The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast
The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast
Episode 69 - History of expensive decks, strange techs, Mr. Beast, Ross.dec, Leafeon/Beedrill
I watched some of the loop more so streaming the GG torques. He was playing a Urshifu and I was just like, how I'm curious, what does a stack do to survive? And he got some cool yoga loops, which as the answer you just got to, you have to yoga loop. That's basically how, the only way you beat mew.
Mike:Um, the only games I played were like the, the night of our podcast last week and the day after. Because I was excited about the Leafeon Beedrill um, and I played maybe like a dozen games with that. So I'll pull up the list that I ended with. Um, but as I'm pulling up PTCGO right now, it's updating and it says UI and gameplay support being added for Pokemon V star. So we're getting live no times to
Brent:That was all over the Twitter sphere. And people were saying like, hopefully they were just adding support for like the first two V stars. And like, they were still thinking it's coming out in February. I don't think it's coming out in February.
Mike:you have bad news for you. All 2022 is still Tony Tony two and 370 days from now.
Brent:Although. So I tried to like rise up and a place, a log in and I was like, okay, let me trade it for some cards. And they were like, literally knows aura works available for trade. That was trying to build the control back, man. There's only one kind of deck. We tried to build it this house when it's, when it's impossible to trade for the tier one day. Like I, you know, the first thing I did was I said, Okay. what would I need if I wanted to give you? Okay. I can't do that. And then I was like, okay, this control back looks cheap. The bill like you need is you need a three, three Zororoc line. And like a Crobat will be like, I could probably get these cards. And then I started looking at the problem was like, nobody's gonna try to trade them. Um,
Brit:That's what I need. You make an offer. They can't refuse so high. That's the only way I ever trade. And it's just like, let myself get ripped off, essentially because it expedites the process.
Brent:Well, you know, here's the, actually this is adding, like, this might be a subject for the pod. This is, this is the cold open topic here. The way that they've transitioned to this, like three tier step of competitive decks that you can buy at the store and stuff like that. I don't think they don't really have like theme decks now. So you can't buy the theme decks in the store, right? Or am I missing something like,
Mike:You're probably right.
Brent:it used to be that I, like, I always knew for like 500 coins, there were probably a couple of staples that I'd pick up, you know? And like when I went and looked at the store now and I was like, okay, what's the theme deck? This set. Can I buy it and get some of the cards that I need to build some of these decks, like a Gorebyss or something? I don't know. And it was like, that is not a thing. Maybe I'm missing something. I don't know. But like, like why can't, why are the V battle arena decks available in the store?
Mike:Yeah, that would be nice.
Brent:Wouldn't that be awesome. And like, it, like Pokemon doesn't care really, And it would like totally devalue the economy for like a bunch of staple e-cards and like, that's probably good. Yeah. It doesn't take any money out of their pocket. They should just do that. So I was frustrated, like I went into the store and I was like, wait. So the only way for me to get cards from fusion strike is just a bypass and pray, man. That seems kind of like. I mean, I guess the moral story is I'm on the PTCG Live train of like let's dust stuff and like move on. Welcome to the Trashalanche. Brent Halliburton. Mike Fouchet Brett Pybas. We always do the introduction. We always 100% attendance. It is episode 69. It's a little known fact. You have the ability to set the season and episode thing in your podcast for uploading to apple iTunes. And I have never rolled ours to season two, but I've noticed that other podcasts like tag team and stuff like that, they, they do seasons and essentially they get through 52 weeks and then they reset the next season. Like the tag team guys are very smart. They start the new season at when the world championship would have ended. That's like the last part of the season. And then they kind of roll it. And I thought about doing that. And then I was like, now we're just going to keep it going, keep it going. And as a result, we have episode 69 and they will never have that. They will have season two episode 26.
Mike:Yeah, that's a big win for us. Um, wherever we can get them.
Brent:Exactly. Exactly. The only podcast that tells Pokemon we should be the official podcast sponsored by channel fireball. You know, we talked about getting cards. Channel fireballs marketplace is one way you could get your cards. They help defray the costs of the pot, and we very much appreciate them. So you should definitely price compare the channel fireball marketplace with all the other stuff that you're thinking about doing to get the cards you need, especially as people start to need physical cards, which is very exciting. Five-star review update. You know, I didn't check this week, guys. I, I don't, I assume we did not get a new five star reviews because I assume there would have been bells and a light would have shined from the heavens and people would have been celebrating and low. There are no reviews. If you leave a review, we will read it on the. You could you could be a participant in the Christmas miracle and let us come back from Christmas holidays with reviews. People make it happen. All right. The first question that I wrote down on our exciting thing that I wanted to just talk about for a second, because it's unspoken, unrelatable, always taking care of the Pokemon related stuff. First, I had taken some notes on I want to get you guys' perspective on how much content creation is like a business versus an art. Like it's interesting a hot chalk, a TCG, one of our favorite Twitter of voices of the community and the hashtag like Pokemon fit fam fit, fit fam, something like that guy. He started a podcast and like the first three minutes of his podcast is like, I woke up this morning wanting to do even more in 2022. So I started a podcast and here's the first episode. And like, it just drove home to me. So there's a there's like no competitive barrier to entry in podcasts, just like podcasts. I don't think you'd do it because it's a great idea. I think you do it because podcasts are fun or something.
Mike:I mean, it's nice that people listened to us, but it's also like, we kind of do this because we like chatting with each other. Right. And we like being able to just talk about Pokemon once a week, regardless of how much we are into it at the given moment. And it just gives us a nice excuse to, and it's great that people listen. Um, but like, I guess for us, that's, at least for me, I don't know. I can't speak for you guys, but that's like, that's not necessarily the point.
Brent:Yeah. I know. I've talked about how, like I have realized, I like to do like creative things that are weird, build weird Pokemon websites, do weird Pokemon podcasts, like, oh, you know, the, the opportunity to test and try experimenting the act of creating. Even though I cannot draw or paint or do any of that other stuff is like a weird thing in that way. It's fun. all related, no guys and members of the podcast, I want to just shout you guys out and appreciate your listening and participating in all of the crazy creativity of the podcast does little known fact book sales are surging as we approach Christmas and by surging, I mean like it's like two or three copies a day, like where we're not breaking the universe open, but like I've sold more copies in the last two weeks. Then we've sold in any two weeks since like the day we launched. And I sent out zillions of free copies of my own expense because I was doing an act of creativity with it, had no business value, but, but as a result, we're going to write like it's several hundred dollars check to not. Come the end of this year to help people with mental health issues become their best selves. So it should be really good. I'm really, really excited about it. It's great to see. I mean, every time I see a sale, I have a vision of some like, you know, 12 year old or 10 year old, getting a book about like how to play the Pokemon card game and him saying, I got to go to my locals just as soon as there's locals, which I like.
Mike:Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. Congrats.
Brit:You get a sell, sell it up more like all the everything else in the world does gotta be like buy now, buy now, even though we don't run out of stock to up 2000% this week, you don't want to miss out. Pre-order now pre-order your video to me. I hear ready to made item. Like it's all about the language and stuff. It just, you got to get a game of fight and these new Instagram ad influencers sort of ways. That's like, that's the key to sales. I think.
Mike:Yeah, that's so funny. I've been seen, you're just reminded me. I've been seeing these posters all around New York for this comedian guy. He has four shows and it says the first three shows are sold out by tickets for the last one. And then I look online, you can get tickets for the first three. Like it's not that hard and they're not even that expensive. This is really funny.
Brent:Yeah, so show it. Let's talk about, let's talk about the things that are happening on Twitter for a few.
Mike:Oh real quick. I feel like I kinda answered your question before, but so the core question though, was, is it more of a business or an art and I guess it's probably. For a lot of people, it starts as more of like an art and a creative outlet. And then if they gain a lot of traction, then they kind of turn it into a business. Right. And I feel like that's true for not just this content creation, but just art in media in general, you know, there's lots of people that start off doing music or drawing or whatnot as, as a hobby. And they're like, ah, you know, if I take off cool, I'll do it as a job. But if not cool, it's fine. I just like doing it. Um, so I feel like this is similar in a lot of other ways.
Brit:Yeah, that's a, that's a really Sundancer I don't think I really have too much more that could possibly tack onto that. But yeah, I was going to sort of offer it just cynically. Like it's a business, like, or at least clearly it is once a year successful because so much of it is just like fun playing the algorithm, you know, you're on YouTube now the whole game is like, you got to upload three videos a day and it doesn't matter if they're all garbage or not, you just kind of keep uploading them and things like that. Like, it's a, it's a, it's a, you're chasing the trends, both in the analytics and in like what the people themselves want and seems exceedingly difficult, I think. Or like I get it. I think Mike just summed it up so, well, I, I think sort of at its best as a passion project, but then when you're just like, well now I got to make tick talks. Well now I gotta make a podcast to like on top of the YouTube and so forth. Now I got a stream. Like that's a nightmare. I'm I'm glad I, uh, not a, not a content creator. It seems like a whole, a whole lot of work.
Brent:are 100% committed to never being content creators,
Brit:A whole lot of work,
Brent:episodes we record.
Brit:not a whole lot of security from what I can tell.
Brent:I, you know, the I have to say one of the things that I've talked about with my kids a little bit, I am a fan of, I don't, I don't completely understand it cause I'm I'm way too boomer, but I I'm pretty sure I'm a fan of whatever the heck it is Mr. Beast is doing, because it seems like he's willing to just like spend insane amounts of money to try to like do some one-off thing. And he doesn't necessarily seem like completely tied to this. Like I have to just grind out like the same thing over and over again, because like that's what my core audience expects in some way or something like that. You know what I mean? I feel like we are trying to you know, live up to that, like Mr. Beastie, mojo. I mean, I can't think of anyone else. That's just like randomly mailing people, Pokemon cards, like.
Brit:I mean, is that just sort of like predicated on his platform though? Like I sort of, as I think mentioned, it was just last week. I don't know anything about YouTube as I like only vaguely vaguely know who he is. Like what, what got him big? Like what sort of, has he always just been like doing one-off sort of squid game ask type projects? Or did he have like a consistent niche and then he, then he spiked at some point in time and now he just has the freedom to do nonsense.
Brent:I don't know. There's probably like a New York times article. It would explain Mr. B's still old hits,
Brit:Yeah. I don't, I don't know enough if he just like, I don't know for all I know he could have, they
Mike:I'm going to spend
Brit:as a Minecraft streamer or something.
Brent:all right. My Mike is, Mike is investigating the YouTube rabbit hole to
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:data on Mr.
Mike:I also don't know much about him. I see him post on Twitter all the time that he's given away money. That's most of the extent of.
Brit:a restaurant or he's affiliated with some burger chains or something. I think
Brent:Yeah, he, he liked you like started a restaurant. He like bought a car dealership and then gave away all the cars to people that came to the car dealership. It's a good example of creative randomness in the pursuit of whatever the business venture is. That is like not super well understood. Right? Well, I like, I, I like, I like, you know, I mean, the Internet's so like lacking in originality as people just like figure out clickbait and then grind it out right here, top 10, blah, blah, blah, blah. He does a good job. It seems like, I feel like consistently coming up with weirdness, that. is like, well, I hadn't, I wouldn't have thought someone would do that. I wouldn't have thought it was even possible to do that. The squid games thing. Perfect example. Right? Like I'm going to build an incredibly high production duplicate of this crazy TV show.
Mike:He's way younger than I thought he's only 23.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:I thought he was at least my age, like 30 ish. Cool.
Brent:Yeah, Mr. Beast, if someone wants to explain that to us on Twitter, we will, we will read it on the pod. Exactly. Exactly. I, yeah, I, I, there there's no question in my mind, but yeah, you're, you're so right. I feel like all the time we see people who were like, you know, I'm uploading a whole bunch of videos cause I'll be out next week. It's like, man, we're just going to take two weeks off, but we'll see how that goes. People.
Mike:Ah, so the video, just, just to wrap it up the, to answer Britt's question, then he was making YouTube videos for many years, but the video that got him famous is he uploaded a 24 hour video of him counting to a hundred thousand.
Brent:There you go, right? Like you couldn't possibly have thought this is going to be the thing that breaks it open for
Mike:Yeah. Right.
Brent:It was like, it's just, it's an act of pure artist artistry. And I love it. I love it. I love it. It's like completely meaningless. And, and Yeah, I mean, I guess so who watches that video? Like I assume you fast forward to the middle, you fast forward to the end,
Mike:you were like, cool. Ah, that's hilarious.
Brit:Yeah.
Brent:I don't assume people look for their favorite.
Brit:I don't know. I don't honestly be willing to bet like tin, foil hat for a moment that like justice, like, I mean, it's true for the music industry. It's true for like literature and publishing. So many, like hits are just such manufactured and inside jobs. I'd be, I'd be curious to know, like, if any YouTubers were like more, you know, some sort of like boardroom creation, you know, that they've, they've ran the numbers, they created the perfect persona. That would be popular. Like that doesn't sound terribly. Far-fetched like a little cynical. I don't, I would wager it's not true, but like surely where, I mean, I know we're avenging. Towards that sort of territory. I've read something about like fake tick talkers and things like that. Like tick talkers that are like presenting their, you know, story of my life. They're not real people. They're they're ads and things like that, but I'd be curious to know if like any of the mega stars even on like Twitch or something could be, could be something more to it.
Brent:Yeah, that'd be that, that definitely is a thing. That definitely is a thing. There's no question. There are people out there who are like, like minor celebrities that are definitely not real because welcome to the internet. Right.
Mike:Yeah, Yeah, these are a bunch of interesting Twitter things. Good. Good.
Brit:It just kind of like grabbed a couple. One of them is probably not worth talking about as just me getting annoyed, but two of them I think are interesting enough potentially to address like one of them we've soft answered like several times on the podcast. Um, you know, this question of is like, did, is there, you know, just like essentially just like th th th the Twitter's just like the online scene is bad, and this is what I'm reducing it to an argument forum. Like the online scene is bad and sort of doesn't. Didn't a fully, like didn't sort of come to the full potential of the cards because there wasn't a prize incentive. Like therefore, like the crushing hammer lists, they're all bad, like something to that effect. Um, and I just think that's wrong. I think that's, you know, cashed and someone who hasn't touched cards in two years, like what, what do they know about the formats and things like that. Um, but the, the other ones are about just like what cards look like both, but were competitively good. I thought Jane would have had some really good answers to that. Um, but in general I think is interesting. Um, and then the other one is just sort of about card prices. Jake Gearhart, like tweeted something from a video that like insinuates that like the Stormfront format was expensive, which it was, is just wrong. Um, it's just, just verifiably false. Um, and it's just like laughably. So I think like that's the one that made me mad.
Brent:How much were decks at D during SFS P like, talk to me about the the Gearhart tweet for a second.
Brit:I mean, a lot of it is going to depend on the timing because a lot of just, there are never like, like for decks, like gang guard decks, like Garrett. So many of these cards are like available in, started X for one, um, commons, not even holler airs for two. Um, and like things like that. But then the sort of the big card of the diamond and pleural era were like played on Oxy, which eventually got promos. Um, which sort of which made them essentially worthless. But even when they, they weren't promo, it was like, I don't think they were like, Like you could buy four axes, which your deck never played for like two new V maxes. I'm sure. Um, and again, like all the supporter trainers are like worthless for the most part. Like I just, I just, these, these constructions saying that like Stormfront gang Gar, or was like a$400 deck or something as ridiculous. And like some of the lists, the list that they even pulled from are bad. But like I watched the video that like those screen grabs are from, and the person is like, these might not be accurate. These are from troll and toad. And I was just like, okay, there we go. Conversation over. But
Mike:I'm looking at this, there's a gap. There's a Garret list here that says it's$270 there. The only hollow in the whole deck is Oxy level ex.
Brit:which you would never play Garrett, I was never played that card. I've never seen a Garret list with Lexi level X in my life.
Mike:Like some of, some of these staple cards were expensive for non hollows, but like was like five bucks max then, like, that was probably the most expensive of them. Then there's like a Zelle stabilize that were maybe like three bucks, like.
Brit:And I remember, I remember it was before like 2010 nationals. I think. I remember Jason goes in ski, just talking about it here and there. Like I think like a luxury level X like hit like$70 or something. And it was just like unheard of, and UQ C-level X was like 90 or something, you know, and this is, this is not like real value, quote unquote, this is like what the vendors have got going on at nationals right now. Um, and even that was just. Absurd to think of and like, sure. Like let's, let's grant that the, the most expensive, the most expensive the card ever was like, that's how much we need to put in our like, deck list, price list here. But like you only needed one or maybe two and like Luxor. I certainly never too with Oxy and things like that. Whereas like you need 4, 4, 4, 3, like of all your V maxes, generally speaking. Um, but yeah, I just think both sides of the, like, I don't think it's like all of that expensive too. Like if you, if you buy the new archetype of the new set and then like an early release period, like yeah. You're going to spend a lot of money before. You know, as somebody who hasn't really bought very many cards during the pandemic, like I know that just every everything, except for like new stuff is just promos. Like there's, there's, there's the, there's the league decks for both, uh, both single strike and rapid strike Urshifu now like there's jolty ons and tens, like all, all the non V max is the regular V's are like all basically worthless. I don't even think it's like comparatively all that expensive to, especially now, when you have like the trainers tool kits, which you buy one of, each of them know that there's two and you, you more or less have enough staple cards to like, build all your decks. But yeah, like I really think, cause I mean, I was just like a high school kid. I had like, didn't work the whole time, but I had a part-time job for like a lot of it. I had every deck. I very easily had every single deck with like, like I, I think I had to proxy like staples here and there. Like, I didn't have like 12 or exams, but I probably had like eight or 10 or something like that. And they're just easy to come by. Like all of this stuff was like just valueless. Like Pokemon has always been the cheapest game, but I definitely think it's was cheaper to play back then. And yeah, I mean, it's a good question to ask, but I think, like I said, like, unless you're playing the hottest thing at its hottest time, I think it's pretty cost effective cost efficient to play Pokemon.
Mike:time that like very clearly sticks out to me as the first time where I couldn't easily build whatever deck I wanted for me and both my brothers. And we were all, like you said, high school and younger was nationals 2011 when Yon mega Magna zone was kind of like the big secret dish kind of deck. And we all wanted to play on mega magazine, but young mega is, and magnesium's kinda like went up there a lot. Um, those were the prime cards. And that was also partially because you wanted to play three or four of these copies in a deck. And they all got to, like, I don't know. I feel like y'all, Meg has got to like 40 bucks at some point or magazines got to 40 bucks. Um, but that, that, that was like the first vivid time that I can remember. But I, so I agree with you. Like, it was very, very cheap to play from definitely from like 2005 through 20 10, 20 11. Um,
Brit:Yeah, I think it will. I mean, I think that's right for me to, at least as my, as my memory serves nationals 2010 or 2011, rather, it was like a difficult time for people, especially people who like just didn't buy cards. Like it was, it was really hard and expensive to track in Meghan's down like the last second. Cause everyone, everyone needed them and nobody had them because I mean, there were like$4 a week before, like you had mega prime had just been more or less unplayable until rotation happened. Um, but I, I don't think they stayed. I mean, magnetism did magnetism always retained somewhat of a value as it sort of had decks far beyond, um, the initial post rotation format. It was like, uh, electric and stuff in that city's format. Um, but yeah, like again, mega I think even by worlds was not worth anything anymore. Like maybe$20 or something. It max.
Mike:Yeah. It's also, I also remember it because it spawned this joke that Sam Shen and I have where he would start saying like, oh, that meal cost me three quarters of a magnet zone prime, or that airplane ticket cost. I could buy two magazine primes instead of that airplane ticket. So, uh, that's also why it sticks out. And I think, and I think it's because it was kind of like the first real ridiculous pricing. Um, so yeah, anyway, to wrap it up, I feel like the game was much cheaper. Or at least, or at least not more expensive, even if it's not that much cheaper. It's not like we're in this situation now where it's so much better.
Brent:I mean, what, you know, w uh, I think Britain, my mind, you hit the nail on the head. Like, it's weird when you obviously, like prices today, feel inflated because collectors, and if you, and if you, but, but even still, if you kind of take a snapshot at any point in time of like the hot cards at their like, highest prices, like lots of things seem impractical. I mean, there was when shamans were running around with. Shamans running out for like$70 or something like people were losing their minds and like, indeed, you needed many shamans to be able to play the game at that moment. Like there were a lot of problems people had, but like, you know, I don't think people look at the decks now feel like that. I mean, people like right before tournaments expanded tournament's today, the vendors are selling computer searches for like a million dollars. Like it's, it's just facts that like, you need computer search, you can't get computer search. It's a million zillion dollars. I mean, tropical beaches are kind of the same way, right? Like the prices will just continue to sky rocket because there's no prints or they're harder to get. And like all that stuff. But, but if you don't like, if you look at it like the average during the period in which they were playable, it's probably much lower.
Brit:And actually, yeah, I actually don't know that that due to our PR our beaches, like steadily still going up, I guess, like, I would think they flat line, like at a certain value. I guess not flat line, but the hold it hold a consistent, consistent value. Um, but like I have, but I haven't touched features since I lost all of mine, really. Like, I, I would, I would guess they're just like$200 now, is that wrong? Or they worth a lot more.
Mike:tropical beach.
Brent:Yeah, I'm looking at TCG player. They don't have any,
Brit:like all that much of a collectors item. The, obviously the better you do the standard ones are, but like generally speaking, these are a strange sort of case that they do have a high value, but I think like exclusively for competitor reasons. But again, I'm talking about how little I know. So I'm sure like a grade 10 regular one is probably worth a lot of money. I'm not sure.
Brent:The, the tropical beach top 16. A car that's for sale on TCG players going for six 50. It's pretty strong.
Mike:There's no regular ones
Brent:Yeah. There's no regular one. So it seems like six 50 is like the thing to do. Let's see. Quarterfinalists Nope.
Mike:you can't find any, there's not any on troll and told either they have them listed for oh wow. Like they have the English regular one listed for 700, but it's out of stock.
Brent:The staff tropical beach is 400.
Mike:That's crazy. So yes, they're worth quite a lot.
Brent:Yeah. And It continues to be wildly impractical to say, you're going to get a place out of tropical beaches. So you can do that.
Mike:is someone good that in terms of play? I think tropical beach is a very, very interesting card and I like that it's good at certain points just based on the mechanic of it, but I'm glad that it hasn't really been a very, very good card and expanded in a while because of the accessibility issues.
Brent:Yeah. And, and, and I think you guys both know, I mean, all this uh, Pokemon it's great, like, you know, complaining about$300 decks as being like super expensive, man. I've seen magic.
Mike:Yeah. Well, and it's funny when people ask, when I talk to them about Pokemon, can they know nothing about. See a question that I very often get is like, how paid a, when is it like, does the people there like, do the, do the people with the better cards just win all the time? And I'm like, no, that's not really the case because the cards are very accessible. Like, yes, you have to pay some amount of money, but the game is very accessible. Um, and I really love that about the game. I like to tell people that, um, cause they people, external people often have this connotation with games like this, where you do have to, it is just paid a week. Exactly. That. Um, so it's nice that it's not usually.
Brent:You know, I've, I've always described it as like TCG has an element of pay-to-win this in that, like, you got to have the cards. If you don't have the cards, you're just completely. And like, there's, there's no getting around it. Like you do have to have the cards and, and it does cost probably a couple of hundred dollars to feel like you've got the cards. So you're not going to have a card problem. Whereas VG it's just time. It's like, you just have to commit to like spending thousands of hours and memorizing like the speed of a scarf guard shop, blah, blah, blah. Like you just have to like memorize thousands of pieces of data and sit there and grind teams or, or cheat, but like you know, VG was just like mega time commitment at TCG is like, you got the cards.
Brit:Yeah. Like I understand the question it's like pretty expected, especially with, with like the whole, just like Pedro in sort of being more applicable to so many other kinds of games. Um, these days, a lot of, a lot of the like mobile trending games and so forth, but it seems like it's pretty easy to feed just like within the data itself, like take any given tournament, um, and say, you know, let's say regionals, you know, Utah regionals is tomorrow. Like what percentage of the player base like plays mew. And then like what player? Percentage of the top eight it's still new. Like even. At four of the top, a like, you know, like plenty of new players are having bad days, even still. So it's, it's, you know, again, it's probably somewhat obvious for anyone listening well immersed in the card games and so forth. But like if somebody doesn't answer, it's like, no, you know, you could have the very best deck you could in fact have the same 60, um, as that Wednesday event. And you could just have a terrible day for a variety of reasons. So there's always, there's always the sort of like rider to it.
Brent:You know, I, I remember, I, I think, I think it was a tells me at one point when we were talking about like the whole DDG thing and, you know, one of the things that he had said about, about the DDG kind of deck building strategy versus how he had thought about building decks before he was like, DDG crew was like, before he was DDG crew, as he built decks, he was playing a little more towards like, I just want to make everything 50 50. And I like out skilled people and working more with like Jimmy and Igor. And then later, like Danny and stuff, he was a little more we're gonna polarize the match a little bit. Like we're going to, we're going to make medicals a little more and then just try to outscale the stuff that's outside the matter, but like take it. from, you know, take like the stuff that was important to, to 60, 40 or 75. And I think their theory was one of us will high roll in with, and you know, so like five or six or seven of us, or the best players were playing the same 60 and yeah, like you just, you're just gonna get some bad beats, but you know, if, if we're all playing, what we think is like the best deck for this game, one of us will get the right match ups and just roll through the tournament. That'd be easily.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:But, you know, I think the the other side of what you're saying is like, Yeah. if you taught regionals was tomorrow on the one hand, like you gotta have the cards and you gotta pay to have the cards, but would like twenty-five percent of people show up with a four, four BW VMX and 4g NSX. Yeah. Like somehow it's not so like cost prohibitive, but that people can't like, people can't play the deck. They want to play, you know, like you got to buy the cards, but like. It's not completely prohibitive to get the cards unless you're like, man, those four tropical beaches. All right. Let's talk about, let's talk about Tate and LucMetal where they're talking about cards that seem like complete bulk, but we're actually played index for a second. Cause that was a fun tweet. Making the rounds that did any were there any cards that were like on you guys' radar when you saw that tweet? I'm sure you guys must have spent at least like 120 seconds racking your brain to try to come up with something.
Brit:I mean I've and I know Mikey probably has, has more, I've played some pretty bad cards and tournaments tournaments before that would definitely take this, but like the ones that tape posted, I've never, I've never seen before in my life. Like what next are these in?
Brent:You know, like that was a funny thing. My reaction to that list was when he posted the bear tick with igloo holes, I was like, that was not a good deck. I remember like, that was, that was exactly, that was one of those decks. And like, I don't even know how common, I mean, maybe it was the era of online tournaments. It's, it's not uncommon, but like, that was one of those decks that literally for 24 hours, people were like this one, a city championship, we have to test this deck and then everyone tested it. They were like, this deck is bad.
Brit:cities
Brent:Yeah.
Brit:that would always happen. I miss it. Sometimes for those reasons you would just get, like, don't know, Andrew Rambo would play some just bizarro decks and of course was good enough to win in our area. Like they have, there's always some goofy things. If you just wouldn't buy results alone.
Brent:Yeah, it was like such a, it was such a city's deck. The absolute worst.
Mike:The T I C tape posted six, the, or he posted more board in that. Okay. So I, I remember the carnival line. I don't remember what deck it was in, but it's so reminiscent of the rosacea. That was quite good in like the 2006 year. So I remember thinking the current mine could be okay. And I remember it being played in something. And I remember me stick PX definitely was played for a very short amount of time in Garrett dose. And. For Garrett dose, the one that does damage for the amount of counter is on your magic art on the bench. And so Meow stick was played in Garrett dos to counter other to counter like the mirror match. And I think maybe a couple of other decks played it as well. Um, cause you got to just like move a counter and kill a magic for free. Uh, and then this Chris Selia E X, I also remember being it being played, but I don't remember where or when, but like soul rock,
Brit:Yeah, the Chris Elliott
Mike:even know what this would do.
Brit:familiar. There's something. It was, it was good in a mirror or something, I think. Cause you would hit, you would hit for weakness and then wouldn't have it, but I'm blanking on what it does. Look a little familiar to me now, too.
Mike:Um,
Brent:Yeah, no, no idea.
Mike:see, I did post a couple of cards. Um, Oh, yeah. You, you commented about the DNA. The DNA was playing. That card was played quite a, quite a lot.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't so uncommon at the time. It was quite good.
Mike:Yeah. So I posted a couple of cards. First one was unknown. K, which is polka power was one steering your attorney. You may remove two damaged counters from one of your opponents defending Pokemon. Um, and that was good. In the flagon memory, very locked deck that we played at worlds 2011. We didn't actually play an okay in the final list, but it was up in there. And so the idea of that deck is you would bring up a clay doll or some other non attacking card. You would use, um, memory Berry on your flagon to copy tripped pinches attack, which was corner. You know, it did 10 damage and they couldn't retreat. And then flag on level X is this polka body in between turns you discarded the top card of your opponent's deck. Um, so you would mill them out, but eventually you'd have to kill whatever you're trapping. Cause you're doing 10 damage. So with unknown, K though, you could heal them and then infinitely trap them. Uh, it ended up being like a Winmore card. Like typically if you were able to trap a clade off for, you know, eight turns and discard. 16 cards from their deck. You were going to win the game anyway. Um, but it, I could see a scenario or a meta-game where it was necessary to play that. And so that was a cool card to play, um, posted something else too, and I can't find it.
Brent:The Hitmontop stages of evolution.
Mike:Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, I played a lot of Bonnette IEX in the 2007 format and I played like really wacky Bonnette IEX decks. Um, the popular versions, uh, were, I mean, by world, it was pretty popular play either Benetti X with the evolutions or Bonnette with the Luna tone soul rock. Um, which, uh, my friend Jeremy one. Seniors that year. But earlier that year I played a lot of different things. So I played Lickitung D was like a really big inclusion that I played a lot of. But anyway, so there was a regional that year where I played a two, two line of the Hitmontop. So I played two Tyro and two hitmen tops, and I played one of the scar Marie edX. Uh, and I probably should've won the event. I lost in top eight or something like that to a really bad misplay. Um, and those cards were not good cards. They just happened to, I needed a fighting attacker essentially because Bonnette was weak, too dark and I needed to hit something for weakness. I, I forget exactly what it was. Um, scar memory as well, not a really good card, but Bonnette was just a really efficient attacker at the time. And often just need a little bit of extra damage to, to get there and smooth its attacks. And so se-commerce, IEX put counters on them. When they switched to retreated. Uh, so that kind of just got you over the edge. Um, so yeah, so those were some interesting cards. I played some of the rest of the cards that I see on here. Some of them I've never seen, but a lot of them, I remember like, uh, like Dedenne I, like I said, the B Julie X, I think it's a really good choice. Um, do you guys remember that? When I was like,
Brent:Oh, that was a, that was a sad time for the format.
Mike:yeah, that was like the Dessie plume time, right?
Brit:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Brent:but there was no, that was the only like that in the men Chino, the tape posts that were the only like tool removal at like the very, that the two times those were playing, it's like, that's why people play at it, Right.
Mike:Right.
Brit:yeah. I guess before faba or something. I remember, I remember the Beedrill basically like, I, well, that was a, that was in a year or two that I, like, I played that very, very minimally, but I remember that. And Vileplume now that you said.
Brent:yeah, I, I feel like the, the other category. So I like your submissions, Mike, because I feel like the, so many of the cards that I see posted are just like obvious, uh, like typing counters. They're like, it's a type of text with color and this energy. So I put it into my deck.
Mike:right.
Brent:a lot of people did it, but like, it never really fixed things.
Mike:Yeah. Some of the ones that Luke posts on, like we have already ex really, um,
Brent:largest are on the Onyx. Like people tried taking that stuff in and never quite got you there, you know?
Brit:Yeah. I don't remember that even on it, people would play the Onyx and like malware and stuff. I believe. Like I recognize that woman. And, um, be, I mean, some of the question itself is like fairly subjective, I guess. Just like what it looks like book to you might not look like both to me. Um, so it started a part it's like, I don't know, like, you know, it's something that's like a hollow air. I would still be able to define it as bulk all like, does that like remove it from someone else's definition of both then in virtue of the fact that it's hollow? Like, you know, some people might only be thinking of like commons and uncommon, but I can think of a few, um, just like on that note. And again, some of it, I think depends on time and the format and rotation and so forth, but like one of the first examples that came to mind are all the heart gold soul, silver babies, and like a bit cheating there. I think I'm in the same answer, but like, they were sort of unplayable bad or just like, no one touched them until the mid season rotation. Then all of a sudden, like all of them, like even Smoochum in some scenarios are like really, really good. And it just like ended up being in this kind of like weird wackiness with the rules and the flips that they couldn't be damaged when they were asleep, but they were definitely. Both bulk bulk binder fodder, um, until mid-season rotation and the, for the first set of rules change for that format. Um, another one I can think of that. I really liked a lot that Colin and I had a deck for that we like almost played was, um, shiftery from platinum. I think it was, um, it just made all of your, all of your, um, your, all of your opponents flips were tales. And so it was like, it was really good against scary dos cause they, that was often a pretty slippery deck. Um, and then it just, it could do some other things too. It could just like confuse you if you had the same type of the same number of cards in your hand, which was awkward for a lot of decks to deal with, they would just have to take the confusion slip, which wasn't always great. Um, And it certainly was never a real deck and there was another shiftery that Misa and I almost played for worlds in 2016. We were really, really close. It was really close to being good. Um, but I'm sort of blanking on what it did, but it was about for us, it wasn't like, it wasn't the one that got banned that had the like flipping fan effect, but it was like, it used for us of giant plants. And like, I think it was a dual type or something maybe. Yeah. Cause the, um, there were dual types and uh, the volcano that was called or blinking steam siege, but it was certainly not good either, but we had, we had decks for it, whatever it had, it just like was good forest of giant plants. Revitalizer had a lot going for it.
Brent:So you guys can tell me if I'm misreading this, but like my, my reaction that thread was like, I was like, you know, there are some cards that I think when they were first printed, probably lots of cards like this people didn't realize, oh my God, that's like a completely broken card. And like, like they thought it was bulk. And like, when we look back, we're like, oh, it was totally a staple of the format. It was never bulk at all. And like the card that I, I think the first one, I think that says Oranguru like when Oranguru was printed, I think there was zero mention of it. The first time I hear, I remember people actually talking about it was like Russell apart, putting it in Galicia pod decks and saying, this is super good. Everybody should put on. a ringer with listen. And then like we spent the next two years just dealing with Oranguru.
Brit:Here's an easy answer, just like most, most of the cards and standards that I think would qualify for this. All of them. All of the Pokemon cards is very consistently with just like usually count. I think, especially like if we go back for there with like the Reggie Gigis wall decks, things like that.
Brent:yeah, yeah. Like th you know, it was weird. Cause I looked at, I looked at all these cards and I was like uh, for me, maybe with the exception of, uh, of like the Arduino and the Dedenne, which you rightly point out, like, I feel like there was lots of those. They were like, ah, you know, there were card choices. You can put them in. You could not put them in like, yeah, there were a bunch of cards that. I think people realized later, they were like, Oh, my God, this car is crazy.
Brit:Oh, that reminds me even just saying on Dina reminded you of another one. Maybe, do you remember this one? Mikey, there was this Adina that you could like discard from your hand and it would remove a damaged counter and special conditions. It was like kind of hyped, kind of, not for seismic Todd, but I think people tried it right away and it was bad. And then it never found a place in lists ever again. But I remember playing that in a tournament or two for sure.
Brent:people, people played it that, that, that hip bump Edina was this like a staple investment Windex. You'd put one in because you'd be like, I can always discard it. And it feels a status conditions.
Mike:Yeah. It was like pretty good investment Quinn. It's just like, cause you didn't have enough other good cards to play. But yeah,
Brent:Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you always knew like you could discard this and it would be 10 to image.
Mike:right. It just really sucks. Starting it.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, th the the hidden power unknown was another one that. I don't think people realized. I mean, maybe cause they, you know, I don't know when exactly that was printed compared to the best book when, how like, oh Yeah. you're definitely gonna play this card. You're gonna play it a lot. Like it's a really good card.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that that's like a different question, but a cool question to think about as well. Like what cards were took us a lot of a longer time to figure out we're very good
Brent:yeah. I am.
Mike:It's hard to think about that retroactively sometimes, right?
Brent:As I was thinking about the Oranguru example, another example that came to mind was when came out, like that was a card that had a ton of hype, like everyone's talking about. it. Oh my God, this is a really good card. That's really good cards is really good card. But that first Philadelphia regionals, like I coming out of that, Don Finn was the biggest.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:And like Wiseman toad was not that well-regarded, it took like three or four months before it took like toad puff before everybody was like, oh, we should play this all the time. And then towed shame. And then like, it was toad, toad, toad, toad, toad, the rest of the year.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seismic toad was. It was like a tech card index before it was its own deck. Like a lot of people play a one-up tote in their evil toss. For example,
Brent:Right, right. Well, and a lot of people showed up at that first Philadelphia regionals with like a, you know, one of those kinds of like, just a big, basic decks, right? Like it was like mew and seismic toad, and a couple of other friends. And you try to hard counter of and see where that got you. And like stuff like that.
Brit:Jason Kaczynski was playing seismic toad immediately. I remember, I don't know if he was at that Philadelphia regionals, but like the neck, the first region was I went to that year was, uh, Texas where I did well with like Donald fan. Right. You and Jason played with playing seismic, took Garber door, like at that tournament was like, and it was just like, sort of, even, it was like laughable, just like he was, it was just like four toad and Garbodor and there was nothing else. Um, clearly improved over time with things like shaman, but like he made day two and played it, played it and expanded in day two, just with better cards still and so forth. I felt like he knew. Um, one, one other card that comes to mind, which I think we have talked about on the podcast before is Dragonite. FB is a good one because it was just sort of considered binder fodder. Um, until the Japanese all showed up with it at worlds in 2010. And it's just like for a double colorless and an energy game, which for us pay Pokemon is just cheating on an energy, like the elemental badges that the EVs have. Um, but just for us people come on and it was colorless. So you hit. Um, you could kill guard shots, but then just the 80 damage itself was like generally enough to knock out like most, most, um, like S people come on, like the regular versions of them before they became level X, like all had one just, just at HP and like bronze on had 90, Crobat had 80, Lucario had 80, like, and so it was just cheap prices. And then after that, it was, um, more or less a staple and almost not all this, like you would still like play. I would, I personally always played both. Like, that was one of the things I thought was very good about. My Dow lists that I qualified with worlds for the first time is that I was always so proud that I had, I had Amber qualm and Dragonite, like I was good to go again. So the guard, Sean decks. Um, but anyways, regardless of whether you. Or not. Um, I, I think that the opinion was certainly that it was good, um, which was not the case until world's 2010, I would say, like, I don't think I like people weren't playing at us nationals and things like that. As far as I know, it was just sort of unheard of.
Brent:Was that Philadelphia tournament, the tournament that you did well at Mike? Or was that the one before it, before
Mike:Um, I top aided that one with evil tall. Um, and then I got second fear to later. So, yeah, the one after that is probably the one you're thinking about, but I did top eight, that one. Um,
Brent:yeah, Know, there was one where you got to the.
Mike:yeah, yeah. yeah. But I just played at UL taught that one. That was actually my first major tournament back playing after not really playing for a bunch of years. Um, like I played, you know, here and there, but, uh, that was kind of like, all right, I'm going to play this season. And then I came in top eight in the very first regional, which was a, a big boost and reason to keep playing and stay in the game.
Brent:We owe it all. We owe it. All
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:right. There are people.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:All right. Uh, what else should we talk about? Should we talk about Noel's take on the format.
Brit:Sure. I mean, I think, I think it's an interesting question.
Mike:Can you just, can you summarize it for us, Brit?
Brit:yeah. Let me, let me pull it up again. It's, it's less sort of about the sort of the frame does, like, what did we learn? But it's really just the, like, there was just never a good reason to include crushing hammer in ductless. And essentially because there's never been strong enough, like prize incentive to the online scene, we essentially haven't figured out the meta games as, as well as we would have say with more with like the regular regionals schedule and things like that. Um, and I guess, you know, the obvious question is just like, is that true or not? Uh, I think the answer, I do think there is like, I'll I'm willing to grant that, like, it would be better. Like we would be Arlis would be better and so forth. Like we'd be developing and advancing like maybe a little bit more than we have online. But I, like, I don't think like the online has just been like a wasteland of debt, plus I would never, you know, meta games that wouldn't exist if people are caring. I think that's somewhat of outlandish of a claim. Like people clearly care about the online scene and the meta games do adapt very quickly. Um, and things like that. Um, and so I think, I think there's a lot wrong, a lot wrong to his just general summary. Like, but I mean, again too, like I just think that we've, we've, we've drilled this crushing hammer thing to the ground. Like. Crushing hammer with good and peaker, um, for like reasons, a, B, C, and D. Like it wasn't just like all better, you know, it just like people would have been playing more consistency cars. What consistency cards, what are you talking about? Picker pick around, played for of every supporter. Like, I just don't think, I don't know like where the, you know, th that's so often how it's framed, not just this tweet itself, but the conversation in general is just I, and I see it. I see this so often, and it's almost exclusively from people who haven't touched two years, but it's just like, yeah, you would never put a crushing cameras in the real world. And I just like, like what consistency cards aren't you playing? Like, have you looked at these lists? Like they're already playing for quick ball for evolution and sense half the time too. Like, there's just not other consistency that you, you know, like people aren't just like, oh yeah. Made my deck worse. It was crushing hammer. Like it's more so like, I can't make my deck any better. What do I do with these spots?
Mike:Yeah, that's a good point. And I mean, like, there's, obviously we've seen people throw a crushing hammer in random decks and the general consensus of those is that it's bad. Right. But, but the decks. Are good. Like you said, like Pikarom is the perfect example. Like it was the most consistent deck of last format and still had space for, for crushing. Um, and I feel like sweet Coon is like a, kind of a more recent example. Tate has been doing pretty well with, you know, that sweet Coon deck and it took out Luda colo to play crushing hemorrhage. You're not losing any consistency by taking out a 2, 1, 2 stage Dew line to put four crushing average. And you're probably making your deck more consistent to be honest. Um, so yeah, I, I agree like there are, there are clearly decks where you can't play them and you shouldn't be play them, but there's plenty of ECS that, yeah. And that's like a great, uh, the great, the best part of your argument essentially is there's just not enough good cards right now to like fill out your deck. Um,
Brit:You mean?
Mike:There's not a whole lot of like tech cards, quote unquote tech cards that are make sense to play index that do powerful enough things. So we have, we're forced essentially to play crush numbers. There's no like, like some of the old formats that we've been talking about, like there's no ease elf, there's no mess Brit, um, that are like powerful cards that you can play in a deck specifically, um, for specific situations or match-ups, there's just not many of those that do enough toward plane. So you might as well just play like generally, okay. Disruption cards in crushing hammer.
Brit:Yeah, I think some of it too, it's like also like cash behind the position that like the online tournament or the sort of the only thing able to like advance the meta-game to make developments. And I think that's just like also false because I think content creators are doing that already. You know, that's part of their games. They can't just play music. They need to be posting like, here's this deck that beats me too. And so like, there's like baked into his claim is that just like people would have found hard counters for the good decks. And I just like, I don't think that's true or at least not, not, not, not to a greater degree than it's already happening. Like, I just think so much of the is situated behind like a purposeful ignorance of the online scene. Like in similar, I would say the same things too about the people who like exclusively diminish them, like, you know, saying they don't count. Saying later on count saying they're not the same thing as the regionals are two different arguments. One is, they're both obviously true, but.
Brent:You know, uh, I think I, my, obviously I feel like you, you hit the nail on the head for it. Like one thing that jumps out at me, it was like, when I thought about where Tate was going with his dad I mean, one thing that maybe it doesn't have an appreciation for it because he's not like entering in all these tournaments is the, I feel like maybe the nature of our current Metta is like, it's a tempo driven Metta because it's driven by mew. I mean, I think the reason you cut the lyrical is putting the hammers is like, you don't need more consistency. You need to buy turns.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Like, what are you going to do with more supporters in your deck, dude? Like the turn of the game ended after.
Brit:I mean, I think another thing it, especially just to examine crushing hammer more particularly, is that like, let's, let's talk about all the, the, the three best techs on the farm. Aright it's mew. It's jolty on it's gang garlic. I'm basing this off. Um, I think this is from Danny's tearless like a week ago, like mew tier one, tier two jolty on gang Gar. Um, the drill or not, let's leave that to the side, but like, so the single strike decks are. The Christian cameras are so good against them. So, so, so good against them. Like those whole decks are sort of about this, this resource resource management of the single strike energy. And just like, how many can I put on the board? This turn? How many, like, how many do I have to earn back this turned to reached the sort of metrics that I'm trying to reach. And I'm like crushing hammer as such as sort of a, just like headache for you to deal with that. Like, you just can't do anything. If you lose two energy and you only have like two hound doom and you need a third or nothing, you know, it just creates these scenarios where you have to draw more cards because you need more pieces of your puzzle. Um, and I think when you, when you examine that too, like, it's not just like, you know, maybe even in to, to bring it back to Pikarom the hammers and picker on where like maybe more so just like generally useful, like sure. Like what match-ups were they really, really, really good again, like, Dragapult like, I'm trying to think of the, the, the mattress where the hammers were like, for sure. Gonna, when you have the map. And that's, that's really the only thing that comes to mind. Like we, you know, obviously really good against ADP finding the mirror, things like that, but like, they were just, it was more so a general utility card. Whereas when you, can you say the card is like going to win me this match up more often than not. And in the other ones it's going to hopefully buy me enough time. I just, again, don't think that there's a question of it being good, like energy removal too, is historically been a very good car. It's like, they're not just like in uncharted waters with this bad card suddenly being good for the first time in its life. Like, no, this part is basically been good since based that just like, you know, gust of wind effects. It's almost like an evergreen part of playing Pokemon and. The mechanics, mechanics and rules are such that like you only get one energy or turn this card. 50% of the time basically prevents you from playing the game. So like, I just think people are overly harsh because I don't know, again, some of it is, I think they don't properly understand math and statistics. Like 50, 50, 50 odds are just like really freaking good. Sometimes. Like you've got worse thoughts and a lot of other things I think.
Brent:I'm in, uh, like certainly when they printed fan of waves I mean, anybody that had played prior formats is like, well, this is some sucky, special energy removal compared to like the amazing things we've had in the past. But like, people are putting that in index because mew is so lean on energy because they're trying to burn their hand every turn so they can just draw, draw, draw, draw, draw it's like a good time to play energy removal in a 50, 50 odds to like slow them down for a turn. That's a really, really good. It just seems like a really, a nice time for it, like, we haven't seen it, I think. in results, but I feel like it's probably a good time for control decks. If people start to build. And it's certainly a good time to put four hammers in your deck. If you've got the, a room, I mean, an extra turn means a lot.
Mike:Yup. Agreed.
Brent:Let's talk about, let's talk about Ross, his deck and results from this week. Let's talk about Pokemon for just five minutes.
Mike:a little bit. So Ross won the Sunday open with the dark weird deck that we talked a little bit about last weekend or last week. And then it also one like another event later that day. Um, auntie I believe that's Logan McKay, uh, just took Ross this list and played it again. Um, Ross also messaged me sometime yesterday, a couple of days ago and was like, I listened to the podcast. My deck does not lose to mew. Um, which is probably like, I mean the only, the only one or two times I played the match up, like it was me playing against like a random person. And so like, I really knew how to play the matchup and maybe they like made some mistakes, so I'm sure I'm sure it's favored for the dark deck. Um, but there is outs from you to win and that's kind of what we talked about last week where, you know, you just don't play two V. Max is down you've target. You tried to take some prizes with, um, on like soccer balls and stuff like that. Uh, I think the, the Moltres V in the dark deck is really interesting. Cause I feel like that's also kind of how you can lose if you play that down, um, then they can take an easy two prizes and then kind of catch up on the prize trade. So I wonder if that's even worth it. Um, But yeah, I'm really impressed that, uh, Ross has done like did so well with it. Um, but on the other hand, he's also been playing it for a while and has done quite poorly, lots of other times. So, um, take it with a grain of salt. I mean, it's a good deck against a new metagame and it looks like he beat a bunch of other stuff. Like he beats single spike a couple of times.
Brit:what I that's the matchup that I was, I don't in my head. I couldn't sort of find, find the path to beat single strike. Like seemed just like, I feel like they would just, I mean, I don't, I don't really know what I'm saying, but yeah. I was surprised. I believe we beat it in the finals too, but that was looking at his matchup history. That was something I was just like, I couldn't piece the puzzle together in my head. What that matchup looks like.
Mike:So Gloria and Moltres does 20 plus 53 each price card they've taken. I think so you can pretty easily force them to go to five prizes. And then your one, essentially one shot in a V max between their single strike energy damage from the hound room and maybe Inteleon things. So that's, so you, so you pretty easily get the last three prizes, I guess it's like the first three prizes. How do you get those? Um, and I guess it comes down to like, you hit them with a Hoopa a couple of times and then hit them with a Moltres bus to finish it off. I feel like it would, the issues would probably come in if they're playing it well, they're going to use like a VMs. And then a two Prizer and then another view max. And that's where it seems really, really, really hard to be able to kill so many
Brit:I mean, that's how, that's what stumped me in my head. I was like, why wouldn't I just like attack with a two prize? They're like, I'm gonna knock you out. I'm sure. Like, I don't know what guilty or not guilty, but I don't know what does, but like, I assume it can do enough to kill a Hoopa with some single strike energy on it. Like that. That was, that was, that was kind of, my question is in my head, I couldn't find a way for the price game to go well, other than like really aggressive and getting a ping knockout or something.
Mike:Yeah. I guess you do always have a decent chance of in the early game, getting a quick hound, RKO with a Hoopa, um, either go in first or go in second, especially going second, if they just started a hound door. Um, and that would offset the prize trade quite significantly, I suppose. Um, If you get that, then it seems pretty straightforward. Um, but if you don't get that, I feel like that's when you have issues, um, if rap rapid strike has to be a really bad matchup, he only played at once any, any loss. So I have to assume that's really bad.
Brent:And I love, I love the, the rapid strike he loses to immediately loses the next round of drops.
Mike:Yeah. Joel,
Brent:the only opportunity for this guy to get a dub as against Ross.
Mike:The, uh, the Joel Deon matchup also seems kind of bad, but he did beat the one that he played. I'm not really sure. I don't know. Cause it just seems like any deck that can take multiple prizes against this deck in a turn seems, uh, it seems like it'd be tough. So not sure how that goes. Um, and then I'm also looking a little bit at Logan's matches. He played a bunch of muse. He played a Sylveon, he beat two Daralyn dons, which I guess that makes sense. They're all, Don's also a deck we should touch on briefly. Um, lucky. Um, yeah, I mean, the list hasn't changed. The only additional card new card from this set is the PICU Magoo. However you say that, which is the unknown draw card, um, which seems fine. I mean, I guess the idea is just you have all these fall search cards that you don't need at some point in the game to just use them to draw an extra card here and there. Um, Yeah. I mean, the deck's really straight, like the list is really straightforward. Right. It's just kind of piecing together the right order of attacks. I think in the right order of your supporter cards, like you got to know, when am I going to have to play Clara to get back Moltres, to do my thing. And when can I afford to play boss's order, things like that. Um, yeah, too cool. It's a cool deck. It definitely plays a lot different than a lot of the other decks in the format. So if you're looking for something different, give it a try. Um, your mew matchup is pretty straightforward, like I said, but everything else requires quite a lot of planning. Like, how am I going to take this two or three hit Kao? How am I going to. There's not a lot of margin for error because you have to map out your prices pretty, pretty strictly. And you, since you don't do a lot, to be honest, um, yeah, you gotta play carefully.
Brent:Right. I mean, it, it, when I look at the list and I look at the strategy, it's very reminiscent of the available Dick that you guys played at worlds like three years ago,
Mike:Yeah. It's like, we don't do a lot of damage. We just kind of beat, we beat the good decks.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Like every round is this like, kind of, you're just going to kind of pick your way to a victory and you know, the good news is for reasons, somewhat unclear at first glance, it generally works out.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Like a lot of 180 attackers and you're just going to kind of stream attacks and put pressure on them to like, make them play AMU game that goes for seven or eight turns. Right?
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Digga, digga day. Let's talk about DRL Don for a second. I think first thing I should say is, uh, um, if, if no one was looking for proof that he's right, the drought does it, right? Like we've talked before about how some of the most innovative deck builders are kind of sitting on the sidelines while all this online stuff is going on. And and low grant has like, uh, uh, put a new archetype in the.
Mike:And I think we should also highlight who we, we talked about last week. And was it Britt? You said that there's no way grant would play mew at an event tomorrow and then like the next day.
Brit:No, it was Brent. I think Brent was
Mike:Oh,
Brit:bring, got it. Right. I was like, really? Maybe once I like that.
Mike:And
Brit:I actually, I have a question about that and sort of like in, in the Kevin and Clemente sort of equated or held on to, um, decidua has it, you know, it's sort of as the up and down, whether it's a good play or not, but then he played it in a tournament and, um, you know, said something to the effect of like, you know, like, I hope the new players don't know what they were doing. Oh, they didn't know what they were doing. I had a bad day. What, what is, what is the key to winning that match up? Like what, what do you do? I, I don't know that I was curious if either of you knew.
Mike:um, not too sure. I mean, you don't get one shot, so, and you have like the swift attack, right. That goes through it. So in theory, you can like do one 30 and then shuffle yourself back in your day. But those, I mean, you're still getting hit, like the next turn. Right. So I don't really know. Yeah. I don't, I don't really know.
Brent:Well, I, I think I know the answer to this. What is, what, where can I see the list?
Brit:Uh, I mean, I think probably Kevin probably has it on his Twitter somewhere under this tweet is if I can find it because I think, I mean, I'm not sure if he changed anything from grants lists. Let's see. Here it is. I think
Brent:I mean, the answer is Daralyn VMX right? Like what, what does the new player do?
Mike:yeah. Brit Brits saying like, what can you do
Brent:Oh, oh yeah. How can you possibly beat? this deck?
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:That's fair question.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:Well, if he listens, he can make an answer.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:that's what we're looking for.
Brit:Yeah. That's what I was like, what do they do? Do they magically display enough psychic energy now or something? I don't get it.
Mike:yeah.
Brent:Yeah. I, I recognize, I mean, just like many of, of Grant's decks. I, I suspect this deck was much worse the day after he played the stick. Cause like, if you know, what's coming, you've got to think does yeah. The max miracle deck, uh, hits through it. Right. So They have that. The question is, can you survive long enough to do that thing?
Mike:Yeah. So I don't know. We'll have to gather some more insight on how it can possibly how many you can possibly beat this, but let's assume that it beats, it just let's just assume that because that's where our assumptions is
Brent:I, I assume step one is if you're the new player as always go first,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Gus during the whatever drought on your tax energy to kill it, right?
Mike:Yeah, there you go. Okay. That seems like a winning strategy to me.
Brent:Yeah, Like, like if he, if he can't get to down turn one, you're like, okay, I have a strategy and my strategy is like, kill everything.
Mike:Yeah, it does take a lot or the it's only three energy, but that can take some time right.
Brent:Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. So, so if you, if you kill the one that has energy and then they're like, okay, now I have To attack. You know, multiple energies to this one. And if you just put it up and let him like bop you Bobby bop, you okay. You're going to lose. Yeah, that's don't do that. That's.
Mike:It seems it is a very cool deck though. I don't know what it's like, match-ups are too much beyond you. It seems like it'd probably be pretty good against a jolt yawn because Joel Deon does play a bunch of special energy. Obviously they can just play the lightning into the elemental badge, but they're also not getting a whole lot of value out of their attack. Um, cause it's pretty easy to remove damage using the stadium from your bench. Uh, so that matchup seems pretty good. Single strikes probably bad because they can just blow you up at some point. Um, but maybe, maybe it's fine. Maybe big charm is like enough to put you at a range. Not, not too sure. Um,
Brent:they have to play around attaching special energy.
Mike:well the, the, the Urshifu max just goes through it.
Brent:Oh, okay.
Mike:Yeah, yeah.
Brent:Let's show how much I know.
Brit:That's why it's part of why it's like so good again, like same as then and things like that as well.
Mike:Right. Um, so we couldn't doesn't seem, so we couldn't seems pretty bad against radon because drought, Donald just kill it. Um, and it like sweet and they're out on his not playing a big bench. Speaking's not doing like a ton of damage. It's hard to even two shots. And so we couldn't does play a bunch of capture energies. So you can't really utilize those. So that matchup seems a little, it's probably good for a drought on the, a little bit closer than them you match up. Um, and rapid strike also seems pretty good, right? Because they, they're playing the Melanie version, they can attack. They literally can never attack you.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Uh, so, so yes, that seems good. So, I mean, it has pretty good match-ups I think overall, um,
Brent:Th the match-ups definitely get worse if the other player knows what the Robin VMX does
Mike:Sure.
Brent:as of the first time grant played it, like, you know, it, it just takes time to figure out what you're doing, but, uh, yeah, by the second day, a much worse play, much worse play.
Mike:Um, so yeah, I mean, two cool decks kind of doing well this past week. So mew is still definitely the dominant force in the meta-game, but there's some room for creativity. There's some room for interesting stuff jolty on still. I think, I think Joel Tiana has kind of now emerged officially as like the second best deck in the format. Um, cause it does, it holds its own against you, uh, and has pretty good match-ups elsewhere as bench sniping. So it has a lot going for it. Um, do you guys want to look briefly at the Leafeon that.
Brent:Yeah, let's talk. I wanted to say the one other deck I thought we should talk about is Leafeon because I don't think we saw Leafeon Beedrill but like, there was a lot more Leafeon plate this week.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:I mean, maybe it was just that I was paying attention, but like definitely felt like a lot of Leafeon.
Mike:Yeah. Oh, also, um, worth, worth, noting quickly. The other competitive thing that we talked about last week is playing pumpkin in you. And apparently that has just started to catch on a little bit,
Brent:You know, I, I hear arguments both ways because you need fusion, strike stuff to facilitate draw. So, so the people that aren't playing pumpkin, boo, like I think they make a good point of like, well, you know, if you bench pump taboo, you just said, I like drawing one less card. That's how it is. So, so like, I am more receptive and thoughtful than, than we were a week ago to the value of not playing pumpkin hill. But I could go either way.
Mike:Yeah. Um, all right, so here's, here's the Leafeon deck. I'll maybe I'll, I'll tweet this out. Once the episode goes live. So I took kind of like the standard Leafeon list and I took Danny's jumped Dionne Beedrill list, and I tried to combine them. Some of the highlights, uh, glary and Meowth makes it quite easy to actually get off the single strike. There was a bunch of games where I got, just got it turned one, um, which was pretty cool. So this, the mustard does get it from your deck. So that's, you know, makes it a lot easier than from the discard. Um, I had criminal Maddix in here at first, but if crim had this discarded any card, I think it'd be worth playing. But most of the items you just like don't want to discard actually, um, So I just replaced them with great balls because it's just always a playable card helps you use with your set up a little bit. Um, so it seems pretty good. And then you have the Leafeon package, I guess you still have to play gal or mine as your, as your stadiums, so you can hit good damage. You still need to play a tool jammer to get around air balloon and keep with toughnesses. And I realized you need to play one fan of waves because gang Garvey max plays the, uh, the special dark energy that puts their retreat cost to zero. And that just gets around your Leafeon. So you have to play the fan of waves, so you can one-shot, uh, the Ginga with the Leafeon. Um, I mean, you might not need it. Maybe it's like, not that necessary, but I lost two again, guard and I was pretty pissed. Cause I was like, this should be an auto wind so I can have waves
Brent:I mean, this is what Texas texts were all about. You put in one fan of waves to improve your game or match up because people play Kingdra.
Mike:Yeah, I'm sure. And it's like good again from you too as well,
Brent:Right, right, right? I mean, there's, there's a lot of special energy in the format.
Mike:no,
Brent:It's a good.
Mike:I had to mess around with the energy a bit. Um, so I have six grass, two captures a lot of the Leafeon decks play like four capture for grass Danny's list played. Well, he was, his was jolting on, but he played like a bunch of speed lightnings. And then he played one Aurora and two or three graphs, maybe three graphs, but he played a training court so he could get the grass back. Um, but what I found is that it was really awkward to keep. You have to have the grass energy for Beedrill after the mustard. So there's lots of times where you have a grass energy in hand, but you have to discard it to play the mustard. And then you're, you're struggling a little bit to find the energy. So the training court makes sense a lot for that, but this tech can't really play training court. Cause you need the gala or mine. Maybe you could play one training court with Galler mines, um, as well. But, uh, I think since you play in grass energy anyway, for Leafeon you can just, uh, run more grass
Brent:And the training courts kind of the same. Wow. The nice thing about the training court is you could play it. If you had it in your hand, before you played the mustard, you could be like, I'm putting down the training court, I'm gonna play the mustard as opposed to having to find the training court right? after you hit the mustard, which is what you have to do with the grass energies. But having more grass introduce gives the grass energy.
Mike:Right. Exactly. I think with six grass energy and an energy surge, like it's pretty consistent to find it because you're like you still have outs to like the drizzle and, and whatnot. Um, so it seems six, six energy. I mean, this list could still be refined quite a lot, I think. But, um, I think this is a good direction to go. Um, also having more grass energy is just good with the Leafeon ability as well. Like, so, um, so yeah, I mean, this is a pretty fun deck. Uh, you get out Beedrill w again, way more consistently than I thought you would. Um, I wonder if there's like a world where you actually play three mustard and three Beedrill. Um, I think that's probably better than playing like pal pad. Um, but maybe not. Um,
Brit:Yes.
Mike:I could see this, like, not beating you. Like that consistently, because so one thing that's a little awkward is you can't boss and play mustard in the same turn. Right. So you can get the Beedrill out, but if they don't have a movie max active, then it's not really worth the tacky with a Beedrill. So you have to mustard and then maybe they boss up the B drill and kill it, which is like, okay, cause they're only taking one prize, but then you have to hit them with a VMX and you're you're to energy attack. Barely does anything to them. So you have to have three energy on the Leafeon BMX to threaten the two shot. Um, so it is a little awkward. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I'll probably mess around with this deck some more. Uh, I, I have a couple of weeks off, you know, uh, for holiday break. So I'll probably mess around with this deck a little bit more.
Brent:Is there any world where you'd play cross switchers,
Mike:I did think about that. I think it probably clashes too much with, um, With like the mustard and idea. Cause you have to play your hand to zero.
Brent:right? Right. Yeah. I mean, the other thing I'll send You a card. I thought it was like, I guess my first thought was like playing ropes.
Mike:You could play rope. That might make sense. Maybe like one.
Brent:well, CrossFitter is a actual boss. You just have to somehow magically draw the cards, but you have, Inteleon like maybe drawing the cards is not problematic, but it's hard to burn your hand if you're trying to burn your hair.
Mike:Right,
Brent:Whereas a rope. Is that always burnable, right.
Mike:Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Brent:Hmm.
Mike:Like you don't have anything that has for your treat that would make it easier because you can then in theory, cross switcher, then play the mustard. But can't it harder when you don't have for your treater?
Brent:No, you should do. You should put music
Mike:Yeah, just clean your deck and you you'd be good.
Brent:into the format at all times.
Brit:if like mustard concepts will get any more mileage with the flu minium. That's just been announced too. Like that was such a star of these decks for Geraci and Archie makes these decks.
Mike:I saw a couple of people post on Twitter when Lumion came out. Um, cause we also get ultra ball too. So like what's your ball and Lumion, like I think the, I think those cards will be good, but that, or like definitely much better than they are now. I don't know if they'll be like, I don't know if there's a build around card yet the way that there was with, um, RGS Blastoise, but maybe there'll be like a gut Glade equivalent where there's some deck that plays it. Not as it's like main thing, but it wants to do it and can do it like. consistently like turn to turn three. Like that would be pretty cool. I think the, the other one goes from the discard though, right? The rapid strike one.
Brent:Yeah. The other one goes from the discard,
Mike:So I wouldn't like a lot worse without Balak oppressor. We
Brent:although ultra ball. You know, having ultra back in the format gives you a lot more access to discarding stuff.
Mike:yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brent:That's great.
Mike:We have quick ball and ultra ball, like that is more discarding from hand than we had then. So I guess that's true.
Brent:Yeah. I mean like there, there were a decks without battle compressor that focused on discarding and we're able to discard stuff.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:It's not, it's not a completed possibility.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:It's definitely like, I don't know if the most like random Pokemon to put it on. Like who's jumping for joy at the new minium. Like I bet it's a blue mini on with disability. Like I'm happy. I like to see like the, the love spread around. I also like to see it, not all just like focused on, you know, the most current generation and stuff too, but like many on still like, but on something else, take it back.
Brent:Guys, anything else?
Mike:no, I'm good at
Brent:since we reached the end of the 69th podcast.
Mike:Yeah. That was a good episode. Um, and a little bit longer because we're, we're planning on taking a couple of weeks off, right?
Brent:Yeah, exactly. For, for their listening pleasure, your Christmas drive time radio.
Mike:Yeah. There you go. We'll be back in a few weeks, got a, got a special guest. Hopefully they'll be joining us either the first or. Second episode of the new year. So that'll be fun. Um, so happy holidays, everyone.