By Kenny Wisdom
A few days ago I wrote an article detailing the top 5 most competitively playable cards in the new English Pokemon Black & White set. As promised within that article, I’m back today to write about the cards that have the best looking art. I’m not usually one who cares for the art of cards (although I do have an unhealthy obsession with reverse foils and super rare shiny cards and the like), but I realize that this site doesn’t just appeal to competitive Pokemon players, and therefore my articles shouldn’t either. If you’re a fan of my articles solely for their competitive information, fear not, as I’ll be pumping out plenty of content for tournament players in the weeks to come.
#5: Woobat
I put Woobat kind of low just because I moreso think the Pokemon looks awesome, rather than the card art being all that great. I mean, the card art is fine, it’s just very dynamic. I’m also not sure if my love of Woobat is entirely because it’s actually a well-designed Pokemon, or if it’s all because of how terrible most of the B/W Pokemon look, making Woobat look better in comparison. Either way, cute pokemon + sweet card art = the play, obviously.
#4: Simipour
Simipour’s art reminds me of the greatest time in Pokemon. When I was a kid, I watched the Pokemon anime religiously, and was constantly thinking about how Pokemon would behave in the “real world”, that is, their natural habitat and how cool it would be to see Pokemon walk through a city or a forest, etc. This art isn’t the most dynamic and it’s not a battle pose or anything, but it shows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s simply walking through some kind of river or stream, existing in a Pokemon universe. I guess my love of this art has to due with my passion for world building, not entirely sure.
#3: Darmanitan
This art is essentially the exact opposite of the Simipour art above. It just shows a totally ridiculous Pokemon with an interesting, colorful background. In fact, the background is probably my favorite thing about this art, just in that it’s something you don’t see every day, it doesn’t look like the average Pokemon card and all. I’ll have to admit that, much like the Woobat art, this cards inclusion on this list isn’t entirely because of the actual card art, but mostly because of my love for the design of the actual Pokemon itself.
#2 & #1: Zekrom and Reshiram Full-Art Super Rares
SO beautiful. If it weren’t for the Rayquaza and Deoxys Legend card printed a few sets back, these would definitely be my favorite looking cards. These cards hold a unique place because it’s not really so much the art of the card that make them awesome, but rather the design of the actual CARD itself. I’ve wanted full-art Pokemon cards for a long time, so I was ridiculously excited when I heard we’d be getting them in Black & White. The clean, simplicity of the art combined with the font on the text and the glossyness of the card stock make these cards look simply amazing.
So, that’s all I’ve got. Unfortunately, Black & White is comprimsed of a lot of stock art, so there’s not much to pick from. Still, I think a lot of these cards are quite good looking, and I’m sure as time goes on we’ll get to see more dyanmic, less-stock art in the Black and White generation. As always, if you’d like to comment on this article, please do it in the comments section below or e-mail me directly at kenny@sixprizes.com.
Tags: Pokemon Black & White