004 Spooked Savage

    Like I said in the last post, I am very motivated now that I have some actual cards in my hands.  I just made the next card for the prototype with another free image that I found online.  This monster's name is Spooked Savage, he looks as scared as a monster can get.  Thanks for checking in.

-SRock

First Card Printing

     Today I had my first set of cards printed.  I had Rock Johnson, Bones Batterman and Lucifer Shroud printed along with the backs.  The prints are not two sided, the cards are actually two piece of 80 lb. glossy card stock.  I had them done at OfficeMax because they were the cheapest quote that I found.  They charged $0.71 per sheet and I had 2 sheets of each card done and 6 sheets of the card backs, so 12 in all for $9.21.  This came to about $1.54 per sheet of cards, front and back.  With 9 cards per sheet, each card came to $0.17 a piece.  Better than the $0.20-$0.25 I had previously found at different print shops.  On top of being cheaper than some of the other shops I tried out, OfficeMax was also a cleaner, crisper print.  I am very excited with their work.  The first sheet I cut with a cheap paper cutter and the card edges were slightly frayed and not smooth.  So, back to OfficeMax I went to exchange the first paper cutter for a bigger guillotine style cutter.  This worked out perfectly, such a clean smooth cut.  The cleaner cut also reduced the width of the card in half.  The cards are a little thicker than a magic card, 10 Sports Wars Cards are the same width of 10 Magic: The Gathering Cards.  Having a stack of  45 Sports Wars Cards actually made, printed and in my hands is getting me ever more excited to get this project moving forward.  I can't wait to get more monster images to make more cards.  This is getting very fun and I feel like all the work I have been putting in is finally turning into something.  YAY!!!!  Thanks for reading.  Go donate and receive a few of our freshly printed cards.  For the next 2 days get 20% off if you like our facebook page.

-SRock

003 Lucifer Shroud

    I have this week off from work and have been spending the majority of these day off working on Spors Wars.  Yesterday, I made our third card for our prototype game.  Lucifer Shroud is the monster name.  I found some free images online and played with them a little to make them work for our cards.  Hope you guys like this one.  Lucifer Shroud card is available in our facebook store front.  Thanks for reading.

-SRock

Facebook Store Front

   Last night I was having a hard time falling asleep so I jumped on the computer and played around with adding a store front to our facebook page.  On our facebook store you are now able to buy our first two cards for $1.50 each.  I know this is kinda high but we are more looking at it as a donation to help us get our prototype made, so lets go make some donations.  I have also put up 150 spots for our BETA Testing at $20.00 a piece.  For $20.00 you get to take part in our BETA Test, you receive our prototype starter deck, a 5-card booster pack, a copy of our first card, Rock Johnson and much, much more.

   I have also given everyone who likes our Facebook Page from now until the 1st of January, 20% all cards from our store.  So instead of $1.50 it will only be $1.20.  Please help us get our prototype made so we can move on to the BETA stage of our development.  As always, thanks for reading.  More coming soon.

-SRock

Card 001 and 002

  I was looking at the first two cards that I have made and noticed a few little things that I did not like.  The text inside the player info box was unreadable even after printing so obviously it needed to be changed.  I also thought that the background color was a little too dark so I made so minor changes.  Here are the final products that I have after todays work.  I hope you like.

SPORTS WARS CARDS

Cards Numbers:

001 

and 

002

   Thanks for checking in on us.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

- SRock

BETA Tester ADS

   When I signed up for hosting with godaddy I recieved $50 of free facebook ads and $100 of free Google Adwords ads.  Today I set up ads running through the 5th of Jan. 2012 for BETA tester for our prototype.  Hopefully, these ads will generate some extra pages views to our pages, gain us some followers and maybe some BETA testers.  Funds from the BETA testers will be going to creating our prototype.  I already have our next 3 cards being professionally made and the next $100 will get us our next 3 cards after that.  I will also be selling 3 packs of cards to gain more funds for our artists.  Help us out and donate on our indiegogo page.  The link is below.

IndieGoGo Page

Thanks for keeping up on our project.

-SRock

BETA Testers

   Ever wanted to be a BETA Tester for a new game. Nows your chance, Sports Wars Cards is now starting to look for BETA Testers.  We will be looking for 150 people to test the first version of our game.  To be one of the 150 people selected to be part of this event, just go to our indiegogo page and donate $20 to our fund.  All donators of $20 or more will be one of our BETA testers.  These tester will also receive our first edition starter deck, a 5 pack of cards and a limited edition Rock Johnson card(our first card ever made!!!).  Below is a link to the page for all you wannabe testers:

http://www.indiegogo.com/sports-wars-cards

-SRock

Next 3 Cards

    Hello, everyone.  It has been a while since I last blogged and I am sorry about that.  I have just been trying to learn XHTML and CSS so that I can make my own website and not have to pay someone to make it for me(at least while we are still getting ourselves off the ground).  But the real reason that I am writing is because I have found an artist to make make the next 3 monsters for our cards.  I am hoping that the process doesn't take too long and that I will be able to have the next 3 cards up for viewing within a week to 10 days.  Keep your fingers crossed.  This would give us our first 5 cards for our prototype football game.  I am planning on using these five cards to help get donations.  I will be getting these cards printed and ready for shipping for donators.  I am hoping to raise enough money to get the next 3 cards made and so on.  Hopefully this will help generate some funds to continue getting the prototype developed.  I am getting pretty excited because the ball is final starting to get rolling on this project.  My goal is to have the prototype done before summer.  We will see.  Below are the cards that I already have made to jar everyones memory.  Hope you guys are getting excited because I know I am.  Thanks for following.

- SRock

Sportswarscards.com

   Like I said the other day I bought sportswarscards.com at Godaddy.com.  I then signed up for a single month of hosting because I was unsure about what was actually offered through their hosting program.  Unfortunately, their website design program sucks ass and I was only able to put up a temporary page.  Also, the hosting package I got only allows a one-page website.   I will have to upgrade this once I have developed a bigger, better site.  I am currently building a website with dashboard(a simple mac text editor) and I have gotten a HTML and CSS text book and trying to teach myself the languages.  I have resorted to this because I had created like 6-7 pages of the site using iWeb but in june it will be no more.  It is not compatible with the new iCloud system.  I am just about done with a single page that I can put up on sportswarscards.com here shortly.  Wish me luck and I should have the page up in the next day or so.  Thanks for reading.

-SRock

Purchased Domain

     Today I purchased the rights to the domain http://www.Sportswarscards.com.   I am starting to build a website now that I am back on the iMac.  It is a slow process since I have not done it in a few years.  I will get there though.  I hope to have the site up and running by the new year.  Today I also plan to get our first two cards printed at a local print shop to see the quality that they can provide.  I hope that it will be good enough to use for our prototype.  Keep you fingers crossed and I will inform you later.  Keep reading.

-SRock

Off iPad

     For the last few days I have been working off my iPad and it had really halted my rate of work.  I am back on the iMac again and ready to start pumping out some new ideas.  There should be lots to come in the next few days.  Hope you are as excited as I am.  Thanks for reading.

-SRock

Printing quotes

Like I said today I went went to Office Depot and FedEx Office(Kinkos) and got quotes on printing our cards. At both place I asked for copy prices on 8 1/2 by 11, 80 lb. glossy card stock and printing 400 sheets.

At Office Depot they only had 100 lb. and 65 lb. glossy card stock. I only got a price on the 100 lb. because I thought the 65 lb. would be too flimsy. For 400 prints on the 100 card stock it came to about $0.84 per sheet after tax. Each sheet has 8 cards on it, but the front and backs are separate and need to be glued together. Each sheet of 8 cards front and back costs $1.68. Each card then costs $0.21 to make. Not much lower than having the cards made professionally done but I can make them in small bunches because there is no minimum number of prints. Where as with a prof. there was a 10,000 card minimum to get them as cheap as $0.22 a piece.

Like I said I also went to FedEx and got a quote but it was $1.24 a sheet after tax to get them done there which is almost double the Office Depot quote. I am going to call Staples later to see about their pricing. No need to drive all the way there for a quote. I will let you know what I find out.

Again thanks for reading and don't forget to follow us.

-SRock

Prototype Printing

Today while at work I was brainstorming on way to cut my prototype costs. My two biggest costs are printing and artwork. So, besides drawing all the cards myself and finding usable free images online, I couldn't really find anyway of cutting costs for artwork. So I am going to continue trying to find a few artists who are willing to help get us started with a few drawings and then back paying them once up and running. Might be a while waiting for these artists to come along.

Moving on to printing costs I thought what if I printed them myself. I would just need a bunch of ink cartridges and paper. Ok, this is sounding good in my head. I figured about 30 colored ink cartridges and about 1200 pieces of think paper. Nope this isn't going to work with my printer. I don't think a think card stock will fit and the ink is gonna smear or bleed. Well scratch that idea without buying a new printer and that isn't going to be cheap. So, what do I always do when I get stuck on an idea, google it. So on a break I ended up watching a few YouTube videos and found this one:
So tomorrow I have the day off and I am going to go to staples/kinkos/office depot and check out different sizes and types of card stock. I am also going to try and get a quote on printing sheets of cards. I figure on an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of card stock I can get 8 cards. A deck of 80 cards would be 10 sheets of 8 cards and 50 decks would be 500 sheets. But two sides glued together would be 1000 sheets. I will get a quotes on these numbers. Also, an advantage to this method is it is less expensive for the prototype and would be done with laser printer not ink but some extra work gluing and cutting cards. Should be a fun and knowledge gaining experience. Thanks for reading and please follow the blog.

-SRock

Card images

So, I wanna see what everyone thinks about the monster images on the cards. First here's my thinking about it. I'm thinking that for the player cards the monsters would have no background, to make it look more like a sports card and featured actual monster more, and for the play, trick play, special play cards to have a background because they are more about changing the whole "battlefield" or game board and not a single monster(in most cases). Do you like this idea of backgrounds for the images or do you think that all he cards need a background for the image, like a Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh card? The two player cards that I made with free images I found online follow this thought if you would like something to look at for ideas. Hope to hear your feed back. Once again, thanks for reading and don't forget to follow us.

-SRock

Pro athletes

Any know any pro athletes that play collectible card game? I don't know of any and was wondering?

-SRock

Technorati

I joined technorati today, it is a free site that is supposed to help bloggers get more views. Here is my claim token: G36CZR2WSW9N. Hopefully this will help boost traffic to our site and help us gain some followers. If any of you readers are bloggers yourselfvandcwant to get you blog listed her as well, here is a link to a step by step guide to getting listed: www.internetgeeks.org/blogging/step-by-step-tutorial-to-get-your-blog-listed-at-technorati-directory/#comment-120732
This guide is extremely easy to follow and should help all you bloggers gain some more traffic.
-SRock

First click

I would just like to say thank you to whom ever of our readers that clicked on our Adsense ads on the blog. It helped us raise a few dollars toward our first deck printing. Let's keep up the good work and don't forget, tomorrow is our first free giveaway!!! Thanks again. Keep reading and share us with your friends please. -SRock

Free give away!!!

On Wednesday, Dec. 7th anyone who comments on one of our posts here on the blog, becomes a follower of the blog, likes our facebook page, follow us on twitter or donates on our indiegogo page with be put on our list and receive a 3 pack of our next couple of cards*. So, tell your buddies and our post our link and get the word out there. Refer a friend to our site and have them make a comment with your name in it and you will receive an additional card. That is four free cards, who would pass that up. Not me!!!! Below are the links I mentioned before if you need them. Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from all of you soon.
-SRock
http://www.indiegogo.com/sports_wars_cards
http://www.twitter.com/Sportswarscards
https://www.facebook.com/pages/SportSWars/289816837725176
*Cards are not yet printed. Give away will be sent out after first printing.

First comment.

Want to throw a shout out to Gilbert Espino Jr.. He was the first of our viewers to comment on the blog. Because of this we are gonna send him a copy of our second card Bones Batterman. Also, because he is so awesome and our first to comment we are also gonna send him our next 3 cards. Thanks Gilbert.

-SRock

Football prototype

For the last couple days I have been thinking about how much it is going to cost to make our first 100 decks of cards. I have come to the conclusion that I am going to make only the football part I the game as the prototype, this should cut the prototype costs. I figure we will need to make about 60-80 cards and the football game boards. We could then make to starter football decks with about 40-50 cards in each. This would bring our first printing cost to about . 80 cards times 100 copies of each at $0.22 to print is $1760. And about $150 to print 100 game boards. So that leaves us at $1900 to print our first set of starter decks.

Wait, we have yet paid our artists for the card artwork. 78(we already have two) cards times $50 approximately, is approx. $3900. So, $3900 and $1900 is now $5800 instead of the $23,000 we had before. Also, if I am able to do about half of the artwork or if one of you would like to donate some, that would only leave us with 39 piece of artwork to get our prototype out. 38 times $50 is $1950. Now $1900 and $1950 is only $3850 that would be needed to get a prototype made. I am liking this idea more and more. What about you guys? Do you think this is a good way to approach our prototype? I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again for reading.

-SRock

Artists and printing costs

I know I haven't posted much in the last couple days but I have been working a lot and have not had as much time to work on our little project here. I have been able to post a few ads on craigslist looking for artists who want to help with getting us up off the ground. We have been receiving quite a few emails each of the last couple of days and I am getting a much better feel for how much artists are gonna want to draw our monsters and other images for cards. so far th going rate for artists hss been in the range of $30-75. With a 225 card deck we are looking at $7750-16875 for artwork alone. Then to get he cards printed we are looking at about $0.22/ card until we are printing 100,000 or more cards at a time. So, with that, 225 cards per deck times $0.22 per card to print is $49.50 complete deck of cards. Now let's say we wanna print 100 decks that would be about $4950. With he two together we are booking at $13,000-23,000. Just o get our first 100 decks. All in all we need to start raising some moola to help fund this bad boy. Also, I need to get my sketch books out and get some more of these cards done on my own. Gotta go to work. Ill type for you later. -SRock

Bones Batterman 002/400

  Here is our second card, Bones Batterman.  He obviously is a baseball card and all baseball cards will have this dark red border.  Also, baseball monsters name's will be written in this aqua/green color.  Baseball is weak to football, so both his stat changes are in the negative.  He has his Off. Stat starting at 13 and Def. Stat starting at 11.  In his player info, bones does not strikeout while on the baseball diamond, but because of his fragility he can't survive on defense on the football field.   After his first defensive play he is placed in the discard pile(win or lose).  Let me know what you think.

  Be the first one to comment on this card here on blogger and receive a free card(when printed).  Thanks for you time.

-SRock

Looking for Artists/Followers

  So the last couple of days I have been posting ads on craigslist in various cities, looking for artists who would like to help create the monsters for our cards.  I have been getting a few emails from various artists, most looking more for information than actually submitting art.  This is o.k. though, because it has increased the traffic to our site.  As of right now we have tripled our site views for the last three days and hope that we will soon get a few followers.  If you would like to submit art for a chance for it to be on one of our starter cards send a copy to sportswarscards@gmail.com, put "Monster" in the subject line.  Thanks again everyone for reading.  I hope you are enjoying it.  Lets get some followers, artists please follow to get updates of new monsters.

-SRock

P.S.  Don't forget to check out our indiegogo page:  http://www.indiegogo.com/sports_wars_cards

MySurveys

     To earn some extra cash to use towards my Sports Wars project, I have been doing surveys on MySurveys.com.  I know some of you might be skeptical about these sort of sites.  So was I.  But I started doing surveys on this site about two months ago and have already earned enough points to get a few rewards.  For 1100 points you can get $10-$20 gift cards to various places.  I have been turning in my points for iTunes cards and Paypal cards, both give you $10 for 1100 points.  Each survey tells you on avg. how long it takes for people to fill them out.  It usually take a few minutes less they state so don't let the time scare you away.  They also tell you how many points you will receive if you qualify for the survey.  Usually anywhere from 20-350 points.  If you would like to join MySurveys.com and use sports wars as a referral to get us some extra points to be used toward making our game, send us an email with "MySurveys" in the subject line, with a blank email after, unless you would like to talk about the project.  We will in-turn reply with a code for referral.  Thanks for your help and help us get some decks made.

- SRock

Basketball Game Board

     I have been working on making my basketball game board using gimp.  Like the Football game board, this one is the same 20 in. X 20 in and the actual playing field(court) in the same size as the football field. Both are approximately a 2 to 1 width to height.  I also added a center court logo for Sports Wars.  I kind now wanna put this logo in the center of the football field too but not sure if it is worth it or how it will look.  One day when I don't feel like doing anything else I will give it a whirl.  I have not entered label into the on court card spots because I am not really sure how this game is going to work yet.  I do have a few ideas but have not narrowed it down to one yet.  Where as football, I think that I have pretty much figured out how the game play in going to work.  I did also use the same home and away team colors.  Well, with no more a do here is what I have gotten done on the basketball court.

   
     Well, Let me know what you think.  First one to comment on this board will be awarded a limited edition card available to a select few.

- SRock

New Football Playing Field

So, last night I start making the football game board using gimp instead of making it from construction paper and art board. I'm not gonna lie I got into kind of a groove and before I knew it was 2:00 am. Also, being very excited with how it was coming out, I woke up early this morning and worked for a hour or two before the Lions Thanksgiving day football game started. By the way, I have been a huge lions fan since I was 8 or 9. I know, I know the lions suck. But this year they are playing pretty well.

Back to the game board. So I started with a dark green 20 in. X 20 in. Square. I then put a border and yard lines around the field. I then added yellow yard markers at every 10 yard line and a smaller yellow dot at the five yard lines. Starting to look a little like a football field. I then added home and away teams, in team colors to the end zones. I chose blue and silver for the home team( yeah they are lines colors), for the away colors I went with orange and black for my high school team colors(HMB H.S., CA). After this I started adding borders(in team colors) for card positions and deck/discard piles. This is where I left off for the night.

This morning I got back to work early and fell right back into the zone I was in last night. I got through adding the labels for each card/pile position. I also decide to call the "deck", your roster. I decide to go with "Ineligible List" for the discard pile. I then added the labeling for the offensive and defensive card positions and the yard lines for each position offensively and defensively. I also added out lines to some of the labeling to make the works jump off the background. Below is the pic. Let me know what you think, good or bad.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and thanks for reading.

- SRock

Updated card design

Here is an updated card front. This is gonna be card number 001. As you see I removed the team name under the Player Info box and replaced it with a card edition and card number. I added a buffer of 175 cards to the first deck size of 225 just incase. I would also like to add an online code to the card some where. I believe this is gonna be the final card design right now for the first edition of the game.

Next I will be finishing up my digital copy of the football game board. I am about half way done with it. I just needed a little break from it. I was also able to create a Facebook page
www.facebook.com/pages/SportSWars/289816837725176
I also created an indiegogo donations page but I have to wait for my PayPal account to be verified to start the page. It should be 2-3 business days and with Thanksgiving tomorrow it might be a few days until the page is up and running.

Let's get some followers. Help a good cause and share this page with some friends. Thanks for reading.

- SRock

New Card Design

     So, I spent a few hours watching tutorials on YouTube about how to use Gimp.  I learn about alter images and adding shadowing, plus a few other tips.  I then tried applying these new techniques to my cards.  I have created a new front and back card design that I am very happy with.  Here they are:

     I have realized since designing these that I need to add some sort of copyright info and also a card number to the front of the cards.  I also think that I am going to take out the team name, maybe place else where.  I would also like to eventually ad some sore of online code to each card so you could fight online or with a mobile app.  Pretty much you could have a virtual deck as well as your physical desk.  Obviously this is much further down the line.  So lets here it.  What do you think.  This is just the first card of many to come.

Changes to Card Front:

  I changed the background from a white to light blue background to this greyscale background.  Gives the card a little more meanness, if you would.  I also changed the coloring of the stat letters, these are much easier to see than the yellow color I had before.  I also increase the size of the Player Info box.  This small font size is hard to read hear and I don't know if it will be readable until I am able enhance the graphics or use a different program.  Maybe when printed with a laser jet printer they will be easily readable.  I am really not sure yet.  I also got this image online.  It had no copyright info or info on the artist.

Changes to Card Back:

     I took out the trophy that I was not happy with and put this yellowish colored star and the S and W colliding in the middle of the card.  I also add the silver lettering going down to each corner spelling out sports wars.

Donations Button

Just a little addition to the site. I added a PayPal donations button. All donations will go towards the making of our first set of cards. Also, everyone who donates to our creation will receive a card available only to those who donate. Also, while doing research online last night I found this site:
www.indiegogo.com
It is a site designed to raise funds for just about anything from new inventions, projects, outings, ect... I will be placing a ad here to help gain funds for our first deck edition. This link will be coming soon. Thanks in advance.

- SRock

Beginning Game Board Design

     Before starting to design my game board I laid out all the different trading card boards that I had purchased a Wal-Mart the other day.  First I was looking at the different sizes ranging from 8 in. X 18 in. to 22 in. X 22 in.  For my board I decided that I was going to go with a four sided foldable board where the playing field that is being used measures 20 in. X 20 in..  Then was looking at the lay out of each board and the color schemes.  I have decided to go with a medium ranged blue for the home team colors and an orange for the away team, both of these I believe look good over the top of the green fields(besides  hockey).  Before I started constructing one of the game fields I had to figure out the dimension of the field, outlines for card placement.  After measuring everything out on a piece of graph paper, I started building a football playing field with a white piece of thick art board and colored construction paper.  After a few hours of gluing and cutting I had my first edition football game board.

     I actually really like the out come here.  But I forgot to put in a place for your deck of cards, a discard pile(in this game the discard pile will be call the ineligibles) and your in-play cards(in Magic these would be your traps or spell cards, here they are going to be plays or trick play cards).  This art board was also only 16 in. X 20 in., which gives me an additional 2 in. to play with on each side of the field.  Also my field calculations were a little off and the field is only 19 in. long with an inch boarder on each side.  This gives me a little bit more to play with as well.  Also each 10 yard strip of field is only an inch wide.  I think that the yard markers are a little squished so I would like to maybe shorten the end zones a little and make the field slightly bigger so there is a little bit more gap of green between the yellow.  I also think that my next board I will be making digitally on Gimp instead of trying to construct it physically and wasting product.  I will be spending the day I have off today learning more about how to use Gimp to improve my cards and play fields.  Any suggestions from my readers would be greatly appreciated in the comment form.  I hope to hear from some of you soon.

- SRock

Next post on Improved Card/Board Design.

Beginning Card Design

   I have started to design my cards a little bit.  I am doing all the design work on Gimp.  Since I do not really have any artwork yet for my cards I have just gotten some free images off the web to use on the first few cards to get everything started and underway.   After looking over all the different cards that I had bought the other day they all slightly very in size but are all in the 2.5 in. X 3.5 in. range.  The sports cards being biggest and the trading card games being slightly smaller.  I have decided to go with a card that is 2 5/16 in. X 3 3/8 in.  Here is a picture of the first card I designed.  Full of flaws but the first one.

    Sorry gotta get ready for work.  I will continue later.  Thanks for reading.

- SRock

Beginning card design cont. 2

Here is my first version of the card back. I really liked the red/ blue fade and the silhouettes of the helmet and monster. I'm not too thrilled with the trophy now that I see it on paper. I my head it looked a lot better. So i will have to tweak this one a little bit more. Also I think it needs the game name on the back.

For the front of the card, this version just seems to nice or happy. I think the background colors need to be a little darker and also the picture is just a fill in. I don't like that it isn't a monster of any kind just a typical human. Lol. Also don't like the colors of the lettering. Gonna work on tightening up these cards. Updates coming soon.

Post 1: Welcome to the creation of sports wars

    First off, thank you for checking out the blog.  This blog is being used to gain interest in my new trading card game while I'm creating it.  All comments and questions will be take into consideration while creation of sportS*Wars - The trading card game.  in concept this game came to me one day while walking through Wal-mart, I passed the trading card aisle and remember how much fun I used to have buying packs of sports cards growing up.  Standing there for a while looking over all the different card packs, brands, sports, and then there were all the role-playing game cards(Magic, Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon, etc......).  Both in one section, next to each other, I don't know why but the thought had never came to me before to cross the two.  A trading card game that somehow involved sports and monsters. DING, DING, DING, KO!!!!   sportS*Wars is created.  Now with a purpose for my shop at Wal-mart, instead of just wondering around aimlessly trying to kill some time, I grab a basket and the ideas start flowing.  Once home and at my desk with a stack of bank paper, I begging jotting down all the little ideas that are flowing through my head.  I can't even get them down on paper as fast as I am thinking them up.

     After a few hours I believe that I have the general idea for the game. Wanting a little break, I decided to go back to Wal-mart and buy a pack or two of a couple different type of trading cards.  I figured that I could use them to get some more ideas and also help me figure out a general lay-out for the cards when I get to that point.   Opening the packs brought me back years again to being a kid.  I had no clue what to expect it had been years since I had bought cards like this.  After looking through the cards and reading of the game manuals, help me again hone down my idea and get a better understanding of what I wanted my game to do.  Back to the pen and paper it went, jotting down notes and drawing little picture of potential cards, logos, names, and so on.  After hours of this I finally came up with the name Sports Wars, first because I wanted to use the 3 major sports(football, baseball, basketball), then I am still kinda up in the air about going with hockey for the 4th sport or having the 4th playing field be a battlezone, and secondly because it involves monsters and sports, so in my head that sounds like violent fun, Sports Wars.

     Next posting will be on my beginning the card design process or another card design depending on how fast I learn how to make better graphics using gimp.  Hopefully you guys are signing up to follow my blog and also please share it with your friends on facebook, twitter, etc..  Once my first batch of cards are made followers will receive a free bonus card available only to followers of this blog.  Thanks again.