Thursday, March 7, 2019

Board Game Box Art

'A man can learn all of an opponent's weaknesses on that board,' said Gilt.
'Really?' said Vetinari, raising his eyebrows. 'Should not he be trying to learn his own?'
~Terry Pratchett


Board games can have wonderful art on their boxes. They can also be pretty intriguing...what kind of useful (lion-related) knowledge does Grandmama have? I know it might seem like I didn't, but I really did restrain myself -- there were many more I wanted to include! These are in chronological order:

Grandmama's Useful Knowledge, 1887
Designer: (Uncredited)
Publisher: McLoughlin Brothers

Game of the Man in the Moon, 1890
Designer: (Uncredited)
Publisher: McLoughlin Brothers

Game of Four and Twenty Black Birds, 1908
Publisher: McLoughlin Brothers

International Game of Spy, 1939
Designer: (Uncredited)
Publisher: E. E. Fairchild Corporation

Flash, 1956
Designer: (Uncredited)
Publisher: Selchow & Righter

Railroader, 1963
Designer: (Uncredited)
Publisher: John Waddington Ltd.

Wings, 1981
Designer: S. Craig Taylor
Publisher: Excalibre Games, Inc., Yaquinto

Troja, 2004
Designer: Marek Mydel, Michał Stachyra, Maciej Zasowski
Artist: Jakub Jabłoński
Publisher: Imperium

Endeavor, 2009
Designer: Carl de Visser, Jarratt Gray
Artist: Josh Cappel, Klemens Franz, Hanno Girke
Publisher: Z-Man Games

Two of our family's favorite board games have cool box art: Ticket to Ride and 7 Wonders.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful art on these boxes...and you can see the artistic influence of the periods. Interesting, though, that a couple of the latest ones harken back to much earlier times.

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  2. Loved this, especially the link to the games from Ticket to Ride. I looked at all their games and most of the box art was wonderful!

    Reminds me of the Golden Age of illustration. Rich in color and imagery, not slick and fast computer generated stuff. But painterly looking art. Reminds me of stuff by J.C. Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth and others of that era. Really enjoyable post, thank you!

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