Here are a few pictures I did for the boardgame Victory or Death: The Peloponnesian War. Most of this stuff is about a year old.
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| Cover art, sans logo. The gold plate at the bottom was just easier to include as part of the image, so it’s baked in to the final. |
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| Artwork for the Event card. In the game, Event cards cover a lot of possibilities, so coming up with something generic was difficult. But it being a game about ancient Greece, a fleet of triremes arriving at a city seemed a good bet. Are they invading? Bringing news? Limping home after a defeat? |
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| Art for the Sea Battle card. My initial concept was to show a few triremes in a long shot, but that lacked impact. SoI decided to move closer in to the action, just as two triremes are about to engage. Ship combat in ancient times was mainly a ram and board affair, with very little missile fire. |
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| Artwork for the Status card. Again, this card art needed to cover many possibilities. I figured the best way to do this one was to show the interior of a city, enjoying the fruits of its status. |
As with most historical games, this one required a tremendous amount of research. (Grognards get sniffy if you depict something that’s inaccurate or anachronistic!) I consulted a lot of online resources, of course, as well as a few
Osprey Men-At-Arms books.
For those who are unaware of the Men-At-Arms series, they are stunningly useful books that cover a mind-boggling range of eras. They’re meticulously researched and go into great detail about how things are put together based on the historical records and ancient illustrations. Then they provide clean, modern illustrations of how the warriors would have looked.
