Entering image-based, as usual.
Contest March 2022 CaC: One Per Deck (All Results Up!)
- Thread starter Jabberwock
- Start date
And that's a wrap on sign-ups! Don't forget to submit your entries by the end of the month!
I just saw the contest today, can I still enter Image-Based this month? I want to get back to TCG faking (after a long time hahah)
Sure, CaC only comes a few times a year. I'll put you down for this month, and don't forget to check in early in the future.
Somewhat belated public service announcement: With the Astral Radiance set reveal, we now have confirmation that Sparkling Pokémon have been renamed Radiant Pokémon for their English release. Take this into account as needed for your entry this month.
The OP has been updated to reflect this as well.
The OP has been updated to reflect this as well.
I'm more than abit rusty in making fan cards but I'm trying once more
Reference
-{L} Symbol fo Lord card.
-I'm using 3rd Gen TCG as my reference (Pokemon Star n delta species)
-When imagining the card, imagin the artwork extend toaward the attack area (refer LEGENDS)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kleavor {L} 100HP [G/F]
[Basic Pokémon]
[You can't have more than 1 Pokémon {L} in your deck.] [This Pokémon is both [G][F] type]
[Poké-BODY] Lord of the Wood
As long as Kleavor {L} is in play, all [G] Pokémon in play pay [G] to use it's attack.
[G][G][F][F] Frenzied Slash 50x
Flip a coin for each of you opponent's Pokémon. This attack does 50 damges times the number of head. Discard the top card of each player's deck for each tail.
w - [R/W] / r - [-] / rc - [C][C]
Reference
-{L} Symbol fo Lord card.
-I'm using 3rd Gen TCG as my reference (Pokemon Star n delta species)
-When imagining the card, imagin the artwork extend toaward the attack area (refer LEGENDS)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kleavor {L} 100HP [G/F]
[Basic Pokémon]
[You can't have more than 1 Pokémon {L} in your deck.] [This Pokémon is both [G][F] type]
[Poké-BODY] Lord of the Wood
As long as Kleavor {L} is in play, all [G] Pokémon in play pay [G] to use it's attack.
[G][G][F][F] Frenzied Slash 50x
Flip a coin for each of you opponent's Pokémon. This attack does 50 damges times the number of head. Discard the top card of each player's deck for each tail.
w - [R/W] / r - [-] / rc - [C][C]
Allow me to present my entry.
Radiant Unown HP: 60 [P]
Basic
Radiant Pokémon Rule: You can't have more than 1 Radiant Pokémon in your deck.
Ability: Infinite Language
Once during your turn, if you have no cards in your discard pile with the same name and this Pokémon is in your discard pile, you may discard the top 3 cards of your deck. If you do, put this Pokémon onto your Bench.
[C] Strong Wording 20x
This attack does 20 damage for each card with a different name in your discard pile. If you have 2 cards with the same name in your discard pile, this Pokémon does 60 damage to itself. This attack's damage isn't affected by Weakness.
Weakness: [D] x2
Resistance: [F] -30
Retreat: [C]
Its flat, thin body is always stuck on walls. Its shape appears to have some meaning.
Basic
Radiant Pokémon Rule: You can't have more than 1 Radiant Pokémon in your deck.
Ability: Infinite Language
Once during your turn, if you have no cards in your discard pile with the same name and this Pokémon is in your discard pile, you may discard the top 3 cards of your deck. If you do, put this Pokémon onto your Bench.
[C] Strong Wording 20x
This attack does 20 damage for each card with a different name in your discard pile. If you have 2 cards with the same name in your discard pile, this Pokémon does 60 damage to itself. This attack's damage isn't affected by Weakness.
Weakness: [D] x2
Resistance: [F] -30
Retreat: [C]
Its flat, thin body is always stuck on walls. Its shape appears to have some meaning.
Here's my entry:
Cubone *X# - Fighting - HP 100
Basic - Single Strike
NO. 104 Lonely Pokémon HT: 1'4" WT: 14.3 lbs.
Ability: Lonely by Nature
Before you flip a coin to decide who goes first in a game, you may use this Ability. If you do, don't flip that coin, and reveal your deck. If this Pokémon is the only Pokémon with "Cubone" in its name you have in your deck, you decide which player goes first. (If each player reveals a Pokémon with Lonely by Nature Ability, flip the coin as normal.)
[F] Lonely One 20+
If you didn't flip a coin at the beginning of this game as the effect of this Pokémon's Ability, this attack does 20 more damage. If you have no Benched Pokémon, this attack also does 40 more damage. This attack's damage isn't affected by Resistance.
Weakness: [G]+20
Resistance: [L]-30
Retreat: [C]
*X# rule: You can't have more than 1 Pokémon *X# in your deck. When your Pokémon *X# is Knocked Out, your opponent flips 2 coins. Your opponent takes a Prize card for each heads.
Basic - Single Strike
NO. 104 Lonely Pokémon HT: 1'4" WT: 14.3 lbs.
Ability: Lonely by Nature
Before you flip a coin to decide who goes first in a game, you may use this Ability. If you do, don't flip that coin, and reveal your deck. If this Pokémon is the only Pokémon with "Cubone" in its name you have in your deck, you decide which player goes first. (If each player reveals a Pokémon with Lonely by Nature Ability, flip the coin as normal.)
[F] Lonely One 20+
If you didn't flip a coin at the beginning of this game as the effect of this Pokémon's Ability, this attack does 20 more damage. If you have no Benched Pokémon, this attack also does 40 more damage. This attack's damage isn't affected by Resistance.
Weakness: [G]+20
Resistance: [L]-30
Retreat: [C]
I created a custom mechanic called Pokemon *X#. Basic Pokemon that can still evolve (like Pikachu and Eevee) got V cards, so why can't Cubone get an ultra rare? The loneliness of this card is really fitting for Cubone.
The Ability is like an improved version of First Ticket (Dragon Vault #19). To activate it, you cannot have any other Cubone, even from different sets/versions. If both players reveal Cubone*X#, flip a coin as usual to decide who goes first.
For the attack, the 2 conditions can stack, and that's fine. Since this is my custom mechanic, the bottom stats are a callback to the old Gen 4 era and your opponent must flip coins to take any Prizes. I will keep this note short as the card is pretty straight-forward. I hope you like the card!
The Ability is like an improved version of First Ticket (Dragon Vault #19). To activate it, you cannot have any other Cubone, even from different sets/versions. If both players reveal Cubone
For the attack, the 2 conditions can stack, and that's fine. Since this is my custom mechanic, the bottom stats are a callback to the old Gen 4 era and your opponent must flip coins to take any Prizes. I will keep this note short as the card is pretty straight-forward. I hope you like the card!
A little under 6 days remain to get your entries in!
Hi guys! Here's my entry for this CaC!
Good luck to all contestants! It's good to be back in the CaC
Trumbeak LOT (Ability)
Victini GRI (Ability)
Mightyena TUP (Attack)
Chatot UNB (Attack)
Victini GRI (Ability)
Mightyena TUP (Attack)
Chatot UNB (Attack)
Who's better to bring a surprise item right when your need it than our mischievous genie, Hoopa?
Since I didn't play the TCG after the SM rotation, my choice was to make a Prism Star card, which was our one-per-deck mechanic at that time. I thought Hoopa fit well in the theme, and there was a lot of Mythical Pokémon among the Prism Stars, so I went with it.
The Ability, as I said, matches with the "bring what you need" concept I was looking forward. At first I thought it was too broken for a card, but since we would play with only one Hoopa in the whole deck, it felt fair imo. And you can't use it more than once during your turn, to prevent looping turns.
As for the attack, Hoopa likes to hide items from the others, so it felt like a fitting move. A little disruption with little draw power.
Since I didn't play the TCG after the SM rotation, my choice was to make a Prism Star card, which was our one-per-deck mechanic at that time. I thought Hoopa fit well in the theme, and there was a lot of Mythical Pokémon among the Prism Stars, so I went with it.
The Ability, as I said, matches with the "bring what you need" concept I was looking forward. At first I thought it was too broken for a card, but since we would play with only one Hoopa in the whole deck, it felt fair imo. And you can't use it more than once during your turn, to prevent looping turns.
As for the attack, Hoopa likes to hide items from the others, so it felt like a fitting move. A little disruption with little draw power.
Good luck to all contestants! It's good to be back in the CaC
Notes: Since this is a new mechanic that I introduced into the Neo to E series era, it has unique weaknesses and resistance. I hope that this is fine. I am aware that fire types have no resistance back then.
IMPORTANT - This card was made with Omnium blanks but wording and balance is for Sun and Moon-series cards!
Tail Glow - Incineroar UNB's Strong Cheer, Mewtwo-GX SLG's Full Burst
Heart Swap - Tauros-GX SUM's Mad Bull-GX, Wailord GRI's Open Sea
Heart Swap - Tauros-GX SUM's Mad Bull-GX, Wailord GRI's Open Sea
This card had a lot of firsts for me! I've never used a holosheet before (shows how new I am 0-0), never used Omnium before (it's so convenient, I love it!), and never made a Prism Star card before! I wanted this card to be something similar to Diancie ♢, with some good support as well as an attack move with some healing. I really enjoyed making the card, but I have no idea how holosheets work ?. I started this card by finding aquabluu's work and going from there, so I hope I did it justice with the holosheet bit. The 01/02 is because I planned on making a Phione card for fun!
Manaphy ◇ – Water – HP80
Basic
◇ (Prism Star) Rule: You can't have more than 1 Prism Star card with the same name in your deck. If a Prism Star card is discarded, put it in the Lost Zone.
Ability: Tail Glow
Your Pokemon's attacks do 10 more damage to your opponent's Active Pokemon for each W energy attached to this Pokemon (before applying Weakness and Resistance).
[W][W] Heart Swap 20x
This attack deals 20 damage for each damage counter on this Pokemon. Heal 40 damage from each of your :w_: Pokemon.
Weakness: Lightning (x2)
Resistance: Fire (-20)
Retreat:
It is born with a wondrous power that lets it bond with any kind of Pokémon.
Basic
◇ (Prism Star) Rule: You can't have more than 1 Prism Star card with the same name in your deck. If a Prism Star card is discarded, put it in the Lost Zone.
Ability: Tail Glow
Your Pokemon's attacks do 10 more damage to your opponent's Active Pokemon for each W energy attached to this Pokemon (before applying Weakness and Resistance).
[W][W] Heart Swap 20x
This attack deals 20 damage for each damage counter on this Pokemon. Heal 40 damage from each of your :w_: Pokemon.
Weakness: Lightning (x2)
Resistance: Fire (-20)
Retreat:
It is born with a wondrous power that lets it bond with any kind of Pokémon.
I both adore and hate how wordy ex-era cards are.
[Basic] Deoxys-Attack {*} HP130
{*} (Prism Star) rule: You can’t have more than 1 {*} card with the same name in your deck. If a {*} card would go to the discard pile, put it in the Lost Zone instead.
Ability: Organism #2
When you play this Pokémon from your hand onto your Bench during your turn, you may put 1 Space Virus counter on it for each of your Pokémon in play that has the "Organism #1", "Organism #3", and "Organism #4" Abilities. If you do, draw a card for each Space Virus counter on this Pokémon.
[P][P][P] Psycho Boost 120
You may remove 4 Space Virus counters from each of your Pokémon in play that has the "Organism #1", "Organism #2", "Organism #3", or "Organism #4" Abilities. If you do, and if you removed 16 Space Virus counters, you win this game.
Weakness: [P]x2
Resistance: -
Retreat: [C]
Deoxys emerged from a virus that came from space. It is highly intelligent and wields psychokinetic powers. This Pokémon shoots lasers from the crystalline organ on its chest.
{*} (Prism Star) rule: You can’t have more than 1 {*} card with the same name in your deck. If a {*} card would go to the discard pile, put it in the Lost Zone instead.
Ability: Organism #2
When you play this Pokémon from your hand onto your Bench during your turn, you may put 1 Space Virus counter on it for each of your Pokémon in play that has the "Organism #1", "Organism #3", and "Organism #4" Abilities. If you do, draw a card for each Space Virus counter on this Pokémon.
[P][P][P] Psycho Boost 120
You may remove 4 Space Virus counters from each of your Pokémon in play that has the "Organism #1", "Organism #2", "Organism #3", or "Organism #4" Abilities. If you do, and if you removed 16 Space Virus counters, you win this game.
Weakness: [P]x2
Resistance: -
Retreat: [C]
Deoxys emerged from a virus that came from space. It is highly intelligent and wields psychokinetic powers. This Pokémon shoots lasers from the crystalline organ on its chest.
I tried, but....no luck.
That's a (very late) wrap on this round! Stay tuned for results, coming soon!
Image-Based Results
Judge: @Jabberwock
This was an unusual theme for sure. We saw some great creativity, in terms of both the one-per-deck mechanics themselves and the effects they restricted, but the real focus this month was on playability. We wanted to see how you designed your cards given a particular balancing restriction — one that has tripped up countless fakers in the past, and one with which even Creatures themselves has had a somewhat messy track record. It proved a challenge, and you all met it in different ways.
As always, make sure to keep an eye on wording. Check and double-check all your references; it’s surprisingly easy to make an error in transcription even when the reference itself is totally correct. Remember too that you’re allowed and even encouraged to reach out to others for help on wording, balancing, or even just to bounce ideas off of. The Faking Community Discord server is a great place to find people for that.
Text-based results and the May round of the contest will be up soon. Stay tuned!
~~Jabberwock
Ohman, the number of times I’ve seen this art over this contest’s history … well, it’s not that many, but even a few times becomes a lot in a contest like this. I see this is Macuarrorro’s version, but it’s traced and colored from the official Stormfront wallpaper that’s made a couple of appearances over the past few years, including most recently on a card of AlphaLad’s last November.
Granted, though, this is a somewhat different take on it. The more sketch-like style and the additional colors in the background go a little ways toward setting it apart, and the originality of the blank helps, too. The holosheet could use some work — foils on sketch-style backgrounds are always risky business, and I’m not sure this one really pops enough to warrant its place on the card. Increasing the contrast through an additional Dodge layer might help a little.
The blank itself comes together well. The purple border is a little monotone and could probably afford to have either a sharper gradient or a holosheet of its own, but that’s a minor gripe. On the whole, I’m impressed with the edit. At first glance it looks very clean, and I would be interested to see it used further.
The Pokémon VOID mechanic is nifty. It’s a decent extension to both Pokémon V and Pokémon V-Union, and I like that you’re keeping the thematic “V” element in the name. As a one-per-deck mechanic, it has some hallmarks we’ve seen before, like the put-into-play mechanic of V-Unions and the Lost-Zone-disposal mechanic of Prism Stars. Their combination is interesting, though, and it feels right for a mechanic named “VOID” to deal with both the discard pile and the Lost Zone, so props for flavor there.
Heavily restricting the card in so many ways means you have considerable room to expand what it can do while in play, and you certainly delivered there. It facilitates easy setup of Stage 2s by searching them out from the deck and cutting out the Rare Candy middleman to get them in play — definitely a boon in a format like today’s. It’s restricted to Dusknoirs, which is good since it prevents Dusknoir VOID from breaking the format with any especially good Stage 2s. It also gives them a generally useful attack if they didn’t already come with one, turning all the Dusknoirs in your deck into easy-to-accelerate powerhouses.
Overall, I’m a fan. I’m not sure how much of that is due to the mechanic itself — could it have been a Prism Star, for example? — but I think Reaper Summons and Spectral Hand are an inspired combination leading to great gameplay potential.
Wording errors:
- “play this card” → “put this Pokémon” or “put this Dusknoir VOID” in the “How to play a Pokémon VOID” box, based on cards like Empoleon BRS and the various V-Unions. [-2 points]
- Missing a “Then, shuffle your deck” clause in the Ability. [-2 points]
- “into the Lost Zone” → “in the Lost Zone”. [-1 point]
- “can’t take any Prize cards for it”, based on cards like Lillie’s Poké Doll. [-1 point]
- “Void Spectre” → “Void Specter”. Pokémon cards default to the US spelling in cases like these. [-0.5 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- The card name should be Gill Sans Bold, i.e. not Condensed like the attack names are. [-1 point]
- The left side of “Spectral Hand” should line up with the left side of “Reaper Summons”. [-1 point]
- The leading (i.e. space between lines) in the Pokémon VOID Rule Box is much too small, and the lines are all squishing together. You’ll want the leading to be at least the same point size as the font itself, and if that means lowering the font size, so be it. [-1 point]
- I don’t like the font for the box text very much (in either of the boxes), and I’m generally of the opinion that new mechanics should match fonts for similar older mechanics. However, TPCi hasn’t been super consistent about fonts in Rule Boxes, either, so I won’t dock for it here. I’ll just recommend you look into variants of Gill Sans or Futura for your Rule Box text.
Creativity/Originality: 13/15
(When I’m looking for well-designed cards with a one-per-deck restriction, this is the sort of thing I’m looking for. It has the power to facilitate a whole archetype, retains its utility all game, and doesn’t screw you over if it leaves the field early. The last couple points here come from a doubt I have about whether the complexity of the Pokémon VOID mechanic is really worth it — could it be drastically simplified without losing its integrity? I think the answer is yes — as well as both effects riffing pretty closely on effects we’ve seen before. Still, great design with great gameplay potential on the whole, and certainly a card I’d be interested to explore further.)
Believability/Playability: 15/15
(No complaints here — it’s clear you’ve thought carefully about how this card would slot into its archetype, as well as the format at large. It executes its function with powerful efficiency, but it stays in its lane and would be hard to break.)
Wording: 3.5/10
(Several errors. Don’t forget to check your Rule Box wording; it’s as important as any other part of the card.)
Fonts and Placement: 2/5
(A few minor issues.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(Nice blank edit. The holosheet could use a little work, but overall the card looks great for a first pass.)
Total: 37.5/50
Welcome back, Gabs! The art looks great, and if I think the holosheet could stand to be a little brighter, it’s still a very pleasing aesthetic overall. Something about the colors makes the whole card tie together in a great way.
On the effects side, Gate of Wonders is extremely powerful — which I think you know to some extent based on your notes, but it bears repeating. It turns any card capable of searching out Hoopa — Ultra Ball, Mysterious Treasure, you name it — into a card capable of searching out anything. Only once per turn, sure, but that’s still an effect with a massive impact on the game. Compare to Pidgeot RG, whose Poké-Power Quick Search is still hailed as one of the most powerful consistency effects in the game — and that was on a Stage 2. In contrast, Gate of Wonders requires no setup beyond a search card.
One-per-deck mechanics are tricky to balance, and frequently people use the limitation to throw caution to the wind, saying that it doesn’t matter how powerful the effects are if you can only play one of them. But that’s not generally true; for powerful consistency cards like this one, the justification that “at least you only get one of them” doesn’t really hold. It just becomes a game of who draws into the powerful effect first, or who can recycle it more times afterward. Whoever happens to draw into Hoopa more often, or whoever can search it out more effectively, will have vastly more powerful resources at their disposal, leading to a potentially drastic imbalance by the end of the game.
Dimension Trick is fine, as attacks go. I don’t see either of its effects being too impactful, especially since attacking with Hoopa means Benching it, which means you forfeit your ability to search out cards with Gate of Wonders. I guess it’s some minor utility for the case where you open with it as your lone Basic Pokémon, but I can’t see it doing too much in that case either. It’s got the mischievous grab-bag flavor going for it, so there’s that, but I could wish it somehow tied more into the Ability.
The ideas are there for sure. I do like the attention to flavor, and the art is adorable and well fitting as always. But the execution needs a little work — one-per-deck mechanics aren’t easy to balance, and this one’s definitely on the stronger end of things.
Wording errors:
- “(before your attack)” should be italicized. [-1 point]
- “shuffle this card into your deck” → “shuffle this Pokémon into your deck”. According to both Trumbeak LOT and Audino BCR, it’s still a Pokémon even when it’s in your hand. [-2 points]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- Looks good.
Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(Good attention to flavor, though there’s not much synergy going on and there’s not too much room to explore different potentials for gameplay — the attack, for example, feels a little superfluous. The ideas are there; it just needs a little more in the way of execution.)
Believability/Playability: 8/15
(Some pretty critical balancing concerns around Gate of Wonders — restricting a card to one per deck isn’t a valid balancing tool for something with a consistency Ability this powerful. Such a card would quickly become a staple, and games could be decided simply by who gets to use their Hoopa more often.)
Wording: 8/10
(A couple minor errors, but both catchable using only the references you cited.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Looks good.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(Art looks great, and the color palette blends perfectly with the blank. Holosheet could still use a little work, though.)
Total: 37/50
Nice choice of art. The holosheet is subtle, but not understated. I could easily take this for a real Neo-era card if I didn’t know any better. You’ve really gotten good at these!
Let’s take a look at the mechanics. Legendary Pokémon have a hard one-per-deck rule (i.e. stricter than the “one-per-Pokémon-per-deck” rule that Shining Pokémon use) and have unusual Weakness and Resistance. Pretty simple overall, and I think I would call its simplicity elegant if it weren’t for the Weakness and Resistance, which seem like they come pretty far out of left field. It’s fine to change them for a new mechanic, but why? Just to do something different?
In any case, the effects befit a Ho-oh, and the amount of text certainly befits a Neo-era card. Rainbow Recovery is a powerful … well, recovery effect, and I think the power level (i.e. how many cards you can return with it) is justified by the one-per-deck limitation and the fact that you probably won’t be able to pull off too many of these in a game. As a minor nitpick, I would probably change the final sentence to “You can use this power only if you have more Prize cards remaining than your opponent” or some variation thereof, the idea being that you can’t use it if you’re tied. Remember that being tied is the default game state — you start the game tied — so requiring that your opponent be ahead on Prizes further restricts the power’s usage and guarantees that it will be used more to mount a comeback than to press an existing advantage.
Holy Burn is less exciting but a reasonable inclusion — it doesn’t do much unless your opponent has their Legendary Pokémon in play, but it hits relatively hard if they do. Forcing your opponent to think hard about whether they want to play their own one-per-deck card is a gameplay effect I’m generally in favor of, and I think Holy Burn executes it fine.
If I have one complaint about the card, it’s that the effects feel thrown together a little haphazardly. Rainbow Recovery gets you some discarded cards back into your hand based on how rainbow-y the field is, but can also get a Pokémon onto the Bench, while Holy Burn just does a bunch of damage if your opponent has a Legendary Pokémon in play. Those effects are each fine on their own, but they don’t have much to do with each other. A challenge for future months would be to look out for ways you can make your effects synergize with each other, letting the card play with a purpose rather than a haphazard toolbox of tricks.
Wording errors:
- “Lv. 63” → “LV. 63” in the flavor text box. [-0.5 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- On point.
Creativity/Originality: 11/15
(Effects are interesting by themselves, but I’m not sure they really work as a cohesive card. For additional points here, I’d be looking for more attention to synergy or how these effects might play out with each other in a given situation.)
Believability/Playability: 15/15
(Rainbow Recovery is strong, but it seems fine overall —good job threading the needle of power vs. balancing with the one-per-deck restriction. I think the choice to change the Weakness and Resistance is a little unusual from a creative standpoint, but not unbelievable.)
Wording: 9.5/10
(One super minor error.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(On point.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(Nice choice of art, with a subtle but effective holosheet. Looks just like a real Neo card.)
Total: 45.5/50
CaC is definitely a good opportunity to try new things, and I applaud the initiative in doing so here. The art is cute, and if it’s a little unusual for a Prism Star, it doesn’t look so out of place that you can’t just chalk it up to a difference between conventional blanks and Omnium ones.
On the holosheet, since you mention it’s your first time using one: You’ve got the cutting-out aspect pretty well in hand, but due to the brightness of the background, it sort of just fades into nothingness above the water line. You’ll want to look into the various blending modes at your disposal for a more nuanced application, including ways to make the holosheet show up over both light and dark patches of background. Multiply 40-60% under Color Dodge 80-100% is usually a good place to start.
The effects themselves aren’t that unusual — Tail Glow is like a different spin on Diancie ◊’s Princess’s Cheers, where instead of applying a flat +20, it scales with your ability to accelerate Energy to Manaphy. In a deck with something like Blastoise BCR or Frosmoth SSH, it would certainly become a force to be reckoned with — at least until it gets Knocked Out.
Balance-wise, it’s in an awkward place. It provides a truly drastic boost to your attack power — it’s not unreasonable to expect 5 or more Energy to be stacked on this thing in a given game, leading to massive damage modifiers by the end of it — but it’s extremely fragile. One 80-damage snipe attack, or a gust effect to attack it in the Active Spot, and your huge boost is done for. And since it’s a Prism Star, you’re never getting it back.
That tends not to be a great balancing ethos for cards like this. When a single Pokémon can make or break not just a game but your whole strategy upon being Knocked Out, it doesn’t bode well for the playability of that strategy. It’s like rolling the dice to determine the winner — will I get to keep my Manaphy and steamroll my opponent? Or will they get the jump, Knock Out Manaphy, and leave me down my main damage booster?
Ways to improve the Ability’s balance mostly center around reducing Manaphy’s fragility and more evenly distributing the concentration of power around your board. Letting it boost all your other Pokémon’s attacks based on the amount of Energy they have attached to them would solve one problem, but may introduce another if the damage scales too high too fast. You could also apply a flat +20 the way Diancie does, though that would hurt you in Creativity. Either way, there are options, and they’re worth exploring further.
Heart Swap is neat and a little more unique in design, though I imagine it would only rarely come into play. Most games, with such a good Ability that relies on its holder not getting Knocked Out, you’ll be trying to keep Manaphy as safe as possible on the Bench. Attacking with Heart Swap doesn’t achieve that. But still, it’s good for Prism Stars to have useful attacks, and this one seems like the right amount of damage and additional benefit even if the Ability is too strong to ever let it get used.
Wording errors:
- “energy” should be capitalized. [-1 point]
- “Pokemon” → “Pokémon”. [-1 point]
- “(before applying Weakness and Resistance)” should be italicized. [-1 point]
- Attacks never “deal” damage; they “do” damage. [-2 points]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- The “x” in “20x” should properly be a multiplication sign, “×”. The distinction is subtle but important, and is going under Fonts and Placement because it’s more a symbol than a wording error. [-1 point]
- No other font errors I can spot, presumably because you’re adhering pretty closely to Pone’s Omnium guide. A couple things I might question, like the use of Frutiger over the SM era’s Gill Sans in the Prism Star Rule Box, but it’s not so out of place that you’d lose points for it.
Creativity/Originality: 10/15
(Getting into some technically new territory with Heart Swap, but fundamentally neither of these effects feels truly unique — adding damage, doing damage, and healing damage are all things we’ve seen before plenty of times, and even in configurations not too different from this one.)
Believability/Playability: 10/15
(Some balancing concerns around Tail Glow, detailed above. I also have a hard time getting behind the Fire Resistance — generally you need a pretty good reason to mess with W/R/RC conventions, and I’m not sure there is one here.)
Wording: 5/10
(A few errors — don’t forget to double-check references before submitting!)
Fonts and Placement: 4/5
(A stray x instead of a multiplication sign.)
Aesthetics: 3/5
(Not bad at all, especially for all the firsts this card represents for you. I would encourage you to look further into holosheet application when you can, though — there’s a wide world of blending modes out there to explore!)
Total: 34/50
Very nice! I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Pokémon ☆ in this competition, but whenever they come up, their aesthetics are executed pretty darn well. At their core they’re not that complex — you just need traditional-style art of a Shiny Pokémon, a suitable background, and a holosheet — but even still, they’re fun to see, and this one is no exception. My one suggestion here would be to flip Cresselia horizontally, which would allow you to reposition it in the frame so it isn’t being overlapped by any text.
I like Lunar Dance in theory. Knocking Out your one-per-deck Pokémon in exchange for a supercharged Pokémon from your discard pile is just the sort of thing I’d expect to see on a card with this month’s theme parameters, and honestly I’d probably enter something similar myself if I were on the other end of this thing. Unfortunately, though, there’s a couple of things that push it into overpowered territory with the way the Poké-Power is currently written.
The first is that it’s a Basic that can trade itself out for any Pokémon, Basic or otherwise. There are some very powerful effects on Stage 1s and Stage 2s, which are by and large limited by the fact that it’s not easy to get them into play. If all you need is a Stage 2 in the discard and a Cresselia on the Bench … well, you could achieve that on turn one very easily.
The second is that it gives up a Prize when you activate it — which sounds like a drawback, but is actually quite a potent benefit, especially in the ex era! Remember that this format contains cards like Scramble Energy and Pow! Hand Extension, which are quite powerful, but require that the user be losing the Prize trade for balance, thereby making them extremely difficult to activate in the early turns of the game. With Lunar Dance, though, it’s not hard to envision a scenario where you Lunar Dance, let your opponent take a Prize, and then attach a few Scramble Energy over the next few turns to establish an extremely aggressive early-game board state. Or you can use a Pow! Hand Extension to mess with your opponent’s board and establish a control-like state from similarly early on. There are plenty of possibilities.
Fortunately, there are also plenty of ways to fix an overpowered Poké-Power like this. My preferred way would probably be to just restrict the Pokémon you bring back to Basics only. With the Energy acceleration it provides, Lunar Dance is still useful, but this way the things you can do with it on the first turn are vastly reduced. There are other options too, though, if that doesn’t strike your fancy.
On Psychic Shield … there’s not much to say there, unfortunately. It’s an attack we’ve seen a few times before. To some extent it helps you keep Cresselia around longer, I guess; in a niche situation it might let you avoid being Knocked Out long enough to use Lunar Dance. But there’s also probably some other way to fill those two lines of attack text, one with a greater tie-in to the rest of what the card is trying to do.
Overall I like it, and I’m impressed — cool concept for a Poké-Power, nice aesthetic execution of a Pokémon ☆. Just a couple things to keep in mind around balance. Hope to see you around CaC again sometime!
Wording errors:
- Looks good. Electrode ex coming in clutch as a wording reference.
Fonts and Placement errors:
- On point.
Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(Lunar Dance is a cool concept, and I’d definitely be intrigued to explore it further after a little balancing work. Unfortunately you lose a few points here from Psychic Shield being, word for word, an attack we’ve seen a few times before.)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(Lunar Dance is well into noticeably overpowered territory, though probably not completely broken. Still, it’s worth revising for sure. See comments above.)
Wording: 10/10
(Looks good.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(On point.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(A well executed Pokémon ☆. One point docked for letting the text overlap Cresselia in two places, which doesn’t happen on real Pokémon ☆ and tends not to happen on cards with similar illustration styles either.)
Total: 43/50
Whoa, beautiful card! I remember looking at these wallpapers on their own back when Chilling Reign came out and thinking they’d make a great LEGEND or something if combined. I never imagined something quite like this, but somehow, even with all three on one card, it works! Mad props for pulling this together so cohesively.
You tend to be pretty solid when you’re coming up with new mechanics — they’re bold, they’re fresh, they’re self-contained, and the effects of the cards themselves tend to play into them pretty strongly. This piece is no exception: the VTRIO mechanic requires two whole boxes to explain, but once you get through it, it makes sense, and you begin to see how the whole card comes together. It may only have an Ability and an attack, but those little-r rule boxes put in a lot of mechanical work on their own.
The card has a lot of moving parts, but that’s not a bad thing here, since they all work in tandem and it probably wouldn’t work at all if you cut any one of them. You have attack power and some light consistency here, as well as a way to constantly refresh your Bench. Who knows what Pokémon you might play on that Bench alongside the Galarian Birds? It interplays between the deck, discard pile, and board in a really unique way, and I can’t remember seeing any other card, real or custom, interact with all three in such equal and interesting measure.
That’s not to say I don’t have my share of nitpicks about the card. I would err on the side of caution with this thing’s power level; it may cap at 120-150 damage under most circumstances, but it has three of the game’s historically best offensive types. It hits for Weakness on a decent share of any metagame, boosting its damage output to 240-300 for one Energy. Especially for a single-Prize Pokémon, and even for a one-per-deck Pokémon, that’s a little high.
But on the creative side of things, it’s inspired. Well done, and another well deserved 15.
Wording errors:
- I’m not sure why this card would restrict you from playing any [P], [F], or [D] Pokémon whatsoever, so I’ll assume it was a typo and you meant something like “and”. If you did mean to restrict those types, that would represent a whole other can of worms in Believability. [-1 point]
- Pokémon uses the series comma, so “[P], [F] or [D]” → “[P], [F], or [D]”. [-1 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- Looks good to me.
Creativity/Originality: 15/15
(Outstanding mechanic design, with just about perfect integration with the card itself. Way to maximize effect space while keeping it nominally at one Ability and one attack. Another well deserved 15.)
Believability/Playability: 9/15
(The damage output of the attack is quite high given that it’s a Basic single-Prize Pokémon with not one but three of the best offensive types in the game. Unfortunately, the one-per-deck restriction doesn’t mean much when it can easily be recycled turn after turn to keep attacking. Also, one point docked for the [D] Weakness and two for the name “Galarian Birds” over something like “Galarian Moltres & Galarian Zapdos & Galarian Articuno”. As much space as the latter takes up, I believe TPCi would be more inclined to squish name text than they would be to canonically refer to these Pokémon as “the Galarian birds”.)
Wording: 8/10
(Two minor slips in the Rule Box.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Looks good.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(The combination of the three wallpapers is stunning.)
Total: 42/50
Judge: @Jabberwock
This was an unusual theme for sure. We saw some great creativity, in terms of both the one-per-deck mechanics themselves and the effects they restricted, but the real focus this month was on playability. We wanted to see how you designed your cards given a particular balancing restriction — one that has tripped up countless fakers in the past, and one with which even Creatures themselves has had a somewhat messy track record. It proved a challenge, and you all met it in different ways.
As always, make sure to keep an eye on wording. Check and double-check all your references; it’s surprisingly easy to make an error in transcription even when the reference itself is totally correct. Remember too that you’re allowed and even encouraged to reach out to others for help on wording, balancing, or even just to bounce ideas off of. The Faking Community Discord server is a great place to find people for that.
Text-based results and the May round of the contest will be up soon. Stay tuned!
~~Jabberwock
Ohman, the number of times I’ve seen this art over this contest’s history … well, it’s not that many, but even a few times becomes a lot in a contest like this. I see this is Macuarrorro’s version, but it’s traced and colored from the official Stormfront wallpaper that’s made a couple of appearances over the past few years, including most recently on a card of AlphaLad’s last November.
Granted, though, this is a somewhat different take on it. The more sketch-like style and the additional colors in the background go a little ways toward setting it apart, and the originality of the blank helps, too. The holosheet could use some work — foils on sketch-style backgrounds are always risky business, and I’m not sure this one really pops enough to warrant its place on the card. Increasing the contrast through an additional Dodge layer might help a little.
The blank itself comes together well. The purple border is a little monotone and could probably afford to have either a sharper gradient or a holosheet of its own, but that’s a minor gripe. On the whole, I’m impressed with the edit. At first glance it looks very clean, and I would be interested to see it used further.
The Pokémon VOID mechanic is nifty. It’s a decent extension to both Pokémon V and Pokémon V-Union, and I like that you’re keeping the thematic “V” element in the name. As a one-per-deck mechanic, it has some hallmarks we’ve seen before, like the put-into-play mechanic of V-Unions and the Lost-Zone-disposal mechanic of Prism Stars. Their combination is interesting, though, and it feels right for a mechanic named “VOID” to deal with both the discard pile and the Lost Zone, so props for flavor there.
Heavily restricting the card in so many ways means you have considerable room to expand what it can do while in play, and you certainly delivered there. It facilitates easy setup of Stage 2s by searching them out from the deck and cutting out the Rare Candy middleman to get them in play — definitely a boon in a format like today’s. It’s restricted to Dusknoirs, which is good since it prevents Dusknoir VOID from breaking the format with any especially good Stage 2s. It also gives them a generally useful attack if they didn’t already come with one, turning all the Dusknoirs in your deck into easy-to-accelerate powerhouses.
Overall, I’m a fan. I’m not sure how much of that is due to the mechanic itself — could it have been a Prism Star, for example? — but I think Reaper Summons and Spectral Hand are an inspired combination leading to great gameplay potential.
Wording errors:
- “play this card” → “put this Pokémon” or “put this Dusknoir VOID” in the “How to play a Pokémon VOID” box, based on cards like Empoleon BRS and the various V-Unions. [-2 points]
- Missing a “Then, shuffle your deck” clause in the Ability. [-2 points]
- “into the Lost Zone” → “in the Lost Zone”. [-1 point]
- “can’t take any Prize cards for it”, based on cards like Lillie’s Poké Doll. [-1 point]
- “Void Spectre” → “Void Specter”. Pokémon cards default to the US spelling in cases like these. [-0.5 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- The card name should be Gill Sans Bold, i.e. not Condensed like the attack names are. [-1 point]
- The left side of “Spectral Hand” should line up with the left side of “Reaper Summons”. [-1 point]
- The leading (i.e. space between lines) in the Pokémon VOID Rule Box is much too small, and the lines are all squishing together. You’ll want the leading to be at least the same point size as the font itself, and if that means lowering the font size, so be it. [-1 point]
- I don’t like the font for the box text very much (in either of the boxes), and I’m generally of the opinion that new mechanics should match fonts for similar older mechanics. However, TPCi hasn’t been super consistent about fonts in Rule Boxes, either, so I won’t dock for it here. I’ll just recommend you look into variants of Gill Sans or Futura for your Rule Box text.
Creativity/Originality: 13/15
(When I’m looking for well-designed cards with a one-per-deck restriction, this is the sort of thing I’m looking for. It has the power to facilitate a whole archetype, retains its utility all game, and doesn’t screw you over if it leaves the field early. The last couple points here come from a doubt I have about whether the complexity of the Pokémon VOID mechanic is really worth it — could it be drastically simplified without losing its integrity? I think the answer is yes — as well as both effects riffing pretty closely on effects we’ve seen before. Still, great design with great gameplay potential on the whole, and certainly a card I’d be interested to explore further.)
Believability/Playability: 15/15
(No complaints here — it’s clear you’ve thought carefully about how this card would slot into its archetype, as well as the format at large. It executes its function with powerful efficiency, but it stays in its lane and would be hard to break.)
Wording: 3.5/10
(Several errors. Don’t forget to check your Rule Box wording; it’s as important as any other part of the card.)
Fonts and Placement: 2/5
(A few minor issues.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(Nice blank edit. The holosheet could use a little work, but overall the card looks great for a first pass.)
Total: 37.5/50
Welcome back, Gabs! The art looks great, and if I think the holosheet could stand to be a little brighter, it’s still a very pleasing aesthetic overall. Something about the colors makes the whole card tie together in a great way.
On the effects side, Gate of Wonders is extremely powerful — which I think you know to some extent based on your notes, but it bears repeating. It turns any card capable of searching out Hoopa — Ultra Ball, Mysterious Treasure, you name it — into a card capable of searching out anything. Only once per turn, sure, but that’s still an effect with a massive impact on the game. Compare to Pidgeot RG, whose Poké-Power Quick Search is still hailed as one of the most powerful consistency effects in the game — and that was on a Stage 2. In contrast, Gate of Wonders requires no setup beyond a search card.
One-per-deck mechanics are tricky to balance, and frequently people use the limitation to throw caution to the wind, saying that it doesn’t matter how powerful the effects are if you can only play one of them. But that’s not generally true; for powerful consistency cards like this one, the justification that “at least you only get one of them” doesn’t really hold. It just becomes a game of who draws into the powerful effect first, or who can recycle it more times afterward. Whoever happens to draw into Hoopa more often, or whoever can search it out more effectively, will have vastly more powerful resources at their disposal, leading to a potentially drastic imbalance by the end of the game.
Dimension Trick is fine, as attacks go. I don’t see either of its effects being too impactful, especially since attacking with Hoopa means Benching it, which means you forfeit your ability to search out cards with Gate of Wonders. I guess it’s some minor utility for the case where you open with it as your lone Basic Pokémon, but I can’t see it doing too much in that case either. It’s got the mischievous grab-bag flavor going for it, so there’s that, but I could wish it somehow tied more into the Ability.
The ideas are there for sure. I do like the attention to flavor, and the art is adorable and well fitting as always. But the execution needs a little work — one-per-deck mechanics aren’t easy to balance, and this one’s definitely on the stronger end of things.
Wording errors:
- “(before your attack)” should be italicized. [-1 point]
- “shuffle this card into your deck” → “shuffle this Pokémon into your deck”. According to both Trumbeak LOT and Audino BCR, it’s still a Pokémon even when it’s in your hand. [-2 points]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- Looks good.
Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(Good attention to flavor, though there’s not much synergy going on and there’s not too much room to explore different potentials for gameplay — the attack, for example, feels a little superfluous. The ideas are there; it just needs a little more in the way of execution.)
Believability/Playability: 8/15
(Some pretty critical balancing concerns around Gate of Wonders — restricting a card to one per deck isn’t a valid balancing tool for something with a consistency Ability this powerful. Such a card would quickly become a staple, and games could be decided simply by who gets to use their Hoopa more often.)
Wording: 8/10
(A couple minor errors, but both catchable using only the references you cited.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Looks good.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(Art looks great, and the color palette blends perfectly with the blank. Holosheet could still use a little work, though.)
Total: 37/50
Nice choice of art. The holosheet is subtle, but not understated. I could easily take this for a real Neo-era card if I didn’t know any better. You’ve really gotten good at these!
Let’s take a look at the mechanics. Legendary Pokémon have a hard one-per-deck rule (i.e. stricter than the “one-per-Pokémon-per-deck” rule that Shining Pokémon use) and have unusual Weakness and Resistance. Pretty simple overall, and I think I would call its simplicity elegant if it weren’t for the Weakness and Resistance, which seem like they come pretty far out of left field. It’s fine to change them for a new mechanic, but why? Just to do something different?
In any case, the effects befit a Ho-oh, and the amount of text certainly befits a Neo-era card. Rainbow Recovery is a powerful … well, recovery effect, and I think the power level (i.e. how many cards you can return with it) is justified by the one-per-deck limitation and the fact that you probably won’t be able to pull off too many of these in a game. As a minor nitpick, I would probably change the final sentence to “You can use this power only if you have more Prize cards remaining than your opponent” or some variation thereof, the idea being that you can’t use it if you’re tied. Remember that being tied is the default game state — you start the game tied — so requiring that your opponent be ahead on Prizes further restricts the power’s usage and guarantees that it will be used more to mount a comeback than to press an existing advantage.
Holy Burn is less exciting but a reasonable inclusion — it doesn’t do much unless your opponent has their Legendary Pokémon in play, but it hits relatively hard if they do. Forcing your opponent to think hard about whether they want to play their own one-per-deck card is a gameplay effect I’m generally in favor of, and I think Holy Burn executes it fine.
If I have one complaint about the card, it’s that the effects feel thrown together a little haphazardly. Rainbow Recovery gets you some discarded cards back into your hand based on how rainbow-y the field is, but can also get a Pokémon onto the Bench, while Holy Burn just does a bunch of damage if your opponent has a Legendary Pokémon in play. Those effects are each fine on their own, but they don’t have much to do with each other. A challenge for future months would be to look out for ways you can make your effects synergize with each other, letting the card play with a purpose rather than a haphazard toolbox of tricks.
Wording errors:
- “Lv. 63” → “LV. 63” in the flavor text box. [-0.5 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- On point.
Creativity/Originality: 11/15
(Effects are interesting by themselves, but I’m not sure they really work as a cohesive card. For additional points here, I’d be looking for more attention to synergy or how these effects might play out with each other in a given situation.)
Believability/Playability: 15/15
(Rainbow Recovery is strong, but it seems fine overall —good job threading the needle of power vs. balancing with the one-per-deck restriction. I think the choice to change the Weakness and Resistance is a little unusual from a creative standpoint, but not unbelievable.)
Wording: 9.5/10
(One super minor error.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(On point.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(Nice choice of art, with a subtle but effective holosheet. Looks just like a real Neo card.)
Total: 45.5/50
CaC is definitely a good opportunity to try new things, and I applaud the initiative in doing so here. The art is cute, and if it’s a little unusual for a Prism Star, it doesn’t look so out of place that you can’t just chalk it up to a difference between conventional blanks and Omnium ones.
On the holosheet, since you mention it’s your first time using one: You’ve got the cutting-out aspect pretty well in hand, but due to the brightness of the background, it sort of just fades into nothingness above the water line. You’ll want to look into the various blending modes at your disposal for a more nuanced application, including ways to make the holosheet show up over both light and dark patches of background. Multiply 40-60% under Color Dodge 80-100% is usually a good place to start.
The effects themselves aren’t that unusual — Tail Glow is like a different spin on Diancie ◊’s Princess’s Cheers, where instead of applying a flat +20, it scales with your ability to accelerate Energy to Manaphy. In a deck with something like Blastoise BCR or Frosmoth SSH, it would certainly become a force to be reckoned with — at least until it gets Knocked Out.
Balance-wise, it’s in an awkward place. It provides a truly drastic boost to your attack power — it’s not unreasonable to expect 5 or more Energy to be stacked on this thing in a given game, leading to massive damage modifiers by the end of it — but it’s extremely fragile. One 80-damage snipe attack, or a gust effect to attack it in the Active Spot, and your huge boost is done for. And since it’s a Prism Star, you’re never getting it back.
That tends not to be a great balancing ethos for cards like this. When a single Pokémon can make or break not just a game but your whole strategy upon being Knocked Out, it doesn’t bode well for the playability of that strategy. It’s like rolling the dice to determine the winner — will I get to keep my Manaphy and steamroll my opponent? Or will they get the jump, Knock Out Manaphy, and leave me down my main damage booster?
Ways to improve the Ability’s balance mostly center around reducing Manaphy’s fragility and more evenly distributing the concentration of power around your board. Letting it boost all your other Pokémon’s attacks based on the amount of Energy they have attached to them would solve one problem, but may introduce another if the damage scales too high too fast. You could also apply a flat +20 the way Diancie does, though that would hurt you in Creativity. Either way, there are options, and they’re worth exploring further.
Heart Swap is neat and a little more unique in design, though I imagine it would only rarely come into play. Most games, with such a good Ability that relies on its holder not getting Knocked Out, you’ll be trying to keep Manaphy as safe as possible on the Bench. Attacking with Heart Swap doesn’t achieve that. But still, it’s good for Prism Stars to have useful attacks, and this one seems like the right amount of damage and additional benefit even if the Ability is too strong to ever let it get used.
Wording errors:
- “energy” should be capitalized. [-1 point]
- “Pokemon” → “Pokémon”. [-1 point]
- “(before applying Weakness and Resistance)” should be italicized. [-1 point]
- Attacks never “deal” damage; they “do” damage. [-2 points]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- The “x” in “20x” should properly be a multiplication sign, “×”. The distinction is subtle but important, and is going under Fonts and Placement because it’s more a symbol than a wording error. [-1 point]
- No other font errors I can spot, presumably because you’re adhering pretty closely to Pone’s Omnium guide. A couple things I might question, like the use of Frutiger over the SM era’s Gill Sans in the Prism Star Rule Box, but it’s not so out of place that you’d lose points for it.
Creativity/Originality: 10/15
(Getting into some technically new territory with Heart Swap, but fundamentally neither of these effects feels truly unique — adding damage, doing damage, and healing damage are all things we’ve seen before plenty of times, and even in configurations not too different from this one.)
Believability/Playability: 10/15
(Some balancing concerns around Tail Glow, detailed above. I also have a hard time getting behind the Fire Resistance — generally you need a pretty good reason to mess with W/R/RC conventions, and I’m not sure there is one here.)
Wording: 5/10
(A few errors — don’t forget to double-check references before submitting!)
Fonts and Placement: 4/5
(A stray x instead of a multiplication sign.)
Aesthetics: 3/5
(Not bad at all, especially for all the firsts this card represents for you. I would encourage you to look further into holosheet application when you can, though — there’s a wide world of blending modes out there to explore!)
Total: 34/50
Very nice! I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Pokémon ☆ in this competition, but whenever they come up, their aesthetics are executed pretty darn well. At their core they’re not that complex — you just need traditional-style art of a Shiny Pokémon, a suitable background, and a holosheet — but even still, they’re fun to see, and this one is no exception. My one suggestion here would be to flip Cresselia horizontally, which would allow you to reposition it in the frame so it isn’t being overlapped by any text.
I like Lunar Dance in theory. Knocking Out your one-per-deck Pokémon in exchange for a supercharged Pokémon from your discard pile is just the sort of thing I’d expect to see on a card with this month’s theme parameters, and honestly I’d probably enter something similar myself if I were on the other end of this thing. Unfortunately, though, there’s a couple of things that push it into overpowered territory with the way the Poké-Power is currently written.
The first is that it’s a Basic that can trade itself out for any Pokémon, Basic or otherwise. There are some very powerful effects on Stage 1s and Stage 2s, which are by and large limited by the fact that it’s not easy to get them into play. If all you need is a Stage 2 in the discard and a Cresselia on the Bench … well, you could achieve that on turn one very easily.
The second is that it gives up a Prize when you activate it — which sounds like a drawback, but is actually quite a potent benefit, especially in the ex era! Remember that this format contains cards like Scramble Energy and Pow! Hand Extension, which are quite powerful, but require that the user be losing the Prize trade for balance, thereby making them extremely difficult to activate in the early turns of the game. With Lunar Dance, though, it’s not hard to envision a scenario where you Lunar Dance, let your opponent take a Prize, and then attach a few Scramble Energy over the next few turns to establish an extremely aggressive early-game board state. Or you can use a Pow! Hand Extension to mess with your opponent’s board and establish a control-like state from similarly early on. There are plenty of possibilities.
Fortunately, there are also plenty of ways to fix an overpowered Poké-Power like this. My preferred way would probably be to just restrict the Pokémon you bring back to Basics only. With the Energy acceleration it provides, Lunar Dance is still useful, but this way the things you can do with it on the first turn are vastly reduced. There are other options too, though, if that doesn’t strike your fancy.
On Psychic Shield … there’s not much to say there, unfortunately. It’s an attack we’ve seen a few times before. To some extent it helps you keep Cresselia around longer, I guess; in a niche situation it might let you avoid being Knocked Out long enough to use Lunar Dance. But there’s also probably some other way to fill those two lines of attack text, one with a greater tie-in to the rest of what the card is trying to do.
Overall I like it, and I’m impressed — cool concept for a Poké-Power, nice aesthetic execution of a Pokémon ☆. Just a couple things to keep in mind around balance. Hope to see you around CaC again sometime!
Wording errors:
- Looks good. Electrode ex coming in clutch as a wording reference.
Fonts and Placement errors:
- On point.
Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(Lunar Dance is a cool concept, and I’d definitely be intrigued to explore it further after a little balancing work. Unfortunately you lose a few points here from Psychic Shield being, word for word, an attack we’ve seen a few times before.)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(Lunar Dance is well into noticeably overpowered territory, though probably not completely broken. Still, it’s worth revising for sure. See comments above.)
Wording: 10/10
(Looks good.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(On point.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(A well executed Pokémon ☆. One point docked for letting the text overlap Cresselia in two places, which doesn’t happen on real Pokémon ☆ and tends not to happen on cards with similar illustration styles either.)
Total: 43/50
Whoa, beautiful card! I remember looking at these wallpapers on their own back when Chilling Reign came out and thinking they’d make a great LEGEND or something if combined. I never imagined something quite like this, but somehow, even with all three on one card, it works! Mad props for pulling this together so cohesively.
You tend to be pretty solid when you’re coming up with new mechanics — they’re bold, they’re fresh, they’re self-contained, and the effects of the cards themselves tend to play into them pretty strongly. This piece is no exception: the VTRIO mechanic requires two whole boxes to explain, but once you get through it, it makes sense, and you begin to see how the whole card comes together. It may only have an Ability and an attack, but those little-r rule boxes put in a lot of mechanical work on their own.
The card has a lot of moving parts, but that’s not a bad thing here, since they all work in tandem and it probably wouldn’t work at all if you cut any one of them. You have attack power and some light consistency here, as well as a way to constantly refresh your Bench. Who knows what Pokémon you might play on that Bench alongside the Galarian Birds? It interplays between the deck, discard pile, and board in a really unique way, and I can’t remember seeing any other card, real or custom, interact with all three in such equal and interesting measure.
That’s not to say I don’t have my share of nitpicks about the card. I would err on the side of caution with this thing’s power level; it may cap at 120-150 damage under most circumstances, but it has three of the game’s historically best offensive types. It hits for Weakness on a decent share of any metagame, boosting its damage output to 240-300 for one Energy. Especially for a single-Prize Pokémon, and even for a one-per-deck Pokémon, that’s a little high.
But on the creative side of things, it’s inspired. Well done, and another well deserved 15.
Wording errors:
- I’m not sure why this card would restrict you from playing any [P], [F], or [D] Pokémon whatsoever, so I’ll assume it was a typo and you meant something like “and”. If you did mean to restrict those types, that would represent a whole other can of worms in Believability. [-1 point]
- Pokémon uses the series comma, so “[P], [F] or [D]” → “[P], [F], or [D]”. [-1 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- Looks good to me.
Creativity/Originality: 15/15
(Outstanding mechanic design, with just about perfect integration with the card itself. Way to maximize effect space while keeping it nominally at one Ability and one attack. Another well deserved 15.)
Believability/Playability: 9/15
(The damage output of the attack is quite high given that it’s a Basic single-Prize Pokémon with not one but three of the best offensive types in the game. Unfortunately, the one-per-deck restriction doesn’t mean much when it can easily be recycled turn after turn to keep attacking. Also, one point docked for the [D] Weakness and two for the name “Galarian Birds” over something like “Galarian Moltres & Galarian Zapdos & Galarian Articuno”. As much space as the latter takes up, I believe TPCi would be more inclined to squish name text than they would be to canonically refer to these Pokémon as “the Galarian birds”.)
Wording: 8/10
(Two minor slips in the Rule Box.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Looks good.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(The combination of the three wallpapers is stunning.)
Total: 42/50
3rd Place: Nemes’s Galarian Birds VTRIO, with 42/50 points.
2nd Place: BoatsDon’tSink’s Cresselia ☆, with 43/50 points.
1st Place: Alolan Teddiursa’s Ho-oh, with 45.5/50 points.
2nd Place: BoatsDon’tSink’s Cresselia ☆, with 43/50 points.
1st Place: Alolan Teddiursa’s Ho-oh, with 45.5/50 points.
PMJ
Silhouette Gloom of the Sundown Lands
Forum Head
Articles Head
Elite Member
Advanced Member
Member
Text-Based Results
meh. I wasn't a fan of this round tbh. Sorry this is late, I wasn't at my computer at all yesterday.
It's not completely busted. So you got that going for you, which is nice.
After giving it some thought, Infinity Warp is... okay. It's functionally similar to something like Solgaleo-GX's Ultra Road. It's a little telling that Ultra Road is on a Stage 2 and still only allows one extra movement per turn, and Infinity Warp is on a Basic (even if it is a Prism Star). Still, if you do want to retreat infinite times a turn, you need to pay the Retreat Cost infinite times, so I guess that balances it out.
Spatial Vortex's wording is a little unclear, but it doesn't drastically change the strength of the attack. It's not likely that either player's field is going to be full of Pokemon with more than 200 HP; I am guessing you would do 160-200 per attack on average, assuming that you also ran some Pokemon to pump up the damage. Losing all your Energy hurts, but you need some sort of drawback to prevent it from being overpowered.
Wording errors:
General
- Prism Star Rule missing [-2 points]
- In SM era, Water Pokemon are only weak to Lightning if they are also birds. Otherwise, it should be Grass. [-1 point]
- Fire Resistances haven't existed since the DP era. I'm all for custom Resistances, but we're going for realism here. This card should have no Resistance (and only -20 in SM era). [-1 point]
Infinity Warp
- Always, always, always capitalize the word Bench. Always. [-1 point]
- "...you may retreat your Pokemon as often as you like during your turn. [-1 point]
Spatial Vortex
- It's unclear whether or not the intent is to count Pokemon with a maximum HP of 210 or more or remaining HP of 210 or more. It's a minor distinction, but it still needs to be made. "...in play with maximum/remaining HP of 210 or more." [-2 points]
- "Discard all Energy from this Pokemon." (Empoleon CEC) [-1 point]
Creativity/Originality: 14/20
(Infinity Warp's functional similarity to existing powers dulls the wow factor)
Wording: 6/15
(Even though this is text, you still need all rules that image fakers would be required to have as well)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(Prism Stars cap at 160 HP, this isn't a hard rule but with so many of them at that mark I see no reason to go even further beyond; Ultra Road on a Basic might be a little too good)
Total: 32/50
Yeah so anyway holy cow is this thing strong. Really strong.
This may be the unfornunate time where I say that I acknowledge the possibility you meant to say that Grass Pokemon pay [G] less to use its attack, but I have to grade you based on what you submitted, which means all Grass Pokemon pay only [G] to use their attacks. And that's bad news in ex era, where old Rare Candy rules means you can get big beefy Stage 2s like Sceptile ex and Dragonite ex up and attacking on turn one, to say nothing of Kleavor L itself, whose Frenzied Slash now costs G instead of GGFF. And it's not clear whether or not it works for your opponent as well, which would be quite the double-edged sword. I'm going to assume it's only meant to work for you.
As a way to pay G less, it's actually quite a good body. It's fitting for a one-per-deck in that era. Frenzied Slash is still extremely powerful, especially when you compare it to other one-per-deck cards. Since you can only have one, I don't mind the attack being kinda flippy, since the main draw of the card should be the Grass cost reduction, but it does far too much damage on average.
Wording errors:
General
- Since this is your own creation, I'm not going to knock you for the 100 HP (Pokemon Star don't go past 90) or double Weaknesses, even though I really want to. [-0 points]
Lord of the Wood
- "As long as Kleavor L is in play, the attack cost of each of your [G] Pokémon's attacks is now [G]." (Latias DS, Rayquaza HP) [-2 points]
Frenzied Slash
- "each of your opponent's Pokemon" [-1 point]
- "does 50 damage times the number of heads." [-2 points]
- "Each player discards the top card of his or her deck for each tails." (Camerupt ex EM, Banette PK) [-3 points]
Creativity/Originality: 14/20
(The attack cost reduction is pretty unique for the era and it fits well on a card you get only one copy of.)
Wording: 7/15
(Gotta bust out that spell check, brother.)
Believability/Playability: 4/15
(Again, I have to judge this as written, and it's severely overpowered as written. Frenzied Slash would still be way too strong, even with a cost of GFF.)
Total: 25/50
Wording errors:
Infinite Language
- "Once during your turn, if this Pokemon is in your discard pile and you have no cards in your discard pile with the same name, you may put this Pokemon onto your Bench. If you do, discard the top 3 cards of your deck." (Empoleon BRS) [-1 point, for the right wording in the wrong order]
Strong Wording
- "...this Pokemon also does 60 damage to itself." (Toxtricity FST) [-1 point]
Creativity/Originality: 16/20
(It's absurdly powerful but it's also fun to try and maximize the damage on this thing. Could almost build a deck around it.)
Wording: 13/15
(Almost...)
Believability/Playability: 9/15
(Its ability to tip the Prize trade in one's favor is second to none. It would be in every deck, no questions asked.)
Total: 38/50
Lonely One is fine. I wouldn't waste a Single Strike Energy on it.
Wording errors:
General
- If you're going to specifically cite gen 4 mechanics, then I really should ding you for the -30 Resistance. However, I will let it slide because (sigh) custom mechanic. An extra ten damage ain't gonna hurt no one (it will hurt them 10 less!). [-0 points]
Lonely by Nature
- I'm pretty sure you need to specify that you need to reveal "every card" in your deck, not just "your deck" but there is no precedence for it. [-0 points]
- "...the only Pokemon that has "Cubone" in its name..." [-1 point]
- "...in your deck, you decide who goes first. (First Ticket DV) [-1 point]
- "(If both players reveal a Pokémon with the Lonely by Nature Ability..." (First Ticket DV) [-1 point]
Lonely One
- This wording is probably wrong somewhere but I can't be bothered to figure out how. It seems right enough for me to let any errors slide. [-0 points]
Creativity/Originality: 15/20
(Pretty cool on paper. It would be used in every deck, and that's not a good thing.)
Wording: 12/15
(>cites First Ticket as inspiration but forgets to use it as a source)
Believability/Playability: 10/15
(Like I said, this will be in all the top decks. Getting to choose who goes first is an SSS-tier Ability.)
Total: 37/50
There are too many unknowns here. I might have more to say if you'd provided some context, but as it stands it's impossible to judge fairly. This is a fake that is highly dependent on other fakes, so it's imperative that you explain what those fakes are.
Wording errors:
Organism #2
- Commas should be inside the quotes (Elemental Badge) [-3 points]
Creativity/Originality: 10/20
(With more context, this could have been great)
Wording: 12/15
(It's a good thing repeat offenses are only worth half a point. Good job with just the single error though.)
Believability/Playability: 7/15
(Though there's nothing mechanically wrong with the card, too much information is missing to accurately gauge playability)
Total: 29/50
meh. I wasn't a fan of this round tbh. Sorry this is late, I wasn't at my computer at all yesterday.
It's not completely busted. So you got that going for you, which is nice.
After giving it some thought, Infinity Warp is... okay. It's functionally similar to something like Solgaleo-GX's Ultra Road. It's a little telling that Ultra Road is on a Stage 2 and still only allows one extra movement per turn, and Infinity Warp is on a Basic (even if it is a Prism Star). Still, if you do want to retreat infinite times a turn, you need to pay the Retreat Cost infinite times, so I guess that balances it out.
Spatial Vortex's wording is a little unclear, but it doesn't drastically change the strength of the attack. It's not likely that either player's field is going to be full of Pokemon with more than 200 HP; I am guessing you would do 160-200 per attack on average, assuming that you also ran some Pokemon to pump up the damage. Losing all your Energy hurts, but you need some sort of drawback to prevent it from being overpowered.
Wording errors:
General
- Prism Star Rule missing [-2 points]
- In SM era, Water Pokemon are only weak to Lightning if they are also birds. Otherwise, it should be Grass. [-1 point]
- Fire Resistances haven't existed since the DP era. I'm all for custom Resistances, but we're going for realism here. This card should have no Resistance (and only -20 in SM era). [-1 point]
Infinity Warp
- Always, always, always capitalize the word Bench. Always. [-1 point]
- "...you may retreat your Pokemon as often as you like during your turn. [-1 point]
Spatial Vortex
- It's unclear whether or not the intent is to count Pokemon with a maximum HP of 210 or more or remaining HP of 210 or more. It's a minor distinction, but it still needs to be made. "...in play with maximum/remaining HP of 210 or more." [-2 points]
- "Discard all Energy from this Pokemon." (Empoleon CEC) [-1 point]
Creativity/Originality: 14/20
(Infinity Warp's functional similarity to existing powers dulls the wow factor)
Wording: 6/15
(Even though this is text, you still need all rules that image fakers would be required to have as well)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(Prism Stars cap at 160 HP, this isn't a hard rule but with so many of them at that mark I see no reason to go even further beyond; Ultra Road on a Basic might be a little too good)
Total: 32/50
I think it's kind of fitting that your entry would be for a past era, given what the Pokemon is. I don't know if it was intentional on your part, but it's neat.
Yeah so anyway holy cow is this thing strong. Really strong.
This may be the unfornunate time where I say that I acknowledge the possibility you meant to say that Grass Pokemon pay [G] less to use its attack, but I have to grade you based on what you submitted, which means all Grass Pokemon pay only [G] to use their attacks. And that's bad news in ex era, where old Rare Candy rules means you can get big beefy Stage 2s like Sceptile ex and Dragonite ex up and attacking on turn one, to say nothing of Kleavor L itself, whose Frenzied Slash now costs G instead of GGFF. And it's not clear whether or not it works for your opponent as well, which would be quite the double-edged sword. I'm going to assume it's only meant to work for you.
As a way to pay G less, it's actually quite a good body. It's fitting for a one-per-deck in that era. Frenzied Slash is still extremely powerful, especially when you compare it to other one-per-deck cards. Since you can only have one, I don't mind the attack being kinda flippy, since the main draw of the card should be the Grass cost reduction, but it does far too much damage on average.
Wording errors:
General
- Since this is your own creation, I'm not going to knock you for the 100 HP (Pokemon Star don't go past 90) or double Weaknesses, even though I really want to. [-0 points]
Lord of the Wood
- "As long as Kleavor L is in play, the attack cost of each of your [G] Pokémon's attacks is now [G]." (Latias DS, Rayquaza HP) [-2 points]
Frenzied Slash
- "each of your opponent's Pokemon" [-1 point]
- "does 50 damage times the number of heads." [-2 points]
- "Each player discards the top card of his or her deck for each tails." (Camerupt ex EM, Banette PK) [-3 points]
Creativity/Originality: 14/20
(The attack cost reduction is pretty unique for the era and it fits well on a card you get only one copy of.)
Wording: 7/15
(Gotta bust out that spell check, brother.)
Believability/Playability: 4/15
(Again, I have to judge this as written, and it's severely overpowered as written. Frenzied Slash would still be way too strong, even with a cost of GFF.)
Total: 25/50
Extremely busted. Put a Big Charm on it, kill anything in the game for one Energy, and live to tell the tale. After you go down, Rescue Carrier it back into your hand and take your last 3 Prizes. Infinite Language is helpful I guess but I wouldn't rely on it. Even if you haven't discarded enough things to be dropping 400-HP nuke bombs quite yet, this card is still wildly efficient, being able to do substantial damage for a single attachment without having to rely on your opponent (like Galarian Zapdos V) or your hand (like the baby Galarian birds).Radiant Unown HP: 60 [P]
Basic
Radiant Pokémon Rule: You can't have more than 1 Radiant Pokémon in your deck.
Ability: Infinite Language
Once during your turn, if you have no cards in your discard pile with the same name and this Pokémon is in your discard pile, you may discard the top 3 cards of your deck. If you do, put this Pokémon onto your Bench.
[C] Strong Wording 20x
This attack does 20 damage for each card with a different name in your discard pile. If you have 2 cards with the same name in your discard pile, this Pokémon does 60 damage to itself. This attack's damage isn't affected by Weakness.
Weakness: [D] x2
Resistance: [F] -30
Retreat: [C]
Its flat, thin body is always stuck on walls. Its shape appears to have some meaning.
Wording errors:
Infinite Language
- "Once during your turn, if this Pokemon is in your discard pile and you have no cards in your discard pile with the same name, you may put this Pokemon onto your Bench. If you do, discard the top 3 cards of your deck." (Empoleon BRS) [-1 point, for the right wording in the wrong order]
Strong Wording
- "...this Pokemon also does 60 damage to itself." (Toxtricity FST) [-1 point]
Creativity/Originality: 16/20
(It's absurdly powerful but it's also fun to try and maximize the damage on this thing. Could almost build a deck around it.)
Wording: 13/15
(Almost...)
Believability/Playability: 9/15
(Its ability to tip the Prize trade in one's favor is second to none. It would be in every deck, no questions asked.)
Total: 38/50
This card is way better than First Ticket. First Ticket needed to be in your opening hand to work; this card just needs to be in your deck, which it always will be. Decks will be forced to run this card just because getting to choose whether or not you go first can mean the difference between a win and a loss. This is especially important in game 2 situations, where the losing player could miss out on an advantageous start for them just because they didn't play this card.Cubone*X#- Fighting - HP 100
Basic - Single Strike
NO. 104 Lonely Pokémon HT: 1'4" WT: 14.3 lbs.
Ability: Lonely by Nature
Before you flip a coin to decide who goes first in a game, you may use this Ability. If you do, don't flip that coin, and reveal your deck. If this Pokémon is the only Pokémon with "Cubone" in its name you have in your deck, you decide which player goes first. (If each player reveals a Pokémon with Lonely by Nature Ability, flip the coin as normal.)
[F] Lonely One 20+
If you didn't flip a coin at the beginning of this game as the effect of this Pokémon's Ability, this attack does 20 more damage. If you have no Benched Pokémon, this attack also does 40 more damage. This attack's damage isn't affected by Resistance.
Weakness: [G]+20
Resistance: [L]-30
Retreat: [C]
*X#rule: You can't have more than 1 Pokémon*X#in your deck. When your Pokémon*X#is Knocked Out, your opponent flips 2 coins. Your opponent takes a Prize card for each heads.
Lonely One is fine. I wouldn't waste a Single Strike Energy on it.
Wording errors:
General
- If you're going to specifically cite gen 4 mechanics, then I really should ding you for the -30 Resistance. However, I will let it slide because (sigh) custom mechanic. An extra ten damage ain't gonna hurt no one (it will hurt them 10 less!). [-0 points]
Lonely by Nature
- I'm pretty sure you need to specify that you need to reveal "every card" in your deck, not just "your deck" but there is no precedence for it. [-0 points]
- "...the only Pokemon that has "Cubone" in its name..." [-1 point]
- "...in your deck, you decide who goes first. (First Ticket DV) [-1 point]
- "(If both players reveal a Pokémon with the Lonely by Nature Ability..." (First Ticket DV) [-1 point]
Lonely One
- This wording is probably wrong somewhere but I can't be bothered to figure out how. It seems right enough for me to let any errors slide. [-0 points]
Creativity/Originality: 15/20
(Pretty cool on paper. It would be used in every deck, and that's not a good thing.)
Wording: 12/15
(>cites First Ticket as inspiration but forgets to use it as a source)
Believability/Playability: 10/15
(Like I said, this will be in all the top decks. Getting to choose who goes first is an SSS-tier Ability.)
Total: 37/50
I honestly don't even know what to make of this. Even assuming that the other "Organism" Ability cards are the other Deoxys formes, I have no way to gauge the strength of this card without know what those cards do. Are they all Prism Stars? What do these Abilities do? How are you supposed to realistically get 16 Space Virus counters when, assuming these are all Prism Stars, you would need to put them in play a total of seven separate times and thus can't ever have 4 Space Virus counters on your fourth Deoxys?[Basic] Deoxys-Attack {*} HP130
{*} (Prism Star) rule: You can’t have more than 1 {*} card with the same name in your deck. If a {*} card would go to the discard pile, put it in the Lost Zone instead.
Ability: Organism #2
When you play this Pokémon from your hand onto your Bench during your turn, you may put 1 Space Virus counter on it for each of your Pokémon in play that has the "Organism #1", "Organism #3", and "Organism #4" Abilities. If you do, draw a card for each Space Virus counter on this Pokémon.
[P][P][P] Psycho Boost 120
You may remove 4 Space Virus counters from each of your Pokémon in play that has the "Organism #1", "Organism #2", "Organism #3", or "Organism #4" Abilities. If you do, and if you removed 16 Space Virus counters, you win this game.
Weakness: [P]x2
Resistance: -
Retreat: [C]
Deoxys emerged from a virus that came from space. It is highly intelligent and wields psychokinetic powers. This Pokémon shoots lasers from the crystalline organ on its chest.
There are too many unknowns here. I might have more to say if you'd provided some context, but as it stands it's impossible to judge fairly. This is a fake that is highly dependent on other fakes, so it's imperative that you explain what those fakes are.
Wording errors:
Organism #2
- Commas should be inside the quotes (Elemental Badge) [-3 points]
Creativity/Originality: 10/20
(With more context, this could have been great)
Wording: 12/15
(It's a good thing repeat offenses are only worth half a point. Good job with just the single error though.)
Believability/Playability: 7/15
(Though there's nothing mechanically wrong with the card, too much information is missing to accurately gauge playability)
Total: 29/50
3rd Place: I Like Shorts's Palkia Prism Star, with 32/50 points.
2nd Place: bbb888’s Cubone*X#, with 37/50 points.
1st Place: Falling Skies’s Radiant Unown, with 38/50 points.
2nd Place: bbb888’s Cubone
1st Place: Falling Skies’s Radiant Unown, with 38/50 points.