The Art of My Shelf, Part 2: Worth Framing

Hello everyone!

Some games stop me before I even start playing. Others stop me right in the middle of a turn.

That happened with Unconscious Mind, the first time a dream card with a flying whale came into play. The art is wonderful, but it was the sheer improbability of it that made me put everything down and just look.

Welcome back to my little series on the games whose art I love. Part 1 was about boxes, cozy worlds and invented creatures. Today it’s all about cards: the ones I’d happily frame, and the ones that build a whole world on the table.

An Unconscious Mind dream card showing a whale flying through orange and purple clouds above a domed city — The card that stopped me mid-turn.

One Card at a Time

Codex Naturalis

Art: Maxime Morin · Publisher: Bombyx

In Codex Naturalis you continue the work of the illuminating monk Tybor Kwelein, assembling the manuscripts that list the living species of the forest. It’s a puzzle: every card has conditions before it can be placed, and they all connect through their corners, so your manuscript grows into one big picture.

The species are sorted by kingdom: trees in green, animals in blue, insects in purple, mushrooms in red. The illustrations are quite realistic, but each card stays monochrome, playing with the different tones of its own colour, with gold traces running through to lift it. That’s what makes the whole thing so relaxing.

A Codex Naturalis manuscript in progress, red and purple cards overlapping at the corners with gold catching the light — The gold catching the light, which is what sold me in the first place.

I bought this one for its cards. I saw them online and they won me over before I knew anything about how it played. The end of a game delivers exactly what I hoped for: a shiny tableau, vibrant and full of gold.

Two finished Codex Naturalis manuscripts on the table, showing the green, blue, purple and red kingdoms — Four kingdoms, four colours, all locking together at the corners.

Unconscious Mind

Art: Andrew Bosley, Vincent Dutrait, Yoma · Publisher: Fantasia Games

In Unconscious Mind you play as one of Freud’s followers, treating patients. The palette is dark throughout, and that’s exactly what makes it work: it puts you straight into a psychologist’s cabinet. The only things that pop are the dreams, with their bright colours in the middle of all that darkness.

The Unconscious Mind main board showing Vienna in 1900, lit by a candle — A psychologist’s cabinet, in board form.

The dream cards are the ones I love. The longer you study them, the more details you find, and that part is fantastic. The flying whale still gets me every time.

Unconscious Mind set up on the table, with the main board, player board and dream cards — Everything is muted except the dreams.

There are also transparent cards that lay over your patient’s card. They represent the fog, the catharsis happening in the patient’s mind, and they keep working every single time, not just on the first play.

Two Unconscious Mind patient cards with transparent cards laid over them, adding leaves and flowers to the portraits — The leaves and the flowers aren’t printed on the portraits. They’re the transparent cards sitting on top.

Terrors of London

Art: Ryan Pye · Publisher: Kolossal Games

A complete change of register. Terrors of London is a competitive deck builder for two players, where each of you plays an Overlord with a unique ability and two unique influence cards, recruiting monsters from four factions: Beasts, Mortals, Spirits and Undead. Line them up and they form hordes for some powerful combos.

Terrors of London set up for two players, with the street of monsters between the two Overlord boards — Two Overlords, four factions, and a street full of monsters.

Opening this game is like stepping into a fantasy novel. You cross paths with vampires, werewolves and every other kind of creature, there are Cthulhu references hiding on the cards, and the relics are pictured perfectly. The illustrations are packed with detail, as if the artist wanted to capture every corner of that dark world, and for all that darkness everything stays perfectly legible at the table.

This is a winter game for me, or a Halloween one.

A row of Terrors of London cards including the Templar, Skeletal, Acolyte and Imp, with the Mark of Cain and Healing Locus relics — Mark of Cain and Healing Locus, two of the relics.

A Word on Sleeves

I take a lot of care of my games and I like the feel of the material, so sleeving is something I do whenever the cards are going to be handled a lot. Usually that means deck builders, because of all the shuffling. From today’s games I’ve sleeved Terrors of London, and the hero cards of Tainted Grail, which you’ll meet in a moment.

Cards That Build a World

And now the part I love most: the games where cards laid side by side build an entire scene.

T.I.M.E Stories

Art (base box): Benjamin Carré, David Lecossu, Pascal Quidault · Publisher: Space Cowboys

T.I.M.E Stories was the first game that did this to me. You travel through time to solve mysteries, moving from room to room, and each room is a panorama made of two to six cards laid side by side. Every card is something you can interact with or someone you can talk to, so there’s a lot going on in every scene.

The very first panorama I ever laid out wasn’t even in the scenario. It’s the agency base, with its pods and its blue light, where every mission begins. Seeing it unfold card by card was my first whaou, before I’d even travelled anywhere.

The T.I.M.E Stories agency base panorama, six cards forming one scene of pods under blue light — Pods and blue light. The first panorama I ever laid out.

I’ve played the base game and five of the eight scenarios in the white series, and every single one has had that same effect, so I really can’t pick a favourite. They’re thematic, they’re a pleasure to study, and they matter for the mechanics too, which is rarer than it sounds. Each scenario brings its own illustrators as well, Vincent Dutrait on A Prophecy of Dragons for example, so every new box feels like a new world.

A T.I.M.E Stories room panorama laid out on the board, with the four characters and their cards below — One room, six cards, and the people you can talk to.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Art: Piotr Foksowicz, Piotr Gacek, Patryk Jędraszek · Publisher: Awaken Realms

Tainted Grail is set in Arthurian times, and you build the map with cards as you explore. Picture the map of Avalon cut into pieces: each card is one place, a village, a hunter’s grove with the skeleton of some huge animal, big standing statues. Lay them next to each other and they become a map, and a wonderful one.

Five Tainted Grail location cards laid out in a cross, forming a continuous landscape — A corner of the map. Each card is one place, and they join into a landscape.

How big it gets depends on how many menhirs you’ve lit, but it can reach five cards by five, and they’re big cards. That’s a lot of table. I stop every single time I open a new part of the map, just to take in the details and see how the cards connect. Don’t worry, I’m only showing you a corner of it here, nothing that will spoil anything.

The rest of the deck lives up to it. The combat and diplomacy cards are painted in the same Celtic, mystical style, and so are the creatures.

Six Tainted Grail combat and diplomacy cards fanned out, including War Magic, Hex and Find Weakness — The combat and diplomacy cards, in the same Celtic, mystical style.

It’s long to set up, so it stays on my table for days. That turns out to be the best part. When you’re not playing and you just look at it, it makes even more sense, because you’re looking with nothing but admiration.

The One I’d Actually Frame

If I had to frame one thing from all of this, it wouldn’t be a single card. It would be the Tainted Grail map, complete, once I finish the campaign. I’m curious to see it all together, and I think it will be incredible.

A menhir miniature standing on the Tainted Grail map, with the location cards spread around it — As far as I’ve got. There’s a whole campaign still to come.

See You in Part 3

That’s it for the cards! The last part is about the games that take over the whole table: big colours, busy boards, and the miniatures I can’t play without. I’ll also finally tell you which game is my favourite of them all.

In the meantime, tell me: has a card ever stopped you mid-game, just so you could look at it?

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