Welcome back to CaC, Omega! It’s been cool to follow the progress of your custom blanks over on Discord, and I’m glad to see they finally found their way to the PokeBeach neck of the woods. I particularly like the HP space, the grille/Poké Ball thing to the left of the illustration, and the flavor text/W/R/R section down below. On this card, the colors pop especially well, particularly the bright red of Shaymin’s scarf thing, and the green parts of its body complementing the blank while contrasting against the blue background. Great choice of art and great execution of the holosheet.
A couple concerns about the blank, one practical, one aesthetic. I know these blanks have been in development since long before this round of the contest and you’re by no means obliged to take any of this into consideration, but this is CaC and this is the part where I make suggestions about your entries.
First, as you’re probably aware, there are a couple of good reasons for not putting important information (like “Basic Pokémon”) on the border of a card, which are (a) that the edges are the first things to wear, and (b) that they can make miscuts really obvious. Even when they moved the copyright to the bottom border in SwSh, an unprecedented decision, they took care to leave some solid yellow space between the copyright and the actual edge of the card. For cards that are only ever intended to be digital, it’s not really that big a deal, but it’s why it
looks so odd, at least to me, to put the “Basic Pokémon” bar on the border.
Second, I’m surprised by the spacing of the attack text section. I know the intention is to maximize the possible space for multiple lengthy effects, but it strikes me as weird to make the margins so small and text space so wide, and then also leave a whole bunch of space between Petal Storm and the flavor text area. Why not just space everything in that section evenly? As with putting things on the border, it’s not intrinsically
wrong to do it this way, but no Pokémon era has ever organized its attack text space like this, so it throws me for a loop when I see it here.
Grateful Bloom is interesting. As far as “Bloom” effects go, I like that it turns one search card into three. The hard cap of one Grateful Bloom per turn makes sense to me; you don’t want one Level Ball–like effect to fill out your whole Bench by itself. However, the intent to slot it into a format like DPPt–HGSS is where you lose me a little. Decks in these formats
famously prefer Supporter cards like Roseanne’s Research and Pokémon Collector over Trainer (Item) cards to search out their Basic Pokémon. I think Grateful Bloom would benefit a lot from a simple change in the first sentence to “Trainer
or Supporter card,” to let it function as intended with the way decks in these eras are conventionally built.
Power Bloom is … okay. You’re probably not using a 3-Energy attack to do 60 damage and no other effect with a 70-HP Pokémon all too often, though it could be useful once in a while in a deck that normally prioritizes a different attacker. I think it’s more likely that in most games, you’ll grab Shaymin to net an additional Pokémon off your search card, and then it’ll just be a Bench-sitter that’s served its purpose after that. Ironically, maybe an additional attack (like a support attack?) would help round things out!
It’s not bad work overall. I like the blank, my two quibbles with it aside, and the art is a great demonstration of what it can do. But I think the effects could use some more development, perhaps the attack moreso than the Poké-Power. I’d be interested to see what you do for a CaC that you decide to join before the last day!
Wording errors:
- “if you played” → “if you play” to match the tense of “choose”. Empoleon FB doesn’t work as a reference here because it’s an attack checking something that happened earlier, not a Poké-Power checking something that triggered it and has yet to resolve. [-1 point]
- The “[clause] and [clause] and [clause]” structure of the first sentence of Grateful Bloom is unusual — TPCi is generally quite happy to list clauses separated by commas, so “if you play a Trainer card from your hand to search your deck for a Pokémon, you choose Shaymin, and your Bench isn’t full” would be more in keeping with what I’d expect. To use a more modern convention, you could also do “if you play a Trainer card from your hand to search your deck for a Pokémon and you choose Shaymin, and if your Bench isn’t full”, or you could simply cut the whole “if your Bench isn’t full” clause, since Ninjask LA is an exception to the rule and plenty of cards (e.g. Garchomp LV.X) don’t use the clause for similar effects. [-1 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- In Petal Storm’s damage, it looks like you’ve got a letter “x” rather than the multiplication symbol (×). [-0.5 point]
Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(A Poké-Power that activates from the deck to turn one search card into three search cards is pretty cool design space, and I sure wish there were more effects like it in the real TCG. I think you could take this card quite a bit farther, though — perhaps repurposing Petal Storm into a more unique attack, or adding a second attack for additional utility after the Poké-Power has been spent.)
Believability/Playability: 13/15
(A couple points docked for playability. The Poké-Power seems alright in principle; useful for Grass decks that need to get a bunch of Pokémon out quickly. However, at least the way DPPt–HGSS and most custom formats that imitate it are set up, it would almost definitely need to be able to activate off a Supporter search as well in order to be useful — there’s no Level Ball in DPPt! Petal Storm is okay for a Basic power-wise, but of course you don’t want to be attacking with a 70-HP Pokémon if you can help it, so the attack space might merit a second, more support-oriented effect if you want the card to do more than Bench-sit.)
Wording: 8/10
(Two minor errors.)
Fonts and Placement: 4.5/5
(10x rather than 10×.)
Aesthetics: 4.5/5
(A well developed blank with an excellent piece of art to showcase it. I particularly like the brightness of the colors, and I think the holosheet serves to bring them out even more. Just don’t forget to cut your corners!)
Total: 42/50
