-+@ Product Endorsement @+-

Merry Christmas. I haven't posted pictures for a while so here's one of one of my favourite cards in Elder's Legacy:

Snowflake Crystals is one of the 4 Nar cards in Elder's Legacy and is the relic card of the set. It is one of the few counter relics, like Evu's Jellybeans and Chaos Sphere, but unlike either, it sits around after all the counters are used up. This is to enable cards that discard relics - and there is at least one in Nar to be able to make use of this card once its main usefulness is gone. Tainted Glimpses will add more functionality to this card. This is the first version of the card with text, done up for the upcoming Custom card website.

Since I'm on the topic of MND, the main forum for it - Insiider - has been hacked into and is showing some rather disturbing pictures of "terrorists". Urgh.

And sticking to the MND theme, I played 2 games of MND with Mikey Angel today with 2 different Paradwyn beatdown/dreamwarp decks. Won both games, but only because his deck needs a lot of tweaking. I guess it's my first MND game in ages.

While playing the game though, Brash, my LotR O friend from Canada asked me to play LotR with him. Had to turn him down, but I did tell him about gEngine. I think we've got one new happy player... and one who doesn't seem to want to play VTES! (On a side note, there were more MND players on the engine at one point than VTES players!) Here he is bubbling about it to me on AIM.

Locke Scythe: I actually am pretty happy about this
Locke Scythe: lol
Locke Scythe: like a excited child on christmas

Well, it is Christmas and all. He'll be playing Buffy I guess. It's always nice to tell someone about the engine and they get excited about it.

MND wasn't the only game I played on the engine today. I actually got someone (aka Ryan) to teach me how to play AvP. I'm rather surprised though at how interesting the game is, the only downer is that there are so many little details that one has to refer to outside of the cards. Besides that though, I can see where the Precedence influence shone through and I was very surprised to see the VS combat mechanics in there, although one should not be too surprised by that since the Precedence card designers were also the ones behind VS. Nevertheless, I just can't play a game and not tinker with it. Since this is a game I can tinker with... I added a few things, most of them trivial - setup now plays all the starting cards instead of drawing it to hand... and the counters and markers and dice are all available on setup now. There was a request to bump up the total number of players per game to 4, so I did that which probably earned me some goodwill from the AvP players. Some people are just so easy to please! The other major thing I did was to add a begin turn script that automated unrotating all cards and playing all locations. A few other minor tweaks made it into there, nothing major for this "light" game. I did think about doing automating phases similar to B5 (because face it, Precedence has this love for complicated phases as is apparent in the 3 games I've played so far - B5, WoT and AvP) - but since this game is "light" (think budget airlines and $1 stores), I'll leave it for sometime in future when it gets upgraded into the "normal" category of games.

Since we are talking about B5, I saw 2 players playing it today. They were using rather simple decks but were using the interface like pros, so I didn't intrude on their game. It's nice to see the game being played, even if it's only a 2-player game. I don't think they crashed, which was a good thing. There's so much more I want to do for that game, if only I have the time.

Ed and Kari have been portable adventuring the last few days. I'm glad that they enjoy the game. A complicated CCG gets tiresome sometimes with deckbuilding, card collecting and all that sort of jazz. Portable Adventures takes the shortcut on all that and provides an easy to digest pack, sort of like lunchables, but with all the favours and taste and it actually fills one up.

And we haven't had a licensed game announcement for a while. I think one of my games is going to be announced next but that might change. Meanwhile, with the launch of VTES I wonder if we'd be getting a 2nd White Wolf game to be licensed. I wonder if WW actually owns the rights to gToons. Probably not. The other WW game on the engine - Rage, which is unlicensed - has seen some play over the last week or so, which is welcomed.

And Rage brings me to JC and Le Tournoi. Apparently it's ready for beta, but I don't think Ed has opened it yet. Oh well. It's actually much better than Checkers was when that went beta, so kudos goes to JC for getting it to that stage. It'd be nice to see another boardgame on the engine, not to mention the first original boardgame there.

And as for Bowling... I was going to work on it today, but well, I ended up playing games instead. I think it's something that will only be done next year, unless I somehow find the time between now and the end of the year, which I doubt.

I was just thinking earlier that I'm gonna have to move Yukk, YNDT and Hamlet all to "Now Playing" status soon... probably next week sometime. YNDT still needs that move truck script, but otherwise all 3 of those games are as done as I'd like them to be. Elemental could still use the tidal wave lock and move script... which is a bit more complicated, and I don't think the engine is capable of handling it yet.

Talking about Elemental, vaporator - that's his handle, I have no idea what his real name is, although I do know he's from Italy - told me today he'd like to add AI to Elemental. That's great... or not. I don't want to go around and pick up the pieces after him if he wrecks Elemental. I did suggest to him that he should start with one of his own games... probably something like Chess or Backgammon. He seemed more happy with that idea. After that talk with hom though, I got the impression that all he wants to get out of this is some money, which means he needs to get his hands on a licensed game. Well, tough, he'd need to have done a game and maintained it for 6 months first before he can get his hand on a licensed game as per the rules that Ed laid down. Seriously though, I don't think anyone who codes games for CCG Workshop for money would be doing a favour to the game. Sure it might give them incentive to do things fast so that they get money, but after that, they can let their games rot and still get paid. I hope that doesn't come to pass.

And talking about money, I was surprised to see on the VTES forum someone suggesting that 15 free games is way too generous. I would have fallen off my chair when I saw that... if I was sitting on one. Well, maybe over the next few months it'd get reduced. Who knows? I did however give out Scrooge tips concerning tokens and how to save on them. Ghost of Christmas past, present and future, eat your heart out.

Well, time to get ready for the end of the month stuff. 2 games made public for starters, with the possibility of a third would mean I have quite a bit of work ahead of me.

And let me wish you and yours a very blessed Christmas, full of the joy of life, the love from friends and family and the peace in the assurance that hope is never far from the taking.