Shame. That’s a nice looking shader but deliberately trying for a non-exotic sidearm just isn’t in my wheel house.

And sure, you could join Dead Emo if you want, but New Monarchy's shader is basically the Iron Man color scheme, and boy does it look gorgeous on everything:

Their weapon this week is a kinetic sidearm.

Just sayin'.

That's just the irrelevant weapon that's going to be 50,000 regardless. I'm already getting weapons from the Tokens (seriously, they're the easiest packages to get).
Still, even the sidearm looks appealing to me. Full auto with Kinetic rounds? I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a real threat among sidearms.

I have yet to attempt a Nightfall.

I understand there is a timer. What’s the Prestige timer? I’m guessing better loot?

There are two versions of the Nightfall. The regular 240 Light one, and the "Prestige" version, which is 300 Light, gives you less time, and has tougher enemies. Themain draw for it is an aura that you can wear on your character for the week.

What did you mean by extending the mission timer and choosing battles carefully?

All nightfalls up to this point have had a number of mechanics available to extend your timer. Sometimes it's involved literally jumping through hoops to add 30 seconds to your time remaining, and recently it's required players to find and shoot glowing blue anomalies to extend the clock.

This week has none of that. You get 22 minutes to do the Nightfall, and since you can skip a number of fights if you're quick and clever enough, you are encouraged to do so in order to save as much time as possible for the final boss.

Crazymoose117 and I need to run the Nightfall for Rat King. Is it doable this week?

With the Daybreak-ish modifier available, it is definitely the easiest Nightfall so far, but the limited clock is your biggest enemy for the Rat King. It's doable of course, but you'd have to hit the ground running, and you'd need to make sure that you're reviving teammates as quickly as possible.