White Flare
White Flare
The Unova fire-side half-set. White Flare centres on Reshiram — the Vast White Pokémon whose truth-bound legend defines the entire Unova arc — alongside N's iconic partner form.
White Flare (SV11W) and Black Bolt (SV11B) released simultaneously in Japan on 6 June 2025 as paired half-sets built around Pokémon Black and White's legendary duo. Reshiram leads White Flare — the dragon of truth, framed in the brilliant white palette that characterises its original design. The set's EN counterpart kept the White Flare name and expanded the JP 86-card roster dramatically, adding over 80 additional cards to the EN version. The inclusion of N's Reshiram as a Trainer-linked SIR gave the set a narrative dimension that collectors responded to strongly.
Chase Pulls
Ryota Murayama's Reshiram ex SAR captures the Vast White Pokémon in its most elemental form — a column of white fire rising from a fractured landscape, the dragon's form backlit by its own brilliance. Reshiram is one of the few legendary Pokémon whose colour palette (pure white, electric blue flames) creates genuine composition challenges, and Murayama solves it by making the fire the primary subject. The SAR format suits this card: the complex holo layer transforms the white tones rather than washing them out.
N and Reshiram is canonical lore — the natural child who heard Pokémon's voices and the dragon of truth were always paired. Naoki Saito illustrates them together at Bell Tower in Opelucid, N standing on a parapet as Reshiram descends, the white wings filling the upper half of the card. The intimacy of the moment — two beings who understand each other without words — is Saito's speciality.
Atsushi Furusawa's Volcarona ex SIR sets the Sun Pokémon against a Relic Castle interior — the ancient ruins lit by flame, orange light catching crumbling sandstone. The six wings fill the card top to bottom, each one a different gradient from white-gold at the core to deep ember at the tip. Volcarona is a fan-favourite from Black & White, and this illustration honours the character's mythological weight.
Akira Egawa illustrates the Victory Pokémon with the same warmth he brought to Eevee in SV8.5 — Victini in a sun-drenched meadow, arms spread, that characteristic ear-V silhouette catching the golden hour light. The positive momentum stat on Victini's card has made it a popular pull among players in addition to collectors. A small card with outsized charm.
Souichirou Gunjima gives Hydreigon ex the full chaos treatment — three heads in three different states of aggression, the dragon coiling around a lightning-split sky. Hydreigon is the fully evolved form of the Deino line, one of Unova's signature pseudo-legendaries, and the SIR treatment gives it the cinematic scale it deserves. Pricing still establishing.
Edition Notes
White Flare (SV11W) is an 86-card Japanese print, one of two simultaneously released paired sets. The JP version concentrates its secret rare pool into SAR and SIR slots with no UR tier. The JP holo finish on Reshiram ex SAR captures the brilliant-white energy of the card's design particularly well — the JP-specific scatter pattern gives the white fur and wing membranes a physical luminosity that differs from the EN print. JP collectors got access first on 6 June 2025, giving the JP market approximately six weeks to establish pricing benchmarks before the EN release.
White Flare (SV10.5R) expanded the JP 86-card base to over 170 EN cards — nearly double. The EN expansion introduced additional SIR and UR slots not present in JP, and the EN card numbering diverges sharply past the base total. EN release on 18 July 2025 gave collectors the most complete version of the White Flare chase pool. N's Reshiram SIR and the Victini and Hydreigon ex SIRs are all represented with EN-specific numbering that does not match JP.