Board Games | Art
ISS Vanguard — The Art and Components
“ISS Vanguard is an upcoming major board game from Awaken Realms. It will feature a 1–4 player co-operative gameplay that will immerse you in an amazing adventure among the stars, as you lead the first human galactic exploration effort.”
Art by Dominik Mayer, Piotr Gacek, Patryk Jędraszek, and Ewa Ladak
Published by Awaken Realms
Today we look at the mind-blowing art, components and miniatures of ISS Vanguard.
“And to give this game a unique look, we brought in a new lead artist, Dominik Meyer, who created an inspiring vision, based on a golden age of space exploration stories.”
Mr. Meyer has been involved in such projects as Magic: The Gathering, Concordia, Paleo, and many more.
The art of ISS Vanguard is decidedly purple and full of other bright colors that force your attention to it like board game eye candy.
The box art is similar to what you’d see on current Military Sci-Fi and Space Opera book covers, with epic scale spaceships and interstellar objects. We just know that we are getting into something bigger than us, bigger than humanity, with art like this.
The art above is completely different and brings memories of classic Sci-Fi from the ’60s with such minimalist designs. The starships are barely an afterthought even though their movement is featured prominently. The terrain is both harsh and alien as one might expect.
The art reveals for the campaign of “The Lost Fleet” are energetic, chaotic, and vibrant. Conflict, motion, and open space are all elements paid homage to in these pieces. They certainly leave me intrigued about what’s to come when I finally open these beautiful boxes and discover the game for myself.
The detail of the Crewmembers is realistic and…well…cool! The woman with the tools being lowered (presumably) into the bowels of the ISS Vanguard for…routine diagnostics. The dude with the funky neck gear and hand-controlled drone — his look both engaged and confident.
The character cards look fantastic! Each with traits like “Team Player” and “Methodical” along with asymmetric abilities and personal files with backstories to bring them to life.
The miniatures are a popular draw to any Awaken Realms game, and ISS Vanguard is no exception. This game seems to be the best of a very fine bunch with these latest sculpts. The alien miniature above looks like a flower grown from steel!
We haven’t received confirmation yet on the color(s) of the sundrop (a miniature pre-shading technique), but after seeing the Nemesis: Lockdown sundrop in multiple colors I’m hopeful this game will do likewise.
For those interested, Update #23 features Dominik Mayer’s art tutorial! The video shows Dominik working on the “simple” art for an action card (the process is sped up).
The cards themselves will be multiple sizes, including Mini Euro, Standard CCG, Oversized, and FFG-type square cards.
I’ve shown the dice before but for the sake of the completionist inside us all let’s check out the beautiful prototype dice again. Enjoy!
To wrap things up, there will be various tokens, markers, rings, stands and inserts included with this campaign.
And that is your overview of the art and components of ISS Vanguard. If you have enjoyed this article please throw a follow my way or share on social media! I’d like to continue making more content for our hobby.
-the BoardGameNerd
