=(*)= Switzerland to Ride =(*)=

I had the opportunity to play Ticket to Ride (the original) and two games of TtR Switzerland (among other things) over the past few days, so here's a quick review of TtR(S).


Apologies first for the blurry cards. I must have saved the smaller resolution and image size...

What's TtR Switzerland all about? Well, first and foremost it's a 3-player game, and that was the main reason why it saw play over the past few days - because there were only 3 players available. So that's a plus in its book.

TtR Switzerland also takes to it only one feature from TtR Europe - the tunnels. This made it a lot easier to explain to a first time gamer the rules since there were only tunnels to explain, and there weren't any ferries or stations or the other ancillary rules from TtR Europe. The streamlined multicoloured locomotives drawing (i.e. just like a normal card) also made play a lot more smoother, as players didn't have to stop and ask how many cards they had to take after taking one of those locomotives.

The other plus of course, are the multi-route tickets, two of which are shown above. The players I was with simply loved the fact that it is almost impossible to block those cards as there are 3 possible end destinations. One complaint however, was for the multi-route tickets with originated in Switzerland. The names of the cities, unlike the normal route tickets, were not geographically marked and it took a while to locate them. Otherwise, they were fine.

The other complaint in the game, although not a big complaint, is that the names of some of the places were a bit hard to pronounce. "Brno" - is that Birno, Bruno, Beerino? Well, it's definately not on the list of destinations that a regular person outside of Europe would have generally heard of, let alone pronounce.

Even with the double routes open in a 3-player game, some of the routes were still heavily utilised and blocked. Geneva, for example, saw all 4 routes getting used up on both games, while competition was tough at Bern, Basel and Zurich. The eastern part of the map was sparingly used, especially the south-eastern part. Apparenlty Italy isn't that popular as it is miles from the cities mentioned above.

I won the first game, and drew first on the 2nd after the longest route was taken into account (yes, we were playing with the longest route and most destinations bonuses). We were also playing with the new replacement cards which felt so much nicer not only in terms of the smooth finishing, but also because there are no typos (which came with the original cards in the box).

Overall, this game is great for beginners who have played TtR the original, but have not yet got any experience with the other maps yet. I would strongly recommend getting the replacement tickets and the 1910 cards for more fun. The group I was playing with was so enthusiastic about the map that they are looking forward to the Nordic map, which I explained, will have something more (ferries, 9-card routes). Switzerland is a logical fit in progression between TtR and Nordic with Europe and Marklin after those (although not necessary in that order).

I think Switzerland probably made my gaming group TtR fanatics!

-+@ 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...

-+@ Red Sky @+-

Martin got it right, but I'm continuing anyways, probably until the end of the year if my blogging record keeps up...



These three cards are from the Avatar TCG. Logan tried getting some promo cards for me from Origins, but did not manage to succeed. I guess that's my loss. Somehow I don't think it's doing very well. The card design actually looks a bit dull - they could have done so much with the card, but instead it's just lines and colours. Way too simple for a cartoon that has such a complex plot. The cartoon is going into it's third season next month and there are quite a number of crazies waiting for it.

Another new cartoon that's coming out next month is the Magi Nation cartoon. I'm tired of all the speculation and assumptions dressed up as facts being posted almost every forum I go to. I have started a FAQ just to try to combat those false interpretation, but I have no idea if I'm doing any good there. Oh well, I won't even get to watch the cartoon next month, unless...

Not a lot of things going on with the custom cards as well. I got the Paradwyn EF cards up for playtesting yesterday, and fixed a few things, but things are slow since it's the "height" of summer and not many people are around. No new custom cards are being designed, and I haven't had the time to hunt for images, or to colour any as well. Hopefully things will pick up by the end of September. I should really put some time into it as well.

General CCG Workshop news - Monkeys and Titan have both had a bump up in status on ludoholic.com, but I really haven't been keeping track there. I updated B5 again today though, after correcting a whole bucketfull of defects a couple of days ago. It's embarassing that the game hasn't been updated since 2005. It's a good thing that it's getting popular now. Nipa also did a small Doomtrooper update and I think Aiden has got a Rage update in as well since I last blogged. It's not much, but it's something?

I haven't have had the time to get Fastbreak up as well, and I think that's a good thing. At the end of the day, I think it would have been too much effort for too little gain. So there'll be no more sealed deck in Fastbreak unless I feel really inspired or something. Nevertheless I still have to add in the missing cards - but I have to do the graphics first. I was supposed to do it today, but I decided I'll take a break to write out this blog before the end of the month.

I have been playing quite a bit of Ticket to Ride over the past week or so and have been losing. I think I'm getting worse... or other people are getting better. I also managed to play a game on the Swiss map, which was fun, and there were a type of card in the Swiss game that isn't in the normal game. That was also interesting.

-+@ Offworld Research @+-

Which is what I seem to be doing, hence the lack of updates. New CCG titles starting this month, last couple of months was from Rage.



Art Credits:
Bazel and Auroc by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Kleysa by Annette Burke

3 more images from AoD, which is currently in design and design is progressing. We lost the forums a while back and I had to create a new one at a new location which has been taking up time. The designers have been asked to provide stuff from memory and all - sorta like a what have been done before - since most of the resources that were on the forums is all now gone. Well, as good as gone anyways. It's still progressing, but slower than what it would have been with the old forums I guess.

Origins has come and gone a long while back and there isn't much to report, since I wasn't there and all. Logan didn't get any news about a new Carc expansion, which I have been hoping for, so I doubt there'll be one this year. Maybe next year. Mark got me the free online code for TTR, as well as news about the Swiss Expansion. I'm excited about the latter and grateful for the former. I've been spending a bit of time playing TtR online ever since and it's funny, but I'm still enjoying the game, eventhough it's so juvenile at the first pass. I've been playing quite a bit of the Mega Game though, and maybe I'll start some Europe games one of these days.

I'm also finishing the games I have on Ludoholic.com. Won an Urland game, lost a Monkeys game, and am on my way to losing the other Monkeys game and a Capitol game. I think I found a bug in the Capitol game, which accounts for why I lost (yeah, right! or not!) but I really don't enjoy those games as much as I do with TtR. It's not so much the pbw format, it's more the games themselves. I wanted to say they are less challenging, but I don't think that's the case. I have no idea why I'm so turned off by the 3 Ludoholic games though. Oh well.

I can't believe I haven't got Fastbreak up yet. I guess I've gotta stop procrastinating and finally get around to it. Maybe this weekend. Then it's off to Barathaum and then Armageddon, hopefully both before the end of the year. I doubt I'll get that B5 update in this year... or maybe I will. Who knows?

The MND.com site has been regularly updated over the past 3 weeks now, and it's created quite a stir/storm among the older communities. People are confusing the "Trading Card" for a revamp of the card game and other people are throwing names at those people. It's almost like a circus. The funny thing is how people can jump to conclusions so easily when such little infomation is given. The sad thing is when they take their own (and often wrong) conclusions as fact and present them as facts. I've been trying to correct those who post, but I'm sure that for every one who posts, there are 10 more who doesn't. Sad doesn't even begin to cover it.

I'll end the post with this image by Annette Burke. Note the Torsk in the background which is so full of detail. The character is very nicely shaded as well!

-+@ Deep Journey @+-

Deep is for Orothe, Journey is for Age's End



That's 3 of the 40 cards from Age's End. I like that holding up the sword drawing whcih seems rather well done. I wish I could colour that good. Then there's the gay Magneto, and of course my favourite creature and a different version of the card that drew me to the game. I'm a little bit sad about its passing of course, and these cards are of the "milk as much money from the players before we lose the license" category. The game is extremely overpowered now and after playing it for a few days with all the new cards I don't really enjoy it anymore. What a sad way to see such a great game end.

I've also been playing a lot of boardgames online - Ticket to Ride about half the time, although I don't seem to be able to win much these days. The other half of the time though is spent helping Ed test out Ajax on Ludoholic, now that Capitol and Urland has it as well. I think I'm on 2 Capitol games and a Urland game as well as a Monkeys game. Those games are moving slow as they are multiple player games, but I guess that's fine as that's how it's supposed to be.

I was supposed to work on my super secret game this week, in preparation for another bigger game later next month, but circumstances just haven't been coorperative and conductive for me to work on the game. Today I found out I used the wrong version in the last MND update - that's the one with the bug in the validate script which I corrected while I was away. So I had to fix it again - basically it's just a one line difference. And since I was updating MND, I might as well add in the next EF region for playtesting, which is what I did earlier today. So we're now done to 9 out of 13 and hopefully, the last 4 will be added before the end of July.

Things are also heating up (pun intended) as design for AoD begins with Cald by Myself and Frosty and Naroom by Daniel. I think there have been some rather good designs already, but I'm doing the Cowell thing to push the envelopes to make the set better (although not necessary more powerful) as this might be the last custom expansion for MND that will be totally in my control. Final Night, the next expansion, is RP-inspired, which means that quite a bit of the cards have to stay true to character.

While I was doing up the news for Naroom EF, I realised Ed never actually announced on the WGO that LMS has been moved to Ludo. I added that in quickly but it's probably old news by now. What I was suprised by was the fact that I can add WGO onto the Ludo engine as well. That seems cool... if there were more people on the Ludo engine that is. There were a total of 4 games played in May, but hopefully the only direction to go from there is up.

And what will be going up soon of course are the new Fastbreak cards that I just finished opening and sorting today. I started with 2 boxes of boosters, needing 15 cards, or 14 excluding a Promo - an uncommon, 5 foils and the rest being rares and only got 9 of them. I can't believe I need 5 more rares, but at least I got all the chase cards. Those will be going up onto the engine hopefully sometime this weekend.

And since I was messing about with boosters and starters, I thought it would be good to add in Sealed deck support for Fast Break as well. I have no idea how complicate it is, but Tomi seems to be doing it easily for his games (probably because he wrote the code and knows what he's doing) so I hope I can easily copy it. We shall see and I guess it shall be posted here on this blog whether I manage to do it or not.

And since I'm on coding - Aidan seems to be going crazy on that front, hammering Rage out into something super fantastic or that's what it seems. It's basic housekeeping, I think to get things up to date and he's poking into things that well, not too many people poke into. But that's good. Hopefully, the Rage players will reward him for it by playing more of the game.

There seemed to be some snafu on the VTES engine earlier this month. No, it's not Martin's fault, so don't go blaming him. It was server related though and to make a long story short, players were all give a 7 day game pass. Yippee! I've got to remember that and factor it into the numbers at the end of the month as well.

I think the Shadowfist tournament has ended, and hopefully there'll be winners announced soon. I still can't believe that gEngine is one of the official platforms for the Shadowfist league and the league can be played both online and offline. Good for Zev and his people. The other thing I noticed is that Julien, the SF lead is now in Budapest, Hungary instead of haute (whatever that means) France Island. I wonder what he's doing behind the Iron Curtain.

-+@ Fast Strike @+-

is as close to Fast Break as I can find...



Art Credits:
Krioh by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Zusah by Alison Strom/Whyrl, background by Matt Holmberg and Rich Werner
Wiscon by Justin Zastrow

Three more images for AoD, which as of today has progress into design. No, not all the images are complete - I'm still waiting for one more Nar magi to finish the images. However, I don't see why that should be holding up the design when 99% of the cards have images, so I've given the word to the designers to have a field day with the cards. I'm looking forward to the design and quite frankly am a little bit apprehensive of how things will turn out. Will my fellow MND @ CCGW blogger be able to link 2 and 2 together to get 4? Will we be able to make the big KT creatures avoid being binder fodder? Will there be a card that would really destroy the game? I don't know... at least not until the cards have been done. And that's an interesting process to go through.

Meanwhile, the cards from EF is being added to playtesting, with Naroom just recently added. I think that's like the halfway point or something. There hasn't been much playtest reports, but those are still trickling in. Some good playtesting being done, when there is any and hopefully, the cards will make people go "WOW!" at the text, the design and the images.

I have been playing a bit of Lord of the Rings TCG over the past couple of days. Yes, I caved in and spent $50 to get about 700 cards so that I can play with the cards from the last 4 or so expansions. The power levels are amazing - none of the decks I have can even survive this power creep. The new decks are just so deadly, on my first game, I got exerted to oblivion by turn 4, and I was playing healing hobbits! Eek. I don't like the power creep there and the game has turned from borderline fun to really sucky. I guess that's one way to make sure the last few sets sell before your license runs out - by making overpowered cards so that the game will crash and burn after your license runs out. Icky.

I've also been playing quite a bit of online Ticket to Ride recently, and I think I'm not progressing at all, rather the opposite is true. I think I'm beginning to suck at the game if that is even possible. Still I have fun with the games though, eventhough I don't win as often as I used to, but that's the main issue of the game I guess. It's not the winning that counts, but having fun. So says a guy who wins 1 out of every 4 games now...

Another game I've been having fun with online is Monkeys on the Moon which has finally gone beta and public on Ludoholic. I won the first ever game against Ed, not that it was a proper game as I didn't know the rules then. I still don't know the rules, but that's what makes it fun, I'm not playing to win, I'm just playing, and if I win, well, that's a bonus. I'm currently in a 4-player game with the game designer Jim Doherty and his "partner" and Ed. They seem to be rather nice people to interact with in the in-game chat.

Ed meanwhile has been busy. There's MotM rolling off the presses and updates on Capitol with Ajax and DoA. Ludoholic now has this nifty thing where one can choose their colours, but it's currently limited to Capitol and Urland only. I guess one doesn't need that in MotM. I've been told that there's also an additional programmer on Ludo too... but I'll leave it up to Ed to announce that.

Have I mentioned that Tomi added Sealed deck to both Kult and Dark Eden? I think that's so amazing. I will probably steal the codes to add to some of my games, although I have no idea which game will benefit from a sealed deck scenario. Nevertheless it's still cool... and for the mid most images, here are the associated cool ad images.


I also received my new stash of Fast Break cards yesterday, that's 2 booster boxes worth of cards and about 10 starter boxes. I have yet to open the boxes, I'm saving that for a rainy day or something, but I'm excited about it. I think I'm the only person who collects Fast Break cards. Hopefully I can complete my collection.

Today I actually sent out the details of the 2nd annual Novelty's Origins Treasure Hunt and this year, participation will be increased by 100%. Yes, that's 2 people from last year's one. I doubt that would double the treasure since I'm sending each of them to different vendors and quite a bit of those is actually to get info rather than freebies. Still, I look forward to the write-up, as well as the goodies.

-+@ Stand like a Fool @+-

Happy April's Fool. New CCG for titles. The contents of todays blog may or may not be real.



Three more cards from Ancient of Days
Weird Lightning by Nick Szankovics
Duel by Kaku Watanabe
Zap by Matt Holmberg

I'm still in the midst of collecting images for AoD, and design for the set isn't schedule to start until the second half of the year, although the designers are probably itching to get started. I've recruited at least 2 new designers for the set and I'm sure they are rearing to go, although I've had to pour cold water on them a few times just to get things managable.

Meanwhile EF has started playtesting with the first 4 regions already on gEngine and the next few scheduled for the next few months. This is the first custom set that is being playtested by a select group to hopefully maximise the feedback and to prevent the unsaid negative atmosphere regarding cards that are extremely powerful. I hope it works out better.

This will probably be the final month that TW will be in playtesting, it will be made custom legal and public next month. Hopefully all the balance issues can be fixed in time. Lisan is still a potential big NPE and cards like Barak, Leader and Forest Well are hopefully fixed. I still wanna see cards like Brynn, Duwas and Chana being playtested some.

Meanwhile I've said that people who want to design their own custom cards can have a crack at it provided that they design their own sets. The same standards will be applied to those cards if they want it to be added to gEngine. 3 persons and an entire group (those crazy Brazillians) have taken up the challenge and I wish all of them well... although one person has almost partially given up. Oh well, it definately ain't easy.

Otherwise I haven't been up to much on gEngine... but that doesn't mean other people haven't been busy.

Logan finished Maul of America in February and it's now in open testing on the engine. I helped him cleaned up some of the images for that game and gave him some suggestions as to how to handle a few image issues. Of course, what I did was miniscule compared to all the other work that he's done. And there's also something inspired by the iPod in there as well apparently... His other games also had small updates during the interim. I would take that as a good sign

The Shadowfist league finally finished and the winner was announced. That was a long league but at the end, there weren't that many people playing. Hmm... The Mythos tournament players have also just got their prizes and the forums are abuzz about it... a few weeks back. Meanwhile the current Rage tournament is still ongoing, but things seems pretty slow there as well.

While I'm on Rage, Aiden made his debut at fixing up Rage for the engine. I have no idea how he did because I didn't bother looking at the coding, but it seems to work well so I'll take that as a good sign. It's also a good thing that he's doing it since he's one of the rules guy for the Rage customs.

The other game that was supposedly gonna get a new set was Ultimate Combat, but AFAIK, the cards have been added, but not the images. The PL is a re-instated Craig who seems more interested in other things than his own game. Well, I guess that's his perogative.

The interest in the sealed deck thing that nipa did for Doomtrooper seems to have died down some, but that doesn't mean Tomi hasn't been busy. His latest project though has been to update Titan for Ludoholic Real Time, and he's added the Collosal Arena rules as an option. Titan is the second Real Time game on the Ludoholic RT engine after GRfOS.

And GRfOS PBW seems to be progressing under Mark, after Ed decided to drop it for other things. I do wonder how Mark is getting along but it's a good sign that he's back and working on it. Hopefully it would be the first game that's available as both PBW and RT on Ludo.

Ed has been busy updating Capitol and working out the bugs of Urland in between trying to code for Duel of Ages. I like the images of that last game and he seems to have been making good progress on it, although bug fixing for VTESO and the main engine seems to also be eating into his time.

Talking about VTESO, Martin added another expansion in January and the 3rd Ed is scheduled to be added over the next few weeks. The number of games played there remains strong especially with the new cards being added. I'm sure that would be keeping Martin busy for a while...

Meanwhile in the real world, I have been getting a large number of Ticket to Ride games under my belt recently and it has been interesting. It's surprising how such a simple game can be so strategic and interesting to be played. The other game that I have been playing some is Carcassonne with just the base set to understand the rules. That is fun, but seems to take a bit more work than TtR.

-+@ Future Coin @+-

No coins, but definately the currency to the future of coding.



Continuing the series of fan made customs, this is Babylon 5. There have been 2 fan-made customs with a third somewhere in development. Anla'shok (as represented by Lenonn above) features heavily on the Minbari and their Rangers. The Vorlons (as represented by Kosh) basically makes a Vorlon deck almost playable, but the rules weren't made to add him as a Starting Ambassador so someone else has to be the starting ambassador. The Dying Races (as represented by G'Kar) have been 2 years in the making (it takes time to create perfection?) and will hopefully get playtested next year. It features the Centauri and the Narn and in development is one of my favourite card, Arranged Marriage.

So that makes it the 5th? Or is it the 6th? custom set I've shown this month. Doomtrooper, Mythos, Rage, MND, Wildstorms and Babylon 5. Yup 6. 7 if Call to Arms is included. All of those 6 are available to be played on gEngine of course. There's also the Doomtown and Shadowrun custom expansions, but I couldn't find cards for those, which is a pity. Unless someone wants to point me at the site with the Doomtown custom cards...

As expected, Tomi has started work on draughting and I have the proof below. (Side Note: this blog is written in standard my version of British English as opposed to American, thus I have decided to be consistant in my choice of spellings. Draught is the proper word for the American word "Draft", at least according to my dictionary.)



Makes me wanna play Apocalypse or even Paradise Lost draught eventhough I would have no idea what I'd be doing. heh. It also makes me wanna start coding draught into my games. Perhaps B5 draught might be in the works? Hmm...

Ed is busy fixing bugs... not only on Ludoholic where he's been hanging out lately but also for the VTES engine (and by extension, the main engine). He's been more vocal in the forums which is also another good thing. Makes me feel like I'm not alone to face the wolves in there. Hopefully he won't burn himself out this time but will enjoy the ride pushing the engine to the best it can possibly be.

I just checked out the VTES Online forums and it seems that Martin does have all the cards (or at least the scans) to those expansions that he will be adapting next year. Yay for that. Also apparently those are small expansions as well which is why he chose them. Speed is the key. 3 expansions a year was about what I did on adapting B5 as well, and while that was going on, there was a few games played every day. It only started to die when all the cards were added. I wonder why that was so...

Did I mentioned I played a Mega game of Ticket to Ride yesterday? It was my first Mega game and it is good. You can still depend on LA to NY or TransCanada from YVR to Montreal, but since there's a bonus of 15 points for the most tickets made, you really, really want to get that in addition to the longest route. Hence the wish to connect such short haul cities as Washington - Boston. In addition to the unfamiliarity of the game, it was difficult predicting where people were building towards in order to block them, so the game was basically a free for all build as much as you want where you want to. For a change, there wasn't any blocking, which is good.

Talking about boardgames, BGG gave out a free microbadge this year. I used it to get my Ludoholic microbadge so that I now have the 3 badges I was hoping to get. The other 2 are TtR and CCGW of course. Talking about boardgames, a plea to Carcassonne players out there. I need to get one of those as a Christmas (aka end-of-year) gift for someone. Does anyone have any suggestions which one to get?

-+@ Rally Squad @+-

Is that what the Scoobies are?



Nope, not the Scooby Doo ECG cards, but these are from the fan made expansion for Mythos. I like these cards, they are well made and they are funny too. Hopefully they'll get on gEngine with a release event like a tournament? Nyaah... according to Alex, all he wants to do is to get on and play and not much else.

Not much going on the engine at the moment - the Rage and Shadowfist tournaments are still running but both are going up to the end of the month. I'm not involved in either though so I have no idea how things are going, but there's quite a bit of traffic on the Rage forums and I'm sure the Fist mailing list is probably busy as well. Only goes to show that someone organising a tournament or two can spice things up.

I went to the Ludoholic forums today and was surprised to find that Capitol has gone Now Playing. Wow. I think Ed is really really really excited about it. He's taken 6 years of experience (and abuse?) working on the engine and translated that into a really great job on Ludoholic. There's a steady stream of gamers there and I think it's about time I said adieu to the site for a while (at least until he starts adapting something interesting like YNDT or something). I added an announcement to the main page of CCGW stating that Capitol has gone Now Playing, but I wonder if that will excite anyone there.

What has been exciting is that Barathaum is getting all its info up and running on the wiki even before the game starts adaptation. Wow. Between the creator and myself, we have gotten the page up and the rules up, and since that is open source, hopefully people will drop in to correct spelling mistakes and grammar and what not. It's the first game that I'm using the wiki as my source material as well... well, in as far as the rules and general infomation is concerned. That reminds me, I need to ensure that the board is mentioned in the rules somewhere as well. The example of play that I read is not there too... hmm...

I finally moved over the Paradwyn and Underneath cards to the public viewing forum for player comments - forgot to do that earlier in the month. Worked a bit on the Universal cards, but wasn't too keen on them for the time being so rather than script subpar cards, I decided to leave them for another day. I helped Mr. Burke out on his cards as well. The solutions aren't perfect and playtesting is definately needed for the new versions of the two TW cards. That's getting there... slowly.

I created a rather nasty Evil Men archery deck today with a pure Hobbit flipside. It is doing rather well against the poor casual player as I'm taking out their fellowship with my archers while my hobbits cancel the skirmishes, discards the minions and just run and run and run. I didn't think it was such a good deck, but I haven't faced top level decks - Smeagollum and Castamir for example - yet. At least I'm enjoying the games. Can't say the same for my opponents though... poor them.

I played my first Mega game of Ticket to Ride today... online that is. I can't start the 1910 games because I don't have the software for it, but some other player did and it took me ages getting on. It was new, exciting and difficult as people were blocking each other trying to get to where they though they needed to go. I didn't win the game, but it was fun building from Washington to Atlanta, for example, to claim the 4 points.

-+@ Deity Status @+-

Who me?



Art credits:
Night Awebaw and Firdhen by Strom/Whyrl
Leaping Osatch by Zastrow

I templated some more images a few days ago and three are shown above. These are for Ancient of Days... but it's still early. I've already removed a Cald template for a later expansion and might have to do the same to a Naroom one. The problem is that with just 6 cards for the first 5 regions, things are pretty much cramped there. Add in a relic cross-region theme for AoD and that's effectively only 5 cards per region. Why a relic theme? Well, we've already have crushing spells and spirit spells and tainted spells so a spell theme has already been done. I could do a creature theme thing, but that's gonna be tricky art-wise. Relics though are easy and I have the perfect image for this theme. I just have to template them one of these days.

Double Jeopardy is already getting it's share of reviews and it's nice to know that the comments that are directed my way are mature and thought-provoking instead of destructive and demeaning. The Wanderers have been hightlighted as a potential issue this early in playtesting, eventhough I wonder why nobody pointed it out during the comments stage. Oh well, I guess people just wanna have broken cards added to the engine or something. I'll have to change that soon I guess.

I've been itching to start working on something that's a bit under wraps at the moment, although I've been bursting to say it here. I can't. It's got nothing to do with licensing though, but it is a game that I want to adapt to the engine, hopefully before the year is out. I need to contact the creator first though to clarify a few things. It's probably gonna be no-fries (aka "no frills") initially, and I have no idea if it'll get automation at this stage. It's all up in the air as the saying goes.

Otherwise, things are quiet. The Mythos tournament has finally ended with Jer(e)(my) (I like spelling it that way) being declared the winner. The other two tournaments will run until the end of the month. Aidan tried to start a game on the forums, but that seems to die horribly and he's giving people an extra week to sign up. I do hope more people sign up.

I haven't put in much time on Ticket to Ride. My ISP is having problems which is causing massive lag on TtR. That's a pity. It is a good distraction when I have 10 minutes spare and nothing to do. Yes, 10 mintues can usually finish a game. That's the huge plus when compared with PBW site (like ludoholic). It has its downside though. Sometimes I have to wait to get a 4-player game, but that's not very often.

I've been playing more LotR instead. It's just for fun, or card-flopping at best. I have a middle of the road deck that will probably beat up newbies bad, and get beaten up by really good decks bad, but I don't mind getting beaten. It's more for the fun of playing the cards and making funny comments like "There should have been an Adam Sandler in Lord of the Rings to pants Sean Austin" and stuff like that.

I've been downloading images to a new computer and I just realised that bowling has a missing image, so it back to the old computer to upload the image before coming back here to work on everything else. Things are difficult when one is migrating over to a new machine I guess... but there's always some good in the tedious process, like finding out that bowling is missing an image for example, which I doubt will be reported at all.

I finally dug up the card I got from the arcade game, and it's called Dino Duel. Apparently it's Indonesian, or at least the website is in English and the Indonesian version of Malay (think American version of English). I'm sure Martin will look through the site and tell me the gameplay depends too much on luck or something (or not now that I've said it). He'll probably be true. It has a good concept and it dispenses cards, but the gameplay is bad, at least in my book. I suppose someone will be coming out with a better machine at some point in the future. You probably won't hear about it here.

-+@ 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

-+@ Superior Tactics @+-

won me a game today, more on that later...



That's 2 of the promos that Logan got for me and one that I wish I asked him to get. But I didn't so Oh Well. From left to right - Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica CCG, a mecha from Robotech TCG, and We Must Find Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG.

Just two quick things to write here.

1. I played a game of MND with Cole. He used a burrow deck and all I had was a pure (and by pure I mean 100% of one region, no universal cards even!) Bograth deck. He started off well with a 'fuf and Trygar and I was drawing like crazy with Baa. He dropped an Ormagon and I was devastated, so I just let Baa bite the dust. Wiep flipped next and although I wanted to do a flip-kill, I can't, thanks to his Tunnel Hyren burrowing his Ormagon. I had to settle for waiting a turn before Darkness struck and Trygar went away, but not before leaving a Freep.

I played out a cautious line of creatures, but when he revealed his magi, it was Trug, which, thanks to Freep had enough energy for a Cataclysm. Bye, Bye Wiep. Grahnna flipped next and played a Black Stuff from the discard pile after I had use Transform to grab that Darkness. The response was Strag with another 'fuf. Darkness + Spirit Drain = dead Strag.

That was rather unexpected though as I had only that one card which could take out the burrow creatures. I told Cole that had he been more aggressive he would have got me. Also, if he didn't boast about his Ormagons and Trug, I would have done things differently. Instead I converted my creatures to cards most of the time to be able to survive getting all my cards in played being wiped out. I never got to Ninibom - more than meets the eye! - nor did I get to play that Mist Hyren that I never got a chance to draw.

I enjoyed that game, and there were 3 observers for most part. I think near the end, especially after 2 successful comebacks after getting all my cards in play cleared away, the observers were rooting for me as the underdog. That's the great thing about MND - it's not just great cards that wins a game, it has to do with deckbuilding and skill in playing. Oh and of course, psyching up the opponent with annoying cards always help!

2. I've been playing a lot more Ticket to Ride today, mostly out of boredom, but I have to say, I'm enjoying the "kiddie" version more than the more complicated European map. There's simplicity in the rules, yet there is a whole lot of complexity with the game and that's what I've been enjoying.

There's two different type of players - grandees and annoyers as I call them. Grandees tend to build the longest lines with the longest tracks raking up a huge score in the process by getting the right cards. Annoyers though, are the opposite. They will choose 2 short routes and complete them fast, then play interference with everyone else to prevent them from reaching their goal. I don't have the patience to be a grandee, and running interference is hard because I really, really like those long intercontinental stretches.

My strategy though has been to be a speed-hog (i.e. a cross between a speed-demon and a ground-hog) - take up the most regularly used up line on the west coast and finish as quick as possible to deny everyone else from completing theirs. That usually wins me the game.

---

And in other news - I had a go at Mark for not blogging as frequent as he said he would about his week of boardgames. Consequently he's been getting more regular - there's even a picture in the last installment. Well, thanks to him I'm now playing on TtR...

I hope Martin has finally added those 350 cards to his test version of VteSO. Just over a week left before he'll have to release it. I gave him a formula in Excel to help him speed out the process instead of doing it manually, but I have not yet had a chance to talk with him to see if it works.

Ed's getting headaches these days, the server although seems rather stable is not at 100% yet. He's trying to straighten out the last kinks and he's also pondering the future of CCG Workshop. I hope there's a future.

Logan still hasn't wrote up his Origins report although he said he would a while back. I guess he's just busy. He's been dribbling out info now and again about what went on and stuff, but I can't wait to read about it in full. I hope this doesn't mean he's gonna shelf MoA until next year's Origins!

Oh and I hung out on the engine today in the usual MND timeslot and chatted with a few other people regarding the game. I seem to have demigod status or something. Sheesh! Also got my CCG Workshop email account fixed so that I can send out official emails and stuff. My first email was as Tech support to some guy in Korea.

-+@ Chain Reaction @+-

Why? Because I have just started the Chain Reaction...



Art Credits
Jore Cub by Essence
Bwisp by Vega/Holmberg/Nov, backgrounds by Strom/Whyrl
Athik Shell by Nov

Three more cards from EF... I think I only have 2 more that I haven't shown on my blog yet. After that I'll have to move on to Cure, then AoD/AE. I finally found the owner of the image I wanted to use for the last EF card, and am now waiting for permission. Hopefully, I'll be able to use it because it's an awesome image by Whyrl.

I finally added the last 2 regions for TW onto the engine. There were a number of people who went "Finally!" when I made the announcement in the chatroom. The chatroom has also been rather busy as of late with a handful of people there at all times, or so it seems. Must be because it now no longer costs to play... but probably also because people are curiously testing out TW.

Adding those last 2 regions has just set a whole series of events into motion, but that's currently hush hush sorta.

I have also updated the Summer Tourney's prizes to include adding cards to gEngine for the monthly winners and a whole new custom relic for the winner with art by myself. I wonder how many people will bite the bait. The tournament went dead as soon as the game became free to play. I've advertised it on the MND @ CCGW blog and on the FPNews so we shall have to see what's happening there.

Meanwhile Mitch has finally finalised the last DJ card... well, the next to last anyways, as the last one will be finalised in the tournament that will be held during playtesting. The card text have been up for review for a while now, but things are also going slow there. Well, I guess we will have the time for that soon enough, but I think people are even more excited about the DJ magi than the remaining TW cards.

Oh and I made a few more ads specifically for the FPN... mid post image coming up. The one on the left is the Naroom image for TW, the one on the right is the 2nd DJ ad that I made. The other one can be seen at the top of the FPN.


And I think that's enough MND for this blog.

I read Mark's blog about Ticket to Ride and I know Ed have been raving about it as well, so I took the opportunity to see what they were talking about. I managed to get a few games in today. On the first pass though, I went blegh, this is boring. 3 or 4 games later, I began to see the strategy involved in playing the game and my opinion of the game rose a little. This would be a good 1 hour game to play with little kids...

Mark has barely posted except that one blog about the evening of Day 1. I'm awaiting the rest of his blogs. I wonder what else they are playing. It seems to be only boardgames. I wonder if he plays A Game of Life?

Logan has just got back from Origins and has a whole lotta stuff to tell. I'm awaiting for his "report" about what he played and stuff. I think that's going to be interesting at the very least. It seems he played in a lot of demos and tournaments which sounds interesting. Apparently he said he met Kev there at Origins!

I asked Martin about those symbol things on VteSO which apparently are the clans or factions or something like that. There are about 30 of them apparently. I wonder if Ed is going to show all 30 on the website. Heh. Oh and the new expansion that will be going in in less that 2 weeks? That has 350 cards. Ouch!

I think I'm finally getting into my CCGW groove and I wonder what should I be tackling next... AvP and B5 both needs an update of sort, but with the loss of the forums, I have no idea what I promised to do on them now... YNDT and Urland also need a fresh look at a few things, but again, I have to dredge those up from memory... blegh!