I'll admit that it's been decidedly strange hiring an artist to do an illustration for me, as usually the shoe is on the other foot. However, I'll admit that full color work is something of a weakness of mine - which is one of the big reasons why I chose to illustrate the new edition of Thou Art But A Warrior in black and white pencils. And stylistically, I think that Claudia's work will fit very well with the illustrations already done for the interior. So this is yet another reason to be grateful for this crowdfunding campaign; I wouldn't have been able to afford an artist of Claudia's caliber without it.
Of course, since the first stretch goal has been met, it's time to introduce a new stretch goal:
$1800: Set of 4 illustrated post cards with key phrase reference
Polaris is a bit of a weird system in that you don't have your character sheet sitting in front of you, like you would with most games. Rather, it sits in the middle of the table for everyone to reference. And the beauty of the system is that it works pretty well, as there aren't a lot of things to look at on the character sheets - since they're more to define relationships between characters than anything else.
What I have found, however, is that it's very useful for each player to have a reference of what the key phrases that drive play are and when they can use them. I've played games where there has been one sheet sitting in the middle of the table, and it always involves a lot of passing things around. So I thought a neat incentive would be a set of 4 (the optimal number of players) cards with illustrations from the new edition on one side and a reference on the other:
