-+@ Move to Partial Cover @+-

Or covering your arse?



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-+@ 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.

-+@ Honor Award @+-

Woot! I got some praise... see below...



First things first...
Art Credits:
All 3 images: Beth Zyglowicz
All 3 are for Exodus Flight as well. They are typical for Beth's stuff... not her recent Powerpuff craze, which I'm grateful for, because these don't exactly lend themselves to that sort of style. I like them... they look nice. Also templated a Bograth magi for EF, and added errata to some of the RP cards today. Also did a couple of cards that Reagan coloured for eXodus and EF. People are still interested with the whole custom card thing on Insiider... I guess you can't keep a good CCG down. Hopefully that will keep the interest alive.

I recently got this message from someone named "BograthKing":
"I appreciate everything you have done for MND. 2 years ago i wasnt sure where MND was going to end up. I think you have done a good job with organizing fan sets and keeping the game alive until it can be relaunched. Keep up the good work. Thanks."

Well, game is barely alive and the two hottest sites for it are on the engine itself and on Insiider. I'm sure the Yahoo groups and the official site probably gets a ton of hits, but I don't have the numbers for those. Insiider though, is more active than the Yahoo group, what with the current debate on Bush drawing in regular posters who have been going on to post about other things like what is their favourite awakening card, etc.

The custom card site and forums (two different sites) are also probably getting a good slew of hits as well as I documented a few blogs ago. Are things looking up for the game? Well, the player pool is a bit restless probably, but the company is still moving slowly in the hopes of getting more money. Nothing wrong with that, but their vocal fanbase is probably gonna go elsewhere soonish.

Meanwhile, on the engine... the Malovis challenge is still progressing with Mal losing to dartax and freigabe and probably a whole host of oldies. The poor guy must be devastated at all his losses I guess. Well, he's still not drawing in enough new players though and I doubt we'll be able to have a tournament next month based on just the usual few.

Meanwhile Daniel dartax has been blogging away his games at the MND at CCGW blog and he's showcasing quite a few of his interesting decks as well. It seems that he's having a whale of a time playing the large number of games he's been getting in, so that's a good sign. The side note is that there have been too much spamming going on, so the anonymous comment feature has been removed from that blog.

Meanwhile the B5 expansion is progressing on with the design document for the "Dying Races" being produced. I made a lot of comments there on that document, and I hope Bruce doesn't mind those weird comments that were made. It will be interesting to see a few things, including rules updates for mercenaries and hopefully a better thought out Mu-Tai. There's also going to be a lurker keyword reminiscent of LotR... I wonder if Bruce is going down that road... it is still interesting to see some work happening there, even if it's just embryonic - hopefully more people will get themselves involved.

Meanwhile, on the engine, a slew of games have gone public as beta games have gone free. Ed even sent out an email to everyone on the engine announcing all the changes. Games such as Black Box, Milles Bornes, Summer Camp, Ultimate Combat and Endeavor has gone public. Tomi got AD, ToJH, TOMB and X-files all up to now playing level as well, while I wasn't far behind with B5, Borders, Hamlet and Quartet all following the trend.

Quartet was the game I worked on (mainly) yesterday, updating it. Everything is now automated so the game works a whole lot better, and in the vein that it was designed, I guess. Most of the Go Fish coding and ancillary stuff is gone from it, and the result is a whole lot more streamlined that what Go Fish is and what Quartet was. I guess the engine has just progressed so much further along than when I started working on Quartet. I was pondering if I should finish the last trilogy of the series and add Old Maid/Monkey anytime soon...

Talking about Go Fish, it also had an update with Redemption being the new card. Recent changes to Martin's and Mark's plates necessitated a change in the game as well to reflect everything as it is now. I haven't played a real game of Go Fish for a while now... I wonder if the game is showing its age or is it still going on fine. Perhaps one of these days, I'll have to import the Quartet automation to Go Fish... which would be ironic since Quartet started off as Go Fish's poor cousin.

Reversi also had a quick bugfix yesterday, but it wasn't an easy one. Rather, new code was added to ensure that the game works for both single player with AI and dual player - previously it was designed halfway for one and halfway for the other - it's a bit confusing coding Reversi because of the AI mode in the game, but I'm glad I have that sorted out.

The AvP site is still down and since all the scenario rules are there, they aren't available. I got google cache to cough up the scenarios and saved them. The Contact and Countdown scenarios are also attached to the rules on the engine to make things a whole lot easier for new players. I really should hive them off to a separate page though and link them to the rules document... one of these days...

I realised a few days back that the forum needs to be reorganised to get it in line with the fact that the CC cardback games - CC, Go Fish, Quartet and Borders are now all classed as Playing Card instead of Card. That got done although it looks a bit weird there, but still, it reflects what the engine currently has. No new forums though.

Have been cardflopping at LotRO on and off and someone actually complimented my non-Solo Smeagol deck. Also caught how Fred Coughlin has updated his infamous Solo Smeagol deck with Bloodlines and learned a few more tricks from the master. Caught the Italians playing a rather weird variant of a Gondor deck, and I still have no idea how that works. Actually saw a weird besieger deck that didn't depend on stealing sites. That was also weird, but it didn't work too well. Heh.

-+@ Age of Progress @+-

as things move forward...



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-+@ Reflection @+-

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-+@ The Big Top @+-

with the emphasis on the big.



Art Credits:
Jodst by urm... someone and colours by Scott
Nejza by Zastrow, background by Holmberg
Brynn by Zastrow
More TW cards, 3 magi this time. Jodst stands for Justin (not Zastrow) Orothe Darius Stephan and Tom, the members of the Magi Project and the region that they were going to start off with. Well, the Magi Project survives, if only in TW. The other 2 cards are by Justin. Nejza has his initials in the name, but you'll have to guess who the other people are. Brynn was named by Justin himself.

I actually sorted out the cards for TW today as well. KT is now complete with 8 cards, but half of those doesn't yet have images. I'll have to create them from scratch. Weave needs 5 more cards. Also ballooned up the d'Resh and Nar cards in TW - I think Nar needs 2 more and d'Resh 3 more. None of them have images though, I just browsed the unused ideas leftover from TG and incorporated them into the set. Artwise, it'll probably be photoshopped images from the old cards. Oh well. I'll have to do those over the next few days since I'm fresh out of TW images for the blog.

Today was a crazy day. I almost forgot I had 2 playtest on the engine. The Quartet playtest was good - found a few bugs, but they weren't showstoppers. Finished the game though and that's good. The funny thing is that there seems to be some sort of data drop for the 2 Europeans in my game. Oh well.

The YNDT playtest was a non-starter though. Not only did it report the wrong size for me, but it also did a weird number with the code. I can either rewrite everything again or get Ed to fix his code. I'm hoping for the latter. This affects not just YNDT but every game that uses those method to determine screensize, which is most of my games. *insert big sigh* Hence the title of today's blog. (BTW, it's day 20 and Martin hasn't guessed the CCG yet. He'll probably tell me it wasn't sold in France.)

Ultimate Combat went public today. Which means I had to do a large number of stuff - like move forums, check that the rules are there, ensure the game page is ready, etc. I edited the page slighty... well, more like formatted it rather, and updated the master plates post here on my harddrive as well. It'll go up at the end of the month onto the plates page.

Otherwise things are quiet. Mark is doing heavy duty coding of Endeavor to get it ready in 6 weeks time. Martin is finishing off Doomtown and is moving onto VTES. I must say I'm pleased with the Doomtown adaptation although I hope there's nothing broken with it. I wonder if Logan will surprise us with Sheboygan again, the same way he surprised us with Black Box. Who knows?

-+@ Chinese Zombies @+-

specially for Mark!



Well, there was something that I wanted to do for Urland that I didn't get to do it the last time I hand my head stuck into the code there. So a quick fix today, and it's done. What did I do? Simply automated the drawing of the Panic chip announcement. Now one can't cheat when the panic chip is drawn because it declares it to everyone (I hope). It needs to be playtested though. And the blog proves to me how important things are. While browsing through to get the cards for the 3 above, I realised that they weren't showing up on the engine, and had to make a quick fix on it. They are good now. Oh, as usual, the printed cards has really bad English translations from the original German.

I spent quite a bit of today culling MND images - got a few more Whyrl (Alison Strom) ones, including one that Mitch liked. I have also decided what's coming up after KQ - a promo set called "Double Jeopardy" and I can assure you that Alex Trabec won't be in the set that's for sure. Also did up the current scoring table for the tournament - 2 people have qualified, which is 1 more than last time, so that's a good thing.

The second of the Twilight War ads have gone up on the engine. I'm rather pleased with the TW ads - Distract garnered quite a bit of Wow-age when it was revealed and I think Doll (above) will be used for the campaign next month as well. Made two more today just for the fun of it. TW ads are fun to make, and since I'm in the midst of TW cards, I'm having fun with everything. I'll preview those next week, maybe.

Martin finished up Doomtown today, which is good. I finally get automated upkeep, among other things. I'm surprised at how much work has gone into the game. Hopefully the players will appreciate it as well. We need an online tournament of sorts for that. It's a pity that there aren't many Doomtown players who are willing to undertake such. Time to advertise about the new Doomtown and the new Pillar of Salt fan-made custom expansion, which has gone online.

And as to today's blog title, it's in reference to Mark's new game, Endeavor. It went onto the engine for private testing yesterday and Mark is semi-taunting me that ti will be on before Origins. I hope it will be so. It would be interesting to see more game online before Origins.

The Junior PLs have been rather quiet though. Timmie has been the only one that has made any waves by assuring that custom fan-made cards will be made for SWD. It's nice to see what started off with WS and SR is now being extended to other games.

Someone expressed interest in taking over Buffy today. I wonder if he's actually interested in the game, or if all he wants are free tokens to play his favourite game. Either way, it's up to Ed to decide what to do. His usual MO has been to wait for a couple of months or so and then revert back to them. If they are persistant enough and if they are still around, then they are offered the position. I wonder if it is designed to reward someone who's persistant.

Tony missed his WoT tour yesterday. Shameful really. I just deleted him from that slot. The 2 remaining shepherds are still "doing the rounds" religiously - I guess they just want to hold on to their unlimited supply of tokens. It's hard work, but I don't pity them. Compared to coding, what they do is a walk in the park.

Oooh, and I just remembered that Ed asked me to update the screenshots for Quartet. Blegh. That means I have to play a game with someone again to get a screenshot. I wonder who I can sucker into it. Oh well, maybe I should just offer some tokens for people who wish to play.

-+@ Through all these Shattered Emotions, there's a Lesson to Learn @+-

Where do I even begin? Chronologically might be best.

I finally had a look at the Tainted Glimpses cardlist for MND and finalised the 6 Arderial cards going into that list. I'll have to create 3 of those images, which means my work is cut out for me I guess. Still, 3 is not that bad. At least I know Arderial will have all cards in that set. Next up Bograth.

After that, I fixed Kings so that it closed out all the known loopholes. It plays better now IMO and I know that quite a few people have been playing it recently. I had to get Martin to help me out with the translations and it was a good thing he was around.

Quartet is finally back up again, not with the new things I had imagined, but with the old game minus a few cards and the addition of a few new cards. I'm still not sure if I should put in much effort to maintain this game. Still, it's a game and it's up. Hopefully, that together with Go Fish will form a good basis for the engine version of "Old Maid" or whatever politically correct form it gets transformed to be. With those 3, that "family" of card games should be complete.

Go Fish also had an update today - I had to put in Echelons of Fury into Quartet, so I decided to add the corresponding card to Go Fish as well. The Fury cardback isn't ideal, I got the box image from BGG and I superimposed on the Fire cardback, but I don't think the results are too obvious anyways, unless one looks at it with a magnifying glass (or the electronic equivilant), so I let it pass.

The forums had a minor update, and I also updated the BOT. I'm still amazed at the number of questions that get asked with typos and/or as single phrases where the answers could be anything. Well, maybe I should give 42 as the answer the next time.

I also played a few good games of LotR O today and had fun. Well, considering that I've spent a small fortune on it, I better have fun for quite some time. Haven't been motivated to build new decks, but I'm working on a good monoculture deck. No news from decipher if they the RotK Anthologies is being released on schedule. I do need to make an order from cardhaus soon and I'm waiting for that to get into stock before I make the order.

Didn't get to talk to Mike Nickoloff today. I think he's probably scared of me. Oh well. Didn't work on Portable Adventures as well, although I'm thinking I should sometime this week. However I think I'll work on Hamlet first, because that really should get some stuff done.

I sent Bug the Iron Maiden images - whatever that's done for playtesting anyways and the Firestorm text. I wonder if he'll have time to work on the images for some sort of playtest on the engine. That would be nice. I might have to see to it at some point when I'm even more fired up for Portable Adventures than I am now.

I also asked Bug to make Abduction public. That game is so cool to be played with. I have no idea when he's going to do that but I hope it's soon.

And ideas? Did you know that there's something from the house of ideas on the engine?

-+@ They Paved Paradise and Put Up A Parking Lot @+-

So, I updated the images for Pygmy Balamant (which inspired me to choose that title... If you get bored, you should see if you can name the songs my last 10 or so titles have been from ...), Festive Furok and Reclaim for MND. Reclaim though, marks the last card for Elder's Legacy. I can't believe all 50 cards are up ... I wonder though if anyone uses them. Still, I don't suppose I can complain... next up, the remaining 8 of the Shadowsfall Promo magi which is going to prove even harder to get images for than the ones I got for EL. I might do a Wawek... maybe...

Had a wicked idea for a solitaire CCG on gEngine, but I'll need to develop the idea some before I get it anywhere. We'll see what happens. My other 2 original games are on the slow burner at the moment - Advantage is still very much undeveloped at the moment... and I'm much too unmotivated to work on Workshop, mostly because the mechanics aren't as good as I want it to be. We'll see what I come up with.

Veretax/Feret IM'ed me earlier today to ... I don't know... gloat maybe? about what WotC did. He was very distracted as usual, which is why I removed him from my IM list a while back and he didn't made himself rather clear what he meant about the things he said. Ah well. Some Americans are weird...

Some people have posted that they can't believe how fast VTES is progressing. Well, truth be told, Martin was working on it for more than a month before the announcement, and that may be one reason why. There maybe other reasons though. However, Martin seems to be really fired up about it and is running on all cylinders on the project. I wish I had his energy for my games... especially for Portable Adventures in particular - there's so many things I want to do for that game.

Oh and B5 might need an update soonish. The Vorlons have put in quite a few nice cards, but it's upped the power level some, and I don't know how that would affect the game. Add to that though the fact that Bruce intends to rewrite the rules... and there's already been some friction on it so far... I just hope things are smoothed out soon.

Are those the only 3 games that I'm focusing on? MND, B5 and portable adventures? That seems like it for the moment, although I should find that second win to redo Quartet and make it available at some point.

Talking about availability, Crypt seems to be nearing completion soon. A certain Mr. Graves must be coding non-stop on it or so it seems. That's one game I look forward to be added to the engine, if only because of the fact that it has so many new methods in there to "borrow" from. Learn from the triumvirate as I say.

Heh, I suppose I should explain the triumvirate at some point so it might as well be now. The triumvirate are the almost elitist trio of CCG Workshop ghosts who creates the most innovative games for the engine. They are sort of the Elders for the PLs and a three-man R&D department. Some days, even BugLaden gets coding advice from them. One of these days I'll explain about the LotR references in there...

And I didn't play that much LotR today... not very motivated to play since I'm out of fresh commons/uncommon Johnny ideas. I seem to be making a lot more friends than enemies there, and I think that's a good thing. Then again, not many people are threathened by this newbie, although I find my comboes being copied around now... or at least some of the more innovative moves... like the perpetual lose initiative/gain initiative move with play a tale, draw a card with red book.

Oh and red books... that reminds me... to go check something out... see if you can spot what I'm going to check on the engine. Adios

-+@ I Think I Fell in Love with the Eight World Wonder @+-

If you haven't already figured out where I'm getting the titles from... well, you should rejoice that you don't have an idol.

It's the end of the month so naturally, it's that time of the month when I have to do a few long reports for CCG Workshop again. The funny thing is that I enjoy doing them. I moved my progress report out from the mansion into the Primodial Pool. Hopefully it's obscure enough there that it'd get ignored. If you visit this site anyways, you'll see it posted just before I posted this one. The other report is the Month 30 report where I track what games has been played over the past 30 days on a month to month basis. Last month Bug used the results to set the featured games, so hopefully this month he'll do the same.

LotR O wise, I didn't do much, but I finally feel like a power gamer after buying that box of RotEL yesterday. I finally have an Elrond HtGG, and coupled with spare Vilyas, Gil-Galad and Elendil, I have some of the more sought after rares in the game. I still can't turn that advantage into getting me the Shire rares though.

Played a lot more Sim City last night and I finally got Pineland up to a level where I'm happy to leave it and go work on the neighbouring city - Sawkerchee. That's the industrial megalocomplex which isn't taking off as well as I would like it to do. Just as an overview for those who wish to know... I'm playing on the San Francisco/Bay Area map (only because Berlin was too boring) and I'm building just above where Oakland is in the medium squares. From south to north my cities are:

Sawkerchee - Industrial megalocomplex
Pineland - Recreational/Commercial City
BayVille - Utilities and People City - Very densely populated and the most advanced of the 5 cities. The traffic problem in Pineland is actually caused by the people from BayVille travelling to work in Sawkerchee via Pineland
Bridgeport - High Tech Industry/Education City
Plantain - Garbage Collection/Docks aka Slums

The middle three are almost triving cities, the border two are cities that make me go hmm...

Oh and tonyluzzi told me in the chatroom today he sent his NDA off. I wonder if Bug has got them. I think someone also told me that they've sent off their NDA... hmm... interesting.

I just realised that I have to update Borders, Quartet and Go Fish... and the rules to Quartet. Urgh.

Also, as of today, I've gone a whole week without playing B5. I should get back into the game at some point and build a good deck... maybe I should just copy the NA corp diversity deck... Billy and Bruce and T and almost everyone seems to be building crazier and more powerful decks. I don't think I have what it takes to keep up with the "power gamers". On LotR O, I have the excuse that I don't have all the rares I need for my deck... but as for B5... well, the power game is just a huge turn off for me. Bruce did design quite a lot of combo cards, but as I was never good with B5 comboes... since I tend towards one trick tricks deck. Maybe the NA corp/diversity deck will teach me something new.

I guess that's all for today, but if it's Tech you are after, you best go Battle for it before it's gone. As they say on Norwegian whaling vessels - "Ha det bra, i dag!"

-+@ Pawing Success @+-

Well, I had the inspiration to work on more images for custom cards today for MND so...



Said card above is Umbu Paw, and the image is actually a composite of 3 separate images photoshopped together. The lighting is a bit off, but people who have seen the card have already been asking me where I got the image from... and were surprised when I tell them the source. I did 2 more cards as well - Brown Stuff and Arasyn, neither of which are as good as Umbu Paw, but I guess nobody's perfect.

I got grilled by funk and yurtra today on some of the cards. Brandon was there to back me up on most of them, and where there are obvious and glaring suckiness, I made an attempt to fix them. Still I wonder why I'm doing it if seems as if nobody is playing them. The MND customs aren't as well received as ... say... the Babylon 5 customs or the DoomTrooper ones.

MND aside, I'm still trying to build a good Besieger Shadow side for my LotR Online deck. It sucks big time at the moment, but that's because I'm missing one key rare... or more specifically, 4 copies of one key rare for the deck. Heh, it's going to be like pulling teeth to get those rares, and I wonder if I could retool the deck to work with no rares. Well, that's what deck testing is about.

And I guess I must be making inroads there. I've been invited to join a clan or something on LotR O - not that I think I qualify anyways. I'm still relatively new at the game though and my online ranking is nothing to write home about. Still it's nice to be accepted in a weird place. I guess camadarie is something that most anti-social CCG gamers crave for and they feel the need to do so online.

Oh, I played a game of Go Fish and another game of Earthquake today as well. I still can't believe how smooth Go Fish goes... I wish I could translate that into Quartet... but oh well. Earthquake has most of its bugs fixed as well so that's good. At least someone is playing it.

I talked with Spirit today... who asked me a lot of questions about games and what not. He's involved in Networking and support and not so much the software side of things, but he has been impressed by the quality of some of the games on the engine. Well, he's a shepherd though so let's hope he brings in some money for Bug. Someone else was also saying that they are still surprised that CCG Workshop is still on-going, despite the fact that not many people pay to play. I personally don't think Bug will shut it down anytime soon, particularly not with all the work he's been putting into it. Well, people haven't been paying, but sooner or later, enough people will pay to make it a success... hopefully.

The good news is that Bug should be back later today. I'm glad the server didn't crash while he was away though, which is a good thing. It should give him more confidence of going away and coming back to things still working.

My links section are still missing a few games - 2 Wildstorm Production games: FastBreak and WSS1, and the Wildstorm game that was licensed to WotC - C*23 which was part of ARC. Then there're a few more WotC licensed games - BattleTech and the other 2-3rds of ARC - Xena and Hercules. I did link up Kings and Reversi to the classic section.

And as for this weekend, I'm going to guess it's either Portable Adventures or Bowling. We'll see which one gets done (if any) by the end of the weekend.

Oh and remember Rapunzel? She was in a Tower Siege.

-+@ The Aliens are Coming... that is if they aren't already here @+-

So I played a game of Abduction with Martin last night. It's a quick and easy game, quite a bit of strategy involved and surprisingly it did last for a long time for such a simple game. It has a short learning curve, but the cards make it complex. I like the fact that the boards are made up of cards and since it's a licensed game, we got original artwork for all the cards which look cool. One thing I didn't really like was the fact that exits aren't marked on teh cards... but oh well, I guess that can't be helped. Found a few bugs for Martin to fix, and gave my comments - whatever they are worth on some of the easier implementations to make the gameplay smoother. It'd be good for the next tournament me thinks.

Played another multiplayer game of LotR O with monk and ranger. Ranger won, as usual, but tis fun to play with sucky decks and to be able to see all the strategies being exhibited in that game.

Also read up on Shadows - which will include a few things that Timmy (tada, first mention this week I think) seems to think it's sucky, but we won't know until November when it appears... (and funny, I automatically typed Novelty when I meant November). I'm looking forward to the Tengwar from the block though, which is scheduled for next month.

I am looking forward to next week's WETA promo - Bombadil's hat. Why? Besides the fact that it's a hobbit card you mean? It's a sucky card IMO, but I've faithfully got the online versions of all 4 other WETA promos, so I might as well make it 5. Besides, burden removal just works well with Birthday Present.





Opened the Portable Adventure file and attempted to do an update. Got the name of the cards which I thought I'd fix, but then decided I wasn't really much into it so I backed off. Still at least there's some prepatory work done, which will probably mean that when I start work on it when ever I start, it'll be easier.

I'm also thinking about the images required for Bowling. It'd probably be a black and yellow thing, but I'll have to make the dice or steal and modify from somewhere. Hmm... Still looking for a good black or bold font for it, but if worse comes to worse, I suppose Arial Black would do.

Also thought about snack foods for Quartet - pretzel for 10, peanuts for 1, but I need something for 5... what do you eat when you play poker or cards or whatever? Chips and stuff are a bit hard to do though, which is why I'm discounting them outright. Hmm... time to search the snack food picture archives, aka an online supermarket.

If I'm making you hungry... go find a Sandwich Shop!

Not a very august mood .-+^*^+-.,.-+^*^+-.

OK, so I didn't get to do the images this weekend. Let's see what I need to do for next week:

Finish debugging Portable Adventures.
This is the major one. Kenny and Linda is next and they are huge to do. Then I've got to tackle the Sneaky/Gifted unattach thing and possibly a few of the other things I have on the list. I'm not looking forward to this but it has to be done by the end of the month.

Get the images for Bowling done.
this should be a case of getting the images for 0 - 10 / X and the pins done. Should only take me a few minutes once I find a font and colour scheme that I'm happy with... if I start that is.

Make the Quartet Score images.
I still haven't found any US quarters yet... that's because I haven't been looking. I should really try to make an effort to do this though... sometime next week.

Scan the remaining Triple Triad images.
This is really something I don't really look forward to. It's something to do on a rainy day.. and those are rare this time of the year. Maybe I'll move this to next month.

Make the B5 pip dice.
This is something I've been meaning to do, but never found the time. I should really dedicate an hour or so to it next week to get it done and over with.

Sounds like a lot but besides Portable Adventures there really isn't anything too difficult to do on that list. The last 2 items are more tedious than difficult so they would probably get low to no priority next week. Of course, everything depends on how fast I can clear the Portable Adventures list of "to do"s so that would be the driving force.

And while talking about driving, you should check out what drives are legal when you do a Fast Break.

-+@ Uno Dos Tres Quartro... @+-

So I woke up today and decided to get the screenshots organised... and while doing that I realised I needed to get Portable Adventures and Quartet up. No worries, let's do a try out game. I know Portable Adventures is a bit broken anyways and I'll get the screenshot later this weekend after I've finished the fixes, so that leaves Quartet. Right. Shoudl be an easy task to simulate a normal game... or so I thought.

While digging around in there though, I saw something that was incomplete. Urgh. And so begins my 2 hour epic fix for the game. While working on it, I threw in some features... and I hope things work now. The difficulty in developing games is getting on the spot playtesters. I wonder if there's anyway a bot can be made to be the playtester... hmm...

So, later it'll be images day... I still have to download all those nicely coloured quarters from the US mint for Quartet. I wonder how many states I'll get to choose from though... hmm...

And it's nice to have a slow day. Talked with Todd - an old time MND player - about MND just to see what he's up to and he's trying to create a revival of the game where he is. I say good for him.

Anyways, back to walking the plank! It was nice sailing the 7 Seas...

What's up for the Weekend? .-+^*^+-.,.-+^*^+-.

Right, I just sorted out my MND cards... all 6 of them that I just got in a trade... and while sorting it out I though I might as well put my CCG Workshop plans for the weekend here.

First up is the sorting out of all the mess in Portable Adventures. That needs to be done. I wonder if I'm going to put in the pass and next button ala Mythos - I've got the images done for them, I just need to code them, but like everything else in there, I'm afraid of breaking the code when I add new things. Unattach cards is already broken since all the messing around with events and flipping and that's one thing I have to fix. I'm beginning to think that this is truly the game without an end...

I should also continue scanning in the Triple Triad cards. Unlike normal cards, these have to be scanned both sides which gets a bit tedious. I wish there was a machine I could just put them in and they get scanned automatically, like a card scan feeder or something. Someone should invent one.

Quartet is public now, so I really shouldn't have much to do on it right? Well, the problem there is that the score dice is still the same as Go Fish *sigh* Which means I'll have to update the dice.... I still can't figure out what I should use to score. I thought of glasses of beer, but I don't want parents to come accusing me of alcohol advertising. Poker chips are a bit out of place, and potato chips are a bit... well, hard to scan. I'm still looking for something. Maybe I'll resort to quarters - hopefully, there are enough state quarters taht I don't have to duplicate any of them. And I guess, while I'm at it, I'll take a shot at updating the Go Fish die to add 5 more to it so that it can now take up to 11 players instead of 6.

And Bowling should get a head start somewheree. I guess that since this seems to be working out as a images weekend, I might as well make the images for the game. Now if I can only get a nice font for it...

Hmm... someone is asking if there's anyone who'd like to play MND. Looks new as well... I wonder if he'll mind if I wipe him out with a good deck... probably not since he's probably playing a good deck. Time for a game me thinks, unless I lose my Concentration...ack!