The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast

Natalie Millar joins the pod! Excel, PTCGL, EUIC, Liverpool, Mew, Malamar, Sander, Urshifu and more!

March 30, 2022 Brent Halliburton Season 1 Episode 80
The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast
Natalie Millar joins the pod! Excel, PTCGL, EUIC, Liverpool, Mew, Malamar, Sander, Urshifu and more!
Transcript
Brent:

Don't know if I've told you guys, this is virtually a joke at this point, but what are the things I always do in my interview process when I'm interviewing people is I was asked them, so Microsoft Excel on a scale of one to 10, with one being my mom and 10 being bill gates, like where are you? And like the universal truth is everybody says there are six or seven. Yeah. And then, and then you ask them why. And the, the answers are like completely random. Some people are like, I've done a bunch of visual basic program, but I haven't built a standalone app embedded in Excel.

Mike:

It's like Garrett 10.

Brent:

Yeah. Like some people are like, well, you know, I've, I've done, you know, addition and multiplication, but I've never done a pivot table. And I'm like, you've never really used Excel then I'm sorry. You just qualified yourself. Like the spectrum of people. Like the thing is everybody thinks that what they've done up until now is like pretty interesting, but they see just a little further ahead because Excel is like everything in the universe stuck into a single program. And they're like, well, I know there's like two things that I haven't done, but they don't know what the things after that. Those two are. Yeah. They're just like, I'm a seven because there's two more things.

Mike:

It's funny when you said that. I, my answer in my head was like a six. Um, but

Brent:

why and why a six.

Mike:

Well, my, probably my response would have been very similar of like, well, I've done plenty of the different formulas. I know how to Google stuff and figure out things that I don't know how to do immediately. I've done a little bit of pivot tables. I've never written my own macro. Um, that's like

Brent:

macros or the next step,

Mike:

right. Yeah. Right, right. Right. Exactly. So it's kinda like the same, pretty much the same template of what you just said.

Brent:

Welcome to the Trashalanche attendance. This week is 133%. Mike crochet, Brett Pybas Newbern Halliburton and Natalie malar. Natalie. Thanks for joining us.

Mike:

It's

Natalie:

Miller. I'm going to kind of told

Brent:

you this before, you know, you probably have it just goes to show, uh, um, there's no name, I can't mispronounce. I apologize.

Natalie:

Miller. It's not just, you.

Brit:

I think, but people just like think Australian, we, we have to say it differently or something. It can't possibly be like a dumb American name, surely as like some culture to that or something. And that's where the mispronunciation has

Mike:

motivated as my family is from England. So, uh, you know

Brent:

what, excuse for me, I feel like I can get after any name, nothing will stop me from mispronouncing names. Uh, so Brett, you were just talking about how terrible PTCG Live was Mike Fouchet. You want to a

Brit:

Brett Brett, I guess is my, is my alter ego. Oh, while

Mike:

we're talking while we're, while we're talking about mispronouncing names, one of the funniest things happened to me, uh, the other day, when we were coming, when we were flying back from our trip, someone, the flight attendant pronounced my first name. Mike L or like, I don't even know how she said it. It was like something really, really ridiculous. And I was like, you've never seen the name of Michael. Like that is a very, it's like the most common name in America. It was really funny.

Brent:

Should we talking about PTCG Live and UIC because that is the breaking news.

Brit:

That's where all the pitchforks are today.

Mike:

The mom has gathered, um, Brett and I were talking just briefly about it before you hopped on. And w what were you saying? Like you don't, we didn't understand too much why it was today of all days.

Brit:

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, I guess I think the story is that there's an update relatively recently. I don't know if it was like Monday or just like over the weekend or something, but from what I understand, it's like the most recent update, just like, have a whole new slew of other bugs that just have made have made it even worse, I guess. But still just like, I think what we were talking about was essentially just like, why did it take so long for all the content creators that turn on it? Like, this was a sort of our initial impression. I remember talking on the podcast, like the very first time after watching it, I, I remember like the day that beta went out, um, in Canada watching his little stream and just my initial take was. This doesn't even look better than PTCGO like what's going on. And that just, um, seems to have like an this issue. It seems to have entrenched itself, like even deeper. Um, but yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know the particulars of what's going wrong now. Or it's like older bugs are still floating around, like on top of it. Um, but just kind of stinks. Like it's just like we want, I think the ideal client is something. It doesn't have to be as good. It doesn't have to be a shiny, it just has to work, but something that's like, not just, um, a means to make people buy more products like something that's like actually a competitive. Um, platform, something like the Yu-Gi-Oh, um, the recent Yu-Gi-Oh game that's come out and instead, at least, and this is what kind of stuff what's some of the, the videos talked about like Luke Morsa Andrew Mahoney, but just like, uh, just seems like it's like a funnel to buy more physical product. It's like, it's there to help you learn the game if you want to learn the game. But it isn't like necessarily much

Brent:

more than that.

Mike:

The, the, I think the latest update would the think, like the main thing about it was that, that your turn timer or your action timer was B related to also the animations of the things. So like, you know, if you had a Marni, uh, the animation took so long that basically by the time you drew the cards from the Marni, your turn just ended. Um, so that was like part of it, um, But, I mean, that's just like one of many, many issues and that's like a, that's more like a symptom of potentially a bigger structural issues going on. Uh, but yeah, it's just funny, I guess, cause like, like Andrew Mahoney dropped that video, like you said, Brit, and then everyone else is just kind of hopping on after him and being like this, this thing sucks. It's embarrassing and, and whatnot. I don't know. Natalie, do you have anything big to add about PTCG Live? Uh,

yeah,

Natalie:

the whole thing seems like a mess. Um, I did a coaching session on PTCG Live a few weeks ago and it was actually impossible. Um, I remember an escape rape was unplayable, so it was just stuck in the hand. You couldn't play it. Um, now are fusion, energy and deck for when the client tried to use Elisa sparkle, it just didn't work. They just didn't show up like cards, didn't load in the deck and stuff like that. So, well, that's probably just a symptom of beta. If your game is physically unplayable, surely you shouldn't release it.

Brit:

Yeah. These are like more like alpha symptoms, like at least like common par lamps, like games, like, is it, I think isn't battlegrounds like technically still in beta,

Mike:

like

Brit:

yeah. Like everything like beta, especially with as games these days just like get released on finished and a couple patch cycles later they'll actually be finished. But yeah, I would think like beta is like, almost like basically if you're just bug sexting at that point is what I would think like a beta. And I think these issues are deeper than that. This is like our alpha level stuff. I

Natalie:

think my horn also talks about how the game looks like shit, which is

Brent:

true.

Brit:

Yeah. I mean, I mean, we just talked about this on the podcast before. I would just rather like be a peek at you then have like a real avatar or something. Like, I feel like, and that's like, so much of the problem is that they went for this. Like, I don't even know what style to call it, but it's just like realistic ish, but just really terrible looking. I just, I would rather have just like Pikachu Sprite

Mike:

as my character, Kenny valley.

Natalie:

I honestly prefer PTCGO. I mean, it's really bad because this is first store a place PTCGO.

Brit:

Yeah. I mean, that was our sort of gut gut reaction to seeing it on day one. I was just like, this doesn't even look all that much better than PTCGO what's going on. Let us, you know, all of us crossing our fingers for when it comes out for it to be, you know, a magic arena competitor, a Hearthstone competitor, like Pokemon could pull that off if they really want it to they've got the money. But like, instead we've got this, like, I don't even know what to say. And like for people who haven't been in the game and the community for as long, like PTCGO lie or PTCGO launched as like a Java browser game. And like this seems to be about on par with. A decade later, something, something, something to that effect. And it's just sad. Like I know, you know, a lot of this too is like, I don't want this. Isn't just like TPC and competent. Like I think a lot of this has just, they outsource to like a dire Wolf who is an indie dev. Like I think a lot of what's happening I think is realistic. Um, within what I'm assuming, like what I'm guessing, like the budget for this game is, but it's just like, why don't we have more Pokemon is so much bigger than an indie dev, right? Like I just, it's just so confusing to me. Why. Like more focus and attention aren't given to these things. I think they would, it would be the cash at the same cash count is, you know, the thing I was like, Pokemon games, like cannot sell poorly. They're just all regardless of what kind they are when they released it, it's just all will always be like one of the most heightened selling games of the year. Like, like competing with call of duty and FIFA and things like that. Like Pokemon sort of has that level of just like sales, almost guaranteed to whatever they release. Um, but anyways, I just I'm frustrated. I don't want to blame it. Don't want to blame everything on PPC D I or dire Wolf. Like it's a deeper problem. It's like a, just a money issue, I think. But

Mike:

yeah. Look,

Natalie:

I think one of the other issues is that they're seemingly unwilling to monetize PTCGO right. So they're not giving themselves like the opportunity for, to earn revenue from it. So obviously it's not going to have resources put into it because it's not making money.

Brit:

Right.

Natalie:

Um, yeah, looking at live at this point, I'd be satisfied if they just added a rank flatter and crafting to PTCGO, which is

Mike:

quite sad. Yeah. And I mean, like it, in theory, it'd be really cool to be able to play on mobile. Like that would be awesome. That was the thing. I was probably one of the things I was most excited about for live and maybe it looks fine on mobile, but like the fact that it looks so terrible on desktop is really unfortunate. All right. What about UIC? Let's talk about the other, a big drama.

Natalie:

Well, why don't we start?

Brent:

Yeah, I'll, I'll get up. I feel like, you know, what's interesting is I, you know, as somebody who works in the software industry, although not gaming and I recognize gaming and. You know, like consumer, uh, products in that way are so different than, than the, the B2B stuff that I do. But like all that software stuff, I, I just keep thinking, you know, if they just do a release every week for the next six months, we can get to a place where everybody thinks PTCG Live is amazing. And like maybe unfortunately it takes six months to get there and they launched the beta somewhat prematurely. I think I thought, but I I'm still a big, big believer that when we say it doesn't look good, like fixing how it looks is so easy compared to all the other stuff they have to do. I'm a big, big believer that they could get their UIC, man. They should've seen that coming. Oh, wow.

Natalie:

That's a shame. It almost seems unavoidable. Cause they probably booked it in like October. So. I mean, they, they really should have seen this coming because it happened for Liverpool. And when they saw the numbers for all the other agent angels, they probably should have known that 500 slots for TCG would be a disaster. It's just, it's just

Brit:

such a mystery, like comparing that to any, any of their other recent events or even just like, uh, 20, 19, 20, 20 events and those sorts of numbers. Like I think would've given them like maybe they just sorely underestimated didn't think people were going to be rearing to go to in-person events as they started again. But just like for the cap to be, to have been this low while they're added unite and go, I don't know if United is actually at the IC, but I know Gomez there, but like, how are you, you you're, you're adding games to your circuit while decreasing seats. That's just seems like a colossal in cost will miss that should have been very easy to, to catch. Like, I don't understand that at all. Like you're introducing new players to your tournaments, but that didn't motivate you to have more seats and maybe seats are limited and they just have to allocate

Mike:

them. I think the

Natalie:

T PCI isn't really to blame for this. Cause I don't think they were the ones who organized E Y C it was either it was tournament center. I think they're the ones who do it, but because, and they're also the ones who did live a pool. Coincidentally, so, yeah. Cause all the say I see is outside of N a, uh, organized by different companies,

Mike:

right? Like Australia has their own company that we're going to,

Natalie:

Australia has done everything is done by ESL Australia. And they're like, they're really good. Like, I don't think they've actually. Now that it screw up an event once for now and only started three hours. Like, um, cause I noticed for Brisbane, the cap was pretty similar to the events but the venue was all just a lot bigger to compensate. Sure, sure.

Mike:

Yeah. And I understand that like they want more space even with the same amount of players, but I've seen, I saw some people looking up these venues and it seems like we don't have the full story. So it's hard to say for sure, but it seems like they're only renting out a portion of whatever convention hall convention center, uh, that the UIC is at. So it seems like in theory it could be an easy fix where you'd just rent one of the other rooms and maybe, and it becomes not profitable for them. And maybe that's why they're not doing it. I'm not too sure. I don't,

Natalie:

I don't think it's ever profitable to be honest. Maybe in America where you have like insane registration fees, but from what I know, Australian regionals don't make money, I think. Hmm.

Mike:

So I wonder what the incentive for the organizer is then I

Natalie:

assume it's like, they probably get

Mike:

paid a lot by Pokemon. Um, okay. Okay. Sure. Um, so I know Natalie, you weren't planning on going into it anyway right now. And I know Britt and I were not Brent. Were you planning on going, are you going, did you register? No.

Brent:

Nope. We're in, started with Indy. Yeah.

Brit:

Like basically considering it, or like I'm sitting on a lot of flight credit from like a co uh, COVID canceled trip. And I was just like, Frank Prosek is going. And I was talking to him about his flight. This is just like, oh, decision made. Not even going to think about it anymore.

Brent:

Yeah.

Natalie:

I was thinking of going to EIC before Brisbane, but the fact that I did so well means I should get the NIC travel without doing anything. So kind of motivated me not to go and this like, especially motivated me not to go. Cause I woke up and saw that the event was full. So it's like, ah,

Mike:

yeah, yeah, yeah. Great registration opened like in the middle of the night for you, right? Yeah.

Natalie:

So the people who were going from Australia, they literally like, they were in several group chats and they all made sure to have notifications on. So the second opened, they were like screaming

Mike:

at each other. So they got in, I guess, yeah.

Natalie:

The two people who are going from Australia

Mike:

got in. Okay. That's really ridiculous. And funny. I just hope, I guess that. And I'm not super expecting it, but my hope is that like, within the next few weeks, we're going to hear some communication about any of the things we just talked about in addition to all the other things that we've been talking about the last few weeks, like, um, that's finished limits and, uh, do points carry over. And is there going to be a change in championship point requirements? Like all of those things are also still, you know, very relevant that we would love to hear about, but now we've just added, you know, at least one, two major things. So

Natalie:

like, do we even get travel awards?

Mike:

Right,

Brent:

right, right. I mean, yeah. Like all of this is like, I mean, nobody's really explained how world's works. Nobody's explaining how travel rewards work. Nobody's resolved the seniors that aged up into masters and have 10 good Julian points and juniors that age up into seniors and have a hundred trillion points like. Like that actually that bothers me more than all the PTCG Live problems.

Natalie:

Yeah. Cause they announced that the seniors, but aged up would age up six months ago. It seems like they just haven't found a solution.

Brent:

Yeah. Uh, and what's crazy is the solutions are easy. Like you could just, you could say we're just going to stipend them separately. Like if you, if you said, Hey, we just want to solve this by throwing money at the problem, it'd be super straight forward.

Natalie:

And it's not like Pokemon cards. They're not making money at the moment.

Brent:

So yeah. And if you said we're not gonna throw money at the problem, we're going to be jerks about it. I mean, if they just said that and then they said, here's what we've decided to do as jerks, we're screwing over the seniors that aged up, or we're not screwing over the seniors aged up and everybody else's screwed. Like all those at least give clarity. Yeah. And, and like, those are really at some level, the three possible answers. The fourth being, we have some other hybrid system. But, but like, I don't, yeah. Nothing's going to change between now and UIC that they couldn't have made a decision on four months ago. Right. I mean, they have a

Natalie:

time limit now. The quota technically ends in wait. Yeah. The quota technically ends in 29 days, so right. I gotta do something.

Brit:

No, at some point I feel like, you know, it's almost like where we're like, we're delusional about like TCI and their decisions. Like this is just so par for the course, like year after year after year, just like, we don't know what the CPU threshold is until like March or something. And just like half the events are expanded this year, even though like, it doesn't, there's no real consequences to that. It's just, just, this is just normal for CPCI for us versus continually be in the dark. And I don't know what to say. Hang on. That it's frustrating. When do we start like expecting more? I was having a good conversation with like, just other people like Mike Slutsky. And, um, I don't remember if there's someone else in a Twitter, if I'm blanking on the name, but just like, what are the things that I realized? Just sort of thinking about like the current backlash and things like that, but so many of the, just like good things I think about like our community are just like done by volunteers. Like, like all the like good tios and things like that are not a little more than volunteers at the end of the day. They're not like driving any of these decisions and I don't know why they should. I think they should, they should be a part of them too. And like thinking, thinking too, like. Like our K nine labs is such a fixture in the game now. And that's essentially just like a polka parents, like pet project that has become a core part of the game now. And like, we just don't would we still, would we have anything like that? If you know, the perils didn't exist, evidence seems to point to know and things like, like Jimmy Ballard sort of was. There is like the open, I guess he wasn't necessarily involved in that, but he was, he was like, he like led the charge. I'm like 75 minute pop cut and things like that. There's like decisions that I think are generally considered to be good and healthy for the game. Um, things like that. They're just not coming from DPCI and they're coming from our, our good volunteers who like, understand how to run tournaments and things like that. And it's just like, again, just so frustrating that like, that's just par for the course again, like, I don't know what else to say other than it's just like, so few things like, even to like we don't, so one year we didn't even know where world was until halfway through the season and things like that. I don't know at what point is enough enough, I just move on to a better game. I don't, I don't know. Like, I don't think, I don't think magic is much of a better state.

Natalie:

Yeah. Yeah. So I've been playing magic of it through the pandemic and it kind of shocked me because it turns out per is actually the best game to play. If you're looking for a competitive in person experience, because it's pretty much either what we have for Pokemon or nothing, which is what magic has.

Brent:

Right,

Brit:

right. Yeah. I know. It's just, it's been, it's been on a slippery, slippery slope for years for the pro tour and things like that.

Natalie:

I mean, I've only been involved in like super competitive Pokemon since 2019, but like even in the short time I've been playing, there's been so much stuff that's happened. Like that was that one quarter where they, I remember where they just retroactively changed that the CP would, you got through that quarter would count and not overall CP. Do you remember that? Yup. Yeah. And turns out people who are just sitting there camping. Cause they thought they got the travel award just suddenly don't get it. I remember there was another quarter where they gave me a heart attack because they didn't opt flyered the, they like didn't have a stipend leaderboard until off to NIC and the first stipend leaderboard, they have included two ICS. So I gave me a minor heart attack.

Brent:

All right. Let's let's talk about Liverpool.

Mike:

So for the listeners that don't know that I haven't really been paying attention, here's just a real brief overview. So, uh, yeah, there was a, a regional in Liverpool in the UK this past weekend, Robin Schulz hero of limitless and 2018 world champion took down the event with a very interesting rapid strike. Urshifu. List. Um, but some of the other big stories kind of coming out of it, where rapid strike Mallomar doing quite well, uh, made sec, got second place and also went undefeated on the first day of Swiss, um, by Joe Bernard. And so two of them made top eight. I know there was a number of others that did quite well in day two as well. So I think that's a pretty big storyline. Um, and then we saw Sandra. The control God make top eight with the Zoroark control, the news or control. And that was a pretty big storyline. And then I think kind of after Utah, the question was, is mew alive is, and you're going to come back and it was not as strong as it did in Brisbane, but it is certainly back to the main, top eight, uh, toward reckless played in you. And, uh, did pretty well almost made top eight glossed is when it into Robin. And so the deck is still very strong. Um, but so I think we're kind of in an interesting space right now, and there's a lot of stuff to talk about, um, about Liverpool, but, um, Natalie, I kind of have one big question for you looking at all of the decks that have done well in the last two weeks. Do any of them actually beat you?

Natalie:

I'm not sure. It like science theory, you just beats everything. The heavy emphasis on theory, because a lot of the time that involves that involves you drawing well and you, and the new player, having a really good understanding of the matchup and like there's so many factors as well, like cough, which can just screw up the whole game. Uh, yeah, to be honest, I think that they can beat. I think, I think that the west, the me play is a lot easier. It gets to beat them, but mere also realized pretty heavily on stuff like drawing. Well, because you can draw badly and still lose to a lot of these dark decks and like not even badly, just kind of suboptimally and lose to all the dock decks. And the other issue is how you even build Mir because you can play all these texts. Like you can play full stadiums. Psychic energy and stuff, but then you just make your deck inherently worse and then you just start losing all these games you otherwise would've won. So,

Mike:

yeah, actually before I, before I forget the four stadium comment is interesting to me. Cause like I saw a list from Liverpool that ran four of the single strike stadium. Um, did you guys see that? Uh, yeah, we thought

Natalie:

of that, but decided not to do it. Okay.

Mike:

So what's the idea just that you can just by card you play, right? Yeah.

Natalie:

So the logic is you pitch the stadium, Tio stadium. Uh it's uh, it's like an out end feed troll. Multiple stadiums.

Mike:

Okay. So it's like, it's your counter stadium, but if you don't need them in that matchup, you use them to draw cards.

Natalie:

Yeah. It's not great, but it's a lot better than old cemetery.

Mike:

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. To me. An old cemetery is really bad. I think

Natalie:

if you play three stadiums, you just play three rose tower, which is probably what I do. Because like in Brisbane, I was getting saved a lot by just opening a rose tower plus right. And fine. And then I'd write them fend for the VIP pass or something, then rest half of one and draw it. So I could probably say three rice town.

Mike:

Yeah. That makes sense. Um, so okay. More generally. What do, what do you guys think of any of those quote unquote storylines that I brought up? So like rapid strike Mallomar Sander, the return quote, unquote of mew and Robbins winning deck.

Natalie:

Um, myeloma, wasn't really a main, like, so we respected the deck for awhile, but the issue is, it's just very hard to actually respect it in your list because sometimes that can just tend to. Hit nine rapid start cards and Capgemini, or they can boss your Oricorio as well. So the hope for Brisbane was that none of the good players that play melanoma and we have a correct cause melanoma gets a lot worse if you're not good at the deck, because that's what the me play can do is just out psychic, leaping, and not taking knockouts. And then Melmetal, can't really draw odds. So I remember Matt told me a story. So I met Boris that he played against a rapid strike myeloma player. He would like Cynthia's for full every time or something. And so he just kept sitting there using glistening droplets and psychic leap. And this guy just eventually got to Zurich cards in hand.

Brent:

Uh, you know, I, I, Mike, I want to give you credit. I feel like you were saying last week gave Shumway's list is, uh, maybe one of the best lists that the tournament people should be like really serious about this. And it's

Natalie:

low,

Mike:

it's a mouth, the rapid strike Mallomar list. That pretty much in like one or two cards different from that he got top 16 at Utah. Yeah.

Brent:

The, the like, uh, heavy Inteleon, uh, yeah, I really

Natalie:

like

Mike:

this list looking at it. Yeah. I think it's like, it's really strong. I played it a bunch, um, over this past week. Cause it's pretty fun to play. And like you said, there's, it's not actually the easiest act to play. There's lots of times where you kind of just, you just kind of chill. Um, you know, if you, if you know, you're not gonna be able to get a one-shot on a V max, you should like, maybe you hit for like 40 or 80. Just to like, get some cards out of your hand. Um, but maybe you just do nothing and like, that's cool. And like, you have to recognize when those, when that's the right play to me.

Natalie:

Yeah. I think if you struggled to be patient, this is not what next year.

Mike:

Right. Right. Exactly. Um, but yeah, so I'm not surprised that it did, uh, very well and could have easily won the event if, uh, a Urshifu in the finest. Can I

Natalie:

make another point in that myeloma, if you look at the players who played it, like, I shouldn't be a surprise that they were specifically the ones doing well and not a bunch of randoms. Like we saw Brennan, Cameron is a really good player. That was as well. And both of them really know what they're doing, so yeah. That's,

Mike:

that's absolutely

Natalie:

true.

Brent:

Yeah, I think as, as we've, uh, said, uh, I mean, maybe this speaks really well to the format right now, but, uh, uh, good players are doing really well.

Natalie:

Yeah. I think this format has a lot of very deceptive decision-making to it. Um, it's mostly just sequencing and how well you can play your own deck, but you can see from the results, a lot of good players are doing well.

Mike:

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so let's talk about Robin's deck. So I had Natalie, before you hopped on, I asked these guys if they'd played any games, I played like four or five games. Um, yesterday, when, when I saw the list, have you played it at all yet?

Natalie:

Yeah, I try to,

Mike:

um, okay.

Initially

Natalie:

I wasn't very impressed, but I probably don't know a lot of the stuff about the deck. So. Um, I had a lot of games where, uh, I would just drop us and then lose to

Mike:

me after a few times. But yeah, the new matchup still seems like pretty weird

Natalie:

from what I, from what I understand, Todd was the person that came up with the deck, but he decided not to play it.

Mike:

Right. So that should tell us something. Yeah.

Brit:

Um, yeah, I know too that, like, I don't know what he lost too, but like he was winning 6 21 the first day. So it wasn't, it wasn't like an immaculate Path to, to the tournament victory. And I know like, yeah, like I think that the even still like the matchup can definitely be

Mike:

difficult. It would, I

Natalie:

do think that a big advantage that I had was just playing all these random cards,

Mike:

like yeah.

Natalie:

I think that's that I can also be made about sand is deck, foot playing stuff like Cheryl and Clara and S like bud Kiefa and stuff, your apprentice, just going to stop playing around things that aren't even in your deck, they're gonna like, and especially it's a little weak of players. They're just gonna play themselves into a hall. Cause they have no idea what they're doing.

Mike:

Right. Right. And so actually that's like a bigger point that I wrote down as well as a talking point. And we can either get into this or come back to it later. But, um, for both Utah and Liverpool, we've seen like a bunch of interesting decks kind of come out. Um, but I'm wondering how much of a factor is it that. Everyone is so used to playing these open lists over the last two years. And now we have closed lists for these first couple of tournaments and people are playing these weird cards and catching people by surprise. And like, I, I saw, I saw, uh, drew after the event. I saw his video on his RCS gang guard deck. And I was listening to Pedro stream a little bit today as he was talking about the Urshifu deck. And both of them basically said like, uh, this deck, the surprise factor was like a really big component of why I did well or why it did well. So I'm kind of just curious, like in general, Are we all just like really out of practice of playing closed lists and that's part of why these decks are doing well.

Brit:

I think so. I was like, I think definitely we probably, especially, obviously I'm not, I'm not the figure in this case, but people have sort of never stopped living and breathing the online tournaments. Like definitely you get lazy with that option. Like it's, it's similar, it's similar to the way, like it's easy to start easier to search your deck, um, digitally than it is physically. Like you just see just, it's a lot easier. It's faster, it's quicker. You can count it for a little more optimally. Um, so yeah, I definitely think, I mean it helps the game. I mean, I think it's been interesting. Like, I don't think they're necessarily like bad, but I think it's, it's nice to see closed necklace back in turn, like getting to see like decks, like Sanders and lists like Robbins, like do well. I think I like maybe it's still wins if this happened to have been. An open necklace tournament. Like that's certainly not, um, unreasonable, but I'm sure it like, just basically it was Natalie saying, I'm sure it went a long way and forcing me, like, just tricking your opponent in the out, thinking like overthinking it or something like that. Like, I'm not sure, like with some of the supporters, like where they could have been in the middle, like cards, like bird keeper can be huge if you don't know, they play it. Like there aren't any, any real, like special condition things happening or that switches huge. But just like, obviously that plays into Urshifu strategy and like, especially, I mean, even to like knowing that they play one bird keeper versus two is probably a pretty big deal as well. Like, just like it helps you track, keep track of, um, their switching options, which in turn gives you like a, uh, a rough probability for like how likely are shoes going to hit you for the switching condition on that turn?

Mike:

Yeah.

Natalie:

And I'm also going to make a point about Sanders deck. I kind of feels really weak on paper, like against sun decks, if they just attack every single sign against it, like just put one Pokemon in play, put a ton of energy on it and just attack it's going to kind of fall apart. But I think people just didn't do that because they just had no idea what was in his deck. So they would just play on things that weren't, that,

Brent:

you know, one of the things that jumped out to me about a Robin speck is like, I felt, I was felt like, like my complaint about the way it seemed like Inteleon decks were coming together as they, it was just like pure consistency. And then when you used drizzle, like all you could kind of get was like more. Consistency because your deck was just consistency, consistency. And it's like, I almost feel like, uh, I liked what he did here. And then he just tried to bring like, and at the very least when you drizzle, you'd like suddenly had a whole lot of decisions you could make. And in that way it was like a little less linear than these guys that are playing, like for research for Marnie, like three boss. And he looks, and he's like, well, I can either get boss or I can get draw. Like, what am I going to do? Uh, uh, I like

Mike:

that. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. So I don't want to like, say everything that Pedro was saying on stream. Cause it's a lot, but he was talking a little bit about that and how the, a bunch of the one-up supporters. Like they're there for very specific scenarios. So the Cynthia's for, so against me, for example, he said, you want to go second? You want to keep calling turn one. It doesn't really matter what you play for your supporter. Um, then turn to assuming they get a knockout, uh Cynthia's is like the best card because he said the whole goal verse mute is to get as big a hand as possible. Cause you need a lot of the only way to win is to pull off some huge combo at some point during the game. So get as many cards as you can in your hand. And so the best way to do that is to Cynthia, turn two, and then on turn three Zinnia for five or six cards. So you're essentially drawn like six cards, two turns in a row while keeping some resources in your hand. And like the, so that's a really good example of, they thought very specifically. This is the goal. What supporters do I need to play to reach this goal in the best way? And I'm sure all of the other supporters have a good reasoning for them as well. So yeah, I do think that's pretty cool. The, uh, the scenario, the combos that he was talking about, how you beat me though, like it, they have an answer to like, pretty much every line of play them. You has, but like, all of them are like so many pieces that they need. It's like, oh, if you prized one of them and you don't hit it off the you lose. If you prize two of them, you automatically lose. If you prize and one of them you lose, like it's. Yeah. Cause was

Natalie:

a big issue I found is just not hitting, keep calling some of the games I've played, you didn't start solvable. And it's like, oh,

Mike:

the next game I lost immediately. So I think

Natalie:

the going second part is actually pretty cool because you're going to get to go second a lot with this

Mike:

deck.

Natalie:

Yeah. And that was actually something I realized with mellow hall. Like essentially as the group we found that you're supposed to go second against myeloma

Mike:

is mirror. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that makes sense because

Natalie:

that can't do anything going fast. So I assume after this tournament, me players are going to be going second when they see rapid strike

Mike:

OCI food. Yeah. And rapids. Yeah. Yeah. And, and Malmo too. Yeah. Cause you're right. Rapid strike malam I really, really wants to go second. It's nice to be able to play a deck that wants to go second, but as more people learn that deck's want to go second. They'll choose to go second just to grief. Yeah. And

Natalie:

that's kind of the strength of Muir as a deck. I think you don't really care if you go second because you have the sparkle and stuff. Whereas as osseous, if you go second, the deck just kind of. It doesn't do anything.

Mike:

I wonder if so that's a good point. Like I wonder if it will see RCS decks kind of go back to this Melanie, like shell or you play like to Melanie. Cause we, cause we saw that initially with the RCS Inteleon and then people were shifting away from it because they wanted to play dark stuff. Um, but maybe that's a reason to go back to it. I don't know. Oh,

Natalie:

I think to Melanie, isn't going to help you too much. If you get a second.

Mike:

I mean, you're like the star, right? It finds it potentially.

Natalie:

I mean, I thought you were headed. You're talking about hitting tunnel one attack going second, Ryan.

Mike:

Oh no, no, no. I just mean oh, oh, oh, I guess. Yeah. No, no. I'm I'm being stupid. No, I understand. What do yeah. Yeah. You're right.

Natalie:

You're right. You're right. Yeah, because that doesn't sound reasonable going second. Um, yeah, it's really interesting. How kind of stronger than to have an attack keep calling is become.

Mike:

Yeah, because in both of these decks, like they are rapid strike decks, right. So you're not just finding Salvos, you're finding all of, yeah. Or

Natalie:

even as the, for Moltres. We started going second against that too, because that text just wants to keep calling on turn on.

Mike:

That's true. Luckily, that deck is like not, I mean, like that, I feel like, uh, we talked about it last week, the RCS, um, deck that like Ian Robin, Nick played. Yeah. And it was, what is, what is the Australian player that kind of like there was paid a line. Yeah. He taught for it, correct? Yeah. That's who you beat in top four, right? Yeah. Um, so like that deck is kind of like the new in current incarnation of the Hoopa Moltres. And now we also have rapid strike Urshifu

Natalie:

to be honest, I don't really like the osseous version. It's I've seen all of this. I've seen play two T osseous. So like don't ever really going to hit osseous on turn one, unless you're out there. Some kind of Mazda. And it feels like a lot of your match-ups that aren't mirrored. If you don't hit osseous on time when you just start losing very quickly. So,

Mike:

yeah, that's true. But I mean, we saw Ian Rob, just start RCS a lot. So

Natalie:

yeah. Look, if you can start us. Yes. Every game that X pretty good.

Brent:

Better to be lucky than good.

Natalie:

Yeah. I mean, I think Peyto started the osseous we played five games total and he started osseous every single game against

Mike:

me. So I

Natalie:

had good enough to do that and play the deck, I guess.

Brent:

So sorry. Keep going.

Natalie:

I also think it just struggles with consistency because like you're shaving a lot of the cards that make Inteleon good. You're cutting, like down to two or even like one scape oppnet you're playing one sunshield Inteleon like you would act just becomes you're you're hoping a lot with the deck. I guess that's the best way I'd put it

Brent:

where do we think, like the medic goes from here and like, what do you play at UIC? Like for me, I feel like as a outsider, I look at all these tournaments that I didn't go to when I say, oh, like people played mew in Brisbane, uh, drew super hard counters mew in Utah. Uh, a million flowers, bloom and Liverpool. Like, I feel like the met is more diverse than ever like three weeks later. I

Natalie:

mean, if I was, if I was tomorrow and I somehow registered, I'd probably just play me like, and the main reason being that the extra bricks, less than everything else, like,

Brent:

and, and what changes would you make to the list you rent in Brisbane? Uh,

Natalie:

definitely caught in crime at X over his tower. I'm not sure if I'd caught anything else. Just like

Mike:

one crab, a matter for one rose tower. Yeah. Okay. To have more out of

Natalie:

stones. Yeah. I would never play psychic energy. I think that's terrible. I do

Mike:

fair. What did you think of, uh, what'd you think of towards this, but didn't he play

Natalie:

three, two

Mike:

movie max. He did.

Brent:

Yeah. He played three max and he played the three switching cups and he said three switches.

Natalie:

Okay. Switching cuffs are actually decent. I think that like, it's a low quality Cod, but I think it can do a lot. Um,

Mike:

it's just like a card you can play all the time. Drop more cards. Yeah.

Natalie:

Um, I think it really depends. I would never play through team year because, okay. What else does he find? He played one choice. Bell.

Mike:

You played two, correct?

Natalie:

Yeah, I played two and he only played two double tuber, I guess he just really hoped that he would be osseous like, I don't know. It felt like every game I played against osseous I would lose. Cause I just didn't draw a double turbo or like all the games. What'd you do not drunk double server. So playing third thing to seems very

Mike:

risky. So elaborate on that. Why is double so important in that matchup?

Natalie:

Uh, because going first, your general game plan is to Boston knockout, nastiest sometime too. And well, assuming you miss the ten one attachment, you can do that with double Tibet and a power tablet. You need a power tablet anyway. Um, and then going second, your game plan is usually to turn one millimeter that osseous

Mike:

and you can only

Natalie:

do that with three. It doesn't help them match up at all.

Mike:

Okay. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Um,

Natalie:

yeah, you'll lose condition going first against the RCS is literally just not drawing double time. So playing less devils over seems like a terrible idea.

Mike:

What about other match-ups where's this double trouble helpful and other men. Yeah, it's

Natalie:

mostly just really consistent. It just lets you attack with one attachment. Um, and the other main reason was the fog crystal. Isn't great.

Mike:

As a con. Yeah. That's why it's quite low

Natalie:

quality because it doesn't draw you cards and it doesn't help your consistency like Brighton phone does it? Doesn't discount dead cards from your hand and yeah, you can see Todd's list. He played soccer Kenny Jr. Didn't even play a funk crystal,

Mike:

right? Yeah.

Natalie:

Yeah. So yeah, I think folk crystal is just, it's decent, but it's just not really cutting it at the moment in me.

Brent:

Yeah, I wonder, I wonder, uh, yeah, like playing the one psychic to me. I mean, maybe this is just more of the stories. Uh, I've never traded from you cards because I don't have enough packs. I'll never have enough packs in my life. Just not a things that are gonna happen for me, but, but like, what do you get with one psychic?

Natalie:

So I think the reason is in the mirror match, it lets you care through or a courier. So with double TBA, it's five modifies to one at through Oricorio without double TBA, it's four modifies. That's the only reason I can think of like, and I guess some training coat games, but

Mike:

yeah.

Natalie:

And almost every other situation double-tap I was just a lot better.

Brent:

Yeah. Just like, it just seems to me, like there's almost no situation where you would say, well, I'm super glad I drew that one. Psychic energy. Yeah.

Natalie:

Um, yeah, I guess I, I don't think that's worth it. And I think in the mirror, you still just play double-time because that's situation where you need to want to Cara mew doesn't really come up. It can only really complicated go second. But like, even then sometimes you just go 2, 2, 2, so,

Brent:

right. I think the switching cups are cute. Like they gave you a little bit more of a, like, that's a way you could draw a double Turbo.

Natalie:

I mean, the switching Cubs, the switching cups makes sense. Cause it's always a playable card. You can hold shuffle effects so you can switch and cups of bad carbs to the top and then shuffling deck. But I think that it's just kind of weak. Like it's not that great of an effect that switching cups also help you with full stadiums. I'll give.

Mike:

To like put kind of like, I wrote him phone where you put this on top, say, you know, you'll draw it the next day. Yeah. Both. Just get it out of your

Natalie:

hand as well. Oh yeah. Cause that's the scariest part about playing full stadiums is just having them stuck in your hand.

Brent:

Right? Right. You get two stadiums in your hand and you say, well, the rest of the round sad.

Right?

Natalie:

Yeah. Looking at his list three to new it's just criminal. I can't imagine doing that. Like you, if you prize a movie, you cannot psychically the entire game. Yeah. And there are a lot of situations where psychic leap is really important. So I don't like that if you prize it and there are other match-ups, but if you prize of Emacs and you take a care with the three prizes, you don't get VMX and they knock out your mute and you just lose on the spot. So.

Mike:

Yeah, well,

Natalie:

there are situations where you have to discard one on the first as well, and you just taught, ever used to. Yeah.

Brent:

Like I just got to get him to those

Mike:

games. And the other is

Natalie:

in, is a fourth movie is a really good start because it has Fravor trait. So

Mike:

like you're, you're making a lot of good points here, Natalie. I guess the

Natalie:

logic is that he didn't want it clunking his hand, but I'm UV is really good in your opening hand. And I don't think it's possible to cut down to two movie max. So I dunno, it just doesn't, I don't like it.

Mike:

Um, one thing. Just while we're talking. One thing that I found, uh, you made me think of, as I was playing this week with Mallomar is the Oricorio is really annoying for me because it makes you need nine. Right? Does that,

Natalie:

I remember when we tried this Encino version of Malvar me was losing, but then we added our carrier and this unseen version could literally never get to

Mike:

nine. Yeah. Nine is just too much. Yeah.

Natalie:

They Inteleon version can do it very easily, but the other thing, the Inteleon version gets is being able to bus the Oricorio.

Mike:

Yeah. I wouldn't say that it's like really easy to get to nine with the Italian version. Like it's still, it's possible. It's possible. Whereas,

Natalie:

and they, and this insane version, it was literally impossible. Okay.

Mike:

Um, yeah, that's funny.

Natalie:

I don't think we ever managed to do it after her hair, so

Mike:

yeah, I think like, what do you think of that matchup? The matchup feels like really close to me. Yeah. I agree.

I

Natalie:

think it's close. Alomar was definitely an under respected deck before Liverpool. Um, I think if the meal planners where they're doing, it becomes a lot scarier because, uh, something else that you can do is glistening droplets and knock out an AK on the bench.

Mike:

Yeah. I also learned that the hard way. So

Natalie:

yeah, the early constraints, what melanoma can do. I think if you get sick a second, it gets 10, one attack. It's very hard from Elmo to win the game.

Mike:

Yeah, that makes

Natalie:

sense.

Brent:

All right. So here's here's I think the other question I had about top eight list, uh, um, besides Sander, will anyone try to play the Zoroark control? Like I think everybody enjoyed watching it, but does anyone look at this list and think, oh, I could play that.

Natalie:

Yeah. Like sand does on another level

Mike:

I saw cursings too. It was so funny. He's like I could quit my job with full-time job and play Pokemon 10 hours a day, and I would never be able to play this deck. And

Brit:

that's how the trying to learn extra drill. Last year, I tried to learn it several times and it was just always a pretty miserable experience. Like I like, I, I just don't understand that at all. I don't think it's quite as complicated as my brain wants me to think it is, but. I mean, I think that it's like the, the construction is as much a mystery as the playing is to me. Like how you just, how you, how you settle on the lists that he does on top of playing them. So well, it's just,

Natalie:

I mean, that's control X control at least has like a discernible wind

Mike:

condition

Brit:

intelligible and the path you're trying to get to. Yeah.

Brent:

I,

Natalie:

is there a wind condition aside from,

Brent:

he said to me, when he looked at the list, he was like, how do you win? What do you even what's the objective it's like there's there's no,

Mike:

yeah, yeah,

Natalie:

yeah. I guess it's going to involve, involve some kind of LDL sleep.

Brent:

Yeah.

Mike:

And that's the thing that I would think I was most surprised about was the lack. Uh, I mean, there is, there is recursion, but there's not like a lot of it, there's kind of a lack of recursion in the list. Um, and like, it seems like you're going to just win some games by maybe just getting one Altaria out. Um, and like the Sharon's care was super interesting. Cause like, I feel like how are you ever going to make use of that? You have the Altaria pot helmet. Yeah. Well the, the, the PI helmet, like I can see, you know, you put it on the Altaria whatever, but like the, the Sharon's care, like if you haven't Altaria active and you put the swab blue bench, cause you only have one Altaria and you have a tub bench when like aren't they just going to Boston until the swab blue and then you can never use Sharon's care. Like, I don't know,

Natalie:

assumption is that they can't, at some point they're just going to lose to looping.

Mike:

Yeah, wait, do they have a way to recover Pokemon? There is a, uh, a team yelled, cheer. I think that's the card.

Natalie:

Wait, how does that recover

Mike:

Pokemon? That does right. It gets Pokemon, right? Oops. I read it wrong. I think I did. I also had to look at that though. Cause it didn't because he doesn't run an ordinary rod, right?

Natalie:

No, I guess it's cause you can't leave ordinary rod.

Brent:

Just some sort of weird thing. I, I felt like it was like, yeah, you're you're like shuffling all the gas in and then your team you'll cheer and then insurance care and then you shuffle them all back in again, like bananas,

Natalie:

like Sandra has just some being sent from the fourth dimension to play control.

Brent:

Yeah. It's insane. It's insane. Like it must be delightful to be Sander in that light. I think one of the things that makes like, in my mind, the most fun Pokemon games is when you feel like you're actually being really interactive and making decisions based on what the other guy's doing and that's all he does, right? Yeah. Like, like he's actually playing at some of like the truest spirit of the game and that skews to closely scrutinized what you're doing to figure out what he's going to do to you. All the rest of us are like, we have the strategy and we want to execute it. And he's like, I have no idea what my strategy.

Mike:

Yeah. That's true. That's really funny. That's a funny way to think about it. Yeah. Yay. Um, so similarly, just like, I don't think people are really gonna play this deck. I actually don't think people are really going to, I don't think Robin's, deck's going to affect the meta-game all that much. Um, for partially similar reasons that I think the deck is. Hard to play. And a lot of the plays are not obvious and kind of, as Natalie said, I just don't know how good it actually is. Um, now that it's kind of out in the open, um, and people see the list. Um, so I don't think like, I mean, I think it should be on your radar, but I don't think it's going to be a significant portion. Um, it's, it's like very different from, um, the salt lake results where I think you really had to take into account, uh, you know, the different RCS builds and our pre-strike Mallomar like, those are, those are gonna be in the format now, but I'm not too confident. The rapid strike is

Brit:

yeah. To guess. Well, it seems to me to be like, the most likely outcome is not, I don't think that the list itself will not become Metta, but I think people will just like be, because we, I don't feel like we've really seen it before. Um, just that is to pair Urshifu with baby vultures and in a sort of meaningful way. Like, so, so often was just like,

Brent:

it was with the V or like with the V in

Brit:

conjunction with like and Sylveon and things like that. So if I had to guess, I think just like Urshifu with the, like, it's just the adaptation of where the wheezing dark box deck was a couple of weeks ago. This is just like its current form it's current iteration. So I would guess like more standard. Um, like supporter count and things like that. Like maybe not as techie, probably not as much like scoop up nuts, but that would be my guess is like, you know, you still do kind of like the thin Urshifu and then you do boxy things, but in just kind of like a, a more, um, normative standard deck list, like that seems the most likely thing to be. It's like, I guess there'll be, people will copy it just card for card. No doubt. Um, but like for like someone who isn't very good, like me, for instance, like, I, I feel like, like, I wouldn't understand the support account without a lot of work, but I could pick up this other version of the deck and probably produce about the same results without, you know, without as much like forethought. Um, that's just kind of, that's my gut.

Natalie:

I actually think scape up. That's really good. And the deck, because it just lets you loop Inteleon if you have four of them and like you can still get cards, even if you don't think Joel support every. So, yeah, I don't think you can reduce the scope of net count, especially in a deck like this, where you have to drill supporters, I guess two and a half, if you count bud K-pop but do you,

Brent:

we kind of just have,

Mike:

I think that's right.

Brent:

I think one of the things I liked about Robin seq too, was he actually had a, like interesting diversity of Pokemon that he could get with level ball and quick ball. And even like the Octillery with the evolution. And since like, like the scoop up that probably has lots and lots of uses in, uh, uh, such a, like, non-linear definitely. Yeah. I like the idea of people that played harder decks,

Natalie:

I guess it's way. It's probably the biggest thing I've found of flying the deck is the town of waters is insane.

Mike:

Yeah.

Natalie:

Like it's kind of crazy that that's the only one that looking at the rest of the deck. I don't see why the cut comes from.

Mike:

Yeah. I was thinking that too, like there's no air balloon or switch or escape rope. Like that would be really helpful as well for similar reasons. Um, maybe the second tier of water is just better than those cards. I'm not sure, but yeah. But I also agree with you that I think like this is a way for Moltres to survive. Like Moltres is still a really good card, right? Like Moltres is a very strong card, especially in this format. So it's going to be B and stuff, whatever. And this is like one stuff that it can be part of.

Brent:

Yeah. And, and like the idea of using, um, uh, like yoga loop to try to tee up some of these knockouts, like I was felt like part of the challenge with the Moltres is like putting yourself in a situation where you have the opportunity to win. Can sometimes be a little tricky. This list gives you like lots and lots of ways to potentially try to get there. You know, now, uh, do you guys point, maybe it takes Robyn to pilot it, to figure out all the different strategies?

Mike:

Um, yeah, no, that something else can be

Natalie:

said about like how else the rest of the team did. Cause I think Nico Fabienne and Petra also played it. Right. I think Fabion got CP and Petra and Meeker earth bombed. So. That's not great success rate. If you think about it, especially considering like the quality of plan

Mike:

he played it really, really, really good. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point too. Um, I was going to pivot us for one other thing that I wanted to ask you all. If you guys saw, I think it's the fourth place. Yeah. Fourth place list. It's RCS. Inteleon pretty standard. Nothing too crazy. Except it ran a Crobat VMX um, and I, I don't get it. Uh, it makes sense to me. Okay. So you

Natalie:

can bench Crow that early on to look for cards and then you can evolve it into Crobat and Baymax to stop it from being a two prize liability

Mike:

against me. Okay. Okay. And that's pretty much why you don't, so you don't think you're really ever attacking with it. All of us in our dark energy. So, oh wait, there is dark in a geo at the house. Yeah. Yeah. Could you attack with it? You could. Yeah, I

Natalie:

assume it's just to take the Crobat off the board, like, especially against mere. Cause if you need to Crobat to get osseous plus energy, you can do that without just losing the game on the spot.

Mike:

Yeah. No, that makes sense. That, that makes way more sense than me justifying who attack with it. I mean, like, I guess, you know, you could always, uh, when you attack with RSV star, you could throw like one energy on a Crobat kind of threatening it, right. Will between Reihan and attachment. I guess it's

Natalie:

also a three prize attack. Right. Like something that one at caves, Amir, because I guess you can go osseous into Crobat into Moltres in theory, but the issue is you just lose if they attack with Meltwater at any point, especially if your product goes bust, like you attack with probate and it has 300 HP, which is really bad. So three modifiers carries it with triple fusion in place. So I guess, I don't know. I assume it's mainly as a pseudo

Mike:

big jump. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Let's search. Yeah. Cool.

Natalie:

Interesting. Tonight on limitless Crobat Baymax is more expensive than Crobat V it's

quite

Mike:

wild. Therese aisle is five times more expensive than Crobat.

Natalie:

They is that cause they combined the price of three drizzle.

Mike:

Um, maybe that's true. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's

Natalie:

more expensive than prepping.

Mike:

I was like the most expensive card in multiple decks. Yeah. Which is funny. Yeah. It's like the most expensive card in the Mallomar deck by a lot.

Natalie:

One last point drizzle is more expensive than a. Yeah.

Mike:

Yep. Why not?

Brent:

Uh, we look forward to our dusting overlords where no cards can be crafted because I don't have enough codes or anything. Yeah.

Mike:

Uh, that's like a whole nother thing on PTCGO that we don't know. We don't really know all the details, but, uh, you know, the, I don't know if you guys have seen the one guy he's kind of crunched some numbers and he's like, you're gonna need to buy like a thousand packs, a thousand to be able to craft like enough V stars like sweet.

Brent:

I thought, I thought Julian's analysis was absolutely fantastic. I loved it to death. I Brit maybe have more insight into this professionally, but like, I feel like it's so easy for someone at Pokemon to look at the PTCGO economy and say, okay, we've got to tweak it a bit. To like, fix those problems. I hope they will. But obviously given people's satisfaction with PTCGO so far, we should assume nothing about whether or not people will be able to like, be organized in that way.

Natalie:

Dust, cods on PTCGO. Hell I

Mike:

don't remember. I believe you cannot dust Akash. Like, like if you own less than four copies, you can not,

Brit:

and you can't just like get rid of all your bags like you can in Hearthstone, if you want to.

Brent:

My understanding, I think is, so the trick is when you open packs, you always get cards that you don't have until you have four of everything in the entire set. So, so you're going to, you're going to open packs and you're going to get either new cards or additional cards of cards you already have until you have four of everything. And then they get automatically dusted as you open them. That's

Natalie:

really bad.

Brent:

So, yeah, I like that. Yeah. So, and I really don't, unless you have more than four of them. So

Natalie:

actually, if you look at us at like fusion strike with a bajillion

Brent:

in it. Yeah. So that, that was his analysis was, you know, uh, um, like the, the video that chip Richie had done talking about how Dustin seemed very good. He looked at celebrations, which is a super tiny set. And he was like, I cracked a couple of packs and all of a sudden I had the whole set and all of a sudden that was generating tons and tons and tons of dust and I can build whatever I wanted to. But yeah, if you get into the game with fusion strike, you're like, okay, I have to open a thousand packs and then I start generating dust. I might just be

Natalie:

more of a symptom of Pokemon's huge.

Mike:

That's lightly.

Brent:

Yeah. But they're all huge sets. Like, like you said, it's kind of the rule these days, right?

Mike:

So like the code cards for these mini sets are going to be. Super that probably going to like be super expensive.

Brent:

Right, right, right. Yeah. There's arbitrage value in saying I need celebrations codes, right? Yeah.

Natalie:

Well, that's assuming that PTC July is ready for full celebrations rotates.

Brent:

Right? Right. Absolutely.

Mike:

Sweet Natalie. Thanks for joining us again. Yeah, thank you.

Brit:

That was a great guest to have appreciate the opinions

Brent:

on the

Brit:

format and how to play

Mike:

and congrats. I don't know if we actually

Brit:

say yeah, I don't think we called out your wins. Thanks.

Brent:

We need to do that. That was weeks ago, weeks ago. I assume even you are looking forward to your next big victory. What's so what's, what's on the calendar for you. And I, I see, uh,

Natalie:

NIC is a big question, mark, because I've been looking at flights lately and then like the average flight from Brisbane to Columbus is about$3,000. So unless something happens or I can find a cheap flight, it's looking unlikely that even if I get the travel award, like the travel, what is probably not going to cover the flight. So I'll have to see what I can do. And the other issue is I'll probably have to book like two weeks before the date, because that's when, cause I, cause I'll only book once I'm actually registered for the event after seeing what happened at UIC.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

Very fair. I mean, Mike I'm like, I don't understand why they can't just acquire another hall. Like could they sell another 500 tickets? It'd be easy. And like

Natalie:

the demand is clearly the demand is so there it's wild. And I, I read on Twitter. I'm not sure if this is accurate, that NIC had like 800 titles. So lots of PTCG, which just seems like another disaster again, it's going to be a disaster. I remember the NAYC in 2019, there were like 1,100 masters alone and that was considered quite low. So

Brent:

yeah. Yeah, yeah. And there's going to, uh, I mean, it's going to be bigger than Utah, right? Like probably by 400 people.

Natalie:

How many was Utah,

Mike:

six something, 600 something masters

Natalie:

I'd expect at least a thousand milestones. Like that's another way

Mike:

for any I say, yeah. Yeah, pretty sure. Great.

Natalie:

If we got less than 800 slots for TCG title, that is going to be a disaster. And I'm really hoping that they actually tell us when it's going to release. So we're not going to have another EIC, right. Go to bed and then wake up and it's like, oh, registration's full.

Brent:

So stressful. So stressful. All right. I'll catch up with everybody later. Thank you so much. Appreciate you getting up early,