#fingers crossed tungle doesn't obliterate the links

[stillness138]

Since there won't be any more expansions (and i'm a chronic procrastinator), i updated my personal top 10 Gwent card arts into a top 20, including the few sets that came since then and shuffling things around a bit.

It's a long one, hence the cut.

Personal top 20 Gwent card arts:

20: Bone Talisman by Bogna Gawrońska It's still the most festive looking thing i like. My beloved blue-and-bright red fidget spinner. I really can't explain my weird attachment to it any other way; i generally tend to like the item arts, maybe it's the collector brain, maybe it's because after Homecoming and most of the expansion sets since later 2019 onwards, these base set trinket adjacent arts became more prominent to me among a lot of new, more dramatic and bleak character and scenery art.

19: Ceremonial Dagger by Katarzyna Bekus The entire set of strategem arts from Merchants of Ofir is honestly packed, but the dagger is the one i found myself putting in my in-game profile the most. Maybe it's the item hoarder brain again, maybe it's the color scheme i find relatable if that makes sense, most likely it's the premium helping a bunch to make that choice too. The background weirdly fascinates me. Does it have anything to do with The Spiral? I have never attempted to really assign any logical meaning to the strategem arts, they're clearly more symbolic than anything, but it still makes you wonder.

18: Ard Gaeth by Katarzyna Bekus Somewhat related, here's another piece of wonky multiverse lore. And once again, it's the color that first grabs attention; the contrast of teal and this dusty red. Then one starts realizing the implied size and scope, the birds help with that, apart from being a cute composition detail. The shattery effect makes it look volatile, unstable, dangerous. Ominous. Which ultimately makes it fit with the rest of the Wild Hunt archetype in more than just lore.

17: Coup de Grâce by Lorenzo Mastroianni There are two wolves in me, one loves bright colors, the other actually enjoys a lot of the bleaker scenes. Although to be fair, Lorenzo Mastroianni is a big contributor to that. And it's no wonder, when he casually drops stuff like this. It's almost symbolic, lot less than strategems but certainly more than other, straightforward "war sucks" Gwent art. How do you visually represent something sad in a way that makes it hard to look away not just because of the tragedy but because of the beauty put into making that image? You ask Lorenzo Mastroianni, the modern classical artist, to do it.

16: Viper Witcher by Valeriy Vegera I once described Valeriy's art as "where Lorenzo uses a tight color palette, he uses every pencil in the case". This one is perhaps not as obvious an example, the whole piece has a very unified atmosphere especially from afar, but still, there are so many colors especially in textiles and skin. They're harder to register sometimes but it's how Valeriy does texture and shading. And somehow, he bridges the bleak and the colorful world too. Admittedly, this card also had to be here because mr. Viper is my son, and the voicelines are done by an actor with the nicest, smoothest bass i've heard since Peter Steele.

15: Naglfar's Crew by Anton Nazarenko I was surprised by how much i ended up liking this one. It's the implications, i think; enchanted to laboriously upkeep this monster of a ship, this 'and if you see it emerge from a breach in the sky, you know you're fucked' symbol of death and decay. It's dark in a way i find compelling, i guess.

14: Serpent Trap by Marta Dettlaff Back to the bright ones, i liked this art ever since i discovered it as Nature's Gift in post-Midwinter beta. The card saw play in Scoia'tael spell decks, and to me it became linked to Francesca Findabair for their shared spectral snake thing. But that all aside, the art is just so pretty. Vibrant, yet not oversaturated. And like the item arts, needed to balance out the cool and badass and the dramatic and tragic. Looking at it now, another point comes to mind; it's still grounded? The way Gwent art at large is grounded compared to other card games. Like it's not trying so hard (both this piece and the game's art in general). That's refreshing.

13: Chort by Bartłomiej Gaweł It reminds me of the first game's main menu. The Witcher 1 main menu is, to me, one of the most accurate representations of this universe, its atmosphere. Even if the "you kill cows, you get ambushed by the fucking baphomet" is a meme game mechanic, something about it is...witchery. Superstition, folk legends, and ultimately, monsters. Or that's my takeaway, anyway. But the Chort art, beside being on the more rare side in-game, has always weirdly drawn me in.

12. Oneiromancy by Lorenzo Mastroianni This was the Novigrad expansion key art before they turned it into a card, and i sure am glad they did. Lorenzo can get a bit weird, as a treat, someone said. Are they Condwiramurs and Corinne? Possibly! But i'll abstain from the schizo theories now. It's a gorgeous, well composed and executed surrealist piece. Inception if it had strong palpable atmosphere.

Denis Villeneuve > Christopher Nolan. but Lorenzo beats both

11: Funeral Boat by, you guessed it, Lorenzo Mastroianni One final yippee for the last card set. And my god it's beautiful. Tight composition can get surprisingly hard to coordinate and make decisions for, but this is so well-balanced. The left end of the boat is closer to the frame, but right side has the most noticeable color, the character's face, and of course the bird to even it out. As if to defend the title i gave him earlier, Lorenzo references Isle of the Dead in a way that, even if symbolic, fits into the universe perfectly. Someone stop me before i start rambling about similar concepts in different mythologies.

10: Dana Méadbh (now the token spawned by Call of Harmony) by Anna Podedworna The most famous Gwent artist enters the list. With a piece made around two, when you think about it very bold choices. The goddess of nature and life, glowing with inhuman light in a black and barren forest. Obscured by thin, bare tree trunks. But to make her emerge and stand out, that was necessary. And it's working wonders. A lot of the Scoia'tael faction is obviously green, all kinds of green, but even a simple choice like making it pop out of black makes the card art stand out among others.

9: Circle of Life by Oleksandr Kozachenko It has everything i usually look for in Gwent art; nature, color, atmosphere. A certain tranquility, perhaps. A little bit of story - the orange badge is the Kerack coat of arms. It's that environmental storytelling thing gamers keep talking about, complementing the character and faction drama of the rest of its card set.

There's a slightly changed, extended version, too, and somehow it's even better.

8: Gezras of Leyda by Bogdan Rezunenko As much as i tend to dunk on Bogdan for having played Blasphemous once and making it his entire personality, Gezras is easily the best school founder card art of the set. Once again, the choice to have these prominent arts on the more symbolic side paid off, and the result is a stalking nocturnal animal out for revenge, backed by a giant image of what simultaneously did him irrepairable harm and gave him the means to defend himself. The premium doesn't disappoint either.

7: Rioghan the Undying by Daniel Valaisis To nobody's surprise, the atmosphere, once again, got me hooked. I love the cold color, the dramatic flow, the big imposing silhouette of a ship in the background. Poor boy is the picture of misery. It's pure melancholy (something not that common in the Skellige faction by the way, which is a point in favor of Funeral Boat too), that i, of course, am inevitably drawn to.

he's just like me fr...

6: Witches' Sabbath by Michal Lisowski Did i craft this card already or not? The realist's complaint towards near-greyscale card art. I share this sentiment, if only for the comedy of it, but with a few notable exceptions, and this piece is the main one. The Robert Eggers comparisons were made already i'm sure, but it really is a take on the last good Witcher 3 quest with a dramatic, more dreamy, or you could say cinematic quality ramped up to 11. Gone is the fanservice present in the game and the unnecessarily grotesque depictions of fatness of other parts of this card set, and what remains is a beautiful, ominous callback to folklore and classical art.

5: Tinboy by Valeriy Vegera This is a baroque painting. The drama. Tinboy doesn't take that scarf off, ever. And here this poor soul is, their last will to live dragging it off him. On purpose? On accident? Probably both. The pattern marking Tinboy as a gang member staining with blood of a victim, something something symbolism. All in Valeriy's signature 'which pencil should i pick up next' style. Underrated piece.

4: Lara Dorren by Toni Muntean They finally got our girl. And once again, despite heartbreak, it's gorgeous. Soft, sweet colors with a necessary hint of melancholy (the lighting suggests it's sunset?), and a pure, painted quality without the need for texture assets. A scene like this is better left a comparatively simple and laid back tribute. Beyond the technicalities, i also really, really applaud Toni for the outfit design. This is the Aen Elle princess, dressed well but for the weather. And the fact her mostly blue clothes with yellow sleeves mirror Cregennan's yellow jerkin with blue details, and her red brooch above the heart might, beside contrasting with the blue, very well reflect his fatal wounds... well. As much as death on card art isn't always done the best, Lara is represented together with that which mattered to her the most. Despite being categorized among the Wild Hunt, she remains herself.

3: Lydia van Bredervoort by Igor Klymenko The joy i felt when this was the art of Lydia they managed to get into the game. It's easily one of the best contest pieces and on par with the best Gwent has to offer - it has mood, and that ever present air of groundedness, realism, and in that, unfortunate tragedy. But similarly to Lara, it shows Lydia being her own person; doing what she loved and was good at without sight of Vilgefortz despite her being known as his ever loyal assistant. Likewise, it doesn't sensantionalize her condition, but references it in a subtle, tasteful, and even clever way. I also love her dress and the overall color palette. Igor understood.

2: Eldain by Anna Podedworna Couldn't help it, this asshole has me in chokehold and he's enjoying it. In my defense, this piece highlights everything Anna is known for, because she's damn good at it. Incredibly sharp main subject of the piece contrasted against a blurry background, which allows for insane details like the strings extending from the top of the lute. To add more fun to it, Eldain isn't even in the absolute foreground, but the piece is still composed smart, so he remains the main focus. His silly red collar on mostly green helps. On top of all that, the art tells a little story, something Anna often does too, and in this case it delightfully sums Eldain up. It's also the best premium in the game.

look at his little red ears from sitting against the sun aww

Honorable mention: Lake Guardian by Anton Nazarenko Like the following #1, this card has sentimental value to me as my second card reveal and artwork i made my best emote of. It was a perfect match, bird gals and all. It's a Sirin, bringing in a more obscure but not unwelcome mythology reference to the universe. And I love her vibrant, marble-like eyes.

1: Dol Blathanna Sentry by Lorenzo Mastroianni ...remains my favourite card art since that fateful day sometime in January 2018. I was just discovering what there was to know about Witcher, downloading Gwent in the first place out of need for more content as i was slowly reading through the first book. Gwent has done a lot to explore and build on this universe, and it has helped me contextualize a lot of things early on. I remember scrolling through the deckbuilder, seeing this art, and being struck by its mood, this aura of secret and wonder. "Oh, so this is what Dol Blathanna looks like..." It's quintessential older Lorenzo. Very much admitted brush work, fog, tight color palette. The little specks of blue in flowers and face paint work just right. Maybe it's a reference to Arthurian myth and Avalon, maybe to Greek myth and Hades, or maybe, as is often the case and was the case later (or earlier in this list), both. It spoke to me and my sense of wonder back then. It speaks to me when i search for comfort now.

now, time to tear Karol Bem to shreds in the top 20 least favourites xd

#shut up elis #the witcher #gwent: the witcher card game #fingers crossed tungle doesn't obliterate the links