Dominion: As the game's expansions have gone on, the artists hired to work for it have gotten progressively better and more detailed.
Magic: The Gathering underwent this, quite subtly for the most part until the major redesign. Compare cartoonish, coloured pencil works of the first few sets with the detailed paintings of modern cards and you will see that the overall quality has improved dramatically. This is mainly thanks to detailed art style guides of each of the new sets created.
Mitos y Leyendas: The individual styles of the illustrators evolved throughout the years, generally becoming more realistic and diverse. This is also true of the post-revival Klu! editions, which (along with the returning illustrators) have a lot of new artists whose styles are more realistic and painting-like. This is particularly noticeable in new versions of old cards.
Yu-Gi-Oh! also has shifted since the beginning. The art is more detailed (finer outlines, brighter colors, more nuanced shading, more detailed backgrounds, etc.) and less cartoony, perhaps thanks to its increasing popularity which justifies hiring better artists to make better arts. The most illustrative examples are alternate artworks of the same cards. "Blue-Eyes White Dragon", for example, has gotten eight Konami designs, the greatest number of artworks for a single card to date.
Roleplaying Games
Dungeons & Dragons artwork has changed quite a lot since it was first released in 1974. The art has gotten steadily more Dungeon Punk, but this has let up somewhat in 4th Edition. A lot of fans of earlier editions do not like artwork from newer editions of D&D, and some fans of newer editions of D&D do not like the older artwork.
There have been subtle but noticeable changes to the aboleths' design over the years. Editions 1 through 3 depict them as a sort of armor-plated fish with four tentacles and three eyes, 4th edition removes the armor plating to give them a smoother appearance, and the 5E aboleth is basically a giant eel with three tentacles and a Lamprey Mouth.
Bearded devils had a consistent design in the first three editions, where they're lanky, hunchbacked creatures with green skin, digitigrade legs, tails, and filthy, disease-ridden beards. 4th edition straightened their posture, gave them a muscular build, recolored them red, gave them horns, and turned their beards into biting snakelike tentacles. 5th edition ditched the horns, turned their skin purple, gave them more humanlike legs, and made their tentacles spinier and less snakelike.
Official depictions of carrion crawlers have changed considerably over time. First editions depicts them with bodies divided into clearly distinct, globular lobes, each with one pair of legs ending in a pair of splayed toes, and with heads adorned with large pupilless eyes, a cluster of tentacles, and nothing else. Second edition gives them a design more reminiscent of realistic insect grubs, with two clusters of insectile legs (one at their rear ends and one just behind their heads), less distinct body segments and thinner oral tentacles. 3rd and 4th edition change them drastically, giving them a more monstrous and formidable look, with bumpy green skin, thicker and non-segmented bodies, beady eyes on eyestalks, wide mouths filled with sharp teeth, a pair of serrated mandibles, and a "beard" of thicker, long tentacles ending in knobby topes. 5th edition uses a look more similar to 2nd's, restoring the thinner legs and tentacles and large eyes but keeping a visible mouth, albeit one with smaller teeth and mandibles, and adding a pair of thin antennae.
Ettercaps tend to look more and more spiderlike with each passing edition. In 1st, they were simply hairy, trollish humanoids with venomous bites and silk glands, and in 2nd they stayed largely the same but gained elongated spidery fingers and large, pupilless eyes. 3rd edition gave them a much more arthropoid appearance, including purple skin, limbs ending in two large claws, and very spider-like eyes with chelicerae and multiple beady black eyes. 4th edition turns them into full arthropods, with six limbs and thick exoskeletons, and 5th returns to the 3E look.
In 1st and 2nd Edition, galeb duhr were rough boulders with faces and a pair of stumpy legs. In 3rd, they because stout-limbed but otherwise normal humanoids with rock-colored skin. In 4th and 5th, they have an intermediate appearance as neckless, stumpy-limbed beings more visible made of rough stone.
The gauths' 2nd Edition art shows them with a downward-pointing circular mouth on the lower section of their bodies and with a set of tough ridges separating the eyelets around their central eye. Modern artwork shows them with a regular, forward-facing set of jaws, and omits the ridges.
In 1st and 2nd Edition, gold dragons closely resemble Chinese dragons in appearance — they're elongated, serpentine beings with portionally short limbs and curly horns. In 3rd, they're rather drastically redesigned to resemble Western dragons with finlike wings running from their shoulders to their tail tips, without horns and with long whiskers around their jaws.
Orcs started out with a Pig Man-like design, but their porcine traits were gradually phased out in favor of depicting them as burly humans with grey skin and tusks.
Morkoths began in 1st Edition roughly humanoid generic sea creatures, with four tentacles arranged like legs and arms, a central torso, and a squid-like head with a prominent beak. 2nd Edition redesigned them fairly drastically to resemble gracile, weedy fishlike creatures with four slender arthropod legs and bodies ending in octopus-like tentacles on which the creature moved. 3rd modified the second design to be much bulkier and more intimidating, generally making all parts of it larger and more imposing and presenting the morkoth as a more active and dangerous hunter. 5th Edition revisits the original look, but again makes it much more frightening and imposing than the original, with multiple tentacles, a serrated beak and a "shell" made of trophies from past kills.
In 2nd Edition, weredragons are wingless and serpentine, with a very long tail. Their 3E incarnation, the song dragon, is winged instead, and largely resembles a smaller copper dragon with silvery scales.
Zariel, an archdevil, underwent this within a single edition. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foesdepicts her◊ as a typical Big Red Devil, with horns, cracked dark skin, glowing red eyes, cloven hooves, and batlike wings with membranes of fire. This is a serviceable design, but it doesn't convey her nature as a Fallen Angel. She receives a drastic redesign◊ in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, which removes the horns and hooves while giving her pale skin, a halo made of fire, and angelic wings made of magma.
Pathfinder: Trolls are depicted in early material as very lanky creatures, with long, thin limbs, skin-and-bones frames and pronounced, pointy noses. The first Bestiary begins the trend of trolls being depicted as much more muscular, hulking and heavily built creatures, with prominent tusks and large underbites. Late in 1st edition they gain bristly manes down their necks, muzzle-like faces as their upper jaw extended to match the lower and generally very boar-like heads.
War Games
BattleTech: Early artwork is almost entirely simple, unshaded black-and-white, and prone to very strange/impossible Humongous Mecha anatomy. Some designs were licensed from Japanese manga/anime studios, which often looked wildly out-of-place compared the Real RobotWalking Tank designs that the game became notable for. Later editions feature shaded artwork and significantly improved anatomy, along with a more consistent art style leaning even more towards the Walking Tank philosophy (the licensed Japanese designs were redesigned or dropped due to a messy lawsuit). Art showing civilian equipment has evolved to catch up with Technology Marches On; early artwork shows enormous computers and chunky equipment (this was back in the The '80s, mind you), while newer work shows touch-screens and other modern innovations.
Iron Kingdoms: The art of WARMACHINE has changed quite a bit since it originally came out in 2004. While much of the original art has been phased out and replaced the faction books for each army incorporates each unit and jack added in the previous edition's expansions, as well as their art work.
Warhammer 40,000: The artwork has changed considerably over the years, starting off with goofy, oversized scifi drawings and hewing steadily more and more toward Frazetta-style apocalyptic science fantasy. Most of the combatants received major redesigns along the way as well.
As one of the special characters that has had a longstanding presence on the tabletop throughout the editions, Commissar Yarrick has had more than one model. Early editions feature him with a sleeker Power Claw◊ held in a Stab the Sky pose with. This was to accommodate the pewter casting techniques used at the time. Multi-part casting techniques have since given him a much broader kind of pose, as well as updating his Claw to reflect the Art Evolution the Orks also went through in the meantime.
In early editions, the Orks had a regimented appearance based along the lines of World War I era German stormtroopers, due to casting limitations. As techniques and technology improved, more variety could be put into models and in later editions the Orks moved away from their original characterisation towards a sort-of Mad Max-esque Scavenger Punk aesthetic. Only the Blood Axez clan keep with the original look, explained in-universe by the Blood Axez picking up human tactics and army organisation. Additionally, in early editions, the Orks were depicted with flatter heads, much more protruding, flattened and thin-lipped mouths, and large pointed ears sticking up and sideways from their heads, alongside generally thinner builds.
The Tyranid models from 2nd Edition◊ are very humanoid, standing upright and wielding weapons in their hands. The ones from later editions◊ are much more bestial, possessing tails, leaning forward like birds or dinosaurs and using weapons that are outgrowths of their bodies. Earlier Tyranids have more biological variety too, until their redesign gave the race a more unified look, such as adding boney ridged crests on almost every head.
◊ versus her Anniversary Foil card art
