TCG Fakes Spooncube — A custom sealed cube

Heavenly Spoon

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Spooncube.png
Hello there.

As some of you may remember, I started a custom set some 7 years ago (oh wow). Well, that set is only mostly dead. A project I've been occasionally working on for a while now is creating a custom sealed cube using most of the original designs. Since I'm apparently back, I figured I might as well show it off.

Sealed cube is the only way I still play the TCG. It's based on the cube idea used in Magic the Gathering. You essentially make yourself a big ol' box of cards curated to create interesting gameplay. In Magic you'd normally draft these cards (make boosters, each player picks a card and passes the booster to the next player), but drafting is a lot harder to do well in Pokémon. The alternative is to basically do the prerelease thing and give every player a pile of cards and have them make decks out of them.

I currently have four of these cubes, divided by era (Base–Neo, e-series, EX era, and EX–HGSS). Each of these contain somewhere between 1000 and 2000 cards. To start playing, each player randomly takes a set number of these cards (usually 150, but 180 for the last cube) and makes a 60-card deck using those cards and basic Energies. (I might make a post about these cubes and what's in them if I find the time.)

The goal now is to create such a cube using only custom cards.

The current design consists of 378 unique cards, for a total of 1260 cards. This allows the cube to be neatly divided into 7 piles of 180 cards (or basically, it can be used by 6 people without guaranteeing that at least one player will have a specific card).

Here's a link to the current list.
(The files are quite big, I can run a resize-program and upload those as well if it's a problem.)

Around 57% of the cards are actually done, roughly 95% are planned out and just need some refinements and art.

Some notes:

The original intent for the set—and the main reason it was never finished—had me or friends of mine creating all the art. I moved away from that in order to actually get this thing finished somewhere in this century. I don't have the time or mental energy to go through and contact every artist to ask for permission, so to make sure I don't run afoul of any creator's wishes, I've blanked out all the art I couldn't find clear permission for (and which isn't owned by Creatures Inc.). I guess you can always look up the artist to see what the art looks like.

I tried to make rarity actually matter by having rarity determine how many of a specific card are included. There are 4 copies of every common, 3 of every unique, 2 of every rare and 1 of every ultra rare. I've also added a new rarity (ubiquitous), designated with a –. Each ubiquitous card is included 16 times, to almost guarantee that someone will have at least one. These are the important roll players such as Switch and important Special Energies.

Not every card is wholly unique, I've included some nods to interesting existing cards as well as some reprints of cards which just play well in general. I've got a lot of experience thanks to these other cubes, so I know what does and doesn't create good gameplay.

The cards use custom blanks which are obviously inspired by the e-series, but the power level of the cube is designed to be a bit higher than that. Somewhere around EX FireRed & LeafGreen, excluding the ex'es. The power level of the trainers is a generally bit higher to increase consistency. The power level should also be flatter than most sets, since every card is supposed to be viable.

There's a high focus on synergies and mini-combos, in the hopes that every new play session leads to interesting new decks. The Pokémon within evolution lines are also designed to play well together to help coherence.

The cube uses the rules of the EX era: attacks on the first turn, but no draw or Supporters, 20 damage confusion with easy retreats, 1 retreat/turn.

Only Gen 1 and 2 Pokémon are included, including some beta Pokémon which didn't make the cut. For those, I'm mostly using the names suggested by Nob Ogasawara—the original Pokémon translator.

I don't have the time to add individual notes and explanations for each card like I did with the old set, but might highlight some cards at some point if I find the time. I guess you can check out the original thread for some explanations.

If you want to use the templates for yourself, here's a link to the documents I actually use (.pxd, Pixelmator documents), and here's a link to Photoshop conversions which might work, I don't know.


So yeah, that's it. Enjoy?
 

bbninjas

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Ooh, this is cool. Do you usually just print them out and proxy them or something?
 

Jabberwock

#Jovimohnaeliackvid
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Neat project, Spoon! Definitely an ambitious one too, haha. Out of interest, what are games with the cube like?

The cards are a really impressive spread — I particularly like the Trainers and Energy. especially the Feraligatr

I'd also definitely be interested in hearing the individual notes on a card-by-card basis if you ever get around to any of them. :)
 

Heavenly Spoon

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Ooh, this is cool. Do you usually just print them out and proxy them or something?
The plan is to get them printed on actual card stock, there’s a few companies that do this. My other cubes only have real cards, so I haven’t actually done this before.
Neat project, Spoon! Definitely an ambitious one too, haha. Out of interest, what are games with the cube like?

The cards are a really impressive spread — I particularly like the Trainers and Energy. especially the Feraligatr

I'd also definitely be interested in hearing the individual notes on a card-by-card basis if you ever get around to any of them. :)
I haven’t been able to playtest this cube since it’s not done, but the games with the other cubes vary quite a bit.

The classic cube gets a lot of its consistency from the ridiculous card draw options, but mostly has straight-forward games. The most opressive card was wierdy Mr. Mime, which we’ve since cut (we never included Slowking, which would’ve also qualified). We made the conscious decision not to include Energy Removal and to include Double Gust instead of Gust of Wind, otherwise this one might be incredibly unfun.

e-cube is very straightforward and very flippy. Honestly not the best gameplay, and the power level is definitely too low—Metal Energy is the undisputed best card because nothing does damage. This cube really helps when trying to determine what would play well in the spooncube and what the power level should be.

ex-cube is probably the most straightforward. Celio and the Holon engine are the defining elements of the cube. Celio and the Holon’s Pokémon make for an interesting combination, and make it so this cube mostly uses searching instead of drawing for consistency. Also, there’s weirdly a lot of spreading effects. This is the benchmark for powerlevel, though not necessarily the benchmark for gameplay.

And the final cube is defined by card velocity. Uxie, Unown R, Claydol, Pokédex handy, Poké-Drawer, and so on. Very consistent, but also extreme differences in power level. This cube is a good benchmark to see how far I can push things without breaking them, and to see what seemingly broken things might actually be fine. It’s also the cube with by far the longest turns (excluding Bill chain turns in the classic cube), so that’s something I’m keeping an eye on with the spooncube. I definitely don’t want something like Claydol which basically doubles turn length.
 

All-Stars_Creator

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Very cool! I'm doing something similar, on a similar grand time-scale. My custom self contained cube/set has been 12 years in the making, and now counts around 2000 cards. All text cards at the moment, still need to figure out how to get the images made to my liking. But since I still heavily edit the cards, editing a text file is much faster.

Have you playetested the cards yet? I get a feeling they work very well in a cube. Especially like Clefable's wishful thinking. Such a nice thematic power! If you ever want to playtest, let me know!
 

Heavenly Spoon

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Very cool! I'm doing something similar, on a similar grand time-scale. My custom self contained cube/set has been 12 years in the making, and now counts around 2000 cards. All text cards at the moment, still need to figure out how to get the images made to my liking. But since I still heavily edit the cards, editing a text file is much faster.

Have you playetested the cards yet? I get a feeling they work very well in a cube. Especially like Clefable's wishful thinking. Such a nice thematic power! If you ever want to playtest, let me know!
Good to hear I'm not the only one doing this! I'd love to take a look at your project if and when you decide to share it.

I have to actually complete most of it before I can do a decent playtest, and even then I think I'd prefer actually getting everything printed and then figure out if anything's busted. That means I probably won't be playtesting this online, at least not any time soon. If I do decide to playtest this online, I'll be sure to let you know.
 
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