TCG Fakes Spoonology — An Image-Based TCG Set I'm Apparently Making. 44.6% Complete.

[Heavenly Spoon]

Okay, it's been almost a year. I guess that means it's time to start messing up this lovely project with some truly horrible cards. Presenting:

Spoiler: Chansey

Okay, I kind of set out to make that card as ugly as possible. I do have some other new cards to show, though. I've added maybe 2 cards in the many months since the last updated, and then yesterday made 3 new ones. I have the information but not the art ready for around 40 more cards, though, so it's not like I've been doing absolutely nothing. I've also made some changes to existing cards. Most aren't worth pointing out (like adding Water resistance to the Paras lines), but I'll point out the more significant ones as well.

The other new cards:

Spoiler: Drowzee #1

I still can't draw backgrouds... Dream Harvest requires a bit of support, but it seemed pretty funny to me. The idea of turning a temporary condition into a permanent one seemed novel enough.

Spoiler: Drowzee #2

I drew this thing in like a minutes, recognised it for what it is: pure, unadulterated perfection, and threw it onto this card. Long-Distance Hypnosis is of course the same power as that of the Drowzee from Team Rocket. Combined with Hypno/Dolls strategy it's quite good (if a bit redundant), and it does have some other synergies. Amnesia seemed fitting based on the art
I'm normally not a fan of Drowzee as a Pokémon (and consider it a necessary evil if I wanted to include Hypno, which of course I wanted to do), but I kind of like how these 2 ended up.

The cards I hadn't made an update for yet:

Spoiler: Haunter

My last(?) Create-a-Card entry. This might be the most innocuously powerful card in the set. It helps turn your deck into a bunch of cards you really want, makes sure your win conditions don't end up in your discard pile, helps protect Rhydon against itself, and so much more. Definitely one of the more versatile cards in the set.

Spoiler: Igglybuff

The very first Baby Pokémon of the set! You may notice I've changed the Baby rule to something quite a bit less random. It's still harder to take down a Baby than your average Pokémon, but Baby stalling at least won't be a thing now. The power is based on Neo Discovery Igglybuff. I wanted to add useful but not broken Babies, and I hope this qualifies.

And the cards with significant changes:

Spoiler: Gambler

I originally had this card as just the old Juggler effect. However, this seemed way too random and swingy. I somehow came up with this effect, and it seemed quite neat. I'm not sure what strategy is best here, since there's still a lot of gambling involved. I imagine that, if you're losing, you'll just move everything to 1 pile and hope for a tails. In that case, casting Gambler might not be such a good idea. I'd love to see how this card actually plays out. It sure still feels like a Gamble.

Spoiler: Bill's Computer

This card is still an insanely good draw card, and probably a 4-of in most decks. It used to require you to shuffle a card back for 2 cards. This version is a lot more interesting strategically, and with a shuffle effect it effectively becomes straight up Bill.

Other minor changes:
Hiker: It now draws you one less card at the start, but technically allows you to draw your entire deck now. Might be broken now, I don't know.
Researcher: Not as good a Roseanne's Research now, but probably still very playable.
Scientist: From 7 down to 6, probably still way too good.
Rhydon: Now only discards cards from your deck. It would've been way too annoying otherwise, I suspect.
Youngster: Lowered to 50HP for flavour reasons.

That's it! Hopefully I'll have a few more updates somewhat sooner than last time. (Maybe in like, 5 months or so this time.)

 

[Athena]

It's been so long since you've started judging that I feel like it's been ages since I've actually seen you make a card of your own! I love the Youngster art.

 

[Zygarde]

I just took a look at Spoonology after a long time (on your album, the images on the thread are not working) and boy, your artwork and spoilers are as amazing as I remembered. My favorites are your Supporter cards. Love how you use trainer classes instead of specific trainers, your flavour reasoning for each one, the fact that you broke gender stereotypes and, again, the artwork. Also, adding commentary to cards is something everyone should do. Hoping to see more of it!

 

[Heavenly Spoon]

Thanks a lot!

(Almost all of) the links aren't working because I changed the Energy symbols and fixed some alignment issues and whatnot. I've also changed the Energy symbols when used in text from the black ones used in later sets to the symbol itself like it was done in the e-series. I've been meaning to update the first post and post another update log but I haven't been able to find the time. I'm still working on it, but judging CaC is taking up a lot of my TCG-faking-related time.

I guess I can post an update log now. I'm too lazy to fix the first post, though.

Spoiler: What's new

Big card since it's actually 2 cards (facing different directions so the thicker border is never in the middle). I liked the Legend Pokémon from HGSS since they were one of the few downside-up-front mechanics (being a Pokémon-EX is only a downside when it gets KO'ed, being, say, a Lv.X is a downside up front, since it's harder to get into play). I was always saddened they switched to a 2-Pokémon-per-card design soon after introducing them, which is both a flavour fail and completely beats the point.

This also fixes the problem with Legendary Pokémon in the TCG, which usually end up either being weird-but-still-easy-to-play basics or Pokémon-EX (which again I think is a bad mechanic). I also wanted to have the legendary birds be legendary again. Since I'm only using the first 2 generations I don't have to deal with the flood of legendary Pokémon introduced in the later generations, which allows for these cool birds to shine once more. These were actually legendary back in the day: you didn't know they existed, they were hard to find, and it was both exciting and challenging when you did. They weren't spoon-fed (nothing against spoons, obviously) to you like a lot of the current legendary Pokémon.

The art uses the old Red and Blue Articuno art, because it looked funny enough. The card itself uses a lot of the Articuno tropes, mainly blizzard-type effects and freezing. Great Winter is the main pull with this card. It's hard to play, but it has an immediate and very noticeable impact. As with the other 2 birds (for which I still have to do the art, so you can't see them yet), I'm cheating on real-estate here by combining 2 different bodies into 1. It might be too strong, I'm not sure, but hey, it's legendary, it should be impressive. If you combine this set with the regular e-card sets, you do get access to both Oracle and Super Scoop Up, which might be problematic...

I came up with the idea of a Supporter which returns to your hand and had to fit it into the set somehow. I cut a Supporter I had in the design file (can't recall which) and added this as a common Supporter (which might be a bad idea since this is undoubtably a bomb at any kind of sealed event). I have no idea how good this is. It allows you to run a very low Supporter count, but then you'd run into trouble if you can't find it. It's also worse than essentially every other supporter, so in a deck with a lot of Supporters, where you'd probably be able to play 1 each turn anyway, it's probably pretty bad. I'd expect it to show up as a 1- or 2-of in slower decks which lack a draw engine of sorts. I honestly don't know, though. I'm usually pretty good at judging power level, but I'd to actually play with it to figure this one out.
Also, yes, I think I'm making some sort of dementia joke here. I was looking for a Trainer class which would fit the design, and Old Man was all I could come up with...

This is basically the Professor Birch/Bianca effect, but I like having it in the set so here it is. Add whatever flavour of helping the poor or whatever you'd like.

And a straight-up reprint.

I think that's it for new stuff. I have a lot of cards which only need art at this point, so once I'm in an artistic mood I might be able to post another update.