The GHost's big Destructoid card wrap-up extravaganza!

12:13 AM on 06.11.2008   |   The GHost

70 comments

[Editor's note: The GHost rocks. -- CTZ]

For those of you that have been blissfully unawares: I've been a busy little bee lately, cranking out Destructoid cards as if Ron Workman himself was standing behind me threatening to get his fellow Mexicans (re: Knives) to shank me. However, all things must come to an end eventually, and I find myself leaving the country for the rest of the summer, so this post is two things:

1) A wrap-up and reflection on what I did, including pictures of all the cards that I ended up doing and a .rar file containing all the Photoshop files that I made.

2) A personal love note to Destructoid and the community.

For the tl;dr crowd that doesn’t want to hear how I came to start making all these cards, the links are at the bottom (or just check out the gallery).

Where It Started

Pretty simple, really. You see, a while back, the Xbox Live-famous Atheistium made this thread challenging people to come up with their own cards using a provided template.



Cards were made and lulz were had, but eventually the whole thing died down and the thread became silent. A while after the thread had died, I joined the forum, saw the thread, and thought that it would be fun to make myself a card.

So I did.



That was all that I ever planned on doing, but FATE had different ideas ... Or maybe it was just because I had more free time than usual that month, whatever.

It Begins

After I posted my first card, the delightful Mr. Blehman asked me if I could make him one. So I did.

He seemed to be pleased with his card and there was much rejoicing, but then our resident Australian Minx FooLiz chimed in, also wondering if I could make her a card. So I did.

After those two, a couple more requests came in and I figured "those cards were fun and I've got a bunch of free time; why not put up a forum and C-blog post to see if anyone else wants one?" I figured that I'd get maybe a dozen responses since I'm a relatively new Dtoider and my Photoshop skills are definitely on the bottom/terrible end of the spectrum.

Yeah, I got a few more responses than I was expecting.

The Flood

Like I said: I got way more comments/posts than I was expecting, and despite there being a ton of requests, I decided to go ahead and just start on the list, being careful to promise nothing by saying that if making cards became a serious burden, or felt like a job, I would stop. Funny thing is, as I went down the list, I didn't get bored. In fact, believe it or not, I was having fun doing them. So I just kind of made making cards part of my routine, getting one or two done when I would normally be browsing Web sites or playing videogames. But I still didn't have any kind of focus or plan in mind. I was just making cards because I was enjoying myself and learning a lot about both Photoshop and the Destructoid community, and almost everyone seemed to be liking the cards.

The Part Where Things Get Seriously Serious Business

After doing a couple of "booster packs" (I would post every 5 cards that I finished together as a "boost") I got several people in the comments asking how you actually PLAY with these cards. Now I had thought about getting some rules together, but I knew literally NOTHING about CCGs and so I felt totally unqualified to even attempt to come up with any kind of rule set. So I figured I'd make a post saying as much. I got a bunch of responses, and some really good proposals from Rockvillian, DynamicSheep and Brecksher. It was about this time that I made a few decisions.

Decisions

- Brecksher's rules seem to be the best fit (thus those are the rules that I'm "endorsing", not that anyone can't make up any rules that they want and modify the cards accordingly or make their own).

- Fuck it, I'm going to make up a real simple drinking game with the current cards.

- I'm going to shoot for 100 cards before I leave the country for the rest of the summer (going to Zambia from June 12th-August 21st to teach and I have no idea if/when I’ll have Internet access until I’m in London from August 21-28th)

The Finale

So I made 86 cards and a drinking game (rules here) that anyone and their mother can play (I know 'cuz I played with your mom last night. OH DANG!), and I've thrown out my vote for how these cards could be modified to make a real CCG. The ball is in your court now, community. Do with these cards what you will. If some people want to take the .psd files and modify them to make a real game, then go right ahead. If someone wants to print out the cards, light them all on fire and then pee on them, go right ahead. These cards were all made specifically for the community, and I'd be delighted to hear that people are using them, but remember: there's nothing "official" or special about what I've done here; like I said earlier: the whole card thing was never my idea -- I just made a lot of them. If you want to make a card, then go right ahead. Hell, I encourage it wholeheartedly. I'm sure that there are much more talented and much funnier Dtoiders than me, and I would be just tickled to see what some of you could come up with.

Touchy-Feely “I Love Dtoid” Stuff

Although I haven’t been a Dtoider for long, I’ve had a great experience with the community. From my first Xbox FNF where I met Alex, Heretic, Ub3rslug, Hamza (whose name I totally mispronounced when I talked to him on the phone XD) and many others, to my time well spent with Caff and the TF2 crew, to the fantastic forum fun I’ve had reading hilarious/interesting posts by people like Banj and Serpentish, the list goes on and on.

Is the community perfect? Hell no, it isn’t even close to perfect (sometimes rampant trolling, etc.), but considering the size of Destructoid and the fact that anyone can join, it’s pretty amazing to see how many awesome people from various dissimilar backgrounds have come together under the banner of gaming to make a killer community like this one. This place could have very easily just turned into another generic news aggregation site without Niero's vision, the bad-ass editors, staff and tipsters, and the cool people in the community that make this place my Web site of choice.

The bottom line is that these cards are my gift to you: the Destructoid community. I certainly didn’t get to do everyone that I wanted to, and I probably never will, but hopefully you all enjoyed checking out the cards that I did get around to making.

Enough of me jizzing over all of you; let’s get to the cards.

The Cards

Here’s an alphabetical list of everyone that I made a card of, along with a number corresponding to which booster pack that he or she was featured in. Links to the various boosters are provided after the list if you’re interested in reading the notes that I made while doing these (the notes explain some of the more obscure references). Make sure you check the list to see if your name is on there, as you might have missed the post with your card in it. For those that already have cards: all of the cards from boosters 1-7 and secret boosters 1-3 have been re-tooled! Most of them had minor changes to make them more readable/attractive, while others were actually partially re-written with large batches of the text changed.

.rar files containing jpegs and .psd files of all the cards will also follow the list.

List Of Cards

Note: Number denotes which booster pack that card was in, ‘S’ denotes a secret booster and F is for forum.

Also ‘A’ is for apple.

S2-Aaron Linde
9-abortothefetus
1-Aerox
S2-atheistium
8-BahamutZero
9-BigPopaGamer
F-blehman
S3-BlindsideDork
3-bloodylip
12-BuckF1tches
9-Butmac
S3-ceark
S1-Chad Concelmo
12-charliesuh
12-Cheeburga
S1-Colette Bennett
5-Conrad Zimmerman
12-Cowzilla3
S3--D-
11-Dale North
10-Dexter345
4-DJDuffy
12-Dick McVengeance
9-dvddesign
S1-Dyson Grigsby
4-Elitechief27
4-Eschatos
7-evil chad
F-FooLiz
11-Fronz
8-galagabug
12-Gameboi
1-Gemsi
10-Grim
2-GuitarAtomik
7-Gynecologist Cobra
S3-Hamza CTZ Aziz
3-Harassment Panda
12-Husky Hog
7-A Humble Mr Perfect
S2-Jim Sterling
12-Jonathan Holmes
10-Justice
S3-king3vbo
5-knives
11-Kryptinite
2-Kyle Gamgee
2-Matthew Blake
5-MaxVest
7-McSnow
6-MechaMonkey
1-Mix
11-Mr. Sadistic
S3-Mxyzptlk
5-naia-the-gamer
8-Necros
4-Neonie
10-Nick Chester
10-Niero
6-NihonTiger90
3-Orcist
7-Passionate Styos
1-PetiePal
S2-pheonix-blood
8-power-glove
6-Professor Pew
1-Psycho Soldier
12-Qais Fulton
S1-Reverend Anthony Burch
S3-Rio McCarthy
11-Ron Workman
8-Samit Sarkar
6-SantanaClaus89
5-Scary Womanizing Pig Mask
4-Sharpless
2-Silverback
S3-Snaileb
2-Surf314
3-Takeshi
3-tazarthayoot
S2-Tiff
S1-Topher Cantler
12-unstoppable juggernaut
9-vexed alex
S2-wardrox
6-Y0j1mb0

Booster Links

FooLiz, Blehman and Requests: The beginning

Booster Pack 1
Booster Pack 2
Booster Pack 3
Booster Pack 4
Booster Pack 5
Booster Pack 6
Booster Pack 7
Booster Pack 8
Booster Pack 9
Booster Pack 10
Booster Pack 11
Booster Pack 12

Secret Booster Pack 1
Secret Booster Pack 2
Secret Booster Pack 3

Rules Post 1
Rules Post 2

Download Files

These contain all the cards that I've done thus far. Any cards that I updated are in here as well instead of the originals.

Cards (jpegs)
Photohop Files

FINALLY! The Last Header

If I didn’t get around to making you a card, it’s because I hate you and I don’t consider you to be a real Dtoider. It has nothing to do with me having only so much time and quite often choosing who to do next more or less randomly.

Nope. All hate and scorn. :D

My name is Cameron O’Connor; I hope you’ve all enjoyed the cards, and I’ll see (many of) y’all at PAX.

“Thought it would be pretty funny if everyone on the forum had a FRONT PAGE NEWS WORTHY Dtoid battle card.”

~Atheistium