Pokémon: the Gathering - A Custom Cube

[Brad]

Alright, I've done a lot of behind the scenes work:
All art will now be from the anime, which means artist credit is OLM Incorporated on every card.
Did a ton of art swapping as a result.
Trimmed each main color section to 50 cards. Some cards you've seen, mostly Grass, have been cut.
Reworked the mana base quite a bit.

Mana Base
10 Super Shocks in non-Psy colors


5 Psy+X Ramp Lands

The Grass one has Mystical Power 1G to keep Grass rampy.

6 Grand Coliseums (Main 5 plus Psy)


5 of these (no Psy)

Should be very strong in the 2-2.5 color decks while not really enabling any 5c bullshit.

A few others


31 lands in total. Should add a few more random ones or another cycle of 5-10 to get that number up.

EDIT: I'm open to ideas of what the additional lands should be. Full 10 cycles is hard artistically to find things that are convincingly two kinds of Pokemon while being limited to gen 1. I was thinking maybe Ancient Ziggurat with "T: Add 1" and possibly the same card for nonPokemon spells. Not entirely sure, but it's much easier to find kind of general art.

 

[LadyMapi]

Ditto Day Care should say that it copies an Energy when it enters the battlefield, not a land.

I don't have a suggestion for more lands, but dang I wish that the Legend's Lair cycle was a real land cycle.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Ditto Day Care should say that it copies an Energy when it enters the battlefield, not a land.

I don't have a suggestion for more lands, but dang I wish that the Legend's Lair cycle was a real land cycle.

I believe in you

 

[LadyMapi]

I believe in you

That would require me to have eyes that work properly, sadly.

 

[Chris Taylor]

only kinda. My eyesight is EXTREMELY bad
(-8.5/-6.0 for reference)

 

[LadyMapi]

only kinda. My eyesight is EXTREMELY bad
(-8.5/-6.0 for reference)

My eyesight isn't particularly bad. It's my brain — I got a defective one, so my senses don't work properly.

My eyes gloss over art something fierce.

 

[Brad]

My eyes gloss over art something fierce.

Meanwhile, I'm scavenging thousands of images to find art that shows two kinds of Pokemon and could make a convincing multicolor card. Here's a few... Really struggling with some of the pairs...

Remember, the color pie is different here based on where the Pokemon lead me. I'll (note) what the pair approximates to from Mtg.


(GW) This is an example where I had an idea then found some art with a Grass and a Water Pokemon, then named it in a way that kind of works. The joke is the dual-meaning of "Bash." I can't tell if this card's too strong or fine or what. It's potentially very strong, but requires some steep color requirements as well as a board presence and it's similar to a one-sided Fight if there's a big target.


(UR) Pretty hard to find art with these two kinds of Pokemon, so I have to make something of this. From there, I thought there's a lot of similarities between the Eeveelutions... Kind of like twins... Twincast... Give it a UR twist... And here's where that got me.


(UB) These two Pokemon occupy the Water Fighting slots due to their types. They're fossil Pokemon, which all have Undying here. I figured some draw-discard for grave shenanigans and a super Wall of Omens for control decks seemed pretty UB. Mostly happy with these.


(GU) I looked through a lot of custom cards for this project and stole these two ideas from somewhere. Grass is very green and Electric is kind of blue, but can also charge shit up. Leaning into the Growth Spiral side of GU seemed like a green way of charging up.

I'm looking through my art later for more multicolored images, but it's an organizational process more than anything at this point. I have 5 images pulled for Water-Electric, which is WU, but WU is kind of poorly defined in MtG and doesn't perfectly translate to PtG, anyways. Then I also have to consider what the art can be convincing of as a card and how to name it in a way that makes it flavorful.

 

[LadyMapi]

Exploring feels really strong. Mechanized Growth, on the other hand, is perfect.

As for the Eeveelution card... why not Helping Hand?

 

[Brad]

Exploring feels really strong.

What if it cost 1GE?

As for the Eeveelution card... why not Helping Hand?

As a name for the card or make the card similar to the effect of HH?

 

[LadyMapi]

I could see 1GE work for Exploring. I think it'd need a bit of playtesting — GE might end up being fine in your environment.

As a name for the card or make the card similar to the effect of HH?

As a name for the card. I'll admit that I was looking through the move lists for both Pokemon to see if there'd be a move that you could reference, and Helping Hand stood out to me as kinda-sorta doing something similar to the spell.

 

[Zoss]

View attachment 6874
(GW) This is an example where I had an idea then found some art with a Grass and a Water Pokemon, then named it in a way that kind of works. The joke is the dual-meaning of "Bash." I can't tell if this card's too strong or fine or what. It's potentially very strong, but requires some steep color requirements as well as a board presence and it's similar to a one-sided Fight if there's a big target.

Not to tell you what to do with your own cards, but . . . you gotta.

View attachment 6879
(UR) Pretty hard to find art with these two kinds of Pokemon, so I have to make something of this. From there, I thought there's a lot of similarities between the Eeveelutions... Kind of like twins... Twincast... Give it a UR twist... And here's where that got me.

Is Assist a card yet? If not, it sure could be this one. Copycat would also work because they're, y'know, catlike. It could also be Encore (especially cute because of the top hat and ribbon),


Other cards look nifty, if maybe a bit pushed.

 

[Brad]

Christmas feels too inherently RG to me. This is a total banger, though, to be sure.

My issue with move name = card name is that I want it to be rather true to the move's effect, too. Those names are good but maybe not quite where the card's at. I dunno.

I want like...

Water-Elec Card ... 2 mana
Enchantment
Flash
Your Pokemon have ward 1, except the ward 1 works as a Force Spike in response to a targeting spell.

Is there a compact way to word that without being like "When ~ ETB, force spike... also ward 1 now"?

 

[Zoss]

It's your cube, so you could rephrase ward to trigger on ability resolution instead of on target, which I think would work here? This results in a bit of a mouthful, but referring to resolution is entirely legal even if this does put the cart before the horse. Say, something like:

"Whenever a spell or ability targeting this permanent would resolve, its owner may pay X. If they do not, counter it."

Or, if you want to go at it from a different angle:

"All spells an opponent controls targeting this permanent gain "Pay X. If you do not pay X, counter this spell." "All abilities an opponent controls targeting this permanent gain "Pay X. If you do not pay X, counter this ability."" This might be a little bit more technically "right," but is a lot of text. Depending on your crowd you may be able to shorten it to:

"All spells and abilities an opponent controls targeting this permanent gain "Pay X. If you do not pay X, counter this spell or ability."

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'll throw in my 2c in saying: Exploration is just not that great in cube barring some insane crucible or bounceland sheninigans, so I figure 2 mana on exploring is fine.

 

[Brad]

NAME ... (Water)(Elec)
Enchantment
Flash
Pokemon you control gain hexproof and "[1]: This Pokemon loses hexproof. Any player may activate this ability."

?

 

[Chris Taylor]

It's worded like this to play in response to a spell, right? It wouldn't work as just "your pokemon have ward 1"?

Seems fine at first glance. Honestly as a multicolor card this could probably be a Creature. Maybe that means it loses flash?

 

[Brad]

It's worded like this to play in response to a spell, right? It wouldn't work as just "your pokemon have ward 1"?

Correct

Honestly as a multicolor card this could probably be a Creature

It can't be because there's no gen 1 electric-water Pokemon.

The design could be something else. I was just thinking that electric's countermagic plus water's high creature count should lead us to some kind of interesting protection spell.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Correct

It can't be because there's no gen 1 electric-water Pokemon.

Ahem:
Surfing Pikachu

Okay actually on topic: I think this works, but I'm not sure "UG force spike with upside" is good?
I'm not a fan of censor and this is restrictive censor?

If censor is good this is fine, and if you also don't like censor, you could do like "Creatures you control have ward 1, ETB turn aside"?

 

[Brad]

Fuck it. It's 3 mana. ETB Cancel. Ward 1.

I'll post a few multicolor cards later today, probably.

 

[Brad]

WU is poorly defined in MtG. Here, water is very creature heavy and electric is quite controlling. I tried to make cards that were useful both for attacking decks as well as decks that wanted to slow the game down.


Maybe the first card is too good, but it seems likely to be mostly effective during the midgame, similar to a more traditional 5-6 mana Time Warp. Volcanic Volley is a near-reprint of ?Meteor Blast? that should help the aggressive decks push some damage through and should help the slower, more midrangey decks stabilize a bit. This is sorta like my BR color pair.


Too lazy to make art and names right now. First one is probably decent as a way to get from the mid game to the late game while slowing the opponent down just a bit, or potentially killing them in the late late game. I think the second card needs some help. I'm not married to that design. I'm open to whatever. Fire-Grass here is 90% the same as RG in MtG.

 

[blacksmithy]

yo some of these designs are really cool

 

[Brad]

yo some of these designs are really cool

Glad you think so. Sometimes it feels like WotC has already covered so much ground that I can't think of anything interesting. Then I think of something as simple as Cancel+ or Good Exploding Borders and it's still cool.

Pretty sure my second RG card isn't cool and is ultimately too ambitious.

 

[Brad]

Multi 3

Finished up RG a little more reasonably. No color has a claim on life gain, so a Helix in green makes sense to me if a bat is sucking your blood. The RR mode gives it good aggressive applications and the GG mode allows a slower deck to take its time.


Elec-Fight is similar to UB. These feel a little too generic, but they're sure to see play.


Upgraded Outnumber seems interesting. A lack of art for card 2 lead me to make a charm.


Finalized the name on the first card and made an Electrolyze variant in this UR-equivalent color pairing.


Finished Water-Grass (GW equivalent) with an Anything Mutation.

 

[Brad]

HMs?

I started by making this image into Rancor. Then decided to make a cycle. Then decided the Rancor "return" text was a bit wordy, so I made the cycle into Equipments. Not sure on the power levels compared to one another.

Unfortunately, couldn't find a gen 1 Pokemon using flash. An Eeveelution is reasonably recognizable and I'm not going to sweat it right now. Flavor texts are from little blurbs on the wiki, with me adding a couple blurbs together for Cut.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Love HMs as equipment!
You think Flash is better as menace? It's less blue, but probably more...flash?