Guardians Page Reborn!

C. J. Burke's Guardians Page has found a new, maybe temporary, maybe not, home at:

http://www.mrburkemath.net/guardians/

No ".html" needed. Just go to that directory as you did in the old days.

Right now, the pages were uploaded as they were. I haven't updated them for about seven years now. I'll get to that.

Please ignore all references to the io.com domain -- and that includes the e-mail address!

Be sure to come back here with Suggestions and Comments.

Enjoy.

It's Gone, But Not Forgotten ...

July 1 has come and gone, and with it, all my old pages.

However, I spent the last two days of June using an old ftp program and copied all (or almost all) of the files I had there, trying to keep the directory structures in tact. (For one thing, I had a million files named INDEX.HTML and DATA.

My next little side project will be to go through those pages, remove the references to the old domain, and upload them somewhere. Possibly mrburkemath.net, owned by yours truly, Mr. Burke, who teaches math.

Yes, I'm known by many names.

Why a math site? For one thing, I already own the site for my job. Second, I don't want to pay for another site to hold, essentially, ten megabytes of information. And, finally, it is conceivable that someone, some day, could come along and say, "Hey, you can't have tannikermsith.net! That's our intellectual property!"

And, no, I wouldn't argue with someone about that. I may have taken on that identity because it's a cool name, but I wouldn't challenge the creator for not protecting it.

C.J. Burke's Guardians Page is Going Away

My original page, which I haven't updated in many, many years, will finally be coming down. Not because I've lost interest in the game -- although I can't find an opponent to play against locally.

No, the fact is that the domain name io.com has been sold (again), and everyone is being evicted. A quick summary can be found here.

I've only kept that account for Guardians web page and some other files I had there. Those URLs are archived in more places than I could imagine, and they still get hits. I know, because even though I only check that email every couple months (a lot of spam gets through the filter, so it's bothersome), I still get email about the old stuff. (Guardians and Car Wars, mostly.)

If the name has to change, and I'm losing something I've had for most of two decades, then there's no reason to keep the account at all. I can move the pages elsewhere. It's just a matter of figuring out where.

Opening Day!

In honor of Opening Day for America's pasttime, the Major League Baseball season, here's a link to a baseball-related math comic from last May.

Edit: I just saw this on the page, and I honestly don't remember posting it, and I have to wonder if I meant to put it on my comics page. Well, I hope whoever saw this enjoyed it.

Questions, Comments, Suggestions Thread

Yes, I haven't put a lot of content lately. Sorry about that.

In the meantime, if you've been waiting for me to post something so that you could comment, use this thread as a placeholder.

If you have any questions about the game or my material, post it here.
If you have a comment about my material or the blog itself, post it here.
If you have a suggestion about what you'd like to see posted in the future, post it here.

Some of these posts might turn into future threads.

And, yes, I have to write another draft of the backstory for the Delta expansion. Working on it, but I do have a day job that interferes with home life.

Can't make a comment? Send me an email.

I see in my email that someone attempted to comment three times on this blog over the weekend. It wasn't spam. It was a regular on-topic response. But it didn't show up any of the three times.

I don't know why.

I will check the settings and such, but I believe I have it set so that anyone can post a message.

New Card: River Delta

River Delta: Terrain, Up 6
Any non-Ship Standard Bearer that starts a turn on this Terrain may move into (but not through) an adjacent Seven Seas terrain.

Is it too limited? I wanted the start of turn rule so it wasn't abused.
And then I realized that even though I meant this for defense against a Seven Seas deck, it could be used as offense because Ships are Standard Bearers, so the player is limited to one at a time. That meant that this had to be for Standard Bearers as well.

And, of course, it's a River Delta, which fits in with the expansion symbol and serves as a bridge between the two homebrew sets.

Edit: Changed the word "Shield" to "Terrain", as it was meant to be.

The Other Useless Card

Okay, so I wasn't hallucinating and there was another "useless" card. Except that it isn't useless. Maybe. It depends on which version you're looking at.

In the Seven Seas expansion, there is a card called Ice Floe, but the text doesn't match the image, which is why I couldn't find it earlier today.

The text says:

Ice Floe: UCN: UCN: 18 Any Ship loose one Power Stone to enter this terrain. (Artwork: Pennington, Text: Philbarfly, Design: Cath)

But here is the image: More confusing is that the title of the window, and in the URL itself, says Artic Sea, which is not listed on the page. A mix-up, perhaps?

So losing a Power Stone to enter terrain isn't bad. On the other hand, reducing Rivers and Lakes bonuses to zero is just silly. They get reduced to zero when a Shield is on any Terrain other than Rivers and Lakes.

I suppose it could be useful, and I'd have to check every card, if there were some other card that allowed R&L bonuses to be applied to combat, but didn't change the terrain (e.g., the Overlord card would change the terrain to R&L).

Yes, I feel better. Thank you to jackalwere for pointing this out on the earlier thread today.

Useless Homebrew Cards

Sometimes a card seems really good and then you take another look at it. And you have that "Wait a second..." moment. It doesn't do anything. Or another card does it better. Or it doesn't add anything new to the game. Sure it might be a clever pun, but that doesn't mean anything.

That happened to me when I was trying to come up with a new card for the untitled .sig card expansion set, which jackalwere used a delta symbol for the set icon. (No problem there, and I wouldn't ask him to change 100+ cards.)

And then I realized that what I wanted the card to do didn't really mean anything. And then I realized that this hasn't stopped anyone (including me) before.

Two cards come to mind:

First, the Leftovers card, pictured here:
It's a Spell that you play when something happens to get a Power Stone. Except that Make Juice already does that without any requirements.

Second -- okay -- there isn't a second. I just went looking for it, and I couldn't find it. I thought it was in philbarfly's Seven Seas expansion, but it isn't. Basically, I remember recently seeing a Terrain card that canceled Rivers and Lakes bonuses. Maybe it was a Spell card, which wouldn't be bad. Maybe I misread it. I hope so.

Anyway, my new "sig" card, even if isn't technically a "sig" will be around soon enough, as soon as I figure out what it should do. It's a new Terrain card, and it's meant to fit the theme of the expansion. And yes, there is a theme to the expansion. I think.