Hey, it's the Trashalanche podcast here as always with, uh, Brooke PVIS. Mike Fouchet, Brent Halliburton attendance is 100%. Uh, guys it's like mere seconds before, uh, the first regional of the new year. And with the new year comes the announcement that we somehow missed celebrating our hundredth episode. now, Mike, you noticed this, I could tell you how this happened at the, the constant incrementing of episodes. I think sometimes I just like forgot to increment the episodes in buzz sprout. Because like, after you upload the thing, you have to go in and set the episode number. Right. And, and like, I know there were two or three instances where I just somehow screwed that up and then I would try and like catch up later, but it wasn't like I was, I didn't wanna spend 20 minutes figuring it out. So I probably did it wrong or forgot once or twice or something like this could be our hundred second episode and we just don't even know
Mike:we're we're around a hundred. We're definitely more than a hundred. It's not less than a hundred.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. The good news. It's definitely more than a hundred, unless I, I incremented incorrectly once or twice but I didn't do that
Mike:either way. Uh, as we, as I mentioned right before the podcast started, I think it's very on brand for us to not know exactly where we're at and miss a huge milestone like that. We do know we've been going for more than two years. We at least got that down.
Brent:Two years, a hundred episodes. I think if, if you had told me in 2020 that we would be here, I would've said, wow, that's very
Mike:impressive. Yeah. Not too bad, not too bad. And
Brent:I would say like net, net attendance is probably like 96% or more. It's pretty
Mike:good. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you, if you count the couple times we've been over a hundred percent where our, our average is definitely above a hundred percent. I can't argue with that. Mm-hmm so,
Brent:cause we bring you the math, this is the statistics that cannot be stopped.
Mike:Yeah. So, Brent, I know you're coming to Baltimore. Are you, did you guys decide you're definitely not staying at a hotel. You're definitely traveling in each day. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're just gonna traveling each day. Okay, nice. Um, I am staying. At a hotel, not one of the two main hotels, but a couple blocks away with Ross, my brother, and a couple other EX Espeon people. Brit, what about you? Have you made your plans? Ooh, Brit stayed at our house. Oh, nice. Okay. Okay, cool. I'm glad that worked out. So are you flying in which airport you find into Brent? Uh, I don't remember
Brent:which one DC.
Mike:You fly into Reagan. Is Reagan the one that's closest to you? Yeah. Nice. Okay. Okay, cool. Um,
Brent:yeah. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick him up on Friday. We're gonna do a little downtown Bethesda, cuz that's like a pleasant place to walk around for a few hours until the kids wrap up school mm-hmm and then we can all get some testing in. And then I, I, so I haven't gone and read yet Brit. I don't know if you have, but I assume that there's very early morning, Saturday registration for people like us and we'll just register and. Yeah.
Brit:Yeah. I assume so like, in terms of just like getting your, your wristband or what have you mm-hmm yeah,
Brent:I would think so. Yeah. Shouldn't be too much of a problem. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting is when they do it in a big city, like Baltimore versus like Fort Wayne, I assume you're gonna have a lot more people that register on Saturday cuz they like drive in, right? Yeah. Like you could have a lot of people from like Delaware, Maryland, Northern Virginia that are like, I'll just drive up on Saturday.
Mike:Yep. Yeah. Very, very true. Um, I'm like just far enough, right? Like two hours away. Um, but yeah, there's definitely gonna be a lot of people driving in that morning and like, I, you know, I'm meeting up with friends, so I figured I'd go Friday night, but I'm not gonna get in until Friday night at like 9:00 PM or something like that.
Brent:Um, right. And if you had some reason to like, not go in on Friday, you would not go in on Friday and you could drive down on Saturday. It wouldn't be that big a deal. Right? Like the great thing about Baltimore, it is, it is very centrally located for east coast people, right? Yeah,
Mike:yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I wanted to talk about just some since Brent and I are pretty familiar with Baltimore. Uh, I lived in Baltimore for three years. I figured we'd spend a little bit of time just talking about. The area that the tournament is gonna be at and some travel stuff. So I guess it's too late to give any tips for flying, um, in terms of which airport to go into, but hopefully anybody that's flying in is flying into BWI, which is by far the closest except Brit, who's got a ride from from DC. Uh, but like, I, I messaged someone the other day and I was like, yo, are you flying in. To BWI and they're like, no, I think I'm flying into Dulles. And I'm like that. Wasn't a good idea.
Brent:that? They're gonna, they're gonna hate themselves. Wow. Good time. That's like, that's like$150 Uber.
Mike:Yeah, you can take, well, like, I don't even know cuz like dull, there is a train, like, uh, the mark train that goes for DC to
Brent:Mew. You take like the silver line into downtown DC, like to union station and then switch to the mark. Yeah. I mean, you know, did you really want to add like three hours of extra travel time onto your trip after the flight?
Mike:So anyway, if you're flying into BWI though, you can take an Uber. It's probably. 2030 minute, Uber, my guess is I'll run you maybe 40 or 50 bucks, which isn't that bad. Um, but if you wanted to be a little, uh, cheaper it, take a little bit more time, but honestly not that much more. There is, uh, a, a train option it's called the light rail that takes you from VWI all the way down to the convention center. It does take a little while. There's a lot of stops once you kind of get into the city, the, the real city area. Uh, but it takes you right there. Like literally. A two or three minute walk from the venue and therefore two or three minute walk from all the hotels that are right near the area. You just gotta look up the schedule based on when your arrival is and look for signs for the light rail. There is also, as we mentioned, the mark train, the mark train does pass through BWI airport as well, but that'll only, that'll only drop you. Uh, like a mile and a half, two miles away from the venue. Um, you could transfer to light rail there, so you it's a little bit faster. Um, but, uh, a little bit more work, but those are both. Uh, it's it's really, I, I feel like be, uh, Baltimore is one of the better airports that I've been in with public transport from the.
Brent:BWI is a fantastic, fantastic airport just in general, but you're you're right. The, the, if you end up at the, uh, Baltimore train station, it's too far to walk, but a very short cab ride to the Baltimore center. Yeah.
Mike:Yeah. It would be like from there, it'd be like five to$10 Uber and only like a five minute drive. Um, so like if it, that would be also a good option, if you knew someone there that didn't wanna drive all the way to the airport to pick you up, but you could take the train to, uh, the main train station in Baltimore. And it's only a few minute drive away. That might be what I do with Ross, for example.
Brent:And if you're on the east coast and, and you're not taking the Amtrak, you're missing a real treat. The Amtrak is a super form way to travel up and on the.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true too. Like E people coming from different places around the Northeast, there is the Amtrak that goes there. There's a bunch of buses. There's the Greyhound that is only a couple blocks from the convention center as well. Um, like I think I'm gonna put my brother, so my brother is taking. A train down to me in Philly and then we're driving together. But then when he's going back to New York city, I'm gonna just put him on a, um, a Greyhound bus back to New York city.
Brent:And the buses are really nice. They have like wifi, like it's all this stuff. If you've never taken, uh, one of these, uh, like kind of pseudo long distance buses, it's pretty pleasant.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I like this is probably. The most major city that we've had are regional in, in a long time, at least that I can think of. I mean, I guess salt, Lake's pretty big. Um, I've never
Brent:and salt. Lake's not like this though. Like you don't think so when they, when they had the downtown Philly convention center, that was probably the oh, right, right, right. The one that I think of when I think of like a regional at a, like a real, real location.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fair.
Brent:So, so for people who scrub out day one and are looking for something fun to do in day two, do you have like a, a top hits list, Mike?
Mike:So we're only a couple blocks away from the inner Harbor of Baltimore, which is pretty nice area to walk around. It's uh, you know, literally water it's the inner Harbor, um, right around there is extremely touristy. So you'll see stuff like Ripley's believe it or not museum. You'll see. There's like a shake shack. There's a. A a pretty touristy seafood place, uh, around there, but it's cool. It's cool to walk around, but just, uh, like one neighborhood over in Boltund directions is a little bit more authentic Baltimore, but also really nice. So there's federal hill, which is just, uh, south. Just south of the convention center area. Um, and I think that's right. I think south is correct, but anyway, it's called federal hill. Um, it's kind of the area of Baltimore where just graduated college kids go live I think that's the best way to put it. Um, So it's very, there's a lot of nightlife going on there. It's very pop in it, especially it has, it
Brent:has the best bar scene for Raven's games on
Mike:Sunday. Yeah, for sure. Um, and it's only like, you know, 10 to 15 minute walk from the co center area it's really close. Um, so lots of good bars, lots of good restaurants. There is one of the things that's really cool in Baltimore that. I haven't seen too much. I've seen like more in other cities since, but Baltimore, I feel like really popularized. It is the markets where they have a lot of these indoor markets, small indoor markets that have anywhere from like five to a dozen different. Restaurant slash uh, you know, small, small places to eat. Um, so federal hill has, uh, a really nice market. There is a market closer to the convention center. It's called Lexington market. Don't recommend that one, that one's a little sketchy. Um, But the one in federal hill is really nice. It's got cross street market, cross street. That's what it's called. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And they recently redid it, uh, just a few years ago, so it's real nice. Um, so that's one area totally recommend if you want to walk a little bit further towards the, uh, east, I dunno, east Easter west, I forget it's called, uh, Fell's point. Um, that is a bit longer of a. Um, but you'd from the, from there you kinda like walk through the inner Harbor and then you walk through another, uh, very ritzy area. And then eventually you get to Fell's point. It's probably like a 20 to 30 minute walk from the convention center area. And that is similar to federal hill, but. The demographics are just a little bit older, I would say, but still very popular nightlife, bunch of bars. There's another, um, really good market there. It has the, one of the best ice cream places that I've ever been to, um, called Taka brothers ice cream. So. That's really good. When, when I
Brent:moved to Baltimore, the, what I was told was Fell's point has the highest density of bars per capita of any location in the country. Mm-hmm yeah, that makes sense. So, so yeah, like when, when you realize, when you go, like, you know, uh, I guess like 3, 2, 1 drop or something, or three, three drop, and you're like, okay, where are we spending Saturday night? That, that is. That is where a lot of Baltimore go. Yeah. If they're not going to, uh, um, uh, down
Mike:near cross street market. Yeah. Yeah. If you have like a bunch of time, like if you got like three to four hours, at least I would say Mike, the walk over to FAS point is really nice. It's also right on the water as well, which is cool. Um, and then if you have a little bit less time, maybe just like one to two hours, Go to fed hill, um, cuz it's a little bit closer and whatnot. Um, if you have like the whole day on Sunday, I can't imagine like you have the whole day on Sunday, but just kinda walk, like I would say also walk down to Fell's point. I feel like that's, um, a good, a good idea. They have some good brunch places down there as well. Um, Yeah.
Brent:So I've, I've three, three specific tips that I wanted to highlight. If, if you've scrubbed out on Sunday and you're looking for something to do, I'm sure many, many people, um, when they Google, what should I do in Baltimore will say it's like a five minute walk for the convent center. I should go to the national aquarium. The national aquarium is fantastic. Yeah, it is really good. It. It is absolutely stellar. Even if you just walk by it at night and take a Gander, you'll say, wow, that's a real aquarium. It's one of the best aquariums in the country. No doubt. Um, the second thing that is time consuming and very interesting that I'm a big fan of in Baltimore. You will find nowhere else in the country is the American visionary art museum is the only art museum in the country. For, uh, people who have not been trained professionally as artists and in that way, the, uh, um, collection is eclectic and bizarre and super fun. I'm a big, big fan of the American visionary museum. Uh can't I
Mike:get enough of it. And that is, that is in federal hill. That's like, that's literally next to the federal hill. Federal hill is both a literal hill and a neighborhood. Um, yeah,
Brent:it. It is, uh, very walkable from the convention center. Yeah. All, all these things. Are you basically just walk around the water a little bit? Uh, the last thing I wanted to mention was, uh, Baltimore's little Italy is very pleasant and very authentic and, uh, just past the national aquarium, uh, just a couple minute walk to the convention center. The specific place that I like to highlight in, uh, a little Italy is CCAs. CCAs is a Italian dessert place that. Literally been there like a hundred years. And the best thing about Pikarom is if you are over 65, it's free So if you are looking for like a bunch of old Italian guys, like have Italian desserts and like being Italian, you cannot get more authentic than Pikarom is absolutely fantastic. Uh, I cannot say enough good things about. They've expanded a little bit and they may have other locations, but the little Italy location is very walkable and it's, it's just as real deal as it gets.
Mike:Nice. Those are good. The only, I, I don't know if I've been to CCAs, but I've definitely done the other two things. Um, the, the only other thing I'll add is if you want, like, Another like very Maryland Baltimore thing to do is find somewhere with crabs, uh, and smash some crabs and eat'em I'm not particularly a huge fan of crabs, but if you haven't done it before and you think you might like it, it's an experience, it's more than just eating the crab. It's the experience of opening the crabs and, and whatnot. Um, so it's a, it is cool.
Brent:Yeah. Uh, I recognize for, for some, uh, for many Pokegear players, uh, one of the important things will be knowing that there's also a fo good chow right on the waterfront I know people somehow like that because that's the thing people seem to do. Yeah. That's not my cup of tea, but I, I understand
Mike:that that's the thing. That's part of the very touristy area of the
Brent:city. Exactly, exactly. So great, great stuff, uh, going on.
Mike:Yeah, I'm excited. I think, I think people will, I, Baltimore gets a pretty bad rap, I think, um, partially I think because of the wire and all of the, uh, press around it, but I think Baltimore's a pretty, a pretty cool city overall.
Brent:You know, I recognize both Mike and I are, are somehow like biased. Like I feel exactly the same way, but I feel like when I look back, part of that is colored by I was coming from Philly and like a certain amount of greediness just builds
Mike:character. Yeah.
Brent:Like, you know, I wouldn't have it any other way. So I was like, Baltimore, this seems like a smaller version of affiliates. Totally fine.
Mike:That's exactly what it is. Baltimore is a smaller version of. I like Philly better because it is a little bit bigger, but I like Baltimore because in the same way that I like Philly.
Brent:Exactly, exactly. Love it
Mike:to death. Cool. Um, alright, so moving on, uh, the only I wanted
Brent:to come back to, I, I got some feedback on our, our last episode and, and by feedback, I mean, my, my son listened to the pod and then complained about my characterization of him in the pod mm-hmm And I wanted to address it for a moment because as a parent that's that's like top of mind for me, he said that, you know, all those, all those seconds of regionals never really bothered him. And like, in that way, I feel like I've somehow been successful as a parent in some way. So, uh, you know, I take it all back. He was totally accepting of the fact that after getting first at something, he could get second at some other things and I'm happy for him that he's so like, uh, well adjusted and normal and thoughtful and all that good stuff. Yeah. Very,
Mike:uh, very strong. One of the things my mom always says that she is most grateful for from my whole Pokegear experience. Is that I've learned to be a gracious loser at a very young age. Uh, and she thinks that has served me very well in life, which I think is true. Uh, you know
Brent:what my, my wife, uh, used to say the same thing. So in that way, uh, uh, yeah, like you, the fact that it's a little bit R G and you win some and you lose some and like, you gotta just, uh, take your LS. Like that's a super good characteristic to. So it turns out that my son has developed his character too far better than his father's. I, I appreciate that.
Mike:nice. Um, last thing, before we talk a little bit about Dex and the Meta game I wanted to highlight limitless is new tool that allows you to play the game, you know, kind of like, um, Play TCG used to be kind of like apprentice used to be, but it's, uh, Mew, I would say it's more than just a solitaire, um, because it's somewhat interactive. Like you attach an energy and it sticks to the card. If it evolves, like it sticks to the card, you know, I don't have to like break apart all of these cards and move them around. It's really intuitive. Um, the shortcuts are, you know, pretty easy to use you. Play a game against yourself rather quickly. Um, you, I don't know. I was, you know, I saw that it came out whatever, like a week, a week and a half ago, and I didn't try it until just a few days ago. And as soon as I did, I was like, wow, this is awesome. This is really high quality. And I shouldn't have expected anything else from Robin because he makes awesome. But you said you got to try it as well.
Brit:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was really nice. Just I was more or less just trying to test, uh, like opening hands and like doing like one or two things on the opening turn, uh, consistently. And that's just for like really easy, just like new game, new game, or I forget exactly what command I was using, but it was just like yep. Hit that. Hand's good. Yep. That works. Yep. Yep. Yep. Like just like really, really fast, like consistency testing, but yeah, it's super, super duper useful. And. Um, yeah, definitely excited about it and yeah, I kind of I'm old school and like, remember doing all that stuff on, uh, apprentice and red shark and all these like weird, weird things you had to do to connect to people. It was a lot of fun, but definitely, uh, something like this is nice to have, especially when live is seemingly still in limbo and so on.
Mike:I think one of the best things is that you could use it to test. Against someone else, you know, you can like share screen or something like that. Um, and whether you're doing that or you're playing against yourself, you can take back moves, which has always been one of my big, I mean, like on PT C go like it's like, I imagine it's very hard to program and I get it. Like, you're trying to make like an actual game. It's something that is missed when you get to play in person versus online is being able to say, oh, you know what? I shouldn't have promoted that. Pokegear I should have promoted this one and just rewind. So you get to see what actually would happen if you were like really thinking or, um, you get to test out slightly different lines. You know, you get to, you get to almost have multiple games in one, if you're able to do that, uh, which is. Which is really cool. And so I really appreciate that aspect of it probably the most.
Brent:So how different is it than TCG one, which is the only other thing that I've tried, that's like a Pokegear ish kind of thing.
Mike:Well, TCG one is more similar to PT. C G O in that it's actions are automated, right? Like you click use this attack and it uses it with this. It's all. Manual like you don't, uh, there's no like buttons to press. It's just, I don't know how to explain it in a, in a great succinct way, but. You're not, there's no like game going on. Like you're, that's the first thing is that it's only one side. So it's just your side of the field. Um, so there's no turns or anything like that. You just kind of do an action when you want to do the action. If you wanna draw a card, you press one and it draws you one card. If you wanna draw seven cards, you press seven and it draws you seven cards. Um, if you wanna discard your hand, you drag your hand to the discard pile. There might be a shortcut. But, um, you drag your hand in the discard pile. If you wanna search your deck, you just search your deck, pull a card out. So you're kind of manually doing all of this stuff. So you get to just like how you would do it in real life. Like you're the one manually doing it. It's none of it's automated, which does make it a little bit less of a good game experience compared to PT C G O, but compared to all of the other. Versions of this that have been super useful for testing, you know, ever since I started playing, as, as Brit said, there's apprentice red shark, some other things like this is the most visually appealing and it's Robin has come up with a way to make some of that clunkiness, not so clunky. So for example, in the old school ones, if you were to evolve a Pikachu to Raichu, you'd have a Pikachu card on the board, and then you drag the RRY board card onto the board and it would. Like be on top of it, but there's still two separate cards that if you wanted to move the R shoe to the bench, you'd have to drag the R shoe off, then move the Pikachu, then put the ride shoe back on top. Right. And all the energy cards, same thing. You gotta drag each energy individually, but Robin made it so that you got the Pikachu, you put the ride shoe on. Now it's like one object that can be dragged around. Um, and that has made the whole. Way faster, like way, way, way, way faster. Um, so I don't know if that was a pretty decent explanation or not. Do you kind, oh, that was good. That was good. I dig it. Okay. Yeah.
Brent:So, so how important is it that Pokegear, Pokegear hire Robin to join the PTCG Live
Mike:team? They just need to hire him as like the lead programmer for everything run their run, their digital. Department,
Brent:although, you know, it's actually on a, on a, not unrelated note. I noticed that like for bill bow, I guess apparently like limitless is running the Pokegear stream there. Oh,
Mike:like
Brent:it's interest official. Pokegear has the official Pokegear thing here in Baltimore, but then they've kind of outsourced it in some way. Or maybe bill bad doesn't have a stream and they contracted with limitless independent of Pokegear or like, I don't know exactly understand how that worked, but I'm interested.
Mike:I don't know. Yeah, I know. Well, we'll see. We'll see. I guess when the stream happens, if they have like the official Pokegear, Pokegear like logos and breaks and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Um, all right. Any other random stuff? I
Brent:think that's the highlights, man. Let's talk about getting ready for
Mike:Baltimore. All. Uh, I mean, I don't have too much to add to what I've talked about the last two weeks. I think I, how about this? How about we run down kind of the, the decks and we can like briefly talk and add any new thoughts that we've had. So Brit, do you, or let's start with P I think P is great. It's one of the decks I'm still considering playing. I think anybody. That wants to play Paia should play Paia. I think it's really strong. I would expect it to be maybe, maybe the most popular deck, if not the most popular, like tied around for the most popular, maybe like 20%, 25%. I dunno. You guys got any more additional thoughts to P. I don't
Brit:think it will be the most popular. Okay. Uh it's. I it's very good. I definitely would consider it for sure. There's like, I just think it's like, On one hand, you could like play to win versus like playing for points. And I think it's like a very safe deck to go like six, two, and one or something. Cause like, sort of, regardless of your matchups, especially if you go first a lot, I think PAs is very consistent in doing what it needs to do. Um, just like playing an aggressive prize game even against like good, bad matchups or what have you just like the aggressive starts. I think you can like always get there, especially with the credential play and so on. Yeah.
Brent:Okay. You good?
Mike:Yeah. Well, we'll come back to your thing about popularity in a second. The only, the only interesting thing, I guess, that I'll. For me to add is I've mostly been playing Isaiah Brad's world's list with, without canceling cologne and with the tool jammer. I think canceling cologne is great against charge art and like really not useful in any other matchup. You never get the playoff against mirror. So it's not really good against that. There's not really too many other decks that play Manaphy where it's relevant. Um, so it's really just like making your single prize Charizard matchup. Into a much better matchup, but you're already like pretty even against that. So like you're changing a 50 50 into like a 75, 25 with one spot that's dead against everything else. So I've been playing tool jammer because it gives you a little bit of percentage against char art as well, because it's good to go Roxanne jammer to prevent their charge art one, shoting you. Um, but then it's also good against Reggie, which I think will be more played. In this event than many other events. Um, it's good. It like, it makes Reggie pretty even, or maybe even favorable. And it's good against ice Rider, cuz again, you can go like Roxanne Jamer now they can't one shot you with ice Rider. So, um, I think jammers just like adds more percentage to more matchups. And personally, I think there's gonna be a lot of variety. So I would rather play a card like that rather than canceling cologne and
Brent:Isaiah was playing the Crobat too, right?
Mike:Yeah. The Crow bat's really good.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I assume I assumed the second I saw it. I was like, why, why doesn't everybody include a Crobat cause like
Mike:Crobat yeah. um, And I think like Gustavo played Crobat at N AIC. So they probably saw that and they're like, yeah, that's a card we should play.
Brent:yeah. I feel like when there's Pokegear Pokegear that lets you draw cards, you should put one of those in your
Mike:deck. Yeah. There's so many games where you can use it. Turn two to dig for like a big, uh, turn two knockout play, whether it's like Boston or cross Witchery and something up. Um, like I played a bunch of games against Arceus Pika over the weekend with pakia. And multiple games I use Crobat turn to, uh, to reach for a KO on their Pikachu that they just powered up and it was really, really big. And then on the flip side, if you don't use it early, it's really great Rox Sander proof. Cuz then if you hit a quick ball, you know, you don't a quick ball is not an out usually, but it does be coming out with COBA right, right.
Brent:Turns your quick balls into a hot card. And after Roxanne that's really.
Mike:So I think that, like, we keep trying, I keep trying to like iterate on lye and I keep going back. I'm like, man, Brad's so good. The list is so good. Um, it's literally just that change. I just have minus cologne plus jammer right now. And I think that spot could be a lot of different things, uh, depending on what you wanna tech for. But, uh, yeah. So,
Brent:uh, uh, does that deck win versus Mew two? Like I know obviously my son played the Crobat Bulu. As a Mewtwo counter. And, and I, I wonder without the Turbo,
Mike:how that works personally, I think you're probably even ish maybe slightly on favor, but you still have the quick shooting. So you can like always threaten quick shooting, scoop up quick shooting, which, um, is still adding a lot of damage in one turn. I think if they have like a perfect setup, You're gonna lose the game. You don't have like an out, but I think you're Pia. You're fast. You hit for a lot of damage. And with horn, if they have to like waste a lot of scoop up nets, maybe you can horn to get yourself some damage and you just have a, you have a pretty, you're always threatening, like a big push turn and some games they're able to play around that push turn. And sometimes they're not, I think. What it comes down to, uh, Brit,
Brent:I don't know how you feel. My, I feel like Mew two's gonna be less popular Baltimore than it was at worlds, just because it, it didn't do great at worlds. Yeah. And I definitely
Brit:don't have a good read on it one way or another. Definitely don't think there's any possibility of it being popular, but at the same time, I know people will still play it. The same, the same can be said of stone Jon and things like that too. I'm sure. Um, but yeah, I would say in terms of definitely like the quality of players, unless, unless there's just a, another gamble sort of involved in the deck choice read, um, I don't really foresee it being a deck that like any top players lean towards, um, be never know people like it, just stick with it either way. I
Mike:agree. Um, what else you guys got? So Brit, you said you didn't think P would be the most popular deck. What do you think would be the most popular? I think
Brit:Arceus Pika, I think will be the most popular, I think basically just the world 60 mm-hmm maybe, but one or two differences. I don't really know what you would super
Mike:want. Yeah, I think that seems reasonable. Some people might play like a dark thing, like take the Moltres idea and then that's even like worse for the Mewtwo reunion.
Brit:Crobat yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Seeing some people, some lists, uh, playing crushing hammer in their RCS. That sounds scary.
Mike:That sounds funny. Um, yeah. Do you guys, do you agree that. The Jolteon version will be played, but not nearly as much as the Viv.
Brit:Yeah, I don't really, I don't really see it doing, being super played, I think is just makes a lot more sense and try to win the matchup kind of in a more linear way without disruption.
Brent:I assume people have tried testing both. They'll they'll be like, when I play the BI version, I don't lose to myself as much. So I should
Mike:play that. Yeah. Yeah. Like if Arceus Pika is gonna be the most popular or just one of the most popular, I agree. It'll definitely be in the top two or three most popular. You really wanna lose that mirror just to like increase your P percentage by like maybe 10%. Like you're already 50, 50. To 60, 40, somewhere in that range. And like the Jolteon increases you to like maybe 65, 35. But like, if you go second, you're still kind of back in the same spot because they'll just kill your EVs before they evolve. So, yeah. And it's like, it's just dead cards against you. Like there's so many reasons that I, yeah, I don't think Jolteon is the. Nor do I respect it really? Hence why I'm thinking about two Inteleon decks.
Brent:do you think there's gonna be some quote, like new surprise deck in the format?
Mike:Not really. I know towards come maybe to will run back VAK. Boltund that's uh, all I can think of though, I can't imagine people are like really testing too hard for. O other than like picking a deck that they like and testing those and testing the big matchups. I can't imagine that everybody's going super hard to figure out like a secret deck considering that nobody found one really for, I mean, like, I guess there was like innovative decks at worlds. Um, but
Brent:I don't. Yeah. I mean, I guess I just wonder if, if like, if like ADP was the big innovative. We think that's gonna be the most popular deck at Baltimore. Like if somebody comes with, uh, you know, rabbit strike, Urshifu somehow optimized to win that matchup and like goes on a tear,
Mike:could be Brent, you're shaking your head over. Yeah. Brent that's too,
Brit:too much Mew for Urshifu I think. And on, on top of, I think the matchup is like fairly shaky. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's like some games where you just don't even beat RCS. Cause you only like bench one. It still just dies on the first turn mm-hmm around. S's second turn like the boss player. What have you, um, But, yeah, that's the thing, that's the thing about the, the like mainline RCS deck, the list, is it just kind of like naturally covers all its basis, basises and, um, it's just like, what more could you want? Like, obviously I've talked about like the Carbonite deck, which is just sort of, and like the Aron deck as well. People very well could play, which just sort of takes a different route, but yeah, I've sort of wondered. If people are gonna try to play Cheren's Care, even in their, like the RCS versions, not necessarily like the RCS Inteleon deck, but just like mere options.
Mike:It seems so bad though, too. Like I was playing with this dude this weekend that was playing, uh, a lot of our Pika and the, he was trying out a rock Sander in the deck and I feel, I feel similar to Sharon's as I do with Roxanne, with that type of deck, like, is it worth playing the one of. You don't have any control over when it's in your hand, really? I mean, you can play Lumin, I suppose. And then it works. So I take that back, but you play so many path. You have to like also not have path out. It's interesting. Um, okay. So Pia and Arceus Pika. Do we agree that those are the top gonna be the two most popular? For sure. Some people think that Mew is gonna be just as popular as the other two. What do you think of that? Or do you think it's like a close third?
Brit:I think it's the pretty even third,
Brent:three way split. I think, I think it always turns out being a little more popular than we expect. Yeah. I was gonna say close third, but maybe that means the Bri's right. You know, unless like, unless
Brit:RCS adapt with some dark, which I, I do, I do expect a lot of people will play. Also trying to just like go to one up on the Mew, but like, without, without any adaptations, like Mew
Brent:can be P
Brit:and it, and it like should beat the RCS EX for the most part. So like, it seems like the best play, at least on like a kind of like base level, thinking about the, the way the three matchups go
Brent:mm-hmm I think similar in wild, how RCS is a colorless attacker. Like it's just so tool boxy. You're like, well, I might play Melmetal or like people put dark in and like play the fighting for the mirror and you play the Pikachu. Like it's it's wild.
Mike:Yeah. yeah. Yeah. I think we would be pretty popular. I don't, I also agree. I think it'll be like just under the other two, but, uh, I think it'll be really popular people. Uh, so with a thousand people, right? There's gonna be lots of people coming that haven't played, maybe at all in person And there's gonna be people that haven't played in person since N AIC and some before that maybe they, since it's in the Northeast, maybe a lot of people went to Jersey regionals and then that's it. And now they're coming to this one and. Maybe they didn't buy any more cards. Maybe they just had Mew. So I think like Mew has that advantage and that it's been around longer Arceus as well. Um, HAkia is gonna be popular just because it's the best egg. But I think like if people don't wanna think too hard, Mew seems like a really great, like, think not to, uh, not think too hard in terms of gameplay, but think too hard about what to play. I think Mew is a good play in that sense. I
Brent:wonder if there's gonna be some bias towards like, just playing like pretty straight builds of all these things, because people aren't necessarily trying to innovate on this format cuz they've already busted out the Gus and they're like doing other stuff. Mm-hmm
Mike:that's true. The more I think about this tournament, the more I'm like people are just gonna play. What they like, they're not like a lot of the matchups are pretty even, uh, and if you know how to play them, you're gonna get an advantage. But a lot of the matchups are pretty even. Uh, and so just play whatever you feel like playing. I think you'll be okay.
Brent:Are you guys, are you guys testing groups like very dialed in, on Baltimore or are a lot of people already moving on to the next set?
Mike:Um, It's like it's split, cuz like some of, some of the people I'm talking to are, are going to Baltimore and some are not. And so the people that are not like really don't care, um, and even the people that are going to Baltimore, some are still talking about lost origin stuff. So, but some, but some are like, I haven't even looked at the lost origin set. So
Brent:I mean, it's notable that, that, like, we're not looking at the, you know, limitless results recently and stuff like that. Cuz they are all lost origins and it's like just lacks context for us, you know? Yeah, exactly. How about you Brit? Are people focused on, uh, Baltimore or, or are people thinking about other stuff?
Brit:Uh, I don't feel like I'm in too many actual conversations, uh, right now, but handful of people talking to you, um, Just going to Baltimore, I think. But yeah, I'm like, I'm enjoying what I see on lost origins and the online stuff, but yeah, I don't have any, uh, I haven't really talked about it myself with anyone yet.
Brent:Yeah. A rare instance where I think we're all really dialed into Baltimore right now. So like I have no hot takes on the next set. I haven't looked at any of the cards. Like all that set review will come after, after this.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. My, I looked at the set long enough to make my three quarterly hot takes uh, on Twitter and then I stopped looking um, so, okay, so those are, we agree. Those are gonna be three, the most biggest EX probably making, in my opinion, over 50% of the Meta share will be those three decks, probably close to 60. Uh, and then, then we got a lot of other decks that'll fall around like the 5%, maybe pushing 10%. But so like, let's kind of just go through quickly. Reggies I think could be like somewhere in the five to 10%, maybe on the higher end of that. Cuz it's fun. I think it's a solid place. It's just like really inconsistent and not my cup of. Anything else from you guys?
Brent:Yeah. I think radiant, Charizard falls into that. A bucket of like, it's gonna be less popular, cause it's just harder to play. Yeah. But, but like both of those decks, a well known player did well with it at worlds and people are like, oh, that's like
Mike:a thing. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I would expect Reggie to be more popular than ARD. And this is also a reason. That I wouldn't play cologne Paia, cuz I expect charar to be maybe 5% now of those people that are playing it, they're probably pretty good. But I think a lot of people will be turned off because of how. Mentally draining the deck is to play. Uh, and I can't fault him for that. I am lucky I've been playing the deck since weeks before worlds. I have a lot of practice with it. So I feel, I feel like if I wanna play it, I can be comfortable with that. But even me being really comfortable with it, I know I make some mistakes with it. I'm a little bit worried about time and I still might not play. I might play P um, so,
Brent:right, right. I think everybody that looks at radio chars are as to take into account the fact that they're, they're not Ross. So like
Mike:that is a big thing. So I wouldn't tech for that deck. Um, Maybe I'm Meta manipulating a little bit, but I, if I am not playing char art, I am not teching for char art. So I don't feel like it's Meta, manipulating to literally say what I believe if I was not gonna play the deck
Brent:and Reggies is easy to play and fun to play. So in that way, I think you're right. Like, it'll be, it'll be popular because if somebody test strategies, they're gonna say, cat, this is pretty. Yeah, I'm having a good time, like bopping things. And like you lose, you win something, you lose some, but like you're definitely doing your thing. A surprising amount of
Mike:games. Yep. Agreed. Uh, ice Rider. P we've talked a little bit on the pod about that. I think that'll also be kind of in that higher end of five to 10% range, maybe like 10%, some ice Rider variance. I think it's pretty good deck. I don't think it's gonna be nearly as popular as those other three, but, um, it's pretty. What else we got, we got like arch or Adon UN ironically, I think arch or Adon is a pretty good play. Uh, it's not something I personally would ever play, but I think it's a pretty good play, especially for people that are not as well versed in the format. Cuz your games are. The games don't really come down to your decisions all that much. It's uh, it's like, okay. I drew, okay. I got a decent matchup and you have pretty good matchups. Like you're pretty good against Paia. You're not bad against Arceus Pika. You're not great against Mew, but, um, you beat Reggies, you're decent against Charizard. You're I, it seems
Brent:like in online tournaments, it does amazing virtually every night. But yeah, like, I, I can't imagine. I would ever say, oh yeah, that's a great play. Go, go do that.
Mike:well, and part of that, part of that is like no good players really ever play it for the most part. Um, because it has very little agency, but that doesn't mean that's a bad deck.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, the, the matchups are just super polarized and like, yeah, you, sometimes they flip over the card and you're like, we're gonna get there. And sometimes they flip over the card and you're like, we're not gonna get there.
Mike:Yep. Anything else Dialga I'm sure that'll see some play. It's also pretty fun deck. I don't think it's super great. I think it's probably, my brother has been testing a very, very weird version that if he plays it, he is gonna have a grand old time. He might not do well. He could do super well. It's very high roll deck, but I heard he
Brent:will not be satisfied with going 4 41.
Mike:Yeah, we'll see. Um, the only other thing that I see that's relevant on this list is like, Arceus, Inteleon. Which I think is like dead
Brent:it's wild that Blissey won regionals in the exact same format. And it's such like completely off the radar.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Blissey but I mean, Blissey, Blissey might see as much play as char are, to be honest. yeah. And another
Brent:deck to where you're like, when you play it, you're like, well, this was fun. I had a fun game. Yeah. I attached a hundred energies.
Mike:I would, I also think, I think Reggies will like be, it's funny to say, I think Reggies will be more popular than Arceus. Inteleon like, I
Brent:hear that because like, if you're gonna play Arceus Inteleon why, why wouldn't you play ADP? Right? Like, you know, you feel like, you feel like the people who are trying to win have kind of evolved their thinking to their. Thinking like having more tool boxy kind of things you could do versus just the pure consistency of Arceus Inteleon is, is like, in some way, apparently a little better. You don't wanna take a loss to ADP and like it's more popular deck. Yep. But everybody'll just end up on that, but Reggie's is fun to play and yeah, I think in the great war of like, you know, you're testing Dialga, you're testing, Blissey you're testing. Duraludon when those people, when they play. I should play this. It'd be more fun. Right? Mm-hmm
Mike:Other than that, I'm sure there's lots of other decks that will see play in like single digit counts, Samara Sion Gengar stuff like that, but not worth it. Dark cry, dark cry
Brent:guys. I feel like, I feel like people know what they're, uh, getting to when they go to Baltimore now. Any other stuff
Mike:we should cover. I'm excited to see everyone in person. All right. The
Brent:guys, another pod of the books, the Jon Pauls is our outro.