how long are you home for breath?
Brit:I just hanging out for about a week and then no, probably my semester. I think most schools are doing this, but I don't know if all of them, but we don't, we don't come back after Thanksgiving break. We're just kind of straight into finals and have that entire week off
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Right, right then that this is kind of the COVID, plan,
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. And so I just have like two, two longer papers. I need to finish by early December 1st. So, but. beyond that, doing well busy
Mike:How far do you, how far do your parents live from where your afterschool?
Brit:like four and a half hours, which I, I don't, for me, that's not very far or nice for others. That is quite a ways, perhaps it's a very tame distance in my book.
Brent:It was like four and a half hours to see my parents I've driven further for league challenge.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I have, I think, I mean, not specifically, anytime I drove really far for like a battle roads or something, I was like doing something fun. Like I was just cause I went to Nashville for some battle roads, I think, or not Nashville, but Memphis, which is about five hours away. I don't remember why I think they just started early. Like I think they just had events the very first week of events that I needed to get points. And that's what I did.
Brent:I like that. All right. The trash lanch. It's Brent Halliburton. I'm here as always with Brett privates and Mike we're jumping right in because we got so much stuff to talk about in terms of five star reviews. Sadly, no new five star reviews this week, when you leave reviews, we read them on the air. We encourage everybody to leave reviews so we can read them on the air. It's always funny when we do. but, but it's, I got to start off on a sad note today. the news just came out as we were sitting at a record, the pod that Adam Capriola is shutting down six prizes, at least for the foreseeable future. I know for all of us, I think that's how we got into like, being voices of something on the Pokemon scene. You read anywhere before us expresses Mike.
Mike:no, I was one of the five or six founding writers of six presidents. And so, I think it was me full up Jay Horner, Jay wits and problem. Maybe, I don't, I don't.
Brit:A few, right at the very start. I remember he had a Drake Dion, an article, or like right after he had taught forward worlds,
Mike:Who would you say?
Brit:spreading Diaz or topic, I
Mike:Think Diaz. Yeah. So, so yeah, pretty much right. As six prizes dropped, I was involved and then, you know, kinda been involved on and off, over, over the last 10 years. I've known Adam since 2004. So it's, it's, it's been quite a ride for sure.
Brent:In there a long time as well.
Brit:Yeah, I really, I wrote from. 20 2012, 2013 or so all the way till 2018. there's something I've thought about too. Like when I stopped writing, that's really when I stopped playing. So when I like had to write at least had to kind of stay involved in the game to some degree, to at least compose thoughts, like relevant ones or attempted to be relevant ones. And then. Sort of that, as soon as I stopped writing, I just like kind of magically never, never went to an event again for like a year and a half or something. And I dunno that sort of correlation to Sydney the other day, but yeah, it's really sad to see haven't written for them in some time, but I think everyone sort of will remember six prizes as, just not being, not just being the best, but it was just like, The first, the only place to go for so long, just sort of ride on the era when everything was still in, open gym forums for the most part, like it was just sort of the first, really surprisingly, like, even like, sort of like POJO even at the time was sort of anachronistic, but occasionally would have competitive articles still for whatever reason. so it was really cool at least then to see. not just the content, but I really think it helped grow the game too. Just in terms of like characters and people, you have the writers now, like it's just sort of people at the forefront. And I know for me at the time, that's when I was first starting getting into the game. So you just like, sort of started learning names and stories and I don't know, I just love to learn. The history. And I don't think I would've gotten any of that without sort of six prizes laying the foundation for, so much more to come so much of someone's PC and limitless and all that stuff. All very much indebted to six prizes, I would think.
Mike:Yeah, totally agree. It it's, it's really the biggest jump. Six prizes was the biggest jump I think, in. Pokemon content, ever. I mean, everything after that has been somewhat of the same format or at least all the article sites for sure. and then we started getting into them more like digital media videos and podcasts and all that stuff. but in terms of reading articles, it's all based on the blueprint. That's six prizes, laid out for everyone else. So.
Brent:I, I even down to the, like, you've got a, you've got to have a pun in your article title. It's not opposed to my. It's not a real Pokemon content site. And I felt like six presses started that. I mean, I just, I always thought that like one of the interesting things for me that really stood out, as, as I kind of, you know, and I guess 2014 started looking for content to consume was, you know, like Adam was maybe the only situation there where he was not a player. He was producing content and. I always felt like the result was like more diversity of writers and better quality writing. Like he, I mean, the, the quality of the, like his focus was having a really well edited article. And in that respect, that was like, I mean, there were just other websites that didn't deliver like that.
Mike:Yeah, definitely true.
Brent:And, and other, other websites, like the person creating the content was like a player first and then like content creating and like managing the site second. So I just always felt like the quality and consistency of, of, you know, the output on six prizes was better than everything else I'd ever seen. And UNC, and I felt like you'd see lots of sites that had moments. I mean, Andrew Wimble is a great writer and Charles our lounge was had great content. Someone's PC had like a moment where like they were virtually setting the metadata day, but, but, but it was all essentially, like, it was more about those guys as players and as their interest in playing Wayne, like the quality, the content kind of waxed and waned to. Whereas six prizes and writers would come and writers would go, but you always knew like six presses articles were going to be telling you what the heck was going on in the game.
Mike:Yeah, it's like more of a established like system, as opposed to just. Single things and not going to take away from any of those other sites. I mean, they were all fantastic for fantastic content. Sometimes individually, they were often better than the content you would get on six prizes. But like you said, it was just, just the consistency of, of it. Like I never subscribed to. Really to anything except six prizes. consistently over the years, like I had, like you said, I had a someone's PC thing for six months. I've had a cutter tap thing that I would always activate right around world's time. Cause that's when Finnegan would be active. but, but
Brent:example. Right? Like every once in a while he's like fingers on the pulse of the Metta and he was like churning out articles and then like, you know, nine months would go by. Yeah know, you know, I kind of wondered whether or not talking about this was like, it's almost too premature because I mean, ironically, one of the other things that I'd put on our agenda for today was, you know, Danielle to be a one, the HyperFlex tournament on Sunday. And I want to talk a little bit about, about his list, but like the day prior he had said gonna take a break from Pokemon retiring for a little while Yeah, I know. I know. It's the Pokemon thing where like saying, Hey, I'm taking a break and then not taking a break this.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I think he, I think he worded it well enough to avoid this. I think it was implied that he was playing tomorrow regarding this. I think, I don't think it was quite a doubling back from day one or something, but I could be wrong.
Brent:Yeah. I'll take your word
Brit:I think there was something, something about the way that it was worded was sort of implied that like he's not learning the next format that anything in the current format like is fair game or something to that effect. Which I mean, yeah, sure. I mean, no one ever quits, but.
Brent:Right, right. If he says, if he says I'm going to play hardcore for the next week and then I'm quitting after that seems, that seems worse. All right. Should we talk about, should we talk about the players cup guys?
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:why don't we kick it off by Mike? Do you want to tell us about your, a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day.
Mike:sure. I played pretty much seamless that I was playing the week before. The same list I was playing the week before, I got to buy round one, which was pretty sweet about 20 players got buys. they did get the bias based on your finishing the leaderboard. So it's like the top 20 or so I was 16, I think. so pretty lucky to have a buy, but then round two, I played against Senator scorch, which had three Volcani in one key Tran, one, teeny V and, and a Cramer rant. And so that's a lot to attack my, as Amazon does and we split game one and two both were pretty close and then game three heat that drew and I beat him. So that was cool. It'd be 10 to square to the lot of counters only to go up again around three center squirts with even more counters. So it ran all of those things that I just said, and it ran gear Dina and scoop up nets. So that was quite bad. I did win a game in that set and game three was pretty close. But, couldn't win that one. And then, then I got bumped down the loser's bracket and I played against ADP Z, which just kind of ran hot or ran a tool scrapper, kind of did its thing. Game one. I didn't really have a good start. So one out is what does that poor round, looking back at it, Luke metal, ditto, I think only one made it through an a but ton made it through Europe, which we'll talk about in a second. and I think it was a fine play, but it wasn't that great of play. I think center scorch was played a lot more than expected and I think the ADP's all ran tool scrapper and some, a lot of them were into tool scrapper. I think I saw lists from like Kenny Britton and Isaiah Bradner, maybe a couple of other people that were running to scrappers. So I don't think ADP's would have been that much better of a play for me personally. Honestly, we can, when we talk about the decks that made it through, I think it turn it. This might have actually just been the play for players cup. I'm looking at what the meadow is like at least for an, a.
Brent:So I have the list from the one guy that advanced the top 16 playing, Luke metal. How different was his list? Like he went, he went five. Oh, I just wanted to see, were there things that he did differently in his list versus you? Or was it like super high orangy or was there maybe something else that you look at and you think is different here?
Mike:Is listed as the last consistent, by a little bit. He only has three research. so that, I mean, that's, that's just a small change, but I mean, overall it's basically the same thing he has to reset stamps. that's the only major addition. He, so he went minus one research and minus one, something else. I can't figure it out right now, but plus two reset stamps and I think any, any ran two of the tech teams and I ran one tag team and one stunt Fisk, but I'm pretty sure that's it. So it's essentially the same list,
Brent:Right,
Mike:of cards, different.
Brent:right. So
Mike:So his match ups were probably better. you know, got a little bit luckier. I don't think it was anything more than that.
Brent:yeah, yeah, yeah. I look at it and I think, maybe he played center score and she played ADP mirror turn. It does. And some fossil back. I must be nice.
Mike:Yeah. alternatives for very good matchup. Generally a mirror is, I mean, like you're too O in the mirror. I mean, you, you drew better, like, right. and then ADP, I think is a good matchup, but especially if they're not prepared, but you know, They can just do their thing and they can beat you. I think like also when I played ADP, like one of their games, I prize two out of my four metal goggles and like that's really bad. And that matchup, and he beats on the score twitches, which is cool. It's under scorches it really depends on their list than what they play. I think if they only run the one other fire attacker. So like either he Tran or Vic Teenie, It's not that bad, but if they have both of those pasta ball canyons, then it's really tough. And I think the gear teenage it's really, really hard. but if they don't, if they don't have that many counters so I think it's like 50, 50.
Brent:All right. Why don't we take just a second to talk about, so, so we have some data from Europe, in Europe, as you said, like they had of the people that got through five, Mel metalization three ADP's, two baby Browns, two alternatives, one a decision. Do I. One attacking extra drill, one peak around one sentence scorch. And you know, what's interesting is, and we also have the data, all this is courtesy of zap, those TCG on like the 256 decks that were played and set of scores was like the second most played deck.
Mike:Yeah, that's crazy.
Brent:Any, any thoughts on like, Why we ended up seeing, you know, the cardio Mel metalization do so well in Europe and then kind of bomb out in America.
Mike:I don't know. I mean, it has, it's like by far the best conversion rate to like five out of 24, the metals, Made it and like ADP is the next with 3d and there was 41 80 fees. So like that conversion rate's insane.
Brent:Right. And, and send a scorch has the worst conversion rate. And
Mike:you know,
Brent:that defies all reason, right?
Mike:right.
Brit:do you think it could have something to do with that? Your not Pekichu status was played in Europe versus North America. So if we think that, like we said, the matchup seems to go either way, but seemingly if you play the second bolt-ons that seems does what's in favor of the picker on player, I think. And it seemed like pick around was. Very popular from what I could see. I wish we had more statistics. I'm not sure how accurate that could be, but I would think maybe that could be part of it. Like maybe not that specifically, but just the match-ups in general. obviously since the scorch being really high. should have, should have hampered Luke Mendel's ability to convert so well. So I'm not, I mean, who knows all seven sports could be the most popular deck, but all the Luke metals could still Dodge them the whole time in a, in a bracket, you know, like it could just be variance. I'm not entirely sure. Again too. And maybe it was also that, North America and ADP players were playing to tool scrappers and maybe the European ones decided not to play any things like that seem possible at the very least.
Brent:Yeah, it does. There's nothing seems to jump out. That makes me think it's like medic game versus like kind of more, less specific or kind of just match up R and G.
Mike:Yeah. Britt your question about peek around like big around my think was probably more popular in N a and. The of the average pick around player is a little bit better. And N a would be my guests, like just looking at the people that made it through with speakers from those Mahoen, Justin Bokhari, Kevin Clemente. And then I don't know the last person, Eric Brooks. but I mean, three out of four of those peak around players are very good. so I think a good picker on player does probably have the advantage over. Luke medal.
Brent:let's talk about, let's talk about North America, the top 16 for a minute. Anything's jumped out at you guys.
Mike:So grants, grant manly made it through with the Turnitin test. And like I said, I think it turn it. This might've silently been the play actually for this, I think it takes. A pretty solid match against center scorch, incentive sports teams to be much more popular than anticipated. I think a lot of the ADP Zs, we're not playing big charm and instead choosing other texts like the second tool scrapper and whatnot. And so I think it turned into this is match begins. ADP gets better if they're not playing big charm, it's a lot easier to kill the ADP. You want try the app on the second turn. And clearly loose metal didn't do that well. So it turned to something like that matchup. So that's good. And a lot of the peak around dropped their crushing hammers as well. So that matchup, gets a lot better if they don't have crushing hammers. So I think a lot of things ended up just coincidentally or not, falling into place that made it turn into some pretty good play. And so, I think that's a large reason. Apply granted well, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him make top four.
Brent:Yeah. certainly when you look at the list there, there's a lot of the good players. no surprise. And maybe, maybe the moral story is we dug into European results. We would get a sense of like who, you know, the strong players played the, just played the right decks. Although I felt like, I think I, I feel like I saw that list and there were like lots of like Italian players that I had never heard of. And then like, Benji.
Mike:Yeah, Benji's the only person I know that made it. I didn't see that list, but he's the only one that saw and I'm not, do you know what he played? Which
Brent:think he's the one who played attacking ex Goodrow.
Mike:Nice.
Brent:I was going to ask you if you had any idea what the heck was going on with that.
Mike:Well, he's playing at He is in for a tough time because there's not many good match-ups left for him. yeah, that looks tough.
Brent:Brett. I know you've been following like a lot of the undaunted guys, pretty closely any stories from players cup two that we should talk about.
Brit:No, Tate went out. Oh, and two, I believe Justin went out wanting to, I don't even remember how Frank did Frank is very, all loose at times. He's hard to get ahold of. I know he was. He obviously didn't make it. And I know he won a round, but I don't know anything else beyond that. He never popped back into chat to my knowledge. No, but it seemed like a good day. The peak around players, from what I could see. Good to see Kevin Coleman day's list was very interesting too. And not only did it, it didn't play hammers, but it didn't play anything super interesting and just played more big charms
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:did really well. It would seem. Nice and consistent.
Brent:So a couple of other tournaments that I thought we should talk about, unless you guys have more stuff we should say about players cup too.
Mike:The only thing I'll add is I did see a list for the, I haven't seen a list for the Latin America region. I know Pablo didn't make it. That's, that's literally my only data point there. And I did see a list for Oceania at some point. and I believe the. Guy that won the last players cup. Jack ruler, I believe is the one that won. He is in the top 16 again, this time, which is pretty cool. That's it close to her?
Brit:did the, how did Ross do, did he play clowns?
Mike:Yeah. Ross played bass. Lam's got a buy and then lost two in a row. and Pablo played center scorch. And I think when one and two, so not a good, not a good day for the X-Files crew.
Brent:you know, I recognize, I mean, Like, there's an element of, I mean, this is why, like the whole, they have six one, two automatic cut that day too. Like, it's just really easy when you're only playing five rounds, man, like high RNG.
Mike:yeah, yeah, yeah. like going to X two is good enough at a regional to move on to the next day and going next to here is. You're out. So there's definitely a higher variance and there's been lots of times do I think the, the regional champion, you know, starts off something like two and two fights back to seven and two, and then goes whatever four, one on day two and wins the event. I think that's happened quite a lot, so, I'm not surprised to see some very good players in the top 16, you know, in an NBA is what I mostly can base that on. so, you know, we, we see Kevin Clemente, we see Zach massage, we see Bakari on med grant Mahoen but I'm not surprised to not see. No 12 out of 16, right? I think there's going to be variance that, and not, not, not taking away anything from the rest of these players, they're probably quite solid players, but, we're, we're not going to see all of the name players all the time in a format like this, because there's just more various.
Brent:Right, right. You're not. Yeah. as you said, no disrespect to those guys, but those other guys that you just named are like goats. And I think we've seen so many regionals where like, the topic is like those eight guys and people are like, Oh my God, top eight stack. This is a, this is like, not quite like that. There's, there's definitely a lot of like opportunities for new players that have, not had the same kind of success historically. So in that respect, Hey, you know, we didn't take advantage of orange. You guys go get it. so, so, the other thing, I've a couple of other tournaments I thought we should tell about this week. there was the big a team on daunted versus, I don't even know what the heck it is. Magic Arps and things. And Brit brought, brought pride to the triathlon.
Brit:They're called ramps and carps. I think, I think it's essentially just as equals subs is like channel community, I believe is who they are as a group, including as a, well, I guess since he played the last one, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was cool. Just to have, like, we were. Kind of all playing together the whole time, like, you know, one person was playing and obviously would have to make the decision, but you heard a discord call and could sort of argue about it the whole time, which made it very interesting. And it was really close to, I didn't get to see all of it. but I tried to watch as much of it as I can. and yeah, we've brought similar decks. I noticed that our group didn't bring picket shoe at all, which I wondered if that was. A mistake. We didn't really strategize for an eye. Initially was talking big strategy. Like we'd bring seven Altera decks or something, and surely we would win. so I wanted, I was proposing ideas like that. Like I really wanted to game the system really hard, but I guess there just wasn't time to coordinate something that, intricate. And so we just all played our favorite decks. I played. so I played Makarios, Mel metal. what did I, I took, Mikey mentioned some changes. I co I cut out the STEM Fisk and the tag call, and I can play with one Sonia and one bird keeper instead. they were both pretty good. I mean, I played, it turned on us and I won. I'm not sure if it was really strange, they're pretty close sometimes. Like, even if it goes exactly how you plan, like. It's just hard to deal with the save a lie effectively sometimes. And that's a lot of what the game comes down to. and then bad starts. You can just easily get run over too, which is what happened. The first game. I like whiffed energy for three or four turns I think. And, just he'd killed a blue car before I attacked with it and I can see it. but yeah, and then I forget how it went after that. Dustin one hit the next match with poison and poison. It turned honest against the cardio Mel metal. Kenny lost with ADP to drag a pole like and rock frame clause to Blount with Senator scorch. and then lay lost with. Drag a Poult or like, and rock to figure out what he had to play against with the Aurora box. And then think he played against like greens Pikachu or something, or no green center score is way Tate beat. And then the final match was Azule on welder MuTu. Again, play playing Pika Chu as our decider deck. anyone that one, there was something I noticed about both players cop is I guess I was a little surprised, at least I, I thought Mewtwo was really a pretty good deck. Like, I think that both the psychic version and the welder version were certainly capable of making top 16 at the very least, I was pretty surprised to see none. either side, at least at the one, the unknowns in North America are playing on YouTube anyways, but none in Europe, which I thought was surprising, I guess, toward was close toward. And them, that was their secret deck, lightening MuTu, which I believe he was just around, off.
Mike:Pedro broke for one round off. In your, in your guys', thing was each match up to at a three-year just one game.
Brit:Two out of three. Yeah, there were three.
Mike:So that was like 14 to 21 games somewhere in that range.
Brit:Okay. Yeah, it was hard. And most of them would, almost all of the series went to game three. I'm pretty sure. So it all came down to really tight games and matchups, which was good to see it. Wasn't just. Auto losses being cued into each other or something, which there was always some chance of that happening, I believe. But it didn't turn out that way.
Brent:That makes me feel like it wouldn't be rocket science for PPC geo to add a best of three mode and just like skip all the like weird interactions that people have to do now. you know, all you gotta do is like automatically tee them up for another game and then don't do the coin flip lead, whoever lost pick.
Brit:That's like two basic functions.
Brent:And like, I guess part of my reaction is like, it would, it would just make tournaments like players come through and more smoothly. Like they can just do that. Right. I'm asking, I'm asking, I'm asking for too much. So I wanted to get you guys hot take on. I also posted a, to our favorite Google doc, Danielle to be a one, the hyper Luxe tournament got$500, playing a big around deck that he says his very favorite versus ADP. So he's going to play it until a format changes or until he retires, which I guess was the prior day. any reaction to this, like. is this favor very favorite versus ADP? And you know, we'll gradually see some reshaping of the Metta due to his meadow manipulation tweets.
Mike:Well, so I think you actually took the wrong image.
Brit:Yeah, I thought he won with the MuTu deck.
Brent:I thought so, too.
Mike:He won with the MuTu. Yeah, I don't know. But, so he changed a little bit from towards list. He dropped one of the, Far-fetched devolution surf fetched dropped one of those in something else and put in a Gingerman MCU and the melodic V but otherwise it's the, the same deck and it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Toolbox deck. I think he dropped one MuTu. yeah, so it's pretty cool deck. I really, I mean, I haven't played around with it at all, so I don't know how good it is, but I will. I mean, toward things. That's good. Anything that's good. I will trust them because they are both good to play. Okay.
Brent:All right. Let's let let's wrap up a week worth of tournaments by, having, Mike talk a little about the extra tournament.
Mike:Oh, yeah. So I commentated extra tournament last night. It was pretty fun. I expected to see quite a lot of this deck. Actually the lightning me two deck, we saw a little bit, one of them just bubbled out of top eight, I think, or lost it's one in the top eight. So none of them actually made top eight. but the topic consisted of three ATPs, one, the Carmel metal and then four other decks. And then all the APS lost in topic, which was pretty sweet. and it ended up being a baby little Cephalon versus laparoscopy max finals. So we, we commentated laparoscope in top eight and top four and then top two. so that was pretty fun. It ended up falling in the finals to baby step on in three really good games. so. It was pretty fun. nothing, nothing too crazy, but I just thought it was worth mentioning that flappers didn't seem too bad to me. The list that was played was really consistent, really straightforward. so if, if it turns out that like a colossal, which is, we're going to talk a little bit about maybe the voltage in a minute, but if that kind of pushes out peaker around from the format, I think lapper is actually might have some footage. Okay.
Brent:Yeah. So, so how does the lappers Blaume's matchup work? Is that, is that interesting or worthy of being discussed? Like I recognize you have single prize attackers and you have weakness, like. If you asked me who wins that, I don't know if I would understand how that works.
Mike:Yeah, it pretty much comes down to Kim. Elaborate player gets set up and Marty, the blanch player, like multiple times, And that happened one game and not the other games and also has to like try and boss and killed two pricers when it can as well to jump ahead in the prize trade. so you can't Marnie and Boston the same turn. So that's, what's awkward. so you have to choose like, am I going to disrupt their hand or, or try and kill their or choreo or whatever. So like there was one game where he chose to kill an Ora choreo instead of Marnie. And I think the blouse by I had like seven cards in their hand. And so he killed the word Korea, but then he's still got one shot. Like the BMX got one shot, the next turn. And he had the option of Marnie. So it's pretty debatable, which, which to do, so it was kind of a hard balance. and the Cramer rant is also pretty good to finish the game. So like, the end of the, one of the games you had the laparoscopy max up in the flash player had a very small hand, but he only had one prize left and he had the DNA on the bench. So Kramer ant. Well, there wins the game.
Brent:Nice. All right, guys, should we transition to talking about the new set? It sounds like you guys have been looking at it a little bit in generating some opinions.
Brit:Yeah, let's do it.
Mike:Yeah. I've looked at it a little bit. I looked at it, but really for the first time, last night, kind of wall in between rounds, I was kind of giving some of my thoughts. I will say I'm not impressed. There are not many cards in this set that have jumped out at me. unsurprisingly, the card that I am most interested in trying has to do with spirit tomb. So there is a Don fan in this set that has 150 HB and it does 120 for one fighting energy, which is pretty strong. That's like really good, right? That's one shot in a peek around. And it does 20 damage to all of your bench program on, so you are pairing up your spirit tunes. You're hitting for 240 damage against fighting weak things. You have 150 HP. So you're a little bulky. I don't know. Maybe it's the rebirth of spirit too. Probably not, but I'm definitely gonna try it.
Brit:Yeah. I thought that car looked interesting too. And I didn't see, many people talking about it and most of the top tens and stuff I was going through.
Brent:I know most people don't don't view everything through a spiritual lens, it run with them.
Brit:Yeah, it's got a good fighting. It's got really good support right now. I think, especially with the new energy and the new supporter card, but just like I was saying, I've said a few times so much of the trouble now is that I've given support, but none of them are, are good enough to compete with it or not as really anyways. which so called colossal seems like, you know, the obvious card for that. I'm a little skeptical about it being good. like I recognize that the typing and stuff is there, but I wonder just how good that attack is against anything else. like where, how exactly cause you, you play a ringer as part of your package. I'm sure to try to combo it most of the time, but. I know it did well at a Japanese tournament. I don't recall what else was played in the deck. but it just seems kind of slow. And then eventually you get to two 40, but I would think that's still, it's not fast enough against ADP, you know, knock out ACN or, the ADP any without multiple attacks. And I imagine that just lets them ultimate radio and then you'll lose. So I'm a little skeptical about it being like a really defacto, card of the set. I really, really excited about Snorlax. I think, it's a really good card. I think even in aggressive decks there, I think some merit in trying it out, I think instead of, Instead of another dinner, your curve out, you just get the second one, you get a Snorlax, especially if you're going first. It seems really, really good to me, but then also for control decks too, just it's better as innovation. And so maybe that will give you more the more time that you need. I guess it's just an extra turns out. It's not like all that much more time against Terez ADP. So they don't just knock out your, you know, your big prizes anyways. I think it will have a lot of relativity I'm interested in toda kiss too, again, probably it would just have to be a control deck, something similar to Sylvian, but I just think that I can tax really good even to Sylvie on when it first came out. Would occasionally be used more as a set-up Pokemon more for just powering up your guard of war and I could, I'm not sure what I would be. Maybe the new Char's art and things like that. I feel like it could have some versatility trying to work more as a up Pokemon, maybe with the situation or something like that, or I'm not sure, but probably, probably most likely as your control deck, you're going to play that with, all Terria and the swans and Kangas cons and things like that. I imagine it'll just be another sort of options for that deck. Then otherwise or beetle, or however you say it looks like a lot of fun. I think that'll definitely be my pet project of the set, trying to make something interesting work with it. I'm not sure.
Mike:Spreads.
Brit:Yeah. It's cool. It's attack can do kind of a lot of damage to, to a lot of the format, but it only, it needs a partner of some kind and I don't really have a clue what that would be, but I'm going to work on it. It's the card I'm the most excited for? I think.
Brent:Right. I mean, obviously it kind of naturally combos with save a lie a little bit in that you can kind of spread damage, pick targets. That's like, an obvious thing. So, you said nice things about Snorlax. Do you have like an early opinion guys on Snorlax versus Geraci? Did you run creds? Very good.
Mike:gotcha. Very good. Probably, I mean, I think Draghi is way, way, way better, but, but they're also played in very different, like they might be played in the same deck, but they're played for like different reasons and in different counts, like drought, she's probably going to be. Like the current strategy, it's more of like a three or four of card and Snorlax is more of like a one-off. I think Snorlax takes the place of dashi and kind of like bridge set and even a deck like bliss. Stefan probably runs a Snorlax now instead of Jaci I think is, I'm excited to try Geraci and stuff just cause it can use air balloon. So I think it is immediately quite a lot better than maybe the current strategy.
Brent:Right. The fact that you don't have it. The run an army of switch effects for dead, that the workaround status conditions.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:Yeah, that's something I was really thinking about today was like what Geraci is going to do to Geraci decks. Like, do you do play both? Is the new one better? It's like, does it depend on the deck? Is the old one better for some decks and then new one better for others? There's a lot to, a lot of considerations, a lot that I think we'll just have to test through. I have intuitions on sort of all of those hypotheticals, but I don't really have any clue or, you know, it depends on what you're digging for. Cause someday some decks like that I've been testing recently, like half Geraci. but it just doesn't feel like you need all that much. Like, you know, before, sometimes in the past 80 you would play Geraci and you're still then digging for, you know, whatever, whatever combo piece you need to get to altar creation. But then a lot of times too, like in the peaker, recently where you play the, the scoop of NetSuite have all these Geraci ads and you just don't really need anything. Like if your, your search cards they're just there anyway. So I think like decks like that, where it's just kind of there for a general consistency. I think maybe the. The newer one might be better more often than not, but whereas with something like bliss Cephalon, I would think that has a lot of tiny moving parts or you need to see like more cards and, you know, with five cards you might see two of the three cards are missing or something like that, where, whereas I think your math requires you to dig a little harder. but I don't have a clue. I bet there's a, there's a lot of combinations to try. Obviously, it'll be exciting to find out.
Brent:All right. So, so one of the. I want to ask you guys, I assume beauty's a bad card, right? It's the, it's the new supporter that if you play it, you could play it on going first, turn one and just draw two cards ever. It's never worth a deck slot to randomly try to find a turn one. Right?
Brit:No, I, I would think playing a one judge wish with wall is probably better. And if, if, if that's the case, then I probably would be, and he's probably a pretty weak card, but I could be wrong. I don't know all those first turn gimmicks never seem to be any good. Like, I don't know if people are really freaked out about first ticket. You guys remember that? Yeah. There was a little bit before your time, Brent, do you know, do you know what card we're
Brent:Oh, no, no, I totally remember. I totally remember.
Brit:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. People like I ruined the game. We've got to play for, it was just terrible.
Brent:Right. But, you know, I mean, I think, I think we definitely see a couple of the like classic Pokemon examples of like, well, we printed this card before and it didn't work, but like, let's change it a little bit and reprint it now. what's the, there's the, there's the tool for V maxes that lets you take one less prize, but decreases your hip points a hundred,
Brit:Yeah, the Island amulet, reprint heroes metal or something. That could be good. I thought, man, maybe that the amulet was maybe a little under explored. It was. Occasionally like in like a toward list or something like that, where it's just like, yeah, perfect. You know? but yeah, so I think maybe this card maybe can see play, but I guess that'd be max is really aren't any good if their age, if they suddenly lose HP and half, half of the reason they're good is just because they have so much HP.
Brent:the games I saw it get played where people like attaching it to knock themselves out in strategic situations, more so than like, like putting it on early, it would put it on like late. it's weird to imagine that the, those, those kinds of situations, maybe I would poor imagination.
Mike:Okay. Yeah. So like flipping through the trainers in general, I think maybe that's the most, one of the most disappointing things. It's in general, when I look at a set, I'm always very optimistic about the trainers and if the trainers are bad, then I always kind of assume that the set is just kind of bad in general. And there's not any like trainers that you're like, wow, this is going to be. Played in a lot of decks. Like there's no bystander, there's no professors research. There's no Marnie, like the fighting, the finance, Porter's like not bad. Describe the top five threads of your deck. Attach energy to bench fighting Pokemon that's okay. the best one is probably the Leon card. So you're you do 30 more damage that turn, but it's a supporter. So. Like you're, you're going to have to be using other cards to draw things on the turn that you play that. So this is really good in a deck like ADP that is playing a lot of the Denny's and Crow bets already. other than that,
Brent:about the B card for a second. Cause I'm, I'm a little bit surprised that this a supporter that lets you discard the top five cards of your deck. And if any of them are fighting energy, if you get to attach them to. You're a benched fighting Pokemon on any way you like my immediate reaction to that was I was like, Oh, it's bad. Max elixir as a supporter.
Brit:Resolve wasn't playable.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Like, yeah, like, yeah, I guess my, my immediate reaction was like, nobody's gonna run so many fighting energies that like, they're going to feel like. People with max elixirs all day. If you were just like discard five cards, it'd be like, Oh my God, we're going to live. Yeah, my, yeah. So, so, yeah, certainly I feel like I've, I've looked at the set and I'm just like, man, it doesn't look good. Although, you know, I'm very excited about the dittos and yeah, the next set looks completely out of control.
Brit:Yeah, I hope so that one, this one was just, the age of slash for ADP. yeah, I see, I've seen lots of lists now that people are starting to craft lists for current index, with the new cards. I see Leon being floated around a lot as a one-on-one ADP and I mean, it's worth trying to be sure, but I wonder, like what scenarios do you really need? W additional damage. Like it doesn't really affect most of your thresholds, I would think, but maybe it's just good for like Lou Lucara Mount metal or something. When you don't have a tool scrapper, I could see it being useful there. And if you play all the GOs, then it's always kind of good in your discard. but I wonder what other decks are really sort of fiending for just a little more damage. I think maybe it turned on as could play it. Sometimes they would help them. You know, cause they're going to curve out a return anyways. It would maybe help them one shot. The max is a lot easier. And if, if they're able to do that somewhat consistently, maybe you play one or two of them. then I would think like a scores is suddenly not nearly as good anymore, even though they match up as like fairly close, but it can't go the other way. And it goes the other way or when seven scores just is too shotting you faster than your two shotting it. So. I think that, and just as a presence for feedbacks decks in general, like, it or not us is just clearly one of the strongest ones printed and will probably remain that way. This, you know, throughout the entire block of all of them, they all just get worse if it turned out as it is consistently able to one shop them all. so that's definitely something to think, looking for it. I, I would think that card maybe is worth testing more so. A dark deck rather than ADP, but I guess we'll see.
Mike:makes sense. The rich get richer. one other thing that I'd like to note is that the, some of these rainbow rare cards besides the druggie, but like Their attack costs are pretty ridiculous, but if there ends up being a way to pair these up without too much difficulty, the attacks are super strong. Like Zipkin does 300 damage to a VMX and it's a, you know, a non it's, a single prize, basic Bookman, and the XOM is into it gives itself like it can't be hit by a BMX during the next turn. And it does one 80. So your two shot into BMX and safe guardian yourself. So there doesn't seem to be a way right now where these energy costs can be fulfilled relatively easily. But if we get some way to do that, I would suspect these cards will be very strong.
Brent:Yeah, I was trying to figure out like, I feel like these cards are more playable in expanded or something where you could do like, like stupid ho tricks. Something like that to try to meet bizarre non dragon type Pokemon energy requirements.
Brit:Yeah, that's probably true. All these, all these goofy cards are always, always worth experimenting and expanded. I know there aren't the RCS present star though, is something similar. Remember friends trying to make it work specifically in unexpanded for exactly what you're saying. You know, you've got your counter energies here. You're using mood to cheat stuff out. Suddenly all these goofy energies are very possible. So. Yeah, I could definitely see them having some space and the kind of various new tool boxes that float around and expanded definitely there. Now, until we get double rainbow energy or something.
Mike:the only other card that when I was looking through that is kind of interesting is the talent flame V. So it has free treat to basic Pokemon, obviously for a colorless it's discard your hand and dress sticks, but it can be used on your first trend going first. so that's, I think a pre I don't think it'll see play in any deck. That's not a fire deck. but because it also has another attack, I think it's 160 or 190 for three, one 60 for three, which it's not that bad. I mean, that's basically what Craemer does. A cranberry can hit the bench, obviously, but so it's like a decent fire attacker, but it gives us the fire decks, like a pretty nice option going first. And obviously they don't want to go first cause they want to go second use fall Canyon. But if they're forced to go first, which you know is quite a lot of the time, this is, I think a pretty sweet option. We just quick ball for this and draw six new cards. so I think I would be surprised if this is not at least a one of, in almost every set of scorch deck, every firebox deck.
Brent:That seems very reasonable. I, I dig it and like discarding fires is the business. So with those guys, so like, you're like, yay. Let's discard all of this handful of fire. That's a, that seems really strong actually. So anything, anything that you guys are looking for for players cup two, this coming weekend, who's gonna win.
Mike:sure.
Brent:I mean, with four guys come out of North America, right?
Brit:I wish I could just see the bracket.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I can tell you once I knew that, cause it would just be like, Oh, send us scorch gets free, match up. So I was that way.
Brent:Yeah, right. I recognize it. Really. This is just like, there's an element of just like pick people that we know are really, really good players and say, Hey, that's a good thing. Okay.
Brit:well, I, I would think that Mikey's pick is probably going to be grant. If, if, if he thinks that it turned on us, is the plane gonna eke it out?
Brent:Right, right. We feel like that has a good matchup in the Metta and immigrants. Great. Good at Pokemon.
Mike:Yeah. The one thing I'll say to grant isn't the loser's bracket. So a lot of the good players, the quote, unquote name players are actually in the loser's bracket, the Hoehn Bokhari grant on that. and so they're only one loss away while everyone else in the winners bracket has a loss to give still. so. I had to pick someone besides grant, it would probably be someone in the winners bracket. One of the peak arounds, probably. I know Kevin is a good player, so.
Brit:Okay,
Mike:Okay.
Brit:I'm going to go with a loser pick. I think they're gonna, I'm going to go with them. And I think he's got the extra consistent center scorch list. He's going to make a loser's bracket, run and qualify.
Brent:I mean, he didn't, Zach are basically running same 60, right? Yeah.
Brit:And then for Europe, I don't know. I like Benji a lot. I'll probably just pick him. Cause he's
Brent:Exactly. Exactly. I don't, I don't know.
Brit:also think he's probably playing X schedule. He just always kind of does gravitate towards goofier decks a lot of the time. that would be, I think that would make sense that sort of my intuition of the acts he likes to play, I'd be like, yeah, that's definitely something you would play. I think, so good luck to him. Pretty sure.
Brent:Exactly. We would love to have attacking extra grill. I think in, or I guess after this, they all switched next because it's gonna be the new set dropping, right. But, but yeah, we definitely want to see a taking extra drill do well. And we're all a little bit do fan, so that that's a sound stuff. All right. as always were sponsored by channel fireball. I don't think we have a big ed today because we've already talked for more than an hour about all kinds of things going on in the universe, but we appreciate their support as always. And it's worth mentioning. They love very much.
Mike:Absolutely. Thanks for letting us listen to everyone. We'll be back next week with preliminary, but the voltage testing results, maybe.
Brit:have, I'll have another five and two to talk about. That's just, that's my one life, cause I'm just gonna play my goofy. FedEx every week and just go five and two in the
Brent:That's not true because I know like after like nine weeks, everybody gets to be like, I finally broke through because I see those tweets, you know, a different person has every week soon, it will be, you.
Brit:I was so close. I, I went five and two this last week with the Aurora box and both my losses are just unplayable openings. I like, I didn't even, it was funny. One of them was against EDPC and he like, Oh, quick ball for rosacea and attaches. Intrepid swords. And I just like drawn concede because it's just like, it's over. It doesn't matter. Like I have to get Volcani on this turn. It doesn't matter if I top deck a supporter next turn. Like the fact that I'm not sliced right now means the game is over. And so I'm sure he was very confused, but all the other games went very well. I even want to relate really, really hard game two against a Mewtwo. And it was a lot of fun, but we're beetle or beetle income for you.
Brent:what we like to hear. That's what we like to hear. New set new, a new, her own tales of victory on the pot.