-+@ 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.

-+@ Chameleon Fairy @+-

New Month, same old CCG though for the title... and that card is just so gay...



Lord of the Rings cards and these are from the next set Rise of Saruman. It got approved late last week so 2 cards have been spoilt - Saruman and the Ring. Of course I have to find a third for this blog so I picked up a fan made card with the spoilt text of another card - a throne, which will be one of the "featured" possession in the set. Saruman is the featured minion with not just one or two or three, but 4 different versions of him in the expansion, which makes sense; after all the expansion is named after him. The cards will be spoilt one a week every Friday. Sadly, it won't be printed in time for Christmas which is a pity, but hopefully it'd be printed early next year.

I have no idea if this expansion will even go online. We are still waiting for the last expansion, eventhough that was only a 6 card expansion. Sony's taking over of WA has really messed up WA and if anyone wants to start and make up ground by taking over WA's share of the pie, this would probably be a good time to start. I have been playing a bit more often though and made an Elf deck yesterday with the twins. It's mid level, but it's interesting playing elves... for the first time. I think I've played out the decktype though.

The sad thing about LotR is that there are only 7 fellowship cultures (and 5 shadow ones). Each culture seems to have 2 strategies at the most making 14 possible playable fellowship decks.
That seems a small number though. The numbers are a little bit higher due to "rainbow" fellowships and dual-race decks, but only Hunters, Eowyn-Elves get to see some play although I saw a rather interesting Gondor/Gandalf fp today.

I've had quite a bit of time recently because the 4-player Urland game finally finished with Ed as the winner. I made a mistake early in the game with a misclick and picked the wrong gene. Oh well, blame it on human error. I'm glad Ed won though not because he coded the game but because he really played well. Everyone else made mistakes. One thing I desperately wished was present on the game interface was a notepad where I could jot down which were the chips that I passed on and what my next few moves are going to be. Relying on memory, sometimes for a few days isn't the nicest thing to be doing.

The only other thing of significance today was that a playtest report was posted for the latest MND expansion that have been added to gEngine for playtest. The DJ cards are, as feared, vastly overpowered, but with comments and playtesting, they are being knocked down a few pegs. I think I have the best playtesting team at this point in time on the engine for the cards... and thanks to the effort started last year, a good team of card developers as well.

There's apparently a new expansion of Doomtrooper to be added... probably in the beginning of the year... and Scooby Doo for Mythos as well. Doo and Doom as I call them. As for Barathaum though, this week is shaping up to be another busy week so I doubt any progress will be made. Perhaps over the weekend, if I can squeeze in the time, the excitement, enthusiasm and effort, I might get it done. Or perhaps not - I have no idea how the rest of this week will go much less of the weekend.

I was looking through a new CCG for next year based on the Fox programme Chaotic. I'm not sure I like it. Is it me or are CCGs getting more and more gimmicky these days? I've posted about Dino Duel where you get cards from an arcade machine... now apparently there's cards that give you codes to enter at a website to do things. Granted, that's not new - Digimon probably had something similar, and perhaps Bionicle as well, but still. Why cut out the game stores and stuff? I have no idea. I'll probably grab the images for the next blog update unless I actually do some work on Barathaum, in which case, it'd be that instead.

-+@ Deity Status @+-

Who me?



Art credits:
Night Awebaw and Firdhen by Strom/Whyrl
Leaping Osatch by Zastrow

I templated some more images a few days ago and three are shown above. These are for Ancient of Days... but it's still early. I've already removed a Cald template for a later expansion and might have to do the same to a Naroom one. The problem is that with just 6 cards for the first 5 regions, things are pretty much cramped there. Add in a relic cross-region theme for AoD and that's effectively only 5 cards per region. Why a relic theme? Well, we've already have crushing spells and spirit spells and tainted spells so a spell theme has already been done. I could do a creature theme thing, but that's gonna be tricky art-wise. Relics though are easy and I have the perfect image for this theme. I just have to template them one of these days.

Double Jeopardy is already getting it's share of reviews and it's nice to know that the comments that are directed my way are mature and thought-provoking instead of destructive and demeaning. The Wanderers have been hightlighted as a potential issue this early in playtesting, eventhough I wonder why nobody pointed it out during the comments stage. Oh well, I guess people just wanna have broken cards added to the engine or something. I'll have to change that soon I guess.

I've been itching to start working on something that's a bit under wraps at the moment, although I've been bursting to say it here. I can't. It's got nothing to do with licensing though, but it is a game that I want to adapt to the engine, hopefully before the year is out. I need to contact the creator first though to clarify a few things. It's probably gonna be no-fries (aka "no frills") initially, and I have no idea if it'll get automation at this stage. It's all up in the air as the saying goes.

Otherwise, things are quiet. The Mythos tournament has finally ended with Jer(e)(my) (I like spelling it that way) being declared the winner. The other two tournaments will run until the end of the month. Aidan tried to start a game on the forums, but that seems to die horribly and he's giving people an extra week to sign up. I do hope more people sign up.

I haven't put in much time on Ticket to Ride. My ISP is having problems which is causing massive lag on TtR. That's a pity. It is a good distraction when I have 10 minutes spare and nothing to do. Yes, 10 mintues can usually finish a game. That's the huge plus when compared with PBW site (like ludoholic). It has its downside though. Sometimes I have to wait to get a 4-player game, but that's not very often.

I've been playing more LotR instead. It's just for fun, or card-flopping at best. I have a middle of the road deck that will probably beat up newbies bad, and get beaten up by really good decks bad, but I don't mind getting beaten. It's more for the fun of playing the cards and making funny comments like "There should have been an Adam Sandler in Lord of the Rings to pants Sean Austin" and stuff like that.

I've been downloading images to a new computer and I just realised that bowling has a missing image, so it back to the old computer to upload the image before coming back here to work on everything else. Things are difficult when one is migrating over to a new machine I guess... but there's always some good in the tedious process, like finding out that bowling is missing an image for example, which I doubt will be reported at all.

I finally dug up the card I got from the arcade game, and it's called Dino Duel. Apparently it's Indonesian, or at least the website is in English and the Indonesian version of Malay (think American version of English). I'm sure Martin will look through the site and tell me the gameplay depends too much on luck or something (or not now that I've said it). He'll probably be true. It has a good concept and it dispenses cards, but the gameplay is bad, at least in my book. I suppose someone will be coming out with a better machine at some point in the future. You probably won't hear about it here.

-+@ Peripheral Whispers @+-

Heh, this CCG has really great titles.



Those are 3 cards from Eve CCG. I searched online and found that they were published in Iceland. The art's not too bad, but I have no idea about the gameplay though. Maybe Martin would leave a comment about what he thinks about the gameplay if he reads this.

And it's about time to polish off the things I said I'd write about...

Let's start with VteSO then. Nothing seems to be happening there, and I'm not surprised. The merger/takeover/whatever between EVE and WW is probably taking up resources at WW. The players are agitating about things like when's the next cardset gonna show up and better tech support, but really at the end of the day, with WW in flux, I doubt anything is gonna happen in the short term especially with the holidays coming up.

Ed's been busy on what is known as Ludoholic. Basically that's the play-by-web site and within a short time, both Capitol and Urland are now playable with Grave Robbers being in development. That's all Ed doing all the coding work, but I think Mark has been helping out there some. Kev seems to be the main playtesting guy there with a few others. The games there are slow, especially for me, as I have to wait for everyone to take their turns while I'm asleep. The plus is that I get in games. The big minus is that it takes weeks if not months to finish a game. I'm currently on a 4-player Urland game and that will be my last game for a while until something interesting comes along.

The main engine seems pretty much ignored. Tomi has been the only other person that seems to be doing stuff on there. I think Kult had an update, Doomtrooper has the usual tweaks and a new expansion, and Mythos had a few tweaks. Action on those games is mainly limited to Doomtrooper, if the number of questions on the forums is any indication.

Alex started a Mythos tournament, which seems to be going rather well, but it seems as if it's tapering off at the moment so I'm not sure where things are. The big tournament success is the one being organised by Jacob for Shadowfist. There seems to be hordes of players playing it and Shadowfist has seen some of the most spectular numbers of games being played. I think that's a good sign. The other tournament that's ongoing is the Rage one that H.C. is organising. The usual suspects are in it, but it seems to be drawing in new players if forum sign-ups and posts are any indication. That seems to be a good thing.

The other game that's drawing in new players (now that it doesn't cost tokens anymore) is MND, which has got a new generation of players. I played a game with one of them the other day with my comfortable LE-weave deck and LE alone took out LE-bograth, Baa and the other magi practically with flip kills on the last 2. Weave Path with Bungalaloos = 3e to gain 4e, or more if an Uwamar or two is sitting around. An early Brushfire means an easy burn +2 every turn which was interesting. I didn't even draw any cards the last two turns, thanks to a frusk in play which kept my hand filled with cards. It was a fun game and the opponent was friendly. It has been a while since I've enjoyed that.

One of the new players did ask when will DJ get text and I realised yesterday that it was supposed to be this month, so yesterday, I added all the DJ text to the cards already present on the engine. People are still trickling in to read the cards and I have no idea whether these cards will be a success or not, but the general reception seems positive, with exceptions from the usual suspects, of course.

Mid-post picture below. That's the Cookie Jar picture for the MND animation that didn't get rave reviews.


The other new expansion that I've added to gEngine this week are the Ashcan cards for Final Twilight. Some of the images in that expansion was uncoloured which is a no-no in my book, so I had to go ahead and add in the colours to the remainder of those images. It wasn't easy, and I wasn't really motivated to do colours at time, but I think the end result is definately better than the black and white images. I know DJ, the marketing director for the game has been known to give rave reviews about the colouring so that's a plus. One of the images has pigment based on Holly's skintone and I think Ed was showing it off to her. It was definately interesting colouring those in.

A while back though, someone PMed me and asked me if I were still looking for Hyborian Gates scans for the promos. I was and he kindly scanned in the last few promo cards that I needed to be added to the engine. So after 4 years or so of collecting images, all the images for Hyborian Gates can now be downloaded from the engine. Nobody plays the game though, but that's fine. At least we now have the 70s and 80s preserved on the engine.

Although it's not available yet, I've been told that Titan: Arena might make a comeback onto the engine thanks to the success of talks between Ed and the game creator. This would be the first removed game to make a comeback if it does go ahead. Obviously, the AH images would not be usuable, but I don't think that's a big hinderance - alternative images can always be found. I, personally, think that's good news and it would be a boost to the engine.

I was in a games arcade the other day, and came across a game that actually dispenses out tradable cards. Cards dispensed this way had a magnetic strip which can be swiped on the machine and played. It was a weird concept, but I guess it targetted the card collecting gamers. It sure did work on me. I got a card and it has stats and a magnetic strip on the back instead of a cardback. The game was a boring stone-paper-scissors sort of thing with lots of animation, really juvenile and was a turnoff after the first game. The card was interesting though. I wonder if I can devise a better game based on the number on the card...

The other game I purchased a month or so back was the 2nd expansion of HIStory. This is the CCG that's published in Singapore and is "religious" in nature. I have no idea where I placed the first expansion, but that was basically a shrinkwrapped deck in a cardbox box. This set though is also shrinkwrapped, but it's sold in a 3.25 floppy box of 10 case. That's a good reuse of material I guess since nobody uses 3.25 floppy diskettes anymore.

One comment for Daniel - check the reply to your comment in my previous post.

-+@ 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?

-+@ Sudden Illness @+-

I think I'll continue the CCG for the rest of this month...



Final Twilight cards for a change. These are from the Ashcans which I will have to add to the engine once I finish colouring up two more images. I did one the other day, but I guess it wasn't in time to be included in the Ashcan release. Oh well, it'll definately be added into gEngine anyways.

Otherwise though, what I have labelled as "Entropy2" internally has been added onto the engine. Apparently 3 of the cards aren't finalised yet so those will be changed some time in the future. I'm a bit surprised though because the cards are available for sale as pdf versions already. Hmm...

The other thing has been this player from Poland has been after me to add in the Atmosphere cards onto the engine for AvP. He has been so enthusiastic that he's been getting the images and matching them with the text and creating all the new cards for me. Heh, hold the horses! Well, I really want to properly template the existing cards before I add any more cards, so I got him to send me current scans of the cards - proper 300 dpi ones - so that I can blank them properly to template them. He has. The next step would be to blank them, then do the templates properly, match the fonts, cut out the images and reassemble both the old expansions in addition to adding in Atmosphere. I have no idea where I'll find the time to do that, but I shall have to do it soon if I wanna keep his interest I guess. He and his one other friend has been going crazy with the number of games - the game is being played rather regularly now and I guess that qualifies it for some "frills".

Ed has been really good and has got Armageddon setup for me. The problem is, I haven't had the time to actually complete it and place it on the engine. Argh! I really need to get this going at some point though, but I just don't really have the time for it at the moment. The card art also haven't been finalised for all the cards, but I have got the spoiler and the rules and everything so one of these days, I really have to sit down and sort everything out. One of these days... I have no idea after or before I start revamping AvP.

Ed's also been good on a number of fronts - notice that Titans: Arena is back up on the engine? Well, he went to the game creator and got his permission to host the game on the engine so now it's back up. Hooray - that's one removed game that's now back on the engine. I guess the Netrunner fans and the Harry Potter crazies can start their campaign to get their games back on the engine now...

Since the cat's out of the bag, Ed has recently been working on a play by web (PBW) site called ludoholic.com . I've been busy on there playtesting (well, more play than testing) the interface and the programming of Capitol. I used to think that the Capitol adaptation on the engine was wanting. The PBW version is so much cooler, with the rules in a convienient form and the moves easily understandable, stackable counters and a point and click interface. Sure, the last thing isn't available on the engine yet, but hey, it's motivation for Ed to add them at some point in future... I think. Capitol is mostly done now, Urland is next on the list as is stated on that page so things are moving fast.

Everyone it seems is caught up in the craze. I saw Kev requesting to do Monkeys for PBW instead of the engine on the forums, and I know Logan and Mark are both also looking into adapting games for PBW. I guess I'm just the only person who isn't jumping with joy (or frustration?) about the whole deal, but I already have enough on my plate... if you can't already tell from the above.

The end of last month was crazy... eventhough I've streamlined my CCGW responsibilities, there was nevertheless a multitude of other things to do as well, mostly MND and thus nothing to do with CCGW. There's the calendar which had to be done. I can understand how Holmberg used to be up to at least a week late with them. They aren't that tedious to do, but it does take time to do them. And just because there's space for a mid blog picture:


That's available for download as a desktop image too.

And while tweaking around on a couple of pages on the custom card website, I discovered I had to update the status of the custom cards... and once that was done, to update TG and KQ up to the EL and SP standards. Eep! That's a huge load of work, and I've been steadily toiling away at it. SP received it's printer friendly pdf around the beginning of the month and KQ last night, with the remnants of EL. So that's less than a score done, a century more to go...

TW is still in playtesting and has been joined early this month by the first card for DJ and P2C. There's already been a tempest in a teacup (sorta-pun intended) with the first DJ magi and I added the second DJ magi last night. I wonder what will happen there. Perhaps people will fall in secret love with it or perhaps things will get frosty (no, not forestry). Who knows?

The MND players, as a collective, or should I say the vocal part of the collective have been calling for power escalation to be implemented on a number of cards. I have been wondering why that is so. Perhaps it's just inherent - people just want the best for the short term, not realising the worst that can do in the long term.

That DJ magi was added as part of the Summer League tournament which has sorta died out I guess. That's a pity though. I guess people only played for the prizes and when the prize runs out, there was no point in playing. That's a good thing though, people shouldn't be pigeon-holed to play something they didn't want to play I guess, but as it has shown, it means that they are being rather abusive (game wise) towards the newer players. Ouch. I haven't seen a new player last for longer than three months yet. Oh well.

Meanwhile, things continue to go busy with the cards in development. EF is firmly on schedule with 3 regions going out for comments at the beginning of the month and the other regions getting prepped for it. We've sorta changed the way this works and the designs are not so much in isolation now and hopefully, this would result in better quality cards being designed.

I've also started the AoD/AE image collection process and the subsequent templating to go along with it, and that is an even slower process. But then again, I guess the priority there is low. People have been coming to the forums asking to contribute... well, the main prerequisite for that is their capability to stick around for the long term. As I said previously, there aren't too many of the long termers recently. I guess people are just too much into the instant gratification thing... or at least the instant thing.

I was talking with Nate about this the other day, and he pointed out to me that he's experienced it as well on the forums he frequents. People (and by that he means underagers who are vocal on the forums he frequents) want the thing and they want it now, but they have no idea what to do or how to do it, because almost everything in life is done for them. Apparently he has written some sort of guidelines thing that's a must read on one of those forums. I've gotta remember to ask him if I can read it anytime soon.

And it's round about September/October, which means Tomi gets more time to spend on the engine... Doomtrooper got another custom expansion, and I know he's busy with the latest expansion that's in the work, but that's not the only game on the engine that got Tomi's love. Kult and Dark Eden and I think Mythos had minor tweaks as well, and of course, as mentioned above, Titan's back. Remember the Titans gets new meaning now!

It's nice to see a Shadowfist league has started up on the engine headed by a guy I know from LotRO. I guess his creative energies has to go somewhere and since LotrO is down, a SF league seems the next best thing? Julien has been forced to update the cards and stuff which is cool - at least SF is getting some attention, even if Zev is now focusing on Conan/Star Gate/whatever.

Oh and I got a huge load of cards the other day - a box each of Black Rider and Bloodlines and two each of Voice of the Storm and Nightmare Dawn. The latter 2 were mostly for making real world custom cards while the former 2 I got because they were really really cheap. I expect it'll get cheaper! Nevertheless, it does take time to open packs, sort cards and the like. That takes time too, which is one of the reasons why I haven't blogged in a while...

-+@ Chain Reaction @+-

Why? Because I have just started the Chain Reaction...



Art Credits
Jore Cub by Essence
Bwisp by Vega/Holmberg/Nov, backgrounds by Strom/Whyrl
Athik Shell by Nov

Three more cards from EF... I think I only have 2 more that I haven't shown on my blog yet. After that I'll have to move on to Cure, then AoD/AE. I finally found the owner of the image I wanted to use for the last EF card, and am now waiting for permission. Hopefully, I'll be able to use it because it's an awesome image by Whyrl.

I finally added the last 2 regions for TW onto the engine. There were a number of people who went "Finally!" when I made the announcement in the chatroom. The chatroom has also been rather busy as of late with a handful of people there at all times, or so it seems. Must be because it now no longer costs to play... but probably also because people are curiously testing out TW.

Adding those last 2 regions has just set a whole series of events into motion, but that's currently hush hush sorta.

I have also updated the Summer Tourney's prizes to include adding cards to gEngine for the monthly winners and a whole new custom relic for the winner with art by myself. I wonder how many people will bite the bait. The tournament went dead as soon as the game became free to play. I've advertised it on the MND @ CCGW blog and on the FPNews so we shall have to see what's happening there.

Meanwhile Mitch has finally finalised the last DJ card... well, the next to last anyways, as the last one will be finalised in the tournament that will be held during playtesting. The card text have been up for review for a while now, but things are also going slow there. Well, I guess we will have the time for that soon enough, but I think people are even more excited about the DJ magi than the remaining TW cards.

Oh and I made a few more ads specifically for the FPN... mid post image coming up. The one on the left is the Naroom image for TW, the one on the right is the 2nd DJ ad that I made. The other one can be seen at the top of the FPN.


And I think that's enough MND for this blog.

I read Mark's blog about Ticket to Ride and I know Ed have been raving about it as well, so I took the opportunity to see what they were talking about. I managed to get a few games in today. On the first pass though, I went blegh, this is boring. 3 or 4 games later, I began to see the strategy involved in playing the game and my opinion of the game rose a little. This would be a good 1 hour game to play with little kids...

Mark has barely posted except that one blog about the evening of Day 1. I'm awaiting the rest of his blogs. I wonder what else they are playing. It seems to be only boardgames. I wonder if he plays A Game of Life?

Logan has just got back from Origins and has a whole lotta stuff to tell. I'm awaiting for his "report" about what he played and stuff. I think that's going to be interesting at the very least. It seems he played in a lot of demos and tournaments which sounds interesting. Apparently he said he met Kev there at Origins!

I asked Martin about those symbol things on VteSO which apparently are the clans or factions or something like that. There are about 30 of them apparently. I wonder if Ed is going to show all 30 on the website. Heh. Oh and the new expansion that will be going in in less that 2 weeks? That has 350 cards. Ouch!

I think I'm finally getting into my CCGW groove and I wonder what should I be tackling next... AvP and B5 both needs an update of sort, but with the loss of the forums, I have no idea what I promised to do on them now... YNDT and Urland also need a fresh look at a few things, but again, I have to dredge those up from memory... blegh!

-+@ 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...

-+@ It's Time You Begun @+-

but begun what ... that is the question...



Art Credits:
Woven Cloak by Scott Montgomery, background by msyelf
Coal Mask and Toxic Mushroom by Beth Zyglowicz

Another 3 cards for EF, this time though, relics. And I just realised that I have only 4 days worth of images left before I run out. Ah well, back to the good old days when I have to worry about images after that. I either have to make more... or use non-MND cards. So I decide to template a few more cards for EF today, and the corresponding cards for eXodus and Chimefall. Whee!

It's been a busy day for MND for me today. First off Mitch sent me the Orothe card suggestions for TW and they were good. So that had to go up on the Custom Card forum as a first draft for people to comment. Not many Orothe players though it seems, but that's another reason done at least, which leaves 4 more - Paradwyn, which is mine, Core, Weave and d'Resh - and two half regions - Naroom and KT which are only partially done. Hopefully those can be done in time for a March playtest start.

The exception though would be the winner of this month's MND tournament who will get to pick a region to be added to the engine in February for a preview playtest. I hope that will get things going... but it might not. We shall have to see what happens there.

The Custom Card website has also got an update today. The conclusion of the Double Jeopardy contests means that all the Double Jeopardy cards can now be added to the website. While I was there, I added the scan of the Ancestral Flute "controversy" with a note. That would help people make up their minds.

Patrick Miteff sent me the full scan of Book of Ages issue 1 today. I didn't even ask him to do it, he just submitted it knowing fully well that I intend to add it to the Custom Card site. I guess that's the good thing about him - he's so eager to push the site as well, but he did have a huge part in creating it as well. Consequently, he's using the images from there on ebay, but that's something I really don't mind too much... I think.

I clipped the Hyborian Gates scans that I scanned in yesterday - they look good. No coding done on those yet, but I hope to get them in sometime this week. I hope to finish Hyborian Gates this month as well if I get to work fast on it.

Haven't worked on anything else otherwise, and there's no more games that I would feel comfortable adding the experience points system to. But that doesn't mean that the announcements on the front page of gEngine will stop. Today I bumped up 2 of them and reinstalled a third. Of of those which got bumped is the B5 league weekend announcement.

B5 League weekend starts tomorrow engine time, so that's something to look forward to. To make up for not having one last month, this month's weekend is double time - it lasts for 4 days instead of two. It's a pity I won't have time to play though. Oh well, maybe next month. I still haven't played a league game.

And Bruce has been adding cards for the next B5 expansion. Minbari came out early this week which, although didn't exactly wow everyone, seems to be very well received. There are some gems there mixed in with everything else though so it's a bit hard separating the chaff from the curds (see "how to mix idioms"). I haven't had time to go through them yet though, but I should given that I'm an OK-ish Minbari player... self-declared and all...

-+@ What Have I Done @+-

Indeed, what have I started? Last month's titles were all from Wildstorms or WSS1.



Art Credits:
Machine Hyren by Beth Zyglowicz
Mud Muggum by Jeffry Ransom, background by Matt Holmberg
Elder Stagadan by Beth Zyglowicz

First off Happy New Year 2006 to all those who follow the western calendar. If you don't observe that calendar, well, I wish you a good CCG gaming experience for the next 12 months.

Cards above are from Exodus Flight - yes I still have a whole backlog of those from a few months back, so I'll be getting them out once in a while. Not much has been going on with EF though, but TW has been busy. 5 and two half regions have been posted for comments, the latest of which was 4 out of the 6 Naroom cards submitted by Daniel. There has been quite a few comments on what has been published so far. This is going to be a good expansion.

Talking about Daniel, he posted a blog at the MND at CCGW group blog that detailed his new deck. It was rather interesting for me to read about people playing Bograth, a region that I don't play well and it just goes to show that there's still many things to learn about the game.

I finally judged the final DJ contest The Rangers today. There weren't too many entries to choose from so it wasn't too difficult to pick a winner. Flip had a great entry with some really great names that didn't seem too powerful so I picked that one, but there are good entries out there as well.

And for the last 2 days, the Custom Card site has had quite a bit of updates, with the new calendar for 2006 and the animated series page getting added. The traffic to that site is still rather crazy, but at least the page views are down. There seem to be a dedicated group of people from such faraway places as Brazil and London who seem to be visiting the site on a regular basis. It's rather comforting to know actually that people are enjoying the site.

The last MND item for this blog is that I've started the January tournament online and so far 4 people have signed up. I have no idea though if there wll actually be games from this tournament, but hopefully there will be some that are played. The sad thing is that there won't be a create a card tournament for this tournament to give them a free win so this will solely be just a plain gaming tournament.

Non-MND news wise, I've actually updated the Alphabet Game on the CCGW Forums today since Crisy and Grover have been busy posting one thing after another. I do wish they'd check the X entries though before continuing because they seem to post things again and again. I've also moved the closed VTES forum to the locked forum place on the forum and the resulting 6 forums with "high traffic" is back to where it was a few months ago. The sad thing is that Star Wars and Doomtrooper aren't generating too much traffic so I wonder if those will get axed soon enough.

VTES seems to be going on strong with over 10 people on that engine every time that I check. With the release of Anarchs late last year, the large pool of new cards (online) has probably attracted a fair bit of players, that and the fact that it's still free to play at this point. The forums there have also been busy and there seems to be quite a bit of buzz there, but this is nothing compared to the initial beta release Martin had 2 years ago when upwards of 40 players were online and most of them were playing. Oh well, perhaps it's the death of the CCG industry after all.

I haven't heard from Josh for a while and I suppose that could be a good thing or a bad thing. His other fellow muppets have been busy. Christoph has just released v11 of the virtual cards online a few days ago and is still championing Star Wars ont he engine. He's doing a good job of it at the moment. Tony released a whole load of custom WoT cards a few days before that and is working on the custom fonts for Shadowfist at the moment. They seem to be getting things going there.

Kev seems to have started on Monkeys again, but I have no idea how far he got along since I wasn't around when he was working on stuff. Talking about Monkeys, I really should get Go Fish updated and Hyborian Gates finished ASAP this month at the very least and then maybe add the XP system to Yukk, Reversi and Borders. Sounds like a lot of work too, especially since I'm busy with real life stuff. We'll have to see.

-+@ Winter @+-

Walking in a winter wonderland...



Art Credits:
Ice Zyavu by Jen Reed, backgrounds by Rich Werner and Chana Goodman
Arctic Wind by Justin Gallaher
Icicle Hyren by Jen Reed, backgrounds by Matt Holmberg

Three more cards from Exodus Flight, which is the next set after TW. There's 3 Nar cards to fit the wintery theme of today's post. I did 2 of Just Gallaher's cards today for the RP sets eXodus and Dreamstorm respectively and the one from Dreamstorm wasn't too shabby so that got accepted into Exodus Flight, which is based on the names and the artwork from the first 2 RP expansions. I also spent a large amount of time going through the images again from those 2 sets and accepted 4 more cards into Exodus Flight. All the Exodus Flight images can be seen on the Custom Card site, of course - I just finished a quick update on the site with the new cards.

Today I felt inspired to start the first of the first 3 cards for Chimefall, the 3rd RP expansion. I've done 3 spells, all of which can be seen on Insiider. The art was by Alison Strom and all 3 were for Arderial. The cards aren't too bad and I like the idea behind the cards. It's a pity that none of the 3 will be going into Fallen Hour - that's the set based on Chimefall and Soul Conflict, and will be worked on after Ancient Enemy.

After the blog yesterday though, I was just too psyched up about the Universal cards, so I went ahead and posted the text up on the Twilight War forum. Nobody has commented on the cards yet, but I am going to say some of those cards can be extremely broken as they stand. They will need to be toned down a little bit before they enter playtesting. That brings it to 5 and a half regions completed. One more region and we'd be half way through the expansion.

There's only a couple of days left to the Double Jeopardy contest and it only has 5 entries. I'm not surprised. It's December and people are extremely busy. Likewise the tournament hasn't even had a single game reported, which is also expected. With the other free games though on the engine, there's a lot more to do than to play MND which costs tokens...

The MND at CCGWorkshop blog has also been quiet... I should put something up one of these day there for the end of the year thing or something. The other thing I would like to do is to add the MND customs infomation to the CCGW wiki. One of these days...

I've been playing some LotR, mainly with the revised non-solo Smeagol with Gollum as the shadow. I'm enjoying Gollum extremely at the moment, due to the ability to massively wound the opponents... and the fact that nobody is playing with Clever Hobbits. The game doesn't seem as healthy as it used to a year ago online, which is a sad state of affairs. However, they are still doing rather well, and have even picked up the tricks I've been using for MND - custom cards (only they call these online cards), design contests and the like!

Tournament wise though, I think the Final Twilight Tournament actually had some games played this week, although I have no idea how many were played. Things seems to be quieting down again though on that front. That game seriously needs someone to really push it and support it and I don't think I can do that. The best I can do is to make sure everything is as up to date on the engine as possible.

I had a look at the staff page on CCGW and was surprised to see that Ed has taken up Co-Lead for Frank's Zoo. I guess that deserves a Plates Post update. I'm still listed there as being the Co-Lead for Sailor Moon as well, eventhough I have never had that post throughout the history of the game. I think Ed just wants to make my list look a whole lot longer. The other person who has an "orphaned" Co-Lead is Kev with Galactic Empires. With Gray out of the picture, he's gone back to being a full lead on that game.

Talking about Kev, I wonder if he'll use the holidays to finish up Monkeys. I hope he doesn't get stressed too much over monkeys though. It is best if one is really enthused about coding before beginning, but that's a luxury more than anything else. Hopefully, he'll get everything ready before the end of the year as a surprise to everyone.

Martin still seems to be busy on VTES, and there's just a couple of days to go (or less). I wonder if there's a large group of people hanging around the chatroom there. Probably not, since the initial playtesters seems to have lost interest in the whole thing. Oh well. Hopefully the server will be able to take the influx of the expected large numbers of players later on Monday!

-+@ Diva @+-

New Month, new surprise!



Art Credits:
Grass Chogo by Jen Reed, backgrounds by Matt Holmberg
Onyx Ithapher by Beth Zyglowicz
Mystic Uban by Austin Gardner

My how time flies. The three cards above are from my store of Exodus Flight images... I barely have time to do any MND custom cards at the moment so I'll have to rely on the store of cards.

Some quick MND news - Freigabe won the November MND tournament with a Core deck. He also played the most games and is one of the strongest supporter of MND on the engine. Hopefully he'll continue in form this month for the wacky December tournament. This month's tournament though is the 2 vs 2 format. It has been decried that it would be little played and I hope that is not the case. Still, the die-hards will probably have a go at it hopefully so I'll see how things turn out there.

Freigabe has also sent in a TG playtest report with a few recommendations which I agree, so they'll get added in next MND update. I wish more people were posting playtesting reports. Well, there is only about a couple of months before TG playtesting ends anyways.

The last of the DJ custom card contest has kicked off and things are going rather fast for a change. I have no idea if it's the last card that's spurning everyone or the card topic that is doing the trick, but all in all, people seem to be rather excited about this last card. Hopefully some good suggestions will come out of this.

Ed has got a really cool tournament system in place and hopfully Nate will use it for the Final Twilight tournament. I have no idea when that is running yet, or if anyone is even playing Final Twilight as of late. The 6 new cards doesn't expand the game too much, but it does add a large percentage of cards to the game... I think in the region of about 20%. The game needs more cards to grab attention though - it feels a bit like a boxed game at the moment as opposed to a CCG.

I'm still waiting for Aquarius to go public - I know Mark has been hard at work and I know he has got a few roadblocks, but they seem minor and hopefully he'll be able to work around those soon. Will that be the final game of the year on the engine? I hope so.

Tony meanwhile was busy incorporating the ranking system into Fluxx. It just got announced on the WGO so I guess the new build finally supports it. I wonder if Tomi will incorporate it into Yahtzee next. Hmm...

Martin is way too busy with VTES in anticipation for the release...tomorrow! Eep! Big day tomorrow on the engine. Lots of last minute bugfixes from the playtesters too. Hopefully things will go smoothly tomorrow.

-+@ Move to Partial Cover @+-

Or covering your arse?



Art Credits:
Sand Fratt by Jeffry Ransom
Agrilla Hunter and Bagala Outcast by Jen Reed
All backgrounds by Matt Holmberg.

Another 3 cards for Exodus Flight, although I haven't done much MND custom cards lately. I did manage to announce the winner of the 5th DJ contest and get ready the 6th (and final?) DJ contest today so that was half of my MND achievement for today. The other half was to fix up bugs in the game on the engine, thanks to the defects submitted by one of the most loyal MND player that is out there. It's good to have a solid bunch of dependable MND players on the engine.

The other CCG thing I did today was CCGW related as well. Final Twilight's Trinity series 2 is now available on the engine. I was more interested in showing off the artwork (not done by me) than anything else, especially the cool ads I created yesterday. Those still haven't been added to the engine yet, but I guess it'll be done s**n.

I wanted to get a B5 update going as well, but didn't quite have the time. Hopefully there'll be another B5 update before the year is out. I find that I'm happier coding for games that actually get played than those that just sit there. I guess that's why FastBreak is languishing and Hyborian Gates barely register on my radar. I really have to get that going ASAP though... I want to get it over with before the end of the year. It shouldn't be that difficult to create a no-frills game. I just need the time.

And then in the queue after that? Quartet needs a screenshot and various minor bugfixes. YNDT needs to ensure that it's playable. Then it's Urland and the big revamp. I know I'm no longer competing with Ursuppe, but I think I owe it to Urland to see how awesome a game it can be. Or something like that.

Which makes me wonder if Capitol is getting an update soon... Ed was supposed to be working on it... or was he? I have no idea. He seems to be tweaking every semi-abandoned game... Frank's Zoo got some tweaks, although it's far from complete, then there's Sailor Moon... and of course Rock, Scissors, Paper is still in the works. It sounds interesting though to flirt from game to game. I know I do that on a regular basis!

Otherwise things are quiet... but then again, that is to be expected. Major things only happen about once a week or so. I've got (still) a number of end of the month things to handle as well, despite the destruction of the old CCGW forums. Somethings are just too interesting not to do.

-+@ Fast Deployment @+-

Martin guessed the titles I think. They are indeed from BattleTech.



Art Credits:
Hanging Bungaloo by Beth Zyglowicz.
The other 2 hyrens by Jen Reed with backgrounds by Holmberg.

Three more images from Exodus Flight. I really should be working on them as well, but I haven't had the time. Twilight War should be the next set that would be going into playtesting on the engine and I haven't had the time to work on those as well. I guess they can wait. Here's the status of the next few custom MND sets:

Twilight War: 5 more images to be found, 2 Nar, 2 d'REsh and 1 Universal. After that the text needs to be completed for all 100 cards and as a departure from the previous sets, I'm going to post them up for comments before adding them to the engine.

Double Jeopardy (Promo): December should see the last of the contest for DJ and after that they'll need to have the final text posted up for comments as well before being added to the engine. That is, unless someone sends me an image before the end of the year. This month's contest has finished, but I haven't judged the winners yet. Oh well.

Exodus Flight: Still collecting images, the status of each region are as follows:
Arderial: 1 spell, 2 magi, 5 creatures, 3 relics. NEED 1 creature
Bograth: 1 spell, 1 magi, 4 creatures, 3 relics. NEED 1 magi, 2 creature/relic
Cald: 1 spell, 2 magi, 7 creatures, 2 relics. COMPLETE
Core: 1 spell, 2 magi, 7 creatures, 2 relics. COMPLETE
d'Resh: 7 creatures, 2 relics. NEED 1 spell, 2 magi
KT: 1 magi, 8 creatures, 1 relic. NEED 1 spell, 1 magi
Nar: 6 creatures, 1 relic. NEED 1 spell, 2 magi, 2 creature/relic
Naroom: 1 spell, 2 magi, 6 creatures, 3 relics COMPLETE
Orothe: 1 magi, 6 creatures, 1 relic NEED 1 spell, 1 magi, 2 cretures/relic
Paradwyn: 6 creatures, 2 relics NEED 1 spell, 2 magi, 1 creatures/relic
Underneath: 2 creatures NEED 1 spell, 2 magi, 7 creatures/relic
Weave: 1 magi, 6 creatures, 2 relics Need 1 spell, 1 magi, 1 creature/relic
Universal: 1 spell, 1 creature, 2 relics Need 2 creatures/relics

If all goes well, Tainted Glimpses and Keeper's Quest will end their playtesting status in March 2006.


I've also been updating the site with the new calendars and the non game cards. Most of the calendars are coutesy of Frosthyren Shaw. Patrick magimutt Miteff has been great in providing some of the hard to find cards. They will probably be added there as soon as possible. I've also added two new calendars for this year based on the art from the custom cards. These are 1152 by 864 pixels and the full image can be downloaded from the Calendar section of the Custom Card site.

And while I'm on MND, the tournament seems dead this close to the end of the month. I don't think people are purchasing passes and tokens to play anymore. Hmm...

The B5 league meanwhile also seems dead and not many games are being played. I wonder who will get this month's end of the month tokens. Probably farquardon again I'm sure. Well, that's one thing to look forward to. I've also finally asked Ed to link in the league ad to the engine to be rotated with the rest of it and while I was at it...


Two new ads for Final Twilight based on images from Trinity. I like the reflective effect on the police car for one and the other image just has rather warm shades which makes it feel comfortable. Definately better than anything I can ever draw for the game and I think Nate is really moving ahead with the game. I've got to add the cards to the engine soon as well... maybe tomorrow.


The other ad I created today was for Hyborian Gates. Utter Distraction by name and I guess by nature. It's pretty much a sample of the images in the game with almost nude and erotic images of both males and females. Hopefully this ad will attract attention to the game, eighties hairstyles or not!

I also finally finished typing the spoiler for Hyborian Gates and have exported it into xml. Now I just have to do some quick search and replace to get it into a gML format and I'm done. When will get game get beta? It's probably a while off yet. After the cards have been added and the images checked, I've got to add the markers and then expand the common area and add in the dimension cards somehow. It'll be messy.

Josh messaged me yesterday asking for some clarification on the gML. I guess that means he's working on CWNB... although he's going to find it hard going in the first few months of doing that. I know I did when I first started and at that time, things were a lot more simpler. Now though things are way too complicated that someone new probably would have to take ages to get used to all the nuances of gML.

And one can't mention Josh without mentioning Tony. He's been quiet after the release of the WoT cards but I have a feeling he's still tweaking with Fluxx and getting more cool stuff into it. I guess Fluxx is going to be his definative game, the same way that Logan is known for ShadowRun and Tomi for DoomTrooper.

Christoph has also been quiet lately, but I wonder if he's finally succeeded in getting the player committee to organise a tournament on the engine. He's been going flat out on the game for a while now, including updating the wiki to include a rather comprehensive article on how to play SWD on the engine a while back.

Robert has almost practically dropped off the face of CCGW, so much so that Ultra-Doug Brown has got Ed to look into updates for Sailor Moon. That would be interesting to see what happens in that game. Doug desperately wants to be a pacman for the game there though.

Another person that seems to have dropped off is Julien, who still hasn't signed up to the new forums yet. I'm waiting for him to do so, so that I can give him moderation rights to Shadowfist. I do wonder what he's busy with though... hopefully it's not rioting every night in the suburbs of Paris! HA!

Kev also has been rather quiet lately, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Monkeys still isn't done. I have no idea. He's passed on some of his games - Galactic Empires to Gray and CWNB to Josh... although Gray hasn't even been seen or heard from for ages now - he hasn't signed up to the new forums for one. And since I seem to be making lists of people who haven't signed up to the new forums, add in Eric and Craig too.

On the other end of the specturm, Martin is busy working on VTES for its December release less than 2 weeks away. He has a new submenu with the Function shortcuts that I think looks really cool - in engine colours and all. Perhaps I should steal that for my games.

The other person that has been extremely busy is Mark. He's getting Aquarius ready for beta and that game seems to have gone from scratch to beta in less than a month. I have no idea what sort of game that is though. I'm still waiting for a cardback there to update Go Fish. Mark has also picked up a licensed boardgame to work on. It'll be his first board game and he has reservations about it, but I'm very sure he'll be able to cope with the challenges.

That meant I had to update the plates post which is getting a bit complicated now. Since it's on the wiki though I was wondering if I was adept enough to make a template for it... I have no idea. That's one thing I'll have to start learning one of these days - how to make a template for the wiki.

Logan has been busy on the wiki adding quite a few things here and there. He saw that I put up my language capabilities and added it to his page as well. It's nice to see he speaks German and Japanese to a certain degree.

Tomi hasn't been free enough to work on anything much, but there was a DoomTrooper update today. I haven't looked at it yet, but I'm going to guess it's only minor bugfixes. The DoomTrooper players have been slow signing up to the forums too. I wonder where they are hiding these days.

Ed apparently decided to change the code for each game. So now DoomTrooper is DOM which seems funny to me. I would have preferred the old code of DOOM. That means I've to update the geek code as well... but I think I'll leave it at the old 5 letter codes ... it'll take too much work for everyone else to update their geek code to the TLA. Well, at least MND is still MND...