-+@ Bounty Hunter @+-

I got some good bargains too...



Art Credits:
Tuyet by Jeffry Ransom, background by Matt Holmberg
Tide Hyren by Jen Reed, background by Matt Holmberg
Howitzer Primat by Jeffry Ransom, backgrounds and colours by Austin Gardner.

Another 3 from Exodus Flight. These look good. I'm just pulling them out of the hat, figuratively speaking, now that I've got a huge stockpile of images to use, thanks to the Dreamstorm templating exercise. I've also updated the icons on the Custom Card site to include one for EF, and added rows for the Insiider Custom Cards.

A quick run down for the custom card icons:

The Elder's Legacy icon. The gear represents that it's the first of the gEngine sets.
The Tainted Glimpses icon. An eye in the traditional core purple represents the set. Art by Justin Hillgrove.
The Twilight War icon. War is symbolised by the sword, which is flaming to overcome the falling twilight. Art by Alison Strom/Whryl.
The Exodus Flight icon. A modification of Insiider icon to show its Insiider roots and an X, from which the name eXodus originally originated. Art by myself.

And for the RP cards:
The Insiider logo, exclusively for the first RP set eXodus. The cards were templated without this logo. Art from Insiider/Jim Wong.
This is the first set logo for the RP cards - a cloud which was taken from the body of the Dew Tryter, a creature in the set, to represent the name of the set, Dreamstorm. Art by Austin Gardner.
The Arderian chime from the set, recoloured to serve as the logo for Chimefall, the third RP set. Art by Jeffry Ransom.

I added one card to TW as well - more on that below - and am working on a card for DJ. I was digging through more images by Whyrl and found this one that would probably make a great DJ card. The downside is that I have to change all my announcements from 7 cards to 8 cards. Not a big deal, I guess... if I remember where all the announcements are. It's a good thing I haven't heavily publicised it yet. At least I don't have to update the MND at CCGW blog because that doesn't have anything about numbers... I think.

The other major thing I started for MND this week or so was the Malovis Challenge. This is where people play 3 games with Mal and tries to win 2 out of 3. I've thrown in incentives for winning all 3 and for using Shadowsfall cards, so hopefully, those will be utilised. Mal is also building crazy decks since his challengers are allowed to name the decks they wish him to play - that was Mal's suggestion, I think it will bite him in the end probably, but ultimately, he'll have fun. Hopefully, this will revitalise the game on the engine.

The other major thing going on is the second part of "The Hunt". Four questions, three of them rather easy, the fourth is a killer. I'm making people work for it, but I dropped a hint earlier that Logan got so who knows what will happen soon. Maybe someone will pick up those 5 tokens... maybe they won't.

The new version of the engine has another defect it seems... detaching cards is buggy. I'm glad I haven't implemented things like that yet. Sometimes being low-tech is a blessing in disguise - it means games work even when the engine is wonky. The downside of it is that the game is lowtech, but for MND, that doesn't seem to be too big an issue at the moment.

Things are still quiet on the engine. JC is busy trying to get all the Rage stuff worked out, I think Martin is working on VTES and a few other things and Tomi probably has his fingers in quite a number of pies, whichever strikes his fancy. It's slow, but steady though.

Meanwhile Ed is working on the next bugfix release of the engines. He mentioned that he won't be dedicating as much time to the engine as previously, not that it's noticable anyways - he still spends a lot of time devoted to all things CCGW. That is a good thing.

I just had Nick Szankovics buzz me about doing Tanshihana on the engine. That poor guy has been trying to get the game online for a long time now. I reminded him again of our agreement that I'll code the game for him once he has 100 cards from 2 regions done and ready. He's got 18 more cards to go to reach there, so let's see what happens then.

I logged on to Cardhaus last week hoping to get some Black Rider cards, but was disappointed to find that they aren't offering them still. Which is a pain. I have been waiting to get my Black Rider cards for ages now. I did pick up a box each of each of the block openers - FotR, TTT and RotK. While there, I got a box of Allegiance, War of Factions. They have also dropped their prices for VotS and ND boxes, and I was going to get one of each, but decided it was too much, so I only got a box of VotS.

I haven't done too much to the AWoF box yet, although I must say the cards reminds me of Tempest of the Gods. I would put the quality at below Wheel of Time which seemed to capture teh genre rather well. The template is confusing, and there seems to be too many stats. Also the location of various things are inconsistant on the different card types - makes it a bit hard to locate things at a first glance. Ah well, it's apparently one of the cool new game of the past 12 months and there is some buzz going around about it. Would it last more than 18 months? Probably - the second expansion is already being designed, if not already printed.

The VotS box gifted me with a few interesting cards, including a Cawh, the cald version of the Rock Silth and an Aula, Mindseeker. Nothing big there. The major thing about the box of cards was that I noticed on the booster packing the Kintor image. That image has never been on a card as far as I know, so, a quick scan later and it's now part of TW. That prompted me to have a look at the other boxes. the DE packing has a magi that looks unfamiliar... that might make it into AE at least, although the image quality isn't going to be too good due to the fact that it's small. The VotS box itself has a good collection of creatures with a Nar magi... I wonder if I can use that for something. The Mowat could be promising.

The major thing I did yesterday was to sort out the LotR cards. There were 4 boxes to go through as I realised that I had never sorted my Shadows cards as well. I got some really good cards from Shadows and FotR, normal pulls from TTT, but rather boring pulls from RotK. I think I might have to resort to buying another box of RotK at the end of the day. Sorting out the cards and updating the lists (on Mahasamatman as well) took up the majority of the day. There were lots of poeple offering to trade me cards, but I haven't accepted any offers yet.

I retried the Gandalf RB deck again yesterday on LotRO... and I had to work to keep him alive. I don't think he's playable outside of a pure gandalf deck with elves and men to remove burdens and lots of skirmish events. He floods the pool too, so the only way to ensure survival would be to use the giant ents with G for Grand. I wonder how he stacks up against Uruks, but then again, at battlegrounds, there's that spell to discard conditions anyways. So...

-+@ Fist of Fury @+-

or Palm on mouse if you will...



Art Credit: All 3 by Jen Reed, backgrounds by
Savage Drowl: Background by Justin Zastrow, with shadow by myself
Razorback Agrilla: Background by Shreve/Werner, with shadow by myself
Tunnel Ergar: Backgroudn by Holmberg.

Three more for Exodus Flight and it's shaping up nicely. It's getting ready to be scripted as well. There's some buzz going on about the set as people are freely giving permission for their magi and the artwork to be used on the set. It is shaping up to be a cool set. 150 cards - 12 per region + 6 universal, the largest custom set to date by myself. Gets a bit mind-wrecking thinking about those numbers.

All the cards not used for Exodus Flight will be going to Fallen Hour, of course, and that's already starting to get populated with the spill over cards, mostly universal so far, but there's already quite a number of people planning to get artwork done in time for this as well. it's shaping up to be rather interesting. There have already been a dozen or so magi going into Exodus Flight and people seem to be jockeying for more to be on the way.

All this, of course, is because I have finally finished templating the RP set Dreamstorm sometime last week. Generally people are happy with the cards there - they can be viewed on Insiider and on the Custom Cards Forum, as usual. I'm going to take a break before I start templating Chimefall, the minor reason for the break is to pretty up some of the Exodus Flight cards, the major reason is to complete the art for Twilight War.

I can't believe I haven't done anything for Twilight War (or for that matter Tainted Glimpses) for such a long time. I should really try to get the final few artwork for TW finished and the text finalised so that it can start playtesting next year. You can't rush genious though, although in this case, it's not so much genious as hard work and inspiration. I also need to personally go through Tainted Glimpses for a final check run of the cards before the end of the year so that we can gun for a November release, or wait for a May release next year. Ah well. I know freigabe has been testing out Keeper's Quest, the new Slumber seems to be a favourite for him.

Babylon 5 has been getting a new lease of life it seems... the Star Wars players are beginning to venture out into the other Sci-Fi games on the engine. The complexity of Babylon 5 though probably pales to the amount of errata in SWD so they are probably finding the change and the challenge a good thing. The number of games played, albeit 2-player, has been an interesting change.

The troopers are also back from the summer break and seem to be going mano-a-mano with each other. That's always a good thing. The other game that's recovering from summer has been Rage, it's getting its almost usual level of play now as the players return from whatever cairn and fetish they've been hiding under. The downside to that though is that there seems to be a lag and crash bug in there due to the new build. I hope that gets fixed soon.

Mille Bornes is still picking up players, that's always a good thing, and since quite a lot of them are used to paying to play at games.com, I'm sure it's generating some income for Ed. The main game that is generating money though these days seems to be Star Wars... that is not a bad thing... those players tend to sooner or later try out the other games. And that brings me back full circle to Babylon 5! It's getting played. Hooray!

I was thinking about contacting Bruce about the next expansion, the one that features the Narn and Centauri. Perhaps he's busy writing up his thesis... maybe, but still it might be interesting to see what he comes up with. The downside is collecting images, but then again, with all 5 seasons on DVD, a few made for TV movies and a spinoff, it shouldn't be too difficult to get enough images for cards. Personally though, I'd like to see some of the First ones as cards. Sure we already have Lorien, the Shadows and the Vorlons and the Walker of Sigma whatever, but there are a few other first ones as well.

Is VTES coming out of beta soon? I have no idea. It seems ready as both Martin and Ed strive to finish it before the end of September. I wonder if there will be any of the players baying for blood if it isn't publicly available by then. Probably. I better stock up on my supply of garlic pills.

I was cleaning up the BOT the other day and noticed the question "Will the other expansions be available?" I pondered about that for a moment then realised it was probably directed at VTES. Will it? Well, I have no idea, and it's definately not up to me, so I left that question unanswered, along with about another score of questions. Really though, some of those questions are rather difficult to answer.

Talking about questions, I have started the second "challenge" in "The Hunt". Basically, all this is about raising awareness about CCGW and the associated integration of the website, forums and engine. The goal is to use the forum to Private Message me a predetermined set of text, the winner of which gets copper tokens as rewards. The first one was won by wolfboy Bryan, and he almost got the second one... but missed out on a minor point. All this came about because the players seem to be rather ignorant about things like the WGO, the BOT and the FPN, so hopefully, "The Hunt" will highlight those areas that the ghosts use to inform the gaming public about things.

What is everyone else doing? Not a lot. Martin is working on VTES. Tomi was seen working on a handful of his other games to make them work with the new version of the engine. Logan briefly checked his games when the new version went online. Bruce was busy with Rage and VS, but things seems to have quieten down now. Ed is still trying to get the engine, both the normal version and the VTES version bug-free. I hope he succeeds.



Meanwhile, I've been templating a whole host of different cards lately for the Insiider RP peeps as is shown above. They are stoked about everything too... no requests yet, since on the scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is least, and 10 is the greatest, this probably feature as a 2. Nevertheless, it's good practice templating non-MND cards, because those cards generally have more things to template than MND.

Meanwhile though I have been hunting for more artwork for MND cards, and I came across another good one by Whyrl (Alison Strom) for Double Jeopardy. And the list grows by one. People are also keen to have their own characters in the set too. We shall have to see though, since most MND people barely follow up on what they say they'll do.

Talking about Double Jeopardy, I've been getting the slow feedback from the 2nd contest... people just aren't happy that they don't win. Heh, well, I can only pick one winner, so that means one person gets to be very happy each month. The next one has already been posted, although it's not schedule to start until next month. It's to enable people to get some time to think about the card, not that there are many people who do.

I'm also thinking of starting some sort of competitive MND play next month on the engine. We shall have to see what happens there. It's hard to plan these things, and it's harder still when the player pool isn't as much as it used to be, but it's about time to draw in those returning after summer, so who knows, some organised play might be good.

Oh and the end of the month is coming up soon... means lots of work for me, since there's something that might get announced once Ed gets around to it. And due to the frequency of blogging this month, I think I'll keep the titles from the current CCG for next month, unless someone can guess the CCG before then.

-+@ Age of Progress @+-

as things move forward...



Art Credits:
Flying Carpet by Beth Zyglowicz
Parathin Shield by Austin Gardner with backgrounds and modifications by myself
Furok Mantle by Beth Zyglowicz

I've been going crazy with the Dreamstorm templating, finishing up d'Resh, KT, Nar, Naroom and just did 5 of the Orothe cards today. That's a lot of cards, the results of which can be seen on Insiider and the Custom Card Forums. That means that there's 2 more for Orothe and 5 more regions to go. If nothing else, it's getting people excited about their artwork, and creating custom cards. The three relics shown above were all done recently, as cards for Dreamstorm, and for Exodus Flight. The Exodus Flight versions are shown above.

Exodus Flight has also been getting busy, with the cards from Dreamstorm and the requests by the RPers for their magi to be incorporated as cards. I'm a bit surprised at the large volume of people who want their magi to be made into cards, and am rather surprised as to the large number of good artwork for those magi. They look great. The results can be seen on the EF page. EF is going to be a 150 card set, 12 cards from each region consisiting of 2 magi, 1 spell and 9 creatures/relics, and 6 universal cards. Whatever that's left-over, will, of course, be moved to Fallen Hour.

Non-MND wise, I've been playing quite a bit of LotR with my fun Unbound Hobbit deck. It either wins against the really bad players or loses big time against the really good players and I enjoy the strategy that goes along with it. It's fun, but not tournament level good. Meanwhile though, signs are beginning to look bad for Decipher on the whole... there was a suggestion to publish LotR as online only... which is scary in a sense since online sales is probably a small fraction of total sales.

I've also been trying to fix up the Quartet mess from last time. I finally realised a few things and had to backtrack a few times. Well, I don't think things are fixed, but without a proper playtest again, I have no idea what to fix. There's a new playtest scheduled for next Friday, so hopefully I can clear everything out by then, and move back to YNDT and Urland. One thing at a time.

The other thing I've been doing, of course, is the CCG stats thing. It's going along rather haphazardly, as I can't decide how to do certain things. It's a good thing that it's pointless as well, otherwise I'll have a real headache. Still things are looking good.

Talking about things looking good, Tomi has started work on updating Titan to get rid of all the Avalon Hill images, which we do not have permission for, and reintroducing the game (which we have permission for) onto gEngine. That sounds like a good deal. He's stuck on a number of things though, but I'm sure he'll be able to handle them.

Martin is also busy with the VTES update. His new version is supposed to be the final version, but like all his games, he does a major rewrite after a year or two, so I won't be too surprised if that's the case for VTES. There are people clamouring to play the game, but I wonder how many of those are willing to pay to play. I don't think the signs are that good, particularly now when people are complaining about the lack of players. This is despite having more than 200 players on the system. When the system goes open and the number of paying players is reduced to much less than this, would it be sustainable? I have no idea.

Nick (Superryoga) is pestering people to start work on his CCG again. Really though, he should finish it first and everything before expecting people to work on it. It's been two years, yet I doubt he has more than a dozen cards with artwork finalised on it. Oh well. He's also offered to see if he can get people to play more MND. More power to him if he does so.

CCGs seems to be winding down though. Decipher is low on funds and is possibly on the verge of bankrupcy. AEG is having trouble with its flagship game L5R, and there is already signs that it's producing one less expansion this year. Even the revived games of Shadowfist and VTES are short one expansion this year. Magic, VS and perhaps Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are prehaps all that is still going strong, and if that's the case then it's a sad day for CCGs indeed.

-+@ Reflection @+-

Is this another one of those CCGs with one word cards?



Art Credits:
Nocturn Jip by Strom
Rot Weebo by Werner with backgrounds by Nov
Rattle Uban by Holmberg/Gillette with background by Holmberg

That's 3 from Twilight War... I did manage to template two cards yesterday so I'm left with 12 more to go (6 Nar, 5 d'Resh and one Universal). Twilight war is coming along nicely though, and it's scehdule to enter into playtest sometime in the middle of 2006 which means there's about a year or so to get everything together. So far so good.

I've also been doing quite a number of card templating for Dreamstorm - the results of which can be seen on the Custom Cards forums and on Insiider. Dreamstorm has much better images than eXodus though, and it's rather nice to be working on them. Also, because of the large quantity of acceptable quality images from Dreamstorm, I've decided that any "spill over" won't be in Exodus Flight - the set that will be rewritten for the CCG - but will instead be in the next converted RP set Fallen Hour (named after Chimefall). Exodus Flight will probably be in the region of about 12 - 15 cards per region and will be between 150 to 200 cards. Anything extra after that falls into Fallen Hour.

I have also decided that, if the custom cards will last into 2007, the Invaders are going to get cards as a new region. The Invaders set though will probably take over the Ancient of Days set and that custom set now has the working name, and most probably final name, of Ancient Enemy. The two Invaders cards have been templated and more cards will probably wing its way into that set. I'm going to maintain that set at 100 cards, but the breakdown will, change due to the inclusion of the new region.

Double Jeopardy's second contest is coming along... 3 entries so far and some of them are good. I'm going to guess that people are going to have a hard time thinking about cards for the Stuff Twins, but in about two weeks or so, they'll probably make up their minds and post up something interesting. At the moment, I know who I'll be picking as the winner, but it's still early days.

BobbyDoc and Freigabe has been busy testing decks and playing a large number of games online - those are the two people who has never heard about the game until they joined the engine and are now the 2 most fanatical players on the engine. I see custom cards filling up their decks which means it's a good thing that some of the custom cards are being played with.

Other MND news doesn't look good. It's already July and there's no announcement about the cartoon. I'm going to say that it's probably a write-off at this point, particularly so many years after the last release of VotS. I doubt that even TR will be able to rescue the game at this point in time. That's the for the CCG though. The cartoon, if marketed correctly, and is well written, drawn and produced can probably garner a big following. Even then though, the CCG isn't guaranteed to survive by riding on the coattails.

I have been playing quite a bit of LotR online over the weekend. I've been playing mostly with the Isengard deceived wizards/Uruks with my choking non-solo Smeagol. It's not tournament level, it's just fun. The other deck that I have been tweaking with are the Ring-bound Hobbits with a Besieger flipside. I was talking to Kenneth Ellingsen the other day and it seems the only two shadow sides that are dependable are Cosairs and Forest Naz. Ah well. He also said he's been buying his cards online, but on the flip side, he's winning at least $100 a month with the tournaments so financially it's not eating into him. Then again, he is a good player.

Engine-wise, I haven't done much. The forums had a revamp today, and a few other minor admin stuff was carried out. The BOT though is probably a bit full by now... someone will probably have to spend some time answering those questions. There's also been 2 new Shepherds, one of them still hasn't signed up for her 3 weekly tours. Hmm...

I had a playtest of Quartet last Friday. I couldn't believe how dodgy it was. Definately needed a lot of changes to get it working the way it should. I still haven't loaded the new version.. it needs to be tested online in 2 player mode and I haven't gotten around to that yet. Will probably need to get to it at some point.

I've also started a stats thing for all the CCGs ever produced. More here (or somewhere) when I get the results I guess. It's just a for fun thing that's totally pointless at the moment.

And for other people? Martin is still busy on VTES, nipa has been slowly upgrading his games, and I think Doomtrooper might get an extra expansion in the next week or two... maybe. The next version of the engine is being developed, so 162 should be on the way maybe today, maybe in 2 months time - who knows?

I actually played a game of B5 the other day. Forgot that the deck can't win with the new Vorlon rules so it was a rather pointless game for me. The other players though, were a bit afraid of each other, so I was leading at 13 power or something like that. Could probably get to 19 quickly, but that's all I could do. Someone did crash out though - it's a hints error of some sort - so that's something I'll need to look into as well.

-+@ Inspired @+-

A new month, a new CCG. OK, so I'm less than the title obviously to have to copy the card title from a CCG. And last month's CCG will be discussed below.



Art Credits:
Royal Aritex by Zyglowicz
Quagmire Hyren by Reed
Lava Lasp by Ransom with backgrounds by Nov.

Three potential cards for the Exodus Flight - the first two done over the past week or so. These are part of the Dreamstorm cards I've been templating for RP - I haven't even begun to report them anywhere except on Insiider though. I guess I should start another "bragging" thread on the custom card forums and to publicize it on the blog... or not. I'm actually enjoying templating Dreamstorm - which is a big change from templating eXodus. I think my comments on eXodus have made certain people a bit more aware of their shortcomings and downfalls (artwise), and some of them are really trying their best to up a few notches their artwork, which makes my work of templating easier, of course. I also "donated" a few TG images to Dreamstorm, particularly those that shares an eeriely similar name. People are going to start getting confused very soon I'm sure.

I haven't been working Twilight War in the meantime while templating Dreamstorm (and stealing some of those cards - name and art for Exodus Flight), but I did get some time in between to start the second Double Jeopardy contest. It's day 2 and there are 2 entries, so I guess that's off to a good start. The bad news is those two will probably be half the total entries I'll receive for this contest. I hope there'll be more though, but it's not easy designing a card.

Meanwhile, of the sets in testing, I'm a bit disappointed that nobody is testing out Keeper's Quest yet, but I guess it's still early days. The Nar cards of Tainted Glimpses, however, got a quick run thanks to Bobbydoc and freigabe and their end of the month tokens. I sent Mitch on to have a look at his comments... it's interesting how I'm delegating that part of the work, but since Mitch is a self-declared neo-Nar narcissist (hah!), I think he's the best person for the job.

It was nice though seeing people play with Elder's Legacy and Shadowsfall Promo cards for a change. I guess the engine's populace has long since accepted them as being the norm. Also had a conversation with Justin Zastrow today about his artwork and the game and stuff. He seems happy that more of his artwork are being featured on the custom cards. That's a plus for me I guess. We also talked about him attending the next MND worlds at GenCon Indy later this year... the first one not organised by 2i. I wish them all the best, although I wish I could be there.

And non-MND news... I actually had a playtest of YNDT last month which produced some rather good suggestions. I really think that a good playtest team would be a good asset for developers. Tomi has his team of one... maybe I should start developing my own team as well, one that would get together regularly, maybe once a month, and go test my games one by one. That's something to think about. Anyways, lots more to do on YNDT now.

Talking about doing stuff, I haven't updated my report for a while now... I'm sure that's due somewhere. Simply saying "Forward everything by another month" would be fine for most people I guess, but I should really get it up to scratch so that I know where I am... perhaps I should factor in a few other things as well and update it as per the new "realistic" schedule? Something to think about there too.

Engine-wise, not a lot has been happening. Martin did a DoomTown update and Tomi had a few updates for some of his games, and an update for Buffy. Otherwise it's slow for the month of July with no new games, but that doesn't mean it's a bad month. Summer is always sluggish... I did my usual other "end of the month" chores as well, and there are a few surprises, but those can be found elsewhere. I've also started a CCG related project of sorts... more here when I have more to show and tell.

I have been thinking about porting the computer game "Betrayal at Krondor" to a CCG. Obviously I won't be able to host that on gEngine because I neither have the permission from Midkemia Press or Raymond E. Fiest to use those names, or from Dynamix Studios or Sierra to use the images. Still it sounds like a cool CCG idea. It'll also try to emulate the game as much as possible, or at least I'll try to make it so...

What I have so far:

Win conditions:
1. Eliminate all your opponents
2. Be the first to reach Sethanon and obtain the lifestone (e.g. LotR's mechanic)
3. Fulfil certain conditions printed on the race specific "Objective" cards (e.g. mythos' adventures, B5 agendas, etc.)
4. Obtain a total score of 25 (from B5, WS, etc.).

Factions:
Kingdom
Pathatian
Moredhel
Elendel
Guild of Thieves
Magic-Users
Clerics
None (Quegians, Free Cities, Glamhedrel, Dwarves, Tsurani)

Card Types:
Character
Equipment - Quest, Jewel, Armor, Hand Weapon, Ranged Weapon, Magical Item, "no tag"
Events
Location
NPC - Non-Playing Character
Objective - faction specific
Quest
Spells
Traps and Merceneries

Stats:
Melee
Ranged/Magic
Agility

There will be no "active player" during a turn... everything will run like Babylon 5 or Mythos where initiative order is determined (or most probably predetermined in this case... I have no idea yet) and the players play cards one at a time going in rounds. The cost of the card will be paid from the "circular pool". Say in a 3 player game, it's player A then B then C. Each has 5 crowns in the pool to play cards with. Player A "wins" initiative and gets to goes first. Player A plays a card that costs 2 crowns. 2 Crowns get deducted from Player A, while 2 Crowns get added to Player B. So now Player A has 3 Crowns, Player B has 7 Crowns and Player C has 5 Crowns. If Player B decides to pass, he deducts 1 Crown from his own pool and passes it on to Player C to make it 3 - 6 - 6. This is to preventand unfair choke of sorts with tactical passing. When C plays a card (or passes), the costs get added to Player A's available pool, thus completing the circle. It's a bit complicated to explain, but hopefully gameplay would be more intuitive. Obviously, balancing issues would need to be worked out... not every faction will start with the same amount of Crowns a turn - pretty much like the Home card from Doomtown.

Also like Doomtown and Babylon 5 is that each player gets to start with one card, this one being the "Party Leader" which will determine the faction. I think I'll probably allow a free 3 points worth of characters to be played in addition to the leader during setup (similar to LotR and MECCG before that) so that ther's a ready "party" available to play with. I'm toying with the B5 rule that out of faction characters cost a bit more to play, say a penalty, as in MND. That's something to think about.

At the moment it's still rather close to being a LotR clone, with some of my favourite elements from other card games thrown in - the alternate victory conditions from Middle Earth and Wildstorms, the objective card to victory stolen from Babylon 5 and Mythos. The huge drawback in the design is that the parties have very little chance to interact with each other. Events will help some there - mind attacks by the moredhel spell casters, Navon's nighthawk attacks, etc. The only way around that I can see would be some Mythos style creature attack... with a twist. There'll be traps as well as enemies (both humanoid and creature and spiritual) that players can throw at other players.

Attack would be determined by agility - the fastest player/enemy gets to go first. Ranged attacks (including magic) will only be possible if the character is not assigned to an opponent to combat. Combat is a simple WS sort of thing - compare the numbers, although combat events and on card text should make things more interesting. Of course, location text and equipment, etc. may also help or hinder the combat. Unlike LotR, however, it's fight to the death ... or flee, which would probably turn it into something more akin to MECCG than LotR.

Points are obtained from Quests, which are cards you play when you meet certain conditions. I guess this makes them more like Mythos' Adventure cards instead.

Turn order would probably be similar to the LotR/B5 setup:
1. Beginning of Round and determine order (if required)
2. Play cards
3. Play next location card and move party
4. Play enemies
5. Combat - assign, play cards, determine results (recycle as needed or flee)
6. Draw
7. End of Round and victory checking.
Some of these phases will need better names.

Decks will probably follow LotR, with at least 30 either side and an equal amount or something like that. Well, I have no idea yet, it'll depend very much on how the game design moves on and what gets changed. I'm a bit excited about this though...