Contest November 2021 CaC: Discard Pile (Results Posted!)

Jabberwock

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Welcome to the November 2021 round of the Create-a-Card!

This month’s theme is Discard Pile.

The all-important discard pile is a well-known aspect of the game. Some cards take advantage of its contents, some cards manipulate its contents, and most cards end up becoming its contents sooner or later over the course of a game. We’ve seen a broad range of effects that care about the discard pile from the official TCG over the past couple decades, but this month, we want to see what creative new takes you can come up with!

Your card can draw inspiration from the discard pile as a concept in any way you like, but as a bare minimum, the words “discard pile” must appear somewhere on the card. Beyond that, it’s up to you! We look forward to seeing your interpretations.

This competition has two sections, text-based and image-based fakes. For text-based fakes, all you have to do is create a card in text form and post it here. For image-based fakes, you’ll need the help of some software to let your creations come to life. But one thing remains important between both of them: your cards must be completely original!


Registration

  • To sign up, you must reply to the thread below by November 8th at 11:59 pm EST, specifying whether you’re in for the text-based or image-based category. A post like “In for text!” or “In for image!” is sufficient.
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  • You may register with a partner and work together on the same card. This way each member can use their different talents and combine their skills, especially if one of you is an artist and the other is a TCG player. (Feel free to post in the thread that you’re looking for a partner if you want one.)
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  • We have a total of 15 spaces available for text-based entries and 15 for image-based. If you’ve never done an image-based card before, now is a great time to learn! PokéBeach has many card blanks and guides available for use, and we have a vibrant Discord community willing to help with any questions you might have.


Judging

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Text-Based
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  1. Creativity/Originality
    We’re all tired of effectless attacks! Without images, part of the intrigue with text-based fakes is the creativity of Pokémon Power / Body / Ability / attack effects. Let’s see something cool and new!
    Total: 20 points
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  2. Wording
    Proper wording is key in designing any fake card. As official wording has changed many times over the years, try to ensure wording is correct for the era of card you choose. Naturally, grammar and spelling are also taken into consideration.

    Text-based fakers may format their entries any way they choose, but for those who are new or would like a guideline to follow, this is a simple formatting guideline you can follow:

    Pokémon – Type – HP50
    Stage 1 – Evolves from Pokémon

    NO. 000 [Name] Pokémon HT: 1’11” WT: 111.1 lbs.

    Ability: Name
    Ability Effect

    [R][C] Attack 20
    Attack Effect

    Weakness: Fire (x2)
    Resistance: Psychic (-20)
    Retreat: [C] [C] [C]
    Flavor Text

    Total: 15 points
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  3. Believability/Playability
    Text-based fakes rely heavily on their believability. Think of your entries as if they were real cards. Try to avoid those 400 HP monsters which do 200 damage for [R]! Proper type (unless Delta Species), Pokédex information, and ballpark HP will also be taken into consideration. We will assume that your card is being created for the current TCG era unless otherwise stated, so if you are making a card for a previous era, you must mention this in your entry post.
    Total: 15 points
Max Points: 50

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Image-Based
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  1. Creativity/Originality
    This is a given. With the proper photo editing tools, let your imagination run wild! Among other things, this can involve innovating new mechanics, envisioning new card interactions, and exploring exciting gameplay potential or other design space.
    Total: 15 points
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  2. Believability/Playability
    Believability and playability are both integral to a custom card’s realism. A card’s playability is its power level — try not to be overpowered or underpowered for the era you’re designing in! For believability, proper type (unless Delta Species), Pokédex information, ballpark HP, and so on will be taken into consideration.
    Total: 15 points
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  3. Wording
    Proper wording is key in designing any fake card. Try to ensure wording is correct for the era of blank you choose, as card wording has changed many times over the years. Naturally, grammar and spelling are also taken into consideration.
    Total: 10 points
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  4. Fonts and Placement
    Correct fonts (which may change era by era) are imperative when creating realistic fakes — even for custom blanks, fonts in line with the convention can go a long way toward making them appear realistic. Placement of text / symbols / etc. is also taken into consideration.
    Total: 5 points
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  5. Aesthetics
    Aesthetics is all about how your card looks as a complete whole. Aspects of this category include using creative and appropriate artwork, using neat or custom blanks, and overall having an appealing card creation. Additionally, you may not use existing artwork from the TCG for your cards. If you’d like to use Ken Sugimori stock artwork, you may do so, but it must be transformative in nature.
    Total: 5 points
Max Points: 50

And that’s the point breakdown for this round’s Create-a-Card! @Jabberwock will be judging image-based, and @PMJ will be judging text-based.


General Rules

  • The card you submit must be of a Pokémon — that is, not a Trainer, Energy, or other type of card. Occasionally, we open this up to other types of cards if the month’s theme warrants it, but otherwise it’s impossible to judge Pokémon cards against Trainer cards, since their uses in-game are so different.
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  • For those entering image-based, you must include the symbol here on your card (such as the set symbol) or else your entry won’t be accepted. It was designed by Nekoban Ryo, who continually creates resources for the faking world and is a prominent faker himself. In addition, we do not allow any image-based entries that have been made using automatic, online card generators.
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  • If you edit your post, you’ll incur a deduction of 2 points from your overall score. Posting your entry again on a different post also deducts 2 points. When you submit, make sure you’re done! If you mess up the tags or have a similar coding disaster, tag or PM me to get it fixed. If you forget to credit someone, do so in a new post instead of editing.
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  • Participants who sign up but fail to submit a card by the deadline, if the category is full, will automatically lose 2 points for the next round (similar to losing 2 points for the current round for editing). If the category you have signed up for is full and if you wish to drop out, you must do so with three days remaining before the deadline to avoid the penalty. Continuing to fail to post a submission in future rounds will result in a possible ban from the contest for a couple of months. Please keep a close eye on the deadline.
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  • The judges do not give feedback on entries before they are posted. However, you’re encouraged to seek out help from other members of the community! The forums are an acceptable place for this, but you may be able to get faster feedback in the Faking Community Discord server here.
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  • Participants should only enter one of the two categories. This is to prevent the potential for an excessive influx of entries for our judges to manage.
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  • Artists/illustrators are free to post in this thread, letting participants know that they are available.
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  • All entries should meet the forum rules. You should always credit the artist, and never use someone else’s art without their permission — that’s art theft.

Deadline: November 30th (Tue.) 11:59 pm EST
Here’s a deadline countdown for convenience: [link]​

Anticipated Entrants


Image-Based:
  1. @Kaleidophoenix
  2. @Nick Tornell
  3. @Alolan Teddiursa
  4. @PMJ
  5. @AlphaLad
  6. @CrystalOnixPFVR
  7. @Nemes
  8. @Charmaster:)
  9. @Mick-773
  10. @RedNosedLugia
  11. @CardPone
  12. @EM-isthmus
  13. @Mr. Sableye
  14. @Nyan
  15. This could be you!

Text-Based:
  1. @ThePigThatCriedRii
  2. @Vom
  3. @Falling Skies
  4. @FireLizard
  5. @SleepyBoi
  6. @I Like Shorts
  7. This could be you!

Bold names means I have seen your entry in this thread.

Want to help advertise the contest? Just paste the code below for the banner in your sig!
Code:
[url=https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/november-2021-cac-discard-pile-sign-ups-open.152643/][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/726804916240121878/904867342205468722/cac_banner_november_2021.png[/img][/url]

Credit goes to @Nekoban Ryo and @Jabberwock for the banner.
 
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In for image! I want to see nothing but perfect wording scores this month!!!
 
On the one hand, I really want to join. On the other hand, I am still not finished with my template. And on the THIRD hand, I have a lot of other stuff I need to finish.
I'll just sign up for now. There still appear to be plenty of spots.
(Also, I can always just use Omnium. Or another template.)
 
I'd like to enerter for image-based. I have some ideas in mind, let's see if i can make them work...
 
Throw me in for image. Still a very low chance I'll be able to join this month, but I'd rather have my name on it just in case. Though just like last time, if I'm stopping someone else from joining because sign-ups are full, please replace my name with theirs. I reckon it's around a 20% I'll actually finish a card in time.
 
Reminder that sign-ups close in 3 days, with 4 spots left for image and 11 for text. If you're looking to submit an entry later this month, or even if you just think you might, make sure to sign up by 11:59 pm EST on the 8th!
 
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I'm taking a bit of a risk by faking in the Sword & Shield era since I have no experience in it, but I chose this era mostly for balancing reasons.

I wanted to try and utilize the discard pile in a way that hadn't been done before. It's been well explored over the years. My original idea was to have some Pokemon being able to attack from the discard pile, but I scrapped it because I couldn't figure out how to make it work. While I was brainstorming this, I thought about how a Pokemon might otherwise influence the game from the discard pile, and possession was an obvious decision.

To that end, Gengar was a natural and obvious choice; it canonically has the ability to possess other people and Pokemon, and nowhere on this card is this showcased better than the Ability, Take Over. In a nutshell, Take Over lets Gengar come from beyond the grave(yard), inhabit one of your Pokemon, and go to town. While your Pokemon is possessed by Gengar, it gains Gengar's Battle Style, type, and attack. The effects of this are many. Turning your Pokemon into a Single Strike Pokemon allows you to use Single Strike-specific cards on a Pokemon you otherwise wouldn't. The new Deoxys that has all three Battle Styles confirms that a Pokemon gaining the Single Strike style doesn't necessarily mean it loses another style. After the possessed Pokemon dies, Gengar has siphoned enough spiritual energy to come back to the world of the living or something, and it comes back onto the Bench to attack further, leaving any potential Gastly and Haunter in the discard pile to fuel Phantom Revenge.

Gengar being Darkness looks like a simple choice but it actually ticks a lot of boxes:

- Easier for non-Darkness possessed Pokemon to utilize Single Strike Energy in order to use Phantom Revenge
- No Poison-based cards (yet, I know Gengar VMAX is right around the corner)
- Darkness type fits the theme of possession better than Psychic, I feel
- Not submitting another Psychic card two months in a row
- Foil and background provides a great contrast with the blank
- lol ghost card weak to fighting

Phantom Revenge is adapted from Machamp CPA, with its wording tweaked to check all Pokemon whose type matches the user so non-Darkness possessed Pokemon can get some mileage out of it. Not only does it continue the theme of working with the discard pile, but this style of attack, where you summon the spirits of all your discarded Pokemon to contribute to a single, powerful attack, is thematically perfect for a Pokemon like Gengar. I decided to mimic the cost, even though this attack can get copied by Basics, because the amount of work you need to do just to pull off half of Eternatus VMAX's damage for the same cost was enough reason for me to just leave the cost alone. Single-Prize Pokemon need all the help they can get. Leaving the cost at 2 also makes it that much easier to get multiple Gengar swinging.

A couple other things. First, the downside of being able to pull Gengar from the discard pile is just that - you pull Gengar. This means that Gastly and Haunter aren't required to be used in the deck at all, reducing it to a tech of sorts. On first thought, I had a problem with this loophole, but after a while I figured that using just Gengar would prevent decks using it from needing to waste space on cards that don't match their deck's main color. If players want to use Gengar like this, that's on them.

Next, the fact that Gengar turns everything into Darkness-type, essentially trivializing anything weak to it. This also isn't a problem, since it's easy to kill one-Prizers without Weakness and there aren't a lot of two- or three-Prizers weak to Darkness.

You might have skipped over it on the first read, but Take Over requires your Pokemon to die the turn before, so you don't actually get unlimited uses of it.

The power references "this Gengar" to prevent Take Over from being copied somehow. Probably just being paranoid, but nothing else should be able to use it.

Last, and I want to make sure I point this out before I lose points for excluding it, is that Gengar is not attached from the discard pile as a Pokemon Tool card. This was done intentionally; thematically, Gengar possessing a Pokemon would not necessarily hinder its ability to equip a tool. I also don't think that allowing a possessed Pokemon to equip a Tool would break anything, so I left that bit out as a design choice.

Gengar is currently capped at 130 HP in the current era, and I think that's a good spot for it. Bottom stats are typical for Poison-type Pokemon in this era, regardless of how stupid it looks (Crobat V is also weak to Fighting). I thought about giving Gengar free retreat for maximum mobility, but I think one is fair.

All in all, I think that this has a lot more general utility than Dragalge ever did. It's a fun idea, too, having your Pokemon get possessed by a ghost and then having the ghost fight through you. It's almost like they never died at all :]

References: Heat Fire Energy, Hiding Darkness Energy ("The Pokemon this card is attached to" wording used when buffs are applied); Eeveelutions AOR (probably the sketchiest source but the wording I need doesn't exist in the current era); Single Strike Scroll of Piercing; Shedinja LOT; Machamp CPA

Postscript: Nyan came up with a very similar concept, decided on posting this before they ended up recreating my card lol ;o
 
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