-+@ 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...