Welcome to the Trashalanche podcast as always. Attendance is a hundred percent Brent Halliburton. Mike Fouchet Brit Pybas. We're all on Twitter. You can follow us. We're sponsored by a channel fireball, which is now TCG player, which is now eBay. Uh they're you know, where we buy all our cards. So, uh, I recognize, uh, there is a horizontal integration, vertical integration, something like that happening. Uh, um, having said that it, it seems like, uh, it's easy to buy cards when you use TCD player. It's how I buy all my cards. Um, five star review update. We've not gotten a new review. If you leave a review, we will read it on the pod and discuss, uh, uh, people say, when people leave reviews, it helps people find the pod. And apparently that's a thing. Other podcasts do. It'd be great if you did it for us too. All right, guys. So
Mike:before you keep going, couple things on the five star views, we might wanna check it a little more in depth. Next week, I got a comment from someone that said they left a five star view at one point, and we never read it. So we should dig in and see if we can find one. The other thing is, I don't know if. Like, uh, are we also checking Spotify reviews?
Brent:You know, we are, uh, uh, so I, uh, historically I've used charitable, but I, uh, haven't logged in there recently, uh, which I think is like an aggregatory thing there, but I will, I will try and, uh, I will take responsibility for doing a more thorough review of reviews.
Mike:Okay. So yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll update you all next week. See if we missed any
Brent:yeah, that, that all sounds good. And I'm sure leaving reviews on Spotify while, uh, harder for me to find than apple reviews is interesting and helpful, and everybody loves it.
Mike:Yeah. All right. Sorry to cut you off.
Keep
Brent:going. No problem. No problem. Hey guys, let's talk about, I think the, the big drama in the Pokegear community post Baltimore, it was the announcement that you need 500 CP or is that before Baltimore?
Mike:That was right before Baltimore, I think right before.
Brent:Yeah. So let, let, why don't we, why don't we talk about that and then talk about, uh, Baltimore
Mike:sound good. Okay. Yeah, sure. Um, it's, it's a really tough number for a normal person to reach right now. Um, and, and I think Natalie Miller actually had a really good take on this where she said she feels a day, one invite should be accessible to people that are full-time working full-time students where, you know, a good amount of. Their professional life is not dedicated to Pokegear at all. Um, or, you know, they have a other full-time thing. And I, that's how I've always viewed day. One invites as well is accessible to someone that works 40, 50 hours a week. And it feels like 500 points without locals. Half of the year is not really accessible. Um, so that's kind of where I stand. I did. Okay. At Baltimore, which we'll talk about, I got some points and it sets me up in a place where if I go to probably have to go to at least three more regionals, but we'll see, um, the, the real thing, the real uncertainty though. Are Lele cup and league challenges actually coming back in January, if they are, and you can still have a best finish limit of eight and stores are gonna be running them, uh, a lot, you know, as much or, or more so than they were before. COVID maybe this isn't a big deal, but I think that is still really the big question mark, of like, are their store, are they gonna allow stores to really start running them in January? And if so, are all of these stores going to run them frequently enough for it to actually be enough?
Brit:Yeah. I just have like the kill bill siren flashbacks. Like I just like just my local judges are just like, they're gonna tell me to Mees. I don't know. They're gonna say all this Inna stuff and they're not even, they're not even good enough judges to like judge regionals. I just like have like a terrible like PTSD moment of just like, oh man, not locals but if we have to, I guess.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, locals are, locals is being part of the, get an invite process is a little bit of a weird thing. Cause like when I look back, um, I mean obviously like my context was, uh, as a parent of juniors and seniors and like juniors and seniors, if you wanted to compete for day two, you had to max out like best finish limits with wins. And it was a like every weekend drive, wherever you had to go, like absolute grind to max out your best finish limits, you know? And I don't know if people would feel that same kind of pressure or maybe they're just like, like I just got to like, like if people felt like if in February they said, okay, we're running leak challenges every weekend, everywhere. And there isn't a eight best finish limit. You can use it to get your invite. Like people would be pretty toasty after a couple of months, you know, What you're saying, Mike, is that like every weekend you'd be like, Kelly, I gotta go to this thing. Well,
Mike:short lived. So, I mean, there's, there's, there's two things for that is that one, um, the people that need to max them out are only like the, really the date two chasers. Um, and I think an easy fix that everyone has suggested is to make locals cups and challenges, not count towards a day two and stipend invite. I think that would be a pretty easy change. Still contribute to day one, but not contribute to day two. Oh, that's a great
Brent:innovation. I, I think I've heard that, but I like it.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Um, the other thing is part of the reason that locals for someone like me, and I think for a lot of people are more accessible than regionals. It's not even so much. The travel, the, the travel is an aspect. It's that? There's lots of weekends where I have something going on Saturday or Sunday, but not both. And I could like easily go to a tournament one of those days, but I can't commit to a whole weekend. Yeah.
Brent:That, uh, that makes sense. Um, you know, my, uh, one thing I wanted to say that I thought was interesting was like, I feel like some people have said, I, you know, I, I won't play this season because I can't get a world's invite. And like, my, like my initial reaction was like, uh, if people, if like, if there are people who have just taken seasons off, because they can't get a world's invite, like, are those people. Are there supposed to be people who could just come back and like get a world's invite if they thought it was like a reasonable thing, like, is that, is world supposed to be that quote, like reasonable? I don't know. A weird thing.
Brit:That's the tough question. I think like all the, all the discourse, you know, of people at odds of, of each other, just sort of like missed the, the fundamental question is that I think, and that without, you know, without a seasoned roadmap, without, you know, we're just with the, you know, given all the things that have happened in the past, it's just like pretty murky, usually. Like what, what, what that answer like might be. And I do, I do definitely think, I mean, there's been a lot of, a lot of good conversation over the last week. Um, sort of even, even with people I don't necessarily agree with. I think, you know, I think they've had, you know, made good arguments. Well, well thought out arguments and so on. Um, but yeah, I guess I'm not sure where to start like. And this I think is where Pokegear, Pokegear like flip flops the most it's like they do. I do think that their core interest is, um, in getting as many players in, in seats as possible. Um, it does, if that, and does that necessarily then also apply to worlds? I'm not sure. Um, at least personally, I think there seems to be a, I guess this isn't per personal, but I would say in general, the community does seem to have a problem, a sense, an intuition in that. I think it seems to be whether you agree or not, that the kind of core mentality is that like worlds are bust. Like not, no one cares about anything else. Um, players who, you know, only play somewhat casually, I think, you know, will push back against that. But, and as far as the echo chamber, that is the, Pokegear the competitive Pokegear Pokegear Twitter card game, Twitter. Like that seems to be the case where, for where most people are coming from is that. To be a player, not just a good player, you have to qualify for worlds. Um, and I think that's obviously like that argument can break pretty easily from a variety of perspectives. Um, but then you have people saying like Sam Chen, I think is a good example, both to answer the question of, um, is it realistic for someone just to show up, like after taking some time off and qualify for worlds, cuz that's kind of what Sam did. Right. If I remember correctly, he was kind of an old school player, like played a little bit back in the day and then showed up again, uh, in 2011, um, after like a decade off, basically I think he started playing when he was done with school more or less. And then BA has been a top 16 caliber player ever since. Um, and he, he sort of was voicing a minority opinion in that like for him, like he's like, yeah, worlds is the only thing that matters like, and it was nice to, you know, sort of go through his thoughts even though I think I'm not exactly sure where I land on him specifically, but I think most people definitely disagreed. Um, with that mentality, but yeah, there's definitely, I think a not only, not only is the case, that is it the case that like worlds is the only thing that matters, but world should also be accessible. It's those two points sort of like grounding a lot of the arguments, I think.
Brent:Yeah. You know, I, I, I hear Sam's argument that like, I, you know, I, if people want to bitch about how many points it is, like, that's their right. And like, he's right. It's totally their right. I, I do feel like, I don't know, uh, what you guys sense is. Um, but I felt like Mike was, or Sam was playing a little too much, like devil's advocate, like without saying, like he's playing devil's advocate. Like this is his special Yeah. Like I always thought of Sam as like a little bit of a, yeah. I mean, should kind of go without saying right. but like, he's a little bit of like a poster child of like, you know, uh, if you don't play Pokegear Pokegear cuz like playing Pokegear Pokemon's fun. Like why are you playing it? Like. He's always been a guy who's like, I'm not gonna quit my job to play. Pokegear like, I play Pokegear Pokegear cuz like I like playing Pokegear you know, like I go to tournaments cuz like I like playing Pokegear like, I know he's, you know, like he has a whole like decision tree process around how many tournaments he's gonna go to in a year based on how he feels like he's doing that year. And like how hard he feels like grinding and it's related to top 16 placements, but like, you know, every time people say I, I only wanna play Pokegear Pokegear for the world's invite. I'm like, man, that's a tough, uh, that's tough road to have Pokemon's for
Mike:fun it's card game. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean. Yeah, I agree. I, I, I mostly agree with that stance. I would like it to be accessible, but I am still viewing each tournament as its own experience. I very much enjoyed going to Baltimore. I got to see a couple of my friends that I haven't seen in three years. I got to, I had fun doing the preparation, you know, talking with some people playing games. I had fun playing in the actual event. Um, so I think if you can, if you can hold both of those things in your head, I think it's fine. Like have the world invite as a goal and want it to be something you strive towards and you want it to be accessible because you want it to be a goal, but at the same time, try to view every experience for what it is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
Brit:personally, I'm I struggle with, and I, I think my. Um, you know, my time over the past couple of years is because I've been sort of stuck in that, like worlds, worlds are bust and I don't have time to qualify for worlds. Like, uh, so I guess I'll just not play and I'm sort of, you know, personally trying to navigate that balance and just, but I, I think that's absolutely right. I think that it's fine to sort of have goals and intention sort of beyond the event you're at. But, um, I, I think at least too, with the events I've been to, it's sort of more about just focus, you know, don't tunnel vision, or rather maybe do tunnel vision on, on that one event. And don't just think, wow, well, I got, gotta get 50 points here and then I gotta learn the next format. Like it's just one day at a time, like be present in the moment. And EX just like Mikey says, like, I think you just gotta go with it. And like, if you really, really, really, really want to, like, that's the beauty of it, just go to a lot of tournaments. And I think you'll qualify for world sort of, um, you know, if you're an average player or better, like, I, I think that's the case regardless of, um, You know where the, the championship point threshold might end up being.
Brent:Yeah. And now, you know, I've always said I'm an advocate of like more inclusive worlds. Like part of the amazing thing about Pokegear Pokegear versus Yugi or magic is there is a broader community that Lele like, wants to celebrate Pokegear Pokegear. And I mean, London, this year was like the best Pokemon's ever done. Like there were probably 50%, 80% of the people that came to the world championship of Pokegear were not competing in any way. They were like, I just wanna go to the Pokegear Pokegear center. And like, like London somehow knew that there was the Pokegear world championship and people from all over London brought their kids. Like they wanted to check that stuff out and like, I am sure Japan is gonna be like that a hundred times more like 90% of the people are not gonna be people competing in the world championship. And I love the idea of that, like broader community engage. and I that's something that like Yugi and magic are just never gonna have in the same way that Pokegear has, but, um, uh, but you know, like not everybody can qualify. Yeah. Cool. And did you guys see the tweet about, uh, uh, the Franco Takahashi posted about how the Japanese qualification process works?
Mike:Yeah, that's insane. you would think that they would change it to allow more Japanese players to qualify when it's right there. yeah,
Brent:but you know, essentially for people who are are listening, uh, there was, they have four tournaments in a year that you can go 15, two at, in a best of one. And there's a lottery to register for the tournament. It's like a 3000 person tournament. Um, you can go to NATS and get top 16, or they have. You can win three outta four cups that you only get to play one per quarter and a best of one as well. So like, you know, I mean, what's interesting is I recognize a lot of people have said, Hey, maybe people who top eight, a regional should get an automatic invite or something like that. Like, yeah, like there's, there's an element. If you look at that and you say, you basically have to high roll a tournament, mm-hmm you know, ideally NAS is NAS is a little easier to high roll cuz top 16 gets you an invite, but like you got a high role, like crazy, um, you know, hear, it's nice to know that you can have consistency to get an invite, but, uh, but it takes a lot of consistent. You gotta go a lot of tournaments.
Brit:Yeah. I think one of the point, I forget exactly which, which stud this was on, but Mikey made a really good, good point too, in that. The just sort of, not even just locals, but more on like the regional level. Like you just had a much better sense of like, who was good from where, and like people, the, the scenes sort of were just established so much differently. And I, I think having that like helps too, because it's this thing, like, you don't have to qualify for worlds necessarily, but you do well enough, you know, enough California, Arizona, New Mexico events, and you're a good west coast player, you know, that, that sort of thing we definitely had. We're just so there's no like regional identity anymore. Like you're not a Midwest player and things like that because everyone just comes from to. Part of the fun, I guess. And the way that the tournament circuit was structure is because like, you'd have your states and then you'd go into regionals and it would be like, same people, like over and over and over again, sort of progressively adding to that pool from like other cities and stuff in the area. And I feel like having some sort of metric like that, like would be helpful too, but E even last week on the podcast, I think I said something to the effect of like, you know, yeah. I'm not too interested in like the top 16, you know, chaser who like goes to every regionals and like, Topate one of them. And like just kind of gets a lot of points along the way like this. Just not that doesn't sound like a great player to me. What I am more interested in is like the dad that goes to two tournaments and he Topate one, any top sixteens, the other, like, I think that's great. And I think, you know, a structured, a circuit that can be like more rewarding on that front. Again, like I've suggested I would, I think like the grand pre-pro tour dynamic, just having something else to qualify for that isn't worlds would be interesting as well as just giving out world's invites like more explicitly as well. And I think it just like, you know, when you used to be able to earn your invite at nationals, um, any of them, any anyone across the world? I think usually all of them, it was attendance space, but like caught four better, generally got the invite to worlds. And that just sort of immediately kills this mentality is like, oh, I can't qualify for worlds. So I won't play like, no, you've always, at least got that one tournament, you know, become, become Tom Dole. Right. Um, and so on. Like I just think, I think that there there's solutions. For all of our problems, even without really a drastic dynamic restructuring. Um, and I just Pokegear, Pokegear just seems to be fumbling with it, you know, both in their intentions and planning, it's just like, we've been doing the same thing for, you know, basically since IC started in like 2016 or so now. And it would be nice to try something new at the very least, like even, you know, I, when I was first playing competitively, like the, the way world's work changed every year for about four or five years straight, like the first year I qualified for worlds was the last year of ELL, which I think also would be an interesting idea to revisit. I had some discussion. I think, I think ELL back the way it was done, I think did have a lot of problems, but I think they're all, all also very solvable ones. Um, but yeah, but then, then after it was top 40 ELO and then it was top 40 championship points. There was no threshold events just gave points and you, you know, you fought, fought on the leaderboard and then. And then after that it changed to the thresholds. Um, but then that, that number went from like 500 to 300 to 500 again and so on.
Brent:Uh, yeah. Recognize no, uh, no perfect solution. Uh, uh, Mike, anything else to add? Uh, how about we talk about, um, one of the things that one of the other threads that came up that I thought was interesting and worth talking about for two seconds was, was both like regionals pricing, which I understand people are tilted about and also, uh, or, uh, regionals, regionals pricing and regionals pricing. Um, one of the things that, that stands out to me about Baltimore and like, it's interesting, cuz I recognize, uh, is salt lake city sold out? I don't think it is no don't think so. A real commute to, uh, uh, shitty airlines. Um and, and how expensive it is to fly there. But like if, if Baltimore had. Another like 800 tickets, would they have been able to sell'em? I mean, not that many, but yeah.
Brit:I feel like, I mean, at least speaking personally, you know, I, I ended up getting sick last week at the last second and didn't go, but I miss, I got in on the second wave of the Baltimore invites, but like, I'm not sure how fast those went or if those even sold out. But I was like late. I was like was one of those things where I was like, it's six 50. I gotta be ready at seven check, like staring at my phone, staring at my phone. And then I just like something happened and I it's like seven 30 by the time I realized it. I'm like, no, they're probably all sold out, but they weren't. So I, I don't know. I don't know how strong the demand was, but yeah. I mean, that's, that's sort of another point of discussion that's been floating your own too. I don't know if either of you have seen it, but just like, should Pokegear Pokemon's game be growing more competitively, like even, you know, say, say we're not capping our events. Like, are, are we really comparable? Are we really growing as much as we seem to think we are, or in the sense that with how, how much, how profitable Pokegear has become in the pandemic years and things like that. Like, especially too, like a lot of the discussion here was, um, you know, more comparative comparing to like Yugi and magic or again, I don't know, what's really happening was physical magic, but like Ugo, physical Ugo tournaments, like beat us in size still. And I think for the most part I'll always have, um, even though I just, it's not a, I mean, the game itself is expensive, but I don't think the collector's market is really anything comparable to Pokegear though. There is one still to be sure.
Brent:Yeah. But it's strange because I don't know that there's been a tournament where as many people could sign up as they sign up for Ugo tournament like that. That's I guess part of why I asked the question was, you know, if, if we had said there's 2000 slots for Baltimore, instead of a thousand, like. Would, uh, would we have been able to get 2000 people to sign up?
Mike:I don't, yeah. I mean maybe, maybe 1500, 1500 feels reasonable. Like I,
Brent:like, I, I recognize, I mean, as I said, part of what made London amazing was they marketed that the world championship was happening in London and all these like random civilians just came out to play and check out things. And like mm-hmm, Pokegear play labs and all that stuff. And I wonder if, uh, if, if the Baltimore regionals guys were told, you know, you cannot sell out in the first week, you gotta, like, you gotta make room for 1800 people. Yeah. If, if that would've, if Pokegear would somehow collaborate with them to fuel like more regional marketing to try to like bring new players in, to try to. Do all that stuff. Like you want it to be more of an event in AAC, they had an awesome Pokegear center and it was a huge success London. They had an even bigger Pokegear center and it was an insane success. I wonder if, uh, uh, like Pokegear, Pokegear needs to be pushing tos more in that area. Yeah. And you like, everybody can complain about$70 prices, but like Baltimore sold out mm-hmm what if they said, you know, the new price is$125 and all the pricing is tripled. I mean, would everybody say. You've you've done a great job or would they say this is the worst thing that's ever happened in the game?
Brit:they would be mad. I think, I think people would, even though the exact, the exact same people, you know, are nothing but the top end competitive grinders, I think they would still just think that's too much. But, you know, I think the thing with the entry fees is not necessarily, I mean, obviously more pricing would be good, especially when we compare it to old seasons. When top 64 was like$250. Um, it's just sometimes like, like a lot of what you're paying for is just junk even too like Espeon, Espeon, Espeon, Espeon. I mean, especially with outside of the basic registration, all of the, all of the like premium ones, you just get like a crappy t-shirt like, and, and things like that. Like, and, and all that to say is that I just don't know if the. The entry fees is going to, you know, where it needs to go. I, I think it internally it could just be better budgeted, like that sort of thing. Um, like again, like in my own, you know, my personal opinion and I think a lot of competitive players will probably agree is like, I don't care about the swag. Lele leave it. Um, like I, I don't need another hat. I don't need another mat. Um, I just, like, don't even really usually want the promo either. I usually just give, give it to someone. Um, and that, that's just what I mean, like we could, we could pay more or less I think, and get what we want. Um, and it's just more that it's just like, I think so the money goes to printing those awful t-shirts and into getting these dice and, you know, things like that. And like, I, again, I have no idea of what these tos are, are taking home at the end of the day and if it's really profitable or then so on, and like what the, what the compensation is for staff and volunteers and things like that. But I just feel like there's just a disconnect between like players and tos and that's where a lot of the, like the monetary discrepancy is coming from. Um, and that's, that's some of it too is I think that like some of the regionals kind of like waiver between like being a PCON and like being a tournament. And again, that's also where some of the problems come from. Go go to PON somewhere else have give us strictly the tournament. And I, I think that would also be a, an avenue towards fixing the money issue and, and sort of making it a, just more efficient experience, if that makes
Brent:sense. Right. Right. I, I, I hear you like it to the extent that my$70 helps defray the cost of flying a, like illustrator from Japan to Baltimore to like sign cards for people. I'm like that's.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, and that that's like, cool, but again, like collector that's a collector's thing. And obviously there's plenty of, there's plenty of, um, cross pollination between the competitive scene. People who collect and people who compete. But that's just what I mean, like yeah, exactly. Like how much money, how much money is it costing to do that? Um, when, when that could just go to. Something else, but yeah, it just seemed, it just seems like, I guess too, like just talking about the, the competitive, the, the championship point issue like that there are plenty of solutions, but just nothing is being tried. It's just like more of the same, more of
Brent:the same. All right. Uh, should we talk about Baltimore guys? Yeah. All right. Before we talk about, about how Mike's run went, cuz Mike actually made a real run. I, I made a list of interesting things about Baltimore that, uh, I thought Brit would find really interesting in some way. Uh, the tables were kind of close again. It was still just two players playing at each table, but instead of gaps between each table, it was like you long row mm-hmm And that made me a little sad, but like, you know, I also want 2000 people to be able to go to a tournament. So I guess, uh, I'm not surprised that there's backsliding from the incredibly humane, uh, joy of Milwaukee regionals, but, uh, there you go. There was no VAX check didn't care if you were vaccinated.
Mike:Yeah. I think Pokegear changed that that's,
Brit:that's just the world. Right? You just have to have a mask.
Brent:Right. I, I mean, I thought that they had changed that because of like London city ordinances or something like that. Well, I thought they did too.
Brit:And then they just didn't didn't back down. Yeah. That's just the norm now is what they had to do for London. No, doesn't matter
Brent:anymore. Yeah. A as we discussed the early check-in on Saturday was like a little bit pandemonium, probably. I felt like, uh, uh, fully half of the people there showed up for early check-in on Saturday, as opposed to check in on Friday. I don't know if you, I dunno if you checked in on, uh, Friday or
Mike:I checked in Saturday, the line was ridiculously long. I think if they want to do check in on Friday, they should just keep it open pretty late, because lots of people don't get in until. You know, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Uh, and so if they kept checking open until 10:00 PM, even if there's just like one or two people there checking people in, cuz there's gonna be a slow trickle, it's not gonna be a ton of people. Right. Um, you could probably defray, you could probably make that line on Saturday, much shorter. Conversely, they should have known that there was gonna be that many people, the, it, it seemed a little inefficient that the way that they set it up and it trickled into delay in the tournament because, uh, cuz of
Brent:that, yeah. Immediately kicked it off with a 30 minute delay as a result. Yeah.
Brit:I guess one thing I was wondering about just like off the cuff, like how hyperbolic were the, were all gonna get shot and murdered in Baltimore takes like, was it fine? Was it a little sketchy? You guys will, you guys will sell it to me straight. I'm curious. People seemed a little mixed on this as well.
Mike:I mean, I didn't experience anything, but I lived in Baltimore for three years, so my tolerance might be higher than other people, but I did not. I mean, yeah, there's homeless people around. Sure.
Brent:I don't know. Yeah. I lived in Baltimore for seven years than, you know, like Mike, I lived in Philly for 10 years before that and like, whatever they said about Baltimore, it's worse in Philly. Like,
Mike:and I love Philly. I was standing outside at 7-eleven at one point Saturday night. And like some teenage kid came up and asked if I would buy an alcohol at the Seven-Eleven. Like I said, no, that's it like, I don't know. There's just like, you're gonna have interactions like that, but I, I don't know. You, I'm sure you can have a, a, like a pretty negative EX experience. I'm sure it's possible. Um, but I don't think it happened to most people.
Brent:Yeah. Uh, there was no bag check, which I thought was fascinating. Yeah. And. Obviously in the big scheme of things, I'm a fan. I'm like the guy who's carrying the bag. Yeah. As a parent. So like, uh, no bag check was, was a huge victory for me, but I thought that was interesting. Um, another complaint I have about tos was lunch, logistics, uh, lunch, um, the, uh, the Jimmy Johns next to the convention center, the lady working there took a picture of the line because it was crazy
Brit:times. Yeah. That's always a nightmare. When, when you have a lunch break and there's just like, literally one thing that's walkable, I'm, I'm such a, such a strong proponent of. No lunch break. I just think, I just think it, it it's worth in everyone's best interest to pack a snack, find something when you have a short round find a friend. Like I just think it, it, it's not worth wasting the tournament time and it's usually just like, I don't know. I, I've always very stressed about time. And so I feel like I, I very rarely feel like I actually have time to go eat. I usually just like, oh, I gotta go somewhere. You know, in Indianapolis or something when there's just, the lines are usually crazy at just anything that's walkable. It's just like go to the gas station or something, if you
Brent:can. Yeah. I went to the Starbucks after lunch and they, they, I even asked them like, they were like, we literally have no food left. There's no, you could buy it at the Starbucks. And like, yeah. I mean, on the one hand, it kinda is what it is, but like, is there any way the tos can be like, Look, you know, at noon, something that we're gonna tell a thousand people to go get lunch and they have a one hour window and it's just gonna be like that. And you gotta prepare yourself. Yeah. Like it would seem like there's something you could do.
Mike:I will say though, the, this tournament had many more food vendors in the convention hall than I've seen before they had a pop. They had like a quick pizza thing. They had a quick hot dogs thing. They had a whole, uh, you know, burger chicken fingers, whatnot, grab and go salads and sandwiches. So we, I actually, this was one of the first times I ever just got some, some lunch in the convention hall and it was pretty efficient, so that
Brent:was good. Nice. And, and then the last, the last comment they had on the, the venue was I, I saw some complaints on Twitter and they're not wrong. Like the, the, where we were in the convention center was like a five minute walk from the entrance. Like you had to kind of go through this crazy rabbit Warren maze of like up this escalator down this escalator around this corner, down this hall, up this escalator down through this way, down this SL down the other escalator, take a right, take a left. And then you're in. And like, I mean, I, you know, it sucked, it would've been nice if they'd put us more forward, cuz it didn't seem like anything else was going on. Yeah. But like convention centers are big man. Mm-hmm
Mike:yeah. A little annoying. One of the most annoying parts was at 1.0 it was actually after the lunch break we tried to. So after the lunch break, a huge line was forming in order to get back down into the hall where the dude was checking the wristband and it was a huge, huge, huge line, but he was funneling everyone into the escalator when there was. Three things of stairs right there as well. And there was two people checking wristbands, and we tried to kind of like walk around to walk to the stairs and he's like, no, no, no, no, no back. And it just seemed that that was one of the few times where I was like, this is so stupid because you could make this line go five times faster. If you just kind of like checked really quick and let people go down the stairs too. It was really stupid.
Brent:But yeah. Alright. The last question I had for you guys, uh, uh, before we get into Mike's run was, uh, I think several times there were incidents, uh, over the weekend where people broke the rules on stream and after the fact it was caught, like, should something happen? You guys have any sort of reaction to like, like that's crazy.
Brit:Like how fast should these things happen? Cause yeah, I mean, there's weird. There's a weird precedent for this. Cause a lot of it, you know, a lot of it, a lot of the cases like this that have happened before, like it's long after the fact that they get banned or something, but yeah, like is the question like, should something have happened at the event
Brent:itself? Like right, right. The, yeah, the, the grra deck stacking thing. Right. Was that, was that the one where the, was it worlds that the guy got banned? The guy that stacked the stack in the finals? The Malamar
Mike:yeah, that was the guy. Yeah. Worlds. Yeah. The gr one was like a long, I don't
Brent:different. One different one. Yeah. I'm talking about the Malamar one. Like that was one where like, after the fact they went back and like had some sort of punitive thing. Yeah. I, I wonder, um, I, I think most of those things were accidents, but like they were also clear rule violations. is something supposed to happen?
Brit:I don't know. I would need, I would need to familiarize myself with other other games and how they would go about it. Cause I, I feel kind of bad in, in either direction. I don't, I mean, I don't on one hand, I just, I don't really like the way a lot of Pokegear Pokegear penalties work. It's like hard to do. Well, like just the way the prize count and things work. It's like it's awkward to do in game and then like, but then, and then it just like, you know, let's take the Isaiah Xander game. Let's say that, like, you know, what do they do? Well, like just a random round later Xander or like they let Isaiah's opponent like win a game or take three prizes. Like that's just odd in so far as. It's just not related to that game at all. Like I, I feel like if anything should happen, you should just, well, I mean, I guess you can't like retroactively do stuff like this either, but like, I don't know. I don't like either outcome necessarily, at least with the, the warnings. I feel like you just have to like shrug and be like, well, uh, judges should have caught it. And let's like the end of the conversation. Um, I mean, like again, and I, I think that the Isaiah Xander thing is just like, so clearly an accident, um, just like zero I, 0% of me believes anything intentional happened there. Like, obviously it was wrong. And, but yeah, like the better question I think there is just like, why do the judges consistently miss miss these things? Why is, why is it your, your Twitch, your Twitch streamers that are like having to rewind it and, you know, the Mew player that insufficiently shuffled or whatever that other example. Um, yeah, like that's, that's it's own conversation of course, but one that I think is more important in answering.
Brent:Right. Right. Well, like, it'd be, obviously we'd all like, like that's, that's the easy thing to say. Right? It's like, we'd like the judges to catch, like these problems when they happen. We'd like to catch, you know, we'd like people to cut decks, like all that stuff. But like, I just wonder if, if we're supposed to do something after like these things get missed, you know?
Mike:Yeah. I don't
Brit:think, I mean, it's just so awkward again, because of the way that like the like, okay, we've noted, noted, you know, a couple times throughout the tournament that you've had these warnings and then suddenly to have the trigger pulled on you for the, the like triple prize penalty, like in a round where you didn't elicit a penalty or something like that. Like that, that's the scenario that I'm like that bugs me then that, that to me seems like one of the main ways you would be able to enforce like missing something later on. And that just seems to like, I don't know, just like invalidates that round for no reason. I'm not sure if that's making sense, but it's a, yeah, it's a very difficult to navigate. It seems.
Mike:Yeah. I agree with you Brit in that you don't wanna, you don't wanna punish them in some arbitrary round, right? Like, and give like a win to some random opponent just because they happen to play that person in the round that they decided to apply the penalty. But I don't know. So two thoughts. One is that maybe they give everything up until like a prize penalty on their records or whatever. That's called a warning. Like, so like an official warning goes on their record. This is also a time where it would be great to have tournament to tournament records because if someone gets, if someone is realized on stream of. Cheating or some insufficient shuffling, they get this stream warning. Maybe it's like flagged to something different stream warning. And then the second stream warning is just like a DQ, because then that's not like helping any individual opponent of the, of the person, but it's just a straight up like, all right, you've done this twice on stream. Like you're out of this tournament now. Um, but unfortunately we don't have a record from tournament to tournament as far as I know. What about this? Didn't
Brit:I don't know. I think this used to be the case. I don't know if it still happens, but didn't it didn't it used to be that if you were late, like you couldn't bubble into cut, like you would automatically, you would automatically finish like ninth say or something like that. Like couldn't couldn't they do something like that where like they could, yeah. You just, you just you're forced to bubble. Should, should you be in that scenario? Like that seems okay. To me, that seems I, that I think that would feel better than just like. Having the trigger pulled on you in a random round is like, okay, I guess I just randomly have to take a loss. Like it's something like that. Maybe like it may
Mike:be yeah. 0% resistance basically. Yeah.
Brit:Like I don't, I don't, and maybe that's too soft, like that's not strong enough of a punishment, but like take a point away, like take away match points or something. Like, I don't know, like that just seems like a better direction to me than doing something in the game. And obviously like the extreme examples, I think are easy. You just right. You DEQ them on the spot and that's, it's, it's, it's, it's no problem after that, but yeah, all these other cases and establishing intent and so on, it just gets even more awkward when it's it's it's less clear cut and one person says cheat and one person says not cheat, then it's just kind of like back into one of those. Uh, hearsay decisions and that's even harder too. And like probably will feel bad for someone at some point, like the cheater will, will get away in those scenarios here and there. But yeah, I don't, I don't have a good solution, but yeah, it's, it's
Brent:a tough problem to be sure. Yeah. Yeah. I, I feel like, uh, uh, you would like something to happen, but it's not, it's not obvious what the right thing to do is obviously love, love Mike's idea of if only we could keep track of people from tournament to tournament, if only there was some way in the galaxy possible to remember that people had committed a variety of minor crimes that like slowly accumulated right, or had been DEQ at a prior tournament or whatever, like, you know, it'd be nice if there was some, uh, historical memory of these events for, for some future retribution. Um, let's talk about how things went. Brit Brit got the COVID. Did not attend very sad story. Uh, Liam went 2 22 playing his own Dragapult Creation, uh, which allowed me to teach him the writing metaphor. Uh, you have to kill your darlings and hopefully he can apply that in some future instance. I think he knew the deck was bad, but he had spent a lot of time on it, which I, I think is something that everybody's done it at some point, but so he played a bad deck and got exactly what he deserved.
Brit:yeah. I, I did not have, uh, any faith in, in that the time or two, he showed it to me and talked about it. I was just like, well, you do you, man, if you say a beats thing, I'll believe you and I'm not, I'm not spending a moment longer thinking about it. Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. Uh, uh, oh, the, the, the only story that I came away with guys is, uh, uh, Brit you you'd be once again, appreciative that you were not there. Um, uh, Liam helped delay the tournament by a nice, solid 15 minutes by getting a, uh, happy to call a judge that then. They spent 15 minutes, like unwinding the call, right. As like they went the time the other guy was playing, um, Mew and he techno blasted. And then he tried to techno blast again, the next turn. And when Liam was like, oh, you got you can't techno blast back to back buddy. He was like, no, no, no. In between these two, the, in between the last time I took my blasted and now we both drew past and Liam was like, that's impossible.
Brit:that's insane. Like, I feel like that's, that should get you written down as, you know, watch this guy. Like, he just, he, he made a, he, he made us make a judge ruling on something that just like is so unintelligible that it would just like, let's look at the board state and what world would either of us draw past, like. Then there's a conceivable scenario, I guess maybe, but yeah, it sounds like Lamb's action was just like, what,
Brent:why did I do that? Exactly. But he was absolutely convinced that they had both drawn it past and, and like, you know, they escalated up to the head judge and masters and, and thankfully they did not escalate any further than that, but like, it was a show. That's funny. all right, Mike, you actually did something by playing a good deck.
Mike:uh, yeah. So leading up to the event, as I talked about as did between Paia and char, I decided on ARD for a lot of reasons. One. It's a deck that I helped create, you know, I helped Ross test and not for world. So it was something I felt pretty confident in and wanted to kind of see through to the end, if that makes sense. Uh, but really the thing that pushed me onto it in the end was I kind of had a read that Mew is gonna be really popular. And I was right. Mew is extremely popular, especially amongst good players. The DTE Mew is really popular amongst some really, really good players.
Brent:It felt like Mew was more popular than Paia. Yeah. It did feel like that Mew Mew felt like it was everywhere. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah,
Mike:yeah. Yeah. Um, and char art has like an insanely good Mew matchup. It's probably 80 20. Um, And the Pia, you know, verse Mees, not bad, but, uh, you know, it's 50 fifties, 55, 45. And so taking like a really, really favorable matchup against what I thought was gonna be the most popular or the second most popular deck, um, seemed really good. Um, and so I stuck with Charr. I had pretty good start to the tournament, started four. Oh. Um, I played. In the first four rounds I play, I played against Christian label with Arceus Duraludon he was the one that top 16 to top 32 worlds. He was the one that played Ross on stream, where Ross made that really terrible. Misplay trying to hit inter Dedenne with twin energy. Um, so I beat him round three. That was a really, really good matchup. Uh, I ended up playing him again on day two and losing, so the matchup is really close. Um, so I played charar just with one change from Ross' list. I played minus one air balloon plus one escape rope, and the escape rope is really for the flying Pikachu matchup, but it's also really good against Arceus. Duraludon. The reason for that is the reason, uh, the way that they play the matchup they wanna set up Arceus VStar and then two drilled on VMax. So your goal as the char art player is to never hit the Arceus because then you're forced to take eight prizes instead of six. So you wanna kill two of the VMax. Um, and so escape rope essentially acts as a free boss because they only have two or three Pokegear Pokegear on the field. So at any point in the game, escape, rope is a free boss to avoid hitting the Arceus and just hit the drought on. So the rope was actually super, super good in that matchup. It won me both games against Christian on day one, GA game two, uh, day two, I just drew a little more awkwardly. Um, so that was around three around four. I played against Ryan Shouse with Malamar VMax Arceus Jolteon, which should be like the worst matchup ever for. Chars are, you know, they shut off Inteleon they have Malamar to disrupt your hand and whatnot, but Ryan just drew so terribly in our set, uh, and like game one, he drew pretty bad. He got himself back into the game and then, but I was able to like, he it out at then, and then game two E prize, both of his R PSV stars. So, uh, that didn't go so well for him.
Brent:And, and he also day two. So it just speaks to like, like you started out four. Oh, but you did not have like the, the easy rounds to get to
Mike:four. Oh, you had the sure. Right, right, right. Yeah. My first two rounds were pretty easy. I played like a, a Mew and a single strike deck. Uh, but yeah, round three and round four, pretty tough. Uh, and then you saw me on stream against Andrew Estrada with 63 card Pia. Um, I was so confused that match, uh, game one. I probably should have scooped a little earlier. I prized three outta my five energy and wasn't going that well, should I scoop, should have scooped a little earlier, but then game two, it was really close. He played so many tech cards. I, he played big charm P PADD, ordinary rod, Leon Crobat and all of the normal cards. And so I'd seen all of these cards and I was like, there's no way. He also plays canceling cologne. and then he also did play canceling cologne as well. Um, so uh, I did, misplay like, I actually watched the match yesterday back on stream. I did misplay once or twice. It was probably my weakest set that I played all weekend. It happened to be on stream. I didn't play like terribly, but there was some small things that I could have done better for sure. Um, that's a little unfortunate. He ended up also making day two, but then doing worse than me, I think, um, Yeah, I could say more, but I'm good on I'm good on that. Uh, so then I was four one, and then I beat another Jolteon deck. I played against Arceus Aron. Jolteon another tough matchup, but was able to eek out in three games, played another Mew, played Jeremy Gibson is someone that I tested with and talked with a lot for this event. He also talked with me and Liam a bit. He also played Radian Z. Um, but played the Zeb striker three, two Zica that, and Brit, you were like kind of interested in that deck. I think
Brent:people were very on the Z strike. You have to explain what the heck this is afterwards. I don't
Mike:even know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and that match up. So it's really just radiance Z the same type of deck, but with Zrike getting there for P and flying Pikachu, but turns out that it's also really good in the mirror match because the whole idea of the mirror match is you. Take the first prize and then stay ahead in the price. Trade Zrike is much better at that because it can kill a BLE for one energy. So if I go first, turn two, I need to get like candy and tally on attack in order to get ahead in the price trade. If they go first, if Jeremy goes first, he just needs a Blitz, turn one, and then turn two Zrike energy. So both games, he just took the first prize and it was impossible for me to get back into it. Uh, so I'm six two, and then I could ID my last round or I could play it out. And I was pretty sure once I sat down that I had seen my opponent a couple rounds before playing Mew. So I was like, we're playing dude. um, and he was playing Mew and I too owed him because the matchup is really good. Um, so that's I guess a tip for people, especially if you think you might be in that six two area. It's very helpful to just notice what people around you are playing, um, because it will, Unformer you a lot, if you should play against them or try to take a tie. Um, I think I might have played anyway, even if I didn't know that unless I knew like the matchup and I thought it was like definitely unfavorable going into day two at the largest regional ever at 6 21 just didn't feel that great to me. Like you're gonna have to have a really insane record and getting an extra win. Just seemed like a smart idea. If I lost, I was still gonna get points. Right. So, uh, the difference of 10 to 20 points is not that big of a deal. Um, just seemed smart. I sat next to PR Mew that round. He was also six and two and he also decided to play and he lost, but he wasn't, he didn't regret his decision. He wanted to try. And Topate the. So I was happy with that. I'm sure
Brent:he was like, I just got a
Mike:whole day back. Right, right, right. Exactly. I don't think he was upset at all. um, so yeah, so finished day 1, 7 2 was pretty happy with that. Um, let me also say before I keep going, I didn't tie at all the first day, that was one of the things going into this event that I was a worried about. And B had a goal for after the nerd New Jersey tournament. When I tied four times in six rounds, um, I really wanted to play faster. I wanted to know when to scoop quicker. I just, I wanted to not tie as much and I was very successful at that. So I like, I was really, I was really happy with that after day one and throughout the, throughout the weekend.
Brent:Uh, and how much of that do you attribute to you trying to do something different versus radiant Charr? Cause I, I noticed that also, and I tried to go back and look at people in day two who are playing radiant Charr and like my initial hypothesis was I'd find out that the. Charizard people didn't have a lot of ties, but like there were ties.
Mike:Yeah, I think it's, I think it's both for sure. Um, Charizard is a really interesting Inteleon deck because you only shuffle your deck at the end of your turn. You shuffle it once at the end of your turn. There's no like with Paia, you might go level ball, search deck for DRIs. Then you might Gria for either you have to shuffle your deck, put it back down Gria for two cards and then you, um, capacious bucket for waters, and then you Melony and draw three cards. And then you, uh, shady dealings for another card. Like there's a lot of shuffling picking, drawing type of stuff. Chars are very, very, very little of that. Um, the only time you might have to do a midterm shuffle is if you're gonna Mew. And so, you know, you basically, you pick up your decade, the beginning of your turn for your first search, you put it down. You play another search card, you put it down and then at the very end you shuffle. So it is much quicker in that sense. It's also very deterministic. There's not a whole lot. Once you've drawn your card for your turn, you almost always know exactly what you can and can't do. So cuz you can only grab a certain amount of cards from your deck at any given turn. You're like, okay, I can shady dealings for three cards. This turn I wanna do. This is three cards enough. Yes. Okay. Let's do that is three cards. Not enough. No. Okay. So I guess we're gonna have a more passive turn this turn. Um, and those are really like, that's like the decision tree. Um, so I think in that sense it is a little bit easier. I also had the benefit of almost never going to a game three. I had a lot of two OS and I had a lot of oh twos. So that was also a big contributor.
Brent:Right, right. I, yeah, that's obviously when I looked at all the other radio charts, our ties, you can't unwind how much of them. Win one lose
Mike:one time. Right? Right. Exactly. But I will say the two matches that I did go to three games. I scooped the loss, like extremely fast, like within like less than five minutes, for sure. Sometimes even less than that, like two or three
Brent:minutes. Yeah. Well, and obviously, Hey, when you go seven, two, and you're too owing most of the people and you're touring, like having really polarized, but positive matchups is like a good thing.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. So yeah. So day 1, 7, 2 day two starts and I play against Jeremy again first round and he beats me two more times. Unfortunate. Uh, second round I play against an Archis Inteleon. I have one game where I scoop really quick. And then game two, he hits me with Marty, Marty, Roxanne, P pad Roxanne. And I draw out of all of them except the last Roxanne. Um, so that was unfortunate started at oh two day two. So I was out of top eight. I almost just dropped at that point but I decided to, uh, keep playing cuz my brother was hanging around. Um, then I played against some weird decks. I played against a, like a Turbo, dark cry and I played against a single strike Gengar, which were both very good matchups. And then I lost to Christian Lele with dark Israel on and then my final round, I played against a Pia only my second PA of the whole tournament. Um, so I went three, three on day two to finish 10 and five. So no ties, just 10 and five. Um, played only against two pals and zero Arceus Pikachu in the whole event. So definitely a lot of weird stuff that I played against, but overall pretty happy with the, with the result. Like I said, some of my goals were, um, to get points, which I did to not tie as much didn't tie at all. Great. I got to play on stream, which was awesome. Got the shirt, got the stream shirt, um, which I always love. And I got to hang out with friends. So it's overall really successful weekend. And I got to play a deck that, like I said, I got to, I, I created or helped create. And so, uh, being able to play that in probably it's last like event as the most powerful potentially one of the most powerful decks is cool. Oh. And it's also great to when you play the deck that ends up winning the event. Right, right. That right. Also feels really good.
Brent:Yes. You obviously played the best. Yeah. Uh, any comments on like the broader, uh, tournament, uh, uh, Brit I'm sure you watched some stream games too, uh, while you were suffering
Brit:I watched more of the, the bill bow stream. I think just for the timing, just worked out. It just happened to be on when I was at my computer and not on a, on a computer, a lot of the weekend. Um, no, no real thoughts. I mean, I'm clearly pretty wrong. And some of the predictions I offered last week, I thought a Pika would be a lot bigger. Um, but again, I think people that's just tends to be where I am. I'm like a step behind usually what, what the case ends up being. Um, but no, I feel it was a little pretty bummed to miss out. I would've played. Probably just might be 60, honestly. Um, and I had been practicing it, so I, I too always struggle with tying. So, um, I sort of imagined that I, I would've tied a couple times here and there, but no, I definitely had some FOMO too. It felt, felt bad missing out. Like I, I wanted to compete. I was ready to go. I've been playing games. Um, I'm sure it was just other than the Baltimore bad takes out there. I'm sure it was like a relatively good time decently run event and everything else.
Brent:Mike, any observations from day two?
Mike:Well, the very end of day one, at one point I was like walking around, looking at like the top 10 tables, for example, maybe like around eight around nine we're. It's all Mew and arch Ordon, that's what it seemed like at the top tables, all Mew and arch Ordon and arch Adon clearly didn't do that. Well day two, but there was a number of them at the top tables at the end of day one that clearly made day two. And it was just really weird, cuz we were like, this is the Meta game. I?
Brit:That was the finals of bill Bower too,
Mike:right? Like, yeah. Right. Um, so arch Adon, I think, despite not making top eight did pretty well overall. Um, and Mew obviously did very well, um, made multiple top eights, um, I
Brit:guess, worth mentioning that grant, Danny, that group, a lot of them ended up playing Mewtwo control. Yep. Interesting. It's nice to see that the, that deck is hanging in there hanging around to, to be frustrating, but yeah, it's cool to see. I don't know. I'm happy to see it still being played. I was always wondering if it would stick around or not. And just obviously the, the more Pika deck. Um,
Brent:as well. Yeah. How different was the Mewtwo list that they were playing versus the, the N a I C slash world's list. It was about the same, the
Brit:list is sort of like a part of our, most of the changes I feel like that have been made to the archetype were because we tech, we over teched intentionally from Mew, at N a I C. And there's just been, people have sort of just shied away from some of that. And like, uh, they played three peon. I remember that being kind of the, the main thing that stood out to me, which seems fine. The card is really good. Um, as it turns out, just to figure things out, like, it doesn't matter if you need anything in there, but it just makes your, your game plan, everything else you're doing with the deck, um, it just gives you more info and that, that, that sort of informs your play to a better degree. Um, so that didn't surprise me at all. Um, but I don't, I don't remember anything too different than that. I don't remember if they played PO stop or not. Um,
Mike:so I was gonna say the big difference, I think is they ran three Path to the Peak. Oh, yeah. That's
Brit:what it was, right.
Mike:Yeah. Um, which I presume is also an over tech for the Mew matchup um, but they had double to, and they had Path to the Peak and they have Sydney as well. Did you guys play Sydney in N IIC? Yeah.
Brit:Um, I didn't want to, I wanted to cut it, but it wasn't, it was another Mew card. Mm-hmm
Mike:Sydney's also, I think the only reason that Charizard is unfavor against it, because otherwise you just like, you hit with Inteleon for a long time in the beginning, and then you put two, your other two basic energy on Charizard. And then at any point then you, if they go YouTube, you can go retreat, you know, magma basin, twin energy. Choice belt scraper, triple Zigzagoon to do three 10. And, um, but with Sydney, if the twin energy like hits your hand and they kill it, you lose the game immediately. uh, so yeah. Oh, the other thing I wanna say. So the pone thing that you said, I think is really true. There was a number of times throughout the weekend where I didn't, I knew I didn't prize any basic KO Pokegear, but I shady dealings for heavy ball so I could check my prizes. cause chars art's very similar in that sense that like, if you prize like a cross switcher, you might have to play a little bit differently. Or if you prize a Clara, you might have to play a little bit differently. And just having that information without taking all of the time to search your deck is extremely, extremely valuable.
Brent:You know, it was interesting. Uh, um, I think I've never, I know people do this, but I've never actually seen it before, but I don't know if you guys, uh, I think most people have watched the Isaiah versus Xander game on stream, but I don't know if people watched like the beginning, but when he did, when Isaiah did his first deck search, he literally sorted his
Mike:deck. Yeah. I've I heard that he's been doing
Brit:that. Colin would always do that, or at least who wouldn't necessarily sort his whole deck, but he would, he would be systematic in that way.
Brent:Yeah. He, he put, he put all the Pokegear Pokegear Pokegear in the front and sorted them. And then he just like browse through all of his trainers. He put all his energies in the back. So as he was going through his first, XRT moved all the Pokegear Pokegear the front and all the energy to the back, and then he went through it again. And I thought that was
Mike:interesting. You just gotta make sure to shuffle a lot after, I
Brent:guess, right. Yeah. Is anything else we should talk about from Baltimore
Brit:hard Meta game to reflect on it? Just like immediately doesn't matter.
Mike:Yeah. The only thing,
Brent:the only thing I was super excited to see Piper win, obviously drew cause Drew's a homie, but uh, once drew went down, I was all in on Piper.
Mike:Yeah. I think it's awesome to see Piper win as well. Oh yeah. About that matchup. Some people like going into that, everyone was like, oh, Reggie's gonna win. And like it beats chars art and whatnot. And yeah, like I think the matchup is favored for Reggie's, but I think it's like really close actually. Um, I originally thought it was overwhelmingly favor for Reggie, like 70, 30, but it's really close because Reggie can miss a beat really often, as we saw in both those games also drew as a madman, he played one Reggie. Yeah,
Brent:the, the, the, uh, ten second scoop is like, uh, that's, that's how you do it. I mean, that's, that's clearly a, you know, these games are best two outta three. That's how we're gonna do it guys.
Mike:Yeah. And if nobody knows, right. Nobody knows you only play one, nobody's target it down. Um, like really, really funny. Um, the only thing, the only like really big lasting thing that will, I think we'll carry over into the next format is I think the fusion list Mew is probably the way to play Mew going forward. Um, and I think that will probably be true in the next format as
Brent:well. Uh, you know, uh, uh, one of Liam's losses, uh, Was that he ran into a Mew player that was playing two psychics, two training courts. and he was like, you're a mad man, what do you stop?
Brit:Stop? I, I lost a training court, psychic Mew at Arceus. And I, he was just like, it was, it was the game I fumbled and like scooped, but I just like, that was why he ended up, he beat me on like, off that into catcher. And I'm just like, uh, really?
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. He was like, and you know, I'm sure all the Duraludon players that he bumped into after that were like, who, what is wrong with you? Yeah. But, uh, so yeah, I mean, he, he was, I guess, making the right medical, but like, uh, Lele Liam was not emotionally prepared for such insanity at his first, uh, master's tournament. Yeah. That's
Mike:funny. All right guys, anything? No, let's do it. Let's wrap it up. That was
Brent:a good one. All right. The Jon Pauls are our outro music. That's another podcast in the books guys.