I have a question; for my custom card, I found some really good art, but I can't find the artist. I tried Google Image Search, but there are hundreds of results for the same image. Should I use the image?
Contest January 2021 CaC: New Year, New Type (Results Up!)
- Thread starter Jabberwock
- Start date
No, you'll need to know who to credit, as well as permission from the artist if the art isn't in the public domain.
Some other folks here might be able to help you find the artist, though! Feel free to ask around here or on Discord.
PMJ
Silhouette Gloom of the Sundown Lands
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Try saucenao @IggyKoopa849
never mind, im leaving text
time for my image faking debut!
i know some fonts might be off and some placements might be bad but whatever i expect that.
using sunlava was annoying. I understand why people hate it now
I think some of my fonts are bad, especially for illustrator and the evolves from. It's fine, im not going for the win anyway
this was good and fun practice, i cant wait to see how i did
time for my image faking debut!
i know some fonts might be off and some placements might be bad but whatever i expect that.
using sunlava was annoying. I understand why people hate it now
I think some of my fonts are bad, especially for illustrator and the evolves from. It's fine, im not going for the win anyway
this was good and fun practice, i cant wait to see how i did
This card makes no sense to me and I’m loving it! Can’t wait to see how someone could make this work! Oh wait...
(Porygon Z + Team Yell Horn + Air Balloon (plus Orbeetle?))
(Porygon Z + Team Yell Horn + Air Balloon (plus Orbeetle?))
haha, but then you deal with the coin flip from confused. I was thinking of ways to make it playable without having to use garbodor, and confusion was the first thing that came to mind. I guess its somewhat balanced because of that coin flip, it would be super op if it could just attack without it
then again, it does get to survive all attacks for free, basically. the opponent would need a pokemon with free retreat to attack it, which i guess a lot of decks has access to. I wanted to make it kinda broken but not too broken. even though the blank is S&M its balanced for SSH, by the way
I apologise. I'll be backing out of this one.
Glad to have you in image, TLS! Broadening horizons is always cool.never mind, im leaving text
time for my image faking debut!
i know some fonts might be off and some placements might be bad but whatever i expect that.
using sunlava was annoying. I understand why people hate it now
I think some of my fonts are bad, especially for illustrator and the evolves from. It's fine, im not going for the win anyway
this was good and fun practice, i cant wait to see how i did
As a note, I'm still going to count this as an edit (and hence [-2 points] from the final score), both since you edited the text-based entry before switching categories, and since we'd usually count a switching of categories as a functional change in entry in most circumstances anyway.
100% expected.Glad to have you in image, TLS! Broadening horizons is always cool.
As a note, I'm still going to count this as an edit (and hence [-2 points] from the final score), both since you edited the text-based entry before switching categories, and since we'd usually count a switching of categories as a functional change in entry in most circumstances anyway.
like i said again, please judge this as a swsh card, not a sun and moon card even though its on a sun and moon blank lol
Took inspiration for the Psychic typing based on the fact that all three of the beasts learn Calm Mind and Extrasensory on Level Up, as well as inspiration from their general gimmick in the games for their GX attack.
Raikou & Entei & Suicune GX — 280 HP — [P]
Basic — TAG TEAM
[P][C][C] Extrasensory: 100+
If you have the same number of cards in your hand as your opponent, this attack does 100 more damage.
[P][P][P] Roaming Beasts GX
Discard this Pokémon and all cards attached to it. Then, your opponent reveals their hand. Choose 3 cards you find there. Your opponent shuffles those cards face-up into their deck. When your opponent draws one of the face-up cards, choose 1 of your opponent’s Pokémon and place 15 damage counters on it. (You can’t use more than 1 GX attack in a game.)
TAG TEAM rule: When your TAG TEAM is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 3 Prize cards.
weakness: [P]×2
resistance:
retreat: 2
Basic — TAG TEAM
[P][C][C] Extrasensory: 100+
If you have the same number of cards in your hand as your opponent, this attack does 100 more damage.
[P][P][P] Roaming Beasts GX
Discard this Pokémon and all cards attached to it. Then, your opponent reveals their hand. Choose 3 cards you find there. Your opponent shuffles those cards face-up into their deck. When your opponent draws one of the face-up cards, choose 1 of your opponent’s Pokémon and place 15 damage counters on it. (You can’t use more than 1 GX attack in a game.)
TAG TEAM rule: When your TAG TEAM is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 3 Prize cards.
weakness: [P]×2
resistance:
retreat: 2
Around 6 days left to submit your entries!
Here's my submission
Dusknoir – Water – HP150
Stage 2 – Evolves from Dusclops
Ability: Ominous Haze
Once during your turn, you may have your opponent reveal their hand. Put as many cards you find there into the Lost Zone until your opponent has at least 2 cards left in their hand. At the beginning of your opponent’s turn after they draw a card, return the cards you put in the lost from the effect of this Ability back into their hand. You can't use more than 1 Ominous Haze Ability each turn.
[W] [W] Tundra Curse 50
Flip 3 coins. If 1 of them is heads, discard a random card from your opponent's hand. If 2 of them are heads, discard a random card from your opponent's hand and discard an Energy from your opponent's Active Pokémon. If all of them are heads, discard a random card from your opponent’s hand, discard an Energy from your opponent’s Active Pokémon, and discard the top card of your opponent’s deck.
Weakness: Metal (x2)
Resistance:
Retreat: [C] [C] [C]
This Pokémon can be seen from afar on plateaus doing intricate movements during the early morning. Whenever a researcher comes close to it, it vanishes in a cloud of vapor. Researches still do not understand the purpose of these movements.
Stage 2 – Evolves from Dusclops
Ability: Ominous Haze
Once during your turn, you may have your opponent reveal their hand. Put as many cards you find there into the Lost Zone until your opponent has at least 2 cards left in their hand. At the beginning of your opponent’s turn after they draw a card, return the cards you put in the lost from the effect of this Ability back into their hand. You can't use more than 1 Ominous Haze Ability each turn.
[W] [W] Tundra Curse 50
Flip 3 coins. If 1 of them is heads, discard a random card from your opponent's hand. If 2 of them are heads, discard a random card from your opponent's hand and discard an Energy from your opponent's Active Pokémon. If all of them are heads, discard a random card from your opponent’s hand, discard an Energy from your opponent’s Active Pokémon, and discard the top card of your opponent’s deck.
Weakness: Metal (x2)
Resistance:
Retreat: [C] [C] [C]
This Pokémon can be seen from afar on plateaus doing intricate movements during the early morning. Whenever a researcher comes close to it, it vanishes in a cloud of vapor. Researches still do not understand the purpose of these movements.
At last I've reached a point where I don't think I can improve this card. In my following post I've prepared a short list of notes for this card. It's kept separate in case I notice a spelling error; I can fix it without editing the post containing the entry.
Hope you enjoy! Good luck to everyone else!
Hope you enjoy! Good luck to everyone else!
I'm sorry to do this to you Jabber. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America says this qualifies as a "Novelette". Or it would if it were a story and not just notes for my CaC. After removing formatting it's 9,845 words and takes 17 pages in the Google Document I typed it up in. Go ahead and expand all the spoilers and see for yourself. I hope you like reading. There's a lot of interesting stuff in here and I had a lot to say about this card.
This took way too much time to write up and I'm definitely never doing something like this again.
I wish everyone the best of luck in this contest!
Thanks so much to the judges and PokéBeach for making this possible! I can't wait to do this again!
This took way too much time to write up and I'm definitely never doing something like this again.
After getting dead last in November's contest and with a score that I consider to be well below my standards, this month it was time to step it up. At least once this year my plan is to get a perfect score on a CaC, something that hasn't been done in either category since January 2018 and a score that Jabber himself has never given.
With that in mind I figured I'd give myself a history lesson in CaC and study what might make this elusive score possible for the second time in over 6 years. Through the years I would say Wording is probably the easiest score to max out since, for the most part, it starts at 15 and goes down for each mistake you make. I've scored perfect in that twice and I think there's a science to that that I can nail down with the proper amount of references. Fonts & Placement is likewise easy, especially in my case where it's a custom blank that uses a Photoshop file that perfectly places everything for me.
That leaves the other three. Since CaC's comeback in 2017 the judging seems to be more strict, which I think is a good thing, but it means some categories have had very few perfect scores since. About 31% of entries since 2017 have a 5/5 Aesthetics score, though I have nothing to compare this to since Aesthetics only existed as a category for one contest prior to 2017. I've actually not yet achieved 5/5 in Aesthetics for any of my Jabber-graded cards yet, so that's something I've pushed to emphasize more this time around by harkening back to my Silvally LEGEND entry, which came closer than any other card. I don't have the time for a full-on LEGEND card like I did back then, but I have a few other tricks up my sleeve for this one, like using the beautiful Cracked Ice pattern you might recognize from Nyan's November entry in the previous CaC, provided courtesy of aschefield. Or the unique border style I use for my Omnium full arts that to me is better than it has any right to be. I've got my work seriously cut out for me if this doesn't nail the aesthetics.
Believability is another difficult one, though slightly less difficult than Aesthetics by the looks of it. About 32% of all CaCs since 2017 have a perfect Believability score. While this category certainly isn't the easiest to achieve, as it requires a very attuned knowledge to the format it's made for, a decent amount of entries have achieved it, including most of my entries (this fact actually caught me by surprise, though, haha).
But then there's the big one. Creativity. A category so difficult to master that only 6 image-based entries out of the 241 submitted since 2017 have ever maxed out. 2.5%. These odds are not in my favor. I'm proud to be one of those 6 with my Anorith entry in the September 2019 CaC (see the results post to see how that went down), but no one has done it twice since CaC's revival. This is a tremendously difficult category to max out and this is where almost all of my focus will be going for CaCs over the next year, as I'm fairly confident in my abilities to get max scores - or at least very close to max scores - for everything else.
Now, I wanted to take a closer look at what it takes to get a maximum Creativity score. From the official TCG, Sableye SF 48 and Mew Prime TM 97 are cited as being cards that would have merited a perfect Creativity score if they were CaC submissions rather than real cards, however the judges are fairly open about how the difficulty of this score can vary by the judge of the contest, and some judges have never given out a perfect Creativity score, which I personally strongly disagree with, but thankfully Jabber is not one of them. With that in mind, I needed to see what it takes to get a perfect score from Jabberwock specifically. What does Jabber look for in the Creativity department?
To date there have only been three Jabber-approved perfectly Creative cards, and one that scored 14.5/15. We'll start with that 14.5/15 card since it's the earliest example and work our way forward from there.
Subject 1: Seedot by WastedSkyPirate on April 2017 - Results Post
There isn't a huge amount to go off of here from the judging breakdown. What I gather from this is that the imagery that the attack's names and effects add to the card is what does it. There are sort of new effects (at the time), but these effects are also themed and add flavor to the card. This is helped quite a bit by the notes that were posted along with the card, which after reading really help you get a clear scene in your mind. Seedot climbs a tree (Tree Climb), and then damages your mons a little by falling out of the tree (Falling Acorn). It's a very fun and thematically wonderful card and I see where the high score comes from.
Subject 2: Dustox by Gabs Kazumi on Autumn 2018 - Results Post
Over a year later we finally have a perfect 15. Immediately on seeing this one I notice it has a supplementary Beautifly to add not only to the effects of the Dustox, but also to the flavor of the card, all the way down to the illustrations clearly being in the same scene. The introduction of the new Allergy counter and the synergy this Dustox's moves have both with each other and with the supplementary Beautifly appear to be the main things contributing to Creativity here. I can't say whether or not the absence of the Beautifly would have affected the score, but I wouldn't rule it out as cards are often graded based on their synergy with existing cards or cards that are meant to exist in the same format. The concept of "Allergy" being a thing that builds and becomes more of a problem if it's left unchecked probably contributed a bit as well.
Subject 3: Suicune & Virizion LEGEND by bbninjas on February 2019 for The Faking Tournament - Results Post
This is the highest overall score Jabberwock has ever given out to a card*, marred from perfection only by a single wording error. Once again I can see synergy in the attacks as a big contributor to this entry's Creativity score, and both effects are unique twists on effects that I believe have been seen before in other variants on other cards. For the second attack it appears the unique but balanced tradeoff for such a powerful effect is the primary contributor to this score, with the synergy being second.
*This score is actually tied with two other entries Jabberwock has judged, those being Nyan's Froslass GX (Results Post) and bbninjas' Clefable GX (Results Post).
Subject 4: Kyurem by FourteenAlmonds on July 2020 - Results Post
This entry has by far the most detailed breakdown of the card's scoring in the results post. As effects go I'd say this is entirely new design space whereas the first three subjects build heavily on existing effects. Introducing a new Special Condition can be a risky affair but in this case it seems to have been the way to go. What I get from the judging post is that these two effects along with the new special condition immediately get your head spinning with a slew of interesting and fun, yet entirely new deck strategies to build on with the effects of this card. It's really hard to pinpoint exactly what singular part contributes most to the score of this card because there's so much that's interconnected with it. It all appears to stem from the Frozen effect, though, and it seems the idea of new kinds of locks combined with their temporary nature and the versatility of the accompanying effects (even the inclusion of damage appears to have contributed to Creativity in this instance) is the driving force between the high grade.
What stands out to me is that two of the three cards that got perfect Creativity scores were heavily reliant on Special Conditions for their design space. Clearly that isn't the core requirement for a high Creativity score, but it is interesting to note. The key I'm seeing is not just heavy twists on existing effects or entirely new effects, but particularly those that work well with other cards or that really get your deck-building bones going for what kind of cards you would want to include in your deck to synergize with this card, but at the same time create a scene in your mind that works with the artwork and the flavor of the attacks themselves.
With all that out of the way, I'd like to present… Shuckle δ.
With that in mind I figured I'd give myself a history lesson in CaC and study what might make this elusive score possible for the second time in over 6 years. Through the years I would say Wording is probably the easiest score to max out since, for the most part, it starts at 15 and goes down for each mistake you make. I've scored perfect in that twice and I think there's a science to that that I can nail down with the proper amount of references. Fonts & Placement is likewise easy, especially in my case where it's a custom blank that uses a Photoshop file that perfectly places everything for me.
That leaves the other three. Since CaC's comeback in 2017 the judging seems to be more strict, which I think is a good thing, but it means some categories have had very few perfect scores since. About 31% of entries since 2017 have a 5/5 Aesthetics score, though I have nothing to compare this to since Aesthetics only existed as a category for one contest prior to 2017. I've actually not yet achieved 5/5 in Aesthetics for any of my Jabber-graded cards yet, so that's something I've pushed to emphasize more this time around by harkening back to my Silvally LEGEND entry, which came closer than any other card. I don't have the time for a full-on LEGEND card like I did back then, but I have a few other tricks up my sleeve for this one, like using the beautiful Cracked Ice pattern you might recognize from Nyan's November entry in the previous CaC, provided courtesy of aschefield. Or the unique border style I use for my Omnium full arts that to me is better than it has any right to be. I've got my work seriously cut out for me if this doesn't nail the aesthetics.
Believability is another difficult one, though slightly less difficult than Aesthetics by the looks of it. About 32% of all CaCs since 2017 have a perfect Believability score. While this category certainly isn't the easiest to achieve, as it requires a very attuned knowledge to the format it's made for, a decent amount of entries have achieved it, including most of my entries (this fact actually caught me by surprise, though, haha).
But then there's the big one. Creativity. A category so difficult to master that only 6 image-based entries out of the 241 submitted since 2017 have ever maxed out. 2.5%. These odds are not in my favor. I'm proud to be one of those 6 with my Anorith entry in the September 2019 CaC (see the results post to see how that went down), but no one has done it twice since CaC's revival. This is a tremendously difficult category to max out and this is where almost all of my focus will be going for CaCs over the next year, as I'm fairly confident in my abilities to get max scores - or at least very close to max scores - for everything else.
Now, I wanted to take a closer look at what it takes to get a maximum Creativity score. From the official TCG, Sableye SF 48 and Mew Prime TM 97 are cited as being cards that would have merited a perfect Creativity score if they were CaC submissions rather than real cards, however the judges are fairly open about how the difficulty of this score can vary by the judge of the contest, and some judges have never given out a perfect Creativity score, which I personally strongly disagree with, but thankfully Jabber is not one of them. With that in mind, I needed to see what it takes to get a perfect score from Jabberwock specifically. What does Jabber look for in the Creativity department?
To date there have only been three Jabber-approved perfectly Creative cards, and one that scored 14.5/15. We'll start with that 14.5/15 card since it's the earliest example and work our way forward from there.
Subject 1: Seedot by WastedSkyPirate on April 2017 - Results Post
There isn't a huge amount to go off of here from the judging breakdown. What I gather from this is that the imagery that the attack's names and effects add to the card is what does it. There are sort of new effects (at the time), but these effects are also themed and add flavor to the card. This is helped quite a bit by the notes that were posted along with the card, which after reading really help you get a clear scene in your mind. Seedot climbs a tree (Tree Climb), and then damages your mons a little by falling out of the tree (Falling Acorn). It's a very fun and thematically wonderful card and I see where the high score comes from.
Subject 2: Dustox by Gabs Kazumi on Autumn 2018 - Results Post
Over a year later we finally have a perfect 15. Immediately on seeing this one I notice it has a supplementary Beautifly to add not only to the effects of the Dustox, but also to the flavor of the card, all the way down to the illustrations clearly being in the same scene. The introduction of the new Allergy counter and the synergy this Dustox's moves have both with each other and with the supplementary Beautifly appear to be the main things contributing to Creativity here. I can't say whether or not the absence of the Beautifly would have affected the score, but I wouldn't rule it out as cards are often graded based on their synergy with existing cards or cards that are meant to exist in the same format. The concept of "Allergy" being a thing that builds and becomes more of a problem if it's left unchecked probably contributed a bit as well.
Subject 3: Suicune & Virizion LEGEND by bbninjas on February 2019 for The Faking Tournament - Results Post
This is the highest overall score Jabberwock has ever given out to a card*, marred from perfection only by a single wording error. Once again I can see synergy in the attacks as a big contributor to this entry's Creativity score, and both effects are unique twists on effects that I believe have been seen before in other variants on other cards. For the second attack it appears the unique but balanced tradeoff for such a powerful effect is the primary contributor to this score, with the synergy being second.
*This score is actually tied with two other entries Jabberwock has judged, those being Nyan's Froslass GX (Results Post) and bbninjas' Clefable GX (Results Post).
Subject 4: Kyurem by FourteenAlmonds on July 2020 - Results Post
This entry has by far the most detailed breakdown of the card's scoring in the results post. As effects go I'd say this is entirely new design space whereas the first three subjects build heavily on existing effects. Introducing a new Special Condition can be a risky affair but in this case it seems to have been the way to go. What I get from the judging post is that these two effects along with the new special condition immediately get your head spinning with a slew of interesting and fun, yet entirely new deck strategies to build on with the effects of this card. It's really hard to pinpoint exactly what singular part contributes most to the score of this card because there's so much that's interconnected with it. It all appears to stem from the Frozen effect, though, and it seems the idea of new kinds of locks combined with their temporary nature and the versatility of the accompanying effects (even the inclusion of damage appears to have contributed to Creativity in this instance) is the driving force between the high grade.
What stands out to me is that two of the three cards that got perfect Creativity scores were heavily reliant on Special Conditions for their design space. Clearly that isn't the core requirement for a high Creativity score, but it is interesting to note. The key I'm seeing is not just heavy twists on existing effects or entirely new effects, but particularly those that work well with other cards or that really get your deck-building bones going for what kind of cards you would want to include in your deck to synergize with this card, but at the same time create a scene in your mind that works with the artwork and the flavor of the attacks themselves.
With all that out of the way, I'd like to present… Shuckle δ.
Shuckle – Metal – HP10
Basic
Delta Species
Ability: Odd Resilience
This Pokémon gets +10 HP for each damage counter on all of your Benched Pokémon.
[M][M][+] Avengeance 10+
This attack does 10 damage to 2 of your Benched Pokémon. (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance for Benched Pokémon.) Then, choose a number of your Benched Pokémon up to the amount of extra Energy attached to this Pokémon (in addition to this attack's cost). This attack does 10 more damage for each damage counter on each of those Pokémon.
Weakness: Water +10
Resistance: None
Retreat: [C] [C] [C] [C]
#213 Mold Pokémon HT: 2’ 0” WT: 45.2 lbs.
After being exposed to Holon radiation, its source of power and vitality seems to come from its will to protect the injured from more harm.
Basic
Delta Species
Ability: Odd Resilience
This Pokémon gets +10 HP for each damage counter on all of your Benched Pokémon.
[M][M][+] Avengeance 10+
This attack does 10 damage to 2 of your Benched Pokémon. (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance for Benched Pokémon.) Then, choose a number of your Benched Pokémon up to the amount of extra Energy attached to this Pokémon (in addition to this attack's cost). This attack does 10 more damage for each damage counter on each of those Pokémon.
Weakness: Water +10
Resistance: None
Retreat: [C] [C] [C] [C]
#213 Mold Pokémon HT: 2’ 0” WT: 45.2 lbs.
After being exposed to Holon radiation, its source of power and vitality seems to come from its will to protect the injured from more harm.
Every part of this card was deliberately planned to be the way it is for a reason, from the Pokémon to the typing to the damage output to the attack cost to the HP. What is this reason? Scaleable Power Level. The intent for this card is perhaps the most ambitious and risky concept I've ever taken on, and that's for it to be balanced for every format.
But first let's talk about the themes, shall we? Shuckle is known for having the highest defense stats in the game, but what happens when he's exposed to the electromagnetic waves from the Holon Research Tower? He becomes much more dependent on his fellow Pokémon, and on his own he surely wouldn't stand a chance against any other Pokémon. but when the going gets going, boy does he get tough. I've completely redesigned Shuckle's gimmick for this card and no matter what score I get I can at least say the redesign paid off hugely in my mind.
The custom Pokédex entry I've written, which in the context of my blanks ties in along with my cards from Frontiers Renewed and their return to the Holon region. I even think it works well with the art. I'm fairly sure Mr. Tesla's intent was for the Shuckle to be looking at his shell, but with this Pokédex entry and the theme of the card's effects I like to think that the viewer is one of this Shuckle's injured friends and he's checking behind him to make sure the friend is still okay. He's a bit wild with his attacks, you see (see Avengeance), and while the collateral damage is very small, he cares about those he's protecting and needs to make sure they're still okay. Even in the context of a mon whom this Shuckle isn't "friends" with, he would be checking on it to make sure it's still okay because his own power depends on that Pokémon (or human, as the case may be) not fainting. He likes to keep an eye on his friends as much as he keeps an eye on his enemy. Either way, knowing that, I think this puts this art in a very different light and makes it look quite a bit more heroic, which is exactly what I was going for.
I chose this holo pattern after some debate when I started to notice that the holosheet I have prebuilt into the Omnium template isn't at its greatest when it's used on this type of full-art card. I maintain that Acid Wash looks great on normal cards, but in this case - and I reckon the case with many full art cards - I think another holo pattern is in order. I do also have a sheen holo pattern which I used on my Dragapult entry in March 2020, but I never could get that pattern to look to my liking and this art, in my opinion, is better suited to not being mixed with textures. With that in mind, and after seeing a few of Nyan's entries with the beautiful Cracked Ice pattern that asche isolated for us, I decided it was time to give it a whirl. The results speak for themselves, and I think this is a strong contender for the best-looking CaC card I've made in no small part because of the holo pattern. Initially the parts of the holo along the border disappeared behind Shuckle just like the rest of the pattern, but as I looked at it I think it left the bottom of the card looking very bare, so I extended it is so it covered all of the border and I'm quite satisfied with that decision as well.
Technically there are two holo patterns on this card. The second one can be seen on the Shuckle shell near the bottom of the card. While this was originally intended to be the holo pattern on its own, I determined that it doesn't have enough flair to stand out, so for the purposes of this illustration I'd like to point out that it is intended to look like part of the artwork itself and not a holosheet. Think of it as the physical manifestation of the power he's gaining from a seriously injured ally on the Bench. Or maybe even the viewer's eyes having issues because they've been punched so hard in the face that they got vision problems. The interpretation is up to you!
As a side note I wanna say it kinda looks like Shuckle is wearing his name as a hat. No themes or lore there. I just thought it was funny.
As for the water weakness, Delta Species almost always carry over the weakness of their normally-typed counterparts. Most Shuckle cards are actually weak to Fire or even Grass, but considering Shuckle in the games is weak to neither of those types, I've taken the Water weakness from his HGSS print. It always bothers me when a card is weak to types that it isn't weak to in the games. The +10 for the weakness is a quirk in the way that almost all weaknesses in DPPt are calculated in that Pokémon who have less than 70 HP almost always have +10. And since this card only has 10HP, that's just what he gets.
Now for the retreat cost… Here's a fun fact: Shuckle is the slowest Pokémon in the game. With a speed of 5, he's matched in that slowness only by Munchlax and Pyukumuku. The card game doesn't really reflect this well at all in that he usually has cheap attacks and a retreat cost of 1 or (in exactly one case) 2. I see this trend and choose to instead stick with a more game-inspired theme for this card. I originally was going to go with a retreat cost of 5, but since only 4 cards ever got that much and early templates clearly weren't even designed for a 5 retreat cost to be possible, I opted to stick with 4. In general that's basically a way of saying "Don't bother trying to retreat with energy" already, so the point is made.
Now, the rest of the card really has to be talked about in relation to the rest of the rest of the card. The most unusual part of this card to most people I'm sure is the HP. It's 10. We do have precedence for this HP amount all the way up through EX Sandstorm in the form of Mysterious Fossil (as well as one Clefairy Doll), but never in the form of a Pokémon. This is a stretch in Believability, but hear me out. Look at the ability. This clearly is no ordinary kind of card and the low base HP is almost a necessity. I contemplated putting it at 30 just to match the minimum of other Pokémon, but I still believe that is too much with an ability like this. In Omnium this HP amount isn't unheard of. Since the very beginning I always intended for Shedinja cards to have 10 HP, for example. I still haven't made any of those cards, but I'm pretty firm on that. So there would be precedence in Omnium if that's worth anything.
Okay, so how about that ability? "Odd Resilience". This is what the Holon researchers called it when they first discovered the effect Holon's radiation had on Shuckle. He's resilient, but it's odd in that the level of resilience is heavily reliant on those around him. He borrows the HP they already lost anyway and turns it into his own vitality. This can get very interesting very quickly, but more on that in the meta section below. HP-adding abilities have been done a handful of times, but never like this.
Now "Avengeance". He's seen his buddy hurt and he's having none of that. Well, maybe a little. As above, he is kinda wild with his attacks. He's not trying to hurt his friend, but he's not very good at keeping his attack all focused on one spot. Not that this doesn't help him, though. With every attack, assuming you have the Benched Pokémon you need, you're gaining +20HP and, if you have at least 3 energy attached, at least +10 more damage. It starts small, but it can get really crazy as you go and as you attach more energy.
I'm not gonna lie and say this is a small investment. You almost never want to be relying on Avengeance to be putting damage on your bench, as it's very slow even in the Classic format, but in a pinch, in the right circumstances, it might just be enough to make a difference later on. I figure it adds a tiny bit of extra versatility to the card. This means you need to have another card that can do self-bench damage in the active or, and this is probably the better use of the card, don't try and make it your only attacker. This shines much brighter mid-to-late game after your mons have had enough time to take some beating. But this also isn't something you can surprise your opponent with in most cases. You're doing no more than 10 damage until you have 3 energy attached. Why is that? One word: Stall.
In earlier stages Avengeance's cost was actually just [C]+, meaning it was splashable in every deck and could just be plopped down and ready to go in 1 turn without any support. That would be insane in a stall format. Have a Wailord EX active to soak up some damage, then switch it out and be doing 200+ damage for one DCE. I couldn't have that. I also had it at just [C][C]+ and then [M][C]+ for a hot second as well, but the more I thought about it, the more scary stall felt with that cost. [M][C][C]+ was where I started to feel comfortable with it. But the more I went through the meta analysis I actually started to think it might be too weak in this state. I spent a very long time debating which cost was the best before I finally settled on [M][M]+, which prevents you from using DCE or most other multi-energies to power it up, but still allows you to set it up in a reasonable time frame. It's extremely vulnerable to gusting cards in almost every format, which makes it a very fragile card even with the faster setup time. This does put it in quite a risky place in the Classic era, although I think it wouldn't be the best deck in any format that has gusting cards. Again, we'll talk about that in meta analyses down below.
Okay a couple things about wording and the layout of the attack. You probably noticed the "+" in the attack cost even though this isn't a Tag Team and you probably also noticed that this layout did not continue into the SwSh era once Tag Teams stopped even though the "(in addition to this attack's cost)" wording is still used. This is an intentional change. The "+" design element as seen in the attack damage on any given card with such an attack shares a common purpose with the one in the attack cost in that it's not really required for the attack to be able to be understood since it's all covered in the text anyway. I can say it's kept there for consistency with the attack damage but in general this is just an intentional design choice and I'm likely to carry this into the rest of my Omnium cards going forward. Any attack that has additional effects if more than the base energy cost is provided should get the "+" in the attack cost. I think it looks nice and makes the template more interesting. The other wording stuff is addressed in the References section of this post.
Okay, how about that bit about this being scalable to be balanced for every format? Is that even possible? I like to think that, with a little clever thought and consideration, anything is possible. The more accurate question would be "Is it plausible?" Probably not, but this is my attempt at achieving the implausible. Unfortunately given the time frame I won't be able to go into every single Standard format that the official tcg has seen, so for the purposes of the next few spoilers, I'm going to define a "format" the same way the custom Lackey plugin does: Base Set through Skyridge is one format. EX Ruby & Sapphire through EX Power Keepers is another format. Diamond & Pearl through Call of Legends is another. And everything from Black & White onwards is another.
That being said, I'm still taking a crash course in the entirety of the Pokémon Trading Card Game over the last 25 years all in the space of like two weeks, so while I'm gonna try and be as thorough in my research as possible, there's no way I can account for every single thing and it's probable that I'm going to not think of a lot of things. I'm gonna do my best. There's also no way I can try and touch on every single deck it would have a matchup on for each era, so I'm going to pick out ones that I think I have a decent grasp on and talk about those. I'm gonna level with you here, though. I knew virtually nothing about the formats before BW prior to delving into this. I knew about Haymaker and why N1 Sneasel and Slowking were broken and all that, but almost everything else I'm learning for the first time. Like I said, I'm gonna do my best to paint an accurate picture, but maybe someone else would be able to more accurately describe how this Shuckle would interact with things. I encourage discussion about that if it's okay with the judges.
Anywho, as a note before I get started, I checked with my professor and it was ruled that, if something damage this Shuckle while it was on the bench, even if other Pokémon on the bench were also damaged, if that damage is greater than Shuckle's HP at the time of the attack, then Shuckle would be knocked out before the ability could add more HP. So 10 snipe damage would knock him out if he's just sitting there. However, if another Pokémon had a damage counter on it, Shuckle would have 20 HP, in which case sniping him for 10 damage would have functionally no effect, as his ability would then count that damage and he would still have 20 HP afterward.
Basically, damage is applied, then a knockout is checked for, and then the ability would kick in.
But first let's talk about the themes, shall we? Shuckle is known for having the highest defense stats in the game, but what happens when he's exposed to the electromagnetic waves from the Holon Research Tower? He becomes much more dependent on his fellow Pokémon, and on his own he surely wouldn't stand a chance against any other Pokémon. but when the going gets going, boy does he get tough. I've completely redesigned Shuckle's gimmick for this card and no matter what score I get I can at least say the redesign paid off hugely in my mind.
The custom Pokédex entry I've written, which in the context of my blanks ties in along with my cards from Frontiers Renewed and their return to the Holon region. I even think it works well with the art. I'm fairly sure Mr. Tesla's intent was for the Shuckle to be looking at his shell, but with this Pokédex entry and the theme of the card's effects I like to think that the viewer is one of this Shuckle's injured friends and he's checking behind him to make sure the friend is still okay. He's a bit wild with his attacks, you see (see Avengeance), and while the collateral damage is very small, he cares about those he's protecting and needs to make sure they're still okay. Even in the context of a mon whom this Shuckle isn't "friends" with, he would be checking on it to make sure it's still okay because his own power depends on that Pokémon (or human, as the case may be) not fainting. He likes to keep an eye on his friends as much as he keeps an eye on his enemy. Either way, knowing that, I think this puts this art in a very different light and makes it look quite a bit more heroic, which is exactly what I was going for.
I chose this holo pattern after some debate when I started to notice that the holosheet I have prebuilt into the Omnium template isn't at its greatest when it's used on this type of full-art card. I maintain that Acid Wash looks great on normal cards, but in this case - and I reckon the case with many full art cards - I think another holo pattern is in order. I do also have a sheen holo pattern which I used on my Dragapult entry in March 2020, but I never could get that pattern to look to my liking and this art, in my opinion, is better suited to not being mixed with textures. With that in mind, and after seeing a few of Nyan's entries with the beautiful Cracked Ice pattern that asche isolated for us, I decided it was time to give it a whirl. The results speak for themselves, and I think this is a strong contender for the best-looking CaC card I've made in no small part because of the holo pattern. Initially the parts of the holo along the border disappeared behind Shuckle just like the rest of the pattern, but as I looked at it I think it left the bottom of the card looking very bare, so I extended it is so it covered all of the border and I'm quite satisfied with that decision as well.
Technically there are two holo patterns on this card. The second one can be seen on the Shuckle shell near the bottom of the card. While this was originally intended to be the holo pattern on its own, I determined that it doesn't have enough flair to stand out, so for the purposes of this illustration I'd like to point out that it is intended to look like part of the artwork itself and not a holosheet. Think of it as the physical manifestation of the power he's gaining from a seriously injured ally on the Bench. Or maybe even the viewer's eyes having issues because they've been punched so hard in the face that they got vision problems. The interpretation is up to you!
As a side note I wanna say it kinda looks like Shuckle is wearing his name as a hat. No themes or lore there. I just thought it was funny.
As for the water weakness, Delta Species almost always carry over the weakness of their normally-typed counterparts. Most Shuckle cards are actually weak to Fire or even Grass, but considering Shuckle in the games is weak to neither of those types, I've taken the Water weakness from his HGSS print. It always bothers me when a card is weak to types that it isn't weak to in the games. The +10 for the weakness is a quirk in the way that almost all weaknesses in DPPt are calculated in that Pokémon who have less than 70 HP almost always have +10. And since this card only has 10HP, that's just what he gets.
Now for the retreat cost… Here's a fun fact: Shuckle is the slowest Pokémon in the game. With a speed of 5, he's matched in that slowness only by Munchlax and Pyukumuku. The card game doesn't really reflect this well at all in that he usually has cheap attacks and a retreat cost of 1 or (in exactly one case) 2. I see this trend and choose to instead stick with a more game-inspired theme for this card. I originally was going to go with a retreat cost of 5, but since only 4 cards ever got that much and early templates clearly weren't even designed for a 5 retreat cost to be possible, I opted to stick with 4. In general that's basically a way of saying "Don't bother trying to retreat with energy" already, so the point is made.
Now, the rest of the card really has to be talked about in relation to the rest of the rest of the card. The most unusual part of this card to most people I'm sure is the HP. It's 10. We do have precedence for this HP amount all the way up through EX Sandstorm in the form of Mysterious Fossil (as well as one Clefairy Doll), but never in the form of a Pokémon. This is a stretch in Believability, but hear me out. Look at the ability. This clearly is no ordinary kind of card and the low base HP is almost a necessity. I contemplated putting it at 30 just to match the minimum of other Pokémon, but I still believe that is too much with an ability like this. In Omnium this HP amount isn't unheard of. Since the very beginning I always intended for Shedinja cards to have 10 HP, for example. I still haven't made any of those cards, but I'm pretty firm on that. So there would be precedence in Omnium if that's worth anything.
Okay, so how about that ability? "Odd Resilience". This is what the Holon researchers called it when they first discovered the effect Holon's radiation had on Shuckle. He's resilient, but it's odd in that the level of resilience is heavily reliant on those around him. He borrows the HP they already lost anyway and turns it into his own vitality. This can get very interesting very quickly, but more on that in the meta section below. HP-adding abilities have been done a handful of times, but never like this.
Now "Avengeance". He's seen his buddy hurt and he's having none of that. Well, maybe a little. As above, he is kinda wild with his attacks. He's not trying to hurt his friend, but he's not very good at keeping his attack all focused on one spot. Not that this doesn't help him, though. With every attack, assuming you have the Benched Pokémon you need, you're gaining +20HP and, if you have at least 3 energy attached, at least +10 more damage. It starts small, but it can get really crazy as you go and as you attach more energy.
I'm not gonna lie and say this is a small investment. You almost never want to be relying on Avengeance to be putting damage on your bench, as it's very slow even in the Classic format, but in a pinch, in the right circumstances, it might just be enough to make a difference later on. I figure it adds a tiny bit of extra versatility to the card. This means you need to have another card that can do self-bench damage in the active or, and this is probably the better use of the card, don't try and make it your only attacker. This shines much brighter mid-to-late game after your mons have had enough time to take some beating. But this also isn't something you can surprise your opponent with in most cases. You're doing no more than 10 damage until you have 3 energy attached. Why is that? One word: Stall.
In earlier stages Avengeance's cost was actually just [C]+, meaning it was splashable in every deck and could just be plopped down and ready to go in 1 turn without any support. That would be insane in a stall format. Have a Wailord EX active to soak up some damage, then switch it out and be doing 200+ damage for one DCE. I couldn't have that. I also had it at just [C][C]+ and then [M][C]+ for a hot second as well, but the more I thought about it, the more scary stall felt with that cost. [M][C][C]+ was where I started to feel comfortable with it. But the more I went through the meta analysis I actually started to think it might be too weak in this state. I spent a very long time debating which cost was the best before I finally settled on [M][M]+, which prevents you from using DCE or most other multi-energies to power it up, but still allows you to set it up in a reasonable time frame. It's extremely vulnerable to gusting cards in almost every format, which makes it a very fragile card even with the faster setup time. This does put it in quite a risky place in the Classic era, although I think it wouldn't be the best deck in any format that has gusting cards. Again, we'll talk about that in meta analyses down below.
Okay a couple things about wording and the layout of the attack. You probably noticed the "+" in the attack cost even though this isn't a Tag Team and you probably also noticed that this layout did not continue into the SwSh era once Tag Teams stopped even though the "(in addition to this attack's cost)" wording is still used. This is an intentional change. The "+" design element as seen in the attack damage on any given card with such an attack shares a common purpose with the one in the attack cost in that it's not really required for the attack to be able to be understood since it's all covered in the text anyway. I can say it's kept there for consistency with the attack damage but in general this is just an intentional design choice and I'm likely to carry this into the rest of my Omnium cards going forward. Any attack that has additional effects if more than the base energy cost is provided should get the "+" in the attack cost. I think it looks nice and makes the template more interesting. The other wording stuff is addressed in the References section of this post.
Okay, how about that bit about this being scalable to be balanced for every format? Is that even possible? I like to think that, with a little clever thought and consideration, anything is possible. The more accurate question would be "Is it plausible?" Probably not, but this is my attempt at achieving the implausible. Unfortunately given the time frame I won't be able to go into every single Standard format that the official tcg has seen, so for the purposes of the next few spoilers, I'm going to define a "format" the same way the custom Lackey plugin does: Base Set through Skyridge is one format. EX Ruby & Sapphire through EX Power Keepers is another format. Diamond & Pearl through Call of Legends is another. And everything from Black & White onwards is another.
That being said, I'm still taking a crash course in the entirety of the Pokémon Trading Card Game over the last 25 years all in the space of like two weeks, so while I'm gonna try and be as thorough in my research as possible, there's no way I can account for every single thing and it's probable that I'm going to not think of a lot of things. I'm gonna do my best. There's also no way I can try and touch on every single deck it would have a matchup on for each era, so I'm going to pick out ones that I think I have a decent grasp on and talk about those. I'm gonna level with you here, though. I knew virtually nothing about the formats before BW prior to delving into this. I knew about Haymaker and why N1 Sneasel and Slowking were broken and all that, but almost everything else I'm learning for the first time. Like I said, I'm gonna do my best to paint an accurate picture, but maybe someone else would be able to more accurately describe how this Shuckle would interact with things. I encourage discussion about that if it's okay with the judges.
Anywho, as a note before I get started, I checked with my professor and it was ruled that, if something damage this Shuckle while it was on the bench, even if other Pokémon on the bench were also damaged, if that damage is greater than Shuckle's HP at the time of the attack, then Shuckle would be knocked out before the ability could add more HP. So 10 snipe damage would knock him out if he's just sitting there. However, if another Pokémon had a damage counter on it, Shuckle would have 20 HP, in which case sniping him for 10 damage would have functionally no effect, as his ability would then count that damage and he would still have 20 HP afterward.
Basically, damage is applied, then a knockout is checked for, and then the ability would kick in.
Classic Era
So let's start with the Classic block, then. Before we say anything I want to say this ability would be erratad as a Pokémon Power in this era. I wish they'd used "Ability" from the beginning, but what can I do? That being said, what cards stand out as cards that this Shuckle would like to be friends with? My first thought was cards that damage your own Bench. I first thought of maybe Golem FO 36, but are you really gonna invest 4 turns and at least 7 deck slots to 20 spread? Granted, that's as much as 100 more damage for Shuckle, but requires Shuckle to have 7 energy attached and you've given up a free prize. There is slightly less investment with Magneton BS 9, but you're still gonna have a hard time. If you really wanted to go the spread route, your best play is probably Pichu N1 12, which can really spread the damage around for just a single Colorless energy. Just make sure Shuckle isn't in play at least for the first time you use that attack or he will be knocked out.
But if you ask me that's the wrong way to play. This Shuckle likes stall decks. And what better stall is there in the Classic era than Chansey BS 3? This card is ludicrous, and even today 120 HP on a basic is still pretty good, but back then this was wild HP. Shuckle likes that. Now, you might be eyeing that second attack for some speedy self-damage. I wouldn't waste my time with it. It seems like a good idea in theory but you're wasting your time powering it up, even if you can reliably draw DCE two turns in a row to get it going. You do 80 damage to yourself. Shuckle will really like that when he's active, right? Hitmonchan BS 7 would like to know your location. Hitmonchan was the star of one of the most popular and powerful archetypes of the era: Haymaker. And for good reason. It may look boring, but Special Punch doing 40 for 3 energy was kind of a big deal back then. Not only that, but it hits for weakness on Chansey, too. So not only is it already doing enough to finish off a Chansey that used Double Edge (assuming your opponent was smart and thought to power up a benched Hitmonchan instead of the one that would be KOed by Double Edge), but it's doing twice that much damage, just to add insult to injury.
No, what you want to do is just throw Chansey in the active, maybe throw another one on the bench, and let your opponent do some damage first. Chansey has an unfairly low retreat cost for its durability, so a single energy attachment switches him out easily, but you'd want to use Switch here anyway, so that point is moot. Or better yet have a Dodrio JU 34 on your bench and save your Switches for Shuckle when he finally starts to get low. The one thing you want to pray for is that your opposing Hitmonchan doesn't have two PlusPower ready to go, but you may wish to counter that with a well-placed Defender just before your opponent can get that last energy on Hitmonchan. Or maybe a Metal Energy if you're in a pinch. Just make sure you have some left for Shuckle, since you can only put 4 Metal Energy in your deck in this era.
Now you're talking. Chansey probably has taken as much damage as it can stand and you should have a Switch/Dodrio ready to go (because what are you doing if you don't?). Switch that Chansey out for the second one and slap that Shuckle on the bench. He now has enough HP to take a hit from Hitmonchan even if they have a Gust of Wind to promote him to the active. You can hopefully take some time to get him loaded up with energy before unleashing some vengeance on that Hitmonchan.
If you were wondering why I said even the type was carefully chosen for this Shuckle, this is why. In this era (and actually the following EX era as well), Metal Energy only existed as a Special Energy. It's intentionally more difficult than normal to power this Shuckle up, although it is helped in return by having a little bit of damage reduction as if it didn't have enough HP. This also prevents it from hitting almost all cards for weakness. (Only 12 cards were weak to Metal in the Classic era; all of them were e-Cards.
As for alternatives to Chansey, I probably wouldn't play any. You want the biggest resilience possible and 6 basic Pokémon even have three-digit HP in that era; 2 of them are Chansey and 2 of them cost thousands of dollars a piece. You could argue weakness is a big enough concern to use something else, but in my opinion Chansey's weakness to the best deck in the format is actually the best part about Chansey in this case.
Is this an autowin against Haymaker? Well, it's hard to deny it would be seriously powerful in this matchup, but I still give it to Haymaker because of one seriously broken card that never got banned: Gust of Wind. A single copy of this can completely erase all the work you put into your Chansey by gusting it up and finishing it off. Not to mention Energy Removal, which can really mess up your plans given that this Shuckle's attack has a fairly high cost and Special Energy are not easy to recover in this format (or any format really). It can be mitigated somewhat with a card like No Removal Gym, but it's always hard to rely on a stadium that only helps you on your opponent's turn since they can just play a counter stadium to get rid of it. That being said, if you got 2 Chansey low by the time you revealed your stall was actually a Shuckle, you might have enough staying power to get the best of Hitmonchan even with Gust of Wind running amok.
Speaking of things that rhyme with "guck", though, I think it's proper to note that Muk FO 13 entirely guts this archetype, and that will be a theme as I discuss this card further.
EX Era
In this era Shuckle's Ability would be issued an errata that changed it into a Poké-Body. You probably aren't going to want to use a basic ex as your damage sponge (especially since they only have marginally better HP than the best single-prize alternatives), which means since you don't have access to Chansey anymore, your best choices for basic Pokémon are Team Magma's Groudon MA 9 or Team Aqua's Kyogre MA 3, both with 100 HP and both with a grass weakness. If you think you've got time for a Stage 1, you could alternatively take a swing for Wailord ex SS 100, which had the most HP in the card game by a wide margin for many years. It also has a weakness to Grass (and Lightning as well), but with 200 HP it can usually take a hit even with weakness, which means the extra damage is more helpful to you in this case. In an era that heavily favors evolution decks, this is no stretch. There were basically no Grass decks in the entire format that rose to stardom, but there were a handful of electric decks that could be exploited, such as Metanite, Mewtric, or Absol ex/Eeveelutions, which ran Jolteon ex.
Some cards, specifically Manectric ex, had attacks that would stop you from using your precious Switch card, which meant you either had to find a Supporter card that could switch out your sponge (there were none in this era) or figure out another way to move him away. (Pelipper CG 26 almost looks like the solution here, but sadly it wants the δ on the Active Pokémon rather than a Benched Pokémon.) Dodrio RG 21 actually returned for more retreat support, but if Wailord ex is your sponge, Dodrio can't help. You're definitely gonna want a Switch here. Alternatively, if you think Shuckle can take a hit on the following turn, you could just attach an energy to Wailord ex and use its first attack to escape. You're sacrificing 3 damage counters to do this, unfortunately, but it might be your only choice if your Switch cards are blocked.
But there was an even more insidious type of card in this era that stops Shuckle dead. Poké-Bodies seemed to be much less of a target for cards in this era, but there were a few that made things bad. Muk ex, while I couldn't find any decks that played him, would pose a huge problem for Shuckle for those decks that do play him, and Space Center could put a swift end to your Odd Resilience, but the one that I know did see lots of play was Cessation Crystal. There seemed to be quite a back-and-forth in terms of Powers/Bodies being good and cards that cancel them being used a lot. Cessation Crystal is an easy tech that, while counterable by most decks, is almost a death sentence for Shuckle as the card could be attached and then any damaging attack would knock Shuckle out assuming no damage reduction. Metal Energy could still help you out to a degree, but you're fighting an uphill battle at this point.
Not all matchups are unfavorable, however. If you can keep something damaging your active and have a way to switch out into a Shuckle that's been powered up a bit, you can still lay down some massive damage. Blaziken RS 3 could help to quench your Shuckle's energy requirements after the first 2 Metal energy, and the format really liked Stage 2 Pokémon, so he'd fit right in. If you thought you could manage it, you could even treat Blaziken as your damage sponge at the start. Starting with Torchic would give you more time to evolve up and get that engine running. Sadly this process couldn't be aided by any multiple-energy cards like DCE since DCE didn't exist in this format and whacked out cards like Double Rainbow Energy, Boost Energy, and Scramble Energy could not be attached to Basic Pokémon like Shuckle.
It's honestly very hard to compare this Shuckle's archetype to any specific deck in the EX era because there are simply so many viable decks in this format it's impossible to pick one. EX era truly was the golden age of the TCG and from what I can tell Shuckle has potential to be a great deck if the shortcomings mentioned above could in any way be accounted for.
DPPt and HGSS Era
This is the true home of the Shuckle I designed in terms of power level. While it is still meant to be able to run in any format, all of my Omnium cards are designed specifically as parallels to generation 4. Is it good in this format? Well, there was some definite power creep come generation 4 and the era heavily favored Basic Pokémon starting with Platinum, though toward the front end it still did favor Stage 2 decks quite a bit. We do finally see a basic Metal Energy in this format, which helps a lot. Interestingly, this era offers the best picture possible for what a full-generation era would look like, as the 2009-2010 rotation was actually Diamond & Pearl through Unleashed - just three sets short of a full generation. The back end of this format was dominated by LuxChomp, though, so that will be the main focus of Shuckle's matchup here.
In this era you have a very big selection of 100-HP cards to choose for your sponge, and even a couple of basics with 110 HP. Even with the changes to weakness in this era, which generally means less damage, DP is where you start to enter territory where you don't want weakness to boost any damage done to your sponge. Even Wailord GE 30 may struggle to stay afloat against a quick LuxChomp deck, especially if any damage boosting gets in the way. Steelix Prime could perhaps be an alternative high-HP Stage 1 that's not weak to LuxChomp, but then you have BlazeRay running around and kicking you into oblivion. Some combination of the two may work so you have options, but these matchups are very unfavorable to Shuckle. In both decks, Luxray gets a free gust as soon as he enters the battlefield, which means your sponges are constantly vulnerable, and as far as I can tell there aren't any other cards that would be able to prevent that without also shutting off Shuckle's Poké-Body, which is obviously a no-no.
It's possible I'm missing something, but frankly I don't actually see a way Shuckle could compete in a format with Luxray GL LV.X, especially LuxChomp. Gust and Snipe are pretty much hard counters to the Shuckle archetype and both Luxray and Garchomp having free retreat in addition to Luxray's ability means you can't even try to strand something in the active while you set up. If there's a deck archetype that Shuckle could use to counter that, I'd love to see it. After researching this block I see now why LuxChomp was such a dominant deck.
Expanded
I'd prefer to think of this as more of a "BLW-LOT" format since Tag Teams really destroyed any interest there was in the TCG for me, but I suppose for this to work in any format, I have to include TEU+. Admittedly I've not followed the top decks in any format except for LuxChomp, Haymaker, and of course today's ADPZ and Pikarom decks, however of all the formats I've gone through so far, this would be by far the one I'm most familiar with. By sheer HP, the best partners for Shuckle would be Magikarp & Wailord GX SM166 and Birds GX HIF 44, which if you can get enough damage on all of them could be enormous for this Shuckley boi.
You may have more interesting and efficient strategies though. One that could get Shuckle all the power he needs very quickly while also allowing you to use cards like Eldegoss V, Crobat V, Dedenne GX, and even Tapu Lele GX to set up, all while delivering a good deal of damage to your opponent's setup cards in the process, would be Weavile BUS 86. This is the first format where I think self-damage spread is actually a viable option, though it's not without its risks as well. There are plenty of gusting cards that can take an easy knockout on these. That being said, if you can get a single Rule of Evil off with 5 Benched Pokémon-V/GX with abilities, play Sky Field to get more Benched space, retreat for free into Shuckle, then figure out how to quickly get some energy onto Shuckle, you'll be sitting up there with a massive 310 HP on a single-prize basic, and if you have, say Battle Compressor, some metal energy, Metal Saucer, and some easy energy attachment like the good old Double Colorless Energy or even Twin Energy, you might just be able to power it up for a decent amount of damage. This can even take advantage of Zamazenta V, that could really rock things. He has the highest HP on a 2 Prize card while still having an Ability. Depending on how risky you're feeling, you may feel like getting two or three Rule of Evil attacks off, and this is where it stacks super quickly. If you could conceivably do that, somehow find a way to stop gusting effects or snipe damage to your bench, which you would want to be full, and get Shuckle down with a mere 3 energy while preventing any ability lock, you would have a basic Pokémon with 910 HP that can hit for 190 damage (which is admittedly not the most massive damage in the universe for a 3-energy attack, but that's the trade-off for all that HP, and one more energy guarantees a knock-out on anything, so there are options.).
Is this a tall order? Absolutely. No situation is this ideal unless you're playing against a spectacularly terrible deck, so you're probably never going to pull off a 910-HP Shuckle in any real match, but there are ways to make this work, even if it's not going to win at worlds. Is it spectacular against all decks? No, I wouldn't think so. It's probably below average in most cases, but a card like this is not meant to be the best deck in the format. The best case would be for someone to find some wacky strategy no one thought of that can somehow get ludicrous mileage out of the ability and attack effect, but then get countered after its initial surge once people start realizing how easy it is to break it. As it stands, I would put it at best middle-of-the-pack, but man it would be fun to play around with. It's meant to fit in that class of "fun" cards, not necessarily "good" cards. I'd love to see it have a breakout good matchup though.
You may still end up preferring to use this as a stall sweeper. Leave something mega bulky in the active for a little bit and let it accumulate damage, then play your Shuckle and figure out a way to get 3 energy on him in a single turn (not impossible, but not the easiest either. Maybe a couple Metal Saucers and an attachment from the hand or something). Here, your big HP and big damage comes from a single source. Or maybe two depending on how you got your pieces set up. One Magikarp & Wailord GX could be enough to swing you up to (at maximum, unless you use something like Fighting Fury Belt or Buff Padding) 300 HP and 300 damage for three energy. Watch for your own collateral damage, though. Just that 10 damage will break your Wailord in half. Or you could just tech in a Mr. Mime PLF 47 / BKT 97 to stop that damage altogether. The choice is yours.
So let's start with the Classic block, then. Before we say anything I want to say this ability would be erratad as a Pokémon Power in this era. I wish they'd used "Ability" from the beginning, but what can I do? That being said, what cards stand out as cards that this Shuckle would like to be friends with? My first thought was cards that damage your own Bench. I first thought of maybe Golem FO 36, but are you really gonna invest 4 turns and at least 7 deck slots to 20 spread? Granted, that's as much as 100 more damage for Shuckle, but requires Shuckle to have 7 energy attached and you've given up a free prize. There is slightly less investment with Magneton BS 9, but you're still gonna have a hard time. If you really wanted to go the spread route, your best play is probably Pichu N1 12, which can really spread the damage around for just a single Colorless energy. Just make sure Shuckle isn't in play at least for the first time you use that attack or he will be knocked out.
But if you ask me that's the wrong way to play. This Shuckle likes stall decks. And what better stall is there in the Classic era than Chansey BS 3? This card is ludicrous, and even today 120 HP on a basic is still pretty good, but back then this was wild HP. Shuckle likes that. Now, you might be eyeing that second attack for some speedy self-damage. I wouldn't waste my time with it. It seems like a good idea in theory but you're wasting your time powering it up, even if you can reliably draw DCE two turns in a row to get it going. You do 80 damage to yourself. Shuckle will really like that when he's active, right? Hitmonchan BS 7 would like to know your location. Hitmonchan was the star of one of the most popular and powerful archetypes of the era: Haymaker. And for good reason. It may look boring, but Special Punch doing 40 for 3 energy was kind of a big deal back then. Not only that, but it hits for weakness on Chansey, too. So not only is it already doing enough to finish off a Chansey that used Double Edge (assuming your opponent was smart and thought to power up a benched Hitmonchan instead of the one that would be KOed by Double Edge), but it's doing twice that much damage, just to add insult to injury.
No, what you want to do is just throw Chansey in the active, maybe throw another one on the bench, and let your opponent do some damage first. Chansey has an unfairly low retreat cost for its durability, so a single energy attachment switches him out easily, but you'd want to use Switch here anyway, so that point is moot. Or better yet have a Dodrio JU 34 on your bench and save your Switches for Shuckle when he finally starts to get low. The one thing you want to pray for is that your opposing Hitmonchan doesn't have two PlusPower ready to go, but you may wish to counter that with a well-placed Defender just before your opponent can get that last energy on Hitmonchan. Or maybe a Metal Energy if you're in a pinch. Just make sure you have some left for Shuckle, since you can only put 4 Metal Energy in your deck in this era.
Now you're talking. Chansey probably has taken as much damage as it can stand and you should have a Switch/Dodrio ready to go (because what are you doing if you don't?). Switch that Chansey out for the second one and slap that Shuckle on the bench. He now has enough HP to take a hit from Hitmonchan even if they have a Gust of Wind to promote him to the active. You can hopefully take some time to get him loaded up with energy before unleashing some vengeance on that Hitmonchan.
If you were wondering why I said even the type was carefully chosen for this Shuckle, this is why. In this era (and actually the following EX era as well), Metal Energy only existed as a Special Energy. It's intentionally more difficult than normal to power this Shuckle up, although it is helped in return by having a little bit of damage reduction as if it didn't have enough HP. This also prevents it from hitting almost all cards for weakness. (Only 12 cards were weak to Metal in the Classic era; all of them were e-Cards.
As for alternatives to Chansey, I probably wouldn't play any. You want the biggest resilience possible and 6 basic Pokémon even have three-digit HP in that era; 2 of them are Chansey and 2 of them cost thousands of dollars a piece. You could argue weakness is a big enough concern to use something else, but in my opinion Chansey's weakness to the best deck in the format is actually the best part about Chansey in this case.
Is this an autowin against Haymaker? Well, it's hard to deny it would be seriously powerful in this matchup, but I still give it to Haymaker because of one seriously broken card that never got banned: Gust of Wind. A single copy of this can completely erase all the work you put into your Chansey by gusting it up and finishing it off. Not to mention Energy Removal, which can really mess up your plans given that this Shuckle's attack has a fairly high cost and Special Energy are not easy to recover in this format (or any format really). It can be mitigated somewhat with a card like No Removal Gym, but it's always hard to rely on a stadium that only helps you on your opponent's turn since they can just play a counter stadium to get rid of it. That being said, if you got 2 Chansey low by the time you revealed your stall was actually a Shuckle, you might have enough staying power to get the best of Hitmonchan even with Gust of Wind running amok.
Speaking of things that rhyme with "guck", though, I think it's proper to note that Muk FO 13 entirely guts this archetype, and that will be a theme as I discuss this card further.
EX Era
In this era Shuckle's Ability would be issued an errata that changed it into a Poké-Body. You probably aren't going to want to use a basic ex as your damage sponge (especially since they only have marginally better HP than the best single-prize alternatives), which means since you don't have access to Chansey anymore, your best choices for basic Pokémon are Team Magma's Groudon MA 9 or Team Aqua's Kyogre MA 3, both with 100 HP and both with a grass weakness. If you think you've got time for a Stage 1, you could alternatively take a swing for Wailord ex SS 100, which had the most HP in the card game by a wide margin for many years. It also has a weakness to Grass (and Lightning as well), but with 200 HP it can usually take a hit even with weakness, which means the extra damage is more helpful to you in this case. In an era that heavily favors evolution decks, this is no stretch. There were basically no Grass decks in the entire format that rose to stardom, but there were a handful of electric decks that could be exploited, such as Metanite, Mewtric, or Absol ex/Eeveelutions, which ran Jolteon ex.
Some cards, specifically Manectric ex, had attacks that would stop you from using your precious Switch card, which meant you either had to find a Supporter card that could switch out your sponge (there were none in this era) or figure out another way to move him away. (Pelipper CG 26 almost looks like the solution here, but sadly it wants the δ on the Active Pokémon rather than a Benched Pokémon.) Dodrio RG 21 actually returned for more retreat support, but if Wailord ex is your sponge, Dodrio can't help. You're definitely gonna want a Switch here. Alternatively, if you think Shuckle can take a hit on the following turn, you could just attach an energy to Wailord ex and use its first attack to escape. You're sacrificing 3 damage counters to do this, unfortunately, but it might be your only choice if your Switch cards are blocked.
But there was an even more insidious type of card in this era that stops Shuckle dead. Poké-Bodies seemed to be much less of a target for cards in this era, but there were a few that made things bad. Muk ex, while I couldn't find any decks that played him, would pose a huge problem for Shuckle for those decks that do play him, and Space Center could put a swift end to your Odd Resilience, but the one that I know did see lots of play was Cessation Crystal. There seemed to be quite a back-and-forth in terms of Powers/Bodies being good and cards that cancel them being used a lot. Cessation Crystal is an easy tech that, while counterable by most decks, is almost a death sentence for Shuckle as the card could be attached and then any damaging attack would knock Shuckle out assuming no damage reduction. Metal Energy could still help you out to a degree, but you're fighting an uphill battle at this point.
Not all matchups are unfavorable, however. If you can keep something damaging your active and have a way to switch out into a Shuckle that's been powered up a bit, you can still lay down some massive damage. Blaziken RS 3 could help to quench your Shuckle's energy requirements after the first 2 Metal energy, and the format really liked Stage 2 Pokémon, so he'd fit right in. If you thought you could manage it, you could even treat Blaziken as your damage sponge at the start. Starting with Torchic would give you more time to evolve up and get that engine running. Sadly this process couldn't be aided by any multiple-energy cards like DCE since DCE didn't exist in this format and whacked out cards like Double Rainbow Energy, Boost Energy, and Scramble Energy could not be attached to Basic Pokémon like Shuckle.
It's honestly very hard to compare this Shuckle's archetype to any specific deck in the EX era because there are simply so many viable decks in this format it's impossible to pick one. EX era truly was the golden age of the TCG and from what I can tell Shuckle has potential to be a great deck if the shortcomings mentioned above could in any way be accounted for.
DPPt and HGSS Era
This is the true home of the Shuckle I designed in terms of power level. While it is still meant to be able to run in any format, all of my Omnium cards are designed specifically as parallels to generation 4. Is it good in this format? Well, there was some definite power creep come generation 4 and the era heavily favored Basic Pokémon starting with Platinum, though toward the front end it still did favor Stage 2 decks quite a bit. We do finally see a basic Metal Energy in this format, which helps a lot. Interestingly, this era offers the best picture possible for what a full-generation era would look like, as the 2009-2010 rotation was actually Diamond & Pearl through Unleashed - just three sets short of a full generation. The back end of this format was dominated by LuxChomp, though, so that will be the main focus of Shuckle's matchup here.
In this era you have a very big selection of 100-HP cards to choose for your sponge, and even a couple of basics with 110 HP. Even with the changes to weakness in this era, which generally means less damage, DP is where you start to enter territory where you don't want weakness to boost any damage done to your sponge. Even Wailord GE 30 may struggle to stay afloat against a quick LuxChomp deck, especially if any damage boosting gets in the way. Steelix Prime could perhaps be an alternative high-HP Stage 1 that's not weak to LuxChomp, but then you have BlazeRay running around and kicking you into oblivion. Some combination of the two may work so you have options, but these matchups are very unfavorable to Shuckle. In both decks, Luxray gets a free gust as soon as he enters the battlefield, which means your sponges are constantly vulnerable, and as far as I can tell there aren't any other cards that would be able to prevent that without also shutting off Shuckle's Poké-Body, which is obviously a no-no.
It's possible I'm missing something, but frankly I don't actually see a way Shuckle could compete in a format with Luxray GL LV.X, especially LuxChomp. Gust and Snipe are pretty much hard counters to the Shuckle archetype and both Luxray and Garchomp having free retreat in addition to Luxray's ability means you can't even try to strand something in the active while you set up. If there's a deck archetype that Shuckle could use to counter that, I'd love to see it. After researching this block I see now why LuxChomp was such a dominant deck.
Expanded
I'd prefer to think of this as more of a "BLW-LOT" format since Tag Teams really destroyed any interest there was in the TCG for me, but I suppose for this to work in any format, I have to include TEU+. Admittedly I've not followed the top decks in any format except for LuxChomp, Haymaker, and of course today's ADPZ and Pikarom decks, however of all the formats I've gone through so far, this would be by far the one I'm most familiar with. By sheer HP, the best partners for Shuckle would be Magikarp & Wailord GX SM166 and Birds GX HIF 44, which if you can get enough damage on all of them could be enormous for this Shuckley boi.
You may have more interesting and efficient strategies though. One that could get Shuckle all the power he needs very quickly while also allowing you to use cards like Eldegoss V, Crobat V, Dedenne GX, and even Tapu Lele GX to set up, all while delivering a good deal of damage to your opponent's setup cards in the process, would be Weavile BUS 86. This is the first format where I think self-damage spread is actually a viable option, though it's not without its risks as well. There are plenty of gusting cards that can take an easy knockout on these. That being said, if you can get a single Rule of Evil off with 5 Benched Pokémon-V/GX with abilities, play Sky Field to get more Benched space, retreat for free into Shuckle, then figure out how to quickly get some energy onto Shuckle, you'll be sitting up there with a massive 310 HP on a single-prize basic, and if you have, say Battle Compressor, some metal energy, Metal Saucer, and some easy energy attachment like the good old Double Colorless Energy or even Twin Energy, you might just be able to power it up for a decent amount of damage. This can even take advantage of Zamazenta V, that could really rock things. He has the highest HP on a 2 Prize card while still having an Ability. Depending on how risky you're feeling, you may feel like getting two or three Rule of Evil attacks off, and this is where it stacks super quickly. If you could conceivably do that, somehow find a way to stop gusting effects or snipe damage to your bench, which you would want to be full, and get Shuckle down with a mere 3 energy while preventing any ability lock, you would have a basic Pokémon with 910 HP that can hit for 190 damage (which is admittedly not the most massive damage in the universe for a 3-energy attack, but that's the trade-off for all that HP, and one more energy guarantees a knock-out on anything, so there are options.).
Is this a tall order? Absolutely. No situation is this ideal unless you're playing against a spectacularly terrible deck, so you're probably never going to pull off a 910-HP Shuckle in any real match, but there are ways to make this work, even if it's not going to win at worlds. Is it spectacular against all decks? No, I wouldn't think so. It's probably below average in most cases, but a card like this is not meant to be the best deck in the format. The best case would be for someone to find some wacky strategy no one thought of that can somehow get ludicrous mileage out of the ability and attack effect, but then get countered after its initial surge once people start realizing how easy it is to break it. As it stands, I would put it at best middle-of-the-pack, but man it would be fun to play around with. It's meant to fit in that class of "fun" cards, not necessarily "good" cards. I'd love to see it have a breakout good matchup though.
You may still end up preferring to use this as a stall sweeper. Leave something mega bulky in the active for a little bit and let it accumulate damage, then play your Shuckle and figure out a way to get 3 energy on him in a single turn (not impossible, but not the easiest either. Maybe a couple Metal Saucers and an attachment from the hand or something). Here, your big HP and big damage comes from a single source. Or maybe two depending on how you got your pieces set up. One Magikarp & Wailord GX could be enough to swing you up to (at maximum, unless you use something like Fighting Fury Belt or Buff Padding) 300 HP and 300 damage for three energy. Watch for your own collateral damage, though. Just that 10 damage will break your Wailord in half. Or you could just tech in a Mr. Mime PLF 47 / BKT 97 to stop that damage altogether. The choice is yours.
I'm very unfamiliar with the Lackey formats in all honesty and there are no online articles or breakdowns I can go searching for unfortunately, but I thought I would also take some time to try and see how it would fare there since at some point I would like to submit it to the plugin. Only two formats exist there right now, so we'll take a look at those.
DPPt+
Right off the bat I already know this doesn't bode well for Mr. Shuckle. Lackey's meta changes a lot, but Shuckle's weakness to snipe damage remains a constant no matter what, and there's not much better sniping in Lackey than our very own Rayquaza SAB 7. Even a bulky low-cost retreater like Kangaskhan UNH 21 would have a hard time keeping Rayquaza out of its business, although Kanga's ability could do a good bit of helping Shuckle survive by moving Rayquaza's remaining energy to other places. Is it enough? Well, it's a hard sell. The meta Rayquaza deck right now runs Xurkitree UIV 12 and Energy Switch to return Rayquaza's energy to him, and Meteor Falls WK 66 to avoid that third energy attachment, which means your opponent probably arranges to have no energy on Rayquaza on your turn anyway, so there's nothing to remove from him. If there were some card to remove energy from your opponent's discard pile and ensure they have nothing in their hand then there could be a case here, but this is getting more into Rayquaza counter strats than Shuckle strats, so let's move on knowing that this is a double-plus-ungood matchup for Shuckle, though this particular snipe is extremely powerful against any deck in this format.
Vespiquen UNH 12 actually has potential to favor Shuckle in a matchup. Neither is hitting the other for weakness and if I'm reading everything correctly, Vespiquen can't OHKO a tank in the active, which means if you've got your Switch cards ready you've got a good bit of damage and HP ready to brew for your Shuckle you should be about to place down. One thing to be careful of is a cheeky snipe from one of the Spinarak UNH 74 this deck usually runs. If all your sponge has taken was one hit from Vespiquen so far, then this isn't an immediate threat, but it is something to keep in mind. If you can get two sponges to take hits from Vespiquen's Servant Blow and manage to get 4 energy on Shuckle, then you can OHKO even a Vespiquen whose HP is boosted by Combee UNH 53 with a decent amount of wiggle room, and who doesn't like to wiggle?
There are a few other decks in this format that are good, but the lack of reliable gusting cards in the format really helps Shuckle here. Medicham could be a problem for Kangaskhan if that's what you're using to sponge, so it might be advisable to tech in some Stakataka UIV 7, Celesteela UIV 1 or some other big basic that isn't weak to Fighting to offset Medicham's power. In fact, Celesteela's ability to retreat for free without a Switch card could turn out to be very useful here, and it can even become Celesteela LV.X for that extra tiny bit of bulk you might want against Rayquaza if you're trying to tech against that, though Rayquaza could always just hit it a second time and ruin Shuckle's day. Other helpful cards for this deck might be Nest Ball UNH88 (if you're only playing Shuckle and one type of sponge), or really any ball; Switch, obviously; Blaziken LV.X if you can evolve it up fast enough to avoid getting KO'd first. The ability could power up Shuckle's attack in one fell swoop, which is pretty huge here. Farfetch'd LV.X can't be overlooked, either, though that's pretty useful for basically any deck.
It's probably mainly for the lack of cards in this format, but I think Shuckle is probably at his best in DPPt+.
Expanded Modern
Pretty much the only deck I know about in this format is Goodra GX, who seems to stir quite a bit of controversy in Lackey's discussions. It seems I dodged a bullet with this card because Goodra doesn't really specifically punish Shuckle like it does a lot of other cards in Lackey. Shuckle isn't an EX or GX, so Goodra's ability doesn't apply. His attack costs 3 energy to really see damage anyway, so the effect of Goodra's first attack doesn't really apply either. The damage is something to be wary of but it's far from unheard of on a Stage 2 GX. The only thing I really would be afraid of in a Shuckle v Goodra GX matchup is Goodra's GX Attack, which deletes all of Shuckle's energy, but that's sort of a fear of every deck, not specifically Shuckle here.
In terms of energy acceleration, Elixir FAL 102 is a good way to help get Shuckle powered up. If you're good on the metal part, though, you may be able to tech in Nikki FAL 108 and a Grass Energy or Flareon RXS 33 and a Fire Energy to get a move on those (though Flareon could hurt your tankiness). Magerna FAL 79 is also sorta something to maybe consider? Given this deck's setup I can't see it being a very good way to accelerate energy onto Shuckle knowing Shuckle doesn't want to be played until after your Pokémon are damaged, but maybe there's a way to make it work. Noivern EX SPR 45 is also technically an option if you can find a way to ensure you'll get an energy. If you're willing to wait for it, Explorer's Rucksack LWO 112 is this card's best friend right now in terms of energy acceleration. There are many ways to acquire energy into your hand, such as the aforementioned Elixir, and with this card you can easily attach it to Shuckle and boost your energy just that much quicker. In this strange case where fast mid-to-early-game-but-not-in-the-first-few-turns acceleration is key, Explorer's Rucksack is the card.
For sponges, there are options. None that can accelerate energy unfortunately, or at least none that I could find, but two that stood out to me were Steelix GX FBA 65 and, interestingly, Darmanitan GX FBA 16. Steelix is sorta more of the same as what we've seen before. Take damage and find a way to switch, but Darmanitan's ability means you only have to worry about getting the first one down and you already have a backup to switch into once the first one takes damage. In terms of switching, the best one while you're trying to get damage on your Darmy bois is probably Pokémon Plush FBA 106, however Koga's Hidden Trick FBA 105 isn't too bad a choice if you for some reason don't have any other supporters to play. Warp Point FAL 120 is also an option, though may work against you if your objective is to accrue damage. Darmanitan and Shuckle in this archetype also like the extra damage Darmanitan would get from Lucario RXS 139 as well, which is a nice bonus.
Admittedly there are a lot of ways poor little Shuckle can get himself into a pickle here, too. If you only have 1 Shuckle, your opponent's single copy of Warp Point could be enough to break things, but moreover a card like the upcoming Tracker LWO 119 might be a thing to deal with, but these gusting cards are nowhere near as prevalent in Lackey yet as they are in the official tcg.
Bench snipers could potentially be a problem as well. Tapu Fini GX FAL 78 has potential to at least keep you on edge, though the chip damage might not be enough to top anything off if something like Darmanitan has been your starter. Undellan Gumshoos FBA 29 is capable of causing a stink for this archetype, as well as Absol RXS 148 to a lesser extent. I'm told that Pidgeot GX FAL 89 and Lanturn FAL 31 are likely to be effective for whittling down some benched Pokémon, and I'd say they're much better at it than Fini. Plus in Pidgeot's case it does a pretty hefty amount to Shuckle in the process. In terms of big boy snipe damage the likes of which compare to Rayquaza's potential versus Shuckle in DPPt+, it would probably be Undellan Gumshoos.
DPPt+
Right off the bat I already know this doesn't bode well for Mr. Shuckle. Lackey's meta changes a lot, but Shuckle's weakness to snipe damage remains a constant no matter what, and there's not much better sniping in Lackey than our very own Rayquaza SAB 7. Even a bulky low-cost retreater like Kangaskhan UNH 21 would have a hard time keeping Rayquaza out of its business, although Kanga's ability could do a good bit of helping Shuckle survive by moving Rayquaza's remaining energy to other places. Is it enough? Well, it's a hard sell. The meta Rayquaza deck right now runs Xurkitree UIV 12 and Energy Switch to return Rayquaza's energy to him, and Meteor Falls WK 66 to avoid that third energy attachment, which means your opponent probably arranges to have no energy on Rayquaza on your turn anyway, so there's nothing to remove from him. If there were some card to remove energy from your opponent's discard pile and ensure they have nothing in their hand then there could be a case here, but this is getting more into Rayquaza counter strats than Shuckle strats, so let's move on knowing that this is a double-plus-ungood matchup for Shuckle, though this particular snipe is extremely powerful against any deck in this format.
Vespiquen UNH 12 actually has potential to favor Shuckle in a matchup. Neither is hitting the other for weakness and if I'm reading everything correctly, Vespiquen can't OHKO a tank in the active, which means if you've got your Switch cards ready you've got a good bit of damage and HP ready to brew for your Shuckle you should be about to place down. One thing to be careful of is a cheeky snipe from one of the Spinarak UNH 74 this deck usually runs. If all your sponge has taken was one hit from Vespiquen so far, then this isn't an immediate threat, but it is something to keep in mind. If you can get two sponges to take hits from Vespiquen's Servant Blow and manage to get 4 energy on Shuckle, then you can OHKO even a Vespiquen whose HP is boosted by Combee UNH 53 with a decent amount of wiggle room, and who doesn't like to wiggle?
There are a few other decks in this format that are good, but the lack of reliable gusting cards in the format really helps Shuckle here. Medicham could be a problem for Kangaskhan if that's what you're using to sponge, so it might be advisable to tech in some Stakataka UIV 7, Celesteela UIV 1 or some other big basic that isn't weak to Fighting to offset Medicham's power. In fact, Celesteela's ability to retreat for free without a Switch card could turn out to be very useful here, and it can even become Celesteela LV.X for that extra tiny bit of bulk you might want against Rayquaza if you're trying to tech against that, though Rayquaza could always just hit it a second time and ruin Shuckle's day. Other helpful cards for this deck might be Nest Ball UNH88 (if you're only playing Shuckle and one type of sponge), or really any ball; Switch, obviously; Blaziken LV.X if you can evolve it up fast enough to avoid getting KO'd first. The ability could power up Shuckle's attack in one fell swoop, which is pretty huge here. Farfetch'd LV.X can't be overlooked, either, though that's pretty useful for basically any deck.
It's probably mainly for the lack of cards in this format, but I think Shuckle is probably at his best in DPPt+.
Expanded Modern
Pretty much the only deck I know about in this format is Goodra GX, who seems to stir quite a bit of controversy in Lackey's discussions. It seems I dodged a bullet with this card because Goodra doesn't really specifically punish Shuckle like it does a lot of other cards in Lackey. Shuckle isn't an EX or GX, so Goodra's ability doesn't apply. His attack costs 3 energy to really see damage anyway, so the effect of Goodra's first attack doesn't really apply either. The damage is something to be wary of but it's far from unheard of on a Stage 2 GX. The only thing I really would be afraid of in a Shuckle v Goodra GX matchup is Goodra's GX Attack, which deletes all of Shuckle's energy, but that's sort of a fear of every deck, not specifically Shuckle here.
In terms of energy acceleration, Elixir FAL 102 is a good way to help get Shuckle powered up. If you're good on the metal part, though, you may be able to tech in Nikki FAL 108 and a Grass Energy or Flareon RXS 33 and a Fire Energy to get a move on those (though Flareon could hurt your tankiness). Magerna FAL 79 is also sorta something to maybe consider? Given this deck's setup I can't see it being a very good way to accelerate energy onto Shuckle knowing Shuckle doesn't want to be played until after your Pokémon are damaged, but maybe there's a way to make it work. Noivern EX SPR 45 is also technically an option if you can find a way to ensure you'll get an energy. If you're willing to wait for it, Explorer's Rucksack LWO 112 is this card's best friend right now in terms of energy acceleration. There are many ways to acquire energy into your hand, such as the aforementioned Elixir, and with this card you can easily attach it to Shuckle and boost your energy just that much quicker. In this strange case where fast mid-to-early-game-but-not-in-the-first-few-turns acceleration is key, Explorer's Rucksack is the card.
For sponges, there are options. None that can accelerate energy unfortunately, or at least none that I could find, but two that stood out to me were Steelix GX FBA 65 and, interestingly, Darmanitan GX FBA 16. Steelix is sorta more of the same as what we've seen before. Take damage and find a way to switch, but Darmanitan's ability means you only have to worry about getting the first one down and you already have a backup to switch into once the first one takes damage. In terms of switching, the best one while you're trying to get damage on your Darmy bois is probably Pokémon Plush FBA 106, however Koga's Hidden Trick FBA 105 isn't too bad a choice if you for some reason don't have any other supporters to play. Warp Point FAL 120 is also an option, though may work against you if your objective is to accrue damage. Darmanitan and Shuckle in this archetype also like the extra damage Darmanitan would get from Lucario RXS 139 as well, which is a nice bonus.
Admittedly there are a lot of ways poor little Shuckle can get himself into a pickle here, too. If you only have 1 Shuckle, your opponent's single copy of Warp Point could be enough to break things, but moreover a card like the upcoming Tracker LWO 119 might be a thing to deal with, but these gusting cards are nowhere near as prevalent in Lackey yet as they are in the official tcg.
Bench snipers could potentially be a problem as well. Tapu Fini GX FAL 78 has potential to at least keep you on edge, though the chip damage might not be enough to top anything off if something like Darmanitan has been your starter. Undellan Gumshoos FBA 29 is capable of causing a stink for this archetype, as well as Absol RXS 148 to a lesser extent. I'm told that Pidgeot GX FAL 89 and Lanturn FAL 31 are likely to be effective for whittling down some benched Pokémon, and I'd say they're much better at it than Fini. Plus in Pidgeot's case it does a pretty hefty amount to Shuckle in the process. In terms of big boy snipe damage the likes of which compare to Rayquaza's potential versus Shuckle in DPPt+, it would probably be Undellan Gumshoos.
Admittedly I have extremely limited knowledge on almost everything I said above. I've never once played in the EX era, DPPt/HGSS era, or Expanded Modern and while I have played in Classic and DPPt+, these were either a very long time ago or consist of literally one game and so that knowledge is likewise limited. I have a fair bit of experience in Expanded, but since Team Up I really haven't kept up with many cards. I did everything I could in these analyses to consider the matchups, but in just a month there's only so much I can consider before it becomes crunch time. I spent at least 24 hours across more than a week to get all this researched and written down (and became very stressed and crunched for time in the process; this was the only thing that saw any progress on the days I worked on it). I'm confident that it's at least not broken and I don't think it's terrible in most cases. It does have a hard time against some very powerful decks in whatever meta, but it does give other decks a hard time if they're not playing the BDIFs. I believe it sits comfortably in the "playable but requires skill and a little bit of luck to pull off" category. A strong contender for a nice rogue deck.
Shuckle is very dependent on the cards he's played with, and this intrinsically makes him as good as the format he's in. He can go anywhere, and while he has potential to go in with huge damage in any format, he also is extremely vulnerable to gust cards, ability lock, and snipe damage, but also requires quick setup since you are generally only going to want to play him after the game has gone on for a few turns and you've had time to soak up some damage with your sponges. This means energy acceleration is an important resource.
His attack has some mild self-synergy, albeit quite slow and should not be relied on as your only source of damage/HP boosting. You do essentially get +20 HP every time you attack, which is pretty nice, but it also has potential to backfire and accidentally KO one of your guys if you're not careful, which in the worst of situations could also lead to a KO on your Shuckle as well. The interesting case here is that to defeat Shuckle you generally want to attack everything else except for him.
As I said above, a Shuckle on the bench would be KOed before his ability could kick in if he was sniped and was hit for more HP than he had at the time. However, on the other side, Shuckle is effectively invincible on the bench if it can't be sniped in one hit. With four Shuckle and some stars aligned correctly you could actually get yourself to effectively infinite HP and damage, but it would take some major planning and some clever tricks. And pray your opponent doesn't have Garbotoxin.
It's not stellar in every matchup in every format, but its mere existence also isn't an autoloss either. It needs other cards to survive and with the right cards it can go far. The Metal Energy keeps it from becoming way too powerful in earlier eras and becomes a non-issue starting in generation 4, which only really works with Metal or Darkness energy. In the same way, this Metal typing keeps it from hitting weakness in the Classic era, which tames down its power levels as well.
Shuckle is very dependent on the cards he's played with, and this intrinsically makes him as good as the format he's in. He can go anywhere, and while he has potential to go in with huge damage in any format, he also is extremely vulnerable to gust cards, ability lock, and snipe damage, but also requires quick setup since you are generally only going to want to play him after the game has gone on for a few turns and you've had time to soak up some damage with your sponges. This means energy acceleration is an important resource.
His attack has some mild self-synergy, albeit quite slow and should not be relied on as your only source of damage/HP boosting. You do essentially get +20 HP every time you attack, which is pretty nice, but it also has potential to backfire and accidentally KO one of your guys if you're not careful, which in the worst of situations could also lead to a KO on your Shuckle as well. The interesting case here is that to defeat Shuckle you generally want to attack everything else except for him.
As I said above, a Shuckle on the bench would be KOed before his ability could kick in if he was sniped and was hit for more HP than he had at the time. However, on the other side, Shuckle is effectively invincible on the bench if it can't be sniped in one hit. With four Shuckle and some stars aligned correctly you could actually get yourself to effectively infinite HP and damage, but it would take some major planning and some clever tricks. And pray your opponent doesn't have Garbotoxin.
It's not stellar in every matchup in every format, but its mere existence also isn't an autoloss either. It needs other cards to survive and with the right cards it can go far. The Metal Energy keeps it from becoming way too powerful in earlier eras and becomes a non-issue starting in generation 4, which only really works with Metal or Darkness energy. In the same way, this Metal typing keeps it from hitting weakness in the Classic era, which tames down its power levels as well.
Odd Resilience
- Galarian Stunfisk V DAA 128 - "This Pokémon gets [+10] HP for..." - (Apparently no Pokémon in all of SM had HP-modifying abilities.)
- Aggron CIN 67 - "...for each damage counter on all of your Benched Pokémon."
- Thundurus UNM 68 - "This attack does [10] damage to [2] of your Benched Pokémon. (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance for Benched Pokémon.) - (I came within literally a few minutes of posting this before realizing that the Benched Pokémon clause needed to be there. D: )
- Delibird LOT 57 - "[Then,] choose... -
- Luvdisc CES 44 - "...a number of [your Benched] Pokémon up to the..."
- Mewtwo GX SLG 39 - "...amount of [extra] Energy attached to this Pokémon..."
- Sandaconda SSH 110 (or literally any Tag Team GX) - "(in addition to this attack’s cost)"
- Jangmo-o CEC 160 - "This attack does 10 more damage for each damage counter on..."
- Delibird LOT 57 (again) - "...each of those Pokémon."
The Delibird is kind of a stretch in that last bit, but I do believe this is the correct wording. Speaking of Delibird, I also wanted to note there's a definite correlation between the word "choose" in the context of choosing multiple Pokémon and the word "each" for referring to those Pokémon. I had some debate over whether the wording should be "each damage counter on all of those Pokémon", but after referencing Delibird I was much more in the camp of "each damage counter on each of those Pokémon". Pokémon Breeder's Nurturing backs this up as well.
- Shuckle HGSS15 - Water weakness, in case my reasoning above wasn't enough.
- Detailed breakdown of which HP amounts correlate to which weaknesses in DPPt - No Pokémon with fewer than 50 base HP have ever had more than +10 weakness. Those 2 30HP mons with x2 Weakness are from Pokémon Rumble and the 40HP and 2 50HP mons were those secret rare reprints of Pikachu, Surfing Pikachu, and Charmander from the Wizards era.
- And as mentioned before: his RC is 4 because he is literally tied for the slowest Pokémon in the video games. It's not 5 because Classic era was clearly not designed for 5 and this is supposed to work in any era.
- The Shuckle artwork is by Autobot Tesla. I can't link to his page because Pokébeach says no.
- The Cracked Ice Holo pattern was extracted by Aschefield101.
- Special thanks to Nyan for helping me with getting this pattern to look fancy.
- The extra sparkly effects on Shuckle's shell are by TheoGothStock.
- A good portion of the meta analyses is helped tremendously by PTCG-Radio's TCG History Series.
- Equally tremendous help came from JKlacz's History of the pre-XY meta decks.
- Super extra special thanks to bbninjas, PMJ, Nyora, DoubleAACE, and Jabberwock for helping me familiarize myself with some of the current Lackey meta.
- Mega thanks to CardPone for compiling all the data for every single CaC ever submitted (will be made public in the future) and for free unlimited access to the Omnium blanks. Isn't he great?
- Everything else, barring the fonts and the CaC symbol, was by me.
Thanks so much to the judges and PokéBeach for making this possible! I can't wait to do this again!
Can I still sign up for image?Sorry for being late,these days are pretty busy.
WOW! That card is incredible!
Omnium can really do wonders.
Omnium can really do wonders.
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the play: bench 2 spiritomb and use the abilities to have 2 damage on benchAt last I've reached a point where I don't think I can improve this card. In my following post I've prepared a short list of notes for this card. It's kept separate in case I notice a spelling error; I can fix it without editing the post containing the entry.
Hope you enjoy! Good luck to everyone else!
play spikemuth
switch between 2 shuckles as much as you can
welder double rainbow brush attach dce
turn 1 ??? damage
Yep! I've put you down in the OP.
Good thing I've got a month to read this Dx