-+@ 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.

-+@ Pouncer A @+-

Time to pounce on things to get them started again.



Art credits:
Alpha Balamant by Jen Reed, backgrounds by Holmberg/Nov
Sandsifter by Jeffry Ransom, backgrounds by Werner/Shreve
Frigid Weebo by Jeffry Ransom, backgrounds by Holmberg

Another 3 more cards for Exodus Flight. That's the set that's going nowhere fast, but it's still going. I wish I have a bit more time to look into MND custom sets, but time is a commodity in short supply for myself right now. People are still doing artwork and stuff for the Insiider cards, so I am going to guess that there will be some cards, although I have no idea how much.

The Official MND site going down for much of the time is a blow for the remaining players and where possible, I have tried to recreate the parts of the site useful to players at Novelty's Custom Cards. The hit rates for that site has gone through the roof since I started that and there are people advertising the site all online, including on Gaia Online and the various Yahoo Groups. It is still missing about a score of d'Resh VotS cards, but in place of that, I've put up the alternate art cards and all the promos. It's turning out to be a good site content wise, but as usual, my web design skills suck so the site looks barely mediocre.

The CCGW forum blew up last month which put a halt to the first Shadowsfall tournament. CapAp/John was leading when everything fell down so I gave him some tokens and he seems to be happy. There has been a lot of games starting up again this month for the tournament this month, but there aren't too many new players and the game seems to be on a decline. I guess as long as the existing players are happy, the game will survive. It has survived for so long now.

Double Jeopardy has another contest this month of course. I was so busy last month that I retroactively named Mitch as the contest judge. He didn't choose himself, but chose Daniel/Dartax instead so that worked out well. There's only been 2 entries for this month's competition... well, it's still early days yet.

Someone called me Mr. MND earlier this month because I seemed to be involved in everything. Oh well. I guess maybe it's about time I took a step back and just let the game die or something... or just wait until the animated series airs, if it does airs. It is definately taking up way too much time though, but it is fun.

The 4th anniversary for gEngine passed by quietly, since I lost all my articles and lists that were stored on the forum for that. I guess I'll start a new tradition where I don't bother too much with the anniversary. No new games were made public over the anniversary, but Mark did make Monster Rancher public a day before so I guess that works.

The only other games that went public after Radical Racers was Fluxx which Tony had been working on for a while - it's his first full fledge game too. Otherwise things are quiet on the CCGW front in public. There's always things going on behind the scenes but I'll leave the respective PLs to announce that.

The engine itself also had an upgrade and a few things were moved around. Ghosts have all lost their gears and ranking has been replaced by something called "level". What good is the level, I have no idea, but it's not fully implemented yet. Perhaps in future when it gets added it'll be of better use. The other major change is that the game wall is now in place. I have no idea if the players are using it though... perhaps they need to get used to that idea as well.

MND wasn't the only tournament that got affected by the loss of the forums... the Rage Tricks and Treats tournament originally scheduled over Halloween was hit as well, so they had to extend it. The other thing that the loss of the forum dealt with was the B5 league, but since all the records are being kept by Alwyn off the forums, it wasn't affected too badly. The league is still ongoing and there's even a league weekend next weekend with real cards as prizes. It is shaping up to be an interesting league after all.


I won't call myself the regular artist for Final Twilight, but I was given a series of 5 more cards to colour in. The image above is for Street Thug - pencils by Antonio Rojo with colours by myself. It's a bit cartoony and I don't think it's indicative of the art found in Twilight, but Nate seems to like it so it'll be in a future expansion of the game.

Talking about the game, there's going to be bucketloads of expansions to Final Twilight starting in December and I've already have the first expansion to add into the engine. I was told to hold off until December though, so that will only go in then, but at least things are starting to move for the game, and I'm happy about that.

One thing that isn't moving too much is Hyborian Gates. I still have yet to type out the Vortex Tactics into the spoiler - that's the last thing left in the spoiler. One of these days, I'll just have to get on to do it. After that, it's basically just importing that onto the gML and adding the scripts and the other pieces required to play the game. Perhaps I'll release it early next year.

I still have to finish up fixing a few other games - YNDT for starters, then Urland needs a huge overhaul. I think Quartet needs some tweaks as well to get it up to scratch and Bowling is still waiting for the AI to be coded in. Lots of work on too many of my games. A quick summary:

AvP - No-frills, images needs to be clipped.
vT - Spoiler to be created, images to be clipped, scenarios to be added.
B5 - Where do I start on this? Bold text, replacement handling, full starting hand automation, initiative determination, lots more to do.
BORD - The reverse card can finally be coded now that the engine has support for it.
BOWL - AI automation and some minor reported defects
CHECK - It's would need time for me to get everything going on this game, up to the point of automation and AI.
ELEM - This is still waiting for the engine fix to enable hotspots for pieces on a card. It's going to take Ed to ensure that the engine is capable of handling that before things can move.
FB - Lots of playtesting needed. It's playable, but things like score automation would probably needs to be done.
FTWIL - An upcoming expansion might be time for me to add in attachments as well.
FIRE - Nothing going on here... I have all the images, but no time to work on anything.
GOFSH - I'll call this finish and done with.
HAMLT - It's public, but there is nothing to check for victory conditions.
HALN - There is no support for the new cards, which would need a massive amount of playtesting to catch.
HGATE - still in the coding stage... it's going to be no-frills
KINGS - Let's call this finish and done with as well!
MND - The players are happy with the setup as it is and minor changes to enhance and speed up gameplay would probably not be too appreciated.
PAD - Ed wants everything to be automated, and now that the engine is finally capable of doing it, it should get done at some point.
QUART - There still some bugs and suggestions on this game that needs to be close out at some point.
RDRCR - It's No-Frills and the engine version is going to be slightly different than the print version.
RVRSI - Minor defects exist on the game, perhaps due to the complications of making sure things work with the AI in 1-player mode and to allow 2 human players as well.
TRIAD - Heh, this is so not going to be done for a while now.
URLND - Scores automation, numbering the oceans, automating a few other common tasks... lots to do here and this would be the second one of the licensed games to get attention... after YNDT.
WS - Some automation would be nice for one of the oldest games on the engine... wish I had the time for it.
WSLS - Heh, well, let's shelf this under the table for now.
WSS1 - An AI would be nice... I think I will be ripping out the preconstucted deck and replace that with a randomly generated deck.
YNDT - some more minor bugfixes required for the game. It's pretty slick now.
YUKK - I'll call this one done as well.

And the title today is from the same CCG as last month since nobody guessed what it was last month. I guess there hasn't been enough entries to guess it as well.

-+@ Charge! @+-

and that in more than one way describes Radical Racers...



Art Credits:
Hinko and Wasperine by Beth Zyglowicz
Greedy Kilm by Jen Reed with background by Holmberg/Nov.

Three more for Exodus Flight, most of which can be viewed on the EF page. Work on the RP customs have slowed down quite a bit, but that's to be expected what with the end of summer and all. Still the customs are getting a bit of attention in other quarters, with TG getting some errata on the engine.

Of course, the SP tournament is still ongoing although the number of games have slowed down dramatically now that people have used up all their tokens. It's good to know that there are still people playing in the tournament that is almost running itself. There's been calls for more tournaments too, although I have to wonder how viable it will be come December.

The fourth Double Jeopardy contest ends in about half a day and there's been disappointing responses. Oh well, guess that's from the disappointing winners that have been chosen or something. I haven't yet picked a winner, although I do think that there are very strong entries in this month's competition.

The website is still going on... I'm still putting up the card scans on my site after the demise of everything on the official site. It's still getting crazy hits every day, and today, someone sent me a broken link report. I guess it must be getting bigger and stronger everyday. Quite a bit to do there - put up the alt art and the preview decks, then the Japanese cards before I can move to fiction. I think I've decided to post the fiction in reverse order - i.e. latest first - don't ask me why...

The B5 league started last weekend and up till today, only 3 games have been played. That might not seem a lot but bear in mind that each game lasts at least 3 hours (and can take up to 7 hours) and has at least 3 players, that probably means more manhours have been spent playing those 3 games than have been spent on the Doomtrooper league this month (that's a trick statement, there's no Doom league this month so no hours have been spent there). Alwyn is doing a good job running the league and my commendations goes out to Rune.

While I'm on the subject of B5, the next expansion seems to be going slower. Sure, there are some young turks who are so keen to get their ideas into the set that they are almost spamming the forums. The SWD players will probably tell them that they need "patience, my young padawan". Still, Bruce is probably mulling the cards over in his head and we'll hopefully get a list of about 180 cards by the end of the month or early November.

Both the two games mentioned above had updates in the past few days, although I still have been busily trying to finish up Hyborian Gates. The images are all clipped now and the spoiler is more than halfway done. I just have to push myself to get the spoiler done soonish and then to import the cardlist into the gML. Lots of work there... would probably take me 30 minutes to import everything and to get it working.... if I remember how to do it correctly.



The distraction of the week though is Radical Racers which went public beta today. That's after 2 days of not so hard work... but the game is one of the lowest standard adaptation I've ever done for the engine. It needs to be spruced up with bells and whistles (literally and figuratively) to get it running up to scratch (pun intended). Still the owner of the game has been rather pleased with what has been done so far. I know I can do better, but well, I need lots more time to do that.

Having said that though, it was a bit hairy at some points since rather than copy from an existing game, I actually wrote the scripts from scratch for this one. It's a lot more difficult than I remember it to be and I can just pity new PLs who are trying to get everything up to scratch. And what I am doing here is really, really basic... for me that is. No wonder people get hang-ups about automations and game design. It's not that easy after all.

So that's the second original game that has gone live in under a week. I've even updated the links on the right to include the game as well. These games are all good though since they have:
1) Finished cards, complete with art
2) Rules
3) A webpage where everything is hosted
4) Some support from the creators of the game.
Final Twilight shares all that of course which was why it was adapted so quickly. I pity those people who want to design a CCG to make money, but don't know how and need experience from the inside. There seems to be lots of those flying around, but they come up lacking somehow. Mostly. I haven't been blown away by the Original games so far though. Not even by some of the really high powered ones - Allegiance, for one... and the MTG clone Mystical Empires...

I was digging through my weekend bag and dug up a starter deck of Naruto cards and a booster pack of Spiderman cards. Whoa, I forgot I bought those almost a month ago. What do I think about the cards? I think one is a kiddie game and the other is unappealing at least to me. I'm just going to keep copies of them in my cardback collection file.

With all the cards lying around, I searched for the good part of the week for a good online store that will ship cardbox boxes for cards to me cheaply. Well, tough, there isn't any that I can find. Bear in mind that most online stores charge $70 for shipping. Urgh. Ebay proved no better either... nobody wanted to sell those boxes outside the US. So what did I do? Today, I cut up a huge FedEx box and made two 1200 card count boxes. I think they can take 1200 cards... I didn't count, but the boxes are long. They don't look too professional, but since they are just storage boxes anyways, I think they are better than having cards lying in piles all over the place.

It's almost the end of the month and things are going to go crazy... particularly with the anniversary the week after that. Mark has been busy on Monster Rancher and Tony is still plugging away at Fluxx so hopefully both those games will go public then. I hope Hyborian Gates will join them on that day too.

I still haven't got everything done for my top 10 list for the anniversary... I guess that needs work... and there's the usual stuff - plates posts, statistics and all the internals that nobody else sees.

One thing everyone will see, but hopefully not notice is that the forums are getting shorter. I've been merging some forums and getting rid of others in a quest to make the forums shorter. I don't think I've been too successful so far, but I guess I'll get there eventually. There's only so much that can be eliminated anyways.

-+@ Close Formation @+-

and a few things are close to fruitation too...



Art Credits:
Slea by Raegan Walter
The other 2 by Beth Zyglowicz

That's all for Exodus Flight, and that, along with all things Custom Card-wise seems to have taken a back seat for the moment due to the website shutting off all its resources to the fans. I think that left a number of people high and dry so I have moved in to fill the gap. Novelty's Custom Cards now has images of the printed cards, and what is outstanding will be added in over the coming weeks. After that is done, the fiction will be added in slowly as well. The errata list and the restriction list are already available on the site. Consequently, the number of hits on the page has gone up tremendously.

The Malovis challenge from last month did wonders for the game on gEngine, pushing it back up to top 5 again, which was a good thing. It was lingering in the doldrums over summer. I think we need a summer program of some kind to make it worthwile for people to play then. The new Shadowsfall tournament has started and I think most of the crazies (especially Doug) has already blown their quota of 5 tokens on their tournament games. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

The other thing that has started, or rather continued, is the 4th edition of the Double Jeopardy contest. People are definately improving there as they try to outdo each other to get the tokens and the tournament win from the contest. It's shaping up to be an interesting month.

I did say that nothing much custom card wise has happened, well, that's a bit of a lie. Freigabe did some testing on the Kintors in Tainted Glimpses, which were found to be very wanting, so Mitch did more revisions and they got added onto the engine. They still aren't great, but with more Kintors coming in future, it's hopefully going to get great. The other card that has been the focus of many a complaint is Darunia's Twist. It got overhauled so that it's now perceived as being balanced, although the powerlevel of the card is probably still the same as before. It's funny how people perceive certain things.

And what has 2i's website been doing? There's an announcement on the official MND site stating that the property has been licensed to be produced as an animated show, the when and where and who and hows are rather vague and sketchy and there aren't too many details there. The sad thing is that they took down all the resources that was formerly on the site. Hopefully, that won't kill the game in the interim.

And non-MND stuff... the titles of the blog for the last two months have been taken from Doomtrooper cards. Nobody guessed them. Anyways, it's time to move on. Starting this month, the title topics would all be from a different CCG... which one would be for the readers to guess.

The end of the month was a busy time as usual... statistics, plates update and a whole host of things I had to do on the engine. I didn't think anyone used them, but Ed and JC has proved me wrong so I'll continue working on them every month as long as I remain a PL. There are a few other things that really should also be update... the CCGW (geek) code page for one, but I don't really have time these days, what with...

Hyborian Gates is still in the process of being prepped. 36 more images to go, then the spoiler and markers and specialised menu items and it'll be ready, hopefully to go public on the anniversary date. It's still a month away, but I'm mindful that time is short. I hope I can make it on that date.

Also hoping to meet that target dates is Mark with Monster Rancher. I have no idea how many weekends he's giving up to get it done by then, but if anyone can do it, he can. Tony could probably slip Fluxx in before then. He's got it to alpha testing stage on the engine and I guess it's only the last minor testing stuff that he needs to finalise.

Ed himself wants to get RSP ready by then, but I have no idea if he'll meet that target date. He has been working on Frank's Zoo for the past couple of weeks and has got a large number of issues resolved on that game. I wonder if he'll finish up what he's doing there and go back to RSP or move over to Capitol next...

No news on when VTES will go public... I guess these things need time for WW to figure out how things are going. Still the players asking to play it seems to have dried out... I wonder if someone else has developed a better copy of something to play it online. Martin hasn't updated the game in a while as well.

Tomi has been making minor tweaks to his game, and last I heard actually worked on Duel of Ages. That game is complicated, but it seems fun. Can't wait to see it. I can't believe Ed still hasn't sent Logan a copy of Maul of America... almost 2 years after Logan has taken on that game. I suppose Logan is also waiting for the materials to Sheboygan. Well, the latter is a game I'm not too interested in, but it would be a milestone to adapt that game for the engine.

There are also a number of games that are being licensed, but due to a shortage of licensed game developers, or something like that, I think Ed is holding off on the announcements. Two games I know we won't be getting are Pokemon, where Mike Liesik told me in no uncertain terms that we won't be getting it, and the game by Mystical Empires, which apparently are in talks with World's Apart to adapt the game.

Over the past week or so, besides MND, I made a minor upgrade to B5 due to requests from the players. People are playing that again, and Alwyn/Heidi is trying to organise an online tournament with the (now defunct) Welsh-league tournament rules. Obviously Engine Rules with the 2 custom sets applies. The hubbub around the next set though seems to have died down. I think most things have been hashed out and now all we're waiting for is Bruce to do his magic.

I was talking to Nate about Final Twilight and he expressed interest in an online tournament over Halloween. He'll probably be swinging resources onto it. He's also published 2 games this year, the Supers and Imp, the former is a CCG with just line art, the latter is a boxed card game (I think). I didn't ask him for further info, although he did link me to the sales area at RPG.net. If he wants to get it on the engine, all he can do is ask, I suppose, but since he hasn't, I didn't push him. He did mention he'll be getting the licensed agreement back to Ed soon, which means I'll have to do a bit of work to upgrade FTWIL to a licensed game standard - attached cards and deck-legality checking comes to mind. I'll leave out the automations though... they might spoilt the game. I was also requesting more cards for the game since it's getting rather stale, especially with the small amount of cards. Well, a shoestring budget would only get people so far, so I offered to do art for the game. What am I getting into? It'll probably be chronicled here in the blog.




The other "Independent" game that have come knocking on the doors is by an outfit called Lo'Jac Inc. with a racing car game of some sort called Radical Racers. The graphics are shown above. I think the game is slightly different from Mille Bornes in that it's more a CCG than a boxed game set. I'ven't contacted him yet, but I did leave a message on the forums in reply to his post asking him to contact me via PM. Let's see if I get anything.

Also got an IM from Nick Szankovics today saying he got 800k in a court case. Well, he'll get to keep over half a million even with the contingency fee and all. I wonder if that means he'll finally have the encouragement to finish up the images for Tanshihana? Well, only time will tell.

Yesterday, I got my second box of Shadows boosters and the 4 starter decks for Shadows... almost a year after it was released. It's interesting to note that I got better cards online than offline again. The plus is that this box of boosters had one more rare foil than the first box that I got ages ago. I've been trying to pick up a box of Bloodlines and Black Riders, but with no success. Ah well, I'm always down and out.

I'm also looking for more card storage boxes - I'm getting to the point where I need more for the MND and LotR cards that I'm amassing a-plenty. I wonder if there's a good online place that I can pick these up for cheap. Ebay has some nice ones, but they want way too much for shipping than I'm comfortable with.

-+@ Bounty Hunter @+-

I got some good bargains too...



Art Credits:
Tuyet by Jeffry Ransom, background by Matt Holmberg
Tide Hyren by Jen Reed, background by Matt Holmberg
Howitzer Primat by Jeffry Ransom, backgrounds and colours by Austin Gardner.

Another 3 from Exodus Flight. These look good. I'm just pulling them out of the hat, figuratively speaking, now that I've got a huge stockpile of images to use, thanks to the Dreamstorm templating exercise. I've also updated the icons on the Custom Card site to include one for EF, and added rows for the Insiider Custom Cards.

A quick run down for the custom card icons:

The Elder's Legacy icon. The gear represents that it's the first of the gEngine sets.
The Tainted Glimpses icon. An eye in the traditional core purple represents the set. Art by Justin Hillgrove.
The Twilight War icon. War is symbolised by the sword, which is flaming to overcome the falling twilight. Art by Alison Strom/Whryl.
The Exodus Flight icon. A modification of Insiider icon to show its Insiider roots and an X, from which the name eXodus originally originated. Art by myself.

And for the RP cards:
The Insiider logo, exclusively for the first RP set eXodus. The cards were templated without this logo. Art from Insiider/Jim Wong.
This is the first set logo for the RP cards - a cloud which was taken from the body of the Dew Tryter, a creature in the set, to represent the name of the set, Dreamstorm. Art by Austin Gardner.
The Arderian chime from the set, recoloured to serve as the logo for Chimefall, the third RP set. Art by Jeffry Ransom.

I added one card to TW as well - more on that below - and am working on a card for DJ. I was digging through more images by Whyrl and found this one that would probably make a great DJ card. The downside is that I have to change all my announcements from 7 cards to 8 cards. Not a big deal, I guess... if I remember where all the announcements are. It's a good thing I haven't heavily publicised it yet. At least I don't have to update the MND at CCGW blog because that doesn't have anything about numbers... I think.

The other major thing I started for MND this week or so was the Malovis Challenge. This is where people play 3 games with Mal and tries to win 2 out of 3. I've thrown in incentives for winning all 3 and for using Shadowsfall cards, so hopefully, those will be utilised. Mal is also building crazy decks since his challengers are allowed to name the decks they wish him to play - that was Mal's suggestion, I think it will bite him in the end probably, but ultimately, he'll have fun. Hopefully, this will revitalise the game on the engine.

The other major thing going on is the second part of "The Hunt". Four questions, three of them rather easy, the fourth is a killer. I'm making people work for it, but I dropped a hint earlier that Logan got so who knows what will happen soon. Maybe someone will pick up those 5 tokens... maybe they won't.

The new version of the engine has another defect it seems... detaching cards is buggy. I'm glad I haven't implemented things like that yet. Sometimes being low-tech is a blessing in disguise - it means games work even when the engine is wonky. The downside of it is that the game is lowtech, but for MND, that doesn't seem to be too big an issue at the moment.

Things are still quiet on the engine. JC is busy trying to get all the Rage stuff worked out, I think Martin is working on VTES and a few other things and Tomi probably has his fingers in quite a number of pies, whichever strikes his fancy. It's slow, but steady though.

Meanwhile Ed is working on the next bugfix release of the engines. He mentioned that he won't be dedicating as much time to the engine as previously, not that it's noticable anyways - he still spends a lot of time devoted to all things CCGW. That is a good thing.

I just had Nick Szankovics buzz me about doing Tanshihana on the engine. That poor guy has been trying to get the game online for a long time now. I reminded him again of our agreement that I'll code the game for him once he has 100 cards from 2 regions done and ready. He's got 18 more cards to go to reach there, so let's see what happens then.

I logged on to Cardhaus last week hoping to get some Black Rider cards, but was disappointed to find that they aren't offering them still. Which is a pain. I have been waiting to get my Black Rider cards for ages now. I did pick up a box each of each of the block openers - FotR, TTT and RotK. While there, I got a box of Allegiance, War of Factions. They have also dropped their prices for VotS and ND boxes, and I was going to get one of each, but decided it was too much, so I only got a box of VotS.

I haven't done too much to the AWoF box yet, although I must say the cards reminds me of Tempest of the Gods. I would put the quality at below Wheel of Time which seemed to capture teh genre rather well. The template is confusing, and there seems to be too many stats. Also the location of various things are inconsistant on the different card types - makes it a bit hard to locate things at a first glance. Ah well, it's apparently one of the cool new game of the past 12 months and there is some buzz going around about it. Would it last more than 18 months? Probably - the second expansion is already being designed, if not already printed.

The VotS box gifted me with a few interesting cards, including a Cawh, the cald version of the Rock Silth and an Aula, Mindseeker. Nothing big there. The major thing about the box of cards was that I noticed on the booster packing the Kintor image. That image has never been on a card as far as I know, so, a quick scan later and it's now part of TW. That prompted me to have a look at the other boxes. the DE packing has a magi that looks unfamiliar... that might make it into AE at least, although the image quality isn't going to be too good due to the fact that it's small. The VotS box itself has a good collection of creatures with a Nar magi... I wonder if I can use that for something. The Mowat could be promising.

The major thing I did yesterday was to sort out the LotR cards. There were 4 boxes to go through as I realised that I had never sorted my Shadows cards as well. I got some really good cards from Shadows and FotR, normal pulls from TTT, but rather boring pulls from RotK. I think I might have to resort to buying another box of RotK at the end of the day. Sorting out the cards and updating the lists (on Mahasamatman as well) took up the majority of the day. There were lots of poeple offering to trade me cards, but I haven't accepted any offers yet.

I retried the Gandalf RB deck again yesterday on LotRO... and I had to work to keep him alive. I don't think he's playable outside of a pure gandalf deck with elves and men to remove burdens and lots of skirmish events. He floods the pool too, so the only way to ensure survival would be to use the giant ents with G for Grand. I wonder how he stacks up against Uruks, but then again, at battlegrounds, there's that spell to discard conditions anyways. So...

-+@ 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.

-+@ War @+-

Such a simple title...



Bloodlines spoilers, and shire as usual. Always good to use the hobbits to beat up the nasties in LotR. The new card type for the game is shown above - follower. That's going to be interesting. This is the first non-ringbearer Frodo as well. I have no idea if he'll be good or anything, but it's good from a design point of view as it opens up the deck design somewhat. I can't wait to start playing with some of these hopefully by this weekend.

I did a bit of MND stuff today - changed a SP page, did up 3 DJ promos and posted one of them for preview at the Custom Card forums. Hopefully that will garner some interest in the game and such on the engine, but summer being the bad time that it is, I doubt it'd do much. Still there's no harm trying.

Martin got up a new build of VTES today. He's been working hard on that too, I'm sure. I haven't had the time to look at it yet, but I'm sure it's probably full of his Sterling coding examples. When I have the time, that's one thing I'll have to look at and see if there are any examples I can "borrow". Well, anything to up the Martin part of my nM rating!

-+@ 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.