Welcome to the Trashalanche podcast. It's the only podcast about the Pokegear trading card game that people listen to. Me and Mike Bouche are here. Brit was supposed to be here. He's not here yet. I assume he is gonna roll in like halfway through the pod because like we're having some scheduling issues today. I apologize for that. It's mostly my fault. Mike and I are on Twitter. What's the other stuff that I always say? we're sponsored by Dragon Shield and I don't think anybody left a five star review. I didn't look. Oh, guys. Oh, somebody did. Somebody did gear 11. We gotta hold it til Brit here. I can't, I I don't wanna, I don't wanna spoil the, the adventure. We appreciate the five star reviews. We are going to leave review. It is so important. When people leave, review that we are saving it for when, when Brit is here as well. So we can really, really dive into this. We very much appreciate it. It's awesome. Alright let's dive into this. We might have to circle back a bit when we, when, when, if or when Brit gets here, but I think we should kick things off by talking about Angel Miranda.
Mike:Yeah, it's really sad. I, I'm not like super close with Angel, but he is someone that I've known for. I don't know, well over 10 years. Like, I don't remember exactly, but you know, I've been playing for a long time and he's been playing for a long time. He is from New York City. I grew up outside the city on Long Island. I've been around the northeast seen my whole career. So he's always been like super friendly face, always said hi to him. Talk to him a little bit. I saw him in Orlando, chatted with him for a little bit. He's just a really good dude, and like I'm, I'm pretty good friends with that whole New York City crew. So like, I can't imagine Tristan Masick is the one that has been organizing the GoFundMe. And like I'm pretty good friends with Tristan and all those guys, and it's, it's crazy man. It's just super sad.
Brent:I, I did not know angel personally, but, but I have an angel story that I, I can share with podcast listeners. Sure. I, I knew him essentially like through commentating and, but, but like, what's funny is I have a memory of Angel that I will always remember. Liam's first tournament is a master in Baltimore. He got paired against Angel in round, like, Oh, wow. And, and he was like, I'm paired against this, that a, a Miranda, don't know who he is. And I was like, he's really good. Li was like, I've never heard of him. And I was like, well, you know, I think this is what it's like when you're a master. There's a lot of good players and like many of them are not guys on this like top 16 grind, but you're gonna bump it over and you're gonna realize they're pretty. He's one of them. And like after round three, Liam was like, it got bodied, and like, as, as many, many people may recollect Liam primarily blamed his terrible deck choice for basically all of his losses. But like, he was like, oh yeah, you were right. He was, he was super good That was the first, that was like the first round Liam had as a master where I was. You're paired against somebody. Really good. Welcome to Masters. This is like, this is, you know, this is gonna be the real thing. Mm-hmm. So it was the first non-random person that Liam had ever been paired against and he proceeded to have the exact counter run you would expect.
Mike:Great welcome. We were just we just started, we are just discussing Angel. And the unfortunate news.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was, I, I heard over the weekend and was doing, you know, I'd seen. The fake posting. I knew, you know, I knew something had happened, something related to Christian Ortiz. I thought it was like maybe his brother or something like that. And I was, I like, like a breath got taken away when I heard it was Angel, like, I don't know Angel, but I interact with him pretty consistently, or at least regularly I'd become a fan, liking him all his tweets and things like that. Just cheering, cheering him on. But yeah, it really hurts. Or again, not to say that I can emote as the people who do know them, but it, it stings for sure seems that he was just so well.
Mike:Yeah, for sure. The you know, after I heard, I looked back at our, you know, Facebook chat history cause I was like, I don't know, I don't remember the last time that I talked to him online, but it was, it was, it, it's a kind of a funny story. It's a few years ago I was teaching, it was my last year teaching up in New Jersey and we had just gotten a new student who was, I think a junior at the time, and he played. Vgc competitively. And so the only person I really knew in the Vgc scene in the Northeast, or the person I knew best was Angel. And so I, like, I messaged him, I was like, yo, do you know this kid? And he, you know, we went back and forth about how yeah, he is a, you know, he's a typical teenager. He's a cool kid. And the like, the last thing he sent to me was just like, lol, I can't believe you're teaching him now. And like, I don't know, it's just the. Nice thing to have as the last thing from, from him. So so listeners encourage you if you can, there's a GoFundMe page that's been going around Twitter. You can go check it out. If you live in the New York area, I know they're doing a tournament this Saturday in Queens. I think the venue is called Gamers Choice and all the proceeds from that will also go to Angel's Family.
Brit:Super nice.
Brent:Super nice. Yeah. I, I thought we should talk about ah, met Ali's tweet as well, guys.
Mike:I didn't see that really. What is, what is the gist of it?
Brent:Oh buddy, you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to flip up at your browser it out. Cause
Brit:TLDR is that ADHD people are at an unfair advantage when it comes to deck check because they're just not as inclined to notice these, you know, modern minor alterations and you know, sleeves and things like that. And that seems to track for me as well as I'm a EX al equally expressing feeling victimized by the judges as a result of. His skin color is ethnicity and so on, I believe is the gist of it all. Mm-hmm. And I think, I think more generally that everyone is kind of uniformly in agreement, agreement that the penalties are just inconsistent and too harsh, you know, somewhere between those lines.
Brent:I, I had a couple of of thoughts on the, the tweet that I want to get you guys reaction to. And, and Mike and Reid while talk to, One is you know, Liam and I talked about it a little bit and like, let's be clear, we would never have gotten into the game if if it was a computer game instead of playing with physical cards. Like, like playing with physical cards was part of the attraction for us and for me as a parent, like getting into Pokegear. But like pen, it's like sleeve penalties for marked cards. The, excuse my French fucking worst It's the worst because like, like I think just, it's sad that I think every person who plays a lot of Pokegear just accepts that. Like you just have to accept that from time to time you're gonna get an incredibly arbitrary game loss. Hmm.
Brit:What I, what I really dislike, and this this relates to not just sleeves, but judging in general, is that, you know, this, this I think is, you know, manifest in all sorts of platforms and so on, but it's just so strange to me that. That every sort, every single judge ruling has to be offered objectively. I just don't think that should be the case In the same way, like say in the criminal justice system that you know, you know how, how does he do that? Well, mandatory minimum sentences, we don't get to, we don't establish like character for these things, and we just sort of by default, you know, give you this verdict and things like that. And if you do sort of manage to establish character, I feel like that's just like, that's how you answer. Just like, is this person probably cheating or not? And things like that. And I understand that this is difficult because when you, when you operate behind the rules where there's just like, I'm sorry, you know, these are the rules. There's nothing else I can do. You know, that's when we get into these problematic territories where it's just like, Sure it might be in the rules, but I think if you examine it sort of at least a little outside of the literal rules themselves, you'd be able to make, you know, these obvious exceptions that like, this person is probably not cheating with what is going on with these sleeves. Or, you know, this person is a, you know, take, I don't know, Andrew Mahone or someone like that. You know, someone of just like I, I think is such a reputable player, like probably is never cheating, is always such a source of positivity and just, you know, case by case basis like that and use that. As sort of, you know, your way out of these sort of scenarios and it just stinks that every sort of ruling is like, is like that, whether it's sleeve penalties, whether it's, you know, failing to main maintain the game state. You're both sort of given equal treatment. And again, that's another instance where just like, you know, clues player one who's player two, that again, like you establish these sort of relationships all, all over the place, but like when it comes to str like legal reasons and we have to, you know, just be like deontic about it and absolutely nothing. Just again to say, Sorry. It's the rules. What else can I do? I was like, you can absolutely do something else. Think about it a little longer, like, I don't know if that tangent makes sense, but that's just like, I, I find a difficulty in the sorts of people who can, can see just like, yeah, this is a problem. I do agree that you're probably not cheating triple game loss. Like, that's just feels so wrong to me. Like it, it feels like there is a way out of these scenarios and it is through relationships and sort of demonstrating who you are and things
Mike:like that. So in addition to all that, one of the things that I, and I've seen this argument before that I find kind of strange about sleeve penalties is I feel like you're either cheating or you're not cheating with sleeve penalties, right? So like a game loss doesn't really make much sense. It's kind of like hedging their bets, right? And so like I feel like you either deduce that they're not cheat. and you've maybe, maybe you give them like a warning and if it happens like you know, a bunch of times, then you, it leads to something bigger. But like, it shouldn't be anything of real consequence. Right. Or you decide that they are cheating and they're de disqualified from the event. Yeah. Like a game boss is like hedging their bets in a weird way and it doesn't make much sense. Yeah. And so
Brit:what I, what I feel like is going on, or if I, if I can say a little more on like the comments I made on this. I assert that it's like a power thing, and what I mean by, I do think it's a power thing, but I wanted to sort of clarify what I mean by a power thing. It's not that this judge is just like, oh, how do I be high and mighty in this scenario? Oh, I, you know, I deck check in this, or no, it's more to the effect that like, One, I don't think you want to end up in deck check. I think that like as, as your career as a judge, you want to work your way to being on the floor to being a head judge and things like that, and that the people in deck deck check judges. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it is my impression that the people in Deck Check are not the best judges that they're there for. You know, that, you know, they're of course are gonna be good judges there. But for the most part it's, it's people just like filling the space. And so, you know, what do they do? They think to themselves, I wanna be a great judge. I wanna be a head judge. How do I work my way, my way up? I prove to my, I prove that I'm good at deck checking. How do I prove that I'm good at deck checking? I find lots and lots and lots of people cheating. And in fact, in some cases I, I stretch it. I take any, and you know, An ounce of suspicion and I, I penalize, you know, something like that. That is what I think is happening. That is what I think the case is in a lot of these scenarios. And, you know, to say that it's power, but also just like this is how you work your way up to hierarchy too. But maybe, maybe
Brent:you, you justify your existence by being diligent. Right. And that means the smallest error you, you jump on you know, the, the, my immediate reaction to your comment was, I mean, at all these companies I worked at, like I worked at AOL for a long time and aol, you know, they, they were doing all these acquisitions during the time that I was there, cuz it was like the AOL heyday and like we used to talk about the deals they were doing and like how mediocre they were. But like the saying that I always heard, and it's so true, I feel like it's been true everywhere I've gone is like when you look at companies that have m and a teams like those, those m and a guys, they don't get paid to not do deals. Like, like, you know, if they look at an acquisition, they'd say that's a bad acquisition. Nobody says good job, and they can't put on their resume avoided five bad acquisitions. Right. like, ain't getting, ain't getting promoted to a like head of BD for like, Not doing bad deals, but yeah. To do deals, you know, Nike's point. Yeah.
Brit:Like it's, it's not a soft cheating example. It's not, again, in any of these plethora of examples, we've, you know, perhaps had cases of throughout tournaments this year, say with accidentally taking a wrong card in a Rita and, you know, palming a card from your discard and things like that, that like this is just stronger. Stronger version of cheating. It's, it's, it's a sort of, it's, it's a mechanism or what have you that's designed, you know, it supports you every single round. It is, it is not a individual decision. You know, you don't releve in between, you know, swap your. Mark sleeves consistently to keep'em on their toes or anything like that is, you know, it would be a tool again to help you out through the whole tournament. So, yeah, I've just never thought of the way Mikey put it, but yeah, that's a, a real problem for Mewtwo. Like Yeah, like why is it not more severe, you know, compared to everything else. Because again, if, I think if you examine it from the perspective of intent and things like that, that. If there are marked cards, you are cheating. Whereas, you know, all of these other cases, you know, the game state one, for example, truly can be an accident and you're penalized in the same way. Or again, you know, say it is intentional and you're like, oh whoop, sorry. But still, I guess it's different degrees of intention. Intentionality for sure.
Brent:And I'm sure that every player feels this way, but like for me, when I like check a deck, like. When I check my deck to see if I have problems, the problem is, it's like weeding a garden. Like when I go out to weed my yard, you pull all the big weeds, and then after you pull the big ones, like the little ones are so noticeable, and then you pull those and then like the tiniest ones are so noticeable and like they're sleeves, like you're shuffling cards 10 times around, like there's no way to avoid. unless you say, I'm just Reese leaving every single after every single round, there's always a problem. Yeah. You know, like, I, I don't know. I feel like I've never seen a deck that, like, you couldn't say, well, that's a problem if you wanted it to be a problem. Mm-hmm. and hence, and, and, you know I don't know. I guess what really jumped out to me about a Mees tweet is like you gave the example of Andrew Mahome, but. I think about med the same way, like yeah, I don't think anybody thinks that that guy's cheating, you know? Yeah. I just like more
Brit:of a
Brent:figure, like, I don't know if everybody Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, yeah. Andrew's a public figure, but like, I, I don't know. I mean, I'm at his super well known in the community. He day twos, tons of events, and he's the nicest guy in the world. I don't think anybody thinks that that guy's trying to do anything special. You know, he, he's, he's also a
Brit:chemistry PhD. He's absurd, Inteleon intelligent on top of everything else, so, yeah.
Brent:Yeah. Like, and, and like, he's a little older. Like he's, he's not, not, you know, he's not trying to win. He's trying to have fun plan Pokegear and he, you know, he goes on a run, he's in a situation where he could topate the event and he gets this incredibly arbitrary game loss. It suck.
Brit:Also, I don't know if I've ever said this before, but on, on the topic of praising Ahmed, Ahmed was the, the courier for the Mewtwo V-Union deck from, he was the local shop that I found all the, all the cards for, and so brought him there just to say he is a great guy. A
Brent:little more. Yeah, he is a super great guy. He is. He is the absolute best very upsetting to see that. Such a thing could go down. The other thing that that jumped out to me about his tweet and I wondered about is I mean when he says that like a judge kind of sat on his round, one of the things I wonder, and I don't know if you guys had any opinion on this, is like when somebody says they want to escalate to the head, judge, does the do do the other judges like hold a g.
Brit:I think so, and in the times I've done it before, I've been a little rude about it because I'm just like, I know you're wrong. Get me the head judge right now. No,
Brent:I mean that's, that's what's implied when you say, I wanna ask head judge is like, you're an idiot. Lemme talk to somebody smarter than you. Right. So probably
Brit:at least to a certain degree.
Brent:Yeah. And like even if the head judge backs up the junior judge, you still said, I think you're an idiot. Right. I just feel like, like it's just human nature that that would like create a little bit of a tonal problem. But like it's not supposed to and the fact that it does is upsetting. Yeah.
Brit:Anyway, I'd be curious to learn a, dig a little deeper, talk to somebody plays competitive magic or something just to get a sense of, you know, I do this in, you know, I make an equivalent. To Pokegear and magic, what happens, you know? And equally what happens at, you know, what from event to event, from like Pro Tour, grand Prix local, et cetera. Curious just how different it is. And you know, I think magic in general is a little more interested open to bands like I know, you know, there's just always some controversy in magic where. Hall the hall of famer gets banned and then he, he's, he's finally un banned and playing again. It's just like, he's probably still cheating and things like that. But again, just to get a better sense of how other games are doing things. Cause it wager that it's better elsewhere, but that's perhaps, you know, not well founded.
Brent:Yeah. That, that's probably all there's to say on that, or, or there's, there's so much more to say, but it's just, it's just complaining about the,
Brit:I mean, yeah, we could, I, I have some great stories of times that I, I've may have told the main one on here before, but just like I got, I got penalized from Mark's sleeves and I like, Took the three cards they said were marked and like sh shuffled them up and put like three other cards on the table and said, go pick'em out for me. And they missed every single time I'm just like, all right. And I, I lost in top a because of the prize penalty of the cities, and I was just like,
Brent:okay, you got me. Right. Right. I mean, it's, it's it just seems, you just take it as a given that you're, they're going to blame you for something that when, like you weren't trying to do a thing and like it's just taken as a given. And it really sucks. You know? It's it's just so unfortunate. And, and like the problem is obviously they're deck checking more aggressively, people who are doing well and like, you know, those people have to just overcome that then. And it's it seems unjust.
Brit:Yeah. World ain't fair. What can we do?
Brent:Alright guys. Big world announcements on Pokegear. Yeah, I figure we should talk about a little bit about Pokegear Day stuff.
Mike:Yeah. Well also NAIC dates. I think we did our podcast last week, like the day before they announced NAIC. So we got dates for NAIC and World within a week. This is awesome. I mean, it's still way too late, but it's awesome to have'em. Finally I, I don't know if you guys were, were you guys a little surprised that the world's dates were earlier than normal?
Brit:Maybe a little. I don't think I had. Too clear, like too much of expectations in either direction. But it, I, I do agree that it is, I mean, it's earlier than it usually is. Usually worlds sort of like always conflicts with like the first week of college semesters and things like that.
Brent:Yeah. I, I, I, I agree. It's, I think it's gonna work out better for most people. Yeah. But, but yeah, it, it, it was a little bit of a change. So I, yeah, I think I was a little bit surprised mm-hmm. but I was, I was just happy to have dates, so that was a situation where I was definitely not, not gonna complain about anything. Yeah, for sure. Any a i c dates a any comments on that? I booked at the hi.
Brit:Okay. I think I'll try to put there. Yeah, I don't, how'd you start figuring
Brent:out my plan? I, I, I know they said that they're moving up to the a and b halls, which are the bigger halls. Mm-hmm. So whereas before, like we were kind of down at the, the far end which is where they like had set up that Pokegear center. Now they're gonna be up at the top. So the Hilton is a little more on on point. We booked at the Embassy Suites, which was very close to that previous.
Mike:Yeah. I don't know. I think Ross booked a room for us, but I'm not sure exactly where it is. It is funny that they did change the date from the previous, like when they initially announced it, because they did, I guess, actively avoid Origins,
Brent:Oh, I, you know, I didn't see, is there did they announce in Origins? I was wondering if I know somebody had commented about how it used to. There was like Origins and then a week, and then it's
Brit:Origins before. Yeah. I think Raul tweeted speculatively that there might be a special event or something, which, which has happened in the past. The Right, the one, the 2017 I think it was. Mm-hmm.
Brent:Right, right. I, oh, you know, I was, I was always a fan of that and I remember, I think pandemic year, I had been planning on like helping Liam do the like origins into NAIC. Spend a week, and then I know everybody goes to Six Flags in between. We were like trying to figure out how to make all that stuff happen. We were gonna get like an Airbnb with a bunch of guys which is a really good thing to do.
Mike:Yeah. But it, it is just funny though cuz like when it, when they first, they announced like the NAIC dates this year for like a day and then they took it down and it was the same weekend as Origin. So it leads you to wonder if like Pokegear. Hadn't booked the convention center yet and just put the dates up. That doesn't seem likely. I guess more likely would be that like they had booked smaller halls. And then like, took it back. I don't know. It's, it's kind of weird that they would release dates and then have the dates changed. I, I, it's just unclear like what happened.
Brent:you know, I assume Origins is a really big event, but if they were able to do Origins in the smaller halls and then they did Origins in NAIC at the same time, I think that'd be super good. Yeah. I
Mike:mean, so the first couple years that Nintendo. Took over 2004, 2005, 2006. I don't remember when it, they first moved it out of Origins, but at least those first three years Nationals, US Nationals was part of Origins. It was exactly during the same time now. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. So, but now Nationals was much, much, much smaller than but it was the case for a few years. And those, I have, I have some really fond memories of that. Like, you know, being able to do kind of like a. Gaming convention essentially when I wasn't there. Like we went with my family, we went, you know, a couple days early and the day before nationals started, we just did a bunch of random stuff, which was sweet.
Brit:I was just gonna say it's 2009, I believe. 2008 was the last origins, cuz there was the, there was the St. Louis here and then we were in, we were in Indie for a while. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike:So, yeah, if they could manage that, I don't, I. I don't know how big Origins is these days like, but if they could manage that sometime, that would be really
Brit:cool. I think it stays pretty big, like I don't think it's com comparable to GenCon, but I think it's kinda up there in terms of, especially in the Midwest. Just like big gaming to-dos.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. My impression is, well, I have never been, it seems like it would be super. I mean, kind of on that
Brit:note, I think that a lot of people have talked about this as, you know, a possible solution to like making regionals better. Is that, you know, some people have expressed something to the effect of that, just like I go to regionals because it's, there just aren't Pokegear conventions, right? And so like, I, I feel like exploring something in that direction also is solvable because Yeah. Especially, you know, playing into the, the collecting side of things that's have such a huge uptick and, and things like that, like, Yeah, like I think there, there are players that do just sort of want to, you know, play Pokegear the card game in, in a way that's, you know, with their friends and meaningful, but that they're we're the only option is just going, playing it at the highest level competition possible. Like, just kind of feels bad too. And I was talking with trainer Hill a little bit just about Just like the disparity in like local scenes and how, as I've said before, I find I don't like, I, I'm not against locals coming back, but I just really don't think that marrying locals to the com, the uber competitive scene is like the right idea. I think there needs to be some sort of like intermediary between the two and just like similarly looking at the products that T P C I makes, they're just, I don't think is that a good enough bridge between. Competitive and casual because you have, you have like the Battle Academy, which is for babies tutorial. You have the V battle decks, which in theory should be that bridge, but they're just not, they're, it is not good enough. They're just bad still. And then, and then after that you get the league battle decks, which are just pre-con of real decks essentially. And you know, I don't know if that sort of comparison makes sense, but. I just think like, because to foster the community to help the game grow, you need the local scene. And I feel like only the only seeing grinders, especially grinders that are gonna travel three hours to your tiny little local store, to, you know, stomp people that are learning and playing for fun. I feel like there just has to be a better way to do that. And I don't have a solution, but I guess to express again, that I, I think something, something sanctioned that can cater to you. Again, something that isn't just uber competitive, I feel like is a good direction to keep the game healthy and growing.
Brent:I, I really like how they have the, the Pokegear first start thing at regionals now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I think was the first time they had that at Worlds or in a I c I can't remember, but like, I remember the moment I saw that, I was like, that's a really good idea. I, I wish that they. There was like more regional marketing around it because I, yeah, I, I saw the tweet too where they were like, they should make a Pokegear conventions, and I was like, that's a great idea. I'm a big fan of that. Yeah, you
Brit:have the, the go stuff I guess might have, you know, obviously it's like outside and things like that, but they've sort of event crews, you know, Niantic doing stuff for that. So yeah, I feel like definitely seems like something I T P C I could profit off very easily. Yeah. You know, you run. You know, comic-Con kind of thing. That's only Pokegear. You know, you bring in the artist, you know, artist Alley and all that stuff. If doing it officially just feels like it would make a ton of money. Yeah, totally. Great. Totally so popular. And again, there's such like, I don't know if you saw the like thing that like Danny and like Kid and people are involved with, but it's sort of like a show match, but more involved with like the collectors and things like that. But yeah, to say that I think they would show up to this kind of thing like this, you know, an official sanction. Just like, let me show off all my. It's just like a good opportunity and would just make money on hotels and things like that, I'm sure.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, if you think about how popular the trading area was is every year at Worlds, like, I'm sure you could get probably two-thirds of that at almost any regional thing. Just cause like regional, like how many people could travel to trade. It's a, it's a hard thing to do. And I know traveling to trade is like probably slightly more lucrative or like more interesting to Japanese people and stuff like that, but, I'm sure there's a big market for that kind of opportunity and there there's that kind of interest, you know. Alright guys, let's we got a couple more things we gotta grind through and we have a hard stop in six minutes. PTCGO. No more updates starting today. Yeah,
Mike:just think that's worth noting. There's no real incentive to migrate to live until Scarlet Violet comes out. But this is the official day that nothing new is coming towards PTCGO. If there's any bugs in the game, they're there forever.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Very I I don't know. I haven't, I've yet to play a game with PTCG L so I can't comment, but I get the impression I'll be thoroughly traumatized very shortly. The
Mike:only. The one benefit that I was thinking might happen, it probably won't happen immediately in a month, but maybe today, on March 1st means PTCG L is using the money that they were giving to Diol for at least some of it, to start hiring more people. And we'll see a little bit more more rapid improvements in PTCG l starting today. I don't know if that's true, but we'll see.
Brent:Yeah, I like, I hope it's true. I thought about that too. Like, I guess my impression is the way like companies work is what, like what happened was they said, okay, step one is you have to invest 10 million and then you'll have your own client and then you can stop paying those dire wolf guys. Mm-hmm. and, and like, I don't know, six months ago they were probably supposed to stop paying the dire wolf guys and they were like, no, you gotta keep paying'em. You gotta keep paying them. Mm-hmm. but like, I don't get the impression. I assumed they felt like they were making an investment to stop paying them. Mm-hmm. And it wasn't like, oh, once you stop paying them, you get all that money. You can do whatever you want with it. You put it to better use. Like, I'm assuming that the company is planning to claw that back. Mm-hmm. and they're like, they're like, we invested already. We've, we've fund two teams running simultaneously. We're not gonna just keep paying twice as much. We have a team. That team's gonna just keep going.
Mike:Right. Yeah, that's probably true.
Brent:I mean, it sucks cuz Yeah. Like, you'd like to think that you know, we get something for not having PTCGO anymore, but I think that that probably doesn't work out that way.
Brit:Just look at their openings.
Mike:We don't really have time to delve deep into Knoxville, but, you know, nothing too crazy. There was Lugia. Other decks, I do, I do wanna briefly mention I love Zander's inclusions and Mew, like absolutely love them. Did you guys see that
Brent:combo? The, the, I I didn't actually get to see him deck somebody out, but I assume he decked somebody out. Yeah, I'm
Mike:sure he did. For those listening, he put, instead of a one, one Aerodactyl in Mew, he put a one Palkia v and one. I don't even remember what it's called. Drey, is that what it's called? So Drey is a fusion strike. Pokegear for a psychic energy does 10 and your opponent cannot retreat. So Mew can copy Drey with a double Turbo and it's doing zero damage and your opponent cannot retreat normally. This has been a strategy used a few times, but in the history of Pokegear to like infinitely lock your opponent's active Pokegear. But the really, the one use case that Xander put it in for is for the Lugia Matri. So against Lugia you want to Path to the Peak them so they can't somebody in star, one of their only outs to that is to use pumpkin kaaboo and it's their most accessible out to that. So if they do go for the pumpkin kaaboo to try and get out of the lock, you can gust the pumpkin. And you can start making it so that they cannot retreat. You are doing zero damage. So it's infinite. I've thought about this strategy quite a bit to try and beat Lugia, but the issue I always ran into it is that they can attack with pumpkin or they can attack with Dunsparce or Manaphy. They have the resources to attack with these cards, but. Hum. CBU only does 20 damage and fusion strike cards have access to Oricorio, which reduces damage by 20. So they cannot do any extra damage, meaning that you can infinitely lock them. You know, they might play a bird keeper or escape rope. So, but as long as you can just boss it back up and not lose the game, then you are good to go. So I thought it was a really, really cool. Idea and a unique way to approach the matchup. And I'm sure I, I know it won at least a few games, and I think it just seems more consistent and more natural than running aerodactyl. So
Brit:really like it. I think he pivoted away from the Aerodactyl. Cause I, I talked to him about Mew and just was playing his list for the, the thing. I did that in last week. And I, I think it makes sense. Like, it is funny, you know, that we exist in a format where the best deck you can just, in theory almost, you can just put a one, one of everything and it gives you like a 50 50 shot against it, you know, cologne depending, of course. But yeah, I think that, You know, just ended up being more proactive anyways, that it's just not worth the space because it's just so dead a lot of the time too. But I mean, it's cool. I mean, I complain about Mew often as the, the archetype that, you know, was force fed to us by set design, but people in have innovated it two or three times now, and I'm of course always very impressed. So it is really cool. And yeah, again, these strategies are always super cool to see just these kind of very niche wind condit. Against preying on particular weaknesses in deck building and so on.
Brent:mean, this is the, the benefit of a, like well-formed Meta is like, you know, what the Lugia players are doing. Like there's no, so, so you can like, really think outta the box about how to counter that and, and try to really come up with some innovative stuff, which which is nice. Yep. All right. Do you wanna talk about the haggy interview really quickly?
Mike:Oh, I just wanted to mention, I thought I wanted to mention when we were talking about the O C I C stream, that was like, for me, the best part of the whole stream. I dunno if you guys saw that little segment when he interviewed the two Japanese players, but it
Brit:was, I
Brent:did not. Yeah. Tell,
Mike:tell us about it. He, he had two of, i I, he had two of the most prominent Japanese players, one of them Daichi, who was got third, second at, forget which one. Yeah. And one of the other players that's like part of Japan's Elite four. And so he was just kind of talking to them. They spoke like a little, a minimal amount of English. It looked like they understood better than they could speak. But so they had a translator there, but Ethan also speaks some Japanese, so that was kind of cool. So they got to like, it was like a mix of English and Japanese and they asked them about the tournament structure there, what they thought about our tournament structure. It was just you, you still rarely get to see. The perspective of Japanese players, and they were both so it was interesting to hear from them, but they were also, those two individuals were clearly used to being kind of in front of the camera, just like, you know, someone like Azul might be here. And so that was, it was just really cool. It was very entertaining and a window into the Japanese players experience.
Brent:Guys, I gotta call it, I got stuff I gotta do today, but we will reconvene. I have such a good, would you rather question that? We'll have to save it for the next pod along with the, we got a, we got a review in Brit. We have held off reading it. Oh save for next week. Sweet.
Brit:Sounds good. Sorry I was late.
Brent:the John Pauls are our outro.