How was Peoria?
Brit:Uh, I thought it was fine. Uh, like, I guess like many people, I don't know anything about the city, but it seemed big. Like it certainly bigger than Springfield, Missouri, I guess where I'm from, um, there was like not a lot of, not a ton of food in the area. Like no, I guess it must have been downtown ish, like a lot of bars, micro brews and things like that. But kinda lacking on the food front. Um, but not to say that there wasn't places to go for dinner, but just more on the, the lunch. Lunch break was tough. Um, but yeah, I thought it was fine. It just pretty typical unexciting Midwest somewhere like, same as blindfold me and tell me I'm in Fort Wayne. I probably couldn't have told you I wasn't like It's just a little mid, mid-size city. Um, Good, good distance though. It's closer to me than I thought it would be.
Brent:Um, you know, I wonder like, uh, um, I assume that there's maybe other conventions have the same kind of like, like scheduled conventions have the same kind of problem, but it seems like, I wonder, I mean, Baltimore had a lunch problem too. I wonder just as these events get bigger when they say, Hey, 1500 people, you have, you know, 50 minutes to go get lunch. Like, it just might not be possible.
Brit:I I'm very anti lunch break. There is definitely a point in time where we like usually wouldn't get them at regionals. And I think that, I mean, I understand like to a certain point, like you gotta feed the judges. Like, I think feeding, keeping the staff happy is more important than keeping the players happy. But like, as, as a player, I think that it should just be bring snacks, finish around early, go find something like they, there's obvi, there's, there was concessions and stuff. Um, within the convention center. Um, but yeah, I just, I think the losing that extra hour, um, or so a little bit more is just not worth it. And in the, in the past we definitely didn't always get lunch breaks, so, um, and like I do think I do, I would say that I thought the event did run well. There was, there was like some big hiccups, like in the first round they didn't quite get the full story on, but something kind of strange happened. Someone like, I think there was like almost a fight and someone had to get escorted out. But it's really all about all I heard. Um, I do know, I definitely know like for a fact someone like both of those things are true, but who and why and why I, I don't know more, but I ended up talking to the judge that did the escorting, um, at later in the evening, so I got a little info there. Um, but yeah, what it, So yeah, yeah. Back, back to finish that thought, I thought it was pretty well ran, but then at the same time it like, It was ending like after nine, I think it was when around nine. Finished. Um, when did, when did Baltimore finish Swiss?
Mike:Not too much before that. Maybe eight
Brit:30. Okay. That's probably fine then. I, I thought that was a little late seeming, but I guess with the lunch break and everything else, it would, seemed pretty good. Like every, everything else felt good. The, the space itself was definitely smaller than like Indianapolis, just like the convention. The hall that we were in specifically was not nearly as big, um, but didn't have any real spacing issues, like you said about Baltimore. They're not really doing covid stuff anymore. It was just kind of normal tape, normal table numbers, but didn't feel cramped or suffocated or anything like that. My biggest nightmare with these tournaments is I just don't ever get signal. In these centers with a million other people. So I like almost had to use paper pairings the whole time. That just like is frustrating for me. They need a better carrier or something, I guess.
Brent:And it seems really important that when they go to online pairings, they also have like, they spring for the convention center wifi, you know? Mm-hmm.
Mike:That's true. One thought Brent, uh, about other conventions and dealing with lunch break that we have the unique problem that everyone needs to take their break at the same time.
Brent:Right, right. That's, that's what I say about, it's like when I go to business stuff. Like if, if you just skip a, a, an event or something, like people kind of stagger it like the lunch a little bit because there's different stuff happening at different times. Mm-hmm. I don't know that how many other events there are that have like this kind of competitive format besides like this thing. I'm sure there's tons, I just don't know. Right.
Mike:Yeah. And I mean they could alleviate that a little bit. Right. Um, by, they could like split round four or five up into two different times. That's
Brent:interesting. Yeah. I mean that, that's kind of splitting the difference of Brits, like don't have a lunch break thing. Although, I mean the problem is really like what they're doing is they're adding an extra round when you split it, right?
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I mean it would still be the same length as case
Brent:scenario
Mike:adding an extra round. Right, Right. It's still adding the same length of time at a lunch break, perhaps even a little bit more. Cuz sometimes the lunch break is not a full 50 minutes, but. It would make everyone's,
Brent:Yeah. I mean, the lunch break is when you get back on schedule from your late start, right? I just claw all back. Yeah. So, Hmm. Brutal. Welcome to the Trashalanche. Brent Halliburton. Mike Fouchet. Brent Pybas, all your favorite Pokegear podcast host. We're the best Pokegear podcast. Pokegear knows that they just haven't acknowledged it yet. Um, attendance as always, a hundred percent. We have not gotten a five star review in a while. If you leave a five star review, they say that it helps people find new podcasts, so it helps us a lot. When you leave review, we'd appreciate it. And when you leave review, we will read it on the pod and discuss. So it's a great chance to do a fun thing where we do fun things together. Um, Uh, you know, guys, I had one other, uh, thing that I wanted to circle back on from, uh, last week. We talked about how the, uh, the death of written content, uh, um, uh, is a thing and, and Channel Fireball has, uh, gone away. The one other thing that I, I wanted to get your quick reaction to, uh, uh, that occurred to me as, I mean, I recognize one of the big things that people used to really rely on written content for, and, and this is a meme that's now gone because there's no more written content on the internet, is listless list, List list, and I wondered it how much like, like YouTube could have done away with Listless List, List list, but I feel like Limitless has almost done a better job of doing away with listless list
Brit:list. Yeah, Limitless Pokestats too. Even like, there's just lots, just
Brent:the fact that like, like there were no like meta breaking decks at Peoria because they were already like, all played online for three weeks before that, right? Mm-hmm. and if you were looking for like listless listless list, like nobody, like, I think went on YouTube and watched what, what CELs was playing or something, right? You went on Limitless, I assume, and you looked at what?
Brit:Yeah, that's, I mean, for me, certainly, like I, I, I love, and I'm friends with, you know, these content creators, but I don't, I don't watch, I don't watch any, any of those videos. Like when I was young, I, I watched every top cut video, every book of video and so on, but. Now. Yeah, I'm just like, and I, I feel like the, the lack of written content, like is just ubiquitous now. It's not just like Pokegear that's suffering, it's just everywhere. There's so much less to read. It's all in these annoying video forms and shorts and so on. But yeah, definitely like straight to the info. It's just limitless. Cause not only do you have list, but you just have data too. Lots of really good Trainer Hill too, obviously as well.
Brent:Yeah. Trainer Hill's great. But yeah, it, it, I, I just had a weird moment earlier this week where I was like, Wow, nobody's been like list, list, list, list lists for Peoria. And uh, it's funny because like that used to be the thing, especially with a new format, right? Yeah,
Mike:yeah, yeah.
Brit:I mean maybe you could, Sorry, go ahead Mikey.
Mike:No, I was just gonna say one. So there's one article that I go back to all the time that I can't, that cannot be replicated, I don't think, in a video format. And that's that one Math six prizes article. Do you know which one I'm talking about when I say that? It's like the,
Brent:it's the, it's a really old one, right?
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's probably 10, 10 years, eight year, eight to 10 years old. But it's like the opening hand probabilities and it talks about, uh, you know, odds of starting a certain basic odds of starting a certain card in your hand based on all these, you know, different variables in your deck. And that's something that I've looked at this weekend, for example. Cause I was curious on estimating the odds of getting turn one VIP pass in paia. You can do that really straightforward for just the raw VIP pass, but then also incorporating that half the time you go second and have access to ida and, but then you're, you don't wanna count IDA and VIP pass cuz then you're over counting. So, um, so like, I dunno, that article is something that I go back to frequently that I don't know, like it's such a good resource as a textual article that. It would not have the same effect, lasting effect, at least as a video or
Brent:audio. It, it's interesting, I think it's kind of a credit to, uh, um, the, like, I think the game has gotten a little more complex, at least in that I feel like when I first started playing, which was the era of like virgin and plasma and eval, like that stuff was the Bible, because really it was like straight supporter counts and then you could run Jirachi and there was, there was like nothing else that was gonna affect how well you drew in a game. And now there's like so many Pokegear that like, or Mew, or. Uh, um, you know, Snorlax, like, there's just a million other factors that kind of play into it. Tracking shoes, it's like, well, it's not a draw card, but like, it's a little bit of a draw card. Like, all of that stuff. Like, it's, it's a little, um, less straightforward to do the calculation and I like that. Generally speaking, think it's true. Like there's, there's a lot of little things you can do that move the needle just a little bit, right? Yep. And, and like how you think about battle VIP in terms of whether or not you like, Draw Dead, you know, And the Inteleon engine obviously is like, like there's just a whole bunch of stuff that like, makes it a little weirder to think about, which I like. I think it's good. I, before it was just, you know, what, what are your outs to draw ins, Sycamores, What else you got? Right? Sycamore's. Even, even not, not old school enough, Juniper. What are, should we talk about Peoria? Should we talk about the top 100 rankings?
Mike:Let's, let's start with the rankings. All right. Before we start, I do think was on Twitter today, I saw, um, his name Ross Gilbert PTCG Radio posted kind of like the conversation of Jason versus to especially now, that to just won this past weekend. Um, cuz he was bringing up Sam Secum into the conversation, blah, blah. But it was just funny since we had mentioned it briefly last week and it's relevant talking on that. So anyway, for the
Brent:rankings. All right. So, um, I was thinking guys, today we'll just do like, I think, so when you think about how ESPN does their top 100, they kind of blaze through with like one sentence each for the top like X until you get to the ones that are interesting. So I thought today, like, Uh, like 50 through 26, I'll just blaze throw'em. And then next week we'll start to grind through like 25 to, I don't know, like 11, and then we'll do top 10 the week after that or something like that. Sound good? Yeah.
Mike:Yeah. And I think it's worth mentioning, you had mentioned to me that there was like some clear statistical, like breaks, right? Yeah. So is this gonna take us kind of through like one of the statistical breaks?
Brent:Um, not really. Uh, I think the, the, the biggest statistical breaks were at the top 12 and then at the top five. And, and after that there's no breaks. So let me start by saying, talking a little about my process, um, I think I said last week I deleted a bunch of, uh, uh, things that were just like bad. Um, I know people were said that, uh, some people were left off the list and you know, it's tricky cuz there's a tension between a manageable process and a comprehensive process and we tried to kind of tow the line. So I recognize that when we talk about the, like maybe 35 to 50, there might be people that were just left off the list or maybe if the list had been in a different order, results might have been slightly different. Um, right, like Ross Coffin and Diego Casa Ragga are way down on the list. Andre Screwballs way down on the list. Gustavo is the first player on the list. Frank and Drew are way down on the list. Mike is like the last person on the list. Like, if, if these lists were in a, at its different order, maybe that would've been, there would've been like certain, like a different set of biases as people went through it. So, so all that is a little weird. Having said that, the data seemed okay. So, So without further ado, let me, uh, um, I'll just grind through these. Uh, uh, if you guys have a comment. So I didn't do everybody, cuz we had 86 people on the list and I feel like there's definitely people that were left off the list. Um, only about half of our responses did people go past like 30 or 40 in terms of ranking people. So, The mathematical process that Mike came up with that we then subsequently used is, uh, for people who didn't go all the way to at least 50, we would take the average of the rankings. So if they, if they ranked say 25 people, uh, we essentially took the average of the rankings from 26 to 86 and assigned that average to all of the rest of the votes that they had. So in that way we didn't like, essentially give people who didn't get ranked zero. We gave them something. But people who, um, ranked very few people, we kind of ranked people a little better than people that ranked lots and lots of people. Uh, the people that they didn't rank were ranked relatively worse, if that makes sense. Uh, I'm happy to talk more about it on Twitter if that that didn't make sense to people cuz There you go. But, but as a result, it seemed okay. So I figure like I, you know, fifty's kind of a random place to start. Um, but, but, uh, that allows us to kind of capture most of the people who got most of the actual rankings and in that way it seems okay. So in 50th, then again, Aly. Nice. Uh, everybody know Fi, he's a great player. Uh, 49 was Matt Cannon, who's not someone I know
Mike:also, not someone I know.
Brent:Uh, 40 eights Christian label
Mike:from Canada,
Brent:uh, 47, who didn't do quite as well as I think I would've ranked him. Niko Arceus. Hmm. Excellent player in Europe. Everybody knows him. Uh, 46 Matthew Burris, Australia. Yep. 45 Ren Taghi. 44, Owen Cameraman. 43 Milli slab Plus led me. Hopefully I got that pretty close to right. 40 two's Altavilla Cueva. Hopefully I got that kind of right.
Mike:Think he is Chile, maybe?
Brent:Yeah. Uh, 41 was Drew Bennett. Kenneth. Nice. Uh, 40th. Bert Walters 39th. Matt Car Roka. I, I, I feel like he's someone who aged up in seniors in Brazil.
Mike:Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, I don't, not familiar with, So
Brent:he, while, while he had like maybe the third or fourth most CP in the entire world, uh, last year, uh, he's, he's a, uh, a Brazilian player, um, who's done very well. Uh, 38th is Igor Costa. Very good player. 37th is, is Grant Shinx. And I think so. I think that's interesting. Cause that really speaks to the recent performance and, you know, if ego comes back and plays a lot this season, I wouldn't be, I would expect people to say ego's really, really good. Yeah. uh, uh, 36 is Fabian. P 35 is, uh, Phillip Schulz. Mm-hmm. Uh, I, I could, I could've easily seen both of those guys doing better. Have you
Mike:said that Phillip hasn't been playing as much, You know, in recent times? I mean, it's the same thing with eor. I, I guess,
Brent:yeah. And, and like, it's easier for me to say, Oh, I would've thought that those guys would do better. I, I think as starting like right about now, I mean every name on this list is gonna be like, Oh, I mean, it's just like the nba. You're like, those guys are superstars. Mm-hmm. and how they rank relative to each other is, is tricky. 34th, Brian of Reeves. Mm-hmm. 33rd is Frank Ick. 30 seconds while ready. Uh, 31st is Travis Beckwith. 30th is Zacian Cool. 29th Gabriel Smart. 28th. I I'm gonna fail the pronunciation here. Uh, Joel Pedro Madeiros.
Mike:Yeah. I'm not sure. Sure. But I think we apologize.
Brent:I recognize he's extremely good at Pokegear, although doesn't to that many, uh, uh, like US tournaments coming on. I, this, this really reflects coming off a strong world's performance. Yeah. Amazing. They're showing that world's. And then the last one we'll do today, 26, Caleb Emer
Mike:seemed reasonable. Well, I mean, everyone we mentioned is definitely a very good player, and probably none of them are, like, none of those names. You're surprised to see in like a top list, but you're also not surprised that they're not like the top 10.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I, I looked, I looked at all those names and I was like, those names are all fine. And, and when you think about the names that have been left off, which is like toward Azul, Gustavo, uh, Grant Manly, Isaiah Bradner. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole bunch of players that we haven't mentioned that yet that you're like, Oh, those are the people who are like, coming next week. Um, uh, the fact that they, those people are ranked more highly than, than those other people. You're like, I believe that, Yeah, I'd
Mike:still be very upset to see any of those people on my pairing sheet.
Brent:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like are those, uh, amongst the top 50 players? Yeah, they're, they are like top 50 players ish. So, um, uh, we will try to pull together some sort of, I, I think, I promise people I try to post those on, uh, the Twitter and I'll try to post those on the Twitter. But, but now we've given you on the pod first, the, the 50 through 26 and then next week, well maybe we'll count it down to 12 and then we'll do the, the 12 through one. Cuz that's the 12 is definitely a big, uh, uh, break point in the data. There we go. Cool. Excited. Super fun. Super, super fun. And like, as you guys said, I looked at that and I was like, Yeah, that it doesn't feel, it's like, are there like little bits of controversy? Sure. I mean, I'm good friends with Drew and Frank. Do I think Drew and Frank should be doing better? Yeah, sure. Why not? I love Drew and Frank. They're awesome. Um, do do, does it list feel like mostly correct dish? Yeah, I could see how people got to the way they got to. Let's talk about Peoria guys.
Mike:So toward one
Brent:towards super gonna
Brit:Pokegear. That's a big story. Yeah. One European wins the whole tournament must be so much worse.
Mike:Yeah, there's lots of big stuff to talk about, but um, maybe Brit can just start us off with his experience.
Brit:Uh, I had my usual sort of tournament run where I get frustrated and dropped while I'm still in contention for day two. So I don't have too much to report from my end. I played Gu Tina, which I think was. A fine, a fine play. It's a fine deck. Um, my list really was only like two cards, one or two cards off, uh, Jon and CCAs. So like not, um, nothing too unique going on, I guess, to, to give credit where it's due. I was motivated by Kevin Clemente posting and talking about it. I DMed him a little bit just on like thoughts and a few like matchup points and things like that, and ended up basically playing that list. Um, I played, I only played two, two Garina as opposed to the three two, or rather the two three, um, in favor of, uh, I just played like a Marnie and another quick ball. I forget the other card that I changed. Um, but it was good. I just had some like bad draws on top of like one, one game wasn't even bad draws. It was just like I just drew the energy in the wrong order and like had game, but like. Drew the energy that I needed to Mirage Gate, like, and if I had just drawn like any other cards, I would've won. Um, but that sort of experience, I was, I tied a lot, I guess to clarify, I was 1, 1 2 when I dropped and like almost tied the, the loss was a turn away from being a tie to, um, and I don't feel like I was playing slow. In fact, I conceded every game. It conceded early, like every single game I played or every single game that I lost in these series. So, like, I think the lost stone deck are just a little bit sluggish. Um, it's just kind of a lot of extra searching, extra thinking. You just gotta a lot of tiny moving parts. So you have to make sure to keep straight. Um, played against two Kru, a Mew and a gig. A Reggies, um, beat the Mew lost to a Kru, tied to Kru, uh, tied the Reggies. The Reds matchup, like is, I think you just kind of hope that they clunk out. Like it's pretty tough. It's, it's definitely a really, really slow grindy matchup. But like, adish not too bad. Um, just, I'm glad I, I was talking in a group chat that Mikey, I think has made recently with like Liam, um, some other like Northeast players and Jimmy McClure, and I was sort of complaining the night before, like, I don't think I've ever used a Zig again. What is it for? Mm-hmm. but it's definitely very clutch against Reggies. He just like, he does do 120 like, and so, but your damage isn't very good and you have to play around, um, you have to play around nets. So like the, the setup spread damage is like awkward to do. Like, I think in like a perfect world, you get, you get to save life fast and you start putting four on everything and then you, you try to take a double knockout or two. Um, but again, like, and even all the damages, just like potentially useless if they time things right. And then otherwise, like Snorlax was really good in that matchup. I definitely like, definitely gets a lot harder I think, without Snorlax. Um, and that was definitely a good card. I'm glad I played it from Kevin's list. Not all that, um, common. I believe Justin and John played it as well. Um, but isn't, isn't super, um, isn't like necessarily an ever evergreen inclusion for the deck. Uh, but yeah, I guess like I really wish I had played Pia. I think sort of everyone knew that Pia was the safe play and then I think it proved itself. A very good safe play. Plenty in top eight, um, plenty in day two. Um, all that good stuff. I just like backed off Kiri because I finally decided that I thought there was gonna be too much TAA for me to wanna stay on it. Um, and that, I guess was the right call since there definitely was a lot of Inteleon. Um, but Kiir is Kira's really, really very good. Like, um, it's, it's very strong going first. Um, I felt like as a, that was another, I guess part of my sad little report is I, I lost every coin flip. Um, and just like the deck you really kind of want to go first with, um, and, and the ki match of it's really hard going second into turn two kiron. Like you just don't have time to make gt. Um, unless there's a Thornton play and the pressure is just really fast, they just take a prize every turn from turn two onward. Um, but yeah. Um, Yeah. I guess one thing I would, I was gonna say earlier that, well, I think play into this is that like, because we, we had so many online results and that definitely like dictated the meta game more than anything else. And that to me just feels like, um, I mean, I guess there's maybe nothing they can do with like, the timing of the set release, but like, I think this would've been a much more interesting tournament had we had it like a few weeks earlier, or like if Baltimore could have debuted the format or something like that without all the online results. So that just kind of feels like somewhat of a miss. Or maybe just on more so on the disappointing side of things. Um, just in terms of not a whole lot of surprises toward one with kind of what's been the star deck in the online tournaments with, you know, Alex, She Mansky doing very well with s hrs, our version of the lost, the lost Box deck. But I think in general, the, the lost box decks, the lost, both of the decks are challenging to play and so it's really no wonder that toward wins with, with one of them. I think they, they reward sort of immaculate play and immaculate sequencing, like more so than anything else. Like, not a lot of margin for error and certain decks, but just like the way you play them. Um, you know, you're, you're digging for cards versus just like having your whole deck at all times. Like, you know, said, say the take the like RCS list or something. Like, there's not a lot of agency in those decks. They're just playing draw draw supporters and hoping to have the right cards at the right time compared to the lost, the lost box deck or even the Zoroark Arceus decks that I think really tried to just like thin themselves down, um, sort of as much as possible. Um, and I guess, I guess that's one sort of note to mention, uh, Zurich has existed online, but it, I think it definitely showed, proved itself this weekend as being. Maybe tier one.
Brent:Certainly a, an upper contender for that was, that was definitely the biggest surprise of the tournament, right? Yeah.
Brit:Yeah. I actually, I like sort of, or at least the day before, I talked to two people who were both on Zoroark Arceus and I like thought about switching to it. Um, but I just didn't feel like finding the cards for it. And like, I played some, played a bunch of testing games the night before with gt after I'd sort of walked into it and I'm like, it felt good. I like, I won them all, which also always feels really good. It's good to go to bed on those, on a bunch of wins in testing. Um, But yeah, I definitely just like had better, better draws in those games than I did in several of my tournament games. But you
Brent:probably went first half the time.
Brit:That'll help. Yeah, I definitely did. Yeah, I was going first CX and it was, it was a lot of freebie stuff. Um, but yeah, I don't know really too much more to note other than that was a good tournament as far as like good players Altered very well, like everyone there who is a named player contender for our top 50 list, like midday two for the most part. Um, and that's always, that always speaks well of a format, I think. Um, and a lot of decks. I guess one other learning that I had personally, and I think this is like. Generally true across the board, but I think that the Mew deck is just so good. I think I like underrated how strong it would be and like, like people are playing double drap on to beat them. Like the one drap on is like usually not enough. Or like if they can just temp out tempo, you even still and like obviously will have access to the city a lot of the time. So you can only only do it once. Um, in the game I, the series I won against Mewtwo ira, the on for like 10 prizes over three games or something like that. It was, it was very good. Um, definitely no way. I don't think there's any way you win without it. Um, but it definitely doesn't win you the matchup. It, it, it's what keeps you in it, I think, in a lot of scenarios. And like, I think if I think playing pa I would still probably consider it for the deck. Like I, I don't know how much of a death sentence it is to start with it in a lot of other matchups, but definitely just to take a like. 50 50 is mash up to 60 40 or something like that? Seems ideal to me. But I'd have to look at the data to see like how well paia did versus Mew, like on the streams and things like that. But it definitely feels like if Mew goes first, it's really tough.
Mike:I mean, Cal, Cal Connor, who got second played D on in Paia. Oh right, Yeah, yeah,
Brit:yeah. Oh,
Mike:there you go. Yeah, the like, the biggest thing about it is that you don't play a natural switching card except the cross switchers. So it's, it is awkward. It's like particularly awkward if you start it compared to some other decks. But yeah, it's still, it's probably a good, um, couple thoughts as you're talking. So you mentioned that you didn't play qm, but ki surprisingly did pretty well. Like, it was, it made two top eight spots and most surprisingly it was the most played deck. So maybe it's not surprising that it made two top eight spots, uh, considering that it was the most played deck. Uh, by kind of a lot Um, I'm looking at the chart right now. So 173 people played Pa Kiem. The next most popular deck was Garina with 1 29. So over a 40 person differential between the most popular and the second most popular. Um, and then just to give some context, so after Gart, Mew was number three with 113, and then Paul Inteleon had a hundred people and then the lost zone box had 69 people. So, and that rounds out the top five. So Ki Pia was like by far the most popular deck, which I think is interesting. Um, what ultimately led you to switch off? Oh yeah, you said cause you thought K and Italian was gonna be very
Brit:popular. KT match is like not good. I think. I think going first. Um, and just having a good start, you have a chance. But, um, for the most part, I think it's, that's Crobat definitely your worst matchup, I would think. Um, mostly be also too, like even with the good starts, you're not playing very many like switcher cards or like, uh, gu gust effects. And like a lot of list played Switcher, which we talked about last week, ended up being, I think, more common than I expected in all the lists. But like you, you're not hitting them as faster consistency and consistently as the Inteleon deck, you know, cross switcher and Kiem is just like, Oh, I have one time to eta for the second one. Whereas you can just, like, sometimes just pull them up, pull them both out of nowhere with, you know, shady dealing nets, shady dealing sort of stuff. Right. Um, but yeah, Kira's really good. I like, I just think it's like more linear than everything else. I don't think you have like, like you have two really good attackers, so you have Keira and PA and Lele, Gria and things like that. So you have, you do have some sort of. A variety of options there, but otherwise it feels like the game plan is pretty streamlined and then you're, you're most vulnerable to, to late game stuff like game disruption. I think you just like most list don't play bi most lists don't really play path outs. Um, they might, they play a couple training courts, but like obviously if you, if you play the, the Roxanne and tandem with Path, like I feel like you usually just lose as Theum player, I guess depending on your board state and how many energies. I haven't seen Zacian Krekeler list, so I'd like to look at that. Um, I guess I can maybe pull it up here, but he, the Krekeler tend to play goofy list. Like, not, not say that they're bad, but just like, they're always unique, I would say. I mean, Andrew was playing, I, I tested, that was one of the decks I played the night before too. Played against the rcs Shadow writer thing. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, just like not a, not quite an archetype. I think people that people were expecting.
Mike:So Zacian. Arceus is not like too funky, but the biggest thing is that he only has one, One Paia.
Brit:Interesting.
Mike:Which is definitely a little weird. Like there's some other like little inclusions that are nonstandard, but that's the biggest thing. Um, something else you said towards the beginning when you were talking about, uh, matches going to time and whatnot, The loss zone engines seeming very slow. I don't know if either of you watched The Stream yesterday during Top Cut, either of you watch.
Brent:Are you gonna talk, Are you about to talk about the tour versus Jon game? Yeah. Yeah.
Mike:So top eight was Tour versus Jon. Game one took 45 minutes because they're both lost. They were both also playing very slow. Um, Like, but so one of the things that I didn't really think about that increases the time length is if you wanna check your opponent's discard, you don't just have to take their discard, you also have to look through their law zone. So it's two separate, like search actions every time you wanna look at their resources, which adds up over time. Um, that's actually pretty significant. Um, and it's the same for you if you need to look through your own resources. Um, and we saw the effect of, you know, you comfy, you gotta think about your choice, you chorus, you gotta think about what you're throwing away because I mean, I get it. When cards go to the law zone, they're literally out of the game. You, there's no way to possibly get them back. But it's still like, it was like really painful to watch how, how slow the matchup went.
Brent:You know, it's funny, my, my reaction was slightly different. Like, I, I think I liked watching the Comfy Engine in that I feel like the comfy engine kind of played quickly cuz it's like, it's not like a shuffle draw thing. You're just like, look at two cards. Like, it's not even like tracking shoes. It's like Abike, I guess, right? Abike, yeah. Like they would just take two cards off the top and they'd look at'em and they'd pick one. And in that respect, I felt like that was okay. I mean, Cobalion risk to your point, like that takes a long time. I mean, back in the day, people just Sycamore and you're like, deal out seven cards and then you start playing cards. Mm-hmm. this, this is one where they like, they deal out five cards and then they spend 45 seconds agonizing over what they're gonna do. Right? Yep. And like, they look at their hand and they look at their blossom and they look at their discard and they look at their hand and then like, like there's a lot going on there, you know.
Mike:Yeah, so I can see, I can definitely see why ties are much more likely playing these type of decks, but I'm sure as people get more comfortable playing these engines, games will speed up as well. Yeah. This is the first
Brent:tournament with that. You're you're absolutely right though. I mean, when, when, uh, to, and Jon spent 45 minutes playing the first game, you're like, Wow, that's, if this was not a 75 minute thing, like what hope would there be for anyone? Right?
Brit:Yeah. Right. I like most versions, probably more particularly the guarantee version than the chars art version. Since if you like playing a matchup that with char, where the chars art is gonna take you big prizes, it's probably not as much thinking, but like, I feel it felt like playing gear at Tina that, um, all of your match, a lot of your matchups are like really scrappy. Like, it's not, there's not like a, there's not a good, you know, just a flow chart. That's what I'm looking for, like a flow chart. Just like do X and then do Y and then do Z and like if all goes well, you'll win. It's like you have to be. You have to kind of be on the fly a lot of the time in terms of like, okay, I'm, I guess I'm attacking with Cramorant next turn, and then I'm gonna have to figure out a way to finish that knockout later and then now I'll use GU and so on. And it's, it's a little like figuring out, figure out you in conditions is like, I think a kind of on the fly process a lot of the time for the deck. And like, that's fun. That's like an enjoyable to deal with. Cause used to have to think creatively. I think a lot of the times certain match trip just like, don't go that way. Um, but like you're kind of underwhelming to a certain point too. Like the first, the first or two, like you're as scary and just kind of doing what you can. And then once you're, once you're mirage gate and later to g and things like that, things pick up. Um, but yeah, definitely tricky decks to play. Like, again, like I think just in, in terms of pure like speed, it's not all that slow, but just. Lot of more like meticulous thinking and figuring out your deck and discard and lost zone and so on. Like, and prizes, like all very important, very consistently. Like similar, like some games too. You just like chain colors into colors, into colors and like, you win when, when that happens. Like you just get to seven or 10 very, very, very quickly. But some games you just don't, or at least, you know, I'm sure I wasn't playing it as nearly as well as Justin or John or toward, but like some of the slower starts are also hard to deal with too. And like the games where you, you dig for, you dig, you dig for colors, turn one with like Lumin and then don't play another colors for the rest of the game. Like that's really tough. And um, people have been trying Crobat on the list, which I think is interesting. But I think the biggest difference, which I, I could have done and just like didn't at the last second was playing an ultra ball just sort of solves this, like that problem of struggling to find guarantee a VStar. Um, Jon, Jon and Justin did, and someone in our tech, the group chat like did, and I just didn't have time to to change it, but I definitely would've been a good inclusion to me, I think.
Mike:Yeah, yeah. Speaking of, so Jeremy Gibson, I think who, that's who you're talking about, played ultra ball. Yeah. So he, he is like in our group chat and he went, he played Gu and I don't know, sometime during day one he sent a really funny message to us. He's like, Gu Tina is basically the same as Pia, except being slightly favored against everything. You're slightly un favored against everything
Brit:It feels direct to me. I, I, I deeply appreciated that. And just like, I was just like, Yeah, it does feel that way.
Mike:Yeah. So that's, that's a nugget to consider at least. Um, Jeremy's a really good player. Obviously there was a bunch of other really good players that played Guino, like Premo, Jon, Boari, et cetera. Um, so they must have seen something in the deck as well, but, From what I've heard a little bit through the grapevine is that even some of those players think that the lost zone box is a better deck. They just weren't as, um, well prepared to play it perhaps.
Brit:I think one another thing that I feel like is definitely we, we talked about it last week, but I feel like it's proven now. Ole Leafeon stinks. Like Yeah, I dunno if you watched Pram, Pram played two stream games where opponents started with it. He he won both. Yeah. like, and, and, and Mewtwo the, the one ki that opened against it, I like, I won, I won that game and like didn't matter and then the ki on my lawsuit didn't even play it like Paul on Bad confirmed, Let's
Mike:move on. Now all of the Reggie decks are playing paths to the Peak, like, so it's not even good against that. Um, And actually that was kind of the next thing I wanted to mention. Another somewhat big surprise to me was how prevalent Reggies was at this event. So I was talking to Pablo and Ross a little bit before, and they both ended up playing it. Pablo has been kind of on Reggies on and off since World Ross knew he couldn't play Chars art again, didn't have time to test, so he just trusted Pablo. Um, so I knew that they were playing Reggies, but not really for, like, they thought it was a fine meta play, but it was not like, there was like a huge reason behind it. But it turned out that it was a pretty good play and a lot of good players ended up on it. Um, Reggies was the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, seventh most played deck. Uh, there was 59 people that played it, but 16 people in day two, which feels like a pretty good conversion rate. Um, 16 out of 60. Um, and what's really interesting, I'm looking at the Pokestats page for standings. Um, Reggie's did really well up at the top on day two. Like there is 1 2, 2 in the top 16, none made top two in the top 16. Another 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, another six in top 32. So eight total and top 32. And then you scroll down and there's like none until the very bottom of day two and then there's like another like seven. So on day two it did like really bad or almost good enough for top eight. Um, there was multiple Reggies that I think lost their winning in to top eight. Um,
Brit:play. I think it obviously has like good matchups again, like with no flying Pikachu being close to nonexistent now or certainly comparatively. Um, like I think that was your biggest problem. But like Reggie's just biggest problem is itself too. Like it reminds me a lot of greninja. Like grin when you, when you have the nu starts, like you just don't lose, like you go water duplicates of all of all you can blah, blah blah, like all that stuff. But then usually it just has all this like inherent clunk and that's, that's such veggie's problem. It's like not only could you have bad prizes, not only could you have, um, just not a lot of draw support, like things like that, but you just like your sequencing of your energy can go wrong and you know, you can prize poorly or now that, now with Lost City, like you can get locked out of it that way. So most of the lists, of course are playing like three counts of like gigas and, um, maybe one more. I saw some of the lists played three of the Drago, which seems good to Mees, just kind of your draw. Um, but yeah, like Reggie's is just that, that I think and does have a good on paper lost box matchup. I think that matchup is pretty tough. Um, for either version, again, kind of for reasons we talked about earlier, but. I just, I just don't think there's a way to solve the consistency issue. And like, I mean, you can make it worse, but playing Thornton too, but Right. I think that that's, you know, is just definitely not just a meme or what have you. Um, yeah, Reggies I think will probably occupy that space until it, until it's cycles I would guess. It's just like on paper. Very good. A bunch of, a bunch of beefy one prizes with type coverage and so on.
Mike:Brent, were you gonna say something about Reggie's?
Brent:Uh, I mean, good players played it. Mm-hmm. right? Grant Azul. Drew Pablo Ross
Brit:Zacian.
Brent:Right. Yeah. I mean very, uh, very good players, uh, chose to play it, so I, I think that's those good. What else? All right. So Lele, let me ask you guys, uh, a couple of questions first. So, is, is Lost Stone Toolbox the best deck or was it just toward, was playing it and toward wins tournaments?
Brit:Hard to say no with this result and the Japanese one, like those are very big tournaments, very difficult tournaments. One by, I mean, it didn't win in Japan, but sort of made it splash there. Um, yeah, it'll be interesting to see where things go, but yeah, I think I, I'd have to think about it more, but like, it's probably just better. Like I, I'm not sure moving forward, like if there are increased loss cities and in other decks and things like that, that like if in these match where the char art is super necessary and like that makes things better, I could see some scenario like that happening. But, um, I don't know. It's just fa it's just a lot faster and more consistent at the loss zoning and I think it will probably just Edge GT out because of that. Um, GT's is, is such a good card, but it's so awkward at the same time too. And it's just, it is just difficult to play, to play into it. Uh, play it into other VStar a lot of the time. Cause you just like, you're not accelerating like Pia or RCS is so like you just like watch them die and then your prize, your prize race is like not good if you're not using the, you know, getting a two 80 knockout and eventually the, the VStar attack Knockout.
Mike:Yeah, I agree. Also, like towards list is actually pretty different from the Japanese list.
Brent:That was my next question. It's pretty different than frankly the list. Every list you see on Limit List
Mike:too. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz all of those are based off the Japanese list, right? This is, this is different in. I would say like two major ways. One or maybe more than that, but um, it's really all consistency. It's very straightforward. Doesn't have like Zigzagoon for example. It doesn't have, um, canceling clone, but instead it has the paths to the Peak which served the same purpose and shutting off in Poon. But I think probably more importantly, the paths to the Peak plus the loss vacuum just gives you a much more consistent speed of your way of getting to the 10 loss zone cards. Um, and obviously Path to the Peak is very good against a lot of decks just in general. So I think that's one thing. And the cross switchers, right? The cross switchers are pretty huge. Gives an EX, it gives you just extra switching options for comfy, um, if you really need it. But, The deck kind of struggled to play boss because of the other supporters that you wanted to have, maybe you had lost on it. So a lot of lists were playing like one boss, one P pad, and it's just a little awkward. And I think the cross switchers probably make more sense. I think it's somewhat likely that you'd have to lost on a cross switcher at some point in lots of games. So you're probably realistically only getting off one gust, but that's probably enough. Um, and then other than that, yeah, like I said, it's just really consistent. It's got the four fog crystal, um, got like, basically it doesn't run real switch but runs four rope, four scoop up net four switch cart So lots and lots and lots of ways of switching Comfy. Uh, the Oranguru is pretty interesting. I'm not a hundred percent sure why you play that card. Um, I guess it's good against Marnie. I guess. It's good if you know, you like draw the IP pass, you can put it on top and then comfy to make sure that you get rid of a bad card. Um, I guess it's probably just like good enough and your bench space is not really spread that thin anyway. Um, yeah,
Brit:so like the, Sorry, Brent
Brent:you go first. Oh, uh, so, yeah. So, uh, you know, one of the things I saw on, on the Twitter net, I don't know if you guys saw this, but the, uh, player that won, seniors played, uh, lost on box as well. And, but he played the Zigzagoon. He was like, Zigzagoon best card in the deck, And then obviously I look at Towards List and I'm like, Zigzagoon, apparently the 61st card in the
Brit:deck. Yeah. Well, like it's one of, it's one of those cards that when you're, you have a brain as big as to like, it's, it's like correction or that extra damage you need. But if you're toured you, the math is already settled. Like you don't even, it's like you're like a computer, right. You know exactly how you're winning the game with your Save I spread and like a lesser player Take Me for instance, is like, Oh, I messed up that turn. Just gonna ping you twice. You know, that sort of thing. But like, joking aside, I do think that something like that is actually the case. Like Yeah. Um, But I, I also do think, like I just sort of said earlier, like I really, really was very close to cutting the Zigzagoon and very, very glad that I did not. Um, so we'll see. I think, well the, the, the point that I wanted to add was just that, um, like none of theists were like, we talked about it last week. Mikey played a tournament with the 70 hpss and we didn't see any of that. So maybe that will make the deck a little bit worse moving forward if everyone just like is respecting that more and like we see more PIA 70 hps lists, like maybe that will be enough. I'm not sure. It might not be even still, but that, that's just another thought. As far as where meta game adaptations go, Espeon might show up in a lot more decks potentially. Things like that. I guess, I guess the guarantee I might be more like resilient towards meta game adaptations and it might just like be, always be a safer play, but it's hard to, hard to knock the single prizer now.
Mike:Yeah, there's no, there's no echoing horn in this list. That's like a, another pretty big difference. Um, like three echoing horn to zero, um, which I think is fine. Uh, but you definitely play the game differently and you approach building your deck differently against a version that has a bunch of echoing horn versus one that has none. So that's something to like consider for people building decks if they're preparing for a list more like towards, you don't have to worry about echoing porn, which is relevant with something like BLEs. Actually, I'm not sure if the 70 HP BLE gets better or worse looking at this list. I'm not actually, I gotta think about that more because one of the fears was that, Even if you didn't leave any soles, if the, if one of'em, or if two of them hit the discard at some point they could double echoing horn and take two prizes immediately. But without that, it's fine. Um, the other thing about Zigzagoon that I'm a little surprised about is it seems so good in the mirror to be able to KO tomb com fees, like immediately. So that is, maybe it just doesn't come up that often. Uh, I don't know. But um, that was like the other place my head went to when I saw no zigs again.
Brent:Yeah. I, I recognize that, uh, if you wanna play cross switchers instead of one boss, like you have to make Yeah. Make some sacrifices somewhere. And it's interesting he made those, but I. I, my immediate reaction was like, love the cross switcher. Like obviously if you had to choose peanut boss effect and a Guzma effect, like Guzma is way, way better. Yeah. And to your point, like you're building big hand sizes and you're having to discard, uh, cards that, uh, you don't necessarily want to like frequently, you know, if you have a choice of like one boss or like a cross switcher effect, like the fact that you're gonna discard across switcher two, no big deal. And if you never do and more power to you and it gives you a switch effect. Seems like straight dubs, But so, so do you think people after this, like there's gonna be like this, Oh, we gotta play the tour list. Yeah.
Mike:Yeah, definitely.
Brit:We'll see, we'll see. We'll have some online results
Brent:and yeah. I mean, it was just so dramatically different than the list that everyone else was playing. It's, uh, it's wild as always a credit to tour. I'm sure he must have played a million games to get to the list. He got to.
Mike:And also to his credit, I doubt he played this exact 60 on his dream, but I do remember watching his dream maybe a week, week and a half ago, two weeks ago. And he had something very similar where he was playing like four Path for Lost Vacuum. And it seemed like a meme to deal with in Poon, but the more I think about it and see it, it makes sense to just really accelerate getting things in the lost zone. So he had the idea out there for everyone to see
Brent:Uh, so, so where, where do you think the, the Salt Lake City Meta evolves from here? Hmm.
Brit:Let's see. I bet, I guess I would take a, take a stab and say Cure em goes way down in play. I don't, I don't, I think that it will be edged out as the meta game adapts further. That would be, that's reasonably strong guess that I have. Um, I think, I think there are other decks that still have some potential. Um, I guess on the, the, the point of lots of things being viable, like I do still think that's true, but a lot of it is super matchup dependent, like the gout decks didn't do too well, and I don't know how well positioned they'll be going forward against either of the lost decks. Um, especially with like lost vacuum, like probably increasing in play. That's definitely a card that, um, I would potentially play more of in gu like I played one and in Kevin's, uh, Twitter thread he mentioned like potentially going to two. And like, it's just really good if you can see it and use it early. Like even if it's on your own stuff, it's plus two in the lost zone. Like I, I had a game where I, I lost owned my own air balloon and like just got to Cramorant immediately. Mm-hmm. Um, and it felt really good. Um, and it's good against parasols and things like that that can potentially stop you. So I would think that. Moving forward, these potential adaptations to the P list that we've sort of talked about. Um, I would guess that more the lost zone, both versions of the lost deck just get refined a little bit more and that maybe something like Vical is also refined more that can counter them in, like Pia, something like
Brent:that. But I don't
Brit:know how much it'll really change. Um, but we'll see.
Mike:Yeah. Quick note. None of the p on top a played Thornton, so totally happy with that. Uh, yeah, I agree with all that. I think there is room, a little bit of room to innovate. Um, perhaps it's Azul, perhaps it's something else. Um, I'm not sure what Muse future looks like. Um, I saw a tweet by GW today that he thinks that this was the last event that Mew is viable, which I don't think it's that dramatic. Um, but it will be interesting to see how the combination of seemingly a bad loss box matchup and d Dron play, how that kind of affects how popular Mew is. It is extremely powerful. Like maybe in a vacuum, maybe the most powerful deck. Not sure, but, uh, the counters are, are already there, so we'll see. I'm not, and I'm not sure about the tanky decks as well, because I think the only decks toward lost to the whole event was GRI decks. So presumably that's a bad matchup and that kind of makes some sense because gru's very tanky. So maybe that has a spot. Maybe it does have a spot. Maybe it's more or less, I don't know, but it's other matchups are not very good. I don't think so. And like it's match against GX is obviously quite bad.
Brent:Yeah. I wonder how much this was like, uh, uh, you know, obviously first big tournament in this format, people kind of played the decks that they hadn't had the chance to play against, but were kind of the parasitic archetypes given to us by Pokegear. And if we'll see more like innovation in, uh, Salt Lake,
Brit:I think new will be fine still. Like even, I think it's not that bad against drap beyond guarantee lists, like still really close if, if they just start fast stuff. I think, I think one problem with the DT Mew has is that like, it really, really wants to go first. Like it's, it's another one of those decks and like, cause you just get a free turn if they go second. They can't do anything at all on their first turn, but draw cards, so like that EX, that extra turn really goes a long way, especially if you play drap on. So like, I, I, that's, that's definitely a problem. But if you go first, like I, I think it doesn't matter. So just, just becomes kind of that another one of those dynamics which will keep the deck viable, but is unfortunate. I think
Mike:um, I think Reggie's will probably see less play. Than this. I would just because there was so many good players that ended up on it and seemingly because of a meta call, but I'm sure lots of them experienced Reggie Hans at various points. I know Alex Schmank was tweeting about it significantly, but I'm sure everybody had it at some point. Um, so I would be surprised if a lot of top players stick to Reggie and don't try something else. But it seems like a fine play for anyone, just cuz it is more of a meta call than, than like a very strong deck
Brent:Yeah, absolutely. Anything
Mike:else guys? No, I think that was good. How many, how long is Salt Lake away from now, do you know? Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. And Brent, you're going, you guys are going to that. Okay. All right. So we gotta prep Liam.
Brent:That's exactly right. You guys gotta funnel all the, all the
Brit:juice. He's just, he's got too many, He's, he's too creative now. He's just got too many bad ideas. You gotta get him to just test the Mees
Brent:you know, because they canceled the, like, all, all of his seasons and Pokegear, he didn't have time to work all the bad decks out of his system right? Isn't, isn't, isn't being a senior, like when you do that.
Mike:Sure. I, I would say it's when
Brent:you, when can play all this because you're trying to figure out how to build decks, you know?
Mike:Well, you can do it there and get away with it there. Yeah. You can't, can't always get away with it In, uh, in Masters, it was funny actually, Yoshi made top four, right? And. He always, whenever he plays, he always plays like really weird stuff. Um, and I, the, the commentators even mentioned that he was disappointed in himself for not bringing something spicer to the event.
Brent:he, he has fantastic on stream. He has so much personality. The personality is just like bursting out of his hands
Brit:as he plays cards. He's great. He's fun to play against. I've played him a handful of times, but yeah. For listeners who don't know, Yoshi is like a classic Lele, defacto, like just rogue player, and he does very well, consistently. I don't know if he's ever, I think he's one, he won states before I believe, and I think has some other regionals, top fours, finals maybe even too. But just a classic Midwest rogue player. Always a
Brent:pleasure. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I, I remember, I remember getting him to like be on stream at tournaments and stuff, and he's, there's just so much personality. He's hilarious. Love him to death. Was, was it a very sad that he could not, uh, figure out a way to, uh, get to the finals? Cool. All right. Jon Paul, our outro. There we go, guys. Nice. I do have one funny story for you guys that, that was not suitable for the pod.