours where everytime I checked there was at least one game. It's interesting to note that though. I wonder how much of it is due to the fact that the Vorlons is only available (mostly) on the engine.

I'm still learning how to hack into the engine and do things. I've got a few proposals in the wings that I'll have to clear with Bug. The last thing I'd want to do though is to slow down the loading of the forum or to make it too cluttered... I think the card back idea although good, is already giving it a cluttered look... well I don't have to decide now I guess.

More people were asking about VTES yesterday... and since Kev and Logan were handling them, I didn't get involved. It's good to have not one, but 2 other ghosts on while I'm on - it does give me a break from dealing with all the rift raft and the motley crew. Well, if all goes planned it'd be an October private test... if not public release.

Classic Concentration still hasn't been made (or remade?) public yet. I thought it was ready. Hmm... hopefully, it won't take about a month to do so like what happened to Crypt.

I wonder when the next licensed game would be announced. That sounds like an interesting game... which one, I can't divulge. The thing is that all parties on that announcement has to be in agreement about it before it goes public, so I guess that takes time. Hmm...

The end of the month is approaching and I'm dreading it. On the one hand, I'm almost resigned to the fact that I won't be able to finish what I wanted to do for Portable Adventures this month, but that in no way makes it unplayable, just a bit more clunky. On the other hand... yay! It's the end of the month. Or not. I've got to prepare the list of games that would probably get assigned to the featured games, I have to write up my end of month report - I think I'm the only person still doing that on monthly basis and I have to clean out the plates post, hopefully the last one won't need too much attention. We'll have to see. Maybe I should take it easy next month and reschedule the rest of the year for a "lite" schedule. After all, I'm sorta swamped these days with the other engine admin work. It would be nice if some kind PL would take up the slack and offer to help out on the BOT or something.

I'm seriously considering doing a "no frills" version of Hyborean Gates as well. It seems to me that that is the way to go until the playing-ship picks up. The problem I seem to be afraid of is that most new players would have slow machines that would be more liable to crash the game if it was more complex. Granted, crashes do occur with the "low tech" games, but they don't seem to happen as often as the more developed games. The other plus of course is that (other than Timmy, who doesn't really count because he's such a nitpicker) AvP hasn't had many major complaints so far. I'll see how that goes.

Half then half again to get the whole.

-+@ Being Good is Just a Fable @+-

Go Fish had a minor tweak today, only because RR was working on CC and I thought I'd clean up a few things on there and make it more "presentable". It's good, at least there's a new version of Go Fish, eventhough not many people will notice the changes.

I had a quick chat with nipa today. Apparently he still hasn't got internet access at his new apartment, but he is settling in nicely, or so he says. I told him he'll probably need to have kapa on his couch to complete the furnishing at some point... and hopefully it'll get him out of his coding funk.

There has been a continual stream of B5 games going on all evening for me, which is a good sign. Hopefully people will come every Sunday to play in what appears to be the European league. It should be interesting.

The Sunday tours are in full swing as I write this. Quite a few people doing tours. Also two people signed up to be shepherds, but never signed up for tours so I removed them. They probably signed up to be shepherds because they are out of games for the end of this month. Oh well, can't stop people from abusing the system I suppose.

Played quite a few games of LotR O today and I guess I got my deck ready for Shadows. I wonder how ready is ready though. Not much news over the weekend, but I'm looking forward to more spoilers as Decipher is known for.

And if you think those Ringwraiths have huge flying beasts, wait till you try out the one on the engine!

-+@ Don't Give Up On Me @+-

Weekends are always busy and today is no exception. I'll run through quickly the related stuff for today:

Someone asked in the chatroom to play Portable Adventures. There weren't too many people around though so he got ignored for most part. I wish we had more people around and stuff. It would also be good to organise some sort of leagues for a few of the games.

I worked on Portable adventures today - got the stuff cards which rolls during an adventure to work. It actually is much more simpler than I thought it would be so I finished it faster than I thought it would take me. So there's only Linda and the adventure phase pass/next buttons left... I've thought of a simple yet elegant way of handling Linda but I'm not sure if it'll work. I'll have to think further about it. I might also leave the pass/next button for the next build, in which case the game is almost as close to done... besides these two issues and the encounter cards, it's good to go anyways. Sure, it could do with some condition and legality checking and it'd be nice to have a play stuff directly onto character thing, but that's a bit advanced and could be done some other time. I've sent an email to Ed to let him know he can announce it as being in Beta now.

Played LotR today - well, one game and my Gondor deck took out a weird Southron minion deck. My threatening Southron archers wasn't too shoddy against a move 3 sites a turn Gandalf deck - red wrath was good there, and fierce archers at 11 strength was a bonus - 2 woulds a turn. They won't stand up against Elves though, which is my main concern, and my Knights/Forts won't be able to survive a Saruman's Power, but since that latter card is getting X'ed, I'd reckon Gondor might survive more after Shadows... we'll have to see.

Concentrate! It's classic memory!

-+@ I May Not Get Applause Every Night @+-

Urgh, I typed out a post and it got lost. I don't think I want to do the whole thing again, espcially after spending about an hour on it, so I'll just get through the points quickly.

The big news today for LotR is that the changes to the X-list in two month's time was announced. 3 Hobbit cards were removed an a bunch or other cards, but Shire Countryside is not on the list, much to my amusement. The good news though is that we would be getting the cards a month early online, so the X-list will kick in then. For those not in the know (and I apologize if this really doesn't interest you), the X-list is the list of non-tournament legal cards. The buzz is that there might be a new Hobbit companion, which would be good news of sorts. I don't mind if that companion turns out to be Frodo - it'd be good to have a non ring bearer form of him.

As for actual gaming though, I went back to my old, tried and tested deck since 2 of the cards on it would be X'ed when Shadows is released. Might as well get my money's worth from those cards. I also worked on KnightRaiders. I need to read the cards though because I seem to be putting in useless cards there. Oh well. I suck at the game, but then again, I'm not a Spike player... being your typical Johnny, I'm happy to pull my combos off and that I do very well with my Hobbits.

Non-LotR wise, I started a game of B5 today with 2 other European players. We didn't get to finish because of time constraints and they were going rather slow, but it was fun. We had 2 NA players and most of the time I was competing for characters with the other NA player. I don't think I would have won, but it'd be interesting to see how a NA B4 deck goes.

I was supposed to work with PAD today, but Thomas hijacked me with some Mark Twain stuff (no, not Shania Twain) and I got lost in it. Also! Anyways, he (Thomas) seems to be still working rather hard trying to get FZOO public this month. I hope he does get it done.

I didn't work on PAD, but I did work on the forums today. I was surprised to see that there are almost 100 forums available to the public... and I have more hidden forums of course, waiting for certain announcements to be made. I am starting a database offline just so that I can know what's what because as it grows, it's going to get even more harder to maintain.

HP Lovecraft = Mythos, Robert Jordan = Wheel of Time, but can you name another author (not comic book author) with a CCG on the engine?

-+@ We're Not Far From The End Of The Road @+-

The big news today, all over the message boards are the spoilers for Shadows. I've included 4 out of the 5 spoilers below - they showcase the 3 new loaded keywords.



Today was also a big day in the online world - Kings Anthology was released. The dead tree version is to be release a month late... oh well, stupid WARS must have got in the way, but at least late is better than never. I don't think I'll get the online version of the Tengwar cards - it's horrible playing with them. I would be getting a dead tree version though... which would be next month. Blegh. I could really use an order right about now.

Well, Decipher is weird... first they go quiet for almost a month and when they start making announcements, it's like the dam breaking. Way too many things being done in one day for LotR. Let's hope it steals the thunder from WARS.

I worked on Portable Adventures for the first time this month. Got some of the hard scripts in, which once I know what I was doing was easy going - it's always figuring out how to do the stuff that's the hard part. It is also nice to be able to sit down and dedicate my usual one hour slot to coding - I haven't done that for a long time this month - didn't even do that when I was working on the Bronx Project surprisingly. The trick I've learnt is to set tasks for that one hour and to attempt to finish it, but if I don't, I'll advance the schedule by a day. Today though, I did meet my schedule and I sidetracked and did a few more other things on the side, so I feel a bit accomplished with PAD. Tomorrow won't be a piece of cake, but the roll dice for stuff cards should be done. I hope I can do all the cards as I would probably have to code them one by one, but if I can't... well, there's always the weekend and next week. Let's hope I can finish it this month.

I'm also surprised to see the number of people downloading AvP today. The chatroom was much busier than usual as the usual people hung out to download AvP. Nobody played a game though, probably because they are either afraid of losing credits so near the end of the month, or they don't know how to play the game and are just downloading the images, but hey, at least there's some buzz in the chatroom.

Apparently Robo and flaw are playing Abduction these days. It's interesting to see Robo going from game to game and flaw trying out something else other than HP. Most of the regulars though have gone on to learn Shadowfist. It's interesting how much interest a "free to play" game can apparently hold interest. There's nothing wrong with Shadowfists though and it seems good, but it's just not my type of game.

So Crypt still hasn't gone beta yet. Apparently it was suppose to go public a week or two ago. I wonder what's the deal there... maybe Bug is displeased with something in it. Who knows? The other game that might go public soon is Frank's Zoo. T is working on what seems to be the ultimate (as in the last, not the best) script which is the scoring script. I hope he doesn't pull out too much of his hair trying to figure out how to get it right... I don't think he's got much hair to start with anyways...

I also updated the plates post today. Nothing new or interesting there. I'll need to touch up Go Fish soon to update the pictures in that post. Basically, the plates post has plates. The plates are from Go Fish. Go Figure!

Oh had a weird thought today... how do design a politically incorrect CCG. Call it Imperialism CCG. Set it during the time of the scramble for Africa. You get to play any of the western powers, or Japan and try to carve out colonies in the world and to gain fame, fortune and French West Africa, but your opponents are trying to do the same... and since resources are finite... well, it's intriguing anyways... and I can just see Martin playing the French everytime. Pondicherry anyone?

Oh and obligatory CCGW Game spam - Play Portable Adventures - I did an update today and it'd be good if people played it. There. I never said the last line always has to be oblique now did I?

-+@ I Have Found The Perfect Mystery @+-

Aliens vs Predator is finally ready for a "soft launch" now. As promised, it's just a basic draw card/play card/discard card game at the moment. The cards aren't clipped and some of them are a bit out of alignment, but I decided that it wasn't worth putting in too much effort into a game that might not get played much and that might be removed by Paramount Studios who actually owns the Aliens vs Predator stuff. The rules got up today, as well as the missing images from yesterday and as Timmy pointed out the preconstructed decks as well. Hopefully that's all for the time being. Unless play picks up for it, it's going to remain a "low tech" game. I'll have to ask Jason if he could give me further suggestions for the game, since I know he plays it... I'll try and catch him when I next see him on AIM.

So now that the "Bronx Project" is completed, I can finally move back to Portable Adventures. I did talk with Mike Nickoloff today again for what's it's worth. Apparently he's a rather busy person and can't really make it to play on the engine. I don't blame him though. Well, 8 more days for me to finish Portable Adventures, quite a lot of time left, but I dunno, I've been working so slowly lately with the coding that it's not even funny anymore. Maybe I'll take it slow and do one thing at a time... I'll probably need it since some of those things have to be done one card at a time. Urgh. There goes the rest of my evenings this week and probably most of my weekends.

I also talked today to Mark about Sideshow and Crystal Authority. Apparently he's thinking of making Crystal Authority online for download to play offline only. I have no idea how he's going to do that. He's also trying to get Sideshow licensed. Sounds intriguing, but that would be up to Bug. Knowing Bug though, it'll take a while before he comes to a conclusion regarding that.

I edited the poll in the New Game Request forum and it sort of barfed up on me. The numbers are weird now. Anyways, with AvP out of the picture, Scooby Doo is leading the pack adn that might be a bit hard to get cards for though, especially with all the ultra rares. I wonder if I could get any of the Scooby Doo collectors to scan me cards... hmm...

Bug said he has a full set of Star of the Guardians and Ruinsworld. Both are supposed to be horrible games and I wonder if it would be wise to adapt either or both of them with the AvP treatment. Well, that would depend on Bug scanning the cards for me, something that I highly doubt would be speedy given his recent burst of "activity" on the engine.

Also had a PM from amarriner today telling me he's busy but will be back in the chatroom at some point in the future. I wonder what's going on with Sim City - I'd like to play that game eventhough I know it'd probably be boring.

I still wonder where are all the B5 players. There used to be 1 or 2 hanging around in the chatroom constantly doing nothing. These days though, nobody is even doing a driveby in the chatroom except for Billy. Perhaps there's a social stigma of being in the chatroom and I don't know about it. Oh well.

Got into my first LotR draft today and placed last out of 8. Drafted 2 good rares though and people are telling me that they make up for the fact I didn't win. Somehow I think they are just happy that they won.

This is the last line... but would I have the last clue? Challenge me and find out.

-+@ If These Old Halls, Hallowed Halls Could Speak @+-

If these old walls
If these old walls could speak
Of things that they remember
Stories and faces dearly held
A couple in love living week to week
Rooms full of laughter
If these walls could speak


If these halls
These hallowed halls could talk
These would have a tale to tell
Of sun going down and dinner bells
Of children playing at hide and seek
From floor to rafter
If these walls could speak

They will tell you that I'm sorry
For being cold and blind and weak
They will tell you that it's only
That I have a stubborn streak
If these walls could speak

If these old fashioned
Window panes were eyes
I guess they would have seen it all
Each little tear and sigh and footfall
And every dream that we came to seek
Or followed after
If these walls could speak

They would tell you that I owe you
More than I could ever pay
Here's someone who really loves you
Don't ever go away
That's what these walls would say.

Last night I hummed the line from each of the songs that have been the titles of my blogs for most of this month. 8 more to go before I'll have to look for something else to fill up those titles with something else.

Fastbreak had a quick update today. I'm a bit surprised that someone was looking at it yesterday... then again, it was the free game of the day yesterday, so I shouldn't be so surprised. If nothing else the free games are encouraging people to look at the lesser played games and of that I'm grateful. Anyways, back to Fastbreak, some guy found a coding inaccuracy which I corrected today. As I say time and time again, Fastbreak needs a lot of playtesting to get it into tip top condition.

Fastbreak wasn't the only game I worked on today, I finally "finished" the Bronx Project. I've put a little spoiler in the Aliens vs Predator forum for the game... it'll probably generate some interest that will result in 10 or 20 games the week or so after its release then die to mediocricity (is that even a word?) after that. Oh well. First though, Bug has to link it up and I have to do a whole lot of non-programming stuff (move images to the server, get the rules set up, the game page, the screenshot, etc.) before it can go public.

Martin showed me yesterday that Tyranny Games has the rights to Terminator, so that might mean we won't be able to adapt it. If that's a case, then it's a pity. Martin and I also hunted the web for the unreleased Atmosphere expansion. We found a few images, but no spoiler. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.

Thomas told me today he's going to get Frank's Zoo out beta soon. Well, that would be good. It seems my blogs does do something after all. Maybe I should comment about Monkeys... Talking about Monkeys, Kev logged in from work today (no, I didn't call Kev a monkey...) and proceeded to download the games for the new machine. Apparently he's doing it to show his boss some of the stuff he's programmed.

Who's the boss? You can be one!

-+@ A Breeze in this Tornado @+-

Some days, I head over to some people's blog only to see one word. It makes me feel... a bit cheated that I spent that time going there to do nothing. So eventhough I don't realy have much to say, I usually just go on and on about nothing in particular - see, it's not that difficult to do.

Let's start with LotR O where I spent the majority of the day trying to get enough commons and uncommons to build another good deck. Gondor Knights and Forts and Southron Archers and Threats... something that I've condensed to KnightRaiders. Yes, I know, that sounds suspiciously Yu-Gay-Oh-ish... as long as David Hasselhoff doesn't fit into it I'd be fine. The deck is beginning to take shape, but it does have two key splashable cards - Sam, SOH and Enquea, TOTO - a common and an uncommon respectively. I'm already having fun with the deck though, and I guess that's all that counts in the end.

Didn't get to work on Portable Adventures today or the Bronx Project - I might work on the latter after this pending real life not getting in the way. I did get to talk to Martin about the latter though and got him rather fired up about it. Too bad Bug hasn't made it alpha yet, then I can finally announce it to the world what I've been taking time out from Portable Adventures to work on. It might be a short alpha as it will go beta once I finish the dice and the markers... maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.

Apparently TMNT has got a CCG out now. I wonder which 80s cartoon celebrity will make it into a CCG... Transformers? I did see some MTG custom cards with them where it was artefact heavy GI Joe? That would be an interesting game and I'd be happy if I get to swarm. He-Man? Well, the 2nd season of the cartoon died down in the US and the toyline is only selling overseas... so maybe it'll be a German CCG, just like the Simpsons was a German CCG before WotC decided to do their own version... I can dream, can't I?

I've also been told that WARS has the rules up somewhere on Decipher, although I can't really be bothered to go dig for them. What I'd like to know are what are the cards that will be in the King's Anthology for this month (or yesterday) of which Decipher hasn't yet announced anything. Also, the LotR site hasn't been updated in a while now. I guess Decipher is abandoning the game gradually...

Ivan the Terrible might have left the US... but do you know which game has Ivan?

-+@ And I Love Your Company @+-

This is the weekend update as I end my Sunday. I wonder how people get to do all the boring facts of their lives and condense them into a blog... wait, I already do that with a boring subset of my life.

Anyways, I thought I'd do a spot check today to see where I am with CCG Workshop stuff. Two thirds of the month has gone past and I should at least have most of the things on my list done. Well, I didn't plan on taking up the Bronx Project at the beginning of the month and that has eaten into my time... so let's start with that first then.

Bronx project - it's the no frills version of a game I don't want to announce at the moment. It has all the basic draw card/play card/discard card already done and I did some work on it yesterday. I was suppose to put in the dice and markers today but life happened, so it'll be done sometime next week. I'm also waiting for Bug to load up the game onto the engine as alpha and to setup the directories on the server so that I can see that everything works on the engine. Anyways, it should go public beta by the end of the month.

Portable adventures is the other thing I have to "finish" up by the end of the month. All I need to do are the pass and the next buttons for the adventure phase. I don't know why I dread that but I do. The other 3 things - Linda, stuff card with rolls, stuff card with bonus CP is really optional I guess. It's a pity I'm a bit burnt out on the game. I really should get into it a bit more to get my enthusiasm up to code.

The MND update for this month was done early on. The 50 card Elder's Legacy custom is all on the engine and I think the text would be as final as they can get. I'll probably announce that the set is finished on the anniversary of CCGW in November. Art is already pouring in (OK, trickling) for Shadowsfall Promo, the in between filler between the sets. I'll have to start work on those ASAP to finalise text to get them to a phase I'd be comfortable with them. I should dedicate an evening to sit down and sort that out. I also need to sort out the Elder's Legacy Promo and then the Tainted Glimpses cards. Urgh, lots of work there, but the crucial bits for this month is done.

Hamlet and Kings were the other 2 games that were scheduled to get updates this month and I can say they are done. I'm quite happy with the Kings update, and well, the Hamlet one is OK I guess. Not many people play those games though which is a pity, but I guess expected. At the very least, they are getting updated.

Bowling has been pushed back a bit because of the Bronx Project. Hopefully, I can get the motivation to finish the game next month - I really need to get Portable Adventures out of the way there so that I can concentrate on this.

Go Fish had a few updates to include new cards and to remove some of the other cards. Gameplay wise, it hasn't changed. Maybe I should organise a tournament for this to see what sort of response it'd get. Or maybe not. Hmm...

Wildstorms automation and Triple Triad scanning can be moved back to next month. After all I did mark them as optional. That would mean the workload for next month would be a bit on the heavy side. I hope I don't have to worry about Portable Adventures then.

Seems like a few things would be moved to next month, I guess I'll have to move one of next month's mega games to the month after... That would probably be Hyborean Gates, and I might put HumAliens as "optional" for next month. We'll see. There's not much going on in the HumAliens world at the moment. The game is mediocre at best, but it does deserve a chance I guess.

I still haven't made any firm announcement on WS Legends Solitaire yet. I guess I'm waiting for at least 2 out fo the 4 games I have in development to go public, so that would means that October would be the earliest... but it'd probably be around November or so. The engine's anniversay seems to be a good target as any to make that announcement.

The situation with B5 seems to be a bit depressing at the moment as nobody seems to be playing. I think I'll stick to my November schedule - yes, you read right, November as in early November - to finalise the Vorlon cards, unless play picks up and there's a huge demand for me to do them early. Somehow I doubt it. B5 players can't seem to be able to organise themselves for a game. Some new guy, azuredarkness, asked us for our IMs and contacts, but I have yet to hear from him asking for a game. Doesn't seem to me that he's interested, or maybe Billy beat him black and blue with one of the crazy decks Billy has been known to make, and he lost interest. Who knows?

I'm still waiting for Bug to make Crypt public, if only to offset the loss of the games last month. I'm going to say it'll take a few months to make up in numbers for the loss of those 9 games and Crypt and the Bronx Project will help. Of course there are a large segment of the population (or maybe I'm deluding myself...) waiting for the launch of VTES, but since that would be on a separate server, I wonder if it's going to be worth counting it in the usual stable of games. I suppose I could, but we'll have to see how that sets up. Hopefully, for the beta stage of the testing anyways, it'd be on the engine proper and then it could migrate onto its own server once things are finished.

TRagedy asked me about his app to be a PL. I explained that Bug is usually swamped. He wants to do his own original game... and so do so many of the people out there I guess. At least he knows programming so that's good. He's also been asking about Frank's Zoo, and that's something I can't answer. I have no idea how far along the game is and Thomas seems to work in spurts at best. I doubt he'd be capable of finishing it, or to get it to a playable stage, in the next 3 months. According to the forums, he started it late March/early April, so with the 6 months deadline, he should have it finished by early November. Somehow I doubt that deadline would be met.

I've got a poll running on the forums asking for which game people think I should adapt next. Two games are currently tied on top spot. I'll leave it for another month or so to see how fares either game... or maybe a third game will claim top spot. It could happen.

I've been playing some LotR O as well, not much though. I think I'm happy with the new incarnation of the Hobbits Tales / Sauron Besiegers deck. It works rather well, especially against Ringwraiths, has been known to take down Gondor fortifications and pure Dwarves FP. Haven't tested it against a nice Rohan deck. Hmm... I wonder if I can make a good Rohan deck with the cards I've got... perhaps when I have more time.

And time is something you have very little of when you play this game on the engine... just make sure you have got the power of the gods.

-+@ Love's For Fools Wise Enough To Take A Chance @+-

Have I mentioned how much I like the site tracker thing? It's telling me that scroogey is visiting on a daily basis and Billy on an twice daily basis. Interesting stuff or not.

Let's go in reverse order for today.




Noticed that there was an entire roomful of Yukk people today for the tour as you can see in the screen capture above. Never seen a 5 player game before which is just so cool. Anyways, I would guess the people playing are probably those who are bored out of their wits.

Worked on the Bronx Project today... if Bug remembers to set it up, it'll be up for Alpha testing later today. I'm only doing the "no frills" version of it though which I hope would be good enough. It already does have a unique background. Next up would be to finilise the cards in play menu and scripts and to make the dice and markers for the game.

Got a few more results to the poll for the game I'd be adapting next year. I was going to call it Project Chelsea, but then decided it'd be rather stupid to give it a codename when people already know which game I'd be doing, so well, I'll see what happens then - it's still a few months away after all.

We are trying to guess which card in The Vorlons were designed by Tewart. So far it's been hinted that it's not a character, which I guess I already knew. Which non-Character though would be a bit more difficult to guess. We'll see.

Played quite a lot of LotR today. Found a good card for my deck that nobody uses... and it's proving its worth so far. Trying to get 2 more of them for my online deck. It's a rare though - Stone Trolls, but it's a rare that nobody uses. Still, it does not take regional restriction (or whatever the equivalent is in LotR) into consideration which makes it a very good card for the deck.

Photo-Edited Logan onto Keanu's body today just for laughs. It does look good though. It can be seen on the quiz thread in the forums... that thread also has a very fake picture that Thomas did in order to "get revenge". I don't think he succeeded. And someone has to tell him that Hulk is the guy with the green skin, Shrek is the ogre with the funny ears and large teeth.

nipa told me yesterday about his schedule over the next few weeks ... and on closer reflection, I wonder if he told me only because he felt he had to give an explaination for his prolong absence. Well, I have no idea, but there was absolutely no need for him to have told me his plans. Well, it's just weird now that I think back about it.

Oh, and Rage or Dredd? You decide.

-+@ Oh We Have To Keep A Watch On Our Shadows @+-

Or they'll start walking away...

Opened the box of Hyborean Gates... and only got one Ultra Rare that I don't already have. Sad but true. So I started this with 17 cards needed and 2 box of boosters later, I'm down to 5. Wow, it's going to be tough collecting these cards... and the way that it's been packaged doesn't help as well - I got 2 of some of the Ultra Rares in this box. Yikes! I've also got to check out the starter decks, but I don't want to mess with those until I can find a cardlist somewhere.

Well, I desperately need card boxes now. Maybe I should jsut make a few for myself. I still have a box of Tempest of the God boosters that I need to open at some point.

Played some LotR games - won one against someone who has never faced a Hobbit recurring pump deck. Well, I added 2 cards to the deck - Long Knives of Legolas is proving its worth by making Legolas last a bit longer than he usually does (before today, he used to die at site 5, now he's lasting the whole journey to site 9) And Assassins... well, only one, but they were enough to make the Elf players I was playing against cringe... and in both games, I got rid of Galadriel with TatD... that card itself is worth its slot in the deck.

Didn't work on the Bronx Project today. Wasn't up to it. I guess this means the whole thing would have to slip to next week.

Didn't work on Portable Adventures as well, but I did get to talk with Mr. Nickoloff. Urgh, every day I say that I have to get it finished, and every day I procrastinate on the game. Maybe I should just give up while I'm ahead...

Have you ever wondered how some of the people I mention in my blogs look like? Here's scroogey



And Mike



head? check. legs? check. arms? check. what else do I need to win?

-+@ Do You Dream of Me? @+-

Hopefully the answer would be no from jackalope and scroogey...both of which have visited in the past 24 hours.

I got my X-men boosters and some (more) Hyborean Gates today. The latter being cheap on ebay. Haven't opened the HG stuff yet, but the first thing I notince about X-men was that it was by WotC. Meaning I had to remove it from Go Fish... which was what I did. So that's one game updated today.

I wasn't very impressed with the X-men cards though. Firstly, all the characters seem to be foil... but the upside is that there are more foils per booster box than anything else. The art is ugly. For a comic book franchise, ugly art = bad news. I'll probably throw these into a box and happily forget about them.

I'm also hoping I'll get the remaining of the super ultra rares (or whatever that rarity is called) from my box of HG boosters - there was a bonus 2-player starter decks thrown in by the seller as well, which I thought was cool. I'll open those tomorrow maybe... after all, I need to leave some CCG excitement for tomorrow.

Go Fish wasn't the only game that I updated today. The Bronx Project also had a minor upgrade. All I included were the background and the card back, but it does look rather decent now. Next up for that menus and scripts, then dice and markers and scripts.

Timmy moaned that his LotR cards were crappy... well, he got $45 for an almost complete set of FotR on ebay which might sound good... until you realise that maybe 5 or 6 of the rares there are worth about $10 each individually... so he could have made more money selling them off individually. Oh well. It's a bad time to be selling LotR cards anyways as people are dumping cards in anticipation of Shadows sucking.

Online though, I picked up some more cards to add to my collection. Didn't have too much time to play, although I wish I did. Some kid told me he spent $100 on a booster box and made $190 in return, so it does sound like a good way to make $$$, but I don't have paypal, so I don't really bother.

And I didn't do any Portable Adventures stuff today... I doubt I'll do anything on it this week since the Bronx Project is sucking in a considerable amount of time. It will have to wait some.

MND-wise, Pic is still trying to get artists - he sounds so enthusiastic that I don't really want to discourage him too much. Hopefully he'd be able to get good art for some of the cards for the custom set.

Set first, rain untamed.

-+@ You're the Kind, When You Love, You Love With All Your Might @+-

Nothing notable today.

Forums wise, I got promises for a few cardbacks but nothing concrete. I'll have to see where that goes. And new forums of course means new games... just which new game is something up for y'all to speculate.

Played LotR O yadda yadda yadda. Note to self - Europeans play nasty decks. I need to edit the few decks I have to put all the "working" combos together into one deck and somehow make sure that my draws don't suffer from a deck that tries to do too many things... oh... when I get the time.

MND-wise, I got 2 of the custom art Jen did for me, which I'm glad. One of those will be going into Shadowfall Promo, the other into the yet unfinished Tainted Glimpses. Well, actually both are unfinished, art-wise and card text wise. I wish I have more time to spend on it, but ...

I started the secret Project aka the Bronx Project today. The cards are sort of done and it displays properly on the card manager. Next up would be to finish up the views and then the menus and scripts before I go back and pretty it up with customised dice and markers. It may be done by the weekend. It's a CCG for one and I can't mention the name now, but watch this space.

Which means I didn't get to work on Portable Adventures today. Oh well, I think I need a break from that anyways. I did talk to Mike Nickoloff today and he wasn't too anxious to get the game out so I'll leave it be for the time being. Besides, it's going to sit in Beta for a rather long time me thinks as I try to think up how to automate Encounters, which is tricky as there are so many variables there.

I also saw the work that JC did on VS, but since that's a current game, I doubt it'll even get added to the engine. It's a good thing that he's stopped working on it now. Hopefully, he'll do a licensed game.

Tim's also trying to take up a licensed game. I'll leave Bug to deal with him. I don't think he's ready yet for a licensed game, based just on his dedication to Star Wars, but that's just me. Some days I think it's a good thing I don't have to make these types of decisions... and I get to tell Bug "I told you so" when I prove right.

And I just found out that scroogey has been visiting this blog. I wonder if that will make Thomas happy. Talking about that though, I wonder how far along is Frank's Zoo and if it's playable... I should play a test game of that one of these days, but I'm lazy. Apparently he has added a south image of the cardback and got it to rotate. I wonder why that is required. Well, it's weird anyways, but I can never understand Germans and have always find them weird anyways.

Well, I wonder if that will have a chance of pipping Crypt to the finish line. I think Logan is just waiting for Bug to make that public with all the funfair of that game. I think it's an interesting game with tiles, where the board is built up like Abduction, but there's more strategy. I'll have to join one of the tours one of these days.

Now, a question for you - who'll win the battle for the moon? Sailors or Monkeys?

-+@ Call My Name and I'll Come Running @+-

Not a lot to write about... that's because I've been running way too much.

Nothing much CCG wise to write about - didn't work on Portable Adventures, although I did get to talk with Mike... didn't get any work done for the game for the engine as well. Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

Got Timmy's help to build an Moria Orc swarm - he gave me even more suggestions for commons uncommons I could add to my deck to tech up against a few other decktypes. It's always good to pick his brain I guess.

Played two MND games... I'm really bored with the game now really. It badly needs new cards and new strategies. I should priortise TG and SP to get them on the engine.

Didn't get to work on the Forums, although that is now low maintenance and even lower priority. It would be nice to put in the game blurb for each game once more and perhaps indicate if a game is licensed. I'll have to do that one of these days.

Updated the bot for a few things. Someone has been asking MND rules questions and the bot just isn't handled to do that. Besides, the MND rules are simple enough to be understood and can be easily accessible from the rules button. Now the rulings OTOH are a different story.

Well, my brain is on vacation so go let your fingers do the walking. Will you be the last man standing?

-+@ Got to Let it Go @+-

Well, Billy asked me for a Babylon 5 game today which I turned down. I think I'm on my Babylon 5 vacation at the moment. I'll probably be so lost when I get back on to actually play the game at some as of yet undermined point in the future, but oh well.

I was actually in a LotR O game and faced a rather good Hobbits FP deck. The flipside is that it uses Gollum/Shelob, so Tales wasn't really able to stand up to it early. That's the problem of the Tales deck, it's slow to setup so Gollum and Nazghuls kills the deck early on. I think I'll see if I can make a monoHobbit/MoriaArchers deck since now I know both those sides complement each other.

Talked with Mike Nickoloff today again and it seems that sales of Portable Adventures aren't as high as expected, hence the discounts on the current sets. Well, it's not as if he needs $$ from Portable Adventures to survive I guess. I have yet to work on Portable Adventures though - I had a look at it yesterday to determine what needs to be done and I think it needs about 2 full days of dedicated work to get it up to a level which I'd be happy with. Sadly, I don't have 2 dedicated days this weekend to slot it in so it'll have to wait until such a time when I have more time.

I also had a look at Bowling and what would be needed to complete it by next month. I started the file, but it does definately need images before I can do anything. The main display would be a Martin-esque table with the name of the players and the scores setup. I'm still thinking of a colour scheme for the whole display - I'm tending towards yellow on black at the moment, but red on white could also be a good alternative. I'll have to see when I start manipulating the images.

Updated the forum earlier to make sure the forum icons are unique to each forum. nipa sent me a number of scans of which I used two and I got a few more from the engine itself. My favourite two happens to be the Primodial Pool icon and the hidden to everyone else Foundry icon. I'll need to move Bowling up to the correct slot at some point and to add in WS Legends Solitaire. Yes, I think I'll announce that I'd be doing WSLS sometime this month, and to just keep it on my plate for a bit, or at least until after Triple Triad is done.

And Pic is trying to get artists for his custom cards so that I can include them online. I hope he'll have success, but somehow I doubt it. Creating art - even MND'esque art is a thankless task and when there's no financial incentive, well, let's just say that it's really not worth it most of the time. That's why I don't even bother to draw entire new pieces - it's much easier jutaposing (sp?) various previous pieces together to create a new piece. At least that silenses the critics a bit because they can't say it's not MND-esque.

Oh and I hope we'll see Crypt this weekend. Logan said it's almost done - he's just adding more automation and legality checking. It would be good to have another game go public this week to show to the world that we are still alive and a force to be reckoned with.

I saw the new DC VS cards and they seem OK. If they weren't so expensive, I might buy a booster box or two. I guess I'll have to make do with a starter or two the next time I order cards from Cardhaus. Would it be better than WS? Parts of me hopes not, but it probably is, since all those card designers (B5's Kevin Tewart included) has had so many years to work out the kinks. I'll just have to see.

Oooh, and while talking to Martin yesterday, he assumed I was going to take Barons of Fyn as my next licensed game and I'm going to colour it in. Uh huh... right... OK... maybe next year if I'm still interested in colouring in cards. It does sound like a nice little game that some other "junior" PL (i.e. not the triumvirate or myself) should be doing as their first licensed game, but we don't seem to have many of those lately so, oh well.

Talking about new PLs, apparently Bug is in talks with Tony to let the latter take over WoT. We'll see what happens there. Tony has been trying to take that over for a while now and he has been rather active for the past few months, particularly playing Shadowfists. The decision is Bug's though, and I'll leave that up to him.

Timmy seems to be going along with Hoth as well. That's the next SW expansion. I wonder how far along is it because he hasn't been talking to me about it. Probably trying to do everything himself, which would be good for a change. There's always a first time for everything.

And according to nipa, ToJH will be delayed for about a month or so. I don't think he has any time for coding at the moment due to all the other stuff in his life. Well, I wish him the best with his decision and I hope it won't delay ToJH too much.

VTES seems to be moving forward at full speed as well. Martin seems to need only the images now, I think it's fully playable eventhough I haven't seen it yet (it's going to be on a different server/client anyways). He's probably adding the automation and the legality checking over these next few weeks while waiting for the images from WW. I can't wait to see how it works. If Abduction gives any clue, it's going to be superb.

Mark seems to have gone all quiet on Summer Camp all of a sudden. I think he's about a month behind his own schedule, although I must say he was really fired up about it when he started after Origins. Still, I can understand what's happening, if Portable Adventures is anything to go by - automation is hard work, particularly with cards that interact. At least for him, he has a "closed" set of cards. Portable Adventures will have more and more cards over the next few years if it does survive and go on.

And speaking about Portable Adventures, I heard rumours ... OK, I heard from Mike that there's a 13 card set of expansion for Rat King. He has no idea how to market that yet, but I hope we will be getting it for the engine. Rat King is my favourite set so far (I think Bug likes 8th Grade, because it has Linda) and I can't wait to see more of it.

And there's still no news about the Urland expansion. That's one thing I'd like to add to the game, especially since the new genes are suppose to be better then the current one. I shall have to bug Bug to get that approved and added at some point - preferably after the tournament that he's planning on having with Urland.

And as for tournaments, don't get doomed if you are a themed trooper!

-+@ When Do Pieces of a Broken Heart Mend Again? @+-

Sometimes things bring me crashing down to earth again, which is good, because floating away with my head in the clouds tend to make me big headed.

Forums updates are still going on. A shadowrun card now graces the Test Forum. nipa has got 2 Doomtrooper cards as suggestions for the programming and tech help forums, which I hope he'll scan for me soon.

I updated Hamlet today - it's now hopefully a bit more clever in that it recognises when one is out of moves. That should make things easier to play (hopefully). I also added in the errata the Mike Young had on the webpage. It's funny how such a simple game can have an errata. Not many people have been playing it since jaegerpenguin disappeared from the engine. Oh well.

Martin updated Tower Siege today as well to include the brand new expansion. The cards are really really good to look at. It's a pity the game mechanics is a bit MTG-ish and it depends a bit too much on dice... it's more like a dice game than a card game. That's another game jaegerpenguin plays...

Thomas is finally trying to play MND, after he decried it as having no strategy and "not his game". I wonder what made him change his mind though. It might not be as complicated as Doomtrooper, with the upteen expansions or as complex to play as Babylon 5, or even as good in multiplayer as VTES or as balanced as Netrunner, but it did had a loyal following and there are still people who wish to play it.

Funny story in LotR O today - I said "Salut!" to someone with a french sounding name and the next thing I knew, he was talking to me in French. Well, I didn't have the heart to stop him though, so I just went along and pretended that I understood what he was saying... I got the gist of it more than anything else.

I said Hi to Mike Nickoloff today, and he seemed rather grumpy, or at least he wasn't very polite. Then he logged off. I wonder what that was all about. Anyways, that put me off working on PAD for today (which was why I worked on Hamlet instead and got quite a bit done there). Bug PM'ed me about PAD today - maybe a chaser or something and I do really have to get it polished up by the end of the month... or that's what I tell myself anyways.

Oh and Valyrian edition of A Game of Thrones is finally out. I'm contemplating buying a pack of starters just for the rules and if I get to like it maybe to get a box of boosters at a future date. The art isn't really my style - it does remind me of MTG - but if the mechanics are good, I guess I'm going to be a huge fan of that after LotR bites the dust... if LotR bites the dust.

There's still no word on the King Anthology from Decipher yet. Most of the news on the site is about the just released .hack expansion - I think it's Incursion - and the upcoming release of WARS. It's not giving nervous LotR players any confidence in the game, particularly coupled with what people have taken to be bad news about the next set - Shadows.

Have I mentioned that Bruce has asked me to update the "final" version of The Vorlons? That is not getting any priority till after Portable Adventures is done, or that's what I tell myself. Still it's nice to see people logging in to the engine if only to grab the images for the new cards... but they'll be a bit disappointed since those images are clipped and aren't really complete.

Bug has just announced the latest licensed game - Barons of Fyn. It's a game I really should try to get an interest in, but I just can't somehow. I guess I'm more interested in weird things like bowling and triple triad and old maid. Well, bowling for next month that's for sure. And no licensed game for me until after the year is out. Hopefully some kind soul will take over Barons of Fyn and adapt it ASAP so that I could play it on the engine.

Would you believe that there is already a game on the engine with Barons? Think outside the box... square... grid.

-+@ I've Been Looking for You since I Took My First Breath @+-

So, I played a few more games of LotR today. Some poor guy was playing Castamir with the condition that gave them initiative each time Castamir was played, so A Light in his mind removed one burden, triggering off all my shire countrysides and all my conpanions were healed even before Castamir did anything. He finally discarded the condition, but it was a bit too late for him as I have had enough So Fair so Good in my hand, and with the discard a card from hand Smeagol and Birthday Present in play, his Castamir had no chance of winning, as long as I can add threats. Poor guy.

I updated the forums today with a few more icons. I think the gears are a bit too generic and won't mind getting specific cards for the various system forums. I'm not sure if my current approach of getting actual cards as icons would be a good one, let's just see what sort of response I'll get over the next few days.

Talked with Mike Welling today and got quite a few MND goodies, which I can't divulge. However it does add to the ideas I have for new cards for MND.

Cait Sith/Justin logged onto the engine today to see the GenCon 2003 spoilers and subsequently posted them on Insiider. Well, let's see what the reprecussions of that will be. The good thing though is that MND on the engine is still being played - JT, arderialite and funk have been almost pushing it to everyone else. I saw stormcloak and Spirit playing today, so I guess that's a good thing.

Talking about spirits, do you think you can be doomed in town? Head over to deadlands.

-+@ Through all these Shattered Emotions, there's a Lesson to Learn @+-

Where do I even begin? Chronologically might be best.

I finally had a look at the Tainted Glimpses cardlist for MND and finalised the 6 Arderial cards going into that list. I'll have to create 3 of those images, which means my work is cut out for me I guess. Still, 3 is not that bad. At least I know Arderial will have all cards in that set. Next up Bograth.

After that, I fixed Kings so that it closed out all the known loopholes. It plays better now IMO and I know that quite a few people have been playing it recently. I had to get Martin to help me out with the translations and it was a good thing he was around.

Quartet is finally back up again, not with the new things I had imagined, but with the old game minus a few cards and the addition of a few new cards. I'm still not sure if I should put in much effort to maintain this game. Still, it's a game and it's up. Hopefully, that together with Go Fish will form a good basis for the engine version of "Old Maid" or whatever politically correct form it gets transformed to be. With those 3, that "family" of card games should be complete.

Go Fish also had an update today - I had to put in Echelons of Fury into Quartet, so I decided to add the corresponding card to Go Fish as well. The Fury cardback isn't ideal, I got the box image from BGG and I superimposed on the Fire cardback, but I don't think the results are too obvious anyways, unless one looks at it with a magnifying glass (or the electronic equivilant), so I let it pass.

The forums had a minor update, and I also updated the BOT. I'm still amazed at the number of questions that get asked with typos and/or as single phrases where the answers could be anything. Well, maybe I should give 42 as the answer the next time.

I also played a few good games of LotR O today and had fun. Well, considering that I've spent a small fortune on it, I better have fun for quite some time. Haven't been motivated to build new decks, but I'm working on a good monoculture deck. No news from decipher if they the RotK Anthologies is being released on schedule. I do need to make an order from cardhaus soon and I'm waiting for that to get into stock before I make the order.

Didn't get to talk to Mike Nickoloff today. I think he's probably scared of me. Oh well. Didn't work on Portable Adventures as well, although I'm thinking I should sometime this week. However I think I'll work on Hamlet first, because that really should get some stuff done.

I sent Bug the Iron Maiden images - whatever that's done for playtesting anyways and the Firestorm text. I wonder if he'll have time to work on the images for some sort of playtest on the engine. That would be nice. I might have to see to it at some point when I'm even more fired up for Portable Adventures than I am now.

I also asked Bug to make Abduction public. That game is so cool to be played with. I have no idea when he's going to do that but I hope it's soon.

And ideas? Did you know that there's something from the house of ideas on the engine?

-+@ I Can See You in the Evening @+-

So, I think this blogger thing is broken. Sure it saves all my blogs, but it doesn't seem to be able to display them... so I'm stuck on two days ago, I think.



Not much happened today really. I did up some MND customs for Tainted Glimpses, one of which is posted above and updated MND with new art for Brown Stuff. funk asked me to update a number of cards, most of which he considered underpowered, and most of which I threw out. Why do people what to up the power levels of the cards? It only closes the door to future design possibilities which is not a good thing.

While I'm on MND, I did talk to Liesik about his new job, well, the subject of his new job anyways. He's pretty much up to date about which sets are legal for which format... I guess he has to be since he's directing it now... oh and the game? Pokemon :)

Pestered Mike Nickoloff some more today. I think he's beginning to regret talking to me. Well, I still have to finish up Portable Adventures for him though. Hmm...

Got my "free" montly LotR O boosters today. Didn't get much in them except for one rare that is borderline good. I wonder if I can trade it for something I need.

I don't think I mentioned that I got my ebay Scooby Doo cards yesterday. That was fun. Now I just have to find about 10 more of the super/ultra/very rares and I'll have a full set of Aliens Too. I wonder if it'll be worth it to adapt it for the engine.

And talking about Aliens, you should go try them out on the engine. No, not the vs Predator kind, but the Daemon kind.

-+@ Main Street USA. Boarded Up @+-

Talked with Mike again today and teased him about various other stuff, but only because he said I was "involved in the industry", whatever that means. I won't consider myself being "involved" much, but Oh well. Oh and yeah, I know, I know, I have to work on Portable Adventures one of these days.

Played some LotR again today and went up against my first dunlending minions. Lots of rares, but either he had a sucky minion draw or his minions aren't so good because I had no problem running them down. Sure, they took out Legolas early on (Yay! Good Riddance!), but I had my support cards out by site 5 and I was recurring the So Fair So Good every turn after that so all those not-so-big guys were being overwhelmed easy. Nothing like using 3 wimpy strength 3 Hobbits to kill off a swarm or three. He even dropped Enquea after site 6, but with 4 vitality on my unwounded hobbits (they have to be unwounded to take advantage of Everyone Knows) he couldn't even capitalise on the threats that I had, which was 3 at that point. Is it me or are LotR decks getting very predictable?

I wonder though where are all the "Johnny" players in LotR... I was told that two of the key cards in my deck are being X'ed or banned. By themselves they do nothing. Combined though together with the cards I have and they form part of the Hobbit chain reaction as I have named it - playing a card triggers off a number of cards which in turn trigger off more cards, which makes it rather deadly, but not broken, in the end. I even incorporated the Hobbit Hospital into that chain reaction, which is reward in and of itself for me. Yes, I'm a "Johnny" player, my take on CCGs is like my take on Lego - to make the interaction of the parts greater than the sum of the whole.

Talked with Martin about Johnny vs Spike and LotR vs CoC. It was an interesting conversation. I think we are all maturing now, as we move into the realm of card design - I'm currently involved with the MND customs and (not so much) the Babylon 5 customs and he's got a few Doomtown customs on his plate, so hopefully the insights that we bring into card design will help each other in the long run.

Run? Pass? Foul? Iron!

-+@ They Paved Paradise and Put Up A Parking Lot @+-

So, I updated the images for Pygmy Balamant (which inspired me to choose that title... If you get bored, you should see if you can name the songs my last 10 or so titles have been from ...), Festive Furok and Reclaim for MND. Reclaim though, marks the last card for Elder's Legacy. I can't believe all 50 cards are up ... I wonder though if anyone uses them. Still, I don't suppose I can complain... next up, the remaining 8 of the Shadowsfall Promo magi which is going to prove even harder to get images for than the ones I got for EL. I might do a Wawek... maybe...

Had a wicked idea for a solitaire CCG on gEngine, but I'll need to develop the idea some before I get it anywhere. We'll see what happens. My other 2 original games are on the slow burner at the moment - Advantage is still very much undeveloped at the moment... and I'm much too unmotivated to work on Workshop, mostly because the mechanics aren't as good as I want it to be. We'll see what I come up with.

Veretax/Feret IM'ed me earlier today to ... I don't know... gloat maybe? about what WotC did. He was very distracted as usual, which is why I removed him from my IM list a while back and he didn't made himself rather clear what he meant about the things he said. Ah well. Some Americans are weird...

Some people have posted that they can't believe how fast VTES is progressing. Well, truth be told, Martin was working on it for more than a month before the announcement, and that may be one reason why. There maybe other reasons though. However, Martin seems to be really fired up about it and is running on all cylinders on the project. I wish I had his energy for my games... especially for Portable Adventures in particular - there's so many things I want to do for that game.

Oh and B5 might need an update soonish. The Vorlons have put in quite a few nice cards, but it's upped the power level some, and I don't know how that would affect the game. Add to that though the fact that Bruce intends to rewrite the rules... and there's already been some friction on it so far... I just hope things are smoothed out soon.

Are those the only 3 games that I'm focusing on? MND, B5 and portable adventures? That seems like it for the moment, although I should find that second win to redo Quartet and make it available at some point.

Talking about availability, Crypt seems to be nearing completion soon. A certain Mr. Graves must be coding non-stop on it or so it seems. That's one game I look forward to be added to the engine, if only because of the fact that it has so many new methods in there to "borrow" from. Learn from the triumvirate as I say.

Heh, I suppose I should explain the triumvirate at some point so it might as well be now. The triumvirate are the almost elitist trio of CCG Workshop ghosts who creates the most innovative games for the engine. They are sort of the Elders for the PLs and a three-man R&D department. Some days, even BugLaden gets coding advice from them. One of these days I'll explain about the LotR references in there...

And I didn't play that much LotR today... not very motivated to play since I'm out of fresh commons/uncommon Johnny ideas. I seem to be making a lot more friends than enemies there, and I think that's a good thing. Then again, not many people are threathened by this newbie, although I find my comboes being copied around now... or at least some of the more innovative moves... like the perpetual lose initiative/gain initiative move with play a tale, draw a card with red book.

Oh and red books... that reminds me... to go check something out... see if you can spot what I'm going to check on the engine. Adios

-+@ Baby I'm ready to dig in, ready for more than skin on skin @+-

Happy!

I've almost hit the 100k mark for Pineland, after rejuvenating Sawkerchee that is. There is a minor League and a major League stadium next to each other and down the road from that is some weird part of Hollywood. I finally discovered how to make one way onramps onto the highway, and the heart of the city has been now zoned for high density. All the large spaces have been occupied though and there are still small plots of land here and there that would be converted to residential areas soon. Traffic is still a nightmare to handle, but I've convinced my Sims to use the subway - one of my most favourite things to do... I'll lay line after line of subway without a second thought about the expenses or the cost... of course, the city now has almost 10 mil worth of funds for me to play with, so it doesn't really matter how much I lose :)

And I didn't lose too badly in my LotR games today. Quite a few people using Galadrial RB and my Besiegers had a tougher time than usual, particularly agains Elf/Archery FPs. I'm quite happy with both sides of that deck though - Hobbit Tales and Sauron Besiegers. Next up will be to reuse the first deck - Hobbit Pump and Uruk Hais - with the tricks I picked up from playing Besiegers. Might be fun.

Fun is also the keyword for the ability to play around with the forum controls. Removed the first 2 forums... and did a few more cleaning up and preparation for future happenings. Well, the thing is, eventhough the forums look half dead, there's actually quite a bit of life in there, particularly on the coding side of things which is hidden from most everyone else. I just wish the Tavern could be a little bit more... alive with some Buzz.

And talking of Taverns, I taught two new people - shrike and mental - Portable Adventures today. It was an impromptu tour and we played Lair of the Rat King. They seemed to like it. The interface still feels a bit klunky - I wish I could do legality checking, but that would mean I need to put in the turn order stuff... which I am suppose to do soonish. Shrike won the game... only because the game was going on for ages and mental keeps on making weird undos and I sort of threw the game. But it was fun... in its own way. It's a pity we didn't get to switch decks to play 8th Grade.

Taking about switching decks, I got the "in development" cards from Mike yesterday and I was looking at them today, well, only Iron Maiden. I haven't downloaded Firestorm (the portable adventure expansion, not the CCG) yet. Some of them are actually rather nice. When will I add them... urm... well, I have the excuse that they cards aren't finalised yet. But it'd be nice to play with something new for a change and I've got to download Firestorm soon.

Oh and I'm seriously considering if I should adapt Firestorm. Mike is nice to work with and gives quite a few goodies when working on his games. I know, it's sad, but he's sold me onto his games. Hopefully we can get more mileage ouf of those games after they are coded.

And since we are talking about mileage... how about a truck? You know you can't depend on your friend, Drew's truck, forever, ya'know?

-+@ Ain't Nobody Gonna Say Goodbye @+-

I finally made contact with Mike Nickoloff today - yes, that Mike Nickoloff. He was a rather nice guy to talk to as well. I must have come across to him like a bumbling teenager though. He offered me his place in Santa Monica to crash at if I ever head over to LA and offered to send me some Firestorm cards. I wonder if money grows on trees for him or something. Have I mentioned that he's really really nice?

I cleaned up the forums some more today and updated the plates post for the PLs. I was more in the mood for general housekeeping rather than coding today, although I did update Go Fish. I hope I didn't break anything in there though.

I got my box of Tempest of the Gods boosters today. The cards are printed on really good quality cards. However the art isn't as good as it can be, which makes the overall quality of the cards a little bit below par. But for a 1995 game, I suppose it's good.

Popped back to my "old" message boards just on a whim - it's nice to know that I haven't been forgotten there. As usual, the 2 people who knows the deal invoke my name and the one mod answers. It's almost funny to watch them do that dance which gets repeated about every 6 months or so.

Just hanging around the LotR O trade room now and shooting the breeze with the peeps there. Nothing much happening otherwise.

And where will the winds take you today on the seven seas? Why don't you find out for yourself?

-+@ Cause No One is a Stranger @+-

Well, I had quite a few adventures in LotR O, but they can be found in one of the links to the right, so I won't repeat them here. It was fun though. Saw my first online foil set and it did absolutely nothing for me. I was like, OK, so it's all foil... so what?

Updated Go Fish today, but didn't do as much as I wanted to. It lead on to getting more cardbacks for the game which lead through a whole sequence of events... until... well, check out the CCG Workshop forums... I added in all the icons on the left and made a few new forums while I was at it.

And there really is more, but I'm tired and I think the bed is calling out my name...

And before I go, if you want a bed of roses, you might be able to find it on the moon :)

-+@ And I am a Deeper Shade of Blue @+-

Blue is good - from the ice blue of the landscape after a night of snowfall and the soothing blue of a clear summer sky to the calming blue of the ocean and the deepest aquamarine, blue speaks to me of large wide expenses, of calming inner peace, of things in motion, yet forever remaining the same. Blue is good... unless you're green, of course, then green is good.

I joined my first draft today... and did terribly. I didn't even draft enough cards to make a proper deck. Oh well.

I worked on Borders and Go Fish today to make them the first update of the week. Borders got a minor upgrade while I was at it, while I thought about doing some tweaks to Go Fish, but decided I wanted to game a bit, so I left it off.

Played quite a lot of LotR O today. My Besiegers took out an Elves FP... by a complete surprised at site 9. I was being decked and I knew it - those elves are nasty. I doubled to site 8 while he was on site 7, then he doubled to site 9. Killed 2 Elves at 8, but didn't have enough to kill off everyone at 9... and reconciled to only 4 cards for site 9 sinced I was decked. I am still amazed that someone could deck my 90 cards deck. Anyways, his Galadriel RB had 4 wounds, with Gil-Galad at 3 wounds, the pesky unwounded Aegnor with the peach fuzz and an exhausted Arwen. I dropped three Besiegers and then played the last card in my hand - Terrible As the Dawn. And I won. Much to my amazement. Winning with the last card in hand/deck. Wow.

And if you don't want to be blue, why not go Dune buggying in the desert sometime? Just beware of huge worms and funny people with fake Finnish names.

-+@ Puff, the Magic Dragon @+-

The shoe has finally fallen (and no, I haven't been puffing on anything magic) and 9 games have been axed from the roster. This is the largest culling. The last culling only removed a couple of games, but not this much. Well, different people seem to be reacting differently and it's almost interesting to gauge their reactions.

And two people have noticed that my name is blue on the forums... someone even said that it must be really cold where I am... although I just think maybe they are just green with envy. But as Kermit the Frog sings it... it's good to be green.

I sort of played 2 B5 games today, but since my ISP has been sucking, I never got to finish either. I built a swarm NA deck which swarms rather well... but does nothing interesting. I've got to find a way to make that deck win.

I taught Spirit how to play PAD today, so hopefully, he'd be teaching that soon to the general populace. He disconnected halfway through his tour today, and was rather apologetic afterwards. Apparently some DUI guy ran into some cable and decapitated his passenger... yes, gory... and weird that Billy showed me the news item just as Spirit was talking to me about it... coincidences... probably.

Hung out in the Trading room of LotR O and shot the breeze with some of the 16 year olds... I wish the 16 year olds on CCGW could be this mature, but oh well... (and with YGO being removed, hopefully, the quality of players on gEngine would improve). Perhaps LotR is targetted at the more "mature" crowd and even the teenagers that play it try to act grown up. I think.

Oh, I got my paper LotR cards from Poland yesterday - these are the cards that I traded for 9 FastBreak cards. I just got an email today asking me if I would be willing to trade more FastBreak cards. Apparently, I'm like one of the few people, if not the only person that offers the card. And what is FastBreak, well, you best to try it out before it goes the way of Netrunner :)