Welcome to the Trashalanche podcast. Our intro song is Chris Webby Webster's laboratory. We like to just take a moment every once in a while to acknowledge it. Attendance is a hundred percent. We have Brit Pybas. We have Mike Fouchet. We have mere bhalliburton we're all on Twitter. If you feel like you just can't get enough of us, we're sponsored by channel fireball and we very much appreciate them paying the bills. I think I forgot to say that last week. So we're sponsored by channel fireball twice. Um, guys, I thought you should know that we did get a five star of you
Mike:Nice. That's a great review. Well,
Brent:sexy Broy writes easily. The best Pokegear Pokegear podcast started playing in 2000 with the GBC game, played some organized during the first EX EX area era got back in right before fusion strike Trashalanche it's archived the past year and all its recommendations are indispensable to players of any level. I also wanna know if you think the new slow bro from go will be good, maybe in Zoroark.
Brit:Yeah, it's a good question to ask for this episode to
Brent:Yeah. Perfect. Perfect timing. Excellent. Uh, uh, uh, review very much appreciated sexy. Broy you are the homey. We appreciate that. And we will definitely talk about slow bro. As we run through the, uh, pod.
Mike:we'll talk about slow, bro. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. I actually also learned how to play the game boy. Game. That's how I learned how to play the card game.
Brit:Yeah, I probably did too. Like I cuz that, but I remember having that as like just a seven or eight year old. Um, and yeah, I definitely remember beating it and like, but at the time, like my sister and I had cards and like went to a league once, but yeah, I don't think I ever really played. And even then I'm like, did I really understand the rules? Or am I sort of, you know, did I learn as a child how to put the, the square shaped box in the square shaped hole? Like I, I would guess it's something closer to that. Just pressing a until the, but the game, let me do certain things and not really sort of thinking about strategy or understanding what's going on. I
Mike:but that's part of the reason that I like, you know, PTC go so much is because it is, you know, it doesn't allow you to do illegal things. Right. So it kind of like, it does shoehorn you into at least getting a basic idea of the rules, whether you're totally cognizant of it or not. Um, I think it's a, it's a really nice tool to help teach.
Brent:You know, uh, hearing you say that suddenly made me, I was gonna ask like whether or not they'll start using that for competitive play or something like that. And I recognize we've used that for the players cup. And like, what's funny about that whole process is, and nobody complained about cheating at the players cup.
Mike:It's true.
Brit:mean, I've said it before. It's a, it's a horn. I like to too, anytime where. You know, talking about not just like cheating, but just like randomization. I'm always just like, there's no way. And everything in person is like sufficiently randomized, even, you know, even outside of the discourse between Ruel shuffling versus pile shuffling, I'm just like, no, there are human elements involved in this, your cards don't weigh the same. Therefore I think, you know, there probability of being in certain are not always equal cetera, etcetera, any, but the only, the only way to ever solve that is to take humans out of it. Purely, purely a numbers game. No, uh, no other, no other, other outside elements. But at the same time though, like I think you kind, you lose a certain like ju Aqua when you're not, you're no longer physical. Like, I don't know if you've ever been to like a, in person Hearthstone tournament, but they're kind of like sterile and antisocial compared to the way that like Pokegear Pokegear is just naturally, like, what are you doing between rounds? You just walk around and find people to talk to. For as like Hearthstone, at least in my experience, you just find an outlet and you're there the whole day and you might talk to people, but you probably don't move past your friend group that you're sitting with.
Mike:Yeah. I definitely got that vibe. I went to two in person, Hearthstone events and yeah. People like you don't even during the match, there's not really a whole lot of banter. Like the whole room's silent. It's very.
Brit:You might not even know who you're playing against. Like in, in the couple that I went to, I don't remember only a couple times, and I don't think I ever initiated it. Did we have the, just like, Hey, I was your opponent, good games, you know, find you across the room or wave or something like that. It's just completely just like, you're just playing a screen name who know, you know, and you might figure out who's who as the day goes on and people get eliminated and so on. But yeah. Yeah. I think all that to say that I think playing physical cardboard will always sort of have a special quality to it, whether that's in person or not compared to purely digital. I
Mike:Yeah. Agreed. Cool. Yeah. Great. Let's go through
Brent:I think our plan for today is to try to, uh, go through the Pokegear go set a little bit and talk about its implications for worlds. Uh, do, do we wanna go through the, the go set or do we start by talking about, uh, a couple of the online tournaments that have already happened?
Brit:don't know if the online tournaments have had like go centric results that are worth discussing at all. Like, I don't, I don't, we, I don't think we've really seen like, Hey, here's, you know, Mewtwo or something, for instance. And there's it finally made top four or one last night? Like, I don't, I don't think we have any cases of that. At least from the tournament results that I've been looking at. Um, just kind of pat, more of the same Paia RCS, occasionally the Mewtwo V union does. Okay. Um, I think like Vinnie played it in one tournament and I think made top eight and I saw Shinx ITO played it in like the very first, late night after nationals and like got ninth or 10th, like missed, barely missed top eight. Um, but yeah, I think it might be more economical just to kind of talk, go straight into the cards than the decks, but if I could be proven wrong on this other front, I would, uh, certainly be open to the, the other option, I just don't, I just don't feel like we've any, anyone other than content creators are sort of like doing stuff impactful with this, that yet, but there's a lot of possibility. Like I definitely think worlds is gonna be a surprise, I think in terms of like maybe the decks and the Meta games, all kind of shake out to be roughly the same, but I'm like pretty, we'll be very surprised if at least one or two of these cards from the go set don't end up being kind of like, uh, a build around or a way to change up the deck. Um, that's defining compared to where the lists were at N a.
Brent:know, I think, I think if we're just, uh, if we just knock off each of the radiant Pokegear, we're probably getting a good overview of big implications, right.
Mike:Yeah, one thing that is funny before we get into it, you just reminded me mentioning worlds. I think I saw Henry brand tweet the other day saying that he wonders that since Pokegear, this set came out so far before worlds in comparison to some of the. Other worlds when we've had a set come out where it's only been like two weeks, three weeks, maybe before the event, at least online. Uh, and now that we have so many online events that is there really gonna be any secret decks, maybe just such a high likelihood that people figure out at least the same concept. And then maybe they're not even going to worlds and they just play it on a online event. And then other people take notice and they're like, oh, that's a really good idea. Let me build on that and blah, blah, blah. But the idea will still kind of be out there in the ether. Uh, so that'll kind of be an interesting dynamic over the next six weeks.
Brent:I think, I think if you look at, I mean, did we see any surprises at N AIC besides Mew two?
Mike:Not really. I mean,
Brent:I mean, you know, like what's interesting, I guess when you look at Milwaukee and you look at N IIC, the fact that Blissey, and Dialga had already kind of quote, like leaked, uh, um, but Dialga was probably the big leak, like the week before Milwaukee, right?
Mike:Right, right, right.
Brit:Sort of startled people and as it showed up online and, and then progressed from there. Yeah. I mean, I guess to Mikey's question, and this is kind of where I'm stuck at in parsing the sets like it's like on one hand, I do think there are clearly very good cards in this set, but on the other, I don't think there are enough cards to, for like a new archetype to really sort of shine it make its way. So in that sense, like I would say like, no, there's not secret decks, but I, I will. I do think that like, The 60th, the 59th and the sixties cards are gonna change, you know, whatever, maybe more, maybe less in like RCS and Paia. Um, I think that, like, that will be surprising. I think it will be interesting to see like, just where all the player groups gravitate, um, like was there's so many good distinct ones now. Like you, you have limitless and the Europeans, you have Jon Ang Raul, uh, Xander, like Sam Chen, like that player group. And then like Ian, Ian, Rob, and people that he tests with. There's just a lot of really very strong play testing groups all over the world. And obviously the, the, the kind of core Australian group with like Natalie, um, Brent and so on. Like, but yeah, and they, they all just seem to always land ever so slightly on different sort of lists or last cards within the same archetype. Um, but yeah, in terms of just like, I, like, I don't think lunar rock is good enough to be relevant. I don't think YouTube VStar is good enough to be relevant. Like I see people trying it and I think it's certainly like, not bad, like the cards that you're trying it with, um, are just good. So there's kind of it's, you know, not surprising that combining two, like clearly confident cards is at least like a tier three Creation or something like that. But yeah, just like whether that's Shadow Rider or RCS, like just don't seem strong enough compared to, you know, the current top decks and RCS and Paia.
Mike:Lele, let's, let's talk about YouTube. VStar let's just start there, I guess. So the core issue that I see with VStar is that you need to run acceleration energy acceleration of some kind, but you also need some consistency engine, right? So like pakia. The way that it ups its damage output is just by benching Pokegear, which it wants to do anyway. And it can just do that with the Inteleon engine or BI or, or, or whatnot, but Mew two needs, energy, acceleration and consistency. The only Pokegear Pokegear that really provides that Brit you mentioned is Shadow Rider. And it does that kind of at the same time, but do you really wanna be playing a dark weed VMax when Mew is still relevant in the format? Shadow Rider is like not, it's crazy to me to think that I'm about to say, it's not that good of a card. Um, cause it's like energy acceleration and drawing cards, which is so funny, but I don't know it is, it isn't that great of a card. Right. Um, and it's a big liability to have these three price Pokegear Pokegear on the field, uh, in the current format. Um, and so if you don't play that, then you have to play like. Either the Luna and so rock or Glar Oro, but then you also need or something to be some type of consistency engine. And I just don't know if there's a way to get around this core, fundamental issue.
Brit:And like my sort of only extra point on top of that would just be like, like what's the fantasy here. Let's sort of imagine, like what, what what's the board state look like when I've sort of like I've, I've hit the knots, every single turn for like the first three turns of my deck and just like. It's just underwhelming, I think just like compared to say, oh yeah, like I, I, I have, I have a really good board. I have enough energy to one shot your Pokegear Pokegear and then I discard all of them and have to do it a couple more times. Whereas PAs just like set for the whole game after it pops into NewStar ability basically. And this is just like, ah, gotta keep attaching, gotta keep doing more. And like, I mean, and again, kind of the nail in the coffin is just like, it's weak to dark. Like you just like, that's just such a, such a loss for any deck. Like I, I just, I don't even ever really care. Um, how popular, like Glar and Moltres decks are just, it's never something I feel comfortable about. And like, I mean, I guess a good reason why I don't think I ever really EX experimented with Mew. Um, this past year I've really tested it for IL events. I just like feels bad to me to just kind of, oh, I mean, and obviously you can play around it. And these, these things are stronger than just being weak to dark, but just like, I don't know, it feels bad just to like, have your day ruined by someone playing a bad deck with two Mew races in a Kiara can like, definitely just beat you. And like when you're weakness is like the same, it's just like kind of compounds the problem. And that's why like, in the past format or like E U IIC era ish, when players like Connor Fitton were doing like Shadow Rider, whims KO versus like just straight whims KO. I was like, yeah. I mean, I guess at least they're not weak to the same thing. So you, you kind of have more options, but that's just kind of like my take on Mewtwo and then Luton, Lutton soul rock is like similar in that, just like, okay, what's the fantasy here? 130, 130. Like, it's gotta be better options than that. No matter what, like I'm glad these cool new cards work well enough to have a semblance of a deck, but just no way it's super viable.
Mike:Yeah, I don't really understand why people are playing it a bunch. I mean, it clearly hasn't done super well in tournaments, but I played against on ladder last night, for example, with the Pia ice Rider deck. And I prized Greninja. That was my last prize. So I didn't even get to use that effect, but I beat it just by going. Okay. Here's an ice Rider. You can't one shot it. So it's gonna, you know, trade two for one, here's a Paia. You also, can't one shot that that's gonna trade two for one, and then here's another ice Rider. That's gonna trade two for one. And I was just able to kind out trade it like that. Um, Yeah. So I don't know that deck just definitely seems very bad. It looks fun though.
Brent:I'll I'm sure I'm gonna cut this from the pod. Cause I'm just missing something. But. Is there not some world where people play Mewtwo VStar and then they just put a bunch of energies on, on Luna tones all the time.
Mike:yeah, I think that's, uh, a reasonable deck idea, but like I said, there's then you need a consistency engine too, and you don't, you can't fit it all at one.
Brent:right, right. You can't, you can't play if you got four. Uh, so three, so rocks down
Mike:And a Luton and your too, right?
Brent:and a Mew VStar down. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, just too, too clunky, too clunky.
Mike:I do wonder if, um, it, it kind of suffers from the same thing, but alchemy Luton. So rock almost seems better to me, um, than Mewtwo VStar because.
Brit:is just way better. Like,
Mike:Math seems better. The, uh, the weakness is better. You have a good first attack to just, you know, attach a bunch of energy. Um, I dunno, it's still probably bad, but that seems better than Mewtwo
Brit:Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that, but yeah, that clearly seems much better, but I think we'll still just like, not have the, the right ways to trade prizes. Well enough, and we'll just still be outclassed by two prizes, riches, three prizes, like, you know, cause I think it would probably be similar to the way ice Rider plays and like the, the way ice Rider seems to have, um, found its foothold in the format is not, you know, the traditional like four, three ice Rider. Inteleon, it's kind of like it's splashed in with the PIO synergy and things like that. Kind of using their. You know, one, one to solve the other's weaknesses kind of, and like ice Rider is really good because it trades so well against the VStar, but it's not good enough to be your like only attacker for instance. And I would think that's just like also a creamies problem. Like it's really good when you set up and like get to kill other VMax decks that like against RC EX like RCS and two prizes, like they probably just find a way to just out trade you. And even, especially with like grin and their one prizes, just like setting up easier, two prize knockouts and things like that.
Mike:remember when we were first talking about, uh, astrol radiance and Pia ice Rider and talking about how to like fit it together. And I think your initial thought was to go like two, two or three, two on both. And that ends up being, uh, yeah, I think like Frank's version Frank first six version of the deck is just the best way to play ice Rider for sure. Um, Vinny Fernanda has actually won the late night with that last night. Yeah.
Brit:Yeah. So his, he just like, he didn't have any of the Miltank answers and just had a little more consistency compared to what Frank played at nationals. But yeah, like that tech seems really good to me. I like haven't spent any time with it and like, just like I was one of these things, like I knew Frank was working on it. Like he was, he was clear that just like, I think I Rider busted, you know, to everyone on Twitter, but I just didn't ever talk to him. And then he, you know, what he, the version he was playing was so much different than all the other versions. And just obviously he converted, um, he did well at both. He'd made day two at Milwaukee and N AIC with something like pretty fringe. And like, I think I mentioned this last week too, but I was worried about all of us playing him at N AIC. Can't beat an ice Rider with cologne and with the heck it's gonna stomp us.
Mike:Yeah. That's one of the few decks that didn't see like a ton of success. Partially because, you know, very, very, very few people played it. Um, but it's one of the decks that I think people will really need to take seriously going into world. Cause I think it's much better than the big results.
Brent:Super underrated deck. Right. And then only nine results. Prove it out too.
Mike:yeah, yeah. It
Brent:more people play it, it's gonna get more good results.
Mike:yeah, it also won, uh, won a couple days ago as well. That was pretty big. So
Brit:Yeah. I mean, actually that's actually worth talking about cuz this is somewhat of a trend that we do see pretty consistently, like between nationals and worlds. Like you have this deck at nationals that like only a couple people do well with, but like, it doesn't really sort of like make an impact in terms of just like a general impression, you know, maybe it has like one top 32 and that's it. But then you, you see it just like be fixed for worlds and get like four top sixteens or something like that. And there's just like, there's a lot of decks. I can, I can think of that happening too. And like maybe we see that here. Maybe there's just like Frank is on to something that, you know, not enough people were listening to, but it will just like, I mean, I don't know, frankly, I haven't tested, but I would be curious to just like, what is, what is the, the, the dynamics in between like, Isaiah Bradner Jon on like their, their P list versus that like, I, let me see 120 games of that or something. And you know, maybe like maybe it turns out that there's, you know, decks can really compete with P I'm not sure, but that's definitely like something to keep an eye on. I think.
Mike:Yeah. Agreed. All right. Back to the Pokegear Pokegear go set. Let's talk about the radiant cards. Um, let's, let's work our way up from the worst one, which is definitely venous sore.
Brent:I thought, I thought we were just gonna go through the list, uh, starting with grass typing
Mike:Okay. Well the,
Brent:and all the cards are bad in grass except for VSR, right?
Mike:yeah, the stage two Venosa is. Interesting, but not good. Cuz this is stage two. Uh, yeah. And radiant Veo. It probably doesn't have a place in anything right now,
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:but it's a cool effect and it's something that could,
Brent:They,
Mike:it could and probably will be good at some point. Yeah. The Arceus
Brit:Yeah, it's just like, it's clearly good. Um, what, like what home does it find? Like what, what problems does it inherently solve for X concept? Y concept doesn't seem to be anything like that. And it's like, sort of such an edge case, I think in general, that like, it's may just end up being one of those cards. That's like clearly great on paper, but just like a little bit weaker than
Brent:they feed it an archetype in the next set, right?
Brit:Right.
Mike:canine.
Brent:Yeah.
Brit:yeah, yeah. Something like that seems like a natural home, but yeah, like it's very good effect, but just like the sort of value of kind of the other, the bigger names, radiance, like might just be too strong.
Brent:Yeah. It, it's definitely not a card. You just splash in to try to quote, fix your draw problems or
Mike:right.
Brit:when does the Gardevoir come out? Cuz I've Def I've seen that. I feel like I saw that card, like in a Taiwanese tournament and I'm just like, why do you have this card? And we don't, that's like, not in this set, but is one that Japan has.
Mike:is it? A radiant Gardevoir what is it?
Brit:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike:I don't know. I don't even know it. Oh yeah, yeah.
Brit:Like reduces damage, all the damage that you take. I saw like, maybe I'm just wrong and maybe, maybe I think I saw Taiwanese results and it was Japanese, but I guess I think Taiwan and Japan played similar formats. I don't think Taiwan is always on the same structure as us, but anyways, bad tangent. Um,
Mike:That's
Brit:Yeah, blast choice. Blast ChuChu is like, it's, it's weird because like, I think Charr is like, probably better. And like, people are clearly experimenting more with Charr right now, but I just like have this sense that like those decks will all fall a little short and like, maybe there's just an easy place to like, I think like, especially when the decks like RCS, like I thought maybe you would be able to play radiant Gren, RCS. Like you have a lot of energy. You wanna discard your waters doesn't really seem to matter. And it just like didn't really work at all, but Inteleon does sort of consistently have a dam, not Inteleon, but RCS has always sort of fishing for a little more damage in a lot of matchups. And like, maybe it's better there. Like maybe it it'll be better in RCS to kind of like replace your goon pings and because you're so path heavy, like. You know, it's hard. It was really hard to make use of gringo, trying to keep a path in play most of your terms. But like with this one, like, it just seems better. Maybe only getting to use it once or twice a game. Like maybe that's all you need and you don't need this kind of consistency push that other decks are using Gring for
Mike:Yeah, could be, um, I haven't really seen it played in anything except the Usha food deck, um, that Jake Earheart is touting as the best deck in the format. And I played, I played it in the tournament last night and I played a handful of games on ladder, you know, in total, I may only have maybe like 10 games with it and it's pretty good. It's definitely makes Usha food better. I'm not convinced that it makes it the best deck in the format. but
Brit:do you mean? He solved it with Lapras
Mike:yeah, right.
Brit:has all the answers.
Mike:Lapras is a pretty cool idea. I gotta give it a shot now after, uh, seeing that.
Brent:Let's be clear Lapras is not his cool idea. His, his cool idea is like we have this like 17 cards over three turn combo that you just like string together and like, Good luck.
Mike:yeah. Um, yeah, it still has like the same issues that has had though, that it's clunky as hell
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Like it, yeah, there's this, there's this, like, I don't have a super powerful draw engine, but I have to string together these wild combos turn after turn after turn.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Uh, but, but I think, I think it is interesting. The idea of like blast waste combined with scoop ups gives you a little easier access to that quick shooting mojo for you to pull off wild MEChA plays in, in your 10 games. Were you ever able to MEChA. Hm.
Mike:Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, I do wonder if blasto. Makes the like rapid strike. Inteleon a little bit better as well, because now you just have an extra way to throw some counters on the board. Um, so maybe something like what Raichu played at New Jersey, which was basically, you know, towards Urshifu, but with Inteleon I dunno, maybe that's worth looking into again with this that might just synergize a little bit better since you're already playing waters. You're already kind of doing that strategy, but I don't know. Um, other water Pokegear Pokegear slow, bro. Let's talk about slow, bro. I don't know what it's good in, but it's a good card.
Brent:Uh, it would be good in some like Zoroark work dance list where you're like,
Mike:mm-hmm
Brent:I, I, I
Mike:a bad.
Brit:Yeah. Zekrom seems like the most logical place. Like it's such a good effect, but like, I mean, I think it'll definitely be good. Like, I really could see it being in like, even a Sander list of some kind, like where Sander is just like play something that wanted to take prizes, I guess. Like, it seems like in Zu Arceus I think again is just all kind of the closest thing we have to this in the format currently, but just like some sort of counter box where you're, you, you have a very, very sort of clear and meticulous path to those first four prizes. Like whether it's just like response response or something kind of aggressive, and then you fizzle later on, like, it clearly seems good to me. Um,
Brent:You know, my, my thought was, uh, Sander would put it in a list where he plays the slow poke and he is like going ideal fishing day, ideal fishing day, ideal fishing day for like turn after turn after turn like. Enabling some sort of like mild recursion. And then, and then he gets you down to where you have one prize left and then he locks you up and takes two prizes, takes two prize, takes a prize.
Mike:Yeah, that could be a strategy. It seems a little fragile, but seems like it could be okay. Mm-hmm
Brent:But, but the fact that slow poke gives you some access to your discard. You're like, well, this, so this is fun. We're gonna get up like four slow pokes and slowly feet feed.'em a bunch of slow folks. And then a certain point we'll like, do the thing, whatever the thing is. And then, you know, three turns later you win the game.
Brit:I don't maybe if I like had a better cuz just cause I like was on like control and YouTube going into any IC. I don't. I don't have as good of an understanding of kind of like the P versus Pia matchup and the P versus RCS Inteleon versus the other ones. Like maybe there's a matchup where you just really, really like one of these decks really struggles to end the game. And like, maybe that's like the Pia versus RC Inteleon matchup, because like P is so aggressive out of the gates. But then if RCS Inteleon, you know, stabilizes with their chair loop and things like that, if they, if they find that kind of perfect board state that just will beat, like maybe it ends, can end there, like how you'd set it up. Not sure.
Brent:you
Brit:have to bench two and pre
Brent:and tackle, and then he is just asleep for three turns and.
Brit:like play it 2, 1, 2 online and like bench pray. Maybe it would, or even logically, like maybe it has a better home in like the frost Mew, like tool boxy kind of things where you have just like. Extra, just option. Like it's such a good, uh, at least like on paper seems like it has to be useful at some point in time. Just trying to like close out those games. I'm not sure.
Brent:It just seems like a waste of space in 99% of
Mike:I wonder if there's any auto ability in the format. Um, like, you know, when you play this, Pokegear your opponent's activist paralyzed, cuz then that could be like a way to do it. Right. You go like Roxanne, paralyzed, slow, bro. And then scoop up paralyzed slow, bro.
Brit:Yeah. I was try, I was trying to think of a play like a Rox Sander, like checkmate kind of play where you, you get to use it twice in a row. And like, again, something, I think something is clearly there. I just, whether we're missing some ingredients, I'm not sure, like maybe it's, it'll be just good and expanded, like as an EX, an EX, an expanded deck that like are doing all the gimmicky prize stuff with like Jirachi and lucky Clover and like all those stupid cards, like
Mike:Yeah. Well, you can go. Um, yeah, you can. I think I saw JW CRE wall. I don't know if his list was exactly like this, but I was thinking you could Goana Del GX stinger go to three. If they take a knockout, then you do some Jirachi slow bro combo. Or if they don't take two prizes, you have electro GX blow yourself up and then do it. So by the way, just a quick expanded aside. I did build the electro GX Dialga gear, Tina ChuChu deck and expanded to have some fun. And I played like five to 10 games with that, that deck consistently wins on turn to almost every single game so that's um,
Brent:I love it.
Brit:What is the EX exact combo?
Mike:So you pretty much go through your whole deck, turn to you, blow up electrode onto Dialga VStar you counter catcher, something up that you can kill you. Cyrus prism, star them to down to two bench. Pokegear Pokegear you VStar their active. So now they only have two Pokegear Pokegear on the board. Then you scramble switch into GU Gar ChuChu and discard them both.
Brit:Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. That sounds fun.
Mike:Yeah,
Brit:How many energy do you play? Like do you have to play Melmetal and the double dragon, I guess enough. Oh, right. You
Mike:no, you can't do double dragon because it has to go on first.
Brit:have to.
Mike:Yeah. So you just play rainbows on Aurora. Yeah. It's it's really consistent too. Cuz you draw through your whole deck with, uh, unknown. Unknown and, uh, dragon IDX to get them back and you play four rescue carriers and you're just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's uh, it's fun.
Brent:uh, yeah, for further
Mike:why. And it's not coming
Brent:be an expanded tournament until they either rotate the format or transition over the NGLC sounds. Sounds, uh, yeah. Sounds like exactly what people wanna play against.
Mike:Um, one other thing for slow, bro.
Brent:And do, do you have a, do you have a, uh, uh, or Miltank counter?
Mike:no, no. Yeah.
Brent:Okay. I, I saw the, the expanded deck that won the tournament last night on limitless was, uh, um, uh, Miltank stall.
Mike:Oh really? Well, I mean you can guarantee a guard jump to discard them, so
Brent:right. Yeah. Yeah. So if it's not just like triple Snorlax
Mike:yeah, yeah.
Brent:Miltank, you could just, uh, catcher around and
Mike:Right. Exactly. Um, one more thing for slow, bro. And this'll transition a little bit to radiant Charizard is I think the radiant Charizard focused decks that just kind of try to loop charar over and over again are pretty strong and they can run like a two, one slow bro line as well. Um, and it kind of feels weird because Charizard gets so much better once your opponent goes to low amounts of prizes. But one of the issues with the Charr deck is getting Rox Sander once you're down to two prizes. So if you can take some, take four prizes with Charizard and Moltres and Inteleon, and then the turn you go to two prizes, you bench double slow poke. Then all you need off of Roxanne is basically a Ryon to find, you know, slow bro, and, and an energy, um, to, to close out the game. So I think that. To me, that seems like the best use case that I've seen so far of solo, bro. I still don't know if it's worth playing for sure, but that is a strong deck in and of itself. And so you wanna play this in an already good deck, right?
Brent:Yeah. I don't know. I feel like every, every use case I've heard feels a little win Mew.
Mike:Yeah. Right, right,
Brent:I'm like what, what if you cut all those and just put in more treking shoes and then like, you'd find the charar pieces and win. Right.
Mike:That's that's true. Um, okay. So radiant char art is insane. Like it's really, really good. You pretty easily, you kill all V Pokegear. You can kill pretty much any VStar with the choice belt or any VStar with the ChuChu belt. You do have to watch out for tool jammer. That can be that's part of the reason that that dedicated charges, our debt can be a little weak. You get Rox Sander with a Jamer on Paia. You need a lot to. Finish up the game. Um, but the deck's super good. It's really not that hard to loop Charizards over and over again, uh, between magma basin and Ryon and twin energy and Clara and ordinary rods, like you can attack with char art four, five times in a game, um, which is really good. It's like not a small Pokegear, you know, it's got 160 HP, usually that's one 40 after you magma base into it. Um, and does a lot of damage and so that texts really it's really good and I've seen different builds of it. Some people, uh, are running like four, the four ire, a package, some people are running a more box, dark box type of supporter package. I don't know which one's better. I've been playing mostly the, I Rita one. Um, but it's really. I don't know if it hasn't done that well in the tournament. So I don't know if people just aren't playing it, but I think the deck is pretty good. I'm if I play in more events, I'll probably try that out.
Brit:And I remember just like when the chars learned was released, I was like, this card is incredible. And people, I feel like people definitely told me it was bad and I'm just like, what are you talking about? Um, but yeah, I'm a little, it was just skeptical. Like, I don't know if it'll be good enough, I guess kind of, as, as I've said about the set in general and there's like, seems to be a handful of ways to play it. Like, it's just, you play it in the like full Inteleon list with just like all counter Pokegear Pokegear and that's it. But I've also seen kind of like, and also ideas in between this too, but also kind of like returning to the fires, like packages, which interests me because I spent so much time on NTA that I just like this stuff and the entire time on NTA, I'm just like, this is really, really close. Um, and I've seen like kind of magma basin toolboxes versus Inteleon toolboxes, I guess is I think what I'm trying to say. And I don't know which would be better. Both, both are very interesting to me. And I think just the fire support is good, but I, I wonder too, just like if you're playing the basins. I think heat ran might just be better, but I'm not sure. That's like a tough question to answer. Cause like there isn't a, there isn't like the same like overt synergy with like the char already in basin. Like you're not, you're really trying to power it up as with as little energy as possible, ideally. And so like that, I'm not sure, but I, I think that's like a tough question to answer. And like, I think like using like Alex Krekeler and Alex Shamsky's like firebox fire, like RCS thing. Like again, like I'm not sure what would be better there. There's obviously like a convenience to the U the utility that Charizard could do when it's discounting itself. So well, but I wonder if just like the damage output for a heat ran. I mean, obviously it takes a lot more time, but there's something in there, but yeah, that's kind of my, my issue now I'm like basically waiting for one of these decks to do well in a tournament and I'll adjust my thoughts accordingly, but it seems promising at the very least.
Mike:Yeah. Um, other fire Pokegear Pokegear so the Charizard, the stage two Charizard is almost certainly not good, but there is a funny deck that I saw on Twitter and happened to play against on ladder last night that I want to explain. So the other Charizard, all fire energy attached to your Pokegear count as two fire energy. Um, and oh, and it actually played the blasto from this set too. The stage two blasto and the blast is really interesting. Uh, once you're in your turn, you can take six energy from your deck and attach them to your Pokegear Pokegear anyway, you like, and then your turn ends. So this deck strategy was to use a Centiskorch it's an old Centiskorch that for each fire energy on the Centiskorch you discard one card from your opponent's deck. So they played four DIY. They played this blast. Do they played. Sander Gorge. And so they would hide beyond dancy with all basics except for the blast. O and they'd go attach six energy to the Sizzla PED attach six energy to the Sied attach six energy to the SI Lele PED. I think it played like 20 energies. And the goal then was eventually to go rare candy Charr and then discard like 40 cards from your deck. yeah. Um, obviously some weaknesses there, you can still boss the blast O through DNC. Um, but, uh, and the other bigger issue is cross switcher. Like I was playing the deck with cross switcher, so,
Brent:Right. So you never got to see him do the thing because you destroyed him two seconds into the game.
Mike:But it's the cool idea. If cross switcher wasn't so prominent in the format, it would be pretty cool. Oh,
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Yeah, I was gonna ask you whether or not that blast race is playable. I assume it's 100% not playable, but that was a interesting idea. Although it, that still sounds not playable to me
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:is, is the magic art raging fin, not playable. I'm sure. Content creators will try to build raging fin deck.
Mike:I haven't tested it myself. It seems kind of like a worse, mad party to me.
Brent:Yeah. Like you're just gonna, so you, you discard six or something and then you have like rescue carrier. So you're gonna get back to every other turn and then you have like double Turbo and you're like, we're just gonna hit for 180 every turn and see how it goes.
Mike:Yeah. Well, well wait, wait, you can do 2 42 50. You can do two 80. If you get all the magic harps in all the OSes right.
Brent:Like you gotta, you gotta attack with what are you attacking with?
Mike:You talk with ditto.
Brent:Oh,
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. So you can do two 80, but I mean, it's not, it's probably not happening until later in the game anyway. Um, and if you're capping out at two 80 with the belt, I don't know, just play mad party then like mad party also gets to those numbers later in the game, but it's, uh, it's easier. yeah,
Brent:Yeah, yeah. Yep. Look for content creator videos,
Mike:I know. I know. Uh, Mewtwo magic art, Kevin Clemente is definitely gonna try it out.
Brent:for sure. For sure. Yeah. Everybody's gonna have to make one.
Mike:Yeah. Um,
Brent:Uh, there's only, there's only three lightning Pokegear cards, double Peak ChuChu and a zap dose. Would anyone ever play two zap dose to try to make Zoroark more viable?
Mike:I don't think that, but zap of the three legendary birds, they all do the same thing. Right. Um, for their respective types, zap to me is the most interesting because of alt V. So you, you know, you throw a bunch of app dust in your bench and now you're quaking punching for. 80, maybe one 10 with a choice belt could be okay.
Brit:Yeah. People really were had experimented with Fick Boltund I think like quietly for the fast format or two, like, it was one of the decks that like mace had, like we were playing and I saw people, other people playing this. So like, it wasn't unique to him, but like the Turbo. PK, both just like a little lightning splash then. And like, if you, you always want to go first, but like on the games that you go second, like if you can get Vic Bulu off, it's usually pretty strong. Just the way that decks are being constructed right now, they own a lot of switches, a lot very reliant on their item search to hit those kind of like turn two tempo spikes, um, with RCS and Pia, you know, obviously it's need, you need those incentives. And if you're blocked from them sometimes like you're perfectly playable. Hand is just bad. And even had testing games like that, that reminded me of like in seism Mato mirrors when you'd need versus seeker, just like just to be safe, you know, even if it was kind of like a poor use of the versus seeker at the end of the day, it would just like give you a supporter in hand for the next turn and you wouldn't just be like locked out of it. Should that be kind of like the only place that you have? So like, I think, I think B Bulu just. Is a good card, you know, a very good card for having basically zero results for its legality. I feel like we're due for it to like top 16 worlds or something like that. I, I think there could be something there potentially like quick shootings SP Boltund.
Mike:it's great
Brit:does a lot of damage too. Like it, when you, when you wanna break the lock, like you're taking two prizes, almost always. So like, I don't think it's prize game. Is that bad? Um, it just like, is the format vulnerable enough to item lock?
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I want, I'll definitely give it a,
Brit:Probably not like probably Inteleon stuff just like beats it out consistency wise at the end of the day. But I like that idea at the very.
Mike:give it a try. Um,
Brent:we're, I think we're at the cycle in the, um, like the Meta game historically, where it's always the best, like right before worlds is like the Cardpool is the biggest people are playing more items to try to draw faster through their deck. Like it's never gonna be better than is right now.
Mike:Yeah, right. The next couple types all have a bunch of unplayable cards. We talked a little bit about psychic. There's nothing there already fighting nothing, dark, nothing. The Azul and eradicate has an interesting attack. It's the three colorless put your opponent to 10 HP left, but I don't think that's good enough in this format if it was, if there was more three prizes, maybe, but the fact that it's dominated mostly by, VStar Um, the Melmetal Melmetal VMax, like it hits decent numbers. It does two 80 for five energies, which it's not that great. You do have Melmetal saucer. I think I saw someone play RCS Melmetal VMax deck in a tournament and they did. Okay. So it's like viable ish, I guess, but probably not that good.
Brent:Yeah, it seems, it seems not, uh, good enough
Mike:Yeah, the Blissey. I haven't seen anybody do anything with the Blissey yet, but this seems like a Sander card. This seems like a stall, a pretty strong control stall card has 200 HP on a single Prizer. So that's not getting KO very easily at all. And it's attack is heal all damage from one of your bench Pokegear Pokegear. So in theory, you can kind of, if you have an easy way to switch between Blissey, you could just go back and forth and heal between them. Uh, I dunno that this seems like a pretty good card. If someone figures out how to use it in a good way
Brent:problem is everything hits for 200. You know, it was like, although, I mean, I guess you could put like a Cape on it.
Mike:or a big charm, big charm.
Brent:evolution. Yeah. It's a big charm,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:but I mean, two 30 for single prize, like, uh, you know, Mew EX don't run that many, uh, damage Mew.
Mike:Yeah. So I don't know. You could like, maybe there's some like bird keep SI PED infinite combo here. Um, and you'd obviously play Miltank as well. Like maybe, I don't know. Maybe it's better than Mewtwo union. I don't know. And like that type of deck,
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:not too sure. Um, we got ditto, we talked a little bit about ditto. I did play a bunch of games with mad party because I really like, I've always really liked night March. I've liked mad party. Um, I think ditto definitely makes the deck better, but I don't think it makes it a force in the Meta game. To be honest with you after playing with a bit, you still have a lot of the same issues. Um, maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I don't think it's going to be any different than it was before, even though it is objectively better than it was. Oh yeah.
Brent:a good card and a good control.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:But Snorlax will be a good card in some control deck.
Mike:I played against on ladder last night. It was just a force Snorlax deck
Brent:right.
Mike:and that was not good. I will tell you that they played like, uh, the, the confused Boltund active Pokegear Pokegear but I just like simply did not play down a Pokegear Pokegear like Crobat and I never discarded a Pokegear Pokegear like Crow. So, cause I feel like if you're playing Snorlax, uh, you probably play echoing horn to try and pull something from the discard. But as long as your opponent just never discards one never plays one down and just like plays two attackers down. Like what are you gonna do? yeah. So,
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's not a good way to, uh, fix that problem. Right.
Mike:but it, it probably will be good in as like a, one of, in a control or stall deck to capitalize on situations. But I don't think it can be your only strategy
Brent:Right. Ambapo slacking and BI are all things that have abilities, but they're all terrible. Right?
Mike:ambapo looks kind of fun. Right. It's a lot, if you're good at flipping coins, it's really good.
Brent:if you're good at flipping coins, the definition of skillful Pokegear Pokegear play.
Mike:Yep. Um, the BI is so weird, like. It's
Brent:never worth it. It's
Mike:Yeah. It's a counter to like a type of deck that doesn't exist.
Brent:Right? Right.
Mike:um, yeah.
Brent:This is, this is a, a, a stage one super hard counter to people playing the blast O uh, Charizard, uh, Beck. Just as soon as that takes over PTC, go like there, there is a two card hard counter to it. I not clear why that was printed in case you can't gust blast oyster and kill them or play cross switchers or any of the other millions of more interesting and helpful counters in other situations.
Mike:Yeah. Um, PO stop is definitely the best trainer card. We can talk about any others if you guys want, but I, and PO stop's the best card, best trainer card. I don't know if it's that good. I, I tried it in mad party. It's okay there, but discarding bosses feels really bad. Discarding special energy is not that big of a deal. And the mattress where you need six special energy, you just don't use PTA. The only other deck I've tried it in is Dialga and it felt a bit better in that because you feed off of getting energy in the discard. Um, so I feel like
Brent:Yeah,
Mike:the best, the best places for it are item heavy decks that want basic energy in the discard. And then the only thing that you really care about discarding then is supporters. And maybe like a evolution, like you don't wanna discard the bag of VStar, um, in that deck, but that's kind of the only thing. And you can get around the supporters a little bit more like you just play four boss instead of three. So if you mill one, it's not the end of the world. And you just have to, you have to know when you should use it. And when you shouldn't use it, I lost a game on ladder playing Dialga because needed the last boss and I used it like two turns before I used it when I shouldn't have, and I ended up discarding a boss that I needed a couple turns down the line. So, um, but Brent, I know you were like talking a little bit about Pogo stop earlier. Did you have other thoughts on it?
Brit:No. I just think it's a, a good card. I haven't, I haven't like messed with it, but like, I, you know, people talk about it in Mew, which seems okay. Mew is. Has a lot of pieces. It always needs to hold on, even though it does also see a lot of cards and draw a ton, like you end up having. And I feel like that's, you know, something obvious that sets like the good Mew player apart from the bad one is the good one is just like, whoops, I discarded all my resources where the, the, or the bad one rather. And the good one is just like, playing in such a way that, um, it doesn't matter what they discard. It just always sort of like conveniently works out in the end. And so with poker stuff, it like some wrong discards, just lose you the game. And I'm not sure if like the times where that doesn't happen, like we'll make it worth, it we'll make like playing those odds worth it. Like muse seems to be pretty secure and it's like rose tower and things like that. I'm not sure if it's really looking for a card like this.
Mike:Oh
Brit:It's very strong. And like, I, I think will definitely be like something for Turbo mad party night, March type decks, like to always have in their back pocket. So like, I, I think it definitely can see more play over time, but like I, a Dialga these, the heavy Mew, like Turbo decks seems like the most logical place for it right now.
Mike:yeah.
Brit:maybe dark, like that's something I would like to try or at least something that I just like, I don't feel like I fully flushed out, um, like Turbo Gengar basically. I know that's what, like Frank Diaz played and I don't actually know how he did, but I, I was able to talk to him a little bit about it at the event at N I C it's something I worked on and just felt like I was so close felt like it felt really like almost good enough. And like maybe it, I mean, it ends up being a similar story to any of the Turbo EX I think, but just like. With the dark patch and things like that. You just have like an extra trainer that you're usually digging for. I think like compared to Pia.
Mike:yeah. I agree. Yeah. Any Turbo deck, this seems pretty good. Um, but it doesn't like the, the weakness of the Turbo deck though, generally isn't that they aren't fast enough. I mean, this does speed them up a little bit, but that really wasn't like the core issue with those decks. The core issue was if you go second and your opponents playing Paul Inteleon and they gust and kill your one dude, before you get to attack with it, you lose the game. And so. I don't know if it really addresses that issue, which yeah. So like makes the thi makes the times where you're, where you're in a good spot a little bit better, but doesn't really fix when you're in a bad spot.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Uh, versus something like rose tower, I reckon it'll, it's like it'll help sometimes. And sometimes it'll, you'll be like, oh no, that was great.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:Maybe it's a well balanced card.
Mike:yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's solid. It's not amazing, but it's not terrible. Unlike all the other trainers, which I think are pretty terrible
Brent:Yeah. Yeah, no one, no one's ever gonna wanna draw two cards and then flip a coin. Right.
Mike:yeah. Like I don't even know if these cards would be that good if they didn't have to flip a coin, like they'd be okay.
Brent:It'd be a, I mean they're yeah, they, they, yeah. They're like, I don't know, uh, uh, weird Melony
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. That one's the funniest one. It's like one Melony in the, format's just pretty much strictly worse. Um, yeah.
Brent:but yeah, making, making it super flippy is, uh, uh, just feels way too risky.
Mike:Yeah. Well, that's pretty much the set as Rick kind of pointed out earlier, there hasn't been too much impact so far on the online events. There's been a little bit of LUN rock. There's been some decks with radiant Charizard. There's been a little bit of Urshifu with radiant blasto, but doesn't seem like anything's had a huge impact, which, and I think we said this really briefly on the podcast last week. This feels like a good level power level of a set before worlds. You know, this form, the Astro radiance format was still pretty young. There's still like there's still room to explore just that format. And so introducing a whole new, big set, like another set with like Azul or an RCS would completely change things again. And it's nice that it's somewhere in between.
Brit:Yeah, we sort of, even before we started this episode, Mike, Mike and I were just like talking about Hearthstone and it kind of feels like that we're Hearthstone Hearthstone sort of model for the past couple years is like set and then a mini set. And so we're, you know, the set introduced is like a new keyword, a new mechanic, you know, maybe a new like type of cards. Like, you know, when types they're usually same as race, but they just, uh, can differ a little bit. So it's not, not quite as clear. It's just like, what kind of creature are they? And then in the, and then in the mini set, they kind of get to like fully flush that out. Like one more time, like bring in like one more layer of synergy and things like that. I actually really enjoy it as a player. I, I find that it just like, it gives you a little more time with the cards without sort of having to always like jump to the next completely new mechanic and things like that. And obviously like. Um, in terms of the sets, like there, there isn't like mechanical spill over really between this Pokegear Pokegear Pokegear go set and the normal sets, but like, it feels like that kind of same dynamic in that it's like small and it's, but good at the same time, which is also rare. Like this wouldn't be the first time of like, Pokegear, Pokegear, Pokegear doing like a special kind of mini set, but usually they're just like, kind of like collectors troves only, like there's those like team Aqua and magma ones where like the only cards that ever were good were the stadium card that just like put damage counter on things. I'm trying to think of any other examples. I think there was like a. So there was another one that I'm thinking of that I think had the, uh, Shinx Rayquaza, the like shred one that
Mike:yeah, I got dragons EX
Brit:rays. That was also mostly like a miss, but yeah, it's cool to see like a kind of, um, you know, obviously it's cross promotion kind of hyping up things and go, but it's nice to see they, they were able to do that, making some actual good cards, I think, and not just kind of like relegate it to this, just like collector's wasteland of like nothing, but just like the most vanilla, bad cards, something like that.
Mike:yeah. Agreed.
Brent:And, and it's probably good that they didn't print some like mega new archetype right before world.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Um, I feel like, I feel like we're we're I feel like they, they printed some cards that might make some of the Arceus that it fade a little bit, a little stronger, like for rapids kinda refounded that'd be nice. I like that.
Mike:I do think it's probably much better in best of three, right? Because you can just throw away one game due to the Dex clunkiness, but I don't know. We'll
Brent:Right, right. Guys. Anything else? I wanna take a moment to shout out to Parker and Nora, we super appreciate the, uh, nice tweet from, uh, Parker's family on. And hopefully you guys are enjoying the giant bags of swag.
Mike:for it. Yeah. looked like it from the picture.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that promotion seemed like it was, uh, well received. We did a good job. Um, and, uh, uh, and, and Kenny said some nice words too. Uh, big fan of, uh, Kenny saying nice things. That seems good. So Jon Pauls are outro music