Hello, my FANTASTIC friends of the fucking variety! Let’s all say a collective “Fuck you” to the week and sail into a carefree weekend!
What kind of things will I do this weekend? Hmmm, the kid’s at comedy college and the wife is out of town… maybe I’ll get super high in the middle of the night and eat mini chocolate donuts while watching… Venture Bros? Rick and Morty? Maybe Community. All solid choices.

It’s funny: As much as a rewatch stuff all the time (I often have the Running Man playing in the background as I write), I also consume an insane amount of new media. I should recommend stuff on these updates that I’ve found compelling. So here is my first one… I got the hardcover (fancy!) collected edition (or graphic novel!) of Eight Billion Genies. Very enjoyable story. Super quirky idea and the art is top rate (plus the title of the book is insane… how do you NOT read that?!). It had a wonderful arc and was emotionally moving without being saccharine or hacky (the greatest sin is HACKY in my household). Anyway, check it out!

Hmmm… what can I share with you this week? WELL, I know we talk a lot about the deck-builder, but let’s take a little peek at how ESW 6 is coming along. We have these images back from some factory-ready files and I am super excited. We always try and add fresh mechanics to the spellcrafting games, but I think this is the biggest “reinvention” to date. And it has some ANNIHILAGEDDON favorites as spellcrafters! Just take a look at this dude…

Very cool! (Of course it is…. smoking makes you look COOL. DUH.) Again, I know the focus has been on the deck-builder but I really think you’ll enjoy ESW 6, and it’s going to be awhile before we do another one. Speaking of the deck-builder…
Now that the final dev work is done on ESW A3, actually I want to stop and make sure it’s clear. The game is late because of art, not game design. We ended up making a product with over TWO TIMES as much art as a regular (already ART EXTENSIVE) ESW-style deck-building game. And sadly (gladly?) the nature of ESW is that one old man does ALL the art… so yes, we kept iterating on the design because the more time, the better. But the art is why it’s taken so long.

Anyway, we are now (and have been) hard at work on ESW A4! As a matter of fact, R.S is trying to get a head-start and rolled right into the Champion Wizards art for that game!
So as a WAY, WAY ahead-of-time sneak peak, here is one of the Champion Wizards… can you guess her last name? Can ya!?! Ahahahaha…

One of the other things we have finished up is the sleeve. Yeah, those are pretty much the same except we had to change the design slightly to accommodate the tech on the sleeves (they need some space to accommodate the art… we cannot have it bleed off). I think it looks great this way.

So a little different, but very cool.

Well, until next week, I love you very much.

-cory