Synergizes with: Infernape SF
Kicking things off with a cross-era entry! It does a great job of being an anachronism (a Fairy(?)-type Darkrai in Generation III) without looking in any way out of place. The art draws the eye in an excellent way, from the brighter red of Darkrai’s neck crown thing down its arm to the glowing sparkles in the lower right. The soft pink glow really sells the Delta typing, and I’m intrigued as ever by the “oldening” of the blank I’ve come to expect from your cards. I seem to recall you saying it’s some combination of a noise filter and a blur? Whatever you’re doing, it’s working — the card looks just like an old scan.
Somehow, I
also remember you saying you build your cards piece by piece, Frankenstein-ing together a blank from bits of other blanks rather than trying to create elements like textures from scratch. If that’s true, I can hardly begin to understand where you started with this one — we haven’t had any ex-era [M]/[C] dual types before! It’s truly incredible; there’s something in my brain that just refuses to believe this card is a fake.
As far as the theme goes, the synergy is there, though it’s a little light. An obvious problem keeping Infernape from being good is that this super powerful effect only activates 50% of the time, so boom, give the player a second shot at it. It’s a natural place to go if you’re trying to make Infernape better.
But while it mitigates the downside of the coin flip effect, it doesn’t address the underlying issue with it — that luck-based effects are very hard to do well with, especially in the ex era and DPPt. A 75% chance to accelerate 4 Energy is pretty good, but the remaining 25% of the time, you’re still left with nothing. An effect that “fixes” the coin flip, like
Will CEC, potentially with additional costs to use, might be the more gameplay-oriented way to tackle this — that way, the player is more in control, even if they have to meet somewhat steeper costs to get there. That’s generally preferable to trusting things to the roll of the dice.
Another minor note: I’d like to see an attack that takes full advantage of Infernape’s Poké-Power! This one does 40 for (e.g.) [R], but you could take advantage of that in
any deck that plays Basic Energy. Infernape’s big attack is cool in its own right, but if you’re going to the trouble of setting it up with Darkrai for support, you would probably hope for other strong options, too.
You’ve clearly put thought into the effects, and I can totally sympathize with not having a huge Pokémon TCG gameplay background to draw on. Fortunately, many of our members are only too willing to help out! It’s great to have a community you can draw on for help with effects and such as needed — brainstorming, fine-tuning, and all the rest. It’s also great that you’re already showing so much attention to detail (a Fairy-type Delta Species Darkrai?) — I’m super excited to see what you do with it in the future.
Wording errors:
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On ex-era dual-type cards, the first type listed in the “Delta Species rule” is the type corresponding to the symbol you see in the top right. So for the Energy symbol on this card, it should properly say “This Pokémon is both [C][M] type.” [-1 point] Edit: PMJ has brought to my attention that you may have meant the card to be [M][C] type, which would preserve the order of types used in attack costs, modern sets, etc. The exact pattern of the texturing would be the giveaway here, but it seems your texturing doesn't correspond 1:1 with real Delta Species cards, so I can't use that as a guide. What I'll say here is that the type symbol and dual-type rule text should match, so I must still dock the [-1 point], but it would be up to you which one you change.
Fonts and Placement errors:
- ex-era names should be in Gill Sans Bold Condensed — compare the “Darkrai” here to, for example,
Dark Gyarados. [-0.5 point]
- This era could be all over the place in terms of text width and kerning, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the attack text squished horizontally this much. It’s about right for DPPt, but I can’t make it work for the ex era. [-0.5 point]
Creativity/Originality: 12/15
(You’ve clearly thought hard about the direction for this card: from composing the art to the “Fairy-type Darkrai scares things away and then attacks them with rainbows” part of your entry notes, the whole thing screams intentional design. I could wish for greater attention to the theme, though — this way, it feels a little like you ticked a box by giving Infernape a second coin flip and then went off in a different direction entirely for the attack.)
Believability/Playability: 9/15
(It’s definitely on the strong side. 40 for [R] is quite powerful for a Basic Pokémon in this era, and devolving any of your opponent’s Pokémon as an on-drop effect can be devastating in a format with Rare Candy. These effects can probably be fine-tuned without overhauling them completely — capping the attack at 20 or 30 would be appropriate, and I think limiting Cosmic Fear to the opponent’s Active Pokémon would be a good fix there. As a more minor note, I also find it hard to see this card without [P] Resistance, since virtually all ex-era [D] Pokémon had it.)
Wording: 9/10
(Minor dual-type error.)
Fonts and Placement: 4/5
(A couple minor errors.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(Man oh man, where to begin? I think it suffices to say that I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that this is a custom card!)
Total: 39/50
’s Glalie ex, with 43/50 points.
