-+@ The Furies @+-

Not a fan of Shakespear?



Art Credits:
Quido Flight: Zastrow
Tony's Ring: Werner/Gillette/Holmberg
Krue, Helper: Strom/Whyrl
This was some of the cards I templated earlier in the week for TW. The artwork is terrific. I wish I can say the same about all future cards, but somehow I doubt it. I thought I templated two cards, but I actually did 3 today - two weave ones and a KT one. That means all KT cards for TW has artwork, and Weave needs one more to get done. That's a good sign. It's on to Bograth and Paradwyn next. I've got a really good background for Bograth, but nothing as the subject, so I'm still hunting high and low for that one. Running total, for anyone who's interested is 73 cards out of 100 with art. Of course, this time around, I'm doing the art first, then designing the cards around them, so that might probably impact how things go. Then again, the design doesn't have to be finished until next year...

Mitch posted another blog in MND at CCGW about his new found Underneath deck. It is good to know that he's busy blogging despite actually having a job (for a change). I think he's writing more now that he has a job for some weird reason. It's good to know that one of us 3 are actually writing.

I just realised it's the 30th today, meaning I have a ton of stuff to do. I'm going to forgo the monthly report this month - let's face it, besides the stab at YNDT and the work on MND, I haven't been my usual productive self as predicted last month when I wrote that report. Just take everything from last month, advance them a month and that would be my report for this month. Maybe next month I'll do a combined report or something.

I was pondering why I was losing interest in the new LotR set Bloodlines so quickly today. What did the previous 2 sets have that this one didn't? Well, quite a bit. Shadows had the replace all the old Shadow side with 3 new factions thing going, which really shook up the game. That, coupled with the new Site Path and new path mechanics meant that Shadows was almost a whole different game. Likewise Black Rider eliminated 500+ cards from the game with rotation. Staples that people used to sail by (or swear by?) were suddenly gone from the game and the impact from that was dramatic. By contrast, Bloodlines introduced a new card type, but that was only as a replacement for the one that was rotated out in BR. Nothing new there. They did have the ability to do things, but current cards already do those things. The new remove from game thing really doesn't affect the game much at all - this is a game where decking is a valid win mechanism after all, and the value of the discard pile is close to nil for most decktypes. Then there's the more tokens things, but guess what? I've been playing with tokens even before the new set.

Great cards in the new set, but for a Johnny like me, the same-ol' stuff and nothing revolutionary means the game is getting a bit stale. The Timmies are probably enjoying all the huge cards (I know because I've been trading away my Timmy cards), and the Spike players are the ones who invest the most money in the game anyways. And what do the Johnnies get? Nothing much since the game was never meant for the typical Johnny player. Boohoo.

I installed the AGoT client today. It sucks. I could not connect to the server with the server button, and I had no idea how to build a deck. I did try clicking all the buttons to no avail. I even read the FAQ too, but that didn't have a deckbuilding section. I suppose I should have spent more time looking for the how to build a deck, and how to connect, perhaps even register in the forums (yes, there are two), but I decided that it wasn't worth my while at the end of the day. The application screams "Hard Core Computer Nuts Only, casual users and players need not bother". I hope gEngine doesn't scream the same thing to new players.

Origins should have started today. I think Mark has his Endeavor game today. Most people will be arriving tonight or tomorrow for the gaming and stuff. It sounds exciting, I hope to get a good look at pictures and reports. I wonder if I can find any blogs about it. Apparently there aren't going to be any. Boohoohoo and a bottle of rum. Erm... excuse my pirate speak.

The newly wedded Mike Welling will be travelling to Columbus to work in the booth that's going to show off the Full Metal Alchemist TCG. That sounds interesting, whatever it is. With the shakedown in the industry though, it might not survive, but one can never tell. The other game I'm looking forward to see is Teen Titans CCG. Hopefully someone will get some cards and scan them (or the card back at the very least). Decipher isn't giving away free LotR cards (or free cards for any of their games!) but they do have promos for sale. I guess that only goes to show what dire straits they are in.

I just realised I have to make an ad for DJ for tomorrow when the competition starts. Back to the grind...

-+@ Whim of the Fates @+-

I think this is going to be the second month in a row that nobody will guess which game the titles are from. Hint: It was a game on the engine.



I'm getting bored with Bloodlines already, after only about 2 days of playing. And I haven't even been playing that intensively. Quite a few things in the set - a new card type in more than 2 years - the follower (like the chap Deagol is above), which I've explained in a previous blog (look for Hobbits) and their associated keyword Aid. Then there's the new term "Reinforce", which is found on cards like the horses (Shadowfax is a horse, although the bad cropping of the image shows more of the guy instead of the horse). "Reinforce" basically means, add a token to a card that already has a token. Of course, being the tokens set, all races got at least one card that has tokens. My favourite is Howdah. It looks fiendishly evil on first sight, but playing with it has shown it to be very tame.

As I said, I'm bored with it already. Have been playing bouncing Hobbits - Forest Naz and Non-solo Smeagol - Evil Men. Tried to build a Ring Bearer Hobbit deck, but failed because I couldn't answer all the questions (the main one being how to remove burdens efficiently). I'm already thinking of a So Fair, So Desperate deck, but that would mean adding Smeagol AND Gandalf which sounds like a no-no from my deckbuilding point of view, well, not for that deck anyways.

Anyways, LotR aside, I did manage to template 3 more cards for TW and continued plugging away at the gaps in the TW spoiler. Which is good because it means I've got 70 cards done now. 7/10. Not really a milestone. I still need images for 7 regions, including Universal and the 6 newer regions. KT has one left, Weave has 3 left, so hopefully, KT will be finished tomorrow (or the next time I work on the images) while Weave can be finished a week or two into it.

The 3rd DJ preview has been posted on Insiider yesterday. Hopefully it'll generate some buzz, and I hope it's not the negative kind. I haven't yet checked how many hits that page has got, but I don't think it's a lot.

Of course all the DJ cards can be seen on this blog, yesteday's lot of 4 cards were the last of the set. I just realised that quite a few blogs have been linking here, including Dartax's blog which is simply titled Dan's blog. I wonder how many hits I get from there.

I also talked to the newly married Mike Welling, who told me he's headed to Origins to work at the booth releasing Full Metal Alchemist. I have no idea if he'll be at the Bandai booth or the Joyride booth. I did direct him to seek out anyone with a CCGW t-shirt though, because those people are going to be one of the three ghosts attending - Kev, Mark and Logan.

I've been talking to Logan about getting me freebies from Origins as well. Well, not a lot of freebies really. I'm more interested in the photos though. If I do get permission I might post some of the up here as a picture gallery.

Finally downloaded the online client for AGoT. Haven't installed it yet. I hope I don't have to download 100+MB everytime they upload the client. Eeek! That's bad.

Otherwise, things are quiet. It's summer, people are on holiday... and I should be taking one as well. Where should I go?...

-+@ Massacre @+-

I'm in the mood for some mayhem anyways...




4 Cards... Art Credits:
Wanderers by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Double Jeopardy by Rich Werner
Bash Brothers by Alison Strom/Whryl
Secret Lovers by Alison Strom/Whyrl

I made Double Jeopardy today, along with a whole bunch of TW cards. The other 3 were templated a few weeks back. I actually previewed Secret Lovers to Mitch Wyatt (aka Malovis), who then replied that DJ was going to be his favourite set. Heh, I can guess why - 2 Ard/Oro magi and a Nar/Naroom one. Those are all the cards in the set though - 6 cards, 5 of which have 2 different templates, and a promo to cover it. These small promo sets are nice to do though. They are small.

TW on the other hand has just passed the two-third mark. That's the easy mark. For my full 100(+) card sets, the marks are half, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 85% 90%, 95%, 98%, 100%. Takes about the same time to go from 0 to half and from half to 2/3 and 90% to 95% and 98% to 100%. It's because there are less images for the last few regions (particularly d'Resh and Nar, but especially Paradwyn and Bograth!) and that's tough. I'm happy though to have reached the 2/3 mark. 8 more cards to the 3/4 mark then 5 cards to the 4/5 mark. Those would start the tough bits.

Robert Hicks (aka Silver) actually IM-ed me today to talk about MND. I showed him his Chaos Jile and not only was he pleased with that, but he gave glowing praise of the whole of TW so far. Well, at least someone likes it. I'm sure more people like the cards out there, but they are just too scattered and too busy to even get together and play. Such a pity though.

I guess all this was brought about by the large amount of spamming of KQ that I did over the weekend when I added the cards onto the engine. So that means 2 sets (one of them promo) are on the engine after playtest - Elder's Legacy and Shadowsfall Promo, 2 more (again, one of them = promo) for playtesting - Tainted Glimpses and Keeper's Quest, and 2 more (another promo set here) in development - Twilight War and Double Jeopardy. This looks busy. And this is how things were when 2i were up and running. There's also Exodus Flight, Native Spirit and Ancient of Days, but those are so far flung into the future that I don't even want to think about them.

People have been going crazy with the new Bloodlines cards... lots of games going online with the cards as people try to feel their way around the cards. I've already updated two of my decks... bouncing hobbits / forest nazguls seems to be much hated by almost everyone, particulary when I get all the cards in hand and the hobbits run to 9 while the Naz scares people away from second moves. That deck is rare intensive though, but the staples in there aren't.

The other deck is my non-solo Smeagol coupled with Evil Men archery. Well, I can couple it with Besiegers as well, but since the Besiegers didn't get any new card (the only 2 new Sauron cards were Sauron himself and his staff), I'll pass on the Besiegers. What I am interested in is a good non-solo Smeagol with Gollum on the flip side. That should prove interesting, but I'll have to think about what cards are needed in that deck.

Kari has been busy with Gandalf yesterday. It didn't survive too well. His deck-building skills seems to be trial and error, very much how everyone else does it I suppose. I can't wait to see his Rohan/men deck though. That with Burden Naz might be interesting.

Tomi continued yesterday working away on his games. I was a bit surprised to see X-Files got an update over the night, but he's probably just doing things over the weekend while he can. Small updates, but constant updates anyways, to show that the game is at least being thought about even if nobody plays them. I should do that more often as well.

Joshua was asking about AGoT on the engine. Erm... no, I don't think so, but someone else has already made a AGoT client out there. I am still downloading all 115 MB worth of data. That's a killer though. He should at least package the stuff in smaller files or something. It would be good to learn how to play AGoT though... I've always wanted to learn that game. However, Martin cautions me that CoC is a game of who has the most Rares, so AGoT will probably be the same, but I hope not.

Ack! There's still people who's after me to be a Simon Cowell for CCGW articles. Argh! I definately do not want to read through 2 or 3 badly written article on games I have no idea what they are going on about. I have better things to do with my time. Really. Like making lots of grammatical and spelling mistakes when I type out my blog...

-+@ Ready for a Fight @+-

coz it's Bloodlines online release!



I pulled two of those last night in the sealed deck, Sauron was the card everyone was after. That Uruk won me one game out of 4, I only played 4 out of 6 though, because I was too tired. Won 2 and lost 2, the first one due to stupidity, the 4th one due to a very good swarm. Won the 3rd because of a stupid mistake by my opponent. People are still getting used to the cards and lots of stupid mistakes always happens during this. It's fun though.

Yesterday, I also updated MND on the engine and I added the Keeper's Quest promos there. TG cards got tweaks due to playtester feedback and I think it's going to be crazy to get everything in order there, but there's no rush to make that public anytime soon. Previewed the 2nd of the DJ cards online at MND on CCGW and I have no idea how many people have seen it yet. All in all, it was a good day yesterday for MND custom cards.

New engine builds means things go awry, and there are still a few issues with the new build, but with Ed away on holiday, I doubt it'll be fixed until he comes back. Anyways, nipa has been testing them out, tweaking his games to avoid all the pitfalls, so it's interesting.

Otherwise it's queit with Martin being away and Origins around the corner... time to go open online packs of Bloodlines!

-+@ War @+-

Such a simple title...



Bloodlines spoilers, and shire as usual. Always good to use the hobbits to beat up the nasties in LotR. The new card type for the game is shown above - follower. That's going to be interesting. This is the first non-ringbearer Frodo as well. I have no idea if he'll be good or anything, but it's good from a design point of view as it opens up the deck design somewhat. I can't wait to start playing with some of these hopefully by this weekend.

I did a bit of MND stuff today - changed a SP page, did up 3 DJ promos and posted one of them for preview at the Custom Card forums. Hopefully that will garner some interest in the game and such on the engine, but summer being the bad time that it is, I doubt it'd do much. Still there's no harm trying.

Martin got up a new build of VTES today. He's been working hard on that too, I'm sure. I haven't had the time to look at it yet, but I'm sure it's probably full of his Sterling coding examples. When I have the time, that's one thing I'll have to look at and see if there are any examples I can "borrow". Well, anything to up the Martin part of my nM rating!

-+@ Left for Dead @+-

Well, I'm not dead yet. Really. And I'm going to be a bit more "chatty" in today's blog because, I'm tired of technical writing.



3 cardbacks? Yup, I got a pack each of X-Men, Raw Deal (Base Set) and Star Wars (Decipher) - Death Star II expansion two weekends ago. Got them for cheap from the markdown bin as well. I have no idea how to play any of these games, and the only one that is on the engine is Star Wars, although I wonder how long will it last on there since even Decipher it seems have stopped supporting it. Hopefully for a long time more to go.

I haven't really been doing anything interesting for CCGW - sure, there's the usual forum maintenance, the BOT question clearing, some FPN and WGO updates, but otherwise life is quiet.

Unlike Tomi, who's been busily updating his games - almost half of his games got an update over the last weekend alone - both the Doomtroopers, Kult and Yahtzee. Even Reversi got a quick update over the weekend to move it forward to the new engine. As always I am grateful for the work he does, particularly that on Reversi.

Martin has also been a busy ghost as well, updating VTES within 24 hours of the complaints. It seems to be a full time job there, and I'm glad that I'm not doing it, because I simply don't have the time or the patience for that sort of thing. Still, Martin is the best person for the job and he's doing a great job supporting the game. I think Ed should just plop down some money and hire Martin on a semi-permanent basis just to handle VTES.

Mark has also been busy. There was Sideshow, then Summer Camp and now Endeavor has been made public on the engine all in time for Origins. Not only is the engine the main draw, but there's also a demo event of Endeavor at Origins too. Whew. Talk about dedication. That's the type of busyness that I can symphatise with.

Kev is still trying his hardest to get Monkeys out before Origins. I hope he meets his deadline. I know the frustration he's probably facing as he tries to hurries up, yet with all the "improvements" in the engine, it seems that for every step one gets closer to the goal, the engine takes 2 steps - eep! Well, the black queen said it best in Through the looking Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland - if you want to get anywhere you'll have to run twice as fast.

Well, running fast isn't something JC has to worry about ever since he got his Mille Bornes public on the engine. I've yet to play that game - too many things to do, too little time, but from what I can see, he's got a custom expansion up there in record time as well. To quote Inspector Gadget - "Yowzers!"

Even Nate is gearing up for the big summer Con season. There's this new Community Service for Final Twilight and an entire rules update due (which has my name in the opening credits, so thank you Nate). He buzzed me a few days ago to warn (if that's the right word) me that the new expansion will be ready in July. Eep! The details are already available on the website. Time for me to get busy too.

So what have I been doing? Well, I've been like the hare in the parable of The tortoise and the hare, I've been napping while the tortoises are going slow and steady. But blegh, if they wanna win the race, I'll cheer them on, I'm not trying to win races, I'm just here to adapt games.

I've got a YNDT playtest up in about half an hour - I actually fixed most of the defects from the last playtest 2 weeks ago today and I hope it holds water with all the extra oomph that I've put into it. Give me another 6 hours or so and I'll probably close the noose and fully automate the entire game. Yes, the engine has gone that far. When I first started working on YNDT, nothing was possible except the very basics. Now I find that everything is possible, if I can only imagine the code for it. It's too bad nobody is playing it much though, I even updated the rules today to fix all the typos and stuff in there.

And there's always a MND section. No, I haven't done anything yet. Today is the last day for the signup of the tournament and I doubt I'm going to get the "quorum" required for the tournament, so I'm going to let it pass. It's a pity though. I've yet to find the time to actually get Twilight War into shape, let alone work on Double Jeopardy, and there have been people (OK, one person, and his name is Doug) asking about DJ already. Oh well, like everything, they'll just have to wait until I have more time. It's nice though to know that there are people actually waiting for my custom cards.

The end of the month is coming up soon and the madness for that time period will certainly consume me. Let me be the first to predict that even with the 100 players, VTES, being completely free at this closed beta phase will take the top spot of being the most played game. Not only that, I'm sure it'll also be the game with the most defects reported this month, since the players are going crazy there. That might be a good thing for Origins too.

As for my own goals... well... I'll doubt I'll meet any of them, which means I'll have to push everything back to July and delay everything for a month. Whee, that should be fun... not.

-+@ Path Not Taken @+-

which is a rather cool title...



Art Credits:
Fukal & Mori: Whyrl/Strom
Stuff Twins: Whyrl/Strom
The Shapers: Whyrl/Strom
Double Jeopardy... now you know why it's named such. Dual magi all of them, and dual-region as well. I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms here with these, but Alison Strom's artwork is just too good to waste by cropping them badly into 2 separate magi. Well, the first of these will probably go up in July as a competition. Probably, not definately. I have no idea where I'm going there. Made these cards a few days ago. I liked them, but they took quite a bit out of me. There are 3 more to go...

Mitch posted in the MND at CCGW blog. That is a good thing. The game is dying down for summer. Not too many has signed up for the tournament yet. It's still early days though. Also, I've got to put up the KQ Promos onto the engine for playtest soon. I hope people will enjoy seeing the cards they designed up on the engine.

I actually held a YNDT playtest and garnered a dozen defects. That was crazy. Things are broken again. Lots of things to fix. Hopefully I can get everything fixed up properly again to make the game playable. The people who played the game seemed to like it. Of course, the tokens I was giving away was a bonus to them as well.

Finally did the statistics for last month, and since summer is approaching, the numbers are on their annual downward spiral. Nothing much to do there... which is why hopefully VTES will reverse the downward trend. I totally forgot about the custom cards in SR and was told (off?) by Ed and Logan about that so I had to revise it slightly. Otherwise, that's like the second or third time in 17 months that I've been corrected I think.

The BOT has been quiet, I cleared out a couple of questions a few days ago, but I suspect someone else has been clearing off those questions as well. I'm also axing down the WGO and FPN to get them to something a little more reasonable after the glut of stuff that was announced last month. Things are slowly disappearing, which is always a little bit sad, but it makes the respective sections a lot more readable without having to scroll.

Ed has been busy trying to get the next build of the engine out. Make that engines. That's the normal engine and the White Wolf engine. I wonder how many of my games will be broken by the new engine. I hope there's none, but I'm sure some of the things that are introduced, or an existing method that's tightened, will probably find a flaw in my programming. Yes, my programming sucks.

Kev told me he still hasn't finished monkeys yet. I understand that it's a huge undertaking, but I'm sure that when he finishes it, it'll be really interesting. Can't wait to play that game, especially if there's a whole horde of people playing it.

Talking about playing, Billy turned up on the engine yesterday and we tried to get a B5 game going, but it was a no go since there wasn't enough players. It is a surprise to see him though, he seems less "vinegar"-ish than he was when I last talked to him on the engine. I guess living with David has probably smoothened him out or something.

Tomi is still busy fixing up his two major games - Doomtrooper gets quite a number of small bugfixes due to the large number of games played by the Europeans. They are getting a second win since they have discovered my playtesting sessions where I give out tokens. I also gave out tokens for the tournament participants and the eventual winner. So those people should be awash with tokens this month.

Mythos meanwhile has been played to death by Alex as he attempts to get the repointed adventures accepted. Those makes for a more balanced game, I suppose, but I haven't touched Mythos for a long, long while now. Apparently, Logan and Alex are going to meet-up at Origins to play Mythos. I think I'm getting jealous of that.

The Rage tournament is still going on. Only 2 games so far, and HC O'Neill has been in both. It's sad though that not many people are participating in the tournament. I did all the advertising on the CCGW site where I can, but I guess that isn't enough. Anyways, we'll see what happens there at the end of the tournament.

I've been playing quite a bit of LotR these days, only because everyone is comfortable with the cards now. About 6 more weeks till the next set appears... maybe the next time I blog, I should preview some of those cards. Anyways, I'm still catching people offguard with the stupid commons and uncommons, and I haven't been using a standard run of the mill deck for a long time now.

-+@ Nothing is Impossible @+-

New CCG this month...



Art Credits:
Sergen: Shipman
Lunar Aversion: Whyrl/Strom
Sap Jar: Zyglowicz
Getting ready for Exodus Flight here with the first 3 cards that will be in the set. I'll reveal more of the cards in the set as I post more. This is going to be fun, I think. These are some of the oldest images from the RP cards, and some of the best IMO. The text would need to be revised slightly though. Quite a bit of work there, but it's not going to happen till after Twilight War.

Other MND news? Mitch won last month's tournament by one point. He was really fighting for that win. Good to see though. He's also trying to get that one Arderial/Orothe magi that he's after onto the engine, so who knows what he's going to be up to. The new tournament signup is on, but there hasn't been many people signing up, only 4 of them. I think MND at CCGW is going to die down over summer as usual. Oh well.

I've got to start up the Double Jeopardy competitions as well at some point, but not this month. I haven't even templated the DJ cards yet, which I'll probably need to do soonish. I'll also need to finish setting up the Shadowsfall Promo event. Way too many things to do for MND and I don't really have the time.

Silk Road has also been progressing as Chris seems to be tightening the rules. I have no idea where things are going with that, but hopefully it should become interesting. It's a bit boring though as it lacks a coherent storyline behind it, something that is essential in the new CCGs that seems to be released these days, but the thing at this point is to get the mechanics going. Let's see where that goes.

Martin has asked me to do artwork for his game. Do means colouring in this case. I haven't got anything final from him yet so I'm still waiting. It's not going to be easy, colouring never is, but it'll be interesting to see how things can go from there.

Before I forget, last month's title were all from Scooby Doo, the ECG from the same publisher as X-files. I have all but 10 cards from the last expansion, but nothing from the base set. It's not easy getting those cards as well, the rarity system makes it crazy getting at least one of each card. Oh well.

Nothing much new going on otherwise, Doomtrooper tournaments have ended and they are still deciding what to do for the next one. VTES beta testing still isn't up yet... mabye sometime this weekend. I've also got to update statistics and stuff on the CCGW site *sigh* Lot's more to do. Best get to it instead of blogging here.