For the event and they said, no,
Brent:So lamb,
Brit:What did they say no to I missed
Brent:That they, that they they, they did not want people publishing the actual bracket bracket bracket.
Brit:insurance or illegal reasons, I guess like really?
Mike:I don't know though. Like what legal reasons could Connor seems.
Brit:I mean, clearly there has to be something otherwise like, yeah. Like why are they just so uninterested in, you know, making this kind of information public? Cause yeah, like if it was a legal thing, then more online tournament, I guess, I guess a lot of the time, like the e-sports video games, one, I guess you just published screen names and stuff and then probably don't have to deal with like right. It's and that sort of thing. I'm not sure how any of that works.
Brent:Welcome to the trash ranch. It's sprint Halliburton. I'm here as always with the bread privacy. My attendance continues to be 100%. We are as still at 22 reviews. You got to leave your reviews. If you want us to read your review on the pot, if you leave a review, we will read and discuss it on the pod. That is the easiest way to be featured on the pod every week. Leave a comment. It's it's what people do. Guys, we should jump right into it. I mean the big news is players cup three action. Last weekend, Mike Fusha with the hopes and prayers of fresh Lynch nation resting on his shoulders delivered the goods. Mike. Good job, man.
Mike:Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Brent:So, so you want to give us the you want to give us the play by play map?
Mike:Sure. So I played, so I ended up playing peaker. So let's start with that a little
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Last time there was, there was a lot of questions about ADP versus peek around.
Mike:Yeah. So I played at ADP in two events last week. I taught forward one of the smaller ones, and then I played it in chill, which was, you know, a bigger event. And I don't remember exactly how I did, but maybe like top 32 or something like that. And the deck felt pretty good. There was some changes that I made after the event. Like I was going to drop the big charms and play on Marnie and me and something else, maybe a tool scrapper, I forget. And I felt like it was okay. And it was kind of like a safe. Pick. But in the last two days leading up to Dex submission, a lot of people that I were talking to were on center scorch and bliss up on Blount, you know, Chris, Cephalon wherever you want to call it. So a lot of fire decks and those aren't terrible matchups, Rady P but they're good. They're very solidly good. Match-ups for peaker. And so I kind of felt like, well, you know, I'm most comfortable playing peaker. And you know, last minute I'm hearing about a lot of people playing good match-ups for me. So let's just go for it. It's my comfort pick. Anyway. So, and you know, the Metta seems like it's shaping up, so pulled the trigger
Brent:and, and it definitely seemed like, like so some poker stats had a lot of like data about the people that advanced, but they didn't have a lot of data on like the bigger picture meta game. But I felt like Brett, I don't know if you had a reaction, but I felt like looking at Twitter, everyone decided to play Santa scorch.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely my. You know, sort of waking up reaction. I was just like, wow, everyone's playing Simon scorch. and I don't know, that just goes to show, it's been interesting to sort of re kind of some of them, the aftermath of the event. We've talked about it a little bit on here. I think I even sort of referred to it. It might be compared it to like Taboola in the past if kind of a deck that was clearly fine the whole time, and just kind of, for whatever reason, managed to, you know, just get this reputation of being like a deck for bad players. And that seems to still be like, sort of going around, like, I think a good amount of players who are not these kinds of tried and true semi scorch players played it for the event and like may not have had such a great showing. And then, you know, it just circles back to this, like you know, welder deck doesn't matter, you know, if you didn't hit welder, you don't win, blah, blah, blah. But.
Brent:any, any theory on like what drove the massive set of scores? Like if you look. And a guy like Zach massage, obviously. When are the last player? Scott? I felt like he had been on a Turnitin for like the week or two before that. And then he flips over to Santa scorch. Is that like, was he like metagame manipulating with the internist or like, was there something that made attorneys player say, you know, I gotta play, well, their decks let's go
Brit:I really don't know, maybe my cable no more since he was kind of you know, obviously preparing a little more than I was. But from what I could tell, it just seems like, like I'm trying to remember Danny's tweet how he worded it as to why he went with, send a scorch. Then it just kind of ended up being at a hedging decision. Like all the decks are kind of close and this one, I think a scorch has of all the top decks. I think maybe this will be wrong. I will see what you guys think. But of the top decks, I would say some escorts has the most high roll potential. And I've talked about, we've certainly talked about this. I say there are certain games, like the games that send a scorch has fall Canyon on their first turn and welders and attaches, like you just don't lose from there. And so I think that was part of it. Like and I think maybe even this was from Danny too, that just the way that double elimination works, that, you know, there's perhaps this idea that like you just try to high roll, that's the best way to do it. Don't think about the loser's bracket at all. Play the deck. That's gonna send you out at Oh and two or five and Oh, like, you know, some sort of methodology in there, but I don't know why you would play it other than if you were worried about ADP. I think if you thought a lot of players were going to end up there and weren't ending on Chris Cephalon or bill Cephalon. Cause I think that sent a score to his worst matchup. I would think that are the, the poison to turn into us. But, yeah, I don't know if it was a Medicaid call that motivated it, or if it just ended up being, you know, like we talk about Pikachu, a deck was just lots of 50 fifties and some high roll potential.
Brent:So where we left off last week was there were, there was questions about whether or not Chris Cephalon was buggy and if you just like we're slow to click crammer, it works fine. How did that end? Can someone tell me
Mike:I don't think there. I don't know if there was an ending I haven't heard after we recorded the podcast. I didn't hear any more about it. so I assumed that it was fixed or resolved.
Brent:like my, my immediate reaction, when I thought, how did everybody end up on fire decks was like, we all talked about how fire decks are going to be played. And then people were like, well, in that case, I'll go play like a deck and sweep the fire and like, it'll be fine. And then like, everybody comes back and they're on fire. And I was like, we were trash lands, driving the meadow manipulation.
Brit:I mean, it seems a little. I guess not all that unsurprising. I like we, as we talk about, even though Pika Chu ends up being pretty close with it you wanna play against Senator scorch as a Pekichu player. If you get a, if you had your pick of the match ups, that's what you want to face. Even if it ends up being a little hard and just like no one, but Mikey has really kind of stuck with Pikachu. It seems like obviously people are still playing it. It placed it places in the weekly, in the nightly tournaments very consistently, but it just doesn't, it doesn't have the same metagame presence as it did, you know, say a couple of months ago, like right off Mikey's like first big win or something. And I think that, I think maybe that was part of it peek at you just ended up being kind of under expected. You know, maybe people just like gave up on it and. Based on the game, they were expecting the clearly it just ended up being kind of the move. I just think sort of the way I characterize the event as Mikey's tweet is like, Oh, I hope we, I play against fire all day. And it was just the narrator. He did it good day.
Mike:I think that's a good point. I think like center scorch and bliss, Stefan are both like both of their worst matchups are Piqua. So if you expect Pika to not be super popular, then they seem much more attractive. And I think it makes sense for people not to expect Pika to some extent, because it turned into, this was so dominant in the weeks before the players cup which has obviously peak rounds where it's matchup. Plus the addition of rusted sword ADP, which are both of the reasons why I was hesitant to play poker I'm in the first place. So if you. Expect that the meta is kind of trending in that direction. Then I think fire makes a lot of sense. Set of scorch also, as Britt said, has a lot of kind of even ish match-ups as a shot against pretty much every single deck. So that's attractive it beats kind of the, the stupid decks, like decidua and Ataria things like that. Which is, which is great. Yeah, so I think, and so, so that, that was the other thing I was going to say in our like little testing group that I was working with. We made one of those match-ups spreadsheets and input, like what we expected, you know, percentages and almost every single way that we fudge with the numbers send a scorch, came out as mathematically the best play. So if other groups did that too, then they probably, that's probably how they came to that same conclusion.
Brent:So Mike, why don't you walk us through how your day went?
Mike:Yeah, so I was really lucky to have a buy the first round. I think about, I think about 30 people ended up having a buy the first round, which is, I think a little bit more than the second player cup. Yeah. Cause I think I was right on the edge of, of getting by the last one. But anyway, so I got to buy the first round, which was great. I played against a Chris Cephalon deck. The second round, actually that first game was one of the, the tournament could have been completely different based on my very first game. So I went second in the first game, which is, which is good, but they have a really good line if they can pull it off going first. So, what they want to do is go first play the use art, attach an energy to it. If that energy sticks around, then they can flare, strike the Bolton on the next turn on turn two, and then get a second welder and go big double blaze on your MuTu or peek around or whatever you, whatever tag team you attack with. So that's like their ideal line going first. And so, you know, they went first, they attached to sheets, ARD. I had two crushing hammers and I flipped tails on both of them had to go Bolton. They get the flare strike and they're able to play MuTu down. So ensures that even if I'm Marnie them, they have the welder. So I'm in a really kind of like awkward spot where. You know, I go in and I'm going to attack with me too. I have the option to go full blitz or tandem shock. They had burned two switches already. If I full blitz, I can set up a second MuTu and maybe stamp them to one, but I'm still in a pretty bad spot because I had to play it to Denny down on the first turn. So I'm just like a crammer ant away. I've only taken three prizes. I need a couple turns to like finish the game. So it gives them a pretty big opening to just kind of finish the game. So I ended up taking a risk and going with tandem shock and just hoping that they didn't have one of their last to switch. And they, you know, they played welder, they played Crow bat, they played DNA and with the switch. And so that was, and then I win the game immediately. Like if they don't have switch, I, I automatically win the game.
Brent:This is great,
Mike:Right. Exactly. So that was like you know, who knows what would've happened if he gets the switch because then I ended up losing game two and I win game three. So I would've been down, Oh, one, maybe I lose, maybe I win game two and then lose game three. I don't know. It would have been really interesting. Game two and game three were not quite as interesting as that, but like just the very first game of the day, big turning points had a little luck go my way.
Brent:That's super stressful and the double tales of the hammers, you're just like,
Mike:Right, right, right. Because yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, exactly like that, you know? And I remember like, I. Cause I was, cause it was a Mewtwo. I was debating between full blitz and tandem shot down to the very last second, like the timer was ticking down and I was like, I don't know what to do. But so it ended up working out. So those were some, those are some good games. And then the next three rounds, I played center score center, scorch center scorch, which was, which is great. Nothing too. Ooh. So the first two rounds, nothing too. Ridiculous. I lost one game somewhere in there. How did I lose? Oh yeah, I remember how I lost. So I went first, they, and on my second turn, I bolted to energy to a Mewtwo. They had gotten the Volcani Canyon on like going for, or going first, turn going second. And I just put two energy on my mute too. Like not even thinking about it. And the next turn they got the great catcher welder, one shot my Mewtwo with the sentence Gorge like two 80, two 80 on a YouTube. And then I just immediately lost that game. I could've split the energy and put one, one on him, YouTube one on a right shoe to like play around that. But I wasn't even thinking that they would, you know, great catcher. One shot my mute. Yeah. They need a lot to get that. So that was the one that was the only game I lost against center scorch in all three sets. I did have the best games though were against Luke Morris's mom, Joan in the winning in round round five. So the first game, the first game, she probably should have won, but she ended up using Fiona towards the end of the game when she shouldn't have to. I had I only had one attacker set up a Mewtwo. And she found it to the bench and ended up hitting a different tag team and not one shot in it. And then that was, I was then able to just bring up my Mewtwo again, Stanford to wander to, and full blitz, to set up a a tag bolt for game. And then the second game was also really close. I felt really behind the whole time, but I actually ran out of energy. I hit a, hit a couple of crushing hammerhead. She had to retreat a rashes ARD at some point yell grant was pretty useful. And then like I stamped at the end and yeah, got there. The other interesting thing again, Senate in at least two of the games, again, set of scores, maybe even three I would like stamp or Marnie them to a low hand towards the end of the game. They were bench locked. And I w. Just either past to either set it, like attach pass to set up a tag bolt for the game or use Boltons to electrify and set up a tag boat. So Mo yeah, a couple of times I just got myself to like three or four prizes and chilled and just waited to set up a tag bolt for the win. That I know I did that in the very last game against Joan which I thought was a pretty clever play. So yeah, so beat a bunch of fire decks. I
Brent:So I know Joan advanced, did any of the other people you played against advance?
Mike:don't believe so. No.
Brent:Yeah, I w we'd like to salute Joan Morrison as the, a good Morsa.
Mike:I was talking to Luke like the whole time like before, cause we were kind of in the same group chat, preparing for the event and. Once we had gotten to, once we were both in round four, I looked at the bracket and I was like, yo, Luke, I, me and your mom are going to play if we both win this next round. So it was, it was funny.
Brent:I'm sure he I'm sure it, if his contribution was anything like my advice, when it comes to the chest, he was like, now's the time to used to be? You know, I I'm the worst, like casual chess observationalist in the universe. If I just walk by a chess board, I will give advice and that advice will be game losing. There's no question. Any other stuff we should not? So I want to talk about who's left and what's next for next weekend, all that stuff. Is there any other stuff that we should talk about?
Brit:Nothing is really coming to mind for North America. I think obviously Europe has some stuff worth talking about other things worth noting. Azule still in it always great to see the best players, you know, beat the best regardless of when and where that might be. So I'm always very happy to see the top players performing here. So, and obviously Zach Lasage won the last one. So, you know, that's a great sort of example of a good player winning a good event, even though it's online. So but otherwise not a whole lot of really interesting decks. It's pretty standard, I guess, pun intended. For North America, there's an Italian deck floating around in there, which might be a little surprising, but I, again, I don't think we have the. Sort of total statistical picture, but it doesn't seem like pick shoe was super popular as we can see. There's. Two, two other ones too, both in the losers for North America,
Brent:No, there's one other in the winters in North America, too,
Mike:Yeah. So, so Pico is actually of the 16 that advanced it's in North America. It's the most populous I think.
Brent:Yeah. My reaction was the combination of the peak around decks and the IntelliJ on deck. There must've just been an unbelievable amount of sadness.
Mike:yeah.
Brit:yeah, I think so.
Mike:Yeah. I do think like, it seems, it seems like peek around ended up being potentially the play for the event with a lot of fire. Maybe not a lot of attorneys. I think I am going to go through and tally up all the decks from North America. Cause I have access to that. I don't think anybody's done that yet.
Brent:Ooh,
Mike:I'll say.
Brent:people next week, spicy, spicy a pod right here.
Mike:Yeah. The only other thing I'll say for myself is that I know my next round is against LMC. I think there's two LMDs left. I play one of them today, a guy named William Crawford. I've actually played against him a bunch of times in like various regionalists he's from Canada, pretty good player. So that match up, I feel pretty comfortable in, he's not running into crushing hammers, so think it's pretty solidly in my favor. And then I looked at the winners bracket for me. If I win that one, I'll play against the winner of an ADP versus decidua so hoping for the ADP. To win. Yeah, and if I win, if I win both of those, then I make it through winning the next one though is like the biggest one, because if I, if I lose the next one, then I have to win three in the loser's bracket. But if I win the next one, then even if I lose in the seventh round, then I only have to win one round in the loser's bracket. So it's the difference between going like two and one versus three and one?
Brent:That I think the thing that really jumped out to me as I kind of watched the tweet storms happen was how many more games you had to play if you were in the loser bracket than here in the winter crack? I mean, like you, you went to Zulu like, like day, like I'm done. And then a, like, everyone else was like, Oh, it's grueling the grind, you know, so horrible.
Brit:I was just about to note on that too. It's just kind of, you, you know, for those sort of uninitiated to the double, double elimination experience, it might just, you know, your sort of initial take might be like, Oh, it's the same amount of games, but just like, no, it's just so many, especially the earlier you lose. That's why, I guess also too, that the losers run stories are always so cool because they're, you know, they're, they were, you know, on the winner in it for 14 straight
Mike:Yeah, I was I was talking to Ross like the whole time during the event he lost and like maybe, maybe the third round of the winners bracket, something like that. But in the loser's bracket, he was in the loser's bracket with Kyle Lesnevich, who was playing the munch lacks control deck. And like that corner of the bracket was like two hours behind everyone else because of him. And so like, and Ross had to play him in the like second to last round of losers and beat him there. But like, I don't know that was, it was, it was at least four hours after I had finished maybe five hours after.
Brit:I would, I would be curious to watch just that game. I don't know. I don't really know how any deck is supposed to approach the, the matchup, but watching raw. Like I just like know, like Ross had a game plan like that and probably executed it perfectly. Like I just would've been art or something for me to watch like
Brent:Yeah, that's, that's a great game. That's a great game. There's no question.
Mike:we had talked a little bit about it, like, as he, like he, cause he saw that he would potentially play that match up before it happened. So we were messaging each other a little bit. He hadn't actually played it, but we were hearing it. Do you go aggressive and kind of like, just hope that you hit your switches and whatnot or do you play much more conservative? And he said after the fact that he'd lost the game, that he played conservatively and won both game to where he was very aggressive. So I thought that was interesting.
Brent:That is interesting. And so, so how did he get, how did he get derailed? What do you lose to that? The next round?
Mike:Right. So in the very last round, he lost to peak her arm. I think it was there's two playgrounds and losers. It was Evan Campbell. He lost to him. Yeah, but that's a bad matchup. I mean, Ross said one of the games, he had like a 75% or to win, but missed it. But either way, it's not a good matchup for him.
Brent:Right. Right. Very tough. Very tough. Any other guys we should talk about for North America? Obviously, Thomas, if he gets there with Senna scorch, one of three, a four sentence quarterbacks to advance.
Mike:four one, two, three. Oh yeah. Okay. So there was just so much CenterSquare set of answers, peek around, but my guess is percentage wise, peak around did much better.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike:Andrew Hendrick made top 16 again, that's poker Hawkeye. He is, I think this is his second time making top 16 in a players cup. So that's cool. Kevin Kruger is the decidual I player that name sounds familiar. I think he was the one that like won the limitless thing maybe.
Brit:sounds familiar to me too. And I can't place it either.
Brent:Yeah, he's a good player. And do you know, I believe I saw him tweeting and he said the ADP that he's playing plays the double model while,
Mike:yeah,
Brent:but, but he's already beaten like an ADP deck with a double model while in this tournament. you know, he, he feels like he has a plan for that.
Mike:Yeah. I'm sure. Like it's still, it's probably favored for him. But cause my wife's just can be so random. Like sometimes just they just get it
Brent:Right, right. Yeah. I mean, you, you kinda, you know, he's gonna mow while you, so every turn you're playing, because you're like, okay, I gotta play around the small while, but like, There's also only so much you can do at any given point. Right.
Mike:Right. If you don't have the research to discard your guys or you don't have quick balls, like yeah. Whatever. Christian Chase, I know is a good player as well. He's my other, he's the other winners bracket beaker. I think the big thing though is only one to turn it to us side of these 16 decks is pretty surprising, especially considering how popular it was the last few weeks.
Brent:So, so how does the bracket work? How many people from the winners bracket advance
Mike:So two from each. So
Brent:each. Okay.
Mike:yeah, so the, the winners backup will go from eight to four to two, and then those two will move on, but loser back I'll go eight to four, four people will be out. Then the four that lost in the first round of winners will go down. That'll, it'll be eight, like a new eight in the loser's bracket. Those will play to four. Then they'll play to two. And then the two that lost in the last round of winners, we'll go down and play one more round.
Brent:Gotcha. Gotcha. So, so it's the, one of the thing that doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway is honestly the way you just described the bracket, you won't have to play a Azule to advance, right? He's on the other side of the winners bracket.
Mike:I haven't looked at the loser bracket. Maybe I would have to play them in the losers.
Brent:Yeah. Like if you, if you best the losers, I recognize that everything's off the
Mike:Right. Right, right. Yeah. But in winters.
Brent:side, if you beat the situ I you're
Mike:Yes.
Brent:assuming that the beat ADP.
Mike:The, the citywide deck does not play Hitmonchan though, which is, which is very interesting. So like it plays the whole kind of like martial arts dojo, random attackers package to deal with you know, things like vault Canyon and stuff like that, but it doesn't actually play hipbone Chan. So maybe my taboo, Coco prism star with a big charm can get there.
Brent:Anyone else that we should talk about in North America?
Mike:Yeah, I think that's pretty good
Brit:If we didn't talk about you leave us a review and we will rectifier our
Brent:That's right. This is your chance to leave a review complaining about how we didn't review you and then we'll review you and your review. That's. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Latin America for a second. So Latin America I felt like it was much more all over the board. Just like a crazy Dex colossal VMX is
Brit:haven't even, I haven't even actually looked at it now. And the first one thing that hits you is costs also. Yeah. That's
Brent:Yeah, they got colossal. They have five attorney's offices. They have three ATPs. They have two Luke metals and two peak arounds, three big, two big rounds, three big rounds. I don't really know any of these players.
Mike:I know Miguel, Miguel Lopez from Mexico. He's a good player from Mexico and the losers playing peek around. That's the only name that jumps out to me though.
Brit:Yeah. I recognize that name now that you've mentioned it as well. But I don't think I can place anyone else here. Either
Mike:The the, probably the most interesting deck is the Aternity. So revital, which saw some, I think saw some play a little bit in the last few weeks.
Brit:for his players cup. I believe, which I thought was quite, was pretty interesting that he opted to play it. I think Stefan, he
Mike:Oh yeah, yeah,
Brit:the Viola alternatives for PC his PC three, which, you know, people, people were toying around with Levi, like right away. And I know it's kind of stayed on the friend, but I was really surprised to see that as like a top player, his deck choice. Like I just sort of never, never put any real thought into it behind it.
Mike:yeah.
Brent:I, I definitely, once we get through the players cup three, we had a question submitted via Reddit this week, where they wanted to ask about the implications of Levi's with Cheryl. And I think that's a really, really great question. I want to talk about that a bunch.
Mike:Okay. Yeah. Good question. Yeah, there was some other people I think, in North America to play too. I know John Ang played it. And I don't know if Brandon Sal's are qualified for players cup three, but he won like the Hexter event, like right before players cup with, with the deck. So I did see some like success right before list were due. And I guess like the thought process is it makes your Luke metal matchup probably fine because you played the Umbrian dark ride GX as well. So that's a pretty good attacker against them. So it like shores up your worst matchup, but I'm just, I guess I would just be worried that it makes all of your good match-ups.
Brent:All right. Let's talk about, let's talk about Europe guys. Robin Schulz is probably where we should start
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Any, any reaction guys?
Brit:It's clearly good. I guess, of what, how good beyond that remains to be seen, I'll be really curious to see how it is, but what's really interesting. So you would think that let me pull up the list here. You think that kind of the, I think the obvious place to start, perhaps when talking about the deck is that it seems like, or I guess what we should figure out ourselves is like how much of a medicating call was this deck, is it a mega game called deck or is this just a good deck that sort of came out of nowhere, I guess sort of maybe also worth noting now that we're in EU and have kind of talked about some tech choice. One thing that I, I did notice none of them made it through, but like toward. And maybe one or two players, they all played extra drill, which,
Brent:Toward a, made it through on the loser side.
Brit:Oh, he did
Brent:So there, there is one extradural control in Europe and it's toured. In the entire tournament. Now there's one that's rule patrol and it's torn.
Brit:I must have seen someone else then who I thought I saw, like maybe like Burt, like bolters play at or something. I don't know what I'm thinking of,
Brent:Yeah, it was, yeah, there was somebody who was saying that he was on the same side of the bracket and they almost got paired for like a
Brit:Sure.
Brent:you know, they were going to play the same 60 X guttural control. That would be really fun to watch.
Brit:I think, I mean, just kind of in thinking about looking at the Latin American results and thinking about this now, just, I always find it fascinating how. You know, as regions do geographical locations, like there's a tendency and deck choice, like, especially like right now, like no one in the States place, X schedule control at all. and you know, even last time, last player's cup, I'm pretty sure, you know, people played at people, qualified sander did very, very well with it and played a qualifying, but we just don't seem to touch the deck. And I'm always curious as to why I would like to think that there are some, some book worthy sort of sociological information would be able to explain some of these trends. Maybe I would make, maybe I'll write it one of these days, but I'm always just fascinated seeing this sort of thing, even in like more American, like you could certain card choices where, you know, like Florida plays this in blast toys, but the Midwest doesn't play this in blast toys. Like, I dunno, it's so cool to me that that tends to happen. It's just sort of a fact of our game anyways now to Cramer rant. To answer my own question, I guess, is that. I think it might've been a medic in call that's it just seems like, I don't know why, how you could play this deck and a meta-game where there would be a lot of picket shoe. And so that to me seems, it seems consistent too with how picket you seem seemed like a great metagame call for in a, it might've similarly been one for EU too, but yeah. Does this deck have a place in the medic game now? You know, it's no longer a surprise. Maybe people start to play Pekichu again, or is it here to stay? Is it here to sort of exist alongside everything else? What do you guys think?
Mike:I'm kind of curious how the eternity matchup is as well, because like CRA like regular crammer, it's not very good against the Turnitin. I mean, I guess it's okay. Like you like soften up and turn into is V max, but then you're just worried about getting one shot back. Like the, the VMX obviously it doesn't get one shot by an attorney, but like you need to flip a lot of heads to one shot a, a, it turned his V back. So you probably often need to spit shot one. And then like maybe later in the game, Attach a ton of triples and just go for it to get your second Kao. So I don't know how that match up goes.
Brit:He beat one, he beat the poison version and round five,
Mike:Okay. I agree that,
Brit:harder.
Mike:yeah,
Brent:yeah, I was just assuming he is like spectrum. That's been John's good shot.
Mike:Yeah. I do think the deck is pretty good. I played against it once this weekend. Like in the, just Sunday open with battle styles, but it was pretty much the same list. And it did seem pretty good. Like the fact that you're a stage two deck is offset quite a bit by B catch. So that's pretty cool. And your special energies are all really strong. Like you're able to play capture energy, play recycles. The powerful energy is pretty good. Triple's obviously very good for that attack. The stadium gives you. You know, the, the reset ability. I think the deck is pretty good overall. I don't know how good it will be. Like once we kind of figure out how to play against it and how it matches up against everything. But my initial assumption is it's actually a pretty strong deck.
Brit:Well, I'm just thinking too, like, I mean, this list is really tight. I'm not really sure. You'd probably have to play with the energy count more than anything, but like you could play weakness, guard energy, I suppose. Seems like a pretty natural inclusion. Maybe one, I mean, I guess Pikachu plays the crushing camera's anyway. So in the end up being all that good, but that would make it better potentially or good thing, but maybe that's just the point. Maybe that's why they don't play it in the first place. Cause they know it was just going to get granted or hammered and you know, even you just wait until you play the one grunt and then you take three prizes. It doesn't matter how many you play. Probably have enough time.
Brent:The crazy thing about Europe in my mind is one sentence scorch deck came out of Thompson's team. Whereas we had a, like all set of scores all the time kind of met up. When I look at the sheer amount of ADP that had success, I assume there was very little fire.
Brit:how much do you guys think? I mean, obviously. I think the answer is going to be some, no matter what, but like how much of these results are just results in general are, you know, more indicative of just like Europeans are better. Let's say, and that's why sent scorched didn't do as well. Like, that, is that like some escorts I'm using sort of as the fall guy here, we can, we can talk about this without, you know, trying to add more fuel to that. You know, that I'm fine with tennis courts. I'm not, I'm not trying to disparage it at all. But yeah. Is that, is that something you guys ever think about or do you think that's like a legitimate, you know, maybe thought here it's kind of like. And, you know, maybe not just, we don't have to talk about you know, good or bad, we can talk about it. And also in terms of just like a Metta development, like, you know, things change at different rates. And so like, you know, it takes time for one, for one region's Metta to develop compared to another. And that that's not, it doesn't necessarily have to speak to anyone's ability or anything that can be more in line with, you know, information and how it's spread that sort of thing. But that's just, at least to me, that's the easy answer of parsing kind of how different these results are. It's just like, you know, maybe, maybe one of these groups, like for smarter and, you know, that's why one deck just says it here, something like that.
Brent:So here's let me ask a slightly different question. I don't actually know the answer to this, so, so you guys can make me a little smarter. I get the impression, I feel like, like, From looking at limitless, like the quote, big online tournaments happen on us time. And there's less opportunity for EU players to get in on like all these things tournaments. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if, if like the fact that they get kind of fewer opportunities to compete somehow shapes how they think about the meta a little bit differently than the way like the North American players
Brit:No, I think that's right. I think that would be an easy, an easy part of the answer, just to sort of have an account for why, you know, the metagame does shift at varying rates. I think that that would be a very, very prominent sort of. You know, leading us to the answer for you. It's like, yeah. You know, so many of them don't get to play because it's, you know, American centric and all that. So that makes a lot of sense to me. And I
Brent:Yeah. I mean, it's, it's funny. You would think with all online tournaments, like maybe it'd be, it's an international audience, but like it's not really that international, like
Brit:yeah, I
Brent:is not playing in extras every week. Blah-blah-blah right.
Brit:it was always a couple Japanese players, even Korean players here and there. I wonder, I don't know the time differences super well off the top of my head. I don't know when they're, when they're playing. That would be interesting because there's always, there's almost always like a Japanese, at least one Japanese player in the
Brent:So I, I actually kind of do know this cause I have a friend who lives in Japan and we tried to do a call like every month or two. And so like 8:00 PM. Our time is like 6:00 AM their time.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:So, so I think some of these late night tournaments, like they can kind of wake up in the morning and be like, I'll do
Mike:Yeah. And play them during the day if they're free.
Brent:Yeah. If they're a student or something, they can be like, Oh yeah, I'll do that. Right.
Mike:Yeah. And I do think like, it's even more than just like, North American centric. It's like East coast centric for the most part. Right? Like most of the weekly big events start at like six, six 30 Eastern time. So that's too early for a lot of people on the West coast to play consistently. Yeah, so it's like very East coast centric.
Brent:Right. And I wonder how much that, that shifts the game, but I assume there was just less escorts. Like how could ADP do so well in Europe, if people weren't like, it's possible that like, these guys are just so good or the sentence scores players just whiff. Well, they're so hard that ADP kind of rolled through the tournament, but I assume there was just less than a scorch because that seems like an unlikely explanation.
Mike:Yeah. I am. I know someone put together the whole meta-game results for Europe. I think I could probably find it. I do remember it, there was a ton of alternatice like that was the number one deck by a lot.
Brent:Right. And, and like, am I, I think if you're the ADP player, like that's pretty much the matchup you want. You're like yeah.
Mike:So yeah, here we go. So alternatice was 23% of the meta-game there's 49 of them. ADP was the second most with 32, then LMC with 26, then sent us Gorge with 24 crisp line with 23. So the welder decks, where if you add the two older decks together, you still don't even get quite the amount of attorney tests peak then peek around with 18 and then it kinda goes obviously down from there. But so do we. Is it turned into just the most popular that made it through one, two, no, ADP was the most that made it through. Right. So
Brent:Yeah. I mean, ADP just rolled through that tournament in Europe.
Mike:Yeah. But so it's interesting, like turned it, this was a quarter of the meta-game and not a quarter of the top 16.
Brent:Yeah. It was two of the top 16, right.
Mike:Two or three. Yeah. So yeah.
Brent:the, is the LMC metric great favorable for LMC versus attorney says?
Mike:LMC is very good and Sturt this.
Brent:Yeah. And then I, yeah, I think of ADP as being pretty favorable because like they really have to just hit everything or hit heads on hammers.
Mike:Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know the answer to your philosophical
Brit:I mean, I don't, there's not there isn't one, you
Mike:Yeah,
Brit:there together, but yeah, it was just, it was something I was really curious about. It's always, always, I think the most interesting at, at like worlds or something, when you see like DEC choice being so sort of coordinated to your region, so distinct and things like that, like, I don't have any, any worlds off the top of my head, but you know, the Japanese always tend to bring something so, you know, strange compared to what we expect or to what the American Mehta games tend to be like. I don't know. It's just trying to, you know, solve this problem. So we don't keep repeating and thinking about like, what, why is it so different? Why, why our results and, you know, there's probably not a good answer, but that's just something I was curious about, I guess, more than anything
Brent:Wow. So, so if we go back and look at Latin America, and I mean, if you guys had to pick two people likely to advance out of the winners bracket, are there, are there two P two people or decks?
Brit:I mean, I'd like, it'd be, I'd hope. You'd be able to say more with the bracket outside. Unfortunately don't know who are any of these will go, but the, for Latin America just, I mean, there's the one colossal there's, so there's so much dark floating around. They could really, they could have a good shot depending on their bracket. I would think that would just be my pick. Just because it'll be, it would be something different.
Mike:Yeah. Like if you're right though, the bracket is so important. Like if that colossal was playing against either of the attorneys or the peek around, it's probably going through, but if it's playing against the Luc medals
Brit:you're I
Brent:yeah, it's going to be a stressful time, right.
Brit:you could have, yeah. Double buys or will be just swiftly eliminated for all we know.
Brent:right. And that would be, that would be bad for us. If we were cheering for Pico rum in finals. Right.
Brit:a lot of this, I think probably probably too much. Aternity just to see peek around probably making it through the Latin American bracket. I don't know. I'm trying to see if there's anything I can catch, but nah, it's just all over the place. It's go colossal.
Brent:All right. How about, how about Europe? Are there any people that we think of as likely to advance? Does I, I guess we're assuming that Craemer and has a favorable matchup against ADP that
Mike:Yeah, I guess,
Brit:I was thinking, I was thinking about that too, as we were thinking about it. And then I was just like, wait, I had it. It just seems the, the typical kind of checkmate play of, if they altered Ray, you lose same seems to probably be the right way to characterize the matchup. So I'm not sure. I don't think he played against any, if I remember his, his bracket correctly from this past week. And I don't think he hit any ATPs, but you go off. I mean, it's just the same story, I guess, with anything, if you go off well enough and it can knock out our ADP after they alter, then you probably wouldn't the game. Like that's also probably still true, but it's a lot of just some serious attaching and flipping you have to do first.
Mike:Yeah. And the thing is like, you need to have the Porygon. So like they can always, two-shot a V max and then kill the poor gun and that's six prizes. So they don't even need to like boss, boss necessarily.
Brit:And like, similarly it sounds like probably match up dependent, but a lot of the times you probably want to beat catch on your first turn and that's just, that's scary against as ACN deck. Like. Sign in, in that game too, they might, you know, say they take the, the, the knockout on Kramer and right away, like they don't even need the sort of altered, right. Alter ultimate re strategy to win the game from there. They can just like double boss to Porygon or something like that. And that's also like, probably don't have enough time, especially if you, if you're not knocking out like ADP, it just seems like the tempo just really has to be there for the Kramer player to have, have a chance. Then statistically, I would think the ADP player is just going to be doing their thing more often than Kramer ant is doing their thing.
Brent:Do we have an opinion on like extradural control in a field of ADP?
Mike:It seems tough. Seems like a
Brent:tough. Yeah.
Mike:be your hardest matchup, right?
Brit:Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I assume he was taking advantage of attorney displayers. And the same way that all these ADP guys were, but now like all of a sudden ADP.
Mike:Yeah. I I'm looking at my pick for Europe to advance would be the Luke metals in the winners bracket. Like they feels like all of those match-ups are very winnable. Even like crammer, it seems kind of hard because like you just go double as Amazon into, and then they're never one shotting the basic Krammer and doing a hundred and having to discard energy, you get their cycles back, which is good, but I don't know, doubles Amazon to against the crammer. Antech feels pretty strong. And then Luke metal is generally good against ADP their sword kind of. It makes it a little more awkward now, but I still think the matchup is at least even, and then it's very good against the alternatives obviously. And there's only one fire deck in the winter. So Luke metal would be my pick to to advance from your Europe.
Brent:Yeah, I like that. All right. Let's talk about Oceania for a second.
Mike:So the big thing from there is I know all four peaker AMS are all the same 60 and they're all from like the same little testing group.
Brit:Yeah, I recognize it.
Brent:And, and this is a testing group that I feel like we see at all the like online tournaments. Like when we talk about people in Asia playing in limitless tournaments, these are the guys, right?
Brit:Yeah. Yeah.
Brent:Christian has Bonnie Jack malar. Man, I know, I, I feel like I see those guys every week doing stuff.
Brit:Yeah. Those are the ones I know. Those are the ones I knew. I think Jordan, I might know Jordan Palmer, if that sounds familiar as an Australian sort of play her name,
Mike:He was historically like before the last couple of years he was like consistently the best Australian.
Brit:then, and then I'm, then I'm hopefully thinking of the right person then if it's, if it's not from recently I guess beyond that is the, the thing the what's worth most talking about worth talking about the most in Oceana is at discharge is our deck here. Yeah.
Brent:Yeah, we salute different NABI way to get there with Charles ARD.
Brit:I just, I'm really curious. It's his list? Like, is it like drastically different than, you know, what Pooka and people posted? Did he crack it or I that's a, that's a mystery to me. I've played against that. The vivid voltage, Charles, our Leon decks. So many times on PTC geo and I've like, I've lost two at less than three times. I want to say I've only lost two at once and have just played against so many versions of it. It was very, it's a very popular deck among bad decks for whatever reason, but I don't want to say his deck is bad. I'm willing to believe him having made it this far. I'm just, I just need to know more. I want to see his bracket. I want to see his list. So
Brent:Right. And then there was also a straight zation deck in the, on, in the winner's bracket side.
Mike:Yeah, I think it, I think I saw that someone said it was basically just the gauntlet, which, you know, with all the flipping cards.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. I think I actually, I saw that too, and I want to say I was actually maybe Christian, who was the one who had tweeted it and brought it to people's attention. But yeah, just the, the gimmicky, I wonder though, we've talked about it too. I wonder if it has, like, I mean, I guess logically you would be playing like sword and things like that, but that was one of the only decks we really talked about with the release of shining fades is like maybe that version would be okay. And you know, I think they were, you could try it with Dito too and things like that. So I'd be curious to see if any of those like kind of newer additions to the Decker in there refers just the gauntlet that we saw a couple months ago with no kind of changes to it. But you know, that, that, you know, maybe speaking more to the, the format, all obviously not great on paper, kind of like Maybe like the Vic teeny VMX that we'll talk about hearing a little bit, like on paper, it's just take three fast to prize, knock gaps. You know, you've got the tools to do that and you kind of found her for other reasons, but you know, that strategy works clearly. Even if there are better strategies out there
Mike:I think it's also interesting. There's two, two of them here and then. One of them in Europe is a Turnitin, this wheezing. And I know in shining fates, the like the coughing came out with the Ascension. So like that's relevant. I don't think it pushes that variant over the top of others, but I, it's interesting to see three here you know, in the various
Brit:I think there was one in the the Taiwanese tournament that we talked about last week. I believe there was a wheezing, a gov, a turnout to us wheezing there too, that I might be misremembering. But yeah, the Ascension coughing is a big addition, I guess I should maybe have some thoughts on the deck because I was a proponent of it for awhile and I don't, and I don't really have good reasons for why I don't. I just sort of got set aside and I've never returned to it, but I, I really did think it was, you know, competent a couple formats ago. And I think it would maybe a good now and definitely something to not forget about as we get closer to rotation, that ability is. Very good. You know, similar to Corbin Nivea mix that we have now. So I think wheezing will, you know, stick around. But for the moment, I would think that the other attorney artist's lists are probably just a little bit better still.
Brent:It's a, it's disappointing to me that it's not sent a scorch everywhere on all of the rest of the world for Mike to feast on for the rest of the tournament.
Brit:Well, you have to change that. So eventually we'll only, well, it just choose peek around again in a couple of weeks.
Brent:so setting aside, Kevin, Kruger's incredibly unfavored mojo against Mike. How how, how successful could decision do I be? Like the rest of the tournament? I mean, I guess there's a lot of a welder toolbox out there, but is decidual I like poised for success here.
Brit:mean, it could, and I think that's just always going to be the case for decidua. Like Mikey said, the decision why Kevin Kruger is up against ADP with double Manuel, which in theory should be hard, but he's already beaten that. And I think that just speaks to decidua, at least for me, like decidual, I just don't find, I've never found to be particularly consistent, but some games you just have those games, some games you turn on, like attached, turned to evolve and, you know, somehow magically you have no Pokemon in your hand and they just, they, they whiff their miles and then you just can't lose. And so it's just always has, I mean, I guess you could probably say this about every deck, so it's, you know, maybe not all that particular to this situation, but there are just games that you can't lose. And because of the way, the ability and thing works You just have more freedom to do that. Like what you, what you have to accomplish against most techs to win is just to evolve.
Brent:Yeah. Well, I know we were talking about how high role in the players cup is a very viable strategy. I feel like a lot of playing decidua against ADP is just like, we're going to hire role. We're going to hire, we're going to hire role with so much ADP left in the Metta. It makes me wonder, I'm trying to, I'm just looking at all the decks that that's like a one of in the overall meta-game and seeing if any of them jump out at me as like interesting things. I mean, the fact that there's an Italian is interesting, but I think that's really all there is to say about it.
Brit:I can't imagine just between ADP and all the fire that, like, I think this decidual, I like could have been. I guess obviously it was probably a bad deck choice based on the chairman of Senator scorch in North America. But it definitely was like the high real choice. I think I don't, I don't think you would ever be wrong. Can choose to sit your why for a format like this particularly double elimination when you're, I think almost even more so incentivize for these gimmicky kinds of strategies.
Brent:Yeah, props to them. They're better than me. All right. Let's talk about the tweet that's been going around about double elimination formats for a second. I have to be honest, my reaction having, having just read a couple of the tweets, cause there were a lot of them out there, so it was like, A little bit of it's a smaller tournament. If you lost two rounds, you were probably out already. Anyway, why is everybody salty? Educate me guys.
Brit:I mean, I think it's a, I think it has an intro really interesting Twitter thread and kind of correspondence because I, I go back and forth, but you know, like I said, when I, I put it in our discord thinking it would maybe be a good talking point is like, I really do see both sides. I think And maybe it will be able to impact this further. So yeah, it's this question of like, I mean, I think it's a lot of questions at once the first one may be being does double elimination, like work for Pokemon, just kind of at a general level. And I guess just to relate it to the thread, I think sander clearly says no and Kendall says yes, and then kind of comes around to their points, I think. But I'm not really sure. I kind of see it, see it both ways. So you know, the argument is that in, you know, and, and, and either tournament's in Swiss or double eliminations, like if you lose twice, particularly early, like your tournament was probably done either way. And so, and. The, like we've said before in double elimination, losing early also just means you have to play a whole lot more. And I guess the question is like, whether or not that's fair and, you know, part, part of the, for me is, you know, trying to think about it anymore, you know, again, general or objective sense. Cause like I understand, you know, what Sandra is saying, but also so much of his particular to the decks he plays. And I think that has to be a part of your considerations. I don't think you can, you know, the best tournament format, isn't one where like your particular kind of deck can thrive. Like part of the game is, are the rules. And so obviously like we have these stories of like mew lock from 2006 new world order, you know, this magical mystical deck that never lost, could never lose in an untimed game. And then that scenario there, that's this question you know, it wasn't the best deck in the format or not, and obviously you can argue either way, but it just seems like the fact that it, you know, couldn't compete sort of in the official rules. I mean, I think that seems to me to be somewhat telling, like, it's not, you know, there isn't just Pokemon, we play the cards and the rules sort of, you know, finding their way afterwards, like thrills are there from the get-go, whether they're fair or not, again as a separate question, but I'm not sure if any of that made sense to you guys, but that's just kind of rambling my way through a couple of my thoughts on the kind of polemic.
Mike:Yeah, so I like the idea. Yeah. Double elimination, like in general, I think it makes us smoother tournament at, which is what I imagine is the primary reason that Pokemon is decided for this, for the online events. But it does really suck when you lose in the first two rounds of, of the winners bracket and have to play. I dunno, it's not quite double as many games, but it's like almost double. So I don't think it, yeah, it does. I think I agree with, I mostly agree with sander, but from a, from like a tournament operations standpoint, I agree that double elimination is pretty nice. I wonder if there's a way that you could make it so that it wasn't so uneven the number of rounds that you had to play. I don't know if that's like logically possible. But that would be like the ideal fix.
Brent:Yeah. I mean like, obviously double elimination is like, I guess what's funny is when I was thinking about it a little bit, I thought I mean, I don't know how many people complained about the grinder, but like that's single elimination for you and like you know, I'm sure everybody would say, well, single elimination, like you just run into a bad deck and your day is over it. And there you go. So like double elimination is a logical response to that and attempt to make people happy about fixing that problem. You know, I can understand how people would be sad. Like when you look at Mike, you say, well, Mike got the best of both worlds. I got the buy round of one, he wins four games and his day is over. It's like, I mean, he played four games and he's like on to top 16, but, but that's not all that different than like the world championship where the top 16 get a buy out of like seven agonizing rounds, seven, eight, nine. I mean, how many rounds do people play day one in masters. A zillion.
Mike:the state usually. Yeah,
Brent:Yeah. I mean like, like that's kind of the same thing.
Mike:Yeah. You could look at it like that. Or even like, if he was like a day two of worlds
Brent:Except that you're also fed a wave of meta information before you start playing right.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Even if you just look at day two of worlds, there's been some years where like a couple, six and Tuesdays we'll make cut, but if you have you lost the first round, you're not going to make cut at six two, but if you lost your last two rounds, maybe you do.
Brit:I mean, I, and I think that's Kendall's biggest point. And I think one that is at least for me, largely, right, is that it's the same kind of the same story either way. What makes it different so often is that, you know, we have the sort of nominal distinction that you, you made top 32 or top 16, which I understand isn't something to scoff at, but I've said it here before that. I just don't. And obviously again, the analogies can waiver, but like, I just don't care per se, like you went, you know, you made a top 16 at worlds, but you started out Oh two and one just like Jen, just genuinely don't care. Like that's a bad performance. I think. And again, you know, I'm not trying to talk other people down my two best worlds performances, like are these stories. I'm not trying, I really am not trying to talk anyone down or anything like that, but I think in terms of you know, just, you, you want the best players to win. You want the best deck to, and, and things like that, clearly it wasn't, you know, obviously, you know, maybe you got three bad match-ups in a row, something like that. Like, but that's just the luck of the game even still, like, that's just part of it. And on that note, I think that's sort of where Sandor positions themselves against it. And I just don't know how, how different that is compared to other games, but he, so it just sort of to note him just like match-ups variants are huge deciding factors with deals with that. And I'm just not, I'm just not necessarily sure if Swiss does deal with that. Like he claims, I think there's still, it's the same functional, random, you're just, you're at the mercy of Tom
Brent:I mean, he lost the last two rounds. Like that's the same as losing two rounds. Right.
Brit:I mean, that's my point too. Yeah. We just, we have these other ways to think about it that just make it feel different. Like you start to win the game, you start to win winning games and things like that. But like obviously the more rounds you have, the less of a chance, like one round will just truly ruin your day. But I just don't, I just don't really see it as being any different. And again, I think so much of it is speaking to this particular kind of deck choice where you, you, you just can't lose as much here. You know, his decks are these control decks that we're at almost every single card has, you know, a particular purpose. You know, one card is good in this match up one card is good in this match, and sometimes there isn't any carry over. And so I just, I just feel like so much of his position as a kind of rooted there. And again
Mike:Yeah. The the other example of that we have in regular tournament's of like timing of your wins is like, imagine a, I don't know, like a seven round leak cup, or even a six round week where it cuts the top eight. If you win your first four rounds, you can double ID the last two rounds to make it in top cut. But if you win three and then lose, well, now you've got to play your last two rounds, probably because you probably got to go X one to make cut. So like order of wins is not absent from Swiss, I think is the main, the main counterpoint.
Brent:Right, right. That's the fact that you ripped off four straight wins. Like now you reap the benefits of the fact that you did that thing. We see that all the time in a Swiss play, right? I mean, you, you show up at day two of a regionals and you win your first three rounds. And you're like, where ID and our way in the top eight boys, here we go. Like you see it all the time.
Brit:there's even more like to Justin Swiss, like. You can't, you obviously have no control over how your opponents do. And so like, so many people, you know, have these bubbles stories were just like, Oh no, I got ninth in my round. Cause my Roundup post my round one opponent, you know, went Owen six. If they had dropped at Oh into, I would've made cut. And, but no, they played every single round and they lost them all. Like, there's just, there's just more, there's just more and more luck sort of to all of this. And I just think functionally it's stuff elimination, no matter how you cut it for the most part.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. I, I kinda, I kinda came to the same conclusion as well.
Brit:and yeah. And, and it's, it's about tournament efficiency too. And which, I mean, again, we'll maybe just be funny because it's just the, it's the control player that, you know, potentially are the ones slowing things down that are saying, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, no, we need more time here. We need more arounds. We need
Brent:Yeah, well, and that's, if there were prizes for going further down, then the value of trying to like drive out other players to clarity by having them play more rounds to like refine placement would be a thing, but there's not. So it seems like, like taking the most expeditious from a tournament organizer path is probably the most valuable path.
Brit:I mean, I, and I think that's even, even before trying to compare them, both for being functionally similar, I, I think that is the strongest point more than anything, like you need your tournaments to, to run fast. Like I just can't, can't tell you how many regionals I've just like halfway through. And the only thing I want to do is drop because of how slow it's going. Like it just like I'm doing well, but it doesn't, it almost doesn't matter. So, cause there's just too much tournament left
Brent:Yeah, well, and it's different when everybody's in a room and we've all come for the tournament, but in this like zoom world, I think it's a very thoughtful as a tournament organizer to provide a format where you know, it's easy for players to leave when they realize they're not going to win, you know? And in that respect, it seems cordial. Whereas like when we all fly to, you know Knoxville, Tennessee to play Pokemon, like, I mean, if they tell you after two rounds, Hey, you're done. You might as well go home. You're like, dude, I came to play, let's play some more Pokemon. Like here we get so two players, cause that is apparently how good I am. But like, you know, people, if people want to play giving them the opportunity to play is pretty good in the zoom world. I feel like most people like they'd just want to leave once they're able to you know, we can call it a day and move on to the next thing, you know, All right guys, we've been going for a while. Do we want to talk about a battle styles on PTC geo for a hot second? Or do we want to push it to next week?
Brit:I was thinking the same thing. We could, we could condense the big, teeny decks really fast or just, or just push it all back. It would give us another, another week of data too, but that's my boat. We could hit pick teeny kind of
Brent:Let's let's talk with Deni real quick. Oh, and I do want to do the Reddit question really quick. So let let we'll we'll grind through stuff. Really fast speed. Round big teeny decks.
Brit:Oh, well, I just thought noticing the tournament over the past weekend, after the sort of dust cleared on the PC three bracket, we had the Sunday open with battle styles being legal. And I think the big takeaway there is some scorch ends up winning. So no new archetypes sort of didn't show up to take first place right away. But Vic teeny VMX did do very well. And clearly I think it's going to be a good deck people. There's a lot of, kind of content on it now. And there seems to be a kind of a handful of ways to build it. But I guess before we talk about any of those ways let's just talk about the deck more generally, Vic Teenie it's fire, right? So obviously your strategy is going to revolve around both drawing and then playing welder. But the main, the main sort of gimmick of Vic teeny is that you know, for instance, in Isaiah Bradner, his most recent channel fireball article, he kind of compares it to a Turnitin. So it's the new alternatives. It's a, VMX that can't be one shot and takes lots of easy one shots of it's. And so your sort of strategy I think, is to use this evolve fast and Gus Gus gust, and just take three easy prizes. And then maybe you have things like rushes, ARD, he Tran just kind of the typical firebox stuff to fall back on. But naturally as we see kind of a handful of ways to build fireboxes currently there's even more ways to do it with battle styles. And so Stefan made top four with kind of like Vic teeny, bla Cephalon kind of a hybrid of Chris Cephalon with. The new VMX. And then there is the, are they a strategy which doesn't have well Cephalon at all and is really kind of more just like the new version of firebox. Not quite you don't need to commit as much space to think teeny as you do for center scored. So you kind of have a lot more wiggle room there particularly too, because you have the old Vic, teeny V, which just has general utility with fire Pokemon. But yeah, there's just seems to be a handful of ways to build it. And then the third version. So we have with bill Cephalon kind of just, and then Isaias standard just kind of normal firebox. And then Danny has a version that we were talking with him about today. That's you know, it just wants to go all in on the Gusts are strategy. So it's playing catchers as well. And maybe even like nine tails too. Just to always just Gus three times as fast as possible. And naturally to you have escape rope and things like that. I think I have heavy kind of escape road could be worth considering in that deck as well. And I guess I haven't seen any lists of this one, but it's standard. So I imagine there's a version out there where you, you put four crushing hammers into and it's at least worth testing.
Brent:All right. So I want to ask you guys what you think when people start playing battle styles like crazy next weekend. What, like the big Sheryl deck's going to be, but before we do that we had Reddit question come in. I posted on the Reddit Pokemon CCG channel. Yeah. Do you guys have questions for Mike and Brett? And the one big question that came in is what do you think about hydration or we've battled GX with alternatives with Sheryl coming out.
Brit:Sounds fun. That sounds interesting to me. I hadn't, I hadn't thought of that. Obviously there's some, some real synergy there.
Brent:mean, obviously all the, all our talking about like bronze on boxes last week, we didn't really talk about the fact that they already printed all these cards for dark.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:I'm not sure. Like it clearly wouldn't be bad. But I would think that kind of the strategies are at odds with each other. Like it turn it, isn't sitting there saying like, I would just win so many more games. If I had a little bit more healing, like they could, you could be playing hyper potions and things like that already. So I'm not a hundred percent sure if that would like make the deck better. Like, I, I would think in the, if the the, we vile, like Umbrian dark rye version that has solid little play and players cup three, I would think if that is the best version for whatever reason of alternatives, then you would naturally at least play one Cheryl in there. I would imagine, but I just, I'm not sure.
Brent:But yeah, I mean, you have so many bench sitters that have so few hip points. It seems like you wouldn't like go as hard into like mega Cheryl drag out games.
Brit:well, I mean, Cheryl only works on your evolutions again.
Brent:Right. Right. Then, I mean, I guess my point is they have targets. Like they have ways to take prizes,
Brit:Right.
Brent:it isn't like, you know, well, I'm just going to play Cheryl every turn and like move my energy around. I do this thing is like going to fix your problems.
Brit:yeah, yeah. That's a really good point that I had, I hadn't hit yet. So yeah, like I turned into his whole game plan involves playing Crow, tons and tons of curve ads. So the fact that you're healing doesn't change the fact that you've got these phone over a little bench setters. So I would think it's not going to find any place in turn it, but it's worth trying in the summary on dark right version, at least one, I would think.
Mike:And kind of a similar point, is that like, In the metal version. If they kill a Brown tongue, they're only taking one price. If they kill the weevil, that's two prizes, that's a much bigger deal. Overall, and, and the, and the metal version also has the metal saucer. So like, if they, you know, if you don't get bronze long set up or they kill it, you can still sometimes play Cheryl and then get the energy back and still attack.
Brent:We'll share, we'll find its way into like the teeny VMX and you know, you can use welder to repower stuff up, but like, like I could see a thing there.
Mike:I I've been thinking about it. Like you can't Sheryl and while they're in the same term, but what you can do is like Sheryl and then use it's one of the Victoria's first attacks to recover energy is put them on a bench guy and then if they don't have boss, then maybe you could, you know, they, they hit your active, you share again, then go into the second, big teeny V max that you just powered up. And you could like maybe have some strategy there. So I, I think it's, it's probably not as good as the more aggressive versions of eighty-nine V max, but it is a possible that it could be good.
Brent:Yeah. It seems like there's more and more BMX is where kind of to your point, Brit, like a lot of people will say I'm just gonna throw one Sherrilyn cause like, sure. It's a really good card.
Brit:Yeah, I mean, I say it pretty pessimistically. Like I can't imagine that it'll end up being good, but like, you know, there's no, obviously no harm in trying and that's just how we've learned. You have to try in the first place, like a plate one, Leon and all my decks, last format didn't ended up being any good. So time to try to Cheryl and as many evolution decks as I can find
Brent:So, so is there a Cheryl deck? Like, so when we, when we meet a week from now, will there be a Cheryl deck? And we say, Oh yeah, that did really, really well.
Mike:It's probably the metal version, but.
Brit:Sure. I think that whether it was interesting maybe to have more, more data next week to talk about, but from the Sunday open, there were two maybe a little more, but there was one or Shifu and top 16 and one, the top 32. But the one that did the one in top 16 was actually the the single strike, which everyone seems to think. We've all been talking about rapid strike being the better version, but it with hound doom and all that made it a little farther. I think I saw that there's a bug with the, with the stone energy or the, whatever the special energy is called.
Mike:I think there's a, I'm not sure. Maybe you're talking about different bug with the single strike, but I know there's a bug with the the rapid strike and in Polian like, if I'm pulling on. I think because I'm Pollyanna tag moves and energy, I believe from it to bench Pokemon. So if it moves this, the rapid strike energy, then that rapid strike energy is attached to the Pokemon. But doesn't actually count for anything that gets attached there, but like, doesn't count as an energy, which is so strange
Brent:All right. Before we wrap it up, Brit, you want to tell us what's going on with team challenge. We should get it. Let's do a quick team challenge updates guys.
Brit:Oh, well, I have, I have the riveting conclusion to my saga and it's it's at least a consistent pattern of behavior. It's not the first time I've made this mistake, but I, I, you had to submit deck lists on the 19th. And I, it was like, it was at 6:00 AM on the 19th and I didn't, I didn't notice, I like, I like genuinely logged in to do it like in the morning. And I was like, Oh, this submission is closed.
Mike:but that was for, but it wasn't that that was for didn't. You have a buy though,
Brit:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike:so it's fine.
Brit:Nice. See, I
Brent:Oh,
Mike:Yeah. It was, it was for this past week.
Brent:thought we were going to find out that like all your teammates have ceased to exist or something.
Brit:write all part of the plan.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. You're good. You're good. But so you still haven't heard, have you heard from like the store at all? No.
Brit:Oh, I, I messaged the Tio twice. I even, in fact, haven't received a response from, and this is just on Facebook. I suppose. If I cared a little bit more, I would have tracked down their email and maybe seen if they were better at responding to that. But no, I even messaged them before the team challenge itself. Hey, how do I sign up? Figure that out. I figured that out on my own one, never got an answer and I'm still trying to track down my team.
Brent:So what, what Douglas did you try to submit?
Brit:I was going to play ADP. I think. Let's see. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it wasn't a bowel styles. Wouldn't be legal yet. So we were just talking players cup three. I was going to play the Skyla ADP.
Brent:all right. Good times. Good times guys. Let's let's wrap it up. Well see everybody next week, you guys saw, I sent in the chat. My big idea for the new outro would be for me to say, like Danielle TVA sent me the secret new deck for the next format. And you know, I got to talk to you guys about it and then we just cut it off.