-+@ Close Formation @+-

and a few things are close to fruitation too...



Art Credits:
Slea by Raegan Walter
The other 2 by Beth Zyglowicz

That's all for Exodus Flight, and that, along with all things Custom Card-wise seems to have taken a back seat for the moment due to the website shutting off all its resources to the fans. I think that left a number of people high and dry so I have moved in to fill the gap. Novelty's Custom Cards now has images of the printed cards, and what is outstanding will be added in over the coming weeks. After that is done, the fiction will be added in slowly as well. The errata list and the restriction list are already available on the site. Consequently, the number of hits on the page has gone up tremendously.

The Malovis challenge from last month did wonders for the game on gEngine, pushing it back up to top 5 again, which was a good thing. It was lingering in the doldrums over summer. I think we need a summer program of some kind to make it worthwile for people to play then. The new Shadowsfall tournament has started and I think most of the crazies (especially Doug) has already blown their quota of 5 tokens on their tournament games. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

The other thing that has started, or rather continued, is the 4th edition of the Double Jeopardy contest. People are definately improving there as they try to outdo each other to get the tokens and the tournament win from the contest. It's shaping up to be an interesting month.

I did say that nothing much custom card wise has happened, well, that's a bit of a lie. Freigabe did some testing on the Kintors in Tainted Glimpses, which were found to be very wanting, so Mitch did more revisions and they got added onto the engine. They still aren't great, but with more Kintors coming in future, it's hopefully going to get great. The other card that has been the focus of many a complaint is Darunia's Twist. It got overhauled so that it's now perceived as being balanced, although the powerlevel of the card is probably still the same as before. It's funny how people perceive certain things.

And what has 2i's website been doing? There's an announcement on the official MND site stating that the property has been licensed to be produced as an animated show, the when and where and who and hows are rather vague and sketchy and there aren't too many details there. The sad thing is that they took down all the resources that was formerly on the site. Hopefully, that won't kill the game in the interim.

And non-MND stuff... the titles of the blog for the last two months have been taken from Doomtrooper cards. Nobody guessed them. Anyways, it's time to move on. Starting this month, the title topics would all be from a different CCG... which one would be for the readers to guess.

The end of the month was a busy time as usual... statistics, plates update and a whole host of things I had to do on the engine. I didn't think anyone used them, but Ed and JC has proved me wrong so I'll continue working on them every month as long as I remain a PL. There are a few other things that really should also be update... the CCGW (geek) code page for one, but I don't really have time these days, what with...

Hyborian Gates is still in the process of being prepped. 36 more images to go, then the spoiler and markers and specialised menu items and it'll be ready, hopefully to go public on the anniversary date. It's still a month away, but I'm mindful that time is short. I hope I can make it on that date.

Also hoping to meet that target dates is Mark with Monster Rancher. I have no idea how many weekends he's giving up to get it done by then, but if anyone can do it, he can. Tony could probably slip Fluxx in before then. He's got it to alpha testing stage on the engine and I guess it's only the last minor testing stuff that he needs to finalise.

Ed himself wants to get RSP ready by then, but I have no idea if he'll meet that target date. He has been working on Frank's Zoo for the past couple of weeks and has got a large number of issues resolved on that game. I wonder if he'll finish up what he's doing there and go back to RSP or move over to Capitol next...

No news on when VTES will go public... I guess these things need time for WW to figure out how things are going. Still the players asking to play it seems to have dried out... I wonder if someone else has developed a better copy of something to play it online. Martin hasn't updated the game in a while as well.

Tomi has been making minor tweaks to his game, and last I heard actually worked on Duel of Ages. That game is complicated, but it seems fun. Can't wait to see it. I can't believe Ed still hasn't sent Logan a copy of Maul of America... almost 2 years after Logan has taken on that game. I suppose Logan is also waiting for the materials to Sheboygan. Well, the latter is a game I'm not too interested in, but it would be a milestone to adapt that game for the engine.

There are also a number of games that are being licensed, but due to a shortage of licensed game developers, or something like that, I think Ed is holding off on the announcements. Two games I know we won't be getting are Pokemon, where Mike Liesik told me in no uncertain terms that we won't be getting it, and the game by Mystical Empires, which apparently are in talks with World's Apart to adapt the game.

Over the past week or so, besides MND, I made a minor upgrade to B5 due to requests from the players. People are playing that again, and Alwyn/Heidi is trying to organise an online tournament with the (now defunct) Welsh-league tournament rules. Obviously Engine Rules with the 2 custom sets applies. The hubbub around the next set though seems to have died down. I think most things have been hashed out and now all we're waiting for is Bruce to do his magic.

I was talking to Nate about Final Twilight and he expressed interest in an online tournament over Halloween. He'll probably be swinging resources onto it. He's also published 2 games this year, the Supers and Imp, the former is a CCG with just line art, the latter is a boxed card game (I think). I didn't ask him for further info, although he did link me to the sales area at RPG.net. If he wants to get it on the engine, all he can do is ask, I suppose, but since he hasn't, I didn't push him. He did mention he'll be getting the licensed agreement back to Ed soon, which means I'll have to do a bit of work to upgrade FTWIL to a licensed game standard - attached cards and deck-legality checking comes to mind. I'll leave out the automations though... they might spoilt the game. I was also requesting more cards for the game since it's getting rather stale, especially with the small amount of cards. Well, a shoestring budget would only get people so far, so I offered to do art for the game. What am I getting into? It'll probably be chronicled here in the blog.




The other "Independent" game that have come knocking on the doors is by an outfit called Lo'Jac Inc. with a racing car game of some sort called Radical Racers. The graphics are shown above. I think the game is slightly different from Mille Bornes in that it's more a CCG than a boxed game set. I'ven't contacted him yet, but I did leave a message on the forums in reply to his post asking him to contact me via PM. Let's see if I get anything.

Also got an IM from Nick Szankovics today saying he got 800k in a court case. Well, he'll get to keep over half a million even with the contingency fee and all. I wonder if that means he'll finally have the encouragement to finish up the images for Tanshihana? Well, only time will tell.

Yesterday, I got my second box of Shadows boosters and the 4 starter decks for Shadows... almost a year after it was released. It's interesting to note that I got better cards online than offline again. The plus is that this box of boosters had one more rare foil than the first box that I got ages ago. I've been trying to pick up a box of Bloodlines and Black Riders, but with no success. Ah well, I'm always down and out.

I'm also looking for more card storage boxes - I'm getting to the point where I need more for the MND and LotR cards that I'm amassing a-plenty. I wonder if there's a good online place that I can pick these up for cheap. Ebay has some nice ones, but they want way too much for shipping than I'm comfortable with.