Players from past eras may be able to chime in on this
If they picked Umbreon VMAX, it’s going to be the RR not the HR special art. I think they only gave Magikarp its AR because it’s not the higher tier rarity (SAR)
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They didn’t reprint any Umbreon or Espeon. Those are new cards.
I’ve asked player-focused Discords- most of these were extremely playable cards before. All of those you mentioned Delcatty etc. were.
I think a real issue is, as the years go by, how much of the list will be dominated by renders instead of art. 5ban and the like are so low effort and are barely worth collecting. Is there another TCG out there that provides such terrible art for any rarity?
What would have been much cooler would have created art/SARs based on the archetype. So you keep the stats/attacks etc of the selected card but have new art showcasing what made the deck work.
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It is often a side effect of capitalising on the SR+ formula in BW and beyond. Like 25th, the reprints are not solely a representation of popular chase cards. It’s a celebration of the actual game still alive and strong after 30 years, which may be harder for collector-only fans to appreciate
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I understand Delcatty and Uxie, being card draw machines now. The Buzzwole still cannot work out why.
Be glad this isn’t Magic the Gathering which at this point is more like Disney’s Marvel the Card Game. And had various stolen art/AI generated art controversies.
This. Unlike other card games, you can still basically build any competitive Pokémon deck for under 100 dollars. Something you cannot pull of in Magic, One Piece or Dragon Ball Super. Purely because all the game pieces are printed on the very accessible rarity, while other card games out their the important game pieces are in the upper rarities. Upper rarity prints in Pokémon are for collectors and to bling out your deck.
I hope the pull rates are as good and fun as they were in Celebrations
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I’d argue that the reprints are for the most part not popular chase cards. What I’m saying is that the base rarity since BW has just been CGI slop and since SM, or definitely SWSH, those cards are also bulk. So I don’t think it really appeals to either collectors or players just because it now has a stamp and in some cases texture it didn’t already have.
Perhaps if they all had the art on the standard of Mitsuhiro Arita’s Lugia V, then it would be alright as there is some base collector appeal. As it stands though, these cards are so recent, so common and have terrible art.
My suggestion would respect the actual archetype with new art and nods to what made each tick in the art. Personally, if the art isn’t drawn, it doesn’t deserve to be reprinted.
edit: I’d also say that textured SRs shouldn’t ever be reprinted. Kind of like how home video had SD-HD-4K, cards can be ‘upgraded’ to holo and then to texture- and then that’s it. So once again, it feels like the older cards have upgrades whilst newer ones don’t. It doesn’t help that newer CGI ones are also paired with no backgrounds and repetitive poses.
Aside from those controversies, pretty sure that MTG, Lorcana, Flesh & Blood, One Piece etc have zero CGI rendered slop cards though? It’s not like TPC cannot do it. In the SWSH era, they had a decent amount of art for the RR rarity. They are drowning in money. It is way past time to get rid of 5ban slop.
No they have not. I don’t know about One Piece but Pokémon Company being a traditional Japanese company they probably don’t want to hire non-Japanese artists to do their art work. 5ban has had a very long bad streak of below average generic 3d artwork but I think the hate they are getting is mainly because 5ban’s art is featured on RR rarity cards. Nobody would complain about 5ban if they would do just normal card frame uncommon and basic rare cards. Wizards, Disney, F&B probably are more willing to just hire artists, even for just one or two pieces, to get their artwork done. Pokémon Company doesn’t even seem to hire Illustrator contest winners and runner ups.
Yuu Nishida, REND and Jiro Sasumo are Illustration Contest/Grand Prix winners and have drawn cards. A substantial list of entrants and finalists also have cards, but because of the EX/GX/V/ex rarity tier system in the last 15 years they only draw either regular cards or special arts and not the RR. I assume TPC wanted the HR/SAR to stand out, and realised giving RR any impactful art was a mistake (e.g. Arita Lugia V, EGAWA Ho-Oh V, etc). So it’s really the present circumstance that TPC chose the RR reprints for a textured glittered enhancement
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Brief summary for the layperson to infer which cards were chosen for playability,
In-depth analyses of formats by Jason Klaczynski, which includes much of the cards being reprinted (c: @inertgeometry )
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Thing is, RR cards are so plentiful/overprinted these days, that the prices are not expensive to play the game. Not to mention HCS in every language reprinting that art.
But as non-Japanese, I doubt they ever care about our feedback. I wonder if the Japanese fans complain at all or are they also overlooked.
edit: also they do actually have 2d art for ex cards. Just even fewer than Vs and of course covered up by the card box.
That brings up a something I have been thinking about. I think it would be cool if we could get some well known Western artists to do some Pokemon cards. I collect comic books as well as cards, so I’d love to see some Pokemon art by artists like Todd McFarlane, Alex Ross, Jim Lee, etc. It probably would never happen, but it would be cool to see their take on different mons.
Yeah, but this happened a few days ago. Is an artist like McFarlane able to follow the extreme strict design guidelines that Creatures Inc. has? It would really limit the artistic styling or even the possibility of their art work even being published. That’s why Magic 30 years ago was wild, and why art even to this day is original. Artists get a few keywords, a general idea of what the ‘card does’ and if its an established character a few design guidelines. Rest is free game.
An European or American artist is probably perfectly able to draw a Bulbasaur or Blaziken that everybody will recognise. Will they be able to the same within the strict design guidelines?
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Crystal Lugia all the way!
Worldwide Release Day - TPCI are taking it seriously!
Buzzwole GX was an insanely strong meta defining card for a long time, you had tournament results like this -
I strongly agree with @bk2021 that the increasing amount of CGI bulk art that comes out for base rarity playables these days makes this set worse than the Celebrations sub set, and will almost certainly make any future iterations of this theme even worse still. We’re already up to 30% CGI bulk for this subset.
Of the 5 cards added to this set that represent the 5 years since Celebrations released, 3 of them are 5ban! Even if you’re one of the few 5ban fans worldwide, I think everyone should recognize that if this is meant to be a celebration of the history of the Pokémon card game, you need a variety of artists to be showcased as well as a variety of competitive archetypes.
Next, of those same 5 cards, 4 of them are worth <$2, the only one that bucks this trend is the one that isn’t bulk rarity. Who exactly is meant to be excited about their reprint inclusion? I don’t see players or collectors caring one iota.
So that my post is at least a little constructive…
For the classic collection specifically, it should be fan service to get less obtainable arts to become more accessible to a new generation of collectors. Don’t give me Genesect EX and Arceus VStar, give me Coro Coro Mew, Gold Stars, Call of Legends Shinies. At the VERY least, give me full art/special versions of that Genesect and Arceus.
It looks from the trailer like they will be using the kind of slight textured, slight McDonalds card pixel style holo from Celebrations again? They have gorgeous cosmos holo for promos this generation that is the closest they’ve got to vintage cosmos holo in decades. Use that period appropriate holo for the cards which used it like Misty, Crystal Lugia, Scizor ex etc.
Move the ugly and intrusive stamp to the bottom corner where the set symbol goes. (Ugly stamp even infected the Japanese release this time too lol).
For the main set, I haven’t seen enough of it to confidently comment. But from what I have seen it looks (like almost every modern set) to not have too much theming or cohesion. I would like to see more modern throwbacks and references to the history of the TCG.
Post-Celebrations I would say the most universally loved addition to the Pokémon TCG has been IR cards. They should use this to celebrate their history, it seems like such a no-brainer home run. Have a parody or reference to the Illustrator. Have IR that show the city of Aquapolis, Skyridge temple, light Pokemon, Holon Island, Sandstorm desert. Have an IR that is a tribute to the iconic 90s-epitomizing arts of Keiji Kinebuchi (RIP) etc etc etc. They still have time to prove me wrong here, but from the reveals so far, the IR look like they could be part of any other modern set.
I love the Pikachu subset, that’s really cool.
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According to the JP site, the core set is going for a “Day” theme and “Night” theme, which seem to match the “Day Out” and “Night Out” concert experiences announced earlier this year
- Mew, Espeon, Lapras, Shaymin, Spheal, Psyduck and Drifloon are featured in the “Day Out” poster art
- Umbreon, Lycanroc and Mewtwo are featured in the “Night Out” poster art
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do you think that means there’s a likelihood we see the other mon’s featured on the posters get cards in this set? or am i grasping at straws here lol
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It’s possible otherwise it’s too much for a coincidence, maybe the poster artist had a preview of the set’s Day cards. The trailer has a glimpse of Alolan Exeggutor so there’s that
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i’m manifesting wooper/quag appearances, i’m repeating my mantra every day 
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They also claim fan favourites. I suppose you could say Alolan Exeggutor, Scraggy and Slowpoke meet that. Not sure Jangmo-o, Seismitoad, Unown, Galarian Meowth or Vivillon do. Though Unown spells out Anniversary and Vivillon has the Pokeball pattern.