Seeing the preview for the Watch Commander (see other Topic) has reminded me of the odd decision FFG has made when designing the card face for attachments. When we all learnt AEG had sold the game to FFG, one of the first things I thought is that at the very least the cards were going to look great and, by all means, they do. But for precisely that reason the choice to have this floating sword, intruding in the art or all and every attachments, seem so jarring to me. AEG had already done something smiliar in one of their latest redesign, having a similar artifact in all their item cards. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

On most attachment cards it is something I can more or less ignore, but in a certain number of cards, with the artwork featurng swords (check, for instance, Pacifism or Fine Katana) I find it distracting and I consider it makes a diservice to the looks of the card. What's more important, it serves no purpose at all, adding no information.

Yes I realize this is relatively unimportant, but I wanted to get it off my chest... Mini-rant over.

Huh. I have no issues with this. I though (and hoped) that this rant would be about how the templating the card wants you to splay them to the left for the kill modifiers, but also down for effects so it doesn't REALLY fit no matter what you do.

Also just so I don't derail your thread. I can see your issue.

I didn't even notice it before, but now I can't unsee it.

Haven't noticed it either. Guess I have to go have a look-see as well...

Aaahhhh! It's Casper, the friendly ghost sword!

I actually like it - it is a quick visual cue for me.

Huh. I don't think I ever would have noticed that without it having been pointed out to me. I guess I don't really find it out of place on attachments, and don't mind it. Though to be honest, I'll probably forget all about it by the time the game releases, and whether they kept it or removed it, I wouldn't even notice.

THIS! I absolutely HATE that sword. What purpose does it serve? If it was only on weapons with a different icon for followers, spells, etc I'd still dislike it but at least there's a quasi-justifiable reason for its existence.

We already know attachments are attachments due to their orientation and the fact that they say ATTACHMENT in the top left corner.

Yeah, that was template for Celestial and Emperor items only (they removed it in Ivory). Honestly, for me it looks much better than this semi-transparent LCG one.

PS. Amazing art on this sword.

PPS. Comparision.

Going back looking at cards to see what else I was oblivious to, I noticed that Art of Peace and Art of War are like before and after shots of the same garden! I had noticed that they both had bridges in them but I didn't recognize it was the SAME bridge. Maybe I'm the last to realize this as well, but pretty cool.

No, you are not the last! XD

11 hours ago, kempy said:

Yeah, that was template for Celestial and Emperor items only (they removed it in Ivory). Honestly, for me it looks much better than this semi-transparent LCG one.

Personally, I prefer semi-transparent sword over solid sword; but I prefer no sword over sword!

1 hour ago, Mon no Oni said:

Personally, I prefer semi-transparent sword over solid sword; but I prefer no sword over sword!

Same here!

I wonder if this was a case of making templates before deciding what the "attachment" category was going to include.

Haha *cannot*unsee* the guy is holding a ghost sword!!! Its Ambition back to kill us all!!! SCC CONFIRMED!!!

41 minutes ago, shosuko said:

Haha *cannot*unsee* the guy is holding a ghost sword!!! Its Ambition back to kill us all!!! SCC CONFIRMED!!!

please don't say that

Even AEG removed the sword from the item template for the last few sets under their tenure, so I don't understand why FFG re-instated it.

I think it's fine. It's definitely better that it's semi-transparent and blends in with the card template. The old solid colored sword sticks out too much and takes away from the item art. As FFG has it now it just feels like a useful symbol so you can see at a quick glance that the card is an attachment (and as a graphical call back to the old card designs).