-+@ I've Seen this Before @+-

and it's not a CCG on the engine. One more clue to help people who's guessing.



Whoa, what's this?
Art Credits:
Sidar: Zastrow
Chuke: Zastrow
Auroc: Whyrl/Strom

Exodus Flight needs a few magi and here are three of them. The Shadow Paradwyn Magi Sidar, The Orothe Chef Chuke (Razorfin) and Blitz's character Blitz (but renamed Auroc for the custom cards). N'est ce pas?

What have I been up to? Asking Doug to use a spell checker on his Sailor Moon article, for one. He seems cheesed off by it though, and I wonder why the younger Americans can't seem to take constructive criticism. Oh well.

Spent a busy day yesterday since Endeavor went public. Yeah. I was rebuked that I had no faith in it going public. Erm... OK. Anyways, that means there was a whole host of things to do, from rearranging the forums and updating the plates posts. I hope everything was done properly though, it's not everyday that a game goes public.

I have no idea what everyone else is up to though. Probably getting on with their life. I did playtest Urland the other day after the blog, but one of the playtesters dropped out so the playtest was in vain. Still, I like how the new stuff is working, now all I need to do is to make sure that hotpoints work and I can automate a few more things there, including scoring.

I bought what looks like a CCG today... I have no idea yet because this is one that isn't made in the US. It's in English though... I'll show a scan if I have access to my scanner, which I don't. Almost $20 for a boxed starter of 42 cards and a d20. Hmm...

Also saw someone playing VS in a comic store today. It was blah... boring IMO. Still, I can see why the Magic and Deck Masters crowd would like that. It's even more structured than WS though and probably less broken. I wish them well.

Also played quite a bit of LotR today, I like it when I get to confuse people with my unorthodox deck. The tournament players are mostly unfazed, but the other players have to think more and it shows in their gameplay. Sometimes they make mistakes, which is funny. Ah well.

-+@ Witchcraft Made Easy @+-

I did say the titles from this month's CCG is fun. And no, this game isn't on the engine, which is why I guess nobody has got it yet.



Art Credits:
Lisan: Liam, with special effects by Nov
Velvet J'lith: Gray
Chard: Liam, with background by Allen
Those are the latest 3 cards for TW, and with them are all the cards I have artwork for that's made in TW. I made a run on two artists work which I have featured before and I found quite a bit of them. Liam was one of them and as evidence from the cards above, he's rather talented. Not quite Holmberg-esque, but I'll make do with what I can get. Lisan is a contraction of the file name that I made for the art - Liam's Sandy. The interesting thing is that Lisa's name is in there as well (Yeah, she sent me a MND cap and T-shirt, so I'm good with her). Velvet J'Lith is done by Samir Gray, recoloured for Core. I like how it looks there though. And Chard was an interesting choice of artwork for a KT magi, and I thought that it deserved a non-Holmberg background, so I got something that Dave Allen did and used it as the background. Overall three rather interesting cards for TW.

And all those cards can also be viewed now at the Custom Cards page. While I was updating that, I also updated the SP cards to reflect the post-playtesting, final version of those cards. It's interesting that each card has a one paragraph write-up, which was a bit weird to do for SP, since most of the cards are rather similar. Also posted about these on all 3 forums that I'm doing admin for...

And today someone accused me of doing either insufficient or incorrect advertising targetting at the MND players. I have no idea why I was the subject of such a vicious attack, but people think they can get "hundreds" of players to the engine by simply advertising. Well, good luck to them. I won't be adverse if they succeed in that as well, but I've done almost everything that I think I can in terms of low-cost advertising and I must say, I'm getting a slow trickle of players to the engine, but definately not the hundreds and thousands that supposedly could happen if I did it "properly" whatever that may be.

Those were the latest 2 ads that were created for Twilight War, both with art by Allison Strom (Whyrl). I like the one on the left because of how the clouds perpetuated in the rest of the image. I had to extend both images to allow me space for the text which wasn't too difficult, but I didn't know if I could pull it off aesthetically. I think the one on the left isn't too bad though.

The tournament is going fine. Three people have qualified now, the first time that anyone other than Mitch has qualified. It's interesting tough how tough the competition has been at the top. birdie (whatever her real name is) got a boost when I declared her the winner of KQ#4 - she still needs 2 more games to qualify, but it's good seeing that a female is contending at the top spots with the guys.

I actually have a playtest in about 15 mintus. Fun stuff and all. The game is Urland and I haven't yet had the opportunity to try out all the new stuff under game conditions. However, I doubt I'll get anyone around to playtest though, the engine seems a bit dead at this point in time.

I also need to do the plates post update in a bit, as there are quite a number of things that needs to get updated there. I should really do a Go Fish update as well, but I've already posted my monthly report, and I'm also rather busy with all the end of the month stuff anyways. Oh well, there's always next month. It's not as if it'll run away or something.

And other PLs? Mark is still feverishly trying to get Endeavor public before Origins. One more month to go and anything is possible I guess. I hope he gets it working too. Logan couldn't find his copy of Sheboygan, or so I was told, so that's not going up. Martin meanwhile is in the midst of working on VTES again as it will be going for closed public soon. Can't wait for that to happen. However, before that happens though, a new Engine has to be finished and made available. Hopefully the hotpoints stuff will be fixed there.

JC surprised us all with a new game hitting closed testing this week. As usual, the images were too large in my opinion, but there's only about two cards anyways, so I guess that doesn't really matter here. Still some optimisation could be useful for his images in general. Timmie has been busy in tandem with Christoph to get fan cards for SWD into play. It's good that the support for that is going so strong now, particularly since it's heavily played. Still, it seems to be highly buggy and poor Timmie probably have no idea why it's doing that. Robert has been promising his fan made expansion for a while now, but I doubt he's too keen to do it since it is a lot of work, and nobody seems to be playing anyways.

And the Junior PLs? Craig is still trying to get the China expansion for UC out I think, but he seems to be going a bit slow. Well, no big deal there, I guess. He does deserve a break after getting UC public, IMO. Gray has begun coding for GE. I wonder how he's doing generally. He seems to be playing more often than he's coding, but there's nothing wrong with that as well.

People who seemed to have gone missing include Kev, and Monkeys isn't beta yet - I hope it'll be ready for Origins and Tony, who seems to have nothing to do now - well, he did upgrade WoT quite a bit, but he hasn't been advertising it much, so it's dying down again.

~ Novelty's May Monthly Report ~

No new public game from me this month. Whoa! That's the longest I've ever gone I think. Quite a lot of other things happening this month... and yes, I'm a few days early, but since I know I won't be working much over the rest of the month, this is pretty much it.

Tournaments

The April MND Elder's Legacy tournament had 8 participants, although more signed up. Malovis was declared the undisputed winner. The May MND Elder's Legacy tournament is still ongoing and this is the first time that there has been a reduction in the number of players this month than last month. It is very likely that Malovis will also be the winner this month, although it's a bit close to call for now.


gNet BOT
The BOT is being cleared on a daily basis so that the questions are populated with answers ASAP. Nothing much to see there though.


Forums
The forum wasn't as busy as last month, but it still required quite a bit of work. Two new games means the requirement for two new forums, and the games that went public now has to be moved to the correct sections as opposed to the previous layout where they just sit there. I think this format is better than the last one, and the number of posts being made hasn't taken too drastic a hit... yet.


Games
Games were mostly for stopgap measures, the ones needing updates the most getting them, while those that could live with the older stuff will live on with them.

AVPVT Aliens vs Predator
A quick display fix for the game was made this month. The traffic on this "no frills" game still doesn't warrant the attention that other games should be getting.

ELEM Elemental

Elemental got tweaked a bit more in an attempt to figure out if hotspots can be the sweet spots. Unfortunately, the engine isn't mature enough for this yet. Oh well.

HALN HumAliens
Pet Enhancements and the non-Team Actions were added, thus bring to completion the entire New Orders expansion online. It is not possible to play some of those cards online yet, but since I have no idea what new mechanics are possible or not on the engine it's a bit difficult to add them. Playtests are definately required.

MND Magi-Nation Duel
All of the new fan-made expansion, Tainted Glimpses, was added to the engine this month for playtesting. Shadowsfall Promo went out of playtesting, and I took the opportunity to convert MND such that now it recognises "Novelty Format" instead of "Standard Format". A few more features were added, but these aren't too obtrusive so not many players would probably have noticed them, yet they make the game flow better. This is one of the top 3 games played on the engine after all and it needs constant attention.

URLND
Urland picked up a few things thanks to a playtest last month. Labels are gone so that the board look less cluttered. Volcanoes automatically go to the back so that Ichtos aren't blocked, and the panic chip is now automated... and the announcement has audio as well as visual.

YNDT You Need Drew's Truck
The remaining YNDT updates were added, automate truck moving, playing stuff to donuts. Auto placements had to be recalculated to take into account the different play area these days thanks to the new engine.

June 2005 Plans

I only did 4 of the 8things I said I'll do this month. Better than the 2 out of 6 from last month. I guess gone are the days when I can finish what I should be doing every month. I did predict that I'll be to falling behind even more in May, and I'll say that the same outlook will be carried over into June. Also to be carried over into June are the 4 unfinished tasks from this month.

Babylon 5 still needs to finally get the bold text in for all the cards. This will be a major upgrade for minor benefits.

Firestorm will need to get started this month. This is going to be huge.

Hyborian Gates needs to get spoiler-ified, cards needs to be clipped and processed for the engine this month.

MND Minor typo updates required on Shadowsfall, and various other updates for the TG playtest cards.

PAD Encounters automation should start with the first 3 cards this month.

Elemental needs to get things fix once Ed figures out what's wrong with the coding.

Bowling goes optional this month with the update to change the message slider to buttons.

New expansions for AVPVT (Terminator) and WSS1 (WSS2) are going optional this month as well.

The regular optional - Go Fish cardback updates will still be retained for the month.


So, games for this month not prioritized, nor with expected completion dates:

1. Automate some Portable Adventures encounters.
2. Babylon 5 Bold text.
3. Magi-Nation Duel - minor typo fixes.
4. Firestorm - spoiler and images
5. Hyborean Gates - spoiler and images.

O. Add Go Fish cardbacks when available.
O. Bowling - change dialog box to buttons.

O. Complete WSS2 cards for WSS1.

O. Add Terminator cards to AVPVT.

O. Elemental - complete hotspots and Tidal Wave automation.


Rest of the Year Plans

Aliens vs Predators and Terminator (AVPVT) - Add Atmosphere cards and create the Planetfall scenario. Add Terminator to the engine and create the 2 additional scenarios, as well as the Terminator scenario(s). Quite a bit of work here, but between Ravage and Ryan(Rekkon), I hope to get everything up and ready by the middle of next year.

Babylon 5 (B5) - 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.

Borders (BORD) - Game is fully functional. It should probably get promoted to Now Playing soon.

Bowling (BOWL) - More playtesting is needed for this game especially after the fix.

Checkers (CHECK) - This is another "no frills", "low-tech" game at the moment. It would probably get upgraded once I have the time, motivation and ideas, but for now it's playable and that would have to do. Hot spots and automation and AI is envisioned for the future.

Elemental (ELEM) - 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. Hotspots aren't working properly yet for Elemental.

FastBreak (FB) - 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.

Final Twilight (FTWIL) - A pay-and-play system and card attachments are also in the works. This game was originally intended to be "no-frills" but since it's probably getting licensed, it'll have to move beyond that.

Firestorm (FIRE) - New licensed game for me to do for 2005, it's going to be delayed to a December public release, or at least that's the plan, if I get all the cards.

Go Fish (GOFSH) - 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 undetermined at the moment, and it's not high priority. As usual, cardbacks will continually be added to this game.

Hamlet (HAMLT) - 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 (HALN) - Massive playtesting is required and the functionality for New Order cards needs to be added in. No plans for this at the moment.

Hyborian Gates (GATES) - Hopefully this will go public in June. It's going to be another "no frills", "low-tech" game though so it might lie fallow until someone with more enthusiasm and ideas comes along to take it over.

Magi-Nation Duel (MND) - 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.

Portable Adventures (PAD) - Encounters needs to be automated, and then there's quite a bit of work involved with the playtesting.

Quartet (QUART) - Playtesting was carried out this month and all issues were fixed. I think this is another game that can be promoted to Now Playing status. No further work required.

Reversi (RVRSI) - Since Tomi added the left-click functionality and upgraded the images, it's done and has been upgraded to "Now Playing". No work required.

Triple Triad (TRIAD) - Scanning has finished, but I have no idea when I'll have the time to code
this. There is also a rather good site to play it online anyways, so it might be moot to adapt it to the engine... but it'll make a good distraction for one the the months when I need a distraction. I only have cards 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 (URLND) - It could use some scoring automation at some point in the future as well as hotspots. Those will have to wait.

Wildstorms (WS) - There's the plan to add my custom StormWatch expansion sometime this year, probably in the second half of the year. Also the cards needs to be clipped and blanked. That will have to be done first.

Wildstorms Legends (WSLS) - This game is going into the queue after Firestorm, Hyborean Gates and Triple Triad. I guess that means it won't go public this year.

Wildstorm: Set 1 (WSS1) - 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. Schedule: June - October.

You Need Drew's Truck (YNDT) - The only thing to automate are the action cards. This would be possible, but a bit pointless. Nevertheless, it'd be fun to do if I can schedule in the time. Sounds would be a good addition too.

Yukk (YUKK) - This game feels rather low tech, but it works well. I think I'll leave it as it is.

I have way too many games on my plate. No new game announcements from me for a while.


Rest of 2005 Plans
July - HGATE, FIRE, WSS1
August - HGATE, FIRE, WS (clipping)
September - FIRE, WS (clipping)

October - FIRE, TRIAD, WS (Stormwatch)
November - Finish up everything outstanding

December - One month break from coding

High Priority:
* Automate Encounters in Portable Adventures
* Make Hyborian Gates beta

Medium Priority:
* Firestorm
* Add bold text to B5 cards

In between Medium and Low Priority:
* Add Terminator to AvPvT

* YNDT action automations

* B5 replacement

* HumAliens playtesting

* Automate scoring in Urland, add hotspots
* Add AI to Bowling

Low Priority:

* Final Twilight automations
* Triple Triad
* WS Legends
* WSS2 expansion for WSS1
* Stormwatch expansion for WS
* Atmosphere for AvP

* Checkers automation
* Crab to Go Fish

No Priority:
* Tempest of the Gods
* Armageddon

-+@ The Big Top @+-

with the emphasis on the big.



Art Credits:
Jodst by urm... someone and colours by Scott
Nejza by Zastrow, background by Holmberg
Brynn by Zastrow
More TW cards, 3 magi this time. Jodst stands for Justin (not Zastrow) Orothe Darius Stephan and Tom, the members of the Magi Project and the region that they were going to start off with. Well, the Magi Project survives, if only in TW. The other 2 cards are by Justin. Nejza has his initials in the name, but you'll have to guess who the other people are. Brynn was named by Justin himself.

I actually sorted out the cards for TW today as well. KT is now complete with 8 cards, but half of those doesn't yet have images. I'll have to create them from scratch. Weave needs 5 more cards. Also ballooned up the d'Resh and Nar cards in TW - I think Nar needs 2 more and d'Resh 3 more. None of them have images though, I just browsed the unused ideas leftover from TG and incorporated them into the set. Artwise, it'll probably be photoshopped images from the old cards. Oh well. I'll have to do those over the next few days since I'm fresh out of TW images for the blog.

Today was a crazy day. I almost forgot I had 2 playtest on the engine. The Quartet playtest was good - found a few bugs, but they weren't showstoppers. Finished the game though and that's good. The funny thing is that there seems to be some sort of data drop for the 2 Europeans in my game. Oh well.

The YNDT playtest was a non-starter though. Not only did it report the wrong size for me, but it also did a weird number with the code. I can either rewrite everything again or get Ed to fix his code. I'm hoping for the latter. This affects not just YNDT but every game that uses those method to determine screensize, which is most of my games. *insert big sigh* Hence the title of today's blog. (BTW, it's day 20 and Martin hasn't guessed the CCG yet. He'll probably tell me it wasn't sold in France.)

Ultimate Combat went public today. Which means I had to do a large number of stuff - like move forums, check that the rules are there, ensure the game page is ready, etc. I edited the page slighty... well, more like formatted it rather, and updated the master plates post here on my harddrive as well. It'll go up at the end of the month onto the plates page.

Otherwise things are quiet. Mark is doing heavy duty coding of Endeavor to get it ready in 6 weeks time. Martin is finishing off Doomtown and is moving onto VTES. I must say I'm pleased with the Doomtown adaptation although I hope there's nothing broken with it. I wonder if Logan will surprise us with Sheboygan again, the same way he surprised us with Black Box. Who knows?

-+@ Chinese Zombies @+-

specially for Mark!



Well, there was something that I wanted to do for Urland that I didn't get to do it the last time I hand my head stuck into the code there. So a quick fix today, and it's done. What did I do? Simply automated the drawing of the Panic chip announcement. Now one can't cheat when the panic chip is drawn because it declares it to everyone (I hope). It needs to be playtested though. And the blog proves to me how important things are. While browsing through to get the cards for the 3 above, I realised that they weren't showing up on the engine, and had to make a quick fix on it. They are good now. Oh, as usual, the printed cards has really bad English translations from the original German.

I spent quite a bit of today culling MND images - got a few more Whyrl (Alison Strom) ones, including one that Mitch liked. I have also decided what's coming up after KQ - a promo set called "Double Jeopardy" and I can assure you that Alex Trabec won't be in the set that's for sure. Also did up the current scoring table for the tournament - 2 people have qualified, which is 1 more than last time, so that's a good thing.

The second of the Twilight War ads have gone up on the engine. I'm rather pleased with the TW ads - Distract garnered quite a bit of Wow-age when it was revealed and I think Doll (above) will be used for the campaign next month as well. Made two more today just for the fun of it. TW ads are fun to make, and since I'm in the midst of TW cards, I'm having fun with everything. I'll preview those next week, maybe.

Martin finished up Doomtown today, which is good. I finally get automated upkeep, among other things. I'm surprised at how much work has gone into the game. Hopefully the players will appreciate it as well. We need an online tournament of sorts for that. It's a pity that there aren't many Doomtown players who are willing to undertake such. Time to advertise about the new Doomtown and the new Pillar of Salt fan-made custom expansion, which has gone online.

And as to today's blog title, it's in reference to Mark's new game, Endeavor. It went onto the engine for private testing yesterday and Mark is semi-taunting me that ti will be on before Origins. I hope it will be so. It would be interesting to see more game online before Origins.

The Junior PLs have been rather quiet though. Timmie has been the only one that has made any waves by assuring that custom fan-made cards will be made for SWD. It's nice to see what started off with WS and SR is now being extended to other games.

Someone expressed interest in taking over Buffy today. I wonder if he's actually interested in the game, or if all he wants are free tokens to play his favourite game. Either way, it's up to Ed to decide what to do. His usual MO has been to wait for a couple of months or so and then revert back to them. If they are persistant enough and if they are still around, then they are offered the position. I wonder if it is designed to reward someone who's persistant.

Tony missed his WoT tour yesterday. Shameful really. I just deleted him from that slot. The 2 remaining shepherds are still "doing the rounds" religiously - I guess they just want to hold on to their unlimited supply of tokens. It's hard work, but I don't pity them. Compared to coding, what they do is a walk in the park.

Oooh, and I just remembered that Ed asked me to update the screenshots for Quartet. Blegh. That means I have to play a game with someone again to get a screenshot. I wonder who I can sucker into it. Oh well, maybe I should just offer some tokens for people who wish to play.

-+@ Ok wise guy, lets see you do that again @+-

I haven't had so much fun and laughing choosing a title for my blog for a long time. Just in case Martin is still guessing, this card has a base set and an additional expansion set and the rarities are Common, Uncommon, Rare, SuperRare, UltraRare and Promo.



Art Credit:
Solar Charge: Werner/Gillette
Guarded Entrance: Zastrow
Core Jile: Hicks, with background by Holmberg
These are Twilight War cards and I really should be getting on and making more of them, but I really haven't got the interest. Solar Charge is another Solar card for Relaura, Guarded Entrance uses the full artwork that Justin did for Rock Balamant in EL. You can tell I'm reusing the image. Core Jile was submitted by Robert Hicks as "Baby Jile" with the instruction"do whatever you want with it". Well, it was a bit misshapen, so I made it Core. I think I need to slow down TW and get TG playtested in the interim.

Talking about TG playtesting, I made a realy bad stalker's deck today. I don't know why, but I can never make good stalker only decks. I guess stalkers just isn't my style of play. Played Bert with his anti-creature Core deck and had most of my stalkers stolen. Oh well, live and learn. I don't suppose stalkers will be key until something like Weave Seed is made for them, which is why I'm not making a Weave Seed for stalkers - it's over-reliance on one card. I made a few minor tweaks after the playtesting though.

The big news is that VTES has finally started accepting beta players officially. It's being done thruogh WW's site so that means we don't get to admin squat - which is good! Let them do the work! Some days I feel so swamped with all the goings on on CCGW... like at the moment, I'm trying to help this poor Polish player to get his credit card accepted by the website.

Other news... yeah right! Mondays are always quiet and so I barely get much done in my Tuesday blogs. Tomorrow though, Urland gets an update for the panic chip! And on Friday, YNDT goes for a playtest spin.

-+@ Evil Teddy Bear @+-

I can't believe a CCG could have such a card...



Well, those aren't MND cards. Those are in fact the badly translated English version of the German board game Urland. I updated the game on the engine today with the playtesting suggestions from a month ago. Now for more playtesting to see if those new stuff are acceptable. Next up, adding the siren when the Panic chip is drawn and automating it entirely. Seems fun. Then further down the road when Ed fixes up a few things, the scoring can get automated and associated stuff can be done with that. Good stuff.

MND has been quiet. There seems to be a whole new group of players these days, rather distinct from the group that was around at the beginning of the year. The tournament is still going, but slowly and KQ#4 has been getting hits but little interest otherwise. Well, I think MND is about to do its usual die over summer trick again. Oh well, not much I can do there to stop that.

I just realised that Babylon 5 and Portable Adventures are featured this week. Quite a few people are trying to play those games. Babylon 5 works beautifully and there shouldn't be much complaints from the peanut gallery, with the usual exception of the engine's stability of course. Portable Adventures, works, barely. The problem is that the increased automation decrease the game stability. Hopefully the players will continue to post defects if and when they find those.

Black Box went public the same time that Summer Camp did - something which I missed earlier yesterday, so I had to scramble to put up all the good bits about it - FPN, WGO and plates update. I also showed Logan where he should be adding the game rules as well. He and Mark was moaning about not having a checklist for what to do when a game goes beta so I created one for them in the forums. Hopefully I have everything covered.

Also did a middle of the month plates post update in the forums. It was crazy since there was so many things to change, but I think I pretty much got it all. I've started a "Prediction of the number of games available to the public during Origins." My original guesstimate from a month or so ago had it at 70. I have had to up ti to 72 now, since there's 69 games public and the possibility of at least 3 more - Monkeys, UC and VTES - going public before then.

Ed was actually rather busy last night his time, fixing up a number of webpage defects while adding more power to the PLs. We now get to see a list of ads linked to the engine and are allowed to delete them.

Eric is working hard on Cyberpunk, and that's a game that's not even in the bag yet. He's trying hard to get it up and running first to attract attention though so hopefully things will be good. It'll be his first game since 2003 when he last adapted Judge Dredd to the engine.

Christoph and Timmie between them have got the PC set #9 out for SWD a day after those cards were finalised. They are getting good at releasing cards. They seem to also keep the playing pool happy as there are still a large number of people who have purchased passes to play the game. I guess they must be on the way to making SWD the best adaptation online.

I had a look at Knight of the Zodiacs last night which seems to have good art. I doubt the game play is good since it seems to have disappeared off the face of the earh. Poor Bandai, they can't seem to hold onto a good game market. Talking about Bandai, Decipher has decided to terminate Megaman and .hack, probably due to poor sales. I wonder if those properties revert to Bandai. WARS is also "put on hiatus", whatever that means, so that leaves Decipher with STCCG and LotR. Coincindentally those are the 2 games that Decipher has online as well.

-+@ We Might Ask You the Same Question. @+-

It's the middle of the month... someone must have an idea now of which CCG the titles are from...



Art Credits:
Riding to Battle: Werner, Background by Holmberg
Hyren's Spell: Whyrl/Strom
Zusah: Whyrl/Strom
That's three more from TW, and if I keep that up, I'll only have enough made so far for 2 more posts, which is sad. I need to start making a few more perhaps, and KT and Weave are next in line. Having said that, the above three were made months ago - Riding to battle makes use of an image that has oft been seen, but never on a card. It gets the War treatment here. The other 2 cards are the usual run of the mill Whyrl images, made into cards.

The MND tournament is going slowly this month, and I have no idea if it's because it's the last one of its kind or some other reason. This is despite the fact that the deck building rules are the simplest so far in the tournament. I guess people have just run out of tokens or have been chased away by the uber decks that has been showing up in previous tournaments.

I made 3 more eXodus cards today - those are posted at the usual places; Insiider and MND at CCGW blog. Nothing exciting there, but at least one of those cards will make it into Exodus Flight. Also made an ad for the engine, but, I'll premier that maybe next week.

Talking about ads, I updated the FPN and the WGO with the Rage and Summer Camp news today. It's exciting to see that the Rage tournament is finally going ahead, and the prizes seems spectacular - first prize is going to get a Rage custom art of some sort, which tokens are being distributed to the winners. It's a competition that's spread over the weekend and then some so hopefully, that'll catch most of the players.

Summer Camp going beta means that I have to update my records for that. That means that SJ has got 2 games public two months in a row. He's really getting things ready for Origins. I see people are already picking it up. Hopefully, it'll get some play. Poor Kev is still fixing up Monkeys. I guess he's probably ready to pull out all his hair by now. It was supposed to be ready months ago, but even Mark has surpassed him by putting out two games in the interim.

And new games means new game pages. I had a quick look at the Summer Camp Game page and realised that the image link from there was broken. What started off as a quick fix to one page ended up being a check for all the other pages for the image and the forum links. Fixed a number of those which were still pointing to the old server, but a number more has got incorrect links in the database which only Ed can fix.

Talking about Ed, he was around yesterday, as he obviously made Summer Camp public. A few of the web pages were also updated as a consequence. Also getting an update was Black Box's icon in the engine. It's good to finally see that for a change. Logan also did up his game page properly, which was a good thing, because I would have no idea where to get the infomation for that. I had to make the game pages for Power Cardz and Hyborean Gates though today. Nothing exciting there, but at least they were CCGs and I know where to get those info from.

And from there it's only a hop, skip and jump (aka one link) to the BOT pages. Tomi did a good job on them a while back and there are quite a lot of useful infomation there. I answered all the questions as best as I can, although about half of which is still junk and not game related. The thing abuot that BOT is that it's reactive and not proactive. It's a mixed blessing - it would give less work to the PLs over time, but over the initial period, it's consuming more time than it's supposed to be saving. Someone should be given overall charge to that, but heh, I doubt that will happen soon since nobody will be paid to do it.

Tomi updated Mythos today. I have no idea what he did, but according to him, it made things a bit more stable. I helped him test things out and it worked fine for me. Then again, it's always worked OK for me. Alex is the one that gets kicked on the backside with all the Mythos problems. Well, hopefully things will go more stable for him now.

Timmie made a SWD image update today, but he seems to have problems accessing the new server. I wonder if he even realises that there's a new server. He's been keeping himself pretty much out of the loop though, and couldn't really care too much about the other things that seems to go over his head. Oh well. At least he's updating Star Wars.

-+@ Monkeys are Funny @+-

Only because that is such a funny title.



Art Credits:
Snowball by Werner/Gillette/Holmberg
Stinz by Zastrow
Solar Xyx by Whyrl/Strom
All 3 cards are for TW of course. The snowball was a curious choice as I haven't seen a card with that art yet. I wonder what it's for. Justin got named on his card just like Darius got named on two cards. I wonder what he'll say. And of course, every fan made set has had a Xyx and this one won't be an exception. Solar will actually help out Relaura as well hopefully, and the Whyrl artwork is actually my first modified Whyrl.

Well, I made 5 eXodus cards today, the results of which can be seen at Insiider or the MND at CCGW blog. Four of those are going to make it into EF, and the fifth is already used up for TG. Also made three TW cards to complete the Core subset. Now onto the KT and Weave parts, and I think KT needs 4 more while Weave needs 5 more. Shouldn't be too difficult, but it's not going to be easy either.

Martin told me today that Doomtown upkeep is coming along. I think he's going to automate the whole thing, which isn't an easy thing to do, but then again, that is his first game and I guess he's going to make it his signature game again, which is good. At least he's not showing favouritism between it and VTES.

Mark has decided that he's debugged enough of Summer Camp and it'll be ready for beta release later today or tomorrow. Well, unless something crops up I guess. So that would be the first beta game in... oh, about 3 months I think, the longest drought for a long long time. Well, game adaptation seems to go slower and slower as the engine matures, mostly because of the large amount of things that can be done these days. The first few games were simple draw card - play card affair. The latest games have all the automations you can shake a stick at.

Everyone seems to have fallen in love with Anachornism. Apparently one of the MND designers has his name in the credits as well. Hmm... it's supposedly unbalanced, but then the same can be said about most games with multiple regions. Oh well.

While I'm on non-CCGW CCGs, I spent most of today reading up on Bloodlines, the next LotR expansion scheduled for July. Apparently, there's a new type of card called follower, which most people think are a cross between allies and conditions, or like the follower card of L5R. Who knows. I'm more interested that there is going to be a non-RB Frodo. I wonder how much twilight he'll cost.

-+@ Great, now we know the ghost drives a truck @+-

Only because I did a YNDT update today.



Art Credits
Eerie Path: Bozyk
Curious Fird: Holmberg
Hot Stuff: Whyrl/Nov
These 3 are from TW. I'm queueing up the TW cards in such a way that I'm previewing them in the order that they were made, or about as close to that anyways. I made 3 more TW cards and put them into the queue so they should be revealed at some point in the future. That means TW has 54 cards done, with art that is. That's over the halfway point which is a good thing. The bad thing is that from this point onwards, it'll be tough going getting artwork for TW. Oh well.

Also did 3 magi for EF. Those are in the queue as well, so it might be a while before they get shown. I really do like all 3 magi though. Who are they? Well, I'm going to post one of them up somewhere... maybe.

I actually spent about 3 hours today adding automation into YNDT. The game suffered from being an old game. At the time it was adapted, it was probably one of the games that were at the forefront of the technology. That was almost two years ago. Now it's just a lowly old dog. I gave the old dog new tricks though. The automated setup that was done last month and the play direct to the board that was added today should cut down playing time some (but not thinking time). The actions aren't automated yet, and I'm sure Ed will ask me to automate them at some point. I'll get to them when I get the time I guess.

Talking about Ed, I haven't seen him for about 2 days now. I wonder what he's up to. Probably a surprise of some sort that will culminate in some good news for the Workshop? Maybe, but most probably not. I'll keep my eyes peeled for an announcement.

Mark told me today that Summer Camp needs one fix and then it should be ready for public release. So that's the first game to go public since I made my prediction that there'll be at least 3 more games going public before now and Origins. We'll just have to see which game will be the first to cross that line.

Apparently Alex had problems with his tours again. He always seems to find all these small things here and there, which is good, but some days, it drives people crazy. I'm glad I'm not coding Mythos, although I do pity Tomi. But then he probably enjoys it.

Martin is still pushing hard on Doomtown, with Pillar of Salt and a couple of random cards thrown in, with automated upkeep and stuff. Things looks exciting for the game and I can't wait to play it. There also seems to be a huge group of people playing it these days. Sorta a good sign for the game I guess.

The doomtrooper tournament is still going on and there seems to be a large number of people still playing. I have no idea how successful the games are, but at least the complaints about the game being buggy has ceased. Then again, those people who complained the loudest haven't been playing much these days.

Talking about tournaments, I have got a Sandwich Shop one coming up next weekend, I think. I better get ready for it soonish, I need to add a few deck building rules to make things interesting. Let's see what happens next week...

Other things to do next week would be Urland and Babylon 5 and if I feel up to it Hyborean Gates, unless I get the Firestorm images by then. I've also got a YNDT playtesting session for next week (made a new YNDT ad too) and I think once Urland gets the update, a playtesting session is in order for it as well. Busy, busy, busy...

-+@ Tubs of Dry Ice @+-

only because the TW Nar and d'Resh cards were added to gEngine. Get it? Dry and ice?



Artists:
Reality Check: Zastrow
Furnace's Heart: Gillette/Shreve
Tainted Snow: Gillette/Werner
Reality Check is the only new image here, the other two are cards with the images redone. All 3 are from TG. Justin's style isn't exactly MND, but he is a big MND fan, so I guess that should count for something. This isn't Justin's first work in the set - the Bograth magi Luglee, the alternate K'gyn and the background from Urok's Skullcap are among some of the cards he's done for this set.

As I said earlier, Nar and d'Resh have now been added to the engine for playtesting, which means that all 100 TG cards and the 4 associated promos are all on the engine for playtesting. I'm glad that's over, I don't intend to repeat that ever again, which is why TW is going a very different route.

Talking about TW, I did an ad for it yesterday and it got quite some response. It's nice to know people take notice of the ads. Then again, I made sure the ad was eye catching. It's the one above. I wonder how many MND people have discovered this blog yet. I haven't even been advertising it because I don't really want too many people to ask too many weird questions, as I'm sure most of them will. This is like one of the few places I post up all the MND custom stuff before they hit the rest of the forums and websites.

Mark has been busy with Summer Camp. It's supposed to be fully playable, although I haven't tried it yet. Perhaps I should ask him for a tour one of these days. There are already people asking about it in the chatroom, so that's a good sign... I think.

No tournaments from Ed this week, I wonder if he's given up on the idea of having his usual Sunday tournaments. This would be the second week in a row that he's not having them. I hope he's not too discouraged by the low turnout.

Martin has been busy with Doomtown, among other things, these days and it's good to know that there'll be an upkeep thing going on in the next version. He's redoing everything from the ground up again, which is usual for Martin. I really do wish I had as much time as he seems to have to devote to adapting games - I would have got Firestorm and Hyborean Gates done a long time ago if I did have all that time.

And no, I have no idea when I'll start on those games. I'm still waiting for the images of the former and have yet to devote time to the latter. I think the next thing for me to "scratch off" my list would be YNDT with the truck and donut automations. Maybe I should start playtesting for those...

Logan got Black Box out last weekend. It's good to see a new game, although it means quite a bit of work on my end as well since there's like a number of things to add and update for every new game. Nevertheless, I made a prediction that the engine will have a number of games by Origins and I think we might be able to meet that deadline.

Kev is still tweaking Monkeys, so that might be out before the deadline too I hope. That's another game I want to play. I guess I'll just have to wait until Kev offers a tour. Tomi hasn't been doing anything much now that summer is getting into gear. He'll probably be relatively quiet for a while, unless he finds enough motivation to push through Heresy.

Robert made an appearance on the forums again, and apologized for the delay of the fan set for Sailor Moon. Hmm... that reminds me, I've got to ask Doug fi Sailor Moon still works on the new engine. Timmie and Christoph are trying to get scores for SWD. One's code illeterate and the other is lazy so I wonder if we'll even get anything soonish. Who knows, they might surprise me and get that finished. After all, they have stated that they want to make the engine's adapatation to be the best adaptation on the WWW.

I played a few games of LotR over the last couple of days. Testing out Besiegers with Dwarves and Gollum. Besiegers have won more often than not as not many people seem to be able to take out the engines. Gollum makes the dwarf slow going though since it is present. The pathfinding trick though, means that the dwarves can run all the way with mountains. Needs some work, and I have no idea how it'll deal with burdenating orcs or Nasty Naguls.

-+@ Real? Aliens @+-

Not real... just HumAliens, check them out below.



Actions were the last 30 odd cards left to add to New Order and I spent most of the allocated hour today completing them. While doing the counting, I found that I was missing 2 PETs as well so I added them. Altogether, 33 cards were added today, the biggest addition for New Order in my take it slow policy. Sure the cards are all there, but the game needs now to get all the additional stuff needed for some of these cards to function better. It needs playtesting though which can be done now that all the cards are in the system.

Anyways, that scratches off one thing off my list for this month. It's probably the easiest to scratch off anyways and was 7 more to go, and I'm not even sure I can handle some of them, but by the end of the week, hopefully, I can get MND finished.

Talking about MND, people are still beginning to sit up and notice the game, and 6 people have already signed up to the tournament. It's something people look forward to I guess, but this one might be the last one for a while. Next month, there will be a one-day Sealed Deck Shadowsfall Promo Release Tournament, and I'm not sure if I should hold the regular tournament as well. We'll have to see.

The bad news is that I think the custom card forums have a bandwidth limit. The good news is I've got Jim Wong, the owner of Insiider, to agree to moving the custom cards over to Insiider. Let's see what happens over the next 48 hours or so. If all goes well, Insiider might get back to its former glory, and then maybe even a bit more. That's one thing to see.

And after MND? Probably YNDT because it's the easiest, and I do want to get it ready before the tournament, if there is one. Urland also needs a few tweaks, which I seriously doubt I can squeeze into this week, but it depends on how this weekend is shaping up. And of course, Portable Adventures needs to get a bit more automation and a whole lot more playtesting to work out the kinks. Those three games are at the forefront of my current concerns at the moment. Hopefully, I can get the out the door soon.

And everyone else? Martin is upgrading Doomtown now, which is getting seriously played because it's featured this week. I can't wait to see what new tricks he's adding to it. I hear there'll be an upkeep thing... hopefully it gets interesting. Knowing Martin, it will.

Mark has been busy upgrading Sideshow and GRfOS, and people are really excited about it, excited to the point that they are submitting a whole load of defects. It should gear up to be interesting times for him as he races with the clock to get Summer Camp and Endeavor ready in time for Origins. Sounds fun.

Kev and Craig had a UC playtesting session earlier today. I think the interface is adequate. It could do with some final tweaks, and then it should be ready for release. How fast or how soon or how motivated Craig will be to do that, I have no idea. But it should still be interesting times anyways.

I just realised that Tony removed his custom fonts from WoT. It won't work for some reason, and I guess he's given up trying to debug it. It's a pity though. It would have been great if it works. I wonder if it works in VTES as well. I guess I'll just have to wait for it..

JC updated Rage and VS a couple of days ago. The interesting thing is that VS had the mulligan upgrade finally added. It's good. The bad thing is that he forgot to insert the checksums for the fonts, so they are downloading everytime the game is selected. Oh well, nobody's perfect, I guess.

The Doomtrooper tournament is in full swing and people are playing a bucketload of games. At the rate they are going, they'll probably run out of tokens before the week is out. It's all good though. Hopefully, they'll leave a couple for the tournaments or for the playtesting to get the tokens that they need for the tournament. We shall have to see I guess.

I checked out PEZ yesterday. Nice game, easy to play, although I doubt if anyone will actually play it if adapted to the engine. The cards are going to be very very hard to come by though since there are some ultra rares. It's only a 204 card set, but having said that, I doubt it'll be easy to get all the cards to adapt the game. Hmmm...

-+@ We Got 'Em! @+-

Sure "We" did... details below!



Art Credits:
Kintor's Rage: Holmberg/Gillette/Werner/Nov
Kintor Scout: Holmberg/Gillette/Nov
Heavy Frost: Werner/Gillette

These are some of the last few images for TG. The only one I haven't shown is Reality Check, which features artwork by Justin Zastrow. Nothing much to write home about. Reused images at their worst. I do like the moustache on the Kintor for the Rage though. It has a Tom Selleck kind of semblance.

Three quick things to talk about. I got a whole shipment of MND cards today. Unlimited Base set, but that's not too bad. Opened 48 booster packs today and got a foil Thunderquake, so all's good. Also got the 6 season kits, complete with posters and stuff. Hopefully some of those will make good custom cards. We'll have to see. Also got a box of miscellaneous stuff from Ed today - My LotR pormos, 2 starter decks of PEZ, some C*23 cards and a box of WS Conflicts. The last one is the interesting one. Now I can finally play solitaire multiplayer WS.

Also did a whole lot more advertising for the MND stuff this month - KQ#4, May tournament and I put in a blurb about the TG playtesting. Posted at 5 different sites, so hopefully that will draw in some attention. Mitch was rather happy with his 15 tokens from last month's competition today, which is a good sign I guess. I also guess that's why he signed up too. Team Marshfield though, has generally been very supportive of the tournaments and him and Joe and Nick have signed up again. They even purchased gold tokens to play in last month's tournament.

Talking about tournaments, the GRfOS tournament had at least 3 games played today from what I saw. Only 2 people played in all 3 games though, so it's an easy 25 tokens split between the 2 of them. Oh well, guess we just have to spread the word more. Mark is doing his Sideshow playtesting today. Looks fun too. Didn't have time to join though.

-+@ New Mystery Machine @+-

A new month, an new CCG to get card titles for... and that one is rather appropriate.



Art Credits:
Yirid: Werner/Gillette
Dusty Habob: Werner/Gillette/Shreve/Holmberg
Night Sandsinger: Werner/Gillette/Goodman/Holmberg

I did say I'll put up the Nar TG cards today, but since I did the last 2 remaining TG cards for d'Resh, I thought I'd put those up instead. These cards were based mostly from existing cards - Hasseth, Habob and Sandsinger. It's a great trick to reuse images from existing cards.

Yes, last 2 as in I'm all done now. 100% finished with all the artwork for TG. I'm so relieved. Next up would be to put these cards up onto the engine for playtesting. Hopefully they'll come of age.

Talking about coming of age, I really have to get Shadowsfall Promo off playtesting and onto playing proper. Also would need to update the engine rules for "Novelty format". It's going to be interesting though to see new cards entering play.

The beginning of the month also heralds in a few other things - Keeper's Question #4 has just started today, and hopefully, people will flock to it. It's going to be a bit difficult to design for it since it costs X. May's Elder's Legacy MND tournament is also underway, the signup thread was started on the CCGW MND forums. The rules were tightened a bit so hopefully more people will qualify, but the deck restrictions were relaxed a lot, so hopefully more people would join.

The Doomtrooper themed tournament also starts today, and this time people will be rewarded with tokens to encourage them to play. Hopefully, those crazy troopers will play more games. There already has been a number of games played. I guess some people just can't wait but to burn up their tokens on the tournament.

Mark has also been busy these few days. There's the GRfOS tournament today, and although he's not organising it, I'm sure he'll be around for it. He's also finalising Summer Camp and there's a Sideshow playtesting session tomorrow. He seems to be having fun with his finger in so many pies. I think he's also slowly working up Power Cardz too.

Tomi uploaded a new version of Mythos yesterday. I think that was the result of the post-update of Yahtzee/Kismet yesterday with Logan, where a comment or two leads to an entire update. That's how most of us work though and I guess we are comfortable around each other. It's a nice environment. I sometimes wonder if we are a bit clique-y, but then again, the NDA sets us apart from everyone else anyways.

Craig doesn't seem to be able to take comments rather well. He made what sounded to be an outburst in the UC forums which Mark replied with actual coding info. I had to move that to the coding forum so that it doesn't violate the NDA. Yes, I'm careful about things like that. I have an entire blog and I know everything I write here doesn't contravene the terms of the NDA.

I'm actually writing up the monthly statistics report in another window as I'm typing this. Last month was the first month that the number of free tokens were dropped to 5 and well, the numbers show that there hasn't been a drastic reduction in the number of games played. That's a good sign I guess.