Friendly Skeleton Games

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Meet the Triumvirate!

Solar systems with life are rare, and ones with sentient life are rarer still but the members of this Squad are from a solar system with 3 planets that each evolved sentient life independently. Though they are all highly different from one another, their species have forged an unbreakable bond of friendship and formed an Arena Squad together.

The alien designs for the Triumvirate were all largely inspired by some of the weird looking creatures from the covers of old pulp magazines, especially ones painted by Frank R. Paul. The idea of aliens using their differences as the basis for their friendship rather than their similarities appeals to me too - there'd be no competition for resources or environments if none of them could even survive on the others planets after all.

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Meet the Burning Gaze!

A Squad of one-eyed warriors from a planet of choking smoke and magma rivers, they favor concealment and waiting for the perfect time to strike rather than allowing themselves to be caught out in the open.

I had a lot of fun illustrating this squad - it was a neat challenge to try to add variety to the very simple faces of these cyclops aliens and to find colors that would work well with each other. The squads magma-dog mascot Sholipopi was especially fun to draw and I'm hoping that she looks good in print, because sometimes the more subtle glow effects don't always show up as well as they do on a screen.

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Meet the Golden Herd!

A Squad made up of an order of warrior-alchemists that believe in achieving perfection of the self through adversity. They favor defensive tactics and healing over pure offense, but can still pack a punch when pushed.

I've noticed the theme for this upcoming set does have quite a few influences from Greek mythology, such as the Minotaurs of this squad and a few other beings that will be coming along later once I get around to illustrating them. They were a fun squad to illustrate though, and I enjoyed working on them.

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Meet the Shock Troupers!

A squad of performance artists, whose extremely bizarre and violent acts were banned on every civilized planet (under penalty of death in some cases), who found themselves a captive audience in the Arena.

The concept of a group of horrible alien space clowns may not be 100% original, but it is fun. This squads theme actually didn't start out as clownish at all, but was more of a creepy skeletal-alien concept but this ended up winning out in the end.

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Meet the Red Tide!

The Red Tide are mostly famous for their frequently changing roster since the Squads captain is famous for devouring anything that gets in her way - including teammates that don't move out of the way fast enough.

This team was a lot of fun to make - I realized that in the first ARENA set I hadn't included any aquatic type beings, so I thought it would be fun to include several different types here.

This is also the first Squad that I have illustrated since the Blue and Orange Boxes for ARENA had been released on sale, and work is underway to get the upcoming Red and Green Box cards ready for a release later this year!

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ARENA on sale today!

I know my only followers so far are bots, but in case any of those bots manage to get corporeal bodies and enjoy card games I'd like to let them know that my card game ARENA goes on sale today.

I've been working on this project since the spring of 2021, and its pretty exciting to finally have something available for purchase! Currently I have 2 sets out, but I am hoping to release more in the future.

You can find them here and here.

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Meet ToxiCorp!

The only corporate-sponsored team in the Arena, ToxiCorp's mercenary members and their lovable mascot Toxi, are in the pay of the ToxiCola corporation. This company manufactures a single product which is sold as either a delicious beverage, cheap fuel source, cure-all elixir or industrial poison depending on the local planets biochemistry/gullibility.

ToxiCorp was a little poke in the direction of satire about crass commercialism and capitalism in general. It's a bunch of alien snake people selling poison as literal snake oil so its not exactly subtle, but neither am I. Toxi was extremely fun to design though, and he's quite the good boy/genetic-abomination.

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Meet the Sporenadoes!

Whether the Sporenadoes are a Squad of one or many is a matter of some debate. Denizens of a swampy planet, these amphibian beings all share a hive mind thanks to their infestation by a powerful psychic fungus. The mind-bending properties of the spores give this Squad the ability to daze and befuddle their opponents before they move in for the kill!

This squad got its start when I got briefly fixated on cordyceps fungus and its mind controlling abilities. The weird collection of fungus infested critters in this squad are collectively known as boglins (see what I did there?), and they were a blast to draw.

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Meet the Shield Clan!

Built millennia ago by a forgotten species of master craftsbeings, the Shield Clan carry on their creators culture and traditions to honor them - including that of their warrior caste. As their name implies, they excel at providing a rock solid defense to their allies but can still go on the offensive when the situation calls for it.

This Squad was the very first one that I illustrated since I thought it would be a good idea to start with the more simple and geometric forms of robots before moving on to organic characters. I enjoy Dwarves in fantasy settings, and loved playing the game Dwarf Fortress, so I did this Squad as an homage to them. For a bit of extra backstory, every member of this clan starts out as a robot of plain steel when they are born in their factory and their ornaments of bronze and gold are crafted by them for their team-mates. Each bot crafts their own golden mask to cover their factory-standard blank robot face when they decide who they are and what face they want to present to the world.

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Meet the Psyklones!

Trioptans are a powerfully psychic species, and the member of this Squad are among the most powerful their planet has to offer. While they are not very physically imposing, their mastery of mind-games and battlefield manipulation makes them formidable opponents.

Another of the earliest Squads that I illustrated, their main inspiration came from old pulp magazine cover art and "grey" style aliens.

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Meet the Nekromansaurs!

A bizarre but popular entry in the Arena, this Squad consists of a pair of priestesses that wield their divine powers to borrow the dead temporarily from their goddess, the Great Devourer.

This was another squad idea that started out as a silly pun (though originally it was the Fossillich, an evil undead tyrannosaur wizard). I was really big into dinosaurs as a kid, so having a team of necromancer dinosaurs in this space gladiator game made perfect sense to me. Science fiction is already fantasy of a sort, so why not just go full on science-fantasy?

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Meet the Lucky Devils!

Natives of a dimension of pure chaos, these bizarre beings flocked to the Arena as soon as they learned of its existence because it seemed like a fun time. They are potentially quite powerful, but also extremely unpredictable.

Chance and randomness in games can be a pretty fun element, so I decided to make a team where it would factor in quite heavily. Despite the squads name there's nothing sinister or evil intended with these characters - they are meant to be more of a goofy, anarchic type of creature that is perfectly happy whether their plans succeed or fail just as long as something blows up along the way.

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Meet the Guerilla Troop!

Outcasts from a society that values pacifism and harmony, the members of this Squad have found their place in the Arena since their nigh-uncontrollable aggression and love of explosions are more than welcome here. The Guerilla Troop rely on unstoppable firepower to get the job done wen it comes time for a match!

The visual design for this squad is a mix of 80's action movie posters, edgy 90's comic book art and big mean-looking primates like adult male mandrills and silverback gorillas (who are actually sweethearts most of the time). Once I found out that a group of gorillas is called a 'troop' the whole idea crystallized and I got right to work on doing these illustrations.

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Meet the B.L.O.B.!

A colorful crew with a constantly changing lineup, the Brilliant League of Battle (or BLOB to their fans) are masters of the art of teamwork. They had to be to survive on their homeworld since Gorplings are individually quite soft and fragile, but they evolved to be able to combine their bodies with others of their species to share their mass and intelligence.

I read the War of the Worlds at a pretty young age, and the Martians were always fascinating to me - a species that had evolved to be mostly just brains with some eyes and tentacles who used machines as their bodies. I also found the concept of colony creatures like the Portuguese man o' war to be really cool, so I wanted to combine those 2 concepts together when I made this squad. An alien species that consists of a little lump of goo with an eyeball, but when combined their exponentially increasing intelligence allows them to build and operate extremely complex machinery that they wear like an exoskeleton.

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Meet the AstroKnights!

Stalwart and proud warriors that carry on their species ancient customs of chivalry, the AstroKnights consist of the mighty armored Dar warriors and their swift Squires that act as scouts and support. This Squad strikes fast and keeps pressure on the enemy to keep the momentum on your side!

This squad was the second one which had been drawn, but their design had been one that I had worked on for a long while to try to get just right. The design of the Kentyr was pretty heavily influenced by the Andalites from one of my favorite childhood sci-fi book series, along with the idea of centaur-like warriors that were like knights that combined both horse and rider into one being. I also couldn't resist the pun-name, so obviously they had to be made.

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Meet the Regiment!

Modern Orcs have given up their life of pillage and conquest for peaceful cooperation, but the historical re-enactment society of their homeworld still enjoys cutting loose like their feared ancestors once did. The members of the Regiment leave behind their respectable jobs on the weekends to participate in the violent thrills of the Arena, the only place in the galaxy where their group was allowed to re-enact with live ammunition. This Squad relies on flooding the board with lots of small Champions to overwhelm opponents and then bringing in the big guns later once their weaker troops have fallen.

The main inspiration for the Regiment was the fact that in fantasy fiction the "bad guy" species like Orcs are usually depicted with lots of ugly coding around their "savagery" and "barbarism" that feels pretty gross when you examine it for more than a few seconds, so I thought it would be interesting to strip them of that and put them in crisp clean uniforms like soldiers wore in the Napoleonic era. The idea of most other Squads in the game being their planets elite gladiators and the best of the best, and the Orcs are able to participate as equals with them by sending a squad of adrenaline-junkie history nerds was also pretty funny to me.

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Meet the Blood Royals!

The corrupt aristocracy of an ancient world, the members of this Squad had turned to a mix of forbidden science and ancient sorcery to gain eternal life. When a democratic revolution forced them to flee their planet or face punishment for their cruel reign, they found themselves drawn to the Arena. Now they battle for the amusement of the crowds of a thousand worlds. These parasitic Champions can sacrifice their allies to strengthen themselves.

The Blood Royals were another early Squad idea when I was first working on ARENA. Their look was heavily inspired by Nosferatu and the biomechanical art of H.R. Giger.