TCG Fakes Diamond & Pearl - Discovery

[Gravity Monkey]

Filled with countless mysteries and untold wonders, the known world of Pokémon is only the tip of a monumental iceberg. Despite this, its horizons are slowly but surely broadening thanks to the breakthroughs of its scientists, its historians, but most important of all, its trainers. In this set, retrace some of the discoveries of our favorite universe like the revival of fossil Pokémon, the exploration of the Lost Dimension, and, most intriguing of all, the phenomenon of Mega-Evolution.

I'm very happy to announce my first complete PTCG set for this community! This set includes 78 new cards intended for the Lackey DPPt metagame, including 10 LV.X Mega-Evolutions.

These Megas have a particular gimmick, different from the XY ones: they don't end your turn upon being played, but instead you can only have one type of Mega in your deck. For example, you could have 4 M Venusaur LV.X in your deck, but you couldn't have 1 M Venusaur LV.X and 1 M Charizard LV.X in the same deck. Standard LV.X rules also apply to them with one big difference: since Vensaur and M Venusaur are two different names, you can have 4 of each in your deck rather than 4 copies total, making them more consistent than normal LV.X.

I have been working on this for the better part of the last 6 months, and if you've seen some of my works for CAC and the Faker's Marathon, you might recognize some of the cards. Discovery is currently about 70% complete, with more than half the cards being done from A to Z. Bear in mind, I've only recently picked up faking, and so my photoshop, game design and proofreading skills are far from the best, so if you pick up mistakes or very clearly broken stuff, don't hesitate to give me a heads up.

With this out of the way, I would like to reveal a little sample of what's to come with this extension!

~ Mega-Gengar ~

Gengar and its Mega-Evolution form the flagship line of the Lost Zone archetype of Discovery. They trade low HP stats for absolutely demonic toolkits including the attack Lost Eraser, the most nuclear option the whole Lost Zone pack as access too. It requires a certain amount of preparation, but once the right quotas are met, there is no escaping Gengar. It's Poké-Body, Forever Gone, facilitates this, allowing retreat costs on your side to fuel your Lost Zone while hindering your opponent. While this normal form is very strong, its Mega form pushes thing even further. Its Poké-Body Wonder Room, which first of all force retreats from your opponent since Switch type cards now don't function, also has a myriad of use cases, also blocking Pokémon Tools, Stadiums, Big Meat, and a host of other random cards. Lost Roulette also gives Gengar a ton of additional disruption while filling up your Lost Zone quota, at the cost of some consistency. Well, that's if you don't have any way to manipulate the top of your deck, at least...

~ Mega-Tyranitar ~

Tyranitar is a devastating Pokémon with a single goal in mind: Putting as much damage on the board as possible, whether it be on your opponent's side... or on your own. Its base form is the only one in the set with access to a Mega Stone held item in Tyranitarite, possibly allowing it to reach LV.X in 2 turns, provided you also Pancake it. It's also usable on it's own, mind you, as the combination of the Poké-Body Inevitable and the move Dust Bowl ensures the board is flooded with damage counters, putting your opponent in pickle would they try to position their board. However, it only reaches its full potential thanks to its Mega form, now being able to take advantage of the counters on it's side. A simple Rage attack already makes Dust Bowl that much more dangerous, every use boosting it's output by 30. For a Pokémon with 160 HP, the health loss is almost negligible. But Tyranitar truly shines with its second attack, Collateral Wreckage. This attack can theoretically allow you to attack up to 6 times in a single turn, which, with a well placed Dust Bowl, might just close out the game in a single turn, at the price of putting you in a very precarious situation if you can't do that. However, if you have Pokémon that would benefit from getting Knocked Out, this might just be an upside all around...

~ Mega-Gyarados ~

Some of you might remember this Mega Gyarados from the last CAC contest, as I've used the same render. The card has been, however, completely revamped, its old Gimmick having been repurposed to an extent on the Tyranitar line. It now focuses on a different goal, milling, inspired both by PMJ's Final Strand Gyarados as well as its mega's playstyle in the video game. The first attack from its base form (and most important one), Requital, also takes inspiration from somewhere else: DP Stormfront Gyarados. As multiple cards on Lackey are echoes to some DPPt counterparts, I thought it would be fun to bring one of its most beloved threat with a twist. Its other move also interact with the discard pile in various ways, but you realistically want to be spamming that first one as much as possible, at least until you get to the Mega Form. Call of the Storm allows you to have Magikarp-less Gyarados on the board, allowing 4 card mills with Requital. Savage Rampage is also either a crazy explosive attack needing a lot of set up early on, or a late game deck finisher. In any case, Gyarados is a threat that forces your opponent to approach the game in a very different light.

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I hope this first batch got you excited for what comes next! I'm going to open a thread in #showcase on the Custom Card Community discord server, which I will probably update more often than this thread. Be sure to keep an eye on that! And with that, see you for the next update ;D​

 

[Gravity Monkey]

Here's a little update with the cards I've shown on Discord since the post! (With copy-pasted descriptions because I'm lazy qwq)

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Some more pre-evos for the first mega lines revealed! This Magikarp is so useless it now grants a half-prize (on average), meanwile Larvitar and Pupitar have a bit more going on. A lot of Pokémon have had Explosion type moves in the past and theyre never particularly good, in this case Pupitar's low energy cost and Poké-Body might just make it usable. This Body synergizes best with Tyranitar though, as a Dust Bowl + a Collateral Wreckage is enough to cleanly KO it, granting your mega an additional attack while letting you spread some damage counters around.

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Continuing Gengar's theme of disruption, Gastly is the important one here, getting access to the very powerful Meddle Poké-Power, which makes it so if you have Haunter in your hand, you may stop your opponent dead in their tracks. You can also bluff it just by having a Gastly on your board. It also makes getting to your Gengar easier, as you can evolve during your opponent's turn. As for Haunter, it gets access to a very strong 60 damage single energy attack, Lost Soul, but with a steep cost: getting rid of 2 Supporters from your hand permanantly.

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Here are 2 of the first cards I worked on for the set, the two forms of Aegislash! Stance Change has a lot of text, but basically, when you use the move, you switch your active Aegi with an Aegi from hand and then use one of its attacks. Thanks to that, as long as you have Aegislashes in hand, you get to use any of its attacks for only CC! They get to do a lot of cool stuff, like switching between 2 types to fish weaknesses, snipe damage, get immune to second effects of move, or wall basic pokemons completely, ala Noivern ex. You can use any of these in a pinch with Stance Change, or get to spam them if you have the right amount of energies attached. Either way, it demands a certain amount of set up, on top of being a Stage 2 mon.

We also got the pre-evos, by the way! A little less exciting, but still necessary to the set. Im really proud of how the Honedge art came out, as yunimaru's artwork was gorgeous but very awkward to frame. I think I did a good job, with the leaves on the foreground hiding the cuts on the drawing!

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One of the "themes" of Discovery is trying to fill out some of the duos and trios that were featured in Ardent Genesis, since it had a lot of legendary mons featured without their counterpart. Here's the first one of them, a Latios to PMJ's Latias! I tried to make it so it would work both as a functionning tool on its own as well as enabling and profiting off of Latias' effects.

First, News Relay is a "Supporter as an effect" thats pretty common in the PTCG, not unlike Sableye, however with some caveats to make it fairer. One, it only works with Supporters in your hand, and two, you can't really spam it, as its effect forces you to do some mindgames with your opponent which become easy to predict if your opp has seen you use the attack during the last turn. To offset that, you get to keep the Supporter in hand to actually use it on the next turn rather than discard it. Second, Gather is just a solid acceleration tool, allowing you to both get an Energy on one of your mon and assuring that you get another one on the turn after that.

But the true purpose of these moves is to play off of Latias's tools. Gather lets you know what type of card is on top of your deck even after you draw your first card each turn (assuming you don't draw more or shuffle your deck, which tbh is unlikely in a practical game, but like it works if you want it to work), which lets you get maximum value with Wonder Draw. On the flipside, Latias's Regroup searches for 2 Supporters, which turns News Relay into an obligatory 50/50, making a surefire prediction from your opponent impossible. Each mon has an attack that enables the full potential of the other's attack, and I think that's a more interesting way to make the cards play off of each other than a "If you have Latias in play" type effect--especially considering both are perfectly playable on their own.

Overall this is a card whose design I'm really happy with! And to top it off it has a really cool art from ImazArtz that perfectly complementys iogi's Latias: one in the air, the other underwater

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See you later for more updates!