Hello Everyone! Tommy Roark here with another casual article. We won’t be talking about deck lists, or tournaments, or anything like that this time. We’re gonna talk about the first thing you notice and one of the more underappreciated things (in my opinion) of a card, namely the art!
Before I officially begin; I am one of the art collectors for the public Force of Will Artwork Database, which you can find here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UWL8ys-V31fZRYNBFhVL8lQCqEpDNcqK
This is our all-in-one and easy-to-access location, whether you plan on making custom cards, playmats, want them as avatars or anything else you can imagine! There’s a plethora of art, from sketches to WGP (worlds) drawings to the actual card art, the Force of Will logo and more!
Why I like the art/why it drew me in
Now, having come from more of a Yugioh background, I was accustomed to playing cards with a similar cartooned quality to them. Being told it was similar to yugioh, my expectations were similar in a way to the art style.
Oh how wrong I was!
Take Dracula, the Demonic One (CMF-077J) or Yog-Sothoth, the Dark Myth (MPR-089). They aren’t pretty or cute. They’re evil, demonic. They convey a sense of power and impending dread. You can tell they fulfill the “Boss monster” vibe. The level of detail on Dracula, the victim’s bite mark, the flowing uneven cape waving behind him, each individual strand of hair out of position. Every thread of his aristocratic robe. The attention to detail is huge, and in my personal opinion is unparalleled on any other card game of it’s time. Yog-Sothoth for example. You see the darkness, you see his looming and expansive figure. The tendrils, the many eye’s. It’s creepy. It’s dark. You don’t know where it starts or where it end’s. That’s scary and yet impressive to create such an imposing figure.
What Force of Will does with the artwork while it might be not be unique, it is done to create a story. That story changes with the sets they release, but the story is still told. Each series of cards whether labeled as “Heroes” and “Villains” create this dynamic and imaginative world, just from their art. Dracula and his castle Alvarez giving me mad Castlevania vibes (Symphony of the Night was my favorite game growing up) The dragons were big lumbering boss monsters, the Lovecraftian Cthulhu were all hideous and dark, deformed and twisted. The aesthetic befitting of a hideous, otherworldly creature(s), bent on taking over whatever world was in their way.
But its not all dark! As a counterpoint, fairy tale cards such as Little Red Riding Hood (CMF-027) and Crimson Girl in the Sky (TAT-057) were very whimsical, much akin to their fairy tale nature. They gave off some of the more conventional overly cute style one would expect from a more Eastern orientated card game. It’s not a bad thing, and it is a major compliment to the dark and real aesthetic given off to some of the earlier cards.
Whether you’re into light whimsical fairy tales, dark hideous monsters and demons, powerful commanding dragons, or more fantastical humans such as Jeanne d’Arc, the Three Musketeers, powerful Six Sage humans wielding elemental magic, or anything else you could possibly imagine. The beauty of Force of Will, is that no matter what interests you, there is an artwork that exists for your taste. So enjoy the artwork, and until next time!
