When we scheduled for February, I didn’t really imagine I’d be dropping this article from 35,000 feet. As I discussed last week, I’m on a bit of a strange back-to-back this week, only a few days removed from writing about the aftermath of Dallas last week. My sense in discussions has been that most players would prefer to hear about Ultra Prism, rather than have me rehash BKT-CIN again. So, today, I’m going to take the opportunity to go over some of my favorites from the new set, the impacts the set figures to have on the current Standard’s titans, and generally look toward St. Louis.

I understand that a few of our subscribers have interests in Sydney’s imminent happenings; if you should wish to pick my brain on that, feel free to drop a line privately. I feel it’s better to handle limited-use information that way, rather than writing a piece that will be useless to a large portion of our subscribers immediately, and to the rest, in a mere few days. It isn’t lost on me that it’s a weird look failing to write about the impending International Championship, and emphasize that subscribers are more than welcome to reach out to me individually.

So far, we’ve had Alex take a look at Glaceon and his overall buylist for the set, and Pablo examined a few other archetypes he believes could make waves in the new format. To be completely honest, I wasn’t even 100% sure what all of the cards in Alex’s buylist did the first time I read it, so to say the least, there’ve been some interesting revelations on my part as I read through some of the cards he listed. As I haven’t yet placed my Ultra Prism order—and, indeed, I recognize the danger in the timing of that fact—part of this article is going to represent my own learning/decision making in deciding what seems to be worthwhile as investments go.

My plan is to start by discussing the cards that are the most interesting in my mind, offer a few lists to start testing with, discuss the overhyped folk of the set, and finally examine a few of the potential sleeper choices the set looks to offer. With everything from insane energy acceleration, to big GXs, to intriguing Stage 2s, there are a lot of moving variables in the set. While I, and a few of my friends,’ initial reactions are that the set could largely disappoint, there’s certainly no shortage of potential ideas to dig through. I don’t normally write set previews, so this’ll be a bit unique for me, but I’m hoping it’ll be insightful.

This article — “Diamonds in the Rough” – Exploring Ultra Prism and First Looks at Magnezone and Empoleon — was originally published on SixPrizes.