Well, lucky I have been playing a bit, but I haven't been playing, you know, with the hardcore mindset. Right. But was his debate camp in person? It was, it was okay.
Brent:He was up at university of Massachusetts, Boston. Oh. So Brit, you didn't hear you, you haven't heard the story, but, but Mike and I have both heard it like secondhand now. Uh, he was at camp with a bunch of kids that went to Horus man, and they knew Mike.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:yeah. So the way, the way Liam found that out was they found out that Liam was into Pokegear because he still logged on to do the on guard tournament. Okay. The invitational or whatever. And, and they were like, oh, you're into Pokegear Pokegear do you know this guy, Mike
Mike:Fouchet? And Liam's like, oh yes, I do.
Brent:And uh, uh, uh, Brit you'll you'll laugh. The thing that apparently, I don't know how much Lele had told you besides that, Mike, but apparently what they said was the defining characteristic of, of Mike Fu she's classroom was people would walk into the class and not know who the teacher.
Mike:That's really funny. He did not tell me that. That's great. That
Brent:was, that was the story that he told me.
Mike:Yeah, that's funny. It didn't sound like, uh, any of my specific students were there, but, um, they were friends with kids that I had in class.
Brent:Exactly, exactly.
Mike:Yeah. That's pretty Fu he didn't tell me how they found out either that's even better that like, they just saw him playing Pokegear and they initiated that. Exactly. There was this deep that we know played Pokegear
Brent:yeah. Yeah. They were like, we know a guy who plays Pokegear that's he was our teacher. And like, I, I think the second you said that Liam, like Li's like, I already know who you're gonna
Mike:say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Too. Funny.
Brent:Welcome to the Trashalanche podcast. We're back. We're better than ever. Uh, vacations are in the past, except for the upcoming vacation after the Pokegear Pokegear world championship. Um, we are sponsored by channel fireball, which is secretly TCG player. We're gonna have more information about that probably soon, but TCG player, you know, it, they, uh, they're fantastic. Uh, and they're slowly taking over the world and we're participating in that. Um, I didn't even check to see if we get any new five star reviews, but you should still leave one. And then the next pod we'll cover it extensively. There's too much stuff to talk about for worlds. Uh, um, let's jump, uh, right in where, where do you wanna get us started? Brit?
Brit:I don't know. I guess I can start with some complaints, um, in that, or maybe the better way to frame it is, at least for me personally, I'm not really feeling too bad that I'm, I'm not prepping for worlds. The format, I think, is another case that we've run into before, where I do think it's a very good format. But I don't think it's fun. Um,
Mike:and yeah, I would just like, wow, would I, do I really
Brit:wanna play some RCS Inteleon Mees? Or would I do rather do almost anything else? And it's gonna be the latter, like, and you know, we've hit a lot of these points over time, but I, I feel like it is really Cobalion coalesced with that deck in conjunction with, with RCS early. So I was having a, a good conversation with, with one of my friends the other day that I'm just like, I'm ready for rotation. I don't know if I can handle another year of Inteleon like, and maybe, maybe that's scrubby like a scrubby opinion. Like I just, like, it's, it's too much. You have too much agency or, or what have you, but like in combination with RCS, it's just like boring. I think you're, you're just your whole deck is in your hand the entire time. Like, I dunno. I just think of a lot of formats where it wasn. You know, your beats are just so like telegraphed, right? Like it's just the only kind of uncertainties of playing RCS Inteleon are just like, is my hand going get disrupted or not? Um, but otherwise it's just like, oh, here's time for Cheren's I've you know, my whole deck is in my hand, I don't ever struggle. And just thinking about these other formats, where a lot of matchups were like more dynamic, you know, there's thinking on the fly and things like that. And of course that's still true, you know, I'm not trying to say that this is never the case for any of these decks, any of these matchups, but just like, I don't know. It just feels like, so a lot of the matchups just seem very solved, like it just on paper and then, because consistency is, is so. It's just like a flow chart almost. And then again, like I said before, the variables are just how the morning go. Like, things like that, you know, compared to, um, at least just talking strictly of like Inteleon versus Inteleon like things get interesting when you're playing Inteleon versus BI and so on. But yeah, I mean, at the very least I learning the in Inteleon our CS Inteleon mirror is just not fun.
Brent:It's very, yeah. I, I kind of imagined where we'd start the conversation today would be like, how different is, is world shaping up to be that different than N a or is it just gonna be like run it back? I mean, as a
Brit:average player, I, I suspect that. Isaiah Jon Raul. I suspect that group is probably has some spice, like whether it's just two cards versus an entire deck. Like the, the former seems certainly much more likely. Um, but yeah, like I, I always cash my opinions and, and sort of ending and just like, but I'm not very good. So I have faith in the better players, but, um, but for, for the most part, yeah, I don't think so. Like, it doesn't seem like we've had, uh, the go set long enough now that, um,
Mike:I mean, maybe we're looking
Brit:YouTube, but like, doesn't seem like it's really done anything. It's just like char art is an interesting factor and that's about it, I think.
Mike:Yeah. And in with Charizard, I feel like I've seen a handful of similar tweets from different people about Charizard saying something to the effect of. Am I not playing Charizard, right? Or is it just mediocre? Um, and I think that's kind of the sentiment of a lot of people that have tried the very strict Charizard based decks. I know I've played around with it quite a bit, and I often find myself not being able to win games for this reason or that reason. And I kind of have the same question I'm like, is my list. Does my list just need to be a little bit better? Or is it, or does it just not be, does it not matter like, as chars are just never going to be at the same level as some of these other decks and if that's the biggest inclusion from the set? Well, then I, I would kind of go back to your question Brent and say worlds will probably be very similar to the NAIC Meta. Um, the inclusion of the Mewtwo union as a known quantity could make things different, but I don't know. If it'll make things different so much in terms of the decks as it will just kind of, and Brit what you said was perfect. Like maybe just changing a few cards and being more intentional about being able to beat YouTube, not YouTube. VStar
Brent:yeah. I see this like RCS and I, I feel like, oh, somebody wanted to, uh, to like win the RCS mirror, I guess. But like, I don't know that that's some super, is that the next super deck? Hard to imagine?
Mike:It seems pretty good. I haven't tried it myself, but I've seen it. Yeah. I've seen it be played in much more increasing quantity. It has some cool aspects of the YouTube union stall deck, right. In that you can just chill for a while and maybe like, if you're playing aggress, it. Did you, do you guys remember the match, the finals match of Azul versus Pratt at our regionals? Um, Azul was playing lyo Garb and PRM was playing Zoroark rock, I think. And Azul ended up winning Azul. One of them ended up winning the game. I don't remember who One of them ended up winning the game by constantly Guzma something up and stalling and winning the game. But it only got to that point because the other person, cuz that person kind of like ran them out of resources essentially. Um, and I feel like that is kind of how the. RCS deck can play, but it's doing it a little bit more intentionally, right? In, in that it has this secondary game plan that it should always kind of keep in mind. It shouldn't be its primary game plan. Um, but it can kind of fall back into healing, a ton, a ton, a ton, and just, uh, kind of play in the war of attrition, which is pretty cool. The other, the thing that I really think is cool about the deck is that it always starts RCS. Right. Um, cuz it does play any other basics, so that's pretty sweet. Now the downside is I have played against it and they've Mulligan like 12 times yeah.
Brent:Yeah. You definitely see the like people posting screenshots of like 20 mulligans, like uh, completely insane.
Mike:Have you guys seen, speaking of RCS Inteleon um, have you guys seen Natalie's new article that came out yesterday? I think.
Brent:I saw that it came out, but I hadn't read it yet. It was
Mike:the high points. So, so I'm in, I'm kind of interested in her list. It's kind of a callback to the OG Arceus Inteleon list that ran Zigzagoon. So it runs a choice belt, a Zigzagoon to be a little bit more aggressive. It plays a quick shoot, but the bigger consistency bump that I, that she talks about a lot in the article is she runs for capture energy. And so that's a way to smooth out your starts and Brit, I agree with everything you were saying before about Arceus Italian kind, you have access to pretty much everything are at the game. The games are very roadmap for you. There's not like there's decisions, but there's not interesting decisions to make. Um, But the one way that Arceus Inteleon can lose pretty easily is if it, you know, has a very slow start, basically, if it doesn't start with Arceus plus energy, it can be a little rough. And so I think the four capture energy was a, a vehicle to try to remedy that it gives you the energy and it gives you an extra basic, which seems kind of cool. I don't know if the aggressive strategy is just okay right now, because it's just different than what the norm is. Or if the double Cheren's double big charm is better, cuz she only plays one big charm, one Cheren's she had to, you know, cut some stuff to fit the more aggressive things. But I also wouldn't be surprised if that kind of becomes a popular choice going into world as well as a slight variation from what has become such a. Such a homogeneous list. Um, it's funny. I was thinking about this the other day. Arceus Inteleon in the last format had much more variety than it does now. Right? It had, there was the B drill. There was the dark package. There was the straight water package, which is pretty much all that we see now. Um, it's really interesting that we got a new set with more cards and the variations on this deck basically went away.
Brent:Did you see, uh, um, just, uh, in like the last hour grant manly posted his list from, uh, the Carolina series.
Mike:It's it's chars our deck, right?
Brent:Uh, yeah. Well, it's it runs radiant. Charizards if that's the definition of chars our deck, then it is a Charr deck.
Mike:Okay. Oh, interesting. Okay. So he has. In there as well. So it's like an Inteleon online with Viv and
Brent:then, and then he doesn't have the cards, uh, display, but he has a slow poke and a slow bro.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's got Glar Z and the, I don't know if like the row bird keep package makes that much sense. I've mostly played with Ida in this, uh, type of deck and you, it is really, really good.
Brent:Right, right. You're you're just grabbing, uh, Inteleon pieces and then getting whatever card you want plus getting another card. Yeah.
Mike:Uh, it
Brent:seems
Mike:like it'd be really good. Yeah. I don't really know why, like doesn't, I mean, I guess like, you're just trying to keep up with the prize race against Pia and arche. So you're just playing rally to kill Azul. I maybe I'll give it a, give it a shot. Seems cool.
Brent:I feel like the, I mean, the interesting challenge when it comes to all of this, uh, um, Paia stuff is just like, Paia is super good. Like it's really, really like it trades even a deck like this. I look at it and I think I suspect the trades really well with
Mike:it. Yeah. It's really easy to attack with Inteleon if you kill the Manaphy and you end up getting a Gria double knockout at some point, it's really hard to deal with. Yeah. That's actually been the problem. The biggest problem with the charar decks is that I feel like you lose to Paia more often than you beat it.
Brent:Yeah. Like, like, so yeah. I guess he's running double choice belt. Yeah. To try to get like a radiant Charizard KO on a Paia, but like how many of those are you gonna get, man? Yeah.
Mike:and cuz like the big thing is that you just, at some point you get Roxanne passed against both RCS and Pia and then. You have to recover from that. So I guess the BI is there for that, but you like need to recover from that immediately. Pretty much. Um, the slow bro in, in theory helps with that. You don't need that much to then pull out a slow bro. But if you get Roxanne path and you have three prizes, I dunno. It's just, it's, it's still awkward. I don't know, but I'll give it a shot.
Brent:Yeah. I, I, you know, obviously the, the best thing you can say about it is obviously grant got a really good result with a like deck we haven't seen before.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Go
Mike:grant. I would be surprised if this is a deck that grant really wants to play at worlds. Agree. I feel like he'd probably not play the deck. He's most interested in playing at worlds, even though this is like, you know, it. They're it's like their championship of the North Carolina series, like cool event, whatnot, but he's not gonna play his world play. Yes. This is spicy,
Brent:but this is not the spice.
Mike:Another deck that's been pretty successful recently and the online tournaments has been ice Rider with one, one, Pia and Inteleon. So it's kind of a spinoff of Frank's ice Rider, Pia deck, and kind of like cut a little bit of Pia, edit Inteleon back in. I don't know. It doesn't actually seem that much different than the old ice Rider deck. So I feel like it's not actually gonna be that impactful for worlds, but. It's better than people thought, I guess.
Brent:Uh, you know, obviously what's weird that that was actually the deck I thought of when Brit was saying, people just tweet out these like totally binary opinions on decks.
Mike:it's either
Brit:I wasn't talking about Jon. He was he's clear. It's like these other it's like, uh, Chris Franco, I just, like you just said this, the stick was the worst deck of all time. And then your friend you'd hyping up your friend who just got second place with it in a tournament. Like I'm so confused.
Brent:You know, Chris Franco's Twitter game ever since he spent like the entire OC New Jersey, like sitting on the front steps of that tournament tweeting because he couldn't get into the building. He's just been on an absolute Twitter fire. Amazing. I think, I think he like turned all of his energy into winning Twitter and, and has kind of tried to keep it going ever since. It's pretty impressive guys, there other stuff that we should talk about.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I mean, the other, one of the other points I had put in the
Mike:agenda is like,
Brit:I don't know. Like, I, I feel like, I guess I don't have a great sense of this, but if I had to take a step at it, my sense is that RCS Inteleon is the best deck and that it's expected to have a good Pia matchup. Um, but you know, obviously we, we didn't see our CS. Inteleon when a, I Azul won with the toolbox version. And so that's sort of, that's the main sort of quandary I have for the format right now is it's just like, when do you pull the trigger on, you know, your VMax is, and when are you just playing the straight version and. What, what are you looking to see versus like the other ones? And so, like, I would think that naturally that RCS Inteleon has a good matchup against Azul RCS. Um, and so does that make Azul deck a bad play or does it sort of go in the other direction that people are coming to beat RCS Inteleon and so these tool decks are maybe a little bit better. Like, I don't know. Like I think like Gigis probably has a fine, um, RCS matchup, like RCS Inteleon like, I can't imagine like GI has like a, you know, consistency issue at the end of the day. I think it has pretty good matchups across the board when it runs well.
Mike:So that, that matchup is a hundred percent predicated on if they run dun sparse or. And a lot of, a lot of the lists have been cutting. Dun sparse been cutting. Manaphy like if they don't play Dunbars it's good for Reggie. If they do play dun sparse, it's like unwinnable for Reggie
Brit:well, do they always play? I mean, can't they just kill the dun sparse, like do they, they don't always play. I can't imagine they were also still playing
Mike:Manaphy that's a good the, yeah. Yeah. Right, right. So if they, if they play DUNS spars, and Manaphy, it's very bad if they
Brent:play.
Mike:Right, right, right. If they play dun spars, no, Manaphy, it's pretty close. And if they don't play either, then it's pretty good for Reggie. I think that's pretty much how it goes.
Brent:Mm-hmm I feel like there's a lot of these matchups where if you're playing an RCS stack and you don't have a plan to get back the Manaphy, if they kill it, it's like problematic. Right? Like you, you know, if you, if you don't have a plan to recover your done spars or recover, your Manaphy, like everybody's got some sort of plan there because yeah. It's just like. Uh, such
Mike:a thing, you know? Yeah. I mean, every, every Arceus Inteleon deck plays a rod, some play too rod, but everyone plays one rod. The other thing about the
Brent:they're they're worried of running into like gringo plays versus Pia stuff like that. Like, you feel like there's so much pressure to run Manaphy and have a way to recover
Mike:Manaphy yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, the one thing that Arceus Italian can do against Reggie, if they play dun spars, but no Manaphy is they can big charm it and then Cheren's Care. It uh, which is, but if you're Cheren's Care in the dun sparse, then you're not Cheren's Care in the Arceus and then you kill the Arceus and yeah. So I dunno, but it does become more interesting, but a lot of the list have been cutting both of those cards and for good reason, there's not like a whole lot, like Reggie's not popular Urshifu it had its kind of like little popularity spree when. Jake Earhart was playing the blast ice version, but then that didn't really pan apps. There's no, Urshifu, there's no, Reggie glaring appose is very few and far between. I wouldn't be surprised though, if PE people that are playing in worlds do play those cards just because, you know, um, because they want to have some of their basis covered and there's not a huge cost to playing dun spars and Manaphy in your deck. Um, but Manaphy is also not that good against Pia because you keep your bench solo anyway. Um, so I would probably, if, if it was me and I, I would probably cut Manaphy before I cut dun sparse, like dun sparse feels like a little bit safer. It covers more bases. I feel like, um, than, than man if he does.
Brent:Right. I mean, I think part of the beauty of showing up with ion particularly like day one is you're like, well, I don't wanna lose the JNK stuff. Right. Yeah. And like playing, playing, uh, dun sparse is part of don't lose the J stuff, right?
Mike:Yeah, exactly. That, that's a really good point. Like that's the reason you would play that deck is you're like, I just wanna have 50 fifties across the board at least. Right. And it doesn't matter what I'm playing against. I could beat anything because I'm the most consistent deck that can do exactly what I want every single game. Right. Um, you wanna talk about Dialga a little bit? Yeah.
Brit:Talk about Dialga I think, yeah.
Brent:I, I, I want, I wanna talk about Dialga and I also wanna talk about like, uh, um, uh, a little bit of your take on the day, one versus day two plays and how you think that, that those, those, like, opinions might be different.
Mike:Right. Okay. Yeah. Good. So that'll be a good segue. So. Yeah, I played, I had some time this weekend, so I played in a couple of online events. Shuffle squad had their tournament where they invited all the top players from the world. Uh, not that many showed up. That's a whole nother can of worms that I don't wanna get into. But the day, the night before they had kind like a day one or a grinder for that LCQ. Yeah. And so I played in that and I got top eight. It was actually kind of funny. Um, it was eight rounds and I won the first six and then we wanted to go out and that night. And so I went to, uh, hang out with Kelly and Kelly's friends. And so the seventh round comes up and I'm planning a, the Blissey with a Miltank. So I was just like, ah, I can't win I'll scoop. And then. The eighth round, I just IDD, which cuz you know, they, we were both guaranteed top eight, but it was just really funny. Like if they, if he wanted to play, I just would've lost and not made it anyway. Um, but so I played Dialga because it's the deck that I think is really fun. I find it really fun to play that deck it's EX EX EX extreme. I've always really enjoyed combo decks, both in both in Pokegear and in Hearthstone, like, um, you know, way back in the day, like 2005 worlds, I played the electrode EX dark Tyranitar. Um, you know, I helped, I don't know, I've just always really enjoyed combo decks. So, uh, this is like the combo deck. I feel like of the format where it's just all about your first and second turn and your sequencing and making sure that you're playing your cards in the order that maximizes the chance of you getting. What you need to do. Um, but the cool thing about KO EX also that I really like is you have this game plan, but you also have to know when to deviate from your game plan or do something slightly different. Um, and I think that's really interesting and I made some really cool plays over these two tournaments that I think people didn't really expect. And so that's, that's kind of like my rational for why I want, why I've enjoyed playing a and why icontinue to, to play with it. Um, and so I tweaked the list a little bit from our N a I C testing. Uh, I, if, if you remember Xander and I had talked a little bit about the whole bird keep Starly package and the Starly and the Path to the Peak and the Roxanne were there. If you go second against Mew and Paia, and I was just. Let's get rid of all that. And let's just go first. again, that seems like a much better plan. Um, and so I kind of just played a bunch better cards, made it a little bit more consistent in the Turbo nest. I kept the bird keepers though. Bird keepers are really good just to act as a draw card, but also it reset Zacian if you need to attack with Zacian, it gets you extra, uh, pros on different muse. Um, you know, sometimes you start a dag or Zacian and that sucks and gives you an app for that. So, uh, the bird keep stayed over Avery and I don't know everything else is pretty, pretty standard. Uh, I have made some changes since the two tournaments this weekend. I think the two most cuttable cards were the big charm and the third bird keep. So I'm kind of playing around with those spots. Uh, right now I'm trying two Pokegear which seem okay, because then you can help you find a supporter seems pretty good. Um, but. I mean, there's nothing too notable in any of my games. I beat P every time I played against it, because I went first. And again, if you go first and you get, uh, even if like, even if they have a great start, the best start that they can have basically is setting up a board of two Pia, two or three BLE, and a Gria like, that is their ideal board. But if you go first and you get boss, VStar Pia and then boss KO and other Pia, you just win the game immediately. And I did that a couple times played against Lele in, uh, in like the winning in for one of the tournaments. And I did that to him. uh, and that was kind of funny. Um, so I ended up losing in the other tournament that I played into Pia ice Rider BI, um, cross switcher is just still really annoying to deal with. Uh, if you, you know, if you with. Or if they go first, it's really hard to deal with. So, um, but yeah, I mean, I think the deck is pretty strong overall, like going, going first, you're just pretty favored against most things. Uh, even going second against most arche decks, you're still pretty good because they can't, they can't one shot you, even if they boss and hit your Dialga. So if that happens, what you usually do is ideally you'll boss a basic RCS and VStar it and KO it. And then boss the RCS VStar back up and then one shot it and then you're still kind of in the same spot you would've been. And then you can, if they do end up KO, oftentimes if you do that, then they can't even deal with the initial Dialga VStar that you had. And then you'll just win the game. Uh, but even if they do, you can usually set up a Zacian to win the game. And echoing horn actually might be pretty good in the deck as well. Um, to kind of like. Take your last, uh, two prizes at some point. Um, so yeah, and, uh, I can kind of like segue that into like day one versus day two. I am quite interested in dialog. If I was playing in day one, I would be much more interested in Dialga than if I was just playing day two. Um, I think some of the characteristics of decks that can be quite successful in day one are decks that don't tie don't have to worry about tying at all. Um, and Dialga is not gonna tie, like you're not Inteleon deck. You have one or two really long turns. And then every turn is very quick after that. Um, the games are short, even if you, even if you don't win a game, the game is gonna be short because you're going to know on turn three. You know, you're, you're just not gonna get there or, you know, your opponents playing Paia and they go first and they get the cross switcher, turn two on your Dialga. You can just scoop it up, go to the next game. It's fine. Doesn't matter. Um, I think stall decks control decks are significantly weaker on day one. They have not had a very good track record of success because they're so prone to tying their game plan is basically win game one. And then hope game two does not finish, which is a fine strategy, but you're not gonna win game one all the time. Uh, so I don't think there's gonna be that much Miltank so I think you can basically not play Miltank counters. Like you could play one in Dialga, but it just makes the deck worse. Um, so I think that Dialga has that going for it. Uh, and being able to just take two losses is also good. Like a deck, like Dialga, as I said, if you go first, you're incredibly favored. And you're not gonna go first every time, but you kind of play the odds a little bit. You go first more than you go second. You're gonna win more games than you lose. And hopefully you only go second two times and lose those. And like, you have to go second and your opponent has to have really good turn ones. Um, so I don't know. All of those things leads me to believe that Dialga could be a pretty good play day one. I don't do. I think it's like the absolute best play, probably not, but I just think it's, uh, it, it hasn't been talked about that much and I think it's a pretty good deck.
Brent:Uh, you know, I think in, in the same vein, I, I should ask you guys about a couple of other decks that I feel like are like objectively good decks that people aren't talking about. Uh, uh, Brit you mentioned like flying Pikachu mean is that are, are tons of people gonna play that or is everyone gonna just play vanilla RC, Centennial.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I mean, I don't know why you would really play, I mean, I guess to answer my own question, like they have such similar matchups, the things that the Pikachu is good against, like just aren't relevant currently. And like, so that's the thing that, I mean, the Pikachu is still good, you know, is also good against Pia, but it just doesn't seem as reliable as like the Inteleon stuff does. And just kind of playing the defensive game rather than like an offensive one. You can just like, you know, if they kill the Pikachu early or something like that, you, you're probably just in a really bad spot. Cause you don't, you, I can't remember list off the top of my head, but I would wager you, you don't play as many Cheren's Care. And like some people even play two P pad, like specifically for the mirror. Um, naturally you can't keep up with that stuff.
Brent:Yeah. Uh, uh, so on a related note, uh Blissey uh, will people play bliss.
Mike:So I think Blissey fits a lot of the same things that I was just saying about Dialga as well. You know, it's, it's an aggressive deck. It's pretty fast. It's not going to tie very often. Um,
Brent:right. It was objectively tier one, like the day before an AIC right,
Mike:right. Um, people are not really playing Stary. Right. Like, and that was, I think, a big, no one's playing Stary right. Yeah. And I think that was a big reason why we talked about this. I think like, it wasn't that it didn't do that good at NA I C because people played Stary and people played less Blissey because they were scared of Stary is just completely gone right now. So I dunno. Yeah. I think listy could be okay.
Brent:Duraludon
Mike:I think that sucks still. All right. And I suppose
Brent:I should ask, will, will people play Luna tone or, or is that, is that me? I'm just dead.
Brit:No, it's like, doesn't even exist anymore. Like, people aren't even talking about it. I don't think like it's it had its moment it's except we've moved
Mike:on. Yeah. I think any world's caliber player will not do that.
Brent:Yeah, no. Nobody wants to put their, their, uh, fate in the hands of that deck. Right.
Mike:Yeah. And that's kind of how I feel about, um, DRA on too. There will be a couple people that PlayOn, but it's such a, it like much more so than any other deck in the format. It's like, what do I draw? What did I draw off from my turn? Like, did I, did I hit the double Turbo energy? Hyper potion off my research? Oh no, I didn't. Okay. I lose immediately.
Brent:right, right. Well, you know, I mean, like I recognize, uh, um, I mean, you know, there's a collection of players that are well known for like, when they tweet they're lost, they're like, you know, terrible hands, blah, blah. They never got to play the game. But like people that play that they don't get to complain cuz they knew what they're getting into. Right. Yeah. Right, right. The RCS Inteleon players, you're like, oh yeah, they must have had drawn really bad hands to somehow uh, uh, lose because like they can never just objectively lose. Yeah. The deck's too
Mike:good. Yeah. The thing that's interesting about worlds is that everyone's good. So there's not that many people playing like these random, like tier two or tier three decks because like why they're kinda like, I, you know, I just should play the best decks on the flip side of that though, is that everyone's also trying to beat the best decks. So you will play against. Random janky EX decks that are like designed to beat the top decks. But like, I feel like something like Luton, so rock Archean, like those are just like not great decks and no good player wants to play them. Brit you're cracking up. Why are you 11? Oh,
Brit:I, I just had a, a, a reaction to every everyone at worlds is good. I'm sorry. I was just like, I don't think that's true.
Mike:okay. Well, I'll rephrase that. The percentage of good players is much higher than at oh yes. It's
Brit:like a regional and the highest, the highest possible to be sure. Yeah. Right, right.
Mike:There you go.
Brent:so, so this, this actually is, is a great segue into the other question I wanted to ask you, which is like, uh, you've talked a little about day one strategies on, uh, lake of rage pod, but. Uh, do you guys have any thoughts on what people should think if, uh, they're playing in the London open? I mean, there's gonna be a lot of people playing in the London open, right? Mm-hmm and most of those people will have done not as well at worlds as they wanted to.
Mike:I wouldn't say most people though. I think most of the London open will be totally non world competitors.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's true. I mean, obviously, uh, like 60 to 80 to 85% of like day one competitors, plus 90% of day two competitors. Right. Plus, you know, 70% of the London open people that are like just people showing up to play in our regionals.
Mike:Right.
Brent:Uh, um, but. Will will those people just play whatever the craziest pict thing that's gonna be in, like the asymmetric cut that's going on concurrently to that is, or like, will they play the deck that they've been testing? Will we see like an explosion of Luna?
Mike:No, I wouldn't be surprised if, sorry. Uh, I wouldn't be surprised if there's like Luna tone in that tournament. Cuz there are people that are just gonna show up with whatever deck they're gonna play anyway. Um, yeah, but I think there'll be a good mix
Brit:for the London open. I would, I would say it would probably be like fairly reactionary. Like if there's anything spicy. In day one or day two, like it'll be overplayed. I think like, I, I wouldn't say it was overplayed, but I remember 2018 was like that, like Rayquaza was kind of a big deck. Like, you know, we got top four in the main event, but it like, it wasn't a lot of people's radar, but then it did, it did quite well in the open sort of following that, like seeing, oh, it's a real deck. We can, we can play this now and things like that. Um, yeah. I mean, differences, obviously some differences between like day one and day two, I would just say, you know, as some like personal experience, like I really like be, be willing to switch decks. I think cuz I like the, the one year I had to play day one and made it through, I was just like so tired and just like changed one card. And I, I really just sort of like, not a lot, like I don't Lele, I don't lie awake at night thinking about this, but like kind of kicked myself just like, I think if I had made a couple more choices, um, I might've made top eight. Like that was the world that came really close. And I think if I had just like, thought about it for 10 more seconds and realized I should've teched a little more for Greninja like, maybe would've been it. So yeah, on that note, like, don't get too locked into your choice. Like it could still be the right play, like the same 60, for sure. But just scrutinize, be a little critical and just like be open to something else potentially. And I guess, you know, all that to say, be practicing multiple decks too, potentially. Cuz like, I don't know, like I, I think there's there's fringe decks. Like, I mean we, we, we saw it in Milwaukee, like the right Meta games can yield a Blissey Dout on finals again. Um, so you always, you always gotta sort of just be thinking a step or two ahead.
Brent:Anything else?
Brit:I do. I, I thought of something in the meantime, and this is something I, I think it was actually like one of the very first six prizes articles that I wrote. Um, and not, not to say that people are actively trying to be disprove it, but I haven't really found good reasoning for it either. And anyways, in that article, I like wrote about sort of this notion that I think that all players want to win. Um, and I think that's regardless of if you're competitive or not. And so I just sort of have beef with this, just like some people just want to play, you know, fund EX we shouldn't be mean, you know, I think this was sort of, this was sort of reactionary to Jon Eng saying that, uh, KO ice Rider is bad and it was just like, ah, no, we should be nice. And like, you know, obviously that's true, but like the people playing the fund EX don't want to lose like true. So like, it's like, there's nothing more
Brent:fun than winning.
Brit:It's so, so, so more often than not, it just creates these scenario, these sort of psychological, like it's psychologically manipulate manipulative in the sense that you just can't lose. Right. I was like, oh, I'm playing, I'm playing a fun deck. Oh, I did bad. You know what expect I'm playing a fun deck. But if I did well, look at me, I'm doing well with the fund deck. And, you know, it's the same thing for people who are just like, oh, I'm bombed a tournament again. That's what I get for switching decks at the, you know, at 4:00 AM again, contrastingly like, look at how great of a player I am. I switched decks to 4:00 AM. It's going well. And so I just, all that to say that like, whether you're playing for fun or not, like, I don't think that really changes, um, any part of the narrative. And so it's just so, so like defeatist or. Just just plain manipulative, I think, to just be like, oh, the fun people are just playing for fun. Like, I don't think that's true. Like they want to win, you know, perhaps not to the same degree, but I think like inherently you don't, you don't want to lose regardless of sort of where you're coming at the game from.
Brent:Yeah. You, you could be, uh, saying, well, I'm, I'm happier going, oh seven playing the deck that I wanted to play versus the oh seven. I would've gone playing like tier one deck, but like what really make you happy is being like seven and oh, right.
Brit:Right. Yeah, I guess, I guess, I guess I'm what, I'm, what I'm harping on is just people are just lying basically. Like it's just, you know, creating these, these, these, these situations where you can't lose. And that's just like, not being honest with yourself, I don't think. And it's just like, ah, you can, you can play, you can play for fun and play to win at the same time. They're not, they're not mutually exclusive. And that also, that, that comes up a lot of the times too, when people, you know, you have that certain like class or archetype of players that are just like shaking their fist at the, at the good cards all day long, just being like those cards are too good. It's not fun. I will only play the bad cards like, but you would want to win with the bad cards. Like in theory you, again, you don't play these games with the intention to lose, regardless of where you're coming from. You might expect to lose, but that's different than having
Mike:intent. Right. Right. I think that's a really good point. Like expectation versus intent. Yeah. Yeah.
Brent:I, I, I, uh, uh, was I completely unoffended by John's tweet and like, I take offense a lot of John's tweet. I mean, I
Brit:don't think people, people are, were like any, if, if any of that stuff truly was reactionary, like, like I'm saying, you just need to get with the times, this is how kids talk. Like they're not trying to be mean spirited or anything. Like, I mean, maybe they are, but you know, inherently a lot of, you know, we're usually doing things like that. We're so driven by competition and perfunctory identity. And so
Brent:Actually, the one other thing we could talk about really quickly is obviously they announced all the casters today for worlds. There is an army of casters. I really think people who watch the stream are in for a show. Yeah. Like it seems like they have a plans to do like more analysts, more post game interviews, more like, you know, like, uh, uh, like detail coverage besides just the, like watching the games. And there plans to do some sort of like weird asymmetric cut day three, like there's gonna be more rounds to watch from top players. Like there's a lot of stuff going
Mike:on. Yeah. Okay. I just counted. So there's 27 casters. Uh, one of them is Anna Proser, who I guess is just like the MC for the event. Um, and so this, this includes BGC, TCG unite, and. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, and so I think I counted six TCG people. Yeah. We got Ross and Joe from Europe, we have Pika and Hester and then we got boo and, uh, Adam Watson scars. Zacian okay. Yeah.
Brent:Right. So like six casters. That's a lot of coverage.
Brit:Couldn't tell that's a lot. Like, it looked like a, like an eSports event, the way they like announced, you know, their huge cast for like a whole variety of games, you know? Great to see Puca.
Mike:Pokegear Pokegear unite. Oh, he's a unite. I got
Brit:it. Yeah. I'm probably seeing it like secondhand, if you follow Kirk or something like that, like retweets or something, you might just see the
Mike:name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, Kirk being on there is really cool as a, you know, as not TCG commentator as a unite commentator. I know he is been doing a lot over the last couple years, but it's still really cool to, uh, see that transition. It's pretty sweet.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. So it just seems, it seems like, uh, uh, I mean maybe, maybe it's always been like this and I haven't noticed, but it's just an army of people. Like they're really bringing, uh, a lot of manpower to bear, to make sure that the tournament is absolutely awesome. So I'm expecting a topnotch stream experience that will absolutely below the doors off people's, uh, uh,
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pumped. I'm pumped to be able to, even though I won't be there, I'm pumped to be able to experience it that way.
Brent:And you guys could still opt to like, go do the London open in the last minute.
Brit:I mean, I've thought about it. Andy gray messages. Me about flights very consistently. I just like, uh
Brent:is Andy gray, like the secret flight machine? Does he have like all the sneaky tricks?
Brit:No, he just, I would say he just loves planes, loves to travel. Works, works, works on airlines is just his, his, his passion in life. Um, yeah, I don't think he has any like secrets that aren't sort of common knowledge. Um, but he's always doing goofy stuff. Like. You know, flying standby everywhere and things like that. It's like, that's not for me.
Brent:you're, you're willingness to just hang around in an airport for like six hours.
Brit:Nah, not so much. I remember it, I guess back back on the conversation of Hawaii that Jim and Grafton role, cuz they, that was they Jim qualified for world state year in masters, which was really cool. I think Grafton was still a junior even, or maybe he had just aged up. They got all the way to Hawaii on standby and it was just the craziest thing. I think I've seen people do. You've got the patience. You definitely it's definitely like, I think probably a little more realistic than a lot of people think, but it's just patience more than anything.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. That would stress me out too much, man.
Brit:That's what I mean. I get stressed out on, on what I have booked that could all just be canceled on a dime.
Brent:Insane. All right. The Jon Pauls are our outro. It's great to be back guys. Yeah, that was a
Mike:good one. All right, cool.