Even More Art of Warcraft

By in large, I'm a poor collectable card game player. Since the strategy often baffles me I'm often left rifling through my cards, looking at all the pretty pictures and thoroughly frustrating the other players (all part of my master plan). Fortunately, this January, Upper Deck is making a book for CCG players like me, World of Warcraft: The Art of the Trading Card Game, a collection that lets Sunday gamers finally enjoy the World of Warcraft TCG by avoiding all those sharp cardboard corners and antagonistic opponents.

World of Warcraft: The Art of the Trading Card Game will feature a collection of sketches, paintings and finished artwork highlighting a selection of World of Warcraft’s most valiant heroes, devastating spellcasters and bloodthirsty creatures created by some of today’s top fantasy artists. These artists include Todd McFarlane (Spawn), Greg Staples (Judge Dredd), Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai (InQuest Gamer magazine’s “Artists of the Year” recipients), Marcelo Vignali (Disney Animation), and Todd Lockwood (Forgotten Realms), among others.

Even with its more than 300 pieces of art, the book is optimistically noted as "Volume #1," signaling its imperialistic designs on my coffee table. But all this does leave me with one question: being art, based on a card game, based on a video game, probably based on concept art, how far are we now from the Platonic ideal of a Murloc? I'll leave that one for the cyber scholars of the future to ponder.