Pack Break: 2010-11 Victory Rack Pack

I went to Walmart the other day with some more bottle return money in hand and decided on a rack pack of 2010-11 Upper Deck Victory. I'd seen plenty of previews and thought I'd try out a pack or two.

This was one of those rack packs with two 18-card sections, so I'm not going through the trouble of scanning each and every one of the 36 cards, just some of the better cards from the break.

Here is one of the base cards:

For some reason I really like the base card design this time around, the last few Victory base set designs have been awful with the giant Victory logo behind the player, so these are a big improvement. 

The best part in my mind has to be the full color player image on top of the black and white background. I also like the team color for the name bar and the transparent V. Some of the better base cards were:

Johan Franzen

Jonathan Toews

Matt Duchene

James Van Riemsdyk

Alex Kovalev

Marian Gaborik

Here's one of the newly added red parallels: 

They're just the base design with the white space changed to red. I like them, and its a plus that they only come from the retail packs. I only pulled two and the other was Matt Stajan. 

Here is one of the Victory Rookies:

Never heard of Dustin Tokarski, but he does have a pretty cool looking mask from Spokane. These cards are pretty busy on the front, but that's ok because they differentiate themselves from the base design. I also pulled two of these, the other was Clayton Stoner. 

Now onto those highly coveted Victory inserts: 

I actually like this set for some reason. The diagonal lines may be a bit much but they work. I really like the fading of the player image from color on top to black and white on the bottom. 

Again, I kind of like this set, with all of the silver foil and all, but the diagonal lines are a bit much. I do like the use of the team colors though, it gives the set a little variety throughout.

All in all, it was worth the $4.98 just to get going with the 2010-11 hockey card season. Victory was good, now I can't wait for Panini to release Score to be able to compare the two directly.