Beautiful work as always, Mick — really out here proving that an NFE theme is no reason not to go all out with visuals. It’s dynamic, it’s colorful, it draws your eye all over the place, from the tail to the neck curls to the bright splatters in the background. It’s a gorgeous piece of work, even for your standards.
I like the blank, too; it reminds me of old custom blanks I used to see years ago, when the BW era had just started and people were enamored of the futuristic curved bars in the design. Harkening back to that style seems particularly suitable for a Servine, intentional or not.
On the attacks end, I’m not super sold. I know Baton Pass is an existing attack with an established TCG effect, but I’m not sure it brings much to the card, since it basically just puts your Energy on a different Pokémon and thrusts it into harm’s way, and Energy tends to be a valuable resource that you want to conserve as much as possible. Maybe if the attack let the new Active Pokémon attack again afterward, or had some other nifty effect on top of the 20 damage.
Grass Pledge is really where the excitement’s at, but I’m not sure I’m sold here either. I’ve seen other people’s takes on the elemental Pledge moves before, and they always tend to amount to “If another of your Pokémon used [Pledge move] during your last turn, [do another effect]. If another of your Pokémon used [other Pledge move] during your last turn, [do another effect].” It’s a lot of text, and the effects usually feel disjointed with each other. Here, they seem to be directly inspired by the Pledge moves’ in-game effects, which is cool as an inspiration, but the issue of cohesion is still there. VG effects don’t always translate well to TCG effects, and when a card’s attacks are mostly or entirely based on the Pokémon’s in-game moves, it usually just feels like a miscellaneous grab bag.
I’ve seen you come up with really strong designs before — your Minior and Tyrantrum V come to mind — and I would love to see more of the route you took with those: finding some notable features of the Pokémon, especially related to the theme, and finding new and exciting ways to represent them mechanically in the TCG. I think that will usually result in a more complex and interesting card than you would get by just picking a couple VG attacks and translating their effects into TCG terms.
Still a great work — the art is beautiful, and the blank and even the attacks hit on my sense of nostalgia for the TCG era I started faking in. But I think the attacks let you down a little bit mechanically, and I think you can rework them in more interesting ways — or invent totally new ones — if you think about it. As always, I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.
Wording errors:
- In the flavor text, “Grass Energy” should be either lowercase or, if you’re referring to the TCG mechanic, “[G] Energy” (with the leaf symbol standing in for [G]). [-1 point]
- There’s an extraneous space between “photosynthesize” and “and”. [-0.5 point]
Fonts and Placement errors:
- Looks good to me. I think it’s been a while since I’ve seen a card of yours with flavor text, but I like the choice of Sanvito over the more recent Optima.
Creativity/Originality: 10/15
(Gen 5 is clearly a big player in this card’s design, but it’s almost made it too one-dimensional. Translating VG moves into TCG attacks is interesting anecdotally, but it gives you next to no room for synergy or the other card-to-card interactions that make your design really shine.)
Believability/Playability: 15/15
(Three for 110 is probably a little steep to be viable on a Stage 1 in the current era, even with the additional effects, but custom blanks give you the benefit of ambiguity, and there was a time not too long ago when the combination of Pokémon with these Pledge moves would have made quite the fun deck.)
Wording: 8.5/10
(A couple things in the flavor text.)
Fonts and Placement: 5/5
(Looks good.)
Aesthetics: 5/5
(The dynamism of the art is beautiful, and showcases how it’s possible to go above and beyond even on a theme that calls for middle Evolutions. I’m impressed by how much of it you made / edited yourself — all in a few weeks’ work, and the effect is astonishing.)
Total: 43.5/50
Your fonts and placements are getting a lot better, which is awesome to see. I see you edited your entry to fix a couple problems, but you’ve still missed out a couple wording things. We’ll get to those later, but I want to point out up front that it can be valuable to get additional sets of eyes on your card before you post it — don’t be afraid to ask people to proofread!
