Contest March 2024 CaC: Kalos Pokédex (Stay Tuned for Results!)
- Thread starter Jabberwock
- Start date
Art by mcgmark!
Gogoat – [G] – HP100
Stage 1 – Evolves from Skiddo
NO. 0673 Mount Pokémon HT: 5’7” WT: 200.6 lbs.
[G] Scout Ahead
Draw cards until you have 6 cards in your hand. If you drew any cards that evolve from your Pokémon, you may put them onto those Pokémon to evolve them. If you drew any basic [G] Energy cards in this way, you may attach them to your Pokémon in any way you like.
[G][C][C] Bright Horns 110
If you put a Basic Pokémon from your hand onto your Bench during this turn, this attack costs [C][C] less.
Weakness: Fire (x2)
Resistance:
Retreat: [C] [C]
It was raised in a forest under the care of a stark white tree. It's traveled many miles, but it always comes home.
Stage 1 – Evolves from Skiddo
NO. 0673 Mount Pokémon HT: 5’7” WT: 200.6 lbs.
[G] Scout Ahead
Draw cards until you have 6 cards in your hand. If you drew any cards that evolve from your Pokémon, you may put them onto those Pokémon to evolve them. If you drew any basic [G] Energy cards in this way, you may attach them to your Pokémon in any way you like.
[G][C][C] Bright Horns 110
If you put a Basic Pokémon from your hand onto your Bench during this turn, this attack costs [C][C] less.
Weakness: Fire (x2)
Resistance:
Retreat: [C] [C]
It was raised in a forest under the care of a stark white tree. It's traveled many miles, but it always comes home.
I wanted to challenge myself to make a support card with 2 attacks this CaC, and when I saw this amazing art of Gogoat, I knew I'd found the Pokémon I wanted to make for my image fake! I chose to make this card in Omnium because I love how Omnium full-arts look - the transparent borders are just so tasty. Gogoat doesn't really have much of an identity in the TCG - there aren't any cards with notable effects, and it feels more like padding than anything made with the intent to be used competitively. My solution to give it a support effect was to pull from a number of support effects, namely Reuniclus TEF, Gardenia, Vileplume 151, and Cleffa OBF to help accelerate high-Energy attack costs and get out the numerous Stage 1 and 2 ex cards (Meowscarada, Venusaur, and Torterra come to mind). The second attack is supposed to shine when you're setting up to play, too - the almost-free attack whenever you play a basic lets you take prizes before your opponent can finish their setup, though it won't do much once they've got their big-HP ex mon out.
This card is meant to have some lore to it, actually! The Gogoat on this card is meant to have grown up under the Xerneas tree, so it has a lot of ties to it. Its whole theme is growth, energy, and life - it evolves your pokemon like Xerneas in Super PMD, it gets stronger when new Pokémon are played (as if they were born), and its second attack has the same name as Xerneas Prism Star! I'm not sure the theme comes through very well, but it tickles my brain and makes me happy!
This card is meant to have some lore to it, actually! The Gogoat on this card is meant to have grown up under the Xerneas tree, so it has a lot of ties to it. Its whole theme is growth, energy, and life - it evolves your pokemon like Xerneas in Super PMD, it gets stronger when new Pokémon are played (as if they were born), and its second attack has the same name as Xerneas Prism Star! I'm not sure the theme comes through very well, but it tickles my brain and makes me happy!
Vivillon ex – [C] – HP270
Stage 2 – Evolves from Spewpa
Ability: A Piece of Home
You may attach a Stadium card to this Pokémon as a Pokémon Tool. Use the effect of that Stadium as the effect of this Ability. If Vivillon ex loses this Ability, discard any Stadium cards attached to it.
[C][C] Bluster Blow 130
You may discard a Stadium in play. If this Pokémon has a Stadium attached, you may play it.
Weakness: Lightning (x2)
Resistance: Fighting (-20)
Retreat: -
Pokémon ex rule: When your Pokémon ex is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.
Stage 2 – Evolves from Spewpa
Ability: A Piece of Home
You may attach a Stadium card to this Pokémon as a Pokémon Tool. Use the effect of that Stadium as the effect of this Ability. If Vivillon ex loses this Ability, discard any Stadium cards attached to it.
[C][C] Bluster Blow 130
You may discard a Stadium in play. If this Pokémon has a Stadium attached, you may play it.
Weakness: Lightning (x2)
Resistance: Fighting (-20)
Retreat: -
Pokémon ex rule: When your Pokémon ex is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.
Vivillon is such an interesting Pokémon with its gimmick of differing scales depending on where it's caught, and I feel like it doesn't get nearly enough love in the TCG or the games. It feels like such a quintessential Kalos mon, and I really wanted to redeem it. Instead of playing off of the existing identity that Vivillon has in the TCG (which feels a little vague, really, especially since it doesn't have that many cards), I decided to design my effect based on its different patterns. Its ability lets you attach a Stadium card to Vivillon like a Tool, and as long as Vivillon keeps its Ability, it'll provide the effect of the Stadium. This basically lets you play a second Stadium that's much harder to remove from play! This is balanced by Vivillon being a Stage 2 and a 2-prizer with relatively little HP for what it is - you can stack Stadiums with multiple Vivillon, but then you give up bench space for a 2-prizer that can be Bossed out and killed pretty easily. The attack is kind of a quick utility that you won't use very often - you can replace the Stadium in play with the one Vivillon has attached to it so if it survives the turn, you can replace the Stadium on it.
Thematically, this card is supposed to represent how Vivillon come from different places and change based on their environments - each Vivillon ex can do something different because it was raised in the environment of the Stadium attached to it! In a region with as many varying environments as Kalos and a theme of beauty, a colorful Pokémon representing different places seemed to carry the theme this CaC well.
Thematically, this card is supposed to represent how Vivillon come from different places and change based on their environments - each Vivillon ex can do something different because it was raised in the environment of the Stadium attached to it! In a region with as many varying environments as Kalos and a theme of beauty, a colorful Pokémon representing different places seemed to carry the theme this CaC well.
I feel like she's a bit scuffed. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with how this came out, but I think more work could've been done with the holosheet & keeping coherency on the card. But alas, this is my first SV fake, and my first time working with ex blanks, so I don't have the infrastructure of my several years of SM faking PSDs behind it. In addition to all of that, this is the first time I've worked on a big fake like this without having an in-person card to reference, so I mostly had to run by online pics. The effects were very fun to work with though! Next time I am hoping to get a more true-to-SV form fake... but as it stood, I purchased the pack from asche this morning not using DA and he had to sleep, so I didn't have immediate access to it. I sorta fenagled together a working fake with what I had downloaded prior. There's two holofoils here: @Nekoban Ryo's Classic Star Foil, alongside his 2015 Refractor I upscaled & denoised with waifu2x. I messed around with the font name a lot, so the "Eternal Flower" bit is smaller than the typical name subtext, and obviously it's horizontally compressed. Overall, I made a lot of hacky decisions to get this card rolling but I like how it came out! I am happy to be faking again, this was soooo much fun.
It's worth mentioning how I got this render off the ground too! The Floette is the Scarlet & Violet model downloaded off of The Models Resource that I recolored. The flower is the XY model with upscaled & added texture via Photoshop filters to make it look closer to the updated SV model. All of that was MMDified with MMDTools on Blender, and then promptly posed & rendered with MMD Raycast 1.5.0! (i used to use 1.3.0, but I took the chance to update!).
Also this is my first render & fake on my new PC, which is a huge deal! Thank God the flash drive for transferring my files shipped in time otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get this out. The workflow is like 5x faster than my old laptop, it's great.
It's worth mentioning how I got this render off the ground too! The Floette is the Scarlet & Violet model downloaded off of The Models Resource that I recolored. The flower is the XY model with upscaled & added texture via Photoshop filters to make it look closer to the updated SV model. All of that was MMDified with MMDTools on Blender, and then promptly posed & rendered with MMD Raycast 1.5.0! (i used to use 1.3.0, but I took the chance to update!).
Also this is my first render & fake on my new PC, which is a huge deal! Thank God the flash drive for transferring my files shipped in time otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get this out. The workflow is like 5x faster than my old laptop, it's great.
And I think we can safely call it a wrap now! Stay tuned for results at the end of the month!