W-W-W-What’s this??
Your eyes doth not deceive you… this is an actual new fake card! With the release of Pokémon Sword/Shield for the Nintendo Switch, the Pokémon TCG has been incorporating much of its video game mechanics into the card game. One of which is the “Raid Battle” format. But before I go into this any further, let’s just watch this video first:
When it initially released, Raid Boss cards were simply “cards” and other game bits-and-bobs you had to download from the official Raid Battle page on the Pokémon website and print out at home. I’m sure by now they’ve also released actual products you can buy at a store. But here at PA!, we’re all about letting YOU make your own Pokémon TCG cards, which also includes your own Raid Boss fake cards! And this is where you can download everything to make your own!
First off I want to give uber kudos to Legendary Master Faker, aschefield, for his hand in everything. That is to say, he had the same idea as I did (great minds think alike, don’t they?), and so we worked together on this official fake release. And by “worked together”, I mean like, aschefield did all of the blanking and I just slapped “PokemonAaah.net” on the bottom. Lol, actually of course it’s more than just that; aschefield and I have been working on trying to collaborate on something, so this is just the start of plenty of blanks to come!
Download Raid Boss Fakes
Anyways, as you can see, the blank looks bang-on relative to the actual Raid Boss cards provided by Nintendo. I mean, that’s obviously the point. Aschefield in turn provided multiple forms, one for each of the three Levels, and one for the *amax Forms (Dynamax and Gigantamax). The blanks are set up so that all you need to do is download the ones you want, and then use the included Icon Pack to add in other elements, such as the “Vmax” and HP graphics, as well as energy type symbols for the Raid Boss’ type (including 
Fairy type, even if they aren’t being used anymore)… concerning the energy type symbols, all you need to do is copy whatever energy type you want and paste it into the white circle in the upper-right corner of the blank. EZ-PZ stuff!
Here’s everything for the download:
| Level 1 ★★★ |
Level 2 ★★★ |
Level 3 ★★★ |
||
| Dynamax | GET | GET | GET | Click here to download all files |
| Gigantamax | GET | GET | GET | |
| Icon Pack | ||||
The blanks themselves are PNG files, allowing for them to be transparent. The same goes for the icon pack; by being transparent, you should be able to copy and paste everything without having to worry about jaggies or any other issues when it comes to working with older blanks that work transparent. Of course, just make sure you’re using an graphics program like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP which can utilize transparent PNG files. Furthermore, the blanks themselves are sized to be twice the dimensions of my old fake cards; meaning that if my old blanks were a particular pixel size, these Raid Boss blanks would be twice that. The idea is that, when you print them out, they should be larger than the actual Pokémon TCG cards.
OH WAIT! I forgot one other thing… the fonts! Uh… lemme get back to you about which fonts to use, and at what size and style. Pokémon TCG still uses “Gill Sans” after all these years, so if you downloaded it back in the old skool PA! days, then you’re set. If you haven’t, just poke around the PA! archives, or check out the PokémonCardResource group over at DeviantArt. As for the other non-Gill Sans typeface used for these cards, that one is called “Francker“… until I can figure out an alternative means for you to download and use it for your fakes, I hope you guys have $650 to spare in the mean time! If you don’t… well, I’ll try and think of something, I always have.
One final notice: This isn’t the end of the Raid Boss Format Fakes. One of my next goals is to create more Cheer and Boss Attack Cards, to help spice things up and add a bit more variety to the game. Like, as it is, there are only five Cheer Cards, which will get stale quickly without more variety. Likewise, the Boss Attack Cards simply say stuff like “Use Attack 1 against Player 3”, etc; if it were up to me, there would be extra abilities or drawbacks… stuff like “if this is the first Boss Attack card drawn, the use Attack 1 against all players and that damage is doubled. No further Boss Attack cards can be drawn this turn”; you can see an example of my idea on the image to the right there. But yeah, I legit believe that there is a lot of potential for this format from a base mechanics point-of-view, but it definitely needs to have more interesting game details to built upon those base mechanics.
Inspirations for Raid Boss Fakes
First off, oh man, this has been something I’ve been waiting for with baited breath. But furthermore, I’ve always wanted to see some kind of “outside of player control” element added to the TCG, ever since I made my “Wild Skarmory” fake card, pictured right. That is to say, it’s always been in the back of my head when designing fakes on what I could do to add some way for players to battle Pokémon which aren’t under the control of either you or any player. But I guess that the only way to really get this to happen is to literally design the game.
But honestly, this is great. In fact, this kinda reminds me of the Vanguard format from Magic the Gathering… sorta. Actually, this is nothing like Vanguard. No rather, more like… it’s not so much that it’s like Vanguard, mechanically, as much as it’s a way to change the game to be something different, and yet still have elements of the core game still within it. In the case of Vanguard, you were given special jumbo cards which altered how you actually played the game… like, you started with more or less cards in your hand, or more or less life, and/or had a good or bad ability as a counterweight to those changes.
In the case of these Raid battles, what reminded me of Vanguard was the idea that you have this jumbo card which affected how you play the game. But instead of it being player versus player, it’s not players versus…. uh… card. Now so far, based on the response on YouTube, this might be a fun idea to try out myself.
BUUUUTTT… perhaps the BETTER aspect of this game is… it’s downloadable! You don’t seem to need to buy anything to play it, you can just go to the Raid Battle page on the Pokémon website, download all the necessary bits-and-bobs, and you’re on your way! And because it’s all downloadable… you know what this means? FAKE Boss Cards! And FAKE Boss Attack and Chear cards to boot. And they’re already so easy to make… this should be a cinch to make! So who’s with me?? 