Welcome to, uh, the Trashalanche, uh, podcast. Uh, it's the part I do best the introduction, my big contribution to the pod attendance as always is a hundred percent we're on Twitter. Mike Fouchet Hayes wise be bhalliburton. You can follow us and, and get tweets that are just like listening to a podcast except in 140 characters and written down. We're sponsored by channel fireball, which is now part of TCG player. TCG player is. Where I buy all my cards. So it's super awesome to be sponsored by them. Really excited to, uh, if you go and spend some money there and use the code track. Oh, I don't think we have a TG player code yet. We should get one.
Mike:Oh, yeah, we should.
Brent:I gotta work on that. Yeah. Cuz that would be, that would be good. And they would see such an impact cuz I spent some money on, uh, TCG player. Five star review update. I, I have a new laptop. As many people know I have a new job, so I don't think I have the review thing completely on point, but I don't think anyone's left a new review. If you leave a review, we will read it on the pod and discuss it. It's a great way for you to get involved. And as, uh, every other podcast always says, apparently it helps people find the pod, which we much appreciate. Um, August 5th was our second anniversary guys. We're at nearly a hundred episode. I keep a little note in my calendar to remind me, uh, very impressive. We keep showing up.
Brit:years. Wow.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:Yeah, right. That is crazy. Um, All right. Let's, let's jump in. I think the most exciting thing about our second anniversary is it's the first time we're about to have a world championship at Pokegear in the history of the pod. Yeah. We will have a pod next week. It will be awesome. Um, we'll crank it out Monday night before I get on a plane to, uh, London, but, uh, a good stuff happening. So here's, what's going on with my family. Walker has signed up for the London. So he has geared up to play his first Pokegear in, uh, uh, since the pandemic started, um, I told him, uh, before he could practice for the grand finals of Fortnite, had to put in an hour, either reading a book, like a normal human being does or playing some Pokegear. And, and he was like, well, of course I'm gonna play Pokegear Pokegear then I guess. And. He was like, what should I play for our worlds? And I was like, you should definitely play Paia
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:But, but the problem is we don't have PAs in our PTC G account because as you guys know, it just takes a lot of, so, so he sat down and I was like, fine, play this like RCS Inteleon list. And he played like five games, but I think our account was like really far down on the ladder. He, but, so, so he like five, oh, he won all his games, but he was like, Arceus, Inteleon seems completely insane. as, as somebody who hasn't like touched the power creep for three years, he's like, how does this deck ever lose? How does it ever lose? It doesn't seem like it would ever lose. I'm totally playing this. It's too good.
Mike:That's funny. Yeah. I mean, it's super consistent. Hit hard.
Brent:exactly. I mean, I think we've discussed before, but one of the tricks with Walker when he was a junior and we were deck building is like, what we would do is we would build the optimal list and then we would go back and cut the 59th and 60th card and just put in two more supporters because he was like, If I lose and they like, they beat me, that's fine. But if I lose and I never got to play the game, then like a terrible thing has happened an affront to all justice. And he would rather like play the game. I mean, Mike, you helped build his, uh, uh, regardless Zekrom Garb list at, uh, uh, when he got forth at worlds, like he's, it was always more focused on like consistency and setting up and getting the chance to play the game than like teching for different matchups and trying to do wonky. Um, so yeah, so he plays Arceus Italian and he is like, oh my God, how does this deck ever lose? You? Never not. You never don't get to play the game.
Mike:Yep. It's true. I mean, Pia is, so it's funny that you say that about, um, not having pals on PT CGO, cuz I also had not had them for a long time. Um, I had gotten a two, two line to play around with the ice Rider, Pia deck, uh, maybe like right after N a I C, but then I finally caved and. more packs so I could get the extra one, one pakia. And so I, most of what I played this past week was Pia for the first time. And I probably played like 30 or 40 games this week with it. Um, it is also extremely consistent.
Brent:Yeah. Uh, um, yeah, I mean, my reaction, like obviously the only reason I didn't set'em on the PA path is cuz we didn't have Paia, but like at Paia
Mike:yep. It's really good.
Brent:fine. Right? Yeah. Like obviously if he had played those at like bottom of ladder in PTC, G he would've said, how does Pia ever lose broken? Right. Um,
Mike:Okay, so Walker's, so Walker's playing London open. What else are you guys gonna do while you're there?
Brent:Um, me mad. So where we get in Wednesday at like noon. Cause we have a stopover in Reiki, Vic, because we're taking Iceland air because our plan is Sunday afternoon to fly from London to Iceland, and then we're gonna spend six days, uh, a touring, whatever Iceland is, but it should be awesome. Uh, Iceland seems like it's awesome. Let's see the, the thing that Liam's been doing, because we don't have PAs and testing against Paia is like an important part. Oh. And his friend, Caden Hyatt also does not have PAs online. And he played Paia at Milwaukee and N AIC, um, uh, and, and day two with Paia at N AIC. So I, I think, and, you know, testing Pia, it's a thing you should do if you're preparing for the world championship of. That's hot tip of the pod people match up. So, so they've been doing, um, uh, like testing with real cards on camera. So Liam's complaint to me today was, um, we don't have enough cards for me to like, have like 15 real decks. So I'm having to make so many proxies and I'm like, so the really good news as a parent is I didn't build 15 decks guys that that's like a first. The the bad news
Mike:as he gets older, you gotta put more and more responsibility on him.
Brent:yeah. Yeah. So he like, and then, and then I turned it around and I was like, the reason we don't have more than four Path to the Peak is because you were in charge of buying cards. You didn't buy more than four. So there you go.
Mike:Mm-hmm
Brent:Um, uh, so, so like, and he kind of took that and ran with it. So on the one hand it's way too late to order cards. You know, I have successfully parented my child into like masters. He'll be in his first master tournament in the London open, unless like really good things happen, uh, uh, you know, a week and a half from now. So like, that'd be awesome.
Mike:I thought you were going, you were going, uh, where you were going with that story was that he ended up buying like$500 worth of cards on TCG player.
Brent:I mean, I mean, we, we did that previously, but yeah, like he recognized this. As, as you guys know, uh, uh, it would be a worse practice to order a whole bunch of cards on TCG player right now. And think that it's gonna work, its work its way out before we have to leave. I think the one guarantee would be they would all show up in our mailbox like the day after we leave.
Mike:That's true. Yeah. Brit, you're the type of person that brings like everything. Right?
Brit:I mean, I was gonna joke, like, what are you gonna do if you need a new B union and you're across the pond without it.
Brent:exactly right. And, and like, when we didn't have one, I was like, oh my God, that's a big problem. And, and I recognize now, You see all these like online. I mean, I wanna say Mees, although I guess people kind of think they're doing a thing like Greninja union. We don't have that. What Greninja union, we're not getting that, but you know, I guess some people play it. If it turned out that was the spice, we're just in trouble.
Brit:I think, I think the nail in the head in this conversation is just like, maybe not the Cardpool per se, but like it's not, I don't think you would re there's really not too many decks. You know, again, what so much of it at the very least is like the same core, you know, RCS, this RCS that has. Probably more than 20 or 30 cards that are the same. So like you, you can bring multiple decks, um, and, and less, less cards. And then Pia too. Like, it just doesn't seem like, um, really only really any other archetypes are sort of floating around. Like it does seem to like a lot, a lot of people seem pretty quiet right now, or at least they're going into the, the lab for the one last time before. Traveling, things like that. So like, again, I'm, I won't be surprised. Um, if I'm surprised, I guess. Um, but yeah, I mean, even too sort of to touch on like, not being able to understand what the kids are saying on Twitter, it's just like our season Italian's bad. No PKI is bad. Like it's both just these, like, they're both unplayable, like both, both sides, just think very strongly of the matchup. Um, But yeah, I'm like, I don't know exactly what I would expect. I just like none of the fringe stuff seems right. I think one of Chris Frank ghost tweets, I, I thought also was really spot on and, and easy to understand in that. Just like, you know, we, we talked a little bit, a little bit about it last week with like Manaphy, Dunsparce both neither in RCS. And I think his, his comment was like, Like, if you're worried about bad fringe decks, like you can play dun sparse, but like, you probably don't need either of them, like something, something to that effect. And like, that seems right to me, like, will Urshifu show up again? Um, Maybe like, I don't know. I could see. Or at the very least, like, I don't know, maybe we would've broken that for by nationals. Um, in terms of, if there's just like an Usha food toolbox that's worth playing or just like Mew sort of has seen a new little bit of surge in popularity. Um, if like one and. Was a double finals. Last one, one of like the late nights last week with, uh, Cal Connor, uh, and Gabe smart playing a mirror. And like, I think people started to question like maybe muse the play or something like that. Um, and I think that's interesting, like, I think I've seen some good conversation about like the Mew versus Pia matchup and it's like, it's one to me that's always seemed very favorable to, for Pia, like even playing against, I played against it in Milwaukee and I. Dumpster them one game and then like opened dead the next game. And then they like catcher, catcher hacked me out of the last game and it was still just. Had one, one tail, one flip gone my way. I like, I would've blown them out of the water. It was just like a sequence of several of them that all really mattered and they got them all. Um, so I I'm, I guess personally cynical, skeptical of Mew, really being all that good. I mean, I guess at the same time, I've always expressed a difficulty beating you. With RCS without the dark stuff. Um, which really doesn't seem to be floating around anymore. No one really seems to be playing any dark anymore. I guess I do see some Crobat VMax more than anything, but I don't see any of the Mew traces in RCS or anything like that anymore. Um, so it seems the RCS toolbox lists, or just sort of focused elsewhere now, which seems right to me. But again, I like Roxanne and prey, Marnie and prey. Doesn't always feel that strong of a, like that strong of a strategy. Like I just like crossing your fingers. Never feels good. And I know there's just so much variance in the games. They immediately draw off it. Like you can just get blown up. Um, but yeah, I, if I just. Sort of had to take a guess. I think it will really be more of ironing out the last few cards. Like I, I do think, you know, as we saw at any IIC, I think there's a lot of variance in the way you can build Paia. Um, and just determining those last couple techs, I think will be really big, like tool scraper seems very strong to me like RCS and big term is sort of such a necessary part of the way a lot of these matchups go. And if you're just sort of targeting that aggressively, that seems strong pump Cabo. Could really show up in a lot of decks, I think potentially, um, just things like that is just like, if I had to take a guess at where the Meta game is heading, especially for day one, like all, you know, perhaps any sort of newer novel decks that those will all be in day two onwards and day one, just being a, you know, naturally the player skills, just like a little less than day two. Um, So, yeah, maybe more vanilla things, day one and interesting things. Day two. I'm not sure. I'm sure. I'm sure there will be different decks, but just how many I'm not sure.
Mike:So a couple comments on some of the stuff you said. So I've played, like I said, I've played Pia a bit the past week. The Mew matchup, I do think is ed for Pia, but it's pretty close. The biggest scenario that, um, Mew can get in is they can get a Mewtwo Meta and a Mew VMax out with two fusion, strike energy each, and then they're hitting two 80. Right. So then there're always one shot in Azul. It's. Pretty much impossible for Azul to one shot a Mew. So the common strategy for Pia to win is to kill a three gen EX like boss them up. The secondary strategy is to kill one gen sec, kill a Mew, VMax, and kill a Mewtwo. But the way to do that, In a way that keeps you keeps the tempo up for Paia is to use Greninja to kill a, to kill Mewtwo and hit the Mew and then finish the two shot with the Mew. But they can also play around that, whether Oricorio, um, so it can get a little awkward if they have Oricorio. Mewtwo that they don't ever attack with. They just kind of Leafeon the bench. Um, or they can, I guess they can attack with it as well. Um, but so that's kind of the situation that you can get into. That's kind of like a checkmate on Pia actually. Um, I have seen some P list play a Leon and that can I don't does the math work out 200, 2 62 93, 20. Minus 20 with Oricorio. So if they have Oricorio ChuChu it still doesn't matter. So Leon doesn't seem that good. Um, but I do think the match is generally favored. Like, um, they could prize a fusion, trike energy, and if they prize a fusion trike energy, then it's pretty hard for them to win, for example. Um, and they still can get Roxanne path. Um, And PKI, I think is a little bit more consistent than Mew, but I do think Mew is probably in a better spot than it was going into N a I, um, you know, there's less direct counters to it. Um, there's a little bit less Path to the Peak, just in the Meta game in general. Um, flying Peak ChuChu archist doesn't seem like it's that popular regular Arceus Inteleon and Paia play one, maybe two paths to the Peak. So. That certainly has a going for it. Um, there's something else that you said that I was gonna mention? I don't remember though.
Brent:So I know the argument against playing Paia is everybody's gonna have a plan to play Paia, right? Like if you haven't tested against Paia, what are you doing? But, but I, I was interested in hearing, uh, uh, your perspective, Mike, on like, what's the argument for playing Paia is Paia just better than everything else.
Mike:Um, yeah, before I answer that and it kind of is related. The other thing I was gonna say, Brent was talking about different tech cards for Pia. And one of the things that I think you could see in a pretty decent amount of Pia decks is the quick shooting Inteleon, which I don't think is particularly good, but it is really. It can be really good in the mirror because it's very hard to one shot of P VStar, but quick shooting Inteleon helps you get there a little bit easier. Um, and so I think, and Brent kind of bringing that together with your question. The biggest reason for me not to play Pak is I don't wanna play PA mirrors. That's really seems really bad. Those are. It, when I played them online the past week, it seems like almost everyone pretty much comes down to who went first.
Brent:Yeah, it's all about.
Mike:yeah, it's like, it's really, it's really bad because the person, as long as the person that goes first, you know, gets a couple basics down. They get APA, they get Azul. It's really quite easy for them to get the. Cross switcher knockout on the initial Pia. And like I said, it's really hard to kill a VStar. So, you know, the player going first takes, goes up two prizes, the player going second. Now they're on the back foot. They've had their Pia V KO. So if they didn't get a second one down, they immediately lose the game. If they, uh, did get a second one down, now they have to get a third one down that next turn. And then that one also gets gust KO. Then they are, they're just, they're down six, two, and uh, in prizes. And then they have to try and rely on a Roxanne play, but you know, they're gonna Roxanne and hit with a P VStar and then the opponent just has time to two shot while you never have time, two shot. So it can snowball really, really quickly. Um, and then there's obviously like gringo plays, you know, the player going first. If, if the player going second can only get a couple basics down. They have to prioritize Paia. They have to prioritize two Paal and some soles and a Manaphy like, are they gonna get Manaphy down as well? So then that also opens up the player going first to do a gringa play, to kill two. So bowls it's just the player going first, as long as they don't, you know, draw completely dead going first has a really, really significant advantage. Um, and I think that's part of why Isaiah Isaiah's list is the best list because it's just the. They're kind of just playing to, I'm gonna go first in the parking mirror and I'm gonna go first and have the best first turns with a battle VIP pass. Um, so quick shooting, like I said, can help a little bit, but I don't know how much it really, I don't know the percentage of games that it affects where going first didn't already have such. Enormous bigger, you know, such a bigger effect in the percentage, if that makes sense. Um, but other than that, hockey is like favored against most things and it beats a lot of the fringe stuff. Quick shooting also helps against the Mewtwo reunion. I should say it as well. That's also another reason to play it. Um, you can more easily hit that three 10, um, But the only way to fit, like a card like that, I feel like is to drop your paddle VIP pass count, which also kind of sucks. Um, but I, like, I kind of agree that I think P is pretty favored against Arceus. Inteleon like, it's not ridiculously favored. I, a lot of people think it's like Brent was saying, some people think it's like 70, 30. Um, I don't know if it's that favorite. Maybe, maybe it is. And I just haven't played hockey enough. Um, But it just has a lot of outs against all the random stuff. You know, it can beat Luton, soul rock pretty consistently and other things can't, uh, I dunno, it has it. It's really good at beating random decks and it's good at beating other good decks. It's just really, it's really, really consistent. The Ida engine is insane. Um, so that's the reason to play it. So like what I've tried out is taking Brad's list dropping three of the battle, VIP passes, putting in an extra quick ball, being quick, shooting Inteleon and a fourth BLE. And so, right. The thought is there, if you're playing quick shooting, you maybe want access to an extra BLE. Um, but you also, and then the extra quick ball is a way to offset battle. VIP pass, maybe, maybe, um, two battle battle. VIP pass is still fine, but you know, the thought is keep one VIP pass for you. Go second with Ida. But I don't know. I, I haven't liked that list as much. So what I, what I do in situations like that when I'm testing is I will. So the quick ball is, is the best example there. I think the list had three quick balls before, and now it has four, but when I'm playing the deck, I'll play the same three art quick balls and
Brent:I knew you were gonna go to the art
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. And then I'll play a different art quick ball in the fourth spot, just so I can kind of keep track of when would this have been a battle VIP pass. Um, and I think I actually dropped. At some point, I had dropped one for, uh, another level ball as well. So I kind of did the same thing. I played a different art level ball and the number of times where I was like, man, this was a battle VIP pass. This would've been a really awesome start. Or like I prized one of my battle VIP passes or the one battle VIP pass. But I have the gold quick ball in my hand. I'm like, man, Speaking of Ida and the Ida engine. What did you guys think of the most popular tweet I ever made? How do you pronounce
Brit:Oh, yeah, that one doesn't seem hard to me. It's just Ida, like ear Ida. I don't
Brent:It just goes to show, uh, when it comes to the internet, there's absolutely no telling what, what people are gonna like, uh, be captivated.
Brit:I mean, I bet that's just your name in Japanese too. Cause that those would all just be like, uh, the hu like all the one syllable letters. So that would be my guess, like E re um, in fact, I can look, let me see.
Mike:Yeah. It's just an interesting, Like we've, we've been saying it like relatively consistently as Ida. Um, but like the more that I looked at, the,
Brit:Yep.
Mike:the spelling, I was like, I can be pronounced either way and there's two I there. So it's like, Ida, I Rita E EITA E RDA.
Brent:You know, we, we were, I think the last podcast to get off the ethernet train or something like that. So like, you know,
Brit:Yeah. I mean, you'd be surprised, especially like, probably more so in my neck of the woods than either of you east coasters, but yeah, I get some just purposefully, like dyslexic pronunciations a lot of the time. Like, I'm just trying to remember how people would try to say like, Dialga and things like that. I looked it up and I was wrong. Not her name. Her name is just Kai in Japanese. So, um, yeah, not sure then it's, uh, I don't know, probably regional, but yeah. I mean, it's definitely not. I don't, I definitely don't think it has the. I, I write a, like, that would be, I don't know, people, like, I, I think I said, or at least didn't know how to say Lele Sander. Like I think I, and others were tempted to say like Lysandre or something like that initially without the better context. Um, but yeah, this to me seems just like IITA, I don't know why you would say it any other way, but have you heard people say it otherwise?
Mike:I don't think so. Hey, I don't think so,
Brent:So you just stared at it too long and your head
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, I play it. I, I played it too many times now. Um, I think I was listening, you know, I, I listened to the tag team podcast one time and JW always calls Duraludon Duraludon and like, maybe that was like, I was like, thinking about that. Um,
Brit:I mean, even
Brent:there's, there's definitely a couple of people clinging to some weird pronunciations of, of cards out there.
Brit:Well, I think
Brent:Duraludon is definitely a, a thing that's out there.
Brit:I think RCS is wrong. Isn't it? The, I know the movie says Arceus.
Mike:Yeah. But I think I've, I've heard that when RCS first came out, it was pronounced RCS. And then just in like the last year or two they've like changed the official pronunciation. I mean, it does kind of make sense to be Arceus like, it's like kind of like the, an Arceus Pokegear
Brit:He is Arceus and you get the, the DAS EX from Latin or something like that, but no, no, the, the RCS movie came out like this. We were talking about like around the time of the original diamond in Pearl games. Like I remember, I remember seeing that and you know, at least when I was like, starting to play the card games, I was like, oh, I'm just gonna kinda watch some of these movies here and there. And I remember that. And just being like, Interesting, but yeah, who knows? I mean, it doesn't matter at a certain point. Like once, you know, uh, once you know, you know what you're talking about, it doesn't matter what the word is. Cause you're talking about something under the word.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Uh, speaking of Pokegear shows, uh, you wanna talk a little bit about the format for worlds and all the exciting things that are gonna happen besides just, uh, um, people playing some Pokegear, there's actually like a structure to it. That's different and novel.
Mike:Well, so I was gonna talk about it initially, just in the sense of, um, I think last week when we were talking, we, they had not released this world website and the world's website is now out. And one of the things on it is the schedule. And so from the schedule, we can presume that the schedule is accurate to what the tournament will look like. I think there's always a chance that that's not true, but so for right now, it says for day one, that there's gonna be eight Swiss rounds. And so if all things hold similar to previous years and this schedule holds that means day one, players will need to go six and. In order to make it, or day one players will have to go six and two to make it through to day two. Um, which is the most, I mean, they've had eight rounds before, um, but it's never been more than eight rounds. They've never had nine rounds. Um, so it's on the higher end for sure. Going six and two is not easy. um, and so I think day one player should kind of it. It's good to know that. Is probably what it's gonna be. This is the first year where day one players have had an idea of how many rounds they were gonna be. You know, people have theorized based on the number of players and whatnot. Um, but I, I can't find the tweet right now, but I think Cheren's Care, uh, had posted some numbers of previous worlds, uh, and. He expects that, you know, around 50 ish players will make it through to day one. And I think so, but also depends on how many day one, uh, invitees actually show up if they're significantly less, because it's in London then usual, like significantly lower percentage who knows maybe this Swiss round will be, uh, cut short. Maybe there'll only be. Um, and so beyond that, so that's kind of day one that's Thursday. And then Friday, everyone was kind of hoping that Friday, Saturday was going to look like a regional, but that is not the case. It seems like, looks like they're gonna have nine rounds on day two, cutting to a top X where X is the, not top eight. So they're gonna do an asymmetric. Top cut, which is pretty cool. Um, they've done this once before I believe at the, uh, Anaheim open in 2017. Uh, and so that means that let's say the top six seeds are all 7 1 1, and then seventh and eighth seed are both seven two, then all of the seven twos will make top cut. Uh, and they'll. Run the initial top cut round. So then the second top cut round is top eight. So, you know, if, if seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th are all seven two, then they will pair off so that, um, it ended up with the top eight after that. Uh, and then the top seed. That kind of make the math work out. We'll get a buy in that top X round. So I think this has a lot of interesting, um, consequences to it. I'm not sure exactly what they will be, but there's a lot of weird scenarios that could for sure happen. I've been talking a little bit with Ross and Pablo about it. know, there's a scenario where two players are seven one and typically they would ID. To pretty much guarantee top eight. They may choose to play it out. Right. Because eight one would mean that they get a buy and they won't have to play in that top X round. Um, but 7 0 1 might and then, and there might not be. So there's a lot to gain there. And in theory, there's also a lot to risk, right? Because maybe seven, two doesn't make it, but maybe seven two will make it into that play in round. Um, so there's gonna like going into the last round or two, I feel like there's gonna have to be a lot of math that the top, you know, the players in, in good positions are doing, um, to kind of figure it out. Um, Because like, you know, that's seven one verse seven one in the last round. Maybe, maybe you have a really good matchup and you're like, I would, I just wanna play. Right. And, or maybe you're like, if I, maybe it's a 50 50 matchup, but you know that you're going to have a lot of bad matchups going into top cut. And so you're like, well, you know, I should just take this 50, 50 right now and try to not play. Against bad matchups. Um, so there's gonna be a lot of weird stuff going on this year.
Brent:I mean, I don't wanna get too grant manly, but like, if you were seven one and you're like, if I ID, I lock into playing the next day, like I'm in the asymmetric cut. If I play it out, if I lose I'm out. You ID, right? Like, I mean, you could say like, you, you might, you might, you could, you could potentially get the buy if you win. So like you advance to like a real top eight instead of like the fake top eight. But like the important thing is to play the next day. Right? I mean,
Mike:I think so. Yeah, but it's, it's gonna be interesting. I could see peop I could see people choosing other things and like I said, there might not be. There might be weird stuff happening too, where people like are kind of like playing and trying to wait to see what other matches do, because maybe that affects how many, like what records will be in that top X, cuz maybe that maybe the cutoff will be seven 11, but maybe seven two. And if it's seven two, there might be a lot of those. Right. So.
Brent:right. I mean, I could see table one saying, Hey, you know, I'm gonna play it out. Cuz I don't wanna like lock in a top six position or something when I could lock in like the top spot or something like that, you know?
Mike:Yeah, yeah, right? Yeah. Like 7 0 1 are playing like an eight. Oh, there's a 7 0 1,
Brent:Exactly. And, and I love the idea of like creating a format where like table one and table two, have no incentive to ID and they're like, let's just kill each other.
Mike:yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It is nice.
Brent:good for the game,
Mike:Yeah, right, right, right. Exactly. I like that. There isn't cause right now, and for a long time, there's been no incentive to be the first seat versus the eighth seat. Right. Um, but this gives some incentive, which is cool.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I, I like that. I like that a lot.
Mike:Um, so yeah. Okay. So Fridays has those nine rounds and then Saturday they are playing the top. EX round, the playing round in the morning does not look like they're streaming that, but it looks like by the schedule that they're going to stream everything past that. So they'll stream all four top eight games, both top four games, uh, and then that'll be it for Saturday. And then Sunday is kind of what, we're, what we're accustomed to, where they'll do the finals for everything. Um, all the divisions, uh, and London open. Also happens Saturday. And as far as I can tell the London open is the same as the last open, where they are just playing Swiss, like a leak challenge, like a really, really big leak challenge. No top cut.
Brent:I think one of the weird things about this idea of them streaming all the rounds. Uh, like, assume that part of what they wanna do is like, if a round ends they have, they throw the next guys in like, like not have long breaks. So they're gonna kind of tell the players, okay, y'all gotta sit here for like five hours, you know? And like, I, I guess, I mean, that kind of sucks, but like, Hey sucks for you, man. You're in the top eight of Pokegear world championship, like sucks for.
Mike:yeah.
Brent:I, I guess my big hope is I hope like Pokegear Pokegear uses that time. Well, like they're already sending so many casters over. They could be doing like some interviews, like some set up B roll footage, like some stupid stuff. Right. You could like do a quick PR interview and like set'em up and talk about'em and, you know, instead of having them fill out a quick form with all their accomplishments, you could like film the whole thing and like chop it up into. A random 32nd interview. You know, like if, if, if I told the Pokegear crew, they were gonna have two hours to prepare with the players before they broadcast the, the two players playing each other, like we should have a hell of a broadcast. Right.
Mike:I just told Kelly right before this, that, Hey, just so you know, that weekend of worlds, I'm watching worlds. Like we're not, I'm not doing anything else that weekend, so hoping they deliver.
Brent:I love, I love it. I'm sure the podcast listeners will love it. Uh, we're gonna, we're gonna have Mike and Brit bring you guys the postgame commentary and then I will listen to it while driving around Iceland and then that'll be, that'll be totally
Brit:do the like co stream thing and just do our own commentary the whole time.
Brent:dude. I, you know what, that's like not the worst thing in the world. Right? I mean, obviously as coming from Fortnite in Fortnite, they do that all the time where they have, they actually
Brit:in finding
Brent:provide streamers with like the not caster footage
Mike:Right.
Brent:where it's just like the constant stream of Fortnite and then you, they just, uh, commentary over it. That's uh, super cool. Uh, I, I recognize, I think the trick with, um, Pokegear is generally speaking, except in this one instance where you guys can go stream all the, all the people are there, right.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:Tricky tricky. Tricky, but yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure that would be the most popular thing on the internet, you know?
Mike:I do think this world will probably, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the most viewed Pokegear Pokegear event like ever, like, because, because it's, um, in Europe and not in the us, I feel like a lot more people that wouldn't have gone, but will watch, um, We'll be watching, uh, and it's, and it's the first world in a couple years, and it's probably, they're probably gonna have the biggest production value. And I've seen that they're doing some like little incentives to make you to watch. I dunno, if you guys saw there's some Arceus, uh, show that's gonna be premiering there. Um, so there's like all of these things like together, I think it's going to be by far the most watched event ever, which.
Brent:I like this. I don't know if this is a hot take, but I.
Mike:Yeah, yeah,
Brit:I, I mean, I think that's right. I think just the, the teases of production that we've seen already, I, I think they're gonna go, um, huge with it. I think just in, just in terms of like raw production value, that is gonna be the, by far, the coolest thing we've ever seen. Um,
Brent:I get that question too. It's really.
Mike:they're probably, they're probably gonna tease out some more Scarlet and violent video game stuff, as well as introduce us to some. New mechanic and the
Brit:Well, I bet we'll see the, uh, the terrestrial or whatever it's called. They'll show the, the card mechanic for that or something like that. So there's always like, that's been the president for a couple years now. Like we saw the, like the ultra beasts and things like that. And. Maybe we maybe there were the V unions there. I don't remember when that was revealed, but it's always some sort of cooler, different mechanic.
Mike:yeah,
Brit:So.
Mike:yeah. Um, What else? Oh yeah. I going back a little bit to the, to the Meta game, the Brady and Charr deck has kind of caught some steam this past week. Um, Jeremy Gibson, who is a really fantastic player from New Jersey who hasn't really played too much recently. But I did see him at New Jersey regionals. He came to that and he's someone that I've kind of talked to on and off. I just happened to notice that last week, every single day, he played in an online tournament that had 70 plus people. And he top aided every single one all with more or less the same radiant Charizard Inteleon list. Um, so I just kind of wanted. him a shout out, uh, his list kind of like changed over the, over the week a little bit. He was making tweaks. Um, but I think the deck is quite good. Um, the way that he was playing it differed from the norm because he played the ARITA package, which is not super crazy, but a lot of the list that we had seen doing somewhat decently we're playing more bird, keep focused, and this. IRRI to focus for sure. Which I think is the better way to play it. It's what tour started out with at the very beginning when Pokegear, Pokegear go, came out and this is kind of just an improvement on that variant, uh, the bigger, and so he is got the IITA and then the other really big difference is he played for cross switcher, which I also think is really good. And he played echoing horn. So. Against things like P and Arceus you have a tool scraper to kill one big trim Arceus uh, and then you can kill another Arceus at some point, and then you can echo in horn one back or Pia, kind of the same thing. You don't need three ChuChu belts, then you just need two to maybe kill two VStar. Um, And I think he played, he was playing. It was, it's kind of interesting. He played Hoopa with two dark energies instead of playing the fire Moltres. And I asked him about it. He just said it's annoying to, it's more annoying to have to find the stadium to activate Moltres than it is to play different colored energies, to just be able to use hoop. Which I think makes some sense. It also allows'em to play Glar Moltres V, which is really good against Mewtwo V union. And it's makes the Mew match up even better. The Mew match was already like fine. It's already pretty good. You just kind of kill three GenX, but, uh, the Moltres V obviously makes it really, really, really favorable. So, um, I think that deck is pretty good and could be a little bit of a sleeper pick for worlds. I don't, I assume. Other top players also noticed, and just didn't say anything cuz they're playing in worlds. um, but me, I haven't, I'm not playing a world, so I'm like take a look at this guys. This looks really I'm uh, spoiling all the fun, but uh, I dunno. So that could be an interesting thing. I do think it's still struggles, uh, a little bit with. Arceus Inteleon because they play too big charm. They play Roxanne. Um, so the end game against that deck can be a little sketchy. I think it's a little bit better against Paia than it is against Arceus. Um, but yeah. Cool. Deck.
Brit:Yeah, I was looking at the list and like, uh, just seems kind of a, I don't know. So, so like reaction, reactionary, I guess is the word I'm looking for. Like, it just. Just doesn't seem to, doesn't have a whole lot, I can do until like char really starts to function. And that just like makes me feel not great. Like obviously he does well, so I I'm, I think it's a good deck, but just like, I guess in my own like play patterns and things like that, it just feels, and I remember like similar doing similar things with like other very like, like, it just feels like. Just like, oh, well, what do you do if you're not doing trier things? Oh, we've got bird keep in res. And like, like, I don't know if that's really enough, a lot of the time, like 60 damage on a 60 HP Pokegear. Cause I remember like for Milwaukee I was watching Frank test like the night before and he was like trying to make the decid I work and that was like part of it too. It's like, oh, when I don't need the Siti, I'll just rattle at them. And I'm just like, I guess like draw three, draw three, take a prize. Uh, Compared to RCS search your deck for two cards due two to hundred damage, put three more energy on the board. I dunno, but yeah. Yeah, it's a, it's a cool deck. And I guess I do think something like. Seems better to me than just like trying to splash the char art into RCS or, I mean, I, I might take that back actually. Uh, Orion has been having a lot of success with, um, like RCS. I tried to get Frank to play this on his stream the other day. I've been tuning into him when I can. And, um, he's been Orion anyways has been doing very well with RCS. Charar B. Which like seems pretty strong to Mees. Like I think, uh, B drill just has a lot of soft use cases. Like even if it isn't just like bopping a Mew, like it's always pretty strong in the mirror. Um, which I think is big. Like again too, as we've seen the lists, uh, devolve into just like the chair and loop wars and some lists just play two P pad now and like, uh what's well, it just, so it seems like an easy opt out of having to play that like war of attrition. Um, so I really like that. Like that's, I think my mind would. On something like that, for sure. I've always kind of gravitated towards like over overly tacked toolboxes, um, and that, so that definitely seems up my alley and it just has the, um, Inteleon just, is always pretty consistent in making the mustard work.
Mike:yeah, that I've, I've seen that too. That deck seems pretty sweet. I, I like it and it, so. Like the, the, the deck from N a I C, that was the Arceus flying Pikachu B drill. This seems like, kind of the better iteration on that, where you don't have to commit quite as much as you did, but ARD is still providing quite a lot of utility. Um, one of the other interesting developments, not Meta or anything, uh, in the last couple weeks is one of my brothers has started playing. Quite a lot of Pokegear, um, which has been cool. So I traded him cards to play Mew, and so he's played a bunch of Mew. And then from that, he's kind of been like buying codes every now and then trading for cards. He just built a, a Dialga deck. Um, So I'm pretty excited. I'm hoping that he keeps the momentum and he keeps playing. We, we like talked yesterday for like two hours and played and built X, which was really fun.
Brent:People, if you're, if you're not ready after this podcast, you should do more testing because they run outta time.
Mike:Yep.
Brent:The John Pauls are our outro