-+@ Bound to its Fate @+-

There seems to be quite a number of people looking for Wildstorms Cards here. Sorry, I haven't started my Stormwatch custom expansion, but it'll be here sometime next year. At the moment I'm working on the custom MND cards for the custom set titled Tainted Glimpses, and some of the cards are posted below. If anyone wants to play either Wildstorms or MND, please click on the CCG Workshop links on the right for more details.

Well, first up, as promised, the 6 cards I did yesterday after the blog.




Artist credits left to right, top to bottom: Novelty, Werner, Holmberg, Werner, Katura and Holmberg/Werner. One of the most useful piece of artwork I've got is the Weave one. That has spawned all 3 of the 4 Weave custom cards in EL - Weave Path, Savannah Hyrenand Weave Homestead... as well as Weave bulb above and Tainted Blades below... and has provided the backgrounds for Wawek (EL) and Halla (TG, above). I don't think I can use it for anymore full art cards, but I'm sure I can use some of it for background art somewhere.

In case anyone is wondering about Cwm, it's going to be a poison creature. Now a cwm (as I understand it) is basically a lava tube - it's a geological term of some sort. Naming a flying creature that might seem a bit bizzare, but hey, every custom set done by me has to have some funny name with an actual meaning - that's how the cards Chimera, Charybdis Wellisk and Warrada, Simulacrum all got their names in EL.




And here are the last 6 of the Taint spells, Tainted Leaves was retouched today, Tainted Peaks was done yesterday. Artists, as usual left to right, top to bottom: Holmberg, Holmberg, Werner, Werner, Allan and Werner. Actually, the piece of Orothe art is probably the second most used art for cards - art was used for Algae Band and Aquatic Warlum in EL and Tainted Tide above. The image used for Tainted Peaks isn't actually a MND thing from 2i, but then again, neither is this custom card set. That image is obtained from one of his "Elemental" series of images which has been exhibited in art galleries in the midwest. Of course, it's also been published ... not as an artwork, but as part of MND's background on gEngine (as it was then) in page issue 68 of Scrye, February 2004. I guess it needs to be immortalised as a custom card now.

I haven't done any (new) cards today, but I might do some later. I'm keen to push past the 34 card mark - i.e. to have a third of the set ready to be adapted to the engine. Art though would be the hard part, but that's always the case.

And on a totally unrelated note, I think I'm coming into my own on LotR O. Some kid (OK, he's not technically a kid) actually gave me a Rare card for free, not because I'm "Novelty from CCG Workshop", but because I'm "Novelty, the guy on LotR O". What's even cooler is that I have got my first groupie... or stalker, or whatever you want to call it. Some guy with the handle of TripleJ has been observing all my games, though I have no idea why. I asked him about it but he avoided my question. I guess the idea of playing top level decks with a bunch of common and starter deck characters must really seem like a good allure to some, perhaps people like TripleJ. Who knows. Yes, I realied that I have avoided decks with rare characters (or even uncommon ones) for some weird reason. I have been picking up the commons and starters and have been wielding them to be a force to reckon with. Sorta cool actually. Built a Non-solo Smeagol deck today for the first time and wiped out a Ninja Gollum deck. That was cool, but only because that's the worse decktype against Smeagol. I'll have to try getting that deck paired up with Uruks +1, Morcs, Burdenating Naz and swarms.

I previously thought that there were only 2 ways to win in LotR - run to 9 or kill your opponent. I just realise that there is a third way - it has been there for quite some time, and I've seen the decktype, but never really thought about it as a different "way to win" until today when I built the decktype. It's overwhelming the ringbearer - a lot more difficult if it's Frodo, but the advantage of overwhelmnig with burdens is that Sam can't take over the ring. There seems to be 2 decktypes - the more popular Nazghul burdenating decks, wich uses Enduring Wraiths and the Witch King from Shadows, and what I built today, a new Orc shadows side whose focus is to add burdens to overwhelm the ring-bearer, but could also swarm and do beatdown depending on the draw. The burdenating part of the deck is the sneaky part as I found out today. I had a huge Beastly out and my opponent had his focus on it, so he didn't pay attention to the tiny stealthy burdenating orc who added a burden during regroup and won me the game. Rather cool. I shall have to think how I can make it more... efficient.

And whenever I start talking about Timmy, it seems things happen with him. He appeared in the chatroom today asking me how to convert excel to text. Well, the process I use to produce the result that could be used in the gML isn't that complex, but sadly, I wasn't around to answer his questions, so nope, no Hoth for anyone today. Oh well.

Ah, I hear my A Game of Thrones starter calling me for a game....