Radiant Pokemon Recap (Tier List + Discussion)

I also like Radiant Alakazam

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:joy:

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beautiful! I’ve got a couple binder pages so far, I’ll catch up to you eventually :sweat_smile:

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My top choice would be the japanese Alakazam and glad they made one for venusaur!

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Alakazam and Saitou Zard top it for me too. Hate that I had to buy the 3 jap reprints to complete the whole set but glad I commited to doing so!

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Negishi consistently at the bottom.

Also Fukuda’s awful Blastoise.

I think radiant pokemon were a cool idea, and appreciate they included as many Pokemon as they did in the set. I do see them as right around amazing rare coolness, but not as cool as shinings from Shining Legends.

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interesting. to me they are identical at face value. i would also put them in the same group as the BW UR shinies, however jp bw ur shinies have insane texturing effects. I’m wondering if the crisscross texture effect hurt their appeal in the end

FWIW, i’d put neo rev, gold stars, and pt shinies above these and neo destiny, hidden fates, and shining fates below these. not sure where i’d put the steam siege shinies. probably in a similar tier as these, although they weren’t particularly special from a rarity standpoint

I think you called out what my trepidation is for these, I don’t like the cross hatch pattern.

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I wish they committed to either scenic backgrounds (Charjabug, Charizard 2, Greninja) or singular color backgrounds (Charizard 1, Heatran, Blastoise, Alakazam) instead of doing a mixture of the two.

Amazing rares felt like a better execution. Pokemon covered all the energy types with 1 amazing rare each. Assuming Vstar Universe is the end of Radiants, we would have the following:

Fire (3): Charizard 1, Charizard 2, Heatran
Grass (2): Venusaur, Tsareena
Steel (2): Jirachi, Steelix
Psychic (2): Alakazam, Gardevoir
Water (2): Blastoise, Greninja
Fighting (1): Hawlucha
Dark (1): Sneasler
Normal (1): Eevee
Dragon (1): Eternatus
Electric (1): Charjabug

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Collecting this set slowly as well. I also enjoy the WOTC feel of these yellow bordered cards. Nice post. Charjabug is my next pick up. I enjoy the full art Charjabug too. Such a great pokemon. We all need one.

Such a great card.

Went ahead and updated the tierlist to include the SCN exclusives.

https://tiermaker.com/create/radiant-pokemon-artwork-only-2025-update-19008086



Also, my opinions have shifted a bit over the years, so I thought it would be interesting to see how the others compare to my original rankings

Original Ranking:

as for my list, here it is:

New Ranking:

While i do like Alakazam a lot, the novelty of this style of art wore off. Now, the ones that remain at the top tend to be more complete artworks with depth and scenery. Eternatus remains high due to its majesty, but cards like Jirachi and ninja jump up along with the SCN Venusaur to join the second Charizard due to their depth and detail. Overall, having more time with these and factoring in the impact of looking, some ended up moved around within tiers, while the most boring and imo ugly drop to the bottom despite something like Heatran being genuinely funny to look at.

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My first tier list:

Updated tier list:

I didnt see the Pokemon Go Stamp the first time around.

Thank you for updating this tier list.

I like all these cards but also find the landscape background cards to have a depth to the card I like. I also find the Mega Steelex card to be my favorite because its Gold color is so different than normal. Somehow the Pokemon Go stamp just turns me off from the starters.

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curious why you rate the saitou charizard so low

I love Radiants. I don’t think there is a single bad looking one, however I feel the ones I placed in C-tier are a bit lacking compared to the other tiers. I really dislike more generic looking backgrounds, especially when other arts in the subset have environments. The Chinese exclusives were fantastic additions.

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The Saitou Charizard is amazing, but seeing Charizards feet or soles is top class. The pokemon go logo is kinda a buzz kill but I could see it growing on me. I feel like the Pokemon Go Charizard has a more medieval design and if we zoomed out what is the Charizard looking at ? Treasure ? A trainer? prey?

To summarize , the other Charizard besides the Pokemon go logo, I enjoy the artwork more than the Saitou artwork.