-+@ 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.

-+@ 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...

-+@ Voodoo @+-

I assure you, black magic this is not.



Art Credits:
Twilight War by Werner/Gillette/Goodman
Harp of Time by Vido/Nov
Keeper's Quest by UIEvolution

All 3 cards produced today for the upcoming Twilight War. One of them is the Univeral card for the 100 card set. The other 2 are promos that's going along into the set as well. With these cards, the only 2 images left for TW are the 2 d'Resh ones and that's 98% of all the card images done so far for Twilight War. Things are moving along... and moving along faster than I had expected.

The harp took way too long to colour and looking at it now, it doesn't hold a candle to what an image for a card should be. Ah well, it will have to do. The pencils is by a new fan artist who draws excellent with pencil on paper, but who haven't coloured anything yet. Based on that image, I'm not sure I want to colour the rest of his pencils though - I doubt I'm doing his images justice. The nightvision image for Twilight War by contrast too about 5 minutes to do and I really do like the effect there. Of course, it's an existing image so things were much easier there. And for the first time, an image from a computer game actually made it on a card. That's the Keeper's Quest opening screen from the game of the same name. I had to edit it slightly to remove the "Press Start" notice, but it doesn't look too shabby overall. I'm happy with the images though and they should be going up onto the engine next year.

I'll also have to go back and fill in the promo for Shadowsfall, since that is the only expansion without a promo at the moment. I wasn't going to do a promo for the promo expansions, but DJ sorta scampered that and now that I've done KQ, I might as well go back and do SP. Haven't found any images for that yet, but there's no rush... if anything the promo for that will be going together with Ancient Enemy, which is 2 big expansions away (after TW and EF).

The Custom Card site also had an update, if only to add on the above 3 cards. Moved the old news to the Old News section as well, and next year, I'll probably have to move the old news to the 2005 news archive. The other thing on the website is a notice for the Springfield MND tournaments - that's still going on with a moderate group of people which is good.

Things are beginning to pick up for MND though and people have asked me if I'm printing the custom cards - the answer is no, and even if I were, I can't make money off them because that's just wrong. There's nothing stopping someone from printing the cards out, sticking them onto some spare commons and using those in games though.

The two big things on the engine is the release of VTES in a couple of days time... that's going to be fun watching a huge number of people play the game finally - and it's all for free as well during the first month. That's just so awesome. Hopefully the WW people are satisfied with all the work that Ed and Martin has done.

The other thing that's been going on at the engine is that the Experience Points system have finally taken off. People are being drawn to games like Wheel of Time just for the free tokens. That's especially good for exposure for the game. Mark has added XP to some of his games as well and that's another good thing IMO. The current list of games with XP according to the WGO are Aquarius, Endeavor, Grave Robbers, Fluxx, Summer Camp and Wheel of Time.

On a quick note, are CCGs dying? WotR laid off 15 middle management personnel - probably some restructuring fo sorts, but that's not going to inspire confidence in an investor. AEG has had trouble releasing L5R and Decipher has cut down to a core product of two games. When some of the biggest names are shedding excess baggage, one has to wonder what's happening in the industry.

Nevertheless, there's a number of new games being announced for next year. Battlestar Galactica by Wizkids, World of Warcraft by Upper Deck and Godzilla and Stargate, both by Comic Images. I'm looking forward to Stargate out of those 4 mostly because I wonder how Comic Images is going to pull the game off. BG though might prove interesting as well.

And my top picks for this year's games would be Anachronism by Tri-King games and Full Metal Alchemist by Joyride. Neither are doing rather well though, but both have a hardcore group of players to keep the game going. Hopefully, one or both of them will get onto the engine soon.

-+@ 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...

-+@ 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.

-+@ Inspired @+-

A new month, a new CCG. OK, so I'm less than the title obviously to have to copy the card title from a CCG. And last month's CCG will be discussed below.



Art Credits:
Royal Aritex by Zyglowicz
Quagmire Hyren by Reed
Lava Lasp by Ransom with backgrounds by Nov.

Three potential cards for the Exodus Flight - the first two done over the past week or so. These are part of the Dreamstorm cards I've been templating for RP - I haven't even begun to report them anywhere except on Insiider though. I guess I should start another "bragging" thread on the custom card forums and to publicize it on the blog... or not. I'm actually enjoying templating Dreamstorm - which is a big change from templating eXodus. I think my comments on eXodus have made certain people a bit more aware of their shortcomings and downfalls (artwise), and some of them are really trying their best to up a few notches their artwork, which makes my work of templating easier, of course. I also "donated" a few TG images to Dreamstorm, particularly those that shares an eeriely similar name. People are going to start getting confused very soon I'm sure.

I haven't been working Twilight War in the meantime while templating Dreamstorm (and stealing some of those cards - name and art for Exodus Flight), but I did get some time in between to start the second Double Jeopardy contest. It's day 2 and there are 2 entries, so I guess that's off to a good start. The bad news is those two will probably be half the total entries I'll receive for this contest. I hope there'll be more though, but it's not easy designing a card.

Meanwhile, of the sets in testing, I'm a bit disappointed that nobody is testing out Keeper's Quest yet, but I guess it's still early days. The Nar cards of Tainted Glimpses, however, got a quick run thanks to Bobbydoc and freigabe and their end of the month tokens. I sent Mitch on to have a look at his comments... it's interesting how I'm delegating that part of the work, but since Mitch is a self-declared neo-Nar narcissist (hah!), I think he's the best person for the job.

It was nice though seeing people play with Elder's Legacy and Shadowsfall Promo cards for a change. I guess the engine's populace has long since accepted them as being the norm. Also had a conversation with Justin Zastrow today about his artwork and the game and stuff. He seems happy that more of his artwork are being featured on the custom cards. That's a plus for me I guess. We also talked about him attending the next MND worlds at GenCon Indy later this year... the first one not organised by 2i. I wish them all the best, although I wish I could be there.

And non-MND news... I actually had a playtest of YNDT last month which produced some rather good suggestions. I really think that a good playtest team would be a good asset for developers. Tomi has his team of one... maybe I should start developing my own team as well, one that would get together regularly, maybe once a month, and go test my games one by one. That's something to think about. Anyways, lots more to do on YNDT now.

Talking about doing stuff, I haven't updated my report for a while now... I'm sure that's due somewhere. Simply saying "Forward everything by another month" would be fine for most people I guess, but I should really get it up to scratch so that I know where I am... perhaps I should factor in a few other things as well and update it as per the new "realistic" schedule? Something to think about there too.

Engine-wise, not a lot has been happening. Martin did a DoomTown update and Tomi had a few updates for some of his games, and an update for Buffy. Otherwise it's slow for the month of July with no new games, but that doesn't mean it's a bad month. Summer is always sluggish... I did my usual other "end of the month" chores as well, and there are a few surprises, but those can be found elsewhere. I've also started a CCG related project of sorts... more here when I have more to show and tell.

I have been thinking about porting the computer game "Betrayal at Krondor" to a CCG. Obviously I won't be able to host that on gEngine because I neither have the permission from Midkemia Press or Raymond E. Fiest to use those names, or from Dynamix Studios or Sierra to use the images. Still it sounds like a cool CCG idea. It'll also try to emulate the game as much as possible, or at least I'll try to make it so...

What I have so far:

Win conditions:
1. Eliminate all your opponents
2. Be the first to reach Sethanon and obtain the lifestone (e.g. LotR's mechanic)
3. Fulfil certain conditions printed on the race specific "Objective" cards (e.g. mythos' adventures, B5 agendas, etc.)
4. Obtain a total score of 25 (from B5, WS, etc.).

Factions:
Kingdom
Pathatian
Moredhel
Elendel
Guild of Thieves
Magic-Users
Clerics
None (Quegians, Free Cities, Glamhedrel, Dwarves, Tsurani)

Card Types:
Character
Equipment - Quest, Jewel, Armor, Hand Weapon, Ranged Weapon, Magical Item, "no tag"
Events
Location
NPC - Non-Playing Character
Objective - faction specific
Quest
Spells
Traps and Merceneries

Stats:
Melee
Ranged/Magic
Agility

There will be no "active player" during a turn... everything will run like Babylon 5 or Mythos where initiative order is determined (or most probably predetermined in this case... I have no idea yet) and the players play cards one at a time going in rounds. The cost of the card will be paid from the "circular pool". Say in a 3 player game, it's player A then B then C. Each has 5 crowns in the pool to play cards with. Player A "wins" initiative and gets to goes first. Player A plays a card that costs 2 crowns. 2 Crowns get deducted from Player A, while 2 Crowns get added to Player B. So now Player A has 3 Crowns, Player B has 7 Crowns and Player C has 5 Crowns. If Player B decides to pass, he deducts 1 Crown from his own pool and passes it on to Player C to make it 3 - 6 - 6. This is to preventand unfair choke of sorts with tactical passing. When C plays a card (or passes), the costs get added to Player A's available pool, thus completing the circle. It's a bit complicated to explain, but hopefully gameplay would be more intuitive. Obviously, balancing issues would need to be worked out... not every faction will start with the same amount of Crowns a turn - pretty much like the Home card from Doomtown.

Also like Doomtown and Babylon 5 is that each player gets to start with one card, this one being the "Party Leader" which will determine the faction. I think I'll probably allow a free 3 points worth of characters to be played in addition to the leader during setup (similar to LotR and MECCG before that) so that ther's a ready "party" available to play with. I'm toying with the B5 rule that out of faction characters cost a bit more to play, say a penalty, as in MND. That's something to think about.

At the moment it's still rather close to being a LotR clone, with some of my favourite elements from other card games thrown in - the alternate victory conditions from Middle Earth and Wildstorms, the objective card to victory stolen from Babylon 5 and Mythos. The huge drawback in the design is that the parties have very little chance to interact with each other. Events will help some there - mind attacks by the moredhel spell casters, Navon's nighthawk attacks, etc. The only way around that I can see would be some Mythos style creature attack... with a twist. There'll be traps as well as enemies (both humanoid and creature and spiritual) that players can throw at other players.

Attack would be determined by agility - the fastest player/enemy gets to go first. Ranged attacks (including magic) will only be possible if the character is not assigned to an opponent to combat. Combat is a simple WS sort of thing - compare the numbers, although combat events and on card text should make things more interesting. Of course, location text and equipment, etc. may also help or hinder the combat. Unlike LotR, however, it's fight to the death ... or flee, which would probably turn it into something more akin to MECCG than LotR.

Points are obtained from Quests, which are cards you play when you meet certain conditions. I guess this makes them more like Mythos' Adventure cards instead.

Turn order would probably be similar to the LotR/B5 setup:
1. Beginning of Round and determine order (if required)
2. Play cards
3. Play next location card and move party
4. Play enemies
5. Combat - assign, play cards, determine results (recycle as needed or flee)
6. Draw
7. End of Round and victory checking.
Some of these phases will need better names.

Decks will probably follow LotR, with at least 30 either side and an equal amount or something like that. Well, I have no idea yet, it'll depend very much on how the game design moves on and what gets changed. I'm a bit excited about this though...

-+@ Whim of the Queen @+-

Wonder where's the king...



Art Credit:
Poisonous Zungg: Reed
Sikkada: Ransom/Nov
Rayalon Scholar: Zyglowicz

It's been a biggish day for MND custom cards today, so lemme run down the sets one by one.

Exodus Flight (currently collecting images) finally saw the light of day on the Custom Cards site and Forum. This set is mainly for the gEngine players, so they were invited to comment on the artwork and the names. I'm sure some of the cards will either be dropped or renamed. More will probably be added when I start templating Dreamstorm (and later Chimefall) cards, but at the moment, the current list will suffice. I also have to remember to get the rations correct - there should be more Nar and d'Resh cards in the set than say, Cald or Arderial. At the moment, that doesn't seem to be so. The ad for the set is from Whyrl's Lunar Aversion, and I think it looks nice. Can't wait to put it onto gEngine ad rotation.

Double Jeopardy (curently being designed) saw the 6th preview card being put up at the Custom Cards site. This is after the preview on the engine yesterday and the 2nd DJ Contest being setup, also yesterday. It's generating some buzz among the players on the engine which is a good sign. I've also asked for suggestions, both on gEngine Forums and on the MND at CCGW blog as to where to post the preview for the last and final card in the set. I'm going to look forward to the answers.

Twilight War (currently in development) has been put on the back-burner, but I did manage to figure out a few things to do for the next few images. The text has yet to get approved though and that would probably take mega time to do so.

I just realised today that Keeper's Quest (currently in playtesting) does not have a card of the name - it really should. I guess that would mean going back to the drawing board to find an image to make a Keeper's Quest promo card. That would probably up the set to 5 with the additional spell. No big deal there I guess, but the text would probably need a tournament to get designed.

Tainted Glimpses (currently in playtesting) got a playtesing report yesterday. It's good to see people still trying to use the cards and trying to figure out the combos and stuff. The game also saw Delcea, a Shadowsfall (currently in play) magi, being played as well, which was definately interesting. TW still has a long way to go before the text can be finalised, but at the moment things are looking good.

Elder's Legacy seems to be almost forgotten by this point in time. The 50 card set is in playing and I'm going to say no news is good news.

Other CCGW news? I don't think there's much that I know of.

Mark is still busy with Monster Rancher, and seems to be the only person (besides Martin?) who's working on a new game... I saw a number of Mille Bornes players today, and it seems to be picking up steam on the engine. Someone advertised on game.com to pick up the players there and brought them over... I wonder if game.com is a free site or a pay site.

Even the troopers are quiet, as their last campaign tournament was a huge bust, or so it seems. I wonder what else Thomas has up his sleeve. It is summer though and it seems that troopers also disappear for a while as well.

A few days back some guy from Ophidian posted in the CCGW forums about checking to see where the agreement is at... I wonder if that means we will be fasttracked into getting the game onto the engine. Hmmm...

I also had a look at automating the encounters in Portable Adventures today. Gave me a headache and it didn't work in the end. I haven't been coding for so long that I'm so rusty at it. Hopefully, I can get that done before the end of the month. Well, I think I'm going to push back everything that's not done by another month... which sounds bad I suppose, but I feel that there's no point doing shoddy work when I'm unmotivated and then suffer later... might as well wait until things are fired up to do the coding.

-+@ Many Skills @+-

I don't have that many...



Art Credits:
Dream Anchor by Holmberg/Gillette/Shreve
Phlouk's Lantern by Werner/Gillette/Goodman
Commando's Knife by Holmberg

I templated three cards today, and one of them was Dream Anchor. This is supposed to be an alternate Reality Anchor, so it's a modified image with a new background. I don't really like the image, but it'll have to do, unless I want to draw a whole new image. Phlouk's Lantern is just a crop of the Phlouk image, which makes it easier for me to get the artwork. I like how it turned out in the end. However, Commando's Knife, the crop from Iain, Commando, didn't work out as well. It looks a bit weird in that image, but it'll also have to suffice for the time being.

So that's 85 cards done for TW and 15 more to go. Bograth got "closed out" today and for that I'm grateful. All that's left are 1 more for Universal and I think 7 each for Nar and d'Resh. I'm not going to rush it though, so it'll probably be November before I get those templated and done. That and the fact that it's going to be hard to get images for some of those cards.

Daniel posted a Weave playtest report today. It's nice to see people are still playtesting TG. He mentions particularly about the power escalation in Weave and I think that's to be expected since that was the plan from the beginning for Weave and Paradwyn and to a smaller degree Underneath. I wonder though if the new cards would generate any new deck types. Probably not since they were designed for the weaker existing deck types. That's something to find out anyways.

Meanwhile Double Jeopardy has been quiet, with only 3 entries to the competition to design the cards. Those aren't exactly what I'm looking for though, but some of them are innovative and I think that's a good sign. Still, I wish more people were interested in the set and stuff. This is going to be an uphill struggle as well, at least Keeper's Quest and Keeper's Question had lots of entries and interest.

I'm not the only person desiging custom cards for MND. The Insiider RP people are moving on to their 4th expansion, Soul Conflict. I'm looking forward to some interesting cards from that set and hopefully some good artwork from Beth there as well. Insiider RP seems to be going slow as well, but there's still a hard core of people there doing stuff and I guess that's a good sign.

And moving on, I have been playing a bit of LotR Online recently trying to escape the boredom of the game. It's still boring though, even with the new set and that's something that should raise warning bells for Decipher. It's not because the new expansion is badly designed, on the contrary, Bloodlines has lots of good cards for existing decks and strategies. However it doesn't offer much new though, although it hints of several strategies that may be coming, but those aren't too coherent as of yet IMO. Of course, I could be missing out something. This would probably drive away the not so dedicated players I guess. And all this before the actual release of the expansion.

I'm already looking forward to the next LotR expansion, but with that comes rotation - Tower block will be rotated out, which means a whole host of important cards would be gone from Standard format. I wonder if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm inclined towards it being bad, because less cards = less strategies, which means that the game will get even more boring... unless the new expansion inject some new oomph into the game. I'm not sure Decipher is capable of that now though.

Haven't read much Origins stuff, although I did read Logan's post a few days back. It's interesting to see that Chaosium is still supporting Mythos in Origins eventhough they no longer publish the game. That's a good sign. Of course, they probably have other products to fall back on besides the CCG.

And gEngine is being quiet. VTES has slowed down since the first few weeks and even with more players being added to the beta test, LESS games are being played. Hopefully they'll get out of playtest soon and go public. Star Wars is still going crazy as Timmy and Christoph and Patrick has been pushing it around. Lots of people getting passes to play the game there, which is a good sign. The big surprise for me when I saw the stats today is that DoomTown is on a "boom" (or an upswing, not an explosion). I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Pillar of Salt is now available online, or if the word about it was spread over Origins.

-+@ Massacre @+-

I'm in the mood for some mayhem anyways...




4 Cards... Art Credits:
Wanderers by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Double Jeopardy by Rich Werner
Bash Brothers by Alison Strom/Whryl
Secret Lovers by Alison Strom/Whyrl

I made Double Jeopardy today, along with a whole bunch of TW cards. The other 3 were templated a few weeks back. I actually previewed Secret Lovers to Mitch Wyatt (aka Malovis), who then replied that DJ was going to be his favourite set. Heh, I can guess why - 2 Ard/Oro magi and a Nar/Naroom one. Those are all the cards in the set though - 6 cards, 5 of which have 2 different templates, and a promo to cover it. These small promo sets are nice to do though. They are small.

TW on the other hand has just passed the two-third mark. That's the easy mark. For my full 100(+) card sets, the marks are half, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 85% 90%, 95%, 98%, 100%. Takes about the same time to go from 0 to half and from half to 2/3 and 90% to 95% and 98% to 100%. It's because there are less images for the last few regions (particularly d'Resh and Nar, but especially Paradwyn and Bograth!) and that's tough. I'm happy though to have reached the 2/3 mark. 8 more cards to the 3/4 mark then 5 cards to the 4/5 mark. Those would start the tough bits.

Robert Hicks (aka Silver) actually IM-ed me today to talk about MND. I showed him his Chaos Jile and not only was he pleased with that, but he gave glowing praise of the whole of TW so far. Well, at least someone likes it. I'm sure more people like the cards out there, but they are just too scattered and too busy to even get together and play. Such a pity though.

I guess all this was brought about by the large amount of spamming of KQ that I did over the weekend when I added the cards onto the engine. So that means 2 sets (one of them promo) are on the engine after playtest - Elder's Legacy and Shadowsfall Promo, 2 more (again, one of them = promo) for playtesting - Tainted Glimpses and Keeper's Quest, and 2 more (another promo set here) in development - Twilight War and Double Jeopardy. This looks busy. And this is how things were when 2i were up and running. There's also Exodus Flight, Native Spirit and Ancient of Days, but those are so far flung into the future that I don't even want to think about them.

People have been going crazy with the new Bloodlines cards... lots of games going online with the cards as people try to feel their way around the cards. I've already updated two of my decks... bouncing hobbits / forest nazguls seems to be much hated by almost everyone, particulary when I get all the cards in hand and the hobbits run to 9 while the Naz scares people away from second moves. That deck is rare intensive though, but the staples in there aren't.

The other deck is my non-solo Smeagol coupled with Evil Men archery. Well, I can couple it with Besiegers as well, but since the Besiegers didn't get any new card (the only 2 new Sauron cards were Sauron himself and his staff), I'll pass on the Besiegers. What I am interested in is a good non-solo Smeagol with Gollum on the flip side. That should prove interesting, but I'll have to think about what cards are needed in that deck.

Kari has been busy with Gandalf yesterday. It didn't survive too well. His deck-building skills seems to be trial and error, very much how everyone else does it I suppose. I can't wait to see his Rohan/men deck though. That with Burden Naz might be interesting.

Tomi continued yesterday working away on his games. I was a bit surprised to see X-Files got an update over the night, but he's probably just doing things over the weekend while he can. Small updates, but constant updates anyways, to show that the game is at least being thought about even if nobody plays them. I should do that more often as well.

Joshua was asking about AGoT on the engine. Erm... no, I don't think so, but someone else has already made a AGoT client out there. I am still downloading all 115 MB worth of data. That's a killer though. He should at least package the stuff in smaller files or something. It would be good to learn how to play AGoT though... I've always wanted to learn that game. However, Martin cautions me that CoC is a game of who has the most Rares, so AGoT will probably be the same, but I hope not.

Ack! There's still people who's after me to be a Simon Cowell for CCGW articles. Argh! I definately do not want to read through 2 or 3 badly written article on games I have no idea what they are going on about. I have better things to do with my time. Really. Like making lots of grammatical and spelling mistakes when I type out my blog...

-+@ Ready for a Fight @+-

coz it's Bloodlines online release!



I pulled two of those last night in the sealed deck, Sauron was the card everyone was after. That Uruk won me one game out of 4, I only played 4 out of 6 though, because I was too tired. Won 2 and lost 2, the first one due to stupidity, the 4th one due to a very good swarm. Won the 3rd because of a stupid mistake by my opponent. People are still getting used to the cards and lots of stupid mistakes always happens during this. It's fun though.

Yesterday, I also updated MND on the engine and I added the Keeper's Quest promos there. TG cards got tweaks due to playtester feedback and I think it's going to be crazy to get everything in order there, but there's no rush to make that public anytime soon. Previewed the 2nd of the DJ cards online at MND on CCGW and I have no idea how many people have seen it yet. All in all, it was a good day yesterday for MND custom cards.

New engine builds means things go awry, and there are still a few issues with the new build, but with Ed away on holiday, I doubt it'll be fixed until he comes back. Anyways, nipa has been testing them out, tweaking his games to avoid all the pitfalls, so it's interesting.

Otherwise it's queit with Martin being away and Origins around the corner... time to go open online packs of Bloodlines!

-+@ Path Not Taken @+-

which is a rather cool title...



Art Credits:
Fukal & Mori: Whyrl/Strom
Stuff Twins: Whyrl/Strom
The Shapers: Whyrl/Strom
Double Jeopardy... now you know why it's named such. Dual magi all of them, and dual-region as well. I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms here with these, but Alison Strom's artwork is just too good to waste by cropping them badly into 2 separate magi. Well, the first of these will probably go up in July as a competition. Probably, not definately. I have no idea where I'm going there. Made these cards a few days ago. I liked them, but they took quite a bit out of me. There are 3 more to go...

Mitch posted in the MND at CCGW blog. That is a good thing. The game is dying down for summer. Not too many has signed up for the tournament yet. It's still early days though. Also, I've got to put up the KQ Promos onto the engine for playtest soon. I hope people will enjoy seeing the cards they designed up on the engine.

I actually held a YNDT playtest and garnered a dozen defects. That was crazy. Things are broken again. Lots of things to fix. Hopefully I can get everything fixed up properly again to make the game playable. The people who played the game seemed to like it. Of course, the tokens I was giving away was a bonus to them as well.

Finally did the statistics for last month, and since summer is approaching, the numbers are on their annual downward spiral. Nothing much to do there... which is why hopefully VTES will reverse the downward trend. I totally forgot about the custom cards in SR and was told (off?) by Ed and Logan about that so I had to revise it slightly. Otherwise, that's like the second or third time in 17 months that I've been corrected I think.

The BOT has been quiet, I cleared out a couple of questions a few days ago, but I suspect someone else has been clearing off those questions as well. I'm also axing down the WGO and FPN to get them to something a little more reasonable after the glut of stuff that was announced last month. Things are slowly disappearing, which is always a little bit sad, but it makes the respective sections a lot more readable without having to scroll.

Ed has been busy trying to get the next build of the engine out. Make that engines. That's the normal engine and the White Wolf engine. I wonder how many of my games will be broken by the new engine. I hope there's none, but I'm sure some of the things that are introduced, or an existing method that's tightened, will probably find a flaw in my programming. Yes, my programming sucks.

Kev told me he still hasn't finished monkeys yet. I understand that it's a huge undertaking, but I'm sure that when he finishes it, it'll be really interesting. Can't wait to play that game, especially if there's a whole horde of people playing it.

Talking about playing, Billy turned up on the engine yesterday and we tried to get a B5 game going, but it was a no go since there wasn't enough players. It is a surprise to see him though, he seems less "vinegar"-ish than he was when I last talked to him on the engine. I guess living with David has probably smoothened him out or something.

Tomi is still busy fixing up his two major games - Doomtrooper gets quite a number of small bugfixes due to the large number of games played by the Europeans. They are getting a second win since they have discovered my playtesting sessions where I give out tokens. I also gave out tokens for the tournament participants and the eventual winner. So those people should be awash with tokens this month.

Mythos meanwhile has been played to death by Alex as he attempts to get the repointed adventures accepted. Those makes for a more balanced game, I suppose, but I haven't touched Mythos for a long, long while now. Apparently, Logan and Alex are going to meet-up at Origins to play Mythos. I think I'm getting jealous of that.

The Rage tournament is still going on. Only 2 games so far, and HC O'Neill has been in both. It's sad though that not many people are participating in the tournament. I did all the advertising on the CCGW site where I can, but I guess that isn't enough. Anyways, we'll see what happens there at the end of the tournament.

I've been playing quite a bit of LotR these days, only because everyone is comfortable with the cards now. About 6 more weeks till the next set appears... maybe the next time I blog, I should preview some of those cards. Anyways, I'm still catching people offguard with the stupid commons and uncommons, and I haven't been using a standard run of the mill deck for a long time now.

-+@ Witchcraft Made Easy @+-

I did say the titles from this month's CCG is fun. And no, this game isn't on the engine, which is why I guess nobody has got it yet.



Art Credits:
Lisan: Liam, with special effects by Nov
Velvet J'lith: Gray
Chard: Liam, with background by Allen
Those are the latest 3 cards for TW, and with them are all the cards I have artwork for that's made in TW. I made a run on two artists work which I have featured before and I found quite a bit of them. Liam was one of them and as evidence from the cards above, he's rather talented. Not quite Holmberg-esque, but I'll make do with what I can get. Lisan is a contraction of the file name that I made for the art - Liam's Sandy. The interesting thing is that Lisa's name is in there as well (Yeah, she sent me a MND cap and T-shirt, so I'm good with her). Velvet J'Lith is done by Samir Gray, recoloured for Core. I like how it looks there though. And Chard was an interesting choice of artwork for a KT magi, and I thought that it deserved a non-Holmberg background, so I got something that Dave Allen did and used it as the background. Overall three rather interesting cards for TW.

And all those cards can also be viewed now at the Custom Cards page. While I was updating that, I also updated the SP cards to reflect the post-playtesting, final version of those cards. It's interesting that each card has a one paragraph write-up, which was a bit weird to do for SP, since most of the cards are rather similar. Also posted about these on all 3 forums that I'm doing admin for...

And today someone accused me of doing either insufficient or incorrect advertising targetting at the MND players. I have no idea why I was the subject of such a vicious attack, but people think they can get "hundreds" of players to the engine by simply advertising. Well, good luck to them. I won't be adverse if they succeed in that as well, but I've done almost everything that I think I can in terms of low-cost advertising and I must say, I'm getting a slow trickle of players to the engine, but definately not the hundreds and thousands that supposedly could happen if I did it "properly" whatever that may be.

Those were the latest 2 ads that were created for Twilight War, both with art by Allison Strom (Whyrl). I like the one on the left because of how the clouds perpetuated in the rest of the image. I had to extend both images to allow me space for the text which wasn't too difficult, but I didn't know if I could pull it off aesthetically. I think the one on the left isn't too bad though.

The tournament is going fine. Three people have qualified now, the first time that anyone other than Mitch has qualified. It's interesting tough how tough the competition has been at the top. birdie (whatever her real name is) got a boost when I declared her the winner of KQ#4 - she still needs 2 more games to qualify, but it's good seeing that a female is contending at the top spots with the guys.

I actually have a playtest in about 15 mintus. Fun stuff and all. The game is Urland and I haven't yet had the opportunity to try out all the new stuff under game conditions. However, I doubt I'll get anyone around to playtest though, the engine seems a bit dead at this point in time.

I also need to do the plates post update in a bit, as there are quite a number of things that needs to get updated there. I should really do a Go Fish update as well, but I've already posted my monthly report, and I'm also rather busy with all the end of the month stuff anyways. Oh well, there's always next month. It's not as if it'll run away or something.

And other PLs? Mark is still feverishly trying to get Endeavor public before Origins. One more month to go and anything is possible I guess. I hope he gets it working too. Logan couldn't find his copy of Sheboygan, or so I was told, so that's not going up. Martin meanwhile is in the midst of working on VTES again as it will be going for closed public soon. Can't wait for that to happen. However, before that happens though, a new Engine has to be finished and made available. Hopefully the hotpoints stuff will be fixed there.

JC surprised us all with a new game hitting closed testing this week. As usual, the images were too large in my opinion, but there's only about two cards anyways, so I guess that doesn't really matter here. Still some optimisation could be useful for his images in general. Timmie has been busy in tandem with Christoph to get fan cards for SWD into play. It's good that the support for that is going so strong now, particularly since it's heavily played. Still, it seems to be highly buggy and poor Timmie probably have no idea why it's doing that. Robert has been promising his fan made expansion for a while now, but I doubt he's too keen to do it since it is a lot of work, and nobody seems to be playing anyways.

And the Junior PLs? Craig is still trying to get the China expansion for UC out I think, but he seems to be going a bit slow. Well, no big deal there, I guess. He does deserve a break after getting UC public, IMO. Gray has begun coding for GE. I wonder how he's doing generally. He seems to be playing more often than he's coding, but there's nothing wrong with that as well.

People who seemed to have gone missing include Kev, and Monkeys isn't beta yet - I hope it'll be ready for Origins and Tony, who seems to have nothing to do now - well, he did upgrade WoT quite a bit, but he hasn't been advertising it much, so it's dying down again.