Ten Random Cards

Ten Random Cards

I was playing with the Random Card Generator at http://www.io.com/~cjburke/guardians/
And these are what popped up when I reloaded the page:

1. Paper Elemental:

Elemental, Vitality 12, OCB 3, Small, Gold, Element, CMP 0, red bar. -6 to Vitality against fire-based creatures.

2. Drought:

Up Number 25, Event For the rest of this turn, all Creatures with Dry Heaps bonuses are +3 Vitality, all Creatures with Rivers and Lakes bonuses are -3 Vitality (never reduced below zero).

3. Mr. Suitcase:

External, Vitality 12, OCB 0, Medium, Gold, Wanderer, CMP 0, red bar. When played as a primary attacker, you may search your draw deck for any one creature, Spell, Magic Item or Bribery card that can be played during this match-up. That card *must* be played during this match-up.

4. Great Forest Fire:

Up 11, Event(*) For the rest of this turn, all fire-based attacks are double their base Vitality against creatures with Woods bonuses. (*) - see mailing list archives for what an Event is.

5. FAQ U. -- (pictured a school of higher learning) Accesory:

Up 21 Anytime a rules argument cannot be settled through careful consultation with the rulebook, the FAQ or the ''Guide to the MidRealms'', spend a stone and win automatically. First stone spent wins.

6. St. Elmo's Fire:

Spell, 11 When played on your Pirate currently in a match-up, both the Pirate and its opponent are destroyed. (or maybe the name ''St. Elmo's Fire'' should go with something more ethereal like -- ''Play as a command card. All Pirates get double their Off-color Bonus against elementals until the end of the turn.'')

7. Eagles:

Mortal, Vitality 6/8, OCB 2, Large, Flying, Animal, CMP 0, red bar. +4 in Mountains, +3 when defending strongholds (these are cumulative and in addition to other stronghold bonuses).

8. Itsy Bitsy Spider:

Mortal, Vitality 3/1, OCB 0, Small, Bug, CMP 0, red bar. -3 Vitality in Rivers and Lakes, unless its primary matchup opponent has a fire-based attack.

9. Dwarven Hammer Thrower:

Mortal, Vitality 4/6, OCB 1, Small, Beer, Dwarf, CMP 0, red bar. 4-point ranged attack. Immune to Giants.

10. Deasil Engine:

Hand Magic Item, Up 6 Play at the end of any turn. If your opponent gained more than two stones in this turn from any source or sources, you get half of them (rounded down).

I don't know whether to be annoyed or elated that I didn't get too many that haven't already been posted as part of The Seven Seas or the untitled .sigcard expansions.

FYI: that last card isn't misspelled. It's pretty much stolen from Illuminati: New World Order.

What Do I Call My .Sig Card Set?

As I previously mentioned, the Guardians CCG blog has 100 card designs based on many of the .sig cards. One of the things missing from the collection is a name.

I never named them because they were just homebrew cards that I was tossing off at the end of messages and I hadn't given it much thought? So what to name the new set?

Well, there are some Angels, which I always thought got a raw deal in the original game. This might be because Demons and Devils are considered cooler or because they had folks like Brom doing the artwork. (Brom did one Angel card: the Angel of Death. Kind of figures, doesn't it?)

On the other extreme, the stronghold is the First Circle of Hell, which gives more support to those same Demons and Devils.
This leads me to think that the name should have something to do with Inferno or Infernal. Moreover, Jackalwere used a delta as the symbol for the set. Delta is the letter "D", which is the first letter of Dante. Eerie co-incidence??

The set also introduces Elves, Dwarves and Gargoyles into Guardians, with a handful of cards each. These have little to do with the eternal struggle of Good v. Evil. On the other hand, not every card in Necropolis Park was a dinosaur nor a dead Egyptian.

So what to call it? Inferno? Dante's Peak? The Divine Expansion: so far North, it's Heavenly.

Of course, since they are .sig cards and the stronghold is Hell, we could call it ...

Nah, let's not go there.

Once Upon a Time, There was a Card Game named Guardians...

Back in the mid-90s, there was a glut of collectible card games, also called trading card games. Many were quickly-produced, jump-on-the-bandwagon, make-a-quick-buck games, which tried to cash in on the success of Magic: the Gathering.

One game that was better than all that was FPG's Guardians. It was fun to plan, had great artwork and simple rules. And it didn't take itself too seriously. Sadly, I discovered this game right about the time the company decided to discontinue it.

That didn't bother me much, because there was a fan base on usenet and a handful of webpages. In fact, at one point, I had risen in the ranks of geekdom to have been the go-to guy for information if you couldn't find a representative from FPG. (Paging Dave Gentzler! Paging Dave Gentzler!) Folks said that if you stopped by my webpage, you might learn a thing or two. (I'd point you to the webpage, but I really need to take it down as I haven't used that account in many, many years even though I'm still paying for it. But I digress...)

When I posted on usenet, and later on a mailing list, I used to add what I called ".sig cards", homebrew card ideas which might've been serious or silly or possibly related to whatever I was posting. (As an aside, the idea to try to have different funny signatures came from following a Master, the late John M. Ford. If only I could be that good!)

I have recently discovered (as in a half-hour ago) that there is a Guardians blog (which I knew about) which has been taking my ideas and creating cards out of them using artwork from some of the original contributors of the game. He specifically took my cards and wanted to make a set out of them. In fact, he started this past May and just finished, and I discovered it accidentally while looking for something else.

Okay, now this doesn't have much to do with math, other than stuff about Probability and Statistics and Game Theory and the fact that Magic was created by a mathematician, but it's something I'm proud of, and I would like to share it with as many people as I can.

And it's frikkin' cool.

My .sig cards, as imagined by Jackalware.