The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast

5 Pokemon players, Draft the World - format & snake vs auction, Evolving Skies set review, history of Copycat, Black Ballista, Rayquaza, Medicham, Reddit bashing

August 24, 2021 Brent Halliburton Season 1 Episode 55
The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast
5 Pokemon players, Draft the World - format & snake vs auction, Evolving Skies set review, history of Copycat, Black Ballista, Rayquaza, Medicham, Reddit bashing
Transcript
Mike:

Okay.

Brent:

Like Doug and Doug was like the best marketing Pokemon had for like three or four years running.

Brit:

Right. I mean, you know, maybe it's just the, the circumstances not to defend TPC too much. They're not known for making good decisions, but like he's an old, old money sort of guy. He doesn't need a job or something like maybe, maybe in a world where he was cooker, you know, some, someone equivalent to Fuca that like a job would've fell into his lap. But given that he's a dad with a job, it just didn't, you know, maybe that's part of why it wasn't pursued more. I don't know.

Brent:

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's like it's weird. And he was just a guy taking pictures and they were like a hassle of that. And, and like, the crazy thing is there's not a lot of like ways to get pictures. So did you guys go through the evolving sky set?

Brit:

I did I'm finishing up or just kind of skimming through it again. Now they're just like just sort of laughing to myself. The set is big, but just like pages of it are just that, that the chase cards, the highest tier rarity stuff, just like I'm maybe two thirds of way down the page and it starts, and you know, this is a third of the set that is just these Uber rare, expensive cards. I know what they're doing, I guess, you know, play to your audience.

Mike:

Yeah, I went through and I made a list of cards that I'm pretty sure will be good. And there was about 10 of them. And then I have like another 15 that I put them under. Interesting, but probably bad.

Brent:

Sadly. That's like, that's like the Pokemon way, right? The interesting bad.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

Yeah.

Brit:

I think I was thinking about just kind of in relation to, I think, last week, talking about the formats and just thinking about old formats and at least the way it is, the old cards would be designed. And I don't know if I'm, this is just nostalgia talking. So I'll be curious to think what either of you think, but like my just impression when I, when I was starting playing, you know, right around when platinum came out and just in general, just the diamond and Pearl block and kind of that era, but just my, my memory is just that like almost every card, like not every card, of course, but like for the most. Like every stage two was like, good enough that if you just like played clay doll with it, it would be like at least a leak deck.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brit:

And that's just not true, like at all anymore. And, you know, maybe we joke like, well, you just play Inteleon and see how it works. But I just, like, I just don't think that's true. Like there's just not comparatively. There's just something missing. I think like, you know, I was just thinking randomly as like the, the dust docks and beautiful fly from platinum are both just like, they do kind of nothing, both related to special conditions, but I just know it was like Tyler, Tyler, Nina, Maura had a deck with the stuff stocks at one point in time. And there's just like, all of these random cards just could potentially be good. And I wonder too, if that's just like why we don't have secret decks really anymore has that, that design space just isn't there. Clear. Oh, for the most part, like there's, there's a card we'll miss, maybe two or three that we'll, we'll pick up halfway through the format or something, but there's just so rarely an entire deck or an entire concept that isn't just sort of like in our faces from the very beginning and just like, thinking about chilling rain, we miss anything? No. W w the only thing we missed was putting Inteleon into things faster, like th th that's really all that happened from reading the scans to now, essentially, I feel like, and of course there's, you know, semantical points. So just like, oh, creamy or not Path to the Peak or not, but for the most part, just like the big picture was captured from the scans essentially, or something like that. And I don't know, I'm just being, being old and complaining again. Yeah. But I miss it. I miss it. I could just, some of these, any of these cards could like make a fun Saturday afternoon or something where it's just like, I don't know, 70% of these cars just are bare are maybe unplayable, even in like the gym leader format or something.

Brent:

I know what you mean? Like there's definitely there used to be a time when you could say, Hey, this is a card. Let me see if I can build a deck around it. And I feel like now it's either, obviously a thank you card. You can build the deck around or it's obviously not. And like the amount of exploration they want you to do. They're like, I wouldn't spend a lot of time on that. You know, they're slapping you in the face with this, with the style.

Brit:

Maybe just an example from the scans themselves, just like, like, oh, what should I play? Should I play like a random card from the set? Or should I play Sylveon V which has its own tool card that goes with it, you know, stuff like that. It's just like, oh gee, I wonder like, should I play the cards that are getting like, It's strange. I'm just sort of laughing about this Sylveon card. Not only is it good, but just like how often do we get a good card? That is so it's only for one other card. It's only for one Pokemon. And I mean, obviously like the spirit links, things like that, but that doesn't count, but yeah, like, right. I mean, let's just a good example. Like the, the design, the design of the sets is pushing you in a particular direction.

Brent:

I know, it's funny. I was thinking about spirit links just the other day. And I was thinking, it's funny how they never printed a generic spirit link. Like that's the kind of thing that would have been like encouraged deck exploration. Right?

Brit:

I don't remember if I ever wrote about that, but I know, oh, I have, I had that thought multiple times. Cause yeah, the spirit links were just terrible. Like the mega has just never really, really felt quite found a space or at least compared to the VMAX is, or the tag team Pokemons. I would, I would argue that the mega is, we're not as meta game impacting as powerful as, as these cards are like the best one brain closet probably. Right. And what it requires to do while it didn't need spirit links. So there you go. And obviously the electric was fine, but still. Not oppressive or anything like that. But yeah, I always thought that was just like, it's like, there's a clear way forward there. And, you know, especially to, to talk about, talk about it in terms of the game itself. Like, I I'm, I'm blanking a little bit on how the Mega's worked in the video games. But I think you'd have like a watch and like, it, it worked for all of them. You didn't need like a, a specific stone or anything like that for them. It was just like, he could just do it if you wanted to. I think.

Mike:

And I think, I think. like the Mega's were like perfect for the meta game. Like they weren't too overpower, but they were playable enough. Like they could have maybe been a little bit stronger, but it was nice that they weren't as powerful as, as B max is in tag teams or like as dominating, I guess, but it still would be cool to have like a generic one or at least one that I don't know how they would like group Pokemon or maybe they just had like type spirit links, maybe like all Pokemon of this type could mega evolve with this link. That would be cool. Maybe a generic one would be a little too strong. I'm not sure.

Brent:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brit:

Okay.

Brent:

Primal grab, not as another good example of like, yeah, it was only it was only good because like, it didn't even bother the place. You're like, dude, we're just going to gut it out. You just evolved and moved on with your life? I feel like we're just gonna, grind through the set because the format's totally stale.

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah. Standard is not worth talking about.

Brent:

All right. Welcome to the Trashalanche podcast. Brian Halliburton red. Pybas Mike Fouchet, we're all here. Attendance is a hundred percent as always. Guys, we we did not get any new reviews. I feel like there's some large chunk of our audience that think of themselves as the kind of people that never leave reviews, but you should leave a review because then we would read your review on the pod and talk all about it. And you would find that more fun than you might think you should totally do it. Leave a review. I feel like it's been a couple of weeks since we got one, we should definitely get some reviews. So even if you're the kind of person who thinks I'm not that guy, you could be that person it'd be fun. You'd like it. We're sponsored by channel fireball. Channel fireball is totally sold out of evolving skies, which just goes to show with their prices are fairly reasonable. If you went and spent some money there and used the code word trash, I think you get a little bit of money off. They would tell us that we helped them make some money and they, they would like us more. All that stuff would be good. We like them. They like us. It's it's pretty good. Anything happening in the Pokemon unite world?

Brit:

Not a ton from what I can tell. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see once. I mean, I would like to see, I don't really have a sense of what, like something that's primarily on the switch or primarily a mobile game, like how that could have like a good e-sport scene, just compared to sort of the platforms and such that the, the household names I'll play on. So hopefully that will take off, I'm sure there's a grassroots scene already. But I'm confident that it exists and, you know, just as, you know, row we'll play that tournament not too long ago and didn't do so well. So I'm sure the, like, you know, the there's just already just like teams and stuff like that. But yeah, it's still playing as I've described kind of just a little bit here and there every day I will, I do like PoliSci a lot more, or at least self-consciously reflected on what I said about bliss a little bit last week. And when I wanted to make it sound like I maybe knew what I was talking about. And so I, it's not that bliss is bad. I do think bliss is good. But when you play by yourself at a low level, you have to carry games and bliss. He doesn't do enough damage to carry games. It's a must, it's a much better sort of just like I'm only playing support sort of kit. Whereas on some of the other ones, I can be a little more aggressive. And so that, that's where my comments last week were directed. I like Leslie a lot, but it's hard. It's hard to hard Carrie with bliss alone.

Brent:

Yeah, it seems like glass canons are more conducive to hard carries and those kind of situations.

Brit:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's hard to know. I don't really have a great sense of who ends up as the MVP. I get it a lot when I, when I'm shocked to get it. And I was like, oh, weird. I guess I just scored a lot or something. I don't think I was the best player that game. So I don't, I don't know what motivates it's it's all the time. But yeah, it's just from what I can tell which again, pretty low level understanding. It's just still a DPS fast from what I can understand, just do, do as much damage and rally for objectives and that's about it.

Brent:

you go all the Pokemon unite podcast you need in 30 seconds.

Mike:

I did have one question. I saw you tweet something about your teammates and zap dos, and I didn't understand it. Can you reflect on that? It was like good morning to everyone, except somebody that did something with the adapters that you maybe, maybe it was someone else's tweet now. Okay.

Brent:

I think some of the thinking around as they'd like rebalanced the Dreadnought and zap dose a little bit, like some of that thinking I think has evolved, but, but it's still all

Brit:

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know this, the tweet you're talking about and I don't think it was me, but I did think did do think I saw again from Raul, I think talking about like a, like a sneak Nerf to zap dos or something. And there's some like strange interaction that I feel like takes Aptos while you have the Dreadnought shields. It's like, not as good or something like that. And it's intentional, but it's, it's, it's not it's not clear just like through base game knowledge that you would know that, but it's, it's supposed to be in the game like that, but that's the only thing that really comes to mind there.

Brent:

Speaking of Twitter and that's the kind of professional transition that goes with the like highest quality podcasts people. So it seemed like the tweet that was making the rounds at end of last week and over the weekend was the five players that influenced your Pokemon playing the most. Definitely seems like a good one to talk about. What would are you guys answer for that?

Brit:

Well, for me as I think the way that I, I chose to take it, I'm not sure. I think there was more of a consensus here. But I think you could have maybe divvied it up a little bit, but I wanted to take it as purely, I think this is the way that Kenny might've worded it, but just like purely in the sense of like, who taught you, like the meta game, who taught you the deeper parts of the game? Like who, who did you acquire your fundamentals from? Like sort of like a, you know, and so in this sense, I think like you can answer people who aren't your, like your friends and things like that. I, you know, so I tried to think about it purely and just like, you know, when I was bad when I was coming up or what have you like, who really sort of showed me some ropes and you know, I found some, some good answers there, but. That's how I went about it. I'm not sure if you guys had any other thoughts, but

Mike:

Four out of my five were exactly as you described it. But then I also picked Jason as a fifth person because he was like, when I was starting, he was. And to some extent still is like the pinnacle. And if he did, you know, do some writing for POJO back in the day, but it was more that, you know, you just hear of this guy. I was like the best player in the world and you want to be like him. So I picked Jason, but then my other flour pretty much as you described Brit,

Brent:

yeah, give it to us. Brit

Mike:

You go first.

Brit:

Oh, and I won't go through all five. Maybe we can bounce back and forth. But my thing, my first one probably pretty obvious would be calling mall for sure. I just can't imagine. I mean, I, I wouldn't still be playing the game. I'm sure I would have quit at the end of high school or something. Like I, I just truly think. And so I think he's an interesting pick both in terms of, because he is such a close friend, one of my very close friends, my closest from Pokemon. So there's that too, but just if we're, if we're only framing the question in terms of the way that Mikey and I just did, just in terms of like raw ability and things like that, and, you know, gosh, he's just barely plays. And I think, you know, this is what has always been so interesting to me about Colin is I think Colin really could have been. like kind of just a top 10 player, really at any moment in time, if he wanted to, he just sort of, and this is something I've really learned or I've been trying to learn like recently, like how can I enjoy the game? How can I enjoy the game and play competitively if I don't want to win every event, if I don't want to go to every event, if I, you know, and that's just sort of his model he's just has, I think just the right balance to just like play it and enjoy it, or what have you. I just always like, I have to play every event cause I have to prove that I'm good and I have to win. And it's just like, it's just never an interest for him. But then at the same time, he's just like casually, like last year playing Pokemon for the first time made top 16 or top 32 in the first players cup just does stuff like that. Very seamlessly and never, never in these like Orthodox ways. Just always has an interest as a weird weirder deck list. Weirder Pokemon, like just wants to play with different kinds of Pokemon. Just has never been a player whose choices are dictated by the winds of the meta games and things like that. But yeah, just so many, so many fundamentals in the game, just the technical game, as well as just like, oh, I'm going to need to deck someone out this game. Like Colin is the master of the alternative strategies and that's something I think I am personally good at, but that's just from losing to him and play testing year after year after year when I just get decked out out of nowhere because I haven't been paying close enough attention.

Mike:

I would say my equivalent to Collin is Sam Chen. He is for people that have been playing for, you know, a relatively long time. You might actually not know that Sam. Has been playing for a long time. He just took a very long break and came back in whatever, like 2011 or so, which is still like a long time for this modern age. But he missed out on like five or six years. But I met Sam in 2003 for the very first time. So we've known each other for almost 20 years. We met at what was the first Nintendo ran event, the Ruby Sapphire challenge, where it was a combination video game and TCG event. And we played in the video game and he knew much, much, much more than I did. So he beat me, but I did okay. In the cards. And then we kept in contact for the next few years and test it together and played together. And we, he, he just. A lot of the, he taught a lot of the game to me and then he came back and then he like quit when you went to college. And I didn't talk him for four or five years, or at least not too much. And then he came back in 2011 and obviously since then has been a big part of my life again. And so Sam is my, my oldest friend in Pokemon and definitely the most, one of the, one of the most influential for sure. Keeps me on my

Brent:

is a great one. Same as a great one. When I was thinking about who is that and being on a, on my list, Sam was a definitely a one of those people. He's fantastic.

Mike:

Yeah. And he just has, like, we've talked about it. Like, he has a way of thinking about the game that is so analytical. So mathematical that is different from other players. And it's really, it's always good to get his perspective on things.

Brent:

Yeah. Delightful person, delightful player. One of the best people in the game.

Mike:

Yeah. Great. Give us another one.

Brit:

The next one, I really sort of, I have one or at least one, one that I thought would be interesting to talk about. Cause I think, you know, it's like I did learn a lot from this person, but I don't really want to associate with them as sort of canceled before cancel culture. But I, I, I really, really was influenced in 20th of 20 11, 20 12 season. By Martin Marino, we played, we practiced so much. And I guess to talk a little bit about Martin is that he sort of famous for winning. He's just an old guy. Where he won the 2006 national championship completely undefeated. And then, and then what later would later be banned from Pokemon for showing up to a city championships drunk? Oh, a whole litany of other stories there, but regardless of his sort of personal character, I do think he, he didn't know the game and did approach the game in a different way. And just like, I don't know, I've just learned, learned lots of fundamentals from him too. And it was sort of the funniest part too. Even, even in these years, we there were better ways to play. Like PTCGO existed at this point in time and I'm like, I'm like blanking on. Sort of what the, where are the other options where like, so it was like TCG one TCG player. There's just, there's just been a lot over the years, but we never did either of those. He would only test on apprentice and not only would he only test on apprentice, but we never had the cards. So apprentice is just like an old, like magic simulator. And it has a very kind of easy, like create your own card. So we would always, we had to make like all of our cards. And so we, all of our tests and games around this, like janky, like just really bad, really like all low resolution, like magic simulator with basic lands everywhere. I was just like, no text on them because we didn't, we didn't need to actually put the text on them. All we needed was the shuffle function that draw function and then a name. But I just, it was just sort of funny how kind of like anachronistic he preferred to test. But yeah, lots there I, there probably wouldn't be an order. Calling is my number one. I wouldn't say that Martin is my number two. The rest are. Hm.

Mike:

Yeah. I wasn't really sure that order necessarily of mine either. The, yeah, the other, so I had Jason, Sam, and then my other three were kind of like different times early on in my career. So the first one nobody would know, but his name is Nick He was a local from the new England area and he was. Since I played a lot in new England actually growing my first few years. Cause it was pretty easy to get there from long island. They were some of the closest tournament's. And so you kind of took me under his wing and taught me a lot in my first two or three years. And then since there wasn't that many local torments, I played a lot online, kind of, as you're just describing Brit and the, the old Neo Lafonda guys also kind of nurtured me as, as a young you know, whatever 13 year old at the time. And so. I don't know exactly who the number one person is in there. The first person that came to mind was drew Holton really good guy, but also like Chad Harris and AIG Deloitte are in that category. For sure. And then when I kind of met up with the X-Files crew, they have obviously been super influential in my plane over the years. And Spencer Nala was the first one to introduce me to that group. But I think probably Tyler is the one that has influenced me the most in terms of deck building. Like he's just so crazy and imaginative with what he wants to do with Dex. And I, and I really loved that and always loved bouncing ideas off him. So it's kind of like, well, the Fanta crew, the X-Files crew each have their own influences in my trajectory as a player.

Brit:

Tyler is actually on my list as well. And I think which will, which will compliment the story, I think, in an enjoyable way. And what I'll say is that he like leaked me stuff from you guys here and there, which I know you guys knew, but but yeah, just, just to, just to say some of that stuff, you know, to, to reiterate, but yeah, and you know, just for me again, this was all the way I've always kind of just, just described. My career, I guess, with Pokemon is that I just kind of like accidentally qualified for worlds. The first time I was, you know, I like when I was playing that season, like I knew what worlds was, I was going to events, but like wa wasn't something I ever thought would happen. And I just did, did well at states out of nowhere and spiked at nationals finishing qualified. But then at that worlds, I just met enough people. I just happened to meet, you know, I went, I stayed with Jason, Harry who had he had made top four, it nationals that year and he beat me in the top cut and he let me stay in his room and it was just like, it just snowballed from there. Not only, you know, in terms of the people I met, but just like, because I met so many people, I just had. Connections deck lists all this sort of stuff. And so for that, I would frame the next two people on my list, kind of the people I met from worlds or people I met through other people shortly after and Tyler being, being up there for whatever reason, I don't have to think about exactly the story was, but I've just been pretty close friends with like a lot of the Pacific Northwest for just a long time, just for whatever reason. And it was just made a part of like their group chats there, things like that. And when they were working on decks and of course, Tyler being a part of that too. And yeah, just always very unorthodox stuff with Tyler. One of the, one of the things I remember most fondly I think is that his pool was playing tropical beach in like big basics. Like we, we like the, the the set, what was that boundaries cross had just come out. And so the medic game was just like, Like landrace, like Lander, landrace, MuTu ho decks and things like that. But Skyla had just been released and he's just like, well, the beach decks play either. Like all the evolution decks play Skyla and beach. Like we play skylight. Why should, why shouldn't we still display like a beach? There's not a whole lot going on on our first turn. I'm just always kind of pushing the game in, in different ways. And I know lots of a lot of the X-Files stacks he's played a great role in over the years. And those are, I think are some of the most iconic rogue creations in the history of the game. And the other player, very similar one in retrospect I regret playing as many of his decks as I did, but, but the, the influence is definitely still there and was a good player pushing the game in different ways. But Aaron Curry from Florida also on my list, he was someone I just like, I met at that 2011 worlds with, and just kind of as inseparable from for the next couple of years, in terms of just like what I wanted to play. I don't know. There's just something about me. I'm just like, I like playing weird decks, you know, to, to my own detriment. A lot of the time. And Erin, Erin always had weird decks for me to play and things like that. But that about rounds up my list. I couldn't quite think of a fifth one. And I was, I was going to throw in like Jason or someone like that to as my last one. But those are kind of all the personal, like I think where I learned the deeper fundamentals from, or however you want to think about it.

Brent:

Do you have on your list, Mike?

Mike:

I think I covered, I covered my list.

Brent:

Fair enough. Fair enough. You know, the

Brit:

Okay.

Brent:

I think if, if I'm known for anything it's that I hired almost everyone at one point or another to try to coach my kids. Obviously you, you guys coach my kid Jimmy pen, Darvis a, an eager cast of both some coaching and Liam really liked working with the Igor. And then like our locals community has been super supportive. And I always, I think like you guys, you always think of like the locals, it's like the people that got you into it, right. Colby Evans was the junior that if he had not been so such a good kid and like, so just delightful to spend time with, I don't think Liam would have embraced playing Pokemon like you did,

Brit:

Yes.

Brent:

but you know, people like Dean as Dylan, Dreyer, who is going off to play Hearthstone now and very sad because he was a super awesome you know, Jimmy was a local and we had so many like the like Northern Virginia Pokemon community. It's like so many good players, but at Christa Puerco is, well, somebody I got to work with for several years and I played Pokemon with so that's fun. But I w when I was trying to think of my Mimi and response to like these kind of Mamie things, cause I think like you bread, I'm like, well, I would never respond to it. We'd like this, but if I had to, what would I say it was going to be like you know, fifth Russell Laparre and then like fourth Dylan Bryan, third, Dylan, Brian second bill and Brian first, Brian bill and Brian, super influential. I think another guy that like, you know always looking for a way to deck you out, no matter what that he was playing, like always, always thinking about open and wind conditions, always thinking about problems, analytically you know, always thoughtful about decks in the meta you know where we're super sad that he's not playing anymore. Cause he was always a super fun guy to spend time with and always enjoyed it.

Brit:

Okay.

Brent:

so guys, a couple of us sort of draft the world's coming September 18th and 19th. I saw an interesting comment that somebody said, I assume we're going to be playing a PTCGO. Are they, is there going to be a supporter rule change for the old FedEx? I assume the answer to that is no. And people are just going to have to draft picks accordingly.

Mike:

Yeah, that's awesome. My assumption too, like I saw some people saying that they think it might be played in real life. And I think that is a very unrealistic expectation. Like how are you going to get eight of the best players in the world together to play in real life that doesn't make any sense? Yeah, so, I mean, they could do what online tournament do and do like. the pass pass thing. But my assumption is that they're not going to do that because it's officially run by Pokemon. Why would you do anything so logical?

Brent:

Exactly. Exactly. And that just breaks the rules in a different way. Right.

Mike:

Yeah. Right, right.

Brent:

Everybody gets an extra card. Okay,

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

Brett, you were going to say something.

Brit:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was just going to respond to that. I've also seen people being like, it'll probably be in person and I'm just like, so T PCI just has a, has a recording studio and stuff now. Like, I don't think like, maybe like if my memory serves correctly, like at TPC, I just like, it's a floor in, in an, in an office building that is there's many, many sort of companies, or at least it used to be. And now they used to work next to like Expedia or Amazon or something. I had a friend who worked in the same building. I don't know. I don't know if that's possibly has changed, but all that to say is like, there's not this like magical headquarters where they would definitely have that. There is something where this, cause I don't know, like I'm thinking of like the closed, like magic worlds broadcasts or something that are really small or something like that. So imagine what people are visualizing or something and yeah, I mean, that's just a stretch too. It'll be, I'll be curious to see, I'm hoping I thought about this too. Hoping that they'll do what they did was the invitational and we'll get. The players just progressively announced day by day. I'd like to see something like that. I think that's just like, you know, a good way to do it as well as like probably how you want to be running your social media is anyways, like more hits, more posts, more interactions and so forth. But yeah, it would be, I'll be curious, like last week I said something to the effect that I was like, oh, this is just what I want at the invitation to be the whole time. So I'll be curious to see who they invite comparatively. If there are different faces, more of the same, if it's more players cup sort of heavy again that's sort of another question going forward now that we're probably not in getting events till next year sometime, or we just like our, we do four. Just like another year of players cups. Like, we've talked about that enough, but I just am curious as to what's going to be happening now. Just with everything I suppose.

Mike:

Okay.

Brent:

The, the other thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about the, the draft, the world had been coming up was as somebody who's played a fair amount of fantasy football, it's, we're taking a moment to say snake drifts, suck auction, draft rules, everybody's pin attempts to that stuff knows.

Mike:

What is an auction draft?

Brent:

So, so here's what they should do. Right. So, so assuming, and like, I mean, I'm making a million zillion assumptions about what is actually going to happen for this thing. Right. But like, I'm assuming that they're not going to eliminate people, like, because that would be less fun instead. It's gonna be. Five rounds of eight people playing like the top eight decks from the world championships that year. And then at the end, they either cut to like top four and have elimination or they cut the finals or they crown a winner or something. I don't know what they're going to do. Right. But like, I don't want there just to be one round of like 2019, whereas there was like four rounds of 2015, you know what I mean? So, so they said that they're going to have a draft before the tournament of like the decks that people play with, if, if it was elimination right out of the gate, getting the right deck for 2015 would be like the most important thing in the world. Right.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

So, so hence my working assumption is they won't do that. And like, so, so here's, what's weird about a snake draft snake draft. If there's one pic, that's obviously the thing. It, it disproportionately benefits the person who has the first pick. Right? So, so in an auction draft, what they do is, and I'll give you the fantasy football version, I guess, first, and then we will translate it into Pokemon. Eh, they give you like 200 virtual dollars, right? And then they sneak through where you nominate players and then those players get bid on and the highest bidder gets them. it's a football perspective. You have to draft 10 players and you start with 200 virtual ducks. If you want to spend$190 on Tom Brady, like you can get him. And then all the rest of your players completely suck.

Mike:

okay.

Brent:

So, so there's some choices you have to make between having like a large pool of average players or like one or two superstars, and then like comparatively bad players.

Mike:

Okay.

Brent:

so if you look at, like, if you said, man in 2016, there was a one deck that like, I just really, really want to play that deck. Right. Then, then like you could bid disproportionately highly to get that deck. And then the result is you would have less flexibility to get like a deck you wanted in other years,

Mike:

Yeah. That makes sense. Just sounds much more complicated than a snake draft.

Brent:

more complicated, but the result is better outcomes.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

So they probably won't do that because snake drafts are so easy, but I just want to put out there as, as somebody who is analytically minded, I am acutely aware that snake drafts suck and auction drives the rule. And that's how it's got to be.

Mike:

Yeah,

Brent:

They're, they're probably not going to optimize it for that way. Like, like for example, it is highly likely that they're going to have players who actually competed in those years and like, they might really want to play their deck. And yet, like if their deck is like the good deck, I mean, you would hate for it to either a get like, just snaked or like, you know, like B other people can't get that deck because like they got it or whatever, right? Like let's make tracks. If, if there's a good deck, people would just take it. And that seems like somewhat unfair. There's no fair way to really balance it properly.

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing, like if they're using. I don't know, pardon me, assumes that they're gonna be picking from the world decks from each year. I don't know if that's a good assumption, but let's say even if it's more broad than that, and it's like the top four from each division, right. The juniors and seniors decks are much worse on average than the masters decks. So that's also not great.

Brent:

Yeah. Yeah. I I'm assuming that they won't do that. I assume that they would just take like the top eight master things.

Mike:

I dunno. We'll see.

Brent:

Yeah. But you, you make a, eh, hence the value you have an auction draft is even more emphasized in it. Like if you looked at, you said, well, these two years, the juniors and seniors decks were not as bad, maybe that's it would change how you would approach the problem. Right. It'd be more, it's important to try to get quote the good decks from the other years.

Mike:

Yeah. That's true.

Brent:

So, you know, I mean, a snake draft that ability to like ha express an opinion. Gets, gets kind of nervous because it's just a matter of like there's, there's no relativism at all. You just take whatever the best pick is like that at any given moment. guys, you guys ready to talk involving skies?

Mike:

it.

Brent:

All right. The, the, the current format is stale. I think we, we, haven't done a deep, deep dive on like a next set maybe in the history of the pod, but it seems like this is a good time to do it.

Mike:

Yeah. Let's start with like cards that we know are going to be good. And then if we have a little time, we can get into interesting cards that might not be as good.

Brent:

Gotcha. So should we start with, is Reihan just the best card in the set and everybody's going to play at least.

Mike:

I'm not, it's a good card, but I'm not completely convinced. Cause like the only two things die. Right. So like you only get one chance to use it. And a lot of decks cause they'll kill two V maxes. You know, if you don't use it, the one turn the big kill your first VMX you just don't have any opportunity to use it. So I don't think it will be used in every deck. I think the decks that do use it, it will be good in, but like people are saying that it's going to be awesome and rapid strike and I just don't see it because like you're a VMX deck they're only gonna take, you're only going to have one or maybe two turns where it could be useful.

Brent:

That's fair. You know what? I like it because I feel like that's a little bit of a hot pick. I feel like everybody loves the.

Brit:

I think too, like I don't, I agree. I sort of, don't sure how to parse these cards. That always just are the supporter cards. They just always strike me as like, this would be good if we had versus the seeker, like stuff that stuff. There's a lot of supporters around, out there like that. And I just don't, I don't like, I just don't know how to fit them in the decks or how to just think about them the right way. But in the case of Reihan I think that to just maybe add on to what Mike has said, we can think about it too. It was like, well, like, oh, if you only put a couple of them, how would you find it? Well, if that answer is Inteleon, you're just sort of wasting your time, I think, because it entails Inteleon and drizzle just like, kind of do part of that already, if that makes sense. So like, you know, like imagine this play that I, that I like drizzle or Inteleon for a Reihan and something else isn't that, that just seems like a little silly, almost like why I, instead of the Reihan I could like, you know, say a C Inteleon. I can almost do the same thing without it and as more and more decks, seem to be falling back on this Inteleon engine, it just like, I don't know if you would ever. Find time for it. Like I like, you know, compared to say drizzling for your Melanie or desiring Inteleon for a boss or something like that, much more impactful plays. I would argue like dispatch out, arrive on that itself, like fetches out a card. You know, obviously the, the first part of the effect, getting the extra attach and things like that are, are the better part of the card. Don't get me wrong. But like, you know, if your deck already is doing part of what the card does, I don't know why you would find the space to suddenly play it. If that makes sense. That's my argument loosely against why I'm, I'm also a little sort of like, I don't know. So many of these cards is just the versus secret thing. Like these, this would be great if we had, if we had versus seeker, if like,

Mike:

Even taboo LA. Right. If tech like, like, yeah, the drip kind of like what you said, like the drizzle Inteleon can find anything, any trainer essentially, which leads pretty much into any. So like that doesn't feel quite as good, but like, like specifically the supporter. right? So, yeah, I agree. That's a good analysis.

Brit:

Right too. And you know, it reminds me of, and other of these cards that I've described are similarly, but just like thinking about teammate, serious thing, one played teammates without, without versus seeker and or Laylay. Right. And that's just the exact same story. Like how, like, if you play this car, you know, it's not like twins or something where you can build your whole deck around being behind the whole time. And then it's not really a question of being able to use them or not. But yeah, like again, no one, no one did that with teammates, because you would have like, had to play a lot more copies, which would have just been bad, but you would, would've just been discarding them and they would have been clunking up your hands and so forth. I guess while they were just on Reihan what about Zinnia she's going around here and they're just

Mike:

he has discard two and draw one for each of their Pokemon. Right.

Brit:

yeah.

Mike:

I think it's significantly better than Eric has hospitality. I think the discard effect is actually really good. There's not a whole lot of discarding effects in this format. It's just quick ball and research pretty much. So I think the discarding effect is like much more appealing than the, you know, the, I mean, the drawing is good, but like the discarding effect plus the drawing, I think it actually is a pretty solid card,

Brent:

I think it's interesting because I feel like the, when you get the most value out of the discard is early game and that's when you're going to get the least value out of the draw. So it'll be interesting to see how, how people kind of take advantage of it right

Mike:

Yeah. That's true.

Brent:

now in Inteleon rich format. Like I guess people have a lot of Saba's Ben, Shirley, so maybe it's okay. But it's a weird thing.

Mike:

Are there any good other good trainers? Oh, you the what's that booster card.

Brent:

Boost the booster card is a great card to talk about booster shake. I think the first question I have about booster shake is will it be banned and expanded because this is exactly the kind of card that makes people do terrible things and

Mike:

So booster shake is like an immediate revelation, right? You can play it like the first time you play something and then your turn ends.

Brent:

Yeah,

Mike:

yeah. So I think it's good. I don't think it will be very good in standard is my guests. But I do agree that in expanded it's probably too good. Like you get like, like they band Wally, right. And this is just wildly for an idea. Yeah.

Brent:

Yeah.

Mike:

Which sounds kind of stupid. So like, yeah, going first, you can get, Trevenant going first. You can get Garbotoxin going first. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, but both of those seem pretty frigging good. So. I don't think it will be that good and standard though. It doesn't seem that great.

Brent:

Yeah. I mean, the only thing I can think of that's even vaguely approximate that is like, turn one Altaria but like who cares?

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares about that? That's that's whatever.

Brent:

I mean, if, if, if you have one of those decks where you like, well, I'm going to kill two or three of these other things. And then like, I have to kill the Altaria, but I can only tell like, you know, one or two of them before I lose, maybe that makes it a little tougher for you. But I mean, if you built your whole lot, Terry that around doing this thing, it's probably not very good.

Mike:

Right? What else? Copycat coming back. I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you think that'll be played over Marnie or anything?

Brit:

Aye, the good one. Colin was a big, big copycat fan. Like I like played it in my SP deck. Back in the day that I qualified for world Smith and it was like always super duper good in there. I'm forgetting. I just remember it was never all that popular of a card until you mega really. But I've, I always thought that it was, it was a really underrated in those formats. And I think maybe it could have a place here at least like. You know, there's a lot of tech lifts that seem to like, just play an Erika every now and then just like a single copy, like one now. And I would think it's just strictly better than that maybe not. I mean, someone, someone can try to crunch do some real numbers crunching on average hand sizes and things like that. But like, at least in my head, the impression is usually like, I at least imagine that Shadow Rider usually has a decent sized hand. I stride it doesn't I stride or tends to have smaller hands. Usually I would say Inteleon or not Inteleon, but Urshifu has smaller hands. I'm just kind of talking, I'm thinking out loud here, but now that I've thought about it, I'm skeptical. But initially I was going to say, I'm looking forward to it. Maybe eventually it's a good car.

Mike:

Yeah, it's good. It's good to have an option, even if it's not like immediately. Great. It's good to have another potentially good draw option. Rather have Cynthia, but.

Brent:

You guys can tell me, my impression is, so this is not the first time they've reprinted, copycat. Copycat was a card like two years ago, something like that. And I remember when they printed it, that was the first time it had been in a format since I started playing and all the, all the old guys, like you guys were like, oh, I got a copy again, such a good card. It's such a good card. And it saw like, no play. And this was in like a Zoroark kind of format. So you would see people run like one copycat. Living this magical dream that these Zoroark guys would have this huge hand size. And they would somehow like reap the benefits of it. And it never, like, you never really felt like you got good value out of it. I think to your point, a Brent, like they would play a one off. Cause they were just like, well, I want a one more supporter and all the other supporters were bad, but like, it wasn't good. And I don't know. I don't know what has the change about a format for it to like, not be a good card anymore, but like, if you feel like me and you've been playing since like 20 14, 20 15, you're like, no, that's not a good card. People tried to print it, make it a good card before, but like not a good card.

Mike:

I think the big difference is so like when copy got first got printed in like the east set and then it got reprinted, you know, a little bit into Nintendo era. The game was so much more search based and very little draw or much less, much less shuffle draw. And so you would often accumulate hands that were bigger because you'd be playing TV reporters or Stevens devices, or you would use You know, energy draw Del caddy, just kind of like build it. your hand. There wasn't there was no professor Juniper. There was very little shuffle draw outside of copycat itself. So Yeah, So you just kind of like, now you just play all your cards too. Like there was, there was much fewer items back then. Now you just kind of like dump items at will. So yeah, it, the game was a little bit different. Copycat is certainly a weaker than it was many years ago.

Brit:

Yeah, I guess, too, for those who didn't play the SP era huge, like you're you're they were so big sometimes, you know, an S N S P near match. I'm assuming no one had, like, there just wasn't very much hand reset at the time at all. It was just kind of judged, which only really found a place and a few decks. But like, so Cyrus has conspiracy sort of was the card that made everything work and SP, which was just really a reprint of Castaway and older supporter. But it was, it's a three for one. So with the you get a tool another supporter card and a basic energy. Cyrus. Those are limited to SP had to be in the name, but otherwise, same card. And so you just play your chain, those 1, 2, 3, 4, every turn. And you know, most of the time you would need to play these cards and you were sitting on power spray and things like that. So naturally your hands would just get huge. And I guess that was sort of the fun interaction as your opponent would try to use Oxy or clay. It all, you know, your, your big draw effects, Oxy thing, like Crobat, but a little better And you'd have this 20 card hand and that you'd have to, you'd have to sit there and be like, am I going to your opponent would wait. They would look at, look at you looking at your hand and be like, do I get to draw or not? And you, you know, that was the fun part is you'd have a 23 card hand, but no power spray. And you just, it would be the best bluff in the world and be like, go fish, you know, go ahead. I have one I'm going to try to make you think I have one in that. I'm allowing you to do this, but yeah, that's when that's when I played copycat. And so though that was a large hand format to be sure.

Brent:

Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe like this anticipate some future format where they, they tweak things a little bit. Like if people are playing zinnias instead of, you know, Sycamore and Marnie, and you're just like drawing more cards and adding to your hand size and you know, like the different thing. But if, if, if decks are just paying, like for researches for Marnie's, you're just never going to have like the kind of hand size where you get real value out of that. Right.

Mike:

Yeah. Like the best you can do is the turn after they Koob max, maybe they have like eight cards. Like that's probably like the best.

Brent:

Yeah.

Mike:

All right. So the, the only other trainers that are interesting, I think are the two stadiums, the one that's like a Brooklyn health for lightning and dragon and the one that is rough seas from metal and dragon. So those are both interesting. And then the, like the evolution tools are interesting. I think everything else is unplayable.

Brent:

The, the rough seas stadium made me wonder if like LucMetal and expanded will be a thing. Yeah, I don't know. It made it expanded. There's gotta be way better stall mechanics than that. That's not good enough.

Mike:

Yeah, I do think there could be a like just a Zamazenta deck potentially in standard where I mentioned this and I've made a list for like the current syringe shield on, but it, you know, it runs like hyper potions and suspicious tins and stuff like that. But you know, this card, this card could make just like for Zamazenta for, of its specific tool that gives it 70 HP you're in for the stadium, some other healing, like maybe you could still run hyper potion or like Pokemon center lady or something like that. And that might just be good enough as a deck. I'm not sure that's really the only application I can think of, but. I mean rough seas was a really good card. So this will probably be okay at some point, HP is also a lot more, so maybe it won't be, but.

Brent:

All right. What's next on the list.

Brit:

I've seen. I mean, we're getting closer to the just real obvious ones, I guess maybe talk about the fringier EVs may be like, I see I'm forgetting what exactly it gets played with, but I know I've seen it. Yeah. Two different ways people have tried. I think Luke Morsa had a video on one of them, but with the Leafeon almost said GX, but VMX do you guys think there's anything there? Like the, the ability is good on the V for sure. I think that's an interesting will be interesting. Maybe not just in the stack, but just kind of elsewhere.

Mike:

Yeah. That's much more interesting to me than the V max itself. The V max seems pretty weak to me.

Brit:

I agree. Maybe not a whole lot more to stay there, but I just know like it compared to some of the other fringe year ones, like I haven't seen anyone talking about Glacey on, for instance. And it seems roughly on the same power level. And I was just curious if there is some grass stuff I was missing or it's like, they played it with but like, surely that's, what's worse than real Rillaboom I would think.

Mike:

I think the glacier could be okay. Like it has a, the basic has Ascension, so like going second is not bad and That's a huge benefit in this format. Like make making second more tolerable and then, you know, the BMX is Zamazenta but on a BMX Which means. So like one of the weaknesses of Zamazenta is that if people play Path to the Peak, then they can potentially still just one shot the Zamazenta, but that's never happening to a VMX I assume. So. Or at least there's no deck that will play Path to the Peak. That can also one shot it. I think. I don't know. I guess we'll see. But it seems unlikely. And so that could be, that could be good. I think Leafeon V max is a little bit underrated, In terms of the other EVs, like obviously I'm Brianna and Sylveon are the best. Right.

Brit:

Yeah,

Mike:

I keep forgetting, that's still be honest, psychic. Like I keep thinking that it's going to be fairy and I'm like, wait, why is it good? I was like, oh yeah, it's psychic. If one shots rapid strict w that's why it's good.

Brit:

it's frustrating. It's the, it's the, Sylveon in the dark gang, Gar that just

Mike:

Yeah, right.

Brit:

up the wall with my petty grievances, but both of them. Yeah. It's just, it's such a pink card too. Like it's just the most pink Pokemon.

Mike:

Yeah. I'm very obviously very, very good. I think it'll be really cool to see what up being, but umbrella is going to end up being like Lycanroc, I think, where it's played with a bunch of different stuff. So I'm really interested to see how that pans out. It's also really nice that in one shot Shadow Rider. So that's really cool too. I saw lists for like a single strike box deck that ran Umbrians and single strike Urshifu and something else. And I feel like that could and pounding obviously. So that could be like a cool way to play it, but I'm sure there's other ways to play it too. And it turned into this as obvious and obvious one as well.

Brent:

Yeah. The fact that only it's one dark energy and two colorless means it's like a little more splash Hubble

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

and, and all these single strike decks, like, you know, obviously that's included on your single strike decks. Cause like you can figure out a way to make that work, right?

Mike:

It might be like, if I was going to say the best card in the set, I might say I'm Brianne, just because it's like powerful and versatile. A lot of these other cards that are very powerful or very specific.

Brit:

Even solely on I wonder just like the, the main, the main, the main way I see playing it is not by itself, but just in the, the rapid strike box. There's not another way to play Sylveon is there, like, I imagine that's just sort of the best way that'll come out of it, but at the same time too, I've seen some lists and like, I, I love, I just love these four corner decks. It's one on, you know, there's an old archetype type of deck, but it doesn't tend to exist anymore. So I'm always really excited for anything like this to pop up, but it just kind of seems clunky to me. Like, you know, not only do you have this weird sort of stack of attackers, but like you want, you just like need Octillery to probably to make everything work. And that's just like, it's just so many Pokemon really more than anything. I'm a little, I think it's just kind of cuts itself then trying to be at everything, you know?

Mike:

Yeah. I didn't notice that the Sylveon basic ability is actually kind of cool, right? It search search for an item and then your turn ends. That's that's not bad. That's like pretty, that's pretty good.

Brent:

So Sylveon going to be like a top tier.

Mike:

Tough to say. I mean, I think when you say top tier, at least tier two, probably. I don't know if it will be tier one, but it will be tier two. I think.

Brent:

What kinds of things do you think it gets paired with? Like, obviously the whole point is you're going to, you got to pick other types and like you want Pokemon that somehow, like magically make it good.

Brit:

The way that I almost always say, I don't really think there's too much variation on this because again, you know, you're trying to maximize your colors as much as you can, but you just, you just mashed all the good rapid strength Pokemon. It plays like, I think Sylveon is the focus. Excessively, like it's not a 4, 4, 4, 3, or anything like that. It has to be kind of lower just to fit everything else, but it plays blaze. This is the one I'm most unsure about is also trying to fit Bali's akin in there, but it has plays akin Sylveon Urshifu and I think that's usually about it. Like you could play zero aura, of course that's another color which occasionally gets thrown alongside plays akin. But I don't usually see it in these lists. But then, yeah, just, I am curious. I just I'm skeptical. Like, I, it just takes so much for it to work. I just sort of, anytime I see the list, I just like this can't be better than just Urshifu Inteleon is my main thought about the deck. But that's usually how I see it play it. I think there is another more sort of streamlined version of it though. Maybe do you know Mikey?

Mike:

Not really just ones that don't play plays. Can you just play like, just Urshifu and Octillery and then. Throw like a basic in there to get the type that you need.

Brent:

Yeah. I was wondering if you play like Moltres and energy switches to let you get that like third attachment. So you can, you can be like rapid strike energy, dark energy attack.

Brit:

I don't know about the energy switches, but I do. I have seen mold trays and this, I have seen people being, obviously Urshifu Moltres does a deck that exists most in both. And then post rotation, but I have seen people try to just kind of pair Urshifu Sylveon alongside the Moltres race. I imagine the energy switches is probably like, just too much at that point. Like take the Urshifu decks that try to play Tapu Koko for like a similar idea. And those kind of didn't go anywhere. And the, the, you know, Alex Szymanski is more consistent version of probably just the way to go. And I guess something similar.

Brent:

I mean, I had heard people saying they were excited about this card and I looked at it. I was like, I dunno. It's okay.

Mike:

Yeah. I mean, I think it's main thing is just going to be it's a little bit more splash and a little bit more. Okay. And, and one shots rapid strike. Urshifu like that's its main niche in the format.

Brent:

Right, right.

Mike:

All the other like cards that I have on good list. Well, okay. Actually, let's talk about sweet Coon V a little bit that one's, that one's a little bit more ambiguous as well.

Brent:

Yeah. And this is a car that's very popular in Japan, right?

Mike:

Yeah. And I think we've mentioned it briefly at some point on the podcast, but it just seems so strange to me. I get the ability is okay, draw card is fine. And its attack is also okay. Maybe it's just the fact that it's efficient at what it does. Like it, it can, two-shot stuff for two energies while also drawing a card for you. And it can be a parable turn with Melanie, so I could have some good things going for, but maybe it's just not flashy. And I don't know, you guys have any thoughts?

Brent:

I feel like you know, in is a great example of another card, like copycat that when they essentially like reprinted the exact same card, people who had played old and bully and were like, oh, this cards really good. And the problem was like, it did not quite power creeped enough. And it like, wasn't good enough. I look at this card and I'm like, yeah. You know, like, I mean, I guess on the one hand, it's just a V as opposed to BMX, but ice rider just seems objectively better.

Mike:

Yeah. I mean, and maybe it just gets played as a one of in ice rider. It's very possible.

Brit:

I wonder if you could like play Glacio on like in ice rider. I wonder if that, I mean, I guess not. Cause I was thinking like, maybe it could think some match-ups for you, but I don't think it would, but like there's, there's some, there's some space to explore there. I think I stride or being so, so linear. I don't think, I mean, obviously see what Kuhn I think just finds a place in there as a one of, and it's because it's good to have some other ways to attack even though I guess at the same time. So we can it's one attack is essentially just. Right of the hiking already, like to kind of similar. So it's not functioning as something new, but maybe still just a two Prizer that you can rely on. Isn't so bad. I'm not sure. Not as well-versed in ice rider these days, as most people.

Mike:

Yeah. Like the argument of like, why it's good and ice rider is, you know, you can force them to take a prizes, but it just seems so likely to. If you're playing Inteleon, they're going to kill a VMX, they're going to kill the sweet. Good. And they're going to kill a, a single price. So we'll see. The coolest deck that I've seen with weekend is like just sweet food mattress. Just kind of like two very efficient V Pokemon, kinda like do their thing. They do their thing. Well that seems like a better way to take squeaker and to me.

Brent:

When the prize trade just by hitting really hard,

Mike:

Yeah,

Brent:

fairly quickly, right.

Mike:

yeah.

Brit:

It sounds like the Zacian Inteleon deck. But just with some different options that are like, I don't know, I just obviously metal patching or metal saucer is, is good, but the, the caveat to Zacian attack is not. So I would just think that maybe these other options would be just as good. And it seems, it seems to be the case. That Inteleon goes well just about anything. So maybe I'm not sure. I mean, so we couldn't seems a little eliminate damage wise too. And so maybe the pings can assuage that as well.

Brent:

You make a good point. I bet you have to play Inteleon with that because otherwise against a good player that would just manage your damage output, right?

Mike:

Yes. Right, right? If they know that that's what your deck is for

Brent:

Yeah. And they're like, he's definitely attacking this week, the next turn. And they just, they just do what they have to do to stop you from getting where you want to get to. Right.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brit:

Okay.

Mike:

There's the super obvious scarves requires of Emacs. those are all like, I feel like super obvious like

Brit:

I mean, I think, I think requires those where worth talking about it is the star of the set and obvious combo, but is it any good, you

Mike:

right?

Brent:

I mean, it looks fantastic. It looks amazing props.

Mike:

The artwork is amazing.

Brent:

amazing.

Brit:

I don't really even like, I guess I'll give a hot take. I don't like the Altaria Rayquaza where it's like in the fine in the city. I don't like that. I don't think.

Brent:

Really I dig it, man.

Brit:

I like the Sylveon and stuff more, but like, I've thought about the stack and like, I don't know, I've got pretty burnt while I'm an alternate cross-match. That was kind of like the last deck I really worked on before taking a break. Like I, they came out sort of at the tail end of that season, and that was the season I failed to qualify for worlds, but two separate winning ends. But I, I, I think I wrote like a six prizes article on, on it, and I like worked on it a lot and like, we just could never consistently be Zororoc. So I didn't, I just ended up playing Zororoc at those tournaments, I think But yeah, all that to say is that I was just like, yeah, it's going to be like mega Ray. I'm going to build it or not mega, but radios. And I'm just going to copy it. And so like rails kind of just evolved pun intended, I guess, over time, the way that the lists look cause like at first, you know, Ross wins kind of the first regionals where it's legal and it just like only played random receivers and like Bianca's and stuff. And then just like more and more cards came out for an eventually by the spring, regionals would be won by the super-duper like Uber trainer heavy focuses rather than kind of the older, just like draw supporters and a few balls, much more, much more given towards the heavy items or, but, you know, I was gonna build it like that and I want to build great quizzes in the same ways, but I just, like, there's just always something missing or there definitely was with the Krasno. Like, it just seemed like it should have been fine. It shouldn't seemed like it should have been a deck like ratios and just. This wasn't just like the, the, the, the times that just changed too much. It wasn't anything, it wasn't one thing in particular, it was everything. It was just the way that the game played sort of was just different compared to the way it was in 2012. And so I sort of wonder if that will just happen here again, like it's a, certainly a much better card, you know, if one between this and alternate across, and then if one of them was going to work, that would be this one, for sure. I mean, especially given the support, the items support with level ball and evolution in sense, but I, I just don't, I I'm torn and I guess we'll say that I don't think it will be good. And, but so a lot of that is based on Japanese tournament results and doesn't really seem to do well there. That's, that's some good data to start with. I would say. Yeah.

Mike:

I think so. Like we were just talking about how in the ice rider, like sweet Kuhn could offset the, you know, the three prize, three prize thing. But I think like against something like great quasi could actually work because Rayquaza needs so much to get it to one shot that it's going to be much harder for it to get it. Off of like a boss's order when it really wants to, because it needs to play rose to get the extra energy or needs to play Juniper, to find the flat fees or et cetera, et cetera. There's so many more moving parts that like, you're not really going to be able to use boss very often effectively. And therefore, like your goal is like the real draw for, to Rayquaza B max it's you just kill two V max. Right. But I think realistically, that's not going to happen as often as you want, because you have all of these moving pieces. If that makes sense. And then add on to the fact that you're very weak to rapid strikers food, killing your two flat fees. I think the deck will be good, but yeah, I think there's a lot of pitfalls that it could easily make it not as good as intended.

Brent:

So, so here's my question about requires the guys the, the non V max requires has basically the same attack if you only have three interviews attached,

Mike:

Right.

Brent:

right? Like, I'm sure, I'm sure somebody's going to have like some success with this deck, although I I'm inclined to agree with you guys. Like, it doesn't seem that great. Are, are, are those people going to be like skillfully thinking about whether or not they evolve, their requires us and like, they'll do a lot of times, like attacking. Regular requires a V or is the fact that flat fees are so easily killed, kind of wreck the value of trade and manage the price trade they're like, is that a thing where you're like, I'm just going to attack for 180 with this requires a V instead of like the maxing and like force you to take two prizes. Although it's easy to take the, probably the last 200 something hit points.

Brit:

Yeah. My initial reaction is I don't think that the math is there. It doesn't, it doesn't do enough. Like, and so if you were like doing, if it was like in conjunction with other things, like take, take, like Inteleon pings and like iron rule as an example, then it would be really good. But I don't think you know, you, you, you, your deck, I think has two attacks, so essentially, or at least the way I have it in my head right now is see what attack that this requires or the BMX. And just comparing the, I don't think this, this first attack is doing anything useful for the BMX is damage as well as associate. You can discard up to two, just one of them. So it caps that way. It only does 180. So it doesn't knock out these, which is just useless.

Brent:

Right.

Mike:

I agree.

Brent:

Does this deck just definitely, definitely, definitely lose to Urshifu.

Mike:

I don't know about definitely, but it doesn't seem great on paper. I mean, max has a lot of HP writes what? 3, 3 23, 48, only three 20.

Brent:

It's interesting. I started playing right as like, like black Melissa was like, not quite was like never quite good enough when I started playing like available. It just been printed and it was like, not, not good enough, but I feel like these decks that discard energy and then have your cards that get them out of your discard. Haven't been good enough in a while. Like, I feel like the last deck that was good was Mallomar Garrett, Tina, and I feel like guaranteeing them was good because you didn't have to discard the energy. So if they targeted your Malabars, your gear key that Tina just kept attacking and the result was like, they felt that like the person you were playing against had to make a decision. Like saying it shouldn't make them try to find a gear, a Tina again, next turn or, and target down the, their gear Tina, or should I target their Mallomar, which gets the, just gonna attack the guarantee and that again, I'm like, that was part of it. And it was a single prize attacker, and that was kind of what made it all work. I feel like this this archetype hasn't worked in a long time.

Brit:

I mean, I think that's just, it, it has a sorta Garrett Mallomar was the most recent one and it's just like, I mean, I think almost like think you're, Tina could have been like, Quite a bit worse. And I think that that still would have been good. Its power was just in the fact that it was, it was the best one, one Prizer and the stuff like spell tag and what you were able to do is spell tag and sort of what you're able, you know, just creating a Espeon D Oxys out of nowhere to win games. It was all like, that's why the deck work. It wasn't, there was no like constant discarding strategies. And so the example that comes to my mind as a recent example, that just was a flop was, is Magnuson Magnuson, and they're not in a craftsmen. It was a

Mike:

yeah,

Brit:

yes, I got confused because it was the Solgaleo one and I just couldn't remember. But yeah, and so that was sort of. It was like a focus of the set. It got so many tools, like not only do we have rain dance for metal Pokemon, but like we have a new black Calista, there's a stadium card. That's energy retrieval Gardevoir is the best deck at the time. It's weak to metal. How, how does this deck not come out? And it it's just so it's just totally irrelevant. It can keep up with Zoroark decks. And that's just like, I think another example why, and very similar to what I was talking about before with ultra Necros is that. It seemed like it should have worked, but it just didn't. And I think that just speaks to the speed of the game where like, Zoroark just doing one 20 turn to every turn is just playing better than like eventually blowing stuff up. And, you know, so much of what made black Paulista work is that it, it, there were no good counters to it. So like if you stabilize, you almost always took four prizes with one of them. And now that would just be the story behind most of your games is that there was just no easy way to take it down. And that's just, I don't think, I mean, and not to say that requires us getting one shot or anything like that necessarily, but like was just more of more of the moving parts for why it succeeded in the past and seems to continue to fail in the present.

Brent:

Right. And like big scheme of things it's in a better like, theoretically I think the med is more conducive to it than in the past. Like the black Melissa decks immediately, like available Garbodor was like the very next deck. And you're like, oh, well this is horrible, but it's still just it seems like it's too easy to kill flat fees and killing flag is completely disabled or strategy.

Mike:

Yeah. All right.

Brit:

Sorry.

Mike:

are you guys going to transition?

Brit:

Yeah, I was going to say too with just how ever present Inteleon is that just seems like any, any match up against Inteleon where you have to come back where you're playing from behind or something just seems impossible. They'll just, they'll just ping down a flat fee or to overturns and like, you know, I guess that's even ignoring whether or not they. Get it with Urshifu sniping attack or not. But yeah.

Brent:

Right. And, and if more and more people are playing like three of the quick shooting Inteleon. Like, if it takes you a couple of turns to set up your flat fees and stabilize your board, like they, you know, they're just gonna like target down all your basics as you try to like set up.

Mike:

Yeah, right.

Brent:

Right?

Mike:

Brings me to the next card. The other really good card in this set medic CHAM V. So like if you ever have to replace a flat fee with the Murray and they have like two pink Inteleon tout and a meta jam, like you just immediate, you can't win the game because they're just going to loop those things. I had two other cards on my, like really good cards list. Meta jam was one of them pretty self-explanatory again, kind of only has one niche and the rapid strike or Inteleon decks, but I think it is a very, very big edition. The last card that I had as quite good is pumpkin booth. Did you guys see Punka boo? So Punka boo is when you play it from your hand discarded stadium. So it's not quite as good as a, the Mar shadow that we have right now. But I think with Path to the Peak in the format and no chaotic swells that pumpkin BU will still see a pretty significant amount of play index that really need to make sure that pat stays out of play. We've seen these cards printed before and they're all always pretty good, I would say.

Brit:

Yeah.

Brent:

Yeah, it is, it is objectively so much worse though than memoir shadow. It's very, in that respect, it's a sad story.

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it's still, I think if I was making a top 10 list, it'd probably be in my top 10,

Brent:

Yeah. I mean, that's the only stadium removal in the format now. Right.

Mike:

Yes.

Brent:

Once, once the rotation happens.

Mike:

Yeah. Besides just stadiums themselves,

Brent:

Yeah.

Mike:

the fact that it's searchable, you can click bought for it. Like that's what makes it so good.

Brent:

Yeah. And, and certainly if you're playing a Shadow Rider, it's a, it's a, one of, you got to put it in your back, right? I mean, you can fond crystal for it had the biggest horrible. Why would you not have this? Of course you have. It

Mike:

Yeah. Right. I have a long list of interesting, but probably not very good cards. Maybe we can tackle those in a future episode.

Brent:

sounds sounds like a great plan. We can talk about the 15 weirdest cards in the set. Next episode. The two rants that I had for the set was I absolutely handled the Nicola lyrical lows. I feel like everything wrong with game design. When you play this card from your hand, your basic does a hundred more damage.

Mike:

Let's put this let's make a good stage two, but then make it support basic Amman.

Brent:

Yeah, like they're, they're telling you don't play this don't play evolution decks. C'mon man. Like don't I want to do that, that, that absolutely gets my go. Who would decide to do that? Why would they think that's just, if they just took basic out, it becomes so much more playable and maybe the moral stories that they don't want you to like, be able to use it when you attack with a BMX, because that'd be too good, but like just seems super lame too. Like Nerf evolution decks,

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

as you guys know I'm on the Appalachian trail. The other thing that is weird to me about this, I do not like that. They decided to print all of the evolutions as basics. That feels contrary to something about the soul of Pokemon to me. And I'd like to historically how. Have an Evie and you could tech other evolutions that had Palo Alyssa attacks. Like I always thought that was like a fun, neat, like the point of view Lucian decks was they were supposed to have Koa was the tax and you can tech weird colors in to do weird things that you wanted to do.

Mike:

yeah. It like, it would have been really easy for them to make EBV. And then all of the V max has just evolved from UVB.

Brent:

Right.

Mike:

Yeah, I agree.

Brent:

Why, why have a glassy on V and then a glazed ham feedbacks, like EBS, they evolve to different things. That's the whole point, yeah, like, like when flaring was a deck, what was the, there was a Leafeon that had a meaningful attack people used. I can't remember what it was.

Brit:

It had an energy crush.

Brent:

Yeah.

Mike:

Like 20 for each

Brit:

It just did like a lot to science, monotone and Hatteras. I believe also to water. But yeah, I think it just did like one 20 or one 40. And of course they had had the energy evolution. So all you needed was the grass energy. So it was like really, usually pretty easy to find even through the item lock, which would usually block your avenues to searching it. But like, yeah, it definitely did. It could one shot you. Cause so, cause it also did it was your total energy GM play, not just the descending Pokemon. So you got to be careful about it as a size photoed player. So if you were bad and glycine on her, Leafeon would take six prizes on you in three terms. Sometimes if you weren't. Careful or just didn't know the card existed or something. But yeah, I remember just hating that. I couldn't think of some, some states matchups, cause I played size and all the flaring on decks and just having all these like awkward, like laser flipped games against this dumb, dumb Leafeon Dex would play it sometimes too. Like they wouldn't be the best McQuinn flaring on deck or anything like that. I'd just be like, I need a seismic towed counter. What do I do? It's like 4, 2, 2 Leafeon and some grass energy. And you might be good to go.

Brent:

Right, right. So it more innovative time for evolutions. I hate that they based the set around like evolutions, but then there's like no Evie in the set. And like you can't tech different kinds of evolutions into your deck to like do stuff. Without it being weird.

Mike:

Yeah, I agree.

Brit:

Talk about the forgot to mention the team challenge. And it, again, you just talking about Sandra just reminded me cause Netherlands won again.

Brent:

Yeah, they're just a, they, they apparently just have the best teams.

Brit:

I tuned in, or I just like, it was on Friday afternoon, so I just put it on while I was working. And just, I mean, I know the event was, you know, for, for an event that wanted to capture, you know, the spirit of the local game store experiences. I think they succeeded was the deck lists I saw in the finals of the American players. I was, you know, I was just like, it was just like, this is something I would have to play against that my league challenge, like it was, it's just so bizarre. And I don't know how, how far in advanced his decks are locked in, but it was like an ice rider list with Geraci and nets and frost last there's something else. Oh. And just lots of drop Pokemon, at least to Dedenne a

Mike:

gas.

Brit:

Crobat and it just, it just reminds me like, you guys, you guys probably know a guy or two like this, but there's just a certain class of player. Like they play good cards, they play meta decks, but not good lists ever for some reason. And it's just like, it's just always strangely a mass and you know, like, they're, they're smart. It's not that they're dumb or anything like that, but they just can't, they just have to do their own thing or, you know, what have you, and it's just like, what week are we in? Like, I just don't know. This was the way maybe we thought about playing this. When the scans were out, certainly not after weeks and weeks and weeks of Inteleon results,

Mike:

Right.

Brit:

but yeah.

Brent:

I, you know, I don't want to make somebody's username is disgusting toenail. I don't want to make them feel too bad, but I think this is kind of funny. So the Reddit Pokemon TCG. There was a guy who posted there the other day and here's this thing it was like, I want to play rapid striker. Urshifu asked for the deck list. I want to play Alex shimmy skis, but I don't really want to play Inteleon. The whole line is 12 cards that I'd much rather use that space to try out my own wacky spin on it. So my question is how good is rapid striker? She food with that and tell the yacht.

Brit:

That's just, that's just the Reddit experience for whatever reason. I, I would love to know why that is. Why, why the Reddit scene is just so sort of infamous for being bad, but like purposefully bad, right? Like they're just like, yeah, that's just not how I wanna play, but like, but they don't know enough. They don't know enough to just know from there that Urshifu is still good, that there's other plenty of ways to play. Urshifu they're just like, I'm going to be different for the sake of it. And that's just their default sort of starting position.

Brent:

I, you know, I always thought the classic, like, Hey, Fante Reddit, whatever was like I'm playing this deck. And that, that is like super bad, but I don't want to be, I'm not trying to be competitive. What advice do you have for it to improve it? And like any advice you'd give the Emilia reply, like, well, I'm not trying to be competitive.

Mike:

Yeah. You're Like okay, well, no advice then.

Brit:

advice are you looking for? Try to play a few more colors. So you don't have weakness problems, like advice for bad players, you know, just like, yeah. I like to, you know, I remember starting in occasionally talked to friends that would, would, would dabble in Pokemon from Yu-Gi-Oh or something like that. And they're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started with a 20, 20, 20 deck that's that seems like the place to start. And I was like, Hm, I don't know. 20 Pokemon, 20 trainers, 20 energy. Like maybe

Brent:

I got the idea from the back of the theme deck. Let's

Brit:

correct.

Brent:

All right. Take it easy guys.

Mike:

All right. See you. later.

Brent:

Without further ado. The John Paul's