I feel like I don't have as much to talk about this week except the domination of mew.
Brit:Yeah, I think that's sort of roughly about it. I think we can maybe hit some.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I don't know, reprint discussion with, I don't know, the people people have, have had reactions to the new professor research reprint, I guess. I don't know. Jake Earhart always says like the most nuclear of takes and he's very mad about it and everyone else is just like, what else did you expect? I sort of, I don't know if we talk about the I'm kind of annoyed at the. Just sort of sheer laziness of it's frustrating to me,
Mike:That's true.
Brit:it's just like, uh, you know, we talk about Pokemon falling back on old, old ideas a lot, but it's usually not within the same locality standard. It's just that they're just all the same, like why.
Brent:I miss this. What is a, is there some new part out, but, uh,
Brit:Uh, auntie and Ryko or just so we Coon, but different colors. It's the same card.
Brent:Oh, nice.
Brit:Just a great I'm sure that it's just so frustrating. Even from like a design perspective, it's just like now all of your sort of lightning and fire type stuff to sort of be built balanced around these cars. And it's just like so many decks are just going to always have to worry about their bench space and things like that. And it's just, I don't know. It's, it's annoying to me for a variety of reasons.
Brent:Welcome to the Trashalanche podcast. Brent Halliburton. Rick privates, same intro every week, same attendance every week, a hundred percent attendance we're on Twitter. Like Fouchet at his wise at B Halliburton. You can follow us all and get more of the pod to be a 140 character things. Um, I'm still kind of liking the only podcast that tells Pokemon. We should be the official podcast. Although I have wondered if we need to have to start like yeah, the problem is we are going to Twitch stream. We would have to commit to actually having a time.
Mike:Yeah, that would be.
Brit:It would almost certainly, at least for me for now have to be in the later time, which I guess when, I mean, it probably worse for you. You really scenario had.
Brent:Right, right. Uh, we're sponsored by channel fireball, uh, the source for things like towards weekly power rankings. Uh, uh, and we'll talk more about power rankings in a few minutes. So, you know, power rankings are super important. Um, five-star review update. We have received no additional reviews, but if you leave a review, we will read it on the pod. If you've been wondering, should I leave a review? I'm not the kind of person who leaves reviews. You could be that. You could leave a review. Um,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:uh, so speaking of it's worth, uh, telling you guys, I'm sure you guys have more stories than I do. Probably several people reached out to me via the Twitter DMS to say I was a, we were amongst their most popular Spotify, like things of the season. Um, uh, one person wrote into complain. Uh, while they liked our pod, better lake of rage was actually in first place simply because their pods are longer.
Mike:Uh, I feel like that's almost a compliment to us.
Brent:You know what I think he took it. He took it as a compliment as well. And I'm like, it's worth pointing out. I think. Um, uh, I definitely feel him. I think lake of rage sometimes like me and there's a little bit, whereas we're like pretty scripted and, and when I'm in. Post-production every time I'm like trying to get us to an hour. Like my dream pot. I've always thought my dream pot is like 45 minutes in and out because then you're listening to it at one and a half speed and you play it in 30 minutes and like 30 minutes sounds like good. That's what you wouldn't want to listen for longer than that. So, so, you know, in an hour it's 40 minutes, I'm like, okay, we're we're right at the edge of the amount of attention people can pay to us.
Mike:We're interested in, but we're not that interested in.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, also I want to talk about, um, uh, so on a related note of people sliding into my DMS, Zach massage wrote in because he had a bunch of comments on the top 10 discussion we had on our pod last week. And then I went and looked at his top 10 pod this week. And I wanted to tell you guys all about it because I thought that that was like the highlight of my week. He wrote in to say, ah, this is a quote I wanted to give you some insight on how my top 10 videos for the Trashalanche podcast. I create a spreadsheet and give each event a value based on the amount of participants four to 500, plus that value trickles down with kickers. So I ranked the top performing decks from first, all the way to top 32 for each event, depending on participants in the event of a close, final CP for any archetype, I use my judgment to change the slots. So, so I think the moral story. Uh, w when we kind of were propping, uh, Celio is up for being super data-driven. He was like, I want some of that data-driven mojo too. And, and indeed, he then kind of brought that same analysis and published the CP for his top 10 video, uh, this week. And there were a couple of things that I thought were interesting, uh, uh, about that, that I wanted to just, uh, share with you guys to get any reaction. So first, yeah, you got it. You kind of kicks off the introducing the CP in his video by saying, a lot of people are saying, why is this deck here? Why isn't this deck here? And I was like, why a lot of people, I assume he means the Trashalanche like, maybe I, you know, I actually, that's not entirely true. Maybe that's pat myself on the back a little too hard. I'm sure he gets like a lot of YouTube comments where people are like, what are you talking about? Jolts John's the best second format or something like that. And he's like, So he's got kind of trying to say, Hey, you know, it's not my opinion, it's the data. I hear that. Right. But my reaction to that was immediately, oh, he means the podcast
Brit:Yeah.
Brent:by far the funniest thing that he said in his entire top 10 was he got to a get Gar and he goes, I'm the only person that has been honest and said, this is a good day.
Mike:And yet spoil they're looking at this top 10. It's not even on it.
Brent:No, no, no. It was that, that was, that was last week. It's not
Mike:Oh, that was last time. Oh, okay.
Brent:Yeah. It was on the top 10 this time. And he was like, this has like a pretty favorable new matchup and like azoles had good results with it and stuff like that. So everybody that tells you it's bad, it's snowing you. I'm the only person telling you the truth, which was absolutely hilarious to me. I love it. The the, so the other thing that I realized, um, uh, so I had two more notes from watching a stop and podcasts. Uh, first he's expanding it to be a top 20, which I was like crazy time to be alive. I mean, I think we've always, we've really talked about how there is not some iron triangle of meta right now. It's a gigantic circle with many, many points when you're like a top 10, just doesn't do this meta justice. Um,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:That's amazing.
Brit:Yeah, I need, I need the hard answers on where credent fits into things. I need the heart answers on where like Santa Chondra is at, you know, like I just think of like the Reddit comments, like, why do you think, what do you think of this deck or something like that? Why didn't you, why didn't you rank Sandaconda Cheryl or something?
Brent:Uh, but, but that's like, I, I know what he's thinking where like DEC 11 is not appreciably worse than deck 10. It's a crazy time to be alive. We actually have a fair amount of viable archetypes in the Metta.
Brit:At a certain point, I think.
Brent:Yeah. And I know your, your point's a good one, right? You couldn't be like, let's go to, you know, 21 to 25, let's go to 50. Like there's, there's many, many archetypes, not all of the Bible. Like it's also, there's just like a fair number of playable decks. Although actually, I guess I have to hold, we'll discuss in a minute to some of you is actually the only playable back and all of the things.
Mike:Yeah, it's a weird Metta because there are, it's kinda like there's one S tier deck, and then there's a couple of decks that are clearly. Like Right, below it. And then there's a ton of decks that could be like tier two, tier three.
Brent:right. right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then those are the last comment that I had watching his, uh, thing was, uh, um, I recognize on the one hand, we're always telling people you should be more data-driven you should be more data-driven you should be more data than. But I realized watching him publish the results that like the downside of the kind of Celio Zack massage system and the upside of towards is like, I mean, there's there's room for opinion. Like what I, what I, what I didn't like about it was I realized like him telling me, um, these were the decks that got good results. Last week is not really a list of the top 10. a list of the top 10 decks. I got good results last week. And like, there's an element of when you're watching the best Pokemon players talk about Pokemon, where like, you want to say this deck is underrated. This deck is overrated. Like this deck. If somebody just builds this deck, right. It's like the meme that wins and that like, as you, as you drive down to. retrospective numbers. You, you missed out on that. Like, what I like is data-driven explaining why, like, this deck should be better than it is, or like this deck should be over-indexing relative to the meta or, or something. Right. Just like summing up results and saying, this is how things went last week is like, it doesn't tell me what to play next week. It just tells me what to play last week.
Brit:Yeah.
Mike:Right. Yeah. that's true. And, but, I mean, I guess that's like kind of the put, I guess you could see either way, like it's putting the onus on the watcher, Right, To be like, okay, it's your responsibility now to take this information and do something with it. So like in theory, it's making the watcher better if they're paying attention, but, um, yeah, I dunno.
Brent:right. I mean, it's, eh, he's not, it's not spoonfeed. Like, like you could say the result is he's not spoonfeeding you what the play,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:but like, isn't the point of watching top, top tier players on Pokemon talking about both commands that they should like tell you what the play and I, you know, at the end of every pot, I'm always asking you guys, okay, what's the play this week? Like,
Brit:no, I mean, those are really good points. I think, I think this is in, I want to say this is in like one of Collin's six prizes articles that I like to reference a lot. The one he wrote sort of a really good, um, like explanation on like rogue decks, like why, why to play road decks, like when to do it, like. And, you know, sort of like, I think had various like class designations, like the player who, you know, the player who plays rope for the sake of playing road, probably isn't gonna win very many events, but you know, there's something in there. Or at least I think somewhere in there is the notion that like the best deck is not always the best deck you should is not always the deck you should play, like, things like that. Like there's of course all these other, other sort of factors that goes into it. But yeah, those are all really good points on sort of, um, I guess the importance of like being critical in your data parsing, like it's not, it's not just. Uh, verbatim answer for you to copy and just be like, oh, towards that, it's the best deck. Why didn't I, why didn't I make top cut this weekend? Things like that is, you know, a little more work that goes into it. And I, again, you know, that's just another thing that sets the top players apart of the, the azoles and the towards from everyone else, because they're able to like, yeah, this tech might be the third best deck, but this is what I expected. These are the match-ups like, I'll be 50 50 with this things will go right. So forth.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, uh, uh, you know, when you look at the data from like Luke last week and from, from Zach this week, mew is overwhelmingly the best deck. But I think the one thing we can all agree on is grant manly would not play me. What a regional this weekend. Michael K Toronto would not play mew in regional this weekend.
Mike:Sorry.
Brent:slash you know, Jimmy rip would not play mew this weekend Azule would probably not play mew. Danielle TVA would definitely not play mew. Like the best players would probably be playing something else. I think
Brit:I mean, I mean, we'll get into that, I think, but I think that's the question right now that the community is trying to answer as like, is mew just that good.
Brent:maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. Maybe the, maybe the moral story is used so good. Uh, uh, that, that, like there there's just no alternative and you have to play it. I, you know, I assume it's, I assume, uh, uh, you know, uh, grant would be like, I'm playing for in nothing else. We're just going hard. All right.
Mike:I'm trying to pull up the, uh, the event that just happened. Where did it go?
Brent:Oh, so while you're pulling up, I'll tell you the, the, the comment I had from last pod that I forgot to say it was like, you know how they announced that whole, like this bee climax set that's coming and all of these new, like character shiny rainbow, like not rainbowy things I want to say. I like that. I'm a big, big fan. If people told me that Pokemon collectors, uh, paid more money for the like cards that have awesome art versus it's a Char's art. that. I endorse it. You know, I might still not completely understand it, but I like it a better than just blindly buying chars arts, uh, all those, all that art looks totally awesome. And I love Pokemon, um, investing in art to try to make cards interesting instead of just printing another charger.
Brit:Or both. Yeah, big fan of all the, all the Altaria stuff. It's really cool. Despite I've never liked the, as I'm sure we've hit this on the podcast before, but the diamond or not diamond, uh, rainbow rares, whatever the max rarities are just always Insightly. I can't imagine playing with those. I mean, they're not, they don't seem particularly interesting. Like they remind me of like the burger king toys from the first movie that like little gold plated, like Pokemon.
Brent:Right, right.
Brit:I think it just sort of like it's, it's distracting from the overall like aesthetic and sort of pleasing qualities that Pokemon often have, you know, dumbs them down into monochrome or what have you.
Brent:Yeah, totally, totally agree. And do, do we have any comment on a Jake Gearhart's a professor researcher in.
Brit:Yeah. So let's talk about it for a second. I mean, I mean, I think that there's maybe a couple, a couple side or separate discussions in there. And I think maybe one of the questions is like, I guess one could be like, is it surprising? Like why would it be surprising that it's been reprinted when it's just like been reprinted like consistently for so long now. But I did see, I don't know, I don't know who it is or his full Twitter. I think it's a Vinny or something like that. It had like, um, sort of a good response to. It's just like, what would other decks do compared to new, without research? It seems like. That's kind of the only way to maybe keep these other decks of flow when you've gotten new drawing. So many cards for turn, like how could, how can you keep up with Jenise sex if you don't have something, if you don't have, um, I don't know, like professor Oaks research, even Cynthia. Um, but yeah, like I, I understand the frustration as, as it's one, I often express being just like disappointed that we're in this, we're in the evergreen, um, black and white format, generally speaking, um, at least with a lot of, a lot of the cards. Um, but yeah, I don't, I don't think it's bad for the game per se. Like, it's, it's just what Pokemon's become for so many years now. Like, I don't know, it'd be like, I don't know, just like something else being sort of like. Yeah, I lost, I don't know where I was going with that.
Mike:Yeah, And we've talked about like how it would be nice. Well, I guess we were talking a bit talking about it in terms of Shauna, but it would be nice if like Cynthia shuffle dress was part was one of the, these evergreen supporters. Um, it's a little bit more fair, balanced, skillful. Um, but yeah, not surprising at this point, discard draw seven is probably just going to be in the game forever. Uh, so. I don't know, it doesn't seem more complaining about.
Brit:Yeah, similar thoughts about, and I know I've expressed this before on the podcast, but I think part of just like, okay, Hey professors, research it's bosses orders, getting a reprint to. Answer. It seems like probably, um, and again, for me, it's kind of just like, as it's evergreen, like the go to base that we've always had gusta effects, like the notion that Gus effects should be banned or something. And it just like, I don't know, to me it's like a, you know, a core part of Pokemon's identity and it's just sort of silly. Like I can, you can complain about the, just sort of functional reprints again and again and again, and that's, that's separate from, I think the sort of like evergreen newness, if that makes sense. Like there's a laziness and design, but like Pokemon also at the same time, like has always been this way. So like, I don't quite under like, what, what is this game that you're imagining that like, doesn't have boss doesn't have research, like not a whole lot of formats out there that like don't sort of at least have like equivalent gusta facts, equivalent draw supporters. I mean, at least in recent times, like, as we all would say, that's kind of what marks. The current era of for many years now, compare it to like the early IEX era as that used to all be about like search. And now it's about draw, um, her to leave it like, um, it's just kind of how the game is obviously become, and we've been just for so long, been on this like acceleration towards bigger and faster games, big, more and more HPE, faster and faster and games, so forth.
Brent:Yeah. Yup. right. Let's talk about, uh, let's talk about actual, like playing with cards. Um, Hey mew, it seems like it's a good deck.
Mike:Yeah. So there was an event last night. Uh, how many people were in it? It was like almost 400 people. And you got first and third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh. So it made up six out of the top eight when in the event, uh, there's another like. Three or four in the top 16. So it's like it was 11 or 12 out of the top 16, all of the lists. I haven't checked every single one in the top 16, but all of them in top eight where the turbo version with ROTEM phone battle, VIP pass, great balls. Uh, and then all of them played. Meltwater in some capacity, some played one someplace to, um, the winning lists played too. And I feel like music just kind of has it all now, now that we've started to figure out and that, and that's kind of the discussion that's been going on in Twitter is that, um, with the inclusion of Melo and this turbo engine, the deck. just seems to have. Everything. Um, I think little dark fury summed it up in a, in a tweet. I don't know if you guys saw that, but, uh,
Brent:I did not.
Mike:so here it says list of things that movie max has free retreat cost. Good typing, insane dry engine, energy acceleration supporter, uh, V max Unitec, uh, electrical power item, a really good special energy, uh, self attack. Uh, shred attacks, like getting through stuff and a single prize attacker. So it's got all of those things going for it. Um, which does make it quite hard to beat.
Brit:I mean, another thing, just even from this format, I saw this earlier than other tweet from, uh, Patrick Wall team Ambra, uh, of the six decks and top eight to play for mirror matches three, played five and one played six. And that over the course of 15 rounds, like sounds fun.
Mike:Yeah. And there's a part of this discussion as well is, um, it's mew, a skillful deck and at least my. Initial reaction is that I think mew against all the other decks is actually pretty skillful. Um, and takes some planning. You got to make sure you use the right attacks the right time, and you don't want to play your VMX like you. Sometimes you want to force them to kill a BMX and then you don't play VMX down for a while. You just tend to use the movie V. Second view VMX down once they go to a single prize. So there, I think there is a lot of intricacy in a lot of the match-ups, but it seems like the mirror match is the least skillful matchup and all that's going to be the mesh that you end up having to play quite a lot. If you want to win an event.
Brent:Yeah. So one version of the question I just sent you James Gee's deck list. He, he top 16, uh, the late night event. And like his deck list is the, is the only one that I found in the top 16. That was a different bill. And I feel like it just kind of underscores how it's ridiculously powerful. Like the core engine is just so powerful. It's hard to say how much stuff matters. Like he just, he doesn't run the mellow ETA. He just runs for movie for BMX. For Genesek. The only supporter he runs is for PME.
Mike:He doesn't even play the fusion strike energy was just,
Brent:doesn't even play the fusion, strike energy. He just runs one, uh, exp share and says, that'll be fine.
Mike:that's pretty
Brit:list, this list is upsetting.
Brent:Like, like this list is able to go. 10 31, he went three, one against jolty on, uh, decks. And he went to two versus the mirror, but both of his losses, where do I say a shovel? Uh, yeah, like I, I look at this and I'm like, it looks like he was like, I don't have the cards, but like I have the four, four movie and a Genesek. So like, we'll just put the cards. And see how it goes. And like I went great.
Mike:Yeah, that's pretty funny. It's just, that just shows like the power, the raw power of the cards. Right,
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Like the core engine. Oh, he runs, he ran for Pokemon catchers.
Mike:right. I mean, yeah, if you're not playing bossy, like have to do that.
Brent:crosswords. So he's playing, he's playing peony and he's grabbing like cross switchers and Pokemon characters. Every turn.
Brit:I mean, this is it's just seems like, like Clady P but just battered, like just so many levels better and more consistent. Like you're not just like rolling the dice with your discards and like, oh, there go my water. I guess I lose, like there's no, there's no sort of like. Uh, like lose condition from your turbo engine. Like it's so strange to me that this is able to do as well, like relatively as well as the other lists. But I mean, that's, I mean, clearly, yeah, clearly there, I think early impressions of mew were just wrong. Like, I, I'd be curious to see if we can adapt some, like, I, I suspect like. Towards we'll just continue to do fine with like rapid strikes somehow or something like that. Or maybe I'll cross my fingers. That that's the case. Um, yeah, at least I'll definitely say I was, I was wrong about Neo. Like last week I was a little cynical, like that's good, but it's not Zoroark. You know, some of the, from some of the takes last week, but after, after this, and even as we will post it a list that like, um, like it wasn't playing any counter stadiums and it seemed like maybe even better, obviously, like you just, you just play lose to path, I suppose. But like that list just like seemed even a little faster sometimes in these lists can be, so that's definitely. Yeah. Like, I mean, just as the tier list saw, seemed to indicate you've got mew and then you've got everything else.
Brent:I'm looking at the, uh, rapid strike Inteleon list that like popped 16. He played for muse and went one to one. Yeah, I guess I feel like some people were going into the week thinking if you ran three mattress, you might be able to like, like you kind of made the match up more. Okay-ish
Mike:Doesn't seem like it though.
Brent:in like it though.
Mike:So I think actually the better way and toward posted some screenshots of a, it looked kind of like his old rapid strike Melanie list. I think the better way to approach that matchup is just trying to kill three genocides. And I think you do that by you use an initial. Rapid strike V. Max do one 20 to two Genesis X, and then use some pings. Then eventually you like you, you met a CHAM, one of them, and then tell us, got big site, puts me in to be able to kill the other two. Um, so that seems like a better strategy to me. And you're just better against other things. Cause you're not playing. Matrass.
Brent:Yeah. Uh, the, the fact that you will rely on yoga loop to give you like an extra turn to like, get ahead, just speaks to the, ah, when rapid striker Urshifu is not fast. Sometimes out there.
Mike:Yeah, right. Um, and like the thing that, the reason that that works too is because they, they're not going to want to attach energy to the Genesek. And so that's like a big reason why some of these Inteleon index can struggle hitting math against mew is because the fusion strike energy blocks, the, the Inteleon pings and yeah, it's, it's pretty annoying, but if you target gender sex, then, then you're good.
Brent:So, so let me just get out of the way guys. I sent, I sent you my mew question, uh, uh, before we started, if the best I can format is has four great balls and four VIP's and four cram Maddix, and four row Tom phones, and four random, almost Path to the Peak counters. That's like a third of the deck is the moral of the story that like we're currently in a place where items are kind of bad or like, It really just doesn't matter.
Brit:And I mean, it's just like, they can, they can be bad because it doesn't matter. Like, because it's just like, oh, I'm just drawing cards anyways. Like that's sort of. Whether your, your, your battle passes or your great balls, or like find pits or even the Cramorant Maddix. Like you still draw a new hand every time. So it's like, all part of your game are their way, whether they're good or bad, not just like, I don't know, Jenna seconds, just like what a mistake. Like, it just seems like an error that it's not once per turn. Like, it's just incredible to me.
Mike:Now Brett, I'm a little confused on this question. Do you mean that like these cards are not good and just like.
Brent:So, so here's, here's, what's interesting to me, like I look at, yeah, like I, I just look at this and I like after turn one, win, win battle, VIP pass becomes less valuable. Like a third of your deck is literally like cards you're committed to burning. And like, what's funny. I guess I just, I look at these lists. Uh, these cards exist to either grab a boss or grab a switch or grab a quick ball. Like, like there's like nothing else they're trying to grab.
Mike:Right.
Brent:Uh, uh, you know, I mean, is. you weren't required to have 60 cards of your deck, would you just play this deck with 40 cards? Like I recognize, I guess, I mean, obviously the beauty of criminal medics, like you get to pick the card and like that's super good. So, so, uh, I mean maybe cram MADEC is just a really good card and I not giving it nearly as much love as I should, but, um, uh,
Mike:it's not that.
Brent:it's weird that li. The four gray ball for krama Maddick for OTOC phone. Like those were the best cards we could find to put in this stack. Man, it's a weird thing. Like maybe this is the other half of the, uh, you know, Pokemon not having a, uh, you know, like super big, uh, innovative ideas in terms of cards. They print the, like that's the best cards we got.
Brit:I mean, I think to answer your question, I think, yes. If you could play with less cards, I don't know why it wouldn't. And I'm trying to think about it though. That's a curious question. Like how many decks would that be the case for? Um, in, at least off the cuff, my inclination is not many, like a lot of decks, at least decks that have been historically so dominant, like say Garda galley or something like that. It didn't have this power. I mean, for one let's compare them. Telepaths only once per turn. Um, you know, of course on top of being a stage two, things like that. But yeah, like I, I do think I'm trying to think of really any other decks. I mean like night, March, I suppose. I guess a lot of battle compressor decks probably would be fine. Um, if they could play with 40 or something like that, they'd probably be. A similar place, but maybe not. But yeah, I do think you probably could be fine playing less cards.
Brent:Yeah. You know, I thought of that exact same example when, uh, when I was thinking of the question is like, you know, some of these cards are kind of like trainers, male, like trending knows a good card. Um, it's like a. And item based support or are you kind of thing? What'd you look at cards? good.
Mike:One thing at least to consider, as I think ROTEM phone is actually a pretty, like a really good card. Um, because it, especially in this deck, um, because you know, Puts the card on top of your deck. So you can immediately draw it with Genesek, but you can also choose to not immediately dry it and protect yourself against Marty or something like that. And I feel like That's especially valuable against. Path to the Peak Marnie decks. Um, so you might use like two or three Jenna sex and you don't really need to use like the third or fourth one. So you just wrote him phone, you maybe at five cards in your hand, but then you don't use the last one and you just leave the card on top of your deck. So I think wrote them phone of, of all of these, I think is actually good. The rest I agree with that. They're kind of, eh, I can do without.
Brent:So guys, if you, if you were playing tomorrow, uh, Is there a strategy for beating you or do you just have to go all in on the meal?
Brit:I'm not aware of any reliable counter strategy. And like, we've sort of, we said last week and I poked around a little, like in results and like silly Coonley to Nicola can beat it sometimes. But, um, I mean, and that that's a deck that like, isn't just a, like a hard counter that has fine match-ups across the board. Um, Yeah, I'm not sure. It's like, I don't know. I played a little bit and talk to Les about, um, cause he and Vinny both had some success this last week with like ice rider, which we talked about being really bad, but of course, with Les, it's all about the hammers. So, and like, they're okay. They can, some you like, and it's like for hammer to, um, fan of wave. So it's like, it's not bad. And I think if you have a really good, uh, single strike match up because of all that. But, um, I, I, yeah, I mean, I would just play me. You are mature Sharon. Hope to be okay in the mirror.
Mike:I am still interested in Obstagoon a little bit. Um, I only played a couple of games with this. And I more than once made the mistake of sending up my Zigzagoon act. Well, I keep getting, even when I'm talking about it, now, I keep getting Obstagoon attack mixed up. I keep thinking it's like a Calissa pot attack or a rapid straight attack where you have to move from the bench. But it's actually that if your opponent has damaged counters on it, somehow I have to like, get that through my head. Um, But, yeah, so I've, I haven't really realized that a couple of times and it's messed me up. Um, but I think Obstagoon is still pretty solid. I would like to play the match up against you a little bit more. Uh, I'm pretty interested in the Mallomar deck as well. So the rapid strike nom, our deck got second yesterday. It's pretty straightforward deck. I mean, it's a lot of sequencing. I think that's the biggest thing. Um, but. It's a pretty fun deck. you know, I played it a little bit back, um, two formats ago, like when I first came out and it was, it's always been pretty fun deck to play. So, uh, I might try to play that a little bit more, um, see how that goes.
Brit:And what about, uh, like rasa stack? I mean, and this might be a good segue to talk about it a little bit. I don't think.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Ross is deck for those that don't know is a, it's like a dark single Prizer at Inteleon deck. So it plays an Inteleon line. It plays a two or three baby Clarion matrass and it plays a bunch of who does the Hoopa that does have a glisten pod, rapid strike S attack where it can only use it when it comes active. Um, and. I forget who tweeted it? I think it was Tate, right? When it came out, it was toast. So funny. Where are you? He was like, somehow Ross has made another deck that doesn't do anything at all, but it's still very good or something like that. Um, and that is how it feels like when you play it just, you feel like you're not doing anything the whole game. And then you're like, oh, I could actually win from this spot. Um, I think the deck is okay. Um, Beat it with mew every single time that I played the matchup, but it's always been pretty close. Um, because since they play Inteleon and they're playing these low HP Pokemon, you can get knockouts with a movie and his attack. So you can very much forced them to take eight prizes, essentially. And by doing that, you kind of, uh, just when you can just win the prize. Which is a little awkward. So the fact that I think it's not actually that good against you. I mean, it's like, it's fine against me. I don't think that it's like bad against me. It was probably like 50, 50 ish, but if it's only 50, 50, it's probably not that good. If that makes sense.
Brent:Um, so I know it plays, it plays training court as the stadium. That makes sense, because you need so much energy in your hands to do Gloria and Moltres stuff. Uh, yeah. How much does Path to the Peak give you an opportunity to win? Like, like do you think the, the deck that like somehow overcomes me, you has to have Path to the Peak.
Mike:personally. Yeah, I do think, uh, you're either like, mm, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like you can attack it from a weakness perspective, but then you has counter play to the weakest perspective, um, by going this strategy of like attack you with new UV and, you know, again, forcing the eight prizes. Um,
Brent:Yeah, let me, I looked at Ross's deck and I was like, it just seems like it's, um, uh, a one trick pony designed to beat. By attacking with like dark single prize attackers that are easily powered up.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right. Exactly. So like, if you can force, if they play bad and they play down to new VMAX, the dark Dexter, like gonna win all the time, but any good new player will not play their second BEMAX down until later in the game. I guess that's the.
Brit:About Beedrill that's sort of. I mean worthwhile thing potentially, or at least the only thing that like, I think it was Danny's tier list that was mew in tier S and then Tia was gang Gar and jolty on Beedrill and then everything else was.
Brent:Yeah. Talk to me about jolty and Pedro. Cause I don't, I'm like, I feel like this is not really, uh, like people haven't really seen this.
Mike:Yeah, I don't understand this. at all. What is it? What does BJU do if your prototype problems, any special energy it's knocked out. Okay.
Brit:And then you, you mustard it out, right?
Mike:And mustard is like Archie's and magazines, right?
Brit:I think it's from the deck.
Mike:Oh, how do you get your hand down that.
Brit:I mean, I guess I assume it's pretty hard. I've been like, it does seem good to me cause I remember when my home, um, not my home homes, um, I'm getting people confused here posted about it, um, like a week or two ago and being like, that was sort of my, my question, reading it, like, yeah, this is clearly good, but it doesn't seem. Super reliable to have your, your hand down to zero. I'm like, I know you can, you do have some agency in planning it out with your desires and Inteleon and so forth. But, um, I'm curious, like I haven't played it, so I shouldn't be like too critical, but it doesn't seem terribly reliable.
Mike:Okay. So he plays, they play for chromatic and they played the culinarian Meow that led to discard two cards from your hand,
Brit:Oh yeah.
Mike:I guess that it could be pretty reliable, but you're giving up a lot to fit this whole package in right. You're playing. Terrible card in the house. You're playing to be drills, which maybe be drills. Good. And other match-ups too. I could see it being okay, but like playing for creme and MADEC and to mustard, like it's, it's a, it's a lot, it's a lot of space to dedicate to, Uh, to this. seems cool. I haven't tried it and also I don't want to speak too negatively of it, but I am a little skeptical that it's actually good.
Brent:Uh, you know, I feel like this is the kind of thing where it might be better partnered with like a Zuora worky thing. Having never played in a game so that, like I recognize there's some Zoroark toolbox the thing that people like Sandra are working on. And you're like, that would be a way to like, kind of get the Beedrill out.
Mike:Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I wonder, yeah. I wonder how. Why is guilty on the choice of partner? That's a good question. Um, here, like jumped down to pretty good at card and attacker, but there's no, there's no like obvious synergy going on. There's no obvious Vidro with these matchups and Giante on Wednesdays. Matchups Joelton is already like, not terrible against you. So, and they win in very different ways. Like Beedrill is trying to kill two movie maxes. If you're attacking with jolty on against you, you're trying to kill, um, at least one Genesek maybe even three Jenna sex. So the way they approach the matchup is quite different. Hmm. What else could be Joby good at.
Brit:Do you mean anything kind of with that discard engine and Inteleon it's could be played in, like, I'm not sure how many other decks that count would count for without sort of radically changing. The way the deck is built, but I would think like it could go and there's gotta be like a, a way to like maybe focus like a single prize attacker deck that has the be journal as an option. Like, I don't know if Ross, his deck would be able to do anything like that. I suspect no, but like I do think that it would probably, to me it's it's, it strikes me as being most likely to be good in a, in a tool, a single price toolbox. If there's such a thing as even able to be competitive.
Mike:Good thought. Something, something loan maintenance would be good. So like sweet Coon is probably the most low-maintenance V so could be an interesting option there. The fact that you need to play grass energy though sucks. Like for anything like grass is a bad type. Like if there is a good, there's a good grass deck already, it would make things a lot easier.
Brit:Leafeon.
Mike:Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. I actually, maybe that makes some sense because Leafeon. is really bad against you and a B DRO could beat
Brit:Yeah, that actually doesn't sound too bad because
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:you're not sort of ruining your deck, but having to play grass energy for it on top of the whole sort of combo package. Yeah, maybe that's not so bad because Leafeon, I don't actually know how things have changed since Dane Garvin is sort of the star of single strike, but I do know previous in the previous format, Leafeon had a really good single strike matchup and it's probably still fine. Probably still pretty good would think.
Mike:Vanguard has three retreats. So that's pretty good.
Brit:Oh yeah, that's gotta be great.
Mike:3, 4, 5. I think that means you one shot, one shot at, with some pings. Okay. All right. Maybe we just knew we just broke the format here. Some Leafeon the max Beedrill action. I know Alex, Szymanski just posted an article about Leafeon Moltres. Right. But this seems better than that. Beedrill.
Brit:I'm very, very cynical of Moltres, such as it's too slow, like far too slow. Like I think it was maybe worth, um, worth it. When we were, when we were talking about Shadow Rider being like a three energy attacker that in and of itself, isn't doing a ton of damage from the get-go. Um, and in, in that world, I think the, the I'll just play glare animal trays. So it'll be dark week decks. Like things have just changed significantly early.
Brent:You know, the crazy thing about Shadow Rider is, I mean, Shadow Rider had a super powerful Pokemon based draw engine, but I feel like, I mean, maybe I should go back and listen to our old pause, but I don't think we were talking about how they're just going to play boss every turn and like one shot, whatever they want. Right.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brent:And we're like, that's the thing now.
Mike:Yeah. Just think of how many cards you can draw compared to Shadow Rider. And it's sort of like Shadow Rider maxes out at like six and that's, if they have three shadow riders and they, they can only start drawing six at like 10. Too bad. Best realistically like turned three. They're going to draw six cards, a turn and Jenna sex. Like I'm going to draw 10 cards on turn one 12 cards on turn one. And then for every single turn, I'm drawn 10 cards if I want.
Brent:Right. I mean, you know, nobody was ever like, let's cut the supporter accounts to just be bosses
Mike:Right.
Brent:and the Shadow Rider and yeah. And, and I like, you know, battled, VIP pass. I'm sure people would have been like, is this good? It helps you get a bunch of shadow writers on your deck, but like, you still had to have other stuff. This is like, it's a self-sustaining engine. You just, if you find one battle, the VIP pass, you win the game. Congratulations.
Mike:Yeah. Um, yeah. And going back to Moltres. It takes three energy you can only attach to and it turned to it unless you play Reihan. And so Janice acts like, they're just going to kill you. They're just going to boss it up and kill the Moltres before you get to attack with it. So, yeah, I agree. It doesn't seem all that good.
Brent:Um, uh, uh, my no, no tournament. So this past week I felt like you were about to go on a run there, man.
Mike:I know I would've played the Sunday open, but it was expanded and I was not touching that. Um, I am signed up to play. Oh wait, did I already start? Let's see.
Brit:In my.
Mike:Oh, yep. I missed it.
Brent:No, go, go, go and flip, flip over and see if you're about to play around one.
Mike:No, no, it's, uh, it's already, uh, round one's already started. I was going to play Sunny's event, but, uh, yeah, it started at 10, like 20 minutes ago. That's okay. I totally forgot about it. I signed up.
Brent:We would've played the first round on stream. Here we go.
Mike:I signed up like four or five days ago. Cause he, uh, they cap it at 64 people, but it's a nice event cause it's just twists and not top cuts. So it doesn't go that late. Um, and it's only 64 people, but uh, I signed up like five days ago cause it usually fills up and uh, totally, literally totally forgot. So
Brent:right.
Mike:maybe I'll put maybe tomorrow night we'll play. We'll see.
Brent:Tough. Tough times. I just saw a friend of the podcast loses around one.
Mike:Um,
Brent:He's playing and he loses to out a new, new with one pumpkin. BU this has got the crazy.
Brit:Interesting
Mike:One is pump caboose.
Brit:Shadow Rider.
Brent:Yeah, it discards the
Mike:Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:This guy has got the wacky that he runs
Mike:pretty good. Actually. Wait, why aren't Mulas playing that, that seems really good. You have the four-five crystal, you have all this like item search for a thing that seems actually way better than
Brit:Way better than just the kind of arbitrary counter gyms.
Brent:Uh, yeah. You know, and this guy, this guy ran no stadiums
Mike:Okay, well, that seems bad, but I do like the, uh, the punk abou. I'm going to try, I'm going to put that in my list over one of the stadium guards. That seems good.
Brent:and then he ran a double.
Brit:Yeah, it's gotta be better. Cause it's like, I mean, obviously like you just said, it's searchable nervy. Others are just plainly searchable with a card. That's just always useful.
Mike:Yeah. What are we.
Brit:How bad of a start? Like how bad it is is your prize game. Like, should you start with it?
Mike:Yeah, probably is probably fine.
Brit:I mean, like you said, a lot of, a lot of it, a lot of the match-ups seem to be just killing three Jenna sex and that doesn't obviously doesn't get in the way of that.
Mike:Yeah. And you can just like bump your own stadium too. Like it'd be player and stadium. Do you just use it?
Brit:Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just so you could draw more too. Yeah, that seems great.
Mike:Yeah. Okay. So between Leafeon Beedrill and Punka boom, you we've made some serious competitive strides this episode.
Brent:Amazing part in the books,
Brit:Thank you.
Brent:I might go walk his dog. We know the important stuff.