I don’t think i have a clear idea about what set was good and bad but i do know that i only opened one AR card through the whole era which i think is a bit sad 
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Here’s my order, each tier has been ranked as well. Some main points I want to express:
151 was near perfection, it would be 8th wonder of the world if Kanto themed set wouldn’t interest people.
As a big fan of original Gym sets I gravitate towards sets with owner’s Pokemon and Destined Rivals has been amazing experience, Heat Wave Arena cards are certainly better part of it.
Even when I haven’t opened any Surging Sparks/Black Bolt/White Flare I still give them credit for good chase cards or cohesion, seriously those mastered BW sets will be glorious sight to browse.
Most of the tera sets are in bottom half for a reason. In VGC I like the mechanic way more than Dynamax but with cards it’s a different story: most of them are just fugly or too cluttered. Also Shrouded Fable would in F tier without those gorgeous collection box promos.
Overall gen 9 TCG leaves a good taste in mouth, didn’t expect during SV Base launch I’d have so much fun with certain sets. 
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Thanks to whoever bumped this thread I needed to have a go. A B2W2 themed set would be the greatest thing since sliced bread but Black Bolt/White Flare are good enough for me. Wish the English set wasn’t so bloated with normal reverses, Poke Ball, and Master Ball reverses though, and the lack of Hilbert, Ingo, Emmet and Shadow Triad is insaneee
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I finally got a little more familiar with the last sets since they abruptly decided to end the era early. I find that interesting. They want to make a new block/era out of the new “Legends: Z A” game.
I don’t know why I did this much depth. Honestly, way too much to read. Just enjoy my tier list image and don’t bother reading my disertation on the scarlet and violet era of cards from a collector’s perspective.
151
Gen 1, break incase of emergency. Up to this point, the Covid era stonkers had gone away a while ago. Many people hated the era to this point despite my experience being nothing but enjoyment. However this set was very oddly timed out of nowhere. I felt like it should have come out around the 30th anniversary. It was what I felt like a real throw back set SHOULD be. Reprinting base set again, is tired. XY evolutions was overprinted and I think we’ve seen those cards enough. This was all new art, and included ALL 151 pokemon truly! I think the choices for what cards got special arts could have been chosen better, but the ones we got are beautiful. Pull rates were decent. And I think the lack of the Masterball gimmick in English, in retrospect, made it superior to Japanese and other languages that had them. But at the time the masterball idea was a neat gimmick that turned out to be a nightmare due to extremely low pullrates. Its a set that you can enjoy opening packs with friends and family who were around in the Pokemania days of yore and they will recognize the pokemon and connect with it in a way that they wouldn’t with new stuff. This is why, I feel good about this set. I opened packs with my Mom, and she pulled the Charizard SIR from a booster pack, and I pulled the Venusaur and Blastoise. I think nothing beats that experience and being such a sharable set makes it S tier.
Paldea Evolved
At the time the only thing anyone wanted from this set was Iono SIR and magikarp. And the magikarp, while nice, had simply been bought out by one person and price manipulated successfully. The set was way too big. Lets get that out of the way. However it has tons of wonderful cards in it. Too many to go over. But it felt like a huge mix of cards from all over the place, but it has a surprising amount of Gen 2 love in it. One of my hands down favorite cards in the era is here which is the Mismagius IR. I just kept picking up copies of it here and there. I put my money where my mouth is too, I opened up way too much of this set. But it was a genuine joy. I can tell you how the boxes are mapped. To date, they haven’t ever reprinted booster boxes so this might change. This was the pull rate for paldea and base set by the way. In 1 booster box you always got 1 SIR. Then you had a %50 chance for another SIR or a Gold card. Obviously you want another SIR despite being technically less rare. IR rarity was 2-4 a box, which was puzzling. But usually you’d get 3, sometimes 2 but rarely 4, like super rarely 4. So it was fun to open, and the timing was perfect for me. I think this set is just fun. I like the use of art over time. Watching the starter pokemon grow up in the world around them in the IR/SIR variants.
Black Bolt White Flare
Summary
So far I haven’t found this set at all anywhere. But a friend has opened it some. This floored me. Special arts for all unova pokemon. What a concept, and so many of them are winners too. But there is something for everyone’s taste here. This set feels exactly like Gen 5 did in its time. Highly produced, they went all out, yet people didn’t appreciate it too much at the time. Due to this the set has the lowest nostalgia which works against it. But that aside, the effort is amazing. However its curious they even made these sets at all. I suspect they were supposed to make a remake of the black and white games. But scrapped it in favor of Legends: Z A. However the card production pipeline can’t change on a dime like that so that is my guess. There is really only one thing holding this set back, and that is the bloat of having 3 types of reverse holo in it using the cheap method seen in the Japanese 151 set. The holo pattern is so cheaply made you can just rub off the pokeball and masterball patterns with your finger. So fun fact, if you see an “error” card with no pokeballs on it its a scam. Anyhow, what a let down. This bloat keeps it from S tier. Collecting it could have been less of a chore. They did improve IR pull rates but they didn’t seem to improve SIR or masterball pull rates which is a nightmare of a mistake. I’ll likely open packs once printing gets under control. Like Paldea evolved, the sets are honestly too big, which is again, the issue with modern pokemon cards in general. This is alleviated to some extent due to the effort being high. This isn’t like Sun and Moon just lazily reskinning the same full art card in rainbow and then again in gold and then again for the hidden fates set.
Destined Rivals
I haven’t opened this set, but I know its a good one. It has gen 2 bait and Gen 1 bait, which is prime for me. Peak even. But the art for Ethan’s Ho-Oh SIR really let me down. Its not what I hoped for. Ho-Oh deserved better. Lugia got an amazing regular art and Alt Art in the Silver Tempest set, and Ho-Oh was snubbed in that era. Also calling him “Ethan” instead of Gold is to me, and my mind a travesty. The cards here mostly knock it out of the park. I was never the biggest fan of “Owner’s pokemon”. I think its just the clunky names. But I liked the badges with the owner’s face on them. For this set having people and pokemon together really does it for me and always has. The original Dark Slowbro card looks great because of the people in the background for example. It grounds it for me and gives a fun chance to show off the world and pokemon behavior more. This set is a good example of how messy it is to combine japanese sets. The way they did this made no sense. Clearly, This should have been just the Glory to team Rocket set. In Japanese Glory to Team Rocket is SV10. Battle Partners was SV9, and Hot Wind Arena was SV9a…You see where I’m going right? Obviously, thematically, SV9 and 9a go together really well. And Hot Wind Arena has amazing amazing art. Thankfully this means that Destined Rivals really does still have good cards from Hot Wave Arena. However, Journey Together was just a single Japanese set, and thus is really small. The two sets together would have paired super well. But this clashes. If it had been that and this set just a small set for team rocket, it would have been an absolute slam dunk and S tier. Again, the non-team rocket cards are great, just like pairing orange juice and toothpaste. Its annoying to no end that they did this. And its clear why to me. I think they were trying to make a really unappealing set with journey together so that there was less demand and people would complete the set fast. Its a relic of the time it was made. And in the long run people will vindicate me on this I think. Its so egregious that honestly, I think I’m going to put the Hot Wave Arena cards in with my Journey Together Binder and keep the Glory to Team rocket Set cards on their own. This is blasphemy I know. Its enough to almost make me switch to JP collecting, and for other reasons I might. But I love reverse holos too much. Still borderline S tier because Team rocket, and Cynthia’s pokemon and the other Hot wave arena cards still go hard. Also Gen 4 bait because I love Gen 4. Rant over.
A quick note before I start. This is where I will have some explaining to do. I swear I’m not trying to be contrarian from here on to F tier. I have my reasons.
Paradox Rift
This set to me, marks the end of an era within an era. This was the last fun set to open. And overall its a highly forgotten set that will be forgotten and I know that. This is the set that leaned into the paradox pokemon entirely and for the most part those designs were not taken with much love and likely will fade in people’s minds. But it was a fun set to open. This is the final set where each booster box had at least 1 SIR in each box. I opened a lot of this, tons of it. It was so cheap. The best price I ever saw was $78 a booster box I think if you bought enough boxes. I will say that this set suffers because of the paradox of having nothing but paradox pokemon in it. If they had spread out paradox pokemon across other sets more this would have likely not led to a set like this. But I love strong theming in sets, as you could tell in my destined rivals rant. Paradox pokemon themselves are a mixed bag. Future pokemon honestly suck, and that comes from a sci-fi lover. You can’t call everything “Iron [INSERT NAME HERE]” and not have it turn into a mess. They all look like steel or electric types or both. And they usually aren’t either. The names are nebulous and confusing. The designs are uninspired. Just robot reskins, which was so lazy. Ancient pokemon on the otherhand are amazing. Most of the designs are great. I remember each of the Johto legendary trio being seen as goofy and I have to admit, they let me down except for walking wake. I just call the Raikou one “great neck” because I have no idea what they were thinking. Scream tail is the funniest thing to me and I love it. Half the time they feel like mega forms. Great Tusk just feels like mega donphan. This set has few really stand out SIR cards, but the IR cards knock it out of the park. One of my favorite cards from the era is in this set, this Groudon IR. If they had made it an SIR, this set would be way more expensive for sure. It does have some duds. I’ll never accept you Garbador. Never! You want to be muk but you aren’t. This set has a wonderful blitzle IR by new favorite artist Matazo. So its all good in my book. It also celebrated the return of mantyke with a wonderful IR card, that actually does look stunning too. For those not in the know, both bonsly and mantyke only ever got 1 card ever EVER. And in this era of cards, they brought them back finally. This is why those cards are weirdly expensive despite being otherwise average cards.
Twilight Masquerade
I have to admit, I needed to warm up to this set. I was so mad at the pull rate changes from temporal forces that I almost entirely skipped that set. But I came back for this one because I decided I just enjoyed opening packs. This set is heavily themed on japanese culture and that is beautiful to me. I’ve always seen japanese festivals and thought they looked really fun. But even that aside, the regional forms of polchageist and dipplin, sinistcha and hydrapple are awesome designs, and the arts for them all did them justice. This also got bloated by the crimson haze set from japan, but honestly they don’t clash too hard. This set has what is contender for me, the best card hands down in the era, the froslass IR by matazo. Another one I couldn’t help but buying over and over again. When a card I love is super affordable its too addicting. But so many arts in this set are killer. Wattrel shows off once again why Arita is the king of underwater art. Heliolisk also rocks. Chimecho by REND is stunning. And to me the Torkoal is a sleeper awesome card here. Amazing IRs all around. And yes the elephant in the room, the amazing Eevee IR was what made this set expensive to open, lol. Crazy whenever a rarity that isn’t the highest rarity carries a set. I know gold cards are the rarest, but you know, those are mostly to bling out decks for item cards. So I’m glad they are affordable for players most of the time. People love the greninja SIR but I personally don’t get it. Its pretty like exploding paint and all, but its still a goofy hat card, and I generally don’t like art where you don’t get much background context where the pokemon is grounded in a scene. Its skillful though and its a popular pokemon so I get why it was beloved. Though everyone who says they don’t like the hats then drove the price up on this card? Hypocrisy, thy name is greninja. Ironically what holds the set back is the namesake of the set in japanese “mask of change”. The ogrepon SIR cards are ALL done in the exact same style by the same artist, and honestly I’m just not that big a fan. When you get one of these as your SIR pull, it doesn’t feel great since there are four of them. The idea made sense, have one artist do them all but I mean, I just don’t think it worked out. Ogrepon masks aren’t nice to look at. But the ogrepon promo where she is running in a rice field is beautiful because you can see ogrepon’s cuteness without a big mask, ironic. Also that art is wonderful. I got it in a jumbo from japan(yes its a jumbo in japanese go get one).
Journey Together
This set was hard to place for me. I think it really belongs in C tier but it has some things working for it to get it over the line. The truth is I love the arts in this set. Why it doesn’t measure up is both that its a small set, and that is also why I like it. There is less to go on, so it better be strong, and it is. This set brings back partner pokemon! yay! And they did something awesome by including the trainer’s in outlines on the full arts in the background which was a really clever idea that looks amazing. These full arts I think will be seen as great long term because of it. We get teased with Iris and Brock as trainer cards in this set, but they don’t get pokemon which was a massive let down. Iris is a massively awesome character design who is largely forgotten at this point. But she has cool big anime hair. I have to admit I really don’t like Hop and never will. He was a wanna be Hau and looks like him too. However despite this his card with zacian is beautiful. But the best SIR in this set goes to volcanion without a doubt for me. Again, I think the IR cards carry this set. I do think many SIR cards in the era are not as good as they could have been so I look at the IR cards for their talent. REND once again comes in with Furret. Hyper realistic furret was a mixed bag but I love REND who was a winner of I think the first art competition? He did the arcanine thats what I recall. I’ve been a fan of his work, never failing. they gave him lots of IR cards and i’m so happy for that. Noibat is also a standout to me. its so colorful and contrasty and has so much to look at. Swinub getting an IR was out of left field but its cute as heck. N’s Reshiram here is a balance to the Zekrom we got in crown zenith. I swear to you I predicted they’d make a Reshiram some day to counter balance it. And they did! Different artist, but the art styles are close enough to work side by side. But what I love about this set is that it is just a single japanese set. This happened more than expected. I do think this makes it a strong set, but that kills hype for people because they pull the entire set quite fast and drives prices down. But to me thats a good thing. I dread massive sets, as it dilutes pull rates. It makes it so hard and stressfull to open larger sets unless they are exceedingly inexpensive which is why paldea evolved is such an enigma. For a small set this one is solid. If the cards were weak, I’d have knocked it down to C tier. But I do also think it should have been bundled with cards from Hot Wave Arena like I mentioned before. If it had, I think it would still remain in B tier.
Shrouded Fable
When this set came out it was hot for all of a week, then became the most hated set. I like it a lot, but it lacks because I’m not the biggest fan of the legendary trio here. That said, somehow despite being creepy, the munkidori art is so beautiful. its funny to see this scary monkey on a pretty tree. Its haunting. His yellow eyes stand out against the pink and blues. This set let me down with the duskull IR line. I love duskull and I’m just let down that this was the art we got by the same artist for all three. i’m so sad. What kills the set is that the SIRs in my opinion all feel like full arts. They look nice, just not like a SIR. This is a common theme, but all the SIRs here miss the mark. The reverse holo pattern is really unique and I love that so much. Because of these things this set doesn’t make it to B tier but I think its a good set that just misses the mark. Its a great set for playable cards though and that should be noted. Its a hugely playable set despite being so tiny. And I think being tiny makes it unpopular. Not to me though. its great. Specialty sets should be tiny. Very very tiny.
Obsidian Flames
This set was not well loved. But this was the first single japanese set made into the English and that alone sets the precedent. And I love it. Smalls sets are great. The pidgey line IR and SIR are the worst art ever made in the TCG. The fact that those arts were lifted up to the status of special rarity status is insane. I’m not an artist, but I have the Vector program skills to make those arts, its wild that anyone comissioned those cards. The varoom and revavroom art actually go hard. Despite being unpopular pokemon. And my top 5 arts are here. Ninetales is great. But I have so so many scisor cards. Before the boom hit, this card was like $2-$3 and I bought sooo many. its one of the best cards in the era for me. I love the scizor art. The charizard SIR was the first SIR with a goofy hat and people disliked it, and I dislike it. But they at least made it look nice as much as they could. This was the first set where the SIR pull rate went down, but thats fine considering the smaller set size. I think they nailed it on this set. It just has some weak choices. Its borderline D tier though I admit, but I have to give it praise for the pullrates and being a small set.
Stellar Crown
Again, a set where the set is a single japanese set so its nice and small. The pull rates here of course on the SIR rarity was in its final nerfed form of about 1 in 2 booster boxes so that helps keep it down in the tier rating list. The SIR cards here are all pretty much what I’d want. Terapagos is beautiful, and the only pokemon where the “hat” works because its not really a hat, its a crazy design. I love gemstones. The IR cards in this set leave something to be desired. I think Arita wasn’t very inspired with crabominable but he still gave a good drawing and just didn’t want to make any sort of background. Gulpin is also quite weak and shouldn’t even be an IR. The regular art gulpin was much better, but I think the regular art swalot would have been a better choice for the IR. I don’t bring up regular arts much but the noctowl is one of my favorite arts. Why does it go so hard? Its pretty seeing the light of a shining gemstone on his wings. I also noticed melmetal’s insanely detailed shinning body by takumi Wada. I was stunned and prayed he would get another chance at this metal look on a pokemon and have it be an IR or SIR, and thankfully that did happen(skarmory)! We got ourselves counterparts to the charmander card where it wants to eat the pidgey in bulbasaur and squirtle. So I’m happy. They carry the set honestly for most people. But overall the set is not bad at all. Its just not top tier.
Prismatic Evolutions
I’m going against the crowd and I know it. But that is fine. Everything about this set really rubs me the wrong way. But I can’t throw it down in F tier because there is a lot to like. This set has a massive number of SIR cards. Which while interesting is also very annoying. People see this as the eevee heroes follow up, but its even more bloated than the English evolving skies set was for Alternate arts. In japanese eevee heroes was a pretty small and curated set. But this one is all over the place and makes no sense. This should have been either a set with lots of tera crowns, or an eevee set, but its like the worst of all combos. A set with lots of SIR cards where half of them aren’t tera, and the ones that are, is all the eeveelutions which I hate. I wanted anything BUT the eeveelutions to have the hats. At least its the tera type hat which looks less awful than the single type ones. And then almost nothing else has a tera hat, in a set that in every way evokes the tera type gimmick. What gives? I think they needed to change the set name, and put the tera crown pokemon into the stellar crown set. Oh well. This set has no cohesive theme. And most of the SIR cards are not pretty to me especially the drayton amarys and sripin and lacey cards. Ugly color borders inside a boring house with minimal details in the art. The gold cards are actually really beautiful though I admit. These full art trainers are also the most boring looking because most of them are just student uniforms. Its also a set full of nothing but reprints, which was totally not needed. Just reprint the sets with playables that needed it. People want the higher rarity versions anyhow. The pull rates are also atrociously bad. The pokeball reverse holo rate was just absurdly low. And of course the reverse holo bloat was just the worst part of this set. This would instantly shoot up to B tier alone if they had only done the pokeball patterned reverse holo, no regular reverse holo, no second masterball reskin. I mean, it didn’t even need a pokeball, the texturing and shiny was enough to be cool. But the rates are bad and make getting them all in that rarity and the masterball rarity and absolute pain. Plus you get tired of seeing the same art over and over in 4 different versions at some point. This set is too big for a specialty set and the SIR pull rate is also way too low for how many there are. So I just complained a lot. There is a reason its C tier for me despite all the things it has going for it. This set should have been an easy S tier. its just polarizing. It has amazing things but awful things. The amazing things are yes, its an Eevee set! while the arts aren’t the best due to the hats, they are still pretty for many of them. My favorite is Glaceon which a forum member told me and helped me realize, was drawn by a manga artist who’s books I fell in love with. Witch Hat Atelier if you must know its such a good story and oh my gosh, the art is stunning. I had no idea and I’m so happy. Never have I ever wanted to get a card signed, but this makes me almost want to. But I’d rather get my manga signed honestly. Another mangaka featured is the creator of first of the north star Tetsu Hara, for the Palafin ex SIR. This art is genuinely maybe the best one in the set too. I’m not trying to blow smoke but its really stunning looking. First of the north star is a classic manga, read it if you want. Its like Japanese Mad Max. The lack of IR rarity was replaced with what I think is really a great idea that I appreciate, textured reverse holos. The quality is amazing. They custom textured them too. Each art given its own texture lines, and it takes someone time to go into a program on the computer and painstakingly set where the texture lines go. they had to do this for darn near 200 cards in total in this set. literally every card in this set is textured minus the ace specs. Thankfully the masterball rarity versions are not for the trainer cards, an improvement over the japanese 151 set and a good move. So its not as hard to complete in that sense. Besides, who really even wants a masterball reverse holo of bug catching net? The pokeball version will do just fine. They took out all but the umbreon, espeon and sylveon for promos. Normally id have hated this but the promo treatment works. Though I’m sad they didn’t get the texturization treatment for us. I think they are in japanese, don’t quote me on that. But I’m glad for me, because espeon is my favorite eeveelution, and I like this art for it. Also the umbreon one is the best looking art in my opinion. So I’m glad they left them in the set for the texture treatment. Though i did half expect them to make an umbreon UPC and to pull the umbreon and the SIR for it, and make a textured pokeball/masterball promo. I still think that would have worked out well. Despite the repetition, the textured cards are stunning. I hope they do it again soon. But I’m afraid they might not because they bloated this set and got bad feedback for it. If they had only done ONE version of reverse holo and it was just the texturized one, it would have been awesome. But I still love the concept even if the pack opening experience suffers massively, especially in English where we have the regular reverse holo to add salt to the wound. masterballs have been overdone at this point and I hate them for overdoing it. I would be fine if they had done it for 151 and then waited to do it again for the final S/V era set, or waited to try it again later. But again, this has no reflection on my love for the textured holo variant. its a labor of love.
All that to say, this set is polarizing for me. massively so. Its a love/hate relationship. I bought 2 cases of japanese and got so upset with pullrates that I never opened any past my first couple boxes. English? Forget it, too hard to find. This is a buy it and move on it. But it will remain a contentious set for years to come. Expensive and worth hoarding? yes. Fun to open? Heavens no. Fun art? Yes. Eeveelutions? yes. The monkey paw curling, they have hats? Also yes.
Surging Sparks
This set was pretty unexciting to me. The SIR cards here is probably the worst selection to date. None of the trainers is that interesting. Jasmine’s Gaze really bothers me. She is one of my favorite Gym leaders and this art seems to express nothing about her personality and is out of character. We have 3 goofy hats, none of which looks stand out. Milotic is the best, and Latios andthe IR Latios are a nice pair that saves this set. I think the big reason I don’t like this set is the history around it. It was a middle tier, but okay set. However nothing about it made me excited to open packs for a pull rate of 1 SIR per 2 boxes. This a set that has 2 japanese sets, so its pretty big, but it also has less exciting in it than a single set release like Journey Together. Your rate of good to unexciting is quite low compared to other sets of a similar or smaller size overall. My favorite IR card here is definately Skarmory. Besides that Feebas or Mespirit stand out to me. This set was tainted by negative personal experience. I ordered a preordered a lot of it. By the time it came out and arrived at my door, Pokemon TCG pocket had come out and prices soared and kept soaring. I was unsure of what to do. It felt like it wasn’t smart to open at that point. So it killed the fun for me when it became a serious money issue. Eventually I sold it to my LGS for $210 a box by the time I made up my mind, the prices had gone that high. They had nothing on the shelves and relied on the secondhand market at that point. So I thought it was at least helpful to keep shelves full. Then later that week some criminals broke into the store, smashed the glass, and stole the cards I sold them and tons more stuff. Thousands of dollars lost. I felt awful. At that point I wished I had just opened it like I had intended. So for personal reasons this set gets knocked down. Is that fair? Probably not. But its MY tier list ya hear! Otherwise if pokemon pocket never existed, I’m sure things would be chill, and I’d have opened the set, been kind of pissed off at probably getting the SAR for alolan exegutor in my boxes and just bought the rest for under $40 each.
Scarlet&Violet Base set
Like most first sets, this one wasn’t amazing. They chose not to put SIRs or IRs for the starter pokemon which was a huge blunder. They put them in paldea evolved for some reason. That set is all the better for this set’s loss. They carried over the concept of the trainer gallery from brilliant stars, an idea that I thought was a great way to make opening packs more exciting and give easier to find full art styles of card. having no texture to make manufacture easier, and just showing large artworks is a great idea for a new rarity. So this is honestly, probably the best first set of an era since THE Base Set itself. If you consider Expedition a type of base set then that one is nice too. I consider e-reader series sets their own thing though. Not much else to say. People really tore into this set on release, but I didn’t get all the hate. Are you going to tell me that the Gardevoir line IR and SIR cards are not amazing? People it seems took their time realizing it. I know I completed this set very affordably. But I got lucky on pack pulls too. I got miraidon and koraidon and that felt good. Both beautiful arts. Plus three dogs and whatever riolu is, all dog IRs. Hello, that rocks. Kingambit also looks super cool. While Miriam was way overspeculated on, it really is a neat card. Its so punchy and stylish. It feels like a comic book page style and also feels like a stillframe from some really cool anime opening sequence. But I’m glad it became affordable. This was the second set I Master setted too. Ever. This era really started strong in that regard. It was easy to get what you wanted to open and enjoy for cheap or to purchase and make a set of. However yes, its still kind of just a half hearted selection of pokemon. Do we need 3 lechonks and 3 flittle and 3 tarountula cards? I don’t think so. Trainer cards are pretty bog standard reprints of competitive staples. Gardevoir though, ended up being a great competitive card so thats cool. Overall, not awful, but it just could have been C tier with different pokemon choices.
Temporal Forces
This set is here in large part for this one reason. The difference in pull rate for an SIR from SV base set, to temporal Forces is %25. You went from 1.5 per booster box pull rate to .5. To get 2 SIR card you went from potentially 1 box to up to 5 boxes. Now, if you got a sealed case, it was evenly spaced. But random boxes from here or there? You are gambling. It forced serious pack openers to buy a case or get hosed.
But lets talk about the cards. Honestly, I think it is the absolute weakest set for IR cards. Relicanth is maybe the best one, and I like the creative idea in the Arbok where you can flit it 180 and it feels similar. Visually very cool. The SIR cards are the three future and past beasts from gen 3 and gen 5, which will remain forgotten, especially the “iron” guys. I do like Walking wake, but I a suicune lover. None are bad, its just not my favorite. Its a strong theme though. Getting Morty was good as he is a favorite of mine. His full art honestly might be the best looking FA trainer I’ve ever seen. But still, nothing here screams “chase card”.
Ending off, it is a set with a number of solid playable cards. However it just artificially dampened pull rates for no good reason. Well, we know why, they just wanted to pump up demand but think about it this way, that means twice as much filler junk printed. Right now, they could fix the short print issue if they just put the pull rates for SIR cards back down to about 1 in 1 booster box or roughly 1 in 30 packs. So this set is where things all went wrong to me. Its not surging spark its temporal forces to blame for where things got to in terms of the issue of finding cards.
Paldean Fates
I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy this set. I was excited for more shining baby pokemon. But…I wasn’t ready for just how many there would be. This was egregious. Also, it showed me just how bad the shiny forms are in scarlet and violet. The vast majority are like %3 bright and they called it good. SERIOUSLY WHAT IS THIS?
Don’t adjust your screen, those are regular and shiny tandemaus. Even side by side, I literally can’t tell. I just know they are different because the file names are different.
They aren’t all this bad and many pokemon in this set are some of the OGs and fan favorites too. But this feels like a regression. When hidden fates came out, it was awesome. It was a bold new idea. But they didn’t iterate on it here. They just threw too many shiny pokemon cards at us. It was overwhelming and not fun to collect so many. Seriously, there are 131 of these guys. The same background and everything. Its monotonous and boring. It feels like a wikipedia page list of shiny pokemon. On top of that the pull rates were actually whack. They kept the same ~1/12 pack pull rate for IR rarity, but that only has 3 cards. If you want to ruin some stonk dogger tell them to load up on wugtrio IR cards. The baby shiny pull rate needed to be like 1 in 2 packs, while this rarity needed to be 1 in 40. I got sick of seeing them pretty fast, and it sucks because I think at least pawmi and palafin look awesome! Why wasn’t THIS just a set full of IR shiny pokemon? It could have been! It could have done what black bolt and white flare did but for shinies. Everyone knows it. It had potential to be actually S tier. Then the same issue with full arts. So so few and two of them are the same card with a group of 4 different generic kids nobody cares about or knows. Why? Why have TWO? Why even have ONE? Who wants Paldean Students? Make it at least a Cool Trainer or other generic buy beloved trainer type. Now, of course th SIRs are not bad. I remember being upset I pulled the mew from a pack because I didn’t think it was that good…now I am okay with it looking at how manipulated those prices are. USGMEN is a good artist by the way…but they are an animator. So they use simple shapes. Go on twitter and find them. Cute pokemon animations one after the other. But as a static image, its just not where its at. The gardevoir is my favorite. Charizard is cool and all, but still has a goofy hat. But The gold cards also don’t look as stunning in person as I had hoped, but I like them. The kind of sea green teal is beautiful and I’m a sucker for teal. The shiny look of their holo is killer though and they kept using that technique going forward which I think was a good move. Essentially this is the worst set not just because it was genuinely bad, but also double bad because we all know what it COULD have been! Imagine if it had just 25 IR cards and 10 SIR cards of shiny pokemon. No baby shinies, just IR. It could be a compact set but full of variety, and set the pull rate down to about 1 in 8 packs for a IR and you are set.
2 Likes
It’s easy, Black and White sets are top since they are basically a port of the JP ones and give everything AR/SAR. Then 151, another port.
Everything else is shit since English sets have no cohesion (actually neither do JP sets) and I have zero desire to open packs ever since it’s gambling with worse odds than casinos.
1 Like
My highly cursed opinion.
Favorite cards from each set:
S
Destined Rivals: Yanma SIR!!! Team Rocket’s Mewtwo, Team Rocket’s Moltres, Ethan’s Adventure, Team Rocket’s Giovanni, Team Rocket’s Houndoom, Rotom IR/SIR. Team Rocket’s Archer UR. I love Proton but they did not make him very appealing in his UR FA, which disappointed me.
A
Paldea Evolved: Magikarp, Raichu, Tinkaton line, Chi-Yu, Heracross, Grusha SIR. Honorary mention to Boss’s Orders UR.
Twilight Masquerade: Kieran SIR, Ogerpon ETB Promo, Kieran UR.
Surging Sparks: Feebas, Drayton, Spheal, SIR. Drayton UR.
Prismatic Evolutions: Sylveon, Crispin, Drayton SIR. Wish I liked the Kieran card here but he just looks bald for some reason.
Black Bolt & White Flare: N’s Plan, Snivy, Zorua, Samurott, Sewaddle SIR/IR.
B
Scarlet and Violet Base - Miraidon, Amorouge, Koraidon, Arven SIR. The other Arven card is pretty neat too.
Paradox Rift: Iron Valiant, Porygon-Z, Mienshao, Minior, Slither Wing SIR. Honorary mention to Roark UR.
Journey Together: Lillie’s Ribombee IR. Anything with N is automatically cool in my book. I personally enjoy Hop a lot but not a huge fan of the Zacian SIR.
C
Obsidian Flames: Cleffa SIR. Ortega is pretty cool too. BF pulled the chase Charizard from this set, so that was a pretty fun experience.
Paldean Fates: Pawmi, Clive SIR.
Temporal Forces: Reuniclus, Grotle SIR. Usually I like Morty, but his SIR is a bit wonky in this set.
Stellar Crown: Lacey, Ledien, Raboot SIR. Crispin UR.
D
151: Caterpie, Omanyte SIR. Honorary mention to both Giovanni cards and Bill’s Transfer.
E
Shrouded Fable: None. Gross.
2 Likes
When the list so valid you just gotta cry
2 Likes
Looking back, we didnt get any rayquaza in SV did we?
1 Like
And bro HAD TO RUIN IT
2 Likes
you made me think of it by commenting
and checking with serebii yeah not even a lousy non holo rare in the entire block
3 Likes
Destined Rivals and 151 was the only set that was appealing to me besides the illustration rares.
1 Like
You should be. I opened up like 60 packs of Prismatic and got absolutely nothing
3 Likes
S tier: Great Sets, Great Arts, all of them are memorable in one way or another
A tier: All good arts, just isn’t enough to make top tier due to some factors, but overall good sets
B: Most of these sets have at least 1 thing that excludes them from A tier and 2 thing that excludes them from S
C: Prismatic is here solely because of pull rates, Twilight is not enough to reach B, and paradox rift isn’t appealing to me.
D. Just big letdowns, could have done so much more but didnt.
F. Shrouded Fable, do I even need to say it.
3 Likes
Thank you for the bump! It was enjoyable to peruse through everyone else’s choices and contribute my own:
A few explanations:
DR: Has some set cohesion and a myriad of solid artworks! My favorite cards are the Ethan’s Ho-oh SIR, Ethan’s adventure SIR, Ethan’s Typhlosion IR (Ethan is cool character, what can I say), and the Rocket’s Houndoom IR.
A tier sets: BBWF have incredible set cohesion with an abundance of diverse arts, PR is here for similar reasons (though I find it to be a nice intermediary between BBWF’s positives and most of the other SV era set’s positives) and SS has Milotic SIR (there are other great arts too, but she deserves special mention)!
B tier sets: PE is similar to PR in terms of strengths, I just prefer the IRs from the latter, and TF has a lot of IRs and SIRs that aren’t necessarily my favorites but are above average. SF receives too much hate imho! It has good set cohesion (a rarity in ultra modern), and some beautiful IRs (Persian, Houndoom, and Cresselia especially). I’ll concede SF’s SIRs are underwhelming.
The rest: Everything else is C or less due to missed potential, a lack of artworks I find compelling, non-existent set cohesion, or a combination thereof. The sets that are lower ranked compared to the others in these tiers are worse offenders than the rest.
2 Likes
Only 151/Destined Rivals stood out to me with Journey Together/Black/White/Prismatic being runner ups after.
2 Likes
Very much enjoyed reading through all your takes. Personally, I think that this was one of the best eras ever for Pokemon (at least from my collectors perspective). There is so many staggering artworks that were not imaginable even a few years ago, the only thing i would critique on is the fact, that some sets lack cohesion and seem to be blown up with a ton of fillers.
1 Like
My rationale
I appreciate SV base as it was the first set to take us away from the infamous yellow boarders. I love the ralts/kirlia & Gardevoir line. The alt art & gold Koraidon as I loved him in the game. Nagasawa, Komayama, Aoki, Iribi, Egawa, Komiya, Sowsow, Okacheke, Shibuzoh and Teeziro Illustration rares.
The rest of the SV era is boring to me after that.. It’s nothing new or special versus anything we’ve had for years now. Alt arts have been around a long time now and whilst we got a taste of them with the gold Arita cards from XY and the end of the S&M era. Having them constantly since battle styles along with trainer gallery cards & illustration rares in the SV era. It’s just a bit boring and I could have put anything in C/D tier down to F.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a lover of art and appreciate it as I do draw/paint myself but SV really bought nothing new to the table. Also I may have a slight lack of love for the paradox Pokemon.. At least with XY and now mega evolution, the initial design of the mega Pokemon hasn’t changed to some weird monstrosity variant that looks nothing like the original form and I think the whole era lacked creativity in SV.
1 Like