We got stuff to actually sift through. Talk about Zoroark. I've done,
Mike:Yeah, we set it first. We said it first and now everybody's saying it. Yeah, we said it.
Brit:Someone else has proven it. At least to some degree at least. Yeah. Certainly not me.
Mike:I
Brit:feel good at least about the cursory lu results. I just like, looks like the color is, past stuff is a lot better. And that was just like last week. I definitely voiced as cynicism and like eal No way. Yeah. But yeah, I was definitely like, wanted to play slacking and her ear.
Mike:Oh yeah. I, I need to look at what her ear does. I don't even know. But, um,
Brit:I guess.
Mike:So the Zoroark, the Zoroark Box deck won like the first big online tournament, and then I was listening to Azul and Chip's podcast from last week. And they like basically said all the same. They kind of like went through the same progression as well, where they were like going through different cards and then at the very end they're like, Oh, all of these seem like, uh, good. And dojo's actually good.
Brent:You know the other question here, let me do the intro, then I'm just gonna, I, I got one or two good things for you guys. All right, Sweet. Welcome to the Trashalanche. The most official of the Unofficial Pokegear podcast. Attendance is a hundred percent Mike Fouchet Brit Pybas. Me Brent Halliburton. It's the greatest team in podcasting. Uh, we did not get a new five star review, but if you leave a review, even if it is not five stars, we will read it on the pod and discuss it. You should totally leave a review because other podcasts say apparently that helps the algorithm do the algorithm thing. And, uh, uh, people wanna listen to this stuff sponsored by Dragon Shield. Mike has still never tried Dragon Shield sleeves. We were gonna rock his world in Arlington. It is absolutely gonna blow his mind because he has never experienced the power of Dragon Shield. They are the nicest sleeves, there's no question. Yeah, and, and, uh, unfortunately for Mike, because he didn't know, he did not get the banger colors that Brit did of like Nebula and, and like pink diamond or something. It's, uh, some pretty impressive colors. If you see us in Arlington, you can ask, I, I also think I'm going to Toronto. This is like, uh, possibly late breaking news for us, but we're gonna try and make the
Mike:magic happen. Okay. Nice. Have you booked anything for it yet? No, not
Brent:a thing.
Brit:I have friends that are driving, I'm like loosely on the fence,
Mike:I'm like, I'm also like, Maybe a 10% thing. Uh, I've, I've thought about it. Uh, it'll be, it would be a little difficult for me. I could probably swing it. It's just a matter of do I really wanna do it? I don't know.
Brent:My, my, uh, I have an engineering team in Toronto and my boss has bought into, I should totally go up on, uh, December 2nd and hang out with that engineering team. Mm-hmm. so, I mean, I guess I should go. Yeah, like, I just gotta, so, so I gotta pull it together and if I just pull it together a little bit and Liam tells me he doesn't have any tests on that Friday, then I'll go because like, I definitely gotta go up like Friday morning first thing, or Thursday night or something to, to maximize my time. Right. With the Amazon corporate, uh, powers that be. So I, I can get good value out of all that, but like, so there's good, good mojo happening. Um, guys, let me start with the burning question that's on the tip of everyone's tongues today. Have you installed PTCG Live?
Mike:Ooh, I've not done it yet. I don't really
Brit:plan on it. I like, I'll find an account, someone will do it for me. I don't You know, it's, it's one of those things where I just like, I, it's like a soft protest. Like I just, like, it's more just like forgetting about it and not interested, but I'll, I'll sell it. I'll present it as like, Until it works. But no, I hope it's going well though. Like, no, no mean spirited or anything like that. But it was not on my like, Oh, gotta do it. No, no, no, no, no, no. But I think it was a like, sort of lackluster launch. I think it like crashed or was hard to play. Yeah,
Brent:I, I haven't followed it much, but I appreciate that Robin Schuls put together a like how to guide and told me that I shouldn't migrate my account, which I appreci.
Mike:Yeah. Um, so I'll probably download it either over the weekend or maybe sometime next week when I have some time off and just to test it out a little bit. But, um, yeah, I'm definitely, definitely not migrating. And the, the thing that Robin mentioned about the economy, about getting like enough celebrations, codes, that also doesn't seem possible right now. I heard they're kind of sold out everywhere. I haven't, yeah, I haven't researched myself. I'm just. Taking what other people have said, but I probably won't do anything significant on PTCG Live unless I can do something like that.
Brent:Right. I, I recognize the whole celebrations code is like, there's a, there's a like window of exploitable arbitrage in the PTCG Live economy. I don't like that. Like that's what everybody says is like the thing people do, you know? Yeah. I mean, that doesn't, that it, that's obviously not sustainable, so like what's the next threat? Mm-hmm.
Brit:I mean, I think there are easy, at least hopefully easy within the parameters of the system. Some things they just, the way it was built up, that might not be possible. At least like that's the case with Hearthstone as it were. Just like lots of a handful of just quality of life things you like think should exist. Like they just can't exist because of tech ed and things like that. And so like, but yeah. Yeah, as far as just like why can you let us dust any card? That seems like an easy fix. Like little, little things like that all seem very, Solutions seem designable and implementable from where I'm sitting as far as making the economy better. And like, especially too, like, I don't know if you've seen what like lus are going for right now on PTCGO, but it's just like, it only gets worse over there. And so like the, the better you make this one, the more people you know, the better product, the better launch it's gonna be and so on. And so, yeah, like not having to keep junk cards, little things like that, I'm sure. We'll, I'll add up to like another
Mike:deck. Yeah, and I think that problem is of not being able to dust your cards is exacerbated by the fact that there's so many reprints, so you don't need mm-hmm. 40 switches and you know, 20 quick balls. You can just choose which art that you want to keep and get rid of the other ones.
Brit:Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that too. Yeah, the sheer and so many of the reprints are just like bad too, or lots of versions of Unplayable vs and things like that. Yeah, Yeah. It's a lot of dust. That goes a long way, I'm sure. Exactly. Theory.
Brent:So, so Brit, when you say you're there, there's, there's not a chance there. Are you still grinding the, like are you, are you doing the Hearthstone daily stuff still, or are you like protesting hearth?
Brit:No, I still play. It's not like my main game or anything. I don't really do any, like, I don't, I'm not touching any of the other modes right now. I just play standard and that's about it. Just playing other games with what little time I have. Um, yeah, I mean our stone is I think a fun, I like, I don't know, I could go on more sort of tirades about Snap and I think Hearthstone is just like, I don't know, One of the, one of the things that's like irking. Particularly, I guess as a comparison between the two is that there's so many, there's so many cards in Marvel Snap. There are just direct analogs to a Hearthstone card, but the Hearthstone, the version of the Hearthstone card was deemed like, Urshifu, you know, bad play patterns and things like that. And so I'm just like, Why does it exist in this game? But you knew it was bad in that game. Like, so like, like Shachi is a really big and powerful card, particularly as you, as you get bigger in the Meta and it's just big game Hunter. And Big Game Hunter was a problem for so long because it made like, You know, a large class of cards just completely unplayable and like, because Marvel is so simple and it lacks, you know, these, these other sort of parameters where things like, like card advantage, board control and things like that. It's just so, it is just so abusable in ways like that. And so like another example is like won. Wong is brand bronze, beard, but like brand is such an, is an interesting card cuz to really make it work and to really have like safe place off it, you have to like reduce its cost, play it on a turn where it might die and you just hope it doesn't. And like all these other things and there there's just not, because the game is so short and so small, the counter play is just like always very lacking. That's just, it's frustrating to me. And, and again, because so many of the cards. Exact versions of themselves across the games and like we knew this was bad, like you took this out of standard and things like this and, but I digress.
Mike:One, just one quick on about Marble Snap. One thing that's been cool is the last couple weeks in school, I have talked to some of my students that have, that are like big Marvel fans and they've tried some Marvel Snap. And they've, one of them, one of them has played card games before, but most of them have not. So that's kind of cool.
Brent:Right, right. The, the, the Marvel brand as a way to drive in trading card game adoption. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So now, now you just have to get'em on. PTCG, Live, There you
Brit:go. Still like, again, like I can complain and complain and complain. Like, I do think it's a good game. I do think it's fun, but like, again, it's just those other points that I think you just, you just have to bite the Bulu on and it's just like, eh, it's not that competitive and, and move on. But as Seminar, I guess wanted it to be more competitive or like plays games and just like, 100% of those moves were telegraphed. Like, why, why even play? Like there were no options. It was just, you know, you had a clear best play of return and that was it. Um, and kind of the same Pokegear, the same issue with Pokegear, where like, it's not really a whole lot of interaction between the players. You just, you look up every, and that's about it. But yeah. Anyways, not a, not a, That's enough of that for now. Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm a game designer. I think about these things all day.
Mike:Um, alright. Brent, did you have another thing for us that
Brent:I think that, that was, that was the big top. Did you guys watch much of, uh, Warsaw?
Mike:I did not watch much of it, but I did go back and watch the finals yesterday because I heard it was pretty good finals and it was pretty,
Brent:So talk to me about it, because I guess I, when I saw as, as I texted you guys, when I saw, uh, it was lost box versus Garina, I was like, Oh, that seems super bad for Alex, sucks for him. Uh, it's a shame I'm at this sport and I thinking, Riley can't watch it at all. Uh, was it different than that?
Mike:Um, so game one, Pedro scooped in about two minutes. So he, like, he played, he, I think he went first, had an unplayable hand turn, one passed, drew his card for turn two and then scooped. Uh, so then, and then game two was really close. Um, I think Pedro chose to go second and. I think that's correct. I think Pedro chose to go second but did not get the turn one attack. So fell behind Alex, then got an attack off and was up in the prize trade for a while. Um, and the Guillot deck can still play the single prize game pretty well cuz Alex played two C Cramorant, one Sableye and a Snorlax. Andys green. And he has ion, which is pretty relevant because you can mirage, get to it. Like it's a consistency card obviously. So you find Right.
Brent:It's less consistent single prize attackers. But like you, you run enough.
Mike:Right, Right, right. Um, and so he was able to like, keep up the prize trade, but what happened towards the end of the game? I don't know. I forget because game two and game three are actually pretty similar to each other. They were both extremely close. Um, and in both games, Alex took the first prize, uh, in one of the games, Pedro's, Roxanne, like really stuck pretty hard. Uh, and. Then he was just able to kind of like close it out. But one of the games, it was closer than that cuz the Rox Sander and then Alex had a pretty good draw out of it. I think he didn't like path with the Rox Sander, so he still had grin as an out. Um, and it was just like a really awkward ending. So to whatever game was super close. I dunno. But anyway, it was really, it was really cool because uh, like Alex played extremely well. He used Lele minion as an attacker multiple times throughout the two games. I think he probably attacked with Lele Minion definitely twice, maybe even three times, I forget. Um, and they both played like their out really well. Um, And Espeon, like the lost mirrors are really cool because every decision matters a lot, and you can see that when two very good players have 75 minutes to play two games essentially. The, you know, they're not rushing each other on decisions. They're taking their time. Like Pedro, there were so many times where Pedro like had his face in his hands deciding between which two cards on a comfy. Um, it was, it was pretty entertaining to watch. And, uh, Chris Semanski was one of the people that got to commentate it as well, um, which was cool. And so throughout. Chris didn't even really know Alex's list. I don't think which was, uh, one of the funny parts. Um, but it, it was cool to like hear him commentate, uh, his brother's finals. So, uh, it was nice finals. I didn't get to watch too much else. Nothing else. Super duper interesting. Uh, seemed like it happened. There was like a VECA volt paia that got top eight. Um, Other than that, it didn't seem super anything. It didn't seem like anything new came out of the event. Right. And,
Brent:and Tod played Rapid Strike Urshifu, right? Yes, correct. And did not, uh, make day two?
Mike:Yeah. It seemed like he, he seemed like he probably would've played Lost Box if he didn't post on Twitter. That if this gets X amount of likes, I'll play Urshifu,
Brent:I assume when you do that it is because in your heart you wanna play your fu.
Mike:Yeah, exactly. His heart wanted to play your fu, but his brain probably said to play lost box. I mean him
Brit:talking about the deck, at least like in, I think it was in the, like the comment about the picture of the deck class. So like it seemed like it was a legitimate choice, at least like. For him. Like I, you know, most of us probably didn't believe in it, but according to him as like it tested really well against everything. But, uh, forget had a bad ki matchup, I think. Um, but yeah, yeah, it wasn't just like a deck he wanted to play. According to him, it had pretty good matchups across the board. I think it was a cool list. Like I, I, I guess I just don't pay attention to him streaming and those deck lists don't get posted. But I thought drap on Two Dion and the VStar was, was cool to see. Um,
as
Brent:well, and otherwise I assume it has a favorable paia matchup, a favorable loss box matchup. I don't know how the guillot matchup. But it's probably okay. Cause like it's kind of like paia, like it's, it's hard for,
Brit:I would think, um, just depending on the way things go, like you just have to get up enough in prizes for where the VStar taking three prizes on your Urshifu like, isn't enough. Because otherwise the, like, it takes some, a lot of it takes setup work to be able to do two 80 what have you, to kill the Urshifu. So like playing around that, like you have Cheryl and stuff too, like I would think it's
Brent:pretty. Yeah, like I, I guess what you have to do is you have to like use Sableye to like spread some damage to force them to try to like
Brit:not, Yeah, I mean it plays the chars there too, which itself is like pretty, is always pretty strong against the Garina, like especially in these matchups where you have a lot of, just a lot of different attackers in a lot of plays. Having, having that as an option really at any given point in the game is really strong. Obviously at its best when you're knocking out Garina. Um, so yeah, I think that match is, is strong, but yeah. Kiem just like one shot, everything.
Brent:Right, Right. Yeah. I can imagine how ki would be terrible. Uh, as I told you guys, uh, over text, I thought it was very validating for our, our top 50 Pokegear players list, given that Pedro was a, like seventh on the list of, uh, top players. And Alex is obviously top 15, I think. Mm-hmm. So, uh, great, great to see great players get great outcome. Props to both of those guys for making the finals very rough for Alex. That's a very difficult matchup in finals.
Mike:Yeah, and I think it's been set a lot of times and for anybody that watched this stream, we heard Chris say it a lot, but I think this is, Alex is still not one of regionals and this is his like fourth time losing in the finals which is a little heartbreaking.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's rough. So guys, let's talk about, uh, the next set a little bit. Have you guys been following online stuff
Mike:a little bit? Yeah, I've done a little bit of playing myself, not with Lua, but a little bit with, uh, Reggie's, with Serena a little bit with Zoroark Arceus box and just kind of like playing some random games with me. And Paia me is like fine to play online, but it's not a hundred percent accurate because the. For a Seal Stone does not work under Path to the Peak. Um, but I mean that, you know, that only comes up every once in a while, so it's still fine. Um, so yeah, I've played a little bit, I've looked a little bit at results. I actually have a win a another win a case tournament on Sunday, so I don't have very many cards in real life, so I'll probably either play Pia or Reggie's. But is
Brent:it, is it silver Temp?
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so I just gotta, if I can gets, I'll probably play Reggie and if I can't gets, I'll probably play pa yet. what I'm thinking right now.
Brent:That sounds like a very reasonable, uh, strategy. What's not to like. Yeah. Uh, so, so have you have you theory model Lua very much. We've talked
about,
Mike:have you played against Lu. I've, not that many people have it online, so I haven't played against it a ton, just a little bit. But like in our group chat, we've, we've talked about it a little bit. Um, I like, before the set came out, we had discussed on, and even, you know, our last podcast, we were kind of talking about how little skeptical about all of these rainbow versions. Um, And they've, I mean, it's not a whole lot of data right now, but it does seem like a lot of the lists that have done quite well in the online tournaments are not necessarily playing all this random stuff. I know, but you said one list was playing a Stoutland v. Is that correct? Yeah,
Brit:I think so. I think, uh, Evan Campbells got like first and second at two of the recent online events. Um, both with just the No, no, Amazing I Radiant Pokegear, but just the, the heavy colorless Pokegear and think Stoutland just does like 60 intake prize, I think.
Mike:Let me see if I can find this one. Yeah. Oh, there we go. Oh yeah. Okay. Oh, and he has a, This is cool. This, one of the lists that he played in does not have Stalin, but it has a Reggie gigs. Mm-hmm. just a regular Reggie gigs and then all colorless energy. And he played Cheren's Care, which Brent you brought up, uh, last time as well. Um, the evil tall. Is like the only one of these cards that seems somewhat interesting to me because otherwise I don't know how you Beaton. I guess if you play Path to the Peak, you can Beaton, but it's just so like, you mean three rainbow energy and so you can't really play for just for Aurora then. And so you've seen this starting to play like for Aurora and the special dark energy and like. You really wanna play that card in your deck, Yeah.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, they go farther too, depending on what other amazings they're trying to make work. And I've seen this with like Raku and like One Speed Energy and things like that. It's again, I mean, I think we voiced it well last week, but it's just a lot for, I think cards that like you, you're mistaken for. Better than they are. Like you have this sense like, oh these cards are busted in glc. They're just must not be a real way to play them in standard and we have it now. And that's just like not the case
Mike:still. It's
Brit:like these cards are like interesting. Of course. Fact that they just banned that on your
GLC
Mike:update of the week. Um. But
Brit:yeah. Yeah. I think the more streamlined version is, I mean, for me it was definitely more interesting and it's seen the most success so far. So I think it's just got a lot to offer. And I think Cheren's, Care is just like, Super underrated. It's just a very strong card. All of these, all of the cards like Cheren's, Care, like Seeker and Acerola and things like that are always incredibly strong. And I think we've just been in like a weird format where outside of like the slower Arceus stack there just like hasn't been a great way to play it. Um, and, but I mean, it's a crazy good card and we have more crazy good colorless Pokegear. And I guess too, if you're playing it more with this like colorless box focus, like it obviously isn't working. It works on more than just Lua, of course. Right. So there's a lot of different things you can potentially do with it. And even, even just like resetting, stabilize, spread and things like that is like probably useful enough. Like it's, it's a use case that like can win you games, um, things like that. So you never know, but I'll be curious to see how these things develop and if there's like, you know, I don't wanna be bad for it, but. So you just have the Dunsparce, so like your weaknesses just don't matter and it's just a matter of Yeah, I just don't know what deck you, There's not always anti medex that comes to mind that can be Lua, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Mike:Yeah. Like I feel, I feel like with, if, if LucMetal is start playing Dunsparce and Manaphy, it seems really hard to counter. Um, I think it probably beats Reggie. Then if you have Dunsparce and Manaphy, uh, you're just pretty naturally strong against Paia. I think, uh, I think your new matchup could be a little shaky without some dark Pokegear. I've seen some lists playing like Crobat VMax, which again, it's like, it seems okay, but, um, maybe. Super great. I don't know. Um, but maybe you can just run the, maybe just running Path to the Peak is, is the way to do it. Uh, but yeah, if you're running like Dun spars, Manaphy and like just Cheren's and stuff like that, it seems really hard for another deck to, like a random deck to, to one up. You, it's kind of like the Arceus Inteleon effect, right? Like Arceus, Inteleon just kind of beat all of the random stuff because of that. So, um, So some other decks besides Lua that I think are kind of in, in, we have some more information on them now, I suppose is the best way to put it. So I think ve Boltund, Reggie Leki is like not, I don't wanna call it great, but I think it's a little bit better than I gave it credit for. Last time we talked, I haven't tested it myself, but I watched, uh, Luke more so stream it a little bit and it's been doing. Pretty decent in the online events. So I think that's something my, my only issue, there's currently
Brent:two of them in the top eight at the late night, 69. Very nice going on
Mike:as we speak. Okay. But they both lost in top eight, but it's okay. But they, uh, but they made top eight, which is cool. The, I think my biggest issue with the deck is that there's just not a lot of room. To innovate. I think within it, like you have to run three, three Reg. You have to run a bunch of Boltund, you have to run all of the, the support Pokegear like Crobat and Lele minion and stuff. You have to run Grin Ninja. You have to run really heavy consistency in the trainer section in order to get off turn one Melony pretty often. And so like, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of extra stuff you can. And so the deck is really just gonna be good or bad, I think, based on the Meta. Makes sense. Um, so that's an interesting deck. I, we've seen loss. I, I feel like loss box is kind of seen a resurgence and I don't know how much of that is Pedro winning with the deck. How much of it is. It's just like, okay, pretty good against Lugia. I don't actually know if that's true or not, but uh, I feel like I've looking at all of these events, it's been doing pretty well. There's two of them in the top four of the event that you just mentioned, Brent the late night.
Brent:Yeah. I wonder how much of that, uh, is kind of to your point. I was gonna say, man, I just wonder if like, not a lot of people have lu so it's hard to. When you go and look at the Meta game for late night, 69, uh, Lu is the number one deck 20% of the Mees Lu. Geez, these peoples,
Mike:Yeah. Moneybags. Yeah. Um, and like, well, I mean, I recognize
Brent:that's like people complain about the number of codes that it takes and it just a ridiculous amount of codes. And then like who shows up at these tournaments? I mean, everybody's got Louie
Mike:Yeah. It's always really funny. Like everybody just drops$200. Code the first couple days and then no, whatever.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, the second most popular deck is a Mew Gen sec, which I, I still do not own a full play set of of muse in real life because I just couldn't bring myself to do it back in the day and we never got on
Mike:that deck. They're gonna be really cheap now though. The Mew battle decks just came out.
Brent:I know, I know. It's
Brit:awesome. It's awesome
Mike:for me. I actually. I'm probably just gonna buy two of those decks I looked on, like troll and to just to see if the cost of the individual cards. Cause all I really need is gensec and the Mew and the Mew, VMax. I have everything else. Um, but just buying like those cards is just as expensive if not more expensive than buying two boxes. So like just buy the two boxes and you get all those extra cards as well.
Brent:And you know, for our testing purposes at my house, we need some more battle VIP passes too. Like there's a little bit of like, like bulky ish cards that like we just need to pick'em up. You know, Staples
Mike:Battle VIP passes the big one. That card was going for like a couple bucks at least before. Sure. For sure.
Brent:We had four and we're just like scraping by for the longest time. Longest time. Speaking of guys, on a somewhat unrelated note, I'd like to just let everybody know cause we've been following it closely here on the pod. Apparently world champs decks are coming in March. Oh yes. And they've not said which ones yet, but. Isn't it world champs for coming in March for, for a brief moment there, I, I think And screwball or something Post, No, somebody else post that, that they didn't think they were coming. Right. And then I saw and reply that that was a real tragedy and I was extremely sympathetic.
Brit:I thought it was the, like a, I thought there was a year behind. I feel like all it's the, is it last year this the London world or the year? The year pre Covid or did those come out already? I'm those came out, those. Okay. It must just be the, the press releases are just using the old photos, I guess, and that's what confuses
Brent:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, they, they were old photos of, of prior. Uh,
Mike:there we go. And actually, it's funny you mentioned that Brit, I got really excited when I saw the announcement and I saw the decks and I, like, it was really blurry, but I pulled it up, I zoomed in really hard and I was, Ah, man, It's not
Brent:Yeah, no, that's, I think that was, it was like, it was not an official Pokegear announcement, so I think other people were just grabbing images to like try to, to boost their clicks or something. So it was like kaya's deck that they printed three years ago or whatever. Exactly. But, uh, but, but yes, very, very exciting to know that, uh, at the very least, they haven't decided not to print.
Mike:Yes, that is, that is really good. So we'll see. Maybe, hopefully you guys will get some advanced notice and we'll know.
Brent:Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, God forbid they are printing it, they gotta tell me how to buy like cases and cases of that stuff. Mm-hmm. uh, you know, they gotta send me to a wholesaler or something so I can buy 50. Right. But yeah, we, we are very exciting that Mew is getting cheap at the very least. And we're gonna need a lot more codes or we're gonna have to jump to PTCG Live, in which case, I guess we need a million celebrations, codes, to, to do the thing.
Mike:Yeah. Um, alright, so what are, what are some other decks? I think Archist Oron is in like a really interesting spot. Again, I probably would never play. Buton seems quite good against Lua. They have to have either Path to the Peak or evil tall. And maybe the evil tall by itself is not even enough cuz it'll kill one dallon. But as long as you have a second one, they don't really have a way to set up another evil tall, and so then you could theoretically just win Archist. Aldons always been pretty solid against Paia. Um, it's good against the single prize decks like Reggie Gigas and the Zoroark Box. They need some dedicated way to really deal with it. Um, I mean, Reggie's plays Path to the Peak, but you know, with big charm, they, you can at least usually avoid the one shot and then you can bump Path to the Peak and then, Kind of like go along that dance. Uh, the only real big thing holding it back is that the ME matchup has always been pretty bad because of. Echoing Horn and, and all of that stuff. Uh, so, but otherwise, I think Archist Duraludon is in a pretty solid spot and it's a pretty easy deck to play. And so we'll kind of see how that pans out. Just seems like a good Meta again. So I think Gurus probably goes away now as the best Archist tanky partner and Duraludon comes back. Um, I saw a Frost Moth Inteleon deck, got second in one of the events playing two arto. I was pretty excited for that. I like that. And I played the uh, two of that tool that I mentioned that when it goes down to 30 HP, it heals itself back up. So Arno's, just Arto is cool because Lua plays no switching. So, Like that. It's really good against that. Everything else, it doesn't actually seem that good against Pia has cross switchers. Mew has a bunch of ways to shift around their Pokegear. We'll see. Could be, could be a resurgence though of cross moth.
Brent:I'm just looking at this Zoroark Arceus deck that, uh, uh, like top 32, the, uh, late night Zoroark work. It's great to have randomness.
Brit:Zoroark box. Yeah, it's a Zoroark box.
Mike:Okay. Oh, this one's interesting. It's got a whole raw Kirlia engine. I don't even know what these galls do. Okay. Gall does 60 for each, the Pokegear and it's fighting in, and then a supporter card one. I don't know if I like this list very well, but the, the list that did well, it like won the first event out of like, I dunno, it was like 150 people or something like that. It's pretty similar to what I've been playing. Uh, just like for twin three, double Turbo, a bunch of one. Stage one attackers. The big difference is they have the radiant Jirachi with gl Glenwood tangle, which is a pretty cool two of combination cuz you can just kill anything with that Andras a good, Is it
Brit:better than Hacha? I guess like, I mean, there aren't that many VMAXs or anything, so like Right. Thea damage isn't getting you there and a ton of matchups, but like it's, it's like very limited to like, how are you finding. Is there a way to search the stadium in the deck?
Mike:So the only way to search it is to let your Jirachi die So Jirachi, when it dies, you get to search your deck for three cards. Um, so like you would let Jirachi die and then search the stadium and then like rescue carrier the Jirachi back, I guess.
Brit:Um, that's what I mean. It's just like, that seems like such a stretch of the scenario, but like, it, it's probably fine, Like at least strictly in comparison, toia, but I'm not sold. And I think like one of the deck's problems, at least inherently it, I don't know if the Meta game would ever develop to the point where it's like a huge issue is you're, you're, you're very, very, very, very, very weak to temple and like just having more consistent temple outs and. If you could do that with Glenwood Tangle, you would just need to play like more of them and another card that can use it. Like surely there are stage ones that can make use of it. Um, so I would maybe think be thinking in that direction or just like remove it entirely. But I haven't played it yet and this person has good results over two, like two different tournaments with the list. So it's something at the very least. And yeah, I like sort of the way the, a lot of the other attackers seem to be like coalescing. You have like fla. And Apple to I think whatever they're, they've all been the same guy. I can't, they're, I like that, that one a lot. The Apple piloting guy, that was one of my favorite Pokegear in the last
Mike:generation. And it's like, it's so good against Louette does 70 for each special energy on their board. That's insane.
Brent:So, Obviously the difference that really jumps out at you right outta the gate is the, is the playing the Shinx versus playing the curlies. Do you have any strong reaction to the decision there?
Mike:I mean, the basic Minccinno is, uh,
Brent:Yeah. Are you like, I just like call for family a lot.
Mike:Yeah. Probably like having access to these gallad doesn't seem. Worth it to me. So the Fighting Galle does 60 for each of your opponents. Pokegear V. But you just have other fighting options like the War Dam and the Cleaver. The cleaver he already plays anyway, so I don't, I don't really get it. And then the Galle that searched your deck for a supporter, this is not a deck that plays a lot of one-off supporters. Right? You're just running your draw supporters. And that's really it. Like your Serena is, This is one of the few decks where Serena super, super shines because it gives you the gust effect that you, you kind of didn't wanna play boss anyway because you wanted all the consistency you could have. Uh, but Serena is a guest effect, but it's also a pretty great supporter because you get to ditch all of your random carts, um, when you draw. So, So I don't really know why you need to search support from Redex. So I think in that case, yeah, Shinx probably just better.
Brent:Right? I dig it. I dig it. And I saw, the other thing I saw was yesterday, uh, um, all a Blitz one sons with, uh, Mew two V-Union. Oh yeah. Let's, I think, uh, I think Brit Brit was predicting that two weeks ago,
Mike:he beat a lot of lu, He
Brent:destroyed so
Brit:many
Mike:Lus. He beat three Lus, two lost boxes, which makes sense. I mean, the Lost Box matchup definitely makes sense to be very favored. Lu s I guess they can't hit three 10, right?
Brent:I mean, I think it's as simple as like they can never quite get there and that's all there is to it, right?
Mike:Well, let's see. They do, if they play evil in theory, they can. Let's see, did any of these play evil? One of them played evil, One did not play evil, and the third one did play evil tall. So are you just trying to like, so if they do play equal talk, do you just try and like use your. I don't wanna be confusing, but, So if they play radiant, evil, tall, not radiant, amazing, rare, evil, tall, do you just use your evil tall to just discard energies over and over and over again?
Brit:That's a fair question
Mike:because that also seems like a fine wind condition against them. It's like four evil talls. So
Brent:here's, I guess, um, does big Perol stop eval?
Mike:It does, yeah. But I think a lot of Theseus play, uh,
Brent:yeah, they, yeah, they play a tools grabber.
Mike:Do they? Let's see. Okay. So one of them did not, and one of them. Did play a loss vacuum. So yeah, I think if you see that they have evil, tall and loss vacuum, you can't go too unless one of the cards gets burned. Of course. Right,
Brent:Right. I mean, there, there, there's that element of like out your Miltank and sit there and see what they do. Right. Although ways to kill the Miltank. Million ways to kill a Snorlax, but yeah, you kind of pray they burn through it, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like, I mean, if they know that you're playing Mewtwo and your big parasol, they're like, Okay, well here's the one card I want discard. Right, right, right. Exactly. And it seems, it seems easy to, uh, play
Mike:around. Yeah. But it's not easy to play around getting three of your special energy discarded every turn like you need them. Right. So yeah. I dunno. I'd be interested to see how that plays out.
Brent:Yeah. And he was playing, he was playing two, uh, evil
Mike:tells, Right. So you can, like, you do the two. You si Does he play any Pokegear? Well, yeah. Or like team yells Cheer, Right. That shuffles Pokegear in, right? Yeah. Yeah,
Brent:yeah. And, and he is playing two pal pads, so He is, he can. Stream that all day. Right, Right.
Mike:Four, three. Yeah. Can, I mean, if you tag withal four times, you've discarded 12 energy, which should be enough,
Brent:and they play the ab that has like that Dragapult attack. Is that, is that, is that strong in that, in that
Mike:match up? Probably not because Arceus just powers up whatever you. Whatever you Dragapult.
Brent:Yeah, I, I guess Arceus only has a one retreat.
Mike:Yeah. And you can just attack with Arceus too. Arceus not a bad attacker.
Brit:Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that eol in general is just gonna be a huge card in this format. There's just like anything, they can use it. It's probably busted in, like, I wonder if it's even worth playing in like the Livia mirror or something like that. Just. I guess it would depend on how you're extending your energy, but like, I think like, like there's just gonna be a lot of controlled decks and like Mewtwo, my, the, the, like it did, okay. There are a couple players who played it and Warsaw, but the Mewtwo like more Pika sort of thing that it's become, that Sander has posted about a little bit. I don't know if either of you saw the deck that Sander played. It was just kind of like Zacian control stuff. Mm-hmm. Yeah, just barely missed, I think lost the win. Um, yeah. Cool stuff. And yeah, I just think it's gonna be a really powerful card, but like, I don't know, there's also just these like per permeations of the Meta game, just like depending on things go where you just have, you enter into that like rock paper scissor scenario. And so let's say that like Paia is bad and the Livia game Meta, but like enough Livia counters and Paia is probably again like things like that. I would think there might be that kind of like interaction going on as the format develops, but like, Rcs, like I would think PAIA has a better time staying in the format than rcs. Like other than like the Dedenne, rcs Dedenne of course. Like I just don't see, Which is strange to talk about. Again, for all the things that rcs does, just kind of seems too slow. Like what do you do? Like, I don't know, it's like the same thing as lu, but LU is doing it more proactively almost.
Mike:Right. There was, there is one other arch stick that has done. Recently, this was not a very big tournament, I don't think. Oh, actually it was like 70 people. Um, Gabriel Soto from Brazil played that just straight archist, four three archist, one slacking bee with powerful colorless energies and Path to the Peak and stuff. And he got third at one of these online events. So I don't know, it doesn't seem great to me, but maybe that's a way that Archist can stay relevant.
Brent:Uh, uh, Liam is currently playing in late nine 70 and he apparently he decided to play rcs Inteleon.
Mike:Lu. Does one shot Arceus or It can. So that would be a scary thing.
Brent:He's playing three V Guard energies to try to fix
Mike:that. There you go. And big terms,
Brent:Uh, um. Let me, Yeah, one big charm, one parasol. Nice. Uh, yeah, this looks like absolute lunacy,
Mike:That's, uh, what he likes to do. Wait, what is it? Oh, he's playing the, the the new item. Card that flip a coin, if had you get an evolution, if tail, you get a basic right, the capturing aroma. He couldn't decide if he wanted more l ball or ultra ball, so, or an extra evolution and sense. So he just said, Let's split the difference
Brent:Love it, love it. Um, complete the randomness. I, I, I, my impression is he continues to be a big believer in, uh, Paia.
Mike:I mean, it's probably still good. I haven't really thought about how, if any, paia needs to really adjust to this format. I haven't played the Lugia match at all. It's probably dependent on that. Um, But I mean, PA is just
Brit:pable. That's where it'll go. Yeah. It's weird to see that deck finally, like get a result. Like, I don't know. I've like, I almost played that in Milwaukee. It's like around, I just like never thought it was good. Here it is. It's just like the Turbo Paia that we all had to, that we all thought was good coming out of Australia right away. And it just also never did anything. Turned out Inteleon was way better. Mm-hmm. Just, it's like the same deck, but you just make it worse stuff.
Brent:So. So last question before we wrap it up. Cause I recognize we've gone a while. How much do you think monitoring online tournaments for the next like, uh, uh, week and a halfish or whatever, will tell you everything you need to know about the Meta in L A I C? Or will there be like a whole ton of spice that people just suddenly roll out?
Brit:I don't think there will be spice, but like, I don't think, I think my, my sense in like online, and this is I think true of like most events, not just particularly in IC or laic, is, uh, I think it's good for like establishing like that the deck is good, that the deck can, can do things, but it, it doesn't necessarily indicative of who's gonna play what. And especially in a blind format, I would think that there'll definitely be some spice. As we seem to like keep seeing, sometimes set design is just like too strong and like maybe that spice is just the right 60th card in Lua, but like I, I expect to be surprised for sure with the necklace and L A I C, but so yeah, I think paying attention to online is very helpful, especially for not only for. Big archetypes, like the main, the main draw to set lu up. But for like Mewtwo control, it's helpful to know that that deck exists and is winning. And you know, having, having the data and those matchups, so Arceus even like, I don't know if there's really anything. To do. And I mean, if Zurich is good, I think you two is also really, really good. Cause that's such an easy matchup for you. You just don't kill anything. And you can, you can spread and like take six prizes at once. Um, but anyways, Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's my, that my take anyways. Good to, good to pay attention to. But it shouldn't like be your Bible. That's just good data to.
Mike:Yeah, I agree. I think like the, So this is the first full season that we have in real life events, while also simultaneously having the online events. I think last spring was a little weird because for a lot of reasons. But anyway, like, so going into Peoria for example, that was the first event with the new. There wasn't like a ton of time between the set coming out and the first regional, but there was like, you know, that week or two of online events and while it wasn't completely accurate to what actually happened at Peoria, there was a lot of information that I think probably was very useful and did transfer. So like QM was. Pretty popular online. And I think a lot of people were like, Oh yeah, it's popular online, but it's not that great, blah, blah, blah. And then it was the most popular deck. Um, but conversely, like GU was not the most popular thing online, but ended up being very popular there. Um, so I think there's like information to be gleaned for sure, but it's not gonna be a hundred percent accurate. And also the population that goes to ICS also tends to skew. I would say. Um, and so you have to take that into account as well. Um, comparatively, especially to like online stuff. I think regionals and online stuff will probably be closer to one another than Uhic and online, if that makes sense. That's fair.
Brent:That's fair. I'd dig it. Guys, any, any closing remarks?
Mike:Um, I think the format is, I mean, we're still like, in the really early phases, uh, it's, I'm excited to explore the format. I don't know if it's gonna be good. I don't know if it's better or worse than the lost origin format, but it's here and we'll have it for a while at least in comparison to lost origin format. Uh, so I'm excited to explore. I'll definitely be playing at least one regional in the format, so hopefully I can find a deck that I like. Uh, I'll give you all updates as I, as I start to test Yeah. Well, and,
Brent:and you're gonna play one K this weekend, so you'll have some like, like real life data going into, uh, uh, next week as we preview L A I c with, with a few more online results.
Mike:Yeah, for sure.
Brent:Good stuff, guys.
Mike:Cool.