What’s up, everyone! I’m back with you, again, so soon after my previous article, again, to discuss with you something that’s important to the game at large, again. I hope you’ve noticed an evolution of sorts through my last few articles: what started off as somber and depressing transitioned into cautious optimism, and has since blossomed into gleeful anticipation with regards to Guardians Rising. Today, I “BREAK” my evolution line of articles, and drop the most enjoyable article yet: a preview of our upcoming set’s highlights!

As we move ahead, we’re working much more closely to coordinate our articles to bring you timely and relevant content. As such, we’ve got a great lineup for you this week: I’ll be kicking things off with a general set review, covering some of the best cards from the set and offering some initial thoughts across the board. Later in the week, Travis and Alex will be dropping some awesome deck ideas with cards from the new set. Virginia Regionals, the final major PRC-SUM tournament, is just about here, so I’ll cap this article with a very brief discussion of what I foresee happening there. The bulk of this is all about Guardians Rising, and was an absolute blast to write, so let’s jump in!

Crème de la Crème: Guardians’ Best

In my last article, I gushed over Guardians Rising. This set is really going to change the game, and I think it’ll be strictly for the better. Last time, I had the pleasure of covering Tapu Lele-GX and Field Blower, the two best cards in the set. I won’t be covering them again here because you can check out my previous article, but here’s a summary of my thoughts in case you missed it:

These are the single two best cards Pokémon has created since Shaymin-EX, unquestionably.

Last time it was easy to talk shop, because I only had two cards to worry about. This time, I’ve got what seems like hundreds, because this set is truly massive! 145 normal cards, combined with a whopping twenty-four secret rares, create a colossal 169-card set! The amount of cards in this set harkens back to titanic sets like Skyridge and Aquapolis. What all of this means is that reviewing this set in a typical fashion, going over every card and discussing each of their merits, would be way too extensive for the scope of this article.

The solution? Two articles! Yes, today, I’ll kick off my review with a Top 5 (ignoring Tapu Lele and Field Blower, as they’d automatically occupy the top spots), and sometime later this week, I’ll finish out the review looking at a few cards that just missed the Top 5 cut.

The last thing I want to say before I get started is that this set review and the opinions in it are both preliminary. I could be totally wrong on 100% of these cards (I sure hope I’m not!), right on all of them, or somewhere in the middle. I always enjoy it when cards I rated poorly to begin with actually turn out to be strong, whether through someone’s ingenuity or just natural meta evolution. These opinions are definitely subject to change as I start testing seriously, and as I hear what other people are playing with. Anyway, let’s start with my #5!

The Top 5:

This article — “The Fellowship of the Guardians” – Guardians Rising Preview Pt. 1 — was originally published on SixPrizes.