Art Upgrade - Possession

Considering the old one looks less like a possession and more like Bruce Banner going through the early transformation into the Hulk, this is a no brainer - Upgrade.

Carmen Lives!

The model for Carmen, this year’s winner for Best Supporting Vampire, has been revealed. Known as Malice, she’s a model/manager for the band Hellfire Society. Here is her MySpace page. She even has this photo of herself and her V:TES alter-ego in her photo album:

No word yet if David Bowie plays V:TES

So that’s who that was

It was brought to my attention today after posting the Nossies results on the VTES newgroup that the inspiration for the Best Artwork winner “Liquefy the Mortal Coil” was from an Avril Lavigne photo (as you can see above).

As Peter B. pointed out who knew “so many people were in love with seeing Avril Lavigne disintigrate into a pile of goo… “

Personally I don’t have a problem with this. Being a former illustrator I know how hard it can be to get good models. Often artists use photos in catalogs and magazines or wherever they can to find what works or what inspires them.

Now if only someone would do something with Kate Beckinsale…

The Polls Have Closed - The Results are In!

The 2008 Nossies are over and these are the winners. Thanks to all who took the time to vote.

Best Card: Target Vitals

A non-discipline combat card that allows your minion’s current strike to inflict two additional points of damage on his opponent. Any minion can use it - Fredrick the Weak, Smudge the Ignored, even cute little Alia, God’s Messenger suddenly doesn’t look so impotent. The only downside is that the opposing minion may discard two combat cards from their hand to cancel this card. But up against decks that are light on combat, that may not be a problem for the user of this award winning card.

Best Vampire in a Leading Role: Nakhthorheb

What better way to keep your prey busy than using the vampire with a built in untap? Nakhthorheb can untap once during each of your minion phases. In addition he also has +1 strength and minions with your corruption counters cannot block him. So let’s see here - a multi-action, hard hitting, unblockable vamp… Hmm there must be something here to like, right?

Best Vampire in a Supporting Vampire: Carmen

The race for Best Supporting Vampire was the closest contest of any category. With five nominees it came down to a close horse race between the Tremere Antitribu Carmen and the Ravnos Vasiliy Vasilevich. Vasility has a nice special ability of untapping after performing a successful bleed on your prey as well as a built-in +1 bleed. But Carmen took the prize being both an inexpensive Black Hand member who gives all your non-camarilla vampires an additional +1 stealth on equip actions. That carte blanche ability was in the eyes of many the best reason to give her the award.

Best Equipment:  Camera Phone

No longer limited to girls locker rooms and European beaches, the sharp little technology that is the camera phone has now made it’s way into V:TES. A useful piece of equipment that allows your minions to bleed at +1 bleed as a (D) action. It’s like your own personal, pocket-sized Computer Hack. And it’s free!
– P.S. Look for an upgraded version of Camera Phone to be released as soon as you buy this one (just kidding).

Best Ally:  Nocturn

Things lurking in the shadows got a little more terrifying this year with the addition of the Nocturn. This inexpensive ally is not only able to act on the turn it’s recruited, but your acting vampire will untap the first time they bring one into play. If the acting vampire has superior Obtenebration, he or she may recruit more Nocturn on the same turn, with the cost increased by 1 blood. The Nocturn have a short life span, as you must burn them during your next untap phase. But with a few [OBT] vamps and enough Nocturns in hand, you can create a swarm of kamikaze bleeders to blitz your prey in one turn.

Best Event:  Narrow Minds

It’s a common sight in any V:TES game – bleed followed by ‘bounce.’ But now performing all those deflections, redirections and misdirections won’t be so easy as this new event increases the costs of all cards that change the target of a bleed by an additional blood or life. Your pool may be protected from enemy incoming, but watch out that your minions don’t quickly run out of steam from all that bouncing.

Best Art:  Liquefy the Mortal Coil

by Heather V. Kreiler
Artist Heather Kreiter won the top art prize for her rendering of this Vicissitude combat card. A powerful card to begin with - allowing your vampire to burn allies or diablerize younger vampires in combat, Heather beautifully and skillfully captured the visual of such an event with the depiction of a panicked young vampire watching her arm become liquefied.

Art Upgrade: Skin of Night

The original looks more like “Skin of Whirlpool.” Meanwhile the upgrade can be interpreted as “Fabio at Sunset.” But none the less it is an upgrade and another sign that White Wolf has a vested interest in producing a high quality game.

Art Downgrade: Taste of Death

The original shows a vampire literally shooting blood out his mouth and exiting the victum’s body like a high powered machine gun firing bullets.

The new one shows what looks to be a guy laughing while food is coming out of his mouth.

So we went from violent explosion of blood to a bad smoker’s cough.

Preventing the old Taste of Death required something tough like Skin of Steel. The new one looks like it only requires Tide Liquid Ultra. “Hey buddy, you got something on your shirt there.”

Final Judgement: Downgrade

Art Upgrades: Flamethrower

One of the most appealing features of V:TES is the quality artwork that White Wolf puts into the cards. Admittedly in the early years of the game the art used wasn’t of the best quality. In the years since with the release of new expansions, familiar cards have been reprinted with artwork, sometimes getting an upgrade.

In what will be a continuing series we’ll look back at these reprints and judge if it was an upgrade or downgrade. Here we’ll look at the card Flamethrower.

Flamethrower was introduced in the original base set back in 1994. Here we see a standard image, drawn by artist Brian Snoddy, showing a guy holding a flamethrower. Not a bad painting, pretty straightforward.

Several years later it was reprinted with a new image by Matt Wilson. Here we see a much more active visual of the flamethrower in use.

Final judgement: Upgrade

NAC ‘07 Winner Ben Peal gets own portrait

Ben Peal, former Prince of Boston, 2007 NAC Winner, Drinker of bourbon, and King of the Kettlebell, was immortalized in water colors by long time VTES artist Lawerence Snelly. Might this appear soon as an actual crypt card?

Source: Lawerence Snelly Blog