I'm assuming that today is a simple, we're just going to get a grip and.
Brit:I mean, there's polka. I watch Mikey and I watched the full grip. So I've like, even though I haven't played, I like I watched the decks and have thoughts on gang gang gang. Gar seems to be the, the, the topic of the Pokemon, Twitter of the past couple of days, whether it's good, whether it's bad. Is it a meme?
Brent:Welcome to the Trashalanche front Halliburton. Mike Fouchet for Pybas we're on Twitter. If you like tweeting things, we're sponsored by channel fireball. Their, their marketplace is in full swing. So you should go like experience the marketplace you thing. Now it's, it's what people do until PTCG Live, gets rid of all value of codes and, and, or people need cardboard again. Guys, I have a very interesting five-star review update for you. Someone left a three-star review, but didn't actually leave a review.
Mike:Oh, man,
Brent:Show yourself, show yourself.
Mike:we Steve, as the feedback so we can do better.
Brent:Yeah, you can't expect things to get better if you don't participate in the process, what does that mean? Our first ever not five star review. And they didn't leave any comments. I feel, personally a fronted PTCG Live delayed. Let's talk about it for two seconds. We talked about at the end of the last pod, but like, yeah, I think PTCG Live delay. We co we were calling it. We were talking before the pot about how adding features to a new platform is a pain in the butt. I mean, I know that they're only going back to like, not even a full expanded set, right? Like they're just going to kind of, it's going to be like standard and like a couple of sets backwards from a like card functionality perspective. But man, I bet coding this thing up sucks. I bet it really sucks. I yeah, I bet it's a super hard and like what's interesting is as we talked about, I think on the announcement day, they demoed so much stuff that I look at and I. Man, nobody cares like step one, release a game where you can play the game, like avatars and like outfits and like dances and all that stuff. Ain't nobody got time for that and code all that stuff up later. It's funny. Cause I recognize, you know, we live in a world where Hearthstone is such a mature platform and there's all these things out there and you feel like you have to rise up to a standard. But all my experience in software development is you've got to ship stuff iteratively. And if you're waiting for this moment where everything comes together, you're just going to wait a long time. And I know they feel pressure to have like a lot of stuff kind of together. And it's going to take a long time.
Mike:I mean, like just using the heart stone example, like they, when they came out with their original game, there wasn't that many frills associated with it. And over time they came out with different hero skins and different cosmetic stuff. Same with the battlegrounds game. They've they've recently upped all that. So. Yeah, I dunno like that. That, that makes sense to me what you said.
Brit:I mean, I'm kind of, not sure, like I I'm, I'm sympathetic to your argument and what you're saying, but at the same time too, I'm just trying to envision like with the community, how, how, how let's say, like what the community react, if, cause you know, you think thinking back to just the early days of PTCGO like I think it came out in like 2011, late 2010 something, something to that effect. I might've been in like a beta stage in 2010 and then came out slowly in 2011. But like initially it was just a Java browser game. And that even, even that sort of had the. They're like no frills. And I feel like that that's like fine for your initial project, but I just think people are really expecting something with this. And I would almost, and again, you know, perhaps the point is that no, one's, you're, you're never going to satisfy everyone. People are going to be mad. People are going to be angry about all the wrong things. Almost no matter what happens. But I just sort of like if the game had released, like without these avatars that we've seen, if it were just sort of like raw card functionality or something, like, I mean, we as players, I think would welcome it. But as like, as you releasing this onto the market, I think the intention is. You know, and I've seen sort of related tweets from the community manager from TPC G TPC. I like, they want this to be like, I think springing off point for like new players. And I don't think new people, new players need the whole package, I think is my point. I don't think, you know, like, Hey, are you a big time content fader, maybe you straight you've stream Hearthstone for years. Well, why don't you check out Pokemon? Like, I don't think any streamer is going to be like, okay, I'm going to play this like ugly just functionality game. It has to, it has to be the whole deal. And I think like, you know, it's, it's hard. I don't know which side I'm really trying to advocate for. Like I said, I, I hear
Brent:I hear you. I think, I think part of the challenge is there are so many constituents and they all have like a list, right? Like there's, there's new players coming in and they're like, well, we need these things. We need these things. We need these things for those new players. And then I am sure that like, there's an incredible internal drum beat for, like observer mode or something that lets you see both. And like, like facilitates the commentating process without having to go through all the rigmarole that they did for like Claire's cop, right. Where they're like pasting the cards from like two different views. And sometimes they don't have the other guy's view and like, they just don't have those cards available. Like, I'm sure they're like, we need a commentator view because we need to be able to accommodate these things. And they probably want like Hearthstone and magic that like live stream of data that lets you show like your prizes and your cards and probabilities and let people build. Ad-ons like, there's so many things. I mean all, all my experiences and this is why let's be crystal clear. Another the thing about me, I don't do consumer products. Consumers are weird. I don't understand why. Like they're like, I'm going to buy this Mac because it's purple and I'll pay an extra$500. But the blue one, no way, I'll never buy that. It's worthless. It's junk because it's blue and I hate it. Consumers are weird, but like. All my professional experience working in enterprises is like, we got to pick a couple of those people and be like, you don't get anything they want you're done for, or
Brit:mean, none of that, even you said it I'm just even sort of like the ad-on is such a, such an interesting territory. Like it, I think it works. I don't actually have a sense of if they exist for like magic arena and things like that, but in Hearthstone, like it's just sort of useful it doesn't. Like change the game in any sort of really fundamental ways. It's just like, if you were paying better attention, you would know all this more or less. Like I stressed your deck, lists the cards to your opponents have played. And and then when it comes to battlegrounds, you get some kind of odds, the outcomes of your battles and things like that. But like with Pokemon, like, you know, I imagine it would be fairly easy to write an ad on that. Just like, I mean, I guess, I guess at the same time, you you'd immediately know your prices if you search, but I'm just thinking, like, it just seems like a different game if you're just like clicking online and it just, you know, you draw your hand and the add on immediately tells you which six cards are prize. That just sounds like game breaking in a way, like, at least again, like functionally speaking, I recognize that like you can more or less do that in PTCGO, but it still takes like a little bit of effort. Like you still have to kind of flip through your deck and so on and count. Even when it's like sorted a little better. Yeah, it just does that. Does it make sense to you
Brent:Totally. And that's in commentator mode. They want to be able to like, have the commentators know the prices, but not the players. Right? Like there's all this stuff that you go on. I'm sure streamers have a list of like features they'd like to everybody's got like stuff. And like there's some developer who was like, every time I put the sweater on this character, the whole application crashes. And I don't know why man writing software super hard. I do not envy the PTCG Live people doing such a highly visible product. It is uh, it is really hard work. I invited one of the people who tweeted that he was like a developer working on that project to come on the stream and talk about software engineering practices and nothing. No response.
Brit:Keep trying. I think that would be fine. I know who you're talking about. And I think that'd be interesting, especially as I like in my like fledgling stages learning kind of a lot of this on, on the Hearthstone side of things, I would be curious to sort of learn where they're at with it, but yeah, just the whole, the whole series you just described of just like whatever. I just did crashes the entire game for some reason.
Brent:Exactly.
Brit:That's all, all sorts of fun stuff. When it comes to troubleshooting your own bugs and things like
Brent:Yeah. Like once, once they have to get into the code, like every feature is just a pile of like, oh my God. You know, I just waiting to find out the horrible things that happen when like people really test this and shake it out. And like, it makes, it makes it hard. Netflix Pokemon show, not Pokemon show, collecting show.
Mike:I cracked up when I saw the headline tweet out from Boca beach. It, if you, I don't know if you guys read the polka beach article, but you can actually submit. Pictures of cards that you have that you might want to auction off. So I am thinking about if I have something that I would, if it, I think for me, it'd be like the championship arena card. That'd be kind of cool, but I saw people on Twitter talking about how well there's kind of two camps, Right. There's oh, this is really cool. Or the other camp being we've already had all this crazy random exposure from people like the Logan Paul or whatever. And we don't, we don't want this extra stuff to come in and screw up our hobby. So I don't know if you guys have thoughts either way.
Brent:Yeah. You know, on a, not unrelated note. I got it. As a result of the book, somebody read the book and then sent me an email saying they were a collector and they read the book and they understand that my son has a fourth place card. And like, they really, really want to buy that
Mike:That was their takeaway from the book.
Brent:Yeah, exactly. I was like, come on, darn. It tried so hard.
Mike:Then that's funny.
Brent:And, and the prices that, that he was naming Walker was like, dad, I'm ready. Let's sell this
Mike:got to do it.
Brent:I was like, nah, we can't do it. I am, you know, I know I always buy high, sell low. We cannot get stuck to that trap. We'll never sell any cards ever.
Brit:I know, like some of the like collecting stuff with the world's cards, I've like just been around like Dustin, when he talks about for all top four, it in 2013 and no Dan Norton who like knows the, like I'm blanking on his name, but he's like a VP at Merrill Lynch is like the, is like the main guy. I think that tries to buy the world's cards. And it's always just sort of like, just so it's frustrating, frustrating for him that like the Japanese are just very like the hardest to get them from. And I imagine they don't sell at all. And so, and then of course the Japanese tend to have the best results in the younger divisions. So it's just like a nightmare for this guy when like the top four is all, is all Japanese children or something. He's just like, I don't know how to get the top four card now. Like it's not, it's not the first or the second, like when it's a us like American college student or something, those cards are always easy for him to get, but it seems like these parents that will get in the way of his collecting ambitions and things like that, I
Brent:I mean, when they, when they gave Walker his Pikachu and his card, they were like, when you walk away from this table, someone's going to offer you$3,000 for that card. You should not take that money. And we were like, okay, okay. Like, I mean, the Pokemon knows that like, yeah, these people are lurking, you know, 50 feet away. It's insane.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:I don't know. I guess I'll read the reviews. I didn't read the article, but I saw the headlines. I didn't watch the trailer or anything like that, but I was like, I guess the people tell me it's really good. I would watch an episode, I guess.
Mike:I mean, Yeah. for me, I'll, I'll probably watch it. If, if I know it's, if it's like sports cards, I don't really care about that. But if it was Pokemon or maybe even like a Yu-Gi-Oh or magic, I might be interested in those just because it's stuff that I'm interested in and seeing other people talk about it in a different, different perspective than I would usually care about this stuff is always cool.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. All right. Guys, you can tell me if you want to answer this question now, or if you want to table it for later, but friend of mine asked me a question and I was like, okay, this is exactly the kind of question we're supposed to answer on the podcast. He was like, this is the same guy who was like, I believe Lee cups will come back in January. He was like, I want to start building some physical decks. What are like four decks that I should build if I want to start doing, like, if me and my son wanted to just start doing some testing and I was like, mew,
Mike:So, Yeah, so I'd say let's come up with solid answers by the end, but The first thing that comes to mind though, is that like, if you're trying to answer that question, an important question also is are you trying to build decks for the present moment and like the next month or two, or are you trying to build decks that will have at least potentially some relevance for the next six months? Cause I think that's like a big part of trying to answer what that question is.
Brent:how, how, what do you think is the difference? Like I just, I feel like I can never tell you just play the best I can at any given point in time and.
Brit:Yeah, it just seems though, like, I don't know, like there's there hasn't been as many, like, certainly not since last year, since the TAC teams have rotated out, it really does seem like. Like the, almost every new set, like undoing a lot of the previous steps, like meta game. Like, and I don't know, I don't know too much about the future, but I've already seen people like talk speculatively about like maybe muse, not even going to be good next set. Like maybe I'll just not spend all these codes, all this money on it now and not play it. So, yeah, it definitely seems like. And I know it's, it's hard, it's hard to pin, you know, if that's in the cards themselves in the online tournaments or bow, it's like really hard to know. It's very, it's very possible that our, our, our, the results that we work with now and just be drastically different in, in a reality that, you know, let's say never had COVID and live events never stopped. You know, like maybe peak around net would have never become a thing, like cause to say. But yeah, I think that's just as my piece as it's probably a super important question or in why I'm just always such an advocate of proxies and proxy decks and proxy testing, like who is almost really no way to know. Like I do feel like, and again, I'll, I'll save it, I'll table it for the conversation, but like there's really only one deck I feel, or at least personally I would be like, I would buy that and I would feel okay. And like a smuggling of like cards after that, but like very few like whole archetypes that I, I would feel. Like, yeah, those will definitely be good at that good today. And there'll be though they'll for sure. Be good in March or something like.
Mike:Yeah. And the question I think is more relevant when there's like a rotation coming up, but it's still relevant now. So like, for example, when Dragapult first came out, Dragapult was amazing. It was like one of the top two or three decks and then rotation happened and then it kind of like, wasn't a good deck for a long time. So because Eternatus came out in the next set and then nothing was falling back Eternatus. And so I think those are like, kind of the dynamics that you got to think about is what is like the big deck right now and the way that sets have been coming out, the next set almost always has a direct counter to the big deck. And like what what are the, what are kind of like. the trickle down effects of that? So we did kind of like dive deep into mew last week, but, but we didn't have towards list. And toward released his list was this, today, this article came out or yesterday.
Brit:Today, I think it was pleased yesterday or maybe have played it on stream, but like here it is. And channel fireball form.
Mike:Yeah. So the biggest difference with his list is he plays zero draw supporters. He just runs puny, the Elisa sparkle boss, And then a lot of items, not even like that many more stadiums, he's still only placed four. But he has the ponies. So I don't know, this doesn't seem much better or worse to me than the list that we talked about last week. it doesn't, have the the battle VIP pass package.
Brent:And it doesn't it doesn't have the I feel like I thought, I thought pre towards list. We were gonna spend the entire pod talking about whether or not like krama VIP pass is like new Metta and he wouldn't have those cards.
Mike:I am not surprised toward is not playing cram a medic.
Brit:Yeah, I am a little surprised about the battle pass. Like it, I haven't seen it at this past week, like not just in a year, but I've seen people try it. And I think it was a Stefan's list for a single strike. He was playing them or, or no, I think he, or maybe it was. Gramps lists that inspired his list. I don't remember quite who that decision belongs to, but somewhere between grant and Stefan, but trying it in single strike, which seems strong to me, like that's a deck, you just kind of want to flood with cards. And I, you know, I, I last week or the week before gave my sort of diatribe against great ball would think it's probably just better than great ball almost no matter what, like, even, even with the sort of pretty conditional downside of it only being good on a certain turn. I just gambling in different ways, I suppose.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Yeah, I thought I thought, yeah, we were going to kick off the pod with a like, indeed great ball is terrible. And anything else is a better card than grateful. And, and now we're like a cramp. Nomadic is a bad battle. VIP pass is bad. You know, toward towards shaper of the meta has released the non-credit nomadic thing and criminal medical now fade into.
Mike:It's possible. I still have seen Joe from Omni poke really advocate that draw supporters are good in you and his friend, the other Omni guy, Jack he one Sunday open with with new and it played. Let's see, what did I know? It played Marney's played. Okay. Two Marty's. So like we're saying it played draw supporters, a total of two draws supporters.
Brent:Right, right. But, and, and like, it's, it's more about disrupting the other guy than, about juicing your own in general.
Mike:Right, right, right. I guess that's probably true. And they played like the one battle VIP pass is pretty interesting. I guess like, I guess like wonder four is kind of the counts. That makes sense. Right. Cause you play one. So If you play turn one pod, you can get it.
Brent:Going second playing one is probably the go-to strategy. Right.
Mike:Yeah. So yeah, I guess one, one or four is probably the best CA or zero one or four or the best candidates playing two or three is probably not correct. Most times.
Brent:I also got an interesting that directly the two krama Maddix, which is like he would for just a little more random counts of everything,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:then I feel like I would have expected.
Mike:It was funny you saying that I was explaining Pokemon to one of my colleagues the other day, and I showed him a list on limitless and he was so interested in the, of like the debate of, I think the example he used is like, well, you know, why did this person play three Juniper in three Marty? And this list played for Juniper and to Marnie. And I was like, you are asking the Right, questions. Like that is like kind of the, the ever the eternal debate of D deck building. Why, why do you play certain cards over others
Brent:right. right. I mean, I think the, the universal truth is like everyone that comes into Pokemon and has any sort of like, like mathematical or like game plan kind of instinct is like, isn't there some way you can just machine learn what the optimal card counts are for all these lists. Why can't, you know, why is it, why is there just an answer here? And you're like,
Mike:Yup.
Brent:Yeah. The question has been asked a thousand times by every single person who's ever played Pokemon three times.
Mike:Yep. Well, and he was actually starting to go off on a tangent, but like he was interested in that people's lists were so close to one another. So he was actually looking at it. Well, he actually kind of had both perspectives. Like once, once he realized that there wasn't an optimal thing, then he was like, well, everybody's playing like, you know, why, why are there even like 50 of the same cards? Like, I guess he was kind of like surprised that yeah, that, that there was at least like some shared knowledge. I don't know. It's a really interesting conversation for someone that had never really like played card games before.
Brent:Right. Right, right. And the answer is, you know, the core is locked in as being the correct thing. And then the, you know, there's 10 cards that vary around the Metta.
Mike:Well,
Brent:Or based on personal preference unscientifically or something.
Mike:So I don't really think we want to spend too much time on mute cause we hit it so hard last week. The only other thing that I've seen is there is a that I think we haven't talked about. It's a basic psychic, I think it's for psychic color, colorless does 70 for each fuse and strike energy attached to all of your Pokemon. And I saw that played as a single Prizer, which is pretty cool.
Brent:The, the other thing that we need to talk about is I well counterfeit and did very badly. He played equally to soldier.
Brit:That badly. I mean, he wasn't, he was on a winning it and he got dunked and
Brent:Oh, did you know? Thank you for actually watching. All I do is quotas tweets. I don't know what Connor's doing.
Brit:Yeah. Maybe there was one more round after that, but yeah, he was on, he was on stream and, and like dead drew, like really badly, like, like, like Pokegear with like double top deck with, with scoop. And then in the next game, he just he'd dumpsters, whoever he was playing against. Like I'm not in, you know, I'm not sure. I think the accelerator is really cool. I'm not sure he kind of, it takes a lot of space. I think he was playing. I guess we have the list here, of course. But yeah, he plays like basic Yeah. And that's, that's a lot, I'd be curious to know, like, you know, I would just need some to watch some games, some matchup data to know just like how, how much has he still losing to like dark stuff even with this. And that would be kind of my like decider of whether it's worth it or not. But I definitely, I definitely thought it was cool. I'm glad you mentioned that I wanted to include it. For those unaware, it's a, it's a fusion spec Pokemon that sort of has like a Gliss upon like effect, but instead of boosting the damage, if it comes in from the bench, it just attacks for a single energy. So you can and then it does just like one 20, I think.
Mike:Yeah. So with the, I guess with double power tablet here, one chatting of Emacs with one power tablet, your one in a V or actually no, no power tablets, your one shot and B that's weak to grasp. So Yeah, it's pretty, it's seem to in theory is pretty good against. Well, once a week to grass Umbrian is getting our week to grass as well.
Brit:I think so.
Mike:Let's see. Ginga is weak to fighting. That bothers me a lot.
Brit:It's so confusing. It's just impossible. I know we've complained about this like type crunch already, but like Umbria I'm Brianne is, I don't know. I'm very honest. The one that should be getting punched Ganga is a ghost.
Mike:Yeah. You look every other gang Gar in like the history of the game resisted, fighting, not just neutral, Resisted it. And now it's weak to fighting. That's so silly. Okay. Actually wait, there were some gang GARS that resisted colorless. when that was a thing.
Brent:Resisted colorless.
Mike:Yeah. And like the diamond pro era.
Brit:parallel. Yeah, we got in there some.
Mike:But yeah, no, that's annoying. Okay. So I guess I do think I'm, Ryan is the best of the dark V maxes and the most popular, obviously because of the single strike deck. But the fact that it doesn't hit gang Garmin makes me a little more skeptical than I was originally, but it's still a cool idea
Brent:Can we talk about gender for a second? I feel like, I feel like single strikes getting a lot of love these days.
Mike:and a lot of hate at the seatbelt at the same time. I think. Yeah, I've actually been pretty impressed. So I haven't played against any gang Gar. But I've been playing Pokemon recently the last few days. Not the new format though, on PTCGO they your event tickets. So like the eight man tournament, you can win fusion, strike packs, but it's still the previous format right now. So I've been playing those to get fusion, strike packs. And I've been playing mostly sweet tune and I've been really impressed when I play against single strikes. Like the Umbrian Urshifu I don't know. It just seems to be like doing better than I remember it doing. Maybe people are better, maybe the lists are slightly more consistent and refined. So single strike, I think is a very good deck. Umbrian Urshifu that is but I don't really have a strong opinion on the new gang, our versions. It did get second at the event last night though.
Brit:I recognize it and like, see the somewhat obvious combo, but like what you know, like what does it solve for the previous version for the V the single strike version without it? I'm not sure if anything, it seems like it just might create more problems. I think, you know, that that weakness is much worse, pretty plainly I think like I guess there, their grass weaknesses. Is irrelevant. And Leafeon, hasn't seemed all that popular since the new format. But I I've always understood that was like one of singles, trikes, worst matchups in the previous format. Gang are, might help that, and it just might be worse against there's a few decks. It's not sure.
Mike:And like, It's not even, it's not even like it's helping with the energy. Split because you didn't really play that many basic energy. If sometimes you didn't run any basic energy at all. So like playing, playing like a quote unquote mano dark deck is not there's no real draw to it in that sense. So like, yeah. Grant played one basic dark, and I think he said it wasn't even useful. So I'm not sure. if he would play a different energy as a ninth energy or just only play eight energies. I don't know.
Brent:Yeah. And I know he had said he wanted the third single strike Urshifu V so he could have a little easier starts.
Mike:Yeah. So
Brent:that's just us. That's just the credit card.
Mike:right, exactly.
Brent:Although I feel like I, yeah, well, you know, I I'm sure I'm sure. Grant was thinking, what if somebody goes dreamboat Dusknoir
Mike:Yeah, that is what he was thinking. So the, the deck that one full grip is weaken, so we can lose a colo and it did play one new card. The puku MACU, whatever thing, the unknown Thing, essentially, which is cool. But other than that, that was the only new card that it played. Listen, wasn't too crazy. Other than that, I played an escape rope. It played a tool scrapper, other than that pretty standard. And I do think that of all of the decks and the previous format coming into this new formats, we couldn't seems like the best position to me because in theory, it should have a fine, you match up. You don't really care that you're getting one shot by you. As long as you can kind of like two shot, one in the muse and one. The other view. And then your single strike matchup has always been pretty solid. It's not like ridiculously favored, but it's slightly favorite, I would say for you. So, so we couldn't seem to play in a pretty good position to me, and I'm not really surprised to see it when I knew it was the rule also played it. And God, what did he got? Top eight.
Brit:Yeah. He lost him.
Mike:Yeah. He didn't play the peek-a-boo card.
Brent:He played the LaMere instead we could have told them that's the difference in a first than a six place.
Mike:Yeah. So yeah, I I'm, I like sweet Kuhn a lot. That's actually, I was thinking about it. I remember when we first, when of all these guys was first coming out and I said that I didn't really understand this week code hype. But I think that was, it's a card that I was quite wrong about squeaky and is a pretty solid card.
Brit:It's just Zacian but better. I think like we with Zacian and sort of maintained some, somewhat of a position within, in the format, just being like the two Prizer that can hit hard enough. And it's just like, I've, I've complained, I think, fairly recently about Zacian and so we couldn't, it's just like plainly better. And in almost every sense, I think like outside of your, your damage being, you know, a little more limited they asked Justin and I mean, even similarly, like, like their abilities are fairly comparable, one draws cards, one draws cards, and ends your turn on a text for three energies when a tax for two energies, like it goes on pretty far, I think. And it just And then of course, I think they're really kind of the biggest thing. I mean, again, just more compared to essence, I guess, Melanie versus saucer, like so on and so forth. And I think it's just a little clear that the way the format has evolved and being so situated around Inteleon is that you know, like when you're drawing cards, playing draw supporters, every turn, like the saucers are better, but like when you've got the, just so, so much targeted search, the, you know, in the Melanie I think becomes more reliable and it's just a much more sustainable card. And that's, I mean, we've talked about it. We even talked about this weeks and weeks and weeks ago. I remember we had a discussion about Zacian Luda, colo versus Sui, kumu to Cola. And that's, you know, one, one is a deck that exists and the other, you know, people play Zacian, but it's more in the, just like Zamazenta crystal cave, gonna hope hoped a wall. You sorta deck.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:Okay.
Brent:Are there. So I are there other decks that you want to talk about that did well at full grip? And if the answer is, let me think about it. I want to see Mike, if you had any reaction to the fourth place Inteleon VMX list.
Mike:Yeah. That's where I was going to go next, actually. So that list Is pretty cool. It's pretty similar to what I would be trying out for this like version, like the straight Cheryl Inteleon. I was very, very discouraged from trying like. like I said, I haven't played on PTCGO yet, but these are going to be the first cards that I trade for. And I'm still really interested in trying various ways to play this card, but I am very discouraged to playing this version of it. Now, the force Sheryl for rapid strike energies and nothing else, because the top four matchup was so disheartening. He played bread to collapse that top four when he played against the Shadow Rider. Not sure. So this Inteleon deck played against Shadow Rider in top for the Shadow Rider. I ended up losing in the finals. So Shadow Rider one, because you can just use shadow mist over and over and over again. And the Inteleon deck can never attach its rapid strike energies. So it just kinda like sits there and shadow miss over and over and over until you build up enough energy for the Shadow Rider V max to then one shot. The Italian VMX. So the Inteleon VMX can like pretty much never, ever win again, Shadow Rider. I think it's actually impossible unless they completely Dedra. And then after like really dead drop cause literally all they need is the Shadow Rider V and an energy. So the fact that you have an unwinnable match up there is pretty, it's pretty bad. So with all that said, I am still interested, interested in trying some other variants of this Alex Szymanski posted an article on channel fireball that played. Maybe like eight water energies and it played Rapidash V a played Melanie played Metta CHAM V. New is the idea is to be a little bit more or much more of a spread checkmate type of deck than focusing in on Cheryl. I think it's still played a Cheryl. But so when I get the cards, that's going to be more of the variant that I'm going to mess around with immediately. I don't think anybody's tried that version in these tournament's, so we don't really know if it's any good yet, but that that's what I'm interested in.
Brent:Is it just a matter of like you tech in some way for this like doing these special energy lock is like a little bit of it, like Shadow Rider, such a small part of the matter. I feel like there's a lot of gimmicky mojo there.
Mike:Yeah, that's true. I mean, I mean, clearly the. good against other stuff. You've got top four. Shadow Rider is a small ish part of the meta-game, so it's probably fine to take the elk. I would think that the Shadow Rider match was is bad. Even if you do play light, basic energy is because they are one of the few decks that can one shot you say play. Alcremie
Brent:I mean, you got fourth place. I assume he'd be like everything else. So that seems good.
Mike:Yeah. The only other matchup that's also really tough is like Joel Dionne. So, I mean, it feels like a somewhat polarizing deck. It probably takes some really, really good match-ups and some not so good. ones. I don't know how you do it again. Single strike because they can also one shot you in theory, but it does take a lot. What do they need? Do they need all four? No, they need three, three single strike energies and they discard them.
Brent:Did you guys see any other interesting games?
Brit:This is not related to the full grip stream. I mean you, you saying mentioning Alex's channel fireball article reminded me that I meant to put this in the agenda, but it's his derailed on deck? How have we seen this? I'll post a link to it in chat for the necklace, but it's really, it's really cool. It's I haven't completely parsed how it works, but I think kind of as a good segue in this conversation, I think part of why Darale Don is good is because we were in a meta-game where there's not very much basic energy. And in fact, some decks might not even play any at all. But it's really cool. But like I said, I don't, haven't entirely figured out how it works yet, but he did well in some online tournaments, I think. And has since refined it a little bit.
Mike:Yeah. I did see
Brit:a Zorro box thing.
Mike:So drought on stability is at camp be damaged by Pokemon with special energy. Right? It's like the old age of slash
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. I believe like semantically like even discarding with Urshifu doesn't do anything still, like it would still resist that damage as well.
Mike:wait, wait, you're saying like the single strike wouldn't
Brit:No, no. I'm Amanda GMX flow. I
Mike:Oh, oh
Brit:the one, the snipe from rapid strike,
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Brit:but obviously single strike we'll bust it.
Mike:yeah. So that would be what the Obama's snow like gives you like more HP or something like that, I think. Or like prevents.
Brit:I mean, I thought he might've just been attacking with it, to be honest, it's a grass Pokemon.
Mike:Oh, no. Yeah. You're single strikes gets plus 50 HP. So with that, you actually get out of range of single strike, I think,
Brit:Yeah,
Mike:which is pretty sweet. Yeah, Zoroark makes a lot of sense too, because like you have the Sheryls and one way to beat like a bronze on Sheryl deck is to tell their bronze on. Right. But with dork that becomes much harder because you have this big Zoroark line and you can just kind of recur your, your stage one's back much more easily. Yes. Is pretty cool. I would definitely try this.
Brit:it's the coolest, like, it almost looks like it's Sander, like trying to make a deck that attacked or something like it looks kind of in line with the way a lot of his deck lists tend to look.
Mike:But yeah, I think, I think the meta-game is like an interesting spot where, you know, mew is super strong, obviously there's kind of the immediate response to that in single strike, whether you're playing Urshifu Umbrian or Ginga Umbrian. And then I think it's just going to take a little bit for the rest of the decks to figure out where they fit in that dichotomy of dark versus mew. I do think the other decks that are weak too dark are probably not going to be as good as they were. So like Shadow Rider, even though it did well in the full grip. And Dragapult are probably going to fall off a little bit, just as kind of like collateral damage mew is strong enough that it can kind of fight through its weakness sometimes I think but I don't know if these other dark weak V max is, can do so as, as good as you can. So we'll see,
Brent:It's interesting how. I mean, yeah. And any thoughts on I saw John, Mostofi got a fifth place with Gloria and wheezing is glaring and wheezing. Really? A, in a good place.
Mike:Yeah, And then Luke, Luke more so took that list and changed it up a little bit for the event last night. I don't really get this deck to be honest. Like it's just, it's just wheezing with a couple of dark V attackers.
Brent:Yeah, that was my reaction too. Was I was like, I was like, it's like wheezing, toolbox, what are you doing?
Mike:yeah. I mean, wheezing, just, I guess like you slow me down by having wheezing out, you get to hit them for weakness. I don't really understand how you beat a single strike deck, but Luke did that a couple of times he ended up, Oh, no, no. Nevermind. He didn't beat a single strike once he lost a single strike.
Brent:Oh, really? That's the way, man, if you can't figure out how to get there with wheezing, then in the end, like I, I assume shutting down non V's with abilities is kind of, the point is like, you have to figure out a way to get there with that stuff. Right,
Mike:What else he beat? He beat a sweet Coon. I mean, he played a bunch of muse and other dark week stuff like Dragapult I mean, we've seen pretty good against Inteleon decks in general because they have such a, that they rely so much on that. And like you have disruption, I guess it's just kind of like a disruption deck that just hopes to disrupt you enough to make you Dedra, miss energy drops enough and just kind of get there and also plays gala mine to like, add to the disruption, to like, like the gallery. Mine's not doing really much, except just trying to make you be annoyed.
Brent:Right, right. Let me just make you burn resources until you're like, okay. I lose now.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Sad story. And there we are. what else should we talk about Brit? You want to talk about your metaphor?
Brit:Yeah, I guess. So this is I guess an open invite. We talked a little bit about it. I think not, not on an episode, but I just I've had the idea, obviously, like not as good as I used to be at this game. I'd like that to change. I'd like to do. Okay. I don't, like, I think I've said before, I don't know if I'll like fully commit to trying to qualify, but I'd like to day to maybe top beta regionals or something that again, and then I thought, well, what's a better way to do that then coaching, you know, I've coached before it's in fact how Brett and I know each other,
Brent:Whew.
Brit:but yeah. And I, you know, I think somewhat, obviously, like I could go to toward, I could go to like a zoom call. Those seem like pretty good bets, but I'm, I'm curious. I'm, I'm, I'm letting a. Opening the air. If someone thinks that we would be a good match, she thought like to coach me and you hear this I'm all ears, you just got to sell it to me. You got to pitch. Why, why would you be my pick there's? I sort of had a kind of cynical thought when I. It's a lot of people on metaphor. It would see a lot of Pokemon people and mattify some of them, I wouldn't, I wouldn't I would not pay to have coached me, but there are, there's probably some plenty, plenty of other ones that I, that aren't as sort of well-to-do as toward something like that. That would be excellent coaches. I think definitely two there is when it comes to games and things like this, I think like the best coach, the best explainer, it doesn't necessarily have to be the best player. I think obviously some of the skills are intertwined, but some of them not so much. So perhaps like, and similarly, like, just because you're a good player, doesn't mean you're good at explaining things or understanding things and so forth. So I'm looking for, you know, someone to meet like my interests. And obviously on this podcast, we talked about like the math and things like that. So I'd like that to be very much, I don't want, I just sort of envisioned like a head coaching session where we just kind of like stare at the screen and like. Argue on like sequencing and that's just kind of it, and I don't feel like that would be really that great of a learning experience. So like, yeah, this is my pitch. I just like, I want to find a coach, but it's gotta be the right one. So if you think that's you leave a review or something like that, something like that. And it's just something I've a little side project that like to have fun with and hopefully will improve my plate.
Brent:They're all prams taking a break back. So when I'm looking at the metaphor coaches, I don't know who've been is
Mike:Brazilian player.
Brent:The let's see, Henry brands taking a break. Grant's taking a break. Pablo's taking a break. Jose Marrero or Wolters taking a break pram, taking a break, carry Potter. Headrow Jesper Gabriel smarts taking a break.
Mike:How do you see if they're taking a break?
Brent:I went to the, I went to the, I found the Pokemon trading card game online page.
Brit:It's weird that there's so many. Cause I was, I was looking into it for like fighting games, just kind of on a whim. I I've seen some of the streamers posts, but there's only like four of them there. Why are there a million TC Pokemon, TCG coaches? I just assume, especially some of the ones I've seen, I'm just like, you're coaching, who's hiring you. Like I imagine, I imagine like if you just like asked, they would probably put you on the page, like it's free, free publicity for them, even if you don't have a single client. So like, I imagine there's you know, somewhat voluntary.
Brent:You know, what's interesting. I like, I look at that list and with the exception of Vienna, who I do not know all those people are good players.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:Oh, I don't know who fight clone is.
Mike:I think that's Nick Robinson.
Brent:Oh yeah, yeah.
Mike:Oh, you literally linked the same thing, Brent.
Brent:One the U S national championship. My first year playing go, Nick, you know what? As, as we've discussed on Twitter, Nick's got to say, I'm the reigning us national champion. It'll never die,
Brit:Yeah,
Brent:but the Zol toured role. John Walters, like the fact that like, yeah, these are real. If you told someone Graham gave you coaching, you'd be like, it's going to be like, well, that's a legit,
Brit:no.
Brent:that's a real thing right there.
Mike:Some of the awards on here, like really funny, like you hover over Jose Merera professor cup champion, and then like ego. I don't know. of them are just pretty funny that those are like the ones that you would include, like as Joel says four things.
Brent:Oh dude, dude. No, just mouse over grants. Pre-release first place grant.
Brit:I like to see someone not so self serious.
Brent:Exactly, exactly. Great. You did it. Good job.
Mike:man.
Brent:That is a real a thing, you know? Yes. Winter at pre-releases loser. Originals is, is the best title you can have. I think in all of these. Very good. No, I, you know what metaphor, that seems like a real thing. Metaphor. You can sponsor us just putting that out there.
Mike:All right. Let's let let's, let's answer. Let's circle back and into this
Brent:Yeah. Give me, give me the top four decks that if I was going to build a testing circle, I should build. And I think, you know, what's interesting is where we're in a MetAware. I feel like the problem is there's like eight or nine decks that are all, like,
Mike:Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Brent:I feel like there's, there's been other Meadows where I would be like, wow, really? You only need these two or three and you, you know, Roshambo yourself to death. But, but now the problem is narrowing it down.
Mike:I got three trying to think if I can come up with a fourth,
Brent:Don't don't tell us, and we're going to see a breaking guests.
Brit:Three.
Mike:we'll be back for.
Brit:Well, I mean, I think to, I guess, somewhat to start, I think that the obvious first two would probably have to be I mean, I'm not, I don't know if mutagenesis actus is so obvious. I don't know. I mean, is it, is it the V stars? Is that the very next set? Is that what will compete to dethrone fusion or is there another step before that?
Mike:I think the stars are the next set.
Brit:Okay. Well, I feel good. I feel better about that cause I, I will and I I've, I've seen this, I think we may have said it, but like honor, the times, like when we were introduced to brand new mechanics, they're pretty weak at first and then they find their strive later on. So because of that fact, I feel much safer in saying you but that was my number two. I think number one the, the safest cheat it's safe, it's cheap. It's reliable has to be Sumi Kuhn. So he couldn't load a Cola. Dirt cheap dirt cheap and maybe just the best deck. So it was right there. It seems safe. And it's also like pretty adaptable to like, it might come March. It might not be looking like this, but I, you know, ice rider might come back and there's just a lot of flexibility with what you can do as Sui Coon, because it's so, you know, non-committal and low resource and so forth. But the next two.
Mike:So those are, those were two. of my three, for sure.
Brit:Yeah. Okay. So one more, one more. I mean, I guess it probably, well, I mean, it's, it seems like a coin flip, which which of between rapid strike and the single strike,
Mike:So I think if I had to choose a fourth one, it would have been both of those tags. Yeah. But I was thinking single Stripe seems a little safer to me. But. Yeah, I think,
Brit:I would have gone with rapid strike first myself, but I think that's like cost benefit analysis more than anything, just like the single strike cards. There's most of them they're expensive. Like Urshifu, it's kind of on the cheaper side and promos and so forth. Like, and again, it's, it's fairly adaptable, like right now. You know, even before, before the release of the set there was like towards Urshifu Inteleon Melanie with like the Korean. And I think I saw Luke Morris maybe someone else was playing. It was just like the same deck, but instead of the Korean It was the new Inteleon. But again, it's, it's kind of a versatile sort of thing. Whereas like singles, if you play single strike, you're playing eight of your cards. Our hound doom, how indoor not as, not as much wiggle room and so forth, it doesn't seem like as consistent. But definitely definitely a safety check for sure. And just like the raw power is very clearly there, like so much. The space and flexibility. I don't know, sort of, I think we're at the tail end of getting new cards printed with any of the strike synergy. So it probably won't be too much more like added into the deck, but I mean, we, as we've sort of said on this podcast, like, like gangliar could, I mean, not that we said this, but like gang could be fine. Could as the meta game developed could become the more optimal way to play it. Just depending on what the V star is and things like that do like who's to say, like using the Dragapult example, like
Mike:So as mew, sweet Kuhn, single strike and rapid strike.
Brent:Gotcha. All right. All right.
Mike:Yeah, I think rapid strikes, just like it's adapted, hitting, being able to hit like two things for one 20, if you bump it up with pacinian and Inteleon like, it's always going to be a somewhat of a contender. Like right. now, it's just kind of figuring out if and how do you have to adapt the deck so that it can handle mew. And if people are able to do that, even like, even if the match-ups like close to 50, 50, probably makes rapid strike top to your deck once again, because it's going to beat most of the counters to you. And if it can also like do decent enough against you, then it's going to be pretty good.
Brent:Right. Dragapult.
Mike:I don't think so. It's just like, if you're as weak to dark. So if you're gonna play something, we'd do dark, just play mew. I think right now,
Brent:That's that's actually sounds very reasonable.
Mike:And like, if you want the bench damage stuff like rapid strike is probably just a little bit safer,
Brent:Right, right.
Mike:kind of the same thing with gel Dionne to me, like jump down. Doesn't seem, it seems okay. But like, it doesn't seem as good as rapid strike if you want to do bench damage stuff, but you do have a great suite can match up though, I guess. So
Brent:Yeah. Is there anything else we should talk about?
Mike:I don't think so.
Brent:Easy pod,
Mike:If you're listening, if you're listening to the podcast and you think you would be an interesting guest, maybe you live in another country, maybe that would feel free to message us. And maybe we can figure something out. We have been trying to have some different people, different perspectives. That'd be cool.