Welcome to the Trashalanche. It's me, Brent Halliburton here as always with the brick Pybas and Mike Fouchet as always attendance is a hundred percent gentlemen, it is the 52nd episode. We have been doing this for a year. It is absolutely astounding. we're sponsored by channel fireball. We appreciate their support very much. And I feel like they've had a lot of good and topical articles recently. If you're not a subscriber, you should probably go read those articles. Of people like as ed Bradner are writing the articles that become the meta defining the decks, it's worth checking out guys the big non Pokemon news updates that I have for you guys is we have. After all of the whining that you guys have heard we've done, where I've said, JW crew wall should perform a bassoon outro, a Rudy Wade should do some crazy outro. Something like that. The John Paul's a staple of the Austin music scene has given us an outro. The Austin Chronicle describes their music as repeatedly. Mesmeric the quintet guitar driven, warmth, recalls, nineties, slow core icons, bedhead and melody aesthetic and the fuel and Yola Tango's and during indie rock romanticism. So we've selected an amazing song off of their most recent album. Forget to remember, to forget add two uses our outro and they totally gave us permission to it because they are an awesome group of guys and we appreciate it. So until people record a Pokemon theme song for us to use, we now have like an official song.
Mike:sweet.
Brent:Where we're just like a real podcast, only different five star review update guys. As always, we tell people, if you leave a review, we will read it on the pod. We've been going for more than a year. If you've been listening and thinking, maybe I should leave a review and have them read it on the pod. You totally should. We got a new review in it's a fantastic review, 100% attendance every week. Overdo review from a time listener. I listen to your podcast every week, going to and from work interesting mix of meta discussion and opinions. Good way to keep up with TCG news. PS. I can't wait for Brynn's book to arrive from Amazon Stacy dairy, man, 17 via apple podcast Australia.
Brit:Yeah.
Mike:Sweet. That's very nice review, no questions to to address, but that's okay.
Brent:Exactly. Exactly. I I, and I appreciate you buying the book off Amazon. And I appreciate you listening to us as you go to and from work. Hopefully your commute is not too long and you get like maybe three or four commutes out of it. That would be inline with bulls. I think Any big Pokemon unite updates?
Brit:yes.
Brent:Have you guys been grinding unite or Mike, have you moved on.
Mike:I played one game in the past week. No 2d games. I played two whole games. I did watch a little bit of unite though. There's like an old Hearthstone TFT streamer that I still follow and he's been playing unite. So I've watched him a little bit. I watched rehearsals team play in whatever tournament they were playing in. They lost in the first round. So it wasn't super long stream, but yeah, I watched a little bit and I played I played too. Hey, it's just always going to be like kind of button mashing. I feel like I'm not going to get too in-depth into the strategy, but I do understand slightly more than I did last week.
Brent:How about you Brett? I assume you've been grinding a little.
Brit:Well, no grinding, not so much. I played about an hour or so a day. I try to just, my, you kind of have just a couple of dailies. Like you have to play a quick game, win two games, play three games. Like I basically do that and I'm good for the day. But I, I really enjoy it. I really, I really have a blast every time I play. I really probably planned to keep up with that casually. I, I didn't, I just don't have time to play it, like play another game seriously. Like even, even if seriously only translates to like, caring about ranked mode. I, I just don't have time for that. So I, I sort of knew from the beginning, I was never going to be about. That or I was in a Twitter interaction recently, just asking for advice, talking to them a little and things like that. And some someone commented like, you know, well, if you already have that item level 30, it'll translate well for this character. And I was like, I was bold of you to assume that I have any items remotely close to level 30. Can't even fathom that. I think I just hit like level 15 today, but having a blast sort of, I guess these are just the woes of being an adult or being someone, being friends with people around my age and, and my line of work. But it's just like every, every day or every weekend, it's like, we're definitely going to play this weekend. Right. Like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, we have time Saturday. We'll we'll we'll play. I just haven't, I haven't, I have not I've yet to play on like a five stack or anything like that. I've played with like one friend once, but otherwise I'm always by myself. so it's, it's harder. It's some of your kids have more free time, I guess, is what I'm is what I'm saying.
Brent:I, that that is definitely my.
Brit:I'm a big fan. I like Mikey said, I do understand it a little bit better. And like, I think I'm better than where I'm ranked currently. I'm usually the best in my lobbies. But yeah, I've never been great at these games. So I don't expect to be that guy. Like I know most of the players who are good or like who I've hit the highest tier of the rank masters, I think I'm not sure. But like they are roughly that level at legal legends and like I've never been that good at league of legends. So like I, of course didn't have any, any real expectations. As far as my skill is concerned, but having a blast and it's just nice and casual for me. It's a good way to enjoy Pokemon. I dunno. I like all the little, little or Pokemon games more so than VGC it would seem,
Brent:So I, I saw that they're like, are they nerfing Elba Gustavo?
Brit:yeah, there's some today or tomorrow is the first balance update. Getting pretty nerfed and a few others here and there. Venous or buffed, I forget who else got puffed?
Mike:Charles Arden, maybe I think I
Brit:maybe Tempozard but
Mike:And Cinderella, I think was the other big Nerf.
Brit:cinder is good. Yeah. Sydney raisins damage went down and that's kind of who I picked up syndrome probably about this time last week. So I was really disappointed about that. That's who I have been playing a lot of
Brent:It's like, I, I figured out which one was unbalanced and like, I'm sad that I was, again,
Mike:That's the, that's the way to play games, man.
Brent:exactly.
Brit:well with
Brent:That that is what we're selling here on the Trashalanche. We will tell you what it's like balanced.
Brit:The elder gossip is frustrating cause it's just like the only real support character there is. And now that there's just less support options. So the game just feels more so like just kind of DPS big DPS you know, balls, you just kill each other over and over again. It's quite, not as, quite as like nuanced. You know, say the more developed MOBA with like a tank roll and so on. But it's getting there, I think, but hopefully, hopefully with more time, we'll just have more support units. That's just kinda, my biggest complaint is I don't really like Mr. Mime and wiggly, wiggly tough. I don't really know how to play support. It's I feel much better being offensive on wiggly. Tough,
Brent:right. So my kids, I mean, no surprise down that we're on vacation. All they have are their switches. It's just a steady Pokemon unite grind. Now Liam is up to expert. I think
Brit:nice
Brent:so. Where's the veteran now he might be veteran now, is that the thing after expert? Yeah.
Brit:Master ultra. I don't remember the order. It doesn't make sense, but
Brent:yeah. I feel like the, I feel like the order does wait, when you explain the order to me, I was like, okay. I will not remember that because It doesn't make sense to me.
Brit:should have just stayed in the ball tier as like, just like great ultra and so on. Cause because it's just like, it's, it starts at gray or it split again Mandarin, and then it goes back to the ball and then, then you're ultra and masquerade. And I think that's the sequence then succession.
Mike:Do they have characters that they made?
Brent:yeah. Yeah. So I think Liam experimented with meaning Lucario, I mean, I think the problem is zero warrant and gang guard just better. So he's like, he's frustrated because if it was like, you know, it's, I don't know some perfect balance world. You could pick the Pokemon, you like it play it, it would be playable or pick one that's like stylistically different, but. It feels like every game, it's a race to zero or and it's like, man, it's just, okay.
Mike:I was, I was really impressed by, I didn't play apps all, but I played against a couple apps. Saul's in my two games this week. And it's absolute seemed really sweet, but I don't know. Maybe I haven't seen anybody talking about apps all, so maybe I'm just a new.
Brit:I don't know. Yeah. I don't know what it does, but it's just kind of, it looks like all the other speedsters to me, they just kind of show up out of nowhere. It's all over the screen and you're dead from the bounce around. Like, I dunno. It's like your experience running into gang or something like gain, it just disappears and kills you. It just bounces around like twice when you're dead.
Brent:All right, guys, let's talk. Let's talk about Pokemon. I th I think or, or the trading card game we should probably start with players cup for you. Did you guys watch.
Mike:I did. Yeah, I watched, I watched a good amount. I didn't watch it all, but I watched a good amount pretty much any, if I was around and the match seemed interesting. I watched it. I didn't like, I kind of like purposefully didn't watch the, like the finals though, because I knew it was going to be Alex with Urshifu Inteleon versus spirit, Tim. And that didn't seem very interesting to me and no surprise. Alex won.
Brent:Yeah. I, I watched, I watched the winners finals, losers, finals, winners finals, and it was just like I, you know, all three of them, it was spiritual. Seriously spirits, home.
Mike:Spirit team seemed like it was a pretty good play for this event for two reasons. One it's best of three. I think spirit tomb is a deck that is much better in best of three, because it just, as I've talked about it has those awkward draws and whatnot. And going into, you know, a small 16 player meta game where you're pretty sure that like Shadow Rider is going to be the most popular deck. You have lots of really good match-ups and I don't think. If you think Shadow Rider is going to be the most popular deck, then you're not expecting Urshifu to be all that popular, which is probably your worst matchup. And you do pretty okay against the other V max decks except Eternatus. But maybe in best of three, maybe you can like have a good enough drought where you can be turned into us twice. So I don't know. It seems like I like the, I like the play and it kind of worked out for him. Exactly. Half of Bruno. I think his name was right. I think it worked out exactly how he expected and just happened to go against, you know, Alex with the one deck that you really have no chance of beating.
Brent:Did you watch the ADP spirit home games?
Mike:I didn't not, those were probably pretty interesting actually, though.
Brent:It was, I would be interested in, in you guys going back and watching and tell him, telling me like what happened there. I felt like the ADP player, Joelle who's a much, much better player than me. Like he may, he might've over benched or something. Like, it was weird. Like he decided to go with two ADP's in the matchup. Like he's kind of powered up one to Ultimate Ray and then he Excel and then he was like accelerating to a second one and. I think what's interesting about that is obviously then you only have to kill two books of mine to win. And I think, I don't think that's how I would have played the matchup, but Yeah. maybe I don't understand the matchup very well.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, I like the idea of powering up a second ADP, but I'd probably want to try and stick a Moltres bus attacking in between them, like go ADP, Moltres, ADP. That's probably like the best way that you could go about it. Speaking of those ADP decks I think it was Joe out and Aaron Friedman pretty, I don't know if they played exactly the same list, but it was very, very close if not the exact same, really interesting cheat at all. They didn't, they did play auroras but they didn't run well. Like they just ran formal trusts. Right? They're informal tourists. I think they had a zap dos, maybe twos Aptos even. And they put a Cobalion GX, which I don't really know what that was for, or at least one of them played Cobalion GX, but it's it was just cool to see like, Just ADP Moltres, right? No, Zacian it had a lot less texts, I think, than a lot of the other lists. You save a lot of space by not having to run metal saucer. Right. And I think that was like a pretty interesting play. And I think for the same reason that spirit tomb was pretty good because you expect a lot of Shadow Rider, a heavy Moltres ADP seemed like a pretty solid player as well. And they both did pretty well. They didn't end up winning. I think one of them got top four, right? Yeah. Joe got third and Erin.
Brent:Any thoughts on Alex? Szymanski his victory besides it's awesome. I'm super happy for the whole Szymanski family because The, whole Szymanski family is awesome. I recognize he, he's probably still the worst book about player in the Szymanski.
Mike:The the, to karate belt is pretty sweet. I feel like that's the only way you can beat Shadow Rider with this deck. And I know he did beat a Shadow Rider early on in the event, which I thought was very impressive. So to karate belt seems is pretty nice.
Brent:He also ran the Geraci GX, which I feel like a lot of lists have started to cut.
Mike:Yeah. Well, I think we've seen a pretty big shift of Shadow Rider is not really running Path to the Peak. Like at the beginning of the format, we saw them all running three, four Path to the Peak, and now it's pretty rare to even see any, I do think like a couple of people ran one or two in the event, but for the most part, like nobody's running it. So Draghi is significantly better than.
Brit:Did did he, did he didn't play Hoopa? Did he, that tends to be a card, kind of a big factor. I'm always on the fence about that. Like I know sort of, we had hit most of the relevant talking points about the hoop and last week sort of talking about Katter day, which I would sort of be interested to talk a little bit about today too. I know Mikey had another tweet sort of following up from our podcast episode about it last week, I had just sort of curious as to. I think the tweet more or less was like, oh, there's a lot of obvious strategies decks can do.
Brent:we should definitely talk about
Brit:and, but I don't, I don't know where those are. I don't have the Canada day cards. I just traded them straight back to Mikey. So I really haven't thought about the texts since last week, but I was curious as to the followup, but anyways, these points about Hoopa were relevant last week. Cause Kat her day, that's kind of all like one of the only things, one of the main things they're trying to do in the Shadow Rider matchup. But yeah, I don't know. It's like, I always see that, you know, a lot more commonly in like the Japanese lists or at least when we were a format behind and Japan was playing this, the Calyrex formats. They were, they were playing this card a lot more often and I've always, always torn on it. I, I kind of been warming up to it though. Like I just really liked the Urshifu deck. And I like just give it another sort of option like this. And even, even at times too, you can use it not for weakness, but like what's the residual damage from multiple Inteleon or something like that. It like just ends up like maybe being enough. Kill is ACM here. You know, something like that with the right bench or over time.
Brent:I think you're right. So I played a lot of rapid strike Urshifu Inteleon. Frankly right before players cup before I think that's the deck that I've been playing the most in the last couple of weeks, because I feel like ice rider is like too linear and I turned the Shadow Rider cards to Mike and haven't bothered to get them back yet. But, but I agree. I feel like every time I bumped into Shadow Rider, they assume I'm playing Kupa and they play around it and I'm never quite able to get good value for my Hoopa. I'm like, oh, you know, he's giving me the chance to like hit him for one 20 or one 40. Like he's got two Shadow Rider set up. Maybe that's one of those cards that like, it just goes full circle. And once we all stopped playing it, they're like they sort of all in shadow writers, indiscriminately, and then you get good value out of it.
Mike:There's only 15 people. Right? I did see that looking at the bracket. It's one of the Oceania people no-show I think to the event.
Brit:yeah.
Brent:That's lame.
Mike:Yeah, that sucks. I did see Pedro go out pretty early on. My favorite games to watch were definitely Hampus with the extra drill control. Like that was fun to, that was fun to watch. Even though it does get repetitive, like there was lots of, there was moments. I don't know if you guys watch these games at all,
Brent:did not watch him.
Mike:they're like against ADP is like always exciting, right? Because it's a little bit of a race. And even when he got the lock up it was, you know, repetitive for multiple turns in a row, but he played really fast, so it kept it interesting. And then he would. You know, you get five minutes of kind of repetition and then there's something happens. That's unexpected. And then you're like, oh, so like, for example, he chipped, I remember he chipped chick ice ax one time and there was three research on the chip did bite decks and, and his second chip chip bisects was prized. So like, then you had to like, Altaria strategy for something like that. I think one of the games, he, he prized all his Path to the Peak against ADP, so they could still Zacian. And so he had to like alter strategy for that. So those are like that, that even though it is somewhat linear, once he gets up, it was still really cool. To see also the the new supporter, what is it, Clara, where you get it gets to Pokemon and to energy back to your hand, like that helped, that helped him a lot. With kind of the, the, the loop, which was cool. So I, I enjoyed watching his games and then I watched, there was definitely a lot of Shadow Rider, mirror, eye, and I did watch a good amount of Shadow Rider mirrors. Cause I don't really, I wasn't really sure how to play the matchup. So it was pretty informative to me.
Brent:So, so did you figure out how to play it?
Mike:Well, as we know, Alcremie is quite good. One of the most important things is setting up so that if they whorehouse, then you also have the ability to whorehouse. Like you kind of want a whorehouse, like sometimes you want a whorehouse first and sometimes you want a whorehouse. Second, I feel like depending on how the board state is like if you can whorehouse and guarantee that they can hire a house next turn, like whether there's like a Shadow Rider V and they're active with no. Then you probably just want to go about her housing, so on the other. But on the other hand then, like if I go second, maybe I don't want a whorehouse, but I want to put an air balloon in my active and attached to my Ginga mimic, use that if I get whorehouse on their second turn, then I can whorehouse right back. Right. And then now I kind of have I've stolen the initiative back. So I feel like that's one of the more intricate things. I also feel like benching is I didn't. There were, there was a few times where I saw some plays from people and I feel like they over benched or didn't manage their bench correctly. Because you, you have, you have Alcremie you have the shadow writers you have thinking or Mimikyu. A couple of the lists played Mo most of the lists played a Chris Selia. And then you also need to sometimes have space for marsh shadow or Dedenne eight. And so you, you like, you really do run into a lot of awkward bench management issues. And so if you're not hard housing early in the game, like I saw someone bench again are Mimikyu, like I'm turned three or something like that. And I was like, what? Like, what's the point? What's the point of that? That doesn't make any sense. So I don't know if I learned, like, I don't think there is like a strategy, but I did pick up little things like that that are important things to consider as you're playing
Brent:I know last week we talked about how the, the list of dwell in Japan, they were playing like two, two Alcremie. It seems like in this tournament, the good guys did a one-on-one and then like Dan huger, who ended up not having a great outcome with the ninth place. Finish didn't play Alcremie at all.
Mike:Right.
Brent:do we have any like, strong opinions about that? Is that like I was in the spine or is it Japan is wrong? Which frequently happens? Alcremie seems good. I know we don't like pricing.
Mike:How can we injure it again? Yeah. I wouldn't not play out. Like how come he was really good. One of these lists played weakness energy though,
Brent:the Isaac trons list plays when we first started interview.
Mike:Oh, Isaac trim. But to how many Shadow writers were there? So there was one, two. 3 4, 5, 5 Shadow Rider. So definitely the most popular deck was Shadow Rider and we had three ADP's, but two of them were the matrass and one was ADP Zacian we had two dark boxes, three dark boxes, two dark boxes, One of the dark boxes was the Mallomar v-necks though. And then two rapid strikes and the spirit tune and an extra drill.
Brent:Christian would be three buckets, eight water, energy.
Brit:Okay.
Mike:Yeah, man. So I'm talking about yeah. W we I've been playing w we'll get into a little bit of certain shout on, in a bit. Hi, I tested out the Inteleon Inteleon deck Inteleon VMX and I've been playing four buckets in that. And that is sweet.
Brent:That's a lot of buckets, man.
Mike:it's when we all, when you need three energy, you need, you need the double, you need the double water. Anyway anything else? So it players cup. It's fun to watch. I, I I'm glad that like, the game seemed pretty good. The commentary, the commentary was, was pretty nice. I'm glad that Alex won. I mean, so we've had like all of the champions of all the players cups evolved in very good players, which is cool.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Certainly you look at it and you say there you know, great players are winning it.
Mike:So yeah, whatever people say about. The formats. They haven't been so bad that it's just completely random.
Brent:Yeah. So, so the next big Pokemon thing is the 25th anniversary mutational. I think two days from now, they're going to start like announcing a day at a time that people who are in the invitational.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:So when you check back for the next pod, we'll have opinions on who's been invited so far and it'll be, I don't know, half the players that have been invited or something.
Mike:Yeah. Something like that. I think they said they're like releasing one or two people every day or every other day or something like that.
Brent:Yeah. Before we talk about sort of shield on, do you want to talk about Canada?
Mike:So the two main things. Well, so I played Katter day last week, I guess in like the one event that I played last week. I think it was chill and I just played, I don't even remember it. I don't think it was chill, but I played just a few rounds. And I lost to Kaia Kaia. I'm going to butcher her name. Lick Leitner.
Brent:I think that's right. I think you did not put your, her name.
Mike:Yeah. So I played her and she was playing ice rider Inteleon and I was like, oh, sweet, free matchup. And then she bodied me. She just destroyed me because she just attacked with the Inteleon. She didn't even get out ice riders. If I recall, maybe she started a ice rider and she like, didn't evolve it to a V max, but she just attacked with the sword and shield Inteleon and I couldn't do anything like like I can't kill that many. Inteleon like she got, you know, she got the pink and Italian out. She attacked me. And so after that game, I was like, well, you know, there's a bunch of decks that play Inteleon if they play, I guess not all of the play water interview, but. You just don't have to get your V maxes out. And that's really good against Saturday because they feed off being able to just take two knock outs on TV maxes. So not every deck can adapt that strategy, but a lot, Ken. And then the other thing is, and, and Brent, you mentioned this last week is that you can just kind of get one big guy out, right. And if you don't bench anything else, then they're kind of in a tough spot. They can really only attack with Lee in, or maybe the Inteleon. We did say that Nico put in the the horn card to try and put something on the bench, then you can feel on the guy, whatnot. But, so I watched, I was watching some event, again, maybe it was chill, maybe it was something else, but cash was streaming and Castro's playing dark box against Canaday. And he won because he started, he was a little bit lucky. He started Greninja Zoroark, which is probably like your most efficient. Attacker early on. And so he used that to take maybe three or maybe three or four prizes and the damage built up on it and it was going to get knocked out the next turn. But that was when he like benched all of his stuff. Like he bent double sneezer will so valley, And so then once his Greninja Zoroark was knocked out, he was able to just kind of set up enough attackers before Kennedy was able to win the game. So you can kind of like, even if it's not like the full go one big guy the whole time, you can like, at least use that early in the game to leverage a couple of prizes and then adopt, and then like adapt to your normal strategy. And you can probably often come out ahead like that. So those were just like two strategies that I saw very quickly after our podcast last week. And you know, it makes me think that. The deck is probably not that good against good players.
Brent:I feel like the you, you make a really good point. Like if it's a race to two prizes instead of a race to six prizes Canada is much more challenging, right?
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. obviously, obviously the, the other deck that when you were making that list of decks, I think the other big deck that plays Inteleon is rapid striker Urshifu and they're playing a lot of the CRE, which can still take knockouts on most of your Pokemon and has quick shooting and they power it up for one energy attachment with rapid strike energy. It just seems really. I find, I think one of the things that Alex did a really nice job of it is I think showcasing the power of setting up a whole bunch of CRA Inteleon and it being able to use them both as attackers and to kind of tee up numbers really. Hey Inteleon it's good.
Mike:I want to go. Yeah. I want to go back and watch some of his games. Maybe not again. Maybe not the spirit team games, but any other game I'll probably go back and watch.
Brent:Yeah. Well, I mean, no surprise. When you look, when you watch CRE Inteleon it's against spirit to them, you're like, wow, that's really bad.
Mike:Yeah. Yep.
Brent:Hmm. Well, once you're set up two or three of those, you're just like, Hmm, this is horrible. Like he has turned like he's obviously he's able to like kill, kill, muse on the bench. He's able to kill something in the active and make you put something up for the, knock it out. Yeah. He showcased the full suite of when you have things that just placed damage counters from the bench all the horrible things you can do to people in in, in his final games against spirits him. Must've been nice to play that in the winner's finals. And then in the, in the grand finals right now, you're like, this is, this is how we like to do it.
Mike:it's like, it's a little unfortunate, right? Cause you would hope that like the, the fi like the grand finals is like the most exciting match, but it's so one-sided, and, and I happened last players cup to win is we'll just play. Pikarom like two or three times in a row. And just,
Brent:Yeah, exactly.
Mike:but I that's the nature of these small events though. Like both of these players made meta calls that paid off and it just so happened that Alex has met a call, had not a win against Bruno's medical.
Brent:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Before we talk about sort of shield on the last thing I think we should probably talk about is a little last week of tournaments. And we're thinking about what the note Brit you were commentating on the Celio stats tournament.
Brit:I did. It was a lot of fun. It was sort of past my bedtime. So it was a little tired, but. We, I say fellow old head and James Arnold. So that was a good partner to have, I think, of my available few. I mean, it goes much further back than me though. But yeah, it was fun. It was hard sort of match up wise. A lot of, a lot of, I was watching the whole time and the games I didn't cast were generally more exciting than the ones I did. But it was a fun experience. Again, always sort of a learning experience for me, I'm not the most talkative person, so I'm sort of like already playing a character to be like narrating a game or something like that. And it's difficult to not interrupt and things like that just eventually find the natural flow. And eventually we did. But it was just so late, I was tired and just kinda went and wanted to go to bed. I don't know how these kids play all these tournaments. They play chill and Celia center up until 11 or so every night.
Brent:I think, did you see the people from Europe or Asia who are like, you know, it's like five in the morning, I've been playing for 12 hours.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, that would have been like that in 1920s or so for sure. But now not so much
Brent:Who ended up winning? Do we know?
Mike:I don't know who it was, but I'm pretty sure it was Urshifu Inteleon.
Brit:oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a BD sax. Yeah. It was a he's from Iowa. He's one of Kiernan's friends. I believe they have just Urshifu Inteleon, which is cool. Just sort of to, to foretell the players cup the next day, but yeah, it's such a good. I don't know for so long, I just haven't really been touching it. I just had didn't feel like trying to overcome the psychic weakness, but my eyes have been opened and that's really all I've been playing the past week or two I've for whatever reason that I haven't given up on the two lists with Tapu Koko, which I do think are much worse than just this kind of streamlined Szymanski list. But I don't know. I haven't, I try it here and there and it's, it's fun and it lets you play zero, zero or which is cute. But yeah, definitely worse, but after seeing some Japanese lists do well with it, I was like that. Can't be good. Let's find out. And it's, it's not experimented.
Mike:No,
Brent:I is the more the world that we should take away that rapid striker Fu is the best deck. And Shadow Rider is a lot, or is it just like a momentary twist of the meta or, and, and, you know, the Shadow Rider guys could obviously easily counter by just playing a couple of paths of the peaks and get there, or what's going.
Mike:I think my guess is that if you, even, if you took Alex's lists with Geraci against most Shadow Rider lists that don't run Path to the Peak, my guess is Shadow Rider is still favored like resistance. You can kill the draggy. Alcremie can still take a one-shot. My guess is you're still favored. It's probably pretty close, but. I just can't imagine it being unfavored that said, let's say like at first your food became like this huge force in the meta then. Yeah. Shadow Rider just would start playing Path to the Peak. But as the Urshifu player, if like, if the Shadow Rider decks are not adapting and you're, you're probably okay. Taking like a 40, 60 matchup, let's say, and you're pretty good against other stuff. Right. So I think we're probably in an equilibrium where there's Shadow writers don't really need to tech for issue food. Cause they're already like good enough against them. If that makes sense.
Brent:Yeah. You know, when I, when I go and look at the Celio stats path to victory I mean he played more, a spirit tomb decks, and he played that Shadow Rider.
Mike:Yeah. He beat to shatter writers, which is good. But like, yeah, it would be, yeah. If you beat like six or seven shatter riders, then I'd be like, oh, okay, I'm wrong. But only be two. And you know, you look at a random Shadow Rider player. They, they often have like a win against nursery for your deck. So it's not a, yeah. I don't know.
Brent:I guess the moral of the story is spirit tomb is incredibly popular right now and it just like drives some of the Shadow Rider in this, out of the meta. And you can play next that loose the Shadow Rider and not expect to get completely bodied up.
Mike:That's true. Spirit him. Isn't that popular though? Like, I mean, it's like more populated than it was, but like, if you look at like, I'm looking at the metagame page on the Stelio stats, there was six spirit tombs, pretty seven ice riders, 31 shadow writers, 27 ATPs. So like spirit team is like maybe a little more popular than it was, but it's not popular.
Brent:Here's the question, eh, I mean, as, as we've all always known, there's like the meta game and then there's the medic game, Right, Like, he'd be two of those spirits rooms and day two you know, spirits have just got second and players come for like, are the bad players playing Shadow Rider and the good players playing spirits zone,
Mike:right, right, right. There's probably a little bit of that. Yeah, for sure.
Brent:right? Like. mean, that's, that's the ideal situation. If you're a Urshifu player, if you're Alex Szymanski is like players worse than you play Shadow Rider and players better than you play spirit to them and you play Urshifu and you're like, we're going to get there.
Mike:Yup. Yup. That is, that is very true. And I bet I would be surprised if Alex didn't think of that at least a little bit before going into players cup.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is classic like masters level thinking where you're like, you know, we're going to counter the counter, right.
Mike:Yeah, or just like, I want to beat the it's, like, I don't necessarily care about beating certain decks. I want to be able to beat the other good players. Right. So I can predict what the other good players are gonna play or not play. Then I can, you know, adapt my deck based on that.
Brent:Let's start with sword and shield.
Mike:So I haven't really, I did play in an event the other night, they had like a late night Monday event, but other than that, I haven't really played in any events, but the 10 K tournament in New Jersey it's happening this weekend. So I've been theory monitoring and testing a little. For that. So I figured I would just kind of go through the popular and successful decks in certain Gian. If you guys have questions on them as I just give some brief comments on them, just just happen and interrupt me.
Brent:Wait, wait, wait, can I actually, I actually realized like two days ago that I have a hot take
Mike:Okay.
Brent:hot take alert people here. We I'm interested in. You guys react to this. Here's the big, hot TIG I came up with Kimmy come out of. And this is applicable to both now and sort of shield on, but it's more applicable to storage shield on quick shooting Inteleon will be as hostile to single prize decks as ADP has been. That is my hot tape. Like all of these V V max decks that are going to play Inteleon and they're going to ruin it for people to think that they can get there with single prize decks, because there'll be able to do exactly what happened to you with Canaday. And the result is we'll find that it's hard for a single price decks to be a part of the medic, even after ADP rotates, because Inteleon is a tough to beat, but you gave it the thumbs down.
Brit:I mean, like I get what you're saying and I think there are definitely concerns there and equally I think it does somewhat like just exasperate this first term problem that I think the format has, which I think we were astute to point out like weeks, a weeks ago, sort of on our just very initial impressions, restored and shield on. And I think Danny had a tweet a week or two ago where it was just sort of like every, everything is just Victini VMX, you know, you've got your blue Victini max, your dark Victini V max or your psychic Victini beam. And, you know, just all sort of very functionally on the same page in terms of just like what they evolve. They take prizes on their second term. They take two energies. Et cetera, but yeah, like, and so obviously too, then if you're going first, you get the first Jersey, which might be the first boss, which yeah. That could be pretty damaging for a single price tags. But like, conversely, I think you have maybe two points here on one hand, the single president decks will function and thrive just as much because of that. The Inteleon exists that it's not sort of solely bringing them down. Like just the candidate back again to, for example you know, I think it'll enable just as much as, you know, as it, so I think from like a sort of. You know, just metagame space or however you want to think about it. I don't, I don't think it's going to be as challenging. But maybe not like, I, I think that single pricers just have so many Hills to climb that this may just be one very small one in a large list of other ones that they just sort of, you know, the evergreen problems for evolution decks, you know, Hey, with these, I have 300 HP. Like those would probably be more to their detriment in terms of whether or not they can succeed in this format more so than Inteleon I would think.
Mike:Yeah, that was my thought too. Is that like the, the, the bigger problem in my mind with single prize decks is that. They have to stream six attackers versus a VMX like, it might take you two or three Pokemon TKO, one V max. And like, maybe you can get ahead in the price trade in theory that, but the fact is that you're using so many more resources each turn to get just attack. Right. So I think that is ultimately a bigger problem in terms of the Inteleon stuff. I mean maybe, but like you need, you need probably three Inteleon to threaten any basic, right. I mean, I guess like over the court, I will say though, so I did play
Brent:Okay.
Mike:and this can be, can segue a little bit. So I played Inteleon BMX Inteleon in this event the other night and I played against the rapid strike Mallomar and I will say that was.
Brit:Okay.
Mike:The the, the ping and Italians getting two of those out did swing the price, trade favor, like the price trade in my favor, because I was able to just, you know, ping down one of their guys over a couple of turns and ended up one prize ahead. So maybe if that's kind of more what you were referring to Brent, I dunno,
Brent:Yeah, every couple of turns are gonna have a two price turn right,
Mike:right, right, right. Right,
Brent:And, and like, you know, when you look at like, Mallomar all these decks, the, the risk that you like miss a turn attacking, or need an extra turn to get things set up. Like, you've always mitigated that by saying, well, I have time because they gotta take six prizes,
Mike:right, right.
Brent:you know, if really they only have to take, you know, four, four and a half. I don't know if it always works out the way you think it's going to work out.
Mike:Yeah. So my first reaction to you is hell no, you're wrong, but I can see, I could, I could see it playing out like that. I guess. We'll have to see like what potential single pricers are really. Ended up becoming a force.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Yep.
Brent:All right. All right. Let's run through the meta.
Mike:All right. So I don't really have these necessarily in order of what I think is best to worse, but loosely loosely. So the first deck that I have on the list is ice writer, and there's two ways to play ice rider. Now there is the kind of straightforward Path to the Peak version that is very similar, very, very similar to the standard list. And then there is a heavy chilling rain Inteleon list that it's much more aggressive. It's just kind of like an aggro deck and it aims to actually like essentially one shot, other V maxes over the course of, you know, with, with pinging stuff. I think ice rider is. Probably like the lowest maintenance, most powerful deck in the format, but I actually don't, I don't really think it's the best deck because it's the other decks have kind of adapted. I don't adapt is not the right word, but like other good decks have a decent match up against ice rider. I think so. I think, but I do think inherently ice rider is the most powerful deck for the least amount of work. So that's why I talked about it first.
Brent:You hit the nail on the head. It's like a, you will consistently hit for two 50 starting intern to pretty much all the end of the game. The bad news is you, you, you got, this is your thing, Right.
Mike:Right. Yeah. Yeah. The second deck I have on Louis' rapid strike and in the online certain shit on tournament's rapid strep. Inteleon has done really, really well recently, I think at, to one like the last two or three events some lists are running the Moltres package and some are not so Moltres. This is good for two reasons. One, it helps you again, Shadow Rider, which without draggy GX and without karate belt is like, actually it feels like very unwinnable. So you have the Moltres, which can one shot the shatter. It was pretty good. It does make the deck a little bit clunkier for sure. But the other reason to play Moltres is you can without karate belt, again, you can play some energy switch and you can stream your GMX rapid flow attack, which is pretty good just overall. So like the fact that Moltres just Moltres aides in your worst matchup, as well as just being generally pretty good. Any at least like not totally useless. Kraft not play fighting energy though. And you have to fit these energy switch and the Moltres. So your deck comes inherently less consistent with it. But it is like pretty, I wouldn't be surprised to see people play that version.
Brent:Do you give us an opinion on that?
Mike:I probably would just take the loss to Shadow Rider and play a more consistent version. But I wouldn't fault anyone for doing it.
Brit:No, I agree. I agree. I think we're on the same page. They're pretty sort of cynical, I guess when you know, it just seems like mole tracing some dark energies are kind of haphazardly thrown into a deck list and be like, ah, ha there's our Shadow Rider, man. Like, man, it's, it's never quite that simple, but yeah, like I get it and like, you know, just thinking of, you know, maybe the Pedro's deck clothes from the player's cup that like tried to do it, like also with chin Chino, Like it's, it's just a lot, I would think that you just take the match up and like, just try to get lucky rather than try to like mess up the space. Like, I just don't know how much different like when Sylveon comes out, how much different that like four corners each deck will end up looking. But yeah, I, I mean, it's, it's tough to say. I really don't, don't have much to say about sword and shield on. I just haven't kept up. So I don't think any of my thoughts are sort of were up to par. So I'm not sure, but at least like with a fresh format or format, but like not everyone is so well versed in, it seems like always the best place to start is just kind of what's your, your 50 50 is take the bad match up here on there and just be kind of better on a general level.
Mike:Next on the list is Zacian Inteleon we saw he could do well with this a few weeks ago in real life event. It's I played it. I think I mentioned it. I played it a few a few weeks ago as well. I didn't love it, but it is like the most consistent deck in the format for sure. You have the Inteleon engine and you have Intrepid sword. It's actually, and does powerful things. It's matchups against ice rider. It's very good. It's metric and Shadow Rider is pretty good to rapid strike matchup is okay. I think probably slightly unfavored. Do you have, do you have like a pretty good matchup spread and you're the most consistent deck for sure. It's just like, you're you, your power level is not as high as some of the other decks. I do think that that gets a lot better with the there's this kind of like the half of teammates supporter that's in the next set where you attach an energy and search your deck for a card. I think Zacian gets significantly better because it's easier to with only four metal saucers, it's actually, I think kind of hard to attack three times with three different fashions. I think you kind of just get Kao too quickly by other things. But I think with that new supporter it becomes much better. Next decade Shadow Rider, which. Yeah. I don't know if you saw Kiki's tweet from yesterday where he's basically like Shadow Rider sucks in post to rotation.
Brent:And how could you not have seen that tweet? I feel, I feel like that was everywhere. I definitely thought we should talk about that? Like, it seemed like suddenly everybody turned on Shadow Rider and they're like, that's like, it's terrible. I don't know. It's a pretty good card.
Mike:Yeah, I mean, I do think it is significantly worse in the post rotation. I think it's pretty good. Still don't get me wrong, but I think it's, I think losing is a huge deal. Getting our MEMCA gives you just so much flexibility in and time of setting yourself up. You can kind of get overrun by. Stuff like ice rider. Certainly Eternatus if you, if you like miss a beat in the early game and you just need more stuff out to do your powerful things. So if you, if you have a good start, you're probably the best deck in the format, but if you stumble even a little bit, you can get behind and it's very hard to call yourself back into the game.
Brent:I, obviously, one of the, one of the great things about it today is it's like, so non-linear, and you know, until we see what's coming in the next. You know, post rotation, it looks a lot like, well, you can either attack with Shadow Rider or you can blow all your energy and attack with Alcremie your choice. And that respect it's, it's a lot less good today, but I assume as they print more psychic attackers, it'll get better.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Alcremie is like, it's still Alcremie is like the best part of the certain field on Shadow Rider deck. So like you definitely played to, to Alcremie intern certain on next on the list is Eternatus. I don't think anybody's really figured out the best way to play Eternatus in the post rotation. Like you obviously play a bunch of but there's a lot of lists that run wheezing, which seems like, I mean, we've, we've talked about that Eternatus wheezing multiple times. And maybe it finally has a place, I don't know, but that, doesn't it like if that's the best way to play Eternatus then it's probably not that good. It's kind of what I'm thinking. It just feels like something like ice rider is just doing what it turned it to is, does better with less resources. But you have the weakness on Shadow Rider. So that's certainly good. So Eternatus is a deck. I don't know how popular it would be. The deck that I ha, so I, I am really debating between plane rapid strike and Inteleon Inteleon, those are kind of my big choices going into this weekend. So the Inteleon Inteleon deck saw a lot of success. I don't know, maybe a week and a half or two weeks ago, and his sword and shield on event. And I wanted to take it for a spin. So I played it in this event the other night and it felt really good. I made some changes to the initial list, took out some of the consistency. They, they ran a bunch of great balls and I dropped them for a bunch of tech cards, like one scoop up net and one experience share a couple other little changes. And like, and like I mentioned, I put in a four, four bucket and I think those changes kind of give the deck a little bit more. Flexibility like, and also, so the big thing is that you need three energy to attack were pretty much everything else in the format just needs to. And so you need to lean into that a little bit. So that's why I put the four bucket in helps you find energies early on, let you pretty aggressively quick ball away or research away energies for Melanie that turn or the following turn. And you need something. I think experience share is, was really the card that the deck was missing. I only have one, I don't think you could play two, but I think one is probably enough. But you just get in these awkward situations where maybe you are able to get three energy onto your active Inteleon V max to do the one 60 attack. But if you do that, you have no energy on your bench. And you're pretty sure that the max is going to get knocked out the next turn. And so then you're in this awkward situation where like, okay, I could just, you know, hit for 60. With the active guy and attached to my bench, but that's not really advancing the game state that much, but all of this to say is like, if you were able to play an experience, share that turn, then the following turn, you can always Melanie plus attach and then you're good to go. It also allows you to weaken or lessen your reliance on Melanie and gives you an opportunity to potentially play boss instead of Melanie, like the next turn as well. So I think experience shares is like a huge, huge, huge inclusion that makes the deck much better. And the deck is pretty good. I think I think rapid strike is kind of, it's tough to, well, all of its match-ups are like pretty 50, 50 ish. I think you're slightly favored against ice rider. I think the Shadow Rider matchups pretty 50, 50, I think rapid strikes kind of 50, 50. But you're out of the, you're out of the weakness triangles, which is a huge that's a huge draw for me. Like all of the other decks, like rapid strikes, listen to Shadow Rider, Shadow Rider, losing to Eternatus Eternatus is losing two rapid strike ice riders losing to Zacian. Zacian just kinda like week to all of these things essentially. Cause it gets one shot. So the fact that Inteleon is just completely removed, like nobody's playing lightning at all. That means that I actually don't have any auto losses. So that's pretty appealing. So that, and, and it's just pretty, Melanie is obviously very good cards, so Inteleon was really cool. And it's, it's a little bit unique. You also get to prey on the the Intel, like the, the stage two Inteleon engine a little bit, you get, you know, pretty easy Kaos on bench sabals and stuff like that. So. I guess I haven't really played very much, but I know that they are showing up rapid strike Mallomar has seen some play with chin Chino and Octillery he's I think they kind of took like the list that did well in the Japanese event that we talked about a few weeks ago with the Pokemon catchers and kind of adapted that seemed like it was doing pretty good. Sandaconda we talked about that a few a week or two ago as well. The more I've seen it play the less I've been impressed. If you can like target down the the Drew's Isles and the Salvos and whatnot, then it makes it much harder for them to change their Cheryl's, but still a cool deck. So the ADP ADP Moltres Zacian has kind of formed into the Zacian. And the benefit there is that you hit the two cataracts decks for weakness. Next seems pretty good, but not like not tier one. Probably not even tier two.
Brent:I mean, that, that sounds like one of those decks where they're like, this is a good card. This is a good card.
Mike:Right, right, exactly. Yup. And then the last thing that I have on here. So I think that covers like pretty much all of the top tier one, tier two decks. The last deck that I have here though is single strike. And I feel like w before chili and rain, we talked a lot about how single strike was like probably the best deck. And I haven't seen it like at all. And I just was curious and like, I haven't really given it much thought any, any thoughts on why single strike is disappeared? Other what, besides the, just, just single strike.
Brent:You know, I, I feel like I've, I've seen a couple of different builds, a single strike, but at the end of the day, they're all like, if we don't set up these countdowns, we lose and I, you know, I'm just like, okay, so I should make sure you don't do that. And that seems to work out. And once again, those are like, as a perfect example of like, if you set up two quick shooting, Inteleon it just like really cramps their style, you know?
Mike:Yeah. I think that's what I would, yeah. That, whereas you were talking about the, I kind of just put that together in my head too. Like you talked about the Italian stuff and maybe just the advent of all this Intel, all these Inteleon on decks. Just make single strike, not as good.
Brent:Yeah. I mean if, if they're, if they're putting down like the basics and you're like getting things down and they don't find the stage one right away, you're like, man, that's going to die.
Mike:Yeah. And I guess the other thing is like, they were probably able to, so the ham doom is putting two counters on their guys as well. Right. So they were always able to manipulate it. So maybe that extra 20 damage didn't really matter matter, you know, if they put 20 or like, let's say 40 damage on their VMX now they're at two 90 and that is technically out of range of an ice rider, for example.
Brent:Right.
Mike:But yeah. Now with the pink, Inteleon like that 20 damage that you put on yourself that 20, 40 times you put on yourself as a huge deal. Now it just makes it so much easier for other decks to reach.
Brent:Yeah. Well, and, and they just, they, they have to just be hitting on all cylinders, every turn. And it's like, well, you know, I mean, you can play any deck if you hit on all cylinders, every turn like
Mike:right. Yeah.
Brent:the upside, the upside seems so, so relatively small.
Mike:Yeah. All right. Last thing, not a deck, but as I've been playing games the last few days, I had this weird thought that these Inteleon like the Inteleon engine decks going second, actually my moon rate might be higher going second, and I'm not sure. I don't think I would have. I still don't think I'd ever choose to go second. But what I find is kind of like two things. One Sabas attack is really good. So like, I don't mind using Sapos attack going second at all. And also. Like the, the deck that tends to win most often in certain Shaun is the deck that attacks first. And so you would think that obviously, okay, if I go first, I'm going to attack first, but that we know that doesn't always happen when you're not able to play a supporter on your first turn going first, maybe you start Sabal, but you don't have a quick ball. And so you can't actually get your thing out. And so what happens a lot of time is the person going second is able to play a research or a Marnie or something like that. And then they're actually able to attack at least meaningfully attack first. So it's just a weird thing that I noticed the last five games or so is maybe go in seconds. Isn't that bad. Okay.
Brent:And it's it's you know, maybe coming out of 10 K you'll have like a lot more science on that stuff. And then we do now, but I know what you mean. I still like going first.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, I still think I'll always choose to go first, but it at least gives me a little bit a comfort knowing that I'm not gonna, I'm not going to feel as sad as I would have. I think in the previous sword and shield on format than I do now, I do think like the inclusion of the Inteleon engine has evened it out a little bit, which is nice. I did see today that today, yesterday that the pocket event that it was, it was like the pho world championship last year. I think they're going to do their event in about a month from now. I think it's the first weekend of September.
Brent:Oh, nice,
Mike:Yeah. And that'll be, it'll be like pre rotation, but with the new set, so like team up through evolving skies. So that that'll be cool. If I'm free, I I'll try to be free that weekend to play. I think that'd be fun.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Everybody loves a good world championship.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:No matter how an official, I think that's it guys.
Mike:All right.
Brent:Without further ado, the John Paul's our outro.