Our next specimen is the mysterious and ancient Sigilyph. This common card from the Sword & Shield era set Fusion Arts features the Avianoid Pokémon soaring over a desert landscape, a habitat that hints at its deep and powerful connection to the past.
Card Details
- Pokémon Name: Sigilyph (シンボラー)
- Set: Fusion Arts (s8)
- Year: 2021
- Card Number: 051/100
- Rarity/Edition: Common
- Artist: Sumiyoshi Kizuki
- National Pokédex No.: 561
Card Text & Attacks
- Type: Psychic
- HP: 110
- Attack 1: Tri Charge (トライチャージ)
- Cost: [Psychic]
- Effect: Flip 3 coins. For each heads, choose a basic Energy card from your discard pile and attach it to 1 of your Benched Pokémon.
- Attack 2: Psykinesis (サイコキネシス)
- Cost: [Psychic][Colourless]
- Damage: 10+
- Effect: This attack does 30 more damage for each Energy attached to your opponent’s Active Pokémon.
- Weakness: Lightning x2
- Resistance: Fighting -30
- Retreat Cost: [Colourless]
- Pokédex Entry:
- Japanese: サイコパワーで 空を 飛ぶ。 古代都市の 守り神 とも その遣いとも いわれている。
- Romaji: Saiko pawā de sora o tobu. Kodai toshi no mamorigami tomo sono tsukai tomo iwarete iru.
- English: It flies through the sky using psychic power. It is said to be the guardian of an ancient city, or its emissary.
Collector’s Notes
The artwork by Sumiyoshi Kizuki beautifully captures the enigmatic nature of Sigilyph, showing it flying over a vast desert, a landscape known for preserving ancient secrets beneath its sands. The simple composition emphasizes the Pokémon’s strange and otherworldly design.
This card is a premier candidate for the Friends of Geopik wing due to its profound connection to archaeology and geoarchaeology.
- Guardian of Ancient Cities: The Pokédex entry explicitly states that Sigilyph is the guardian of an ancient city. This directly links it to the study of ancient ruins, which are physical, geological records of past civilizations, often built from local stone and earth.
- Geoglyph Connection: Sigilyph’s design is heavily inspired by the real-world Nazca Lines of Peru. These are enormous ancient geoglyphs—designs etched into the desert floor by removing the reddish-brown, iron oxide-coated pebbles to reveal the lighter-coloured ground underneath. As a form of art made directly from the landscape, geoglyphs are a perfect intersection of human culture and geology. Sigilyph is, in essence, a living geoglyph.
