-+@ 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!

-+@ Vampire Illusionist @+-

or more accurately Werewolf Illustrationist...



Art Credit as stated on cards, but I'll explain why I chose these 3 cards out of 50 or so cards. Gremlins in the filing cabinet was funny and that piece is one of Fenris' (HC O'Neil's) best work in the set. Why is it filed under P though? I have no idea. The veil is by MND-fan artist Beth Zyglowicz - you see her images since they form the bulk of the RPG converted to CCG MND cards in EF, and in the future FH. I recognised the image when browsing through the card because her pencils are so unique.

Ira Martin goes under the name of Todd Traf on the engine and I have talked about him before. This image is my favourite yet. Notice the texture on each individual brick on the background. That must have taken ages to draw. Obviously this is done in the real world and not on a computer. If it was done on a computer though, the window would probably have a reflective sheen on it and stuff. I'm too lazy to provide a link, but there's a link in the Rage CCGW forums to view all the cards.

So that's the 3rd custom CCG that I'm showcasing in my blog this month. The next entry would probably be the images from the A Cure for all Seasons Promo expansion for MND to make it a 4th. Or maybe Barathaum. But that's not a fan-made custom expansion, that's an original indie game. Hmm...

Nothing much to say on Barathaum. No work done on it yet other than cleaning up the wiki and making sure everything is there. The server is setup for the game, but I haven't asked for the database to link to it, because I don't have a file to link to. Maybe I'll start to work on it this weekend since I think I have the time for it then.

I have been busy with MND today though, working with 3 different expansions. We are still commenting on the Exodus Flight cards and I'm still incorporating the comments into the cards. I wish that was more tedious, but there aren't that many people commenting anyways. Well, I guess they will only "comment" (aka complain) when it get online and it gets used against them. Oh well. I finished draughting out the Universal cards for EF today too. That wasn't easy. Universal cards are becomming more and more difficult to design these days thanks to the huge cardlist and the potential interaction of cards. I hope they aren't too powerful. It's still private though, the region will only be made public next month with the yet-to-be-draughted Weave cards.

Two other things I finished today are the Project Second Chance Base Set cards of which there are only 8, and the 4 cards from the A Cure for all Seasons Promo expansion. I expected more cards for P2C Base, but only 8 were selected. That might even be reduced by 1 to 7 cards. It's scheduled to be added to the engine this month though. In lieu of the 3rd region for EF this month, I have made public the cards from Cure instead. It's a bit late, but I guess it's better late than never. Daniel has had a once-over look at the cards and have provided some comments, and I have tweaked the cards some more after that, but there are points which I'm still not very happy with on the cards. I might continue to tweak them over time. Cure goes online in March for playtesting.

Now all I have to finish are the Weave cards for EF, and then I can start hunting for images for AoD. With only 30-odd cards and not that many images left to be found, I wonder if the expansion is even going ahead. I need 50 before allowing card text design to start. Maybe I would have to resort to actually paying for commissioned images. Urgh, I'm going to burn a hole in my pocket I think.

Note to self: remember to do a write up on P2C. I need to blog about it on the MND @ CCGW blog to get people to think twice about the cards. I mean, if I created a custom card called "A Brub" that has the text "alternate Brub" and a recoloured image of a Brub with a very similar power, people will have no qualms playing with it. Yet when I do the same thing with P2C people aren't too comfortable with that idea. Oh well. I guess I just have to spell it out for people.

I actually wrote as "Novelty Nostalgia, CCG Workshop Project Lead" to CCP and FFG today, requesting permission to adapt Eve and Call of Cthulhu CCGs on the engine. I wonder if I'll get any replies from either of them. I would be surprise if I hear from them today. Still, miracles have happened, and I hope both of them will say it's OK to adapt their games.

OK, I just confirmed that Titan: the Arena isn't coming back to the main gEngine. Whether it'll appear elsewhere in a real-time format I have no idea as of yet, but I guess I'll announce it here after I announce it on the main site and stuff. Or maybe not. It's confusing even to me what's happening there.

Before I forget and my apologies in advance for being uncouth: but if you have been reading my blog this year and you wish to give me something for Christmas (or whatever end of year holiday you celebrate... although Sinterklaas and Deepavali is over...), drop me a line between now and the end of the year on the blog in the comments section - that's all I'm asking for. Thanks.

-+@ Not So Fast! @+-

Still from the same CCG...



Art Credits:
Nahara's Staff: Holmberg/Gillette/Werner
Mystic Rain: Holmberg/Nov
Dune Wudge: Holmberg/Vega/Nov

That's 3 for Twilight War, and I must say, I'm a bit surprised at the quality of the images there, even if they are "just" manips. The Mystic rain was an experiment with the rain effect, and it seems a bit weird there, but it works... barely. The dune wudge was the bigger surprise. I never realised I could get dust storms that easily by manipulating a number of things. All in all a pretty good set of cards.

So that means I'm down to 7 cards to go for TW, 1 for Universal, 2 for d'Resh and 4 for Nar. It shouldn't be really long now before all the 100 images for the set is finished and people can start scripting the text of the cards. That would be good to go.

Exodus Flight has also been getting a few more cards from both eXodus and Dreamstorm. I have been playing around with the images for those cards there too. Cald and Naroom joins Core in getting all 12 cards completed - the set is rather far along, with more than half of the 150 cards getting an image (actual count = 109 out of 150). The text though, would have to be rewritten for the CCG, but that's something that would be done after TW.

I'm already pushing images and unused cards to the next two sets, Ancient Enemy (AE) and Fallen Hour (FH) - the former would focus on the Invaders, hence the name, and the latter is the spillover from the RP cards from eXodus and Dreamstorm, together with the cards from Chimefall. Both these are slated for 2007 for playtesting though. It's a bit weird to be almost 15 months in advance.

Meanwhile the 3rd DJ contest has just kicked off and there are already 3 entries by 2 persons for it. Those entries look rather good I must say, although I hope there'll be more entries before the deadline in over two weeks time. This one is a departure though, in the sense that these 2 magi are dual, but of the same region. It should be easier to design for me thinks.

The other contest that is still going on is the Malovis challenge. I think 5 or 6 games have been played so far and Mitch has only won 2 of them. Hmmm... that's an interesting statistic. Nothing new is happening in terms of deck building - Mitch is trying out his experimental decks, but he's getting creamed by the people using really good decks against him. Poor Mitch.

Help Hurricane Katrina Victims

Donate to the American Red Cross
(or call 1 800 HELP NOW in the US)
That's the first public service announcement on my blog. You can donate online by clicking on the link. LotRO is organising a tournament where all the proceeds will go to help the victims too - I just got a newsletter regarding that yesterday. I'm sure they aren't the only one.

I was talking to Michael Anthony yesterday regarding MODO. Apparently with the new release, they are doing crazy things there. 256 player lightning leagues for 52 online packs as the top prize. Not even any cash there (unlike LotRO), and there are people playing there. Wha! Man, those MODO players are sure crazy.



Art Credits:
Rainbow Lens by Beth Zyglowicz
Cloud Seed by Scott Montgomery
Flame Shield by Jeffry Ransom with edits and backgrounds by myself.

Oh why not? I have like oodles of custom MND cards that's yet to be posted. Those 3 relics are from EF. I actually edited the Flame Shield, along with three other relics to get them looking better for EF. The EF page is up to date with all the EF cards. Actually, that's the thing. The custom cards page has been getting a lot more hits these days. I wonder why.

I have been trying to get Bruce back into the game of making a B5 expansion. There isn't much interest in it though, or so it seems. Dying Races is the name of the expansion and the Centauri and Narns are what it's supposedly all about. There's now talk of more NA, Mu-Tai and Nightwatch, not to mention mercs as well. I wonder how it'll go. I suggested that the remaining First Ones also get cards, although perhaps not as Characters, for that might make them too powerful, but otherwise, who knows?

B5 also got updated yesterday to Now Playing, along with a few bugfixes. It still needs major automation upgrades, but since it's playable and stuff, I guess it's no big deal. Borders and Hamlet were the two other games that got upgraded to Now Playing on gEngine yesterday along with B5, so that's 3 games that's gone into the big time, if it can be called the big time.

Everyone else seems to be scrambling around to get their games to Now Playing. Martin was working on Abduction earlier, with claims of robustness. Somehow that just sounds wrong when talking about an abduction. Tomi and Logan are also busy getting their games up to Now Playing as well, although it's a bit more complex than just renaming the status. Doomtrooper also had a new update with deck legality checking before the start of the game. That's something that every game will now (probably) take on.

The new engine is also up now, so it's time to see what new changes has been wrought. I think beta games are now free, something that I support and I think it's a bit long overdue. Beta games are those with bugs and errors and should be free so that people will play them and help test out the game. That will also probably be the time people play those games. After the game goes Now Playing and it actually costs money to play, people stop playing them. But the change will probably be welcomed by players who now have to pay for their games (over 5 a month) suddenly discovering that the game is free since it's still in beta.

I wonder if there are any bugs in it. The last version of the engine had a rather nasty bug and a rather minor one. There were changes to the hints which was one that I suggested, and now I find that it's biting me. Sad but true. Hamlet depends very much on the hints on the cards and since it doesn't report the true status, I wonder if it's still playable. Oh well. No big deal there though as nobody plays it anyways. Hopefully it'll get fixed in the next build.

The WW update also went up today. I wonder if this means it'll see public playing near the middle of the month as the 3 months beta period is up then. I suspect they'll probably extend it to the end of the month, they being WW. That would be an interesting development anyways. There aren't that many people braying at the doors, although I wonder how impressed/disappointed they will be when they finally see the finished product. Only time will tell.

I did the monthly stats yesterday. The engine is still getting played, although the status of VTES seems a bit poor, but I'm going to guess that's because of the limited pool of beta players. Hopefully things will go on the upswing once it goes public (or will it? Who knows?) I still have to update the plates post... that's something I haven't done. And I just realised that Ed has changed the codes for some of the games so the Codes that we all use for our signatures needs an update as well. Yeesh! That can wait though.

-+@ Fist of Fury @+-

or Palm on mouse if you will...



Art Credit: All 3 by Jen Reed, backgrounds by
Savage Drowl: Background by Justin Zastrow, with shadow by myself
Razorback Agrilla: Background by Shreve/Werner, with shadow by myself
Tunnel Ergar: Backgroudn by Holmberg.

Three more for Exodus Flight and it's shaping up nicely. It's getting ready to be scripted as well. There's some buzz going on about the set as people are freely giving permission for their magi and the artwork to be used on the set. It is shaping up to be a cool set. 150 cards - 12 per region + 6 universal, the largest custom set to date by myself. Gets a bit mind-wrecking thinking about those numbers.

All the cards not used for Exodus Flight will be going to Fallen Hour, of course, and that's already starting to get populated with the spill over cards, mostly universal so far, but there's already quite a number of people planning to get artwork done in time for this as well. it's shaping up to be rather interesting. There have already been a dozen or so magi going into Exodus Flight and people seem to be jockeying for more to be on the way.

All this, of course, is because I have finally finished templating the RP set Dreamstorm sometime last week. Generally people are happy with the cards there - they can be viewed on Insiider and on the Custom Cards Forum, as usual. I'm going to take a break before I start templating Chimefall, the minor reason for the break is to pretty up some of the Exodus Flight cards, the major reason is to complete the art for Twilight War.

I can't believe I haven't done anything for Twilight War (or for that matter Tainted Glimpses) for such a long time. I should really try to get the final few artwork for TW finished and the text finalised so that it can start playtesting next year. You can't rush genious though, although in this case, it's not so much genious as hard work and inspiration. I also need to personally go through Tainted Glimpses for a final check run of the cards before the end of the year so that we can gun for a November release, or wait for a May release next year. Ah well. I know freigabe has been testing out Keeper's Quest, the new Slumber seems to be a favourite for him.

Babylon 5 has been getting a new lease of life it seems... the Star Wars players are beginning to venture out into the other Sci-Fi games on the engine. The complexity of Babylon 5 though probably pales to the amount of errata in SWD so they are probably finding the change and the challenge a good thing. The number of games played, albeit 2-player, has been an interesting change.

The troopers are also back from the summer break and seem to be going mano-a-mano with each other. That's always a good thing. The other game that's recovering from summer has been Rage, it's getting its almost usual level of play now as the players return from whatever cairn and fetish they've been hiding under. The downside to that though is that there seems to be a lag and crash bug in there due to the new build. I hope that gets fixed soon.

Mille Bornes is still picking up players, that's always a good thing, and since quite a lot of them are used to paying to play at games.com, I'm sure it's generating some income for Ed. The main game that is generating money though these days seems to be Star Wars... that is not a bad thing... those players tend to sooner or later try out the other games. And that brings me back full circle to Babylon 5! It's getting played. Hooray!

I was thinking about contacting Bruce about the next expansion, the one that features the Narn and Centauri. Perhaps he's busy writing up his thesis... maybe, but still it might be interesting to see what he comes up with. The downside is collecting images, but then again, with all 5 seasons on DVD, a few made for TV movies and a spinoff, it shouldn't be too difficult to get enough images for cards. Personally though, I'd like to see some of the First ones as cards. Sure we already have Lorien, the Shadows and the Vorlons and the Walker of Sigma whatever, but there are a few other first ones as well.

Is VTES coming out of beta soon? I have no idea. It seems ready as both Martin and Ed strive to finish it before the end of September. I wonder if there will be any of the players baying for blood if it isn't publicly available by then. Probably. I better stock up on my supply of garlic pills.

I was cleaning up the BOT the other day and noticed the question "Will the other expansions be available?" I pondered about that for a moment then realised it was probably directed at VTES. Will it? Well, I have no idea, and it's definately not up to me, so I left that question unanswered, along with about another score of questions. Really though, some of those questions are rather difficult to answer.

Talking about questions, I have started the second "challenge" in "The Hunt". Basically, all this is about raising awareness about CCGW and the associated integration of the website, forums and engine. The goal is to use the forum to Private Message me a predetermined set of text, the winner of which gets copper tokens as rewards. The first one was won by wolfboy Bryan, and he almost got the second one... but missed out on a minor point. All this came about because the players seem to be rather ignorant about things like the WGO, the BOT and the FPN, so hopefully, "The Hunt" will highlight those areas that the ghosts use to inform the gaming public about things.

What is everyone else doing? Not a lot. Martin is working on VTES. Tomi was seen working on a handful of his other games to make them work with the new version of the engine. Logan briefly checked his games when the new version went online. Bruce was busy with Rage and VS, but things seems to have quieten down now. Ed is still trying to get the engine, both the normal version and the VTES version bug-free. I hope he succeeds.



Meanwhile, I've been templating a whole host of different cards lately for the Insiider RP peeps as is shown above. They are stoked about everything too... no requests yet, since on the scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is least, and 10 is the greatest, this probably feature as a 2. Nevertheless, it's good practice templating non-MND cards, because those cards generally have more things to template than MND.

Meanwhile though I have been hunting for more artwork for MND cards, and I came across another good one by Whyrl (Alison Strom) for Double Jeopardy. And the list grows by one. People are also keen to have their own characters in the set too. We shall have to see though, since most MND people barely follow up on what they say they'll do.

Talking about Double Jeopardy, I've been getting the slow feedback from the 2nd contest... people just aren't happy that they don't win. Heh, well, I can only pick one winner, so that means one person gets to be very happy each month. The next one has already been posted, although it's not schedule to start until next month. It's to enable people to get some time to think about the card, not that there are many people who do.

I'm also thinking of starting some sort of competitive MND play next month on the engine. We shall have to see what happens there. It's hard to plan these things, and it's harder still when the player pool isn't as much as it used to be, but it's about time to draw in those returning after summer, so who knows, some organised play might be good.

Oh and the end of the month is coming up soon... means lots of work for me, since there's something that might get announced once Ed gets around to it. And due to the frequency of blogging this month, I think I'll keep the titles from the current CCG for next month, unless someone can guess the CCG before then.

-+@ Age of Progress @+-

as things move forward...



Art Credits:
Flying Carpet by Beth Zyglowicz
Parathin Shield by Austin Gardner with backgrounds and modifications by myself
Furok Mantle by Beth Zyglowicz

I've been going crazy with the Dreamstorm templating, finishing up d'Resh, KT, Nar, Naroom and just did 5 of the Orothe cards today. That's a lot of cards, the results of which can be seen on Insiider and the Custom Card Forums. That means that there's 2 more for Orothe and 5 more regions to go. If nothing else, it's getting people excited about their artwork, and creating custom cards. The three relics shown above were all done recently, as cards for Dreamstorm, and for Exodus Flight. The Exodus Flight versions are shown above.

Exodus Flight has also been getting busy, with the cards from Dreamstorm and the requests by the RPers for their magi to be incorporated as cards. I'm a bit surprised at the large volume of people who want their magi to be made into cards, and am rather surprised as to the large number of good artwork for those magi. They look great. The results can be seen on the EF page. EF is going to be a 150 card set, 12 cards from each region consisiting of 2 magi, 1 spell and 9 creatures/relics, and 6 universal cards. Whatever that's left-over, will, of course, be moved to Fallen Hour.

Non-MND wise, I've been playing quite a bit of LotR with my fun Unbound Hobbit deck. It either wins against the really bad players or loses big time against the really good players and I enjoy the strategy that goes along with it. It's fun, but not tournament level good. Meanwhile though, signs are beginning to look bad for Decipher on the whole... there was a suggestion to publish LotR as online only... which is scary in a sense since online sales is probably a small fraction of total sales.

I've also been trying to fix up the Quartet mess from last time. I finally realised a few things and had to backtrack a few times. Well, I don't think things are fixed, but without a proper playtest again, I have no idea what to fix. There's a new playtest scheduled for next Friday, so hopefully I can clear everything out by then, and move back to YNDT and Urland. One thing at a time.

The other thing I've been doing, of course, is the CCG stats thing. It's going along rather haphazardly, as I can't decide how to do certain things. It's a good thing that it's pointless as well, otherwise I'll have a real headache. Still things are looking good.

Talking about things looking good, Tomi has started work on updating Titan to get rid of all the Avalon Hill images, which we do not have permission for, and reintroducing the game (which we have permission for) onto gEngine. That sounds like a good deal. He's stuck on a number of things though, but I'm sure he'll be able to handle them.

Martin is also busy with the VTES update. His new version is supposed to be the final version, but like all his games, he does a major rewrite after a year or two, so I won't be too surprised if that's the case for VTES. There are people clamouring to play the game, but I wonder how many of those are willing to pay to play. I don't think the signs are that good, particularly now when people are complaining about the lack of players. This is despite having more than 200 players on the system. When the system goes open and the number of paying players is reduced to much less than this, would it be sustainable? I have no idea.

Nick (Superryoga) is pestering people to start work on his CCG again. Really though, he should finish it first and everything before expecting people to work on it. It's been two years, yet I doubt he has more than a dozen cards with artwork finalised on it. Oh well. He's also offered to see if he can get people to play more MND. More power to him if he does so.

CCGs seems to be winding down though. Decipher is low on funds and is possibly on the verge of bankrupcy. AEG is having trouble with its flagship game L5R, and there is already signs that it's producing one less expansion this year. Even the revived games of Shadowfist and VTES are short one expansion this year. Magic, VS and perhaps Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are prehaps all that is still going strong, and if that's the case then it's a sad day for CCGs indeed.

-+@ Reflection @+-

Is this another one of those CCGs with one word cards?



Art Credits:
Nocturn Jip by Strom
Rot Weebo by Werner with backgrounds by Nov
Rattle Uban by Holmberg/Gillette with background by Holmberg

That's 3 from Twilight War... I did manage to template two cards yesterday so I'm left with 12 more to go (6 Nar, 5 d'Resh and one Universal). Twilight war is coming along nicely though, and it's scehdule to enter into playtest sometime in the middle of 2006 which means there's about a year or so to get everything together. So far so good.

I've also been doing quite a number of card templating for Dreamstorm - the results of which can be seen on the Custom Cards forums and on Insiider. Dreamstorm has much better images than eXodus though, and it's rather nice to be working on them. Also, because of the large quantity of acceptable quality images from Dreamstorm, I've decided that any "spill over" won't be in Exodus Flight - the set that will be rewritten for the CCG - but will instead be in the next converted RP set Fallen Hour (named after Chimefall). Exodus Flight will probably be in the region of about 12 - 15 cards per region and will be between 150 to 200 cards. Anything extra after that falls into Fallen Hour.

I have also decided that, if the custom cards will last into 2007, the Invaders are going to get cards as a new region. The Invaders set though will probably take over the Ancient of Days set and that custom set now has the working name, and most probably final name, of Ancient Enemy. The two Invaders cards have been templated and more cards will probably wing its way into that set. I'm going to maintain that set at 100 cards, but the breakdown will, change due to the inclusion of the new region.

Double Jeopardy's second contest is coming along... 3 entries so far and some of them are good. I'm going to guess that people are going to have a hard time thinking about cards for the Stuff Twins, but in about two weeks or so, they'll probably make up their minds and post up something interesting. At the moment, I know who I'll be picking as the winner, but it's still early days.

BobbyDoc and Freigabe has been busy testing decks and playing a large number of games online - those are the two people who has never heard about the game until they joined the engine and are now the 2 most fanatical players on the engine. I see custom cards filling up their decks which means it's a good thing that some of the custom cards are being played with.

Other MND news doesn't look good. It's already July and there's no announcement about the cartoon. I'm going to say that it's probably a write-off at this point, particularly so many years after the last release of VotS. I doubt that even TR will be able to rescue the game at this point in time. That's the for the CCG though. The cartoon, if marketed correctly, and is well written, drawn and produced can probably garner a big following. Even then though, the CCG isn't guaranteed to survive by riding on the coattails.

I have been playing quite a bit of LotR online over the weekend. I've been playing mostly with the Isengard deceived wizards/Uruks with my choking non-solo Smeagol. It's not tournament level, it's just fun. The other deck that I have been tweaking with are the Ring-bound Hobbits with a Besieger flipside. I was talking to Kenneth Ellingsen the other day and it seems the only two shadow sides that are dependable are Cosairs and Forest Naz. Ah well. He also said he's been buying his cards online, but on the flip side, he's winning at least $100 a month with the tournaments so financially it's not eating into him. Then again, he is a good player.

Engine-wise, I haven't done much. The forums had a revamp today, and a few other minor admin stuff was carried out. The BOT though is probably a bit full by now... someone will probably have to spend some time answering those questions. There's also been 2 new Shepherds, one of them still hasn't signed up for her 3 weekly tours. Hmm...

I had a playtest of Quartet last Friday. I couldn't believe how dodgy it was. Definately needed a lot of changes to get it working the way it should. I still haven't loaded the new version.. it needs to be tested online in 2 player mode and I haven't gotten around to that yet. Will probably need to get to it at some point.

I've also started a stats thing for all the CCGs ever produced. More here (or somewhere) when I get the results I guess. It's just a for fun thing that's totally pointless at the moment.

And for other people? Martin is still busy on VTES, nipa has been slowly upgrading his games, and I think Doomtrooper might get an extra expansion in the next week or two... maybe. The next version of the engine is being developed, so 162 should be on the way maybe today, maybe in 2 months time - who knows?

I actually played a game of B5 the other day. Forgot that the deck can't win with the new Vorlon rules so it was a rather pointless game for me. The other players though, were a bit afraid of each other, so I was leading at 13 power or something like that. Could probably get to 19 quickly, but that's all I could do. Someone did crash out though - it's a hints error of some sort - so that's something I'll need to look into as well.