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[Asklepios]

Something occurred to me recently: the card art for some cards doesn't match what the card does/represents.

I might be looking at the art the wrong way of course, or thinking the card represents something it doesn't but...

Salvager:
The art shows someone diving underwater and salvaging stuff, presumably from a wreck.
The card effect, and therefore I presume the thematic intention of the card, is salvaging back money from something you no longer want. For example, recouping the cost of a village by demolishing it and selling off all the timber, the dressed stone, the people, etc. etc.

Philosopher's Stone:
Shows a bottle of something.
The card effect generates a mass of money, which gets more powerful as the game goes on. I presume this represents, y'know a philosopher's stone, which can turn base metals into gold but which takes a long time to get right.

Stash:
Shows a small bag of coins. Like a stash that has been stolen.
The card effect suggests money that you've stashed away for later. So maybe it ought to be someone digging up a stash of money, or a treasury-like picture?

Of course, this is all fairly minor stuff. Nothing as bad as some of the "wrong arts" that you see in some CCGs. A classic example I recall is in the CCG Vampire: The Eternal Struggle where there's a card called "torn signpost" that represents a strong vampire tearing up a signpost and using it as a weapon, and where the card art depicts a road sign with a slight tear in it...

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Any other cards you can think of where the art doesn't seem to match the effect?

[Donald X.]

At the risk of offending any artists reading this, I will give you a list! It's all in good fun, artists.

Woodcutter: Not what this activity looks like, also it shows two woodcutters.

Council Room: The table is in perspective but the chairs aren't; the chairs that are farther back must be larger.

Great Hall: It's the place in a castle where they have feasts and things. I dunno, maybe you could fit some tables in here, but the art does not suggest the concept. To be fair we didn't start having explanations for the artists until Seaside.

Embargo: This scene does not look real to me. You wouldn't just hang out in boats in case someone tries to sail in, right? You let them dock and then rummage through their stuff.

Philosopher's Stone: The padlock is anachronistic (they had padlocks, but not that style). The philosopher's stone is a substance, which some guessed would be a red powder, so the artwork isn't otherwise off.

Forge: It looks like she's popping gems into a sword's hilt? They are rocks, they do not pop into anything. Usually they were soldered on.

Menagerie: I do not see how those fences keep those animals in.

Tournament: The audience is nowhere near the action, unless those bleachers are for some other event.

Hunting Party: There's a guy just standing there with a dog. Rewind this picture a fraction of a second and a deer is phasing through him.

Oasis: An oasis cannot have a waterfall (unless it's a trickle). Water comes in from a spring and doesn't flow out. What we have depicted here is a creek.

Envoy: Scroll through the hand.

Stash ended up like that because RGG or HiG wanted SdJ jury member faces in the artwork somehow (they're on the coins).

[WanderingWinder]

Hunting Party: There's a guy just standing there with a dog. Rewind this picture a fraction of a second and a deer is phasing through him.

Is it a blue dog? If so does the guy taking it on a walk fe... Sorry, couldn't help myself

[Julle]

Not the wrong card art but one of my friend thinks that Moneylender looks like he's crying.

[Young Nick]

Can someone explain WW's joke? I don't get it, not at any level. I like jokes, they're fun, but not when they sail a mile over your head. :/

[Tables]

Well, suppose your post let us talk about Pink Elephants whenever we would have talked about Blue Dogs...

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/7743728#7743728 - read from there onwards

[ftl]

Can someone explain WW's joke? I don't get it, not at any level. I like jokes, they're fun, but not when they sail a mile over your head. :/

If you don't want to read a thread Tables linked, here's the short version:

People had questions as to "What happens if you play Ironworks to gain a Great Hall, but then reveal Trader to gain a Silver instead? From the Ironworks, do you get +1 card +1 action, do you get +$1, or do you get no bonus?" The final answer turns out to be that you get no bonus, but it was a very long discussion, and included Donald himself changing his mind more than once. In the course of that discussion, someone made the analogy between the text of Ironworks and the sentence fragment "feed the blue dog, then take it for a walk." That analogy got way out of hand, leading to multiple pages of people discussing the details of what the word "it" refers to in various sentences about feeding a blue dog or a pink elephant.

[ecq]

The one that always bugs me is Navigator.  It is indeed a picture of a Navigator, so maybe the gripe doesn't belong here, but the proportions of everything are all off, and it's one of the few cartoony cards.  The fact that it's depicting an Asian person with exaggerated proportions looks, well, wrong in a different sense of the word.

I think it's just that illustrator's style, but those cards really jump out.  Compare Pearl Diver to Salvager.  Both depict similar things, but Salvager fits in so much better with the rest of the cards.  Also, Shanty Town looks like a screen capture from The Simpsons when seen at a glance, but it doesn't seem quite as out of place, probably because the people aren't as prominent.

[theory]

Related: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/463152/please-no-more-art-by-maura-kalusky