The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast
Worlds Breakdown & Pittsburgh Preview: LostTina, Charizard & More!
Welcome to the Trashalanche Podcast. Uh, attendance is a hundred percent today. Me, Liam Halliburton, Fouchet, Brit and Caden are are out, but they will come back around. And in that respect, it'll be very nice. Um, we're all on Twitter and we're easy to find. Uh, five star review. Update. If you leave a review, we will read it on the pod. Uh, I know last week we said we got some reviews to read and stuff, uh, and I feel like we cannot wait any longer. So I wanna wanna just jump right in and get you guys reactions. Um, two, two reviews and they successfully executed the review, uh, uh, tool by asking great questions. Max Leady says, za. Which I feel like speaks to Liam, so I feel like we're already off to a good start there. I like the podcast. You'll catch me going back and listening to old episodes all the time because I'd be getting bored sometimes. I always enjoy when you guys have little philosophical tidbits as well. It always gets me thinking. I have a question for you all. What do you all think would happen if before a tournament we knew what deck would win, but exactly what list or who. Would you play the deck and try to win or hard counter it knowing people would play it, but you had no chance to win the tournament.
Mike:Um, that's an interesting question. I'd probably just play the deck.
Liam:Yeah.
Mike:like, I wanna win. Right?
Yeah, like, and like it being, the winning deck doesn't necessarily like, indicate that it's gonna have like a way higher like, play rate than like the expected, um, play rate going in. Well, but he's saying that if everybody knows, if everybody everybody knows. I assume, well, I assume, I don't know.
Track 1:Yeah, he says, he says, we knew what deck would win. So it is interesting, I think. Um, yeah, I think, I think you should assume that everybody knows.
Okay. If everybody knows, um, Tech for the. I, I think I'd probably. Yeah, if you could find a good tech premier, that's probably optimal. But I'd I'd probably try to play something else for like the, the fun of it. Although like it's kind of, it's kind of lame playing something else and like knowing that, like even if you're like, oh my God, this seems like so good in testing and like, it makes so much sense in theory that like it's doomed to fail, you know? but.
Track 1:I, I was surprised by how honestly Liam took that. I felt like Liam would be like, I'll play the counter because, you know, there's still a chance
That's funny.
Track 1:I, I thought for sure that was, that was the way that was gonna go.
Yeah, yeah. I'd still play the, I'd still play the deck, but like, I mean, the, the argument I, I, the best argument against is like if you play the direct counter to the deck, then like maybe your chance of getting second and top four is just like, way, is like super high and Yeah,
Track 1:Yeah. I mean maybe, maybe, uh, I don't do, do you think a lot of people show up hard countering? What's the meta share? If everyone knows this is a winning deck,
probably at least like 75% that deck, like,
Track 1:but the fact that it's not 90% is crazy. Right?
uh, it's hard.
Track 1:but hey, I, yeah, here Liam is like, I'm, you know, I'm ready to play the hard counter. So I guess the moral story is a bunch of people would be like, I'm gonna play the hard counter. And then some people would be like, I'm gonna counter the hard counter next level. Yo. I mean, I wonder if like, you know, when you say tech for the mirror, like Is the guy that wins, the guy that texts for the text for the mirror? Or like,
It's not a.
Track 1:a more consistent list? That's insane conversation, I guess. Alright.
but I like do mirror texts. They feel so hard to come by these days. Like I, I don't think I've actually seen like a legit, um, like mirror tech in a while except for like RCS piles throwing in their zap doses or something. Like, there's not like two cards. Guardi plays that like drastically swing mirror or like Giratina can, playto drastically. Swing mirror. At least like that I know of. Um, Yeah, it's true. I, think tech for the mirror has like become much, much harder. Um, It is interesting in the Gardy case in particular because cards are so easily found, like with the deck, especially in mirror, like there's not, like you have time to kind of set up all your draw cards and like it, it is interesting that there isn't just one card that kind of swings it. Like the best card is like, what a second celio, which is like not that good Uh, I, I mean, like, I think ob like, like obviously like at least the, the most natural idea is something that would probably make gardy busted against like the entire meadow, which is like some way to take a double k o one, one prizer. Um, right, right, right. Right. yeah, like if, if you're not doing that, you're never hitting a double K. Like how are you there? There's just no other way to get ahead, I think in the matchup. Um, maybe there's some like control ideas, but I. Dunno, obviously, um, it's been like a mainstream deck for a minute now and nobody's found anything so.
Track 1:All right. Alright guys, there's a second review, crazily. This is a tweet I received in my, uh, direct messages also from Max Leady Yo, I love the podcast. I have a question for the pod. do you guys think it would be better to switch from championship points to how it works in chess with you having an ELO rating that changes based on each game you play at a tournament going up or down based on your ELO difference with the person you played and the scenario, it'd be like top 400 to 500 ish people getting a world's invite. Mike, I assume you actually have, uh, very strong opinions on this subject.
Yeah, so for those of you that do not know, we did have the ELO system in Pokegear from Uh, I'm not gonna get the years exactly right. But it was something like
Track 1:This is what we need bridge for.
2007 was the first year they did it, I believe, up until 2013, I think was the first championship point year, maybe a little bit before that, but it was at least, it was at least like five years. Um, I know 2007 was the first one because that was the first year that world was in Hawaii and it was just top 40 in, uh, the US and Canada. So top 40 elo got invites. Um, and then that was like the first year that I did not get my invite. I think I was like maybe 50th or something like that. Um, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that was the first year. Yeah. Um, so ELO is like not great in Pokegear, um, for, for. A couple reasons here. Here are like the two strongest arguments I feel like against ELO for Pokegear. Um, the reason ELO works in chess is because it's almost a hundred percent skill. It's not a hundred percent skill, but it's almost a hundred percent skill. And, uh, in Pokegear that's just not true. There's way too much variance, um, for ELO to be a super accurate, um, measurement of skill. Like I could get paired, it, it my elo, it. ELO starts at, I think ELO typically starts at like 1600, or at least that's what we used in Pokegear, I think. Um, so like a 2000 ELO rating was quite good. Um, but I could be a 2000 ELO rating and get paired against a player that is their first tournament and they have like no ELO whatever, 1600 and I'm gonna lose if I lose to them just because I dead draw. gonna lose the maximum amount of points that I can from that, from that match, and that sucks. Um, And that should happen in chess, right? Like if you just get, you get paired against someone that's completely unranked and they, they beat you. Like, that's like, that person should be climbing very fast because clearly they're like, their skill level does not match their, their rating. And so they should be climbing quick by beating really good players. But, but Pokegear is, there's too much variance. There's gonna be people that, um, there's gonna be matches that, uh, don't go the way that the ratings. Predict and ELO is much better when, when ratings are somewhat predictable or more predictable. Um, so you can mitigate that a little bit by, I don't know, there's ways to mitigate that, but I, I just don't think it's great. Um, the second biggest reason that I feel like ELO is, is bad is kind of a consequence of that because Pokegear is such a high variance game. If you make invites like I don't know, top whatever top a hundred. You're gonna see players at some points in the season, start an event at like three and oh four and oh five, and oh, and then drop from the event. Um, because get, they get some points from the event and then they drop so that they don't endanger. Losing more points as the event goes on. Um, and that's what happened quite frequently, uh, especially at US Nationals. Um, people that were like, you know, kind of on the border of, you know, making whatever top 40, um, maybe someone was like 38th, 37th going into it. Um, they would start US nationals, four, five oh, and then drop to preserve their world's invite. Like, imagine that. Imagine like giving up your chance to win US Nationals or NAIC, uh, so you could Guarantee your invitation to the world championships like that, the incentives are like very mismatched there.
Track 1:Now, now, you know, I, I knew that, um, I feel like that's the thing, that's the stock answer people give for why ELO failed, uh, back in the day. But, you know, one, one thing I, I would say is Pokegear is kind of trying to fix that because I mean, the answer to that problem as you see in chess is Cash prizes,
Right, right. Right.
Track 1:right? Like
like a little bit, but in chess it's like that issue is still really, really pervasive. Like it takes a little bit of a different form because Pokegear like, Like exclusively holds open tournaments. But yeah, like what, like a lot of top chess players do is like, like Mike said, it's, it's too much of a risk to like, you know, play somebody who's like 200, 300 points below you because that person's still like really, really good. And if you get into like a theory line that they already know, like you could just lose the game or if you try to like, get out of theory and then you just end up worse, like you could just lose that person's still really good. Um, and like, so like a lot of like really, really high top level players basically, like only play in tournaments that. Have other top level players because like exclusive tournaments like that exist, uh, as opposed to playing in like an open setting or something like that. That's interesting. Yeah.
Track 1:Yeah, I was not aware of that, but, but I recognize cash, cash prizes, fixes a lot of those problems. You start out 5.0 and you know, there's a hundred thousand dollars on the line. You're like, maybe I should, uh, just see where this goes.
Yeah, that's true that, that's a good point. Like US nationals back in the day. I think if you won it was like$5,000. Um, and Worlds was still obviously less, but it was still like much, it was, it was much more prestigious to
Track 1:Right.
well at Worlds and, and more like higher ev with a smaller tournament. Um, often like, uh, I don't know if it was I'm pretty sure it was every year, um, that they had elo. If you got an invite, you also got a travel award. So like, so you're like, kind of like making your, you're, you're making your money back there. Um, so yeah. Yeah. So the incentives were there, um, for, for people to, to do that.
Track 1:Yeah. Interesting. Alright, I dig it. So the one other thing I thought we should talk about as far as uh, um, uh, listener submitted, uh, uh, content is the, uh, um, Hendricks, uh, SpongeBob cartoon. Uh,
that was pretty funny.
Track 1:I love it. I love it. I feel like that's the first attempt to make a meme based on the podcast. And in that respect, he has my, he will forever have my love and respect. I. Very, very strong stuff. Take somebody who's really, really paying attention to, to grind out that kind of, uh, Fanta fantastic content and, and we, I wanna just take a moment to salute him. Great, great stuff. Love it to death.
And honestly, I do agree with Liam's point. Um, I'm just not, I'm just not there in my life to, uh, To, to care. But I do think if you're like, really, like really trying to be a top player, that is like the easiest, um, easiest thing to, to check off the list. It go. It's kind of up there with like knowing exactly what 60 cards are in your deck. Like there's like there.
Track 1:your card counts. It's a good thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and like I think there's lots of people that are like, you know, somewhat casual, like maybe they're changing cards in their deck every now and then preparing for a tournament and they get into like round six, round seven, and they're like, wait, do I play one escape rope or two? And like, that's a bad situation to be in Um, but I think that probably happens to a lot of people.
Track 1:Uh, you know, the, I mean, the other side of that is also like I, I feel like there's so many people who are like, I don't even know what com's attack is. You know, I just like play lost box. I don't care.
Right, right, right, right. Yeah. At least know what your cards do.
Track 1:Right, right. Exactly. Like, like, you know, it's a fair point. I, I played a lot of lost box. I do not know what com's attack is off the top of my head, Liam, am I the worst? I already know. Liam thinks I'm the worst. What does Comfy hiss attack Liam?
Let me go read the, the image that I, that I gave Mike when Mike's like, oh, I'm not at that point in my life. This is the one I draw. It was the hockey one. Oh Here's what it reads. It's, it's like one of those sports center quotes. It says, I know I'm turning 35 next season, but it's not like I feel old. I still feel pretty young. I feel like the passion is still there. I still know that I can be a top player if my focus is solely on hockey instead of how I feel. This could be you. I still agree. I agree with that. It, but just my, my sole focus is not on hockey but it
Track 1:so, so I, I, I, I think the, so the last question I have before, maybe we, we wrap this up. I, and, and Mike, let's be clear, I think the context in which Liam says that is, Liam says to me all the time, geez, Mike could win so many regionals. He's so good at Pokegear. It's crazy. So, so that opportunity awaits you. Um, but here's, here's my question, Mike, before Next Worlds, will you read every card in format,
Well, and it is funny that this,
Track 1:did you take away a lesson there or were you like, Nope, I just recognize that's custody of business,
Yeah. I, I'm not really, yeah, it's more that cost to doing business. But it's funny though because I read, I did go through almost every set in the weeks before Worlds. Um, but I think I like skimmed over drape beyond VStar because like in my head I was like, oh, I know what. Yes. Right. Like I was like, oh, I know what the ability does. Like I'm not gonna play this in the deck, so like I don't need to read it. Um, but I did read a lot
Track 1:know about Dra p n VStar is you'll not play it right.
Right Right, right, right. I did read a lot of random, uh, bad cards and have lots of interesting thoughts, but that one escaped me. So, so, so I guess a little bit of both to answer your That's like, that's, that's where you get the goat ideas from, bro. Like when you, when you look at cards, look at cards instead of skimming over them. Like actually think about them, bro. I like, I've given this rent before, man. But like, that's literally what happened with the top four YouTube union deck in 2022. NAIC like, Somebody looked at that card and rather than like everybody looked at that card before the tournament, they're like, oh, it just never happens. Like you never give union out. And they're like, and then what does it do? 16 spread. Look at it a little bit more closely. Think about it for two seconds and then realize it like out, heals the entire format. Like look at the cards for like an extra second or two and then boom, view and young level deck. I do. Yeah. I do feel like when we, when we've done the pods where. we've kind of gone through, sets in a little more detail. I feel like I have been pretty good at identifying cards. Like, for example, I remember when we were doing whatever set the, uh, the Arto was in the one that paralyzes, um, I think that was Silver Tempest. Um, Yeah. when we were going through the set and like all the, all the reviews were like, oh yeah, Lugia, like, Lugia, Lugia, Lugia. Like, there's nothing really else coming out. I'm like, I, I remember saying on the pod, I was like, this article Ofo is good. Like this thing is gonna be good. And something like auto paralyze is a good attack. So I feel like I'm good
Track 1:flippy paralysis. Always bunny.
yeah. So I do feel like I'm okay at it when I do take the time. You're right, Liam,
Track 1:So, so is the moral story that we have to do, like obsidian flames next week.
maybe. Yeah. I feel like I have.
Track 1:for Mike's safety, we have to do a set reviews every day. Alright, uh, um, so speaking of, of, uh, people making content, Mike, let's talk about your world's matchup analysis Coming soon to a Twitter near people.
Yeah, so I've been doing a lot of, uh, well, I've been doing a decent amount of Learning on, on my own of data analysis stuff. Uh, and I've actually, I talked about this a little bit'cause I've been working on the, uh, the championship point thing that's a little bit more involved. I'm trying to do more with that, so that's still, uh, forthcoming, but this was a bit easier. Um, so Arcanine released all of the decks of all the world's day one and day two players, um, and Robin on Limitless was kind enough to categorize and post all of the day two decks, at least on his limitless page, which made it pretty easy for me to kind of just, uh, take that data and then take the event data, um, from Arceus and I and via Julian at Poka data, he, he kind of transforms it and organizes it very nicely for, for anyone to use. So I took the. Data source such from those two. And I created, um, basically like a matchup table from uh, world's Day two. And I don't think this is like honestly super useful if you take this data from like a whole regional maybe even a regional day two. I don't know how useful it is. It'd probably be useful at a regional day too, but Worlds, worlds is like the best players, right? So I feel like this data is actually some pretty good data. Um, So right now I only have World's Day two. If someone wants to go and categorize all of the World's Day one players as well. And when I say categorize, I mean like Liam Halliburton played Shadow, Rider VMax and um, Isaiah Bradner played Lost Stone Giratina and Mike Fouchet played Lost Stone Giratina, like kind of do that, make this big Excel sheet. Um, that would be great. I. Message Robin on Twitter to see if he would do it using whatever algorithm he already has set up, but I haven't heard back from him yet. So if I get that data, it'll be really easy for me to just kind of add the World's Day one data, um, into this as well. Um, so I am working on making this into a, a nice pretty Google doc that I can share on Twitter. So by the time you're listening to this podcast, it might already be out. Um, if not, look for it before. weekend at Pittsburgh for sure. Um, so right now what I have up and what I shared with Brent and Liam is basically the, the big decks and how they did against each other, um, at Worlds. So with that context, um, I wrote some things down at the bottom that I thought were interesting. Did anything jump out to you guys immediately or you.
Track 1:Uh, uh, so two things jump out. One is, I, I like your, uh, uh, cut at the data here. I think one of the things that's interesting about World's Day two versus like a regional's day two is I feel like a regional's day two, the sample size is a little bit like theoretically skewed by the fact that these decks all had to navigate through day one.
Hmm, that's true. Yeah.
Track 1:So, so there's like, um, Uh, there's like some bias because like certain decks were good for navigating day one and certain decks weren't. So you kind of, you kind of miss out on how those,
Because these, like the sample of the decks are right? Like not the matchups themselves, but the sample of the decks. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Track 1:Yeah, so, so I think that this is really interesting because as you said, like it's the top players. It's that like day two thing, but everybody starts fresh.
Yeah.
Track 1:in that respect, it's really interesting. Um, The, uh, you know, one thing that I've done, and you know what you could actually do this too, that I think is really interesting is you could, um, go pull like the CP for all the players in day two and then try to regress on the cp because like one of the things that results in skew is player skill.
Sure. So.
Track 1:like when you say so, uh, uh, one of the things that, that jumps out, the, so the second thing that jumped out at me beside when I looked at this, besides like the, the analysis approach is Arceus seems horrendous. The question is like, did the bad players play arcena?
Hmm. Yeah, that's a good, uh,
Track 1:I,
that's a good point. Let me, let me, let me write that down so I don't forget
Track 1:so, uh, I, I mean, I recognize it's a little weird because Japanese players don't have cp, like there's different kind of Things for kind of getting in, but I I know like if you go back and look at my old six prizes articles, I did like a histogram plot of like player CP and like, like the average performance of the deck they played or something like that.
Hmm.
Track 1:And, uh, um, Okay. And it was pretty interesting. No, no. And you know, the moral story was way, LURD was the best deck because it was like, uh, like it was like an average player who got an extraordinary outcome,
Right,
Track 1:size
Yeah. Yeah.
Track 1:Right, right. Where, whereas like Jason Klazinski playing like, uh, towed, you're like the pro, you know, the, the, the secret there was not towed. The secret there was be Jason Kki.
right.
Track 1:Um,
I just threw in.
Track 1:it would be, it would be interesting to try to regress this out to, to regress out the CP a little bit and see like how much was, like the fact that Azul was playing x like a factor. You know?
Sure that makes sense. Could do that. Um, I did also just throw in like the, basically the raw numbers of the matchups. I'm gonna clean that up before I, I, I present this, but just in case you guys wanna look, because obviously some matchups, um, were much more played. Than others. Like, like the Guard of Oral Lost Box matchup had, uh, what 37 Games played just in World's Day two. That's pretty crazy. And Lost Box won 65% of them. So like that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good sample size, um, for one tournament.
Track 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that is interesting. That is interesting.
Yeah. Yeah.
Track 1:All right. Why? Why don't you walk us through what you saw while I look at the consolidated metric numbers a little for a second.
Yeah, sure. So, um, the first thing that jumped out to me is Mew did pretty poorly into Lugia. Um, which considering that Mew was almost all fusion Mew, uh, I think is pretty interesting. Um, I think, I thought the Mew matchup like Mew and te Lugia was like slightly favored for fusion Mew, but the numbers say that. That wasn't really the case. Um, Lugia won like 70% of the games, um, which seems a little high to me, so that's interesting. Um, conversely, uh, a matchup that is thought to be very good for Lugia is in Inteleon Urshifu, but in Inteleon, Urshifu did very well into Lugia, um, actually winning, um, about 70% of the games that it played. Now, that's not a huge number of games, but, uh, it. Eight games and Intelli Honor should be won five outta eight and Tide One, which is pretty interesting. Um, the, Spirit tomb that Alex Krekeler and Alex Sch Mansky played surely made that match up a lot better. So I think that's, uh, pretty cool. Um, something that really makes no sense to me is Lost Box actually destroyed all of the Arceus decks. Those are, I mean, this is part of a, a trend of just the Archies X did really, really, really bad. Like Arceus Giratina did really, Yeah. really, really bad. Um, I can't like overstate how bad Arceus Giratina did. Um, I. Its matchups are horrendous on this chart. Um, but lost box, which is a deck that is supposed to not take a good Arceus matchup did really well into Arceus X. He went seven, one and three against Argentina and eight, five and three against Archeops X without Giratina, which is pretty interesting. Um, and then Lawson Giratina really is kinda like people talk about it as the 50 50 deck of the format, and it really is based on these numbers. Um, Only has a few matchups that are like outside of the 40% to 60% range. Um, and all of the ones that are outside that are, are all above So like it was pretty favorite against in Inteleon and sfu Arceus and Arceus. Nina, um, And otherwise, like its worst matchup on in this chart was Mew and it still was like just above 40%. So, but all its matchups are like pretty close so that, that checks out. And then the last thing that I wrote down is that q PA is the best deck against guard Devore for sure. Um, it won 80%, or no, not 80%. Um,
Track 1:72%, 73%.
Yeah. Of its games against Guard Devore, and that was pretty much guard, DeVore's Worst. That was guard DeVore's worst matchup for sure. Um, lost Box is a clo close-ish second, but Chio, um, has the best Gardevoir matchup, which is something that I think, um, my group kind of knew already. Like that's a big reason that Kieran played it at Worlds. But I don't feel like it's quite known how good that matchup is for Chi Pow in the wider community. And, and these numbers kind of supported that. So, uh, there's a lot of other interesting things here, but those are some of the biggest ones that jumped out to me.
Track 1:You know, I wonder from like, um, uh, a like, uh, data visualization, uh, uh, exercise, um,,I feel like what people do and the problem is the chart, like they almost wanna say, um, like, could you change the size of the box or something like that to kind of show how many matchups there were or something like that. Like
I could like, I could definitely change like mean, I've been looking at the, the bottom, but I understand that that's not convenient to look at.
Track 1:right, right.
Um, I could change like the size of the numbers maybe.
Track 1:Yeah, that's what you're supposed to do.
Yeah.
Track 1:You change the size of the numbers to express like the number of games played or something.
Yeah.
Track 1:Because like, like, like the, I mean, the trick here is, you know, uh, or you could, or, or you could change maybe the width of the column, but size of the numbers is better. Size of the numbers is better, but like Mariah and Italian food just weren't, that weren't played as much.
Right, right, right.
Track 1:So, so you can't, you shouldn't get sucked into like how you match up against those two decks.'cause like you weren't gonna
Yeah, dude, I, I was looking at it, it's like a hundred over, it's like three decks and I looked at the bottom and it played each of those decks once. Once. Right, right, right. Yeah.
Track 1:Yeah.
Um, so that's what the, I, the other reason I wanna include like a chart with the actual numbers though as well is because there's no other way to express ties, and I feel like that's an important component. I. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Track 1:That's fair. That's fair.
And I, yeah, I can't think of another way to, to do that because you don't wanna include it. Like you can't really include it in the percent. Right. Um, Yeah. so it's a little, Yeah. And I, I think it just has to be a separate entry. yeah.
Track 1:Very exciting, Mike. This is, uh, super fun, uh, data analysis work.
Oh, dude, I was gonna give a comment on Arceus Giratina, um, makes a lot of sense because I, I think it's common knowledge at this point that like Arceus, Giratina is matchups like, um, The, the matchup spread starts off really, really strong against players who don't know what they're doing Hmm. dives really, really far down, really fast. As you know, lost box players start holding their resources instead of like getting rid of everything on turn one, um, like. All of a sudden they're like, you know, chaining attacks and like can't really deal with it. And you have literally nothing to do except play judge and see what happens. And then you just lose to like everything Well when they like figure out how to stream attacks. Um, even into judge. Yeah, you're right. That, that makes total sense. And uh, and this is World State too, right? So everybody kind of knows what they're doing, exactly.
Track 1:All right guys. Any, any cups of challenges in the last week? Oh, you you? Anything more to close that out?
I just wanna say like, um, and I am excited to share this and for people to look at it because it's still like, it extremely relevant, right? The only deck that gets added to this chart is Charizard, um, and Basically every other matchup is exactly the same. So I think people, um, should look at this and, and think about it. Um, and speaking of charizard and challenges, I did play a challenge last week and I played Charizard
Track 1:Look at you. How did you get your charizards? That's the first question I want to know.
good question. That is part of the story actually. That is actually part of the story. So,
Track 1:All right. Give it to us.
I, I'm sure you guys saw, I posted a bunch of my extra world stuff, uh, like a week and a half ago to sell. And I had actually posted in, um, uh, like our local Philly groups beforehand'cause, so I could just deliver it. And this guy wanted one of those, uh, Pikachu decks, the exclusive Pikachu. So we worked out a deal where he gave me some cash and three Charizards and two Pettes. So basically the and, and the basics and like the, you know, the, the, just the common basics. So I was going to this challenge to meet up with him, um, to give him the stuff and get the cards and like, I don't know, like a couple hours before I was going, I was like, I'm getting these cards. I might as well just play charts Like, I, uh, I hadn't played it at all. I, I played two games that day before. Um, just so I knew what the cards did. Um, Uh, but yeah, I was kinda like, okay, I'm gonna get the cars. I'm gonna build the deck right there. And, uh, just'cause it's, you know, as we just said, it's the only new deck that, uh, gets added to the Metagame. So I feel like I should get at least a couple games under my belt. And a challenge is a good low key way to, uh, to do that. So I basically built a list very similar to a list that cash played. Maybe like a week ago it was just charar put you out with a two, two Archies line. Um, pretty, pretty straightforward. Um, it felt great. Two out of the five rounds and it felt really not so great. The other three rounds, I ended up going three, two and making top eight. Um, I beat a chi, I beat a, In Inteleon, Urshifu,'cause I got to go first. That was good. Um, I beat a guard Devore I did not get a good start, but they didn't, they kind of got a slow start as well. Um, and then the other two rounds I like drew really, really poorly. Um, and I lost to a lost box and I lost to a Mew. losing to Mew feels pretty bad as chars are, but,
Track 1:Uh, yeah, they just went too fast.
Yeah, so like I went first, I didn't get a charm mander down, but I got a Pidgey, I got a turn two Pidgey out, which was cool. I got some charmanders down and then they boss triple tablet kill my pig and I did not have anything in my hand, so I lost, yeah, that was basically what happened. Um, but I mean, the deck is, the deck is cool. It's like really strong when it gets set up and really weak when it doesn't. Um, I mean, like, you don't do, like, there's just, yeah. It had two, two Arceus. Yeah. Um, I know I had talked to Liam a little bit afterward. He had a list that didn't run r c s. That seems pretty interesting. Um, I played a couple more games of Char Art after the challenge, and then kind of was like, uh, this, this isn't really for me right now. Um, I, I really hate the RCS builds man. Like, I think especially if you're not playing Victini in rcs or in charge art, like you're doing it like way wrong. Like it just feels like a really bad. It's like an Arceus deck with no path, no one hit option until the very last turn of the game. And like all you get in return is like 50 HP more than Giratina VStar like, Yeah, that's, that seems like a fair assessment. hit it for 180 on turn two and like, it just seems so lame. like it's so slow. Yeah, Piot was, Piot was pretty cool. I liked playing games with Piot out, but I can imagine if you're playing against a deck with Path like Piot must feel really bad as well. Yeah. Um, so like I am excited about Piot in general after playing some games with it, but I, I. Feel like it's probably not that great right now. Maybe someone will do really good with that. R R C S Palkia deck. Like that deck was pretty cool. Um, I haven't played any games with, but I look cool. Yeah, I, I don't know if you saw me and Jeremy talking about it today, like the, the ninja Melony and Poppy lets you do like Mm-hmm. like really sick plays. Um, it's obviously like super rare, but I, I was just like thinking about a scenario earlier today, which is like, just seems terrifying. It's like if you open loan routes, your opponent flips over r c s and like your hand's pretty dead, but you have a level ball and you're like, okay, I'm just gonna like hold for mirage step next turn. And then they go like, Ninja concealed cards. Melony, d t e power ish. Like the fact that like an Arceus deck is like even capable of doing something like that is like pretty hilarious to me. Um, like yeah, they just have like really explosive energy acceleration. Um, and like, I guess some cool attackers that you can throw in with that. Um, And, and utilizing pge. It's always cool. I think, um, I think pge it's like really sweet engine. I, I think I tweeted about this at some point, but yeah, I, the best part of PGE I think is the no tree costs. Like it opens you up so much, um, or like cleans up a lot of the weaknesses that like bench engines have generally. Yeah. So yeah, probably see a lot in the future. Yeah. One of the other things, one of the other issues with P is like the 280 HP actually does become, A liability as you get towards the end game versus some decks like, like you said, um, the biggest selling point of Zat is that extra 50 hp, which is like relevant against some decks, like Giratina can only one shot you once Gardevoir, Gardevoir can like, struggle to hit that three 30 number, but like two 80 is a lot more accessible for, for some of those decks. And that can be a way that they, uh, just win the game where you otherwise would have too much health for them. Yeah, no, um, that was something that was like a really interesting line that when we were, I was like a little bit more into the deck that we found was like, at least when testing the mirror is like, because, because of how tanky it is and like the, the comeback potential is like if you can force your opponent down to one prize, if you have. Four prizes left and you just like io path them that turn. Like if they don't find boss, you just, you take like four prizes in two turns and there's just like nothing they can do about it. Um, so like, yeah, like the, the high HP gets you out of range of a lot of stuff and opens up like some sweet potential with the, like, you know, one hit ability at the end of the game, but it, it doesn't feel great and like, feels pretty unreliable.
Track 1:All right guys, so, uh, Pittsburgh, um, uh, I'll ask you what the play is, but before I ask you what the play is, how real is in Inteleon Urshifu,
It's really real.
Track 1:I feel like that's kind of the deck on the rise, right?
I think like more peop I. It is on the rise, I guess, technically, but I think it's more of, it's like reaching the levels of play that it probably should have had for a while. Um, I don't think it's gonna be like more popular than I. Any other of the good decks, like it's still gonna be less popular than Gardevoir and Mew probably, eh, it might be around the same as Mew. Um, like less than Gardevoir, less than Lugia, stuff like that. But it'll probably like creep up into that like six, seven, 8% range along with other decks, which I think is about where it should be based on its power level. Like it is. It is a good deck. For sure. I've played a good amount with it. I, I was like considering it for worlds for a little bit. Like it's got some good matchups, it's got, you know, a couple me matchups, but as I said before, it's luga matchup is maybe with beer tomb is like actually good. Maybe I don't know about good, but definitely, uh, not too bad. I still think like even with two, your Mew matchup is probably still pretty bad. Um, like 30, 70. Um, And you probably have to play like Tomb and Giacomo for it to be like winnable. Like tomb itself is probably like not enough to really push the needle too far for it. Um, and like JAO sucks. That's a really bad card. Um, but like Spirit Tomb is Spirit Tomb's a good card, right? Like Spirit Tomb is good against, uh, like by itself is probably enough to make the Lugia matchup at least 50 50. Um, I think it's a good deck. I think Italian Shu is a good deck. Uh, I'm probably not gonna play it, but I very much understand why you would wanna play it. I agree. Good deck. I don't, I don't really like the, like the list that people have right now. I don't like artillery in the deck. Like, it's like really funny because the deck like falls apart when you like Crest ka, the remade turn two or something. But like, I, I just like don't know why that is. Like the Pokegear search is like, okay, but like you invest two searches to get one search for Pokegear and then finding the rapid strike energy is like, Just kinda like iono proofs you, I guess, from like missing an attack, but like, like it doesn't get anything good. Like the, the best part of the deck is like filling your hand with waters and then like murdering the entire bench. And like artillery doesn't fill your hand with waters and it's an inefficient use of search cards. It doesn't, it, I don't like playing auxiliary and that deck at all. Um, I. be worse, I guess, but yeah, I, I would not play with ACT if I was gonna play rapid strike.
Track 1:Alright, so what's, what's the play for Pittsburgh guys? What are, what's gonna win the tournament? And then we'll know if we should play it or hard counter it.
The format's too wide open to like know what's the, oh, like there's no, like everything and nothing is the play kinda like it is similar to worlds. Like everything is pretty reasonable. I personally, like the things that I am considering are like, Gardevoir Chi Pow Mew, maybe Giratina a little bit again. Maybe, maybe, maybe I could get convinced to play Giratina again. Um, I like Gar Devore Chi Pow. I, in theory, I really like Chio, but every time I play it I'm like, oh man, I can't play this Dick I'm not playing pile. There, there was a deck that I, I was like, oh, it's got like Chen. I Exactly. Lemme, lemme go look the discord to see. I wasn't
Track 1:and Fluffy,
No. Uh, I,
Track 1:bringing that?
I, after playing Ard like a bit and realizing that it's like not super great, makes me like want to consider Mew more. Um, Like you just won the world championships. It's pretty good. It's pretty consistent. Like, and I don't even think the Charles star matchup is like that, that bad. Like, it's obviously unfavor, but it's, it's not like worse than like 35.
Track 1:not that Unfavor
Yeah. Right, right.
Track 1:couldn't do it. If Mike can't do it, it's, it can't be done.
Did you find the deck? I have. No. yeah, I'm just gonna, I haven't played that much since world, so I. I don't, I don't particularly wanna play a lost zone deck again. Like playing lost zone Giratina for two days in a row was pretty exhausting. Uh, and I don't know if I wanna do that again. I think Lugia is in a good spot. I don't really wanna play Lugia after playing Lugia at two, two other regionals. I think I can think a little bit more than that. Um, but not loss zone levels. So some, somewhere in between Gardevoir would gimme that. Mew would give me that, and I think those are like, I think Gardevoir, Mew, and Giratina lost box are like the three pretty equally the three best decks in the format. That's my opinion. Um, yeah, I, I think me's good right now. I think, I think lost is good right now just because s is really, really good. I think, I think Z's good as well too. I, I still like z I think a little bit more than most people at this point, like. I think some people will obviously play ard. Um, I don't think like very many top players are on it right now though. Um, and I, I'm a bit more open to it. Um, I think, um, but yeah, I, everything's good right now there, like, I, I'll, I'll say the same thing as I said at Worlds. Like if somebody else like submitted a random me deck for me, like. I like my, I don't think my win would be like completely tossed going in or something.
Track 1:uh, Liam, I wanted to ask you if you had any comment on the, the tweet that from trainer skits, a Washington based mud, Kip enthusiast, about how, um, uh, this is Liam's villain Arceus.
Where was this?
Track 1:You, you, you missed that on that tweet,
Was that, was that under the, the whole mic post or whatever?
Track 1:Liam's villain. Arceus after winning worlds and coasting this year has been hilarious and I'm sure great for the POS engagement.
Ah, that's hilarious.
Track 1:The, the, the thing that most jumped out to me there is when he says, I'm sure great for the positive engagement. I assume that that means trainer skits is not a listener.'cause he has no idea. or maybe he's just like referring to the analytics that we don't look at and he doesn't look at either and no one looks at, but, but I like the, uh, Liam Vill Arceus,
Yeah, I.
Track 1:pod listeners. Liam knows, I'm always telling him he should be a force for positivity in the ecosystem as a world champion. He should be a gracious and like, you know, force for a POS force for positivity.
Yeah, like, and you know, I tell him every time that's like, so bro, like, but like. You, you, you know who they are. Ro like, it's just like, like, you know, t Twitter accounts that like, it's like top players, so you have to follow them because obviously you have to follow every top player or you're doing it wrong. Right. But then like, you know, the only post that you ever see from them on your feed is either the, the list that they just played, like, and like this is like after the event where everybody already knows. And like it's, it is just a generic 60'cause nobody builds anything anymore. Um, and like the list that they just played to an event and it's just like zero comments. They're just like, played this top 64, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, the occasional like shuffle squad promotion, um, it's just nothing else, bro. And like, you know, it was like stay outta drama or whatever. But like, you know, the, the whole point of having a Twitter account is so you can argue with strangers online and like, For some reason people don't engage with that, um, as much as I would.
Track 1:All right. Uh, guys, anything else to add before we go to Pittsburgh?
yeah. Um, I think, I think Bennet seems pretty cool right now. Um,
Track 1:There's been a lot of tweeting about it.
yeah, like I actually, I don't know. I. I look at the list people are posting and like, I'm like, Jesus, man, how does, how does this be anything? And like you, you don't have like a single win condition. But then like, I imagine playing against it and I'm like, dude, what if my hands like all items and I pass the entire game? Like, then I just lose, right? I, I lose it. That happens. And like, you know, so it seems pretty cool in that sense, like if you break, you lose and it can make people break, I guess. But yeah, I mean, like, I don't know, I saw Celia's Network post like, like Bonnette Nover or something, and I'm just like, Oh, that. how, how does that bro like, like that's the biggest thing about Bennet List, bro. Like so many of them, they're literally just playing bonnette and like, I think I commented this under one. I was like, what do you do to stop Athena from at Attach? Like draw past six turns, feed three prizes, attach, attach jet, take four prizes over two turns. Like you don't have anything for that. Right? Like zero way to disrupt that bro. And like, yeah, I mean if you bring that, bring a, a better answer than that. But I don't know. Deck is like kind of cool if you make people brick, I guess.
Track 1:Item block's always good.
Yeah, Yeah. Dude, I wish we had better item walks. Game sucks. I think this format is really just, you know, pick a deck or two that you like. Play a bunch with it. gets too hard, man. They gotta slow it down, bro. Yeah. Just get confident in your play with a certain, and
Track 1:just not gonna get fixed until v i p rotates. That's just the bottom line.
Uh, bro, like they have to just like real issues in the game, bro. On v i p man, like you take v i p out. We still see everybody chasing like the same broken combos that do like, you know, that that one hit everything and just try to one hit as fast as possible. It's like everything's just too much damage, bro. So much damage. Oh, bro. That was another tweet though. Like Giratina iss like the most popular deck right now. I think like, uh, by a pre pretty wide margin. Like I tweeted this out, bro, like, Giratina makes it seem so hard to get Koss. Like you have two one hit options and like one is like you have to meet. You have to like get rid of, as Jake put it before lot storage came out like a sixth of your deck. And then like the other is you have to like get rid of two energy, play two different energy types and then like throw three energy on this thing and like get here for two 80. Like, it just seems so much harder to take Kos as opposed to like every other meta deck where like you're playing Guardian, you just like look at the car and you're like, oh, this thing, like this thing just Blowns stuff up like gardy, Lugia, Mew. Like, you just like look at it and you're like, oh man, that like You could just easily sweep something with that thing. You look at Giratina and you're just like, really, dude? It's so slow and clunky and it is, but I guess place Path and io. That sucks. Mm-hmm.
Track 1:All right. Um, guys, let me give you a incredible, would you rather question to wrap things up? Uh, when, when do you get into, uh, Pittsburgh, Mike? Late, right?
No, uh, since I'm not teaching anymore, I can go whenever I want. Um,
Track 1:can just go whatever he wants.
but I'm driving with, uh, another dude from Philly. I think we're gonna leave probably around like 11:00 AM or noon. So we'll get there in the afternoon sometime. Are you gonna leave after school for Liam?
Track 1:I, I, I think, I think we're gonna leave after school. Uh, we're, we're gonna, uh, usually, usually we take the Friday, but I think, uh, this time we're gonna gut it out.
It's not that think this time we're gonna leave at like lunch. I think I want to get in at like five It's not that bad, right?
Track 1:it is a, uh, yeah, yeah. It
at five.
Track 1:but I think the floor is like three and three quarters,
Mm-hmm.
Track 1:three hours and 40 minutes. When I Google mapped it, uh, yesterday and it was like three hours and 40 minutes to five hours, and I was like five hours. a, it's a big, that's a big swing. It's a big swing. Nobody needs that.
Yeah, I, I still have to test the urchin, tail matchups and. I want to play a few games just like with the deck before I submit the list, like in person games, um, instead of just online testing. So, All right. What do you got? Would you rather do it?
Track 1:um, are, are you, are you staying, uh, down like super downtown, Mike,
no, no, no. no.
Track 1:do you. Yeah, we're, we're, we are staying amazingly far from the convention center because it's incredibly expensive. Oh my God.
I think we're like 20 minutes out. I got one of the, the group rates with the, with whoever the organizer.
Track 1:Nice, nice. Alright. Would you rather, this is, this is a pretty good one. This is, this is, this is one we need Bri around for. Um, here's your two choices guys. Would you rather Kill five strangers or kill one person, you know?
Like. Well, okay. Okay. Well, you didn't specify that we have to like this person that we know we can know someone and not like.
Track 1:Oh.
So then I think it's an easy answer, but if I had to pick someone
Track 1:Ah,
that I at least liked
Track 1:uh, I, I, I feel like, I feel like the underlying message there is, there is someone out there that Mike does not like He's, he's, he always seems like such a nice guy, people, but the truth comes out, is someone that Mike would like to kill,
I dunno if I would like to kill them, but I wouldn't feel that much remorse, or, or I should say it this way. I would feel less remorse, killing certain individuals that I know than I would feel killing five random.
Track 1:How? How about you, Liam? If I told you you can't jump on the mic bandwagon and kill someone you hate,
Like this, this question is like insulting to me, bro. Like I, I can't like kill four people outta self-Interest is crazy, bro. Like, That's just crazy. Like, it's an easy question, dude, like, like, be strong. Suck it off. Don't kill four people because you're like, you want to keep your homie alive or something, bro. Like she's just mad. insane.
Track 1:Uh, um, So, so here, here's my question, Mike. Uh, what now that you've, now that you've redefined the problem, it's like you could kill someone you don't like. Would like Vladimir Putin be considered a stranger or someone I know
I think that would be a stranger. Still, it has to be someone you've had personal interactions with.
Track 1:Yeah,
Like you gotta, you gotta have like a real close tie with them that like really causes that, like personal hatred, right?
Track 1:Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, like the, the idea that you could pick the person, Uh, I, I don't think I had really thought about that, frankly, when I asked the question. Uh, I, I guess I, uh, we gotta be more clear on whether or not the person is randomly selected or not,
You could also, like, could also make an argument for killing yourself as the, uh,
Track 1:right?
As like the person that you know, which I feel like is a pretty reasonable answer as well.
Track 1:I thought that was where Liam was going. Liam uh, Liam, uh,
No, I mean like,
Track 1:same path, right?
whoa, whoa, now. Whoa. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Suck it up. No, that, that doesn't extend to me Um, no. Yeah. But like, that's like, that's the ethical thing to do, I guess. Like, you know, and it's hard, it's hard to be like ethical. Um, Sometimes it requires you to make sacrifices that like really difficult. Um, but like kill five people because it's hard, man. Like that's, that's pretty crazy. You know what I'm.
Track 1:All right, well hope, hopefully, hopefully Brit hears this replay later and says, I gotta fix my scheduling issues and get on the freaking pod because these guys are not engaging in this problem in the right way at all. Sure. Brit would've extremely strong feelings on this subject.
say something crazy, bro. Bro, though.
Track 1:our leading expert on the trolley problem.
Matches of like, uh, like ology or whatever, and they're like, oh my God, he is wrong. Like, oh, it's so, it's way different like raw. You can't, like, we're gonna kill the five people. like the five people are like the right ones to kill. And there's like some like, you know, random like obscure texts from like the 15 hundreds that like supports this argument. Like, we kill five people instead of one here. It's the only way to be ethical. Like I, I don't know the amount, like mental gymnastics it takes to get to that dude. bro's.
Track 1:Uh, is, is it, is it a stranger or is it someone you know? If Liam says, wait, wait, I'm gonna hold it, and when I get the top eight I'm gonna see Yeah, that guy. We're gonna kill him. Alright guys. Great podcast as always. Good luck in Pittsburgh too, everybody that's, uh, uh, listening. Don't be afraid to come up to Liam or me or Mike say hi. uh, uh,
Tell me what your plan, if you feel like it.
Track 1:tell, tell him what you plan if you're thinking about, and he'll tell you, he'll tell you how. That's a great play. Absolutely incredible choice, and you've really broken the format. Liam's, looking forward to building you up and being a force for positivity in Pokegear. Oh,