-+@ Whim of the Queen @+-

Wonder where's the king...



Art Credit:
Poisonous Zungg: Reed
Sikkada: Ransom/Nov
Rayalon Scholar: Zyglowicz

It's been a biggish day for MND custom cards today, so lemme run down the sets one by one.

Exodus Flight (currently collecting images) finally saw the light of day on the Custom Cards site and Forum. This set is mainly for the gEngine players, so they were invited to comment on the artwork and the names. I'm sure some of the cards will either be dropped or renamed. More will probably be added when I start templating Dreamstorm (and later Chimefall) cards, but at the moment, the current list will suffice. I also have to remember to get the rations correct - there should be more Nar and d'Resh cards in the set than say, Cald or Arderial. At the moment, that doesn't seem to be so. The ad for the set is from Whyrl's Lunar Aversion, and I think it looks nice. Can't wait to put it onto gEngine ad rotation.

Double Jeopardy (curently being designed) saw the 6th preview card being put up at the Custom Cards site. This is after the preview on the engine yesterday and the 2nd DJ Contest being setup, also yesterday. It's generating some buzz among the players on the engine which is a good sign. I've also asked for suggestions, both on gEngine Forums and on the MND at CCGW blog as to where to post the preview for the last and final card in the set. I'm going to look forward to the answers.

Twilight War (currently in development) has been put on the back-burner, but I did manage to figure out a few things to do for the next few images. The text has yet to get approved though and that would probably take mega time to do so.

I just realised today that Keeper's Quest (currently in playtesting) does not have a card of the name - it really should. I guess that would mean going back to the drawing board to find an image to make a Keeper's Quest promo card. That would probably up the set to 5 with the additional spell. No big deal there I guess, but the text would probably need a tournament to get designed.

Tainted Glimpses (currently in playtesting) got a playtesing report yesterday. It's good to see people still trying to use the cards and trying to figure out the combos and stuff. The game also saw Delcea, a Shadowsfall (currently in play) magi, being played as well, which was definately interesting. TW still has a long way to go before the text can be finalised, but at the moment things are looking good.

Elder's Legacy seems to be almost forgotten by this point in time. The 50 card set is in playing and I'm going to say no news is good news.

Other CCGW news? I don't think there's much that I know of.

Mark is still busy with Monster Rancher, and seems to be the only person (besides Martin?) who's working on a new game... I saw a number of Mille Bornes players today, and it seems to be picking up steam on the engine. Someone advertised on game.com to pick up the players there and brought them over... I wonder if game.com is a free site or a pay site.

Even the troopers are quiet, as their last campaign tournament was a huge bust, or so it seems. I wonder what else Thomas has up his sleeve. It is summer though and it seems that troopers also disappear for a while as well.

A few days back some guy from Ophidian posted in the CCGW forums about checking to see where the agreement is at... I wonder if that means we will be fasttracked into getting the game onto the engine. Hmmm...

I also had a look at automating the encounters in Portable Adventures today. Gave me a headache and it didn't work in the end. I haven't been coding for so long that I'm so rusty at it. Hopefully, I can get that done before the end of the month. Well, I think I'm going to push back everything that's not done by another month... which sounds bad I suppose, but I feel that there's no point doing shoddy work when I'm unmotivated and then suffer later... might as well wait until things are fired up to do the coding.

-+@ Town Judge @+-

and Jury?



Art Credits:
Entrap by Shreve
White Gauntlets by Werner/Holmberg
Rayalon Fiend by Werner/Gardner

There's a mix of sets in today's cards. The Rayalon Fiend is an art redo for Tainted Glimpses. Entrap and White Gauntlets are for Twilight War. The story behind the new Rayalon Fiend goes something like this... I first templated Austin Gardner's image onto an RP card (Mud Mantle, IIRC). It was horrible. I gave him tips about colouring and stuff. He took those tips and practised and practised - he learnt shading and stuff. Half a year later some of the stuff he was producing for the RP cards were amazing - check out Howitzer Weebo. I asked him if he was interested in colouring over a Holmberg or Werner for the custom cards and he accepted. The result is the new Rayalon Fiend.

The other 2 cards aren't anything interesting to write about. Aglow is a card I did a few weeks back based on the image by Ryan Shreve on the official site. White Gauntlets is just a crop of the Velouria image. It's a bit blurry too, I think. Well, for the time being it's good enough, until I can get a better image. So that's one card done, 14 more to go for TW. Hopefully the rest of the images will be a breeze...

I had been busy over the past few days templating the remaining of the eXodus cards, and getting the beginnings of templating the Dreamstorm cards. These are RP cards and thus, aren't compatible with the CCG, but it's good practice templating cards anyways. The RP players seem to appreciate it. The cards can be seen at the usual place, including the MND at CCGW blog.

I've been playing some LotR - just card flopping mainly when I have time to kill. Nothing interesting going on there, at least not for me. WA have upgraded the client to show the German players and there seem to be a lot of them when I get on. Seems interesting.

The engine has been quiet as well - nothing much is happening over summer... well, nothing on the surface anyways. Martin has been busy with the new automation of VTES - I'm going to guess that's going to take up the majority of his time. Mark has been quietly working on Monster Rancher. His progress are up on the forums.

I took a few minutes earlier to upgrade YNDT and MND on the engine. YNDT had an automation added to tighten the rules and prevent cheating. MND had text revised and I posted up a preview of the next Double Jeopardy card on the engine itself.

Talking about Double Jeopardy, the contest finished a few days back and I named the winner today. There was some small excitement among the players - I guess that's a good sign. Still, there aren't that many players anymore though.

The end of the month is almost coming up... time to prepare for all the other things that usually happen then. I've got a playtest session next Friday too... hopefully I remember that...

-+@ Little Baby Godling @+-

That is such a sweet title.



Art Credits:
Ring of Power: Zyglowicz
Osatch Balm: Ransom, backgrounds by Holmberg, shadow by Nov
Shadow Chain: Gardner, effects and background by Nov

I finally finished the 2nd batch of images for eXodus, two of them are up there. Ring of Power is the average FR image while Osatch Balm is typical of Blitz. Yet, both of them looks interestingly OK (Ha!) and I'm going to include them in Exodus Flight. I think I'll take a break before I start Dreamstorm, although, technically speaking, I've already done up two Dreamstorm cards. Well, it'll be a good breather to do something else, like actually code a game, for example.

Yeah, coding. YNDT should be somewhere there together with PAD... and of course, I could do with some Hyborean Gates and B5 as well. But I haven't been in that sort of groove lately so it hasn't got done up much. I should really try and get myself psyched up about it. The question is, which one to do first... hmm...

What has everyone else been doing? Not much. It's summer, and it's time to spend life outdoors and such, which would explain why close to nothing is being done. OK, I lie. Quite a bit is happening, but I'm too lazy to summarise them here. I'll just mention two very briefly.

Martin is working on the new version of VTES already. He's really going for it. That's so amazing. I wish I had his stamina and drive when it comes to coding. Then again, I've had more than 20 games under my belt so...

Christoph just added another virtual set to SWD on the engine. Those SWCCGPC people sure don't let up with the new cards. Well, some of them should also try to look for new images and stuff. I'm sure with all the movies out there, there must be someone who has access to a DVD version of it who can take screen captures or something.

I've gone into cardflopping mode in LotR - just playing around with my usual decks in a braindead sort of way. It passes the time somewhat, I guess. Saw a rather interesting hobbit deck with wizards today (it's rather standard though). Perhaps I should test try it... or maybe not...

-+@ Young Prince @+-

and pauper?



Art Credits:
Acid Morgg by Ransom, with backgrounds by Nov
Yora by Shipman with backgrounds and colours by Gardner
Conder by Shipman

I templated 7 cards today, 6 for eXodus and the first card for Dreamstorm. One of the 7 is above in the form of Yora, the other two was done a while ago. All 3 cards are for Exodus Flight, of course, which is based on the Insiider RP cards from eXodus. I really like the weirdness of the Morgg, the colours of the Conder and Austin's first attempt at colouring someone elses stuff. I guess that's why I chose those 3 cards today.

Not much MND news going on. The only thing that seems to be happening is that I'm feeding the art frenzy by templating the eXodus cards, which goes into a vicious cycle via the feedback loop - the more art they do, the more cards I template, the more cards I template, the more art they do, ad infinitum. The momentum will probably slow down in a bit, but it's nice to ride the crest of the wave while it lasts.

I found another rather dead MND site today complete with RP. It's really interesting how many MND RP sites there are out there. I suppose at the height of the MND "craze" the RP forums must have really dominated the MND-sphere. Talking about forums, I just realised that it's now displaying myself as "Administrator" on Insiider. There's been rumours floating around too that I bought Insiider. Ha!

Christoph had a Star Wars advert out near the beginning of the week to advertise that Star Wars is being featured. Well, it's good to know that someone actually knows how to use the FPN section of the website. I wonder if there's any more new players that's playing. The playing stats has gone through the roof with more than half of the games played in the last 48 hours being Star Wars.

I just realised that B5 still has some crazy number of games being played. I wonder if those are of the 2-player variety where the games are boring and such. Still it's good to see someone playing the game. Doomtown though is still massive somehow, and I'm surprised to see Doomtrooper is being even massively played as well.

OK, from a few days ago... which well-known classic "Children" story would make a good CCG? Here's five in no particular order.

1) Oz. No, not the HBO series, nor the short form for Australia, but the world of Oz. The first book in the series of course is "The Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum. There's 14 books in the series and besides the winkies and the flying monkeys and witches that dissolve on contact with water, there's Ozma and Jack Pumpkinhead and well, worlds and worlds of places and characters and events and stuff.

2) Wonderland. As in Alice in followed by the sequel of Through the Looking Glass. Humpty Dumpty, The Walrus and the Fisherman, Cheshire Cat, Unbirthdays, "Eat Me!" all but screams out to be made into cards. After all it'll be interesting to see Mad Hatter crossing wits with Twiddledum and Twiddledee.

3) Narnia. The movie adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will be hitting the bit screens soon, and that would be a good time to launch a CCG based on the same world. I do have to admit that it's stretching it a bit to call Narnia a classic children story, but the rich and diverse world that is Narnia could very well make for an interesting CCG, with talking lions and angels falling from the sky...

4) Wonka. No, that's not supposed to be a bad word. I'm talking about Roald Dahl's Willie Wonka World (that's WWW as well, for those people who are keeping track). The two main books of course are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the sequel Charlie and the Glass Elevator, although material can be drawn from all the other associated books, including my favourite - The Giraffe, the Pelly and me.

5) Fairy Tales - featuring the works of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. Tom Thumb can finally meet Thumbellina. The Princes and the pea might get to meet the frog prince. Who knows, maybe the little match girl might get enslaved together with Hansel and Gretel. Throw in some Oscar Wilde and it'll probably be great.

Well, there already has been a "Harry Potter" CCG, which is why it's not in the list above. Those are some good ideas, although getting the rights for some of those would probably be a pain. And the above list shows my Eurocentrism. Of the 8 authors mentioned, 7 of them are European - three Brits, a third Brit of Norwegian origin, a Dane and 2 Germans.

-+@ Harpy @+-

flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz?



Art Credits:
Heno by Ransom/Nov
Star Orshaa by Zyglowicz
Kohea by Ransom/Nov

Those are 3 cards for Exodus Flight. I templated Beth's Star Orshaa today, today with 4 other cards (visible at the usual places). The other 4 cards aren't making the cut into EF... even Star Orshaa barely scraped by into the set. Heno and Kohea are two of my favourite images that Jeffry has done - it's a pity he doesn't colour with the computer, but oh well. The backgrounds on both are a bit deficient (blame me for that) but all in all, I think these make good cards.

There's also a huge debate about the direction of Double Jeopardy. Are they supposed to be "for show"? At the moment, yes. In future, I have no idea. I'm tending towards "yes" for that at the moment, but a lot of things can probably change my mind... 4 people have entred entries for it, but I haven't made up my mind yet which one to choose (if any) for the winner. Well, I suppose it's early days.

I haven't have had people asking me to adapt original games for gEngine for a while now. I think people are probably realising how hard it is to get someone interested. Rules, cards, artwork, game pieces and coding on top of all that makes it rather tedious. I saw a request on the engine asking for people to help code games. Ed replied to say that the PLs were busy. I wondered what he has up his sleeve, since he list his occupation as "student". Well, I hope he's 18 or above...


Oh, someone showed me a picture from Origins yesterday. It's the one above. I think those guys are playing Nuclear War or something. I think they are having fun too. I haven't seen too many reports about Origins, other than some people calling LARP Chess as "dorky", but I guess they are entitled to their opinion.

There's nobody on the WW server. Wow. Things must really be dying there. I wonder why that is. Could the players have gotten bored with the game now? Who knows? Hopefully, that means all the bugs are worked out and that the game will go public soon? Somehow I doubt it. Well, only time will tell.

I just updated the BOT thing. Apparently Doug has been at it again, misspelling words like "bored" and stuff. The funniest question I got was "Why is arderialite so weird?" a few weeks ago. Poor Mark. I wonder if he's still angry about the power escalation I added to Paradwyn and Weave with the customs.

I have a follow on to yesterday's topic: Which Children Fairy Tale would make a good CCG? Heh, that's so tempting to answer... maybe tomorrow...

-+@ Path of Morpheus @+-

Move and change?



Art Credit:
Chana by Goodman (who else?)
Smot by Zastrow/Holmberg
Bigil by Strom/Whyrl

That's 3 more cards for Twilight War (TW). Chana is named after Goodman herself. No she's not blonde nor does she look like that, but that's one dolly that she's drawn and I thought it would be good to have her as a magi. Smot was originally Smits as named by Justin, but the name is a bit European so I renamed him slightly to sound like smote (paste tense of smite, old English word meaning kill). I did the Holmberg background maybe 2 weeks ago in anticipation of getting the right image for it. Bigil is a contraction of "Birdgirl" which is what Whyrl named this image. Well, she doesn't have the green skins that's prominant of the Paradans... so she'll need a background story as well... like the other Paradan emissary.

I went back to look through the RP cards and was surprised that the people there have added more images to the eXodus cards. Some of them are nice, others are so-so. Austin Gardner seems to be improving his skill at it while Beth Zyglowicz is drawing up her own style and is moving into her own. Even Jen Reed is contributing images to the set. I didn't template any of those though. Instead I did the 5 spells that Jeffrey Ransom picked out art for. They can be seen either at Novelty's Custom Card Forums (look under Fan Cards), at the RP section of Insiider or at MND at CCGW. As mentioned, none of those spells are going to make it into Exodus Flight.

gEngine stuff (and staff) is/are still quiet, everyone is probably enjoying summer and such. Even the forums are quiet and I'm not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign. One good sign though is that there's a post in the AvP forums asking about deckbuilding and stuff. Seems interesting there and I hope the game picks up, but I doubt it.

I had an interesting thought today (well, that's one more than usual, I suppose) - which series of books would make a good CCG? I'm talking about true books only stuff, not, LotR, for example which only got playable because of the movie, or games like VS where the characters are in a whole host of media from movie to games to action figures. Mythos, perhaps is the best known and probably the most successful game of this genre, the direct book to CCG adaptation. Imajica and Wheel of Time are another two examples that are available for play on gEngine. Others include A Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu off the top of my head.

Well, I only have a Sci-fi/Fantasy background so here are some series of books which might make a good CCG.

Raymond E. Fiest and his Midkemia universe. There are almost 20 books in this series, starting with Magician: Apprentice, with the latest being King of Foxes in the Conclave of Shadows Trilogy. Two of the books in this universe are even the reverse adaptation of the 2 computer games; Betrayal at Krondor and Return to Krondor - the former was a trendsetter, the latter is forgettable. The world is large, the characters are plentiful and the artifacts, events, locations, etc. are there for the taking. And if that's not enough, there's always the world of Kelewan across the rift...

Peter F. Hamilton and his Commonwealth universe. OK, so there's only one book so far, but with 1144 pages, it's a rich world that he's painted with a multitute of races, over 40 locations and a cast of characters that needs a who's who right in the front of the book. The second book Judas Unleashed will be published later in the year (if you're a Brit or if you order from amazon.co.uk) or next year (if you're American).

Robin Hobb and the Six Dutchies. She's barely touched on the world she's set her characters on, even with three trilogies under her belt. Throw in the Chalced States, the Mountain Kingdom adn the Jamailla Empire with the Outislands and there's enough factions. Add in dragons and a fool and things turn interesting. Not to mention memory stone and a rooster crown... and liveships!

Janny Wurts and her neverending tale of the Mistwraith set on Athera. Two blueblood born with the gift over the elements, but not the usual elements. Lysaer, with his ability over light and Arithon, the Master of Shadow. From the mighty Fellowship Sorcerers, the Koriani Order and the clanborn vs the city folk, this tale (spread across 9 books, where it was originally supposed to be 3) has plenty to offer everyone.

Tanya Huff and her Quarter series. No, not the vampire stuff, which is set in a different universe and genre, nor the Valor series, which is currently too limited for a good CCG. I like the concept in the series, bards, singing and manipulating the elemental kythes (or however that is spelt) in a religious sort of capacity. Very interesting stories in the entire series, from political intrigue to romance and a whole host of other things.

OK, I'll stop there, 2 American, 2 Canadian and a Brit. I did think about Asimov's Robot series or even Le Gruin's Earth Sea Quartet, but the former is way too boring and the latter is a bit limited in terms of characters. My favourite Sci-Fi trilogy Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy didn't even make it into the list as I think the game would end up being really nerdy (very much like the books). Terry Brooks (Magic Kingdom for Sale!), David Eddings (Tamuli and topless women) Arthur C. Clarke (HAL2001) and Jack L. Chalker (Husaquahr) all didn't make it into my list for some reason or another. Oh well. Someone recommended RA Salvatore to me, but I've yet to read anything from him.

-+@ Many Skills @+-

I don't have that many...



Art Credits:
Dream Anchor by Holmberg/Gillette/Shreve
Phlouk's Lantern by Werner/Gillette/Goodman
Commando's Knife by Holmberg

I templated three cards today, and one of them was Dream Anchor. This is supposed to be an alternate Reality Anchor, so it's a modified image with a new background. I don't really like the image, but it'll have to do, unless I want to draw a whole new image. Phlouk's Lantern is just a crop of the Phlouk image, which makes it easier for me to get the artwork. I like how it turned out in the end. However, Commando's Knife, the crop from Iain, Commando, didn't work out as well. It looks a bit weird in that image, but it'll also have to suffice for the time being.

So that's 85 cards done for TW and 15 more to go. Bograth got "closed out" today and for that I'm grateful. All that's left are 1 more for Universal and I think 7 each for Nar and d'Resh. I'm not going to rush it though, so it'll probably be November before I get those templated and done. That and the fact that it's going to be hard to get images for some of those cards.

Daniel posted a Weave playtest report today. It's nice to see people are still playtesting TG. He mentions particularly about the power escalation in Weave and I think that's to be expected since that was the plan from the beginning for Weave and Paradwyn and to a smaller degree Underneath. I wonder though if the new cards would generate any new deck types. Probably not since they were designed for the weaker existing deck types. That's something to find out anyways.

Meanwhile Double Jeopardy has been quiet, with only 3 entries to the competition to design the cards. Those aren't exactly what I'm looking for though, but some of them are innovative and I think that's a good sign. Still, I wish more people were interested in the set and stuff. This is going to be an uphill struggle as well, at least Keeper's Quest and Keeper's Question had lots of entries and interest.

I'm not the only person desiging custom cards for MND. The Insiider RP people are moving on to their 4th expansion, Soul Conflict. I'm looking forward to some interesting cards from that set and hopefully some good artwork from Beth there as well. Insiider RP seems to be going slow as well, but there's still a hard core of people there doing stuff and I guess that's a good sign.

And moving on, I have been playing a bit of LotR Online recently trying to escape the boredom of the game. It's still boring though, even with the new set and that's something that should raise warning bells for Decipher. It's not because the new expansion is badly designed, on the contrary, Bloodlines has lots of good cards for existing decks and strategies. However it doesn't offer much new though, although it hints of several strategies that may be coming, but those aren't too coherent as of yet IMO. Of course, I could be missing out something. This would probably drive away the not so dedicated players I guess. And all this before the actual release of the expansion.

I'm already looking forward to the next LotR expansion, but with that comes rotation - Tower block will be rotated out, which means a whole host of important cards would be gone from Standard format. I wonder if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm inclined towards it being bad, because less cards = less strategies, which means that the game will get even more boring... unless the new expansion inject some new oomph into the game. I'm not sure Decipher is capable of that now though.

Haven't read much Origins stuff, although I did read Logan's post a few days back. It's interesting to see that Chaosium is still supporting Mythos in Origins eventhough they no longer publish the game. That's a good sign. Of course, they probably have other products to fall back on besides the CCG.

And gEngine is being quiet. VTES has slowed down since the first few weeks and even with more players being added to the beta test, LESS games are being played. Hopefully they'll get out of playtest soon and go public. Star Wars is still going crazy as Timmy and Christoph and Patrick has been pushing it around. Lots of people getting passes to play the game there, which is a good sign. The big surprise for me when I saw the stats today is that DoomTown is on a "boom" (or an upswing, not an explosion). I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Pillar of Salt is now available online, or if the word about it was spread over Origins.

-+@ Sponsorship @+-

which is what is needed, I think...



Something different? That's correct. This is like a bonus blog since I had this insane (OK, I've been reading too much of Doug's writings, I'm now using insane as an adjective... at least I'm not spelling it as "insain") idea to make a list.

List of Games I wish could be on gEngine

This is the list of games I'd like to see on gEngine. Most of them won't make it to the engine for one reason or another, but the list can still be made just for fun. Who knows, maybe if I start lobbying people hard enough, I might actually get them... but most probably not.

1. Lord of the Rings TCG. This should be a no brainer for anyone who's been following my blog. Yes, I play this game. I don't particularly like it, but it's the only in-print CCG I'm playing these days. I wish I don't have to buy boosters and I would like to build a deck from "unlimited" cards - both these the strengths of gEngine. This game will probably never get on gEngine though, unless WA goes belly-up.

2. (a) Risk, the boardgame. My all time favourite boardgame has to make it into this list, but this is another doubtful candidate, being a Hasbro/Avalon Hill property. Still, it'd be interesting to conquer the world on gEngine.
(b) Lord of the Rings Risk. Well, if the world isn't enough, there's always Middle Earth. Expansion set and all.
(c) Risk 2210. And while I'm power crazy and conquering everything in sight, I might as well start conquering the oceans and the moon as well...

3. A Game of Thrones CCG. The middle card above is from this game. The artwork is nice, and it's also currently in print. I'd like to try out the game before I play it, the politics sounds intriguing, the mechanics are nice. I hope though that it isn't a Rare-dependent type of game, but I don't really know. That's the reason that I'd like it on gEngine. Will it happen? Highly doubtful.

4. Svea Rige. Another boardgame. This one is a Swedish historical boardgame that Tomi has been taunting me with, but since I doubt I'll ever be able to get my hands on it, gEngine would be my one and only chance of playing this game. Oh and it might be fun to try and stop Finland from gaining its independence...

5. Warlords TCG. AEG game. I chose Warlords over L5R because Warlords seems to be the more interesting of the two to me. That and the fact that on gEngine, one can get to build decks with all the promos every printed for Warlords, which is a big deal since AEG tends to print ONE copy of a promo for this game! What are the chances of this happening? Close to none. AEG has been dragging their heels over giving permission for their games.

6. Ophidian 2035. Yeah, I have cards from this. Yes, the rules are supposedly not that good. What sets this game apart though is that the mechanic is interesting. That plus the fact that the company that made it is actually supporting the fan-made expansions. 2i was going about how they would put the players first, well, the company that makes Ophidian actually does that. They released the spoiler for the unreleased expansion and now they are supporting fan-made sets and have given the thumbs up for fan-fiction. Could we get this unpublished game onto the gEngine? There is a possibility, but a very slim one.

7. Allegience: War of Factions. This isn't really a Collectible Card Game, but it is a Customisable Card Game instead. There are some balancing issues, but based on its historical accuracy and good gameplay and great support, it's winning over quite a large number of players. That plus the fact that the cards have no rarity means that everyone has access to all the cards. It does sound intriguing and this is another game I'd like to try before I buy.

8. HeroClix. I like superheroes. Can gEngine even support HeroClix? Barely I would think. Would we ever get it onto the gEngine? I highly doubt it. Again, access to all the clix would make it a good platform to really see how great the game is (or not). That plus the fact that one doesn't have to shell out big bucks to play the game.

9. Settlers of Catan. One of the most popular German board game. I think Microsoft has the license to do this game online, which means that it's going to be out of gEngine for sure. It's a quick and simple game and one that would suit gEngine rather well. It's a pity though that we won't be able to get it there.

10. I was going to put Triple Triad here, but there's still a chance for that on gEngine... just not this year. I'll close the list with another boardgame - Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs, a Waddingtons game that I had lots of fun playing in my childhood. There was a pterosaurs and a swamp monster and stuff on a 2D board with 3D make belief mountains. I don't have a copy of this game anymore though which is a pity.

So there's 10 games I'd like to see on gEngine, but will probably never come to pass... there's always dreams though.

-+@ Total Eclipse @+-

It seems that's what MND is doing lately to my CCGW life...



Art Credits:
Sproutnik by Allen
Bog Stone Staff by Werner/Holmberg/Nov
Jungle Staff by Werner/Gillette/Holmberg

Sproutnik is the second all David Allen artwork for MND (the first was Tainted Peaks in TG) which I did a few days back and I think it looks good, albeit a bit out of place. Oh well. I did 4 relics today for TW, 2 for Bograth and 2 for Paradwyn. 2 of those are shown above. That means I'm up to 82 cards with Paradwyn complete and 4 more regions (Bograth, Universal, Nar and d'Resh) and 18 images left to go. I think I can finish up Bograth the next time I pick this up, meaning after that, all that's left would be Nar, d'Resh and Universal. Wow, that's fast. I didn't expect it to go that fast nor wanted it to go first, but since I was in the mood, I might as well strike while the iron is hot or some weird metaphor like that.

I managed to hunt down quite a few more images today, including 2 from Rich Werner and one from Whyrl. I was actually after a Bograth magi - found one that might work, but it'll probably need some work. I'm already thinking about drawing the 2 Universal images - an anchor and a harp. It's going to be a pain to draw, but once that's done, the colouring should go a bit faster, hopefully. Haven't even started looking at the Nar and d'Resh images yet, other than the fact that I need a magi for Nar. I'll leave those for later, since they are either going to be recoloured existing cards, or brand new drawings.

All TW cards are, of course, visible at the Custom Card site, and that site is getting more and more hits according to the counter. I hope that's a good sign. Hopefully, people are making their own custom cards and stuff or playing with the custom cards that I'm making.

Today is another quiet day. Pretorianstalker showed up for my YNDT tour on Friday, but there just weren't enough people to play the game - I had wanted to test it with at least 3 players. He's also trying to get the Doomtrooper league going, but I think he's busy battling the summer blues as well as people are going away on holiday and stuff. I wonder how that league is going.

A new month means new tokens and quite a few people have logged on to play. Star Wars still takes the cake I guess, since Christoph has been advertising it almost everywhere - on Decktech, on the PC forum and probably on the German sites as well. It's good to see players there I guess. Well, that's a good sign anyways. Apparently there has been quite a bit of update on the game as well.

I still haven't seen any cool Origins report yet. The only person who posted anything was Logan who mentioned that LARP chess is back this year. No news about the lockup or any madvogon stories. That's a pity though.

I got bored earlier and I did a search for gEngine with CCG. This blog returned like 5 results out of the top 20 or something like that. That's interesting, well, not really, but if 10 people were to blog about CCGW, then it could really spread quite a bit of buzz here and there.

I also bought my online Middle Earth Expanded Draft packs today. Some of those cards are nasty, but nice. Elf, Rohan and Gondor will probably take advantage of those cards once they rotate into standard. The images are nice, most of them are WETA produced and not movie based. I wonder if this is part of the "squeeze more out of the game before we go bust" strategy. Hmm...

-+@ Executioner @+-

still keeping with last month's CCG since nobody guessed it.



Art Credits:
Kolte's Spear: Werner/Gillette/Goodman/Nov
Ball of Snow: Holmberg/Nov
Rolling Baldar: Werner/Gillette/Goodman/Nov/Holmberg

I did all this earlier in the week for TW. Kolte's Spear was rather tedious to do, I had to crop out the border and extend the art. I liked how it turned out though. Ball of Snow is a nice card that is based on two different Holmberg images and a foreground by myself. It's not that difficult drawing a blanket of snow after all. Rolling Baldar was the hardest of the three to do - I'm not too disappointed with the final image as shown. It's nothing fantastic, and some of the background could do with a bit more work, but I think it's good enough for the set.

Also did one Weave card today, just to finish off all the Weave cards. 5 more regions and just under 30 cards to go - Universal needs 2 relics, then there's Paradwyn, Bograth, Nar and d'Resh. I'm not going to be in a hurry to finish these, but I'll try and see what I can do about the Bograth and Paradwyn cards. Most of the d'Resh and Nar cards already have text, from the left overs from TG, and a lot of them just needs manips of existing cards. Bogwyn is going to be the most troublesome one for images after all. The relics should hopefully be easy - I'm going to copy the same trick that I used for Weave - copy existing stuff from the magi cards!

I actually did 4 more MND cards for TW in between writing this. I guess blogging only increases my appetite to template cards. Figured out which Paradwyn Relic to make while doing that, bug I guess I'll leave the Bograth ones for another day. So, with that, I'm past the three-quarter mark at 78% finished - 2 more images for Paradwyn and Universal, 4 more for Bograth, with the remaining almost evenly split between Nar and d'Resh. Looks interesting after all.

I'd do other CCG stuff, but I have nothing today...

-+@ Hades @+-

Another word for "Hell"?



Art Credits:
Paradise Hyren: Burke/Whyrl/Strom
Ancestor's Tooth: Nov/Holsten/Werner/Gillette
Rehlya's Scythe: Gillette/Holmberg
I templated two of those yesterday, the third is an interesting crop. I never thought I'd use that particular corner of Ardit/Darunia as a background, but the palm tree looks rather good for the hyren. Ancestor's Tooth is a bit ghastly - who'd want to have a tooth on a stick? - but it works. I actually think I did rather well drawing the molar. Rehlya's Scythe was fun to do. The whole twirling through air effect is something new to me, and I'm rather pleased with the effect.

No new cards done today. Yesterday I had to force myself to look for a good picture for a rather cool Bograth looking background I had, but I decided I didn't want to force it, because the good manips are the ones that comes naturally. I didn't want to recolour an existing image or chop bits from them too, so those will have to wait. However, all TW images can now be seen at the Custom Card site.

Today marks the start of the Double Jeopardy contest. Tom was so interested in it having missed out on Keeper's Questions that he posted an entry just past midnight. Hmm... OK. I wonder if it'll get anything interesting - it's hard enough designing a double-double, and I'm not talking about cheeseburgers. The ad for it is also posted up on the CCGW site - I'm not spamming anything this month though.

I was just figuring out how many custom cards have been made for gEngine, here's the breakdown:
EL: 50
SP: 12
TG: 100
TG promo: 3
KQ: 4
TW: 72 to date
DJ: 7 + 5 alternates
Total: 253 cards. Not a lot there, considereing that there will be 3 full blown custom sets out there. I wonder how the other custom sets compare. B5 has 133 for Anla'shok and 144 for The Vorlons. According to Tomi, the Doomtrooper expansions are 108 cards each, with the exception of Heresy which is slightly less. The WS Legacy expansion has 90 cards and about 150 "other cards". I guess the MND card sets are "about right".

I just had a look through the monthly statistics of the games played and B5 has been getting played quite a bit, back to its usual rate of about 100 games a month or so. I wonder who's playing though, and what they are playing. There's a 2-player game going on right now which is interesting. Perhaps B5 is one of those "summer only" games?

Star Wars is getting massive play, and there seems to be more and more people paying for it. I wonder what draws them to it. Probably the mass of cards. I wonder if the player committee has been taking note of the game online as well. Hopefully they have.

VTES is the other game that's apparently going strong. I don't know for sure, I only look at the numbers, since I barely venture there without garlic or steak (sic). I'm glad the server is still up, I'll have no idea how to reboot that even if I have to. Apparently people are giving away their accounts to other players to beta test. Well, those sad people are going to get stuck after the beta test me thinks.

Origins is up and running and I wonder how things are going. Someone should really come up with the idea to broadcast their experience at a gaming con live over the internet or something. I wonder what new games, if any, are premiering there...

I did have to update my Origins prediction on the plates post. I think most of the predictions were exceeded... well the original predictions anyways. I made new ones for the Anniversary as well. Speaking about the anniversary, I think I best start thinking about the top 10 of the year soon.