Card Informant has a nice little slideshow of the Exquisite Previews, and after going through the pictures, I am both happy and not. I really like the move towards signed swatches, but I cant stand that the booklets are making their way into a product like Exquisite. Triple Threads sucks because of the horrible concepts used in their products, and though these cards look better than that junk, UD is still using the bad ideas. Exquisite was fine without foldouts.
I am still not sold on the Rookie Patches either, as I get a very Las Vegas feel off of them. The borders look weird, and the gold design throws me, but the cards still look good enough that I would chase a few. Not as good as last year, but definitely better than some of the other high end cards this year.
Although the inscriptions are very cool, Im beginning to see a move towards overuse. Instead of getting one subset or two subsets a year, now we are getting three or four per product, and that could get problematic if it continues to spread. Sometimes you just need the old way mixed with new freshness.
Lastly, the biography cards are awful. Just plain awful. Not only are they booklet cards, but they look like the horrid ones I covered back in the worst of the worst from Chirography. They look boring, they have no originality, and are booklets for the sake of booklets. Bad news.
