I had a cold the last few days, so I had time to go through some sets I hadn’t paid much attention to before. I fell in love with a set that went under my radar for way too long: Ex Sandstorm. Not only is the art stunning, but the whole set is desert-themed, which makes all the cards fit together. Having a strong theme in a set is quite rare if you think about it; it takes work but improves the set drastically, in my opinion.
My motivation for this tier list is one thing: motivating you to look at the cards from this set. A reason for the great art is, of course, the artists:
If I had to critique anything about this set, it’s probably that the ex cards are nice but don’t keep up with the rest of the set in my opinion (some could argue that their simplicity is what makes them nice and memorable though). Also, the Ken Sugimori stock art cards aren’t too exciting to me.
Here’s mine, in no particular order among each tier- I love seeing everyone’s different opinions on these arts! Sandstorm feels so cohesive as a set, especially seeing them all together like this.
As is standard, the ranks also go best from left to right within each tier. How OP (or anything who might for that matter) could not only exclude golduck from S+, but even degrade it to A tier, is simply beyond my ability to comprehend as a human being. Good day.
Kusajima is god, and this is his peak creation. Arita was on cocaine during this time, some of his best, and I can say the same thing, throw some extra black market spices for Kusube, like my god.
Take out the gen 3 sugi stock and this is arguably one of the best sets of all time. A few forgettable saitou’s sure, but they aren’t bad. But the greats of sandstorm are some of the all time greats in all of pokemon. Kinebuchi’s reprints on here are exluded, they aren’t truly in the set imo.
i wont mess around and try to convince people of the majesty of Sugimori’s wailmer, but never would I have expected to see Wailord ex in a tier below it. You have offended me personally
I don’t dislike the wailord by any means! It’s just a bit… boring, in my opinion, haha. The card itself is lovely in person, largely due to the foiling, but I’m a lot more personally fond of art that depicts Pokemon integrated into their environments, dynamic posing, backgrounds, etc.
In any case, please forgive my transgressions against wail-kind
I’m glad someone else appreciates the greatness of the Arcanine card. My absolute favorite of the set. This is really where I fell in love with most of Kusajima’s artwork.
I love EX Sandstorm. It’s my second favorite EX set after EX Team Rocket Returns. Saying that, the exs look pretty awful compared to others in the era, and the Sugimori art is shockingly bad.
Sorry for the late reply, I just had a much needed 12 hour sleep. Now, let it be known that I think Arita Armaldo deserves all the S+ in the world, but the filtered dingy brown background has always been a problem to me.
Although the EX Sandstorm artwork isn’t among my favorite Seviper artworks, it’s 100% my favorite artwork of the EX Sandstorm set (as a non-biased Seviper collector ).
Also, again, it’s all relative to each other. It’s not like the B-tier (or even the generic C-tier for that matter) is bad in any way!
Thanks for the entertainment, Sandstorm is a great set overall!
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