-+@ 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!