Updated CK cards and story with pictures

By AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Long story short, I made Astarra card from Crusade of Forgotten with the community balance change and the original artwork from Conversion Kit:

en_astarra_front.jpg?pub_secret=1439499a7b en_astarra_back.jpg?pub_secret=753ae48b73

And now the long story.

You may know me from Fun Facts in Descent , from my contributions to Rugal's Druid , Gksozae's Cavalier , Bringing up the love for Runewars Miniatures kit , or from mine of custom expansion Maze of the Drakon .

I LOVE Descent and I wish FFG would still support it. There are some minor issues which I will talk about briefly and I will share with you what I am doing when I am not painting minis - with pictures!

en_preview.jpg?pub_secret=cd5ade45da

1) Localization issue

I am from Czech Republic and sadly our Czech Descent publisher Blackfire localized and released only Base Game , Labyrinth of Ruin and Shadow of Nerekhall . Everything else I have to get in English, which would be fine, but it extremely triggers my OCD and bothers me to mismatch English and Czech cards together.

So what I am basically doing now: I make translations with multiple friends and recreate every card to HQ graphic. Because shared cards from FFG are not exactly in the good enough quality for printing, I usually spend hours of searching for the original artwork and their artist. Artists quite often publish their pieces on their blogs, websites, DeviantArt, Artstation, etc., but sadly not always and then I use scans, low quality pictures (mostly from Descent wiki ) and try to restore them. I often manually repaints some parts, which you could already see from my published custom heroes.

You can see preview of completely recreated and translated Bonds of the Wild by me (images are at 50% size):

bonds_preview.jpg?pub_secret=787e5d3ab7

2) Balance, typos, text inconsistency

Sadly with plenty of content released some parts of Descent are not exactly balanced and also Czech translations includes typos and incorrect translations. But since I am already recreating lot of cards, I also made corrections of those mistakes and included some balance changes for stuff that I have - mostly taken from Charm'y balance patch , Rugal's balance patch and Dadler93's balance patch (upcoming). Another preview!

fixes_preview.jpg?pub_secret=079465b27e

3) Miniatures scale change

Having monsters slightly larger is really fine, but H&M packs included heroes so big, that they barely fit on their base. That's something unacceptable for me. To solve this issue I am buying minis from Descent 1st, Runebound and Runewars which includes characters we know, but fit into game better and that is also reason why I made this updated Astarra card!

This is creation process of making the Hero card. I was not able to find original artwork, but I did find high quality scan of her card from Descent 1st edition. Since it was slightly smaller, I manually repainted the connections and missing parts - took about 5 hours to do so.

astarra_creation.gif?pub_secret=7e529523

Custom (but not really) content

Runebound 3rd includes updated sculps of Red Scorpion and Eliam which were never released in the Descent. Also Runewars Miniatures Game contains some of amazing miniatures from Terrinoth. For that reason I recreated already existing cards for Skeletons, Golem s and Eliam (as the Red Scorpion ) with the updated artwork. Here is the preview:

custom_preview.jpg?pub_secret=acffd25d0d

And what's next?

Of course Czech translations are not really interesting for you guys, I just wanted to show you what I am doing.

Since Maze of the Drakon is finished, I will continue helping creators with their custom content (e.g. like I did with Rugal's Druid , Gksozae's Cavalier ). Here and there I might even jump on some other projects ( Bringing up the love for Runewars Miniatures kit ) and I will also post completely brand new cards for Drakon board game . Right now I have them finished and playtested in Czech, but I will also translate them to English. Another reason to buy Drakon 4th if the Maze of the Drakon isn't enough.

Overview card is now exactly same size as Descent hero cards, hero cards are now exactly same size as Descent class cards, they are generic, so you are no longer restricted to pick specific miniature and there are 6 more custom ones - increasing number of heroes from 6 to 12. And here is the last preview:

drakon_preview.jpg?pub_secret=6c66795348

Thank you for your time reading this ❤️ .
https://instagram.com/awesometree_in_the_dark/

Edited by AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark

Wow, superb work!

I'm very interested in your Bonds of the Wild files.

It's the only Descent component I couldn't get in Spanish, and I'd like to translate it for those times when I play with people who don't know English.

Thanks man!

Sharing is caring, here are the photoshop templates 😉 :

monsters: Hellhounds , Kobolds , Deep Elfs
familiars
heroes

and fonts . ( Adobe Garamond Pro for texts, Gara Scenario Descent for symbols and Windlass for headlines)

Edited by AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark

And what about the druid from drakon ? ? 😁

nice job, i also has CK astarra, and printed a new custom astarra with a little nerfed hero ability ( "once per round, during a move action you may spend 1 movement point to...") when the quarantine finish, i surely will print those custom heroes, i really like them 🥰

Edited by Pabliten
22 hours ago, rugal said:

And what about the druid from drakon ? ? 😁

I have almost everything ready, I am polishing wording and working on graphics before I publish it.

I rather take my time then rush the job 😁 I hope you will not be disappointed 🙂 .

19 hours ago, Pabliten said:

nice job, i also has CK astarra , and printed a new custom astarra with a little nerfed hero ability ( "once per round, during a move action you may spend 1 movement point to...") when the quarantine finish, i surely will print those custom heroes, i really like them 🥰

That's a good change which I also like and will use 🙂 She already have premium stats, so this nerf is appropriate.

I hope you will enjoy them! Don't hesitate to share your feedback! 🙂

1 hour ago, AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark said:

I have almost everything ready, I am polishing wording and working on graphics before I publish it.

I rather take my time then rush the job 😁 I hope you will not be disappointed 🙂 .

That's a good change which I also like and will use 🙂 She already have premium stats, so this nerf is appropriate.

I hope you will enjoy them! Don't hesitate to share your feedback! 🙂

I hope, but please, I can't wait ! 😉

I did the same change on her, and it is far better

I updated Astarra card to include " during a move action " balance change 🙂

I also couldn't resist and had to create card for Trenloe the Strong .
Jesper Ejsing did incredible job with the artwork and I highly recommend to check all of his fantasy artworks he made, if you already didn't do so:

ArtStation , Website , Blog and this is where I found Trenloe .

en_trenloe_front.jpg?pub_secret=34ba1d880a en_trenloe_back.jpg?pub_secret=50a618b499

EDIT: Painted!

_front.jpg?pub_secret=d700921f76

Edited by AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark

I really do like more the new figures and artwork from than the old ones si I'm not sure about this

It's a matter of personal taste 🙂 Those artworks are giving me a nostalgic feeling.

I don't know if anyone else share the same opinion with me, but I am not forcing anyone to use those cards. I am just sharing, because sharing is caring 🤗 .

Oh my, I found another artwork of Astarra in Realms of Terrinoth. It's tempting to make another card version 😂

astarra_alt.jpg?pub_secret=bdf8c4571a

By the way here is updated card with original artwork:

en_astarra_orig_front.jpg?pub_secret=4fe5741834 en_astarra_orig_back.jpg?pub_secret=0c464c0ae0

Edited by AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark

This is much better imo

The artwork of realms of Terrinoth looks like a bit too much sci-fi to me (surprisingly since she's not but I cannot explain)

I love those 1st edition sculps! They just needed little help with a scalp and green stuff - Trenloe is no longer bending to the side and Astarra staff length is reduced.

trenloe_astarra.jpg?pub_secret=f39cb40b2

Can't wait to paint them.

1 hour ago, AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark said:

I love those 1st edition sculps! They just needed little help with a scalp and green stuff - Trenloe is no longer bending to the side and Astarra staff length is reduced.

trenloe_astarra.jpg?pub_secret=f39cb40b2

Can't wait to paint them.

I don't ! Many are ugly in strange poses. Valadir is maybe the worst totaly ridiculous

Yeah, Valadir sculp is fugly 😄 . But few of them are great in my opinion, like Astarra, Arvel, Ronan, Vyrah, Trenloe, Tahlia, etc.. And most importantly they fit the original Descent figure size ❤️

For almost all I do prefer the new ones.

I liked the style of old Ispher but he was far too small and badly sculpted and Maliki but he needs to be remade

Edited by rugal

Painted Astarra , very simple to paint and had lot of fun during the process 🙂 .

_bg.jpg?pub_secret=b799245a39 _front.jpg?pub_secret=0136ff80bd

Also I created Vyrah card with alternative artwork (from Genesys rulebook):

en_vyrah_alt_front.jpg?pub_secret=0e33d09e84 en_vyrah_alt_back.jpg?pub_secret=9261a2c8ca

Recreated original for comparison:

en_vyrah_front.jpg?pub_secret=00f714a449 en_vyrah_back.jpg?pub_secret=755e8c2ab2

Edited by AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark
On 3/27/2020 at 2:04 AM, AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark said:

This looks fantastic! Are you planning on doing this with the rest of the CK heroes?

Thank you @ComtriS ! Well not really, maybe in the future. You would want some specific one?

I really like Trenloe and Astarra retro artworks and their miniatures so I did those two, but my focus is on other Descent projects right now :) , e.g.:

img_20200803_185214__01.jpg?pub_secret=b6607afc3b

Edited by AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark
On 3/27/2020 at 2:04 AM, AwesomeTree_in_the_Dark said:

Custom (but not really) content

Runebound 3rd includes updated sculps of Red Scorpion and Eliam which were never released in the Descent. Also Runewars Miniatures Game contains some of amazing miniatures from Terrinoth. For that reason I recreated already existing cards for Skeletons, Golem s and Eliam (as the Red Scorpion) with the updated artwork. Here is the preview:

custom_preview.jpg?pub_secret=acffd25d0d

Has this content been posted somewhere?

3 hours ago, ComtriS said:

Has this content been posted somewhere?

Not really, since I did it just in Czech for existing monsters in the game (+red scorpion which is eliam) and I removed skulls tatoo from skeletons foreheads, because I don't like them. But I can share the templates if you are interested of doing something with them.