Monday, February 28, 2011

New Version

I know what you are thinking, “Why doesn’t Forge have its own domain name and website.”  The good news is that Forge is now parked at cardforge.org.  For now it only mirrors this blog but it may have different content in the future.  (There are hints of a global quest leaderboard but who knows what the future brings.)

New month = new version.  (Well…close to a new month.)  Forge has 979 new cards and a grand total of 6,974 cards.  With almost 1,000 new cards in a month, the developers have really done a ton of work.  Using the nice deck editor filter I can see that Forge implements 133 cards from Mirrodin Besieged, which is very cool.

The great stuff is always the new cards, so let’s get this party started.  Brass Squire (cost: 3, 1/3) – “Tap: Attach target Equipment you control to target creature you control” which is a great way to move expensive equipment around.  Consumptive Goo (cost: BB, 1/1) is a pretty cool creature to have around, it kills creatures and grows bigger all at the same time, “2BB: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn. Put a +1/+1 counter on Consumptive Goo.”  We know that green mages hate burn spells and with Dense Foliage (2G, enchantment, “Creatures can't be the targets of spells”) you can say goodbye to Shock and Lighting Bolt

Duergar Mine-Captain (2 R/W, 1/1) has an untap ability that gives your attacking creatures +1/+0.  I love untap abilities because they are so unusual.  Flameshot (3R, sorcery) lets you deal 3 damage to 1, 2 or 3 creatures.  3R seems expensive for only 3 damage but Flameshot has an alternate cost of discarding a Mountain which is a great bargain.  Ghor-Clan Savage (3GG, 5/5) seems like a regular, hulky green monster but it has Bloodthirst 3, which means when Clan Savage is played and your opponent was damaged this turn, it gets three +1/+1 counters on it, turning it into a real green hulk at 8/8.

For a complete list of new cards click here and in the first post, scroll down to “Added many cards, including” and click “Open”.

Download (Windows, Linux) - Forge (11 MB)
Requires Java and takes about 3 minutes to unzip since it keeps each card in a separate file, so 7,000 cards = 7,000 files.  This is the 02/19 version because that is when it was released on the forum.

Download (Mac, compressed with bz2)
Forge (11 MB) - forge.command has the correct permissions, if forge.command is not used there will be a Java error. For more info, post a question on the forum.

Download - Card Pictures (160 MB)
These are most of the low-quality (LQ) card pictures.  You can download the rest of the LQ card pictures or the high-quality (HQ) card pictures using the menu on the New Game screen.

p.s. 
Is announcing a new version each month too often?  Or should I post a new version every 2 months?  Even I have a hard time keeping up to date sometimes.  The rule of thumb is that more users = more time between updates, which is why Word is updated only once a year.  (Of course this question does not apply to people who download the latest version from the forums directly. )

Ideally Forge would have an "update" button so you wouldn't have to move your decks or card pictures but c'est la vie (oh well).  If Forge was perfect, it would have never been written, much like Forge 2.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Forge is still the best thing since sliced bread and burnt toast, whatever takes your fancy! Especially for those of us unable to play MODO. It really has come a long way and just keeps getting better. Please keep the updates regular to a month. It suits me just fine ... even having to copy all the deck and image files around :)

Forge said...

Thanks for weighing in on the monthly updates. I like the monthly updates because it gives me something to write about 1/4 of the time.

I'm glad Forge is butter than sliced bread. (butter = better, ha.)

sprechblase said...

I'd say, whenever there is a significant progress you think is worth spreading, then share it ;) An update once a month is absolutely fine by me...

Anonymous said...

I found Forge by luck, and I was wondering if you'd be open to the idea of an interview for a college paper?

Anonymous said...

I left a comment earlier regarding the interview by accident without leaving my contact info.

managingeditor@universitychronicle.net

Anonymous said...

I like monthly updates, it keeps things alive.

Doc said...

I played your game a lot the last weeks.

The main problem i see here is that many cards i played with did not work or at least did not exactly do what they should do following the official rules (Plainswalkers for example).

That is - in my eyes - a heavy drawback, because it keeps a lot of frustrations.

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