The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast

Content creation, Perth, Vancouver, EUIC, Japan, next format Gardevoir & Giratina, "out-skilling opponents"

March 09, 2023 Brent Halliburton Season 1 Episode 124
The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast
Content creation, Perth, Vancouver, EUIC, Japan, next format Gardevoir & Giratina, "out-skilling opponents"
Transcript
Brent:

Let's just do it. All right. Welcome to the Trashalanche Podcast. It's the only podcast about the Pokegear trading card game. Uh, Mike Fouchet, Brent Pybas, me, Brent, Halliburton. We're all on Twitter. You can find all our information in the Twitter net. Um, oh guys, we, we teased it last week, but uh, it is here. We got a five star review last week. Yeah. Step one. He knows what he is doing. Five stars Erdos 11. Who is Taylor d. Um, Taylor Duffin says, my favorite Pokegear tcg podcast. I'm a longtime competitive player since 2007 and appreciate everyone's insight to the current game and reflections on past formats. I followed and enjoyed both Mike and Brit's content since the six prizes days, and it is insightful now as ever. I met Mike at several Pennsylvania events when I was at Penn State in 20 16 20 17. And he is just as nice a guy in person. The Trashalanche has Meta predictions this week gave me the confidence to play Palkia and tele Leafeon. This weekend at Knoxville regionals, I had my best finish at a major event in years. Just bubbling outta top 32. Keep up the great work Trashalanche. Nice. That's awesome. Yeah, I, I, I remember Taylor, I, he's a nice guy as well. Very nice guy. Uh, always had a pleasure playing against him. I thought there were a couple of notable things. First dude, congratulations. Taylor Duff in top 32. Just bubbling outta top 32 is awesome. That's a big tournament. That's really, that's really, really good. Um, and, and playing the slightly off Meta deck, like I dig it all. Um, Indeed, Mike is just as nice a guy in person if, if he doesn't seem nice on the pod. He's actually very nice, uh, in person. Um, also, I, I, I thought the most notable thing for me guys, I don't know if this jumped out to you, but it jumped right off the page to me, is he said he enjoyed both Mike and Britt's content since the six surprises. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I did not notice that. But Brent Brent Sta time is a six prizes writer, NAIA mentioned, we're gonna call it Notable

Brit:

six prizes, articles. There's certain, certain six prize writers that. Never wrote anything worth talking about that sold themselves much higher than that. So I, I'll, I'll send your praise. Brent, you're at good articles.

Brent:

Uh, you know, I, I mean, I recognize like six, six prizes is like in many respects, the start of the gang. Although Mike, I feel like you didn't write, did you write more in the early days of six prizes? Yeah, like, I mean, I like I grew up in Pokegear reading Britt's articles, like that's how Brit and I know each other like, like we started our relationship from like me reading a six prize articles and being like, so Brits a Pokegear genius. Okay. Yeah. The original five writers for six prizes were me, Chris, Phillip. Jay Horn, John Kettler and Jay Whiz. Those were the five

Brit:

I thought Frank Diaz was, was on there very briefly at the beginning. I remember he had this like drap on Level X article after he, after he taught Ford World. That he was playing at Battle Roads or something, but maybe he was never, he just like sort of found that spot after the, the world's success or something and was never a staple writer. I just remember that article a lot. Cause I was, it was, I was just so curious about it as, you know, a newish player. Then like, I was like, how could this tech, how could anyone play this card?

Brent:

Yeah. That's funny. Um, yeah. And so I, I did a, I did more like that first year, like 20 10, 20 11. I did a bunch and then I didn't really play too. In 20 12, 20 13, 20 14. So I did like an occasional article during those years, and then by the time that I got like back into it, you know, six prizes was relatively short-lived. Uh, well, and I, at some point I like switched from writing articles to doing the podcast. Uh Oh, that's right. You, you were doing, you had like a brief moment as like six prizes. Podcast guy. Yeah, we did it for about a year. Um, that was really hard though because I was the only, like, the format was I was the host and I got two or three people every few weeks and just coordinating the schedules was really tough. Uh, uh, guys, true story. When, when I first pitched Mike on joining the pod, he was like, I. Yeah, I don't wanna do that again. Yeah. Yep. I was like, consistent people is much easier. So like, that's why I really appreciate what Kevin does, uh, Melo Magic Art, because I know how hard it is to get people. Different people all the time. Now it's a little bit, he's doing it a little bit easier than I did. Like it's, you know, it's often just him plus one other person. Um, sometimes he'll have multiple people, but the people, if he has multiple people on, it's usually like his same like small group of, uh, Twitch streamers that will join with with him. Uh, but, but still it's, it's hard to get new people all the time. Uh, I mean, I know just the, it. It's good that we all have the relationship we do because, uh, I, I'm sure as people recognize from the publications of our pods, sometimes cranking a pod out is like, it's chaos scheduling. Mm-hmm. Today was chaos scheduling. The, uh, um, well, I was gonna say, oh, you know, say, yeah. So for me growing up, like, right, like we started playing right in like the six prizes heyday moment. I, I feel like, but yeah, I, I always remember Chris and Jay's articles. They were like Brit on this pod. Like every article started with guys, I know you guys, uh, think I don't even play this game anymore. I haven't written an article in seven and a half years. but like, like, eh, they're cranking

Brit:

out content all the time. Oh yeah. Pull up articles are sort of notorious like for being bad and long He had like, he had like a 10 k, 10 k article on. Mammo swine or something, you know, like storm front mammo, swine and things like that. And it's just like, it was always just like, look, fall off. We understand that you're good but you gotta, you gotta do something. But yeah. Yeah, those are, I think you definitely are right. You came in sort of at like the heyday, you know, especially cuz like with the coaching, cause we sort of, we started that, you know, I don't necessarily wanna say we started the trend or anything, you know, since it's more like an eSports sort of institution now. But you know, initially, S coaching host was hosted through six prizes, and it just ended up being too popular for Adam to, to do it. So he just like broke us off and we, you know, we, we just did it ourselves after a certain point, but it started on six prizes, like at the same time. And I think there, you know, there's functionality on the site to book and stuff. I think,

Brent:

yeah, I, I was definitely one of those people where Adam like sent me a note and he is like, look, I just can't deal with coordinating like coaching arrangements for your son anymore. You're gonna have to just work it out. I was like, I guess that's fine. I had not realized that was a problem. That's fine. And I guess I should have taken away from that, that I should startify, but

Brit:

like seriously. Ceased that capitalized earlier.

Brent:

I, I guess, I guess it, it just wasn't as, and, and maybe this is true for everybody, and that's why Manaphy was so smart. Like it wasn't as obvious. Like whatever game people were playing wasn't necessarily obvious that every other game people also wanted coaching too. Right? And like, like Pokegear, like there's not enough scale to be that interesting for like coaching, but you know, as it turns out, modifies like, well, everybody wants coaching and everything, so that fixes that problem. Um, uh, there was one other, uh, interesting. Uh, I felt like there were some tweets this week as long as we're on the subject about how people should stop writing articles.

Brit:

Yeah. Yeah, I saw that. And like, It's definitely feels like, you know, I've talked about this, you know, just with me and like TikTok or something like, you know, it's definitely like an old school, new school thing, I think. Cause like, I just don't ever want to absorb information as a video. Like, you, you, you know, IGN for example or something like, they, they write the review, you can read the review and then the videos are just sort of narrated of what you would read. And like, I never wanna watch a video and similarly, I just like never really had TikTok or anything like that. But like the experience I've seen of others are just like, I just don. Want videos. Like, it just doesn't do anything for me. I'm always wanting to read. Um, but yeah, and I understand that it's just like so, so against not just the trends, but I think like the generation, like information, it's just common, more common to get information from a YouTube narrator or something now versus an article. Whereas of course with Pokegear, like, I'm trying to even think like what, who was really the first. Major content creator like that we could sort of ascribe that label retroactively too. For Pokegear. Like, like, I mean top, top cut Palkia stuff. Yeah, top cut. Yeah. But there just wasn't anyone other than that. Like, and I mean that's, you know, obviously part of Kyle's story to the top, like the top cut was sort of one of the only one very, very first groups that was making, not only making videos, but. Recording events, recording locals comment like, Kyle Palkia, just commentated everything. I remember just like as a player, then I watched, it was just, there wasn't much content to watch. I watched every single topic video like multiple times just for, for data for matchups and things like that. And it's just obviously there's just, it's a C of content creators now. I don't know, it's just like a very jarring to me sometimes on Twitter. Just like how there's a new podcast every day. There's like a billion content creators all trying to make it. It seems tough. It seems scary.

Brent:

Yeah, it's, um, uh, I, I recognize I'm just a person. Like, uh, I learned by reading Audio man. I just, I just feel like I can't absorb it in the same way. Yeah. And as podcaster I'm sure, I'm sure it's a bit of a generational thing. It's a bit of a bit of a personal preference thing. Um, I, I saw a tweet that Ahmed. Uh, contributed to the whole discourse that I thought was really interesting. At first, when I saw it, I really agreed with it. And then I thought about it. I'm like, I think it's probably somewhat true, not a hundred percent true, but he said, I don't think, uh, this means articles are bad. They're worse for worse players and better for better players. And I think that's an interesting way to look at it as well. Um, and I don't know if it's necessarily true, but it's probably on average true. Um, Better players will get more out of an article because they can take the time to really soak in the details. They can reread sections, um, they'll get a little bit more out of it while, uh, worse players might. They're just, they're, they're not at the level that they can take in the amount of detail that an article can convey. And they're better off kind of getting the overview, like, you know, the overarching concept from a video than, than the details of an article. I don't, I don't know if that makes sense, but it made some sense to me when I read it and it was a very succinct way to put it. uh, you know, this is probably just, uh, just. Tangentially related, but yeah, like my reaction, uh, was like when Grant Manley sits down and cranks out 2000 words on like how to play the lost Bach mashup against a radon, like you can say, well, people would rather consume that as a video, but like, I think. It would be hard to do the video that does that story justice, you

Brit:

know? Right. Because, because like with a video, you know, you, you're, you're, it's like you have to do it. You, you're doing multiple takes or something like that. Whereas in an article, you can just operate entirely behind the hypotheticals and just be like, if, if x then y you know, like that. Whereas if you, if you want to talk about it purely and gameplay, like you gotta go get that game. Right, like the, the game. Yeah. Where, where these, where this, you know, this slight line actually happens and it wins you the game or something like that. And, And so, you know, naturally then like obviously like, you know, I think there's just a sort of that vi you need that visual stimulus that a video, you know, that's just merely narration or something like that. Like for someone who's watching the video, like how do I learn? Sort of just that. Whereas when you're reading, I think you're sort of just in this other kind of state, like you're there to absorb the information and sort of just like take it in. Whereas the video, it's almost, you know, like, you know, I don't wanna say like, cause I love video essays and things like that, and obviously a lot of ones I kind of said I like to consume like, It might as well just be audio. Like, I don't even need to watch the video. There's usually not nothing happening in the video anyways, but like, I think that's sort of part of it too, or at least like, it's just, it's easier to talk about theoretically. And I think for some, you know, perhaps older people, again, people like more used to this as the sort of the avenue for the information. It's, it's, Easier to absorb, but like if you're not a reader in general. Um, and I think again, this is where part of where the generat generational divide comes in, we're just like, we're, we're separated by the technology. We're brought up Ron, right? Like me, maybe Mikey, you know, been through it all. Like I had dial up, you know, I remember my first cellphone and things like that. Whereas, you know, kids these days, you know, I don't, I don't know about your son's Brent, but. with their iPads at age four. You know, things like that. They, you know, you're wired in a different way. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying one is good and one is bad, but like, that's part of the story and that's why like, there are reading differences, or at least like, why would you ever watch a video when you could read or something like that. Like you, you give that proposition to two different people and they take it in two different ways.

Brent:

Uh, you know, I, I really let my children down because Walker constantly says, oh, I don't like to read. I like, Have the book beamed onto my eyeballs, I'm like, man, I let you down. It's bad parenting right there. But, uh, yeah, like I, I mean, I assume, and you know, may, this is, this is me painting an extremely broad strokes, but like yeah, if you, if you say, I wanna talk about this lost box versus draw it on matchup, like, yeah, you kind of go on the ladder if you're trying to record a video and like when you, when. When you play that game, you talk about the matchup, but it's difficult, I think, to lay out the decision trees and like, it doesn't necessarily assume optimal play. You're not necessarily getting optimal play from Theon guy and you're not necessarily like talking about all the outs that he could play. Like it's this, like, it's this kind of linear story and you know, uh, I feel like for better or for worse, unless somebody is an editing God, When you read it, it's just easier to walk through all the cases, you know? Yeah. So, so I, and I know writing is hard, like writing well is really hard versus just like recording some gameplay, you know, like doing editing. God, it would be probably harder than writing. I have mass respect for people to do that stuff, but I don't get the impression that like there's that much of that kind of video.

Brit:

I mean, I think that's just, you know, this might just be more of a like general problem, at least for me, with content Creation. And is that like, is that, you know, it's not necessarily about the editing quality or thing like that, but just like, you know, let's take a survey of say, a hundred videos, 50 Pokegear content creator videos or something like that. Say they're covering, you know, they're all. Uh, Knoxville winning LucMetal list or something like that. You take all 50, take all 50 of those sort of, at least in theory, they're presenting the same information. How many of them are actually going to be insightful? Like probably not very many. And you know that that's just the sort of issue with content. Creation is that. It sort of makes experts out of, you know, you just assume naturally as the viewer that you know, this person that you're watching because, you know, this is their specialty. This is, you know, this is their discipline, you know, say with like an academic pursuit or something like that, that they know what they're talking about. And that's just not true. That, you know, that a content creator can make a video. Like that's the only threshold for, you know, it just has to exist. You have to make it. And whether again, you're presenting the same information. 50 50 of those videos, how many of them are going to actually have anything insightful like. You know, not very many. And so I, for me, that's a big breakaway from videos versus articles like when I'm reading an article, I mean, I guess this could be set of the content creators, of course. Like I go to a zoo versus I go to, you know, again, one of these random people that I, um, I just mentioned not too long ago, like Azul is probably gonna have some insight. This random, average player. Even though they're a content creator, like there's no expertise there. And in, in a lot of ways it's just like assumed or something like that, that like as a content creator, like you're competent or even above average and like that's tenuous even I think too, and like it just creates these echo chambers all the time of bad information and things like that. Like you listen to it, it's. Below average content creator and you get the bad sort of impression and then that spreads and spreads and spreads and

Brent:

you know, so on. I was actually thinking about this effect yesterday in a different context. Uh, my wife Kelly is, uh, gonna buy a new car and so she was, you know, watching a video, uh, testing out this new 2023 model. Prius knows these two guys like driving the car and talking about it, and. They seemed pretty knowledgeable to me. You know, they were talking about like a bunch of the different things, but I was thinking about it. I was like, I don't know, like, are these just two random guys that like to drive cars around or are they people that were mechanics for 20 years and then became YouTube creators? Like there's a big difference there. Right? Um, and, and I have no idea. It was, it was pretty funny. Although I recognize like, like you're taken until you make it. Right. Like if they made, if they made 300 videos, driving 300 different cars and evaluating. Probably around 300. They, they like actually have some real opinions,

Brit:

you

Brent:

know? Yeah. Right, right. You just gotta make sure that their YouTube channel's been around for 10 years first. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that, you know, like, like that, that was always the, like, why should you blog? Because like, you know, who cares what you have to say? And then like, people would blog and like, eventually they would somehow, like, get enough feedback that they actually what they do. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, Crazy. Alright. Alright, let's, let's actually jump into a real topic, but very much appreciate, uh, hearing how well, uh, Knoxville went. Thanks a lot Taylor Duffin. Appreciate the feedback. People continue to leave reviews. They're, they're great. They, they make us talk for a while. Um, should we talk about, uh, Knoxville at all or is Knoxville in the distant her, uh, past? Um, well we talked about Xander. Yeah, we talked about Xander's, Mew. We talked about kind of the variety of decks. Uh, I don't think there's anything like too crazy Melmetal wise. I, we did not mention that. Uh, Andrew Hendrick, Palkia Hawkey, two-time regional champion back-to-back. Uh, really, really impressive, um, to win back-to-back regionals anytime, especially in this format with Lugia. Uh, I know like during the Covid times, Andrew came up a number of times cuz I played against him quite a lot, uh, you know, in the online tournaments. And he kind of made a name for himself a bit in the online events and so it's pretty cool. Uh, to, to see his success finally translate to the real, in real life circuit. Yeah. Uh, obviously, uh, uh, as much as anybody he's validation for these people kind of came up in the online circuit, uh, taking over the universe. Yeah. And, and I think the more this happens, uh, the more it validates that, uh, even though we weren't playing in person during those year and a half, two years, like. those results were at least semi, you know, pretty relevant. Yeah, yeah. While, while there were many players that, that chose to sit those out, uh, you could actually play real games against meaningful people and, and learn stuff about playing the game there. Yeah, for sure. Um, there was some other events recently as well. Uh, you know, there was the regional in Boko. Again, nothing too crazy that there, the, the winner there was the luge with the Veco Boltund in it. For some reason, I, I think I watched a decent amount of that stream and, and that guy got streamed quite a lot. I think he got streamed top eight, top four and the finals. And I'm not sure if he attacked with Veco Boltund, like ever while he was being streamed. Uh, so I think that's pretty funny. Like it, it just felt like a Lugia deck, just like a normal Lugia deck. Um, and then there was the Australian Regional that just happened this past weekend. Uh, the two of the quote unquote top players, Natalie and Christian Hasani both played Vico Boltund, just straight Vico Boltund, uh, both lost in top eight, but they both made top eight. Again, there's nothing new coming out of these Meta games just. Different things coming out on top. Sometimes with Lucia constantly being the most popular deck and the most successful deck, uh, I thought the highlight of the, uh, uh, Perth Regional was that, uh, Natalie, friend of the pod, uh, uh, continually referred to it as the Perth League Cup. Yeah, very, very strong, very. Um, so Vancouver's this weekend mm-hmm. I recognize it has now been this format for three and a half years. is there anything left to say? have fun,

Brit:

Yep. Yeah, I don't know. I would just, I would be with, I would be with Zander on the, an endless pursuit of the technology. I just feel like that's the only sort of way to have fun right now. and look for that one more Mew, spicy Mew tech. So,

Brent:

so would you play Aerodactyl or would you play something? Um, well, I don't, I

Brit:

don't actually know, seriously. I'm not after my little, my, my one K experience with Mew. I just, I don't think I would ever, could ever play it again. It's just like, I know it's good. I know, I know how the math works. I know it's like, you know, I was talking about this even at the, then, you know, it's like you might be able to express it as something to the effect of like, you know, on aromatic flip or something like that. Like the power, maybe even the tempo of a heads is, is just like exponentially greater than, you know, the loss of the tails or something like that. But even, you know, statistically of course it's, you know, still just a flip. But anyways, I, I don't think you need aerodactyl, like it's, aerodactyl is funny, just I think as a general inclusion really in any deck in this format. If, you know, the argument for running in Mew is not really particular to Mew in a lot of ways. Like it just Mew happens to have the space and lots of, you know, basic search and things like that. So it works out. But you know, any deck I think can just play. You know, one, one Aact. I like look at all the Arceus lists and things like that that try to do that. Like, so it's just kind of funny that like you can do, you know, just add two cards to your deck to sometimes just automatically beat Lugia. But even still, I just don't think it's worth it. I think M has good pass to win already. Like I haven't tested or played games with the Dre. And of course like lists, depending, Meta game shifts, depending. Um, like I think that's probably just enough as it is, like even. Bird keeper potentially and things like that. Like it gets dicier depending on just the switching options that they run. But like you can get it back with say s or something like that. So like, even if it gets knocked out like, and they have the answer to the, the first, you know, lock. You could maybe get it again. Um, and then even still, of course, has just like incredible tempo when it, you know, does the things that it does. Going, going first, you know, getting a two prize knockout and just like writing it from there, um, uh, I think I would, yeah, I guess that's just my answer. Like, no, I, I think the other, the space for adaptable is better spent elsewhere, but it, it's not bad. It, it's not hurtful. It's perhaps worth consider. I guess I

Brent:

hadn't realized. Mike, did you look at any of the Perth or Boem stuff and see whether or not people were trying to counter Drey in their list? Like, like were people trying to do the Drey thing? Any of this? Well, BOEM was the same weekend as Knoxville. That's right. Um, so Perth, I didn't notice, uh, the Lugia. Did the Lugia play Bird keep? Two Lugia that made top a one of them at a bird keep, one did not. So that's kind of a counter for Drey. Um, the only other counter forrey would be playing like more outs to path that are not pumpkin kaaboo, but that doesn't really seem worth overall. Um, so I, I think Drey is still good. I would probably, if I was playing Mew, I'd probably play it, probably play the Drey Palkia over the air Dactyl if I wanted to play one of them. Yeah. Because like Palkia is like fi, one of the worst things about air dactyl is the possibility of starting it. And like with Palkia, you start Palkia, you just get it to the bench, then it goes away and you never have to see it again. If you start Drey, it's a single prizer kind of sucks, but it's not the end of the world cuz it's a single prizer and not an aerodactyl, so. Right, right. You needed a turn to evolve your mute anyway. Yeah, you're a single president. Active. Okay. Guess we went do the DR thing, but, okay. Right, exactly. Um, should we talk a little bit about post rotation? E U I C? So, E U I C is well, so E E U I C registration finally coming out. Uh, we're recording Wednesday afternoon and E U I C registration First wave happens in. 12 hours or so. I think it's at like 4:00 AM Eastern time, something like that. Um, I think I'm going to try to register. I'm not gonna wake up early to do it but I will try the second and third waves I think. Um, Brent, are you guys considering, holy newsflash. I think Mike just told us he's on the invite grind here. I, it's the really the only realistic way that I feel like I could get my invite. And I just like, you know, part, I'm leaving my job. I don't care as much. If I take a couple days off, uh, I really would like to get the invite. Um, so, and, and it's the first event in post rotation, which is super, always super appealing. So, I think I'm gonna try to register. Yeah. Boy, you, you, you have a way better sales pitch. Yeah. No, I think Liam has basically the same sales pitch. I'm just mean her to Liam Um, uh, uh, yeah, I think, I think we are not planning on going, because for us it's the week after spring break. Mm-hmm. So like, he, he would, uh, he would like, school starts up on Tuesday and then I guess we would fly out on Thursday. Yeah. Or Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, I just don't know if, if going to school for like a day after spring break and then taking three or four days off is like a thing. That sounds like a, a thing of responsible parents let their children do Yeah. I, this would be like the first time I'm, I'm like ever even considering anything like that. So, yeah. Uh, I gotta, I gotta really think about it tonight because now registration is happening. Um, well, I, it's interesting to, I, I, I think one of the questions I was gonna ask you guys is like the, this like three-part wave thing is interesting. I know they've kind of done it before and it, uh, I think what I feel like when I look at Twitter, I feel like people are, there's this implication that they're trying to be time zone friendly by releasing'em in waves. Mm-hmm. but people. Are really committed. They feel like they have to hit all three waves. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. But I mean, in theory, if you know, you get on the first wave, then you don't have to worry about the other ones. Right. Right. But that's, I mean, you can't, you can't wait till wave two if you're really hardcore to start like trying to play the game. Right. right, because you missed out on a third of the opportunity or something, I assume. Yeah, but also like the last two waves. If, if everybody's like gunning for the first wave, then in theory the last two waves will be easier than the first one to get in. So that's what I'm hoping for. I, I like that optimism that you're just like, I feel like that's really optimism. I'm, I'm like, I, I wanna go, but if somehow I don't get in, in the last two waves, I won't be too upset. like, like the, I think the underlying assumption there is that, uh, um, like I wave one. Satisfies all the initial early demand, but like if it satisfied all the initial early demand releasing the first third of the tickets, then they wouldn't have to release'em in waves.

Brit:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's yeah. Just sort of use all of these as beta tests for n a NAIC. If you do that wrong, like, I don't know, like what else to say, but ho hopefully there will not be those issues there. But yeah, hope e i C is a relatively easy time I feel. You know, outside of communication issues, it's still not that hard. Like if you want to do it and you're there when you're supposed to be like, you don't miss a spot. Like, no, nobody has like, you know, there at the very last, at the very, you know, 10 seconds before and whiffs like, it's, it's only these sort of. Edge cases and things like that. Um, it still stinks at the end of the day that, you know, we're forced. And I, of course too, there's like a lot of psychology. I feel like that goes into it. Like you're on the fence and you, you know, you're not sure. Maybe that forces the decision you wouldn't otherwise make and things like that too. But hopefully if there's enough seating, uh, I'm not sure what to expect in Europe. But I mean, I guess with the. The announcement that there's gonna be another pop-up, like Pokegear Center, maybe they're ready for it. Maybe they're, they're expecting, you know, similar casual traffic, layperson traffic as they obviously not equivalent to worlds, but with something like that being there, like maybe, you know, it's, the space will be good and things like that. Yeah.

Brent:

Uh, I don't know. Did like World Brent you might know, did Worlds, um, spectator badges sell out? Uh, um, I'm pretty sure it did. I mean, worlds was a circus. Yeah. I mean, worlds was the role model because like they somehow convinced all of London that there was a special Pokegear thing happening out at the Excel center and like all of London came to shop at the Pokegear Center and like check things out. So you didn't need a spectator badge, I think, to get into the Pokegear Center. And there was just massive lines 24 7 to get into the Pokegear. Gotcha. And, and it was complete pandemonium Cool. Yeah. And like that's, that's the role model. Like it was totally awesome. It was totally awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure this'll be a slightly scaled down version of that since, like you said, that they're doing some type of pop-up shop. Um, that, that makes me realize, I knew they said they were gonna have some special London only things you're gonna have to like, buy something for me if you, if you don't. Yeah, I got you. Um, so in terms of the format itself, I haven't like consumed that much. Content that people have been putting out. Like I've seen Pablo's put out a couple videos, Luke's put out a couple videos. I have. I've barely watched any of that stuff. Um, but I have been paying attention to the Japanese results. So Japan just had, uh, not this past weekend, but the weekend before, a huge champions league. Over 3000 people played the format's still like so weird. I didn't realize. They do. They basically have the same like day one to day two, nine round. Day one, five rounds, day two, but it's all best of one. And then top eight is also best of one And so it's just a lot of best of one. So you have to take the results with the grain of salt for sure as well. Um, but Lost Box did very good. Um, going into the event, I think. Giratina was presumed to be the best way to play Lawon, and it was the most popular, but it wasn't the most successful overall. Uh, radiant Greninja Lawson decks, very similar to stuff like, uh, Pedro's list from O C I C, uh, did, did very well. Uh, so similar stuff to that. Um, and then Mew is very, Lugia single strike is not a bad deck. It's probably in the top four decks. And then Gardevoir, EX, that whole deck is also pretty good. There was two of them in the top 16, and Gardevoir got second. So I've been paying attention to Japanese results. I played a handful of games, uh, this weekend at locals actually, which was, which was fun. Um, so I'm getting a sense of what the format looks like. Uh, and it's. Okay, I don't wanna say it's great or anything like that, but it's okay. Uh, you know, I think Liam is kind of doing some of the same studying You are, but I keep telling Liam, I mean, it's crazy. Even after, uh, uh, Vancouver, we're going to Charlotte and Fort Wayne, like we have two more tournaments and we're not even gonna Vancouver before. E Y C. It is crazy right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This format has been the format forever. Yeah. We still have literally a month in this format still There's so many tournaments left in this format. It's crazy. Yeah. So, uh, I'm starting to think about it, but I don't expect everybody to start thinking about it. So, is there, is there a reason in post rotation, like, because I, as I said, I've tried not to pay attention to it at all. The Giratina is so much better than it is in the current format. So one of the big reasons that Giratina is not super popular right now. and remember it was right in the last format before Lugia came out. Um, but it's matchup against the current Lugia is really pretty bad. Um, and beyond that, it actually has pretty good matchups. And so the fact that Lugia gets so much weaker, Giratina is able to get back into the format a bit. Now, I think. I think it's not quite as good. Like people thought it was gonna be s tier in the post rotation format. Um, but I think it underperformed because its mirror lost box matchup is not that good. Um, cuz you're basically like a lost box mirror except you have these in your deck and they don't. So, uh, I do think it's, it is quite a lot better, but it's still not, it might not be the best deck just because. Other lost on matchups are, are, are not great. Yeah. Like I, I felt like Giratina got driven out of our format just as much because like, as it turned out, single prize lost box was better. Yeah. And so, so like when people were like, Giratina is Es here, I'm like, but why is it so much be like, what happened that made it better than single prize? But like, maybe the moral story is it's just, uh, um, the big heavy hitter. Yeah. Being as, as able to take like massive knockouts post rotation. Yeah. I think that's a, a pretty big reason why it has, it just covers a lot of bases. It's really hard to counter a deck like Giratina because it has good single prizes, it has damage spread, it has bench hitting, and it has ways to take big one shots. So it, you know, it can beat basically any. Because it has all those tools, which is very appealing. Um, it also, one thing that it does do much better than the. Regular lost box decks. It deals with the counters to lost box or lost zone variance. Much better like clunky. And Napoleon totally shut down or can totally shut down regular lost box decks. But the Giratina, they just push up the Giratina V and they start using the um, whatever that first attack is called, where you look at four cards and take two and law zone two. So you get to build up your law zone regardless of your Com fees being shut. These are the answers I'm looking for. Yeah. Um, I really love Gardevoir. I mean, you guys knew how much I loved Gardevoir dx and so. I am really pumped. I played mostly Gardevoir when I was testing out the, uh, the format and I, it's really good. It's very good. It's very consistent for a stage two deck. Um, once you get going, you, you run through your deck so quickly because you know, you have Kirlia to draw, to draw cards. And then like on any given turn, you can go like Triple Kirlia, radiant Greninja, evolve two of your Kirlia to the Gardevoir, that draws cards as well. And you can draw. 14 cards from your deck without a supporter. Um, so you can have these super explosive turns where you go from like, just setting up your board to like, full on, you have your whole deck in your hand taking big one shots, uh, which is, which is really cool. Um, so I feel like I'll probably end up being a, uh, a garden war main Um, if I go to uic, I don't know if I'll end up playing it, but like, As of right now, wouldn't be upset with playing it. When are the, when are the pre-releases? I guess two weeks. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Two, like a week and a half I think is the first weekend of pre-releases. Good times. Any other stuff that we should talk about, uh, today?

Brit:

The only other thing I was on my mind potentially, since it seems like we want to table the Sam Chan podcast for next week, is just if you wanted to talk about, let me, it was just one of Liam's tweet sort of just like how masters so consistently, you know, like. Assume that their player is going, you know, their opponent is going to make mistakes and that's how they win the matchup. You know, whether that's a viable tournament strategy or not. I feel like that's something we could have a decent discussion on. I'm not sure how much I agree or disagree, but there's, there's some stuff to unpack for sure. I think. So, yeah.

Brent:

So, uh, uh, for podcast listeners, the Lake of Rage interview with Sam Chen Brit has listened and said it was really good. Both Mike and I said, it's on our list of things we wanna listen to. So we're gonna listen to it. You guys listen to it. We're gonna reconvene next week and talk about that, that podcast a little bit listeners, a second podcast to listen to. Um, but let's talk about Liam Street for a second.

Brit:

Yeah, I'll just read it. It's always strange to me to see people count on poor play from opponents to justify their decks. For tournaments as in chess, you have to assume your opponent will make the best moves. You can see if there's clear counter play. Don't just hope your opponent doesn't find it. We have another comment too that sort of runs with his own thoughts, but I guess we can, we can just start there and like I, I do find this is consistently, or at least like as, as for the Pokegear TCG community, we, we so consistently. Ascribe player quality to deck archetypes and things like that. So like Arceus Aldon for instance, is not, even though there's obvious counter examples, say Stefan playing it, winning regionals with it and things like that. I, I feel like that's our current sort of stand-in for the format for like a deck we want to refer to as only bad players play it or only a certain class of players play it while good players are always going to avoid it or something like that. And, You know, that just often seems to be the case, or at least I feel like I will. I mean, obviously I'm not, you know, not doing well or anything like that these days, but like, I mean, obviously at certain Lele levels you, you know, day two or something like that, I don't think this is true, but like, I feel like you can count on poor play for like at least half of your Swiss round. And like, I know this, that's even now, like even against people that day too, but like, You know, it's, it's, I don't think you can fully rely on it. So, you know, as I say before, like, you know, the quote I like a lot from fighting games is like, if you have to outplay your opponent multiple times to win, like your character sucks. And so similarly, like if, if you have to, if you know, if you have to. Outplay your opponent, you know, just get these, you know, 3D chess lines or something like that, or rely on making a mistake. Your deck is also probably bad or, you know, probably not good enough, not viable for that event or something like that. Um, but yeah, like, I just sort of curious, where do you land, Mikey? I guess we can start with like, do you, is it, do you rely sometimes on the chances of mistakes in sort of your matchup spreads and things like that for how you will. Choose to lose to a deck, you know, say, say knowing you, you have a hard loss to Arceus, Aldon or something like that in our example here.

Brent:

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think it's really nuanced because like, so like the best example that I can give is in the Pikarom format. I was very happy playing Pikarom in general because I thought its matchups were pretty good and I felt like it's weaker matchups. Good players did not on average play those decks. So Internit like Eternatus was never a good matchup for Pikarom, but it was winnable and I knew how to play the matchup and I just assumed that most good players would not play Eternatus and would not play optimally and make mistakes like burn their switching cards when they didn't need to. Uh, and you know, if, if I ever played against the good player with Eternatus, I knew I was very un favored. But, um, I could rely on that somewhat. So relatively similar. And Brit, you said, you know, you mentioned Arceus de Aldon. Um, there are, there are good players that play Arceus de Aldon, but on average I would be okay taking a poor matchup against Arceus Aldon as long as I knew I had some type of wind condition. Um, And could capitalize on mistakes from my opponent. Um, because I think on average, weaker players will play Archy strum. Um, you might say the same from you even in this format as well. Um, maybe not as much at this point in the format, but I think especially earlier on in this format, that was true. Um, so yeah, it's definitely something I consider. And then to your, uh, other point of like picking a. I never wanna play Lost Box ever because it's a really hard deck to play, and I don't think the reward for playing it perfectly is that high compared to just playing something like Lugia, which is, uh, no, not the easiest deck in the world to play, but significantly easier than Lost Box. And it's just, More powerful and like, why would you ever play Obox? I don't know. Yeah. It's like,

Brit:

I think there is a tape tweet or something that is just like, you know, you play perfectly every single round. You know, all for something that amounts to just 45, 55 matchups against everything. Like, yeah. you know, that just takes that, you know, that much brain power and things like that again, to, you just play lu, which is clearly the best deck. But yeah, I mean, I, I noticed this a lot. In general, you know, I'm, I'm sure it's, you know, I think it was just human behavior, human psychology and things like that. So I'm sure it's app applicable to any sort of gaming community and you know, just tier list in general and things like that. But I, I find we often sort of just like, not vilify necessarily, but just like, we'll just get the sense that a deck is bad, just like sort of purely on like semantics and things like that. I, I wrote an article on it and think a lot about Tapu, Bulu. Bulu was like this as a deck. I always thought that deck was great and like super viable. And it was always just treated like a joke. You know, it was a meme deck or something like that until I think like Alex Hill, like top four, top eight at the regionals with it or something like that. And I was just like, it was clearly good. Like, you know, it was a stage two deck in a Zoroark format and that was, that was really, it's only downside, but Ulner existed. So like, getting your can, your evolution out wasn't hard cuz you, you know, ulner got you the candy and the Pokegear at the same time. Um, but yeah, that, it just ha it happens a lot that we just sort of seem to. You know, our norms are just like, based in this way, or in the same way too. Like, you know, the truth is such an easy example or like John Roberts and his deck building philosophy or something like that too, where you know, like, yeah, he just never plays Juniper. And we just sort of look at that, look at, you know, every six prizes article is playing for Juniper in every deck and we just sort of automatically say that's bad or that's wrong. Whereas like, you know, the actual story is a little more complicated even. You know, is still the case that you shouldn't be playing research in your deck or something like that. Uh, it's just something worth noting, I think. And, but I agree with Mikey too, that like, I don't, you know, I think there's just a line, you know, like a, a threshold where like if you're counting on too much bad play or too much mistakes, like yeah, you're, you're probably setting yourself up for, you know, a bad time or something like that. But in generally speaking, like. I mean, Mew has definitely seems like that deck to me in my, you know, my experience these past, this past year or two at the regionals that I have played at where I've just like played a handful of Mew opponents where it's just like their just list was just so bad, or something. Like, it was just, it was a mystery to me as to why, you know, they did the things that they did and it's just like, it shouldn't be that hard. But again, like sometimes people even fumble like obvious plays or with a deck like me, quote unquote, the obvious plays are not so obvious. Sequencing, you know, sequencing decisions and things like that to draw your outs and, and so on. And naturally, a, an average player is going to do that worse than, say, a competent player or something. I also think, right, like Liam's next point is sort of like, and this is why, you know, I like, I play Jenk in my list because, you know, it's, it's, it is the surprise. It is the, the sort of counter it is that sort of 1% answer. And I, I agree with that 100%. And as I've talked out before, I, you know, I'm probably more like a rogue player than a Meta player at the end of the day, at least in terms of my. Experience my results and things like that. And that's just all, that's, you know, why I would always do this and, you know, to the point of a fault too, like, I, I over protect my decks all the time too. But similarly, I just, I like, I want that answer. I want that surprise. I want that thing that's just sort of not telegraphed outside of the, you know, usual parameters of the matchup.

Brent:

Yeah. I was gonna say, I, on the one hand, like if you play a bad deck, it's probably gonna go badly, like, you know, night. Played played 45 55 matchups. Like, it's okay, but it's not great But I, I do think of, uh, I remember when, when, uh, um, uh, we were friends with Dylan Bryan back in the day. I feel like there's, the archetypes are so like fundamental to the game right now. There's not the same kind of janky plays that a guy like Dylan, Bryan used to. Anymore. Like, I just don't even know, I don't even know what those decks would be if Dylan still played today. Like, I don't know. But um, but I know when I talked to him about it, he was like, I always played Jake, because my strategy is I sit down for, across from the guy and I've played 200 games against his deck and he's never played against my deck in his life. Right. You know, like if you, if you're playing a bad deck, you probably still lose, like Lugia just rolls over decks. Like, that's the reason why everybody just plays Lugia. But, uh, but, but like, I recognize there's something there. It's not, it's not completely wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, there's, if I think that some deck that I've been playing that is, you know, a. Not a very popular deck has approximately, or even maybe slightly less than an overall win percentage of like the best deck. For example, I'll always pick the deck that people are less prepared for. Cuz you'll always, you play Zekrom box still you. Exactly. Now in this format, you know, by the end of the format, that's like a much riskier play. Like at at this point in the. You play Lugia every 10 doesn't matter. Everybody's played every matchup hundreds of times. Yeah. There's, there's, there's no undiscovered Jin left, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's why like the first regional I was, you know, very happy playing Zurk because nobody was playing against Zoroark. I, I felt like it had a pretty decent shot even against, yeah. So, uh, that's also why I'm excited potentially to go to E U I C. Uh, I could play any d like even if I play Gardevoir, even just Gardevoir, which is like one of the bigger potential architects coming out of Scarlet Violet, it's the first event. There's no way people are gonna play that many games against it. Whereas, you know, playing Lost Box at that. Lost box doesn't change that much. People will already have all this experience playing against Lost Box. Yeah, yeah. They'll kind of understand what your path to victory is. Whereas Gardevoir, they're like, okay, I, I, you know, I might kind of know what this tech does, but I'm gonna read this card And the second they start reading the cards, you're like, yeah, we're getting there. We're getting there.

Brit:

Yeah. That's why I think blind formats are always the best. Like, at least for me, I feel like it's always the most rewarding. Testing and predictions and things like that. Whereas like, again, not default, someone who is a master LucMetal player after a million games, like that's impressive too and you know, its own sort of achievement and so on. But I, I just, it's my favorite format every single time. Like, I just think probably the fondest testing memories I have were. We're for figuring out 2011 Nats, like post rotation Nats, like, you know, obviously we kind of got spoiled by, you know, the other nationals happening before ours. But it was, it was just a lot of fun. I, Colin and I, in our group, we just tested so much of so many different decks. It's just like, you know, experience. I just like never, I haven't had since, or at least compared to where I am in the game now compared to where I was sort of towards the start, just having. Really intense testing sessions all the time. There's definitely some nostalgia. Missing, missing out on it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yep.

Brent:

Cool, cool. Alright, guys, let me give you a quick, would you rather question? Are you ready, Okay, let's, let's wrap it up with the stuff that the people want. All right. Here's your two choices for the next 10 years. You have three of someone else's boogers in every one of your. Or for the next 10 years, every time you use an app or a website, you have to go through the process of recovering your password or creating an ingredient. Mewtwo.

Brit:

Both of these are fairly innocuous for me because I have to do that password seem pretty consistently. Um, anything with like two factor or something, I usually have to like redo Um, I guess, you know, to, to then express that I, I wouldn't personally be bothered by the boogers. I don't think I, I guess there's sort of an epistemic question here, though, like, we know about them, right?

Brent:

Yes. You are aware that that is thing? Um, uh,

Brit:

I guess, I guess I'm gonna go password here still. I guess I would still prefer to do that, even if it's an annoyance, it's gonna be better than the booger. I guess. Again, I'm not really all that bothered by, by that option either.

Brent:

You can tell break into a whole separate pod on the, uh, on the benefits of ignorance is bliss.

Brit:

Right? Podcast on our, the, the metaphysics of disgust, there's no reason to be grossed out by the things we are

Brent:

Um, I think if my daily habits did not change, With like, uh, websites and whatnot, I probably would choose the boos, but if, if I chose the pass, like the password thing, I think my habits might actually change for the better. And uh, like I wouldn't be looking at Twitter 30 times a day. I would only look once a day So that might, it might be a net positive if, if I. If I chose the password, one Excellent, excellent. Guys, this, this has been a very, very productive, uh, uh, would you rather session? I, I appreciate it, Alright, that's the pod. Next week we'll be back with, with Vancouver results and we're gonna talk about the Lake of Rage podcast with, with Sam Chang. So everybody will listen to that after you, you wrap up this and it'll be awesome. The John Pauls are our outro.