the Paul brothers were kind of another instance for me of like, okay, I'm, I'm just disconnected. I like heard of them for the first time. I don't even remember how long ago this was a year or two ago, but I think it was Logan. I don't know the difference between the two. I can. I know that how they look. but anyways, they were just filming themselves in Japan and they like were paying a real doofus and they filmed in this. sort of sacred forest that's known for, like ritual suicide. So like people go there to kill themselves for whatever reason. and they're just like dead body. And then that was the video that got them just like, you're just a past and I'm noxious American things like that. I'm just like, utuber, I don't know any YouTubers. Who are you talking about? So like I know about them now, but only. Because they, they keep doing things like that. Like if you're into the YouTube, whereas I think they're relevant. I know the rapper logic, he opened up based set box this past week too. I think,
Mike:I saw that one.
Brent:All right. Welcome to the trash lanch. It's me, Brent Halliburton here as always with Britt Pybus and Mike Boucher. Attendance is 100% fewer. We're here for episode 12. in terms of five star reviews, we continue to hold steady at six 94% of podcasts, consumers are active on at least one social media channel. You guys could be tweeting about us and talking about us and leaving reviews. People say it helps. And when you leave review, we read it on the pod and we talk about it. And then you're on the pod participating on the pod, all that good stuff. I wanted to just kick off by letting you guys, giving you guys a quick heartwarming story. my wife got a call from a former coworker of hers who has a current coworker of hers who has a seventh grade daughter who, somehow during the pandemic became a competitive BG player. And she was like, How do I meet? Like, I don't know any people, I'm just building these teams and signing up for these tournaments on battle fight. And she signed up for the women's tournament and went five, three. So she's grinding and stuff, but she was like, I don't know anyone. And I think it should warm up everyone's heart here in the Pokemon community to know that I was like, well, let me just reach out to the two people that I kind of know, which is Adam Dora cot and Aaron trailer in VG. And I was like, do you guys know, people I could introduce her to. And, all the people that they referred me to wrote back, almost right away and were like, sure, I've exchanged emails with her. Sure. I'll friend her on discord and exchange messages and invite her to my discord groups. it's exactly the kind of thing that makes me love Pokemon, you know, like they were like, Oh my God, you're you don't know, you're just some kind of like celebrity powerhouse. And I was like, honestly, just everyone in Pokemon is super nice. I just sent emails to like the only two BG people I knew. And it's, it's that easy.
Mike:awesome. Yeah. Everyone loves helping people get into the game. Cause you know, we like playing and we want more people in it and the more people that are in it, the better, the bigger it gets and yeah, that's awesome. That's
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and obviously great to see a middle school girls. I'm all about the, the matriarchy and getting more women involved in eSports is a super good for the sport
Mike:Definitely.
Brent:everybody recognizes. I think that the current composition is bad and we have to continue to try to make the game more wholesome and getting more women involved, both, improves the wholesomeness and like fixes on wholesome problems, which is nice. the other story I wanted to tell you guys is so, so my oldest son, who is now a freshman in high school, and you guys knew him when he was like in elementary school. That's how like, is now on the debate team in high school. And. Yeah, he's been doing these debate tournaments. I mean, it's ironic because you would think that debate would be pandemic unfriendly and with PTC, geo, like Pokemon would be super friendly for pandemic, but it's totally the opposite. Those guys figured this stuff out right away. And they have zoom tournaments now, instead of only being able to go to local leek cups in like the debate parlance, he goes to tournaments all over the country every weekend because it's easy. Right. So he, did a tournament in, did Cal state Fullerton last weekend, because whereas there would not have been a local tournament for him. Like now it's easy, you just call in a zoom and it was on the West coast. So he called in at noon instead of 9:00 AM, which as a high school or he loved even more because he was planning to sleep till 10 30 anyway. but, but the thing that stood out to me, like the interesting thing about debate versus Pokemon, and I wanted to get you guys' hot take on, this is like a game feature. Is the orangy is a little bit different in that like Pokemon, you have a very definitive outcome. Like you either win or you lose. And the RNG is like in the process of playing the game. The weird thing about debate is, you know, YouTube, these two people are like debating each other for people. Cause it's two, two person teams, but, but the RNG is actually. I mean the whole debate. You control every aspect of the debate. Like there's no randomness, the randomness is at the end. there's a person that is judging and they're going to decide.
Mike:Different
Brent:you get to the end of rounds and sometimes you're absolutely convinced you won and you're like, yeah, you lost.
Brit:What, so which I'm trying to remember off the top of my head. So you said he has a partner which will sort of get rid of a couple options. What, what events does he compete in? There's a, there's a couple of just different categories and sort of entails what you'll debate about and things like that. Public forum. Okay. Yeah, that's the, that's the easy one of the partner ones I believe you want to do, tell them to do LD. LD is easy mode Lincoln Douglas, or do that, or, I was more into the, what was it? HII? Humorous interpretation. So you just do some standup comedy or something.
Mike:I was,
Brent:And doing the, yeah, those were, those were the individual events, right? Where it's like, it's like not debate, cause it's not interactive. Right.
Mike:I was surprised to learn. I didn't, my school didn't have a debate team, but I was surprised to learn. That you have the, essentially the same topic or argument the whole time year, right? Like, and so the Metta, if the Metta does evolve, right? Like people like kind of learn the other, cause you have to be prepared on both sides as well. And so like people like build off the arguments from competition to competition and then I'm sure it gets higher and higher level as the year goes on, which I think is kind of cool.
Brent:in policy debate, they have the same topic for the entire year public forum. Is this quote, new thing that they've introduced in the last, I dunno, I dunno if it's five years or a decade, in between the time I did debate when I was a kid. So obviously we could have a whole separate debate pot if we want it to that's absolute pandemonium, but, and so in public forum, what they do is they change the topic every like two months.
Mike:Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So there is still like a mini. Mini Mehta of ABI, but it changes more frequently.
Brent:yeah. So, so in policy debate, you have the same topic for the entire year, but the topic is general and they call it policy to bed. Cause you propose a plan. So they say the topic is, you know, improving our prison systems. And then, each team says, here's my plan to improve the prison systems and you have to debate the pros and cons of that. I know the same topic for the entire year because people can keep changing their plans and the plans get more nuanced over time. And the team has to essentially prepare to debate any possible plan that the other team proposes. so, so the topic is somewhat unbounded in the way and this way public forum, they change the topic every two months, but the topic is a plan. So the topic that he's been debating for September and October is we should pass Medicare for all. And it's like, you are just going to be an advocate of Medicare for all. Like there's many things we can do to improve the health system. You're going to advocate for Medicare for all. Good luck. and it's fine, but, but it's really interesting and weird for me. Like, as, as I said, I was a debater in high school. That was actually my, that was my jam. And, I just accepted it and didn't really like, think about the nuances. But now that I've gone through like this Pokemon experience, it's interesting that you can have games where like the orangy is in the process of playing the game, but the outcome is deterministic. Whereas debate, like the actual, like the activity is deterministic and then the outcome is aren't shit.
Mike:Right, right. Yeah. That is weird. Do they have like rubrics that they use?
Brent:They do. And you know, and what's interesting is like my experience and my son's experiences. your goal, the way you minimize R and G is you get a good judge. Right. I mean, a good judge is someone like, quote unquote, that kind of follows the rubric, right? Like if you have, you know what, the best judges are like seniors in college that debated in high school and then debated in college and they've debated for eight years. And they understand everything going on in the round better than you do. Right? Like they're, they're just much deeper on how debate works. The worst judge is like, You know, your mom shows up and she's like, you know, I don't really like Medicare for all. And you're like, well, I guess this is going to be a bunch of around guys.
Brit:sounds like the real legal system. legal
Brent:Yeah. Like, yeah, it's a little bit like a jury, right? Like, you know, what, what a, you know, what'd, you'd theoretically like for a jury is, you know, impartial peers that like barely judge you and listen carefully.
Brit:you have to pick the right judge too. That's all, that's all part of the game there as well. It's just the same story you gotta, I mean, Which, if anything is, sort of undermining for both enterprises, it's just like, what's the point when it doesn't matter? What I did, what matters is we get the judge, we want, you know, things like that. It's funny. These perfect judges. It's kind of exactly how I would have. Probably just guests, you know, picking all the categories that you want, what kind of person would they be at the end of it? And it was just like, yeah, college students who missed this debating, something like that. I do, I help out on campus here and we had it at my undergrad, but, ethics bowl. Which is the same thing. You're, I'm just a little more philosophical. You don't, you're not dealing with public policy or anything like that. You're just dealing with ethical scenarios, like real life trolley problems and things like that. You know, you're a CEO of a pharmaceutical company and have to make a, you know, decision about the price or I'm programming self. Driving cars today. How many people can they kill? Things like that. but just it's fun and engaging like that. I definitely think that, I don't know. It's interesting. I've never, I just never have crossed my mind to think about debate in terms of a game, or I guess even the legal system that you gave them, quote unquote, for sure. but yeah, the randomness seems at least a little more. Control and your control, like, you know, you can't pick your judge, but you can at least invite a good enough body of judges such that your chances to get a good one are better. I would think. Cause there aren't
Brent:we definitely went through, like when I was in high school, we would try to pick tournaments where we thought they would have better judges.
Brit:I mean, it's the same thing in Pokemon. We pick tournaments where we know the better tos are maybe even the particular judges. If you're there's a local one who doesn't like you, or you don't like, or something like that, I don't affect your decisions too.
Brent:Right, right. and people, people spend a lot of time thinking about like, when you want to play at a best of three tournament, is this a, you know, I mean, a best of three decreases randomness, conversely it takes forever.
Mike:The other thing that crosses my mind in terms of this is how much interaction do you get with the judge, I guess before you start, because I feel like you can tailor how you approach. Depending on, if, you know, if the judge is quote good or bad or where they fall on the scale, cause then you might, you know, yeah. You might just change how you approach the match.
Brent:Right. Right. So theoretically, every judge is supposed to have at started a tournament, a paradigm document that they share with the debaters where they kind of outline their philosophy. But like, you know, my, youngest son who is not in debate and is sworn, he will never do it because, you know, he doesn't want to be like his brother. we were looking at the paradigm for one of Liam's judges, two weeks ago. And it was like, I am the parent of a policy debater. I look forward to hearing your arguments do your best. And it was like, yeah. I mean, yeah. Like walk, read that and was like, Liam's in trouble. He used to draw. Like, all you can adapt for is make sure you speak very clearly and slowly and, and pray that like your arguments don't fall on deaf ears. Right.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:when I'm grading papers, I can always tell, or at least I'd like to think I can always tell if someone's a debater or not. There's just very, very common, like, I guess, You know, like in chess, your openers, your rhetorical openers and things like that, that work really, really well in debate. And I just remember being in high school with all these people and, you know, listening to them, practice their debate and things like that I did, but it just doesn't work in a paper it's always stuffed. They always want to open it with quotes and things like that. And that's so common or at least in my memory of the book fading, that was sort of the joke or a stereotype. We had fair debaters in my high school. I was just like, Winston Churchill once said, you know, just stuff like that. It's that maybe that maybe things have changed since then it was around, but that was my oppression. And I just see it when I'm grading, when I'm grading papers, I had just, it opens with a quote. That's not. Who is they're writing about? It's not really all that related. It sounds good. Like, I bet this sounded really good as a speech, but I'm, you know, it's just like, we're doing different things, but I can just tell that I, I think I can tell us that you're a former debater or not
Brent:They're like, I have rhetorical devices
Brit:your rhetoric hacks.
Brent:Awesome. All right. Let's let's talk about Pokemon a little bit. I thought we should talk about the Logan Paul thing for two seconds. Apparently Logan Paul has made, Pokemon cards. Good again. I have to confess I'm a little too old for the whole like Logan Paul thing.
Brit:he bought an illustrator. Is that what happened?
Mike:I don't know. I thought, well, someone, but an open, like a base set, please. Your boss. I know logic. Well logic did, but someone, some other big YouTuber did as well now.
Brit:I think, I think Logan Paul did too, but I think he also bought a Pokemon illustrator.
Brent:Yeah, I think he bought the illustrator before he bought the booster box, but I think the booster box was like the big thing. Cause he. So I went back and tried to like, look at Twitter to figure out what this was in preparation for the fact that I thought I had to open this Pandora's box for two seconds. But yeah, so he paid like$200,000 for a base set booster box and then sold the individual packs for$11,000 each and then crack each one and got like a base set, chars art out of one of the packs.
Mike:Okay. And so he did, he did it for charity, right?
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I think the stream was for charity, but, I mean, does this mean that all the booster boxes, I never sold the vendors. I need to like lock in a basement and save it for like a rainy day. Was I at genius for not selling those?
Mike:Might be a four. It's gonna like crash at some point. And I don't know, it's one of the 10 of, and it's like 50, 50 in my mind.
Brit:I worry about that. I think, I think what I'm more interested in in terms of, you know, playing the Pokemon stock market or something, is that. I think there'll be an interesting spike when we get once a real events are announced again, like. Feel like, you know, like maybe invest in Crow bats right now. Like things like that I think are okay. Advice. But I do think that the general trend of, whether it's just all the chars, ARDS, and now celebrities going after base set older sets, I think collecting just invoke or being in the middle. You definitely, it would worry me if I were, if I really had a lot of money in the game, I definitely would. Maybe, I mean, I'm not an economist or dealer or anything like that. So I'm everything I'm saying could be grounded in terrible logic. But I, I think, I feel like it definitely can't be good, but maybe, maybe it can, maybe it was stuff will go up at the end of the day. It seems like just a fad and the real people know what they're doing and will continue to do well. But for that reason, like, I don't feel too bad that I, you know, I'm not sitting on a stack of. ETB is like, yeah, sure. Maybe I'm I could have made$500 pretty easily, but I thought, especially too, if they just printing another chart is, are now too, like yeah, we'll see.
Brent:my Twitter these days, I guess is like 90% Pokemon, but, but historically four or five years ago, it was 90% professional. So I follow all these people professionally. And, they, there used to be a very small community of people that I followed that, had professional interests and then were really into baseball cards. And in the last 30 days, they're suddenly like Pokemon cards, Pokemon cards, Pokemon cards. Weird. So, yeah, I wonder if it has like more staying power than I initially would have given a credence for it, just because I feel like I see people that I know, they probably unfollowed me two years ago. Cause they were like, Oh my God, this guy's Twitter is off.
Mike:And now they're good. They're like, what's his name again?
Brent:yeah. Now they're like, we got to get some of those Pokemon cards.
Mike:So I will say that the market, since I don't know from my, I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that probably over the last two or three years, the market for older cards is like very slowly. Been increasing. And so like over the summer, I think I posted on, but I found like a box of a button old cards and I ended up making, almost$10,000 selling them to a couple different people. and I was surprised at, you know, the prices of some of. The individual card, so I can give you some examples. there was some like pretty good condition, you know, like near mint to mint, Neo hollows. huh. And especially the first edition ones. Like I had a sweet tooth first edition hollow that was in good condition. I think that was like$300. And the e-card sets. So expedition, acapella, sky Ridge. I believe those sets were some of like the lowest printed ever, in complement history. And so even something like a common reverse hollow, who's going for like 20 bucks and, you know, you have a budget, right. And so I was really surprised at just those types of prices. And I don't know if that will continue to increase if at all stagnate at some point, if we'll go down. I don't know, but, but the trend has been a slow uptick even before this kind of like big, explosion over the last week or two, So, I don't know. I think keeping those booster boxes and it's probably safe in the long run and I think it might be like anything, right. It's probably going to go up and down in the, in the short term, but I imagine it'll go up in the long term.
Brent:So, so if either one of you gotten anything like PSA graded and like, or are there cards that you're like saving for some special blah, blah, blah, moneymaking moment.
Mike:I don't know if necessarily money-making moment, the one. Like a say set of cards, sub set of cards that I have kept because I have a lot of promo cards from like the wizards of the coast era and early Nintendo era. So, wizards of the coast did Blackstar promos. They had like their first set of Blackstar promos, and I have the complete set of that. and so like, I have a ton of promos from back in the day. there was this one, there was like another promo, I think it was. Like championship arena. I think that's what it's called, but they at worlds 2005, they slid it under the door of your hotel, if you want a trip to world. And so, and then like some people, like I didn't get it and some people did, and I don't know, but I, so I ended up, I have that. And like last time I looked at, it was like a$1,500 card or something like that. So I ha I have a lot of promos. other than that, I don't have anything in particular that I have kept and I've never gotten anything graded.
Brent:Right Brett, I know you had a moment where like basically every card you ever had was stolen, but anything last.
Brit:I never had much of a collection though. Thankfully, then that was frustrating. And that definitely is, you know, a large contributed or why I don't own cards and never really well I'm sure some psychological defense mechanisms that have arisen as a result. I don't know. I won, I won enough evolutions to be a little annoyed, seeing the money. You know, I could have had, I will see what happens with upcoming sets. I guess, you know, you don't make good financial decisions as a teenager into your early twenties. And that was when all I was playing and winning. So I just opening and selling them. But I guess, you know, now that I'm working full time and things like that, and. Ideally a little bit better with my money. It's probably smart. You know, I'm buying the cards I want anyways, a lot of the times too, when I'm a kid I'm opening these packs or a teenager, it's like, Oh, I don't actually have that car. And I might as well hope to get lucky things like that. but yeah, I'll probably just start sitting on all my boxes from here. I mean, I used to just kind of give them a way to not the sealed box has been any, any pack I, when I would always just give too. A friend or I have a friend who works with kids and I would just always give them to her usually,
Brent:Right. I mean, I felt like for us, our strategy for probably the last two years has been like, Oh my God, you know, we got these a box or two, we've got to get over to the vendors before they prize out the masters from day two. Let's go.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:that too, that too, I always like to try to cash out while I'm still there. Just like, I don't care. I don't want to mail this or fly with it. Just give me 60 bucks.
Brent:Exactly. Exactly. That's it. If, if I got there before you guys got priced out, it was like 70. Hurry over to the vendors.
Mike:It's crazy. Like I just looked just, cause I was curious, I mean, Amazon may or may not be the best indicator, but so like in evolutions booster box boxes,$500 there. But even the set like lost thunder, which is not that old is 180. And like, I don't, that seems crazy to me.
Brent:I, you know what I think the closest thing. Yeah. I mean, we've never saved cards because I thought the cards were valuable. I mean, Know, I always felt like I was spending so much money on cards for my kids and they always treated them like garbage. So I was like, whatever, we're not going to buy like nice cards. I mean, we were always minimum rarity people from the get go, but I have, I have two boxes of roaring skies that have just been rotting in my basement. And I feel like the problem is they're going to ban shame any X and then that's going to somehow make the fact that I sat on those thinking that they'd be valuable at some point in the future. Totally not valuable.
Brit:to have. I would think that one was always worth more than most of them, but yeah, maybe if they just all worth something pretty quickly now it's been, it's been a really long time since I feel like we've gotten. Just like a completely skippable set. Maybe my memory is wrong and I didn't play during the IEX area at all. So maybe Mikey will say more, but I remember a lot. I mean, I think a lot of it deal with the S P cards were just better than what was getting printed and the heart gold block. We didn't really quite have time to digest those that block on its own. But I remember a lot of the whole hardcore set's being pretty terrible. Like. You know, most of the primes weren't good at at least until rotation. but yeah, we just don't seem to get that anymore. Like whether or not the vivid voltage does anything to the top decks right now, it remains to be seen probably not. but there's at least always good things in them. And I just don't remember that always being the case, even if these cards aren't designed, you know, in the same way anymore, we still do have to deal with the baggage of all these big basics. But they don't feel like a waste anymore. I feel like, and maybe that's age and being a little bit disconnected from the game, but I look forward to the new sets more than I remember ever doing. And, you know, the pre-releases are enjoyable now or at least playable. Okay.
Mike:I will say at least a part of that is they. Try to keep power creep, but I think, I don't know, a little bit contained. So, you know, you have a good set, then you have a couple of sets that maybe don't have an impact in it while it's bore, maybe boring, a little boring and like keeps the overall power level of the game down. And now they're just like, screw it, go for it. Print those 300 and in ADHB Pokemon. And, so it does make the game more exciting and hype cause you need. The new cards and everything, but I think it, the piece of, the power creep.
Brent:It's funny, you know, this is one of the things that I had put on, our notes of things that we'll talk about in one pod, at one point in our lives, like it's funny, I thought the idea of Pokemon V and V Max's. I really like, I mean, the idea that you could evolve a Pokemon and when it becomes more powerful, it becomes like you get to take more prizes when you kill it. Like, I feel like historically. We just essentially thoughtlessly evolve Pokemon, right? Like if you had the, if you had the basic and the been on the board for turn and you have the stage one in hand, like you were going to play it down because why would you not play it down? I mean, I guess, the only situation, I mean, like, I guess GX Pokemon are like, kind of like that, but the discrepancy between the basic and the Zuora warrants GX was so dramatic.
Mike:right? Yeah.
Brent:It like, it kind of overwhelmed thinking about like making a decision there. Right. But, but the idea that you could have, like there's two prize Pokemon, it's pretty good. Or you could have all you a three price. Both of mine. It's really good. I think that's an interesting mechanic. And if they had said, Hey, we want to figure out a way to create this mechanic without just like power creeping the heck out of the game, they could have done that. It's a shame that like it's just power Creek Parkway park all the way down, man. I feel like Pokemon Pokemon Twitter is just a wash in people complaining about the format. I'm sympathetic to the fact that like power Coopers in Cena.
Mike:Yeah. a quick comment on that. People talking about Twitter, about the game, and I don't know, like Russell was posting yesterday or this morning or something about, you know, how he came back. He played a couple of tournaments and he's like, screw this. And, and I do think that there's some merit to that, but I also do think, like toward and Robyn replied, they're like, well, you know, towards number one in rep in Europe and, you know, Ian Rob was really up there in our rep. And there's a lot, like if you look at the top 20 players of North America, I think like 10 of them, 15 of them. Are like really good players and probably Europe will end up being the same thing. So while the format might not be the best format ever, I still think the better players are generally doing quite well still. and we can get into the, the, I can talk about the extra tournament and a little bit, but like, as it will just one that right. And so. The good players are still doing well, even in a quote unquote bad me.
Brent:Show it let's talk about that. So why don't we, why don't we transition to, like, I know we want to talk about channel fireball and stuff, but why don't we talk a little bit about like, Claire's cup too. And the current Metta and talk with the Hexter attorney. I know you, you have to commentate commentating spun, right?
Mike:Yeah. It was fun.
Brit:I mean, I think it's true. It's just really obviously the good players aren't doing well, and that's great to see. so I think, but I think like we've said before, It just the games themselves, aren't interactive. It's just, you know, the good players are doing well cause they sequence better than I do and things like that. And there's just not a lot of counter play and all of those complaints are valid, but I just don't have a lot of sympathy for, I mean, not. I like Russell, but for, I don't have much sympathy for his kind of just general opinion, because just like, don't play. It's that simple. If you don't want to, like, you know, people are just like, ah, we ban this and we changed the rule. And then, and then we've got a, we've got a perfect game and it's just like, you're looking for chess. Go play chess, go play, go like the, the orange card game is an out there. You're never going to find it. I'm sorry. And so, you know, maybe you want to play a different game. Maybe it doesn't have to play Pokemon, but like, I just, you know, these, these concerns just don't fall on me. Like I'm going to play Pokemon because these are where the game, this is what my friends plays is what I enjoy doing. Even if the cards right now, aren't. Sort of particularly enjoyable what, what I'm getting from the experiences completely unrelated. And so like, that's why I'm still having fun, enjoying, practicing, especially in my own circumstances where I, I'm not going to qualify. I'm officially done out of the top two 56 and that's fine. but I still trying to get better trying to, and enjoy the game and you just completely robbing yourself of those sorts of opportunities. If it's just. Never your fault, always the format. And if you're always waiting for the game to get better.
Brent:I, you know, I think you can want the game to be better and still enjoy playing the game. That's probably where I'm at. Like, I'm, I feel like I'm sympathetic to all those calls, like our conversation about power creep, you know, I feel like I hear all that and I know we've talked on previous pods about what a big fan I am of how. How come I should lean into evolutions and the more they print, just like big basics, just the more brutal I feel like it is for the game, because big basics are both big and powerful. And like, your deck gets more consistent because you're saving all these slots, the new, like other stuff. And it encourages a super fast format that is just, you know, slap it down cards and attacking each other, which. Makes it like less distinguishable from other card games. And I, you know, I feel like less fun and there's something to be probably when you say, Hey, evolutions are where it's, that you're increasing RNG in the game because you're going to have to build less consistent decks if you're going to play evolution decks. But like, I feel like, you know, Pokemon should be figuring out how to put more of that into the game. If I liked the idea of the BMX stuff, all that, because I feel like. Figuring out how to create more room for evolutions is good. And, you know, I feel like a tag team GX Pokemon were totally cheesed. There you go. That's right. I read that, I guess.
Mike:so the Hexter invitationals this weekend. So it's the culmination of. Almost two months, maybe for two months, you know, the weekly tournament and getting points and qualifying. So a lot of these, series have something like this, the poke acts as a similar type of thing. I'm not sure how Atlas is doing it. but. Yeah, Hexter definitely did that. So the top 16 players played a double elimination bracket. I commentated the first four rounds. So pretty much until I think like top six, I commentated all those, all in all Zul ended up winning the event with a peak around hammers, the list that's kind of been doing well over the last two weeks or so. The most successful deck in the tournament, I would say was ADP came second, it came forth, it came fifth and there was only two others that came 10th and 12th. third place was actually a firebox deck that we got to see a couple of times on stream. It was really just like one of all the different fire attackers rushes are Arvik TV. Cephalon keep training. so that was kind of cool. we saw beat ADP Z once on stream and lose to that one time stream. Now it's I, I feel like that's always been the hangup for that deck is can it be ADP? And if it draws really well at Canon, if it drives awkward the, at all, it loses most times, looking at the list there wasn't really too much else. Interesting. There's a couple of the cart melt metals, couple of centers score. It's a couple of me, two welders.
Brent:Where the ADP decks playing, hammers or flippy catchers, or was it all no flippy.
Mike:The two that did the best. Second and fourth were not playing hammers. I think the other three were, so with some validation, what I was talking about last week with my anti hammer rant, they were running a big chart the second and fourth place where I think we're in the same 60 or maybe one card off. So they were running big charm. I think they're in an Aldi gas instead of the word you, which is fine, but they were otherwise it was pretty standard.
Brent:And they were running research over clay.
Mike:Yep. Oh, and they ran you. They both ran mute to help peak around matchup. but as well, I was still able to beat Katelyn in the finals. the only like, well, there's two kind of interesting decks. Neither of them did well. one was the attacking XQ drill deck that I mentioned last week. didn't do very well though. And the other interesting deck is drag a pole cliff fable that I think we also talked about that a little bit last week. It's gained a little bit of popularity. but yeah, that's pretty much just drag about the max with a two, two quick able line. So heavy energy disruption. It's pretty cool. We watched it, we watched it on the stream one round. It just seems a little inconsistent. You know, losing mysterious treasure was really big for the dragon boat decks. Cool deck.
Brit:I went four and three with dragon Poult in the Sunday open. I can talk about
Mike:Oh yeah.
Brit:and play LAFable. I just, my own idea things. I wanted to try with it and I went, I put it up in the chat and so it's hard to say really. How well I did, but, so I went four in three. One of my losses was to, this agreement deck that made top eight. I don't know if either of you saw the list floating around, it seems. Pretty good for the concept I drew really bad and it was a nail biter. I'm sure it probably would have been really easy to have I just attached and evolved on the first two terms. But then my other two losses were just total misclicks or at least one of them was a myth. I just miss attached for some reason. Like I was just being a little too soft, gliding over with the energy and it attached to the wrong Pokemon. So I had two losses. Of that one was against a Ricardo, Mel metal. That was very, very close. And I think I would have wanted, had I gotten a proper attach. I just, in that game, I attached to AMU like, Oh, it must've opened with it. And so clearly I wouldn't, I needed it in the matchup. but I just slipped and it was, I didn't have any energy on drag, a pole on the board. So I was like, Oh, Attacking with new this turn, I guess, instead of attacking the next turn with drag a pole, I just barely, barely lost that game. and then the other one I had, I turned to drag a Poult ready to go. I think they had altered or were going to alter and it was six, six still. So I think I had the, I had the resources to win if I could keep them off boss. or at least I. Had only, I only played one Crow bat. So then as long as I could evolve the other drag a pole before I got boss, they didn't have any easy boss chaos. So I think I could have won. but I only beat real decks, which is interesting. Like sometimes was like, ah, you know, I went three and four with my bad deck, lost to the metadata, but beat the non-metal decks, but like, no, I'd be too Lou Carrio Mel medals. I beat, I beat the Pikachu hammers list and I'd be an ADP Z. And I liked the deck. It's probably, I've had a lot of fun. I refined it kind of all day yesterday playing. I'm probably not competitive. Still. I've won a few games against data, not as, but instead of I just played Geraci, that's kind of the only thing I have a gang garden mimic cue, which is good. I T attacked with it a lot, way more than I was expecting. but yeah, I just have a lot of yell grants and Geraci is instead of cloth table.
Mike:Do you play hammers?
Brit:Yeah. For crushing hammer.
Mike:Okay. Yeah. I was going to ask, I think, a very reasonable approach to the format. Is like, if you, if that, if the deck has good match-ups against everything, except it turn to tests, it seems fine. If you could, you could play it and just try to Dodge that if you feel like you're, you know, at least 60, 40 verse, at least pretty much everything else. I'm surprised that you did so well against the cardio memo to like, I
Brit:Yeah, I am too. I don't think you should be beating them
Mike:Okay.
Brit:I could have played if I, so I'm trying to remember one game. The first one that I B I just took three prizes with Gangahar after a horror house, which was the plan. Or the, you know, the plan there's only so much you can do.
Mike:Brett was crossing his fingers there.
Brit:I think it just worked out in the other game too. I don't remember though, but you just can catch them at an awkward time and maybe just crawl, crawl past the one or Tuesday. I think, yeah. I think every game I was able to, I would not got the Lou Carrio Mel metal for three prizes and then spread around and eventually take three prizes on like a like things like that. I just ignored. I remember one of the games I just did not even try to kill as Amazon to, but yeah, it's, it shouldn't be a good matchup though. One of the ones I did when I only played one scrapper and I was able to use it. Really well, if I hadn't, I would just lose, like, he got a late Goggle down that I was able to bump and then just kill they're spreading to it five times or what have you. But I like the deck. Maybe there's some wiggle room there. Just no good fighting Pokemon. And as just, I just don't know what to do about that. I was thinking I had some idea today. What was I going to try to play with it? Maybe it'll come to me. I was thinking of fitting in some tech Pokemon and there wasn't cliff fable. It wasn't crab domino bubble, but it was something else. Oh, maybe for next week, I'll have a new drag, a pole deck to talk about.
Mike:And finding an unrelated to drag about in particular. I've also been trying to think of fighting Pokemon. The one that keeps popping up and it's probably because of my love for spirit tomb is the term Rakeon that, for fighting to color lace, it says pretty sure if it said all of your bench Pokemon have a damaged counter than it does one to 80, I think that's how much does, either way it's enough. I know it's enough to one shot attorney. This for that. And we have the karate belt in the format. So like technically you could do it for a tool and a, to an energy, so it can come out of nowhere. So I think that's like a really interesting Pokemon. That's probably not good in anything because it's hard to get damaged counters on all of your bench Pokemon, except if you're running spirit doom.
Brent:Oh, it does 200 damage. It's 50 plus one 50.
Mike:nice.
Brent:That's a lot.
Mike:they did a lot. so.
Brit:I've found in all of my. Trying to find something that can handle everything. Kind of like we talked about last week, like the Charles aren't stacks can beat ADP. It's just fixing this other matchup. And this are the last week or the week before that I was really trying to make like that firebox deck work. But with like, I tried, all sorts, I just did well didn't I don't think the Aurora right period of strategy is good enough. Like. I think the just, like you can get it sometimes, but then realistically they can, if you have to set up the second one too, the first one, isn't going to be good enough almost no matter what. And if they gust it before it takes three prizes, you just lose. and the hammer is also very good. Good against Aurora energy requires you to have them on the turn you attack, which is again, everything just plays hammered still. So that's another thing, but I was trying lots of other ideas with. my favorite one is the crab domino bubble that does more damage. If you have less Pokemon, it just doesn't do enough. And none of the modifiers help it just, if it did like 40 more damage or something like it would be busted, it just doesn't do enough. And so maybe, I don't think I wanted to try and drag a pole, but I think I saw a cash man, the guy who takes all the data for all the online tournaments, he posted a list. I think dragon pole crowd dominant bull, which maybe it could work, but I'm not sure.
Mike:The other Pokemon, one other Pokemon that I've been thinking about recently, it is a fighting Pokemon, but not really, very, not in the sense that we're talking about. There's the hair across that. If you're gonna use the GX last turn, you get to throw their Pokemon back in their deck. I don't know. I've seen like it's in seemed like a little bit of fringe play. But I feel like in the right deck that has maybe a poor ADP matchup, it could get tossed in there and potentially swing the ADP. Match-ups significant in like, I don't know that.
Brent:Yeah, it's weird. You would have to pick a deck where killing the ADP is not part of your, a roadmap to victory. And, and like, you think that, you know, if you stop them from getting off the ultimate Ray, then you just, win. So you probably got turn to like Marnie and Hare across him in the same turn to keep them from getting their zations going.
Mike:Yeah. The, yeah, I mean, just in general, the weird part about planning as ADP is they force you to take seven prizes every game and like killing me. ADP always feels really inefficient for most decks. Unless you're a Turnitin, right. Or maybe the too. And so that's why a lot of these decks become, you know, relevant because they have an easy way to kill an ADP. But if you didn't have to do that, there's lots of other decks that can do two 23 times, like, or probably even a two 20, only two times then kill it today. Or a Chrebet, there's lots of decks. That could be that. But you know, that the ADP getting in the way is what's really annoying. So if there's some deck that we can figure out that can toss the ADP back and then reliably, somewhat reliably, these not get killed immediately on the next turn and then, you know, kill three times, then you can outrace the ADP. So I don't know if that exists. obviously the one that I'm have been thinking about the most is spirit tomb. but, it's probably not good enough stuff.
Brent:Yeah. Like, like if you, if you assume that. Based somehow, like are able to attack regardless of whether or not you throw the ADP back in. The problem is like, you essentially got rid of the ADP, but you're down to prizes.
Mike:Right. Exactly. And you lose the game anyway.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. So you're like, Oh, like, you know, obviously everybody, yeah. Everybody's dream is to kill the ADP before ultimate raise. Cause then you're like, okay, we got, we got the three prizes and they haven't powered up the station yet. Or if you can stop them from taking the Kao when they ultimate Ray, and then you take the knockout, like. You kind of put yourself in a position where you can win the race, but it seems, it seems so hard. I mean maybe if with enough hand disruption, you're like, okay, you know, we can squeeze this out. Interesting.
Mike:Yep.
Brent:Alright. Well, let's, let's talk about, channel fireball stuff for a second. As long as we're on the subject, the first like channel fireball thing I want to talk about was the spirits whom list. so gyro Shaun, the host of the Metapod is one of the writers and he did the budget, spirits whom list. And I looked at it and I thought that's just not the list that Mike would play.
Mike:nah, yeah, you can get cheaper than this. Like if you're talking about, if you're talking about a
Brent:this second to DNA. We're gonna take all of that money, buy a couple of better cards, and then you pocket the savings.
Mike:Yeah, you don't need to do that. Like the dentist, the dentist is in the deck solely to like reach for knockouts, like late in the game or against ADP, like search for the knockout on that ADP really quickly. But you definitely don't need to save lives no way that's necessary. Like that's definitely not a good card. everything else that I can. Well, okay, so I'm looking through it. Three draw trees is acceptable. There's probably better, but I have thought about cutting the three muse. Fine. One of the hoop is fine if I had to choose, definitely be the newer one. I don't really know why we're playing both stick to given his fine quarters are fine. Claim three Cape seems pretty risky. I think four is like almost mandatory, right? Reset stamp. I've thought about, but it seems so underwhelming. I dunno, the comms are okay, but like you don't even
Brent:last list I saw that you had sent around, it was you were, you were pushing Marnie's over stamps.
Mike:yeah, I would definitely play Marty's over stamps. I mean like the, the thing is you need to play a supporter every turn with this deck and just running eight proud supporters. You sometimes miss that. So I don't know if I would play either one stamp or Marnie, but if I was going to play one or the other would definitely be Marty, The Pokemon communication is something that I really don't like in this deck. I mean, how many photos you got? Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. You have 16 Pokemon. So the problem with this deck is not that you don't have the specific Pokemon is that you don't have the Pokemon at all. And so, playing Pokemon communication is not great because is. You need the Pokemon to start in your hand. And so just great ball is just strictly better. I think, than that. I'm
Brent:You're happy with any Pokemon,
Mike:happy with pretty much any Pokemon. I mean like spiritual and Geraci are basically half of your Pokemon and those are the only ones that you really want in the early game. yeah. And black market. I don't think it's good at, or that just run fourth, the fourth spike Muth, but I can understand the logic behind it. so definitely things I would do differently, but the big one is you can make it cheaper with one identity.
Brent:How much do the dentists go for? Is that a hundred dollars card now with the Logan, Paul? I feel like it should be, I will sell my to Dennis.
Mike:So I will say, the other spirit to update is I did play one key, my last key as promised with spirit tomb and I did end up winning the event. So it did give me some hope in spirits. I don't remember. Let's see if I can. I remember my matchup. So now I be to plus up on, which is a good matchup. I beat up. Peek around maybe, or send a score. It's one of the two. and then I beat an ADP, which is not an impossible matchup, but it just, what really, you know, the things that need to happen happening. He started, he went first, he started ADP. I hit it for like a hundred damage on my first turn. GX is I kill his ADP and then, you know, I'm able to win the prize race from there, but if they don't start ADP, That becomes much harder if they start ADP and move it to the bench because they know what my deck is, the magic becomes impossible. So it's like a matchup that is much more winnable if they don't really know how to play it. so yeah.
Brent:Right, right. Getting, getting damage on it before it altered creation is a critical path. So. I'm good. Congratulations though. So, so where did you end up for the, a players cup?
Mike:So I ended with the 126 points, which I think when I looked the other day, I haven't looked in a couple of days. I was number 10
Brent:Yay. Congratulations, Mike. That's super good.
Mike:which is pretty cool.
Brent:maybe we should talk about ed, as you said, our predictions last week were wrong and already 80 points is getting bumped off, right? is there no limit to when the madness will stop? will it get to 85? We'll get to 90. I feel like it's moving much faster than we expected. I felt like I saw on Twitter today. I don't, I don't wish or the Schultz brothers it was, but he was like, I'm going to start playing my keys now. And I was like, Oh, I kind of, I think we were all kind of thinking that maybe it seemed like all the good players were playing all their keys really early.
Mike:Right.
Brent:That is apparently not the case.
Mike:Yeah, but there's gotta be some small, at least some set of players that haven't, So, what do we got? I think it ends next Monday, right? So a little less than a week. So at least N a I think my, my estimate of 82, I think will be at least a little low. I would be surprised if, if it's, if it doesn't get to something higher than that at this point,
Brent:So, so guys, if, if you had 50 keys to burn starting tonight, mean you're Russell's friend, what's the play.
Mike:Damn an ADP all day, baby.
Brit:Yeah, definitely. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be suckered in by the peak around hype. I would agree with Mikey. Footless the ADP. The way to go to Guerin, if you, especially at this point in the game, so you haven't really been playing, you need to finish and you need to finish well, like you don't have, enough time to really readjust and refigure things out. Just go with old faithful, you know, trustee and reliable ADP. No. nothing really to worry about, I guess there is this new variation of I forget. I know I did well, I think in one of the weekend tournaments, but it plays a bunch of power plants now, which is frustrating. Can be frustrating. I'm sure. As an ADP player, you're pretty much hafted the DNA on the first turn most games. So it'll be interesting to see if that sticks around. I think heavy, powerful, like PE decks are just. Refined and refined more and just have, again, maybe an extra slaughter to, to try to hedge against ADP and power plant might be just better than crushing hammers in that respect. Like if it doesn't hurt you, if it doesn't hurt your deck, sort of considerably maybe consider that instead of, The hammers are the other ones. That's actually something I was doing in my drag, a pole plus too. I was pulling a lot of power plants. I don't remember if the fable version does. I didn't think so, but there they were great all day. For doing that. I think it's peaker rom is in a similar position. They really want kind of wanted to DNA on the first turn to, and a lot of lists now just play one swell. It seems like ATPs have finally gravitated away from Verdians, which I think is correct. I finished with just one swell myself. I think Michael, you said you played one Verde instilled in, you know, so,
Mike:but it's just like math. The thought could really be something else. That's fine.
Brit:but yeah, that would be something. I wouldn't be worried about it. Exactly. Cause you can just when the coin flip, but maybe it will start to affect results and things like that, but maybe.
Brent:I mean, I think that's a, it's a nod to the kind of evolution of your wheezing concept. I mean, I know when I was playing your wheezing list, I mean, the thing that made me saddest was when I wanted the wheezing, like when I was going first and thinking, you know, I, if I could evolve this into wheezing right now, it'd be so great. I mean, the game would already be over people.
Mike:Yeah, and it kind of is a, we also talked a little bit last week about running two DNNA, two Chrebet and ADP versus three one. So maybe this is an argument is just go with the Tutu, gives you a little bit more leveraging its power plants. to circle back to the, what would I tell people to run? So I was talking to Jimmy McClair this weekend. He had used half of his key so far, and he was like, I'm gonna use the rest of this week. And I was like, well, dude, you should just play ADP. And he said, he said, I dunno, in the card. So I said, alright, I'll lend you the cards, for the week. So go win these 25 tournamets and qualify, man. So I gave him like zations and ADP.
Brit:I've had my ADP card lent out since I, since I finished my kids as well. And just like, no, just take it go, go, go. You'll be okay. I don't think they're going to finish, but they were, they were trying at least for a
Brent:That's funny. Cause he was texting me saying, dude, you have cards. I can borrow your cards. I can borrow. And then by the time I got back to me, it's like, I already got them. I already
Mike:yeah.
Brent:So, so how's his run going? Do you know?
Mike:Haven't touched base to touch base with them since the weekend. So I'm not a hundred percent sure we were talking a lot also about, just my while being really good. And how, I'm going to test, definitely am going to test tomorrow while I might even, it's probably bad, but I'm really wanting to try out running three my while and a couple, what's it called? Surprise box. The the, the card, the trainer card that Bob's a Pokemon from their discard into their hand. Like, I kind of want to go full time and just, killed, like always killed two today. Oh, you researched that? Did that anyway? Nope. Back in your hand, my wireless get'em. You can model them turn one all the time now. I don't know. It's probably bad, but I'm going to, I'm going to give it a go. Cause if I can just get some Freewinds in the player's cup might be worth it.
Brent:So have you started testing for like the next thing or are you just kind of chilling?
Mike:Just theory stuff. I haven't really started testing anything yet. I know Ross is like, Ross is pretty much my primary talking buddy right now. And he's, he's been so onto bliss. Step one. I don't know if he'll even want to try anything else. but. I've like been thinking of ideas, but yeah, I haven't really tested much.
Brent:Speaking of which I we've talked about Ross, a lot of the pod and. Every time I get off the pot, I kick myself and, and it's, it's now occurred to my brain. So I've got to ask the question, the, the time constraints for playing these keys and tournaments seems counter to Ross's whole, the Ross cop on aesthetic. How does he do it? I can't imagine him finishing games with the incredibly tight time constraints of PDC geo keys. Have you talked with them about that? Is there anything you can share with us about. Whether or not, when Ross is playing on his computer, he just plays incredibly fast.
Mike:Well, so I will say that the timers during the QI tournament are much more generous than if you're playing on ladder. you, you have longer for each action, so I'm sure that helps. I haven't specifically talked to them
Brent:But, but you have, but do you have less time total? The play,
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. That's
Brent:So little time.
Mike:yeah, that is true. I think, I think he's played enough online events cause he did so well during the limit of this stuff. That he is a, I think he's more well adapted to playing online.
Brent:I mean that, that implies that he's not well adapted to playing the physical game in real life or something like
Mike:Well, he is, but he is adapted. Well, I think he's gotten better over the years. Yeah, yeah,
Brent:Interesting. So, so if we went back 10 years, you would say Ross takes more time making decisions than he does today.
Mike:Considerably.
Brent:I mean, I obviously I've only like watched him play for the last couple of years. So to me that's like breaking news. Wow. That is absolutely fascinating. What else do we want to talk about guys? I think we're right at near an hour. Do we want to talk about other channel fireball articles for a minute?
Mike:real quick. I liked, well, I read Grant's article cause we've talked about the alternate deck that I mentioned last week. That was really the only one I've checked out.
Brent:How competitive do you think that deck is?
Mike:I think it's almost completely dependent on if ADP ADP decks play. And, again, my, my perspective is through, the next round of the players cup, but it'll be entirely dependent on that ADP plays Daralyn down or not. cause I think if they play a drought on it's actually impossible. Like I can't imagine a world where you'd be a Daralyn on, in an ADP, cause they're always going to take two prizes first. and then you're setting up what to alternatives is, I guess then they kill an alternative with the drought, Don. Then you need to have like exactly Kangas con plus a Zig Ziglar and grant doesn't even play as it can go. But I think you have to play things good for that. So you have to like exactly go Kangaskhan and into digs a goon. Then they killed the Kangaskhan. You also have to scoop up net this a goon and not get my wilds
Brent:right there, there are two prizes left and you can't get my wild, right?
Mike:Yeah. So I dunno, it seems impossible, but if they don't find her out on, then the matchups obviously fine, you just have to avoid the mobile. So I think
Brent:as they don't play for surprise box three mile while.
Mike:right. So, I think, I think it's other match-ups are pretty good overall. so it's almost entirely dependent on that.
Brent:Right. we should probably talk for one second because it's relevant to us about the, about my Twitter beef with Zander about math articles.
Mike:Go for it.
Brent:and did you guys have any reaction to all that? I mean, I think that the thing that I would say is, I think what's really interesting, like he kind of covered some basic math stuff and then he kind of tried to throw out some ideas. And I think the idea of measuring a, like, just like measuring the quality of your turn is a really interesting idea. you know, I mean, my experience with building machine learning systems is. what you would do is you would score it on a scale of zero to one with one being the optimal turn and zero being the worst possible, turn. But I don't know. I mean, he got of implies that there's this thing where you can kind of measure the optimality of the, of a turn. And I assume, I guess, I mean, you can just kind of say, did you sequence right? Like what you would want to do. In a perfect world and kind of what he implied might be possible. And I guess this was where I was quibbling. And he was like, man, I don't like this quibbling was like, you can measure whether or not the turn, like how, how closely the turn, like how likely the turn is to lead you to victory. Right? Like what you'd really like is to say a zero is the turn where you threw the game away. And a one is a turn where you like. Continued to pursue the optimal path to victory something like that.
Mike:To be clear, we're not measuring how good a turn. Is right. We're measuring how well you played a turn, right? Cause those are quite different.
Brent:I mean, I guess the question is how would you tell the difference? Right? Like, like if you're, if you're going to judge the quality of a turn. I mean, the quality of return would theoretically I guess you'd like to say that it should be judged by how much it increases or decreases your likelihood of victory. ESPN has this thing for football where they're like, who's most likely to win at any given point in the game. And they have some weird AI machine learning thing where they say after that field goal, the Eagles are 70% likely to win the game. You know, missing this third downplay made them, you know, they only have a 47% likelihood of winning the game, even though they're up three or something like that, that
Mike:Well,
Brent:you'd like something like that for Pokemon, I guess.
Mike:So the reason I ask that question is like, let's just take like a really simple base case of where your hand is dead, except like you have literally, you have one basic Pokemon out. It's your first turn. You have no playable cards except an energy card. And the question is, do you play the energy card or not? Is that optimal? And so you can measure, you know, optimality, you know, it's either a hundred or zero based on how you define attaching that energy card or not. But probably the quality of that turn and leading you to victory is very, very, very low because you haven't done anything. So I guess that's my question is like, what are we measuring?
Brent:Yeah. So, so I guess the way I would think about the problem and it, and it's super interesting problem. So I I'm, I can, I can spend all day thinking about this stuff is like, I guess what you would want to do is you would want to say, you know, if the optimum path to victory is X, how closely does your play align with the optimal path to victory? Right. Like, I mean, kind of to my point, if, in your example, there's only two choices you can make in a term, you're either going to attach the energy. You're not gonna touch the energy and that's all you can do. Like the question is. What are your odds of victory after you attach the energy? And what are your odds of victory? If you don't attach to the energy and the Delta between those is, you know, the quality of your turn in some way or something, right? Like,
Mike:Okay. Okay.
Brent:but, but like, it should all relate back to like, will you, when, after you make this play. Right. Or like, what are your odds of success after you make this play? Because like, if you're not trying to win, then, then like you're just playing cards. I mean, I like the idea. I think the problem is as it turns out, I mean, yeah, I think the thing I quibbled with on Twitter was he, he judged the success of a turn. Like it was higher. If you played at Sycamore and found the stamp, you know, you gotta set it up as you need stamp to win or to avoid losing next turn. But he said, you get a higher score for the turn. If you play a Sycamore and a stamp, then if you play a, a Marnie and a stamp or something, and like the idea was, well, I mean, what you just implied was you actually need some other stuff, but you don't specify it.
Mike:Well, is it that.
Brent:because why did you care about drawing more cards? Like why is drawing more cards better? Like,
Mike:Well, is it bad or is it just that the Sycamore gives you a higher probability of hitting the stamp?
Brent:no, no, no. It was, it was, if you like, it was like a, you know, we can go back and look, it was like, there's like three cases and one of them was, you know, it was like, you have to disrupt them and you have to find like a boss's order. And it was like, you can either, Sycamore and stamp or Marnie and then find the stamp anyway, or just like, like stamp or something like that. It was like all these three cases, but he judged the value of a successful turn, playing Sycamore different than playing sick in playing Marnie, even though in both of them, you found the stamp,
Mike:Oh, I
Brent:the, like the wind, the wind criteria was fine stamp. I was like, well, obviously what's implied by this is you're actually trying to do something else too.
Mike:Yeah. You have a different criteria than what you initially said, right?
Brent:Right, right. And he was like, well, you know, the game is much more complicated than my example. I was just giving an example. I was like, Oh, well, it. I mean, I don't get good value from your example, then let's, let's be mathy. Let's define everything. And like, like what's funny is I, cause I know Zandra his heart's in the right place and you know, obviously I'm super pro sander. So, so, but like, like, you know, I'd be happy to work on defining the more complicated case and looking at all that stuff. Right. I mean, it seems like there's some opportunity to, to do something there. Like the idea of judging a turn outcomes is good. It's just him so hard. Cause it's yeah. Put them on some multi-variate.
Mike:yeah, there's so many tasks. it leads me to like the, the, my, philosophical question. I often go back to Brett. Maybe we could get into this at some point is like, could we build currently, could we build an AI that plays the Pokemon card game? As well as we could build an AI, you know, that plays chess and go. and I went, you know, that would have a lot of, you would have to be able to build decks and read the metagame and play the game. And I don't know what the answer is, or how close we are to that. And it's partly partially philosophical, partially, you know, just, you know, practical. But, it's something that I think about a lot.
Brent:Yeah, well that's so, so I, I put it, I put it the, like the bottom of the, the show notes when I was pulling together this Google document, they like, one of the things I was thinking about is I was thinking about talking about Zander stuff today is like in chess notation, they put like an exclamation point on certain place. Right? And so I went and Googled, cause I was like, at some level, that's kind of what we're talking about, right? Like how do you identify a play that deserves an exclamation point? And it turns out, at least in my cursory reading of chess literature, it's pretty random. like, this is a good play exclamation point.
Mike:That's
Brent:but, but I thought it was interesting like then after I'm in research that I kind of went down the rabbit hole a little bit and I thought. It's funny how we don't have something like chess, annotation for Pokemon to describe turn by turn plays. there's no ability to recreate the great moments in Pokemon history. Whereas in chess, people do that all the time. Right? You're like, I'm going to set up the board state just like Bobby Fisher had his board States set up and see if I can solve this chest problem. And, and like the. I started to develop my own chest annotation that I was going to be like, here's going to be a tweetstorm right. Describe Pokemon annotation. People can use to annotate their Pokemon games. And I realized that the thing about it that makes it hard is, Pokemon has like an unbounded problem. Whereas chess is extremely bounded, right? I mean, there are no moves in chess that have not yet been discovered, but I know next set, they're going to drop a new thing. That's going to be a new thing. And then like, You'll have to have a new thing for describing that thing,
Mike:Yeah, it's
Brent:you know? right. Like, like, you know, when you use L the, his ability, like, how would you describe that? Like a compact chess notation, does not have a way to do that, but I'd had like, you know, energy to be one is like attaching an energy to your first bench slot and that'd be easy. Right. You'd be like, Catching a fire to the bench slot. And you could like, I mean, the great thing about the cards is the cards all have unique identifiers, right? So you can be like T you 33, you know, something right. And that, like the note speaker up, it's like doing something. I mean, there's like, it's there, it's at the problem is Pokemon adds a new ma mechanic every day. I always feel like that must be the real problem for the PTC geo guys is like, You're this dev shop and you, you get a call from these Pokemon guys in Seattle and they say, Hey for, you know, the next set that's dropping in three months, you have to make it. So like when they play the stadium, there's eight bench slots. They're like, we never thought about that when we were building the game originally, like that's super hard to do, like the cards are designed without consideration for the engineering that will have to come after that. And I'm sure. I mean, that's why PTC has always super buggy, Hearthstone because it's designed for itself. They probably, you know, I mean, they think about those things as they go and they never have that thing,
Mike:Yeah, well, and they probably like at the very start of it, they like built in easy mechanisms to change core functions. Right. Where, where they probably didn't do that
Brent:Right, right. I mean, Pokemon Pokemon, the Japanese, like the card designers, design the card abilities without consideration for, you know, the challenges of implementing it. Whereas I, you know, I'm sure the Hearthstone guys, the card designers are partnering really closely with the engineering team, implementing the client. And if the client guys say, Oh my God, that's insane. It's going to take us an extra three months to figure out how to do that. They're like, let's not, we're just gonna push that cart out. We'll push
Mike:Yeah, right. We'll
Brent:Whereas Japan is like, we already printed it. It's done.
Mike:Yep.
Brent:What else should we, what else should we talk about? I feel like we've covered lots and lots of ground.
Mike:Yeah. I think we did
Brent:Super fantastic. I mean, we, we spent like 10 minutes talking about spirit tomb. Let's go. Great. Greatest pod ever people.
Mike:spirit doom podcast.
Brent:Brett, anything else we should add anything on your list.
Brit:was trying to chime in to talk about AI, but I have a lot to say so we can talk about it in another episode. I don't feel like talking about it and just not have a discussion about it. We'll have to save it for another time.
Brent:We will put it at the top of the list for next time. likelihood
Brit:hopefully it will be interesting. I had a lot to say are
Mike:Good. Good, good.
Brent:Alright. Alright, dude, write it down in the Google doc. So you don't lose your train of thought. We will start there next week.
Mike:All right. Thanks for listening. Yeah. Thanks for listening. Everyone. Go check out. Channel fireball. Give us a like on iTunes.