-+@ 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.