Let's go. Oh man, we're gonna kill it. All right? Mm-hmm. welcome to, uh, the Trash Ants, uh, attendance returns to 100%. Uh, Mike Fouchet, Brent, Halliburton. We're all on Twitter. You can find us there. If you leave a review, we will read it on the pod and discuss it. You should leave a review or like tweet at us, a thing that is review, like for us to read it on the pod, and we will do that thing. Dragon Shield as is a sponsor. It sent us a bunch of sleeves. We very, very much appreciate them. Uh, it's, it's been a couple of tournaments. We're gonna have to try to get some more sleeves soon. Um, although having said all that, Brit didn't attend any of those tournaments, I have a giant box of sleeves that I'm, uh, waiting to bring them. So very excited about, uh, Knoxville, where, uh, great mines will collide. Um, guys, let's get into it. Should we talk about, uh, world's Points?
Brit:Sure. That seems like a good place to start.
Brent:So, uh, Mike, why don't we start with you because I, you, uh, you have a bunch of points and, and I think we were talking recently about how your, uh, you know, changing the points would, uh, would Unformer how you feel about the universe. How do you feel?
Mike:Well, saying I have a bunch of points is very generous of you. Um, I have, uh, one 20. Cuz I didn't get any in Orlando. Um, three 50 for North America is like on the borderline of being reasonable, I think. Um, but it still feels a tad on the higher side at least when compared to any other year that they've had a, uh, day one threshold. Um, because. You know, in theory when it was 500 points, you could get l what, eight times 50. Like, you could pretty much get your whole invite from local events. Like you could get eight League cup wins, which would be 400 points, and then, uh, like you could get your whole invite right from, from in, from locals, basically. Not nobody, no, practically nobody did that. But there's lots and lots of people, myself included, that got 300 plus points. From locals because that's what is, you know, reasonable for us to do. Um, and so without any local events, to me, three 50 feels a little bit high if they're trying to keep the same spirit alive of day one invites. Uh, I think if they, if, if they were trying to be consistent, I think something more like two 50 would be reasonable. Um, so it kind of puts me in a weird spot where like, I feel like. I feel like where I'm at right now, I have to try to get enough points so that when I go to NAIC I just need to like get top 1 28 or top 64. Um,
Brent:so getting top 64 to NAIC is gonna be wild,
Mike:right? No, absolutely. Um, but I feel like realistically that's kind of like my only option. Um, You know, if locals come back in quarter four, which is, seems increasingly unlikely, maybe the three 50 seems more reasonable then, um, but that doesn't seem very likely to me at this point. Um, so it's good, but not great for, that's kind of like where I'm sitting at right now.
Brit:Yeah. For me, who has no points and, we'll, we'll finish the season, I think with no points at the very least. I initially was just, Okay, how realistic is it for me to make it to Germany? Like, you know, that's immediately where my head went. Um, but you know, I, I agree with Mikey, Mikey mostly, and that at the very least too, like on the subject of locals, I took this announcement to sort of be, you know, the soft confirmation that we're not getting locals, you know, and they're, I could be wrong, hopefully I'm wrong. And you know, we can speculate all day long, but it just feels like another one of those moments where they would've just told us, now, you know, I don't know why. Won't tell us still like what's, you know, what is sort of waiting for that to happen? What's like gonna change between, you know, the end of the season versus today in terms of like, Locals like being safe and things like that. Like they're, they're clearly ramping up into something else. I think like, it, it's not just the case that we're locals are back and it's the same story as before. Like, like that's the only thing I can think of as to why, like we're just in the dark still. But that's again, probably wishful thinking. Um, I guess the only other point I really wanted to add to that is it's at least strange to me, at least as far as I think competitive players are concerned. Um, like Europe and North America are so, or I guess like not just North America, but rather like United States in particular. I just don't sort of understand why they're so different. Like it's just so much softer in the eu, EU versus the United States in terms of qualifying, but in, in the terms of like the. The player traveling. Like it's, it's the same, like it's very analogous to traveling across the states, you know, going from the Netherlands to England and things like that. Like, not, not quite, of course, but generally speaking. So what I'm, I'm trying to say is like the same sort of, a number of people are kind of traveling it seems like. And so if that's true, you know, I've plenty of people even like locally from Springfield that have gone to basically, you know, every regional and. I just don't understand if like, it just seems like it's just as accessible for Europe as it is for us and so like why is it harder for us still, we have bigger tournaments like, you know, the, it's harder to get points here and things like that. I've just like, I've always sort of wondered, you know, there were years when it was like two 50 or something in Europe and that that was not like a 300 point year for America and I just like as a, you know, playing increases. It just, the disparity seems strange to me. Like I get. On some level, but at this sort of, if you analyze it like purely through, you know, the top players and like, maybe that's my mistake. You know, European listeners tell me I'm being an ignorant dumb American here, or something like that. But just as far as you know, I can tell I just don't understand why one needs to be so much different than the other.
Mike:Yeah, they, they definitely have less events, but it's not a significant, and you're right, like our events are way bigger. So there is some like trade off there. Um, some other things regarding this. The other regions also got their points reduced and probably Latin America and Oceania needed them reduced even more. So, um, they basically have no events. You know, they have like two or three special events or regionals through the whole year. So their real only opportunity for getting a significant number of points is their ic. Uh, So if you don't basically get your invite from your IC plus one event, like you just can't get your invite, which sucks. Um, there's also Middle East, Eastern, South Africa. I don't, I assume they have no events at all, so I don't even know really why they're on this list. Um, another interesting thing is that juniors and seniors have the same amount requirement in every region. North America where seniors have 50 more points that they need to get than juniors, which also seems a little arbitrary to me, just kind of random
Brit:while they're paying$70 for five rounds and such. Yeah, it seems really bad.
Brent:Uh, you know, I know, I know. I've let my historical self down by not really digging into the junior and senior data, but I, I, I had a couple of, uh, interesting thoughts. So I, I looked at, I looked at the Europe versus US situation for like two seconds. And, and one of the things that really jumped out to me was when you look at the number of American players that have points, it's like, well, in excess of a thousand. And it's like, and there's like 500 Europeans that have points mm-hmm. uh, and yet when you look at, at European players that have already qued for world, They have, uh, I don't know what, what was the account? Um, uh, more than 25. Like it was kind of scroll off the first page. Mm-hmm. Whereas in America where 11 pages of people that have called it was like 20 people already have their invite.
Mike:Even at the three 50 mark, only like. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it goes to show, and we've had way more events than Europe, right? Not way more, but like we've had more, um, right. And so like the distribution of points is going to a wider variety of players than, than in Europe.
Brent:Yeah. So it seems like they're kind of, they're, they're kind of make, they're, they've lowered the bar. I mean, you could say maybe Europe's top heavy, maybe Europe's top heavy. Uh, um, but, but yeah, it, it's. Uh, I feel like somewhat strange that you kind of got to this, right? Yeah,
Brit:I mean, I, I think for Mewtwo, I guess to say one other, one more, one more thing that it's just, I just, I feel like the, some of the, so much of the difficulty as I think we've discussed before, Said, I just don't think Pokegear is just, they're unclear, or at least they're inconsistent in terms of like, what should worlds be like? Is, should worlds be hard to, you know, qualify for? Is that sort of question or is it, you know, like just kind of a participation? You know, you, you do locals and you get there and you're good. And I think that's just something that they consistently like wobble on. And that I feel too, is just like, Tell us, you know, it's, it's an event for everyone. And like, and then this just gets so much easier. Cuz again, like we have these just like dueling perspectives, right? Where people sort of are entitled to worlds, you know, they think I should, I should be able to qualify just through locals alone, you know, something to that effect. Whereas other, you know, more competitive people like, say like, no, that's wrong. You should have to top regionals, you know, you know, whatever the bar is. Um, and I think that's just so much where the problem is. Cuz I think something in, something that I notice that seems particular to the Pokegear community is, you know, I don't wanna call it an entitlement problem, but there's, it seems like the average player, it's their expectation that they can qualify for worlds. But like, you know, let's, let's insert, insert ourselves into another game, even another card game. Not even necessarily like chess or go, but just like magic or something like that. Is it, is it realistic for your sort of base and your base sort of expectations to be. Play at the very top, like as, as the highest level possible. And like that seems a little strange. Or at least too that you know, you have these players that just like, it's my first season, I'm gonna qualify for worlds. You know, like, again, insert any other, you know, skill here, qualifying for the Olympics or something like that. And there's just no other sort of niche hobby seems to dippy like that, or at least anecdotally what I observe, the ones I'm interested in. Like, it's just strange to me that it's just kind of. it's your, your what, your sort of career as a player is premised on that. You're just supposed to do well at your first regionals. You're supposed to qualify for worlds your first year, and I just like, I don't know, seems to be just setting people up for disappointment more than anything else, but it's just, it's just look in the water. I don't know if what I'm saying is making sense, but there's just, it's just always sort of manifests. Various discourses on these points that they're just, there's this, like, this entitlement, like people just sort of think they inherently deserve to go to worlds rather than that they've deserve to qualify or something like that.
Brent:Yeah, so I look, I looked at the seniors for, for two minutes and what was interesting to me was, uh, there there's like 17 European players and 17 American players that have already got their invite. So I'm like, maybe that makes sense. But like, once again, when you look at it, Less than 50 European players that have any points at all. right? Like once again, I, you could say, well, it's top heavy, like run harriman's is really, really good. So like I accept that. Uh, but, but it's, uh, like that's a thing.
Mike:Yeah. Another thing that like definitely needs to be addressed in terms of championship points is. The scaling championship points with attendance at these really large regionals, especially like, it's unfortunate that it hasn't happened this year when regionals is the, basically the only way to attain championship points, but there's no reason that a bigger event shouldn't give out more points. Um, getting first, getting first at at Orlando regionals with 1500 masters should not be worth. The same as, you know, uh, a regional in Europe with 600 masters. And I know it gets complicated when you start dealing with the classifications of regionals versus international championships, but, And, and maybe international championship should be worth more, just baseline. Uh, I can be okay with that, but they are way more, first of all. And um, it's really, it's really frustrating that the people that can afford to take the time and the money to go to three or four ics have very, it's like a super easy way to get a world's invite to do that. Um, and locals kind of gave. Uh, it smoothed it out. I think for people that don't have the ability to, to do that, the, you know, gave them an alternative, alternative path that, um, seemed reasonable. And, but like going to ICS and getting like three top one 20 eights is not hard. Um, and that is like basically enough points for a world's invite. Uh, so it's just, it's, it's really frustrating as someone that can't go to ICS to see how easy it is for the people that can to get an invite.
Brit:Yeah. You know, I definitely feel bad and even too, just like. All the whole stipend stuff, just so, so consistently, at least for me, it ends up being just like a rich, getting richer scenario. Like you, you win the first regional, you get to go to the first ic, which means you get to go to the second ic, you know? You know, just on the same sort of merits, right? It's just like obviously winning a regionals. That's awesome. That's incredible. It's a once in a lifetime kind of achievement. But then just that, you know, that it inherently like locked you in to, you know, day two for the entire year. Like, that seems dangerous and you know, it is gotten better. You know, we're, we're past the first year of ICS when you could go like five and three, you went to Australia and you went five and three for a hundred points or whatever. And so like, but yeah, in general, like it's, it's such a problem and we don't, we don't quite have, you know, the, the same issue with special events anymore. But that was, you know, just the same too. Go, go to Ecuador and Ru ruin some, some locals experience,
Brent:you know,
Brit:which happened, you know, stipend Jason.
Brent:No, that totally happened. That was a thing people did. Uh, you know, I, I, I think you also kind of beat around the bush, uh, um, referring to kind of the same thing, like it's very, very true that O C I C and Latin America, like if you get the first stipend, you like, you're like locking in everything, right? Yeah. Like you lock in, you lock in the free trip to worlds, like you lock in stipends all the way around. Once you're on the, the stipend train, they're, because there's so few people and it's so hard to travel. You're just, you're just greasing the wheels of commerce. Right.
Brit:I mean, at least, at the very least, they have taken like the world's, you know, it used to be the case that you would do well at worlds and that would, that would give you points going in at the start of the season, which would. Which would play into the, to the stipend races too. And that was, that was something that was frustrating for Mewtwo, or at least like the last time I, I stipend chased and got top 16. I was just like, you know, some of these players hadn't even, like, hadn't played an event all year yet, and they were, you know, still get getting, you know, just because they had done so well at world. And so I like, I definitely feel like they, they solved that problem by just like, giving you the free invite but not the points at the same time too.
Brent:Uh, you know what the irony of that is? Brit though, they actually, they actually completely screwed it up because they introduced the open. So now all the day two competitors are basically screwed out of the first stipend because all the other guys are banking stipends at the open, cuz all the good guys are in day two.
Brit:That's true too. Yeah. Piece that together. But yeah, I know people sort of also similarly, You know, done so hot in the season, but they did well at the London Open and they're, you know, they're still cruising basically as a result,
Brent:right? I don't like you, you just, you, you bank like a million points and you bank a stipend to the first, uh, intercontinental, and you're like, we're doing a thing here. Yeah, I don't know,
Brit:like solutions. I mean, I'm sure there are very, a lot that are on the table as to like what I would want or what alternatives, you know, there are, I'd have to do some digging into other structures and things like that. But yeah, just like, I don't know, it just brings us back into just like we're just so overdue for an overhaul, both in points and pricing and so on and so forth, that it's nice to see, you know, at least last week when they announced the. The reduction to the championship point total at least, is like, so they do listen, you know, at least you know, they are paying at least some level of attention to these things. Like let's keep bullying them until we get the rest of the good things that we need. Um, and then we'll go from there. But it's, you know, it's always hard to, to be optimistic about any of it,
Brent:man. It is, it is amazing to, to Mike's point that like I. It isn't like this change with some like novel breakthrough thinking. This isn't, this is like not that dramatic a change. I mean, maybe it's exactly the same numbers as the last time when they bumped the numbers way down. It's pretty close.
Mike:Yeah, it's pretty close. The thing that they also did last time though, is they increased point payout for all of your previous placements. Right. So, uh, that could be something that we could see as well, I suppose in theory. Yeah. Like,
Brent:like this didn't take a lot of work. So the fact that they took until now, like I assume that basically all they did was they waited until they decided there were not gonna be any League Cups or League challenges, and they said, okay, there's no locals, let's announce. And they like roll it out. So like, I don't think they were agonizing about this until now. Like this has been in the, can they could have been working on fixing point payouts and done'em both at the same time.
Mike:Right.
Brent:uh, uh, like, I mean, I'm sure running organized play is super hard, but, uh, uh, certainly like you look at the, the pace of the evolution of problems and like, Seems like we're,
Brit:we're moving very slow. It's just, it's frustrating because, you know, Pokegear t PCI is too, you know, just too propped up by brand notoriety and so on to ever fail to, I think I very, really suffered like meaningful consequences to, you know, poor decision making years worth of, you know, So on raise, you know, take any other card game, I can list a lot of card games that were good and don't exist anymore. You know, presumably, you know, not to say that they don't exist anymore because their competitive structure failed or anything like that. That is to say that, you know, they could be effective, their bottom line like could be effective such that the, you know, the game doesn't exist anymore and that's just, that's never gonna happen for Pokegear. Like similarly. I just don't, there's probably never a world where the circuit goes away. This game is going to exist, you know, for as long as you. We're alive, you know, more than likely. And it's just that tpc, it's just that, you know, at the end of the day too, I understand too that organized play is not, you know, again, driving the dollar for TP C I or anything like that. But again, it's just like, it just seems like they just can't fail because of, you know, the brand and things like that. Or at least they can't suffer consequences from poor decisions it seems. Again, or at least just to make the point of the current situation, right? Like we're all, we're all upset, everyone thinks there should be more prizes and that we should perhaps be paying less. But what do you know? It's record attendance again and again and again. So like, it clearly it stinks, but it's not gonna change either unless, you know, we stop going or something like that.
Brent:Uh, why don't we talk about PTCG Live for two seconds before we talk about actual playing of the game. Uh, uh, Mike, it seemed like watching your Twitter this week. You were, you were.
Mike:Yeah, so I didn't, I didn't actually hit the migrate thing, but I wanted to mess around a little bit more. I, you know, I had created my PTCG live account, I don't know, a couple weeks after they let the United States players do it. But I played like one game with the theme deck. Um, but I logged back in this weekend and I got a free World's deck, and I think I saw. There's something with Liam's deck as well, right on PTCG Live. Yeah,
Brent:I I, I tweet about that cuz people, people were tweeting it, so Yeah. Apparently that's like a thing you can get is Liam Hall's deck. And I was like, I was like, they're giving away an n f T of the deck in exchange to compensate for the fact that they did not the physical deck.
Mike:Like it's something so I it's something, yeah. So I don't know exactly how it works if, um, like different people were getting different world's deck. Or maybe there's another way to get Liam's deck, but like when I logged in, I got, um, the Masters World winning deck. The Archist decision. Pikachu. So listeners, if you also got that deck, Or you got a different deck, let us know because, uh, I'm curious if other people got different decks. Um, but so I saw I got that, which is, uh, obviously a good deck. It's not great in the current format, but I played a few games with that. Uh, and then I remembered I had bought the Mew VMax battle decks, you know, a couple months ago when they came out. And so I used the, I already had'em used on PTCGO, so I, I never used the codes. Um, but, so I used them in, in live and so I made a, at least a decent new deck. So I, you know, I, I've probably played like a dozen games on PTCG Live, just kind of like getting used to the interface and, and whatnot. So I haven't migrated yet, but, um, getting used to it. Definitely some very unintuitive things. Uh, you know, it says you can only have four of a certain card, but in your collection, like the boss's order for example, I think is the one I posted. You can have four of every single different art of a card, which is also fine, I guess. Uh, it's gonna. You know, getting extra cards annoying. But you
Brent:can't. But you could. You can only have like, like they want you to be able to collect four of us four play sets for every set, right? Yeah. Right, right, right, right. So it's like, it's like one to a hundred, you get 400 cards and then like the next set they release a reprinted bosses, you can go one to a hundred again.
Mike:Right, exactly. But you don't actually see the different parts. Separately. Like if you, just like if you, you know, if you're in trainers and you search boss, like you're just gonna see one icon pop up with boss's order. And the way to like see the different arts is you have to like, it's a very unintuitive way to like click through to see all the different arts. Um, and so that confused me. And then something else that I still haven't quite figured out is it says in my collection that I have three Pokegear catch. And at least two of them are different sets, but I still can't find the third one. And so it's only allowing me to add like two. Two and I can't see a third one. Um, like the scrolling to get between the arts is really not good. Um,
Brent:You know, ironically, it sounds like this was like designed by an engineer who doesn't appreciate the fact that people care about the art. He was like, who cares? It's the same card. Yeah. But like, but like, it's Pokegear. I would've imagined that they would've screwed it up differently. You know,
Mike:Well, but, but here's the actual like functional annoyance. So like, um, the Pokegear catcher thing, so like the, the. Art that it has in the, in, you know, when you search it, I only have one of those copies. So if I click to add a Pokegear catcher, it only lets me add that one, and now I have to go in, switch the art or switch the set in order to even add a second one, like, It doesn't just automatically let you do that. And in PTCGO that was also the same. You had to, you know, do different things, but when you searched it, you saw all of them at the same time. So it was very easy to see, oh, I own four energy search. But it's does, it is not easy to see that really. In live. Um, the, the gameplay itself I think is actually pretty good. Um, coming from a game like Hearthstone where there's a lot of dragging the cards, there's a lot more dragging of cards in live than in PTCGO, which I'm, it took like, it took like one or two games to get used to, but then it's like pretty intuitive. Um, the gameplay itself, I haven't really, uh, had many issues with. but the whole deck building aspect and the, the, the starting screen and like knowing like how to collect your rewards for, for different things, it's like, it's a lot, there's a lot going on it outside of the game itself. Um,
Brit:confusing. I don't think I talked too much about my sort of, Tui my first time user experience, but it was similarly just like, I understand Pokegear, I know what I'm looking for, I can't find it. Yeah. Like those, that, that sorts of moments, like I couldn't figure out how to like craft initially it took me a minute and things like that. Yeah. And just like, I don't know if you've seen, uh, the tricky gym, sort of one of the more, more recent just like, life is an embarrassing mistake or, you know, had some sort of sensational. Title and he talks, he spends a lot of time talking about like the UI and the UX and how it just like feels wrong, you know, compared to like simulating the card game experience and things like that. Like it's techy and flashy, but like for no reason, for the sake of being techy and flashy, that as opposed to like an organic tabletop space or something like that.
Mike:Yeah. Um, the other, like, one really annoying thing about deck building is you can't see your whole deck at once. You can only see the Pokegear, then you click and then you can see the trainers. Then you click and you can see the energy. You can't see it all at once, so that's annoying. Um, Yeah, it's not, I will say I had really low expectations, so it was above those expectations, but like, it was, the, the bar was really, really, really low. Uh, and so there was, you know, some, like I said, the gameplay itself not that bad. Um,
Brent:so you can start an account and then migrate all your stuff later and it'll merge the two accounts and not screw it.
Mike:Correct. Correct. Um, I like that confidence. The one thing that I am a little disappointed about is so not. When you migrate anything from like the Heart Code Soul, silver is deleted, that's fine. I don't really care that much about that. But, uh, anything from expanded, basically black and white on does transfer, but they don't have a lot of those cards coded yet. Um, I forget the first set that is coded. It might be, um, sun, moon, it might be Sword and Shield. I forget. Uh,
Brent:I think it's Sword and Shield. I wanna say it's Sword and
Mike:Shield. Okay. So you have, you know, basically, 10 years worth of cards almost that they don't have coded yet. Who knows when they're gonna be coded. It's gonna, it's gonna be a long time. That's my guess. Um, and so it would be really great to not have to migrate everything from PTCGO into PTCG Live. So I was thinking, oh, well maybe I can like, uh, trade my more modern cards to a different PTCGO account and then migrate that PTCGO account to my. And then later migrate again. But that you can't do that. You can only migrate exactly once from one PTCGO account to one PTCG live account. Um, which is a little annoying because I'd love to keep those cards in case I wanna play some old formats, you know, on PTCGO. But it doesn't seem like that's gonna really be an option. Uh,
Brent:Which sucks. You know, I recognize how like, I, I guess they, they have kind of a design choice, right? Like, they don't wanna let you migrate twice and they don't wanna tr keep track of everything you migrated because trades in PTCGO make that absolute bonkers, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, and they don't want you to be able to like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna have you send me all the cards you have, and then I'm gonna import, then I'm gonna send you all the cards I have, and then you're gonna import, right? Like, that's the path to madness. So they have to kind of say, you get to migrate. One time, or they could kind of do it by card sets, right? Yeah. But, uh, um, it seems like you could still say, we're gonna let you migrate one time or by card sets, but like, let you just keep playing on both and like have a snapshot, right? Yeah. Versus like, goodbye PTCGO. It was great.
Mike:Yeah. And it wouldn't be an issue if you could play all of the cards but,
Brent:right, right. Well, and I, and I know people, people will, if, if you said, Hey, we'll let you run'em side by side, people would bitch about how, like, they're like, okay, well I have codes now, but like, I wanna, you know, it doesn't, you gotta pick one place to put'em, but then I want to reap report them because I want, like, the value created. It's like, well, you chose, you know, like you, you, wherever the snapshot was, that was where the snapshot. Tricky. Tricky problems to solve. Tricky problems to solve. But yeah, I, I recognize the important thing is it will import my beaches. My beaches will never be deleted.
Mike:Yeah. So, so we'll see. I'll keep messing around with it. Every now and then I'll Crobat, I'll, I'll, like, my goal is to play like average, like one game a day on live.
Brent:Right. Well, and, and like I assume that playing on your, like are you playing on your
Mike:phone? I've done both. Um, right. I've done both. But playing on the phone is nice cuz I can just do it
Brent:wherever. Right, right. Like I assume the best thing about PTCG Live is like, now you can just play on your phone.
Mike:Yeah. Which is, it's not a, it's not a bad experience at all. It just does drain a lot of battery Like one game and my phone's a little bit old, so like my, my phone is not optimized or anything, but like one 10 to 15 minute game takes off like 15 to 20% of the battery times.
Brent:Yeah. So, Interesting. Alright. Hearing your experience makes me think maybe I'll, I'll actually get on the P CG live train soon. Yeah, try it
out.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, at the very least we can have a third perspective on how bad the TUI is, things like that.
Brent:Okay. Uh, you know, the one other thing we should talk about before we talk about Orlando is, uh, Mike, great podcast last week. Way to hold it down while we were all. I, I recognize I was late to get to the edits, guys. I apologize. I was, I was traveling, which why I wasn't there to talk to Mike's mom myself, but it
Mike:was fantastic. Yeah, no, it was good. My mom came and visited. We actually, so when I flew back from Orlando, she flew into Philadelphia airport cuz she was visiting a friend. And so instead of going right to New York, She came to Philadelphia, we got, we landed almost at the exact same time, and then she hung out for the week. She got to see Philadelphia and I was like, let's just do a 30 minute conversation. Um,
Brent:I, yeah, so I, I, I wanted to hear, I, and I'm sure listeners wanna hear, how did you tell your mom, the people want to know about Mike's mom,
Mike:Uh, I just, uh, we were just out to dinner on like the Monday night and I was. So, uh, you wanna be on the podcast She knew I did the podcast, right. And, uh, y yeah, I mean, we talk about like random old Pokegear stuff all the time, so I was just like, pretty much just tell some of the stories and things that we talk about. Like the, like the thing about resilience and learning resilience through Pokegear, uh, is something that my mom has brought up a dozen times in the last 10 years. So it's something that I knew that she would want to. Talk
Brent:about, I think every Pokegear parent talks about how their kid learned to like take an L. Yeah. With some dignity via Pokegear.
Mike:There's so many people in this world that can't do that
Brent:It's true.
Brit:It's true. It's true. Play Pokegear still too.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:That was, that was very, very entertaining. I, I very much enjoyed listening to the pod, uh, last week. That was good stuff.
Mike:Yeah. I hope, I hope other people like it too.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Really, really, uh, fun. Um, alright guys, let's talk about, uh, the actual trading card game. Mike, you wanna talk about your Orlando experience.
Mike:Sure it's really short. Um, I played, I ended up choosing to play, uh, choosing to play Vica Volt. I chose to not play Aerodactyl and instead run like double Raku and Sky Seal Stone. The thought was that you can beat Lugia in a, in the prize trade instead of trying to lock them out with Aerodactyl. We're a little scared of canceling co. So, uh, we opted kind of take that route. It wasn't very good into Lugia with Dun sparse. You still had some chance, but it wasn't very good into it. But Lugia without Dun sparse was pretty solid. So we're like, let's roll the dice. Lugia ended up being the least popular that it has been at any regional. It was still 25%, but it was, you know, five to 10% less than it has been. So I think the Meta game call was fine. Lost bucks was significantly up, you know. Like 20, 21%, uh, and the lost basket matchup is great for volt. Um, so that was some of the reasons that I ended up choosing it unfortunately did not go very well for me. I played against Gud Law Stone round one, which is a fine matchup cuz I played dragonite and I played the seal stone so you can like kill three little things and then you can dragonite seal stone for three prizes on the VStar. In some games, you just win by locking them outta the game just at all. So, uh, that round game one, I totally locked him out. He just didn't set up at all. And I won game two. I had a dead hand and he won in like three turns. And then game three, I go first. I have a awesome starting hand, feeling great. Then he goes his first turn, he gets turn one Mirage gate with his guru deck, which is, uh, very unlikely. It's not really meant to do that. I asked Ross after Ross didn't come to Orlando, but he's been playing a lot of Gure online, uh, cuz he is been playing in the team challenge. I think he's played like 50 games or so. I, I was like, Ross, how many times have you gotten turn one Mirage gate? He's like, I never have. And I was like, sweet. Um, so just really unfortunate, uh, I even made the game like kind of close, but like that's like really hard to come back from in a deck like Vica Boltund, where they're setting up Audra, which basically takes no damage. Um, And they used base, they used all four scoop up nets, two mirage gates, uh, on turn one, like they've used all their important items before I can do anything. So that was pretty unlucky, I think. Uh, and then round two I played against a Reggie's deck. Uh, that matchup is like also pretty close. Um, but games don't feel close often. Uh, it's kinda like you either blow them out or they blow you out. That's kind of what happened. Game one and game two. We each had a blowout game where I locked him or you know, he got set up game three. Uh, he went first and played. Oh, no, no, I went first. Yeah, I went first. Game three, I have a solid turn. One he goes, plays his whole hand down, doesn't have Reggie Drago active, doesn't play a supporter. Zero cards in hand. I hit him with the item. He draws his card and it's a professor's research, so when he research, he gets to play the game. It actually ends up being a close game, um, because of various things. Uh, and then like another time throughout the game, oh, I prized my Zappos, that game, which made my math really awkward. And then there was another key point later in the game where, He had, I had killed both of his red Rigo. He had two auroras in the discard pile. One of them was attached to a red jaice, cause like 35 cards left in deck. He uses a Marnie, needs to hit the second Aurora in order to hit me with a red jaice to prevent my item lock again, the following turn, and he hits the aurora energy. So I ended up losing that game as well. So I start, oh two off. Some pretty, pretty low odds happening in a row, I think. And then round three, my head was like kind of out of it. I played against the Lugia, didn't draw super well and like made a couple mistakes and he had Dunsparce so I just kind of like lost that match as well. So I dropped at oh three. So not a great, not a great event. I don't think the deck was like the best pick for the event, but I'm not like super upset playing it either. Um, it's a fun. I just was on the bad side of variance for sure. So that was my Orlando. So I
Brent:I I'll give you 30 seconds of, of Leah Orlando. The, the result was not wildly different. What'd he go? Three, four?
Mike:I think he had some ties in there, but Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. Uh, um, so he was on some crazy, uh, j Gearhart. What was it like Articuno or something crazy where, where they were working up until like Friday night. And so Friday he rolls into Orlando. He plays like five or six games with people and at the end of it he's like, the bottom line is this deck is just not very good. so, so his backup was lost box and I was like, that's fine, right? You play lost box. Fine. Um, like, like Pablo List, lost box. And he played three games with somebody and lost them all and was like, lost box is terrible. So then he is like, I'm gonna play Sanders deck and like, You know, obviously the, the downside of Sander Deck is like, theoretically it's only playable by Sander. The upside is like, it's a deck that's a good deck, like Sander validated that you can do well when you play that deck. Um, uh, you know, narrator, voiceover, he did not do well. like Um, and like some of it was like, like bad luck running into matchups and some of it was like probably that. Maybe he didn't play it as well as he did. But you know what's funny is I felt like his big theme. When he had the breakthrough in Arlington, like going into Arlington, like I think the complaint, if you go back and listen to old pods about Baltimore was like, he felt like he played all these bad masters and when they lost tempo or had kind of a bad turn, he was not able to just obliterate them. Right and punish them for their mistake and make them regret the fact that they ran a deck that was slightly inconsistent because they wanted to do something techy or wonky or whatever. And so it, like when he showed up in Arlington playing like a very. Uh, I mean, not the most vanilla LucMetal list, but like a pretty vanilla LucMetal list. uh, um, but like, you know, he is running, capturing aroma for consistency. What? but like, yeah, so he was running a very consistent deck that the feature of the deck was wild damage output. Like there, he felt like every time somebody made a mistake, he absolutely pummeled them for it and they immediately lost and playing the Sander deck once again. You know, he would've turns where he was like, I know that guy whiffed, and I am going to, uh, like
Mike:pass. Yeah, I will. Gorman
Brent:Yeah, I will. Gorman now. Thank. And he is like, you know, like if I was playing a deck that had high damage output, they would've now lost. And instead we're gonna wait another 20 minutes to find out if, if them passing this turn hurt'em bad enough for them to lose. Right. Darn it. Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting because I recognize like when Liam was a senior, it was just like controlled X, controlled X, controlled X, because every kid would just wildly misplay into controlled X. Mm-hmm. And it was totally fine. And I feel like he's getting some lesson here that like, uh, uh, I, you know, I think, I think the, the thing, the way he keeps articulating when I kind of play this back to him is, Day one, it's awesome to just play like the best deck in format because there's not, you know, there, there's plenty of people who are bad people and you can just beat all those people and get free wins. But day two, it will not be like that.
Mike:Yeah, that's what like the hardest thing is. Yeah. Like you just wanna play like a good deck on day one, but then when you get to day two, you have to like, Either insanely good in like mirror matchups or get lucky with your
parents.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Like the, the way to win the tournament is not the way to get to day two. It's a diff That's a different thing. Yeah. And uh, uh, figuring out how to navigate that is tricky. Right?
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, he's been, say, he was saying the other day in our chat that like, dude, Mew is just a, a broken deck like And I feel like that is kind of like the same thought process where you're just like, you just play Mew, which is super consistent hits hard, plays, judge path every turn. And, uh, you make your opponents draw bad and hit'em when they hit'em hard, when they lift. And I, I get that sentiment for.
Brent:Right, right, right. Why is Xander had so much success with it? Because like he won't make a mistake and the other guy will make a mistake and then he instantly wins the game, right?
Brit:Mm-hmm. yeah, was like, Sandra's just so good. I was just listening to you talk about this. I was thinking about, uh, so like NAIC and just thinking about like some particular games and like Sander, like played on stream against Biari and they tied and you know, things like that. And like Meese Meese made day two, but I just remember distinctively him playing Gustavo day two and you know, the whole deck, you know, the whole point of the. To beat Palkia like that was we, the deck beat Palkia. There's sort of no way that it did it. And he, someone like Gustavo just figured it out already and Mace was just like, he played perfectly. It was so close like that, that kind of expression. And that's just again, I think just to to, to reiterate what has just been said, just like. How good you have to be and sort of, you know, just the difference in, I think, Sandra's play versus any other control player. Just like there's a reason he's always on top and it's, it's not just the deck choice, I promise.
Brent:Yeah, yeah, totally, totally agree. So, uh, you know, I don't know if, uh, Liam will say, I've learned my lesson. What I should do is just day two, um, and, and not complain too much when I go like three, three on day. But, uh, uh, yeah, like he, he is like Lugia. I was like number two seed or whatever going into day two in Arlington. And day two I went four, two, right? like it was okay, but it wasn't the absolute, uh, uh, spice, right? Yeah. Um, O C I C right around the corner. Uh, any predictions.
Mike:Um, not really. Vico
Brit:does better than in Orlando. There's like a hot take I'm willing to offer, but otherwise I think more of the same. I think what's the hot take? Vical will do better than it did in Orlando. I think. You know, especially too, we saw that it sort of this deck or. You know, before Krekeler, Morelo popular, excuse me, popularized it, like it won on Arceus, it won the Australian regionals. Right? Like the Vical Palkia thing. Mm-hmm. And so like, it's, you know, a deck down there. So it's just my guess, I don't know, with or with there Dactyl, I'm not sure, but I, you know, think it's better like, Again, and I at the same time too, like Ian's deck, Palkia again seems like a, in a pretty good spot too. Like just look, that's what I think I would, if I had like a handle on the format, I think that's what I would look into playing. Like if I were prepping more and things like that. I just like, it's safe kind of, it's a safe deck, but in different, for different reasons. And like, say Mew, you know, as we were just talking about, would be a, a safe deck. It feels like consistent and has answers. Seems good to.
Mike:Yeah, I, I also really like, I think Palkia and Tallon Artino seems solid. I think Udra is not too bad. Um, I think, like I saw Sosa played four cno and two Parasol in Udra in, um, in Orlando, and I think that's kind of cool. Like four oh is just really good against Lugia. Um, I think you can. As long as you beat, long as you kill the initial Lugia, cno, Roxanne basically wins the game at the end of the game. So, uh, I like Udra. It's like consistent. It does its thing. It has good matchups outside of Lugia and Lugia with Corino seems like pretty solid. So, but I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised to just see Lugia win the event.
Brent:I see I, I'm going the other way. I, I feel like I've consistently been on message where I say every other tournament is Lu's tournament, and then the alternate tournament is Jank. Lugia got there in Orlando. It's Jan, this time around
Mike:All right,
Brent:put put it in the book people. That is the, that is the absolute facts. And, and that means that for better or for worse, uh, Knoxville will be.
Mike:It seems reasonable. You guys are Brent. You guys are going to Knoxville.
Brent:We are going to Knoxville.
Mike:Okay. And Brit, you are not going to Knoxville.
Brit:Like I just am not paying close enough attention. It just like registrations come and go without me even knowing they happen now, and like, forget which one's coming up like later today for
Brent:Fort Wayne. Wayne in half an hour, guys,
Brit:like that's another one. I'm like, I, I'm interested in this one for sure. I will probably do what I did with Florida and just like wait a while and if it fills too bad, if I, if I, if I feel a spark of certainty in wanting to go or something like that, I'll end impromptu register. See,
Brent:I feel like the filling up has they, they've somehow kind of worked out their issues with refunds and stuff. Like, like cuz they're trying to create like space for people that wanna play. So you gotta book your ticket on the off chance you'll go and then you can only sell it back if it fills up.
Mike:Yeah, that's fair. I, uh, Fort Wayne is like one that I wouldn't hate going to, but the flights are really expensive cuz it's a random place.
Brent:Uh, my impression. Do people fly into Fort Wayne or do you fly into like some other place in Drive? The last time we did it, we, we flew into a random place in Drove, like, did you
Mike:expensive Indianapolis?
Brent:But I'm not sure. Yeah, I think we flew, we flew into Indianapolis. But when I look at Fort Wayne, it seems like it's equal distant between like Chicago, Indianapolis, like some other places. Oh yeah. It's
Brit:closer to Michigan, I think. Like it's. Yeah, it's like, it's not, it's like another three hours or so from Indianapolis, I think.
Mike:Yeah. Two hours. I just looked
Brent:How far from Chicago?
Mike:Um, let's see. Chicago, three hours. Hmm. So like flying, like if I was gonna fly and then drive for two hours, I would just drive like, it's like a nine hour drive, I think. Like, I haven't done
Brent:that
Brit:before. Where you, you, you finish the flights and you've gotta drive left. It's not worth it. Don't ever do it. It's miserable. Even if you think you can do it, don't do it.
Brent:Yeah, and you know, it is a little complicated with masters because like, you gotta catch a late flight Sunday night or early flight Monday. So if you have like a big drive before you can fly, it just screws you like so much harder. That seems. Yeah. So, uh, the good news for us is that the first weekend of spring break, so, uh, um, while we haven't completely locked in our spring break plans yet, uh, it it'll definitely be super chill for us on the backside. So I'm really excited about Fort Wayne.
Mike:It is also the first week of my spring break. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe I'll, I probably won't register tonight, but if it like doesn't fill up immediately tonight, then maybe I'll look to register and then, uh, if I don't feel like going I'll, so back
Brent:guys, there's no more romantic way to spend Valentine's Day. Registering for, uh, Knoxville or Fort Wayne.
Mike:Exactly. That's why I'm not registering. I need to go to our reservation, our dinner reservation. Alright.
Brent:Alright. We're closing it down guys. So I, I have a good, would you rather question? Let's, let's close it out with, let's close out the pod with everybody's favorite segment. Are you guys ready? So here's, here's the question. You guys are, you are on the toilet going number. And you realize that there is an intruder in your house. Mm-hmm. Do you wipe,
Brit:maybe I was just peeing and I was sitting down
Brent:with a pee. No, no, no, no, no. You're going number two. I gave it to you. I gave it to you.
Mike:Yeah. Probably not, probably not. Wiping, definitely not wiping. Yep. I'm, I'm, I'm going with definitely not.
Brit:My intuitions are not being pulled in one direction or another as to what I think I would do in this scenario. I like, oh, I don't know. I like, I'm. Confirmed it's an intruder. Like, I don't know if the door didn't just blow open or something like that. I mean, I, this is sort, it's funny that I'm doing this cuz this is exactly what I would criticize, you know, my students for doing with thought experiments and philosophy. They'll just be like, you know, and the trolley problem, just like there's, how do you answer it? And it's just, well, why don't we just. You know, create the track so there's not a problem. And you know, something like that. I'm like, no, just tell me what your intuitions are. That's all That's the only use of these things. It's just, I want to know what sort of direction you're being pulled in. Don't modify the experiment, so there's no longer a problem, but yeah. Yeah. I, I guess I'll, I guess I won't wipe, I'm not sure. There you
Brent:go. People, that is the information that you were looking for True facts about, uh, about the, uh, the podcast. Yeah. I, I, I suspect. I mean, I, I think the real question Brit that you're supposed to be asking is like, how, how rough is the, uh, the number two right? Like, like what if if it was, if it was explosive, maybe you'd be like, okay, well now we gotta reconsider All right guys. Fantastic Pod the, uh, the John Pauls are our outro. Happy Valentine's Day. Hope everybody gets in in Knoxville. Hope to see you all. Yeah. Right.