-+@ Loyal Sacrifice @+-

The things I do for CCG Workshop...



Three "Art of" cards for AE with the symbols. Nothing special here. AE meanwhile seems to be on hiatus as nobody is really placing down ideas for their cards much... yet... hopefully they'll get things running soon. I also need to get the other cards out soon as well - Orothe and Paradwyn and Arderial are all in my stable this time around. Hopefully, I'll be able to get intresting mileage out of the cards... one of these days.

It's just a couple more weeks until the new Magi-nation cartoon starts airing in the US (and probably Canada...). The younger old schoolers have already mostly declared their hatred for the animation and design, while the older old schoolers are adopting a wait and see attitude. References to the cartoon is popping up everywhere but there isn't much to mention other than a few spoilers here and there.

Avatar is also getting a 3rd season soon. I'm awaiting that keenly. I hope it will revitalise the card game, but somehow, I am doubtful that this will be so. I guess Avatar is probably going to be the opposite of Magi-Nation - good cartoon, bad CCG. I'll happily settle for a good cartoon though because that's hard to produce. A bad CCG can always be "fixed" with unofficial fan versions!

And talking about fan versions, the B5 players seem rather keen on revamping the custom cards into their image, to leave a mark or a stamp on it. The discussion has been going on, on the CCGW forums without the input of Bruce. I know the Vorlons seem pretty much "out there" but some of the suggestions are even more "out there"... My position has always been to keep to the spirit of the overall rules, and to use the cards to override the rules if necessary. I guess there'll come a time when I have to test that out, although I'm generally keeping silent on the discussion.

Another SciFi TV show with a cardgame is StarGate and while searching for today's topic, I discovered that there's not only a 2nd expansion planned (or out), but there are also online exclusive cards (presumably on the pay client). One of these days I've got to go back and check those out. I wasn't too impressed by the card design generally, although I do have to admit the icons and the constallation symbols are nice.

And since I'm on new stuff, I just got an email today about the latest Ticket to Ride expansion - the Swiss expansion. Days of Wonders is now accepting pre-orders. It's one that I'd like to get, but I don't think I want to pay for the postage. I'll probably get it the next time I see it in a big board game shop or something. The other big news about TtR has been that DoW is producing a "Nordic" version with a Nordic map to be sold only in Scandinavia and Finland. Players in the US seems rather supportive of the version and upset that they might not be able to get it locally - they are probably as exasperated as how I feel... anyways, I know I can always count on Tomi to mail me a copy or two... and provide the translations as well!

Ed yesterday mentioned that he's busy translating VteS into a PBW format. Wow, I'm going to guess he's gonna be busy for the next 3 or 4 years or so... maybe more. Then again, he might prove me wrong and finish all 20 expansions (OK, I know it's less than that, but it seems that much to me) or so in less than a year, which will probably be my wish! Hopefully, he'll take time out to do other simple games in the interim...

Like Titan, which is the most played game on Ludoholic, both the PBW version, the fast PBW version and the real-time version. I think that game itself is a hit, if only because it's so addictive. Capitol and Urland and Monkeys are fun, but sadly they take time to complete. I'm not going to go into the real-time vs pbw scenario again, but I do feel that people should not be forced to play a version that they do not enjoy, so it's good that both versions of Titan are up on Ludoholic.

Mark has also been rather excited about working on his Ludoholic game. He's making some great progress as well, and although he's not as fast as Ed, I think he's still going more steadily than the other PBW developer (or is it developers?) on Ludoholic. I have no idea, I'm trying my best not to get involved with another format when I barely have enough time to do the things I want to do on the main engine.

And one of the things I did recently on the main engine was to add the missing Fast Break cards into the game. There's a few things that I really wanted to do like sealed deck and to correct the score dice, but I decided it was way too much work for a game that isn't normally played (nobody played it the last 30 days) so I left it as it is to concentrate on other things.

Things like working on Armageddon, which was supposed to be my top secret game but since I've started it and announced it elsewhere, I might as well announce it here as well. It's a game by Blue Leviathan games with some nice artwork, a series of novels planned and other stuff. I know close to nothing, but probably more than the general public I guess. I don't think I have all the images for the cards so that will have to wait. I just glanced at the spoiler though - it's definately going to give me a headache creating the card list! Ouch!

And the parting image for today is from... Orothe. This is an image done not for my custom card sets but for Joe Araiza. He's the penciller (although I modified the pencil some with the inking) and owner of the character. I only did the colours and the background. Don't ask me why there's more beam of lights, I guess I'm just drawn to it. This piece was to test the school of fish in the background - I think the perspective makes it work rather well...

-+@ Legendary @+-

Well, because it's coming to an end soo...



Three more cards from Treachery and Deceit. This will be the penultimate expansion from Decipher for the game as announced on their site. The online game will last for an additional 3 years after that date up till the end of June 2010 as announced by WA, but that was probably forseen sometime back that it won't go on forever. All those people who have sunk hundreds into the game will well, get little to no physical returns from the game. It is a sad day.

Still I had my fun playing the game and I learnt quite a bit of CCGs in general and design in particular. Regional enforcement for starters, careful use of denial (and no, that's not a river in Egypt), caution with magic bullets, addition of counters, fun with the opening up of new avenues and strategies and a whole slew of things which I'm sure I'll take with me as I progress on. There's also gameplay experiences as well and I think there will be games I'll never forget, including overwhelming a Sauron with Merry. Those were the days. I think I will probably write an article somewhere about that... lessons learnt designing cards by playing LotR or something like that.

While I'm on the topic of designing cards, I have finally made TW public today. It'll be custom legal next month, but it's now playable on the engine by the general public. Will anyone even notice it? Probably not, and I don't think I'll organise a tournament around it for publicity. I guess this is going to be a low key release. I haven't made any announcements - I'll probably do that later this week (that's borrowing a page from VTESO).

Riding piggy-back on the back of that is that EF Nar has now been adapted for playtesting online. I think that will get noticed somewhat by the playtesters and hopefully they'll enjoy the arctic cards and the freezing cards. I can't wait to read my first review fo the cards. Naroom is next and I'm still hoping that can be done before the end of the month.

Meanwhile on the engine, the Rage tournament has kicked off and the Shadowfist league event #2 is ongoing. Those are the only 2 active tournaments at the moment. There's quite a bit of activity on the Rage and Shadowfist forums, which is a good sign. The numbers for both games are also up for the month - in SF's case, it's overtaken VTES... but who knows what sort of numbers it'll be at the end of the month with the free VTES passes.

I'm still keeping an eye out on DoA and GRfOS @ Ludoholic, but neither seems to be moving much. I guess the respective coders are busy with other issues to have much time to work on these games. Capitol still seems to be the more popular game there as opposed to Urland, but that's not saying a lot since there's only 2 games there. It'd be nice to add a few more there, but oh well, this month was VTES month. Maybe next month.

I finally ran into a good Star Gate deck today - well, it was rare-ful, which is why it's good. I couldn't even get more than 1 mission completed which sucked big time, but then again, that's because I'm only playing with a starter game. I was tempted to buy a pack or two, but since having gotten burnt by LotR, I decided I'll hold off and enjoy the game with what I have. Afterall, it's not going to last forever, and when the engine shuts down, all I'll have left would be memories...

-+@ Vampire Blood @+-

because I'm gonna talk about VTESO and blood in this blog?



Art by Annette Burke. Just wanted to show more pheygrins that Ms Burke has done. All 3 cards will be in AoD and that expansion will be Pheygrin heavy, but I'm gonna guess it'd be well liked by the general MND public because the art is good and the Pheygrins usually have great mechanics. I really need to finish getting images for this set since design is gonna start next month... maybe I'll just have to delay it until all the images have been sourced.

I finally got the d'Resh EF cards to the playtesters yesterday. That's a long delay I know, when I should be a few more updates into it by now. KT is next then Nar and Naroom, and I hope I can get all of that in before the end of the month. What also needs to be done before the end of the month are the TW cards, but I think it's almost ready to go.

What was not ready to go was Third edition on VtES Online. Instead it's been scrapped and replaced by Kindred Most Wanted... a whole month later. I wonder what's the buzz by the fans that's going on about all this - there are already complaints that the support was lacking, yadda yadda, and now this is the first time that a deadline has not only been missed but has been skipped as well. Hmm...

Also interesting is the fact that Ed's going to do away with the engine and to go with pbw VTES. Now that's interesting. I wonder how many people would pay to use that service when it's much easier to keep track with a free pbem system. I have no idea. I also wonder how convoluted the coding is going to be for a pbw game that has things like interrupts. It takes about a month to finish a 3-player game of Capitol online and that game only has 4 turns in TOTAL. I can't imagine how long a 3-player VtES game would last if done on pbw. It's a good thing I won't know since I don't play the game.

Martin mentioned to me that he didn't realise that StarGate was the latest CCG to be created based on a TV series. Well, it's all brand new and shining and all, but I've already decided that there's something lacking from it. The game seems to be a very crude form of B5 without all the complexities that make B5 nice. At the end of the day, there's not much strategy going on in the game since it's basically a more powerful version of WAR. Of course, this might be due to the limited number of cards - only one expansion. Perhaps they'll improve it in future. Somehow though, I doubt I'd be wowed by it.

I just won a huge lot of Fast Break cards on ebay. It was rather pricey, but not as pricey as what I paid for my first (and before this one, only) lot of Fast Break cards on ebay. I can't wait to get the cards to finish off my collection. I guess I'm the only Fast Break crazie out there.

Tomi has also been trying to complete his Doom collection. Last I heard he needed 8 promos or something like that and he's in discussions to get them. I hope he gets to finish his collection. It's interesting how he can do it in basically under a year.

Ed's also been busy, mainly on Ludoholic. He's updated the page refresh things with Ajax, whatever that is, so that things now should refresh faster, apparently. I have no idea, I don't have any more live games... well, at least not until the next game is made public. Still waiting for Duel of Ages or Grave Robbers, but I think those will be ursurped by something I'm a bit more keen to play. We'll have to see.

-+@Movie Star @+-

Well, there are lots of those in the game below...



Those are the preview cards for the Stargate Online game, which is based on the offline TCG by Comic Images. Eventhough SciFi is cancelling Stargate after 10 years, the franchise is still going strong with Atlantis and another new series and two made for TV/DVD movies in the works... apparently. Yes, I'm a "gater" just by the info above apparently. I've also been playing the online game which is done by former WA, now SOE. I had to sign up for a WoW account to play, but I doubt I'll ever try WoW because that's almost like Evercrack to me. The physical game is in the stores in the US and Canada for over a month how... I hope I remember to send an email to Logan to pick me up a few promos at Origins this year.

And I wonder what else would be cool for "Novelty's Origin Treasure Hunt 2007"? Avatar, the Last Airbender by Upper Deck? Yeah, that would be interesting. I hope they have an interesting promo for that. Transformers 3D by WotC? I wonder if this is a CCG or something else. I'm not really interested in a tile game or non-standard looking cards (like Hexatomb or whatever that was). Eve TCG - the cards look boring, but the screencaps from the game lend it a nice space element that I'm really getting into. That would be a cool one to pick-up. And Spoils will be on my list of course. I don't really like the bright Kult images - Cthulhu did it better IMO, but that would be a fun TCG to pick up a promo.

And no one has yet guessed the CCG for last month. I'm carrying it forward to this month because well, I'm too lazy to think of a new CCG to pick titles from. I would have though that it would be easy to guess the CCGs from which I'm picking titles for last month's blogs, but apparently it's not so. Oh well. There's another month to guess.

One hint - it's one of the CCGs that I just got cards today. Remember a few weeks ago when Tomi was bored and was sorting out his cards? Well, he sent me a whole lot of cards and they've finally arrived today (amidst like 6 ebay lots). I haven't even seen the cards properly yet or sorted them, but they will get done later and will probably be blogged tomorrow or sometime this week.

What was separate from the rest though were 5 cards in their sleeves. These include the Spawn and Madman foils and the promo version of Hazard from Wildstorms CCG. Drool. The foils were from Unlimited with the white border, which means they aren't that rare, but considering that these are cards from 1996 and aren't even printed now it's like gold ... figuratively of course, although the only difference between foil cards and ordinary cards is that the logo is golden instead of black. And Hazard... it can be had for $5 on ebay usually or something like that, but it was a promo in an early copy of InQuest or Wizard (way back in 1996) so that's a little bit hard to find as well. I guess only a WS crazy like me can enjoy them. Kiitos Tomppa!

As I said, I've yet to sort out the stuff I got from the post office today, but it will include some Mahasamatman updates somewhere. That's going to be fun. The database isn't due for updating until early June though. Still, I guess I better do a once-over to make sure that everything is all nice and dandy there. And no, Stargate hasn't been listed on Mahasamatman yet.

Didn't actually get a board game this time around. I'm surprised. I was going to get Monkeys because it seems like such a good game on uh... that other site (heh heh heh). I still wanna get a few more Carc expansions too, but that can wail till GQ summer is here. That copy will have the 4 Kathar tiles for my Carc collection. I might also pick up Towers while getting that and uhm... well, I'm not getting princess and dragon... so I guess that's all the Carc sets I'm picking up for my collection.

Taling about French things, I wonder how Martin is coping with the non-release of 3rd on VTESO. I wonder if the players are in an uproar. There was a post on the main forums by the resident VTESO canuck asking if Ed was around since he apparently hasn't been replying to PM and EMs. That would be interesting to watch out how it develops. I wonder if the movie-star-looking Hungarian immigrant or the first women highness will win the battle. And no, I'm not talking about the French Presidential elections.

And while I'm on movie-stars, did I mention a few blogs ago that Mark is glad to be back on GRfOS? Well, he is, according to an interview I last had with him. He's gonna need lots of help to familiarise himself with the coding and for a change there's only one person that could help him. Poor Ed. I'm not envious of Mark though. According to him too, I'm the pbw-hater. Heh, OK, whatever. Fingers in too many pies is more like it.

There's also a whole lot of activity going on on the main engine, including the SF league which is still running, crazy AvP rules talk and a bunch of other things that really isn't that interesting even when one's moderating the forums. I guess it's interesting for the people discussing them though. I'll write up a bit more about this perhaps tomorrow with the update about the stuff I got today.

To close, here's the last (as of today) of the images that I want to showcase:



Pencils by Joe Araiza (of course, who else?), colours by myself. I am still trying to play with light and things like that (from the Kybar's sword image) and I think I only partially succeeded. I don't like the fact that the shield isn't reflecting some of the light for starters... and a whole lot of other things. Apparently Joe likes it though, and I guess that's fine since this image is for his custom cards.

-+@ Starlit Fairy @+-

which brought me news about Stargate, of course...



Nope, not MND customs as promised, but this isn't a normal blog as well. That will resume after this post.

This is a copy and paste from the Gateworld page:

The game will ship to stores in February 2007, with 60-card starter decks ($10.99 each) and 11-card booster packs ($3.49 each). The series includes more than 200 collectable cards for a mission-based game, featuring favorite characters and technology from the Stargate universe.

Game play will involve four traits tied to each member of the original SG-1 team, with starter decks available for each: Ingenuity (Jack O'Neill), Science (Samantha Carter), Combat (Teal'c), and Culture (Daniel Jackson). Collectors can pick from one of these starter decks for their favorite character, with decks including four special, all-foil character cards.

Booster packs include cards specific to additional characters, obstacles, adversaries, and gear. Each store display of booster cards will include one ultra-rare foil card -- with six different ultra-rare cards in the series.

Here's the series description from Paizo.com:

In this mission-based collectible card game set in SCI FI Channel's hit series Stargate SG-1, players seek to successfully complete seven missions (or accumulate the greatest number of mission points) to achieve victory. Thwart your opponents with "obstacles," "antagonists," "disease," and the most ruthless of the Goa'uld System Lords, while simultaneously sending your undaunted Stargate team of explorers into the vast unknown. This series is introduced in four 60-card theme decks (Jack O'Neill "Ingenuity Starter"; Samantha Carter "Science Starter"; Teal'C "Combat Starter"; and Daniel Jackson "Culture Starter") offered in 8-count displays, and 11-card supplemental boosters packed in 36-count displays.

Future expansions of the game will include both SG-1 and Atlantis. According to Comic Images, MGM will support future tournament play in addition to the game's retail presence.

You can tell I'm excited about this.

-+@ Dead Magic Zone @+-

Whoa, long time no update!



Decipher's Lord of the Ring cards from the Wraith collection. Yup, that's half of the last expansion from Decipher for LotR. Just 6 cards in the expansion. The above 3 images are from WETA workshop, hence the bug in the lower right. However, the images aren't very "movie-like" which has prompted someone to comment that they seem more photoshop than WETA workshop. Oh well.

These cards are not available on LotRO though, thanks to the Sony takeover. Stupid Sony, I guess. Meanwhile, Decipher has already confirm that the next expansion, Rise of Saruman, is in development. Thankfully this time, the set will revert to the usual 100+ cards (140, IIRC), but it will be chok-a-bric with Sarumans (or 4 instead of the usual 1).

I did get all 6 cards from the Wraith collection since the last update, as well as probably half a dozen booster boxes from various expansions - they were going cheap. My free time was spent opening and sorting those cards out though, which probably explains why no blog update was done. I don't seem to have too much free time these days anyways. Still, I made some nice pulls of rares and foils and I'm ever closer to getting my collection complete.

I also got 2 boosters and a starter box of WARS, but haven't managed to open it yet. It's sitting there, calling out my name to get them opened, sorted and stuff, but I know that's gonna take time. No point doing a rush job and not enjoy the satisfaction of doing it properly. I'll get to it some day.

Got about another half dozen MND booster boxes, not only to fill my collection, but to get cheap commons for self-made customs. I don't want to blog about MND today though, because that will just take ages. Perhaps tomorrow when I get the time, I'll talk about all MND happenings and going-ons.

My 1910 expansion just arrived yesterday. This isn't for a CCG, but the boardgame Ticket to Ride. Nevertheless, it's just a cards-only expansion and it comes in a metal tin. I like the tin, it's nicely done, and it's probably done to attract people to buy the tin. However, as someone pointed out, it won't fit in the box for the original game, so I'll have to forgo the tin and just place my cards into the box at some point. Oh well.

Also got my starter pack of The Spoils sometime back, and I must say the cards seems interestingly designed. I don't like the bicycle-deck cardback though, and since what I got are beta cards, some of the images does not have any colours on them. However the coloured images were properly done, and I would say even better than comparable games like Mystical Empires. I haven't played the game yet, or even read through the rules (don't have enough spare time to do either), but based on the images alone, I'd recommend it to someone (who's CCG savvy) looking to pick up a new game.

Talking about new games, Stargate has been pushed back to next year apparently. I don't think anything is happening there at Comic Images or whoever is publishing the game. It's a pity because I was really looking forward to the game. Oh well, next year is a few weeks away.

There's also this new CCG based on a computer game. It's called EVE, and I have no idea if it's one word, or if its an acronym or something. Rich Riley, the only active rules team member of MND has been promoting it almost everywhere, including on the CCG Workshop forums which is where I heard about it. I wonder if there has been any progress getting permission to adapt it. Probably not...

Hmm... this would be a good time to talk about CCG Workshop, but I'm running out of time, so things to talk about in a later blog:
1. all things MND (including Insiider)
2. CCG Workshop - main (including nipa and Mythos)
3. Tournaments
4. Final Twilight & Hyborian Gates
5. Ludoholic (Capitol and Urland!)
6. VteSO
7. Dinosaurs Arcade & Tabernacle?
8. WA post Sony
9. Days of Wonder
10. Remember the Titans

-+@ The Well @+-

Wishful thinking? Perhaps not...



Art Credits:
Forest Primeval by Rich Werner
Briny Deep by Rich Werner / Chana Goodman / Matt Holmberg
Evergreen by Matt Holmberg

These were the 3 cards I did the other day for EF, with the text versions for Chimefall. The latter can be seen on Insiider. I did 3 more cards (templating) for EF today, 3 magi, and I'll show those here some other day. I did update the website though, so they can be seen there for now. With those 3 it means that 127 cards out of 150 and 6 regions out of 13 are now complete for the expansion that's only scheduled to be (re)designed late this year.

Meanwhile for TW, the expansion that's going up for playtesting in just under 3 months time, the remainder of the Naroom cards have been posted bringing the complted regions to 8. I'm still waiting for BobbyDoc for the remaining half of KT, and I've got to do Paradwyn and d'Resh. Weave and Core are still up for grabs at this point, but unless I can find someone better, I'm going to do those as well.

Otherwise, I haven't been doing too much CCG stuff due to real life stuff intruding. But hey, real life stuff takes precedence over CCG stuff. I did however edit the Alphabet Game post today to update it for the latest round. That game is still trying to survive after the loss of the forum, but there are people who are enthusiastically posting there and playing with it.

Ed added Function buttons to the engine a while ago (along with a whole host of other things) and Martin has since incorporated them into VTES. I had a look at them yesterday. They were slick. It does give me inspiration to tweak a few of my games to do the same thing as well. We'll see what I can come up with.

HC O'Neill posted the January Rage tournament on the forums today. I echoed that announcement on the front page of CCGW. Instead of the new Rage ad, I used the other new Rage ad that's on the server. This one is a bit more complicated, but it does say "When will you Rage?" or something like that. I wonder if anyone gets drawn into the game with those ads.

Talked with a CCG-fanatic about Anachornism today. Apparently it's supposed to be available online, provided by World's Apart according to a quote in the TriKing games forum. It's January but there's no online version... yet. It's still early though, there's 18 more days left in January.

I also tried looking for spoilers for LotR's next expansion, Rise of Saruman. Nothing released so far, and I wonder if the design team has even started designing the cards yet. There's a contest on LotRO to design cards for it and 10 suggestions from LotRO will be used in the expansion. I guess the 10 that's been selected looks pretty bland so far, mostly Timmy cards as can be expected.

I did see the fact that Stargate SG1 might be getting a TCG released this year by Comic Images. That's interesting news. I wonder which season they will base the cards on and if they will use the Atlantis stuff as well. One can only speculate so much of course. I think Comic Images must have reached some sort of agreement with Genio, the (Brazillian?) publisher of Myths and Legends as well, because both that game and SG1 (Genio formerly has the rights to produce the TCG of SG1) will be under Comic Images, at least in the US. Who could have figured that Wrestling could make enough money to subsidise another 2 games...

-+@ Voodoo @+-

I assure you, black magic this is not.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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