Our first show notes:
https://jklaczpokemon.wordpress.com/
Our first show notes:
https://jklaczpokemon.wordpress.com/
I just walked outside. I don't know about you, bro. It was 25 degrees and when I walked the dog this morning and now it was 60 degrees when I just walked the dog now.
Brit:Oh, it
Brent:you know what? I have not left my desk. Like I had non-stop work until like, like five minutes ago. I thought I was the one who was late to the pot and I was like, Oh, my God, you, people got to stop talking. I got to go.
Mike:It's funny.
Brent:Attendance has to remain 100%.
Brit:What's up. I didn't never heard of that seamless steak before. It was like a quatre equates a deck. That's just a joke
Mike:Oh, thanks. So it was in
Brit:and this can be things.
Mike:it was on JPS list.
Brent:Requires a Stanler thing.
Brit:No, it's just, it's quad. It's the Delta Rayquaza. It's watertight. I'm trying to figure out why
Brent:Yeah, there's this one that came in 11.
Brit:there. It's dual typed, I guess.
Mike:it was on JPS list. The one, the list on JPS thing, which I guess is Jason's thing runs three of the water Rayquaza, and one of the other one. Not the IEX one, but there's some other Noni X one that looks really bad, but it plays one of that. I guess you could, you just get the benefit of all the whole line energies and you, and it has acceleration for the whole on energies. So it's kind of just like a
Brit:PHP just doesn't seem enough. Like, I mean, I guess, I guess the format is so fast that like you're taking your, you're taking some losses, no matter what you choose. And so like, sure. You're not going to be LDS or something, but maybe it's good enough to be. I just I'm sure it's good, but it's just staring at, it makes no sense to me or energies for 60, 80, HP.
Brent:You know, it's funny, I guess I would have assumed that this would run like a whole cast form or something to help like powered up. But instead they run three crystal beach and I'm like, I don't know. This just seems madness.
Brit:It's got the accelerate on it too, though. It makes sense. Yeah. I think really just the, one of the main questions that I have that isn't. And I know sort of fills this role, but I'm just like really surprised that there's not a super degenerate shock lock type deck. Like some just very, very random amalgamation of cards does that is like a broken combo. There just doesn't seem to be something like that in here. And I just feel like with this many cards, there has to be something like that then maybe not, maybe they just never have been something as good as a ranger room or stabilize or I'll be This recently,
Mike:I mean, what, what beats Mula?
Brit:well, Jason did it in the finals with Bannatte or no, that's, Neutrik rather.
Mike:I don't really know what. I'm sure stuff has to beat me a lack of people didn't play it, but.
Brit:I mean, yeah. I mean, I always thought, and I, I'm not sure how much it differs here, but at least the way it was always talked about or whatever, like Mula, Mulex only issue with time, you know, like in a world where no tournaments were timed Sienna, whoever won every tournament with new lock. Right. I don't know if that's just the case here still. But I I'm trying to think. I never remember people always talk about it in that way. Like if you played it perfectly and had unlimited time, you couldn't lose, maybe it was Matt and my boss was the new lock player.
Mike:and I'm like the Rayquaza Stanler deck seems like a, I mean, it's certainly softer, but like it didn't actually do that well in this limitless tournament. Well, I mean, it, wasn't it not a huge tournament, but still a couple of two people played it and Danny just went, Oh one. So maybe that doesn't count, but yeah.
Brent:He played one game. I was like, well, you know, I mean, what's funny is obviously like you look at this tournament and virtually every player is good, but I mean, I, it's also hard for me to be like, who's free camp. Do we even know.
Mike:He I don't know really who he is, but I do know he is a good player cause he did, he did like super well in the limitless stuff last year. Yeah.
Brent:And that's like, my initial reaction is like, it's hard to judge any like deck when it's like person. I don't know. And the people above him are, you know, Jason Burt, Jake, James Arnold, toward full up like. You know, I wasn't expecting you to win. Like they probably had a plan. So, you know, it was probably really hard. Alright. You guys ready to dive in? Welcome to the trash lanch. Attendance is a hundred percent. I'm Brynn Halliburton here with Mike crochet and brick privacy as always. We have a five-star review update guys, although it's a weird one this week, we got two new reviews. The first is by Matt w 66. Great podcast, amazing Pokemon TCG podcast. The second is Champa fund who writes a great Pokemon TCG podcast. Chill. I feel like those guys. Like I would say they're bots. If they probably accept that they're probably not bots, but like it's a bot review. They clearly don't understand what we're trying to do here.
Mike:Well, nonetheless, I appreciate the praise.
Brent:Yes. Reviews. And in that respect, we've still review, but a Champa fund and met w 66 we're we're looking for higher quality reviews for our higher quality review podcasts. We both, but yeah, as Mike said, we, we do appreciate it looking for more though. Step up your game reviewers. I think we have a lot of stuff that we want to cover today. I think our, our plan for today is to really, really, really try to deep dive on the RSDK format that we talked a little bit about last week because it'd be fun and it's a random thing to do, but let's, let's just get the house cleaning out of the way. I last week, I tried to start this channel fireball on fire tweet of the week. And I think a Brit identified this week's tweet. And I think there's no question. It is the right one Connor Fenton's I believe. Do I need a new playmat tweet is no question. The channel fireball on fire tweet of the week. What the heck is wrong with that kid?
Brit:more of a story to that. Cause I don't know if you're familiar with his original role map, that's just a
Brent:The, the, the laying down that mat. I I've seen that, but like,
Brit:Yeah. And if I don't, I don't know if there's anything more to that. Like if it's just something he did, because he thought it was funny and you know, that's just, I think that's probably it, like, there's probably no, like, you know, he didn't lose a bad movie or anything like that, but it's just comedy for its own sake, maybe.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Clearly he has too much time on his hands. Kinda you can reach out to me and I will I'll think of something for you to do with all this free time you apparently have, because we should never do that again.
Brit:Hey, he's just going to make the mat now, despite you, maybe
Brent:Yeah.
Brit:you already can do with that time.
Brent:Well, I, I mean, I, I recognize, I, I think there were, there were just like a couple of comments on that. I think it was the first person to comment and I was like, this is not good. And then everyone else who commented on that tweet was like, how do I buy this mat?
Brit:If the people want it supply and demand, Kenny, Kenny wisdom. And I sort of have this joke. They were frustrated the, by like, if we would've just like put. Ban ADP on like in a, like a box logo on a t-shirt like it would have sold like hotcakes, you know, it would have been like as minimal effort as possible. And I guarantee people would've bought them just like a Gildan shirt with a red box on it. You got to strike while the iron's hot.
Brent:I mean, this makes me wonder, I, I. I never really looked, but like Azul should be stepping up as merge game. If that's the case. Cause I feel like he would be like leading the, the like sales bandwagon for that.
Brit:Yeah, I think that's a good point. Something I've thought about, I guess, you know, Like to, I've been doing some screen printing on my own, but I've noticed that none of the, like, I wish I had a, like the limitless had those hoodies for the online series last year. And that was like it. And I just, like, I think Pablo might have some merge, but like I would, I would buy a limitless, you know, hoodie. I think it for sure if they have like a store and you know, a lot of those, a lot of these sites too are just made to order. So it's. Like, it's not a commitment really. But yeah, I would love to see some, some more Pokemon merchandise. I really enjoy that for whatever reason. Just like supporting my friends and stuff. I'm not never going to be a streamer. I've decided. So I just like to cheer, cheer my friends on if I can.
Brent:You know, I like, I mean, I, you know, I like hearing that you're doing screen printing. Cause that means like, I think all like so much of nerd culture is like, how do I get this really obscure yet? Topical t-shirt you know, like everyone wants the Pokemon t-shirt that no one else has, because that's like, you're like, look at that thing. I did.
Brit:Yeah,
Brent:So all those are
Brit:of them, you know, like even the. Even like the Pokemon center, like it's not just cards that are selling out now. Like you have to fight for the merchant stuff now, too. Which is interesting. And I see some people it's like Raul and will post seem to pay attention to the Pokemon center apparel. But it sells out like I bought, I bought a 20th, 20, 25th anniversary shirt. Cause there was, there was one I remember from the 20th and I always regretted not having. It was kinda just the same shirt, same Pikachu, but now it's got 25 instead of 20, but they're all, they're all sold out. It's just, it's a good time. Well, no, I take that back. It's not a good time to be a Pokemon fan if your sort of enjoyment is predicated on product.
Brent:Being actually able to buy the product.
Brit:but I feel like Pokemon it's certainly in the cultural milieu right now. So that's maybe not a bad thing.
Brent:Yeah, I, you know, it's a weird thing. I wonder if any of this, if we were having like in-person events, if any of this would be spilling over to like growth of the local leagues or something like that, like maybe
Brit:I think it would. I think that definitely. It's hard to know because some of these content creators that are getting big, doing breaks and stuff were like already into Pokemon or already, you know, Pokemon variety of Pokemon content exclusively, but some of them are not. And I would think that some of them maybe would. People who have no affiliation to the game, but have gotten into opening packs to whatnot. I would think they would get interested or maybe more likely their viewers, maybe, you know, they get it, they get, and they participate in that in a break or something. And it's like, Oh, you, I have cards now, what next? And then I just go to a league or something for sure. I definitely think we'd see an increase and almost all of our numbers right now. Unfortunately.
Brent:Yeah. So, so the next question on my list of questions, I wanted to try to grind through for two seconds before we get to RTK is what's going on with the team challenges guys, do you guys.
Mike:Got a message from drew that the playmat for winning the qualifier are coming in soon, but not really anything about the next step, except I did see Luke Morrison tweet earlier today that. Apparently player's cup three double elimination tournament, like the next round. And the first stage of the team challenge are supposed to be on the same day which is so bizarre and so on brand. And so
Brent:That's the correct combination.
Mike:I'm just,
Brit:what I wanted to say.
Mike:I'm just really hoping that this is not true. And I can play in both.
Brent:You know, it's funny, actually, one of my local leagues I had the option to do the team challenge thing. If I had known there was a mat, I would've done it differently.
Mike:I don't know what it looks like, but apparently there is.
Brit:Yeah, I got, I know it was yesterday or the day before I got the email, I got my packs. Like I got the codes from Arcanine labs. So that happened this last week. But yeah, I was just noticing, cause I knew all they're all done now. And I, I was, I actually have tried a little bit to get a hold of my, for my, I guess three, the group of guys players all day with, I can't, I couldn't find them like one, one, the one that I won, the person who got second or I think, or it was clearly one of the more competent people there. It was like messaging me on discord. A little bit. I was trying to find that conversation and I think he deleted his discord because it's. It's just a user number, number, number now. But yeah, I've tried to get ahold of them and just to at least start talking to things, I guess battle styles, won't be illegal then if I've interpreted that date, right,
Mike:Yeah, I think
Brit:it'll be the same.
Brent:So when, when is the, when is the bait?
Mike:March 20th. Yeah. So definitely the players cup three qualifiers, March 20th, then it said. I do remember somewhere seeing that, like it's supposed to start team challenges. The next phase is supposed to start the weekend of March 20th. Maybe it'll be a little, I mean, I don't know. Maybe I was thinking maybe they'll like give you the opportunity to like play throughout the course of a week. Like anytime that your teams can get together, but maybe. That also doesn't seem great for an official event. Like it's fine for the unofficial ones, but like an official event. How are they going to moderate? Like if, if you don't get together and play your games, who are they going to give the wind to? So I don't know the fact that we don't have more information and it's only a couple of weeks away is not great.
Brent:a it's weird. And I, I assume mean, my gift, if you had to choose one, basically your whole life. It would be disqualified.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Well, and like, at least in our case I
Brent:we'll then get there because he started like five hours before.
Mike:yeah. I don't think we'll got there. I don't know about Kettler, but I know me and Justin both qualified and just Justin was above me in the rankings. He was like top five or something. So yeah, I don't know.
Brent:Bizarre bizarre. So is there anything that we should say about players? Couple three at this point, have you started testing for that mic
Mike:I mean, I don't really know how
Brent:at this point, just like play in some tournaments.
Mike:I mean, I don't really know how much more I need to test it. The only. Diff, the only differences from the last four, three, four months are rusted sword in the format and maybe did a V some type of ditto V. Deck is viable and rusted sword. Is worth testing and worth testing against, but I don't think it impacts too too much. Maybe I'm more likely to include some big terms in my peaker. But I'm almost certainly playing peaker album. So I dunno, it's just kind of figured out what the last couple of spots will look like.
Brent:So, so yeah, that's, that was going to be, my next question was much Slack for versus peek around. Cause I know like when we checked in, I guess. Two weeks ago you were thinking maybe much, Lex is the plan.
Mike:Yeah. So I, I guess my reasoning can be summarized as if I played, if I was able to play munch, lacks, absolutely perfectly. It might be as good of a play as peek around, but I'm not even confident as that. And I know I can't play it perfectly. So it's match-ups are pretty good overall, but like some of them are a little sketchy. So the peaker on matchup can be a little sketchy because of Marnie's for Marnie's. So you'd really have to play Ataria I think, to make the match up really solidly, favored But even then Marty's can just kind of screw you over. I think the ADP matchup is obviously a little sketchy as well. Just cause they're so fast and taking prizes and especially if you play against a good ADP player, that'll just kind of like an ADP and is ashy and, and Intrepid sword and whatnot. I think the Luke metal matchup is. Again, a little sketchy against a good player, just cause Intrepid sword. So good. So you'd really have to like adjust the list and play like I saw standard tweet that you might want to play Persian with if you're worried about this ashy index. Oh. And, and the, the poison attorney into his matchup is completely unwinnable if they're on for Heidi and energies. So Yeah. So I dunno the matchup, the match spreads good, but it's like not so much better than peaker on that. And I know I will play peaker on better than munch lacks. So I just feel like I should, they should play that.
Brent:It, it definitely seems to me like you're in one of those situations where you have to run big around until you definitively like take monster ELLs with it, because like, it would be crazy for you to get off that horse. Right.
Mike:Yeah, I think so.
Brent:And like, and like, I don't think the universe is Mehta gaming against Peter on yet, like
Mike:Right. I mean like Peter I'm is
Brent:same text they had before.
Mike:yeah, bigger. I'm still like the it's still one of the strongest decks people you could argue. It's still the best deck, but it's like, It's one of like the top three, four, five decks. And I don't think people are going to overly metagame for any one of those in particular. I'm so sorry. I'm not, not super worried about, about that. You should be prepared to play against peek around. You should be prepared to get play against ADP and it turned into this and blondes and send a scorch, but overly techie for any of those match-ups seems like a bad idea.
Brit:what do you think? I know you probably haven't tested it, but I. On the, on this point of rusted sword, it doesn't seem like people can figure out the best way to fit it into their ADP lists. I see it sometimes you know, more or less like we've talked about tools and ADP quite a bit before, and it seems like, like you want to, you don't want like committing to, to have both is like ideal. Seemingly if you can have space, I've seen some lists that played all three and that seems wrong to me. That definitely seems wrong. You can't play a big charm and sword. And, and air balloon. I would think like it was, I saw it was like two to one and that just,
Mike:Yeah, it seems weird. I,
Brit:sorry, go ahead.
Mike:yeah, no, if you're going to play restored, I would just not play big terms. That seems reasonable.
Brent:Do we have, do I have a strong opinion of what the answer is there?
Brit:I haven't tested. I'm basically with Mike, how Mikey worded it is. I think they had the only way to think about it. Like. It's worth testing and testing against, but it remains to be seen if the perfect list, the list that we refine at the end of all of this will still include it or not. I think, you know, just the original sentiments that were shared when we first saw the scan of the car, that is probably a bigger deal once furcation comes. And I, I'm just not sure even, even with vitality bands, even playing two of them, sometimes it just, the timing is off and they're just useless. The same could be said of the sword here, but in the right metagame it seems very, very good to me in a metagame role. Lots of people show up with peaker on and are not. You know, it didn't bring enough big terms or something like that. It would be huge. But so much of the, your tech strategy just doesn't need it still that I'm not an ADP player. So maybe it'll be curious to see where like Isaiah Bradner goes with it. He's someone we've talked about and just seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to sort of the fundamentals of your, the core of your list.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:it's
Brent:It's definitely better to play the rusty sword than vitality band. Like I know when we were talking about band versus charm, like the value of band, like the biggest thing that jumped out to me was how you could. Put it on your ADP in like the LMC matchup to kind of like incrementally improve your numbers. And obviously, like, that's not a thing with the rusty sword, but like rusty sword is still better because it like improves your people around, match up a little bit more and stuff like that. Right.
Brit:Yeah, I think so.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, it's, it's actually not a huge difference in the peak around matchup because like 10 versus 30 is kind of the same thing. You either way you hit you too for the knockout. But. Yeah, the LMC match up the sword is actually pretty good too, because then you don't care if they have goggles on. So the same as kind of it's the same as a tool scrapper, you just put rested sword on and then you're dashing into one shot and there's oceans. So I guess it's, I dunno if it's better than vitality Ben, that Metro is probably a little better. But. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's, it's fine. The other thing about sword that like, outside of just ADP is it kind of, it opens up the possibility of the straight Xochi index, potentially being playable and messed around with some of the lists that were floating around. Cache played one that then Luke Morsa picked up and made a video about it kind of runs, it doesn't run. The preserver line just runs goon or under rallied. It runs like Leon's and bird keepers and stuff. And it was very clunky. And I think the challenge with any street is ashy and deck is going to be, can you make it not clunky? And I don't know if the answer is yes. Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously I haven't talked last week about how somebody, you know, that got played at a bunch of tournaments, like the first day that it was legal and it did better. All those tournaments.
Mike:Right. Yeah. And unless I've gotten better since then, but I still don't think they're at a level that makes them any better than ADP or Luke metal. Lashey like those still seem to be better variants to me. And you can actually run a couple of swords in Luke metal and I feel like that might be okay. As well, that would help Luke metals speaker on matching too. So that's, that's another use case of stored that worth testing. If you're, if you're interested in playing LMC you should test store it again. I don't know if it will end up being worth the spots, but it's where it's worth messing around with.
Brit:do you think, just kind of to maybe close out our discussion here on players, cup stuff. Do you think that. The straight Istation deck, whatever, whatever the final version of it is, you know, it just seems to be refined a little bit since we first talked about that. Do you think that's competitive at all? Has your, has your view changed? It's not putting up results. all. I D it's unclear. I haven't, I didn't dive into the numbers. I doubt very many people are playing it. So I'm not sure how much those results are speaking to the deck, but it just seems both good and bad to me on paper. I'm like, I'm intrigued by it, but I'm not also not surprised that it it's not good enough.
Mike:I, I don't personally think that it's going to end up being a super competitive deck. So. In my opinion, the way that a deck like that should be built is, and it's kind of the same as a Luke metal. I feel like the strongest start that a ASEAN deck can have. That is not ADP is you go first, you start Xhosa and you attach to it. You Intrepid soared into an energy turn to you, attach boss something and kill it. Like that feels like the strongest line for any of these types of decks. So I feel like you really have to build. Your deck to streamline that and get that as often as possible. That's why in LMCA, I don't like playing coding energies and I like playing for boss cause like gives you the highest form of that. So the straight Zetia index, if they're running all of these texts like preserver and multiple goons and Geraci is, and. Coding energies and whatnot. Like every time you play these cards, you're decreasing the odds of getting that line going. And so if you can kind of find like a middle ground of like an optimal way to get that line, while also you do need some numbers to like get above the two 60 with rested sword. So you probably need. Probably need some extra goons. You do want a way to like, to shout of Emacs with like two 60 plus something. So like the rally, it does make sense. I understand why it's there. But like the balance of, of, of consistency versus additional damage stuff is going to be tough to figure out.
Brit:What about, what about expanded maybe? Is, does it have a place there
Mike:Well, I just better, right? Yeah. Trish, Ben's pride better, but maybe,
Brit:know, even before rested, soar, didn't Robin Schulz. He didn't win, but I think he went, he was the first seed going into top cut with just like a straight zation. And this of course just makes that better by quite a bit. So are you getting, you have lots of good tools and a to slash, and I don't know, even like steals, shelter and things like that, all like could be useful in the right Mehta games. I would think that's probably, I mean, but at the same time, turbo, dark just does so much so fast. Like your number of year, you don't have enough health
Mike:Yeah,
Brit:don't, can't really, wouldn't be able to one-shot any of their bigger guys. I don't know. Maybe that's not right.
Mike:yeah, I think you could get there cause you also have that you have that the, the basic, I forget what it's called, but there's the basic that all your metal guys do 10 more. So you play like one or two of those
Brit:as a dull mice, right?
Mike:So yeah, it's probably good. Yeah, that's probably good. And you have ranger too. So like the that's the other thing with the streets of Washington deck is that you can just, you could be ADP if you're able to like, do two 80 and kill the ADP right after the GX. But if you don't do that, they're going to win every time because they just need to kill two Zambians and you need to take three knockouts. So in expanded, do you have Rangers? So that doesn't matter, but in standard, I don't know. It seems sketchy to me.
Brent:Should we talk about battles? For a second guys, when isn't it legal? legal? Like the week after the 20th?
Mike:something
Brit:it obviously it'll be legal again for the next phase.
Mike:Yeah. Hi.
Brit:that ladder should hopefully be interesting. Cause like these that's just haven't been impactful enough. So even though player cup one and player cup two, both have had kind of a new format at the end of it all. It just really hasn't mattered. Really made all that much of a difference, but maybe this one will people. People are really excited about this, that I am as well. I guess I'm just kind of holding my breath on whether or not it'll change things significantly or not.
Brent:So give us, give us 30 seconds of your excitement about the set I'm interested in hearing the the, what excites you.
Brit:That's a lot of stuff. We've talked about, like, like sweet, good, Mikey, what Mike, his answers to the question of what he missed most was, you know, useful bench sitters or something to that effect. And there's the hound doom and the artillery. Really excited me. I'm just kind of in on another side, the promo art artillery is so good. I really, really like it. It's super good, but just in general, I I, I think that the, I don't think one of them is good. But the one that attacks for one energy and kind of has a first impact or not a first impression kind of attack. I think that one will be good. I saw a Japanese list. Scrolling through Twitter. It definitely looked interesting. But this is different. It's a unique new mechanic. And I think people it's just different and people are hoping that it's also good at the same time. And I think that's where my feelings are. The supporters, new supporters that are different and interesting. But it's a new direction kind of just a little bit different than all the other VMX sets the sword and shield set so far. Like it's. It's got the VMX was and something new and not just like, all right, the next, the next big basic. It just it's a stage one instead of a big basic now, but I'm not sure.
Brent:we should talk about Australia. New Zealand. Congratulations Australia.
Mike:Yeah, don't travel there. Anybody don't even track.
Brent:You know what I I'm sure. I'm sure you guys all got these messages to the like, Oh, we're going to Australia. We're going to Australia pack your bags. Let's let's hit it. That was like, I was like, yeah, I hear that. But like it wasn't the knock on Australia. Always that there's like two events.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I don't think spin is, you know, it's not about events in general, like it's for small events. That's not, it's not like a regionals is going to pop up this year or anything. I would be surprised. It's just saying you have our blessing to do in store again.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Which some,
Brent:think the knock on Australia was always that like very, a small Pokemon community.
Mike:Yeah. And, and like some places in Oceania, we're already kind of doing like small local events, but I think it's exactly what you said, brands just like Pokemon saying that's okay. Okay.
Brent:Yeah. Our props to New Zealand for continuing to do a good job of keeping the pandemic contained. So speaking of innovative supporters and bench sitters, should we talk about our SPK guys?
Mike:Let's do it.
Brit:Let's dive in.
Brent:All right. You know, it's, this is very exciting for me because I think on like the very first podcast we ever recorded, we talked about how we wanted to do more kind of like old format discussions. And I think on the first like half dozen podcasts, we did a little bit of like 2013 cities. Like we covered some of this. This is really like the first format where I never played this format. And when I picked up all these cards over the last two weeks, I was like, I have no idea what any of these cards do.
Mike:So have you been, have you been playing with Liam?
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Okay.
Brent:Yeah. So, so all my opinions are informed by incredibly small sample sizes with ridiculously high orangy, but like I was playing with physical cards. So in that respect, it was like really fun.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:So let's start by just talking about like this format, like this was never actually a thing, right guys.
Mike:Correct.
Brit:Yeah, it's just it's just something Jason cooked up. Cause he's. And if I don't even, well, the winners, the last event I saw that it was 20, 2017 in AIC. He showed up and played SB on garb, but he really stopped playing, I think after 2015 worlds, he just kind of vanishes,
Mike:Yeah. Like after he won nationals and played that worlds and then he was
Brit:Yeah, I think he talked 32 though else. Cause I remember he had an interesting deck. He played, it was like his towed, his towed concept, but it played hip pout on, which had the safe, has a safe heart attack. But yeah, he just sort of, he just kind of disappeared after that. I talked to him occasionally really more. I talked to his girlfriend and tell her to. Say hi for me. Like, I just it's like his birthday is really close to mine, so I always remember it. Sorry, but anyways, so he he's been experimenting with lots of old formats, like before this, it was based to Neo. And then there is like, I think a lot, some like base rules with like bands and things like that. I think he, one of the earlier things he cooked up was like a base up format without energy removal, I think Minneapolis is his sort of his, his brainchild, I think, which seems to be working really, really well. Like.
Brent:that was going to be my next question is like, do you guys, do you have any like thoughts or opinions on why this format seems to have kind of caught the community a little bit?
Mike:Well, I think there's a pretty. Strong nostalgia just for the IEX series in general and like all the formats. Oh, four Oh five Oh six in particular. Oh six, because the, I don't know for some of the reasons that we were talking about current format, like there's interesting cards and the interactions were cool. The cards were cool. The, there was a. Couple of different strong consistency engines. Like with between the whole on engine, you could run just straight supporters with some dual balls and whatnot. So I, yeah. I don't know. I think that's part, I think that's a large part of it.
Brent:What, what period of time does RSDK cover?
Mike:Ruby Sapphire comes out in 2003 at some point. And power keepers comes out, which is the last set comes out in winter 2007. I want to say. So you get so world's 2004, had a couple sets that were not in the, not in this because they had like some of the e-card sets. Expedition acapella Skyridge but then after world SAS and for those rotate, and then it becomes Ruby Sapphire on and then power keepers comes out. It's like the, the set right before nationals is the first diamond and Pearl set of 2007. So you're so you're looking. Yeah. So I don't know if that answers your question.
Brit:I think to where it's just kind of worth noting here in the history is what. Really what, what marks this? A lot of it is, this is when the game changes hands from wizards of the coast to I guess CPCI research lab, like all of that, whatever, whatever collectively you want to refer it to. And so I think, I mean, I think that's, I mean, just a big part of it, at least it's just like, I don't know the history well enough, just kind of beyond that fact that, that I, then I don't know how this. You know, this transition affected numbers and stuff, but I think kind of at the end of wizards you know, that was like the 2001, 2002 worlds where masters show up and don't get to compete. So I think they had kind of run its course or something. And so this, I think was a huge, I don't know how much of a rebirth it was, but definitely like just almost a new game in a lot of ways.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, it's when I, like I played in a, in a super trainer showdown and a little bit of things like in the wizards of the coast era, but not too much, but Ruby Sapphire for me, kind of there was real tournament's that you could start going to on a regular basis. Like city championships started Like right after sandstorm came out, which was the set right after it'd be Sapphire. And then they had state championships for the first time. And so before that it was kinda like. One tournament a year, maybe that you could go to one or two tournaments in a year, a year. And so this was a, this was a big cultural shift of like everywhere across the country. You could have like standardized events. So yeah, and, and the game really did steadily grow from, from 2004. To what we have now, it's really almost every year we've seen increased since then.
Brent:But you had a ton of questions. Tons of questions here. I'm not
Brit:I don't, I don't mind being the one
Brent:right there. Yeah.
Brit:Yeah, totally. So kind of just know where we're just in the kind of general, general points of it. All. One of the main things I was wondering about, or just like a way to think about it, do you think it's the same quite, is it analogous to expand it? Like, is it, is it the same thing, like, or is it different at all? Do you think? Is there, you know, is it. Does it feel different? Does it feel, cause I know expanded, we talk about it a lot in terms of like, there are so many cards and yet you know, it's just so often it's the most recent ones that are, they're always impactful at the very least. and so here, it seems like the it's not the, so I guess here's what I'm trying to say. Like in Pokemon now, like, you know, this Cards from the upcoming set, like will probably matter and expanded right away. But here, it seems like a card from 2004 has almost an equal sort of, you know, chance of being viable being used. And I guess sort of wondering if you think that's right at all, or if it is still more like expanded, like where there are a lot of cards, but it's still just very metagame dependent at the end of the day. And I think a lot of some of my questions will kind of continue this, but this one of the main. Things I've been trying to think about. And also maybe to relate that to is you know, talking about what makes it that good. What makes the deck bad? Is it something in the design or is it just a meta-game sort of thing?
Mike:Hmm. So I do think that well. So the first difference that immediately comes to mind for expander is this carpool is much, much, much smaller, right? It's only covering two and a half years worth of sets and expanded. Now has 10 years. I don't know exactly.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, that just shows to me just the difficulties of like, it's just hard to think about time. Cause to me like
Mike:I know.
Brit:like ancient history or something. So I just had to have been this giant card pool, but no, it's really not. And I don't remember if we talked about it on here or not, but I just like. The, you know, the, the first year or two of me playing the game feels like a decade compared to, whereas like 2014 through now is, is like, is like that or something. And it's just so strange how that happens, but
Mike:Well,
Brent:Good privates reflects on being an old man.
Mike:Well, I agree. Like I always tell people the first, like the first semester of college was like one of the longest experiences in my life. Like, it felt like it felt like years compared to other parts of my life. And I think probably because, you know, it, it, in similar reasons, it's like a new experience. That's novel. It's a lot of, a lot of stimulation. So probably similar reasons to why. You know, the first year playing feels that way.
Brent:Yeah. And I bet the sets were I mean, even the sets were probably much smaller than the sets that they print now. Right. I mean, I haven't actually looked, but I assume that they were 90 card sets or something. Versus the like 250 card, like dumps that they just drop on us.
Mike:yeah, that's true. There was a lot less. Filler. I mean, there was bad cards. Like don't get me wrong, but there was a lot less bad cards, I think.
Brit:I mean, it was similar. I think, I think what we said last week, like you can, when we were talking about the bench sitters, like you could, in my time, when I started playing, you can put like all of the cards, most of the Pokemon were designed well enough to the. Point where you could, you could make them consistent with clay doll and the supporters and whatnot, and it would at least be okay. And that seems to be the case here. Like, you know, maybe primes are a good example, like so many, even the primes, these all, all of them, there's just always bad ones. Whereas, so, and of course there are Abadi Xs too, but so many of them just seem. I mean, and they're different too. And I think that's the biggest draw. At least for me of this format is the, it, you know, the concepts are different in that the fund X or are viable, like just going through, we don't, there's nothing comparable to either like the liability decks or the fire guard of war and things like that. And it's just, or spread, like I talk about all the time, like it's just so many there's variety and not just in. What's you know, available to you, but just in, you know, your, your options too. Like it's not the card pool that you can do a whole lot with it as well.
Mike:Yeah. I do think though, kind of going back to your question that the cards are. The from Ruby separate power keepers are all relatively the same power level. The first time. I mean, there's more cards that are more powerful than other cards and you probably saw a slight power creep in that time, but not super significant. I think diamond and Pearl, which is, you know, the next set first set of the next block is really where you kind of see the, the jump like incarnate in poli on Luke. Carrio where all immediately. Top tier decks as soon as they came out. And so I think that kind of, that, that was like the biggest jump in, in power at that time.
Brent:So, so Britt, I'm gonna have you drive most of the discussion because I don't think I have like super thoughtful discussions about like a big picture for me, but I did have two kind of comments that I think for me kind of characterize the experience I had playing a bunch of. Games in this format over the last like week or two, that, that jumped out as being things that made me say, ah, yeah, this is why people like this a lot. I liked playing this Pokemon game maybe more than I've liked playing ADP. Eh, the first was, I know I've talked before about how much I enjoyed the GX era. I really, really liked how Like stage twos are better than even IEX is generally like it's like painting and maybe in a little overly broad strokes, but like, just add it's like simple. As when I got out a dark Tyron guitar, it has 120 hip points and it hits like a pile of bricks versus sneezed Lex and like sneezing. The Xs is big for a basic, but like he's still only has 90 hip points. And I was like, I felt like the, the, like trade-off of playing a stage two deck versus big basics. Like you're not as punished for playing a stage two deck. And in that respect, you know, I've always been a big fan of that. I found it very rewarding that like, that was a fine thing.
Brit:yeah, I think sneeze a little IEX and dragged her is such a good example because it it's a huge, it's huge. It has 90 HP. That's a big basic, but some games are exactly as you describe it, just get, can get blown up early by something like that. Yes. I love that car. That car is so interesting to me. It's just so. Underwhelming, you know, it does one for 10 and drag off, but it was format defining, you know, things like that. It's just always interesting. I think maybe it's just the point of comparison.
Brent:Yeah, but that, yeah, but I liked how I was like, okay, you know, you can, you can play kind of a big basic C kind of thing. And it has way more hit points than all the other basics do. And it hits harder than the other big base, the other basics do. But like you're awarded, if you want to play a stage two. By getting an even bigger Pokemon and it only gives up one price and I'm like that. I like that. That's what I'm looking for in like a Pokemon format. You know, I want to play evolutions. I want to be, I want there to be like reasonable trade-offs there. I felt like it, it felt pretty reasonable. The second thing that I really liked, and I know, I mean, I guess I had heard people talk about it for. Maybe say ever since I started playing Pokemon, but I'd never really experienced it for myself was like the whole on engines. Delightful.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, it's really nice. Right.
Brent:Yeah. I mean the, the, the idea of there are whole on cards that are Pokemon and there are whole long cards that are Pokemon that become energy. And there's hold on cards that are like a diverse set of supporters. And then you have like, hold on, transceiver, that lets you get them from your deck or get them from your discard. And, and so as a result, you're kind of incentive to run a bunch of, one-offs kind of like, like the via seeker era that, that I would felt very familiar with, but like you didn't have to turbo through your deck to like get them into your discard to take advantage of them. And in that respect, like it's just very pleasant to play. Like it's it's something that gives you a consistency boost, both from like a supportive perspective and from like energy consistency. And in that way, it just seems very thoughtful.
Mike:Oh, yeah. So talk more about the energy, the whole ons energy.
Brent:So, so I, you know what I have, I haven't used the whole on energy yet. Really. The only thing that I've been, the only Dex, I think that I've played that. It was like, hold on, cast form where I'm like, Oh, okay, this is a thing I can do. And, and in that respect, it lets me like, if I feel like I've been missing an energy attachment fraternity, like, Oh, I can do this thing and
Mike:I just want the listeners to know that before Brent started playing, he asked why there was no hole ons, Magnemite in a deck with Hauns magnetron. And
Brent:I've figured it out. Now. People we are we're slowly but surely getting there.
Mike:I was like, ah, so innocent.
Brent:Exactly. Exactly. So now, now I've played enough games with like the whole on engine and a couple of different decks where I'm like yeah, just anytime you find one of those cards, you're like, okay, this is it's going to be okay if you, anytime you find a hold on strategy where you're like, okay, this is where we're gonna do something nice. It it'll be very pleasant. So, so those were my, like two big picture observations about like how this format works. That, that made me say very pleasant. Like, it seemed like a good balance of is versus stage twos. And it seemed like many of the decks run an engine that gives you like pretty strong consistency, both early game and late game. Because it lets you kind of interact with both your deck and your discard, which is nice.
Mike:Yeah, one of the benefits, I really think of the RSP K versus any of these individual formats is that you get the consistency. Stuff that was in all of them. So like 2004 is a pretty cool format with cool decks, but you really only had the dun sparse Del Cadi engine. And then like, Oh, five Oh six, you get, Oh, five, you get piggy at, and then, Oh six, you get, hold on engine. And so that's really cool to to be able to have. All of these little different pieces and we see an expanded to expanded decks are way more consistent. And so it's similar in that regard.
Brit:I guess to just I guess I have two points here. I'll start with one about the engines just since we're on the topic of the whole lawn package, transceiver and all that. And this will be, I guess, kind of related to some other stuff. I always, I always just think we missed things. I guess the, the era that these cards were all legal and would seem to me, like they would be, it would be more likely that we missed things just in terms of there were less players information wasn't as shared as much. Like there's no way we. Super-duper cracked all of these cards. And so my, I guess my, my main question there is that, do you think that, and this is something related to when Danny was asking about 2006, he asked or at least seemed skeptical talking about that format in the sense that like, hold on. It's just, is it always right? Because his, in his example, that that format has basically all the draw. So much shuffle draw, a lot of the ones that we currently have with you know, rockets, admin being in, things like that. And that's just my main question. And I think about that too. We see these paradigms shift in the game too, I'm thinking particularly of 2012 state championships. When. This is when people moved away from collector and things like that and their electric deck, and you just went all doable. And that was a really big paradigm shifts people for so long. Like why would you flip cards? I'll just guarantee supporter three Pokemon and things like that. And. I remember it was like current Hill and pram. Maybe. I think some actually I think someone did it at worlds in 2011 world. Someone had actually figured it out already, but it hadn't, it hadn't, it didn't catch on for a really long time. But yeah, just exactly that. Do you think that maybe some of these decks are constructed wrong still and could could be rearranged with different engines that they have. They have now, or is just kind of the, the core builds from their respective areas. It's probably just going to be the way to do it.
Mike:Yeah, that's a good question. And it's very possible. I think when my, my first thought when Danny had talked to us about that was. Since there's so many turns in these games and the deck, the cards are S I, I like I'm going to use some heart stone terms. So in Hearthstone, you're often trying to figure out the balance between like the, the value of a card and the tempo of a card. So like a card. Can be played like on curve quote-unquote in Hearthstone and then that would be considered tempo, or maybe you need, maybe it gets better throughout the game. So you want to hold it for value. And I feel like we can apply that here in, in a format like, Oh four, five Oh six RSP K. Since the games, how much longer your cards tend to. If you want to get more value out of them because the games are longer, you're going to be playing less cards overall. Or even if you're not playing less cards, less cards hit the discard pile than they do. In, in the mud, you know, in current standard right now, right now, each card in standard is not super high value or at least. Like the Pokemon or super high value, but the trainers really aren't. And so that's why you see, you can, you can Juniper away a bunch of stuff and not feel bad about it. Like your value comes from your tag teams cause and your Pokemon, your V maxes and, and whatnot where he's in these formats. Since you need evolutions and you need other things like each card, just, you need to get a little bit more value out of each individual card. So something like a dual ball or even a, you know, a, a nest ball, which was in the format. Great ball was, was NASPA at the time. Like they, they, they don't do as much, like they don't have as much value. Their effect is not as strong. And you want, you really generally want your cards to have a strong value, I think, in, in slower formats. And so I think that at least drives a lot of the deck building decisions from like a philosophical perspective, if that makes sense. So maybe there are some aggressive decks. That should be built differently. Like the, like the nine deck. So like Jason's arginine list, for example, has the whole, an engine in it. But I want to say. Let me see, what did Jake, your heart's played? Did he play, hold on engine. So his, Oh yeah. He had a S he had a thin hole on engine, thinner haul an engine, but like Sam Huff's arginine deck that he didn't play in an RSP. K played it in 2006 format, but you could still make some parallels, like he ran dual balls. And it was more, a little bit more. His was a weird deck though. Cause it was more aggressive, but also less aggressive cause he played for palliate and extension as well. So he kind of like sacrificed some value from cards like Holland mentor and whatnot and increased value in other places. But yeah, I don't know if that that's kind of like a philosophical answer more so, but I hope that
Brit:I mean, it's speculative either way. There's no, again, it's not like we were gonna re reason to an objective definitive point or something like that. Just kind of on the same note, one of the other things I'm wondering. Maybe more related to my first question on whether or not it was analogous to expand it, but do you think, and it just seems hard to now without more, more events, more events with more people too. Do you think the format could benefit? It doesn't seem like it needs a ban or anything like that. But do you think it could benefit in any way? Is there any, nothing really stands out to me again. I think I'm, I'm hesitant to suggest that the, the results are always going to be so open. I would think that in, in theory, if say we had a player's cup in this format, or just say, if, you know, if these could somehow get as many players as stewards are limitless, I would think that the results would start to, would start to trend in a certain direction, something some decks clearly would. Come on top. And I would think it would be, it would be the peaker arms of the format decks with a lot of 50 50 is what ended up being the best deck. And I guess too, this is sort of what happens in these old things. Like how could you compete when you're playing against players who have played this tech for 15 years or something like that? Like, I would think that all these old school players would really scare off newer ones. But yeah, that's just, do you think there's anything worth banning or limiting even.
Mike:He had nothing super Opie comes to mind. Like probably one of the cards that you would probably consider is like Statler and mid non maybe both of them kind of lead to both new lock and the Rayquaza Statler deck are kind of. Very frustrating to play against listeners. For those of you that don't know, Statler has two attacks. One of them is a colorless 10 damage, and if the opponents involve Pokemon, they're confused. And then for two color lists, it's 20 and you get to discard a train your card from your point of tan. So supporter items, stadium doesn't matter. And then mid-on is half of an arranger or no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. It's in some senses. It's it's. I dunno, it's probably not better, but it's put any one card from your district probably right into your hand. So you get any card. And so both of those for the same reason that like Stabili or, and grew and whatnot are now banned and expanded. I think those would probably be the first things that I would look at. If I were to think about banding, anything like you could, you could argue like new VX, but like. Yeah, like deck exists because of men on, in particular. And like Neutrik is powerful, but probably fine. Just same way seismic toad is. Yeah. So those are those. Those would be like the first cards to look at. It might even like maybe just min on maybe Stanler sign.
Brit:Yeah, it seems probably. If there had to be one, whatever prevents you from playing like the most fair, but yeah, it's funny too. Just even thinking about power creep here. These are probably the closest that we get in this format to something like a ringer. Ooh, save alive. Button will be in there. Just
Brent:I mean, men is
Brit:so underwhelming imperative,
Brent:infinite power, hand extension. Right?
Brit:right?
Brent:Right. Like I, you know, I think, I think every, the thing we always wonder about is these, these cards that have say essentially enabled infinite recursion encourage you to play a certain kind of day.
Mike:Yeah. And like power power is probably like one of the most powerful cards in the format. But if you can't do it infinitely, then it's not like not Bantible.
Brent:Yeah. That's I was wondering if you were going to go pound, hand extension when he was asked about bendable cards, but like the recursion is the problem, right?
Mike:Yeah. Like Pat, Pat is extremely powerful, but it's more or less fair. It's more or less.
Brent:So, I, I mean, I texted you guys last night, I was playing Bonnette versus new lock and I was trying to figure out like how much stuff I was supposed to bench. And like, the tension I had in the game was what's the, what's the guy that decreases your tree cost once drinks, right? Yeah. And I was trying to figure out like, okay, so I know he's going to confuse me with the Statler. Do I get two bandits out, but if I benched the jinx, so I can go back and forth, he's just going to pound head extension, all the energy onto the Jenks and you know, and then I'll lose. But like, I can't just afford to infinitely retreat, the, but that's back and forth to get out of the confusion. So, you know, unless I have the drinks out. So like, it wasn't obvious what I was supposed to do, and maybe I'm a bad player and there's some obvious answer to this, but I was like, well, this infinite recursion, terrible thing.
Mike:Yeah. And you can't like. You can't just like shady move every turn, right. Because they'll like, they can kill you fairly quickly if you just have one Pokemon and with jinx and yeah. That's, that's tough.
Brent:It didn't seem like that was a thing. So, so yeah. So for a rookie RSF PK player eh, I mean, you like it as a, Hey it's controlled deck. It's not obvious how to navigate that match up, but if you've never played it before
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:the first time the other guy's like my, my objective is not to kill your poker mine. You're like, what do you do every time? Right. So I tried to play it slow. I was like, well, I'm just gonna like go in with this Bennett, but. Yeah, you flip a couple of tails on confusion and you're like, this is not going the way I wanted it to.
Mike:And it's not like, fuck, like flipping for confusion nowadays is like, Oh, you know what? If I flip tails, I'd take 30 damage. It's okay. I have 300 HB.
Brent:Right. I'm hitting for 200 damage. Like it's a fine trade off. We'll get there.
Mike:Yeah. But when, when you have 90 HP flipping tales on confusion feels really bad.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. It was horrible. It was horrible. I was like, why? You know, and yeah. And after like it turned into, I, I was like, he's going to copy shadow. Chintan bench me out.
Mike:Yep.
Brent:And he's attacking with new, for weakness. Like we can't do this all day.
Mike:Yep. Maybe they should maybe they should power creep some of the special conditions up like. Just, this is an aside, I just thought of like, if a, if a, if a multi-product Pokemon is confused and it flips tales, maybe it takes 60 damage. And if it's poisoned, it just automatically takes 20 in between turns or something like that. Yeah. That might be good.
Brit:I like, I like the sentiment there. I would, I would worry that that just makes special conditions to go. But I liked that I liked this idea where we can punish rules. Box and more S more specific ways. I think that's definitely a good thought in the design space moving forward. And some of these questions don't seem all that relevant. Yeah, I mean, I guess I've asked it kind of a little bit, but let's talk about the best deck. Let's talk about the best couple of decks. Now, if we can, if there's even a way to do that and Yeah, I phrased it earlier is what makes it that good or bad in this format? Kind of just what you think other people are going to bring, or is there some best stacks that are more or less always going to be good? Always going to be safe. Maybe like I was talking about with the peaker, I'm like, what are the ducks that I have some kind of just straight 50 fifties across the board.
Mike:It's like new trick seems like a deck will always be good. It just has a very consistent, straightforward strategy. Just kind of like toad variants were good for. So, so, so, so, so long just for that reason, right? You have item lock, which is a very powerful effect. And Neutrik does it the best. There's some other things that can also do the item lock like a, I there's a dragon ID XD that has the same attack. I think there's a Crow bat that has the same attack. But those are both stage twos. So, you know, merely X metric, they can do it much quicker. I feel like that will always be a very strong deck and always in contention for best deck. Some type of Blastoise deck probably always has some place in the Metta because. It can play so many different attackers that it could adapt really to whatever is the popular decks at the time. So we saw, we saw both Fulop and toward play it at the last limitless event. They had different lists, but but like, For example, they both included from crystal guardians, which I had never seen before until I played full up on a TCG Yuan last week and it, you know, it does 70 to any Pokemon. But. And that's just pretty good in general, I guess he had yeah, he did play steel X as well, but 70 anywhere is pretty good, but in particular, at one shots in arc nine so far, can I got really good? You could just play that. And I had as good, good recursion in the sense that you have Pokemon retriever, you have power trees. So like, You can play a bunch of one-offs and get them, get them all back. Oh yeah. And you have the syllabi X as well. So those two decks, like immediately come to mind is like probably no matter what they are able to and you trick, like you don't have to just disconnect every turn to you can play other things to copy. So any deck like that, that can adapt based on an evolving meta-game is probably always going to be a mainstay.
Brent:You know this is relevant to virtually nothing more things we noticed about these old format decks is. They referred the, some of the card effects refer to themselves in third person. So like, like the lady of CX deck that was in the metric deck, it's limitless. I mean, ice barrier says prevents all effects of an attack, including damage done to lady of CX by your opponent's Pokemon, the exterior and your opponents next turn. And today, like if you were playing that with like a mute DX, you would be like, well, it refers to Latvia CX, like Muey X, I mean, who knows what happens.
Mike:Right,
Brent:I like, like the way we read cards today is different. And that's why they, they like refer to this Pokemon in the cards. Like they just didn't like, they, they don't account for all the edge cases. Now they're like, they know that they, they do this thing to themselves and it's so good to see the TCPI people pulling it together a little
Brit:Like the, I mean maybe, maybe the one sort of blot on diamond and Pearl era is that so many of the cards then are worded because for the, like, with the implication of the double battle rules and it's really, it's, you know, it's specifies like either defending Pokemon all the time and things like that. And I'm not sure if either of you have ever played the official double battle rules, but it's terrible.
Mike:No, I haven't.
Brit:It's really long. It's bizarre too. Like you you can S I forget, I've, I've played it a couple of times, and it's really complicated. You can like, I can play a search card and then you can search your deck, like stuff like that happens the entire time. And it takes for ever. And you know, there's no more thought to it. So like strategy-wise is probably just let's team up on him. Let's kill him really fast, something like that. And you know, it just it's, you know, beyond, beyond this wording, the cards were not designed to double battle, but just an aside, how's it worded?
Mike:In terms of. Sorry. I was just going to say, like, so I talked about lbs and Neutrik being like mainstays. And so they're probably always like tier one, tier two. But my understanding is of the format right now. And this could be wrong because I haven't played too many of the events. But my understanding is that the Rayquaza Stanler deck is tier one currently.
Brit:Yeah. When I was first, this was a few weeks ago, not when I was preparing for today, but when I was first sort of trying to explore I got pointed to the requisite Stanler deck quite a bit.
Mike:And, and again, I really don't know the status of new lock. My S I don't know what beats it. So like, my first instinct is to say, it's the best deck, but, but maybe I'm missing something obvious that some of these decks can play around it.
Brit:What about Bannatte obviously Jason winning here, I guess, worth noting, too, just as a kind of semantic trivia as Jason and toured played in round two of this RSVP K tournament and Jason won. So go, go conversation is over. They played resolved, which of course of Jason, this Jason's format. maybe, maybe when toward prepares a little bit more, it'll be legitimate, but I just thought that was really funny.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, like looking at his matchups like Bonnette. Vanessa's such an interesting deck because it doesn't strike me as super powerful in this format is just kinda like a good card. And maybe just like, Neutrik, maybe that's enough. You're just like fast and aggressive in a format that is your fast, aggressive and consistent in a format that is slower. And
Brit:Yeah, your, your mute, your music matchup would be really good. I would think band that I'm more familiar with it in other formats with like ramble and things like that. But yeah, it's always, to me, like, Was a really good example of an Agra deck for me. Cause it's, it's really, really good early. And like the, the world's deck plays Pokemon reversals and things like that. So it's trying to stop you from doing, but it's just, you just lose if your opponent evolves. And so there's like 2007 playing against X, like in on, and, and, and. For an app. And this is, you know, this is right when IEX is don't exist anymore. So we get these stage twos with like 130 HP that do 40 for two energies or whatever. And that's, that's insane compared to these 98, HP two prides Pokemon. But yeah, I just it's hit his list. It's a bit different than the re the ramble list here. He's not playing reversals and steady plays like energy removal and things instead.
Mike:The I mean, in the big thing, at least for his like, Top cut matchups is he gets out the one safeguard, but net and it's pretty much auto winning both nine. And this metric list. I don't think the metric lists played any counters to safeguard. I don't know what the lady asked does. What's loud. Yes, too. But I guess you can tack with Lottie ass, but that seems really bad. Oh, Oh wait. But if you get Lottie ass Latinos, then safeguard gets shut off. Okay. Okay. Okay. Because Latinos, Latinos there, if they're both out, then nobody's work. No polka bodies work. So you can do that, but still, I mean, I guess net hits me for weakness and you're probably just solid anyway, but so I guess the safeguard Manette in general is just like a good enough inclusion that can just beat some decks.
Brit:I don't think I really had too much more beyond that. There's so many decks and I. You know, they did myself last week and I'm, I'm a spread player. So I don't, I don't want to just talk about spread more, but I played it. I played a few games and I started with Metta CHAM just cause I don't even remember how long ago, but I played in those six tournament. When are the. Polka stacks ones from forever ago that I made top eight with Metta chance. So I just kinda wanted to start that. But it doesn't seem, it's not nearly as good as I thought it would. And maybe I should have read Jason's stuff before I play it. Cause I, when I've, when I went through the decks and read it, he doesn't seem to rate it particularly high. It's consistent, but I, I would agree that I, I think it is a little crept out by some of these other texts, but then I guess also at the same time, Some of your match-ups are really good. Some of your match-ups are, are, you know, you just kind of win through evolving in your ability, but then others are hard. And again, kind of what I was just saying. You're a low HP to Prizer. So in, in these games against a lot of Nani single pricers, you just get slapped.
Mike:Did you try any other spread decks, Brit?
Brit:I not here. The next tech I went to was Arcanine just cause you, you and Danny were taught, had been talking about it and it's. Kind of a little, not like, you know, it's, it's overall strategy, isn't spread per se, but you have a little bit of that with overrun. I never, it, the hound doom, I forget how many decks that pops up in, but I'm just never good at that car playing against that card or with it. I always forget for some reason it's just a rare. A rare ability, like I've tested the OMA star and like toda kits and things like that recently. And I just forget somehow sometimes to try to keep them keep an eye on it. But yeah, no, the other decks too, just like really, I didn't, I didn't play all that much admittedly, but the other decks, I just wanted to really sort of explore where. It's like liability and things like that. We've I've mentioned that a little bit. Do you want to explain that for anyone who just doesn't know? Cause there's two versions of it to maybe get a little, give a little history.
Mike:Sure. So like there's a wheezing that for one color colorless energy basically blows itself up kills itself and puts the opponent to 10 HP left. And so there was always a couple of different ways that you could capitalize on that. At some point there is a type flowed version. I don't know if that's here in this format.
Brit:No, I don't think he has it listed as a bag, but yeah, we have burning liability and asset liability.
Mike:So there's like a type of lotion that like did put, I think like one counter between turns or something like that. And, but this, this deck is, there's a victory bell. So it's this do, if it's one steering your turn, you may switch one of your opponent's bench stage to about Pokemon with one of the defending Pokemon. Wait, so actually, I don't even know how this works. There's no point. Is there another victory? Bell? Oh, there's another victory belt. As long as Victor bell. Bell's your active Pokemon put one damage counter. Okay. Okay. Okay. So yeah, so you so you pop wheezing and then you send a victory bell and then it dies. So you can
Brit:just sort of creates this scenario where you're dying in between turns and it's really it's. I don't, I know, I know Thailand, Tyler, Nina, Maura, like the deck a lot. And so that's probably why I'm mostly familiar with it, but it doesn't seem great to me. Like it's very, it's not good. It can't be. The, the other single pricers, like your, your whole gimmick is that it's a, it's basically a gimmick deck that wants to, I'm trying to think if there's anything similar to that in standard now that just like cutely can knock out a GTX maybe.
Mike:Like the Radication
Brit:yeah. Yeah. That's a good example.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:Yeah, the eradication, laser deck and expanded. But it's again, you know, just so different that I at least sort of just wanting to try it. I've never really liked lbs, which is weird because I would, I think I would be considered a Blastoise player. I played it fairly exclusively when it was legal. But I just, don't not the lbs just doesn't. Ever seemed to gel with me. And I think a lot of that is, you know, it really just speaks to the balance of these formats as well. Lbs is, you know, perhaps the most famous deck from this era. Certainly one of them it's just so well checked by different, different stadiums tools, Pokemon, things like that. Whereas Blastoise in, in the modern era and the era that I'm talking about, at least just you get like garbage door shows up eventually, but they're just there just wasn't. Ability sort of lock or any, anything that kind of kept it in play. And I just think that's really just not the main difference. Cause there's, there's so many, but just one of the really crucial differences in the design space. I think you just don't see that in the way our cards are designed now, it just feels so different. And even to, I was, we say to play a Pteranodon play ADP. You're just sequencing. It's your fundamentals that are speaking more than anything than, you know, Being a good player, but I think another thing that's interesting to me about that this format is like the, like, because a good example, we see him in this limitless result, he played a LPs and in my head fall off, like is an
Mike:Yeah, he is
Brit:LDS player. And so it's not, it's good to stay. Like, like we talk about just the, the one trick player or something like this. This might be the format for that. Especially, you know, you're an old head and back in the day, you need to. You know, get away from these new cards and play some of these old ones, but
Brent:And, and I, and I did like what I loved about lbs lists that I think somehow reflects on how, like there's a higher skill cap in the format or something is he, he literally has like 31 off Pokemon. Like it's, it's got elements of like sander list to it where, but lbs has like a mainstream deck at the time. Like just, if you want to play a good deck, you know, it's I mean, it's not like there's these two Pokemon and then there's also some that isn't probates thrown in,
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brent:which is so characteristic of like our modern decks. I feel like right.
Brit:There's just no options to, it's not to Crow about one to DNA or the other way then, then yeah. Or research. However, however many Marnie, you feel like you can fit. And you know, there's so much of the chords of the same for quick ball, maybe some communication. And here it's just all over the place,
Brent:Right, right. I mean, so many times in our era, like when there's a rain dance Pokemon or something, or. Something like that. It's just so overwhelmingly obvious, like this is the best attacker to take advantage of that. You're just going to play like a bunch of these, and you're just gonna pile on energy and smash people. And like, that's how it is, where we're here. Like there's more non-linearity and like that reward school players, that, that makes it good.
Brit:Yes so much too. I don't actually know if this is right or not. But I think it might be in the, in sort of like, for example, like. It's clear when something is going to be an archetype. And I don't think that's the case in these cards. Like, of course it turned out like give it turned out to a CRO bat in the same set. Like, of course they're going to be a deck together. Like these new fighting VMAXs have, you know, the set is designed around them more or less. So your combinations just are obvious in a lot of ways. And it just doesn't seem that way here. It seems like people actually had to explore. People, had to try things, different things like, like I. I don't, this might be wrong, so correct me if not, but like steel XCX and blast Joyce CX, like aren't in the same set. Like I don't think people saw those cards, you know, scans of those cards together and said, aha, here's the deck clearly like, no, like you had to figure these things out and it's, it's not as it's not as smooth things are rough and, but it's, it's. It's more personal. It's just unique. And in a way that, again, these current cards just don't seem to be, and maybe this is all just, you know, old man Rose, Rose, tinted glass and nostalgia. But I really think a lot of what we've said is right. And it's, you know, maybe frustrating to
Brent:I know I'm with you. Like I share your old man values. I that's, I guess where I was going was like, know when they gave us plastics, they were like, Oh, and we're also going to say here's Kelby. OEX.
Brit:Right? Yeah.
Brent:black, Melissa. Like, we're going to hit you over the head with like, if you don't play Blastoise with these cards and you're dumb.
Brit:Right.
Mike:Yeah. And like the cards that made BLS BLS. Kind of like came out very slowly. Like there was a blast joist deck in world's 2005 that I thought was pretty good, but it like, wasn't that the same level, but so like you needed steel, X to come out and you needed Lugia to come out. You need a whole lot, like Holand's magnetron and electrode weren't even really enough to make it the deck that it was, you really need to hold on it's cash form, which came out like right before nationals that year to really push it to the edge of being like the best deck of that format. So yeah, it was like a very slow incremental yeah.
Brent:Right. And, and that requires people going back and like testing old cards and archetypes, right? Like you, you, you didn't there, you, you wouldn't like rule out this thing, you know, you know, all of a sudden like decks get better and better and better. And you're constantly having to like go back and retest things, which is interesting and fun. So, so if you guys run an RSP K tournament tomorrow, what's the play.
Brit:I would play RIAA gigs. It's my, my favorite of the spread decks, I think. But there's quite a few. I want to, I want to try, I know the deck I mentioned, I think it was before we started recording, but I almost played a tournament on Saturday. I think Chris Bianchi. He, he had like a Rayquaza wheezing deck that looked really interesting to me. I know that the, those guys that are guys, they don't they're not as active anymore, but when they are, they, they seem to be trying to like crack the RS through PK format. Like they're not just showing up to copy paste. The list that are on Jason's blog. Like they're trying to like, what about this car? What if we tried this card? And now like they're doing that sort of thing, which is really interesting to me and that that's where they were at currently. So that's what I wanted to try. And with the wheezing spreads, so a natural fit as well.
Mike:Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds cool. I would be trying like the Sam hops are kinda, again, I've been like making some adjustments to the RSB K format, crystal beach. It was not legal for Oh six. So like figuring out how that fits in is one of the big things. It's just a pretty, it's a pretty interesting deck. Cause it's like arginine typically was very like aggressive stage one. But the way that this plays is like use overrun a ton and then you use handloom and power to kind of like control the game as the game goes on.
Brent:Guys we've been at it awhile. Is there any other stuff you want to say about RSP K this week?
Mike:no, I think this was a
Brit:No, I think, I think we got through my main points and maybe depending on interest and things like that, we can start doing, we could do an actual deep dive and just sort of talk about You know, maybe couldn't shouldn't probably do as deep as we've done with the standard archetypes. So maybe try to just talk about the big decks a little bit in a little bit more detail. Like,
Mike:Yeah, I think this is a good.
Brit:or not, it would, it would be a different conversation than, than this one. This one is pretty theoretical more than anything, whereas we can actually start explaining interactions and things like that, but we'll see, I suppose.
Mike:Yeah, I think this was a good overview. And if people, you know, hear some of these things and have questions, then they could ask us and we could talk about them or maybe it gives them you know things to, to research themselves. Maybe we should throw the the link to Jason stuff in the show notes.
Brit:Maybe, I dunno, maybe this'll be instead of, instead of just like keeping here, what if we did, what if we did something, you know, a similar idea with like Like diamond, like diamond and Pearl through RCS. I think it was the last diamond and Pearl set like you could do. And I know like some of that actually had legal stuff, but I, I just, maybe people would be more interested in that space. It's a little more recent,
Mike:Yeah. I think that the hard part for that, and we use with online is there's no way to play that right now.
Brit:Sure, sure, sure. I forgot that. Yeah. All of this is it's not all programmed, only certain, certain formats.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Right. And, and Jonathan Parnell that you are the great enabler. I would certainly would not have been able to have all the crazy fun that I had without him creating like lists of proxies for people to print out, which I totally did.
Mike:KP is the greatest. He's awesome.
Brent:Yep. Yep, absolutely fantastic. And even went back and debug the lists that were a buggy for reasons that were in it. So like I can't even begin to imagine how much work it must've been for him to like go put all those lists together and generate all those URLs like that is really, really grinding and
Mike:That is nothing. That is nothing for gap. We were, we were in a he's been like going through scans of cards and like cropping them just perfectly. I think, I think he's doing it for Adam site PKM and cards, and like, it's so funny, like watching him do it. It's such a, he's such a perfectionist.
Brent:I mean this, this kind of stuff makes the world a better place. I mean, PK in carts is a fantastic website, too. We love all that stuff. All right guys, let's declare victory for the week. We'll be back next week with players cup three preview and and, and maybe some more RSDK stuff.
Mike:Yeah. Sounds good.