Contest November 2020 CaC: Ghost Pokémon (Results Are Up!)

Here's my entry. I've had this one cooking up since the contest started, but I wanted to wait a while to post it. Hopefully this one isn't too much of a dumpster fire as the last one...

Dusknoir - HP150 - Psychic
Stage 2- Evolves from Dusclops

Ability: Phantom Frequency
Whenever one of your opponent's Pokémon is knocked out, you may use this Ability. If you do, your opponent discards all cards attached to the Pokémon that was knocked out. Then, put that Pokémon onto your Bench. (If the Pokémon you put on your Bench this way is discarded for any reason, put that Pokémon in its owner's discard pile.)

[P][P] Spirits Await
Switch 1 of your opponent's Benched Pokémon with their Active Pokémon. Then, flip two coins. If both are heads, the new Active Pokémon is now knocked out.

Weakness: Darkness [x2] Resistance: Fighting [-20] Retreat [C][C][C]

The antenna on its head captures radio waves from the world of spirits that command it to take people there.

So, most Dusknoir cards seem to have a motif with applying or manipulating damage counters onto Pokemon. Even the weird ones like Dusknoir Lv. X (amazing card, by the way. Love weird stuff like that) happen to have this theme to them. But, I thought, with the way Dusknoir's Pokedex entry describes it, how about a card based on the idea of its lore? This is where I came up with the idea of a Dusknoir that can "command" the "spirits" of your opponent's Pokemon, as well as the ability that references the radio waves it receives from the spirit world.

The idea of this Pokemon was something that I wanted to be unique, but situational. Of course, you're not going to want to take every one of your opponent's Pokemon, some of them wouldn't be compatible with your deck. But, say it's something you could use, or something you want to, for some time, lock your opponent out of using. This is where you can use that ability. Depending on the deck, it can either be a useful tool or a situational commodity.

With the attack, I was thinking something that could work in tandem with the ability, so I decided to do a clone of Gothitelle DRX's Doom Decree attack as well as combining it with a gust effect. While the coin flips are rare and situational at best, the gust effect still could potentially help. It's definitely more about the ability in this case, though.

I feel like it being on a Stage 2 also makes it something that's not completely busted. If it were just something you could put on a basic, the ability may have been a bit too powerful. But a Stage 2 that takes some work to get to, in a vacuum not considering any format, feels just right for an ability like this.

Team Flare Hyper Gear cards (The wording on "If the Pokémon you put on your bench this way is discarded for any reason, put that Pokémon in its owner's discard pile.")
Gothitelle Dragons Exalted (Wording on Dusknoir's attack for the KO aspect)
Gothitelle Guardians Rising (Gust effect as well as "The new Active Pokemon")
Typhlosion Lost Thunder ("You may use this Ability")

Also, uh... Because it's Ghost Type month for CaC.
Boo.
Spooky.
 
Some great turnout with some great entries so far, which has been really great to see! :D

If you haven't submitted yet, you've got about 9.5 days left on the clock!
 
Hello, I would like to enter the Text-Based portion of this event.

é
Froslass HP: 90 [W]
361.png
Stage 1: Evolves from Snorunt
froslass.png

NO. 478 Snow Land Pokémon HT: 4’03” WT: 58.6 lbs.
Ability: Eternal Wandering
As long as this Pokémon is in the Active Spot, your opponent cannot shuffle cards from their discard pile back into their deck, or add cards from their discard pile to their hand.

[W][W] Eternal Grief
Shuffle this Pokémon and all cards attached to it into your deck. At the end of your opponent’s next turn, this attack does 100 damage to that Pokémon.

Weakness: [M] x2 Resistance: Retreat: [C]

After a woman met her end on a snowy mountain, her regrets lingered on. From them, this Pokémon was born. Its favorite food is frozen souls.
First off, this card is designed for the current sword & shield era level of power. Froslass just so happens to have had the same HP stat (or lower) since DPP. I will also fully admit I'm not particularly familiar with the current Standard or Expanded format, having played neither in some time, so I may have missed some synergy for this card. I also tried to mimic the blank for a real card as much as possible, having the dex entry under the W/R/R and having those three in the same row, like on a real card.

Froslass as a Pokémon has always fascinated me, as do most Pokémon with human origins. But this dex entry in particular strikes me, as it paints a picture of what kind of Pokémon Froslass really is. I did my best to capture that in this card, with two effects.

Eternal Wandering is akin to a card like Necrovalley in Yugioh, in that you aren't actively denying your opponent resources against every deck, but rather stopping them from recovering resources once they've lost them via a knockout, some form of energy/tool removal, or even just playing trainer cards. This is an extremely strong effect on its own, so I decided to not go the extra mile and let it stop attaching energy from the discard pile via something like Metal Saucer. the anti-synergy between the ability and the attack which completely removes it from the field is intentional, I didn't want it to be too self-sufficient. The delayed damage can still hit the Pokemon that was active when Froslass used the attack if it's on the bench, evolved, or devolved. Given that ADP opened up the possibility for cards to have memory, I'm hoping this isn't too unbelievable.

The idea of this card is to use it in a hit-and-run deck, but for that to happen it would rely on both an attacker like that actually being cost-effective enough to be worth running, as while as Froslass itself being the best option as a stun wall for that deck. Currently, in Sword & Shield, Galarian Weezing and Dracovish would both give it competition, but it could likely see use as a backup line vs decks that need to recur a lot of stuff or even just as a late-game option once they're running low on resources.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope my submission is fine.
 
My Entry:
Chandelure V
Type: [P] – HP 210
Basic Pokémon (Pokémon V)
V Rule: When your Pokémon V is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.

Ability: Soul Transport
Once during your turn, if this Pokémon is your Active Pokémon, put a Pokémon from your discard pile onto your Bench and switch this Pokémon with 1 of your Benched Pokémon. Put 4 damage counters on this Pokémon and the new Active Pokémon.

[P] Thousand-Tongued Flame 10+
Move any number of damage counters on your Pokémon to this Pokémon. This attack does 10 damage more for each damage counter moved this way to this Pokémon. If this Pokémon is Knocked Out as a result of this attack, your opponent takes 1 more prize card.

Weakness: [D] X 2
Resistance: [F] -30

Retreat: [C][C]

References:
Giratina LST
Raichu-Alolan Raichu TTGX
Druddigon UNM
Archie’s Ace in the Hole PRM
Tapu Lele Promo
ADP TTGX
 
I’d like to be a part of the text based portion of this contest.

My submission:

Banette - Psychic - 100HP
Stage 1 - Evolves from Shuppet

Ability: Pulling strings
When you play this pokémon to evolve 1 of your pokemon during your turn, you may search your opponent’s deck for up to 2 energy cards and attach them to your opponent’s pokémon in any way you like. You cannot use more than one Pulling strings ability during your turn.

[P] Puppet master 30
You may search your opponent’s deck for a supporter and discard it. When your opponent’s turn starts and after they drew a card, your opponent must use the effect of the supporter card you discarded as their supporter for the turn.

Weakness: Dark (x2)
Resistance: Fighting (-30)
Retreat cost: [C] [C]
Pokédex information: Resentment at being cast off made it spring into being. Some say that treating it well will satisfy it, and it will once more become a stuffed toy.

Eneporter FLI 106
Clefable RCL 75
 
Gonna split my card post and the notes into their own posts this time around because I always seem to find an error in the notes text immediately after posting it.

CaC_07_-_Oricorio_Sensu_Style.png
Oricorio – Psychic – HP80
Basic
Sensu Style

[P][P][C] Possessive Dance
Discard all cards attached to this Oricorio and attach it to 1 of your Pokémon as a Pokémon Tool card. The Pokémon this card is attached to can use each of its attacks for the cost of this attack.

Weakness: Lightning +20
Resistance: Fighting -20
Retreat: [C]
#741 Dancing Pokémon HT: 2’ 0” WT: 7.5 lbs.
Ultra Sun: It charms its opponents with its refined dancing. When they let their guard down, it places a curse on them that will bring on their demise.


Illus. CardPone - ©2020 Pokémon/CardPone - CaC 07
 
This is the first card made with the the upcoming Omnium 2.1 blanks, which now have brighter silver borders! There were a handful of Ghost Pokémon I was going to use for this blank, but I do like to use Pokémon I don't expect to be used otherwise, so when I saw Oricorio on the list of Ghost Pokémon, that seemed like a pretty good choice. To me, Oricorio, even in its Sensu Form, feels a lot less like a Ghost Pokémon than any of the others.

For once I made "my own" art for this card. "My own" is used very loosely since the background isn't mine and the artwork itself was just traced from a frame of this gif, with a couple of modifications and some liberties taken with the feet. I don't reckon I'll be doing my own artwork for very many CaCs after this. Art isn't really my main thing, so I don't often have the motivation for it, but I am happy with how this turned out.

Just like any other entry I make with the Omnium Template, I've got my trademark bulleted list of things to keep in mind:
  • The wording is SM or the latest syntax of a specific effect if no such effect exists in the SM era.
  • The layout for the attack area is based off of the classic/Neo era. Following that, "Ability" is written in the same red text as the ability name.
  • All Omnium cards are meant to be balanced for the 2010-2011 Standard Rotation, or slightly more broadly any set from Diamond & Pearl base set to Noble Victories.
  • Fonts and placements should be pixel-perfect as they were made using my templates, which places all the fonts exactly where they should be.
For this CaC entry, I also wanted to see if I could make a fun and creative card without giving it an ability, as all my previous CaCs have had one. There were many iterations of this effect, many of which did end up requiring an ability, but the wording always ended up feeling weird or the effect was clunky or some other thing I wasn't happy with. At one point it had an ability and two attacks, which prompted me to take a step back and try to simplify things. Then I thought of this. Is it 100% creative? Not entirely, and I don't expect to max out creativity points on this one, but it is an interesting twist on modifying attack costs that hasn't been done before.

The first note is that it says "this Oricorio" rather than "this Pokémon". This is to prevent the effect being used by Pokémon like Mew or Zoroark that can copy attacks, since they would then not be able to use the effect on the card. If there is a question of whether the Oricorio would be attached to something if Zoroark copied the attack, I believe that wouldn't be the case since the text would be treated as if it were on the Zoroark card, and since Zoroark isn't called "Oricorio", the attack does nothing. Correct me if I'm wrong - I'm not a professor on this.

The second note is that I know this essentially makes all cards splashable. Any attack with any cost can now be used for [P][P][C], which makes Psychic decks really good. I tried to balance that by making it a minimum of three attachments (unless you have Dimension Valley PHF 93 or something going on) and discarding all those energy in order to use the attack. Is it enough when cards like Malamar FLI 51 exist? It's hard to say. From what I know, energy acceleration and cost reduction are not common in DPPt, which means this can take 6 turns to fully set up, depending on energy acceleration. But once it's set up, you can let loose some powerful attacks for much less than they would normally cost.

Following the trend with some bird Pokémon, the Weakness and Resistance come from its Flying type rather than its primary type - a shake-up I've always loved in the TCG. And the retreat cost is just copied from other Oricorio cards. Oricorio obviously didn't have any cards in DPPt to reference for the HP, so I determined the HP by comparing SM Delibird cards to SM Oricorio cards and then adjusting the HP accordingly (though I did give this Oricorio a 10HP boost to help give it a tiny bit more bulk while it builds up energy to be able to take advantage of its attack).
General
Possessive Dance
  • Shedinja LOT 95 ("...discard all cards attached to this [Pokémon] and attach it to 1 of your Pokémon as a Pokémon Tool card.")
  • Basically any Tool card ("The Pokémon this card is attached to can..."
  • I couldn't find a reference for the last bit since I don't think it's an effect we've seen before. Hopefully my wording is good.
  • The Oricorio artwork is a custom piece made just for this card by yours truly, and it was based on a frame from this animation. The background is by brgfx.
  • Everything else, except for the fonts and the Create-a-Card symbol, is by me.
Special thanks to the PTCG Faking Community Discord Server and friends from my Pokémon League for all the input they provided as I made this card!

Thanks so much to the judges and PokéBeach for making this possible! And to everyone else that entered, I wish you the best of luck!
 
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SPOILER_Shedinja-EX_FA_Simple.png

I had completely forgot about this competition until this weekend and had resigned myself to making a simpler card, but then this happened! I'm super happy with how it turned out.

re: The Art Technique
I was fiddling with a Shedinja in Blender as a reference for a cel-shade trace, but was struck by how similar the render's shading was to the style used by Ryo Ueda! He's possibly one of my favourite Full Art artists, and his Kingdra-EX is possibly one of my most favourite Full Arts of all-time (it's a heavy inspiration for the art design!). I tried to replicate his style as much as possible, paying special attention to dynamics - the size of the Pokemon, the angle of the camera and the harsh lighting in particular. I also figured out how to do trailing lines in the outline (see the halo)!

Going all-out with holosheeting and texturing is pretty normal for me, but I wanted to see what would happen if I was more restrained. I was inspired by the simplicity of pkmncard scans that forgo the textures and holosheets - and I'm really glad with how it turned out!

re: The Effects
I feel like Shedinjas exist in a limbo state that bridges life and death, and I leant heavily into that flavour to design the effects. Spirit Tax is inspired by Charon's coin, being the price the deceased pays to be ferried to the afterlife. However, like all good tax, you pay it back after receiving your income; hence your opponent pays a prize card tax after a turn-long delay. Psychic Pokemon don't need to pay tax for balancing reasons because Psychic (Ghost) Pokemon already exist in the afterlife. For Final Wager, I wanted an effect that took Shedinja out from the Active Spot (like Shaymin-EX), but in a volatile way.

re: The Balance / Playability
Adding new prize cards to your opponent's stack is a very powerful effect and should not be used lightly. If one isn't careful, one could cause an infinite stall loop where your opponent keeps taking Knock Outs but is never able to take all their prize cards. These are the ways d a few techniques to balance it:
  • Prize cards are added after prize cards are taken, meaning a player can win the game before the reduction takes place. (This is the biggest difference between this and Life Dew effects.)
  • "Excluding [P] Pokemon" means you can't add Prize cards if Shedinja gets Knocked Out. It also stops the player from chaining Mew-EX and Mew FCO that can copy Shedinja's attack.
  • A [P][C] attack cost means you need to run Psychic Energy, but the exclusion of [P] Pokemon means you can't be running a pure [P] deck. Players will probably need to run split types.
  • 90HP means Shedinja will probably get Knocked Out on the next turn, so your opponent will probably recover the prize cards that you added. This makes the attack useful only if you manage to stop your opponent from attacking, making Shedinja more useful for disruption decks.
  • 90HP makes Shedinja prone to Lasers.
  • A retreat cost [C][C] makes Shedinja somewhat clunky.
However, all these weaknesses does not make Shedinja unplayable. If you can mitigate Shedinja's major weakness - that it's easy to KO - by making your opponent unable to attack, then you have a solid addition to any disruptive deck. If a deck does manage to break through the lock and pull off a KO, Shedinja can weaken the blow.

The card is designed to be released in the early XY-era (around Phantom Forces).

References:
Spirit Tax - Jirachi Prism ("took"), Sudowoodo LOT*, Electrode-ex ("Knocking Out" precedent), Frozen City ('excluding' clause**), Gastly EVO, Robo Substitute (taking Prize cards "for" something), Nihilego-GX
Final Wager - Shedinja DRX, Electrode EVO***

* Sudowoodo shows a "during their last turn" clause can be used in the middle of a sentence for the sake of readability/clarity.
** It's unclear whether XY-era would use "excluding [P] Pokemon" or "non-[P] Pokemon" like in SM-era.
*** it seems XY-era prefers "Knock Out this Pokemon" for self-KOs. SM-era reverted to "This Pokemon is Knocked Out."

I've asked Jabber if it's fine to use "their" instead of "his or her" for pre-SM cards in the CAC and he said that'd be fine:
NiinXuP.png

Credits:
Art rendered in Blender and edited by me
Blank by @aschefield101
Textures by @Nekoban Ryo
Public domain smoke stock image by Pascal Meier
 
bbninjas said:
I was fiddling with a Shedinja in Blender as a reference for a cel-shade trace, but was struck by how similar the render's shading was to the style used by Ryo Ueda! He's possibly one of my favourite Full Art artists, and his Kingdra-EX is possibly one of my most favourite Full Arts of all-time (it's a heavy inspiration for the art design!). I tried to replicate his style as much as possible, paying special attention to dynamics - the size of the Pokemon, the angle of the camera and the harsh lighting in particular. I also figured out how to do trailing lines in the outline (see the halo)!
Click to expand...
Gotta say, you really knocked it out of the park with the visuals here. This really looks like something you'd see out of an actual XY set! I really like the angle you had for Shedinja and the really nice color of purple in the background. While I like when people go a bit creative visually with fakes, I love seeing a nice authentic-looking card too, especially when it's done really well. I'm a fan.
 
Spectrier_CaC.png
So the theme for this month is Ghost types, obviously. So what better ghost to pick than the newest ghost? Probably my favorite legendary coming out of the new gen, Spectrier has such a unique design that I cannot get enough of. I was struggling to think of effects for a while. Eventually, I came up with this. It's not complicated or even that unique, but I mostly made it so it could potentially be added to Lackey later, sometime after the community set (if you don't know what I am talking about, join the faking discord!) so it can be used in tandem with Lost Zone cards from that set. But even with no Lost Zone support, it's a solid damage dealer that can hit huge numbers.
Credit to asche for the original blanks & symbols, which were heavily modified by me
Credit to StargardSora for the art

References:
- Alolan Vulpix GRI 21 ("Search your deck for up to X Pokémon, reveal them, and put them into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.")
- Froslass UNM 38 ("Put up to X...")
- Lost Blender LOT 181 ("... from your hand...")
- Blacephalon LOT 52 ( "... in the Lost Zone." "This attack does X damage for each card put in the Lost Zone in this way.")
 
de9lh6s-2e082b42-3cf0-45cd-97b0-f52eb84cc738.png

For this month's CaC, I decided to make an Aegislash featuring the latest version of my custom blanks. It's balanced and worded for the current Sword and Shield era with some new mechanics to spice things up a little. Most notably, the markers from earlier gens make a comeback in the form of the Cursed Blade attack, and will likely reappear with other cards in Aegislash's set to create some nice synergy. For the ability, I've always found the idea of turning one of your Pokemon into a tool card pretty interesting (like Shedinja and Klefki). With Aegislash being a sword and all, it seems fitting that one of your Pokemon wields it like one.
 
I’m gonna pull out of this competition, I couldn’t think of many good ideas and it just wasn’t working for me. Good luck to everyone else though!
 
That's a wrap on this round of the CaC! Stay tuned for official judging at the end of December!

and Almonds' September judging, which is still coming soon
 
It's late but Jabber said it was cool

qmz9XfK.png

I'm really only submitting this just to have something to submit. I kept second guessing myself whenever I went to post this, it's actually been done since the first of the month.

Anyway. Sableye. The Ability allows you to get a bit of recovery every time you bring him up front, which includes after one of your own guys gets killed. The name is meant to evoke the same feelings of mania that Sableye get when around gems, because Items are a precious commodity that players always want to get back.

The Ability intentionally does not say "Once during your turn" because the intent is to allow for it to be used as many times as you can trigger it. This Ability would likely be broken if there existed an Ability that allowed you infinite switches a turn, but no such card exists, even in Expanded. The closest you can get to Ability manipulation is with Solgaleo-GX's Ultra Road Ability, which would give you one extra switch per turn. I don't think that's enough to break Sableye, considering Junk Hunt gets you two for no effort and you would need to run a Stage 2 GX in order to get the third card (or two, to get two more cards, and so on).

The attack synergizes with the Ability, allowing you to get another Item back after your attack if you choose to bring up a second Sableye. If not, you can bring up a decoy, a different attacker, whoever you like, but your Item recycler will be safe on the Bench to come dig through your trash on a later turn.

Bottom stats are in line with recent Sableye cards, despite the fact that Sableye itself has a weakness to Fairy and has always had resistances to speak of (and used to resist Colorless in the TCG), but Creatures gonna Creatures. Sableye has three cards in the SM block; the most recent one has 80 HP so that's what I went with.

I went with an actual Pokedex entry for the flavor text. I wanted to use the PMJdex entry for Sableye, but went with a real one for those sweet, sweet believability points.

Anyway thanks for letting me submit. Sorry to everyone if I win.

Wording references: Heatran-GX UNM, Herdier SM (Ability), Zorua TEU (Attack)
 
OH SHEET I'M LATE


Dragapult HP 160 [P]

Stage 2:Evolves from Drakloak

[Ability] Ghost Appearance
Once during your turn, if this Pokémon is the last card in your hand,
you may play it onto your Bench.If you do,put 2 damage counters on the Active Pokèmon.

[C] Call for Support
Search up to 2 Dreepy and up to 2 Drakloak,reveal them, and put them into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.
[P][P] Dragon Barricade 40x
Discard any number of Dreepy and Drakloak from your hand.This
attack does 40 damage for each card you discarded.

W:[D]x2 R:[F]-20
RC:None

"When it isn’t battling, it keeps Dreepy in the holes on its horns. Once a fight starts, it launches the Dreepy like supersonic missiles."


Sorry fpr being so late,I totally forgot about this event.I hope I'm on time.
So,Dragapult's strategy is being a fast set up sweeper.To do as much damage possible,I decided to give him an ability like Vivid Voltage Beedrill,
Elusive Master,but with putting damage counters on the Active Pokèmon instead of drawing cards.
I give him 2 attacks to make him better.
The first one,Call for Support,is to search 2 Dreepys and 2 Drakloak,to do lots of damage with the second attack,Dragon Barricade.
Since Dragapult doesn't need to be evolved for being set up,it's much easier to find Dreepy and Drakloak to do enough damage to Knock Out
(or at least weaken)most of the Pokèmon in the meta.
After Call of Support,Dragon Barricade can reach 160 damage!

I hope you'll consider this card!
 
@PMJ @FireLizard You're both good; timezones are weird enough that we usually accept late entries unpenalized within a day or so of the deadline. Just don't abuse that in the future. :p
 
Results are still on their way (and we'll have an update shortly for September's results, too), but in the meantime, it'd be a huge help to us if you could fill out this survey! We're always looking to make CaC the best it can be, and it's high time we get some community input in a more structured way.

We promise it won't take long, and you're free to fill out as much or as little as you like. :)
 
So, some updates! Based on your answers to the survey, here's some stuff we've gathered and decisions we've made regarding general CaC sentiments right now:

— CaC isn't going anywhere. We floated the possibility to see whether people were still actively interested in it or just entered out of habit, but there was a strong response against ditching the contest in favor of other things, so we'll continue to run it as best we can. That's not to say we won't also do other things, but they might be less frequent, whereas CaC will continue at least as regularly as it does now.

— We'll try to cut down the time between rounds. A majority of you said you were cool with the way things are, but a nonetheless significant number of people want the month-long judging period to be reduced. We'll do our best to make that happen. (For transparency's sake, the reason it is where it is now is that when we have relatively few judges, it's difficult to devote a chunk of time every month to grind out judging, but it's much easier to be able to spread that time out over several days or even weeks on an every-other-month basis. If we had a more robust rotation of judges, that would be much less of a problem. Which brings me to ...)

— Introducing our new judges! @Nyora, @PMJ, @The Ωmega One, and @47bennyg are joining me on the team, and in the coming months (read: January and February) we'll work out a rotation system between us such that the judges for each category will change from round to round. (Responses to the survey also indicated general favorability toward more variation in judges.) This should give us more breaks, prevent burnout, etc — and allow, like I said, for the time between rounds to be reduced.

— We'll give another look to the text-based rubric, and we want your input on it! We revamped the image-based rubric recently, but didn't look too deeply into text-based. Some responses on the survey indicated dissatisfaction with the current rubric, so it might be time to give it that look! Let us know your thoughts here, by PM, or on Discord.

Any changes rubric-wise or timing-wise won't be implemented for the coming round (January), since that one opens in just a few days and all these changes warrant further discussion and planning. But be on the lookout for them in a couple months! And until then, don't forget to give us your input. :)

You might have been hoping this would be a November results post — it's coming soon! I promise!
 
Image-Based Results

Judge: @Jabberwock

The theme this month was pretty broad in scope — pick a Ghost mon and do what you want with it — and it showed through in the broad range of interpretations! I like it when that happens.

Some of you might be seeing lower scores than you’re used to, which is largely because for most of you, this’ll be the first round on the new rubric — which emphasizes Believability and Playability. As a reminder, here’s a general overview of how I’m judging that category on the new rubric:

There’s a series of marksbands into which your card will fall based on its power level or Playability. In general, 13-15 means the card is well-balanced for its era, 9-12 means it’s noticeably over- or underpowered, 5-8 means it’s either best-deck-in-format material or I really have to strain to see the utility, and 0-4 means it doesn’t make sense for a normal game of Pokémon. Then various factors can raise or lower that score, usually within the marksband, based on the card’s Believability. I’ll call these out in judging where appropriate.

Above all, remember — it’s a new rubric, and there’s bound to be some stuff that doesn’t make sense at first. If your score is different than you’re used to, it’s not a knock against you as a faker; it probably just means that a balancing mistake that used to cost you one or two points might now be costing you more.

If there’s anything I can clarify about your judging, let me know! And otherwise, stay tuned for the January round coming soon! :)

~~Jabberwock

sableye-ex-november-cac-big.png


Welcome to CaC, and solid work! You found some nice art and constructed a pretty neat card out of it. I rarely see Pokémon-ex these days, but it’s always cool when it happens, and I think you made a good call based on the art. :D

Something to bear in mind about the era, though: there was no basic [D] Energy; only the Special Energy named Darkness Energy. This means that any attack that does damage for [D] Energy actually starts at some amount of base damage (20, for Rock Chomp), and in general, the more [D] Energy it requires, the less often you’ll be able to use it (just because you could only play 4 Darkness Energy). So it requires some careful balancing with that in mind.

But fortunately, power-wise, I think the card makes sense for its era. I was a little iffy on the [D] Energy for Treasure Hunt, since I think the randomness makes it very hard to use, but since Rock Chomp means you need [D] Energy attached anyway, I think it’s probably fine. Actually, I’m not really sure what the problem with including Tools would’ve been — you can play a Pokémon Tool card same as anything else; you just attach it as part of playing it — but once you do exclude Pokémon Tools it’s a bit weird not to also exclude Stadiums. Anyway, the power level for it is probably fine, and the power level on Rock Chomp is definitely fine for a Basic [D] Pokémon-ex.

For a while I was also questioning the choice of [F] Pokémon — flavorful for “Rock Chomp”, sure, but mechanically it seems a bit random — but then I realized it also counts the [F] Pokémon in your opponent’s discard pile. Since [D] decks generally have problems with [F] Pokémon, even in the ex era, this card could serve as a sort of tech to deal with those Pokémon that also has utility in other matchups.

And then, I also like that the card can do two different things, but also have some mild synergy between those two things. Specifically, since Treasure Hunt discards all the cards you reveal, you might inadvertently be fueling Rock Chomp. I think that’s a nice touch.

Wording errors:
- On point. Good references.

Fonts and Placement errors:
- Should have more of a space between “90” and “HP”. Here’s a list of ex-era cards with 90 HP, for comparison. [-1 point]

Creativity/Originality: 13/15
(Original, flavorful effects that also have some subtle synergy.)
Believability/Playability: 14/15
(Power levels seem fine. Risky as [D]-type ex-era Pokémon tend to be, but nothing problematic. Cautious point docked because it seems weird to exclude Tools and not Stadiums.)
Wording: 10/10
(Good references.)
Fonts and Placement: 4/5
(Minor dock. Actually very good overall!)
Aesthetics: 3/5
(Some good work here, especially considering how rare it is to see Pokémon-ex in the faking scene. Additional points could come from some further blending mode manipulation of the art holosheet to make it more closely match the border one, and/or some fiddling with the brightness on the art — it’s rare for the Pokémon, even a [D] Pokémon-ex, to be darker/more shadowed than the background.)
Total: 44/50

CaC_07_-_Oricorio_Sensu_Style.png


I’ve seen plenty of cards with a possession-themed effect that involved attaching it to another Pokémon and affecting their attacks somehow — I’ve made my fair share myself, haha — but I think this is one of the more original takes on the mechanic I’ve seen. You’re exploring some solid design space by splicing one attack cost onto a different attack; I’d be interested to see how it would play out in an actual game.

Unfortunately, I think its uses are quite few and far between. Basically, you’re using up a turn without a damaging attack in order, in theory, to save yourself a couple Energy. The maximum amount of Energy any attack ever costs is 5, meaning that at most, you’re using that attack for 2 fewer Energy — but then you had to discard 3 Energy from Oricorio in order to use Possessive Dance in the first place. So you’re using 6 Energy (3 to use Possessive Dance, 3 to use the other attack) and two turns to pull off one attack. In 99% of circumstances, that’s gonna be a net loss.

A potential use you mention is making other cards easily splashable in [P] decks, but it runs into a similar problem, namely the turn-wasting thing. Even with an Energy-acceleration engine as reliable as Malamar FLI, it’s hard to justify taking the turn to attack with Oricorio before you get to use the other attack.

That being said, I do think it’s a neat effect. There are probably a few potential ways to balance it, and one of the easiest — even though you said you were explicitly trying not to do this — would be to make it an Ability. Alternatively, dropping the attack cost might work, or releasing it alongside a ton of support cards (which you woulda had to specify in the entry post, so eh). Point being, there’s some ways to balance it, so I think given those, it has a lot of potential.

Art-wise, it looks great! It’s a minor thing, but I really like the care you put into the shadow — it really ties the Oricorio vector into the background.

Wording errors:
- We see “attack cost of [this] attack” on cards like the UPR Rotoms, and “this attack’s cost” on cards like Tag Teams that care about having Energy “in addition to this attack’s cost”, but never just “cost of this attack”. The latter is probably the way to go in this case. [-2 points]
- My additional reference would have been Celesteela CES for the “for [this attack’s cost]” bit, but you got that anyway. Celesteela uses the passive voice, but I think the way you did it is also justifiable based on cards like Marshadow-GX.

Fonts and Placement errors:
- On point as far as I can tell.

Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(Original take on the otherwise-somewhat-common possession mechanic. Exploring some cool design space with the attack cost splicing.)
Believability/Playability: 8/15
(It’s hard for me to imagine a scenario where sacrificing an attack and changing another attack cost to [P][P][P][P][C][C] would be useful. It’s definitely a workable effect, but seems extremely niche in its current iteration.)
Wording: 8/10
(Minor wording error. I think you worded the effect admirably overall considering it’s quite unlike anything that already exists.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Omnium pass. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(Your vectoring chops are impressive as always, and the integration of the Pokémon and the background together is very neatly done. Big credit for the custom aspects of the art and blank. The last point here would come from something to put it over-the-top — holo, reverse holo, etc.)
Total: 37/50

de9jhiv-2d08477c-1e2b-483c-a13a-88832e13d7de.png


Oh, wow! You really nailed Ryo Ueda’s style here. The shading, perspective, background effects — everything’s so impeccably reminiscent of those real-life EXs. Even the holosheet and texturing on the gold outline, of all things, is perfect. The community’s reaction to this card should tell you everything you need to know, but in case it wasn’t obvious, I reckon you’ve done something really special here.

Spirit Tax is a really interesting effect — actually, I’m a bit surprised to see it; my impression’s always been that you don’t like stall cards! It’s certainly a fresh take on stall, balancing the Prize-card-manipulation effect in some creative ways, but as you mention in your notes, that means it fits best in a deck already heavily centered around disruption. Of course, that can lead to some equally heavy degeneracy if you’re not careful, so the question is, have you been careful enough with your designs here?

And yeah, I think you have. Low-HP EXs are some fascinating design space, because you can get away with all sorts of powerful effects that would never pass muster on higher-HP ones. They’re just so easy to kill and scoop up an easy two Prizes. For this card in particular, I think that’s great balancing.

And to that end, it’s also interesting what you’ve done with Final Wager, being — as you mention — an effect that takes Shedinja out of the Active Spot in a volatile way. My first thought about the card’s effects was that they seem actively anti-synergistic, since one adds Prizes and one takes them away, and I’m still a bit iffy on that, but at least I can recognize the wager component. It’s like you’re acknowledging that your strategy has to change, so you’re making one last gambit and reversing course entirely on the Prize thing. The only thing is that by the point you’re ready to use the attack, you probably already know it will succeed, eliminating some of that wager component, but eh. The flavor works well enough for me.

I want the last note here to be about the art again, because man. Absolutely stellar work there.

Wording errors:
- The first clause of Spirit Tax (basically everything before the comma) feels … unnecessarily long. I see what you’re trying to do, and you do need everything you have there in order to do it, but precedent for effects like this makes me think that a real-life version of this card would just say “If any of your Pokémon (excluding [P] Pokémon) were Knocked Out by damage from an opponent’s attack during their last turn” (ref: Bisharp STS), Prize cards taken or no Prize cards taken. I trust that you had your reasons for wanting the requirement of Prize cards taken, though, which you allude to in your notes — and again, your wording is accurate for what you wanted it to do — so no points docked for wording here. [-0 points]
- Regarding usage of “their” vs “his or her” in pre-SM eras, I’ll reiterate here what I said on Discord when you asked me about it: I’m willing to make the exception for this particular wording case, provided people clearly indicate that it’s intentional and that they know what TPCi’s convention was, because I believe that inclusivity is a valid thing to prioritize over strict accuracy. I’m trying to keep things brief here, but I’m happy to clarify further for anyone reading this if necessary. :)

Fonts and Placement errors:
- Solid.

Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(Well thought out. I think the two attacks are a little disconnected, but individually they’re both original effects with solid reasoning behind them.)
Believability/Playability: 14/15
(It’s clear that you’ve carefully considered the balancing of Spirit Tax, and it’s certainly paid off. Cautious point docked here because I think the opponent-taking-a-Prize condition for Spirit Tax isn’t necessary and just leads to convoluted wording.)
Wording: 10/10
(All good. See notes above.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Solid.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(Once again I’m sad that this category is limited to just 5 points. For what it’s worth, while I prefer the foiled-’n’-textured version, it’s cool to see the version that shows how it might appear on pkmncards-style images.)
Total: 46/50

SPOILER_NovCAC20.png


I love the creativity in designing an entirely new Pokémon! The basis of a Ghost-type inhabiting a leftover Substitute doll is brilliant — feels very Mimikyu-like in design, and yet also totally original. What does happen to Substitute dolls after the battle? I like this take on it!

That being said, I think there’s a danger in designing a card too heavily based off a Pokémon’s video-game attributes. VG battles tend to be quite tactical, with split-second decisions and spur-of-the-moment calls being made every turn, and much less of an emphasis on any sort of overarching strategy — whereas in the TCG, the reverse is true. The result is that in translating a VG moveset, you get a TCG card that’s built to do a bunch of different things, but without any clear gameplan. In this case, between Fluffy, Ghostly Return, and Poltergeist, all three effects are useful in their own way, but it’s not the sort of card that makes you itch to build an archetype around it.

Poltergeist is probably the most interesting part of the card effect-wise — it’s unfortunate that Poltergeist has an established effect in the TCG, because I think this is a much better and more flavorful interpretation of it! You could easily have gotten away with raising the cap, though; 3 for 60 on the condition of having a Tool attached and with the possibility of it being less … isn’t a very good attack, even for DPPt.

There’s also a Believability issue in that it can do different damage depending on where in the world you are — unfortunately I don’t think there’s really a way to workshop this; it’ll always be an issue as long as the Pokémon TCG exists in multiple languages. It’s neat design space from a creative perspective, though.

And aesthetically, I quite like these blanks! [P]/[C] is a nice combination in that it looks kinda like a desaturated [P] Pokémon — which in a way, Impostitute kinda is? It’s bridging the gap between inanimate objects and ghosts, and I think the blank reflects that well. I also like the grey border.

Wording errors:
- Nothing to report.

Fonts and Placement errors:
- The Poké-Body icon is aligned with the left-most Energy icon per DPPt rather than the middle one per ex-era — which seems odd, since the attack box area is ex-era in design, but fair enough, since the DPPt influence is there overall. [-0 points]
- Same for the attack damage being Futura rather than Gill Sans — correct for DPPt, incorrect for ex-era. No points docked here either, for the same reason; it’s just a little weird to see on an ex-era background. [-0 points]
- The one thing I am gonna dock for is that the margins should be bigger — that is, more space between the edge of the text and the edge of the box. In particular, on the right-hand side, the effect text should be right-aligned with the attack damage. Post-WotC, this has always been the case. [-1 point]

Creativity/Originality: 10/15
(Credit for inventing a whole new Pokémon, and Poltergeist explores some interesting design space, but ultimately the effects are pretty average and don’t relate to each other on the whole.)
Believability/Playability: 11/15
(Playability-wise, Poltergeist could afford to have a higher cap, but Fluffy and Ghostly Return are decent enough to make it playable. However, there’s a significant Believability issue with any effect pertaining to letters, for reasons discussed above.)
Wording: 10/10
(References check out.)
Fonts and Placement: 4/5
(A couple passes, but watch the margins.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(It’s unusual for a regular non-holo/non-FA/etc card to get a full score here, but hey, you make a custom spliced blank, you invent a Pokémon and render it, and it all looks good? You get 5 points.)
Total: 40/50

Spectrier_CaC.png


First things first — looking good! It’s an aesthetic combination of colors, and I like the subtle cracked ice holo over the top part.

I think your Broken Eternity blanks might be letting you down a little here, though — around that top part in particular, there’s just a lot of empty space. The bulk of Spectrier all fits into a pretty narrow band, like the art was designed too horizontally to make for an effective Full Art card. You can kinda see that in how Spectrier’s head is way off to the left, almost as far left as you can go on the blank without going off, rather than being a central focus of attention.

Part of the empty space might be down to the fact that this card — unusually for Broken Eternity — has pretty straightforward attacks. Only four lines of effect text? Unheard of! :p

Anyway, the effects are simple, but they work. Search Pokémon with Alluring Neigh, sacrifice them with Spirit Cull, synergy with incorporation of the Lost Zone as an additional mechanic, check check check. The idea of a Spectrier drawing unwary Pokémon in with Alluring Neigh and then forcing them into the otherworld is … troubling, but amusing. Nice attention to flavor.

I’m a bit worried about Alluring Neigh on its own from a balance perspective, though. We look at cards that say “search for 2 Pokémon and put them into your hand” and find a few examples, your reference of Alolan Vulpix among them. But we look for the same effect with 3 Pokémon, and find … nothing. The closest thing to it is probably Celebi SM224, but that’s a much more restricted effect, and it’s on a Pokémon that’s more easily KO’d and doesn’t have nearly as useful a second attack. Anyway, long story short, I think Alluring Neigh probably should have stuck with 2 Pokémon to be on the safe side. 3 is pushing it quite a bit.

Spirit Cull seems well-balanced, though, and I think if Alluring Neigh were just 2 Pokémon, it’d be a very well-rounded, well-balanced card overall.

Wording errors:
- On point.

Fonts and Placement errors:
- General custom-blank pass for the changes to attack text alignment you make, broadening the allotted width and such, except that it feels really weird to align the right side with the multiply sign rather than the numeral. It goes against almost 18 years of precedent. If Alluring Neigh did like 20 base damage, would that 20 get scooted over to align with the end of the text, or align with the numeral for Spirit Cull? I’m not sure there’s a correct answer, and that’s why it feels weird. So docking a cautious [-1 point] here.

Creativity/Originality: 11/15
(Straightforward effects with solid synergy and attention to flavor. Probably not the most exciting card I’ve seen from you, but not shabby either.)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(3 Pokémon is a lot.)
Wording: 10/10
(Good reference work.)
Fonts and Placement: 4/5
(Attack damage alignment.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(As noted above, with horizontally-oriented art and minimal space taken up by effect text, I think having a quarter-card’s worth of empty space above Spectrier, as well as the focal point being in the far-middle-left, is to the detriment of the card. I’m impressed by the level of technical skill that went into it, but pretty art + pretty holosheet + pretty blank isn’t always enough for a full score if the composition isn’t also on point.)
Total: 41/50

de9lh6s-2e082b42-3cf0-45cd-97b0-f52eb84cc738.png


Love these blanks! The extra-thick border gives it a Base Set kinda vibe, but it’s more streamlined than that — like what those early blanks could’ve been if WotC had stuck with the TCG for a few more years. The reverse foil also works well.

Tool-making Abilities are pretty reasonable for Aegislash; it’s the sort of gimmick the community’s applied to it more than once before. The angle of +30 HP and a new attack is interesting, but I wonder if it’s enough to warrant setting up the Stage 2. My gut feeling is probably not — it’s just too easy for your opponent to remove the Tool, and even if they don’t, 30 extra HP isn’t that big an obstacle.

The attack is cool; I like that you’re bringing back markers without making them a lot to keep track of. I also can’t remember seeing that mechanic around before, and I think it’s thematically appropriate.

I’ll say that it’s a little bit weird on this particular card — if you use Cursed Blade twice on the same Pokémon, you achieve a guaranteed KO, but … you’ve also done 200 damage, which is enough to KO a lot of things anyway. Not everything, at least not in SSH, but it’s still enough damage that you might as well say “If the Defending Pokémon already has any damage counters on it, this attack does a little more damage” and accomplish pretty much the same thing. I guess it gets around healing, so there’s that, and you also mention that you’d have other Curse-marker-dropping attacks, so it probably works overall. I just have to reach to see its usefulness in this isolated instance.

Wording errors:
- The most recent reference for an Ability like this is from the SM era, and your wording is correct for that. I believe that when an Ability like this shows up in the SSH era, it will say “discard all attached cards from this Pokémon” based on Bewear RCL and similar cards, but SSH-era wording has been a little inconsistent and so I’ll let this slide until there’s a better reference for it. [-0 points]

Fonts and Placement errors:
- Everything seems reasonable, so free pass for a custom blank. It looks like your numerals are kerned to Metric as opposed to Optical (the way the TCG has historically done it), so you might consider looking at that, but it’s not big or noticeable enough to dock for.

Creativity/Originality: 11/15
(Getting into some new design space with Curse markers.)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(Cursed Blade seems fine power-wise, but the Ability is underwhelming considering you have to set up a Stage 2 in order to use it.)
Wording: 10/10
(Seems solid, but note the “attached cards” thing above; that might change in the future.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Custom blank; everything seems reasonable.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(I like the blank, and I think the reverse holo works well. The art choice is a bit unexciting, so it doesn’t totally wow me, but it’s solid work overall.)
Total: 42/50

qmz9XfK.png


Always a fan of Steve K’s art. Something about this piece in particular works really perfectly with the SM Psychic blank, even to the extent that I think this is a stunning example of a card that achieves great things with aesthetics while having had (presumably) comparatively little work put into those aesthetics on your part.

Effect-wise, it’s simple, but elegant. It has an extremely useful Ability, and an attack that … realistically you wouldn’t ever use, but does tie into that Ability very well. Actually, that’s probably a good thing — it’s situationally useful, say if you needed an Item but didn’t have a way to get Sableye out of the Active Spot, you could use the attack to move it out of the way instead, but the Ability is so good that the attack being situational is needed to balance it. So yeah, I like where you’re at on this.

There’s not actually that much to say here. Its power level depends heavily on the format, but for most limited formats it seems hard to break without running a ton of Switch/Warp Point-like cards. And if you do that, you’re minimizing the number of cards in your deck you could devote to any game-breaking control strats or whatever. So given limited existing formats, it seems fine balance-wise.

The only concern is that they have to be real careful about what they print alongside it, both in terms of switch-y cards and in terms of viable Items to return with the Ability. You mention Solgaleo-GX and a lack of cards that enable easy repeatable switching in Expanded, but I’d be more concerned about the ever-growing pool of Items to draw from. Hammers, Lasers, Scoop Up Net, VS Seeker into degenerate Supporters — these are all cards I’d worry about having theoretically unlimited Ability-based access to. Not to mention certain ACE SPECs.

Granted, that’s a real-world problem based on the Expanded format as we know it, and you’re allowed some leeway in theorymonning. Overall, simple card, well executed. Props.

Wording errors:
- “When” should be “whenever”. Heatran-GX is a good reference, but “when” is reserved for effects that happen at a particular time, like “when you play this Pokémon from your hand onto your Bench” or Heatran’s “once during your turn” condition. If an Ability can trigger an arbitrary number of times, it should generally be “whenever”. Spikemuth is a good reference, despite being an era later than SM. [-1 point]

Fonts and Placement errors:
- On point.

Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(Can’t remember seeing anything quite like the Ability before. Like I said, simple, but elegant. Hide in Shadows is obviously an existing attack, so it’s hard to award full marks here, but I like how the card ties together overall.)
Believability/Playability: 14/15
(Cautious point docked because of what it could do with the right pool of Items.)
Wording: 9/10
(Minor distinction between “when” and “whenever”.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Nice work.)
Aesthetics: 4/5
(Art works exceedingly well for the blank.)
Total: 44/50

2nd Place: A tie between ggDerpyDerp’s Sableye ex and PMJ’s Sableye, each with 44/50 points.
1st Place: bbninjas’s Shedinja-EX, with 46/50 points.
 
Last edited:
Text-Based Results
Judge: @bbninjas

Fantastic entries this month! Most entries explored new design space - something Ghost Pokemon lend very well too - and several designs had great gameplay potential and design value overall. Shoutout to DashKing’s Chandelure V, which had a particularly cohesive design. Scores were largely let down by minor wording errors (don’t forget to check everything!), or effects that were too powerful or unplayable in practice.

~~bbninjas

AshCo:
Dusknoir - HP150 - Psychic
Stage 2- Evolves from Dusclops

Ability: Phantom Frequency
Whenever one of your opponent's Pokémon is knocked out, you may use this Ability. If you do, your opponent discards all cards attached to the Pokémon that was knocked out. Then, put that Pokémon onto your Bench. (If the Pokémon you put on your Bench this way is discarded for any reason, put that Pokémon in its owner's discard pile.)

[P][P] Spirits Await
Switch 1 of your opponent's Benched Pokémon with their Active Pokémon. Then, flip two coins. If both are heads, the new Active Pokémon is now knocked out.

Weakness: Darkness [x2] Resistance: Fighting [-20] Retreat [C][C][C]

The antenna on its head captures radio waves from the world of spirits that command it to take people there.
Ah yes, the “steal your opponent’s Pokemon” effect was bound to pop up in a Ghost-themed contest!

Phantom Frequency is interesting, but I think it misses the mark on design space. You simply can’t be putting your opponent’s cards on your side of the board as there’s no way of telling who’s card belongs to who should you both be running the same cards (e.g. Dedenne-GX). I’d have given solid points if you managed to solve this problem in your design. Even if you had the Pokemon be revived back to your opponent’s Bench would be cool, and have some interesting strategic opportunities. Spirits Await is an interesting combination of two existing effects, but lacks synergy with the Ability.

Spirits Awake checks out balance wise. Ghosts have a -30 Fighting resist in SSH-era. The Ability isn’t particularly believable as it mixes up the two player’s card, and that’s a no-go in the PTCG.

Wording errors:
- “one” should be “1”, “two” should be “2”. (-1.5pt)
- “knocked out” should be Knocked Out. x2 (-1.5pts)
- “whenever” should be “when” (-1pt, see Alcremie VIV). Whenever is usually reserved for effects that activate automatically.
- Precedent says the Knock Out Ability effect should only activate if the Pokemon is Knocked Out by damage from an attack. (-2pts)
- Typhlosion is the wrong wording for the Ability. See Alcremie; it should be “...Knocked Out, you may put it…”. (-1pts).
- The “your opponent discards all cards attached to the Pokémon that was knocked out. Then, put that Pokémon onto your Bench.” clause should be “...you may put it onto your Bench instead of the discard pile. (Discard all cards attached to it.)” (-3pts). (See Aegislash UNM).

With all those changes, the Ability should read:

When 1 of your opponent's Pokémon is Knocked Out by damage from an attack, you may put it onto your Bench instead of the discard pile. (Discard all cards attached to it.) (If the Pokémon you put on your Bench this way is discarded for any reason, put that Pokémon in its owner's discard pile.)

Creativity/Originality: 14/20
(Nice flavour, but lacking synergy. Ability is close to receiving a high score, but not quite there.)
Wording: 5/15
(Major wording errors )
Believability/Playability: 11/15
(Wrong resist, Ability is a no-go.)
Total: 30/50

47bennyg:
Drifblim – Psychic – HP110
Stage 1 – Evolves from Drifloon

Ability: Untether
During your turn, you may retreat your Active Pokémon as many times as you like.

[P][P] Spirits of the Departed 10+
This attack does 60 more damage for each of your Benched Pokémon that was in the Active Spot this turn.

Weakness: Darkness (x2)
Resistance: Fighting (-30)
Retreat: [C]

Some say this Pokémon is a collection of souls burdened with regrets, silently drifting through the dusk.
Nice exploration of design space here. Untether is a new take on the Rush In / Float Stone combo and is elegantly simple. An unlimited retreat cap opens the door for plenty of new potential strategies (especially with Abilities that function only when the Pokemon is in the Active Spot), netting you a solid 16/20 for creativity in this section. I also like how you leaned into the “retreat” theme in both effects; Spirits of the Departed is a nice escalation of classic attacks that do bonus damage if the Pokemon moved from the Bench, and obviously synergises well with the Ability. The Untether Ability is a bit too easy to use, as a player currently can set up a Drifblim and forget about it for the rest of the game. I would’ve liked to see a limiter or activation requirement on the Ability so that it encouraged more skillful play.

HP / WRR stats check out. Spirits of the Departed is too powerful. The game strategy is simple: bench 4 Pokemon with no retreat cost, retreat through those Pokemon and dish out an automatic 250 damage for [P][P]. Easy KO.

I can’t think of any effects that would break Untether, but a cautious -1pt because the Ability is very splashable and your opponent has no way to counter it.

Wording errors:
- “as many times as you like” should be “as often as you like”. (-1pt)
- The “as often as you like” clause goes before “during your turn” in ShSw-era. (see Frosmoth SSH). (-2pts)

Creativity/Originality: 16/20
(New design space, good gameplay potential, but Ability is not particularly skill-testing.)
Wording: 12/15
(Some errors in the Ability.)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(Attack is OP, Ability is difficult to counter.)
Total: 40/50

Ethan R:
Pokémon – Type [P] – HP 160
Stage 2 – Evolves from Haunter

Ability: Shadow Tag
Ability: Before you select your active Pokémon, if this Pokémon is in your hand when you are setting up to play, you may reveal it and draw three cards. You can't use more than one Shadow Tag Ability per game.

[P][C][C] Attack: Dream Eater 100+
You may discard up to 3 cards from your hand. For each card you discarded in this way, this attack does 60 more damage.

Weakness: Dark (x2)
Resistance: Fighting (-30)
Retreat: 0
Pokedex Entry: On the night of a full moon, if shadows move on their own and laugh, it must be Gengar’s doing.
A Pokemon card titled “Pokémon”! That’s a first.

In all seriousness, nice exploration of pre-game design space. I like how Shadow Tag is usable before setting up, yet isn’t the stock standard “play as a Basic” effect like in Manectric and Talonflame. Additional pre-game draw is particularly interesting as it boosts the chances of you starting with your preferred Turn 1 Pokemon. Interesting potential. That’d usually warrant a 16/20 score for creativity, but the lack of new ideas in the Dream Eater attack and the lack of unique flavour (Shadow Tag / Dream Eater are existing attacks / Abilities) lets you down.

HP is much too high for a SSH-era Gengar (aim for 110-130). Dream Eater attacks already exist in the TCG and don’t do what your effect does, so I’ll dock a point for Believability there.

Wording errors:
- The “if this Pokémon is in your hand when you are setting up to play” clause would go before the “before you select your…” clause. (-2pts)
- “active Pokemon” should be “Active Pokemon”. (-1pt)
- “three” should be “3” and “one” should be “1”. (-1.5pts)
- “per game” should be “each turn” in SSH-era. (-1pt)
- “before you select your Active Pokémon” should be “before you put a Pokémon face-down as your Active Pokémon”. (-2pts) (see: Shedinja VIV)
- Doesn’t say what should happen after Gengar is revealed during set-up. (-3pts)

Creativity/Originality: 14.5/20
(Interesting Ability, standard attack.)
Wording: 4.5/15
(Several major errors. Make sure you check each clause for wording before you submit!)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(Missing the cardname, HP too high, Dream Eater attack already exists.)
Total: 31/50

Solid score for your first time Ethan! Nail that wording and you’ll be a top contender. :)

DashKing:
Chandelure V
Type: [P] – HP 210
Basic Pokémon (Pokémon V)
V Rule: When your Pokémon V is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.

Ability: Soul Transport
Once during your turn, if this Pokémon is your Active Pokémon, put a Pokémon from your discard pile onto your Bench and switch this Pokémon with 1 of your Benched Pokémon. Put 4 damage counters on this Pokémon and the new Active Pokémon.

[P] Thousand-Tongued Flame 10+
Move any number of damage counters on your Pokémon to this Pokémon. This attack does 10 damage more for each damage counter moved this way to this Pokémon. If this Pokémon is Knocked Out as a result of this attack, your opponent takes 1 more prize card.

Weakness: [D] X 2
Resistance: [F] -30

Retreat: [C][C]
Fun design space exploration and great flavour. Soul Transport is a classic revive-and-switch which you don’t see much in the game, but you do see it in faker’s cards. Thousand-Tongued Flame, on the other hand, is the star of this card. Great name, and absorbing all the damage counters and then dishing out massive amounts of damage leads to interesting gameplay and deck building. As the attack leaves Chandelure vulnerable to revenge KOs, players must play strategically to trade off prizes at the right moment. Plus, like how the drawback of the Switch actually fuels Chandelure’s attacks - that’s some nice synergy work.

Basically you’ve created your own archetype here! Top notch design.

The design needs a little polish though to stop it from being broken. Chandelure V is already going to dominate the game - so I’m not a fan of how you can switch Chandelure with any Pokemon, not only the revived one. It’s essentially a free switch, and with cards like Unown AOR, you can discard the Pokemon you revived once you switched to free up bench spots. (Yes, I know, old-school reference but you get the idea). Otherwise, it looks pretty good - Chandelure can’t 1-hit KO VMAXs by natural limitation of its max HP (assuming no HP boosters of course), although the option is always there should you want to trade 3 Prizes for 3. Very cool.

Wording errors:
- “is your Active Pokemon” should be “in the Active Spot” in SSH-era. (-1pt).
- “moved this way” should be “you moved in this way”. (-1.5pts) (See: Froslass UNM).
- “as a result of” should be “by damage from”. (-1pt)
- “prize” should be “Prize”. (-1pt)
- “on your Pokemon to” should be “on your Benched Pokemon to”. (see Alolan Golem). (-1pt)
- “damage more” is “more damage”. (-1pt)
- “moved this way to this Pokémon” should be “you moved in this way”. (-1pt)

Creativity/Originality: 19/20
(You’ve not just created a card - you’ve created a new archetype! Great flavour, synergy and plenty of gameplay potential.)
Wording: 7.5/15
(Many minor errors.)
Believability/Playability: 14/15
(Cautious point dock for the Ability.)
Total: 40.5/50

Falling Skies:
Froslass HP: 90 [W]
361.png
Stage 1: Evolves from Snorunt
froslass.png

NO. 478 Snow Land Pokémon HT: 4’03” WT: 58.6 lbs.
Ability: Eternal Wandering
As long as this Pokémon is in the Active Spot, your opponent cannot shuffle cards from their discard pile back into their deck, or add cards from their discard pile to their hand.

[W][W] Eternal Grief
Shuffle this Pokémon and all cards attached to it into your deck. At the end of your opponent’s next turn, this attack does 100 damage to that Pokémon.

Weakness: [M] x2 Resistance: Retreat: [C]

After a woman met her end on a snowy mountain, her regrets lingered on. From them, this Pokémon was born. Its favorite food is frozen souls.
Great to have you Falling Skies! :)

Eternal Wandering is nice. I’ve seen a number of variations of this effect in my time, and have even made one of my own, and this design is pretty solid. Eternal Grief has some nice synergy with the Ability; Hit and Run effects are a great companion for any Ability that requires the Pokemon to remain in the Active Spot. I like how you’re exploring the “at the end of your opponent’s next turn” design space, which has gone surprisingly underused (they mostly just auto-KOs). I would’ve liked to see you dive deeper into the design space, but I’ll settle with delayed damage for a solid 16/20 score. Flavour is great by the way!

Eternal Wandering is fine balance-wise as any kind of Gust effect disables it. Eternal Grief is also good, though its utility lies primarily in the self-shuffle effect, as your opponent can simply switch out of the Active Spot and avoid taking any of the delayed damage. Everything else looks good.

Wording errors:
- “add” should be “put”. -1pt
- “that Pokemon” should be “the Defending Pokemon”. -1pt
- Otherwise very elegant way of wording an entirely new effect.

Creativity/Originality: 16/20
(Great flavour, great synergy, explores design space.)
Wording: 13/15
(Minor errors.)
Believability/Playability: 15/15
(Looks good.)
Total: 44/50

Stalltar:
Banette - Psychic - 100HP
Stage 1 - Evolves from Shuppet

Ability: Pulling strings
When you play this pokémon to evolve 1 of your pokemon during your turn, you may search your opponent’s deck for up to 2 energy cards and attach them to your opponent’s pokémon in any way you like. You cannot use more than one Pulling strings ability during your turn.

[P] Puppet master 30
You may search your opponent’s deck for a supporter and discard it. When your opponent’s turn starts and after they drew a card, your opponent must use the effect of the supporter card you discarded as their supporter for the turn.

Weakness: Dark (x2)
Resistance: Fighting (-30)
Retreat cost: [C] [C]
Pokédex information: Resentment at being cast off made it spring into being. Some say that treating it well will satisfy it, and it will once more become a stuffed toy.
Design space is looking great! I’m always a fan of effects that manipulate the opponent’s side in a way that is usually advantageous to them, and Pulling Strings fits the bill. Flavour works great, and there’s some very interesting playability potential with Pulling Strings synergising with X-Ball style effects that scale on Energy attached. Puppet Master is even more fascinating - it’s reminiscent of Hypno FLF, one of my all-time favourite cards, with slightly more versatility and plenty of opportunity for interesting plans. Imagine using Puppet Master to force your opponent into playing an N if you find yourself in a dead-draw. Alternatively, use Professor’s Research to force your opponent to mill away your hand! There is some minor synergy in that both Pulling String and Puppet Master could function as pseudo-mill in mill decks, but overall it would’ve been nice to have seen a mechanical synergy between the Ability and attack. Ah well. Great use of flavour and design space overall, for a solid 18/20 in creativity.

I’m going to dock a -3pt for balancing here. A potential strategy is to use Pulling Strings to drop Energy from your opponent’s deck onto useless Pokemon on the field. Five turns later is 10 Energy wasted - and that’s probably enough to leave your opponent with no usable Energy in the deck. It puts your opponent on a 6-turn timer (longer if you manage to stall), and with Hammers running rampant, you have an energy denial deck that is far too effective.

Wording errors:
- “strings”, “master”, “supporter”, “pokemon”, “energy”, “ability” should be capitalised. x11 (-6pts)
- “one” should be “1”. (-1pt)
- “cannot” should be “can’t”. (-1pt)
- “Ability during your turn” should be “Ability each turn”. (-1pt)
- “deck for a Supporter” should be “deck for a Supporter card”. (-1pt)
- “drew” should be “draw”. (-1pt)
- “when your opponent’s turn starts” should be “At the beginning of your opponent’s turn” (-2pts).

Creativity/Originality: 18/20
(Great flavour and very unique design space, but could be more synergy.)
Wording: 2/15
(Many minor errors. The details count!)
Believability/Playability: 12/15
(You can’t lose if your opponent can’t attack. *thinks hard*)
Total: 32/50

A solid entry Stalltar, at least outside of the wording department. Just watch those minor errors and you’ll be a force to contend with.

FireLizard:
Dragapult HP 160 [P]
Stage 2:Evolves from Drakloak

[Ability] Ghost Appearance
Once during your turn, if this Pokémon is the last card in your hand,
you may play it onto your Bench.If you do,put 2 damage counters on the Active Pokèmon.

[C] Call for Support
Search up to 2 Dreepy and up to 2 Drakloak,reveal them, and put them into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.
[P][P] Dragon Barricade 40x
Discard any number of Dreepy and Drakloak from your hand.This
attack does 40 damage for each card you discarded.

W:[D]x2 R:[F]-20
RC:None

"When it isn’t battling, it keeps Dreepy in the holes on its horns. Once a fight starts, it launches the Dreepy like supersonic missiles."
Solid design FireLizard. Call for Support has clear synergy with Dragon Barricade, and Dragon Barricade is a fun and playable scale attack. Flavour is nice too. Ghost Appearance explores some new design space, but is very reminiscent of Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick. I don’t quite understand the “put 2 damage counters on the Active Pokemon” effect and how it relates to anything else on the card; especially keeping in mind that the player is left with a hand of 0 after using Ghost Appearance. Nice overall synergy nets you a solid 15/20 - more exploration of new design space, or a creative way of solving the hand-of-zero problem outlined earlier would’ve netted you more points in this category.

As far as balance goes, this looks great. While the Call of Support / Dragon Barricade combo dishes out large amounts of damage turn 2 and 3, this amount of damage is not sustainable in the long term - those Drakloak and Dreepy are discarded, after all. It means you have to run a dedicated discard recovery support engine, which is cool. I also like how you can only pull off 2 attacks for 160+ damage on Pokemon V before you need to start recovering Pokemon - it means you can simply sweep with Dragapult. Good design overall.

Resistance should be -30 in the SSH-era.

Wording errors:
- On who’s Active Pokemon do we place damage counters? (-2pts)
- “Search up to 2 Dreepy” should be “Search your deck for up to 2 Dreepy”. (-2pts)
- “you discarded” should be “you discarded in this way”. (-1pt)

Creativity/Originality: 15/20
(Great synergy and flavour, but lacks new exploration of design space.)
Wording: 10/15
(Several omissions.)
Believability/Playability: 14/15
(Well-balanced, but resistance should be -30.)
Total: 39/50

3rd Place: 47bennyg’s Drifblim, with 40/50 points.
2nd Place: DashKing’s Chandelure V, with 40.5/50 points.
1st Place: Falling Skie’s Froslass with 44/50 points
 
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