That Distorted Draw Ability is completely left field, and I’m now wanting to steal it for one of my own cards! Rendering the drawn Prize card useless isn’t overpowered, since your opponent getting closer to winning is enough of a reward. It can take away that momentum typically achieved by gaining more resources, which is a rather powerful element of Prize cards, but it’s not enough to be directly game-changing. The use of the Lost Zone is very elegant in maintaining that balance.
I also like how there’s some slight synergy in Impale - it can keep your opponent from using stall tactics to dance around the Ability with Lysandre-esque effects, forcing your opponent to KO Giratina (as to avoid being KO’d on the second Impale themselves) and trigger the Ability. There’s also some synergy, which probably was not intended, in the attack cost sizes. Because your opponent would prefer to KO a Pokemon that isn’t Giratina-GX, they might leave that Giratina-GX that you’re in the progress of setting up alone on your Bench, making the attack costs more viable.
TCPi would never have an attack with the word “Damnation” in its name - they’re too kid-friendly for that.
A few higher skill level aesthetics stuff: the Giratina artwork looks pale and a bit like clay. That’s partially due to the model itself (which you can’t do much about), but you can increase contrast (and perhaps saturation) and decrease the lightness to make Giratina pop more, and fit more in with the darker background. I also see that you’ve modelled Giratina yourself; having more dynamic lighting (that is, pretty much more shadows) will really further the card.
Wording errors:
- “Knocked Out by an opponent’s attack” should be “Knocked Out by damage from an opponent’s attack”. (-1pt)
- In the SM-era, when your opponent’s Pokemon is being inflicted by a Special Condition, that Pokemon is referred to as “Your opponent’s Active Pokemon”. (I believe this is to prevent you from applying a Special Condition to a Benched Pokemon in the case you could attack the Bench.). (-1pts)
- “...is Burned, Paralyzed…” should be “is now Burned, Paralyzed…”. (-1pt)
- The Distorted Draw effect doesn’t have any reliable references for the Prize card related stuff, although I know that “as a result of Knocking Out this Pokemon” would be written as “in this way” instead. (-1pt)
Fonts and Placement errors:
- The Ability and attack fonts, and the 200 in “HP 200” should be about one more point in font size. (-1.5pts)
- The “HP” font shouldn’t be the bold version of the font (it should be either condensed or medium if I recall correctly). (-1pt)
- “Giratina-GX” should be a couple more pixels over to the right. (-1pt)
- The space between the attack cost Energy orbs should be increased by a pixel. (-0.5pts)
- The attack names and effect text, and the Energy orbs, should begin about 5 more pixels to the left and a whole numeral more to the right. (-1pt)
- The illustration text and the set symbol text should each be a few more pixels downwards, and have more of a gap between them. (-1pt)
- The Weakness, Resistance and Retreat orbs and information should each be at least 5 more pixels to the right. (-1pt)
- The “Eternal Damnation GX” text and the “100” damage should be aligned relative to each other just as the other attack names and damage were. (-0.5pts)
- The lines for the effect of Distorted Draw is not evenly spaced (especially the last two lines). (-1pt)
- The Weakness, Resistance and Retreat orbs are quite a few pixels too large. (-1pt)
Creativity/Originality: 14/15
(Very out-of-the-box, great flavour and synergy.)
Wording: 11/15
(A few overlooked minor errors.)
Fonts and Placement: 0.5/10
(Quite the number of placement errors.)
Believability/Playability: 4/5
(Perfectly balanced, but the use of “damn” is unbelievable.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(Looks convincing enough.)
Total: 34.5/50
), link to the original piece here.
