I have not played any Pokemon trading card game, but I have played Pokemon legends, RCS.
Brent:Well, all right.
Mike:I have. Yes. So, and not, and not a ton, but not an insignificant amount. I think I'm like five hours in, maybe something like that. I like it. I don't know if I love it, but it's been pretty fun so far. The first like hour and a half is kind of lame. Cause you basically just have to. Catch slash kill 20 BIDU to move on. Um, but after that it's been pretty cool. I think the battling and catching system is infinitely better than any Pokemon game before this, because you don't have to there's no, there's not really like the whole like cut animation scene to go into it. You just kind of like get in there immediately. It takes a couple seconds, the, everything just moves so much faster. So, um, it's like more, it's not exactly real time, but it's more real time than any other Pokemon gave me four, which just makes the speed of the game go, uh, much faster and better. And it's certainly a little bit harder than sword. Like I got, I got like an hour into sword and then just wanting to never play the game again. Like I thought it was really, I mean, I still have, I still played, it kept, but every time I kept playing it, it felt like a chore. And this doesn't feel like a chore.
Brent:nice horizon zero Dawn comes out on Friday. That's a big day for the Halliburton family because that's when my wife takes up the sword and starts a gaming again,
Mike:Will you be sitting next to her? Watching her play?
Brent:that, that is my role in all this
Mike:Okay, nice.
Brent:is to sit on the couch next to her. And, you know, it used to be my role uh, I know Mike, I know you'll appreciate this. It used to be that my role was when she got to a monster that she could not kill. She'd be that she would hand me the controller and say, okay, you have to kill this monster for me, I'm no longer that person in this family.
Mike:Now she gives it to your sons. That's funny.
Brent:And they killed him like 10 times faster than I would have. It's horrible. I hate those kids. I, yeah, so horizon zero Dawn.
Mike:Did you get RCS?
Brit:No, no, I might get it later down the road. I then like, I want to play horizon two, but I'm not even planning to get it right away either. I'm the game I'm waiting for is Elden ring, which comes out shortly after that. That's like the, from soft. So like the dark souls studio and it's their, it's their take on this open world trend that I sort of complained about last week and like horizon and RCS would fill a similar space, I think. And also this, this other game that I play are very similar to breath of the wild. And I just like one just don't have enough time to play. I don't like
Mike:Yeah,
Brit:play. I'm not, I'm just going to wait to for the one game and then I'll probably circle back for the other ones. But I just like equally, just like, I don't want to start a game. I'm not going to finish. I'm not good at multitasking, sort of in anything that I do. Like, like, even in my work I'm bad at working out of order. It's like, I need, I need to finish this. And then I will start this rather than just like doing a bit of this, a bit of this. Like I just, I just bothers me for whatever reason I always has. I'm just a, completionist sort of how I like to go about things.
Brent:Welcome to the Trashalanche print Halliburton, Mike Fouchet, but Pybas a hundred percent attendance as always. We're going to jump right in. We got a five-star review update guys. The, the title of the review was three fire emojis, solid program and podcasts. Keep it up. Jay's 8 1 7, not the most thoughtful review, but fire.
Mike:Yeah. We, we appreciate it. Not much talk about there, but, uh, thank you very much. Jay's
Brent:Jay's 8 1 7. We super appreciate you deciding to take a moment to record those comments for posterity, because I recognize apparently reviews be hard. So the fact that you took the time to leave a review, you're the man, you're the man. Guys let's jump right in. So first thing we should talk about is the big breaking news. It definitely seems like events are a go, right? Like, like Utah is totally going to happen. Right? Pokemon did their big announcement of like now you have to both be Vaxxed and wear a mask and show up with a negative PCR test. I assume that the strategy is get your PCR tests right before you get on the plane. That way, you know, if you don't have to get on the plane, right.
Mike:Yeah. Or like within the first few hours or within the, yeah, maybe like if you're flying out that afternoon, you get it in the morning, something like that. Um, I just don't think that's going to be logistically possible for everyone, but that's the ideal route, you know, I know, like for me, if I was flying to a regional, I would want, I would typically like, not take Friday off work. right. And so I would fly, you know, maybe at six or 7:00 PM that day. And maybe you can't get a PCR test in between getting off work at four o'clock and find out at seven. So I would have to do that Thursday afternoon. Something, something like that, I guess.
Brent:Yeah, I I'm assuming I didn't read the fine print, but I, I actually, I read the fine print, but I didn't really dice at this. Finally. I assume if it's 72 hours from the start of the event. You're okay. It doesn't have to be 70. Like when you go back in on Sunday, you don't have to have another test. That's 72 hours streets at the Sunday.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. And that was my understanding as well.
Brent:Although I don't think it was like completely specific on exactly how that worked, but yeah, I guess, I guess what I was imagining, like, it seems to me like the nuances, you, you have to cancel your hotel reservation, like 24 hours in advance. So you almost like want to test on like Wednesday so you can cancel everything on Thursday, if you had to,
Mike:Yeah. That's a good point. Didn't think about that.
Brent:and then you fly on Friday. I mean, well, the like, like the whole point of this is you're kind of risking it for the biscuit right out of the get go. Like if you thought you were going to have COVID you weren't gonna go to the event. So if you have COVID like, you were already pretty much shot to hell, right? But yeah, like I, I'm wondering, I'm looking forward to people explaining what the optimal strategy is. And I assume regional organizers are going to go to great pains to be like, here's where you can get a rapid PCR test. Like here's a place right down the street and hopefully they'll reach out to that CVS and be like, you've got to have a lot of tests or how.
Mike:It will make regionals that you can drive to, I think like a huge premium, right? Like even more important. Like, I don't even know if I'll bother. I was already on the fence about flying anywhere, but now I'm almost certainly not going to, I'll probably go to New Jersey and that's it. It just seems like so much. It seems like too much of a hassle. And I know you had a comment of like, by the time you get the test, like if you're flying, it's not even worth it. You want to elaborate on that.
Brit:I mean, you can just like, it's just a, it's just a whole lot to coordinate and you just like, all the cards have to fall together. Like, yeah. I mean, I've, I've had similar thoughts about driving. Like even, even if it's, you know, X amount longer, see, it seems at least in my head, again, I don't pretend to really have a good handle of the science, but like easier to control, like your environment you're in and you're not in and out. You're around less people. Like even in airports, just on a plane. I just, I feel like even like way, I guess the, in the before times I feel like I would just always get a cold on the plane at any time coming back from like a trip or something. I would just always have the sniffles or something like that for a little bit. But, yeah, I mean, you can just, you can take a test and it can be positive or you can, you can get the result you want, but then, you know, you could still get re re-exposed before, you know, and manage to make your way in. I would think to potentially like, um, the way the timing works, but even still like, even, you know, say it's completely reliable. It's just so much to coordinate. Yeah. Like, like if you're not doing anything else, like sure. Like I think I saw John who was going to, um, like every regional and like, I guess if you don't have a job, you know, you're just a student and you can play full time then like you'll be pretty on the ball with, um, you know, making sure your tests and stuff are good to go. But yeah, basically what, just to add on what Mike is saying, it's just so much to coordinate. If you're traveling to like. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't, I'll be curious to see what, how turnout stays, but yeah, I think we definitely call it last week and now like, um, I think them canceling Florida was definitely their moment to pull the plug on all of it. So I've definitely been expecting more and it seems, and there's guidelines for like local level stuff too. So like maybe it's not, I mean, it just sounds so hard, I guess this, this was another thought too, not, but just for like the staff and stuff, like how do you enforce this? How do you police. The most difficult math policy, like I've ever had to India had to hear to, like for sure, like, and so much of the workforce at our events is just like volunteers and like, that's hard. That's going to be so hard. I mean, especially if there are bad actors and things like that, it just sounds like a headache. And I, I mean, I'm, I'm optimistic for the most part, but I know that like, People there will be people at every regional is fighting the rules, however they can, whether it's just like a bad mass or it as, oh, you know, somebody who's always like, it's always down, you know, those sorts of people, like all of that's going to be in the works too. Um, and I just don't know how you enforce that. Super-duper well, I mean, I guess you can just be like very, very strict and like those sorts of violations are what get you kicked out of events faster than like any sort of end game violation. Maybe. I don't know what those, the sort of punishments are for not adhering to like the mask policy and things like that, but like the food, you know, that's even more difficult, especially at like smaller events. If you can't have food or drink the whole time. I think I saw those are capped at the local, the lower level stuff was kept at a pretty low level. So that things easier for sure.
Brent:Yeah. I, I thought there was a bunch of interesting stuff there. Yeah. Certainly for me, I don't know what it's like internationally, but stateside, I thought this just reinforces my decision to say I'm flying Southwest because Southwest, I mean, you can cancel five minutes before and they'll do it. Yeah, it just turned into cash. You can miss your flight and they'll be like, that's fine. That's just cash.
Mike:Right?
Brent:Like Southwest is so flexible with cancellations. The only cancellation I worry about. So the hotel and I'm like, okay, you just have to make sure you kind of manage that fine. And it's probably fine to like hop on a plane and go to tournaments. And obviously I think your point is just like traveling is still an unsafe thing and people feel more comfortable driving then getting on a plane. And that's, I think that's a, that's true either way. You just have to kind of gauge your tolerance for, for travel. But yeah, I, I recognize numbers are way down. I think our county's optimistic the mask mandates are, are going away. So in that respect I'm very optimistic for the world. Yeah, the numbers are going to improve and you know, three months from now, we'll be talking about events. Like, yeah, it's probably fine to go to that event. It's no big deal.
Mike:Yeah, That's true. But you're coming about staff and admit like logistics of this. It was like one of my big thoughts as well. Like it does say in the document that bigger events will need to have certain people, certain people on staff to help with that. But it's still, a lot of the details are going to fall on judges and volunteers would be my guests. Like I can't imagine that they're gonna have other people be checking the tests and the vaccine status. Like there's, I don't know. So that's like a lot of extra work, one thing. And one consequence of that, that I'm a little worried about is just the length of events, right? Like we already had some logistical issues here and there, and this could easily add two, three hours in the morning before the event even get started. If not more than that.
Brent:That's a really good point. I mean, we had just fixed the whole manual check-in process right before the year before a events got canceled, we'd fix that and said, we'll never go back.
Mike:Yeah. And I doubt that they'll have a digital system to do this. Like I I've done, I've seen some things when I, when I went to a wedding that they asked us to do like a Google form to submit that, uh, proof of test and vaccine, which was fine for like 80 people, you know? Um,
Brent:And the assumption that people want to be good at.
Mike:right, right over. Right. Yeah. Like, yeah. I don't know. That's it's gonna be crazy, man. Like.
Brent:You know, hearing you say that is, is really w maybe one of the first things I've heard that gives me pause about going to Utah. Cause I'm like, maybe I should give it an event or two to work that out, because that sounds like problems.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. That definitely definitely spells like a LA a long day, for sure. Like, yeah. I mean, I'm optimistic about the future too, but yeah, some, some of the first regionals are kind of have historically been very, very slowly. Not that there's any fact in the first one needing to be slower or anything, but just like, definitely it was something like this. That's, that's a definite thought I've been pretty apprehensive. I'm like, I want to go. I feel like I feel confident in a deck. I know what will be hard for me not to go. And I like all of these concerns and more, and just like my, just, yeah, I might just like call the season. Good. I'm not going to qualify for worlds and just like go to right. Go to the drivable ones and see everyone at the internationals, which is thankfully drivable.
Mike:No.
Brent:Yeah. So the other thing we should talk about Brit, I bet you, I, oh, we should say, I remember. actually really liked the mask policy. I like how it is incredibly detailed. I mean, hopefully that just means I, I like you. Guys' idea of like, if people just feel like they're empowered to hand out DQ is left and right. Like the more you can say, dude, this is everyone knows exactly what the rules. You can't screw around with this stuff and it's a BQ you're and you're outta here, you know? I, that seems really good, but I also want to talk about Brit's point that they gave a lot of guidelines around local league starting up. I didn't see any local too say, Hey, it's all opened up. Now we can like register events, but I feel like that's coming.
Mike:Yeah, maybe.
Brent:Do you think they'll wait until after you taught and see how it goes before they open it up? Or do you think where like they're gonna open up in a hot second,
Mike:When does he talk in March?
Brent:Four weeks or now it's like March 16th, March 8th.
Mike:I would bet that there's conversations going on, on the backend, like already between stores in Pokemon. I don't know when I would be very surprised if the conversations haven't started, whether you know, it'll open before you title. No, but those conversations must have been started already.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. It, it definitely seems like you know, I, I was wondering if there was a world where there were not going to be local events and just, they're going to just crank out these regionals and declare victory, but it seems like local events becoming,
Mike:yeah. I wonder it, hopefully with such a, uh, low attendance cap, hopefully a lot of stores will do some type of preregistration for their events. Um, you
Brent:mean, I know, I know, you know that in Maryland, that has historically been an enormous problem. Like too many people show up and they literally are just turning people away at the door and they're like, yo, I drove two hours to be here.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:You can't turn me away now.
Mike:yeah,
Brent:Yeah, that preregistration was, was something that was like starting to become more popular as the pandemic hit. And I think the more the more widespread it is, you make a really good point. If they're going to enforce super tight attendance on all these, it would just absolutely slay people if they don't have some sort of preregistration.
Mike:Yeah. Cause it's also like if you don't have it, then you're own. likely going to end up in a situation where you have well over the amount of people in the store, whether they're playing or not, like people are going to like show up and they're going to be like, oh, I can't play. Am I going to hang around? My friends are here. Am I going to go? And you're going to end up with, you know, 50, 60 people in the store when you're only supposed to have 30 or whatever it is.
Brent:I think brilliant stars is so here's, here's the question I wanted to ask you guys before we dive into the brilliant star set again. So Utah's coming it's in four weeks in approximately 10 days, all of a sudden PTCGO will have brilliant stars and people have brilliant stars cards. If you were somebody who'd been out of the game for two years, what's the strategy for ramping up for Utah? Like, so I, you know, I guess so I recognize it's unrealistic to imply that there would actually be ramping up, but let's imagine Sam Chen calls you mind and he says, I actually want to practice and prepare him for this tournament. I'm going to Utah, what should I do?
Mike:Well, the first thing I would say is play new or at least like, make sure you're comfortable playing you or playing against you, whether you want to play. I feel like that's, that's like the big, this first decision. I feel like you need to decide, do I want to play me or do I want to play something else? Cause mew is, I think clearly like the standard, like the baseline of the format, whether it turns out to be the super dominant best deck, like it is in this format still remains to be seen a little bit, but it's still going to be at the beginning of the format, kind of like the base of what you have to compare your deck to you will be the most popular deck, almost certainly at the first event, because it's been out for a while. People know how to play it. There's not a whole lot of the deck. The deck hasn't changed fundamentally. It's just gotten better with, you know, more tools. So I would be shocked if it wasn't the most popular deck. Um, and it can beat, we've seen that it can beat things that are designed to beat it, uh, as well. Um, cause it's so powerful. So that's kinda like the very first step. The very first thing I would say we can get into more detail, but I feel like that's the first thing.
Brent:So Britt, I'm sure you're playing for you to tell would be to not play mew.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's anywhere else where I would, I would play me. You like, I just don't ever play those to ex really, even at local level stuff, I'm always, usually just like countering on or, you know, a client playing a good matchup for it. Um, yeah. But, um, I don't think I would really have too much more to add to it. Like where might you start? Is it just like, learn, learn the format? Like, that's sort of the nice thing. If you've been gone, um, the whole time for the last few years, it doesn't really matter. You just kind of need to learn the last couple of months. Um, the what's what's come and gone in our format. Yeah, you're not getting, you're not going to be losing sleep because you don't didn't know. You don't know that Centiskorch was at one point pretty good as a deck, like things like that. So yeah, definitely just obviously you learn the current format and you start looking at the new cards. Like that's always a thing. I guess for boarding about being a good player at like these big tournaments where there isn't, um, decks really. I mean, the closer we are to like Japan, there's, we're always kind of working off like their archetypes and things like that, but it's always nice. Like, it'd be, it's always different, like going into the next week and of reading those compared to the first, like, you don't necessarily know like good, the more average players are like not, you know, not to say that they're they're capable, but they're just not likely to bring like a new deck or something there they'll, they'll they'll play like what's been established. And I think like mew is not only been established, but clearly just improves with these new cards too improves in like very simple ways. Like it's not like adding new Pokemon, like new gimmicks. It's just adding trainers that make your deck like faster and more consistent. Um, so yeah, I would definitely like, I would be shocked if new is, is not like the most played deck, like equally, like if you have the cards to now, it doesn't really need anything from brilliant stars that just like adds again, those trainers, which probably wouldn't even cost you$20.
Brent:So here's, I guess here's, here's the thing I wanted to poke at if like, so two years ago, when, when all these people stopped playing. I mean, the way you play tested was like, you'd call your friend and you would like hop on discord, hop on PTCGO what, like, whatever it was. Right. And, and now there's online tournaments every night. How much would you say you should, like, you should just enter in online tournaments versus like testing specific decks with your homies.
Brit:I think testing, like if you're, I think testing would just purely be a better use of your time. Like. I just, I just we've had online tournaments for so long and I feel like everyone who's been involved with them is just tired of them. Um, for one reason or not like it just doesn't, they just never seem to offer like the same, the same sort of testing. Like it's nice to test out like your deck in a sort of controlled environment like that. But in terms of just like acquiring data, like there is lots are useful, but like your own sort of tournament path isn't necessarily all that useful and like figuring out match-ups and things like that. And especially with like a new format, I would think like the best thing to do is just like to cover as much ground as possible. And that's like playing a lot of decks at once. So it's not just like your one deck for one tournament sort of experience. And it's good for the nerves. It's good for practice against better opponents. It's certainly a better playing in an online tournament is certainly a better use of your time than testing, like on the ladder. Um, but you know, just doing them doing like blind testing is maybe get like, I guess. As time has gone on. I think there are like more, relatively speaking, more like competitive players in this, like the quick play mode, but like you get bad lists and a lot of
Brent:the latter is a rough, rough way to test
Brit:Yeah.
Brent:Fair enough. Should we talk about brilliant stars?
Mike:Yeah. Okay. So last time we talked about the trainer, we talked a little bit about some of like the staple Lish type of Pokemon. I'm like man, Lumina, Leon what is it? The stage one, They were all at, you dropped some cards and we talked. So we kind of like talked about more general cards, but I feel like today would be cool to talk about some of the specific Pokemon and maybe a little bit more on where do we think the format is going from a meta-game perspective? Like we already mentioned a little bit that mew is probably the baseline, but I feel like there's a lot of old decks that could make some pretty big comebacks and there's some old decks that might fall away and maybe there's some new decks to.
Brent:Well, this sounds really good.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, I think this will be a really interesting set to change the meta-game. Um, whether we get a bunch of new decks. I don't, uh, I don't know, but, um, but yeah, so I don't know. I was just going to like scroll through the list and mention things that jumped out to me unless you guys have a different starting point.
Brent:Sounds delightful.
Brit:No, that sounds like a good, easy conversation to have naturally.
Mike:All right. So the first thing there is a, the grotto and the, from currently I get to grasp Pokemon stage one that lets you search for a grass Pokemon every turn, but that's ability. Interesting, good. I mean, it's like, it's definitely a good ability whether it's like good enough in this format. Probably not, I guess, but.
Brit:No, I don't think so. I think like that tartara deck. Gonna be, you know, like as good as whimsical, as good as kind of some of the more sub-par one prize decks from recent memory have been like, it doesn't seem terrible. Like it's got some pretty, pretty decent stuff lined up for it, but I just don't think we live in a world or a stage twos are competitive. It's like, what do you play it with? Like,
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:like, obviously it's good and builds into itself. And there's like cherubim and like kind of some other grass, fringe support floating out there. But just like, I just pick up Jenna sect and read it and like what evolve in Pokemon can, can, can keep up with this.
Mike:all right. What about the worm and dams? So where Madame is basically vest McQuinn, uh, for two collar lists, it does 30 plus 10 for each Pokemon in your discard. So we have the double colorless energy. We have the old double colorless energy. I don't know any of their names They're double colorless and double colorless with minus 20.
Brit:Yeah, I don't know their names
Mike:Um, and so there's three warm madames though. There's one that's grass, one that's fighting and one that's metal. Uh, so you hit some different types. Um, metal, I mean like grass is not a good type. I don't think it really hits anything through, or it hits like gang Gar for weakness and Umbrian okay. So that's actually
Brent:there's some dark types that it randomly.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's not that bad actually fighting obviously. Pretty good as well. Um, because there's some other dark Pokemon and if GLT on sticks around in the format, um, and then metal is anything weak to metal. Now that ferry has gone. Hmm.
Brit:Yeah, ice rider is, yeah, I was going to say, well, I had to think like what Pokemon, what Pokemon or weak? The metal. Yeah. Cause
Mike:Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Brit:Uh, any other ice Pokemon? There's probably a few.
Mike:Oh Yeah. Oh, and RCS is weak to fighting. So you, so all of the, you know, you don't hit all of the types, but your types are not that bad. Um, 30 plus 10 takes a while to scale up to numbers. That you need in today's format, but if you're hitting for weakness, then like you can get there. But if you're not hitting for weakness, you're probably not in a good spot. So this feels like it's probably not powerful enough, but like almost there.
Brit:Yeah. I just
Brent:agree. They didn't power creep this relative to everything else. Right.
Brit:thinking about it too. like a lot of the, Umbrian not like initially like Dylan Brian's world deck, world stack, which I think sort of kicked off the vengeance sort of decks, like didn't have access to battle compressor. Um, but, um, for the, most of the history of these decks, like they had access to that. And that's a pretty big thing, but like, not only that, but they just had like other little support too. Like the unknowns were very good, you know, just such synergy with this deck. And like, this was back when you could shame in three times in a turn, things like that. Um, but yeah, like I actually think this would be good if it had, yeah, basically exactly how Brent put it. If it had been scaled properly, like if it did like 60 plus 20 or something like that, like I bet it would be pretty good, but yeah, it's just, it's not enough damage and I don't, I don't think there's like. Maybe, I mean, maybe there's, there's, there's quite a bit of pretty good stage ones out there right now. Like there's a lot of just kind of like utility ones that float around in the control list. Like maybe that's what you would want to pair it with. Like you just need other Pokemon in here, other Pokemon that are doing useful things for you, but then all are also adding to your damage. Um, by being knocked out,
Mike:Yeah. Actually, and that, I just had a realization. You still can only play for Warmerdam.
Brent:That's what I was going to talk about. Right? Like, like for all of the typing thing, you all, like, you create problems for yourself
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:deck construction, right?
Mike:Yeah. I was thinking that you could play like two of each or three, like two to three of each, but now you can't do
Brent:going to, you're going to be like, we're going to play two fighting's and a metal and a grass. And we're just going to hope that like, if we run into gang Gar, that one grass takes us distance. Let's go.
Mike:Yeah. Okay. No. Yeah. It's not going to work, unfortunately.
Brit:I mean you, what about, oh, no, obviously you, you probably want to play Zoroark or something. And like, then, then with Zoroark you would have a little bit more consistent access to the colors that you wanted and you could, you know, you're just deer kind of just having to get the basic facts rather than like both of them at once. And maybe do things with that. I guess chin Chino, like with a lot of other Pokemon would be good too. Like probably what you would want to play at a discard. Um, or maybe just biblical is still better. I'm not sure.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:no, I, I think, I think it's got, I think you make a really good point. Zoroark it gives you like a lot of interesting support lines. It just seems to me like the challenges in the way single prize attackers have like this of work. Like if you look back at Dylan Brian's deck, it was like a slow burn, but once you discarded 20, you were like one hitting everything in the union. And you were like, we'll, we'll, we'll catch up. We'll catch up. We'll catch up in here. I mean, if you discard 20, you're still too hidden. Like it's not going to go well.
Mike:yeah. Yeah. 20 Pokemon and discard. You're not even close.
Brent:Yeah, yeah. Like that, that
Mike:That's still ridiculous to think about.
Brent:all right. I mean, all those decks run like 29 Pokemon and kind of to your point, like you know, unlike like none of those are like, I guess maybe they were on a Crobat or something. Like, there's not a lot of consistency Pokemon in there. So you're going to have like all the consistency problems that may come with having a 29 Pokemon deck. And like, once you've discarded more than two thirds of them, you're still not there. Like, it's just not possible to run a deck big enough to one hit B Max's. How could that possibly work out?
Mike:Yeah, like mad party is just the way better version of this, right? Because mad party doesn't need to one shop because it can start to two-shot on like turn to basically, um, I am curious, there is that spirit to, well, just a brief aside on med party, there is that Spiritomb in the format still, that says it's a colorless for each Pokemon. Your post does carpet one damage counter on your opponent's Bhagwan when it, however you want. Um, And then I have to shuffle all their bookmark from their discard pile into their deck. So like if mad party actually becomes a really legitimate deck, people can just play that card, which is Yeah. Which is pretty sad. Wait. Yeah. Chilling rain, right. Chili reading. Yeah. Um, okay. The next card is the shaman V and V star. I don't know. I feel like I've seen, people's saying that this card was going to be good and it looks really not good to me. Um, it's V star ability is pretty bad heel one 20 from each of your grass, Pokemon bench, grass, Pokemon, and then it's attack is one 20 plus 40 for each prize card your opponent's taken already. So, I mean, you kill a VMX if they've taken five prizes, but otherwise this is not a good attack, right?
Brent:Yeah. The, the ability to play around this seems a little too easy, like at a place like Utah you know, after they realize this is your big trick, they'll be like, okay, well, I just sent you to four prizes.
Mike:Yeah, right, And like you, can't not bench, you have to bench the shame V right. So like you could put them to, like, you could force them to five prizes potentially, But not play or shame and V or yeah, I dunno. I just don't think it
Brent:But then you, then you have to bench the V and then you have to evolve it.
Mike:right, right.
Brent:how, how, do you, how does all this come together in a way that works out for you? Right?
Mike:Yeah. This card seems not very good.
Brent:Yeah. And, and the ability, I, I mean, what grass Pokemon are you going to have on your bench that you need to heal?
Mike:Yeah. And like one 20 is not even that much.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Like probably doesn't it doesn't, it doesn't change. It doesn't make Leafeon suddenly incredibly good. We found was fine before. It's the same.
Mike:All right. What about Charles R B star? So Charles R V stars, big V star power kills a V max for, for energy. It does three 20 for four. And you discard two energy on it. That's pretty good. Cause you get to do that any time during the game. So that's nice. Um, and then it's regular tech is two 30, if it has any damage counters on it. So you kill regular viz. Um, and the basic V is not very good, but I don't know. Charles restart is pretty good. It's a two prize or two. So like that seems kind of playable.
Brit:I think it's fine. Like, I, I think, I think you would like the intake that I talked about last week, like, um, I think you would play it in there, like, cause you can power it up out of nowhere. Um, um, with like Reihan stadium attach and an energy switch, you can, you could pull that you can pull the attack, uh, with no, no energy on board, which seems really good. And like, I think entail like wants something to go with it already. Um, And it's, it's just a natural pairing. They're both fire. Um, and like it, like, I don't think, I don't think it could be the focus. Like it's like, if your, if your perception is like I'm evaluating the card as it, as it's being its own deck, then like, no, I don't think so, but I think it's, I think it's good enough to see play and, um, whether this, or like future fire support, like, I just think the fire, the, all the support that fire gets in this set is really good. Just, and like it's a decent weakness to have, or to hit for. Like, I think I've seen a lot of talk about DRL Don, um, especially, and it gets, it gets RCS now potentially then channel fireball, uh, Stefan's list, um, was an interesting read, but like seems to be poised. Like again, if MEO is just like the top dog, I think like they're out, um, in theory would be a fine play going into Utah. And like, can't imagine they're out on can beat something that hits it for weakness, that it can't block and like.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. And, and so if you think about intake compared to sweet and sweet Coon Luda Cola was so good because we couldn't do a really good two shot in Pokemon, but you just want to be able to watch. Like once during the game. So Luda, colo gallery there for sweet food, and this would do the same thing for NTA, like intake and help to shot things. You can use the charge, I'd restart his first attack to help to shout things. But then just once a game, you get the one shot on a VMX to kind of like push yourself that much, like right over the edge. So, yeah, I agree. You probably play like a two, two line of this in like an anti-tech seems pretty good. I like it. I like it. Um, so we kinda just talked about we talked a little bit about Intej last time too. Um, do you have anything more to say about auntie Brit?
Brit:No, I haven't really flushed it out. And anything beyond that, I just think the potential is clearly there. Um, and I, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's obvious and perhaps not worth stating, but like having a weakness on Gemma sect, it's really, really big.
Mike:Um,
Brit:like I think you can race, you can, you know, I think that's just like, I definitely think I could build it to have a good new matchup. Um, whether that's enough, like in and of itself, I'm not sure, but like flicks, just so it's just so similar to Sui Kuhn. Um, with just some, you know, you're, you're rearranging a couple of the moving parts and it's like a very, very, very similar conceptually and like, I don't know, I just feel stronger about it than I do about Sokun going into the next format and. I think a lot of that has to do with, um, the fact that at least from what I can tell currently, like we don't really talk about, so he couldn't leave the colo anymore. Like the silicone deck that's had by far the most access recently, both in terms of online and, um, the handful of like one caves that have been happening hopping around, like Tate's so it could hammers and I just don't think cameras are going to be any good in the NAR in this RCS format. Like both the RCS accelerate, both the regular and the V accelerate energy. And, and there's a double colorless energy too. Like, it just seems really bad to be playing crushing cameras still. Um, but, but usually that's usually proven wrong in, in formats for where people are saying cameras are on their way out. So I suppose it
Brent:to play hammers, right.
Brit:I, I feel like that that's my argument, essentially. It like, like if our assays is just bad or not popular, then like share the like Suzanne hammers can keep doing what it's doing in the current format. Um, but yeah, RCS seems to be a big blocker to me for that. And so pivoting things around with like the fire focused and said, and just seeing what turns up.
Mike:Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I skipped a lot of cards cause a lot of them look bad. The next interesting card looked like in Polian so I
Brent:Oh, then you should go back to Kingdra V max, because somebody is going to do something with it.
Mike:Okay. No, no, no. I intentionally skipped king glares, I think. Well, I will say this about the king, the king Lear V I think it's hysterical because it's first. Is cert search you deck for five water, energy, and attaching to your Pokemon. I was like, oh, that's pretty good. But then I'm like, oh, but you have to flip a coin and do it. You can only not flip a coin if you evolve to the max. Like c'mon, I can't imagine how evolving to a V max and then searching for five energy is good. Like, that seems really bad.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, I there's, there's no like water Pokemon that I know of that loves having a ton of energy out,
Brent:that's fair. That's fair.
Mike:I guess. I dunno. We have frost, modern format. Just play that. Um, okay. And polio is really cool. I don't know if it'll see any play in standard. it's probably going to be played and expanded. It's really cool. So, um, for the listeners, it's one student, your turn, if this cards in your discard pile and you have no cards in hand, you can play it from your discard onto your bench and draw three cards. Um,
Brent:Fantastic.
Mike:Yeah. it's really cool. And this attack isn't even that bad for one water does 60 to anyone. So it can be like a weird bench sniper as well. Um, yeah, I don't know. I'm really interested. We haven't really had a card like this before. I mean, we've had like similar cards, you know, uh, with Maxis and execute, but never a card exactly. Like this effect. Um, even like the Greninja, there was the Greninja, but that had to come from your hand. Right. If it was the last card in your hand, you could play it.
Brit:Um,
Mike:Yeah. And this is way more flexible than that. Um, so. I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you think it could see plain standard or not too sure.
Brit:I mean, why, why do you, why do you think it will see play in expanded?
Brent:the attack, the, the Pokemon doesn't seem good enough for the ability.
Brit:Yeah, like it's and it's not like you continue to draw or something
Brent:You know, like, wow. I just, I just, I just put this thing on my bench that does a 60 snipe for a water energy.
Brit:Yeah. Th that's my tech like, yeah, it's cool. Um,
Brent:If I told you there was a basic that for one water did the 60 snipe, you'd be like,
Brit:because you don't, it's just, yeah, you don't keep drawing. And so it doesn't continue to be useful while it's on your bench, which was always the, in case the case with Archie's and pulling on.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's true. I mean, you can do stuff like scoop it up. Let's give up net and put it back in your discard for like another use later on. You can do that. Um,
Brent:Well, I mean, it's also just risky. Cause like three cards is not five cards.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:You're like, you're like really yellowing that those three cards are going to give you sustained juice for the rest of her, for, you know, that turn next, turn, whatever it is.
Mike:Yeah. That's true. You guys are probably right. It's probably not that good, but certainly very interesting.
Brent:Yeah. Now, I mean, if the, if the attack did, you know, three times as much damage to two or three Pokemon people would be like, oh my God, we got to figure out how to do this,
Mike:Yeah. One energy 60 to all Pokemon. That would
Brent:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If it, if it was, if it was 30 spread, you'd be like, well, let's go, we're building the weird, some crazy janky bag and like, it's going to be fantastic. But yeah, I just feel like 60 snipe is like, what are you going to do with that?
Mike:Yeah. Um, okay. Floats on. We got junk on back, but it's on a stage one and it takes a water. Well, I guess Sableye took a dark, so it takes a water, but it's on a stage one.
Brent:I don't know if it's good, but I hope it's good.
Brit:It's it'll be in Sander's stack. That's all I know. That's like, it's probably fine. Like Hayley he'll probably win, win over regional with it or something. Like, I, it seems perfect for that line of deck, but I just don't have any understanding of how those decks work or how to play them really, so.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:news is you can get it out with Zoroark. So, you know, like, like, you know, you can, it's like quote, splash bubble into the control. X people were already trying to build.
Brit:Okay.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It seems good, but I'm not smart enough to know how, um, we, we see dominion, we see McAfee, great cards, um, Right. UV actually pretty interesting. Uh, and it hasn't it like its first tech is not why It's good, but it's at least interesting. If you go first, you can use this tag going first and interject for lightning and attach it to the right. True. So it's like instant makes going first, even better with this. And then, but for two lightning does 60 for each lightning. From any of your Pokemon and play, so you have to discard them, but you can discard them from anyone in place. So it doesn't have to be on the right shoe, which is a huge plus. And there is no damage cap, which is also great too. And
Brent:This is, this is like Alcremie right.
Mike:yeah. Yeah, like Alcremie but it's a basic. And so perhaps we'll finally see like a fluffy deck do good. Like Rayquaza seemed a little, Rick Rayquaza was a lot higher maintenance, right. You needed two energy types. You needed to evolve to a stage one, um, to attack. I mean, you got the ability which helped you draw cards, but I don't know if that offset the clunkiness of having to run to energy and being a V and a three. And it was a through project too. So this is a to Prizer it's a basic, um, and you only have to run lightning energy. So I feel like it's not gonna be like a tier one deck, but it could be, you know, tier two or tier three.
Brent:I don't know why it would be bad, like, like this, this, it fixes a lot of the problems that I was like the concern to me about single strike being good and single strike is good. Right? It's like, eh, you don't have to run two stage ones. It's just this B and then a stage one and you set it up and you spam attack over and over and over. You can power up an attacker in one turn like it has so many fewer moving parts than single strike. You're just getting lighting out of the discard retention. It
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:seems good.
Brit:I mean, there might be less parts, but like you can't, I just don't think you can compare the functionality of single Sarek to like anything in a married dad. Cause like part of, part of why I sing, even though like single strike is like cumbersome at times, it's all, it's just like the fact that it cheats it from the deck. So like simultaneously and stuff, I get just like, it's a lot, it's a lot different, I think, than like trying to get your energy in the discard. Like you just have the like in like the special energy search like that those cards are crazy. Like we've never,
Mike:Oh,
Brit:and it's
Brent:That's fair. That's fair. I bet me. I just, I, I felt like I was always like, you got to find earns every turn you got to
Brit:Oh, yeah. I mean, like, I, I mean, I haven't
Brent:all these moving parts here. I'm like, you're going to have McAfee and you're going to have. Uh, and you're going to have a bunch of rights UVS, and then you set up flat fees and you're good to go.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. As far as like the overall setup, you have less, once you're set up, like you don't have to keep hitting beats, whereas with a single strike, like you do, like you, you lose games. If you hit there, if you see the urns at the wrong times and things like that, or just establish it themselves. So, yeah, that's a fair point.
Brent:Yeah. And, and this is one of the great things about this attack is if you get a turn ahead, if you're able to take a Kao without having to reach too far, you can kind of get more energy on board, right? Assuming that your discards going okay, like you don't have to discard X amount of energy to get your attack off. You just have to, you can make, you know, if you need 180, you discard three and you leave the rest on the board. Right.
Mike:Yup. Yup. And so the, like, this deck probably plays like one ryku maybe even two ride cuvees. Um, which is just, you know, we talked about NTA, like raccoons, probably the worst of the three, but it's still like good enough. It's still a good card. It's still good enough to play in a deck like this as a one of maybe a two of when you don't want to discard energy, you just kind of need to finish off a Kao. The deck also will have room to play, maybe a single prize attacker too, that you can power up through flat. Um, I don't really know all what that is Right. now, but I'm sure there exists something in the format that you could play. So it seems like it could be, it could be solid. Um, next Pokemon I see is the tool drop card. So patchy, resou, 30 damage reach Pokemon tool attached to all of your Pokemon. And that goes hand in hand with the there's a hunch Krave in this format that you can attach four tools to it. Um, seems cool. Seems like it also probably be worse than mad party as a single prize attacking deck, but pretty interesting heartbroken. Like you can put a bunch of giant capes on it, so it's like, not that each of the code.
Brent:Love it.
Mike:Um, oh, the only thing about it. though is Path to the Peak shit can shut off entre. If that is a big stadium in this format.
Brent:Right.
Mike:All Right. what else we got? What else we got here? There is Dusknoir that energy transfer, special energy, which is cool effect, but probably completely unplayable in this format. Um, okay. Then we've got the whims of caught stuff. So the regular basic, the regular V it's first attack is interesting. It's 20. If the defendant Pokemon is a basic, it can attack during your punish next turn. Um, that seems good. Like, it's not like, you know, it's not like a strategy you would ever use as your primary strategy, but against certain decks, that's going to be potentially really annoying. And in certain situations to where, you know, they you're low on boss and they're a basic deck. You can just kind of win the game with that. So that's just a quick note before I even look at the Vistar, which I don't know what it does.
Brent:Oh, the view star has an, a annoying attack as well.
Mike:Oh, Yeah, Okay. So three energy, one 60, or Ponant can't play Pokemon tools or special energy. So it's chaos wheel and it's V star is the stack to 60 damage to one of your opponents Pokemon for each energy attached to this Pokemon. Hmm. David's pretty good. Is this the reason why people are saying Shadow Rider is going to be good?
Brit:Yeah, I think so. I don't, I don't, I think it's, I will, I have seen some lists that like, I don't remember who posted it, but it was, it was much more focused on when to cut and only played like a small Shadow Rider line, but yeah. Yeah. I think that's a, I think people are sort of like, and I think, I think it was, you responded to someone monkey sort of being like a little cynical about like it being good. I think, I think that's right. I think people have like, they're, they're excited about that, that it has that Shadow Rider has a new partner. And so they're like, yeah, I don't be a decubitus format, but I just don't think it, I don't think it can compete even with whimsical. I don't think like what does it kind of as good. Um, but I don't think it's good enough to like push it through. That dark it's dark matchup. And then on top of that to like Path to the Peak, which I think will continue to exist, like it's PR is very good against it still. Um, and it's just not, it's just not as powerful. It's like mew. I don't think women's like, got changes that like, I think women's, the cop might make it better, but then there's sort of this interesting thing where, um, shadow the basic Shadow Rider already does chaos wheel. Right.
Mike:Right.
Brit:And so like, like it's not suddenly winning new matchups or anything, the fact that you have access to that attack, like you already had that you already had it. Um, so I don't, I like, I don't, I don't think that attack is doing anything on its own. And I think the V star is just like, uh, a nice utility to have like pretty good to be using those attacks. If you can find a way to have access to them. And naturally they pair well together. But I don't think it'll be tier one, tier two, like it's not bad, but I don't think it'll be kind of a top contender.
Mike:Yeah, I agree at first glance, like stopping special energy seems good, but, but like, if like, if it, if it card like this, it seems like, um, we have potential with this now to have like a critical mass of special energy hate between this and Darale add-on. And I know people have been talking about the evil tall, now that we have this double color, this energy. That's in the format. Um, so if you get to this critical, massive, special energy hate and decks, like we'll be forced to adapt. And then the special energy hate becomes not as good. Right? So like you could even shy away from playing as many fusion energy or things like that. Um, so yeah. I don't know. I agree. It seems good, but not great. Um, okay. Scroll in. Haven't seen a good card in a while. Uh, hunch CRO we've mentioned there's the new chin Chino Zoroark Leah pard, um, which has trade discarded card dropped to Ken. Chino is probably better for right now, cause its attack is you can attack for one energy. You have.
Brent:You know, as long as we, as long as we're talking insane control cards, the new revile is a card worth mentioning for a
Mike:Oh, is it? Let's see dark energy flip two coins. If you get one heads, your put it reveals their hand. And then for each heads put a card from their hand at the bottom of the deck. Okay. So, uh, I can control play this style now though, without reset stamp.
Brent:That's fair question. Maybe, maybe the answer to that is a
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. But you're right
Brent:I feel like yeah, I mean, if I flipped two heads, the odds that I could leave your hand, like pretty bad. It's pretty good.
Mike:That's true. That's true. Yeah.
Brent:it doesn't, it doesn't take taking a lot of cards out of your hands to make you think. Well, next turn is going to be pretty boring.
Mike:That is true. Yeah. And it's just a good, good tool to, uh, to have around.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:we have a Zamazenta V I skipped a lot of cards. If you guys know of anything, I skipped, just let me know. Um, there's the Zamazenta V that has a different Intrepid sword. I would say, you know, your ability, your turn, and when you use this, but you get to discard your hand and draw five. So I think sometimes that will, most of the time that's worse than Intrepid stored, but, uh, sometimes could be better. And then its attack is one 20 30 for each weight. Yeah. Does 30 more for each price card your opponent has taken already. So again, you're maxing out at two 70, which is not great. So this seems just like a worst Zacian,
Brent:Yeah, and it takes a million attachments to use it. Like, you know, that's what you saved all your middle saucers for.
Mike:um, Fly gun kills a Emacs, but it takes fighting fight in grass color list, do it, and then discards all its energy. Um, there's some way to power that up consistently, it could be okay. It doesn't have a weakness, which is cool. The Gar Trump stage two is like, not that bad for a stage two, but it's like, it's not incredible. Which is what a stage two has to be.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of cards that have and you know, this is true of so many sets in Pokemon, but I felt like it was particularly true to this set where it's like, that'd be a really interesting attack attack if it didn't take insane amounts of energy to power up relative to like all the other stuff you have to do. Right.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:You know? Yeah. Like you, you activate this ability and then you do what?
Mike:Right. I get to maybe three shots you now, or I guess you could two shot, but it's, it's not discarded the top two cards that you've heard back to
Brent:yeah, yeah. You're like I did all that. I felt the same way about drag of it should be. I'm like you know, it's an interesting attack. The amount of trouble you have to go to, to like do stuff is insane.
Mike:Yeah. Um, the far-fetched is the last interesting Pokemon that I see as I scroll through. Um, cause we talked a little bit about RCS in Biberach last time. So far-fetched for two color lists does 20 plus 10 more for each damage counter on your opponent's active Pokemon. So it is a pretty easy. Cleanup two-shot thing. So if you have something in that, you know, did one 40 or one 50, you can use Farfetch to take the second half of that Kao. So in a deck that's plan B, maybe need to do a little bit more than that. If you're playing the minus 20 double colors, but you know, you might even play like a farfetched in, uh, in mad parties potentially. Um, as a, you know, I don't know if you, I don't know if you would do that, but maybe, maybe you would, I'm sure there's some decks that will be playing double colors, energies that will appreciate this card, even if it's just a one-off.
Brent:Yeah, totally, totally like that thinking. Right.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:And it's one of those cards that, I mean, you can even bench it the prior turn and like, what are they going to do, right.
Mike:yeah. That's true. Like they're not going to gust it and kill it.
Brent:Exactly. Is that like, like targeting that down versus like the thing that just hit for one 40, like, it seems like it it's a really balanced card. They just gives you options and like less linearity and more optionality is what we're looking for.
Mike:that's all I got. You guys got any other ones?
Brent:I think I jammed all my comments in there. I think what excited me the most about this conversation, it sounds like Brett is actually looking at some like realists for some of the new archetypes. So I'm eager to actually talk about those and hear like how he thinks the new Metta is going to kind of evolve. And what's going to end up being really good coming out of this.
Brit:Yeah, that's kind of my biggest question, mark. Cause I know RCS will be good, but it's not, it's not apparent to me what you're supposed to play with it. And so that's sort of, that's my biggest question. I don't know. The drought on thing is, is interesting to me. But before that I hadn't been like super impressed with really anything. Like, I don't think RC cause RCS ice rider has seen, seems very popular. It has been popular in Japan. Like it doesn't seem that good to me. Like they don't seem like they really go well, like there's not clear synergy.
Mike:Yeah. Like I tried to, it doesn't require all these energy. Right. It needs, you can power it up a one third.
Brit:and like, yeah, it gets a little better with choice band, but I don't know why you would want to, you would still just want to play Inteleon I think.
Mike:Right. Um, one thing before, one other thing I just saw on Twitter, Gabe, a Gabriel Gabriel's tomato, just posted a Eternatus list with Leah part in it. So, you know, he
Brit:Yeah, we didn't talk about.
Mike:yeah. Well, I mentioned it briefly just as like a, you know, it's the new trade, but I didn't think about that. That's kind of cool. And we get to play a Eternatus with, it seems like it could be solid.
Brent:big of the dog
Mike:That's cool. Um, but yeah, I agree too, just about RCS in general. Uh, Danny messaged me the other day and asked me what I thought the best partner with RCS was going to be as like, I don't know, whatever is best against you probably. And I think that's kind of been the thought of the Darale Don RCS is probably Daralyn. Don is the best partner against mew, but I agree. That's kind of the, that's really the big question mark of, of this set amongst others, but that's a really big one.
Brent:Good times, guys, the John Paul's door out from music. I think they actually have a tour that they're planning to do come, uh, later this spring.
Mike:Oh, wow. That's cool.