The best of Adam's new art - official Justifier praise thread

Games SotM: The Video Game
#1

I’ve had thoughts of a thread like this for a while; while I like Adam’s core set art a heck of a lot more than he does, there’s no question his skill as an artist has improved, and sometimes the contrast between the 2012-era art of a card and the 2016ish art of its background in the app is quite striking. The endplate after you win or lose can also be quite fun, and sometimes neat little easter eggs turn up in the ads and whatnot. I’ve been meaning to point out some faves as I’ve spotted them, but today I saw a picture that really made me feel awesome.

If you’d asked me an hour ago, when I hadn’t yet beaten The Chairman in the app, to imagine a victory picture for him, I’d probably have figured it would involved him handcuffed and being escorted away by some FBI agents or US Marshals or something. But the truth was so much better! The image of a frustrated Graham Pike rolling up his sleeves and showing off an insanely beefy forearm is seriously one of the best things Adam has ever drawn; it almost looks like a propaganda poster from the 1890s or 1910s of a P.T. Barnum-style industrialist, getting his hands dirty and Building America™, in a way that the actual robber barons of history never did, but certainly wanted the public to think of them so.

Pike and his magnificent old-timey mustache seems to perfectly exemplify this dark side of the American spirit. It really makes me want to see him and Grandpa Legacy bare-knuckle box for a few rounds, while arguing about which one of them represents the real meaning of America.

In other news, I also recently noticed something curious, not good or bad but just slightly odd. When the Harpy, specifically her Dark Watch version if it makes a difference, gets down to single digit HP, we see her start to be surrounded by unstable-looking arcs of purple magic, but in the lower left corner of the picture, where it’s hard to see behind her cards, these streaks are starting to turn bright red, which I don’t recall ever seeing her spells do in her own deck. Does anyone know what’s going on here?

That will do it for now. Feel free to chime in with your own favorite illustrations specifically created for the video game, and I’ll be back later on with the next bit of awesomeness that I notice.

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#2

From the video game I’m a fan of the changing image for Guise.

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#3

He even has different ones for different promos. The Completionist has a lot of odd references I don’t get, though I assume they’re things that make sense to some percentage of the nerds out there. (I’m a nerd myself, but nobody is a nerd for everything, so there are always gaps in everyone’s knowledge, no matter how many rabbit holes they’ve delved to their uttermost.)

PS, I actually managed to lose an app game to Baron Blade, for the first time not involving Moonfall, and his grin of wicked sadistic glee looks absolutely magnificent. Not quite as praiseworthy as the Chairman one, but it’s like a 96 compared to a 98, they’re both amazing.

#4

Found this old thread with Guise video game references. Looks like it stopped before Completionist was released, though. Did anyone go through and try to catalog that variant’s Easter Eggs?

#5

I have only experienced Completey in one game (you know the one), and saw around five of these, two or three of which I forget atm. One was some bizarre string of consonants and digits that I won’t attempt to replicate without looking at it, but the one I do remember was the picture of him pointing at a card in his/your hand and saying “That One! … But could you sleeve it first?”. There’s also the one where he sits in The Thinker pose (that’s Auguste Rodin Thinker, not Clifford DeVoe Thinker) and debates between the Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon, but we’ve all seen that one since it’s on the Variants page.

He also says various comic-geeky phrases, with random issue numbers inserted, whenever you activate his power. I’m not sure if the base phrase is specific to the hero or just randomly selected, but I definitely know he’ll use the same base phrase with different issues in it. I’d be down to document these whenever I play a Weekly that features him (after all, I have literally no use for my time these days), but that’d have to be in a new thread, as it’s way off topic for one about art. (Specifically about beautiful art, so Guise’s funny antics are already mildly OT, but “beauty” and “humor” are both subsets of “awesomeness”, so I’ll allow a brief digression.)

#6

It has not. It a document that should be free for anyone to edit. I just haven’t been able to do a deep dive of games to find them all.

#7

Admittedly, I typically play with sound off (heresy, I know!). So I’m sure I haven’t experienced most of the audio goodies in there.

I’ve seen Trekkie vs. Star Wars, Thinker, and Nintendo Fanboy. Not sure I recall anything with a string of consonants and numbers - could it be leet speak?

#8

My question here has been answered by recent Letters Pages, as we now know that Harpy has a slight degree of involvement with Blood Magic, and calls on this when severely pressed, much as she does with the Mask. I don’t know if Adam knew about the Harpy/Alpha crossovers with Blood Countess Bathory and Chaos Witch Rose Griggs when he drew the app’s Harpy pictures; he may have had a half formed idea of the blood magic dabbling in the back of his mind, or it may just be a happy coincidence. Either way, though, it works.

Back on the subject of this thread, I’ve seen nearly all of the app’s various victory and defeat screens (though it’s been on a phone, and I hope someday I can afford to buy the Steam version of the game and earn them all in their glorious full-screen versions). None have quite topped the Baron and Pike, but another image worthy of mention is the background for Heroic Infinitor after he flips. The expression on the OblivAeon manifestation’s face looks both terrifying and terrified, exactly as is appropriate; I may well crop down this image and use it as a prompt for future D&D games, when the players are up against some monster which is in full trapped-rat panic mode.

(And speaking of rats, I may have mentioned this before, but Plague Rat’s victory screen is another favorite of mine. We see ol’ Randy presiding over the converted versions of Ra and Tachyon, along with a barely visible third figure whose identity I like to drive myself nuts guessing about.)

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#10

FYI - Windows 11 will include the ability to run Android apps.:grinning:

#11

O…k. Not sure of the relevance, but thanks for this information I guess.

#12

As in, you can run the same games you currently run on your phone on your desktop/laptop, with its larger display?

#13

But it has nothing to do with this thread. You may have posted in the wrong place/forum, @doppelgangerung? :confused:

#14

I…didn’t think so, as The_justifier seemed desirous of viewing SotM screens on a full size display… But I’m not interested in arguing it, and will delete if you think it advisable.

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#15

:laughing: Okay, no worries. That was a very tenuous connection that I (and some others) did not make, but thank you greatly for clarifying! :+1:t2:

#16

Okay, I see the connection. And please don’t delete anything.

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