-+@ Habits of Home @+-

I just hate it when I spend about an hour typing out a blog and an error means it's not posted. Grrr.

I spent the whole weekend working on MND - finalising the cardlist for Tainted Glimpses for starters. It has 100 cards and there are 3 promos - one for EL and two for TG. There are two "subsets" of cards in TG, and the "tainted" cards are shown below.





That's just 6 of the 12 spells. Artist clockwise from top left: Goodman, Holmberg, Holmberg, Werner, Goodman/Werner, Goodman/Werner. The other subset are the 13 poison creatures. These two subsets together makes up more than a quarter of the set. The rest of the set is a nice jumble of cards though that hopefully would be able to spark interest in the community. Technomagus (Carl) did the Volcanic cards, Malovis (Mitch) did most of the Nar cards and Lord Pic (Mark) came up with most of the Paradwyn and Kybar Teeth cards. Lugan though had about a quarter of the card in the set and the remainder were done by myself.

Hunting down art for these cards isn't easy. I was all over the internet yesterday and today. ROMzombie and Holmberg's sites were some of the best, but I also did find Whyrl/Strom (Klynn's artist) page of artwork as well (see link on the left). For those cards that are a little more simpler, I guess I'll have to draw them at some point. I've posted Pineedle a while back. I did Heedle (a Lord Pic card) yesterday and that took me ages to draw... and it still doesn't look right. I guess me and drawing just aren't going to match. I'll post that card up when I have a few more cards drawn, but don't expect them to be really good... because they likely won't be (Pineedles was an exception).

I played my first War Block draft today on LotR Online and lost all my games. Shows how well I do in draft. I haven't been that hot in constructed as well. I guess I just need to learn how to play with the new cards properly and to make sure I know enough strategies to play the game. Still, I did win a Shadows booster since it's draft release weekend and it's +1 prize support this weekend.

I noticed that Checkers was available to the public yesterday... when it went public I have no idea, but yesterday is as good a day to record it as any. It also means that the at least one public game every anniversary record is maintained which is good.

Things seems slow to me on the engine though. I guess people are getting preoccupied with things like holidays and stuff. Nevertheless, Tomi has been busy plugging away at his games and with Doomtrooper getting all the interest, it must be fun for him. I just saw Martin (online) back from his holidays, and I know he's got two licensed games to deal with. He should be buried up to his ears with work for the engine. Mark is still working on Summer Camp slowly but gradually, and it seems he has 3 original games in tow. Wow. Talk about being productive. No ToJH or FZOO up public yet though. I thought those games were ready even before I started work on Checkers. I guess Ed hasn't got to them yet. I also haven't heard from JC since I sent him the "no frills" version of his board game that I coded. I wonder what happened to him. Maybe he's on holiday.

I know Ed has been busy with the engine, or at least I think he has been. He talks of ripping things out and that scares me a little since there is a tendency to break things that way. Well, I guess we just have to wait and see what he comes up with next.

And as for me... well, I somehow doubt I'll be able to keep up with my planned November schedule. I've already missed the Babylon 5 deadline since I have been working on MND this weekend. Hopefully I'd be up to scanning Hyborean Gates starting tomorrow... all 400 + cards. I have no motivation to do Bowling as well. It's an interesting game, but somehow I feel so worn out as if I've been run over by a tank and am flat like a mat on the floor. Maybe I need a break...