I love the idea of the new 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Bl💝ack Bolt & Wh🅺ite Flare set. A video game-themed expansion is such a good idea that I can’t believe it hasn’t really been done before. Not only is the entire 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Unova Pokedex included with multiple versions of each to collect, but they’re split between two individual mini sets. You can open all Black Bolt packs and trade with someone who has open꧅ed White Flare packs to find the missing Pokemon, just like you would in the games.

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By the numbers, Black Bolt & White Flare is🌟 the most collectible Pokemon card set of all time. Not only is there are regular or ex card for every Pokemon, but there’s also an Illustration Rare or Special Illustration Rare for every Pokemon, a Pokeball and Masterball parallel set for every Pokemon, and holographic energy cards, plus you can still pull Full Art cards and a brand new monochromatic rarity replacing gold cards, called Black White car๊ds. If you love cracking packs, you’ll have a blast with this set, but if you’re looking to complete your Unova Pokedex, well, good luck.

And You Thought Shiny Hunting Was Hard

The sheer amount of unique cards in Black Bolt & White Flare makes every pack you open an exciting experience, which is a good thing considering this is a special collection, so you’re only going to find premium products and booster bundles rather than standard boosteꦗr boxes and hanger packs.꧋ I opened 33 packs, almost all Black Bolt, and ended up with 29 cards that were better than a Rare. That’s almost one hit in every pack.

Many of my packs had more than one hit, though. In one pack, I pulled a Ma🍬sterball Common in the first reverse holo slot, an Illustration Rare in the second one, a Full Art in the Rare slot, and my energy was holo. That’s four hits in a single pack. This year’s Prismatic Evolutions was the first set where that was even possible, but I never saw a pack likꦆe that. It happened twice in my Black Bolt & White Flare packs.

Having this much variety presents some problems, too. There are three ways you can approach this set, and your experience is going to vary wildly depending on which way you go. If you just want to open packs and see what you get, you’ll have a great time. I ended up with one Illustration Rare (Zekrom ex), a Black White Rare (Zekrom ex), four Full Arts (including Zekrom ex), and five ex cards (I didn’t just pull one Zekrom ex, I pulled two). I a♊lso pulled six Illustration Rares, two Masterball holos, 14 Pokeball holos, and every holo energy except fire. As someone who likes Unova but doesn’t have a favorite per se, this was a very satisfying haul.

On the other hand, if you’re someone looking for a specific Pokemon, you’re going to have a much harder time. Even with the Pokedex split in🍒 half between the sets, there are still 79 Illustration Rares in each set, and another six Special Illustration Rare Pokemon. If Melotta is your favorite Pokemon, you’re looking for a regular ex, a Full Art, and a Special Illustration Rare, in a pile of nearly 100 other chase cards. It’s very unlikely, unless you’re me, pulling every Zekrom card in the set. If you’re hard-targeting your favorite Unova-mon, just buy the singles.

If you’re a completionist lookinไg to fill out your entire Unova Pokedex, oof, I don’t know about that one. Maybe if you treat the Illustration Rares as Shiny Pokemon and just focus on collecting a single version of all 156 Pokemon, you’ll have a good chance, but when you consider all the Parallel Sets and chase cards, there are over 800 unique cards in Black Bolt & White Flare. If this were the early 2000s, I would have a blast trading these on the playground, but with the way the only market and the reseller economy work, getting heavily invested in this set is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Lots Of Products For Lots Of Cards

Like all special collections, Black Bolt & Whiteꦦ Flare comes in ♔a wide variety of product types. I opened a nine-pack Black Bolt Elite Trainer Box, a six-pack Black Bolt booster bundle, a five-pack White Flare binder collection, a three-pack Black Bolt Tech Sticker collection, a four-pack Victini Illustration Collection (two packs of each), a four-pack Poster Collection (two of each), and a two-pack mini-tin (one of each), for a total of 33 packs; 23 Black Bolt and 10 White Flare.

By far, my favorite product is the Victini Illustration Collection. You get a beautiful Special Illustration Rare-style Victini promo card and a jumbo version of the same card, as well as two packs of each set. T💎he only other Victini in the set are the regular Rare in Black Bolt and the monochromatic red BWR Victini in both sets, so considering how important Victini is to Black & White, I consider this a must-have. I also like the Binder Collections a lot. The 396-slot binder has a thick vinyl cover to keep it safe. Mine had a crack in the spine out of the box, unfortunately, so keep an eye out for that.

The other products don’t impress me. You only have to go back a few years to find a set like Champion’s Path, which featured collection boxes with pins representing each of the gyms in Galar. It seems like pin collections have all but 😼vanished except for the most premium collection sets. We also don’t really get figurines any more, and both of those types of boxes used to be quite prevalent.

The stickers are junk and will likely come out of the box with creases in them. The poster is pretty big, but it would be a lot cooler if it featured art from a Special Illustration card rather than promotional box art. The booster bundles and ETBs are going to offer the best value but it would be nice to have some more premium items. This set could have easily featured g⛎ym badge pins from Unova.

All things considered, this is the kind of well-themed expansion I expect special collection sets to be. Unova wouldn’t have been my first choice (in fact, it might have been my last choice), but I’m still happy with the execution overall. It’s hard to set aside the ongoing issues with resellers and product availability when I’m looking at this set because I know ♋how hard it’s going to be to get, and that unfortunately factors into how I review it. In a perfect world, Black Bolt & White Flare would be readily available, and we’d all be trading our Black Bolt cards for our friend's White Flare cards. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. If this set is as hard to get as I expect it will be, the massive volume of hits it offers won’t really matter.