-+@ Spotlight @+-

I wanna turn my attention on a few things, but first:



Art credits:
Twee Twunk - pencils by Joe Araiza, colours by myself, background by Matt Holmberg
Falling Weebo - image by Epoch, background by Rich Werner
Dust Primat - image by Justin Zastrow, background by Rich Werner

Three more cards for AoD, with the first AoD non-promo expansion promo. Twee Twunk was included just to finish off the starting card for a particular magi just in case that this expansion ends up to be the penultimate expansion. (I'm not saying that it will be, I'm saying that it might be, but nothing is certain these days.)

Design hasn't started on these cards though, mainly because I'm still waiting for 2 more images for the expansion before the green light for design to start can be given. I have just finished colouring one of the images for this expansion today and have written another blog about it. The image is posted further down. It was a good image to colour and I did learn quite a few things by colouring it as mentioned in the other blog. I guess I had fun colouring it, but I'm sure the response to it by Joe would be ... well, gushing is the word that comes to mind.

I have actually been templating cards for what was formerly known as Fallen Hour. Formerly doesn't mean it's cancelled. It means that I've renamed it to something a little more . It's now known as Final Night. Tada! Yeah, I know that's a rip-off from something that Batman was associated with and now it seems more onimous. Does that mean that this will be the final MND custom expansion? Who knows? I'm not saying either way because I don't really know.

Anyways, the expansion will be 130 cards, down from the 150 in EF. I've shaved 2 cards from each region and added 4 cards to Universal to give it the final count, although not all 130 cards have been templated. I think as of yesterday, the count was about 70-odd cards done, which is above the 50% threshhold I set for meself to start a custom expansion, so the expansion will be going ahead, if only very slowly (because we are still focusing on playtesting EF and designing TW).

Yesterday I added A Cure for All Seasons for playtesting and decided to do another KMW trick by delaying the announcement until I had the time to do the announcement properly ala Ed. I think Martin actually misunderstood what I was saying in this blog and seemed to have made a rather nasty (especially by his usual French standards) remark there. Oh well, there's a response there that I hope will clear things up.


I managed to squeeze in a game of LotR yesterday and had fun with my Smeagol sneaking to site 8 against the huge besiegers. I think it was a bad match-up there. I didn't win it with my fellowship side though. Gollum didn't even appear until site 4 and was quickly dispatched by the Dwarves who were also busily discarding my deck. Shelob only showed up on 7 and with some bad plays by my opponent with the assignment, I finally overburdened the ring bearer with Gollum and Heavy Burden. I had fun. I hope I didn't drive my opponent away, instead I hope it inspires him to build a pure Gollum culture deck like mine.

I've also been busy updating my MND site. It's weird to be able to pick up the pieces and just go on like that even after such a long break. I had to tweak a few things of course, to bring everything up to date, especially on the custom cards, but I also added a few scans and stuff to keep the non-custom card people happy. I'll need to go advertising it soon again, just to get my counter to go happy again.

And I can't believe I have a super-secret project. OK, not so secret project now. Coming to a gatlingEngine near you soon!

-+@ Dark Angel @+-

which describes the 3 images shown below of course.



Art by Whyrl/Strom. That's 75% of the cards for A Cure for all Seasons Promo expansion. Yup, it's a small expansion of 4 cards. The text is up for comments at the custom card forum - links on the left unless you are downloading this with the feeds. This is the Promo expansion for Exodus Flight and like Exodus Flight, it highlights the RP element even more than the usual card. Poor Daniel made a comment which got partially shot down on the forum, but what he said was partially good. I guess he just needs to learn about the story-telling aspect of these cards in addition to the gaming part of it. After all, the story, the artwork as well as the card-game is integral to the mythos of the game.

Talking about Mythos if you wanna support the science blog with Cthulhu as a mascot (pictured left below), you can go and vote for uh... Pharyngula or however that is spelt for the best Science blog.



His closest competitor is the Bad Astronomer though (banner shown upper right). Their blogs have been funny reads over the last few days as the war of words heat up and it's gotten a bit partisan. And that's my cyberspace community service for this blog.

I don't think I'll touch Barathaum this year after all. Sucks and all I know, but since I'm not being the grinch this year, my time is spent sniping ebay auctions, hand-crafting gifts and teaching newly-weds how to bast a turkey for thier new husbands (or something). Yeah, so Barathaum is gonna take a back-seat after all. Bummer. I really wanted to get it up this year as well, but oh well, there's always next year (unless Ed doesn't die of a paper cut while playing with his brand new board games... then the engine goes down a few months after that, I'd guess).

I wonder if Ed has had time to work on Grave Robbers these few days. I get the impression that the silence means he's busy at work on it and we might get a surprise beta before the end of the year. Then again, he could be busy with all the festivities and stuff, so I have no idea. It's not as if he has a blog or he posts updates regularly... or does he?

The server acted up over the weekend and it got so bad that it had to be rebooted by Monday. I got a number of PM asking me to fix it for them, but I didn't want to disturb anything in case there was something there Ed wants to see. It was a memory error after all and it got rebooted. Wow, the number of games over the weekend must have been a mighty amount to have caused a memory error.

JC dropped by the forum over the weekend to make some announcements. I have no idea if anything is done, but at least he's back. Hopefully, he'd be updating the Rage stuff soon. Talking about Frenchmen, I had a nice chat with Martin over the weekend too regarding ... nothing in particular. Sad but true. It was just good to catch-up. The other French PL was last seen updating Shadowfist. I don't think he's in the tournament though.

I think the Shadowfist tournament is going rather well, but I think it's dying down some. I know the Rage tournament is dying down quite a bit because people are getting busy for the holidays. Sad, but true, but winter seems to be the season for fur lovers.

The forum game that Aidan has been trying to organise isn't going ahead after all. That's a pity. I was looking forward to sate my bloodlust by lynching fellow players. Oh well, it's not to be so. Maybe next year. Who know what next year might bring?

-+@ Temporal Warp @+-

See images below?



Just posting 3 images from dino duel with an ultra-rare on the left, the one and only card that I possess in the middle and a battle card on the right. The card back has a magnetic strip which you can swipe on the arcade machine though so the cardback is a bit weird, but not every cardback has a magnetic strip. The logo is also on the cardback. And that's part of my community service for this blog to educate the public about the future in CCGs. Not.

I'm still waiting to finish my last Urland game. It's been 2 days and I haven't even got a chance to make a move. Kev has been slow to act these last few days probably due to effects of too much turkey (yes, there's a protein* or something in turkey which makes one slothful apparently).

And slothful of course is part of the seven deadly sins... not that thing by some English poet or writer, but the new subtitle in the next two MND expansions. I had to check yesterday to determine if Paradwyn is ready for preview next week/month together with Underneath (it is). Universal might join the ranks there if I can finish that by the end of the month as well.

Wait up, then what will Weave go along with? Well, hopefully over the next month or so, I can flesh out my ideas for Cure and let Daniel have a once over at the design just to see what his gut feeling about the design would entail. Hopefully that would appease him, or alternatively it might upset him that he won't be able to sit back and relax. Oh well.

I had a look at Forest Well today after one player singled it out as being overpowered. I think it is as well, particularly now that it starts with Warrada. Urgh. Compared with Overgrowth though, it gives more bang for buck with Warrada in play, but it's a costly investment. It needs to be pared down a bit, but I have no idea how without making it lose its effectiveness.

While I'm on that topic, a few days ago, people were singling out Glowing Sword (OK, one person who doesn't play with relic discard was singling it out) as being too overpowered, until I pointed out that Finishing move can't be used the turn it is played and relic discards should be common in one's deck. Perhaps that should be the solution for Forest well as well? I have no idea.

I guess I can finally say that the new game I'm looking to adapt this year is known as Barathaum. It's published by Sage's Workshop or something like that and is actually being sold (apparently) online. I made (I would say badly) a cardback for it which is shown on the wiki. I wonder if it'll get accepted by the creator of the game, but the cardback is like the first thing I code in any new game. Well, if all is in order, then it should hopefully take about a week for it to be adapted.

* Turkeys are rather high in the protein tryptophan, which can be a relaxant for the body. That's why one feels doubly sleepy after a turkey meal (although some say it's an urban myth) - due to the tryptophan and the rush of blood to the digestive track to soak up all the goodies.. including the tryptophan.

-+@ Ego Boost @+-

I kid you not, that's actually the title of a CCG card.



Art Credits:
Solar Firagon by Nick Szankovics
Weave Pheygrin by Annette Burke, with background by Rich Werner
Core Firagon by Nick Szankovics

You saw it here first, 3 cards from the next (maybe) MND custom expansion tentatively titled Ancient of Days. Like all expansions, I need to get the images for at least half (i.e. 50 cards) before the set goes ahead. That will be a challenge for this set even more so than the last. I went into the last set (Twilight War) knowing I had more than 30 images. I'm going into this with less than 20. So things aren't really looking up, but there's still time and where's there's a Will there's a Grace?

I templated about 6 cards yesterday for AoD, the 3 above being some that were templated. I'm currently at 23 cards with images wich is barely a quarter of the way through... and this is the easy part of getting and templating images. I have no idea where else I would be getting the images, but oh well, I'm sure it can be done.

Before I go any further, lemme explain why I chose today's card title (Yes, that is a card in the CCG that I've been picking titles from, and I thought it was particularly apt for today). I was on the engine today, just hanging out watching people play some games, when in comes this guy with maniacmadmax as his nick. He went ballistic when he saw me in a good way, of course, and thanked me for keeping the game going singlehandedly. Heh, as if I did such a thing. I told him it was a group effort, yadda, yadda, but it did make my head a few inches bigger. It's not everyday that I get praised like that. I guess there are some people that are just appreciative of all the hard work that has gone into the customs.

And let's do a quick run down of MND custom expansion in reverse order, since I've already started off with AoD.

I still haven't done anything for Cure yet, although I'm glad I waited since I'm getting rather good ideas for the cards. This will be the first time in a while that I'm designing a Naroom magi and I hope it won't be too much of a disaster this time around. Daniel offered to help me with the design (I think he secretly wants to monopolize the Naroom card design) but I have yet to decide if I will take up his offer. Probably sometime after I've scripted out the rest of the Exodus Flight cards...

Exodus Flight is still being previewed for comments and I think the set is shaping out great. 9 out of the 13 regions have been revealed, and 2 more will be out for comments next week/month which would mean the last 2 region would only get out for comments in January. I still haven't written most of the Weave and Universal cards, so that would need to be done before January, and that also explains why those regions won't be ready by December. The plan is to start adapting the cards onto the engine by February for playtesting.

I just completed the text for Double Jeopardy today and uploaded the gML to the engine. That means there's 6 new cards available for play, although the cards are still technically in playtesting. I'm gonna wait for the complaints about them being broken and/or underpowered (well, complaints can only be about one or the other, nobody ever says anything if the cards are just right) over the next few weeks. Fun! Not!

Twilight War is still in playtesting and I think it's almost ready to be made public. I have set the ambitious date of February for it, but realistically, I'll probably hold off till May to make it common with the other 2 sets before it (Tainted Glimpses in May 2006, Exodus Flight in May 2005)

I need to start updating the Tainted Glimpses and Keeper's Quest promos with a printable version soon. Those would have to go up on the website, and probably a pdf version for download for anyone who wants to print them and play with them. That's gonna take quite a bit of time that I won't probably have until about March or so. Oh well.

Talking about the website though, I think I'm behind on the calendars - not that many people are downloading those. I also received all the scanned copies of the Book of Ages from Patrick last week and he expects them on the website ASAP. Nopers, I simply do not have the time to do it any justice at this point in time (and my html skills are rusty anyways - I still code everything in a text editor, so it's a pain). I have no idea when I'll get to them.

Insiider has died out completely... slightly later than usual, but dead is still dead nevertheless. The RPers are talking about taking their RP to someplace else (LJ, I think) to "finish" it and there hasn't been any posts other than trading stuff for a while now. That makes the Custom Card forums the most active MND forum out there now, with CCG Workshop's MND forum coming in a close second. The MND Yahoo group is still alive as well, and can probably compete with the CCGW MND forums as being the 2nd most active MND site.

Cookie Jar Entertainment finally released an image of the upcoming animation, and in my book, it doesn't look promising. The cancelled computer generated animation looked much better, although the animation quality probably won't be as good. But then again I'm not the target age of the cartoon, so I guess I'm not qualified to judge. There's still no announcement yet that the cartoon has been picked up or will air anywhere, but based on the fact that it was just sold this year with half a season, I'm going to guess it'll only start showing the earliest by Autumn 2007 since it's too late to be shown Autumn 2006 or as a mid-season replacement in Spring 2007.

There's more MND stuff, but there's also some other time. I know this is just item 1 of the things I said I'd post yesterday, I'll just have to do some of the rest some other day.

I'd like to end by thanking Martin for that comment on the last post that White Wolf has been bought by the EVE people. I read about that, but since it didn't affect me, I promptly forgot about it. Well, things are now up in the air about VteS and EVE both targetting the same market... will they halt the production of one of those CCGs? Who knows?

-+@ Magical Wings @+-

I wish I had those...



Art Credits:
Indgo by Whyrl/Strom
Meadow Celphet by Werner/Gillette
Winter Cure by Whyrl/Strom

I got bored of looking at the VteS cards, hence a new blog, which is long overdue as well. Martin guessed the CCG from which last month's titles are from... I'm sure he'll be able to do it this month as well if he tires.

I finally finished templating all the cards for Exodus Flight. The last one was Indgo, as show above. That brings the total to 100 out of 100 cards templated... design of the cards is also underway, with not-so-long and not-so-ardous debates about the merits of various things. I guess people are getting into it. There's still a long way to go.

The card on the right, is part of the Cure for all Seasons promo set of 4 cards. Yup, this is the first review of it anywhere online... I think. I have an idea for the set, but really that would be done after people have finally decided what to do with EF. By people, I mean me.

I added to the Custom Card site "printer-friendly" sheets of MND custom cards in pdf for people to download and print. Those were fun to do once the template was done. And I've recently come into contact with a really good laserjet colour printed, and have been going bonkers converting the custom cards into actual physical cards. I couldn't locate any cardstock (300 gsm or more) so these are printed onto paper, then pasted onto spare MND commons (so that I don't have to print the cardback). Then I have to carefully cut along the edges and for the final touch, to paint the borders with a black marker to make it look nice. Two of the cards are shown in the video below.



The card on the right of the screen is actually Liriel from ND. At the resolution of the video, it seems that everythings not distinguisable. One can only tell that it's a custom when you hold the customs up to a magnifying glass to see the individual spots printed by the printer - it's not as smooth since there is some compression and reduction involved in the printing process. Nevertheless, it's not as significance for normal use. Next up, binding them up.

So what have I been doing online? Well, it's mostly to do with the design of the MND cards - EF and P2C, and of course, the playtesting of TW, which is currently up on the engine. It was down for a couple of days, but after some really hillarious posts, it's been put back up at the request of the majority of the vocal players.

The August calendar for MND has also been made public at the beginning of August. I have no idea if it warrants a mid blog picture, but I'm going to post it anyways, just to make it MND overkill.


On the non-MND front, I finally got the promos, aka Novelty's swag treasure hunt, from Origins, half a world away. I'm rather pleased with the cards though. Thanks again Logan for everything!

CCG Armory finally came through and sent me an invoice saying that they have sent my stuff. It's by UPS so I'm going to expect at least a month's delivery - yes, it's probably that slow, not that UPS delivers bad service, but they are half a world away and they depend on a lot of other people in between me and them. I can't wait to get the cards though.

Oh and Decipher has previewed the next "set". No, it's not Rise of Saruman, but some Wraith set which consists of 6 cards. Yes, 6 cards. That's it. They must be milking the franchise for all it's worth. One of these days I'll probably put up the images.

I went into LotRO and AAOTCG to find them both blank. I hardly see anyone on the latter, although I did play a game or two of LotRO on and off this month. There aren't that many players now though, and the decks are wearing thin due to the lack of cards.

What's the next game I'm going to be coding for CCGW? That's a good question. There's always too many to choose from and not enough time. That, plus the fact that I have to maintain all my existing games as well. But the engine going free for legacy games have been good. At least they are all being played now.

-+@ Inspired @+-

New CCG for this month... last month's was from Anarchonism (I think) and the month before that was from Auto Assault OTCG.



Art Credits:
Athik Little by Nov, background by Strom/Whyrl
Spore Xyx by Nov, background by Strom/Whyrl
Glowing Korrit by Nov, background by Essence

I think I can do better than that, but it's tiring doing top-notch work. Still, I don't think these images are too shabby for a custom card set and I'm rather pleased with what has been drawn so far. All 3 are for Exodus Flight, the expansion that is after Twilight War.

I drew the Glowing Korrit just before this... it was supposed to be a Crystal Korrit, but I decided that I could do glowing better than crystal, hence the name change. That is card number 149 out of 150 for EF, the last card is a Nar magi and I'm working on that to obtain permission to use a really great image. Watch this space.

Twilight War continues to get added to the engine for playtesting, and thanks to the game going free last month, the whole thing became like a carnival on speed. People seem to can't get enough of the custom cards and have been playing with them as they get added. I guess that's a good sign. Two more regions to go to be added to the engine, and the Naroom players are already almost begging me to get them added. Well, when I get the time seems to be my mantra, although I hope to get them up before this week is out.

Double Jeopardy has also moved on apace, as I have confirmed the text and have published it for review. Not many people have said anything about it yet though, which is a pity, it does need more comments before I'm going to add it onto the engine. Perhaps a link from the CCGW forums will do the trick.

So TW (100 cards) for playtesting with all regions added in July, I'm going to guess DJ (8 cards) at about October and hopefully EF (150 cards) by about February for the draft versions of the text. And after that of course is A Cure for All Seasons (4 cards). I've still got to draft those cards out. That should keep me busy until God only knows when. I've also restarted sorting images for AoD/AE, but that will take a backseat for a while until DJ has gone to playtesting...

And of course there's Project Second Chance, a MRP custom card set that will attempt to "power up" cards from the earlier sets which are little used so that they'll see more play. It's just something special on my part to make new custom cards without actually making new Custom cards. Phew.

And in between all that there has been tournaments (one just ended last month), contests (again, one just ended last month, and that I've yet to judge the winner), website updates include the brand new calendar for July 2006 as picture below. Mid-blog picture coming up:


Finished working on WSS2 a while back to much celebration and jubilation. It got tried out a few times as well, but it's not a CCG, just a glorified war game of sorts. Still, it is cool to have a custom set for a non-CCG card game.

Martin and Ed have been busy toiling on VteS and in about a couple of weeks or so, another new expansion will join the online cards for play. That's good news for the players, and hopefully it'll draw in more players. Stability shouldn't be an issue to worry about since it seems rather stable these days and it's also gonna be free to play for 3 months, so hopefully that will draw in players.

I was waiting with bated breath for MoA or Crystal Authority to go public before Origins. It was not suppose to be. AFAIR, both had minor debugging issues which needs to be fixed before they can go public, but like all of us, there's just way too little time to do the debugging. Oh well.

Origins is here though and unlike last year, I think I got a good haul of promo freebie cards eventhough I didn't go. NECA was giving out nightmares and there were also free cards from demos of BSG. Poor Logan had to sit through a demo of that... he probably enjoyed it though. I hope he gets back soon...

-+@ Zero In @+-

as in focusing...



Art Credits:
Squak by Holmberg, background by Holmberg/Werner
Iger by Shipman, background by Nov
Wiscon by Zastrow

3 more from EF, that's almost the rest of my library. Very soon I've got to get the remaining 6 cards done and then get ready to get people to do the design for the cards. I wonder if anyone is up to that at this point in time. We shall see though. While I'm on the subject of EF cards, Essence just did one recently which can be found at MND at CCGW blog, which is why I'm down to 6 instead of 7. 5 more underneath creatures and 1 Nar magi to go and then the cards can start their design life.

I just realised that after making the May calendar, I did not post it up on the custom card website. Oops. The website is getting slightly neglected though, and I'll neglect it for a while until about the end of the month when I put up the June calendar together with May's. I should also probably add some more content there, but there's only so many hours a day, and there's so many other things to do... like add TW cards to the engine.

I just added the 6 Orothe cards today, bringing the total up to 26 or something like that, barely a quarter of the TW cards. I hope to get everything done by the end of the month. Minor automation stuff is still being added to the game and I'm going slowly to ensure that people get used to the changes.

I still haven't announced Cure for all Seasons yet, that's probably going to wait until TW has gone online fully for playtesting. And then, of course there's DJ to go as well. *sigh* It's a good thing I'm on a hiatus. Yay for the hiatus.

Tournament-wise, things are looking good for MND. This is the first month that 2 tournaments are running concurrently and there seems to be interest for both of the tournaments. The regular monthly tournament has got over 20 games played, if the results are to be believed, and I've started a play 3 games with me tournament with the custom cards. We shall see how many games I end up playing. If the response is good, I might even continue with it over summer.

I also did some WSS2 images today. I finished the 'Cats and SW backs, but there's still a whole lot to go. Hopefully I can get the rest of them done before the end of the month, at least that's the target.

I have been playing a bit of Auto Assault (TCG, not the MMO) with my one and only starter deck. I have no idea if people see the starter deck and get complacent or something, but I've been winning most of my games much to the embarassment of my opponents, who all seem to have a good subset of rare cards. It seems weird though, that they should have all these cards and not know how to use it.

Nightmare Before Christmas released the Christmastown expansion just recently I think. I haven't been through all the cards yet, but it seems promising. One of these days, I've got to find an avenue to play the game. I think it's going to be simple, yet fun, but sadly, I haven't found anyone to play with yet, online or offline. Oh well.

I'm still waiting for the announcements of the Star Gate CCG that will be released this year... maybe. Apparently the Shadowfist guy is in charge. I wonder whatever happened to Shadowfist though. Did it die out? Hmm... I guess I'm just ignorant.

And I have no idea what other PLs have been doing on the engine. Things are pretty much quiet at the moment, although I'm sure it's just the calm before the storm that will be Origins. Ed is still busy working to stabilise the server - hopefully, we'll get the stability soon.

Someone also contacted me for infomation about providing art for Final Twilight. I have no idea how that went other than the fact that I gave Nate's name and email to the artist. Nate seems pretty happy about that though. Perhaps we will get some more cards soon.

Anachronism Online is one thing I want to look at in detail. I signed up ages ago, but have yet to get a game. One of these days...

-+@ Huzzah! @+-

Whazzah?



Art Credits:
Tomes of theForgotten by Beth Zyglowicz
Climbing Boots by Walter Reagan, colours by Novelty, background by Matt Holmberg
Relic Key by Beth Zyglowicz

Three more cards from Exodus flight, which has been put on hiatus while I get on with life, and these are the next to last batch of cards that I haven't yet showcased on the blog. Oh well. I have to start hunting for images soonish for Exodus Flight if only to have them ready for this blog.

It was rare not to mention MND in the last blog, although that does occassionally happen. It also happened because I wrote that after writing for MND at CCGW blog, so I guess I was all MND'ed out. Still things are moving there, although not as fast as some people would like. As I mentioned there, I still have ideas for things there... it's just going to get a bit slow moving along...

So I spent quite a bit of time templating A Cure for All Seasons Promo... and I have a very good idea what the cards will do and how they will go, but they will take time to develop. I am running with it since the motivation is there... which is sorta funny as the Promo expansion before this, Double Jeopardy, is still not finalised yet. Oh well, it'll get done after the whole list of things... like designing Weave cards for TW and templating more cards and updating the website. Eeks! The website... so much to do...

Then there's my WSS2 plans, which I'm rearing to go, but I can't seem to find the time to get on to it. I think this is going to be the next thing after Hyborian Gates... I know it's like 2 years later than I originally planned it, but better late than never I guess. Still I want to get it over and done with if only to say - there it is, look at my achievement? Aren't you proud of it? Gimme a gold star... or a cookie!

And since I'm talking about cookies, Tomi actually has a nice ad of James Bond up on the frontpage of CCGW (and no, don't ask me how those 2 items are related... I just needed a connecting sentence!) I wonder if it has been added to the engine yet though.

Talking about engine ads, it was a nice surprise to see quite a few of the recent ones I made - ranging from the "levitating leaves" Hyborian Gates ad to the image of Tattered Tomes drawn by - ahem - one of CCGW's own for Final Twilight - among the rotation (or as I like to think of as - parade) of images within the engine. I have no idea if anyone even notices those images, but they are fun.

I had a brief chat with Mark today... and he's got ambitious plans for the rest of the year. I know I've already mentioned the 5 target games this year. There's more though besides that, and I'm sure I have just barely scratched the surface. I'm not going to mention too much until the right time though... but check out his blog - there might be some tidbits there... as a French footballer once said... "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."