In the Wake of the Red Wedding

It feels like it doesn't it?

So many good people, some friends to varying degrees, or people I've shared drinks with or laughed together with at Nora's, or bumped into in the hallways, or who have helped me personally or my Alliance, or gotten me access to a server at the last minute, or made me laugh on Twitter, or whose photos I enjoy on Instagram, or who I helped once with a Team Logo, or who answered that late night DM, or actually responded to an email... frankly I don't know what the real definition of friend is anymore and I don't give a rats ass. These were friends.

99% of percent of them I will miss. And I wish them the very best in what life holds for them. You'll land on your feet somewhere and soon this horror will be a distant memory. That I know. I'll say this again for the record, if any of you needs anything from me let me know. I write a damn good letter of recommendation and I can pop a very nice testimonial over on LinkedIn to make your page look a tiny bit better. If we are not already connected on LinkedIn you can find me easily, I'm the Bryan Ward with the huge picture of Iceland in the header and the Eve Lanyard around my neck in Harpa profile pic. 'Cause y'know, I'm proud to be an Eve player.

Some of you may have noticed that I only said 99%. My readers are very smart cookies.

A story for another day perhaps.

Keep the courage.

After Hours with Rixx Javix

My podcast After Hours with Rixx Javix is now available on iTunes and is hosted over on AudioBoom!  You can subscribe to it on iTunes and get notified when new episodes come out. Which hopefully will be back to a more regular schedule this season.

I updated the graphics to include zero Eve IP since I am forbidden to even think about using it now and in the future. I'm not going to talk about the reasons why right now because frankly I am extremely angry. And I shouldn't write things when I'm angry. For now I'm just going back thru things and removing or altering things where I can. Goodness knows I don't want to end up in Federal Court for being an awesome content-creator, pillar of the community, charitable supporter, and the creator of literally thousands of images, videos, logos, and a....

See? I shouldn't write when I'm angry.

Card Game Updates

More work on the back design today

That's just a box mock-up and isn't the final design or anything. I spent more time today on the back design and I'm pretty darn happy with it. I wanted to get the look and feel down before starting on the fronts. That's where all the work is going to be. I have the cards mocked-up with marker on paper my wife cut out for me, but they still need a bit more play-testing before they'll be considered final.

Whenever there is an update I'm going to post about it. So you can follow along with the project as I work on it. The goal is to have everything done and off to the printers in time for Fanfest, so fingers crossed that we make it.

Long way to go yet.

Eve Conquest: The Card Game

Concept only, not final

As I mentioned in the previous post, I am working on three card games based on Eve Online. The first one is called Eve Conquest and it is a game played entirely with cards in which players try to collect the most valuable regions in New Eden. The player with the most valuable regions at the end of the game wins. Along the way Spais, Invasions, and other factors will come into play to keep you from that goal. It is intended to be very much an Eve Card Game, but it is also intended to be easy to learn, easy to play, and take about 15-20 minutes for 4 players to complete (Up to 6 players can play). A casual, fun, and entertaining card game between friends. That has been the design goal from the beginning.

The second game I'm working on is the Alliance Tournament Game which is card based, but also includes other elements. Dice, combat cards, an arena playmate, FC cards, and other elements both included with the core game and also available as expansions. This game is much more complicated and involved. But essentially it is based around the AT rules and each player builds their fleet and engages in combat until there is only one person left standing. It is intended for 2-4 players only.

The third one is based around Faction Warfare and involves resource gathering, moon mining, and iHub defenses. Each player plays a Faction and conquers and defends their space from the other players. This one is less developed right now, but the general outline is finished and I think it is going to be awesome. Imagine Risk but with Faction Warfare and you'll get a close idea. I hope to include 3d printed objects in this game to use on the board.

These are the three games I'd like to see developed and available to players. Honestly I have no idea how to proceed, so I'm just going to do it the only way I know how - by being as transparent with the community as possible.

My plan is to print 50-75 decks of Eve Conquest using my own money to bring to Fanfest in April. Way back in 2015 this was the advice that some people at CCP gave me with the first generation of games that I proposed to them, so I'm going to take it. My hope is that people will enjoy the game and spread the word. And that CCP will appreciate the quality and effort enough to allow me to pursue further development.

If so, then great. If not, then I will have created an Eve Card Game and 50-75 people will have decks they can play or collect, and I can move on to other things.

Either way, I believe it is worth trying. So I'm going to try.

I hope this is something that players will be interested in.

Onward and upward.

New Card Game

So this weekend I traveled down to Maryland to visit with a bunch of Alliance friends to play board games, card games and hold two-week old babies in my gargantuan mitts. (Which was awesome!) I also brought along the Test Deck (the backs of which are pictured above) of my new Eve Card Game to play-test.

As some of you may remember way back in 2014-15 I started work on an Eve Card Game originally called "Blood of the Empires" which was essentially an Alliance Tournament combat game. That game is still in development and more on that later. In the years since then I've developed two other Eve themed games, the one above is what I'd call the easiest of the three. It is entirely card based (which the others are not) and is designed to take about 15-20 minutes to play. Ideally you want 4 players, but up to 6 can play at a time.

To place all of this in the proper timeline, if CCP had not decided to support the Fountain War Book Kickstarter instead, we'd all have a kickass Alliance Tournament based Eve combat card game right now.

So given all that has happened this past year, I'm going to be making the "easier" game, which I am calling Eve Conquest, myself. I'm play-testing it now and soon will start the final design of the deck. I plan on having 50-75 decks printed and will be taking them with me to Fanfest. My primary goal is to hand those out to friends and supporters at Fanfest, to play the game with anyone that would like to try it, and explain my plans for the AT game, hopefully generating enough interest to get CCP to support the development and wider distribution of both, or all three, card games.

This is where you come in. My readers, fans, friends, and fellow Eve players. I never give up. I'm annoying that way. But I can't do this alone. I'm going to need your support and encouragement to succeed. As well as you letting CCP know that this is something you'd like to see happen.

For my part I'll keep working to create things that I believe in. I'll be sharing the progress with you along the way here in these pages. If the only thing that happens is that 50-75 packs of this thing exist in the world, then that will at least be something. I don't need anyone to make that happen. But, if something more comes from it, then so much the better for all of us.

I believe it is worth trying. I may be crazy. I'm willing to admit that is a possibility.

Let's be crazy together then.

More to come.

After Hours with Jim Halescott

After Hours with Rixx Javix Season 2 Episode 2 with Jim Halescott is now available!

Jim is the recently former CEO of the Thieves Guild and we talk about his activities before and how he got started in the life of stealing other player's hard-earned assets, and why he recently decided to step away from playing Eve.  Join us for another interesting conversation.

You can also listen and subscribe to After Hours on iTunes now. That's right, ALL New episodes are available to stream on iTunes Podcasts, just search for "After Hours with Rixx Javix" and boom! I'll be adding last season's Episodes as well.

I hope you enjoy and will join me next time.

So, What's Next?

To say I had a rough year last year would be a gross understatement. This post isn't about that horrid year, but it does bear mention since it has impacted this year significantly. I'd be a fool if I tried to pretend otherwise. And I'm not a fool. (Which may come as a surprise to some of you.) This year as been much, much better. And busier. And full of taking care of things that had pilled up behind us over the past few years. And not just financially, but also in every other way you can imagine.

This magazine has suffered as a result. And no I'm not going to be announcing that Eveoganda is closing, or that I'm quitting Eve, or anything else as silly as that. Quite the opposite. In fact I plan on continuing to write here in these pages. I plan on continuing my plan to be the last person playing Eve when it eventually does shut down some day in the far flung future, and I plan on continuing to be a major pain the ass. Why stop now?

My focus has shifted however and I'll be the first to admit that. When I started writing Eveoganda back in January 2010 I didn't have my own Alliance and my own Corporation. I didn't have my own Podcast (which is now available on iTunes btw!!), or a Twitter account, or a hundred community projects to get done, or commissions, or a RedBubble Store, or... well you get the idea. So yeah, these pages have suffered a bit as a result.

So it has taken me some time to wrap my head around it and try and figure out where in the grand scheme of things writing about Eve falls. I've made some decisions, again this is only in my own head, so you may not care one way or the other - but I'm going to tell you anyway. I've decided to return to my roots in these pages. And return to the "journal" focus that Eveoganda started with. Telling stories about my adventures inside of Eve primarily, about my fights, my fits, and those people I fly with in Stay Frosty and A Band Apart.

The treatment I've received this year from certain people at the company that makes this game I love has soured me on all things related to the bigger meta - and those things are best left to the podcast anyway. When they come up. My long-term meta aspirations continue in secret, but those are essentially in-game machinations. As for the out of game strategy, those continue but without CCP being a part of them. If they want to treat me like a leper then so be it. A leper I shall be. Sadly for them I'm in a much better position to play that part now, than I was only a year ago.

So Eveoganda will be returning to its roots. And I'll start writing more about my in-game adventures again. This great community of ours continues to evolve and I have to evolve with it. The environment is much different than when I started blogging. Back then, blogs like this one were the kings of the community. Now that role has spread out to a wide variety of options. Streamers, podcasters, stream/podcasters (which is really what most of them are), and social media stars on YouTube and other places.

I'm happy in my multi-dollar media empire over here in the corner. Seldom mentioned, largely ignored by the current faves of the Icelandic prom queens, but content in my role within the community. I had to laugh over the Eve Vegas weekend watching the Twitch stream at just how much of my work finds its way into Eve. There wasn't a moment of the stream that something I did wasn't on air. Pretty funny.

So, once again, here we go into the future. I hope you will join me. It has been a blast these last nine years and I think the next nine should be even better.

Keep the courage.



PS: Here in the next few weeks Eveoganda will be getting a new face-lift into a more modern and responsive design. Just as soon as I find time to design one. Hang in there.