woahpoke, Author at woahpoke

The 75 Best City & Urban Pokémon Cards

The Pokémon world has always had cities in it, but for most of the TCG's life they stayed in the background. That's changed. In the modern era, illustrators started treating the city as a subject in its own right, and now you can build a whole binder out of alleyways, rooftops, storefronts and streetlights.

We went through them all, and this is our full curated list of the best city and urban-themed cards in the TCG!

We’re a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Lifestyle & Slice of Life City Cards

Errands, commutes, window shopping, standing outside a bakery with real intent. Nothing plot relevant happens in any of these and that's exactly why they work. This is the section that makes the Pokémon world feel like somewhere people actually live rather than somewhere people only battle.

Our Picks:

Lifestyle & Slice of Life City Cards

Daytime City Cards

Broad daylight, busy street, and almost every Pokémon here is up to something. Whatever they're doing, they're doing it in public and they're not sorry about it.

Our Picks:

Daytime City Pokemon Cards

Nighttime City Cards

Night is when the city art gets to use every trick at once: wet pavement, neon, headlights, a single lit window in a dark building.

Umbreon naturally runs this realm, and the Mega Absol, Noivern, and Mewtwo are so Gotham-esque you half expect a searchlight in the sky.

Our Picks:

Nighttime City Pokemon Cards

Side-Scrolling City Cards

Flat, side-on, and laid out like a level you'd run left to right. No perspective depth, just the city as a band across the card with the Pokémon moving through it. The three Meowths from 30th Celebration are the ones to get, since they connect into a single continuous street. We went through the whole set in our 30th Celebration chase cards round-up.

Our Picks:

Side-Scrolling City Pokemon Cards

City Park Cards

The quiet pocket in the middle of all that concrete. Benches, trees, a bit of grass, and Pokémon doing the things you do in a park: sitting around, singing, meeting up with each other. We love these cards!

Our Picks:

City Park Pokemon Cards

Scenery-First Cityscape Cards

These ones flip the usual setup. The card is a place first and a Pokémon second, and a few of them tuck the Pokémon so far into the scene that you'll miss it on the first pass. We had the Japanese Sudowoodo for the longest time and thought it was just a cityscape card before we finally spotted him in there. And Lumiose City doesn't have a Pokémon on it at all.

Our Picks:

Scenery-First Cityscape Cards

Interior & City View Cards

There's a particular comfort to these that the street level cards don't have. You're in the city but you're also out of it.

We’ve got more cards like this covered in our round-up of the best home life Pokémon cards!

Our Picks:

Interior & City View Pokemon Cards

City Pokémon Jobs & Construction Cards

Pokémon putting in the work. Scaffolding, hard hats, girders, movers, and a lot of Fighting and Steel types doing what they're obviously built for. We were surprised how many of there these were once we put them all together!

Our Picks:

City Pokémon Jobs & Construction Pokemon CardsCards

Vibrant & Colorful Urban Cards

Where the color gets turned all the way up. Beautiful skies, neon signage, graffiti, and a few cards that drop realism entirely and go abstract with the palette like Komiya’s Drowzee.

Our Picks:

Vibrant & Colorful Urban Pokemon Cards

European Town Inspired Cards

Narrow lanes, shuttered windows, terracotta roofs, church bells implied. We loved putting together this little niche page. Paldea gave the illustrators a Mediterranean template to work from and they clearly enjoyed it, but the influence shows up well beyond that region too.

Lots of birds and fliers in this one, which makes sense.

Our Picks:

European Town Inspired Cards

Affordable & Common City Cards

You don't need an illustration rare to collect this theme. Plenty of city art landed on regular commons, which makes for an easy first page if you're just getting into it. Here are a few to get started!

Our Picks:

Affordable & Common City Pokemon Cards

That's our round-up of the best city and urban Pokémon cards in the TCG! Are you a nighttime neon person or a city park bench collector?

woahpoke is supported by its audience. When you buy something using the retail links in our posts, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read more about our affiliate disclaimer.

by woahpoke

82 Cozy Domestic & Home Life Pokémon Cards

Somewhere along the way the TCG stopped putting every Pokémon in a battle and started putting them in a house. On the couch, under a blanket, up on the kitchen counter where they aren't supposed to be. It's the softest the card art has ever gotten and one of our favorite corners of the hobby.

This is our roundup of the cards set at home, sorted room by room as you fill your binder!

We’re a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Bedroom Pokémon Cards

Nothing much happens in these cards, which is the appeal. A Pokémon is asleep, or nearly asleep, or has claimed a spot on the bed that it clearly considers permanently its own.

The lighting does a lot of the work here. Most of these are lit by a lamp or by whatever's coming through the window, so the whole section sits in that warm low light register that makes you want to go to bed early.

We have more snoozy cards in our full sleeping Pokémon cards round-up!

Our Picks:

Bedroom Pokémon Cards

Kitchen & Dining Room Pokémon Cards

The kitchen brings out a specific kind of mischief in Pokémon art. Someone is on the counter, someone is eyeing a bowl they were not offered, and the whole thing reads like a scene that ends badly for whoever's cooking.

If the food itself is what you're here for, we went deep on that in our food Pokémon cards roundup. A few of the Trainer cards further down are also set at the table, so check that section too!

Our Picks:

Kitchen & Dining Room Pokémon Cards

Living Room Pokémon Cards

This is the biggest section by a wide margin, which tracks. The living room is where everybody ends up.

It's also where the art gets most ambitious. The Ralts line is the standout, three cards that connect into one continuous scene and tell a whole life story across them, and they make an incredible centerpiece for a binder page. Elsewhere you've got couch naps, window seats, and a run of cards parked in front of a fire, which we covered in full in our fireplace Pokémon cards post.

Our Picks:

Living Room Pokémon Cards

Desk, Office & Study Pokémon Cards

Studying, tinkering, reading, or in a few cases, actively getting in the way of someone else trying to work. If you've ever had a cat sit on your keyboard, a couple of these will feel personal.

This corner of the TCG overlaps heavily with books and libraries, so if that's your thing we put together a whole roundup of Pokémon book cards too!

Our Picks:

Desk, Office & Study Pokémon Cards

Backyard, Garden & Balcony Pokémon Cards

Home life, al fresco. Whether that's Persian posted up at a Juliet balcony, Squirtle in a kiddie pool, or something dozing in the flower beds, this is the part of the house with the sky or a window in it. The ones with Pokémon looking out at the world, like Charmander and Persian, are our favorites of the bunch.

Our Picks:

Backyard, Garden & Balcony Pokémon Cards

Trainers at Home Pokémon Cards

The Trainer cards are where the domestic thing gets really specific, because now there's a person in the frame with a whole life going on around them. Cooking, working, sleeping in, or even running out the door. Everyone here is off duty.

Our Picks:

Trainers at Home Pokémon Cards

Entryways, Stairs & the Rest of the House Pokémon Cards

Every house has the parts nobody photographs. The hallway, the stairs, the spot by the door where the shoes pile up, the bathroom sink.

The Quaxly line is the one to know about here, three connecting cards that run the evolution through a single bathroom mirror scene. And the 151 Machoke is helping somebody move in with a cross section of the whole place laid out (and a Meowth cameo if you can spot it!)

Our Picks:

Entryways, Stairs & the Rest of the House Pokémon Cards

Vintage & Rare Home Pokémon Cards

The cozy home card isn't a new invention. It just used to be rarer and turned up in the corners of sets that were otherwise all business. This section runs from grails down to cards that cost less than a coffee, and the range is part of the fun.

Our Picks:

Vintage & Rare Home Pokémon Cards

Affordable & Common Home Pokémon Cards

You don't need a chase card to build a cozy binder. Plenty of the best domestic art in the TCG landed on commons, which means you can put a whole page together without thinking too hard about it. Great place to start if this is a new lane for you!

Our Picks:

Affordable & Common Home Pokémon Cards

That's our roundup of the best home life Pokémon cards out there. Let us know in the comments which room you'd build your page around, or if you’d do a mix of everything!

by woahpoke

65 Hyper Realistic Pokémon Cards

Most Pokémon cards aren’t trying to look real, and it’s why the ones that break from it stop you cold when they turn up in a pack.

Realism shows up in the TCG in more ways than you’d expect, and we’ve gathered and sorted them all for binder-ready pages!

We’re a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Photo Realistic Cards

These are the cards where the camera is doing the illustrating. Sometimes that's shallow focus and bokeh, sometimes it's just light and shadow behaving the way they would actually behave, but the reference point is always a photograph rather than a drawing. The Scarlet & Violet illustration rares turned this into something close to a house style, so if you pull one of these it’s usually from that era!

Our Picks:

Photo Realistic Pokémon Cards

Realistic Illustrated Cards

For these, the realism is drawn one feather and one strand of fur at a time, and you can feel the hours in it. A lot of them also skew toward the moodier end of the roster, which tracks, since dramatic lighting is where careful rendering pays off most.

Our Picks:

Realistic Illustrated Pokémon Cards

Realistic 3D & CGI Pokémon Cards

Gloss, specular highlights, surfaces that catch light the way a physical thing would. Some of these actually are 3D renders and some are paintings that landed in the same place, and honestly you can't always tell.

It's a look that suits certain Pokémon far better than others. Anything with a shell, a gel body, or a coat that would be shiny in real life comes out of this treatment.

Our Picks:

Realistic 3D & CGI Pokémon Cards

Handmade & Clay Diorama Cards

Here's the section where "realistic" stops being a technique and starts being literal. These cards have Pokémon built out of a physical material, set up, and photographed.

Two artists carry this whole category: Yuka Morii sculpts hers in clay, and she's been doing it since the early days of the TCG, which is why her cards show up across sets that are decades apart. Asako Ito crochets hers, and the yarn texture is so specific that once you've seen one of her cards you can spot the next one right away.

If you find this world interesting, we have a full round-up of the best Pokémon card artists and illustrators!

Our Picks:

Handmade & Clay Diorama Cards

Cards with Real People in Them

Now for the curveball. There’s a small and strange corner of the TCG where the art is an actual photograph of an actual human being, and most of it lives in Japanese promos that never got a wide release.

Some of these are pure goofiness and easy to pick up. Others are collector legends that rarely surface at all (like the Ishihara GX). Either way, nothing else in the hobby looks like them.

Our Picks:

Cards with Real People in Them

Detective Pikachu Cards

Technically these belong up in the photo realistic section, but there are enough of them and they're weird enough that they've earned their own section.

The 2019 set pulled the Pokémon designs straight from the movie, which means fur where there has never been fur, wet noses, and skin that reflects light. On the cute ones it works. Pikachu, Charmander and Lickitung all come out of it looking soft and huggable. Then there's uncanny Machamp and Jigglypuff, which we’re not going to pretend we’re chasing.

Our Picks:

Detective Pikachu Cards

Those are our picks for realistic Pokémon cards! Which ones are you adding to your binder? Any we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

by woahpoke

70 Cute Yu-Gi-Oh Cards & Archetypes in the TCG

Yu-Gi-Oh has a reputation for screaming teenagers, card text that runs four paragraphs, and monsters designed to look like they could eat a building. Which makes it funny how much of the game is soft, pastel and shaped like a plushie.

Konami has printed entire archetypes of this stuff, some of them competitively terrifying. Here's our running list of the cutest cards in the game, and a few that only look harmless!

We're a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network and TCGplayer affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Dream Mirror Oneiromancy

Oneiromancy is divination through dreams, and the whole Dream Mirror set is built on the gates of horn and ivory from Greek myth, the pair of gates that sort true dreams from false ones. The monsters are named for Greek dream deities and every one of them exists twice, a bright Joy version and a dark Terror version of the same face.

Not many cards are named after an entire school of ancient divination. This one is.

Dream Mirror Oneiromancy · Chaos Impact on eBay | TCGplayer

Dream Mirror Oneiromancy Cards

Potato & Chips

A Japanese-only collaboration promo, which is about as cute and far off the beaten path as this list goes!

Potato & Chips on eBay

Cute Potato & Chips Cards

Rescue Rabbit

A rabbit with 300 attack whose entire job is diving into your deck and coming back with two identical friends. Konami had to restrict it for years, which is a strange thing to have on your record when you look like this. Three printings here including an eFootball promo, because apparently the rabbit plays soccer now.

Our Picks:

Rescue Rabbit Cute YuGiOh Cards

Danger!? Tsuchinoko?

The Danger! archetype is built entirely on cryptids, the creatures folklore insists are real and nobody has ever produced. Bigfoot, Mothman, the Loch Ness Monster.

The punctuation is the joke. Cryptids the game is willing to vouch for get exclamation marks. The two it isn't sure about get question marks instead, which is how you end up with Danger!? Tsuchinoko? The tsuchinoko is a Japanese cryptid, a fat little snake that may or may not be a rumor.

Danger!? Tsuchinoko? · Quarter Century Stampede on eBay | TCGplayer

Danger!? Tsuchinoko? Cards

Crystal Bond

The Crystal Beasts are seven animals with a gemstone set into each one, a different color of the rainbow apiece, and they were Jesse Anderson's deck in GX. When they die they don't leave. They turn into gemstones and sit on the field.

Crystal Bond is the card that brings them together, and it's worth owning for the archetype it belongs to as much as for itself.

Crystal Bond · SD: Legend of the Crystal Beasts on eBay | TCGplayer

rystal bond YuGiOh Cards

Melffy

The name is German, a mash of Märchen (fairy tale) and Fee (fairy), which lands near "fluffy" by accident and tells you everything about the art direction. Storybook pastels, animals only, a heart on every chest and florals on every thigh. Melffy Mommy is the one who makes it work. She's the mother of the whole group, and the shared artworks have her watching the little ones play.

Our Picks:

Melffy Cute YuGiOh Cards

World Chalice Guardragon

A tiny wind dragon whose whole personality is throwing itself in front of things for somebody else. It belongs to the World Legacy story, one of the longest lore arcs Konami has ever told, and that story runs entirely through card art across a dozen sets. Three printings here if you want the same small dragon 3 times.

Our Picks:

World Chalice Guardragon Cards

Mokey Mokey

The flavor text is the entire reason this card has a following: "An outcast angel. Nobody knows what he is thinking at all. Sometimes he gets mad and that is dreadful." A tiny blob written up like a warning. It became a running joke in GX and Konami has never stopped printing support for it, which is how something this small ended up with a card called Mokey Mokey Smackdown.

Our Picks:

Mokey Mokey Cute YuGiOh Cards

Charmer Tokens

The Charmers are four elemental spellcasters who have been around since 2005, each one paired with a familiar. Aussa has earth, Eria water, Hiita fire, Wynn wind. Their tagline is about walking with spirits day after day, which is unusually gentle for a game this loud.

These three tokens pair them off two at a time. Tokens never have to be good, which is exactly why the art gets to be this relaxed.

Our Picks:

Chamer Tokens Cute YuGiOh Cards

Madolche

The name is three words stacked: madō (magical), doll, and dolce. They're plushies with visible sewing seams on their limbs, standing on sweets cut into jigsaw shapes.

The organizing principle is our favorite part. The archetype splits into Royalty, Servants and Pets, and each tier gets its own pun scheme. Royalty are dessert titles, so Puddingcess. Servants are jobs, so Butlerusk is a butler and a rusk. Pets are animal noises, which is how you end up with a sheep made of maple syrup called Madolche Baaple.

Our Picks:

Madolche YuGiOh Cards

Laundry Trap & Dragonmaid

Dragonmaid is openly modeled on the manga series Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, and every member exists twice: a small humanoid maid and the large dragon she turns into. Laundry Dragonmaid does the washing. Putting her next to Laundry Trap is a joke that lands if you page them together, so here they are!

Our Picks:

Laundry Trap & Dragonmaid Cute YuGiOh

Kuriboh

One of the most recognizable things in the entire game, and it's a ball of brown fur with eyes and tiny hands. Kuriboh's whole role is being thrown away from your hand to take a hit for you, so every good Kuriboh moment is a sacrifice.

It's been reprinted constantly since 2000 and has spawned a whole family of variants, which is a lot of legacy for something that small.

Our Picks:

Cute Kuriboh YuGiOh Cards

Cloudian - Smoke Ball

Cloudians are monsters made of cloud, one per weather formation, and Smoke Ball is the smallest and roundest of the lot. Adrian Gecko ran them in GX, so somebody actually built a deck out of weather.

Cloudian - Smoke Ball · Gladiator's Assault on eBay | TCGplayer

Cute Cloudian - Smoke Ball

Risebell the Summoner

The card description is the whole sell. He's a kindly older brother who reads a magical book with his little sister every early afternoon, and that's the card.

His sister Saambell has her own, which makes this a two-card story if you want to page them together.

Risebell the Summoner · 2016 Mega Tins on eBay | TCGplayer

Risebell the Summoner Cute Cards

Electric Virus

Named like a piece of malware and drawn like a toy, and the gap between those two things is the whole appeal.

Electric Virus · Strike of Neos on eBay | TCGplayer

Electric Virus YuGiOh Cards

Fortune Fairy

Six tiny fortune-telling witches, one per Attribute, each named and colored to match: Hikari for Light, En for Fire, Hu for Wind, Swee for Water, Ann for Dark, Chee for Earth. The art style sits somewhere near a late-nineties magical girl anime.

They belonged to Carly Carmine in 5D's, which is where this section turns. After Carly became a Dark Signer, the archetype became the Fortune Ladies, who are older, taller and visibly more twisted versions of the same six. Collect the fairies while they're still cheerful.

Our Picks:

Cute Fortune Fairy YuGiOh

Shiba-Warrior Taro

The name does the work. He's a shiba, he's a warrior, he's called Taro, and the one thing he reliably does in a duel is run straight back to you the moment anything breaks. Most dog behavior a card has ever had.

Shiba-Warrior Taro · Anniversary Pack on eBay | TCGplayer

Shiba-Warrior Taro-Warrior Cute YuGiOh

Ghostrick Socuteboss

Ghostrick is ghost plus trick, a whole archetype of Halloween folklore creatures in orange and black, and their entire personality is popping out to scare you and then hiding again.

Socuteboss is named exactly how it reads. Somebody at Konami typed "so cute boss" and nobody stopped them.

Ghostrick Socuteboss · Ghosts From the Past: 2nd Haunting on eBay | TCGplayer

Ghostrick Socuteboss YuGiOh Cards

Baby Tiragon

A baby dragon assembled out of three even smaller monsters, which is a lot of babies for one baby.

Baby Tiragon · Number Hunters on eBay | TCGplayer

Baby Tiragon Cards

Volcanic Rat

A tiny rat with 500 attack and no effect whatsoever. It exists, it's on fire, and it turned up in GX in Axel Brodie's deck. Sometimes that's enough.

Volcanic Rat · Tactical Evolution on eBay | TCGplayer

Volcanic Rat YuGiOh Cards

Traptrix

The name is trap plus trick plus the feminine -trix, and every Traptrix looks like a girl themed after a carnivorous plant or a predatory arthropod. Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, trapdoor spiders. Rafflesia is named for a parasitic carrion flower.

Then you find out the girls aren't the monsters. They're lures. There's an appendage running from behind each one's back to the real creature, which is somewhere else entirely.

Our Picks:

Traptrix YuGiOh Cards

Purrely

The name is a pun on "purely" and a portmanteau of pure, purr and fairy, and the monsters blend cat and dog features without fully committing to either.

The part that gets people is the Quick-Play Spells. They're photographs, and concept art revealed the photographer to be a young girl. The whole archetype is somebody's pet album.

Our Picks:

Purrely Cute YuGiOh Cards

Wind-Up

The cleanest design idea in this whole list. A wind-up toy gets wound and then does the one thing it was built to do, so in Yu-Gi-Oh summoning the monster is winding it and using its effect is the toy going.

A rat, a shark, a honeybee, a kitten, a rabbit, a dog and a juggler, all in clockwork. It's a toy box.

Our Picks:

Wind-Up YuGiOh Cards

Penguin Soldier

A penguin. With a sword. From a 2000s starter deck, which is exactly the era that would hand a penguin a sword and not explain itself.

Penguin Soldier · Starter Deck: Joey on eBay | TCGplayer

Penguin Soldier YuGiOh Cards

Which cute Yu-Gi-Oh card is your favorite? Any we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

by woahpoke

16 Fireplace & Campfire Pokémon Cards

There’s a specific kind of card art that makes you want to put the binder down and go make a hot drink. Warm light coming from one corner of the frame, a Pokémon curled up near it, and nothing else happening.

Fire is doing double duty on these. It’s a type, so it turns up constantly, but the best of these cards aren’t about fire as an attack. They’re about fire as furniture.

Here’s our running list of the coziest fireplace and campfire Pokémon cards!

We’re a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Fireplaces & Cozy Indoor Scenes

Some of these have an actual fireplace in the frame and some just have the warmth of one somewhere off card. We kept them together because they read the same way on a binder page, and honestly the implied fireplace and orange cast is doing just as much work as a real one. Flareon and Vulpix are the obvious anchors!

Our Picks:

Cozy Pokémon Cards

Campfires & Lanterns

Take the fire outside and you get the other half of this theme. Magmortar is the one that made us want to build this list, a Fire type that could make its own heat any time and chooses to sit by a campfire instead.

A couple of these are lanterns rather than open flame, but they go great all together so we left them in!

There are plenty more cards in this realm in our camping Pokémon cards post.

Our Picks:

Campfires Pokémon Cards

Bonus: Close Enough Fireplaces

Neither of these is a fireplace, but both earn a spot on the page anyway. Torkoal is sitting in what looks like a pottery kiln, which for a coal Pokémon is super on-theme, and Magby is one of our favorite underrated cards full stop.

Our Picks:

Warm Pokémon Cards

Commons & Affordable Fireplace Cards

You don’t need an illustration rare to build this page. Here are cheap cards that fit the theme, including a Full Flame trainer card from Legend Maker, which is about as OG as this list gets!

Our Picks:

Commons & Affordable Fireplace Pokémon Cards

Which cozy fireplace card is your favorite? Any we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

by woahpoke

105 Spooky, Scary & Halloween-Themed Pokémon Cards

Pokémon has never done horror, but it has done ghosts since 1996 and somewhere along the way the TCG developed a serious appetite for graveyards, haunted houses and things watching you from the dark.

This is our running list of the spookiest cards in the game, from the modern full arts and cute cards to the vintage Gengars that started it. Grouped by what kind of spooky you're after!

We’re a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Gengar, Haunter & Gastly Full Art Cards

The original Ghost line from Gen 1, and still the ones everything else gets measured against. Gastly is a ball of gas, Haunter is hands, and Gengar is the grin. Thirty years on, illustrators still can't leave them alone.

These are our modern picks, and we have a full vintage section further down if you’re after those!

Our Picks:

Scary Gengar Pokémon Cards

Darkrai Full Art Cards

Darkrai is about as close as the Pokémon TCG gets to painting with straight black. It's a Pokémon whose whole design is shadow with a face in it, so illustrators don't have to add anything spooky to the frame.

Our Picks:

Scary Darkrai Pokémon Cards

Mimikyu Full Art Cards

The saddest Pokémon on this list. Mimikyu hides under a homemade Pikachu costume because it wants to be liked the way Pikachu is, and the costume comes out slightly wrong every time. If it gets torn in a fight, it stays up all night stitching it back together.

Whatever is under the cloth is a secret the lore refuses to reveal, which is a lot of menace for something this small. We have a couple great Gengar team ups here, so if you didn't get enough Gengar above there are cameos here too!

Our Picks:

Spooky Mimikyu Pokémon Cards

Umbreon Full Art Cards

The Eeveelution you only get by leveling up at night, which made it a must-have for this list. Its black fur, red eyes, and glowing yellow rings are perfect for the theme. The two Evolving Skies cards feel like they were made for a page like this, and they do it in completely different registers.

Our Picks:

Scary Umbreon Pokémon Cards

Scary Cards

These aren’t spooky, but scary. These are the ones that skip atmosphere and go straight for menace, and half of them aren't even Ghost types.

Our Picks:

Scary Pokémon Cards

Purple Spooky Cards

Purple is doing a lot of work in this hobby and nobody ever says it out loud. Ghost and Poison both lean on it, so it ends up being the color your brain reads as haunted before you've even registered what's on the card. Put these on one page with Gengar, Gastly and Haunter, and the theme does itself!

Our Picks:

Purple Pokémon Cards

Haunted Houses & Mansions

Chandeliers, arches, long corridors, and a Pokémon that happens to be a light fixture standing in a building full of them. The Litwick line was designed for exactly this!

Our Picks:

Haunted Houses Pokémon Cards

Black, Dark & Night Spooky Cards

Where the fireplace and haunted house cards run warm, these run cold. One light source at most, everything else swallowed, and the Pokémon either emerging from it or made of it.

Our Picks:

Black, Dark & Night Spooky Cards

Cute & Aesthetic Spooky Cards

Spooky and Halloween has always had a second setting, the one that's more pumpkin spice than jumpscare, and this is the section for that. Pastels, fairy lights, small ghosts having a nice time. Acerola's Mischief is the anchor. Nothing about it is frightening and it's still the most Halloween-y card here.

Our Picks:

Cute & Aesthetic Spooky Cards

Shrouded Fable Ghost Trio

Three cards, one evolution line, one continuous scene. Shrouded Fable gave Duskull, Dusclops and Dusknoir a flat cartoon treatment that looks nothing like the rest of the set and lines up left to right as a set. Goofier than it is frightening, which puts it somewhere near our funny cards post as a great connecting art set.

Our Picks:

Shrouded Fable Ghost Pokemon Cards

Fall-Themed Cards

Not spooky on their own, but they page beautifully next to everything above.

See the full run in our fall Pokémon cards post!

Our Picks:

Fall-Themed Pokémon Cards

Vintage Spooky Cards

The old ones hold up, and the range here is wide. A few of these are grails and a surprising number are cheaper underrated gems, including some really great Expedition and Skyridge era cards that nobody talks about.

We couldn't believe how many good ones there were, and this list is us showing restraint.

Gengar

Vintage Spooky Pokémon Cards

Haunter

Vintage Haunter Pokémon Cards

Gastly

Vintage Gastly Pokémon Cards

More Vintage Spooky Cards

Vintage Scary Pokémon Cards

Trick or Trade Set

The most on-theme product Pokémon has ever made. Since 2022 they've put out annual bundles of mini-packs designed to be handed to trick-or-treaters instead of candy, three cards per pack, and mostly reprints from recent sets with a pumpkin Pikachu stamp.

There are deliberately no chase cards in them, which is the whole appeal. It's a set that exists to be given away and the stamp is the only thing that makes these different from the versions you might already own.

Our Picks:

Halloween Pokémon Cards

Commons & Affordable Spooky Cards

You don't need a full art to build a spooky page. Gengar and Mimikyu alone have enough cheap printings to carry one. Here are some starters!

Our Picks:

Spooky Common Pokémon Cards

Which spooky card is going in your binder this October? Any we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

by woahpoke

37 Cute Magic: the Gathering (MTG) Cards

Magic has been around since 1993 and spends most of its time on eldritch horrors, war machines and dragons the size of cities. Which makes it all the funnier when an illustrator gets handed a common and quietly turns in a sleeping bumblebee.

This is our running list of the cutest cards in the game. Some are here because the creature is adorable, some because the flavor text is, and a couple because a card this menacing has no business looking like that. Let’s get into it!

We're a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network and TCGplayer affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Food Coma

Wilds of Eldraine took Magic back to its fairytale plane, and this is the card that best sums up what that means. It’s an enchantment that exiles a creature and hands you a Food token, and the art is a bumblesheep face down in a poppy, completely gone.

The flavor text does the rest of the work: “Busy as a bumblesheep” is listed as a Faerie expression meaning “asleep,” which is a pretty funny thing for a fantasy world to have a saying about.

Food Coma · Wilds of Eldraine on eBay | TCGplayer

Food Coma MTG Cute Card

Poison Dart Frog

A 1/1 frog that taps for any color, sitting on a pile of bones in an Ixalan jungle, looking delighted about it. The flavor text is Huatli, Ixalan’s dinosaur riding poet warrior, pointing out that the bright colors are a warning rather than an invitation. Which is true of the card too, since for two mana it picks up deathtouch.

Poison Dart Frog · The Lost Caverns of Ixalan on eBay | TCGplayer

Poison Dart Frog MTG Card

Tunnel Tipster

Murders at Karlov Manor was Magic’s detective set, and every card in it had to fit a murder mystery brief. What that got us here is a mole in a little green hooded cloak, typed Mole Scout, who is officially a police informant.

Tunnel Tipster · Murders at Karlov Manor on eBay | TCGplayer

Tunnel Tipster Cute MTG Card

Phoenix Chick

Phoenixes in Magic are usually drawn mid immolation, wings spread, very serious about the whole death and rebirth thing. This one is a round yellow chick standing in a lava field with its stubby wings out. It’s a one mana 1/1 that keeps coming back from the graveyard, so the joke lands twice.

Phoenix Chick · Dominaria United on eBay | TCGplayer

Phoenix Chick MTG Card

Bear Cub

There’s a long running joke among players about the “bear,” a two mana 2/2 with no abilities that exists purely as a baseline. Foundations went ahead and printed one called Bear Cub. The art has the cute cub sitting up in the grass watching a bee go past while mom keeps an eye on things from behind, and the flavor text is an Elvish saying about exactly that.

Bear Cub · Foundations on eBay | TCGplayer

Cute MTG Bear Cub

Cute Dog MTG Cards

For a lot of Magic’s history there were no dogs. There were Hounds, which is a fantasy word for a dog that is about to bite someone. Wizards renamed the whole creature type to Dog in 2020, and Core Set 2021 is where you can see the shift land, because suddenly the art briefs got a lot warmer.

Selfless Savior is the one that gets people. A one-mana 1/1 whose whole function is to sacrifice itself to save something else, with flavor text explaining that she raised him from an orphaned pup and this was how he thanked her. Comet, Stellar Pup is the opposite energy, a planeswalker from the joke set Unfinity who rolls a six-sided die every turn, wears a space helmet, and turned out to be genuinely good.

Our Picks:

Cute Dog MTG Cards

Cute Cat MTG Cards

Cats have been a creature type since the early days. Some are house cats, some are Nacatl warriors, and a few have been crossbred with whatever the set happened to be about that year.

That’s how you end up with a Cat Dragon and a Dinosaur Cat as tokens, which are two of the best things in this section despite technically not being real cards. Displacer Kitten is the D&D one, a baby version of the Displacer Beast, the tentacled cat that projects a fake image of itself a few feet from where it actually is. Harmless Offering is here purely for the art, which is somebody holding out an orange kitten with the caption “Such an adorable face!” while the card hands your opponent something they will regret.

Our Picks:

Cute Cat MTG Cards

Gavi Nest Warden

Gavi isn’t the cute one on her own card. The dinosaur cats are, and she’s the reason there are any: her ability makes 2/2 Dinosaur Cat tokens, and the art has her crouched in a nest surrounded by hatchlings with one adult keeping watch behind her.

“A mother’s love transcends species.” is a lot of feeling to get across in four words.

Gavi, Nest Warden · Commander 2020 on eBay | TCGplayer

Gavi Nest Warden Cute MTG

Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood

A 6/6 legendary Salamander Serpent that floods the board, drawn as an enormous pink axolotl surging out of the water with a huge dopey grin while tiny people watch from the shore.

Axolotls have that permanent smile built into their faces, which is doing all the work here. The card is a threat, the face is not!

Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood · Commander: LCI on eBay | TCGplayer

Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood Card

Rin and Seri

A legendary creature typed Dog Cat, which is a sentence Magic had to invent a card to justify. Rin and Seri make Cat tokens when you cast Dog spells and Dog tokens when you cast Cat spells, and they’ve been the go-to commander for anyone who wants a deck that’s just pets.

Two printings worth owning for different reasons. The Buy-A-Box promo is the dignified one, both of them sitting on a mountainside at sunrise. The Secret Lair is better: Rin has decided to lick Seri, and Seri’s face about it is the whole card.

Our Picks:

Rin and Seri Magic The Gathering Cards

Harmless Offering

The Eldritch Moon version is up in the cat section. This one is the Marvel Secret Lair printing, and it’s a completely different joke with Gwenpool holding out Jeff the Land Shark with both hands, beaming, while Jeff does his best.

“Awww, isn’t Jeff just the cutest most adorable cuddle baby? The biting means he likes you!” The card still gives your opponent something awful and that’s the gag both times!

Harmless Offering (Rainbow Foil) · Secret Lair on eBay | TCGplayer

Harmless Offering MTG Card

Primal Empathy

Not cute in the kitten sense, this one’s just a lovely card. A person stands in front of an enormous beast and neither of them is afraid. For a Commander 2021 uncommon nobody talks about, it hits harder than it needs to.

Primal Empathy · Commander 2021 on eBay | TCGplayer

Primal Empathy MTG Card

Tinybones

You wouldn’t expect a skeleton on a list like this, but he’s called Tinybones, wears a little hood, and is about a foot tall. He turned up in Jumpstart as Tinybones, Trinket Thief and has kept coming back since, always doing the same thing: stealing something much too small to matter from someone much too big to notice. Pilfer isn’t even his card and he’s in the art anyway, robbing a merchant, with flavor text calling it the greatest heist of all time.

Our Picks:

Tinybones MTG Card

Canyon Jerboa

Jerboas are real desert rodents with hind legs like a kangaroo and ears too big for their heads, and this one is drawn straight, pink and white and striped, standing in a Zendikar canyon.

Magic types it as a Mouse, which is generous. The flavor text is a Goma Fada nomad yelling at it for spooking the herd, which is the only interaction anybody has ever had with a jerboa.

Canyon Jerboa · Zendikar Rising on eBay | TCGplayer

Canyon Jerboa Cute Magic The Gathering Card

Bairn

“Bairn” is a Scottish and Northern English word for child and both of these are Ouphes, Magic’s small woodland fae. Same artist on both, 13 years apart, which is why they feel like a matched set.

Glimmer Bairn is the one to start with. It’s a tiny creature in a striped bee costume carrying a lantern through the woods with a deer watching, and the flavor text is a trick or treat rhyme. Gilder Bairn is the older, stranger one, hauling glowing trinkets through a twisted forest while the flavor text wonders whether they lead it home or lead someone else astray.

Our Picks:

Cute Bairn MTG Card

Nicol Bolas

Nicol Bolas is the closest thing Magic has to a final boss. An Elder Dragon, thousands of years old, has personally ruined multiple planes and headlined an entire story arc built around him trying to become a god. This Secret Lair draws him as a baby in a nest.

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager · Secret Lair Display Commander on eBay | TCGplayer

Nicol Bolas MTG Card

Trufflesnout

A boar that hunts truffles, which is a real job real pigs really have. The Core Set 2021 one is kitted out with baskets strapped to its back, working a mushroom forest, and the flavor text says its exploits are legendary among local chefs and the stuff of nightmares among the forest thallids. Wilds of Eldraine brought it back as Intrepid Trufflesnout, standing in a glowing fairy ring at night with an Adventure spell called Go Hog Wild.

Our Picks:

Trufflesnout Cute MTG Card

Raggadragga

Typed Human Boar, which is a combination Magic mostly doesn’t do, and he’s the goblin adjacent boss of a Baldur’s Gate gang called the Goreguts. He’s not cute. He’s mid explosion, armored, shouting. He’s on the list because Raggadragga is an incredible name for a pig and we don’t make the rules.

Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss · Battle for Baldur’s Gate on eBay | TCGplayer

Raggadragga Cute MTG Card

Placid Rottentail

Typed Fungus Rabbit, from March of the Machine, sitting in a patch of daisies with mushrooms growing out of its back. Then you read the flavor text and it turns: it used to love munching daisies, but lately its favorite snacks are the strange round roots popping up everywhere. Those roots are the Phyrexian invasion and the rabbit has no idea. It’s the sweetest doomed card in the set!

Placid Rottentail · March of the Machine on eBay | TCGplayer

Placid Rottentail Card

Which cute Magic card is your favorite? Any we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

by woahpoke

71 Undervalued & Underrated Pokémon Cards to Collect

Every set has cards that get skipped. Not because they’re bad, but because they landed next to a Charizard, or the Pokémon on them isn’t one people go looking for, or a card with great art that you don’t see as often just cause they’re not an SIR.

Here’s our running list of the cards we think are slept on, lesser seen, or still sitting lower than they should be, grouped by what makes each one worth a second look!

We’re a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Cameo Cards

Some of the best details in the modern TCG belong to the Pokémon who aren’t the subject. Chansey’s Pokémon Center has a Snorlax asleep in the corner, Glaceon VMAX brings the whole crew, and Clive packs in more trainers than most set illustrations manage. The oddity here is the Japanese Influencer’s Introduction, a card about YouTuber Hikakin filming Pokémon content in his bedroom, which is about as meta as the TCG gets.

We went further down this rabbit hole in our cameo Pokémon cards post.

Our Picks:

Underrated Pokemon Cameo Cards

Scenic Backgrounds

These are the cards where the Pokémon is almost incidental and the setting is doing the work. Waterfalls, mountains, a garden fence, or whatever the illustrator decided to build around a 50 HP basic that didn’t ask for any of it. Hisuian Samurott V is the one we’d put on a wall, it reads like a landscape scroll that happens to have a Pokémon in it.

Our Picks:

Scenic Pokemon Backgrounds

Nature

Close cousins to the scenic cards, except here the Pokémon is properly in its habitat instead of posed in front of it. Fields, cliffs, flowers, the whole thing drawn like the Pokémon was there before the card was. Ditto’s Crown Zenith card is the clever one, filling a meadow with Ditto shaped versions of everything grazing in it.

If this is your corner, we have a lot more of it in our Studio Ghibli Pokémon cards and flower Pokémon cards posts!

Our Picks:

Underrated Nature Pokemon Cards

Akira Egawa

Egawa has a look you can spot across a room. Sometimes it’s a Pokémon fractured into shards of refracted light, and sometimes it’s the painterly side with heavy textures and Pokémon caught mid attack. Either way, the card is doing the absolute most and she’s one of our favorite artists in the hobby.

Check out more great illustrators in the TCG in our best Pokémon card artists post!

Our Picks:

Underrated Akira Egawa Cards

N’s Zekrom & Reshiram

N is the most interesting antagonist the series has, a kid raised by Pokémon who believes trainers are the problem, and the cards that carry his name put him in the frame rather than just in the title. Zekrom and Reshiram are the two halves of the Unova creation myth, ideals against truth, which makes them a proper pair to hunt across sets!

Our Picks:

N’s Zekrom & Reshiram

Trainer Cards

Full art trainers are where the TCG does its actual character work. No Pokémon on the front, just a person in a room, and somehow that ends up carrying more story than the legendary in the same pack. Giovanni’s Charisma is the best argument for the whole category: a crime boss in a private lounge doing nothing threatening at all, but still the most menacing card here.

Our Picks:

Underrated Pokémon Trainer Cards

Night Cards

Night art runs on one source of light and a lot of black, which is harder than it sounds because there’s nowhere to hide a weak composition. The ones that pull it off are the calmest cards in the game, and Cleffa under a shooting star is one of the best of the bunch!

Our Picks:

Underrated Pokemon Night Cards

Derpy & Silly Cards

Illustrators can have their fun too. With less riding on the card and more room to be stupid, you end up with cards like a Slakoth starfished in a field like he’s been there for days.

Our funny Pokémon cards round-up is full of more like these!

Our Picks:

Derpy & Silly Underrated Pokemon Cards

Vibrant

Some cards are built to be seen from across the room. Psychedelic jungles, neon lightning, vibrant sunsets, all of it turned up past where the set’s art usually sits.

Our Picks:

Vibrant Pokemon Cards Underrated

Deoxys

Deoxys is an alien with four different forms, which should make it one of the most illustrated Pokémon in the game. It isn’t, and that’s the whole reason it gets a section. The Crown Zenith VMAX and VSTAR were designed to sit next to each other, so that’s the obvious place to start!

Our Picks:

Underrated Deoxys Cards

Winter

Snow gives an illustrator permission to empty out the frame, and that restraint is why winter cards read so differently from everything around them in a set.

Magmortar is the surprise of the bunch, a Fire type warming its hands over a campfire in a snowfield, which is better storytelling than most cards with ten times the rarity.

Our Picks:

Underrated Winter Pokemon Cards

Home & Cozy

Pokémon indoors being domestic. The whole appeal is that nothing is happening and that these cards are just a slice of daily life. Fisheye Litten is one of our favorite underrated cards!

Our Picks:

Underrated Home Pokémon Cards

Water

Underwater is the easiest setting in the TCG and we’ll defend that. The light does half the illustrator’s work, everything picks up soft edges, and a 60 HP Horsea ends up looking like it cost money.

If you like these, our beach Pokémon cards post is the next stop!

Our Picks:

Underrated Water Pokemon Cards

Color-Themed

Cards built around one dominant color are the easiest thing in the world to build a binder page from. Pick a color, pull four or five, and the page does the work for you!

We put together full pages by color in our Pokémon binder page ideas post if you want even more inspo.

Our Picks:

Underrated Color Pokemon Cards

Sleeping

Sleeping cards are a whole category of their own and we went deep on them separately, but a few belong on a list like this on their own merits. There’s something about a card where the Pokémon has completely checked out and the world keeps going around it.

See the full run in our sleeping Pokémon cards post.

Our Picks:

Sleeping Underrated Pokemon Cards

Pikachu

Pikachu has so many cards that individual ones vanish into the pile, which is how you end up with really good art that nobody discusses. Surfing Pikachu is the one with the best story behind it, a Pikachu that could only learn Surf through an event, and the Celebrations printing draws it as round as it deserves.

Our Picks:

Pikachu Underrated Pokémon Cards

Forest

Trees give a card depth in a way an open background never can. Arbok is the one we’d put in the binder first, which isn’t something we expected to ever write about Arbok.

Our Picks:

Undervalued Pokemon Cards

Unique

Whether it’s the art style or the joke behind it, there’s something about each of these that doesn’t look like the rest of the set it came from. Comic strips, flat graphic shapes, straight pop art, none of it the usual style.

We have tons more of these in our unique Pokémon cards post!

Our Picks:

Unique Underrated Pokemon Cards

Trainer Gallery

The Sword & Shield era ran a subset called the Trainer Gallery, where every card had to fit a Pokémon and its trainer into the same frame. That gave the art a job beyond the Pokémon and what you get out of it is more great slice of life scenes, like Eevee at a desk while its trainer works through paperwork.

Our Picks:

Underrated Trainer Gallery Pokemon Cards

Skies

Open sky gives a card a sense of scale that a close crop can’t, and it’s the one background that works just as well for a legendary as it does for a bird.

Our sky Pokémon cards post has lots more!

Our Picks:

Underrated Skies Pokémon Cards

Which underrated card are you adding to your binder? Any we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

by woahpoke

30 Farm-Themed Pokémon Cards

Farm cards aren’t an official category, which is half the fun of putting the list together. Once you start looking for Pokémon doing actual agricultural work you find orchards, dairy barns, olive groves, and a whole trainer class whose entire job is raising Pokémon from the egg up.

Here’s our running list of the best farm Pokémon cards!

Full Art Farm Cards

When we started putting this post together, we did not expect this many farm-themed illustration rares. Going in we figured the farm setting was a niche the illustrators touched once or twice, and instead there’s a whole run of full arts set in fields, barns and groves across the last five years of sets.

Miltank’s Crown Zenith Galarian Gallery card is the one most people think of first, but Dolliv is the sleeper in the middle of an actual olive harvest. Leafeon VMAX, Grotle and Mudsdale round out the working animal side, and Pignite and Ditto are both here doing things you wouldn’t guess from the Pokédex.

Our Picks:

Full Art Farm Cards Pokemon

Apple Cards

The Applin line is the closest thing the TCG has to a dedicated orchard subtheme, since the whole family lives inside apples and the artists keep putting them back in the trees they came from. Appletun and Applin both got recent full arts worth having, and there’s a Chinese Gem Pack printing of Applin that’s worth a look if you collect outside English.

We went deeper on this family in our apple Pokémon cards post if you want the full run.

Our Picks:

Apple Farm Pokemon Cards

Pokémon Breeder

Breeders are the trainer class built entirely around raising Pokémon rather than battling them. In the games they’re the ones stationed near the day cares, and in the anime Brock is the obvious reference point, since his whole thing is diet, health and looking after the team rather than chasing badges.

What makes this a fun section to collect is that the card keeps coming back across eras under slightly different names, and the person on the front isn’t always the same. Putting this list together was the first time we’d looked properly at the vintage ones, and the Neo Revelation and Legendary Collection printings were both new to us.

Our Picks:

Pokémon Breeder Cards

Miltank

Miltank earns her own section for the obvious reason: she’s the dairy cow of the franchise, and she’s been drawn in a barn or a pasture more times than any other Pokémon on this list.

Whitney’s Miltank is the one with the reputation. Anyone who played Gold and Silver remembers the Goldenrod gym as the wall they hit, and it was this Miltank doing it with Rollout and Milk Drink. The Japanese VS card is the version that carries Whitney’s name, and the English printings from Neo Genesis through Mega Evolution give you the same Pokémon across five different eras of card design.

Our Picks:

Miltank Pokemon Cards

Commons/Affordable

This is where the theme gets deep without getting expensive. Moo-Moo Milk is the standout: the original Japanese printing is one of the cards that ended up on the banned list, and the Neo Genesis version is the reworked one that made it into English play.

From there it’s Artazon twice over as a Paldean Stadium, Flaaffy as the sheep the theme was waiting for, and Holon Farmer, which is as on the nose as a card name gets.

Our Picks:

Commons Farm Pokemon Cards

Which farm card is your favorite? Let us know, we’re always adding to these lists.

by woahpoke

The 39 Best & Coolest Riftbound Cards

Riftbound is Riot's League of Legends TCG, and the thing that makes it fun to collect is that champions get several separate illustrations rather than one. The showcase printings are the ones marked Signature, Alternate Art, Overnumbered or Ultimate on the card.

Here's our running list of the best and coolest Riftbound cards, sorted by champion!

We're a small team of two and our links keep woahpoke running. As an eBay Partner Network and TCGplayer affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Learn more.

Baron Nashor

Baron Nashor is the neutral monster that sits in the middle of every League map and decides late games, so he’s the rare non-champion who gets a whole section to himself, with three treatments of the same monster.

The Ultimate is the one everyone wants, and it’s the hardest card in Unleashed to pull. The alternate art and base printing get you the art without that.

Our Picks:

Baron Nashor Riftbound Cards

Ahri

Ahri is the closest thing Riftbound has to a Charizard. She’s been one of League’s most recognizable champions since 2011, and she has the deepest run of any champion here: a Signature in Origins, a second Signature in Spiritforged, an Origins alternate art, and a Vendetta printing. If you’re building a single-champion run rather than chasing one card, she’s the one with the most to chase.

Our Picks:

Best Ahri Riftbound Cards

Darius

Darius is Noxus’s executioner, and his cards lean harder into armor and weight than anyone else’s here. He’s a champion designed around a single axe swing, drawn by people who clearly enjoyed the brief. He’s also the one champion who didn’t get a Signature in Origins. His arrived a set later in Spiritforged as Darius, Executioner, which is why that’s the card listed first.

Our Picks:

Darius Riftbound Cards

Lee Sin

Lee Sin is the blind monk who fights by sound, which gives illustrators an unusual brief: a champion whose whole identity is stillness and then sudden movement. Origins gave him three separate cards to work with, including the Blind Monk Signature plus alternate arts of Lee Sin, Centered and Lee Sin, Ascetic that split the difference between meditation and combat. Dragon’s Rage is his signature kick in card form, and it’s the one non-champion card in this section.

Our Picks:

Lee Sin Riftbound Cards

Leona

Leona is the Radiant Dawn, a Solari sun warrior whose whole kit is built on blinding light, and that makes her Signature one of the most legible cards in Origins from across a room. The Zealot alternate art leans into the religious-order side of her lore rather than the sunburst. If you like gold heavy cards, this is the champion to go after.

Our Picks:

Leona Riftbound Cards

Miss Fortune

Miss Fortune is Bilgewater’s bounty hunter captain, and her cards are the ones that carry the pirate port setting rather than a solo portrait, with ships, docks, and the whole color palette of the harbor. Origins gave her a Bounty Hunter Signature plus both an alternate art and a base printing of Miss Fortune, Captain, so you can get the same card three ways.

Our Picks:

Miss Fortune Riftbound Cards

Sett

Sett runs the fighting pits of Ionia, a half Vastayan brawler who became a crime boss, and the two names he carries across his cards track that arc directly. The Boss is his Origins Signature. Brawler is the earlier, scrappier version, and it shows up as both a Spiritforged Signature and an Origins alternate art. Collecting the pair gets you the before and after in one page of a binder.

Our Picks:

Sett Riftbound Cards

Teemo

Teemo has more cards here than any other champion, which will surprise nobody who has played League. The yordle scout picked up two Signatures and two separate Origins illustrations, but the one collectors actually talk about is the Organized Play promo with “GG EZ” printed on it. It’s a card that exists purely to be insufferable, handed out at events rather than sold in packs.

Our Picks:

Coolest Teemo Riftbound Cards

Volibear

Volibear is the Relentless Storm, a Freljordian demi-god worshipped as thunder itself, and his Origins Signature is the one card here where the weather is doing as much work as the champion. The storm takes up more of the frame than the bear does.

Volibear, Relentless Storm · Origins (Signature) on eBay | TCGplayer

Volibear Riftbound Cards

Jinx

Jinx got a second life with Arcane, and her Riftbound cards arrived into an audience that already knew her from the show rather than the game. The Origins Signature is the anchor, but the Vendetta Overnumbered card as Jinx, Demolitionist is the one that fits her better. Vendetta is the rivalry set, and Jinx blowing something up is the natural read. The Rebel promo rounds out the run.

Our Picks:

Jinx Riftbound Cards

Viktor

Viktor is Zaun’s Herald of the Arcane, the machine herald who replaced his own body piece by piece, and Arcane gave him the same profile boost Jinx got. His Origins Signature carries the full title, and the Leader promo is the shorter-name variant from the promotional set. Between the two you get both sides of him: the ideologue and the figurehead.

Our Picks:

Viktor Riftbound Cards

Kai'Sa

Kai’Sa is the Daughter of the Void, a girl who survived the Void as a child and now wears a living symbiote as armor, and the Void’s color palette is what makes her cards stand out on a page of Origins. Her Vendetta printing as Kai’Sa, Survivor is the cheaper way into the character.

Our Picks:

Kai'Sa Riftbound Cards

Connecting Arts (Vendetta)

Vendetta’s whole premise is rivalry, and its Connecting Art cards are built to be collected in pairs. Each half is one side of a diptych, and lining the two up continues the illustration across the seam. It’s the coolest idea in Riftbound so far, because a single half is an incomplete object in a way a normal card isn’t.

Zed & Shen

Zed and Shen are the rivalry Vendetta was built for: two students of the same Kinkou order who split over whether the balance was worth protecting, and the reason Shen’s father is dead. Zed, From the Shadows and Shen, Scourge of Shadows are both Overnumbered, and the shared “shadows” in the names is doing deliberate work.

Our Picks:

Zed & Shen Connecting Art Riftbound Cards

Riven & Draven

Riven and Draven put an exile against a showman: a Noxian soldier who broke her own sword and walked away from the empire, against the axe-throwing celebrity who never questioned it. Riven, Shattered and Draven, Showboat are both Overnumbered, and the names tell you which half you’re looking at before you see the art.

Our Picks:

Riven & Draven Riftbound Cards

How Riftbound Rarities Work

Overnumbered cards carry a collector number above the set’s base count, which is the signal that you’re holding a showcase printing rather than the standard one. In Unleashed the base set runs to 219, so Baron Nashor at 238/219 is an overnumber.

Signature cards are overnumbered printings with the illustrator’s signature printed into the art, and they’re the deepest chase tier in the game. Most of the cards on this list are Signatures.

Alternate Art is a separate illustration of the same card, marked with a letter after the number.

Ultimate is the newest tier, introduced in Unleashed, and it’s the scarcest thing in the game per card. There’s very little of it, and almost all of it is Baron Nashor.

Which Riftbound chase card are you going after first? Let us know in the comments!

by woahpoke