-+@ Ego Boost @+-

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-+@ Telling Secrets @+-

Won't you like to know what I know?



Art Credits:
Skywalker's Tunic by Beth Zyglowizc
Crystal Chisel: Pencils by Jeffry Ransom, Colours by Nov, background by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Draught of Life by Nov, background by Holmberg

Draught of Life's was today's image. I'm really enjoying these one image a day things. I couldn't believe how much the image reminded me of a Keeper's Quest card, the colour scheme, the grass thing, the red blob, the universal card template. It's giving me a good feeling overall drawing that red liquid in a corked bottle. Fun too. The first time I tried to colour glass and it didn't end up too shabby.

And because it's a slow day, I'll use this paragraph to talk about the other card I drew this week that's shown above. Crystal Chisel was originally drawn by Jeffry, but like all his images, they were coloured with crayons and pencils. So I took his image and recoloured it and that was the end result. There's a blog entry about it too.

The custom cards took a huge step today - Project Second Chance just got into its second phase for some cards. What is Project Second Chance? Project Second Chance is an MRP project that attempts to upgrade underpowered cards by grafting onto them additional text to make them more potent. Will everyone playing online be forced to use them? No, the PSC cards will be clearly marked as such and players can have a choice to either use them or ignore them. Some CCGW tournaments though, will mandate that PSC cards be used instead of the official versions. When will we get to see PSC cards on the engine? Each individual PSC card will be added as soon as it is completed - the process is list (get listed on the forums), vote (majority voted to be in the project), design (new text), add (to gEngine).

Well, today is the last day of the March tournament and it seems that there is a clear winner. I've seen some rather good decks from Bobby and GoC as well. I have no idea who to award the extra tokens though. And next month's tournament already has 2 signed up participants. There's also been a huge amount of games played this month, despite (or because of) it being the first tournament with the unfinalised TG cards. It's been interesting though.

I've been talking about hotpoints (not hotpants!) with Mark and Logan for the past 24 hours on and off. It seems I'm some sort of hotpoints expert at this point in time - I'm not! The one game that I rewrote for it is in such a huge shambles that I don't even dare release it to the public. However, I did point both Mark and Logan to the pitfalls and suggested alternatives that they either didn't think of or didn't know existed before. Hopefully that will help them on CA and LMS respectively.

One more day to Final Nights. Will it be released a day early today? or later than the April 1st date? After all, the announcement did mention "around" which introduces some element of vagueness (Ed is learning how to be vague after all the times unexpected delays have come to bite him in the tush). Nevertheless, it's still interesting to speculate and to see what will happen.

I didn't manage to catch a game of Auto Assault today due to the lack of players, but that CCG is shaping up to be really really interesting. They are still working on things - changing cards, tweaking text, small minor stuff that doesn't detract from the overall experience of playing the game. Can you tell I'm hooked? I'm looking forward to their adaptation of Anarchronism now! Curses (or Praises) to the great and mighty Eddie for suggesting that I try out the game.

Did I mention that we have one fewer PL these days? Time to update my records now. It's also the end of March and Ed did force me to write a whole slew of reports every quarter. OK, I exaggerate again, it's only 1 report. So time's a-wasting blogging...

-+@ Lipstick @+-

and porn? Well, check out the images below...



Images by Boris Vellajo and Julie Bell, taken from Hyborian Gates.

That's right, Hyborian Gates is finally out for public testing, but I doubt it will get played much. It is after all "no frills" at the moment, and I don't forsee it getting any more advanced than that. There are still a number of cards missing in the game, but hopefully they will get added on as soon as possible, or when I get the time and the inclination to code in the cards, whichever comes first.

Hyborian Gates isn't the first game to go public this year though. The honours there were taken by James Bond. Grats to Tomi for getting that honours (yeah, take note of this, it'll probably appear in a future quiz by myself). It's out public testing, and is slightly above "no frills" since it has attachment and stuff. I haven't had a look at it yet though... I should at some point. That means though that all Target games are now on the engine.

Someone has also contacted me to offer to update Aliens vs Predator. With 5 games played over the last 30 days though, somehow I don't see how it would go beyond "no frills" as well. Nevertheless, any work on the game is always welcomed and said guy has taken it upon himself to update the images. Well, we'll see how much of that there is before his interest runs out - somehow I get the feeling I'm going to be stuck with something half done although I hope that feeling is false.

I was looking at the WSS2 stuff a few nights ago as well. I really have got to get the motivation to start taking photographs of these cards. Really. A scanner won't work since the cards can't be scanned, well, not the front anyways. I have already started somewhat, but it does need quite a bit of work to get everything finished up. I guess I can use Origins as my deadline to finish up WSS2.

Talking about Origins, quite a few things are happening in anticipation of it. Mark is getting his games ready - Attack and Crystal Authority - for public release before Origins and I know Logan is revamping LMS with all sorts of goodies. Next up on his list would be MoA, and I did offer to help out with the images there - not drawing them (ha!) but segue-ing (is that a word?) them together from multipart scans.

Ed was working on Milles Bornes over the past few weeks, and has been enjoying his work there. The game has gotten hugely popular though, although I wonder if it's because he's working on it. Frank's Zoo numbers are close to negligable, but Ed has plans to complete the game there. We'll have to see what happens. His work on 7th Seas seems to be done though and the game seems to be getting some volume, although not a tremendous amount.

Martin has been busy, first with a Doomtown update that was a few days late, but nevertheless was released. It seemed to have drawn more players to the game. Monster Mash I is now on the server as well, and I have no idea how much work has been done there, but obviously more than at the beginning of the year. And with April a scant 2 weeks away, I'm sure Martin is busy adding the next expansion to VTES ASAP.

Is that it? 6 people working on games for the engine? Sounds sad, it's true. People and people's interests change I suppose. Hence the fallen away of some. I guess that's how the cookie crumbles... or whatnot. That does give me an idea for a future blog...

And to end, lemme give a quick MND rundown - not much work on anything, but the tournament is progressing rather well and the new TG cards in a tournament setting is grabbing some interest. How long, how many, who knows? There's news of a MMO being developed for MND as well, so does that spell the end for the CCG? Only time will tell...

-+@ Copper Pennies @+-

Whee, new month. Last two month's titles were from Nightmare Before Christmas TCG... betcha didn't know that. New month, new game...



Art Credits:
All 3 by Beth Zyglowicz.

Where to start? It's been a busy month... so busy that time for blogging was virtually zero. Here's the catch-up.

TW had a huge boost in between with Bobby finishing the remainder of the KT cards and myself getting Paradwyn finished. Work has started drafting out cards for Core, which along with Weave, is the only other region that has yet to be finished.

All 6 Underneath TW cards have been added to the engine for playtest, which has got quite a few people interested. The set icon is horrible there, but I wasn't in the mood to update it so it remains such until I get the time to tweak with it. I also added a whole lot of other cards that's at this point in time Engine only. I hope the players like them.

Meanwhile the TG playtest tournament has started and there are those who are looking forward to devasting others with the more than powerful TG cards. Some of those cards seems ordinary though, but throughout playtesting, the regular playtesters have discovered deadly and unexpected combos with them so I'm setting them loose in a tournament format to see if it will give rise to any complaints. Nothing so far, which is a good thing.

Last month's tournament was very well received with a large number of games played. Tim won the tournament though and got quite a bit of tokens in the process. The successful tournament pushed up the number of games played as well. That's an interesting correlation. Tim requested for Arderial TW to be added next for playtesting, so I guess I'll have to do it sometime as well. Oh and Remember Ring...

The official MND website is dead. Well, I guess that means I'm going to get more traffic to my website. I've just loaded the March calendar, but I really need to do a bit more than that - for starters, I need to put in the BoA #1 that Patrick sent me a while back, but there's only so many hours in a day...

Tomi and myself have been busy with the wiki though, getting the game pages stubbed if not fully populated. It looks good so far and there's more than 100 games listed, most of them with rules. Hopefully, if nothing else, it'll serve as a game archive for all things gaming.

A new month means I had to updated the FPN on the website, and there isn't much to announce. I was told that we didn't have the rights to use some of the Rage images as ads, so I had to remove them. Oh well. There's a new batch of Rage ads that I've yet to add. Yeah, when I get the time.

I did the numbers for last month - huge losses for Doomtrooper, which is surprising considering that they had a tournament, and for VTES as the free passes has run out. Gains for MND, which is a good surprise to me since I never expected that it would recover after the slum over the new year, and a smaller increase for Star Wars. I wonder how much server instability has reduced the numbers of games played though.

Tomi has also been busy on Mythos and Doomtrooper in addition to the wiki and it's interesting to see those two games get really advanced. Mark is still working on Attack, and has started work on Crystal Authority. I guess he's well on his way to adapting 5 games for the engine this year. Martin didn't deliver Doomtown at the end of february as he promised, but he did give me a bit of something for my next game and I know he's busy on Final Nights for VTES as well. Ed's still busy trying to sort out why the engine is crashing. Probably a hacker trying to get tokens and passes, I think. Eric was asking a few questions earlier in the month - I think he's designing a CCG of some sort. He's also been looking at other games and was fixing up Dredd last I heard. JC has also been busy, but he's still keeping an eye on his games, and the same goes for Julien I guess as he's been asking for coding tips. Good times for all.

-+@ Backlash @+-

Ouch!



Art Credits:
Melt by Holmberg/Gillette/Werner/Nov
Tundra Weggit by Werner/Gillette/Goodman/Ellenberger/Nov
Frost Burn by Nov/Holmberg

These are, for a change, the TW cards. Nar was the region posted today for review today and I know at least one person is going over them already. That brings it up to 5 and a half regions that has had cards designed for them. Not too shabby, I guess, on that score.

All the above was possible only because I did the Tundra Weggit a few days back and Frost Burn today. I know the Frost Burn has much to be desired and is probably the card with the worse art of the set. Oh well, not much I can do there since it takes an existing TG suggestion. With those 2, that finally means that Nar has all card art. 3 more cards left to do for TW - 2 d'Resh ones and a Universal relic.

That reminds me, I've got to add promo for Twilight War - actual cards with those names - at some point. Double Jeopardy already has the card in-built to the set, so that's one thing done. Elder's Legacy has its card and TG has Taint and Glimpses. SP and KQ didn't have promos for the set name, but they were promos themselves anyways and not a full expansion. It is nice though getting back into the thick of designing MND cards.

However, I think the tournament is dead though. There's hardly anyone around. That's to be expected. There are also a lot of new players and I've seen Tim and Christoph guiding them on. That's a good sign - dead games needs advanced players who can guide the new players into the game.

Minor update on the custom card site with the 2 new cards, but that's also to be expected. Nothing new there, nor any news on the MND front. I think the players are making more of the news than the actual company is... what with fan cards and tournaments an stuff. Then again, the company is dead (or something close to it) until the cartoon airs anyways.

B5 also has the second set of preview cards out for the next expansion. Times are busy I guess... or people (except me) have way too much free time as the holidays get nearer. I have no idea if the cards will even be good or not since they are for the Narns, a faction I don't really know how to play. I left my comments and it will probably be taken though. 2 other people leaving comments on the cards. Not too shabby.

Aquarius went public today. So that's 5 games for Mark this year. He's getting good at coding games and is getting quite a bit on his plate. He seems upbeat about it too. He's gone on to adding stuff for GRfoS and then it's on to his first board game. Heh, it'd be funny if he finishes that this year too.

Tony added XP to WoT today. I guess it's easier to determine victory in WoT than in B5. It's good that his games are getting noticed. He's even got the wiki pages, rules and logos and all, up and ready for both his games. I wonder what game he'll work on next. Probably something with the images already scanned in or something.

I worked on the wiki today too, adding in a bit about how to keep Norton Internet Security fully functional while running the engine. It was a lot harder than it looks. I guess I don't have the knack for techie technical writing. Oh well, we can't be good at everything.

Martin is still busy getting VTES public in... oh, about a week. I think people's adrenaline is going up as the date gets closer. Lots of new people checking out the existing engine to find out how things work and stuff. It will be a crazy day for Martin and Ed. Ah well, I should be away by then hopefully. I'll have to remember to stock up on garlic though.

-+@ Diva @+-

New Month, new surprise!



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-+@ 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...

-+@ 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.

-+@ Final Push @+-

for Hyborian Gates...but first:



Art Credits:
Steppe Hyren by Jen Reed, background by Werner/Shreve
Beheetle by Jeffry Ransom, background and colours by Austin Gardner
Desert Kowl by Beth Zyglowicz

Another 3 more cards for Exodus Flight. I've got a lot more where that is coming from. Work on EF has slowed to almost non-existance, ditto with TW. DJ is still going onwards with the contests and of course TG is in playtesting. In fact, Doug has been going crazy with the playtesting lately trying to abuse certain things. Good for him.

The tournament has died down though, which is a pity, and not too many games are being played. I think everyone is probably out of credits by now and they don't think it's worth it getting more, or something. Oh well. At least Doug spent a wad and got quite a bit. Ditto with JoetheMexican as well.

I'm still putting up the Official cards onto Novelty's Custom Cards site, although the updates aren't going on there daily. Still, the promos are up, and all that's left are the Base Set cards (which will be the unlimited set), followed by the alt art 1st ed cards and then the preview decks. That should about cover things up before I move on to reposting the fiction, if I decide to repost them anyways.

And to other things...

I finally finished getting all the images done for Hyborian Gates. I think. I'll have to do all the checks when I start coding in earnest next week... maybe. First off is the spoiler, then importing everything into the engine. That would probably take about 2 days if I feel up to it. Depends on how much other things I have to deal with over the week, hopefully not too much as I do want to get it done with ASAP.

One thing I can get distracted with is doing artwork for Final Twilight. Nate asked me to do a "Tattered Spellbook" or something like that and I spent 2 hours a couple of days ago to draw the image below. I'm not too happy with the bookstand - it's not ornate enough for starters, and the lighting effects on it is just wrong, but I'm otherwise happy with the book, particularly how the burn/dodge worked on it.


Other news: Tomi got Dementia up on the engine for Doomtrooper, and I think the troopers are going to go crazy with that set. It's not yet automated though, but I'm sure Tomi will get to that sooner rather than later.

Martin got HotS updated again, and is trying to get people to test the game. I haven't tested it yet, but I wondered if a player will notice if anything has been improved. Only one way to find out I suppose.

Tony is still busily working on Fluxx, as he attempts to iron out all the minor bugs and stuff in the game. It's his first full game though and I think he should be proud that he's gotten this far. Hopefully the game will be robust and won't suffer from too many minor defects, or any major defects. It is hard though getting everything right the first time.

Ed has got a second update of FZOO done - complete with bells and whistles... literally. He added sounds to the game besides cleaning up some code and adding more automation into the game. I think he's really enjoying coding on that game too. It's a simple game to code. Well, let's hope he feels the same way about RSP soon - I do want to see the final version of that game in action.

I wonder how Mark is getting along with Monster Rancher... he posted in the CCG Alphabet Game about a Monster Rancher card, so I think he's pretty heavily into the game, at least mentally even if he's not physically coding it. And the Alphabet Game seems to be on its third or fourth wind as people are just posting crazy stuff there. It's a whole lot of fun.

I bought a copy of Inquest today, more for the free cards inside than for the magazine. A VS Iron Man and about 20 FMA cards. Not too shoddy for the price I paid for the mag, and hopefully it'll have some good reads in there too.

-+@ 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.

-+@ Surplus @+-

of work to do...



Art Credits:
Mud Mantle by Austin Gardner and myself
Sunstone and Tempest Amulet by Beth Zyglowicz

All 3 are for EF, and these were done quite some time ago. I did template 2 more creatures - a Paradwyn one and a Core one yesterday, but I haven't have had the time to load them up yet because I've been getting all the Firestorm images from the server so that I can begin work on those. Still, EF is coming along as the gaps are being slowly plugged.

I wish I could say the same about the other sets, but I can't. The good point is, people are playing with Shadowfall and discovering things and making suggestions so I spent a part of today updating MND for the engine. Nothing major there, just bugfixes, text changes to TG and I added the DJ cards that have already have had a Jeopardy contest.

The third contest ends in under 48 hours and it has got more responses than the Stuff Twins, so I guess that's a good sign. Perhaps this is the easier of the magi so far, being single region...? I've liked the entries I've seen submitted so far for this contest. It's going to be hard to pick a winner for this contest.

Mitch is probably totally depressed as he's getting whopped in the Malovis Challenge. Bobby played with a scary Arderial deck - I presume his Shimmer deck with the crazy energy gain-age deck. That's one reason why I like weird and wacky formats for tournaments... otherwise people just play their uber decks and win... especially in this environment where one has infinite amount of cards.

I'm still clipping Hyborean Gates cards... it's slow going and the image quality is poor, but I'm not going to rescan them since I doubt many people will play the game anyways... that and the fact that the cards are going to be full scan. I'm going to make them small and the text is going to be a bit more blurry than usual, but the game should still be playable with the hints and all.

The next set for B5 has suddenly concentrated on the mercenaries. It's not really surprising since there was a foreshadow of this, but the discussion and the design decisions are getting interesting there with people supporting most of the ideas that is thrown about. Still, there's only about half a dozen people involved with the design... which reminds me, I best send out an invitation to the Yahoo group to invite people to participate in the design. I did send a PM to Billy "Binky Jackalope", but I have no idea if he will even read the PM.

Elsewhere, JC got Rage and Guardians updated to Now Playing. This was right after the Rage tournament as well as the moot, so hopefully, this would increase the number of Rage games played this month by quite a number... hopefully. Shadowfist still leads in that category, I think and despite the Malovis Challenge, Doomtrooper still has a healthy lead on MND, which is good news there as well.

Someone logged in today asking for VTES. Told him it isn't available and to come back closer to the end of next month. I hope they aren't disappointed. The VTES engine looks a bit dead though, people log in and log out but they are like ships passing in the night... well, almost literally.

We were discussing how many games will go public before the anniversary and we counted a possible 9, although it's highly doubtful all 9 will be finished in the 6 weeks. We'll have to see. If nothing, I'm going to attempt to get Hyborean Gates public by the anniversary date to continue the trend of releasing a game on the anniversary date!

And for some weird reason, today is Talk like a Pirate day... so does that mean 7th Seas will get played more...? Who knows?

-+@ 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...