_.%~All Good Things ~%._

It's the end of another calendar year. Endings are sometimes difficult to process. After today, I have to start writing out 2009 as the part of the date and will no longer be able to write 2008, well unless I get delusional, or dementia or both.

2008 saw the demise of a number of things. The ambitions of John McCain's ambitions to be the 44th US president for one, the fiction that Kosovo is part of Serbia, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae... Yet this blog (used to!) deal with neither of those.

No, this blog was a record of the work and the fun times and the frustration about CCG Workshop more or less, and my involvement in it. I started blog naively and picked a format that was so much an antithesis of what a blog was supposed to be and kept with that format through the years. Well, this post announces an end to that. However, elements of it will be retained for, something else perhaps.

This post though, marks the passing of CCG Workshop after a successful life of 7 years. Who would have thought that something that was spawned after the turn of the millenium would suck hours and hours of my life, first as a player, then as a developer. There was at least 3 eras of the logo, the first one with the black background and greenish text has since gone the way of telegraph machines and vacuum tube transistors. The orange logo was perhaps the most remembered logo, as it was during the time that this logo was used that CCG Workshop was at its peak. The final grey and red logo was an attempt to be more mature, but that was the logo of the site at its demise.

I must say I've had good times and bad times there. There are things that were developed during those years that I will forever take with me. I treasure all the friendships that I've had there that started there, and in some cases still have those. The skills I have developed - coding, graphics, forum management - those I will take away with me to whatever the future will entail. I'd like to give a shoutout to the person who started the ball rolling, Mr. Edward G. Mittelstedt III, for a superb idea and for giving me a chance to be part of the ride for the past 7 years. Wherever he is, I wish him and his family good health, happiness and success.

Time, as the saying goes, wait for no man. Well, the world has moved on, and so must I. Starting 2009, this blog will undergo... well, no ready revolution, or crazy colour change, or anything drastic or dramatic. But that's something for the new year. I thank all my faithful reader (yes, you know there's only one of you!) for your patronage, but now it's time for me to dim the lights and bid you adieu... until 2009!

Watch this blog.

-+@ Loyal Sacrifice @+-

The things I do for CCG Workshop...



Three "Art of" cards for AE with the symbols. Nothing special here. AE meanwhile seems to be on hiatus as nobody is really placing down ideas for their cards much... yet... hopefully they'll get things running soon. I also need to get the other cards out soon as well - Orothe and Paradwyn and Arderial are all in my stable this time around. Hopefully, I'll be able to get intresting mileage out of the cards... one of these days.

It's just a couple more weeks until the new Magi-nation cartoon starts airing in the US (and probably Canada...). The younger old schoolers have already mostly declared their hatred for the animation and design, while the older old schoolers are adopting a wait and see attitude. References to the cartoon is popping up everywhere but there isn't much to mention other than a few spoilers here and there.

Avatar is also getting a 3rd season soon. I'm awaiting that keenly. I hope it will revitalise the card game, but somehow, I am doubtful that this will be so. I guess Avatar is probably going to be the opposite of Magi-Nation - good cartoon, bad CCG. I'll happily settle for a good cartoon though because that's hard to produce. A bad CCG can always be "fixed" with unofficial fan versions!

And talking about fan versions, the B5 players seem rather keen on revamping the custom cards into their image, to leave a mark or a stamp on it. The discussion has been going on, on the CCGW forums without the input of Bruce. I know the Vorlons seem pretty much "out there" but some of the suggestions are even more "out there"... My position has always been to keep to the spirit of the overall rules, and to use the cards to override the rules if necessary. I guess there'll come a time when I have to test that out, although I'm generally keeping silent on the discussion.

Another SciFi TV show with a cardgame is StarGate and while searching for today's topic, I discovered that there's not only a 2nd expansion planned (or out), but there are also online exclusive cards (presumably on the pay client). One of these days I've got to go back and check those out. I wasn't too impressed by the card design generally, although I do have to admit the icons and the constallation symbols are nice.

And since I'm on new stuff, I just got an email today about the latest Ticket to Ride expansion - the Swiss expansion. Days of Wonders is now accepting pre-orders. It's one that I'd like to get, but I don't think I want to pay for the postage. I'll probably get it the next time I see it in a big board game shop or something. The other big news about TtR has been that DoW is producing a "Nordic" version with a Nordic map to be sold only in Scandinavia and Finland. Players in the US seems rather supportive of the version and upset that they might not be able to get it locally - they are probably as exasperated as how I feel... anyways, I know I can always count on Tomi to mail me a copy or two... and provide the translations as well!

Ed yesterday mentioned that he's busy translating VteS into a PBW format. Wow, I'm going to guess he's gonna be busy for the next 3 or 4 years or so... maybe more. Then again, he might prove me wrong and finish all 20 expansions (OK, I know it's less than that, but it seems that much to me) or so in less than a year, which will probably be my wish! Hopefully, he'll take time out to do other simple games in the interim...

Like Titan, which is the most played game on Ludoholic, both the PBW version, the fast PBW version and the real-time version. I think that game itself is a hit, if only because it's so addictive. Capitol and Urland and Monkeys are fun, but sadly they take time to complete. I'm not going to go into the real-time vs pbw scenario again, but I do feel that people should not be forced to play a version that they do not enjoy, so it's good that both versions of Titan are up on Ludoholic.

Mark has also been rather excited about working on his Ludoholic game. He's making some great progress as well, and although he's not as fast as Ed, I think he's still going more steadily than the other PBW developer (or is it developers?) on Ludoholic. I have no idea, I'm trying my best not to get involved with another format when I barely have enough time to do the things I want to do on the main engine.

And one of the things I did recently on the main engine was to add the missing Fast Break cards into the game. There's a few things that I really wanted to do like sealed deck and to correct the score dice, but I decided it was way too much work for a game that isn't normally played (nobody played it the last 30 days) so I left it as it is to concentrate on other things.

Things like working on Armageddon, which was supposed to be my top secret game but since I've started it and announced it elsewhere, I might as well announce it here as well. It's a game by Blue Leviathan games with some nice artwork, a series of novels planned and other stuff. I know close to nothing, but probably more than the general public I guess. I don't think I have all the images for the cards so that will have to wait. I just glanced at the spoiler though - it's definately going to give me a headache creating the card list! Ouch!

And the parting image for today is from... Orothe. This is an image done not for my custom card sets but for Joe Araiza. He's the penciller (although I modified the pencil some with the inking) and owner of the character. I only did the colours and the background. Don't ask me why there's more beam of lights, I guess I'm just drawn to it. This piece was to test the school of fish in the background - I think the perspective makes it work rather well...

-+@ Red Sky @+-

Martin got it right, but I'm continuing anyways, probably until the end of the year if my blogging record keeps up...



These three cards are from the Avatar TCG. Logan tried getting some promo cards for me from Origins, but did not manage to succeed. I guess that's my loss. Somehow I don't think it's doing very well. The card design actually looks a bit dull - they could have done so much with the card, but instead it's just lines and colours. Way too simple for a cartoon that has such a complex plot. The cartoon is going into it's third season next month and there are quite a number of crazies waiting for it.

Another new cartoon that's coming out next month is the Magi Nation cartoon. I'm tired of all the speculation and assumptions dressed up as facts being posted almost every forum I go to. I have started a FAQ just to try to combat those false interpretation, but I have no idea if I'm doing any good there. Oh well, I won't even get to watch the cartoon next month, unless...

Not a lot of things going on with the custom cards as well. I got the Paradwyn EF cards up for playtesting yesterday, and fixed a few things, but things are slow since it's the "height" of summer and not many people are around. No new custom cards are being designed, and I haven't had the time to hunt for images, or to colour any as well. Hopefully things will pick up by the end of September. I should really put some time into it as well.

General CCG Workshop news - Monkeys and Titan have both had a bump up in status on ludoholic.com, but I really haven't been keeping track there. I updated B5 again today though, after correcting a whole bucketfull of defects a couple of days ago. It's embarassing that the game hasn't been updated since 2005. It's a good thing that it's getting popular now. Nipa also did a small Doomtrooper update and I think Aiden has got a Rage update in as well since I last blogged. It's not much, but it's something?

I haven't have had the time to get Fastbreak up as well, and I think that's a good thing. At the end of the day, I think it would have been too much effort for too little gain. So there'll be no more sealed deck in Fastbreak unless I feel really inspired or something. Nevertheless I still have to add in the missing cards - but I have to do the graphics first. I was supposed to do it today, but I decided I'll take a break to write out this blog before the end of the month.

I have been playing quite a bit of Ticket to Ride over the past week or so and have been losing. I think I'm getting worse... or other people are getting better. I also managed to play a game on the Swiss map, which was fun, and there were a type of card in the Swiss game that isn't in the normal game. That was also interesting.

-+@ Offworld Research @+-

Which is what I seem to be doing, hence the lack of updates. New CCG titles starting this month, last couple of months was from Rage.



Art Credits:
Bazel and Auroc by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Kleysa by Annette Burke

3 more images from AoD, which is currently in design and design is progressing. We lost the forums a while back and I had to create a new one at a new location which has been taking up time. The designers have been asked to provide stuff from memory and all - sorta like a what have been done before - since most of the resources that were on the forums is all now gone. Well, as good as gone anyways. It's still progressing, but slower than what it would have been with the old forums I guess.

Origins has come and gone a long while back and there isn't much to report, since I wasn't there and all. Logan didn't get any news about a new Carc expansion, which I have been hoping for, so I doubt there'll be one this year. Maybe next year. Mark got me the free online code for TTR, as well as news about the Swiss Expansion. I'm excited about the latter and grateful for the former. I've been spending a bit of time playing TtR online ever since and it's funny, but I'm still enjoying the game, eventhough it's so juvenile at the first pass. I've been playing quite a bit of the Mega Game though, and maybe I'll start some Europe games one of these days.

I'm also finishing the games I have on Ludoholic.com. Won an Urland game, lost a Monkeys game, and am on my way to losing the other Monkeys game and a Capitol game. I think I found a bug in the Capitol game, which accounts for why I lost (yeah, right! or not!) but I really don't enjoy those games as much as I do with TtR. It's not so much the pbw format, it's more the games themselves. I wanted to say they are less challenging, but I don't think that's the case. I have no idea why I'm so turned off by the 3 Ludoholic games though. Oh well.

I can't believe I haven't got Fastbreak up yet. I guess I've gotta stop procrastinating and finally get around to it. Maybe this weekend. Then it's off to Barathaum and then Armageddon, hopefully both before the end of the year. I doubt I'll get that B5 update in this year... or maybe I will. Who knows?

The MND.com site has been regularly updated over the past 3 weeks now, and it's created quite a stir/storm among the older communities. People are confusing the "Trading Card" for a revamp of the card game and other people are throwing names at those people. It's almost like a circus. The funny thing is how people can jump to conclusions so easily when such little infomation is given. The sad thing is when they take their own (and often wrong) conclusions as fact and present them as facts. I've been trying to correct those who post, but I'm sure that for every one who posts, there are 10 more who doesn't. Sad doesn't even begin to cover it.

I'll end the post with this image by Annette Burke. Note the Torsk in the background which is so full of detail. The character is very nicely shaded as well!

-+@ Greenpeace Assault Team @+-

Team of course for the first superpowered hero team in comics.



We are Legion. That's what Superman recently said in Justice League of America (#9 IIRC). It's powerful especially for old fuddy-duddies like, well, not me. There'll be lots of Legion exposure leading up to its 50th anniversary next year and the VS cards are only one of the few media outlets where the Legion of Superheroes will, well, make an appearance.

I have no idea if I have mentioned this before, but I actually got 2 packs of these cards - the last 2 packs in a shop that's not here. Didn't get the above cards, but did get some rather good ones - good image-wise that is. I was just looking through them today which is why they are up here on this blog. I wonder if there's anyway to play this game online... hmm...

Even as I'm writing this, I'm scanning the Fastbreak cards and packaging in preparation to getting them added to the game online. I'm rather excited about the fact that I'll be doing a sealed draft in one of my games and I hope I don't blow it by messing up. It's not that difficult to do, since I kept all my old Fastbreak working file, and with the new improvements in the engine, it should be easy to check a few things... well, easier anyways, as compared to the good (bad?) old days where everything has to be done manually.

Talking about sealed deck, my brain is already moving on to the next project - Babylon 5. I just realised that I cannot have random B5 sealed deck because of the way the game is structured. It'll probably have to be something along the lines of LotR draughting where the Ambassador and the starting hand and probably the crusade and ISA decks would have to be preconstructed. Still it seems cool to get the ideas down on... screen and to hopefully progress it sometime this year.

And while I'm on progress, it seems the Ludo games are progressing rather well, eventhough I can no longer see them because I'm not a developer there. Ah well. There are 4 games in development for PBW, and Ed was talking about having one of them ready really soon. Maybe 2 by the end of next month if things keep going at this rate. It seems good for Ludoholic.

Ed also said he might start moving RT games over to Ludoholic 2 at a time to speed things up. That sounds good. The boardgames are just lost in the clutter at the main engine and aren't really being played. The first few games on the Ludo engine clearly stands out, but haven't yet been massively played though. Oh well.

One thing that might be massively played is GTO, who it seems has got a deal with Wizards of the Coast. No, it's not a certain massively popular game - the one that starts with M and has The Gathering in its name - that already has an online version. No this one is for a small lesser known game. It'll be interesting to see where that goes.

Origins start next week or something like that, and that's what Logan and Mark seems to be talking about. I think they are excited about their Treasure Hunt trails that I've set for them this year. Who knows? Maybe they might strike gold. I hope it's not madvogon's gold though.

I did a bit of MND work over the weekend, templatign more cards for Final Night. Heh, for those who still hasn't made a connection yet, Final Night is one of the more famous Legion stories from a while back which dealt with the SunEater, and also features the death of Hal Jordan aka Green Lantern. Anyways, there's something like 50 more cards to go - less actually, I'm down to 48. That's out of 130 so there are a good 82 cards with images for the set that has been templated. I've done all the Universal cards and I think Arderial, Core and Naroom are next.

AoD design is still going on slowly - Daniel is stuck in Naroom and Frosty with Core. I think Cald is more or less there and I should probably move to Arderial soon. Hopefully the other designers will start chipping in with their designs. I think this set might be the best custom set that has been designed - best in terms of art, and best in terms of cards.

-+@ Deep Journey @+-

Deep is for Orothe, Journey is for Age's End



That's 3 of the 40 cards from Age's End. I like that holding up the sword drawing whcih seems rather well done. I wish I could colour that good. Then there's the gay Magneto, and of course my favourite creature and a different version of the card that drew me to the game. I'm a little bit sad about its passing of course, and these cards are of the "milk as much money from the players before we lose the license" category. The game is extremely overpowered now and after playing it for a few days with all the new cards I don't really enjoy it anymore. What a sad way to see such a great game end.

I've also been playing a lot of boardgames online - Ticket to Ride about half the time, although I don't seem to be able to win much these days. The other half of the time though is spent helping Ed test out Ajax on Ludoholic, now that Capitol and Urland has it as well. I think I'm on 2 Capitol games and a Urland game as well as a Monkeys game. Those games are moving slow as they are multiple player games, but I guess that's fine as that's how it's supposed to be.

I was supposed to work on my super secret game this week, in preparation for another bigger game later next month, but circumstances just haven't been coorperative and conductive for me to work on the game. Today I found out I used the wrong version in the last MND update - that's the one with the bug in the validate script which I corrected while I was away. So I had to fix it again - basically it's just a one line difference. And since I was updating MND, I might as well add in the next EF region for playtesting, which is what I did earlier today. So we're now done to 9 out of 13 and hopefully, the last 4 will be added before the end of July.

Things are also heating up (pun intended) as design for AoD begins with Cald by Myself and Frosty and Naroom by Daniel. I think there have been some rather good designs already, but I'm doing the Cowell thing to push the envelopes to make the set better (although not necessary more powerful) as this might be the last custom expansion for MND that will be totally in my control. Final Night, the next expansion, is RP-inspired, which means that quite a bit of the cards have to stay true to character.

While I was doing up the news for Naroom EF, I realised Ed never actually announced on the WGO that LMS has been moved to Ludo. I added that in quickly but it's probably old news by now. What I was suprised by was the fact that I can add WGO onto the Ludo engine as well. That seems cool... if there were more people on the Ludo engine that is. There were a total of 4 games played in May, but hopefully the only direction to go from there is up.

And what will be going up soon of course are the new Fastbreak cards that I just finished opening and sorting today. I started with 2 boxes of boosters, needing 15 cards, or 14 excluding a Promo - an uncommon, 5 foils and the rest being rares and only got 9 of them. I can't believe I need 5 more rares, but at least I got all the chase cards. Those will be going up onto the engine hopefully sometime this weekend.

And since I was messing about with boosters and starters, I thought it would be good to add in Sealed deck support for Fast Break as well. I have no idea how complicate it is, but Tomi seems to be doing it easily for his games (probably because he wrote the code and knows what he's doing) so I hope I can easily copy it. We shall see and I guess it shall be posted here on this blog whether I manage to do it or not.

And since I'm on coding - Aidan seems to be going crazy on that front, hammering Rage out into something super fantastic or that's what it seems. It's basic housekeeping, I think to get things up to date and he's poking into things that well, not too many people poke into. But that's good. Hopefully, the Rage players will reward him for it by playing more of the game.

There seemed to be some snafu on the VTES engine earlier this month. No, it's not Martin's fault, so don't go blaming him. It was server related though and to make a long story short, players were all give a 7 day game pass. Yippee! I've got to remember that and factor it into the numbers at the end of the month as well.

I think the Shadowfist tournament has ended, and hopefully there'll be winners announced soon. I still can't believe that gEngine is one of the official platforms for the Shadowfist league and the league can be played both online and offline. Good for Zev and his people. The other thing I noticed is that Julien, the SF lead is now in Budapest, Hungary instead of haute (whatever that means) France Island. I wonder what he's doing behind the Iron Curtain.

-+@ Fast Strike @+-

is as close to Fast Break as I can find...



Art Credits:
Krioh by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Zusah by Alison Strom/Whyrl, background by Matt Holmberg and Rich Werner
Wiscon by Justin Zastrow

Three more images for AoD, which as of today has progress into design. No, not all the images are complete - I'm still waiting for one more Nar magi to finish the images. However, I don't see why that should be holding up the design when 99% of the cards have images, so I've given the word to the designers to have a field day with the cards. I'm looking forward to the design and quite frankly am a little bit apprehensive of how things will turn out. Will my fellow MND @ CCGW blogger be able to link 2 and 2 together to get 4? Will we be able to make the big KT creatures avoid being binder fodder? Will there be a card that would really destroy the game? I don't know... at least not until the cards have been done. And that's an interesting process to go through.

Meanwhile, the cards from EF is being added to playtesting, with Naroom just recently added. I think that's like the halfway point or something. There hasn't been much playtest reports, but those are still trickling in. Some good playtesting being done, when there is any and hopefully, the cards will make people go "WOW!" at the text, the design and the images.

I have been playing a bit of Lord of the Rings TCG over the past couple of days. Yes, I caved in and spent $50 to get about 700 cards so that I can play with the cards from the last 4 or so expansions. The power levels are amazing - none of the decks I have can even survive this power creep. The new decks are just so deadly, on my first game, I got exerted to oblivion by turn 4, and I was playing healing hobbits! Eek. I don't like the power creep there and the game has turned from borderline fun to really sucky. I guess that's one way to make sure the last few sets sell before your license runs out - by making overpowered cards so that the game will crash and burn after your license runs out. Icky.

I've also been playing quite a bit of online Ticket to Ride recently, and I think I'm not progressing at all, rather the opposite is true. I think I'm beginning to suck at the game if that is even possible. Still I have fun with the games though, eventhough I don't win as often as I used to, but that's the main issue of the game I guess. It's not the winning that counts, but having fun. So says a guy who wins 1 out of every 4 games now...

Another game I've been having fun with online is Monkeys on the Moon which has finally gone beta and public on Ludoholic. I won the first ever game against Ed, not that it was a proper game as I didn't know the rules then. I still don't know the rules, but that's what makes it fun, I'm not playing to win, I'm just playing, and if I win, well, that's a bonus. I'm currently in a 4-player game with the game designer Jim Doherty and his "partner" and Ed. They seem to be rather nice people to interact with in the in-game chat.

Ed meanwhile has been busy. There's MotM rolling off the presses and updates on Capitol with Ajax and DoA. Ludoholic now has this nifty thing where one can choose their colours, but it's currently limited to Capitol and Urland only. I guess one doesn't need that in MotM. I've been told that there's also an additional programmer on Ludo too... but I'll leave it up to Ed to announce that.

Have I mentioned that Tomi added Sealed deck to both Kult and Dark Eden? I think that's so amazing. I will probably steal the codes to add to some of my games, although I have no idea which game will benefit from a sealed deck scenario. Nevertheless it's still cool... and for the mid most images, here are the associated cool ad images.


I also received my new stash of Fast Break cards yesterday, that's 2 booster boxes worth of cards and about 10 starter boxes. I have yet to open the boxes, I'm saving that for a rainy day or something, but I'm excited about it. I think I'm the only person who collects Fast Break cards. Hopefully I can complete my collection.

Today I actually sent out the details of the 2nd annual Novelty's Origins Treasure Hunt and this year, participation will be increased by 100%. Yes, that's 2 people from last year's one. I doubt that would double the treasure since I'm sending each of them to different vendors and quite a bit of those is actually to get info rather than freebies. Still, I look forward to the write-up, as well as the goodies.

-+@ Legendary @+-

Well, because it's coming to an end soo...



Three more cards from Treachery and Deceit. This will be the penultimate expansion from Decipher for the game as announced on their site. The online game will last for an additional 3 years after that date up till the end of June 2010 as announced by WA, but that was probably forseen sometime back that it won't go on forever. All those people who have sunk hundreds into the game will well, get little to no physical returns from the game. It is a sad day.

Still I had my fun playing the game and I learnt quite a bit of CCGs in general and design in particular. Regional enforcement for starters, careful use of denial (and no, that's not a river in Egypt), caution with magic bullets, addition of counters, fun with the opening up of new avenues and strategies and a whole slew of things which I'm sure I'll take with me as I progress on. There's also gameplay experiences as well and I think there will be games I'll never forget, including overwhelming a Sauron with Merry. Those were the days. I think I will probably write an article somewhere about that... lessons learnt designing cards by playing LotR or something like that.

While I'm on the topic of designing cards, I have finally made TW public today. It'll be custom legal next month, but it's now playable on the engine by the general public. Will anyone even notice it? Probably not, and I don't think I'll organise a tournament around it for publicity. I guess this is going to be a low key release. I haven't made any announcements - I'll probably do that later this week (that's borrowing a page from VTESO).

Riding piggy-back on the back of that is that EF Nar has now been adapted for playtesting online. I think that will get noticed somewhat by the playtesters and hopefully they'll enjoy the arctic cards and the freezing cards. I can't wait to read my first review fo the cards. Naroom is next and I'm still hoping that can be done before the end of the month.

Meanwhile on the engine, the Rage tournament has kicked off and the Shadowfist league event #2 is ongoing. Those are the only 2 active tournaments at the moment. There's quite a bit of activity on the Rage and Shadowfist forums, which is a good sign. The numbers for both games are also up for the month - in SF's case, it's overtaken VTES... but who knows what sort of numbers it'll be at the end of the month with the free VTES passes.

I'm still keeping an eye out on DoA and GRfOS @ Ludoholic, but neither seems to be moving much. I guess the respective coders are busy with other issues to have much time to work on these games. Capitol still seems to be the more popular game there as opposed to Urland, but that's not saying a lot since there's only 2 games there. It'd be nice to add a few more there, but oh well, this month was VTES month. Maybe next month.

I finally ran into a good Star Gate deck today - well, it was rare-ful, which is why it's good. I couldn't even get more than 1 mission completed which sucked big time, but then again, that's because I'm only playing with a starter game. I was tempted to buy a pack or two, but since having gotten burnt by LotR, I decided I'll hold off and enjoy the game with what I have. Afterall, it's not going to last forever, and when the engine shuts down, all I'll have left would be memories...

-+@ Vampire Blood @+-

because I'm gonna talk about VTESO and blood in this blog?



Art by Annette Burke. Just wanted to show more pheygrins that Ms Burke has done. All 3 cards will be in AoD and that expansion will be Pheygrin heavy, but I'm gonna guess it'd be well liked by the general MND public because the art is good and the Pheygrins usually have great mechanics. I really need to finish getting images for this set since design is gonna start next month... maybe I'll just have to delay it until all the images have been sourced.

I finally got the d'Resh EF cards to the playtesters yesterday. That's a long delay I know, when I should be a few more updates into it by now. KT is next then Nar and Naroom, and I hope I can get all of that in before the end of the month. What also needs to be done before the end of the month are the TW cards, but I think it's almost ready to go.

What was not ready to go was Third edition on VtES Online. Instead it's been scrapped and replaced by Kindred Most Wanted... a whole month later. I wonder what's the buzz by the fans that's going on about all this - there are already complaints that the support was lacking, yadda yadda, and now this is the first time that a deadline has not only been missed but has been skipped as well. Hmm...

Also interesting is the fact that Ed's going to do away with the engine and to go with pbw VTES. Now that's interesting. I wonder how many people would pay to use that service when it's much easier to keep track with a free pbem system. I have no idea. I also wonder how convoluted the coding is going to be for a pbw game that has things like interrupts. It takes about a month to finish a 3-player game of Capitol online and that game only has 4 turns in TOTAL. I can't imagine how long a 3-player VtES game would last if done on pbw. It's a good thing I won't know since I don't play the game.

Martin mentioned to me that he didn't realise that StarGate was the latest CCG to be created based on a TV series. Well, it's all brand new and shining and all, but I've already decided that there's something lacking from it. The game seems to be a very crude form of B5 without all the complexities that make B5 nice. At the end of the day, there's not much strategy going on in the game since it's basically a more powerful version of WAR. Of course, this might be due to the limited number of cards - only one expansion. Perhaps they'll improve it in future. Somehow though, I doubt I'd be wowed by it.

I just won a huge lot of Fast Break cards on ebay. It was rather pricey, but not as pricey as what I paid for my first (and before this one, only) lot of Fast Break cards on ebay. I can't wait to get the cards to finish off my collection. I guess I'm the only Fast Break crazie out there.

Tomi has also been trying to complete his Doom collection. Last I heard he needed 8 promos or something like that and he's in discussions to get them. I hope he gets to finish his collection. It's interesting how he can do it in basically under a year.

Ed's also been busy, mainly on Ludoholic. He's updated the page refresh things with Ajax, whatever that is, so that things now should refresh faster, apparently. I have no idea, I don't have any more live games... well, at least not until the next game is made public. Still waiting for Duel of Ages or Grave Robbers, but I think those will be ursurped by something I'm a bit more keen to play. We'll have to see.

-+@ Spear of Deceit @+-

Mostly because I'm showing cards from Treachery and Deceit



Yes, that's from Lord of the Rings and yes, that is the next expansion Treachery and Deceit which has been sent to the printers. This is barely a month after the release of Rise of Saruman earlier this month or something. I guess Decipher is finally putting out cards although it's a little too little too late. Still it's exciting that there are cards being released for the game. It'll do heaps to keep the game alive offline for a little while more.

And I still haven't got any RoS cards yet. Well, they are expensive at the moment and apparently there is a broken card in there as well that's not quite as easy to understand, but it enable Fruit Loops 3 easily. Poor Brad Fruitcake. I understand he's quit fulltime from Decipher as well or something like that. I wonder how that bodes for the game.

What I did get this week in the mail is a box of Bloodlines. That is the 3rd box I've got and I'm still missing a few rares. I updated my trading list at mahasamatman to list the cards that I'm still missing and to put a few of the rares that I got. My mailbox has been singing since with the offers to trade for those rares I picked up in Bloodlines. Urgh.

While I'm on mahasamatman, I finally got Sam, the guy who runs the site to reactivate the Wildstorm list, after Tomi encouraged me to do so by saying that he got Dark Eden revived. All I wanted from the list was to record which of the cards I needed rather than to use it to trade. Well, the list got revived but I have yet to actually do anything much to it. Hopefully, the list won't get deleted before I update it.

Since I'm on Tomi and trading, I was told that he's actually concluded a deal that would trade some of his cards for some other cards that would enable him to complete his Dune collection. I think that's cool. And he didn't even have to trade outside his own continent for the cards. Yeah, that's me in envy... he's in the 2nd smallest continent and I'm in the largest continent and he gets to complete his trade without going outside his continent. Sometimes life just doesn't give you a break.

Talking about breaks, Mark seems to be busy on GRfOS PBW after a long break. I think he may be making up for lost time. Ed is still busily getting the surprise game up to scratch, but I'm not allowed to say which one it is other than that it's one of the over 60 licensed games that he's got permission for. OK, I'll give out a clue... it has no tiles.

And since I'm on tiles, I got my shipment of Carcassonne loot today. 4 expansions and a 5th in last years Games Quarterly. I originally only wanted Traders and Builders for the cloth bag and the bucket of tiles, but when I went online to get it, I noticed the prices for River 2, Scout and King and Count were close to nothing that I picked them up as well. Granted, the latter 2 expansions doesn't really hold any fancy for me, but at least K&S gives a few extra tiles to play with. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the purple count though... maybe start a meeple version of Sesame Street.

And I just discovered this week too that my 6 months subscription to TtR has expired. That sucks. I wanna be able to create games, but oh well. I can still play though, and I got a game today. Didn't complete a ticket of 16 points at the last minute, didn't get the longest track, but still won by about 12 points, which was interesting. It was a cool game where people were blocking, not strategically, but to enable them to get to the destinations that they wanted. And everyone were building long snake-like routes - I missed out the longest route by one train, but there was a difference of like 3 trains between longest and shortest.

Snakes of course brings me to the last image in the series:



Pencils by Joe Araiza, colours by myself. I really like how this one turned out and it was really easy to colour as well. The background is cool-ish, but the slab of thing that it's sitting on... well, not so much. Anyways, I have even created a tutorial based on this image. The MND crazies were going ga-ga over the tutorial. Heh.

-+@ Forestry Development @+-

I like the card names in this CCG...



Art by Holmberg on all 3 pieces. That's the Kouba, a new creature type in AoD named after GoC. He seems stoked to have an entire creature type named after him. It follows from Wymitch of course, which is named after Malovis. If the trend keeps up, I'll have to create creaturetypes for Bobby and everyone else.

The final push for getting TW finalised is up and running for a while now, but I just gave it one last push in an attempt to get it ready by the end of the month so that by the beginning of May it will be custom legal and public. Meanwhile testing the playtesters are having a field day with the first 4 regions of EF... which has only served to bring up the fact that the DJ card from the expansion of the same name is still too powerful. Oh well, that will have to be worked out after TW goes custom legal.

No news yet from Martin and Ed regarding VTES, but I'm keeping my eye on it. I'm also keeping my eye on GRfOS PBW as well as it continues development. Mark has real-life commitments first though, so I'm gonna guess it's going tough for him. A new game appeared to be in development for PBW on Ludoholic as well, although it has not been announced yet. So I'll keep mum until such a time as it is public.

Anyways, today I finished up one image. This is a MND image, but it isn't for a custom card that I'm doing. It's for Joe Araiza who of course drew it. It took me about 6 hours spread across 3 days to get the completed image, and I'm still not too happy with it, but as I mentioned elsewhere, I have to let go after some point or else I'll never be able to do anything else.



Pencils by Araiza, colours by myself, grass by Rich Werner and the trees in the back by Matt Holmberg.

-+@ Bell Trees @+-

I wonder if those are bells on trees...



All images by 2i from the cards. Background by me. Art here doesn't mean picture, but instead it means a fighting style, i.e. in the usual martial arts sense. Anyways, there are 13 of them for AoD - one for each region - and the above are just 3 of them. I'll stagger them with the other image cards as I proceed with the blog.

I'm going to post shorter blogs so that I don't really get overwhelmed too much due to time constraints and other things, and today I really just wanted to show off a few things I've coloured this year. But before that...

I noticed that the Rage players haven't been playing - only 25 games or so over the past 30 days and that has been alarming since Rage is after all one of the "Big Game" on the engine. I posted this on the forum and received the reply that LK has been on a hiatus. I guess that answers that then. I wonder if it's CCG-fatigue...

Since he ain't posting it on his blogs... Mark has resumed development of PBW Grave Robbers. I think the first bit, the keywords bit that was done by Ed, is working although I can't be sure at this point in time (since I'm just looking at a sample development game). Hopefully Mark will bring it up to his usual standards ASAP. I think he's hampered by the fact that there is absolutely no (NIL, Zero, Zilch!) documentation on how to code it AND that the only person he can turn to for help at the moment is Ed. Hopefully he'll be building up the documentation as he goes along so that the next idio....erm... project lead that goes along to it will get a lot more help.

And while I'm on Ludoholic, Ed has been busy tweaking the Duel of Ages PBW interface. I can finally see things on the sample game. According to his blog on the forum he's finally figured what to do with the next step, although actually getting there will get some time I'm sure since nothing is instant in this world except bad coffee and some ways to die. I hope that debugging Urland and VTES won't be taking too much of his time... oh and I hope the next VTES expansion doesn't need large updates to the engine as well.

Talking about VTES, I was almost expecting it to have been public by now. Well, it might not be. It's a good thing that the date hasn't been set because there are a few issues that still needs to be ironed out. I hope that won't delay the release too much... and that Martin won't be too stressed by it.

Ack, and I was gonna keep it simple as well. Anyways, the title of today's blog refers to this image which I completed earlier this week:


Pencils by Joe Araiza, Background image by Holmberg/Bolme, colours by myself. It was a pain to colour in and I don't think I have got it down properly or did justice to the pencils. I like what I did on the mushrooms, but the head overall seems rather badly done, and the leaves on the limbs seems a little bit lacking. Oh well, I guess there's always a next time. This is an image for AoD.

I have 2 more images to write about, but I don't think I'll have the time today, so perhaps I'll blog about them some other time. How's that for cliffhanger? Probably not as witty as I think it is.

-+@ Alcolyte @+-

describes the person who did these cards...



That's Call to Arms by Derek Shields. Those images were drawn in paint. Yes, you heard me right, paint as in the paint in Windows. Wow. That's his home-made CCG that he has put in a lot of effort... and like a few years worth of Sundays and public holidays. The effort really shows in the cards. I think they are exceptional, especially for something done in paint. Just look at the icons for starters and notice how detail those are. And the images really make me go Wow, especially when I know that they were done in MS Paint.

And that's part of the custom cards... well, this really isn't custom... it's more original cards. Hopefully in one of the next few blog, I'd be showcasing Barathaum cards, unless I find something else that's exciting.

The news on the VteSO site is that next year is shaping up to be a nice year for the VteS players. January will see a new expansion... Black Hand or something like that hit the VteS engine and 3 months later, Martin has pledge to get the full 3rd Edition out online. Wow. 3rd Edition. If it's as crazy as I think it is, Martin is going to be busy early next year. But wait, that's not all, 3 months later in July, another VteS expansion will be added online. This one is I think one of the recent ones, Kindred Most Wanted. I think that's also the one that has Werewolves and stuff ala Rage. Sounds like a good year for them. I also edited the CCGW wiki for VteS to bring it up to date.

That's now been announced on the main site as well. I had to create a new ad for VteSO as I was getting bored of the 2 other VteS ads. The new ad is specifically for VteSO though since it makes use of the VteSO logo and part of the VteSO website. It looks a bit weird there, but I'll let it slide a bit.

The thing about Mark's games is that there's always an ad. Since Ed has decided to start "blogging" his progress on GRfOS, I thought it deserves a mention on the main page. What I didn't realise is how great Mark's ad is. Well, the CCG Workshop main page is where it can be seen, so don't take my word for it. And yes, Ed's blog is on the Ludoholic forums. There's only one entry and it's pretty basic at the moment, but I'm sure it'd improve over time... if he remembers to post to it.

I have a sneaky suspicion that something is going on in Finland. What's up Scooby Doo? A doomed Revival did you say? No? Oh well. I'm sure someone will get wind of it sooner or later. Probably not me... you won't hear about it here first.