Like back in the day I used to buy, I would buy almost just one, sometimes two boxes of every single set, just strictly for place sets. And he would basically always come out with what you needed to like, sometimes like with, I guess thinking of like gets us being a hollow rare, like occasionally it would be hard and like not the, not the ACE specs, but what were those guys called? The the trainers that attached to your, your opponent's Pokemon. Those were like weird
Brent:Not hindering or was one of them,
Brit:team team, team flare tool or something like that.
Brent:yeah,
Brit:anyways, yeah, they were like strangely in a secret, rare spot, I think in the packs they were straight and we were like 10 bucks or something for whatever reason, but yeah, I missed that. You couldn't possibly do that anymore. And just looking through the scans now, there's, there's just so many supporters and this, that, and actually I do think some of them are good, thankfully, but most of them are not, but that's par for the course, I would think.
Brent:that was such a short lived feature, but it made me sad that they had, they had things like that before. Team flare tools where you can kind of interact with your opponents spoke amount of mess them up.
Brit:Just power spray. Really?
Mike:the only
Brit:Yeah.
Mike:to that.
Brent:so what did power spray do? I mean, I know everybody talks about power, power, power.
Brit:Paris spray, let you, I guess, I guess there was actually, there is that mysterious treasures elk exam that had power spray. You had to discard two cards from your hand to do it. But you just, you, you could cancel a inability back then. It was still there was still that dichotomy of polka powers and polka bodies. And so power sprays only targeted polka powers. And I guess maybe to maybe give you an idea of what those were polka bodies generally are, where like just like, you know, ubiquitous, like field effects or something like that. You didn't have to do anything. Whereas polka powers are like your, your Dedenne charged things that have to activate things that do things once per turn and things like that. And so it was really powerful. You, you had to have three SP Pokemon in play and SP just being, you know, honestly analogous to like rapid strike and single strike, just kind of, there were basics in level Xs, which was kind of the. The design of the cards and the diamond and Pearl era, but it had support around them with the support of cards, but you had to have three or more in play to be able to use it. And it was a powerful card and really the only way that you've ever, it was really the only like real control card I've ever felt we've had in Pokemon, because you think of like magic with, you know, all their, all the blue spells that denied this, stop, that counter that such a sort of obviously core part of magic and the blue coloring specifically. And we just never get that in Pokemon. And it's always to how I feel like our control decks. Aren't really controlled X, if you, you know, if we use, if we use the term generally, I think it works. But if we were comparing across games, like are controlled X or not, and don't control things, they're, you know, they're they're resource manipulation and things like that. It's not the same sort of just like total denial that these magic decks can do. Yeah.
Brent:no, I mean, magic decks. You have the ability to interact with an opponent, like during their turn, which is like something you just don't see in a lot of other card games, I think. But certainly you don't see it in this card game.
Mike:Yeah, power. Yeah. Power spray. And that Alex, Sam, I think we're the only two. Yeah. So, and also like, Brett, did you play when there was polka powers and fuck about his or just abilities.
Brent:No, certainly not me.
Mike:Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Brent:We are like, we started, we started playing like right after X, Y came out basically.
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. So like Garbotoxin would have been a poker body, but decidua GX would be a polka power. That's kind of like the difference.
Brent:right. But yeah, I mean, I've seen, I've seen enough, like poker body poker power stuff to like, be aware that there's a difference.
Mike:Yeah. It always made like that distinction always made sense to me. To have the, kind of like the passive versus the active things. And I also liked that polka powers. Well, actually, so they were called Pokemon powers and they were like one thing and they were all shut off by status conditions. And then they split them to poker powers and poker bodies. Right. Were poker powers stopped by spec status condition still? No.
Brit:no, it was, it was just a, no, sorry. It was poker powers, right? It wasn't poker
Mike:That's what, that's what I said. Yeah. Polka powers were still stopped by status conditions, but polka bodies. were not.
Brit:Yeah, that was definitely just, I don't know. And the game just has, I don't know, it was less binaries and things like that. It's just, there's more good cards, I think too, like status conditions that are relevant and things like that. I know too, just thinking about 2004 and these, all the other old formats we've talked about before, and it's rare, at least just thinking off the top of my head for like a status condition deck, like not to be relevant and kind of at least to some degree in almost any of the Meadows we think about like looking through 2004 to 2012, like, I'm thinking again, just off the cuff here, but like, since the printing of MuTu, I just really can't. I mean, Obviously hypno, toxic laser was a status condition, but it just really, wasn't just more of an annoying plus power. It wasn't like a core mechanic, whereas like cards like McKee experts. So good. Not only because they had that power, but then the ability to shut off, you know, stop your opponent from doing the things they want. But then they're always doing these status conditions too. And it just like, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and these are just the nostalgia talking again. But I just think like all these, the more aspects, the more mechanics and things where I think the more opportunity there are for just better interactions, more games that aren't just sequencing versus yourself and things like that. But yeah, I just can't really think of any recent status condition decks. I shot block, I guess.
Brent:I know, I know one of the things that I think was talked about essentially like in the era before this podcast was how, I mean, I know, I always talked about how Guzma did terrible, terrible things for Pokemon, because like, I mean, if you're going to play like a soldier or something like that, like they're playing a Guzma and they're playing like four versus seekers, like they're, you know, everybody's got an out of status condition. Like there's, there's a supporter. That's going to give you that status condition switch effect. So whatever your plan was expanded and standard when Guzma was in standard is like, it just immediately drove out every status condition back.
Mike:Yeah, like sober was good. then Guzma came out and then
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. They're like, they're like also the gust effect card is a, like, get out of status conditions, free card. And you're like, Oh my God. You're like, why would anyone place that conditions now? Right. It really, really bad in that respect. But it's interesting because on the one hand, like, you'd think like Guzma was a more thoughtful card than like just a straight up gust effect. Cause you know, you have to have your turn planned out, like a little further in advance. Like the Pokemon you put in the active, you gotta be aware like you're going to switch, but the, the secondary effect of ruined all status conditions. Terrible.
Mike:for sure.
Brent:All. Alright, you guys ready?
Mike:Let's do it.
Brent:Welcome to the Trashalanche it's me Brett Halliburton here as always with Brett Pybas and Mike Fouchet. Is at my crochet at Twitter, where it is at B Pybas at Twitter. I'm at B Halliburton. Attendance is 100% as always we're well into the forties in terms of the number of episodes we've cranked out. Guys. It's very impressive. A hundred percent week in, week out. Couple of meaningful five-star reviews guys. So we should talk about these we're on the road to 100. When we hit 100, we will have a contest to award a prize to the best comment ever. The we'll get, we got two comments this week. The first is from Fonzie Berra. He said trash inbound after not playing the TCG since 2016, I decided to get back into it when there was no organized play. The guys here at Trashalanche has helped me understand the current meta, even though in real life events still aren't quite here yet. Highly recommend this for anyone of any skill level. Also figured I should finally leave a review after the Tweedle entrance. That's just nice stuff.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:Yeah. Thank
Mike:all around.
Brent:Yeah, I feel like I'm historically a harsh critic of the quality of people's reviews. I have nothing bad to say about that review. That's a nice review
Mike:No question for us though. Nothing to really talk about.
Brent:there. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. That was, that was your chance to be on the pod. That's how you used it. Having said that complete sentences and, and like a voluminous, a review, as opposed to a one-liner really, really a high quality review. I know we've had so many people ask about leaving reviews on other things. And I went and looked at the Google podcast app, but I don't think reviews are a thing. There are the, a thing on Spotify.
Mike:I'm not sure. I don't I don't really use Spotify.
Brent:You guys were boomers, but, but like, yeah, like my impression is I know every podcast I listened to they're like when you leave reviews on iTunes that helps people find the pods. Like that's apparently a core part. Of the Apple algorithm Jeremy Evans, and this was not an iTunes customer sent me a DM on Twitter saying, what, what can I do to leave a review? I want to leave a review, but I'm not an Apple customer. So I said, okay, man, just just message it to me and we'll roll with it. So, so here's Jeremy Evans. FPG underscore J Evans on Twitter. He says fantastic podcast. I find that the podcast is great for new and experienced players. I love the logic and statistics, the behind the lots of the discussions and the reasoning for certain beliefs like MuTu is just the BDIs. It's great to see top players striving to make the effort to help other players through this pandemic I've been playing and the card game for well over eight years now. And I've never heard anyone do anything like this before. Fantastic idea and great work. Keep it up low key would love to see you guys on my retro weekly webcam tournaments and discord.
Mike:a nice review. A couple of things. I don't think we ever said MuTu as the best egg in the format, but I think we've said peak rom is the best egg in the farm that many times.
Brent:Yeah. You know, I was wondering if he was somehow like he bought Louis once we put two MUTOs in and somehow transformed into a better version of itself
Brit:I definitely
Brent:hard to say
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. Technically I'm YouTube, I suppose.
Mike:I guess I just don't think of it that way.
Brit:Yeah. I forgot.
Brent:go wrong.
Brit:too, but yeah, it's weird. Just thinking about it. What I'm trying to really remember, who was. When did, like who was the, really the first person to innovate that? Cause I was just like peek around was good. You know, I remember kind of the earlier days of the podcast we talked about it in conjunction was like Zigzagoon is nets. And like that deck still had, I think it was pre crushing hammer still. And like that, that kind of good ADP metric, but clearly wasn't all the way there. And, you know, MuTu is what sent it over to the next level, but I'm really kind of blanking on who the first innovator was. I do remember, like I seen a Japanese player and one of the originally early head stirs, maybe it was eliminated limitless playing Pika hammers. And I just thought to myself, like what, why? You know, just odd four, four cards open, no electric power anymore. I guess I'll play crushing hammer. And the rest is history.
Mike:Yeah, I don't remember exactly either. Like, Azule kind of had the real first iteration of how it looks right now, but he didn't have the mute twos in it. But yeah, no.
Brent:Well, I know the nucleus have increased over time. Like it started out at one and then it kind of slowly grew. But it's interesting. I think we'll look back on this last year as a little bit of an odd time in that, like there's definitely, I mean, I think we know there's lots of times where like, people don't, people innovate a deck and they don't win a regionals, like, or someone else wins it with that deck. But like that's success at a big tournament is what drives like awareness of the creation of an archetype or something. Right? Like that person ends up getting a lot of the credit here, like tournaments are happening so fast and so frequently, and they're not like so big and fundamental the community that, that it's going to be a little harder to pick out those like key moments of deck innovation.
Mike:that's true. The other thing in this review is the retro weekly webcam tournament's sounds fun. I've never really been a fan of the webcam. Tournament's I've tried playing on webcam a couple of times in my life. And I don't know, maybe again, maybe, maybe I'm just old. I'm like, I, don't have a separate webcam, you know, it's just part of the one. I just have the one on my computer. So it's really awkward. You have to like angle the computer down in certain ways and
Brit:I, yeah, I actually used to do this, like re this was around when I was first starting playing. I would, I remember even too, I think sometimes like, we'd play over Xbox live even too. And like, I don't know. I think we've maybe just like narrated it and trust, trusted each other. But yeah, it was, I remember playing that and I, I do even more, so remember doing webcam back when there was just a red shark, is that what it was called? Red shark and which you had to play over, like hamachi, which I don't even really understand what this was you had to, there was this weird sort of connectivity issue you had to solve to be able to play someone else over red shark. But webcam was just quicker. And I remember doing that back when I was still in high school, but I'm interested. I even, I even have seen some X and I would plan on, I need to run to the library to proxy a deck. My only caveat is stump. You guys are awfully trustworthy, I suppose. Like, I mean, I guess like you'd probably have to be a pretty lousy person to be cheating in this sort of tournament, but I that's, that's my biggest concern. I don't really have any idea how you would vet that. Cause I would think that like, you know, the web cam captures the board and you know, maybe I guess you can make an effort to make sure your camera or your hand and the deck and stuff stay on camera. But I remember sort of having these thoughts back back then when I was playing Skype tournaments, it just seemed really easy to cheat. But they do look fun and. All for the old formats. That's what I'm here for. So one day I think, but
Brent:I think like you, I used to do a lot of like webcam testing with people. Cause like, like PTCGO, wasn't quite like it was today. And like, we didn't necessarily have the code cards. We didn't necessarily have the cards we had, like. And it was easy to proxy up a deck. And like, obviously we were driving towards, we're going to physically build one of these decks by the end of this week. So we've got to figure it out. We a lot of kind of angle your camera and play Skype games back in the day. But by all my impression is with PTCGO kind of working and I think the results has been I think now that like, I feel like when we interact with people, part of the problem there was, if we were saying, well, we're willing to go get the PTCGO codes and build these decks, like we'd be interacting with people who are like, well, I don't go. So, you know, like, like, you know, so, so they, they would have the physical deck built that they were planning on playing that weekend and, you know, that's, it was what it was. So I feel like, I feel like the community is pretty dialed into PTCGO. Now. I would be surprised if people went away from PTCGO as a testing platform. Let's talk about the tweet lanch for a second, because I think all of these things came in as a result of the tree lanch. We are going to be mailing out some cards. I started, I started pinging people and asking them for their addresses. Cause I wanted to try to like be a responsible person and throw these in the mail while people were excited and, and the result was like, everybody's like, Oh my God, that I want to go a level ball. And I was like and say that, just ask for your address. And I just tweeted like, you know, 30 minutes ago that I'm gonna send something to everybody you know, booster boxes, they follow some sort of law of averages. There was definitely like a couple of people who were huge winners. And then there were a couple of people that like I thought would get something and didn't get the cards they were looking for. I dunno if we want to talk about on the pod or maybe we wait until next week and we just like. Email everyone's stuffing, then they can tweet out what they got or didn't get fascinating results in the Tweedle Anch. We didn't get as quite as many retweets as I think I thought
Mike:it seemed like a pretty popular thread. I mean, what, what were your
Brent:You know, I don't know. We got, we got like, I think like around 30 people ask for cards, but no surprise, like people were asking for pretty rare cards and it was one booster box. So like big scheme of things. I think there were, there were probably like less than half that are going to get like the card. Right.
Mike:yeah, sure.
Brent:So, so like in that way, I'm like, maybe I should have had people ask for two cards, maybe that's two, but that feels like too complicated. And that's why I was like, you know what, I'm just going to mail everybody something. Because life's too short to like, not, not mail everybody something. So but in the intro, bring a treat lunch to the pod guys. We had four people reach out to us from international locations and I said, I'm not going to mail cards to international location, but I will it to every international edition, but we'll do a raffle for an ultimate guard deck box Brit, why don't you pick a number one through four and we will pick the winner of the ultimate guard deck box. And then we go ahead and mail it
Brit:now I'll pick up, I'll pick a
Brent:right now. Let's let's go live on the pod. We're going to pick a winner.
Brit:tough decision. Tough decision. I got to go with my guy. Number two.
Brent:Number two is Gabby
Brit:Hey, good pick. I follow him.
Brent:Well, then you'd go use, you successfully hooked him up with an ultimate guard deck box. I just have to figure out how to mail it now.
Brit:He's just he's in Canada. I believe.
Brent:Wow. That sounds even easier. There we go. People making the magic happen. Let's talk about should we talk about players come for, for two seconds? Is there anything to say about player step four? I get the impression Mike, that you are thinking about other stuff, instead of thinking about players come four
Mike:Yeah, I thought about playing. Well, it's funny. I do think there a, at least from a format a format perspective, it's worth mentioning a few things, but in terms of decks, I'm pretty much set on peak around my thought. About LMZ for a few minutes last night and I've played a game on PTCGO and then I said, why am I doing this? I'm just gonna play peek around anyway. So yeah, like I I've, I've been playing like in a couple tournament's here and there, and I might play a few more over the next week and a half, but I'm just gonna play peek around. It's it's definitely, it it's the best choice for me, for sure. I did have this profound thought though, or at least I thought it was profound. We've seen a significant uptick in rapid strike in the last week or so. And th you might think that that is bad for Pikarom, but I realized. That it's actually good for peek around. Now hear me out. The rapid strike matchup is unfavored, but it's not that unfavored, if we play some of the cards that we've talked about, you know, you could even play a hood and then you're like very close to 50 50, but even without hood with like fourth bus, big charm, I think the matchup is not that bad. And yeah, stamped is just really good for them. They're really good against them. But anyway, okay, so the matchup is not that bad. It's still not good, but the thing is if rapid strike goes up, that means a Turnitin is going to go down and Eternatus is by far your worst matchup, like your match up against it, turn it, this is way worse than, than the rapid strike matchup. So I actually think, or should food being popular is good for peaker. Even though that feels very counterintuitive to say.
Brit:Yeah, that's just been, I think we maybe hit this a little bit last week, but that's just the biggest unknown. I mean, obviously I'm not playing and really not thinking about it, but where I to be w how I'd turn it to shows up, I think, is the deciding factor of the tournament. Not in the sense that I think it has any chance of winning, but I just think that it's, it affects the matchups in such a kind of unique way that I, I don't know if it would be fair to say any other decks really do the same thing, because like so many decks just really takes such a bad, bad matchup to Eternatus like, and they're just on viable and medic games with a lot of it. We can say the. The G to the grass mute too. All of those decks are great. But if you run into a lot of Eternatus, it's a terrible play. And so like other decks like that I just, it's hard for me to say, like, Eternatus, doesn't seem like it has, like, it does it doesn't it doesn't like LMZ is that always the deck I go to, especially now that Centiskorch isn't relevant anymore. As, as the loyalist deck, people, people, people love love to play AMZ LMZ and they don't play anything else, but I just don't don't think I'm not sure if that could be said of Eternatus. I can think of a few players who do seem to play it more, more than anything else, but I'm not enough, not, not at the same level of at least where my, my mental associations are someone like Jake Gerhardt or something like that was like the sort of de facto LMZ player, like who is the de facto you know, the, the exemplar of Eternatus. I couldn't tell you But, yeah, I just don't know. And like we said, last week, I just certainly wouldn't be playing hammers if I were thinking about playing Eternatus. And I just, I would think what Mike is saying is probably right. I don't think it would show up in terribly relevant numbers which definitely would make peaker on really good. A much better play. But yeah, it just seems in general that players cup four is there's just a quiet over at people. People are much more interested in chilling rains. I think we just, we figured out rapid strike players are not rabbit strike, but rather the battle stars format, like kind of at players cup three. And it's been a long time since then. It's in, it's the same at a game, at least until the, the, the final round, the next stage of it.
Brent:so I know we want to spend a bunch of. Talking about the sword and shield on formats, just for fun. But, but I have to say it. So Liam played in a tournament this past week. We decided to randomly play in the Pokestats series three tournament and no surprise. He decided to play extradural control. And I think he, he had I know we've made fun of Mike for the, like, hear me out, pick a, rom his favorite in this match up. Let me tell you why comments before, but like, so, so he went, he went to, to drop, he misplayed into a loss in one round and then gave Shumway give him a smack in a, in a round for the tournament, I think. But when I was asking him how it was going, he was like, man, everybody's got a hard counter to execute real control. All these decks play for Marty. Don't get sucked into Mike's thinking.
Mike:That's funny. It's true. It's true though. The Hart County.
Brit:that's the hardest of counter that you just, you have no chance of getting your cards
Brent:He was like, he was like, man, every time I tried to set it up, it's Marty's Marty's Marty's.
Mike:Man, the so the only other thing worth mentioning for players cup before is the, so the emails went out this week and it came out with a little bit more details on the structure. So we are playing Swiss, as we already knew, unclear for playing eight or nine rounds by guests would be nine, but there are no ties. So that's something that we weren't sure about. There's going to be no ties, but what is still unclear is what will constitute a double. So, so since there's no ties, it's a double game loss. If the match doesn't finish. So like what constitutes. That is still unclear. So if Britt and I are playing and I win game one, and then time is called during game two. Is it a double game loss or do I win the match? It's a little bit more clear cut. If it's one, one in time gets called in game three, then it would be a double game loss. But if one person's up one. Oh, we're not sure yet. So this actually has, I think, pretty big implications on deck choice. I think something like X schedule control would be a pretty terrible choice in, Maybe like if, if the one Oh scenario is just is just a win, then control is a little bit more viable, but still a little scary. Right. But if one Oh, is a double game loss, I don't think any control deck is viable.
Brent:So I know, I feel like at the top of like, you know, the, let me, let me say, like the top 25 30, maybe more masters in the game, it's always seemed like people are very reasonable, but I assume this like incredibly punishing, double game loss is going to result in a lot of text messaging back and forth. You know, with, with four minutes left in the game where people explain their hand and their board state and like, How they think they've won the game at, as they attempt to like negotiate with the other person is scoop or something like, how do you guys see that play out? Is that going to be horrible?
Brit:Yeah, I imagine, I imagine it will be relevant. Concern is, I mean, especially as a control player, I don't know. Like, I know it's a little different with what the, what the players, couple of we played on compared to. The limitless, but I have just like, it's so hard to play those time limits when your opponent, like isn't, isn't there right away. Like, so I'll be able to talk about this more when we talk about sword and shield on. So I just like played in the Altaria deck for a tournament this week and it's felt like I was being intentionally stalled in every single round. And I just like, just such like really, really egregious things were clearly happening. Like people checking in instantly and like I, and then me having to yell at them to accept my friend request and things like that. And like, we're going to tie, we're going to tie, like, what are you, what are you doing in these scenarios? When it's almost five minutes have passed me fairly, even started the game, like even playing ADP or peaker. I would sometimes be worried about being able to finish in time. Like it was just really frustrating experience. So it was super difficult. Like from that perspective, I can't sort of imagine how that would be also playing control in players cup for like under these similar circumstances. I feel like definitely players are. Well, we'll be negotiating and doing their best to like start the explicit, slow flight rules online. That's what I'm trying to say. I think, whereas you can, I don't know, like for what was happening to me in this tournament, I wouldn't, I would've felt very confident in my ability to call a judge and solve the issue. Whereas online I'm just like, I don't even know if I have sort of recourse to a judge. I don't know what the rules are if they would even really be able to do anything. And of course, like who's to say, like, I'm not, you know, sorry, it's a bad connection. I promise I'm not stalling, et cetera. Like, I'm not sure. It seems dangerous to play control.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. But, and yeah, Brent, I think what you said is going to happen in a lot of rounds where, you know, you probably don't talk about at the beginning of a match necessarily, but if you're going into game three and you got 10 minutes left, You might have to talk to your phone and be like, okay. Let's because it doesn't benefit either player. right.
Brent:Right. Right. The double game loss is brutal with no ties,
Mike:yeah. So they're like you're incentivized to come to some sort of agreement
Brent:so, so have you guys, have you guys had like bad experiences as a tournament's with, with like that kind of negotiation? Like, do you feel confident that you'll be able to negotiate in those situations? Or do you worry that I don't know if it's like players will be inexperienced in the fact that like, this negotiation has to take place or they won't be prepared emotionally to have these kinds of discussions or they'll just be immature jerks about it.
Brit:Yeah, this is an interesting thing. Assuming, assuming this is all, you know, as, as legal as possible. Cause if, you know, once we're in kind of like into DQ territory, I would, I would certainly get much more apprehensive about it, but I would think, interestingly enough, it's the top players who would be on board for it. It's the bad players that you're, you're probably going to struggle with. Not
Brent:like, like I said, I feel like the top 40, 50 masters in the game. Like, you've never worried about the DQS because they're going to concede on prizes every time. Like they already know, right? Like they're acutely aware of the situation and they're reasonable people that have had highs and lows and they'll just like, roll it, everybody.
Brit:And so. So just like I just thinking of, you know, this, this happening in like real tournaments, you know, back in the day when Jason Kaczynski was still playing, I remember just remember playing him or sitting next to him and he almost start every best of three with like w how, how would he put it? So like, if, you know, if we're playing game three and you're a head on prizes, I will concede to you, you have, you are under no obligation to do the same thing, but it was just sort of his icebreaker for, for every round and things like that. And, you know, again, to like top players, just like they get it, they get, you know, some of the sorta like semantics of it, you know, like in a nine round tournament to high in the first round is kind of just a loss like, and, and, and things like that. And those sorts of points are just so much more clear for a seasoned veteran. Who's who's made it through Cod who understands how an ID, like, I don't know. I mean, maybe either of you can speak on this, but not even just sort of working out these awkward. Sort of positions where you have to sort of figure out how to concede because the rules aren't great, but more so too, I've, I've struggled to convince people to ID before. And it's just I've I can't for the life of me, sort of put myself into the shoes of these people who are like apprehensive or just like, not don't just trust me. Like I understand not trusting me. I'm not saying you know, a super affable person, but like, I'm just saying, like, it's just weird to me being like, I'm a veteran I've made top cut before. Like what about me? What about, what about this screams screams out to you as being a lie and things like that. And so, yeah. I just think that it's harder to tell newer players, less experienced players, both. Aren't going to be able to analyze the board at the, at the same level as Mikey or Azula and then equally too, they're just like, like, Oh, I don't know, man. I might still win. I might still just stamp you and come back. I was like, but you don't have time to stand me and come back. That's what I'm trying to say to you. Things like that.
Mike:Yeah, we will. We'll see. Hopefully I don't have any par stories for you in a few weeks.
Brent:I never worry about the guys who have really like been there before. It's the people that haven't been there before and they have a hard time figuring out what's going on. And you know, and I guess what's funny is a lot of them are happy to tie and just play for like any point at any placement in, in some of these like regionals, this is a different situation. Like, I mean, double game loss. I mean, yeah, the question is just how much do you want to like ruin it for everybody while you're ruining it for yourself? Right.
Mike:One thing I am thankful for is that so on some of the, like all of the tournament's that are on limitless, you're playing with people from all over the world. Right? And so sometimes when it makes sense for you to ID you try and talk to them and they don't really speak English. And so you, there's a, there's like a language barrier there at the very least, everyone in North America hopefully will speak, we'll speak English. So we can at least try to have that conversation. Like at least that's one, one less barrier.
Brent:Well, you know, I, you know, it's funny. I hadn't really thought about that now. I know like we've competed at worlds and my kids have been in situations where they want to ID and to cut and or ID into day two or whatever it is. And like the memories I have are two different situations with Japanese kids. And both times, like we just walked up to the table and they extended their hand. Like they were ready to get off. They know it's.
Mike:Well, and again, I think this goes back to what you were saying, right, These are generally the players that are at the world championship in the position to ID. No, that they should ID
Brent:right. right. Yeah. Like they, they, you know, and I recognize like Japanese tournament formats are weird. Like, I don't know how much there's a culture of it being in Japan, but like, they knew how they knew how to do this one. There was no need to discuss, but yeah, there have been other situations and we've always tried to be really sensitive to it in juniors and seniors where somebody doesn't really understand. And we have asked them if they want to ID and they're like, they worry that they're getting tricked because we're like the more experienced been there, done it before players and or their parents are like confused or giving them bad guidance or their parents are not there, which is like the worst situation in my mind. And ended up having to play it out. Like it's their prerogative.
Mike:Yeah,
Brit:I've gotten in trouble before. It's like smaller league Cubs where we're playing the right round. And I'm not only like in the process of trying to convince my opponent Hy-Vee, but I'm trying to explain to everyone, like, okay, you ID and your ID and your UID and the winner of these two games. We'll make it in. Like I I've got, I've got, I've got cut, like completely figured out. And people are just like, yeah, like a judge, I got, I've been scalded by like judges. Like just let people play and just like, no, I'm helping you guys. I'm helping all of you. Those tables, those two people are the only ones that have to play. Just listened to them.
Brent:you can, you can start deck checking these decks right now and we can shave 30 minutes off this tournament. Let's go.
Brit:part of it too. That's part of it. I'm trying, I'm trying to get home as fast as possible. Like, so I'm just like, okay, I need to start checking decks. And they're just like, Hmm. I must table judge juniors. I must change the table. Judge. The last table of juniors instead.
Brent:That, that definitely gets my goat. When, when I'm like, Do we just ID to and cut we'll use, will you start deck checking decks now? And they're like, no, no, no. I'm going to wait until cuts formerly published. And I'm like, look at that. Look at the pairings, man.
Mike:yeah.
Brent:of course, like juniors and seniors I'm like, you know, Hey, you guys are gonna be here for another six hours and that's why the judge is all casual about that. I'm like we could be out of here in an hour, if you would just deck check. These decks were around for this tournament up. I want to go. Ah, all right,
Brit:too, it's, it's also the judges that, that don't understand that I'm right about cut. They're just like, Oh, we just have to wait and see. And I'm just like, no, I've solved it. There's zero possibility for anything else to happen, or at least zero possibility for the six of us right here. And not to make cut in the judges. They'll just be like, I don't know, like top judges are usually great, but I think we all have experiences with some like lower level judges who just don't don't understand the competitive side of game and often even the game sometimes. And it's just like also difficult to be, to be in circumstances where like they're in charge of you, so to speak.
Brent:All right. Let's talk about a couple more things before we dive into a sort of shield on do we have stuff we want to talk about with respect to chilling rain?
Mike:if we have time, if we have time, let's do sword and shield on and we'll see, we'll see how long it takes
Brit:yeah, we can. I'm sure it's many of our takes are there ones out there on Twitter with everyone else's shadow writers. Good. Passing the peak is good. Things like that. There's a few cards. I definitely have my eye on, but I don't think I have a hot take or a deep, any deep observations. Just kind of the general ones everyone else has.
Brent:all right. All right. Should we do some advertising for the snow point circuit, 2009 webcam event? Mike, was there a deck that you played in 2009, format, four worlds or something?
Mike:that would I didn't. That was the first year. I didn't qualify for worlds, like in. Many years. But I did orchestrate help orchestrate the flagon memory Barry deck that did quite well. I think it got second and fourth in seniors and then Jonah or Sebastian crema got tepee in masters. I failed to grind in, but Tyler Nemours grinded with the same 60 that I played. And so me and him, me and Tyler were kind of the creators of that deck. So basically, I don't know if you know any of the, the cards and how the deck works. So basically fly gone level X had a poker body and ability that in between turns you would discard the top card of your opponent's deck. And there was a trap inch that had corner you. So for a fighting, or I think it was a fighting, it did 10 and you're putting couldn't retreat. And memory barrier is the same thing as memory capsule, you know, you get to use it. So and everybody played clay doll in this format and there was very few switching cards that were played. so what you would do is there was also a, there was a, palki a level X that was a Guzma essentially for an ability. And so you would bring up their clay doll and you would. He was memory Berry and trapped there, clay doll active for eight turns, as you know, it's you slowly killed it and you had just discard their deck. And it played a bunch of other tech cards and the, the regular fly gun was also a really good card and had its own attack. So there was lots of different strategies, but that was kind of like the core of it. You would mill out your opponent by blocking something active. It's a really cool deck. One of my I've been I've helped make a lot of decks, but that was one of my favorites that I've made.
Brent:so, so I assume if you were going to play in this tournament, that is the deck you would play.
Mike:Yeah. Some iteration of it, for sure.
Brent:How about you, Brett, do you have a, a hot take on the 2009 format?
Brit:yeah, this was right around this time. I started playing. I hadn't I was just going to leak until the next season really, but I re I remember the, remember the event happening Steven Sylvester wins with Beedrill kind of an interesting feature list, but I have my favorite deck of that format was definitely palki Alok. I really liked palki Alok. So what Palka, this was an SP card. Like we were talking earlier earlier about So you have full access to the whole like SP support engine, which is really, really insane. Can compare it to kind of what your other options were. So you had, you had a Cyrus's conspiracy, which was a supporter that grabbed a basic energy, a, a, another supporter and And a team Galactic's tool. And then all of the team Galactic's tools were very good. One of them was power spray. One of them was SP radar, which was just a search card for SP cards. And one of them was energy gain, which was the tool card that when attached to your SP Pokemon, they paid one less colorless attack. And then polka turn, which was scoop up net for SP Pokemon. So all of those, all of those researchable and, and and so then what, how Kia did palki level X love Alexis, we're kind of, we're similar to the maxes. They had to be active to evolve but that's really kind of the only difference. So palki a level X Pokegear G level X, excuse me. Cause they were, there were two Mikey's deck, I believe played the other The Pokegear G once per turn, you could loss zone. If you had four or more, it was for both players. If you had four or more bench Pokemon, you could lost zone down to three. And so what you would do back then there was a lot of hand handed bench, like support Pokemon. So that would just, you would just keep clearing your bench to be able to use more of those. So that was which was shaman or Crobat but for an extra card, it was seven. But the main part of the deck was mess sprit and mess hand, hand to bench. Your opponent can't play any abilities. It is like like having Garbodor every time it went to the bench, Garbodor would be in play for your opponent's next turn. And so you would just do that again and again and again, and then with power spray and things like that, just deny your opponent's ability to set up. And then you, there's lots of
Brent:P I, so people, I, although I didn't play in this area, I assume people were like super alignment. I've seen cradle to like, get set
Brit:Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, that was kind of the, one of the biggest stories of power spray as a card was just that if you went first, you know, if I I'm going first and especially to one of the biggest, one of the big cars in a lot of the SPDX was called energy and color, and G was kind of the only thing you could do going first. Cause back then the first turn rules were just draw, attach and attack. You couldn't play supporters or trainers or anything like that. But calling her D was just, they provided a colorless energy and you could end your turn to put, to Pokemon on the bench. So if you opened with an SP Pokemon you would have three at the end of your turn. And then so say your opponent just had a hand that needed to Oxy or needed to collate all the game was just over on turn two. So like much rare for that to happen compared to like similar things now. But that, that was just one of the most devastating things about that format. But yeah, it was definitely my favorite decade sort of people would always think cause luxury, the G level X was more popular card lightening type hockey. It was weak when people just generally assume that Pachia loss for that reason. And that was just wrong going into the next year. I thought that palki log had a favorable matchup. Again, SP a lot of it was this promo toxic croak that just for a psychic and a colonialist. So ideally just like an energy game could always just respond to the Lux SRE and you would end up winning long game of attrition. And and then kind of the other big factor too, was what was called AMU. So there was one, there was an Azle from mysterious treasures where if you had the other two in play, your opponent's basic Pokemon took one more energy to attack and that would really, really hurt Lux jump. It was a close match up, but maybe, maybe something like peek around versus rapid strike, like on paper, it seems really unfavorable, but like when you're a good player, it's fine. It is what it is. But that was always my favorite deck of those years.
Brent:the way you guys described it. It sounds like it'd be very diverse and like pretty healthy format.
Mike:Oh, yeah, it is cool. It's just cool. When there's, there's like multiple stage twos that are viable, there was basic decks that were viable. Yeah, those are some good years.
Brent:all right.
Brit:That's five fine.
Brent:Speaking of great years, let's talk about a world in which sword and shield on is the future guys
Mike:Yeah. So
Brent:in some sort of shield on tournaments now, right?
Mike:we did. Yeah, Brett and I played yesterday and it was relatively small. But part of the impetus of this is I'd been playing in some sword and shield on events over the last few weeks, bred, I think has played one or two with me. And then. So, Pablo table mountain has been running them pretty regularly every week. And he has the combination of these in his table. Mind invitational that is this weekend. He's running it in a worlds S styles. so day one on Saturday is open to anybody that wants to play. And then the top 32 we'll move on to Sunday day to where they will be joined with top 32 players in the rankings from his from, from the previous tournament. So day two, we'll have 64 players. I I've talked a little bit about my first two results, but I played one last weekend again, and I got top eight with rapid strike. Cause so with that, I am safely qualified for the day two. So I'm, I'm excited to play in that. And so I've been talking to Brit and a couple of other people about what to play. And so that's why we played the event yesterday to kind of test some stuff out and try some things. So that kind of gives you a little background of why we're talking about this and why we're interested. So I think the, the format is very warped around Victini I would say there's kind of like the big number one because it's so easy for it to be aggressive and. Going first, it can knock out any V Pokemon at one son turned two very strong. So Victini is kind of like the centerpiece I would say of the format also in tier one, I would say is Dragapult for kind of similar reasons. It's very, very strong, very disruptive
Brent:Good. Again, searching Shifu. Good against random stuff.
Mike:Yeah. And then the third tier one deck, I would say is single strike. Single strike is a little bit weak against those other two decks. It's okay. It's fine against Victini. But pretty weak against Dragapult, but then it kind of just beats everything else and it's a pretty versatile deck being able to one-shot other V maxes. So there's just really good. So I've, in my opinion, those are kind of like the three tier one decks and then. Right. below them. I would put in telly on variants and rapid strike variants and rapid strikes, kind of interesting. There's a bunch of different ways people play it, some play it with Gino, similar to how it's played in standard. Some play it with like artillery and whatnot. And then the most popular band though is actually the rapid strike Zacian deck, which is kind of just a case of taking two very strong cards And, putting them together. There is some math there that works out, right. A braid blade plus a G max Raptor flow two shots, any V max. So I'd say those are kind of like the, all the big decks, there's other things that are relevant in the format, but those are really all the big ones. The other thing to kind of note, which is pretty interesting is the stage two Italian, right? Is it a lot of these decks? It's in a lot of the Italian VMX decks. That seems relatively obvious, but it's played in like there's rapid strike with Intelius. There's Victini with Intelius, there's other decks with Italian, just because the engine is pretty strong to help set things up as well as giving
Brent:and for people who are just listening, that the reason that like in the stage two Italians ability is get two trainers from your deck. Right,
Mike:And the stage one is get one trainer from your deck.
Brent:right,
Mike:So, so it's a, it's a pretty good setup engine in a format that doesn't have as many tools as we have right. now. And if you play a water, energy or two water energies, it gives you a pretty decent attacker period, but especially against things like Altaria or decidua
Brent:how, how strong is it as a Victini counter? Is it, is it really good or is it just like the numbers aren't quite right.
Mike:It's okay. I mean, Victini camp, one shot at which is good, but it doesn't one shot Victini either. Cause it only does one 20, so it's, it's okay as a Victini counter, but it's not the end. All be all.
Brent:so how, how big and IntelliJ online are people playing like playing the stage two Pokemon as a support Pokemon is like a weird thing to me.
Mike:What have you seen?
Brit:It's usually three to two or two to two, I would think I'm trying to try and remember what I played against yesterday. Cause I played against a rapid strike deck that played it and the Victini deck, that one also is playing it. Yeah, I think it's always around then. I think it just kind of depends on, you know, how exactly you're fitting into the deck. Are you, you know, is it a natural inclusion? Did you already have level balls in the list or are you fitting level balls in the list, you know, to, to make it tell you and run a little bit better? I think those are just kind of some of the basic questions you ask when deck building, but yeah, this part is, that was just my main observation from yesterday. Thinking about maybe trying to pick up the shiny ones and hoping that maybe, maybe they'll flip a nice investment going over time. Yeah. I'm just so impressed by this card. It's so good. It's I. I'm hesitant to suggest that it will remain the case for like all sort of shield on, I would guess that we're just kind of in this, you know, invented fake format of ours. There's, aren't a lot of sets, so it's just like natural that our consistency options are pretty limited and it's just so happens to be one of the best ones available. I really, really, really like it. I just love, I mean, a consistent deck, what, what to complain about if your deck just does what it's supposed to do, and it really, really ensures that. And I definitely think it seemed better than like artillery for sure. Compared to you know, playing that and just the OSHA Fu deck. But yeah, even, even, even in Victini weirdly enough, it hits, it seems good. The I'm blanking on the name of the person who won, but I just remember seeing that list yesterday and being like, yeah, this looks really, really, really good. And I think one of the, one of the other parts of on that's really good is that it's just, it's your free counter. I don't, I can't imagine it would be enough to help you be to decidual iDeCK but I do think it is enough to beat the right Altaria decks. I think there are certain Altaria the x-ray a single IntelliJ on with a water energy is maybe gonna help you go to the distance. And so the Victini deck, the one yesterday did in fact play a single water energy. And I think that makes sense, especially in these decks that are probably playing energy search and things like that. Just why not? And even the, the deck I play at the deck, we'll talk about here in a little bit. It does the same thing and I attacked with him telling him almost every game that I can.
Brent:Yeah, so I think Lucas old's Dale was the guy who won. He played a four, three, one line with one scoop up net.
Mike:nice.
Brent:Oh, at four level balls. And for evolution instance, And a level ball. It only gets him, I guess, so bulls and drizzles,
Mike:Right?
Brent:but I guess the fact that you can get the drizzles with the level ball that that's like really good, actually
Mike:Like, there's just not that many good cards in this format. So like turning like, and level balls, like always playable. Right? So as long as you have the basic on your bench, like, I love a ball is essentially always a supporter or always something else that you may need. And especially in a format where Marnie is one of the best supporters, it's pretty easy to get marinade and not a whole lot, but maybe you just, as long as you get a level ball off it, then you're good or an evolution incense even.
Brent:right, right. And if you're just like playing evolution, instances and level balls, you're like thinning out your deck. Like
Mike:yeah,
Brent:there's like a little bit of synergy there. I could see it.
Mike:yeah,
Brent:And like, and like you say, Hey, I can level ball for like any card in my deck. That's really good.
Mike:yeah. Right, exactly. So it's pretty. Yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good. in a lot of these decks, not every deck can really fit it and it is week to Dragapult like having the IntelliJ online in your deck. It's a little weak to Dragapult, it's a little weak to rapid strike, but overall it's a nice inclusion in a lot of these decks and especially in like Intel on VMX stacks, like it really makes a whole lot of sense cause it's a really nice attacker as well to kind of like force your opponent to draw more than six prizes. One thing I've found in this format that is quite different from current standard, it's really hard to force your opponent to take seven or eight prizes. It's really pretty easy for your opponent to just kill two V maxes or kill a three V Pokemon and really not have to do quote unquote extra damage in order to win the game. And, and telly on can help out with that.
Brent:So, so what did you guys play? And how'd your tournament go?
Mike:first and then we can deep dive into Zuru day a little bit. So I played Intel Xeon. So Brett and I a few weeks ago had created well. So It's kinda been the defacto IntelliJ on deck of the sorting shed on format. And it's pretty good, but a few weeks ago, Brett and I had created just straight and telly on Italian. So we cut out the frost moth, put a bunch of energy removal in and just kind of leaned on that aspect of the deck. And it's that version is very, very good against stuff like Victini, Dragapult Eternatus anything that requires two energy attachments, because you can pretty much deny them attacking. The vast, vast majority of the game, or at least until you're ready to start doing the one 60 attack. But this version is quite weak against rapid strike and single strike, which have energy acceleration in the single strike case and the rapid stray case, just, you know, a tax one 50 for one energy, which is super efficient against you. But so I wanted to kind of take that idea and try something else. And so Peter Kika one in, in real life event a few weeks ago with the Victini deck, that was really just straightforward, but it ran Rose and Rose tower to help fend off against the crushing hammer and energy denial of the format, which is quite prominent. And so I kind of took that idea and adapted it for Italian. So it was just really straight and tele on V max, no IntelliJ on stage to play played Rose engine. And it was pretty good. I actually, there's a lot of aspects of it that I liked more than the Rose Victini deck. The fact that you can just attack for one energy is, is really nice. So you can like, if you want to, you can Rose to a bench guy and then attack with the first attack on the active, which is cool. Your Rose Rose feels like you get more value out of it when you're attacking for three energy as opposed to two. So it, it ran pretty well. I was impressed with, with how it ran. I went forward to, I lost to who the only lightening deck in the tournament tournament, which was a, like a Bolton electro deck. Obviously I'm going to lose that. And then I lost to IntelliJ on frost moth, which also does seem like a bad matchup just cause they have a little bit more acceleration than you do. But he also had an insane start. He played 10 energy, nine energy and his deck. Let me see He played nine energy in his deck. And on turn two, he played all night and energy, which was insane.
Brent:Must be nice.
Mike:yeah, so that was pretty, that was pretty rough, but that deck ran pretty well was pretty happy with it. Brit,
Brit:Yeah. How much, how much, I'm just curious about the energy. It's like how much of it was like raw or did they play like three capricious buckets to Pat, you know, dumping them down?
Mike:I think he played
Brent:waters, one captured two buckets.
Mike:Yeah, but I think he only played one bucket and just happened to have, Oh yeah. All of those energies, like by the end, like he had, he had Crobat it and Juniper bird on on his second turn and end. It has turned with one card in his hand. Feels good, man.
Brent:Geez.
Mike:All right. Brett, talk to us about Zuru day.
Brit:I don't want to talk too much about it. I would your creation more than mine. And I think I was trying to tell Brent, before we started recording, so correct me if this is wrong, but I, I believe the story of where this debt comes from. I don't know if you happen to know the name of this, this concept you just happened to play against. And another one of these tournaments is that right? And it's just, you thought it seemed promising or something like that and have improved it. It's funny how that happens. A lot of, a lot of the decks that I haven't done really, really well with in my tournament, history were just peoples. People had good ideas, but bad lists. And I just leave, you know, actually like the, the, the mega Gardevoir deck that I played at Florida regionals was just like a local from our friend Curtis in Canada's league. And it was just terrible. And he's like, yo, this concept is actually pretty good. And so things like that happen. And so it seems to be the case here. And so what the deck is just as a rude Altaria and IntelliJ on those are the only Pokemon in the deck. Of course we know it Altaria and we've talked about Intellia now. But what Zuru does, if you don't know, which I didn't know, as the tournament went on was learning different parts of what it does. So it has its first attack just as 50 and lock up you can't retreat. But then at second attack for two grass, you can attach grass energy for, to up to two of your bench Pokemon. And if you do it fully heals them, I think that it didn't make a step tile do this or something relatively similar to this.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. It was, it was one of those Pokemon that never saw play, except in like really fringe decks.
Brit:People. Yeah, people played
Mike:really bad at worlds.
Brit:It was a worlds. It was a secret world stack just straight September. But anyways and so, so it's kind of the control deck. Like it's not just like, Altaria, it's an Altaria deck, but you, you just kind of actually have some plays, some, some thinking to do, it's not an Altaria decorator, just sitting there and hoping they don't have a counters and hoping the 60 damage can take you all of the way. You just, you kind of looped you just you it's, it's awkward and matchups where the zeros can get one shot, but there's plenty of match-ups where it can't get one shot. And those are basically just unusable. If they can't one shot at you as how you have Altaria is you have to Sur rudes out and you just, you're just going back and forth. And the deck plays a heavy training court. So like ideally a lot of energy as well as heavy training court. So it shouldn't be in theory easily to. Always have energies. And so, especially too, when you have training court in play, you just retreat, pick it back up fully heal and rinse and repeat until you you've taken all your prizes. And yeah, I think that's just the big story of why the deck's good. We've talked about you know, most of the decks that are relevant sword and shield on and like basically the Victini can one shot at naturally weakness. Not even a factor and Zacian can one shot on it, but basically if if those cards aren't in your deck, I just don't think. You can beat it, like in tele, on can be a little difficult because of the spread damage. I think if they played scope or the telescopic site, it would be pretty hard, but they don't, they don't happen to be playing that for the moment. But yeah, it's like free, if there's, there's nothing rapid strike can do rapid strike only has one 50 and double one 20. Yeah. And you just, you just lock them from there. And really it's not, it's not a particular, really like difficult combo. Like we see with Escadrille and things like that. It's just energy and Pokemon. So it's relatively like Marnie proof, hand, hand proof resilient and things like that too. Yeah. And I, I just remember, so Mikey played it against me. We, we were play testing on, on Tuesday and I just kind of, one of my initial impressions was just how consistent it seemed. It plays Sonia, which I know I've talked about really liking on the podcast before. It's just such a, when you're, when you're debt can afford to be that slow, it's just, it's a wonder, it's such a wonderful card. Just and then, so that's very helpful too, to kind of making sure you always have energies in your hand too. Yeah. And this just doesn't, it's just a combo deck sort of, or a control that Carver, you want to think about it that just doesn't have a whole lot of moving parts to it.
Brent:And I assume the idea is like you set up to the roads and then you like set up an Intellia and then you say you got to kill Altaria to win the game. Like.
Brit:yeah. Yeah. So you have to be, you have to, that's one of the bigger things you have to be thinking about, making sure you don't accidentally give your opponent a way to win. You have to be pretty Methodical about the Pokemon you bench, and really got to figure out how your opponent's gonna beat you pretty quickly. And so like some games I can, I can see like being difficult that I wear, like Zeebrugge it's knocked out early and you somehow are forced to like, need to bench another one. But again, like, thankfully the decks I can knock out into the road just don't really have Altaria answers. And so like the, the deck that one did, but maybe you can be one in Italian with one water energy. I'm not sure, I guess it depends on if they have a way to get the water and energy back, which I suppose they would with our training court. But yeah, I, I just think a lot of decks, it doesn't matter if they have a counter or not it's dessert, rude stuff that kind of sets it over the edge and even against like other Altaria decks, like how on earth did they beat you? They can't, they can't ever do anything to you. You just rotate out the Terrios healed them rotates the rudes heal them. Yeah, it was, it was a really cool deck, fun deck, right?
Brent:If they, if they can't one shot, the military is you cycle them in the same way you were cycling those routes. That's nice.
Brit:Yeah. I'm trying to think of like any match-ups I didn't play against that. Like maybe it would have been difficult. I haven't, I'm not sure, but I just think at the root itself presents like a whole wall strategy. That's separable from the wall strategy that Altaria presents. And so it's, it's multifaceted in that way. But to give you my report, I guess, relatively quickly. So I went for one and one, I got six, I think it was six rounds. No top cut. Round one, I played against this, just a Bismal like Crobat V max Altaria deck. Like it wasn't, it wasn't a particularly well-made list
Brent:Right. He's just, he's just spinning to the bench and walling with Altaria.
Brit:Yeah. And he made, he made a lot of, he made some pretty, pretty questionable decisions. We tied, of course there was, I saw the deck list and immediately said, this is going to finish. Like I have no way to beat him. Cause he played a lot of healing cards too, like Cheryl, but not only Cheryl, but he played this card. I had never seen before. It was like, it was a team. It was a team yell tool that healed 50 or a team yell trainer card that healed 50 from both actives.
Mike:Never seen that either. I just looked that up when I saw it in that guy's list.
Brit:yell horn. And he actually, I think really easily would have beaten me if he had played correctly. But he didn't thankfully we tied and then after that, I guess pull it up. I remember some of my matches, but I'm blanking on. Okay. I'd be at an Intel, Leon in the following round. I don't actually know. Can I pull up my tournament history? Yes.
Brent:yes. Cause I'm looking at it. Yeah, you'd be that. Intellia and then you'd beat inertia. Fu
Brit:Yeah. And then I'd be in Fu and then I, I decked myself out. Well, I guess I didn't, I didn't deck myself out and I just went and entered into a deck out scenario against a Zacian deck. And I lost, unfortunately, because that was really entirely my fault. I know I've talked a number of times on the podcast about sort of that I have bad Hearthstone habits that translate to bad Pope PTCGO habits when I'm playing. So what ended up happening was that, like, it just didn't seem like he was playing seriously, and that was my cue to not play seriously, to tab out to Facebook and go do whatever else I was doing. And so like for the first two turns, he just like. He just, he was doing nothing, but he had like a 40 card hand, one station and it was just Intrepid sorting and he wasn't getting energy. And so I just thought he was just like messing around. Like he didn't want to concede and go home, but he knew there was no way he should win. So he was just having fun or something like that. So I just ended up not paying as close attention and like could have been more conservative with my Marnie's and things like that. Unfortunately just decked out, which one of the main improvements from the deck list I think is which factored into that game as we only played one boss, or I only played one boss for this event, which was bad, almost every single round and would have won that game.
Brent:right, right. I mean, when you say you would've lost a Crobat Altaria I feel like one of the weird things about Crobat BMX is like when the, when the attack at you're spinning to the bench with gives three prizes, like they don't need a whole lot of gusts effects. To take six prizes, even if their wall is like really, really good. But if you only play one boss
Brit:Oh yeah. It just doesn't seem good for how popular of rapid strike is your, your wall. This gets one shot and things like that. Then the runner for that, I'd be a deck, a deck that I would interest be interested in trying, or it'd be interested in doing something. So it wasn't, it was single strike, but not really with the VMX, it was more centered around the stone Jernar and had kind of a few other things. But when I, when I, when I saw the pairing, I just assumed it was an auto loss like Mikey and I tested the VMX single strike against an earlier iteration of the Ruda. And it seemed really bad. But this one I don't have, it just ended up being really lucky because of the stone journey. Like, like what would we said before? Like my deck is tangentially very, very good against the stone journey and the hound doom are we to grass, which I didn't know. And they also don't want shot the, the route. So really my only threat was his like Tyranitar movie, which thankfully also is weak to grass. So yeah, I ended up being a better game than I expected. And my final round, I, I finally played against a I guess this one, it was Zacian or shift and it had, it had actually zero counters. He conceded basically, as soon as I got the first Altaria up, whereas like the other issue, a few deck I played against, I had to like kill some oculars and things like that made, made me work for it. Whereas he just conceded, but it's a cool deck then. One I one, I think what we, I would definitely, I think I wanted to play in the, in Pablo's tournament this weekend, but I don't think it's gonna work out. I I'm, I'll be out of town for a wedding and I thought the wedding was later and I would have time in the morning to play, but it's early. So I probably won't be able to play unfortunately, but I would definitely stick with this deck. We've talked about a couple of changes to the list and I don't really see why I would want to try anything else. It's fun. It's different. And it'll frustrate some people.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I think the only thing that it really takes a hard loss too, is single strike or Shifu. Everything else. It seems like it has a pretty solid shot against which is cool.
Brit:yeah. What I would want to do against this Stoneburner deck is I think I would want to try to like marry the two. I think you're you, you want to play the VMX still, but like two, one or one, one or something like that, and still try to send her your strategy around single prizes, but then you still have this auxiliary option to like, to nuke stuff, to go through decidua and things like that. And Altaria, and I think he even kind of was thinking about that too, just from our testing games. Cause then I remember I, I played our game wrong too. You don't like I benched a second or Shifu for some reason. And it immediately, it was just like, Oh, I won't need this. I just need the first one. And then I'll finish the game with hound doom. So I think something like that would maybe be a viable. Especially too, just like Victini is so good. But if none of your cards that are movies, like you've got a fighting chance, especially going second are going. Yeah. Going second.
Mike:Yeah, that's a good that's a good point. Maybe I'll think about that. Could run like, yeah, like a two, two line maybe of the VMX and like two or three stone Jenners in two Tyranitar is maybe we just have like a single strike box.
Brit:Yeah, exactly.
Brent:I, you know, I, I got to tell you the problem in my household would be if if Liam tried to play that deck you'd would be like, I just want to crack a lanch every turn, because it has a mil of fact, I don't care about it.
Brit:I wish it did more damage. If it did a little more damage, it would be really good.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:It's a good time to
Brent:So, so one of the interesting things about the stone Jenner deck, when I, when I looked at the list really quickly, that I think it was an interesting design decision. I thought about it as we were talking about Intellia too, is he goes for the three hound doors for hound dooms.
Mike:my guess is he just doesn't own for him.
Brent:Really?
Mike:only, that's the only logical thing that I could come up with.
Brent:I think, I feel like it was like Andrew at one point, like. Popularize, this idea like of playing a stage two line where it was like a three, four, four or something. And his logic was, well, you know, if I'm on a Juniper, I'll never Juniper the basic cause I can always just bench it. But, then like, you know, all the, all the stage one to stage two, it was like, I might have to Juniper them. So I run more of the stage ones and stage two is that I do with the basic cause the basic you have just always batch. Is that like insane?
Mike:I feel like that logic is okay, but I think what you're might be referring to is like Vileplume best bit Quinn, which I think is like a, I think that's a fine logic there. Cause you just need one Vileplume. But in this you want to maybe even, probably not three, but you always want like two hounding out. And so like you need to find the hound doors ASAP. So I don't know. It just seems
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it was, maybe it was that he was running like a one to two line instead of like the two, one, two that other people had been running.
Brit:I know we've talked about this before, but like back in the day, people would do this with clay doll for some reason. Like I forget whether it was the logic, just that, like, you had more search for the ball toys or you could call for the ball twice. And so you just want to have the clay doll in hand, like already
Mike:maybe. Yeah. You could like cause you played call on Roseanne's right in most of those. So I guess that. was kinda
Brit:Just that I, I never, it always seemed like I remember thinking about that when I first started playing and sort of like, okay, like that's next level. Right. You know, that's what the pros are doing. This was Steven Sylvester was winning worlds with, but now as I'm thinking back on it, and I just can't, it just doesn't seem right to me, particularly with like broken time-space and things like that. Like, cause as like jump off, wouldn't do like jump off would do that sometimes, but I just I'm just like don't you want as many Pokemon on your benches? Possible. It was played the third beltway, but I never understood. And like Steven Sylvester is less, only plays two broken time-space, which is just seems abysmal to me. I would definitely play for, I would think if you're playing a Beedrill deck currently.
Mike:Yeah, so I think it's interesting that he on their hands three hand door, but I just can't, I can't get behind it.
Brent:it sounds like you think that is definitely not some next level Strat.
Mike:no, like he plays three level ball and the only Pokemon that you can find with level ball is hound or so like, Just drop a level ball for another hand, or like, I don't know, man. Like what if you prize a hound door and then the first one gets chaos, then you lose the game. I don't know. It seems silly,
Brent:All right. Let me, let me ask you guys one more question that the second place deck was a rapid strike or Shifu Chino deck. And he doesn't play any crushing hammers, but he plays too. Fan of waves is crushing him or out of format. And I don't know about it.
Mike:it's in the format.
Brent:Yeah. So, so he plays fit. I can only assume he plays span of waves because. He feels like there's more special energy in the format than basic energy or even saying,
Mike:is a good amount of special energy, but I mean, my guess is that he, because he also plays to team y'all grant, right? So he just wants kind of the guaranteed effect,
Brent:Yeah. You just want you to just wants a non flippy choice.
Mike:Yeah. So I dunno, it seems fine to run it. I mean, there is enough special energy, but like the thing is the match-ups where the crushing number is the most effective is where you want crushing hammer, like Victini and Dragapult or where crushing Emory has the biggest impact. So plane crashing hammer, like, yeah. I don't know if that makes sense, right?
Brent:right. Yeah. I mean, Hey, there's a reason that he came in second. They lost the Victini.
Mike:there you go. Yeah. Victini. match up. Seems kind of bad for, for this deck. You also plays a lot of interesting cards. I don't know what this chat tot does. What does it do? Let's
Brit:it's Mewtwo on a flip. I had to look at it too.
Mike:Oh, interesting. That doesn't seem very good.
Brit:I thought, I thought the same thing. I was, I was looking at it and just like, Ooh, new cards. What one? These two. And I was just like, really? That can't be right.
Brent:I, you know, I, I assume he was like, I mean, the real question is how he found his way to the chat up, right? Like I assume he's like, I'm playing for StubHubs and I apparently can't play this MuTu and he somehow finds the chatter. That's a fascinating.
Mike:yeah, the relat, it seems okay though. Cause you're playing bird keepers. I really liked that rally in general.
Brit:Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. And I'm always, I've always been a fan of bird keeper as a card.
Brent:Yeah, I, I think, I think the reality is a super fun card. Do you guys think, are we going to see more of this like heeled barrier Mimikyu? Like, I feel like I've seen a couple of lists in the last week that have the heel barrier Mimikyu is that, is that much more prevalent in certain children?
Mike:not really, I don't really know if there's even an There's not even really that much Healy and I'm not sure what you're playing it for.
Brit:no. Yeah, because from what I understand that credit cards and LMZ tech in rapid steroid currently, it's, it's part of your strategy to be, to having a winning game against LMZ you stopped, you stopped they're allowed on Maloz and then hope to hope Phoebe will carry you the distance I believe is why, why people are playing that card and standard. Yeah, there's not a whole lot of, not very much healing going on.
Brent:all right. Wait, we just happened to drill down into like the rent, like a couple of random decks that had like big heels stretch, because they're hard to handle
Brit:Right.
Brent:the
Brit:mean, yeah. If the DeRoot deck becomes relevant, it's probably pretty good.
Mike:yeah,
Brent:Yeah, exactly. I was like, like, I feel like all the texts we've talked about, have you she'll strategies? What are you talking to him about? But yeah, obviously Victini doesn't care. Everything. Just like I'll punch you in the
Mike:Yeah. I think Victini, Dragapult IntelliJ on single strike. None of these have healing. Okay.
Brit:I think they're getting to it just maybe to talk for a second about chilling rings, Carter to can is, are the single strike and rapid strike. They're not part of the card name, right? So I could, I could play, like I could play the, the drizzle that searches an energy, like with this new, with the rapid strike and tell you on, right. Or that searches a trainer.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Yep.
Brit:That seems good to me. That card, that cards seems good and just has have some good friends and all the other Intel yawns.
Mike:yeah, I think so. And the, the Sabal that's the basic rate. The Sabal in the new set has like I think it's colorless search your deck for three rapid strike Pokemon or three rapid strike basics. one of the two
Brent:Yeah. it's three rapid strike basics.
Mike:and put them on your bench. Yeah. So like, that's also pretty good depending on the deck That you're playing it in. So you have, so you have like a great Sabal. You have a great middle and then you could play either all of the rapid strike and telly on, or maybe some split. Yeah, that's one of the cards that I'm most excited for in the new set is that Italian
Brent:Do you guys think people will try to hard counter Victini going into this weekend or is Victini just too good?
Brit:no, I'm not even sure what the hardest of counter is. Cause like even IntelliJ ongoing going second, and you can really just be too far behind, already if they turn to take a view, especially if it's like on your Pokemon with the energy. And like, of course, like, you know, maybe in like Mikey's opponent when Italian runs really well, like sure. You'll, you'll beat the Victini is really bad, but I think that it's just the power of Victini and why it's just probably the best deck in the format is that it's just so good going first, so good against everything and just, I think really can play. You know, a three turn for turn game in a way that like no other deck came in. And so when it runs, well, I just like properly anything we'll beat it or we'll lose to it. I should say.
Brent:Good times. And I guess when we come back next week, you can tell us if there's any like super peak around stress going into players cup for that, that people should be met or manipulated into thinking about.
Mike:Yeah, that sounds good. The the, the card that I was cracking myself up earlier, when I was looking at cars from chilling rain, there's that stadium Brett mentioned path to the peak. And I just keep thinking, like, it's just path to the peak, like peak around like have to be cab path to the
Brent:That's that's what the people want. Oh, this is path of the peak is a good card.
Mike:It's power plan on steroids.
Brit:is.
Brent:Hello. This is the card that people want each player's program on and play with a rule box has no abilities. I mean, this is a good card. All right. Yeah. All right. I have a new favorite card for this. This seems like really good. Let's let's bring down all the robots spoken mind as always. All right, guys. Now the successful part in the books.
Mike:it's good.
Brent:There we go. All right guys, take it easy.
Mike:To see you guys.
Brit:Thank you Brett.