It looks like you want to talk about seniors.
Brent:I, you know, I've gone to the trouble of getting the top eight seniors in their decks for the last three years. We could talk about them. Welcome to the Trashalanche attendance as always is 150. We will be off next week. Cause I have spring break guys. Surprise.
Mike:Ooh, that's cool.
Brent:We're sponsored by channel fireball. You could leave a review. If you leave a review on your favorite podcast channel, and if it's not apple, then you should like tweet at us or something. So we know it's there. We will read it on the pod. Uh, other, other podcasts say that, uh, reviews help other people find podcasts. So reviews are good. Dan, we have not forgotten you. Um, so guys, we should jump right into a cell palate. Do you guys want to start with the seniors thing or do you want to start with the master?
Brit:Yeah, might as well. Let's go with it.
Brent:Which one.
Brit:Senior.
Mike:We can start with seniors.
Brent:All right. So yeah. Uh, I have gone to a, uh, a medium amount of trouble to pull together the, uh, salt lake city, Liverpool, and, uh, south Palo seniors names and decks. And I thought, as long as we're talking about how the metal evolves, you guys can talk to me about how, how this stuff evolves. Uh, shout out to no surprise Kaia for sending me the Liverpool list. Uh, Kayla Rogerson for sending me the salt lake city. And, uh, Vinnie Fernandez for sending me the south Palo list. Uh, they are the senior homeys that make it happen.
Mike:That's great. Um,
Brent:So let me start by giving you guys how I've always thought about the like medicine at various levels. And then, and then you guys can tell me what you thought here. So one of the things I always said is like junior. Um, juniors play the deck, that one, the last tournament and masters play, like the deck that beats the deck, the one last tournament. And then sometimes they play, the deck could be the deck that beats the day, that one last tournament. And then the question is like, are you too far ahead? And you lose or did he call it just right. Right.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:And so, so no surprise, um, uh, coming out of Australia. So, and, and seniors, I feel like it's like a little bit in between because, um, a lot of seniors just try to like hard counter everything, like hard counter the meta and play like horrible decks in a desperate effort to prove something. I don't know what, but, but I felt like when I looked at the results for salt lake city and then for Liverpool, I thought it was a little bit more like kind of junior Mehta, mojo, which maybe makes sense, given the. Like there's so, uh, like seniors are getting back into it and they don't have like a proper contextualization. It's like a little more of a junior mindset, maybe.
Mike:Sure.
Brent:I don't know. So, so having said that salt lake city dominated by mew, tons of people playing you, Caleb Rogerson and won the tournament, played mew. Justin template gets second with RCS. V max hammers. Andrew Gardner gets third with you. Lucas made CUSO plays dark box with a two, two RCS. Carson metals, please mew. Uh, and so on and so on and so on. Um, then the seniors in Liverpool play RCS Inteleon
Mike:Yeah, all RCS
Brent:playing RCS.
Mike:RCS right there.
Brent:Yeah. So, so rune Harriman's who? I think one, um, uh, you, I see junior. Two years ago. Uh, he was very good. Uh, played RCS, birds, and one it Alexandra azonian. We played our Susan Telium Rasmus Wagner played RCS, baby Moltres, uh, RCS Inteleon RCS Inteleon Oh, so I think the fifth place is notable Regan Rhett's luck plays RCS Inteleon with the prior week he had been at salt lake. And, uh, uh, played mew and did not cut. He went like 3, 2, 1,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:flies from salt lake city to Liverpool. I think the only person to do that.
Mike:I was gonna make a note of both him, that name. And then as you go through Sao Paulo, there's also a, uh, an American in the top name
Brent:Exactly.
Mike:So I thought that was interesting.
Brent:Exactly. So then Sao Paolo, uh, um, topic, uh, Lucas Jorda out wins with sweet Kuhn, uh, Vinnie Fernandez. Uh, he have zillions and zillions and zillions fall on my tournaments. One of the hardest going guys in the world, please. RCS Inteleon Moltres, Joelle, Antonio, Calvin Cavalcanti I'm mangling these names and I apologize. RCS. Inteleon Moltres. And then, uh, Gabriel Fernandez and his brother played sweet code. And, uh, and that rounds out the top four. And then in seventh Bodie, Robinson plays single strike. Mallomar Bodhi also played, you know, what I have written down. Um, he was also in salt lake city and did not cut. So he took a week off in between and then went to south.
Mike:Do you know if Reagan also went to south. Alabama.
Brent:Reagan did not go to south
Mike:Okay. Okay. That seems reasonable.
Brent:Uh, I don't, you know, obviously when you fly from salt lake city to Liverpool, almost anything could be reasonable at that point, right?
Mike:Yeah, I guess that's true.
Brent:Oh, Bo Bodie played. At the salt lake city. And, uh, both of them went both. He and Reagan finished like 15th and 16th and went three, two.
Mike:So before we talk about the Metta, just a real quick question, cause you know more about, Uh, the ratings and rankings of the senior division than I do. Are these individuals, are they flying around because. They are in trouble of not making top 16 or
Brent:Uh, I know
Mike:what do you think? The reason?
Brent:is like super top four stipend.
Mike:Okay.
Brent:Uh, um, and, and I think historically you would say, uh, uh, I mean, I, you know, I think you guys have seen me comment about how, like, we don't go that hard, even though I think anyone that would look at us would say, you guys seems like they go super hard. Uh, uh, you know, I mean, Bodie and Regan would be the people that I think we contrast ourselves with where we're like, we don't go hard at all the fees.
Mike:It's like that Excel discussion we were having last week.
Brent:Exactly. Exactly. I'm like a five.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:People look at, they say he's a seven. I'm like, man, I don't know. I know sevens
Mike:That's
Brent:Regan is currently second on the Pokemon TCG, leaderboard and Bodie is currently six. I, you know, I think really, I think the real, real truth is, um, uh, this is just something that they and their parents like to do together.
Mike:Yeah, I'm sure not reasonable.
Brent:Right. Uh, they, uh, they were like, you can go to Pokemon tournaments now. And like they and their parents had gone to literally every Pokemon tournament in the world for years and years and years. Uh, you know, I didn't want to try to recapture a moment of their youth before it's gone. Uh,
Mike:Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Were they both juniors before the pandemic?
Brent:Uh, no, um, no, they're both the same age as, uh, maybe Bodie is a year younger than Liam. Um, they're both the same age as my son who's last year and seniors, but yeah, I mean, so 2019 Reagan won or got second place in an AIC. five juniors in 2017 or top aided, um, uh, you know, and as a junior, he won Daytona regionals once salt lake city regionals one, uh, salt lake city regionals the year before that, um, he he's, uh, uh, he's you know, uh, I think besides Kaia people would probably say most established, uh, um, senior.
Mike:right. So back to the meta-game here, you've talked to your sons or at least Liam, presumably about, um, this a little bit. Do they, what are their thoughts? What are your thoughts? Looking at these more holistically?
Brent:I think, I think the, um, the sad news is. If we had gone to salt lake city, we would have probably called the medic correctly because we probably would have been on RCS Inteleon because I feel like I felt like going into salt lake city, we were saying RCS, Inteleon probably beats mew. And it's probably the best deck. Right. So, so the good news is I felt like on the pod, we were selling the right stuff, going into salt lake city, like coming out of Australia. We were like, is not the play. The play is like RCS with.
Mike:Right.
Brent:Um, uh, you know, I think, I think what, you know, south Palo is, could, like, it could be a story of how like lots of decks win and like best players do well. Um, but you know, certainly you saw you started, I felt like the interesting thing about south Palo is you started to see that more diverse metagame that I think masters have seen ever since salt lake city. In terms of like the decks that do well, right? Like salt lake city was like Australia was super mew dominated. And then in the senior's mew dominates for a week and then RCS Inteleon mew counters dominates for a week. And then it's all over the place after that.
Mike:Yeah. So Paolo looks like too sweet Kuhn. 1, 2, 3, RCS, AMU, a Ganga and a rapid strike Mount mark. Yes, that's pretty, that's pretty diverse
Brent:Yeah. And that's I think going into Liverpool, uh, uh, we were saying rabbits, right? Mallomar is probably a good play. And you don't see that show up at all in seniors, Kaia Ms. Top 16 at Liverpool playing new. Or did she get top 16? She missed, she, she didn't have any topic to another, like if you went like 3, 2, 1 or something.
Mike:interesting.
Brent:So, so Bodhi shows up at south Paolo playing, um, uh, what's probably, uh, the best deck, but once again, it's essentially, it's like Intel coming out of Liverpool, as opposed to trying to like, like, I don't look at any of these people and say, they're getting ahead of the curve, unless you say yes, we can. Lucario. And, you know, like the Fernandez brothers aren't as surprised playing like super, super meta decks
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Actually. So now that I'm looking now that I'm looking at these a little more closely, it's almost exactly one tournament behind the masters results. Like almost, almost entirely. Right.
Brent:Yeah. Like that's I really, really looked at these and I was like, these are like junior results. They just played the deck that one last week. Right.
Mike:That is quite interesting. Yeah. And I feel like, and I feel like, especially in seniors, from what I remember, I mean, when I played in Sears, it was a long time ago and it's gotten bigger since then. But one of the big things was that if, if I'm, if I know I'm one of the best three seniors in the room, I am mostly concerned about what the other two best players in the remarkable. So like, I will play an objectively worse deck if it beats those other two players. And just assume that I can outplay, you know, the worst players, I feel like, and that's not something that happens quite as much in the masters, because there's just so many competent players that you can't really do that as effectively. Um, so I wonder, I wonder how much that do you think that thinking goes in?
Brent:I w when I say, I always felt like seniors, it was like much, much more random. The decks people play it. I feel like that, that you probably hit the nail on the head there where it's like much more important to hard counter, like, whatever rumors you might've heard about one or two other players than it is to like, uh, try to scheme for some sort of medical.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Um, you know, the other thing that I thought was probably interesting and, and, uh, I was interested in you guys' opinion on is when you look at all these tournaments, there were like 30 seniors and 30 juniors mean historically, uh, um, there's there's like usually around a hundred-ish seniors. And like 60 to 80 juniors at tournaments like these and obviously like salt lake city. I think we would say it was more crowded because it was the first tournament. Right? Liverpool, like they had attendance caps. I don't know
Mike:Yeah, I was going to say
Brent:I don't know, but I don't know how the attendance gaps back there into junior and senior tickets. Cause like, if you look at UIC, you can still buy junior. See.
Mike:That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if so, like, if that's a quick side note, I wonder if for UIC, if at some point they'll look and say, Hey, we didn't reach the, you know, our cap for these divisions. Let's open them back up for masters,
Brent:I mean, that might be what they're doing now. Like where the, where those other tickets come from.
Mike:Right, right. That's true. Um, but yeah, you're right. Liverpool probably. Yeah, at least in theory could have had not reached cap for juniors, seniors, but yeah, I mean, it's a really good point. Um, what is driving that just the lack of accessibility of playing the game for these younger
Brent:my theory. Like my theory is like, the way you get seniors is you pick up a couple of new seniors and you move all the juniors in. And, and the problem is we haven't had that like minor league system for a couple of years. I mean, I just know if, uh, if my son had expressed an interest in Pokemon, but when he was seven and it was 2019, like, huh. Uh, you know, probably would never, would've got into Pokemon. Right. I assume the same is true for you. If you were like 10 and the pandemic starting, you just never learned to play. Right.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah.
Brent:Uh, maybe you don't even take the interest because a, like, there was a whole, the year and a half where you couldn't get. collectors,
Mike:That's true too.
Brent:like, like how would you, even if you were a kid acquire an interest in Pokemon these days, it's so hard. But, but like, if that, if that doesn't turn around, it's, it's probably long-term super bad. Right? I mean, I know, I think Liam is very excited about attending Indi, but if he goes to the tournament and it's like 30 people. And we've been to, you know, uh, lead cups that were bigger state ski championships that were bigger, you know, that'd be so lame.
Mike:Yeah, I agree. That would be quite sad. I don't know. We'll see. It's gonna, you know, maybe it, maybe it rebuilds in a few years, we don't know.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. That's I, I assume that assuming we're fixing supply chain problems that assuming. I like the leagues open up again. Next year, they can start kind of rebuilding the, the minor league pipeline of like juniors and seniors. But I know it's really, really hard because like, I mean, one of things I've always said about marketing to juniors is to market to juniors. You have to have other juniors. I mean, every time that we went to a tournament where they were like, we're were like juniors or mixed with seniors and masters, I was. If you are a newish player, that's got to suck so much as a junior. Um, I think, I think the thing I was worried about a six prizes was if, uh, if like a new player goes to a like locals tournament and they get beat by a master because they're mixed with masters, their parents says you never had a chance anyway. Like what are you going to do? Be Mike Fouchet you can't can't beat Mike. Uh, but then if he gets paired against like my son and my son. And the dad's like, get good. It's the same as you, you just suck. That's why you lost. Like, if you practice, you'd be good, but like, right. And, and it's because like, yeah, but the parents just look at the ages and they say, why, why is my kid going to go to this place to play cards with 30 year old man too weird. Right? W they, they like the parents are looking for a place where they socialize with other kids. Doing a fun game that they all the kids enjoy. And like, so you got to somehow create that experience. That means like kids, beget kids, you know, and I assume that that's how, like, like if you look at like, uh, the bussers had such success as like they had super active involved kids, they were able to build a really big local league because, uh, uh, other kids would come and they'd see the bussers kids having super fun. And they'd say, oh, we could do that too. So, so a weirdly small tournament. And when you look at this top eight, it's like a quarter of the players and all these tournaments,
Mike:Yeah, what do they have? Like six rounds or something,
Brent:yeah, exactly, exactly. That's the suck, right? That's terrible. Unless your goal is to be done very quickly, which as a, as a parent, like I'm not, I'm not completely anti that.
Mike:What scene, like before the pandemic did, like for NIC, did seniors have day to know? Right?
Brent:Yeah. They had the two,
Mike:are, they did have day two. Okay. So there was over, what, what do you
Brent:Over 128.
Mike:1 28. Okay. And then it's nine plus five. It's nine plus five for that much.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
Brent:Okay, so this is I C a. Indianapolis, because I have pictures of my kids at the steak and shake, which is really like the definitive.
Mike:Yeah. the telltale sign.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. They played 13 rounds. They? Round day one and then five rounded.
Mike:Okay. Nice.
Brent:Um, so whenever that was
Mike:Um,
Brent:alright anyway, so let, let's talk about south Palo for masters guys. And so, yeah, the first, the first thing I wanted to mention was, uh, the salvo water goes 5, 3, 1 with apparently Zoroark Chino control. And, uh, my big takeaway is a Frank person. You can't just, uh, pick up sander deck and think about going to go. Apparently. I mean, I think Gustavo is like, you know, one of the absolute best players in the game. Uh, if he goes 5, 3, 1 with it, it must be really, really hard to pilot.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. And before we started talking, I didn't even know that that's what he played. I just saw, I saw it as two tweets, translated that he made a deck right before the event. And then I saw after the event, he was not posting is less cause he's wants to improve it for EIC. So it'd be interesting if he ends up playing something similar or not, but you got to imagine it. Two two different from Sanders list.
Brent:I, you know, I mean, I feel like there's a, um, uh, I mean, Sam Sanders list, Sanders lists always look, I feel like a lesson in consistency, if, cause that was like working on the list. I feel like he's probably thinking, you know, I don't have to have these,
Mike:Yeah, that's a good point. Um,
Brent:there's definitely some alternative version of the deck where, where it's like a little more focused on a specific wind condition and you play to have.
Mike:Yeah, so a couple, couple of big picture things. And when we can talk about more individual decks, uh, there's a lot of. Even though there's a lot of like familiar decks here. Like a lot of mule, a lot of RCS. There's a lot of what looks like interesting twists on decks that came out of this that did quite well. Um, things like RCS. Rapid striker. She food things like in Fukuda's deck. And Ian is one of the best players in Brazil played like a really weird rapid strikers for Leafeon B star Crobat Moltres. This deck that can, he got nine. I don't think he bubbled. I think it was a clean cut, but I'm not sure. Um, but I saw him play on stream.
Brent:it was.
Mike:Yeah. Like I saw him play on stream really weird deck. Um, there's an RC it's Whimsicott. And then even just like looking down the rest of the top 32, there is a bunch of interesting looking, uh, decks. But, um, the other two big things is the deck. That one was. a very, very cookie cutter RCS Inteleon deck, kind of this. Similar type of list to like Zander and that group a couple of weeks ago, but even more generic than that, like less techie than, than that list. So I know people were saying that this type of deck seems like a good deck, but not a deck that would ever win an event. It would just. Top and event potentially, or get day two, but that's been disproven now. It just won a huge regional, um, so I think that's an interesting point. And then the last big thing I want to say is. Some of the, just like, just like in salt lake, we had a couple of the big online player names do quite well. Like Gabe smart is that Cooper and some other people gave Shumway. Uh, so it really showed that the online players were able to translate their success. We saw that here as well. Um, Ricardo toddy, who I think I've seen quite a bit in the last couple of years in the online scene, ended up
Brent:absolutely spun my son at one of the online tournaments that he played at.
Mike:Yeah, exactly. And he got second place.
Brent:It's so good.
Mike:You got second place at this event, which is great V tour Legon, who I think had played before, but really kind of made a name for himself. At least he familiarize the rest of the world with his name, um, through the online events. The last couple of years, um, got 11th, almost made top eight. And then as we talked about, Vinny got second place in seniors and he has been a beast on the online scene. so I think this is another example of. These online players really doing well, which I think is awesome. I think it validates a lot of what's been going on the last two years. And, uh, I think we should now be able to look back at, you know, all of these different tournaments and the meta game results and at least give it the validity that it deserves. And I, and what, I just think there was always like a question mark, as we were coming out of the last two years of like, Should we look back at these two years and be like, yeah, that was what the game, like, that's what, the best that the game could offer. And, and I think to some extent we can like say yes, which I think is cool.
Brent:Yeah, I, and, and similarly, if you look at the senior's results, the, uh, uh, the seniors that decided to really grind online, Uh, super rewarded coming out of a pandemic, right? Caleb who in salt lake city? Uh, the Fernandez brothers, both top four, south Palo, like getting dubs.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:I think anybody that has played a lot of online tournaments has had to play those guys. And I'm sure that those guys grinding games against guys like Ricardo have, have given them the tools that they need to like be successful.
Mike:Yeah, I agree. Did you guys watch any of the stream from Brazil?
Brent:Just this little silence.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:Just the, just the.
Mike:Yeah, I watched, um, I watched a little bit of Azule commentating over it. Not that much, but I did watch the finals and Ricardo must've played great up until that point. He didn't play the finalist that well. Um, but that's okay. Uh, he can be forgiven, I think. Um, so I'm looking at the RCS Inteleon list. It's so straightforward. Like the only interesting card in it at all is the collapsed stadium. I feel like, I guess you could say the Dunsparce is interesting, but I mean, with rabbit strike, Urshifu winning in prior, like, I mean, you kind of got to play it right.
Brent:exactly. I think we talked about last week. It's not a surprise to see it now.
Mike:Yeah to Sharon's care, I think is probably quite good in the mirror match. Like in the mirror. I think you just want to go like double Sharon's care palpate back to Sharon's care, and then you'll out heal the mirror quite a lot or quite easily rather. Um, it's interesting to note key. Bruno says on Twitter, that new is a bad matchup, which makes sense. Right. Looking at this less, there's not really any special texts for it.
Brent:So one thing, I didn't know, guys, I, I, um, I guess, I guess somewhat unrelated to. Uh, I know he doesn't really have an active Twitter presence, but I think I would have expected that Diego casserole going to show up. Hopefully he makes it back for a future term. It's a super nice guy.
Mike:Yeah. And like, and well, so, and one of the big reasons that Diego does tend to go to these events. I mean, obviously he's good at, he likes to play one up, but his wife, Maya also is a huge judge in the community. Then she staffs events as well. So you would think that she would be going to staff and whatnot? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe we'll see them at the UIC because she also does a lot of the international events too. So.
Brent:Oh, interesting. I had no idea.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. She's how I a community when she's how I communicate with Diego. Cause Diego's English is not very good, but Maya Maya is, is, um, it's funny. Um, you know, what do we got? What's the other deck. Okay. So The number. The next most interesting deck is the number seven deck. If you guys look at that list, so it's are the, yeah, so it's uh, RCS 43 RCS. The two, one rapid strike or she food line. It's got a one, one Crobat V max two to liberal. So no Inteleon in this deck, but so it's RCS. Urshifu fibral with a one, one Crobat V max plane. At Dunsparce, as we talked about, end up pumpkin taboo and it plays for battle VIP pass. So I feel like people are starting to experiment more with battle VIP pass and non-music deck. So like we've seen it in Gar. Um, I've seen it a little bit in. Like Zoroark decks that run Chino. Cause then you can just ditch them later in the game. Uh, and now we see it in this deck. So this is a really, it's a really interesting list. Only plays one rapids, Drake energy as well. So it seems like the Urshifu is more there for the mirror match. So when you're doing like Chell choice belt, Gail thrust to one shot and RCS.
Brent:I mean, it runs a lot of fighting energy runs for fighting energies.
Mike:Yeah. I can, I guess you can go like Reihan like you have one energy and then you go Reihan and attach
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Crobat V. Max is definitely so like last week, Natalie talked a lot about how the Crobat the max is likely there just to take away the liability of the Crobat, which is, which is a really valid point, but this list play. Dark energy when it doesn't run any other dark Pokemon is where as compared to the list that ran Crobat DMX last week, it ran other dark Pokemon. Um, so this is like an interesting, uh, thing to know is that there is, there is intention of attacking with Crobat V max here for the new matchup, presumably. So it's interesting.
Brent:Yeah. The other thing that jumped out to me about this, this, like, I, uh, I mean, I recognize, uh, I mean the, the thing that got cut for those four battle VIP passes or the.
Mike:Yeah, Yeah. It's just three Marnie, one research, one, Avery, that's all the drug.
Brent:Yeah, like that is his dry engine is so reliant on him, like battle VIP into a Crobat in NRCS. And then our CSV max, max, turn into supporters like, and like getting big rolls out with level ball,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:it's wild.
Mike:Yeah. Liberal also has some anti synergy with VIP pass, right? like it's they get clogged in your hand and then like it's much harder to draw out a five.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Uh, totally. Uh, I think it's interesting that, I mean, this is another deck similar to me where they're like, Hmm, I don't even play sports besides.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Just going to boss every turn and see how it goes. Uh, uh, I mean, I guess the good news is you can play liberal just like Genesek and you know, how badly could it go?
Mike:Yeah, you just have a lot more trouble getting cards out of your here and you have a lot less playable cards and Muir does, um, like you play stage ones a lot more energy. So, I don't know. I mean, it seems cool. I'm like I would try this list. The pumpkin blue now makes more sense that I think about it because the only stadium that plays is Path to the Peak. And so if your opponent plays a Path to the Peak, before you get your RCS V star out, you're in a load of trouble with the very small amount of draw that you have. So the option to go? like quick ball for pumpkin. Into the V star ability seems good. So that makes sense. I think.
Brent:Yeah, but I, I assume he probably had it. Uh, like turn one Crobat and a lot of like using the restartability, the second he evolves is RCS because, uh, you got to find cards, right?
Mike:yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Brent:Like until you get a liberal setup, your board is just like, not stabilized.
Mike:Um, okay. I can't see the RCS Whimsicott list right now, but I did see it on Twitter, when I clicked the link, it's not coming up. Oh, here it is. I don't know when you guys clicked that link, does it show up for you?
Brent:Um,
Mike:Here's the, and just send the Twitter link. It's number, number eight AC.
Brent:I, I had seen this list and, and promptly sent to Liam and maybe the moral story is, uh, you can do it, you know, liberal, you can just do anything you want.
Mike:Yeah, pretty cool card. So this is like two to RCS, three to Whimsicott and a biblical line. And then the big things, that's it. Everyone's for crushing hammer to fan of waves, to help with the, you know, if they get some special energy down before you start attacking, you just get rid of them. And then.
Brent:Right. You just need to slow the game down like two times. So, so here's a bunch of hammers.
Mike:Yeah, it seems pretty cool. It seems like it would really beat you. Right? Cause you go, like if they get a bunch of fusion energies out early, you go evil, tall, and then like, just deal with the energies kind of here and there. Um, And if they don't get a bunch of energy out, then you use your hammers. and fan and then they can never get them out. Does it get through, I got to look at women's accounts of tech. Can they Alyssa sparkle through whims? I don't really answer to that. Let's see. Yeah, they can't play it from their hands so they can Elise a sparkle
Brit:Yeah.
Mike:So, I suppose That's kind of their out, but it still should be pretty strong against me. You wouldn't be my guest.
Brent:That's the moral story is.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. You still got the hammer is. you got Path to the Peak. He seems like a very annoying deck to play against for sure. Um, I wonder what he lost to top eight. The name Tiago. I feel like I've heard this name before to Tiago G of an Eddie. He like I've seen him do well at some point.
Brit:Yeah, it looks, this list looks pretty good.
Mike:Yeah, Oh, he lost a Jolteon. Okay. That feels like one of the few, I mean, I guess
Brent:Yeah, that's simply going to be a terrible man.
Mike:Yeah, I do think RCS Inteleon probably not great because they only like there, they only really care about playing the double energy, like really early on before you can really prevent it. But otherwise this deck seems, this deck seems cool. I like this idea a lot.
Brent:And yeah, I guess you're, you're too hitting RCS and he's too hitting you, right?
Mike:Like the whimsical versus the RCS yet? Yeah.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:I guess like, at least to a bigger question know. I think we've kind of seen, and I think Finn, uh, tweeted this out actually yesterday or something like new is not the best deck RCS is. And that's kind of like a big question, I guess right now, but maybe it's not like a super important question because both decks are very, very strong and going to be popular, but it is interesting, like,
Brent:I think that is the question. See guys, what are people going to do?
Mike:Yeah. It's also hard to say like, is RCS the best deck? Because like, there's so many different ways to play RCS. It's kind of like saying Zoroark is the best deck, but like, yeah, Zoroark, it's the best deck, but like, is it Durrell? Pod is it's. Our control is a Zuora Lycanroc. Like there's just so there's too many.
Brent:Right. Right. So I, you know, I think, I think what, one of the things that's interesting is, uh, um, I felt like, so if mew dominates the dominant Australia, it was essentially like people playing what they thought was the best day. And then people come back with RCS decks for Utah, and then. Like Liverpool and south Palo, I feel like it's a little more random distribution, although all there's so much RCS, so much RCS.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Do we see like weird new RCS combinations? Like, is there, is it, is he UIC when we'll start to see the secret bags or will we kind of continue to see evolution of these same kinds?
Brit:It's hard to know. I don't know. I feel like there's a lot. Oh, I'll have to experiment with it even more than we haven't talked about. I think we mentioned it once, but we didn't talk about it last week. It showed up in another top eight, but like, uh, RCS with charts, um, seems fine. Seems interesting to me. I'm happy to see it doing well because I'm not, I'm not too surprised. It seems decent to be. And I guess to explain too, it plays both and VMAX and the V max is just like a really expensive kill anything. Um, and then the V star, as we said does less famous. But, well, I guess now that I think about it, the V star doesn't seem very good with RCS because in my testing and my pay decks and so on, like the V star is good if only for the V star attack. Um, and when you're playing it with RCS, I just can't imagine that you can, I obviously you can't do both, you know, it seemed like RCS has the star attack. It's like always the better option.
Mike:Okay.
Brit:Unless you're just like running really well, I suppose. Um, but anyways, the VMX is good and I double Turbo, I think can work with it.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, I think that's a perfect example of like, if that shows up and tears up a UIC, people will say crazy deck building out of the box thinking, right? Like, like that, that hasn't shown up anywhere on any of like these lists of, uh, that people are playing at at least Pokemon tournament, they might be plenty of at one case, which I think is where we saw the charts, our list.
Mike:One of the online events. I think one of the bigger online events, but maybe, maybe one K. Yeah. I think, and I think there could be a little bit of. Of what you're saying, like RCS is so versatile that the quote unquote secret deck might just be RCS, his new partner. Um, so that's one possibility. The only other, the only like aspect of the format that seems a little unexplored to me is single pricers. Uh, like we've we have Mallomar as a really solid single prize deck, but. Like we saw pram at the very start of the format, tried the word madames or deck, and like, nothing's really stuck. Like I tried people tried mad party at the start, but maybe there's some other single price or deck that might be. Okay. There's like the Zoroark chinchy Chino deck that ran like one of a bunch of things, like one glass of pod, one worm and dam, one flat bowl, things like that. Like, so like maybe that could be good. Um, I dunno, maybe there's something in the, in the single prize world that could be okay. Um, maybe there's a secret deck that is a better version of control and Sandra had, or an evolution of control. Um,
Brent:Apparently Gustavo is hard at work on that.
Mike:Right. So,
Brent:Uh, you know, another, another deck that, uh, is, is a single presser that we kind of talked about before tournament started. And we haven't heard from, since it said.
Mike:oh yeah, that's true.
Brent:surprised.
Mike:Not good at all. Yeah. Maybe not sure if we should be surprised. or not. That's a hard question. They're in such a weird deck.
Brent:My son's been planning, a CIN Chino floats, which I think tells you kind of terrible.
Mike:He really wants control.
Brent:really, really, really wants it, but that's all wrong.
Mike:I feel like Ian Fukuda's deck is like the, the attempt is to be, um, Uh, counter box type of deck of the format, like rapid striker, Shifu, Clarion matrass Crobat V max, you run Leafeon be star cause it's an okay. Attacker and has the free boss as the V star ability. But like, as I was watching his game, I was like, this deck is really. Really bad. Like, like how do you ever wouldn't he wonder if like a 35 minute game one against a new deck? Because they were both drawing super awkward and then lost two games in 10 minutes. I was like, what the hell is
Brent:Uh, it just goes to show if your deck draws really, really poorly that you get the only one with that for so long, right.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:the other guy. Oh, I feel like Britain mentioned this like six months ago or something. I mean, the other deck that my son's been trying desperately to make work is Cramorant Barracuda.
Mike:Oh, God.
Brent:And I was like, why don't you play remonstrate now? Or Martin? He was like, nah, can't, can't be doing that. rescue carrier to.
Mike:That's funny. What else have we got? There are some ice
Brent:and then, and then, uh, uh, Harry Yama decks, that's the other deck coming out of Liverpool. That was like single prize madness.
Brit:Yeah. I don't know. Like I sometimes like people are just like so impressed when something goes six, two and one. And like, it's just never has that impressing. Basilea this tech just like, doesn't seem good to me. I say just like, am I surprised at can go six, two, and one now the best Pokemon on the formats week to like, Yeah, there's some, there's some simple stuff going on here, but like, I mean, it's, it's fun to talk about like, is this, should this be on your radar for the, probably not
Brent:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike:What, what does Harry Hellman do? It's like, if you kill it, then
Brit:you flipped.
Mike:a coin if it had to lives. Okay. Okay.
Brit:And it's just like, I mean, there's like so many versions of that that are always like, almost good enough. Like even like recently, the, one of the Dragapult that it didn't die, but you had to flip the head. It was like competent enough to go six, two, and one out of regional, say like, it's, wasn't that bad. Um, but anyways,
Brent:W w when you feel like that's a perfect deck for when you feel like I definitely can't. Outscale this appointment.
Brit:yeah.
Brent:It's time to flip them. the good news is, yeah. I mean, to your point, given a, given some sort of like normal distribution, you're like, if I just high roll, uh, and get the right match-ups it's going to be great.
Mike:Yeah,
Brit:Um,
Mike:right.
Brent:Uh, anything else, any other stuff that we should talk about? Uh, um, as people, uh, gear up for UIC props, the Pokemon for finding like 150 more seats and releasing them to masters. I feel like that quelled some of the absolute chaos that we discussed on last week.
Brit:Yeah, it was good to see, especially too, like even, I mean, even with live, which is obviously a different issue, like I know they were like, the anger is not like. You know, it's just like, you can do better. And we think you can do better, not like a sort of just like just raw anger or something. And then we got, we got to see it with UIC and like, hopefully, like, I want to say that just like, and I'm sure we hit this. Some of it last week that like part of the problem was just like, not anticipating what the return, like what the numbers would be like with the in person events. And like, at the very least. I'm sure. Every other event down the ramp down the road is like watching and like, like we've seen Lucy in the communications with the Indiana regionals. It's like, as I said, like, I think the cap is 1800, but they seem pretty convinced we won't reach it like under any circumstances, which I'm sure will probably be true, but all that to say, like region other regionals, like might need to buy a few extra tables or something.
Brent:Yeah, I was going to ask you guys, uh, uh, after all that indie news, um, do you think there's a lot more, or is it similar demand compared to salt lake city? Like it needs a better location.
Brit:That'll be a lot bigger just for location. Yeah. Both. Both location, like salt lake city. Isn't close to anyone. Like there's not. Utah's an estate known for like a bigger community. Like they do have their regionals there. But like, when I think of that area, I'm thinking more like the Colorado players, the Arizona players, like tend to be like the forest of those areas. Like I'm sure good. World's qualifying players from Utah. Um, I can't name any off the top. Well, no, you have to not Utah there. I forgot that Andrew Berry, those people and they were quite. I don't know that blank, but anyways, yeah, Utah is like not close. It was not drivable or flyable essentially. Like you had to be in that area. Whereas like the Midwest is, has affordable flights on like Utah at, during sneaky, uh, ski season. And it's obviously a lot more central to a lot of states and us Midwesterners are known to drive long distances. So I'm sure it'll only be shared, will be big.
Brent:Alrighty. Uh, um, we'll be back next week with our help. So how long was the breakdown before UIC calendar?
Mike:I think it's two weeks.
Brit:Yeah. So week of the 22nd, right?
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So we're going to take next week off and then we'll come back right before at UIC and then we'll be right after UIC. And then it's the warmup for craziness
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:and New Jersey Vancouver. Uh, three regionals over the course of four weeks. It's going to be absolutely amazing as we, uh, uh, head towards, uh, in ASC that's through a Pokemon tournament. It's crazy. It's absolutely wild.
Mike:that'll be exciting.
Brent:This is what is this? What podcasts with real Pokemon tournaments or like wild.
Mike:Um, one thing to note, I guess, for the New Jersey regional, I think the, we won't have another podcast before registration opens. It's supposed to open April 15th, which is not this Friday, but next Friday and their cap seemed like kind of big, but it seems like we'll probably reach it.
Brent:All right guys, take it easy.
Mike:Alright, good week, everyone. Our brand have a nice trip. We'll see. In two weeks.
Brent:Indeed.