Okay. Let's see what else we got. We got some new reviews. Nice.
Brent:yeah, I thought we'd try to do like a lightning round.
Mike:Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of little stuff here. That's good. And then, yeah, we can kind of like talk about just battle styles more in general. I actually do want to talk about battle styles as like a general set and its impact. Cause I think it's actually been quite good.
Brent:It's definitely like, I feel like it's introduced new work types without like ruining, like all the old archetypes are basically fine. I feel like.
Mike:Right, right, right. Exactly. Like nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like the best set. That's like the best types of
Brent:Yeah. Like, like I, you would have thought that like, if a rapid strike was super successful, something like Turnitin or people around would just be completely chased out of the meadow. But like, no, I feel like it turns into this like the most play deck now.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:yeah.
Brent:All right. You guys are ready.
Brit:Yeah, definitely the turn. It does talk. It's gone. It's yeah, just that, like I said, it was the best, so on.
Brent:Welcome to the trash. It's me, Brett Halliburton here as always with my crochet and fibers recording on Thursday night, because we've got to keep attendance at a hundred percent, a couple of quick updates. We got another five star review. I would like to thank pine dog in great Britain. He said great pod, all his draws, the nuts, really interesting discussions. One of the top PPC podcasts out there. My only quibble. That was one of the, what kind of dog
Mike:No.
Brent:Yeah. Come on. People are gonna read this review and make an important decision based on it. You've got to tell them what's up. I also wanted to note that I got a note in my email that apparently last week we were like the number 31 podcast in Apple, in the games section of Apple podcasts in Canada.
Mike:Well, there was a lot of qualifiers, but I'll take it.
Brent:Exactly, exactly. Props to the Canadians for their exceptional tests.
Brit:for none of us to be Canadian, too.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Canadians, they have great taste. It's absolutely fantastic.
Brit:all for I'm all for those sorts of statistics. When am I, not that lecture I gave today, but one of the last ones is we had, I don't know, we just had this, we had a reading that sort of, a lot of the argument was based in statistics. And I was just like, well, you know, I mean, you gotta talk about it. I'm in here. Not like not like a mass skeptic, but you know, I'm just pointing out where there, you know, holes and stuff in it. And I was like, yeah, look in statistics, just kind of arbitrary and stuff like that, you know, it's like, and so I always use the like sports example is just like, well, what about, you know, you're watching football and it's just like, Oh, this team has never lost in the third, when there's four minutes and 20 seconds on the clock. And they're down by three when the quarterback is, you know, those are just like, at the end of the day, that's sort of what they all are. And it's just like, Oh yeah,
Mike:like you change like one of those numbers by one thing. And then that stat doesn't mean anything anymore.
Brent:Exactly. They just had to keep adding qualifiers to it. Having said that the importance of this qualifier is it was in some like email that I got sent. So that must mean it's really, really important to someone, some automated algorithm out there. It was like, you did a thing.
Mike:I also want to a quick shout out to a mellow magic carb, Kevin Clemente's podcast. I think it's called Lake of rage. I was, I haven't really listened to it very much, but I was watching them on Twitch the other day and they gave us a shout out. So we appreciate that and shout out back.
Brent:Yeah. Always, always love it. When people say the name, it's a good thing. I, you know, it's funny. I know no surprise because I'm the kind of person that for separates on the problems. Kevin was like cold opens. The only thing I don't like about that podcast. So it's worth taking 30 seconds to give the history of the cold open, and then Kevin can rethink his life choices. But like, so, so when we hop on the pod, usually we, we have like a Google doc where we tried to kind of put things in over the course of the week to talk about, and we'll try to spend like two or three minutes flipping through the Google doc. And like, if something's old news we deleted or if there's something you want to talk about, we added or something like that. And I got to tell you, there's just a lot of times when Mike and Britt proceeds to just tell you the answer to a question, because it turns out it's not that big and I'm like, well, we can either do it again and have a second take, or I could just like put it in. So there's, if you're looking for like a real slice of life of like how they're thinking about problems in real time, before we start the pod like that, that is what the cold open is. If they like talking about Pokemon, I'm like, okay, well, let's throw that in that way. People can say they heard it.
Mike:Non-linear
Brent:cold open
Mike:Yeah, it's kind of like, non-linear thinking what we need and that's why you need them poke them on and to be successful. So we're just applying that to the pod.
Brent:Exactly exactly the cold, the cold open is a little weird, but it there's no other place to put it. Unfortunately. You know, having said that there was like one or two times over the last, like 35 weeks where I was like, you know, we don't really have anything really good. Maybe I should just start with the song. And then I'm like, Oh, that'd be weird. All right. So I, I had like 10 questions that I thought were kind of the quick lightening round that I wanted to talk with you guys about. And a couple of them were, are like sponsor related is channel fireball the absolute best. Do they have any competition at all right now?
Brit:no, I mean so much. I mean, not, not even getting into the sponsorship, quote, unquote, whatever that ends up, meaning for the people making videos and writing articles. Like not even considering that as the team, they're just like, it's just such a, you know, it's just a multi game. Entity, whereas every other sort of quote, unquote sponsorship or just other single stores that, you know, just couldn't possibly compete you know, are more or less relegated to TCG player, I would think. And so, yeah, I just, I don't know. I imagine
Brent:you know, it's, it's interesting how, like, I feel like all of the other content websites have kind of gone away over the pandemic.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a big part of it. Like the only other site that I know of, that's having somewhat regular articles, it's polka beach. But I've never had a polka beach subscription, so I can't really speak to their quality. I assume it's solid, but I don't really know.
Brent:I subscribed once when I wanted to read one one of the controller articles, apparently in Europe, I was like, they got me, I'm going to give him$3. But so do you think that'll change post pandemic? Like do you think article sites will suddenly spring up or have they essentially like consolidated a monopoly during the pandemic?
Brit:I think it would be a logical for new faces, whether that's like new, like teen does quote unquote teams like actual organizations or something. I would think that because of how popular and successful the flipping market is, and even just Pokemon in general now, I'm not sure sort of how common knowledge it is. I was just always express to explain this to friends and it's like, it's not even just like Pokemon cards that are hard to get, like apparel sells out on the, on the Pokemon center and stuff like that and is like the bot and there's just bots for everything now, too. And so anyways, it's just that hard, but I would think someone, clearly someone is smart enough to notice that and is at least willing to take an initial gamble. Once we have an established, like in person circuit, again, I think, I don't know. I don't, I don't think it will be content websites. I think that that's just done. I think that was, that was just in an acronystic where we're
Brent:Well, don't read anymore, right?
Brit:Yeah. That's just the last era we're moving onto the next season of the show.
Brent:It'll just be podcasts.
Brit:all right. Yeah, whatever Patriots and so forth. But yeah, like I think, I think people get into it, but not articles not pay to ride anymore.
Mike:I think that's a good point about the patriotic. Do you see you know, more and more top players and, you know, somewhat content creators doing these Patriots and I wouldn't be surprised to see a little bit more of that. From top players once, you know, once they start playing more often again and feel like they have a reasonable stuff to put out because it's a fairly low barrier. Like the people that have it right now are, you know, like Luke Marissa and Danny who stream and have YouTube channels and, and those types of things. But, you know, you think of someone like who would be a good example, who is a big, like other, I mean, like, I guess I could be an example of someone that, you know, I don't want to do any of those things, but I, but I could have a Patrion it's fairly low barrier of entry. And if I just wanted to share lists and maybe like every now and then right. Write a full article or just like write a couple paragraphs or match ups or something like that for different decks. I'm not going to do a Patrion, but but I feel like. People could do that if they wanted to. And it's just, you could just say like$1 a month or whatever, and it's like, not that expensive and yeah, I dunno. I think that's a good point.
Brit:yeah, it's actually just occurred to me. I think a model that would work really, really well, and I think it would be cool to, if someone would like. Program like an app that would do this, like based more for card games, but to use like, this is something really sort of prevalent in like the fitness community, like every influencer sort of like has their own app or which is essentially just sort of has like their own extension on these apps that are just like for influencers essentially. And so what you could do is like, something like that and you, you know, you always get like, ah, you know, chat, access and stuff like that. So you'd be like, Hey, you know, message me and I'll chat with you about your deck choice and always have always have access to my deck list, like when it's submitted and stuff, but before the event and stuff like that. And you know, just charging a monthly rate. And I would think that that would both be the more, more, there'd be more interest in that. And it would just be like better overall than like the coaching model. I don't, I haven't coached for years. I mean, I guess that's how Brent and I come to know each other, but I just, I've just always felt. There's never all that much to say when you're coaching. I think that that just speaks to the complexity of Pokemon more than anything, but I just feel like so much of the game is like your fundamentals, your sequencing. And I just remember coaching and coached a lot when six presidents first started doing it and it's just like, yup, yup, yup. We did everything right. We're sitting here and we're hoping we need to hit our double colorless now. And now we're sitting here again and we need them not to hit, you know, X or Y off and so on. And I just feel like that's too much of it. And like, yeah, sure. That's really good. And from a, from like a beginner, absolute beginner perspective, like that's probably the best place to start, but when we're talking about, you know, actually I might even be a really good person example. I've I've thought about, you know, getting a coach recently and it just never seems. Lucrative to me is so for like someone like above average, I would much more interested. I don't, I don't want the like one-on-one coaching, but like a service like I'm describing, like yeah. And maybe that's just all Patrion is too, but I just think there could just be a little more to it perhaps. And I think, I think that sounds like it could easily be very successful
Brent:Yeah. You know, I, I certainly one of the things you said right at the beginning, I think really spoke to me, it's like I think the market has evolved in such a like weird way where like people are becoming, like, everybody's kind of making a run at being a content creator. And the, the weird thing is like the growth of content creators has driven the value of the product to like basically to zero. Right.
Brit:yeah. I mean, it's the same just in like e-sports even to this, because it's kind of the whole infrastructure, like, so kind of, kind of what's happened is that. Initially like legal take care of your favorite league of legends pros and stuff. They realized that like, Hey, I make more money when I'm, when I don't have to play on these dumb, official events. I make more money when I'm just having fun streaming I'm I'm not a pro anymore. I'm just a streamer now. And so that's, and then, so that's actually just transitioned for the e-sports organizations. Now, like now their money is in, they make way more money on like these, these tick tock, tick tock, content creators and stuff like that way more than really anything involved in the e-sports anymore. Which just so interesting because like, I don't know, it was just bizarre for, you know, TSM team solo mid this, this organization million dollar organization that only exists because of league of legends now only exists for this just kind of new, bizarre world of content and quote unquote, however you want to call it. Yeah. It's just strange to see it's just everywhere now.
Brent:yeah, it's a weird thing. It'll be interesting to see how that kind of continues to evolve. Right. All right. Oh boy. Our lightning round slate. Super lightning guys. All right. So my next question was will will online Pokemon tournaments continue and specifically will Pokemon continue to push them as the pandemic wraps up. Like I kind of, you know, I mean, we all recently got shots, go us you know, first step towards a in-person events
Brit:Yeah. Are we, are we the first, fully vaccinated Pokemon podcasts? That's gotta be
Mike:We gotta be right. add that to the list of our accomplishments.
Brent:I love it. But like it made me realize, I was like, Oh yeah, two weeks. Like, let's go, let's go to the therapist. But like I recognize, I felt like Pokemon almost kind of rushed out the next team challenge and the next players cup. And I wondered, even though it seems like they've done a really bad job from a like engineering perspective, trying to set themselves up for success in a world where people play PTC geo, or they like keep, do you think they'll just keep like, kind of having these side-by-side online and in-person tournaments when in-person tournaments return? Like, is that going to be a thing to do.
Brit:I would think so. I would guess they would, they will. It seems very, very minimal on their part, really what they have to do so much. Like the majority of it just takes place in the, the keys, the key system. You only got to keep track of the. You know, thousand players or however, two 56 or no, it's not two 56 every, or whatever that total ends up adding up to be. But like, yeah, I thought about that too. I think we've even talked a little bit about whether or not like the headmasters and stuff will stick around and I've speculated. I think that like one probably will, it seems really useful. Like, I don't know, I'm, I'm not even when IRL events come back and I, I don't foresee myself having the time or the interest to like go to every regional. So I'm, I'm going to be at home probably pretty, pretty consistently on the weekend. So like, that's something that would maybe interest me. I don't have every regional this weekend, but I do have an official online event I can participate in, especially if either we get a new online client or if, or if the rewards Map onto the IRL circuit. I think, I think either of those options would be great as well. But yeah, I think they probably will.
Mike:That's the only thing that I was thinking is that the best way that they can incorporate. Meaningful online events is somehow make it mesh with the in-person events. And there's not quite precedent yet, but we are a lot closer than we were before the pandemic. So barring some type of like CP events online. I could see it going either way. I would, I would hope that they continue to do something. Cause I agree. I am likely to do at least some of that.
Brit:I would think, I would think too that the fact that they've upped the ante for. Players cut for, with the cash prizes. That's hopefully a good sign. A good indication. Well, I mean, I guess it's not necessarily correlated with whether or not they'll still be events after online events after the pandemic, but that's hopefully a good sign. I think that they, I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily a case of them listening to the community, but it's a better prize and hopefully they'll continue to get better. And like Mikey says, I don't think there's a better way than the give us champion. You should have points.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:That's all we want.
Brent:So my next question was. Facetious, but I wrote, I want to ask you guys, our top 10 metal is just like nonsense. I mean, I dunno, I, I felt like I saw one or two lists this past week where I was like, you know, they, they added two decks to the list, but the ordering of the list just seemed like a little bit random.
Mike:Yeah. It's just like, I mean, at least in the current meta, like. Well, before battle status came out, like it was very obvious. They were the six best decks. And then like you could round out the rest of the top 10 with like another, I don't know, six or seven decks, but like, it was, it was a clear distinction between the top six and everything else. Now, now you might actually be able to fit 10 good decks on there, but I feel like you could still probably make a similar argument. Like there's gonna, there's always going to be like X amount of decks that are like the really good decks. And then there's like a whole slew. Like there's not even like that's super useful. At least it's easier to talk about it, the last format, because we're more familiar with it, but like taking the six decks, it's not even useful to say like, Oh, you know, of these six alternatives in ADP, R S tier and peak rom and blends are. A tier, like that's not helpful. It doesn't mean anything really. It's like, there's six decks that are really, really good. And there's the rest of them. That then there's a whole group that are like pretty good, but like not the same power level. And so I feel like maybe that's just like the way to think about it. Going
Brent:You know hearing you say that reminds me of, here's here's why people should never invite me to their fantasy for bullying. The last side door on a two, I had the fantasy football, like I tried to build this whole model where I projected out their stats. And like, at some level, if I projected their stats poorly, all the models were like totally wrong. So like bed data in bad data out. But, but like once I built that model, I tried to build lists where I was like, I don't really care about like, who's the best tied in and who's the second best title and who's the best, third, third, best I didn't. My question was like, how much better is the first in the second and how much better is the second than the third? And like, where are the big gaps where like, you know, these four, the top four titles are all basically the same, but like, if you get the fifth, it's like a huge fall off.
Mike:right,
Brent:And then you could like project forward a model based on that. Right? Like at some of once they tell you these six are all basically the same, like, you know, like, okay, we're done.
Mike:right. Exactly. Did it work? Was that a
Brent:STR list and Adrian, how did it totally worked? It totally worked. Although, you know, as I said, it's just a matter of like, like building the model is super fun. Cause I'm a big nerd, but but really it's about like how well do you know football for that season? Because if you don't project their stats properly, then all the models are wrong.
Mike:yeah. Yeah.
Brent:Right. I mean, if you, if you think this quarterback's going to be good and you know, I don't know. I mean, even worst case scenario, he gets injured game on. You're like, well, that was all great. I put a turn at this down. I feel like everywhere. I look, people are saying it, turn it. This is the best bag I want to check in with you guys and see like all the top 10 lists I saw, they were all like, turn it this. How do you guys feel about that?
Brit:Yeah, I guess I guess the verdict is, or what I think happened is that people just tried out weakness, energy and turns out it's pretty good. And I mean, I, that the one that the heck stairs I played last week with the deck, I lost to an alternative this week with weakness garden. I didn't have guaranteed unfortunately in my list. And so that, that ended up just being the game as soon as he attached to the first one. But a similar scenario, you just it's. Well, they want their situation with the Garrett, Tina and the nets later on.
Mike:You were playing.
Brit:just, it hits well with everything else can I don't know how it fares against Vic teeny. I would think the teeny decks probably have a pretty good to just match it up, but then everything else is the same.
Brent:Yeah. Oh, you know, it's worth sort of taking 30 seconds to say for podcast listeners our working assumption during the course of this pod. And we'll find out in a, literally like 36 hours is that Mike has advanced the top four, but cannot tell us. So, so I think in the context of all these discussions you know, Mike should tell us, well, if I was playing, here's what I hate about this bag like that. But, but yes, if you do not remember that, you know we're assuming that Mike has made the top four, but we're not talking about it. Go back to the last pot and listen again. If those viewerships stats up or something. All right, sorry. Mike, talk about alternatives.
Mike:We're talking around that. Yeah. But Brett just clarifying you. So you played rapid striker Shifu in that event without Dina. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I think what you're right, that the weakness energy is pretty solid in the deck. The other thing that has really given it a boost is running one Phoebe one palpate. And so you take out your worst matchup LMC, and it goes from, I still think it's like a pretty close match up. Probably I haven't really, I haven't really played it much from, from either side, but I imagine you're like slightly favored. You know, if you ended up having to research a way a palpate or, or the Phoebe early on, just as you're setting up, then, you know, the second Sam wasn't can be. Can be an issue still. So I imagine it's still pretty close, but like if you're taking a 50, 50 against what before was like a 20, 80 matchup and you're solidly favored versus a lot of other decks, like your peak around matchup solidly favorite, your bland matchup is even to slightly favored your ADP matchups, even the slightly favored with the weakness energy, I think the rapid strike is probably like if our abstracts explained gear, Tina and you're playing weakness, energy or proudly unfavored, but still could be close. Maybe they, again, maybe they have awkward games that they have to discard Dina or a prize it or something like that. So yeah, I dunno,
Brent:if you, when you say, when you say it's, it's not a complete auto loss against the fighting type deck, like that's pretty good,
Mike:Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, I don't know. It's just super, it it's super, super strong.
Brent:Theoretically, that's its hardest counter in the Metta and you're like, well, you know, you have a chance to go. That's pretty good.
Mike:Yeah. So ultimately what, ultimately the matchup that like, if I was playing to turn into this, I'd be the most worried about is the mirror match, which like, unfortunately, almost necessitates playing crushing hammers. Cause that's like by far the best thing to do in the mirror. And I hate playing crashing hammers into Turnitin because it feels like a deck where you just want to, you just want to set up and do your two 70. And so I'd rather devote four slots to consistency. But maybe you just can't if it turned into, this is really the best deck, the other, the only other option is like, you could run like two stamps and those have utility and other match-ups, but you're still, that's still like two spots instead of four that are not consistency card. So at that point, at that point, maybe you're just like, all right, just play the four hammers. Yeah, super, super, super, super, super strong.
Brent:Yeah, I know. And Google's video. He was saying he's done with the stamps because he doesn't like the flip Venus.
Mike:Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. It's still not really my type of deck. I will not be, I mean, I played it actually in the limitless event last week, just when, when it was the day after the Phoebe was first revealed in the deck by someone else. And I was like, Oh, that looks cool. I'll try it. And I did pretty well. But yeah, but it's still overall, not really my type of day. I lost, I didn't play the weakness energies. And I didn't play hammers. I did beat a mirror, but I lost to two or HSA fuse. Cause I didn't have the weakness energy. And then I lost to something else. Oh, I lost two Azule playing spear tomb, which I should have won that game. But like, it was really awkward. I just like missed in energy and like the very middle of the game. And if I hadn't missed that energy, I was like ahead in the price straight and there was no way come back, but I'm all good.
Brent:so, so any new thoughts on fat stocks guys?
Brit:no, I haven't. No, Mikey will be able to talk on it a bit more. Let me just still, I haven't played any more with it and I'm just still kind of the same apprehension I had about the rapid strike deck I still have, but I don't have much experience, so I'm excited to see it in action. It seems like the, the single strike version is kind of just been given up. I think it's here and there still, but you know, it's trending trending much more so for the rapid strike now.
Brent:Yeah. What was the, was the single strike that we felt like we had seen a week ago? Like more a function of people say, Hey, here's a new card. I'm going to build a deck with it,
Brit:yeah, I think so. Like, I mean, it's, you know, it's not just build a deck with it. You have the obvious kind of the whole package is there for you. If like, if it was going to work here, it is for you.
Mike:You think the list have gotten a little more refined? Like I think had a more fun list than other people, but it's still super underpowered compared to other decks.
Brit:Yeah. I've, I've seen some I don't, I haven't seen his list, but I remember seeing one list recently and it was like a very well that's the thing I was about to say. It was a very like non-committal package to the single strike, but that's just, it, it was only the Pokemon that was seemed less, but it had everything else to it. And I just like that just can't be worth it. Like you can't play three, two of this card and then just like, not play like the tools and the gym and, you know, blah, blah, blah. I was like, I played a lower hound doom and I can't remember it what it had squeezed in, but yeah, I turn it as being good. I would think part of that is done. It has to do with like, like, okay. Pick your tutors back now. For real, we have to play a turn into this again. Whereas always in that first like week or two, like kind of people just forget about it. Cause they're trying the new decks.
Mike:Yeah. So I think really the two big decks that have joined, like our previous six best decks are the rapid striker, Shifu and Vic teeny variants. Vic teeny is super interesting because there's still not a consensus of the best way to play it. And maybe there won't be because. We've seen fire in general, be very versatile and take, take many different forms and really adapt itself. Well, just since there has come out. And so maybe, maybe Vic teeny, we'll just kind of add to that mix. But there's like the big teeny MuTu, there's the street Vic teeny Pedro has been playing like a lightning Vic Teenie where it doesn't even run welder. And it it's like, it's basically like the MuTu lightning, but the two to Vic teeny line. So there's lots of different ways to play, pick teeny, which is super cool. But anyway, teeny need very strong card, rapid strikers, a few very strong card and everything else from the set. Well, all the other Pokemon from the set I would say are, have not been super impactful, but the trainers have been like escape ropes shown up in a lot of different decks level ball has given some new life to the single pricers and the single prizes are still not quite at the same para level as the other decks, but. They're significantly better. Which is cool.
Brent:Should we talk about a mad party?
Mike:we can talk a little bit about mad party
Brent:you guys see chips? Fantastic. Sweet.
Mike:Oh yeah. About as well.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. What a recognized chip for doing some absolutely fantastic.
Mike:Yeah. I I was watching a little bit of a Zul and chip last night as they played. And I was reminded like why mad party is not the best deck in the format, like there's new rules, like the way that they were, that was always drawing was so, so, so awkward. And I was like, yup, that was my experience. Playing mad party. And like level ball. Doesn't really like, it gives you a little more consistency, but it's not enough to like, make the deck like the best deck. And also I was thinking about this. I don't think we really want mad party to be the best deck in the format. Like that would be the same as when night, March was the best deck in the format and people didn't really like that. So I don't know. I, I just think people also have to be a little careful what they ask for like, if a single prize deck is the best deck then nothing really can keep up. Like in theory, if there's a bunch of like multi-pronged decks and, but a single prize deck is by far the best, like that's a problem too, right? Because it's oppressive in a different way. If nothing can keep up with a single price deck So, so I'm, I'm glad that they got a little bit of a boost, but they're still somewhat inconsistent, I would say, eh, it's of it's the same way. I feel about spiritual things for tunes, a lot better than it was before. And I played with it and I think it's pretty good deck and better than it was before, but I still think it can just like lose to a Marnie. It can lose to a reset stamp, can lose to not trying to support her early in the game. It can lose to trying to set up its next attacker. And you just, you know, you have all the pieces except you missed one switch or you missed one energy because you need three or four things. Every time something gets knocked out.
Brent:Well so as long as we're on the subject, I feel like we should talk. You had a hot take, you could not say for the pod and you have to tweet it out. Like the battle styles hot takes. I got you. I think you said you got two out of three cricket to be, will not see play in into your one deck. Sheryl is the best card in the set. Single strike would be unplayable.
Mike:All right. Which is which, which one do you think I was wrong on?
Brent:Know, I me, I guess. So first of all, start with cricket tune. I feel like cricket tune seemed more play than we expected. I don't understand it, but it's going away, right?
Mike:Yeah. I think people were playing it during the first like week or two, just to like, see how it is and now it's not, I don't know. I, I haven't really seen it, seen it played in anything. The only deck that has sometimes played it is some of the teeny variants that I've seen. And like, other than that totally unplayable, I think it's yeah. So I think, I think I nailed that one.
Brent:Yeah. So, so the, the one you think you got wrong is the Cheryl's the best card in the set.
Mike:Yeah, it just hasn't really found its place. And I guess it's kind of the same effect that Leon had, like Britt head with Leon. It's just, it's a little awkward to play a, a, a tech supporter Carbonite bronze on hasn't really panned out as a, as a top deck, which is the most natural fit Toby cast bronze on didn't really pan out, which even more of a fit. The only, the only like top tier deck, then that's already a top tier deck that it kind of fits in is the air Shifu. And we've seen it kind of phased out over as the, as the OSHA food lists have been more refined. It's still pretty good in that deck, but like, it's more of a Winmore card than a, and it, I don't even know if it's a win more credit. It probably does when you games that you would have lost, but it's still just too awkward to have to play your supporter because on the turn that you would share all, you're probably having to play like a dead air Crow about that turn. To do whatever else you want it to do. And then it's kind of like, what's the point? Cause cause now you've put a, a cheap two prize you're in play that they can knock out at some point. So it's like, eh, is it, was it even worth it?
Brent:I haven't been paying attention to his standard, built a Sheryl this control decade.
Mike:I have not seen this, but maybe, maybe, maybe we'll see it in the global finals. I know Sandra did not make it, but maybe he's helping someone that did
Brit:I think, I think I saw he's working on expanded or beetle, I
Mike:ah, nice. They're like the stage two, one.
Brit:will be Tara. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which will be terrifying. I'm sure.
Brent:Yeah. Cheryl and expanded seems like a great opportunity to make Pokemon regret their design decisions.
Mike:that could be true. And then what was my third thing? Oh, single strike would be unplayable. Well, we already talked about that.
Brent:yeah. Yeah. Second strike. As it turns out is unplayable.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:I feel like the moral of the story there is when you're predicting things that are going to go well, it's harder than predicting things that are gonna go poorly.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
Brit:sounds sounds about right.
Mike:Yeah. That my baseline for whenever new cards come out is that they're going to be terrible.
Brent:Yeah, exactly. It's easy to look at a car and be like bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. But then like you see cornea, like I've seen so many bad cards that might be good.
Mike:yeah. Right, exactly. The only other thing I do want to say about battle styles in general, I think it's, it's really impressed me. It's a set because. Especially, like at this point in the format, like the third and fourth set in a, in a year that come out, you want them to shake things up, but not make the old decks completely unplayable. And I feel like battle styles has done that really well. We had six very defined top decks for, I don't know, the last six or seven months, and now we have two more and the other six decks are not unplayable. Luke metal is maybe like the one that took the hardest hit, but even that still probably has a niche in the meta game. And so by adding two more decks, the match-ups for all of the preexisting decks are pretty variable against rapid strike in Victoria as well. Like Vic teeny is really strong against it's good against the Turnitin. It's it's good against Luke metal. It's not very good against peaker. It's like. Pretty good. It's like could go either way against ADP, depending on what you're playing it with. It's not that good against blends. And like rapid strike had takes very good match-ups to a turn test. Very good to peak her. It's like pretty even against ADP, even to slightly unfavorite against, Bland's pretty bad against Luke only. And so like it's added a lot of different match-ups, which I think has brought down like the oppressiveness somewhat of the other six decks because all of the decks now have a little bit more to watch out for. So maybe they have to use like an extra spot or two to try and shore up some of their bad match-ups. And. That's also part of what's giving the opening to some of the other decks that are not amongst these eight now top decks you know, stuff like spirit tomb and mad party is they're able to capitalize on the top deck spreading themselves a little thinner. You see a lot of ex fitting in mew now, for example, for the rapid strike. And if you're playing you, that's one less card that is either consistency card or, or something else that could be used in a uh, you know, in a, in a different more popular match-ups. So
Brent:In terms of this runs DV and palpate now. So like fixes some match-ups. But if it's not those it's just decreasing consistency. Right?
Mike:right, exactly. So I really liked what battle styles has done. The other thing is like, if you make a, if you make other decks on playable with a new set, that means like, that is almost the definition of power creep. Right. And so with that, not happening, you know, maybe w w we'll have a. How do I put this like a decelerating power creep curve which is, which is, which is good to see, I think, no matter what, until the tag teams rotate the T the powerful tag teams are going to be very strong. And no matter what they print, that's not going to change. Cause like evolving still sucks compared to just using a basic Pokemon. But yeah, so I think battle size has been super awesome for the game. And I'm excited for the next couple of months of this format and then the next set as well. I hope that the next set is successful in the same way.
Brent:All right. Very quickly I want to recognize ultimate dart, cause they've always been super nice to me. They, they announced their 100% recycled level product line coming to a store near you. Will people buy a product because it's 100% recyclable? No.
Mike:Oh, deck boxes.
Brit:So it got pick a chew on it then? No,
Brent:Yeah. Th they, they do not have a Pokemon license. They're very sad about that.
Brit:no. I mean, good to see I'm sure, but I can't imagine it will motivate anyone's consumer habits.
Mike:if it had sleeves, I think that'd be a different story because those get reused so often, like most people buy like a deck box or at least, I don't know. I I'm maybe not the best person to ask. Like I still have, I haven't bought a deck box in forever and I still have my deck boxes from like 2005, but like sleeves, I buy them all the time. You got eight. So if those are a psychic, well, heck yeah, I would I would buy recyclable sleeves.
Brent:See, I think, I think the fact that you're using deck boxes from 2005 shows your commitment to sustainability.
Mike:true. Yeah. I've I've already done. I've already done my part.
Brent:Yeah. So players cup three it continues this weekend. So this weekend we see the stream where we're assuming we're going to see. Mike dominated everybody. And, and then concurrently was that if Mike is still playing, he'll be playing games. Do you guys have any things we should talk about for watching the stream this weekend? Mike, did you record games? Is that a thing we can ask?
Mike:I did not record games cause I am long story, but I wasn't, I was kind of like in different settings for the event. So I didn't feel comfortable recording, but I think at least I know one of my opponents did maybe more than one.
Brent:All right. All right. So, so we will see Mike, but we won't see Mike's cards
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:or we might, I mean, I assume they have a variety of games they can choose from and they choose games. They like,
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. None. None of the matches that even if you recorded, they're not necessarily guaranteed to show up on the stream.
Brent:right, right. Yeah. I'm sure they record
Mike:They're doing like all of the regions, as far as I know, all in the one stream.
Brent:I, I was, I'm assuming that the fact that they took two weeks from the time when they asked you to record your games to the, when they like stream it I'm assuming production values are going to be absolutely off the charts.
Mike:I hope so. Yeah. Like my understanding is, you know, they get all the recording games, then the, the different casters and maybe part of members of the production team, like watch all of them and decide which games and which parts of games are the most interesting and do their commentary over that. And then they have people video, edit it all together.
Brent:Well, I liked what you said. Parts of games. I imagine like an NBA or like one of those NFL league pass things where they're like doing long simultaneous to this right now we're cutting over through a zone who was about to play a stamp.
Mike:Yeah, that'd be cool. That'd be awesome. You can skip all the boring turns. Like, ah, he, he drew, he attached to energy and he passed.
Brent:Yeah. Well, he stamped them and he got them boss. I am available for commentary book box. You can just do a need. So to say he got the boss off the staff, that's what I bring to the, the,
Mike:You can just use that clip.
Brent:that's a great idea.
Mike:And I do. I do think the stream is both Saturday and Sunday. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I do believe that. Yeah.
Brent:Right? Lots and lots and lots of stuff. So should we talk about tournaments for this past week? I know cash had posted tons and tons of data for like March 29th to April 4th. What X we're doing well and what banks are doing poorly. You guys want to talk about this for a second? I feel like this is, this is the top 10 list that we should discuss, right?
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we got it turned into this number one
Brent:It's exactly what you expect.
Mike:Yeah. Luke metal had this like weird resurgence and then people started playing Phoebe and attendant tests. And I feel like hasn't really been seen since then. So we're still kind of going through like little trends, but the other thing is like a chart like this. It does measure the best X, but also as someone measuring the most popular decks. Right.
Brent:Yeah. I'm always like, I wish I wish they would show what percentage of the total decks it made up, because that would give you the real truth. Right?
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like an average win average placement or something like that.
Brent:Right. I mean, mad party is like ninth on this list, but only two people play mad party.
Mike:Yeah. I didn't even mention that. I was talking about Dex. I didn't even mention MuTu welder. I still can't believe that people are playing that in such numbers. That again,
Brit:I can't either like, even talk even after talking about it last week, I just keep seeing it. And like you mentioned that victim you back where I've seen, you know, a little more of that, and I guess more than kind of the older too, but it's like, what's the point that just can't be worth it. Just play it. The other victim, new tax. I would think that so much space for you to like to do something that your rushes are just like already kind of does
Mike:It's so bizarre to me. I like, it just seems so bad. Like it's so bad against the turn dis like if you don't play Vic, Tina, if you're just playing the YouTube while other, even if you're playing like the Vic teeny me-too, you're like your big teeny lines then enough that it's probably not, it's still not great person to turn to us, but like the regular MuTu welder, like basically never be to turn it to. So I don't and the turn test is the best deck or at least the most popular it's some combination of both of those. So like, I don't know. It seems terrible. And peek around is also like pretty good against me too while they're so like, and those are the two best decks and two, two most successful. Next I'm gonna use that word. It turned into some peek around are the two most successful decks and me too well, there's bad against both. So why would you play that day?
Brent:So, so obviously the third one's rapid, rapid strike or Shifu, and then like, wait at like 12 there's like dragon, rapid striker, Shifu, and then way down at like the bottom of Cash's list is rapid strike greens exploration. You guys have any opinions on, like, I don't know what that, any of that means.
Mike:I don't, I don't know what rapid strike greens looks like ever. That sounds really like, what are you even switching to then to reset your attack? That I'm silly? That I tried a bit of the dragon pole or HSA Fu cause in theory, like in theory it seems great, right? Like psychic and fighting great typing. But it's it, you're running two-stage ones in a deck and drag a pole takes two energy. Like I played against one on ladder using the regular Arisha Fu and I was playing Tina and he attached twice to a drag, a pole. On the bench. And then he sent it up, he did two 60 to my Fu for the weakness. And then I went gear, Tina scoop up gear, Tina and I won the game after that. Like what are you doing? Yeah.
Brent:right, right. It's like, I just I just lose gears. It's too strong.
Mike:yeah, so like, I dunno, you're a super weak to hammer. You're just somewhat inconsistent. Like the deck, the deck's good when it, when it gets set up, but like it's, you're also super reliant on going first and attaching an energy where the one as I've been playing the kind of the more, this Geraci rabbit strike version, you just need to get the basics down. You don't even need an attachment. And that's a really, really, really big difference is just getting a basic band. Cause you have quick balls and you have communications and you have druggie. But you don't have any way good way to search energy. So even if you're playing like 12 energy, there's lots of games where you go first. And the only way you're going to attach an energy is by ane or chromatin batting. And that feels really bad to do on the first turn. If you, if that's the only thing that you need is to attach an energy. Like, so yeah, it's not really my deck.
Brent:any, any takes on that stuff?
Brit:now, I, I I've played my team challenge over the weekend, but I've been too busy, I, which is unfortunate. I've been you know, just a couple group chats and there seem to be some lively discussions on debates and all, I am able to read them for the most part. I have nothing to contribute and it pains me a little bit. I'm hoping to be able to start playing again a little another week or two maybe. Every everything said was kind of just common sense. I've thought like, yeah. Okay.
Brent:Yeah. So, so one Andre won a tournament, won the advantage tournament with peek around while we were out. Is there anything we should say about his list? It looked like he was just playing mix.
Mike:Well,
Brent:He's got the tag switch.
Mike:he's got the tax room. She's got escape room. He doesn't have chaotics Wells. That's the big, that's the big thing is missing. I will say the one thing that has been really interesting to me with the peaker lists and the one that like figuring out was done super well. I know like one guy I Bart has won two major events with peek around. Recently he won the Carollo and he won a Sunday open, I think. And in general, I think Ron has done super, super well, but the weird thing to me, the weirdest thing to me is that all of them, for some reason now have added the fourth speed, lightening energy. And if I think that's a really solid card in general, but like we've been playing 13 energy and peaker I'm now for six months, what is like, why are we playing the 14th energy? Now? All of a sudden, the only time I ever played the 14th energy is when I was not playing crushing hammers. I felt like there was enough space to justify playing the 14 energy then. But like, there's so many other cards that you would want to have. I feel like, like I'd rather play the third air balloon. I'd rather play second chaotic swell. I'd rather play texts, which are an energy switch or. I don't know. So that, that's the only bizarre thing to me is that somehow in a battle Stipe's format 14, fourth speed, lightened energy has somehow become the norm and peek around. And I very, very much don't think it should be
Brent:How'd they get a dog. All right. Let's see. Oh, I didn't know what I was gonna, I was going to talk about choice. Benderson's tweet about the guy who was like Azalea so bad on that YouTube, but.
Brit:do we have a tweet of the week selected out? Cause I thought of one just
Brent:Oh, yeah. Do you have a tweet of the week? Cause this is a pretty funny tweet of the week, but I would love a better,
Brit:I dunno, you guys, it might be the same one.
Brent:This is just this choice. Benderson tweet where somebody, somebody comments on Zulu, YouTube channel, you're like not good. You blunder every video I watch, I watched them just to see how you're going to screw up. And then as all replies, Hey, want to do a best of seven. It would be good content for me to get beaten by someone better than me so I can learn the game better. And then when the guy replies, I don't have near the collection year, do I have three legit backs up the seven would be tough. And I know, you know, the game, it seems like you just get caught up in trying to do what the deck is meant to do versus the best player in the situation. I mean, that's just jibberish. But, but I, I I love it. You know, it's funny. I thought about, I saw Zach was posting that he's like making his discord public or something and it's a safe space and it just made me realize like, Being like a real content creator versus whatever the heck we're doing. Just seems so tough, man.
Brit:yeah,
Mike:creating a discord for people to hang out in. That's crazy.
Brent:Yeah. Like you know, I mean, people are, people are jerks. It's unfortunate. I wish people were nicer. Okay. So what's, what's your tweet now. Okay.
Brit:How? Well, I don't think, I assume, I don't know if it was just a bit or not. That's unclear to me, but so Kiernan, who I mentioned last week he has his stuff that he has a new, new Twitter thread about just asking what's your most like toxic player trait and this kind of response to it's just the most like baldest admission to cheating I've
Mike:Oh yeah, I did see this.
Brit:It's so funny. Mine has to be telling my opponent that I have no basics to start when I have to Denny. I usually hide it under a card. They're usually quick to look and don't count the cards I shuffle and hope to start a better Mon definitely have to unlearn.
Brent:Definitely have to unlearn that whole
Brit:Yeah.
Brent:felt like later there was some tweets where he was like, just kidding, just kidding. And like, it just goes to show man you know, joking around
Brit:one more in there that
Brent:I don't.
Brit:that wasn't quite as egregious, but it was still just like, you don't do that. That's cheating.
Mike:Yeah,
Brit:I don't know.
Brent:Yeah, abs absolutely baffles me when people do stuff like that. Crazy.
Mike:fallen mid in it, too. Crazy.
Brit:I remember, I don't know how, how it's been explicitly in the rules or if it's explicitly changed at all. But I just remember this story from when I first started nationals in 2010. The senior just from the, my, my city that I was in made, like made top 16 of, of nationals and he's playing against Mike Diaz. And so like, it's an SP mere and he mulligans in, in the SP mere, like, you know, you kind of get into some dicey scenarios based on how you start. There's a lot of ways you can get dunked that if you start with like a colorless, weak Pokemon, you can get dunked by an ambo Palm. You could get dunked by like the same color this week Pokemon. And so my, my friend essentially did like, just that, but like didn't know it was against the rules. And there was huge, it took the judges like hours and hours to like rule on it and they didn't disqualify him or anything, which is weird. He just got like a prize penalty and obviously the rules have changed so much that I imagine he would definitely get disqualified now, but I just thought it was just like a bizarre story. And just like, here it is again, like. No, just stick to the rules. Don't don't try to like, I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe put it this way. Like don't, if you're like trying to game, like game the starting procedures, like you're probably cheating, you know, if you're, if you're trying to game any aspect of the rules themselves, you're probably cheating.
Brent:to gain there. Right? You just have to start the day. Like you don't have a choice, so it's not
Brit:right, right, right, right.
Brent:You're like, you're like being tricky. You don't have a choice, right? Like it's just straight cheating.
Mike:Yep.
Brent:Hilarious. Is there anything you guys want to talk about before we talk about teen challenge?
Mike:No, I don't think so.
Brit:a good, a good little update.
Brent:All right. So I went through the pairings to try to bring thrilling news after our discussion last week based on like Andrew Wimbledon posts of all of the teams. And so, so here's, here's the like lightning fast summary computer and gaming universe, which is a Frank B as in Mike newest team lost in the round of 1,002 alternate universe Wilmington, a game stop without the Wilson is out Noam games with Franco llamas and Kaitlin Gitomer they're out Misty mountain lost it around a 502 bell book and comic Misty mountain is Brett Stretton, Ross coffin. Paradoxes out. That's Cody Graham, Carl Kojak Rifkey Kyle Warner. Paul's gamer zone is versus evolution. So let's come back to that. Wasteland gaming is out. They are that's like Ryan Al red and a metal li unrated gaming is out that's Isaiah Bradner and Kenny Britain's team. You talked about utopia gaming this out that's Azule and Ryan it's a new cheat. So like,
Mike:lots of these big teams out.
Brent:yeah, like I feel like the people that Andrew ramble was like, these are the people that maple wood, Javier, it needs to be scared up. Like half of them got eliminated getting us to this point. So Paul's gamer zone is versus evolution. This week. Paul's gamer zone is John Cree wall and a bunch of other guys and evolution is. Mamma Szymanski Alex Szymanski Josh, Frank, Jeff do close. So, so like big scheme of things. That's what's going on. What happened with you guys?
Mike:Right. You go first.
Brit:I can go first. So I, I guess, cause my my, my round this week sort of has two stories to it. The first was just sort of as I've expressed before, I didn't really have much interest in like, We're being really, really serious about this. And most, I would say, say a good percentage of that is really just because I didn't foresee myself being like successful and like con like I just knew the kinds of people I would be having to try to convince and just knew that effort, like would not be the answer and to just sort of like, let them, let them do what they want us to just definitely what would have happened. So I'm glad I was just right in that prediction and just came and just, wasn't going to go with the flow no matter what, but so it was part of that story. It was my team just really, really wanted to bring spirit to this last week and as passively as possible, I was just like, Hmm, maybe let's think. You know, even, even up until submission, I was just like, whatever I'm playing, I'm playing peek-a-boo, don't worry about it. We'll be fine. And so, and even part of it too, part of it, part of it that ended up being funny as I got out numbered, it wasn't just the guy wanting the guy that wanted to play spear to him. It was actually another guy being like, no, no, no. I think we met, we stack up really well if we bring the spirit tune deck. But we ended up, we ended up setting it out and so it was our, I played picket choo again. And then we had our L the LMC guy played LMC again. And I guess we had two Picos last week. And so I was this guy actually, I think, so I said, this was, this was the guy that sat out week one. I think he played ADP. And he And then, so it came down, both, both rounds. My first week, and this week came down to the very last game we had to, we had to win and unfortunately we lost this last one. Our ADP player laid a bad list and got swept, lost. It lost all three rounds. It was, it was a mess of a list. It played, I don't even know what it played in terms of trainers. I, I can't, I can't imagine. I actually didn't see it, but it played a just lash and pulley on Zam. A Zenyatta
Brent:Do you want a text for everything instead of just winning.
Brit:I really it wasn't, it was not consistent clearly as, as he got swept. Yeah. And they had their in, so our opponents three decks were sent a scorch alternatice and Green's drag a Poult. I forget what they sat out. But I, I, I did expectedly, I beat the center scorch and I beat created straggle Poult and I lost to the attorney just pretty badly, but it was like, it was actually, unfortunately, like it was one of those games. I don't know how often this has happened to you, Mikey, but I was like, I was going wild with the hammers. I just didn't have anything else. For some reason, I'm like, I just didn't have the attacks or like, was able to like hammer, hammer, grunt, but then like whiffed and energy, like stuff like that ended up kind of being the series rather than the more typical, just like no hammers. And then I lost. But I was really happy with my play. You know, I guess unfortunate that we lost, but it was a fun, I mean, the, as we've talked a little bit about the frustrations of. I think just the broad format of the team challenge, but the playing with multiple people at once is a lot of fun, I think, or at least, you know, maybe some of it is just having like the human aspect of it. Again, like there's just, it's like being at a tournament and you're chatting with your, your, your neighbors. So I'm sure some of it was that too, but I really liked the format and think as Mikey will be able to talk about the team, he had to play against think, like there was some strategy to it. I don't think anyone really probably took it seriously enough. And I just, I enjoy that. Or I enjoy these, you know, other games within the game, just new medications. It's just a lot of fun. I like it and think it's a successful format and magic, and it's always something I would want to see in Pokemon and into magic. It's even better too. So you don't even have to play the same format. You could play various formats the whole time. I just love that.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I totally agree.
Brent:That's funny. I, I like your enthusiasm. I felt like it was like I, I thought we were kind of starting from a point of like, it's weird because the R and G is so much higher because you don't necessarily know these other people you're teaming with. So you're like you start off with down because you're like even if I do good, I put my feet in the hands of potentially not good players. That's weird.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, part of, part of the, part of my fervor, my interest again, I was like, okay, now I'm I had fun this format rules. I'm going to qualify with a team. You know, I, I wanna, I want to try to make that work next time. I think that would, that's the
Brent:We gotta, we gotta rig the game a little more next time. Right? The Kenny, Brittany zebra entertain. What the heck?
Brit:What if I'll become, I'll become my own legal leader and I won't advertise it and somehow no one will enter it, but.
Brent:Exactly.
Brit:Wanted or whatever. And we just have all, all four of us together. And heck just bringing Les while we're at it. He doesn't have a PTC geo account. They weren't always there.
Brent:Nice. All right, Mike, what happened with you guys?
Mike:All right. So we brought the same decks more or less. Justin brought peaker on we'll brought ADP Kettler brought decidua. I switched it up. I, and I brought'em tempos, ARD plus Stefan and our opponents, one of their, one of their players didn't submit a list. So it was just three of them and they all submitted ADP. So we had to play against three ATPs. They were all very similar lists. They're all pretty solid lists. Only one of them had an age of slash the other two did not. So decentralize was a natural bring peek around wasn't natural, bring with a it's pretty solid ADP matchup. They did all play one rusted sword, but peek around was still pretty solid. And so we were kind of debating, do I sit out with the tempos ARD or does we'll set out with the ADP mirror? We decided we'll to sit out with ADP mirror. And so I did play this week. We started off really poorly. I lost my first round in a three game set. It was just kinda like whatever Kettler played against one of the not ages slash lists and lost. He got like my wild poorly and whatnot. And so he, he, like we thought for sure, that was like a free two wins and he lost the first one against non-dangerous lash. So we were down Oh two to start. And then Justin won. So we're down one, two, and then my second match, I won the first game. And then in the second game I was like, screen-sharing on discord. And we were talking about a play and you know how, when you're playing, if the timer comes up, once it comes up a little quicker in future times. And so like I was quick balling for something or talking about what I was going to get and the timer came up and it said 10 seconds, but the discord screen-sharing lag was like enough that it just ended my turn.
Brent:Holy.
Mike:and I was like, I had, I had six energies on a Rashard and I was going to one shot is ADP on that turn. So I like just immediately lost that game, which was really unfortunate. And then and then I lost the game three. So I lost my first two matches. And so now at this point, we're down one, three, and it should be two, two, but so I was like pretty frustrated. And then, but then Kettler beat the other ADP without the age of slash and Justin won again. So now we're now we're at three, three, right? Yeah. Yeah. Three, three Justin's two Oh Oh two Cutler's one, one. So we need to win two more, but one of them is decidua against ADP with Asia slash so like that's an auto loss. We can't win that one. Yeah, right. It is two out of three. It's two out of three as well. So I can't see. So then I win my match, which was pretty close, but, but yeah, I won and then Justin takes it home going three O against ADP with peaker. So it was pretty intense. It was really close. And, and a little scary. There is like multiple. So I played nine games against ADP, I guess. Cause all of my games went to three things. All my steps went to three games. I mean, I think my opponents got like, I chose to go second, you know, whenever I could. Right. So I think I went second. Maybe. I don't know. Let's say. Five times be generous. And so out of like the four times that my opponents went second, I think they got the turn one altered three out of four times. Which was, which is like, not that likely, I think on average, ADP gets turned one altered, go in second, like maybe one out of three or one out of four games. So that was, that made the games really hard. Like there was lots of mock trials happening in all of our matches. So
Brent:I was going to say it did where they were, the guys who didn't run the age slash running double model while
Mike:they were not, they're only running the one, so they, they really
Brent:just bad luck.
Mike:but it was just like, yeah, they, they just like got ahead in against Kettler and then the model, I was just able to finish it off. But but so I didn't know any of the players that we played against. They all played pretty solidly. They had good lists and. I, if I was them, I feel like what they decided to do was like a really good strategy. I don't know if they did this same strategy the first week, but I could imagine if, you know, if you're familiar with like good players and you see that you're playing against my team, which is, I don't want to toot my own horn, but like, I mean, we, we have a lot of notable names on our team, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so like, I could see someone like looking at that and being like, Oh crap, we're playing against these guys. Let's just play ADP and hope we do ADP things. I think that's like a super good strategy for those people to pick if they don't think that they can necessarily outplay a lot of intricate match-ups and like, and whatnot, like I think they were super smart about it and they played well. So I have a lot of respect for them. Super frustrating for us to play against because ADP is, it can be frustrating to play against, but yeah, lots of respect. And. So now going forward, we actually play against win boat this weekend.
Brent:Oh, really?
Mike:Yeah, yeah,
Brent:Do you know what decks they're bringing?
Mike:yet. I think those come out tomorrow. I got to finalize my deck for it. I know wham Balt brought single strike last week. I'd be surprised if he brings it again, but maybe you will.
Brit:What a story is when both playing for.
Mike:I think at the Yeti. Yeah,
Brit:go ahead. It's just what I asked. So I figured it was a St. Louis one, and I didn't see his name here on the chart that he made. Be curious to
Brent:Yeah, I assume you, I mean, theoretically Yeti has the mojo to assemble a Teeter squad, so,
Brit:and I'm sure it's just a handful. I don't know if the crack color colors would play, but I'm sure it's probably just a good chunk of the St. Louis players
Mike:Yeah. They're probably pretty solid.
Brent:Do you guys anticipate bringing the same decks or mixing it up?
Mike:Will, and Justin will continue to rock and peek around in ADP, maybe slightly tweaking lists week to week, but like Justin super comfortable with beaker. Will's very comfortable with ADP and then me and Kettler kind of like going back and forth on stuff. So I think I'm going to bring rapid strike this week. Cause I've played it a bunch in testing and I really like it. And then Kettler doesn't really want to play decidua again. And Luke metal doesn't really seem like a great play anymore necessarily as kind of like a cheese deck. So he's been talking about maybe playing mad party and I feel like that's pretty solid bring especially like, like if, when of brings single strike again, like especially mad parties, a sweet bring.
Brent:Right, right. Yeah. As you were saying, Brett, it's, it's interesting how because the Meadows, like so small and you can kind of, and, and you get this choice where you can put one out. You can say, Hey, we're gonna play, we're gonna play one kind of rogue fringy deck, because it might have party. And then we can look at our matchups and be like, Oh yeah, this is a, this is a thing. Right. You're like ADP and only one has age slash let's go.
Mike:Yep. Exactly. Yeah. So I guess med party does kind of fit that bill too. You're right. So CA Cutler's our wild card.
Brent:Right. Right. Anything else you guys want to talk about?
Mike:I wish we could talk more about players cup, but next week.
Brent:All right, Mike, and tell us now about the secret list he's working on for upper management.