The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast

Marnies IRL, Tweetalanche conclusions, SwSH-on meta, Deep Dive for PC4: Rillaboom, PikaBDIF, RS Urshifu, Double Game Losses and Scooping, Assymetric Cuts!, Chilling Hot Takes

June 16, 2021 Brent Halliburton Season 1 Episode 45
The Trashalanche Pokemon Podcast
Marnies IRL, Tweetalanche conclusions, SwSH-on meta, Deep Dive for PC4: Rillaboom, PikaBDIF, RS Urshifu, Double Game Losses and Scooping, Assymetric Cuts!, Chilling Hot Takes
Transcript

Hey guys. It's Brent. I don't know if my mic set up or anything. But we tried to record some comments about Jimmy pen Darvis to kick off the pod. And I just didn't feel like they. Did him justice. So I wanted to try to. Record a little something myself. Everything you like, you can credit to Britain MC as well. They're stunned and saddened by Jimmy's death. It's just. Hard to express. How terrible it is to see someone so young. Pass away. And. Our heart goes out to his parents, his cats, his friends, his entire family. As a parent. When I think about someone so young passing away, so unexpectedly. It is just sickening to me. Nothing can prepare you for the seemingly arbitrary disappearance of someone, you know, and care about. But I wanted to say just a couple of things about Jimmy. He loved Pokemon. He loved being a part of the community. He was a legend. He won a ton of regionals. He went to everything. I think everyone knew Jimmy because he was out there. But, but for me, he was also a local guy. When we started playing, he was at all of our local leagues. He was one of the people I feel like I. Saw the most before he moved to Florida. I mean, he went to every tournament. We were on the grind. We went to every tournament. We. We just saw him all the time. And in that way. I felt like I knew him. You know, everyone's probably heard the stories of few tournaments I played in. The story I tell the most is the story of Jimmy putting me in an absolute blender at a city championship. Top four, when he. I helped popularize the volatile hard charms and destroyed me. He played Pokemon since he was a little kid. He grew up with the game game, grew up with him. And he wanted to talk Pokemon. He wrote everywhere and he wrote well, and I think part of how we got to know him was through his writing in places like six prizes. You guys hear me on the pod every week talking about Pokemon. So, you know, I'm an idiot with a million questions. Jimmy was somebody who thought it was an idiot, but he was happy to answer questions and, and in that way A, it was fantastic to be able to spend time with them. Jimmy was a fierce competitor. One of the funny things that I'm sure he would have laughed about it when you read through. All of these tweets is I think everyone wants to say. Something nice, but some people, the relationship they had with him was that he had tried to kill them previously at, he was as competitive a person as you will ever meet. I saw him work judges. So I'm worked the clock. He wanted to win. Andy loves control. So near and dear to my heart. So, so most of the time you were going to play him. You were going to be miserable the entire time. You were going to spend most of that time, acutely aware of how you're going to lose, and then you were going to lose. Jimmy coached my kids both formally and informally. On, on his advice, we played Metta grows to a top 10 finish at my son's first regional as a senior. We played Zoro at UIC. Because he and Igor said, we should. And I remember talking with Igor and Jimmy while toward was being streamed, playing Zuora pot. And. Yeah, I think I said to them, I was like, That seems pretty good. And Jimmy was like, that's terrible. Strong opinions, but weekly health. And I've always said, I think that's one of the best attributes of a thoughtful person, I think part of the thing that makes this really stunning and, and hurt so much is we're all at a moment in Pokemon where we starting to think about going to in-person events again. And I know when I thought of in-person events, I imagined seeing Jimmy there and. I know that's true for a lot of people and the Pokemon communities lost a special guy. It's a tragedy that he's gone. And I know when we resume events. There's going to be a hole because he was always there and. It was always a pleasure to I have that. Be a thing. Like knowing that you would, when you went to these events, you would see Jimmy and like, Jimmy be a, you know, he'd have a funny remark. It might be a biting cutting remark, but, but it was always good to see it. Jeremy And you, you took it for what it was. I I'll miss him. And. I know, as I said, our heart goes out to his family and friends. It's tragic. Anyway. Thanks

Brent:

Welcome to the Trashalanche. It's Brian Halliburton here as always with Mike Fouchet and Rick Pybas. We have a hundred percent attendance. We have Twitter accounts. Mike, Fouchet be, Pybas be Halliburton. You should follow us on Twitter because tweeting is what we do when we're not recording podcasts. It's fantastic. Guys, we got an awesome five-star review update for you. If you have not less have left us a five star review on iTunes, you should leave a review and we will read it on the pod. We're on the road to 100. When we hit 100, I keep saying we're going to have a contest to award a prize to the best comment ever. And that seems like a really good idea. We are at around 30, so keep going people

Mike:

It's still a ways away.

Brent:

And yet who to thought we'd have 30.

Mike:

It's true.

Brent:

It's incredible. It's incredible. We really appreciate the comments. Amazing how even from June the pokey, God, he leads with Pika is best. Second format from June. The pokey got to put it simply. This is the best podcast for competitive Pokemon play as an intermediate try-hard and the Pokemon TCG three really great people, always 100% attendance each talk about the metaphor Pokemon from multiple formats. This podcast keeps you hooked from start to finish and the intro sequence never disappoints. He's got some questions that come after that, but I want to take a moment to acknowledge that. I think he's given prompts to the cold open, which I always appreciate as you guys know a big advocate of the cold open

Mike:

yep. I think that's that's good. I like the, I like the self his self term intermediate try-hard

Brent:

Yeah. That, that, that, that is a, that's an excellent qualification. I feel like, you know exactly where someone is when they say that. Right. That's that's really good. Well we'll phrase. All right. My questions, one turbo, Boltund go room sort of shield on no need for an answer.

Mike:

well, just quick comment. So that that's directed at me. He, I think last week when I said that I played the Inteleon back in the certain Chevonne tournament and I lost to the only lightening deck. This was that person. So that's what he's referring to.

Brent:

June props to you for, for a given Mike the business what's everyone's opinion on shuffling and real life. Cause apparently I have to do that now.

Mike:

That's true. It's a big change from online, especially for people that haven't played in real life, especially for younger people, just right. Like the size of their hands.

Brent:

right, right. You know, the, the the comment that I put in the show notes is there's going to be a lot of like game losses for bad. Marnie's handed out like the first tournament.

Mike:

yeah.

Brent:

I mean, they're going to need extra judges for all the Marni game losses. They're going to have to hand out. Cause the morning mechanic was like, Not, I don't think people have like completely bought into the don't shuffle your deck to shuffle your hand and put it on at the bottom of the deck. Like before they called it, like, we just hadn't gotten used to that Marnie mechanic, man. People are going to be shuffling their deck so much.

Mike:

I'll be surprised if I don't get a game loss at some point.

Brent:

Yeah. Yeah. Like I just feel like, I mean, they might as well just pair juniors and judges like two to one, because every game, like first game game, last Marnie second morning gets played. And half the time it will be the person who played the morning. Like it was like, right. Like that doesn't even matter. That's not the

Mike:

Right. I I guess if any judges listening to this, like make multiple announcements during the course of the tournament, like before the tournament, maybe after the first round, maybe after the second round two and then maybe let it go. But yeah, you should probably do that as the judge.

Brent:

yeah, yeah. That I feel like that is like the number one trap going into the first, like in real life tournaments, people play in is getting destroyed by Marnie's. Three, this one's for Mike being a high school student who has to take math. Has any of your students actually acknowledged PTCGO because for my stats project, four of eight groups did something related to TCGS. I think there's actually a question for both of you guys I'm interested in, in whether or not like your, your Pokemon credentials have been like invoked in the classroom and whether or not like people are thinking about these games, unaware of your Pokemon credentials. I, I do know a friend of the pod, Charlie lock here. Took my next class. So like, if you guys think about it, that's kind of a crazy thing. Like when you say to like top 32, probably at the time Pokemon players, one was like a student in my math class and then Mike was teaching and the craziest part was, I basically never saw the two of them that entire year because Charlie was doing robotics and Mike was teaching the robotics team and they were skipping all these Pokemon tournaments to do like robotics. So even though for all these years previous to that, I would see them at like local leagues and stuff. That year was like the year Charlotte was on the robotics team. And it was the year that like Mike was teaching robotics and in person at the school. And like, he was relatively new to the Maryland area. And at that school doing that thing and the result was I saw them much less than I think I had previously, which was a weird thing. Anyway, back to the question.

Mike:

true. Well, quick, quick note, I never actually taught Charlie in a math class, but I did do all of the robotics stuff.

Brent:

Oh, I thought, I thought he was actually in your class. That's pretty disappointing to me.

Mike:

Yeah. Sorry to discipline. But so I don't know exactly what he means by acknowledge. PTCGO like, does he mean that? Do my students know that I play well, the answer is definitely yes. I have. Paul Pokemon posters, like in my classroom, I've used many. I probably mentioned it on the podcast at some point, but I've used questions like Pokemon probability S questions quite often in my classes. So the students definitely know they don't really like take it upon themselves. I haven't seen any student taken upon themselves really to do their own research. I've had, I have had one student like learn how to play the game and, you know, he's played PTCGO and whatnot. And I've talked to him about that pretty consistently, but not really as like a research project without actually learning to play. I have had students that have played Hearthstone quite a bit, that I've played Hearthstone, but not, not really as much.

Brent:

Yeah. How about you Brett, as, as you're teaching and are intersected with the pokey versatile.

Brit:

now one of my, the very first semester I taught the the professor that I was a TA for, like when he was observing me, like told my students to ask me about Pokemon, but that was really, that was really the only time it ever came up. While I wasn't doing that I guess similarly I did do. Lots. I did a big, I was, I didn't do AP, but I was in like the IB program in high school and I did it. I did my like really big IB math project on like some like cap tray for the, some like, if you like cat trait formula, and then like one other, there's some really, like, I think it's only, we only know it because people have like dug into the coding, but messing with some of the catch rates and just doing it with my own calculations was like a big probability project that I did for that class. So I just, similarly, I guess Bhagavan may not have been in my sort of teaching side of it, but I've always sort of equally approached it in, in the other side of things whenever I can, in terms of math and so on.

Mike:

I have had that, that reminds me, I have definitely had more students interested in kind of the in depth knowledge of the video game. So I've had students kind of like do their own, again, not necessarily for my class, but do a lot of their own research on Ivy trainee or Ivy breeding and Evie training. And what are the optimal spreads of those things for different match-ups, which is a lot of, which is a lot of calculation and prediction from the video game side. So I have, I have had some students do that.

Brent:

You guys are awesome. Hope this helps break the algorithm or whatever. A June the book you've got a, that's an awesome review. We we definitely hope it breaks the algorithm or whatever.

Mike:

yeah. Appreciate it. And Pika is the F agreed.

Brent:

Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of things before we talk about how BDI F it is, I did want to take a moment to wrap up between the lanch and give you guys a couple of exciting facts. It goes without saying the channel fireball is the absolute goat for helping us do this. We sent out lots and lots and lots of envelopes to people. And it seems like that was really cool. Alex Wilson posted on Twitter, he was the big winner getting a rapid striker Shifu max professor pokey got an in Polian beat and I had some quality tweets there for that. One of the note, three set things where Andrew Wimble went for just plain hound, which I thought was like a pretty good play in that. But like we got, we pulled nothing. Yeah. Like, like you would think. Not quite as rare as a B or a V max, and yet apparently hard to find. Cause we got none of them. Somebody went level ball, which as we discussed in the pod was a good strategy. Only pulled two level balls compared to like five Phoebe's or something. So you know, just go to the show apparently a booster box too small, a sample size for us to kind of level out the distribution and get the amount we should have for some of these cards.

Mike:

The sets are so big, man. It's crazy. How many guards?

Brent:

And then Dunkin tally asked for chair him. We got absolutely none of the chair. And even though like my feeling is that's a virtually unplayable rare card, you would have thought that we basically would have only pulled chairs. So I sent him a bunch of bad grass Pokemon to try to a swatch as the probably said feelings.

Mike:

That's nice.

Brent:

All right guys. Before we, before we dive into players cup four and start talking lists, let's talk about what happened. Last week Mike, I saw you picked up another dub. What, what what amount of people did this last week?

Mike:

I played two tournament. So one of them was the sword and shield on tournament that we talked about pretty in depth last week at the Tableau is table minds worlds style event. So I kinda. Since I qualified for day two, I got to wait around and see what did well on day one and then make a decision. And I was deciding between single strike Zuru day. And Victini pretty much were the three things I was considering and single strike and rapid strike bolted really well on the first day. So I didn't really want to play Zuru day into single strike. And I think single strike ended up being the most popular deck on day two. So that seems like a good choice. And yeah, and so I, I kinda wanted to play single strike, but you know, I didn't do that. And the Victini deck, the Victini deck seemed quite good against single strike and against rapid strike. So I played pretty much Peter Kinko's list that he won with. Do you want an in real life? It went then a few weeks ago. I changed a few cards, but the general idea is just straight Victini with rose and rose tower to play around crushing hammers. So you can build up your Victini again. And it plays to the special fire energy and two big charms. And if you have one of each, if you have the big charm and one heat energy, you are out of range from a single strike, a one-shot, whatever its big attack is called. So you're not only, Victini really pressuring the basic single strike V but you also have the ability to get out of range of a one-shot. So that's pretty good. But the day didn't end up going

Brent:

How does that say, having said that.

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah. I did beat the one single strike I played against. I lost to a Dragapult which was it? Dragapult yeah. Yeah. I lost a Dragapult where I. Destroyed one game, pick the wrong deck. One game, that one, and then like a lone Crobat nothing. And the third game I lost the Victini mirror. Cause I lost the coin flip, which is still pretty much, whoever goes first, just wins. And then I played against one of the two decidua in the tournament and didn't play any counters. So so it didn't end up super well, but there's still a fun event. And the the results were really interesting. The rapid rapid strike kind of like straight, rapid strike with activity. I ended up winning the event which pretty cool list. I recommend people to go check that out and I think get lost in top four, but there is also another straight Victini deck, but it was. Like way more straight quote, unquote than the list that I played is just four, four Victini as the only Pokemon. And then I played like all the different trainers that you could like, you know, crushing. I think I played four hammers for fan of waves for research, for Marnie, for boss, just like basically yeah. Like quad Victini. So that was really cool. I recommend you check that as well. So that was it, it was a fun tournament and I'm excited for it made me more excited for sword and shield on, even though we still have, you know, chilling rain and then one other set before it's the official standard. I think people are getting really the more people that are interested in it, the more we'll be able to explore the space of the format and, and see how things pan out. And I think this was a good, a good opportunity for that.

Brent:

Yeah. Brett, you didn't play day one. Did you.

Brit:

no, I almost did. I entered and then dropped. I thought I was maybe going to have time and then ended up not having time at

Brent:

So I have a couple of questions about sword and shield on guys. So first question is yeah, w when I saw that you ended up playing Victini day two, I thought, man, we are the absolute Kings of better manipulation, even though we told people Victini is the best deck did a lot of people play as a rooted. Did was, was that a thing they won? Like when we talk about why or HSA was big success?

Mike:

Nah, I don't think anybody played today.

Brit:

I wasn't going to play it. I tweaked the list and played played it a few more games. When I thought I was looking like, I would at least have a time to start the tournament, I was planning on it. I'd like to think about it a little more. Like maybe there's something you can do about single strike.

Brent:

All right. My, my second question is, yeah, I saw the Hersha Shifu artillery lists that one, and I thought it's a little weird to me that in our current Metta, everybody views artillery is subjectively worse than Chino. Y like what would be different about a sword and shield on format that would make you say, you know what? I want to play artillery instead of Chino.

Mike:

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't really have a good answer. I did. I, I played in that same small sword and shield on tournament that Britain I played in last week or the week before with, I just copy pasted the winning lists, the Octavia rapid strike lists. And I did really well. I came second or third there there's no no top cut. And it felt pretty smooth. But I know I haven't played rapid strike gin, Chino, and sword and shield on. So, so I don't, I can't really compare them firsthand, but the actress I had never actually played rapids Drake axillary, any format. So. It was a good learning experience in October is pretty good. Cause you like, you have access to draw with Corrina's focus. You have obviously you get the energy or the, or the earth fluid line and then searching out fan of waves is also super nice as well. And the stadium is really good. So maybe I don't think that played the stadium and I feel like the stadium was a huge game-changer. So maybe, maybe that's like one of the big things is that you can search out the, your treat stadium, which was super big.

Brent:

right. Well, and I wonder if like, like the lack of supporters and sort of shield on like makes Corrina's focus better. Like people weren't. I think people were playing a, one of Corrina's focus in lists with antillary when people were messing around with it until you heard when they first printed it. Hmm.

Mike:

Yeah, it could be, it could be like chin Chino. And you said supporters, but I think maybe like a more general. The, the higher quality, the card pool, the better like a card like Chino is because just on average, the two cards that you get are going to be, you know, higher value in current standard than sword and shield on. So maybe just the ability to search out these high value cards rather than get too random. Perhaps not as good cards in general. I don't know if that kind of makes sense,

Brent:

Right. No, no, that's totally right. I, yeah, that's, that's what I'm saying is like, yeah. The ability to draw two cards with the carpool is bigger. You're going to get dropped better cards, right? I'm in a really small card pool. You know, you could say, well, heck I filler, it gets me the exact same things to Chino it's that they don't have to discard

Mike:

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that, something like that.

Brent:

Right, right. Yeah. So, so you played another sword shield on tournament. You played rapid strike act, Hillary and it turned out that that was pretty good.

Mike:

Yep. And and then Monday I played the glimmer invitational. So actually I didn't even know that I made the invitation to the day before the the organizer messaged me on discord and said, oh, here's the code to, to join it. I was like, oh, cool. So say I play

Brent:

sounds like we could just be organizing our own invitation. We'll just send out invites to people and be like, you qualify it and they'll be like, okay,

Mike:

So as a 16 person, double elimination bracket, and I played peek around, I hit really great matchups. I played against three Victini is and two X Skidrow controls throughout the tournament. And I just beat all of them too. I dropped a couple of games, sometimes two on sometimes two. Oh But yeah. Those, the match ups were really good and peek around really good. So put those two things together. Easy done.

Brent:

second format

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

stop it.

Mike:

And you mentioned, I think it was last week when Liam played X schedule controlled at that one tournament. And he said that like, everybody plays for Marty. Right. And, and I feel like that, that was the story against the control decks. Like I would basically just set up a Boltund and a peek around there's two, two things, take three, four prizes, and the turn that they're going to want to do their combo. I just make sure I have a Marnie and then I win the game.

Brent:

Right, right.

Mike:

really as easy as that.

Brent:

Brett, you play in any tournaments best week.

Brit:

no, I was playtesting though. I think it was, I was just waiting, killing, killing time for most of my day on Saturday. And so while I was waiting potentially to play the sword and shield on, I just ended up play-testing a whole lot. I guess it was both days. This was just being Saturday, but I played some on Sunday too, but Rillaboom YouTube for whatever reason. I just, it just seemed like fun actually to, I played it and it's the only Unformer game I've played, but I, I took it on to Unformer and played one game. Not, I think it was late,

Brent:

how long did it take you to match? Like 20 minutes?

Brit:

No, I found this guy pretty quickly. But he, I think he, he, like, it was kind of funny. He was clearly already in the queue. Since it shows you how many people are there when you queue up. And then he kind of just like got mad. He was like yelling at me in the chat and stuff. And then he also said, I'm going to queue back up. And I just thought I won't that's that's good. But so I just went and played, played more on the ladder after that, but I don't know, like I just don't, I think we've sort of talked a little bit about the deck and this way on the podcast before, and it's just, especially after a Stefan one, the really big chill TCG term. And I think that's actually why I was a little more so motivated to try it some more made some changes closer to his list and. Yeah, I just don't quite understand like how it works. Like, I feel like the game, some games you just run so well and you just don't even need to deny somehow, like there's just the Rillaboom on its own combined with like me too are just so powerful. It's strange that you sometimes only need like one draw supporter or one boss the entire game. But as long as you got the Guzma Hala to start with you're usually pretty good to go and it just doesn't really quite make sense to me. It just seems like it should be a little more inconsistent Concare than it can be sometimes. But it's really, really good when you don't have the variance issues when you don't have the difficulties setting up your evolutions or just watching your Rillaboom getting knocked out immediately after it evolving.

Brent:

Yeah, it seems like the kind of deck that's super fun to play with a little bit like high Rowley in that way.

Brit:

Yeah, I have similar to like very similar to the Vic of volt Tapu Bulu deck to similarly like that deck really could be, those are most of those are archetypes almost every single time if you ran really, really, really hot. But of course the Zoroark deck for, you know, Mo where they're the ones we remember at the end of the day, a little bit more. But yeah, it's fun. Yeah. There's definitely some like really good match-ups, there's several match-ups that it doesn't matter if you have that magical first turn, you kind of have a little wiggle room to maybe get it on your second turn or so that would usually be fine. As long as you just like have Allana and mallow somewhere in the way, like some of these, you know, some decks like rapid strike, like are just so limited in terms of their options. They have two attacks. And so the healing stuff really But the damper and their strategy they really, the, the matchup that I'm just most curious about and have expressed this in, in chat, maybe some on the podcast before is the ADP matchup just feels so bad. I just don't ever feel like I win without getting lucky. Like, it's just a lot of things really seem, have to go your way. And then you're like, you, you have to get tropical or GX generally. And that's just like a lot of work sometimes. And sometimes too, like you're not even necessarily knocking out the ADP until after they've like Ultimate Ray raid or something like that. Like, because not every, you don't always immediately have the knockout. If they can stick a big charm, like it's really hard to even have the Dragonite attack sometimes too, even if they don't have the, the big charm that's three manual attaches or, or two, and the ability, yeah. Something like that.

Brent:

Yeah. Well, and I assume like in the ADP guy views killing a Rillaboom as like the path to victory. So other people are like, oh my God, I'm going to gust for one prize and leave this like powered up attacker. But like ADP guys are like, yeah, that's totally fine. I was going to kill it relevant anyway. Right.

Mike:

Yeah, so I think like big, charming, the Rillaboom is pretty important in that metric, if you can, for that reason, because that, yeah, that's generally the way ADP wants to win is kill the Rillaboom and then kill a tag team. Yeah, I played, I played the deck a decent amount this past week as well, because it was something that I was at least a little bit considering for players cup four, and it is a fun deck. Like Brits edit. It is super fun. My thing is that play so many to have cards that are absolutely essential. To your game plan, right? You play like a two to two of the, of the Rillaboom you play to Guzma Hala, you play to capture energies like to mute as you played to rally executors. When you play, obviously, if you're playing like a one-up card you know, the chances of present are about 10%. By bunch of one offs, the chance of pricing, one of your one-ups is, you know, pretty high, but so you can kind of apply that same logic. You're playing a bunch of these to UBS, where if you prize both of those copies of any of them, it sucks a lot. Like there's lots of games where, you know, I'll have the Guzma Hala and I'm like, oh, I prize both capture energies. Okay. I can't get the turn. One thing actually. Or I tag call and both Guzma Hala is, are gone. And it's just, it's not that unlikely, like prizing two of those copies of any one of those cards happens, like. I don't know every other game, every third game, something like that. And that's the thing that really sucks. Like you can win those games for sure,

Brent:

I, I feel like, I feel like you have some sort of like survivor bias or like, what are, what's the, what's the appropriate term for it? Cause like, like if you have a 10% chance of prizing, one card, 10% chance of pricing, the second card, it's like, it's like a 1% chance of pricing, both cards, but then you, you said there's like five or six cases. So there's like a five or 6% chance.

Mike:

oh, interesting.

Brent:

happens. Right?

Mike:

Hmm. Yeah, maybe isn't really that low. I was. Hmm.

Brent:

yeah, I, I, I hear you. I hear you. Which thing I'm like, it sounds like Mike's just scarred by that experience, which is like a totally valid thing. Right? I mean, obviously the reason they put two of all those things in is like, you are just critically dependent on getting this thing. So they're like, well, I better put a second one in.

Mike:

I guess that's true. Yeah. You're probably, you're probably right. There's also like other scenarios that are not as related to prize cards may be somewhat related. So like maybe you prize or have to discard, you know, one of the group keys and then you draw the other one, you know? And so like maybe, maybe if you couple those types of situations along with the price card issues, maybe it gets up to the percentage that I'm thinking about

Brent:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you could still run into like 20% of your games. You just have structural difficulties. If you

Mike:

Right,

Brent:

can't get there. Like, you know, if, if one third of those are caused by double pricing. Oh my God. Like that's so much right.

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, but the cool thing is you, you do have like plenty of plays in even those situations. That's why the Vileplume is so good because it allows your MuTu to just attack, even if you're not able to get the Rillaboom out. So. But the deck is really fun. And I agree with Brett has a lot of, it has a lot of really great matchups. And if you're, I feel like it's another deck kind of like peek around that if you like play it patiently, I feel like it's a patient deck. It doesn't appear on paper as a patient deck, but the more that you play the match-ups of this format, you need to play a lot of games. I think a little more patient than you know, than if you're just playing ADP or Eternatus. And so if you do that, I think you can get rewarded quite a lot. And I think it's a really, I still think it's a really wonderful play for players cup. I think it was really good.

Brit:

Yeah. there's definitely some nuances, I think too, like, like, you know, just maybe a D use the rapid strike matcha, for example, like, you know, in your head for just an impression of the mattress, you just like, oh, whatever MuTu, I'll just mute you the whole time. Fingers crossed that that'll get

Brent:

that is correct.

Brit:

and I won't, you know, Mimikyu won't ruin my day or something like that. And that's just actually not how you play it. You actually like, just do you can go just the executor first to figure first three knockouts and you just play it slow with the heel, from the first attack and then Maulana and eventually grind it out. And then you just, and then immune to out of nowhere, 10 the game. So you don't even have to worry about Mimikyu stuff. There's just some kind of slower things like that. Some, some things too. I don't know if, if your games maybe speak to this a little more, but in all the games I was playing over the weekend, I just like truly feel, or at least felt like I could cut the Incineroar. I could cut the dragon. I never used the, I only used Vileplume and executor. I never, ever, ever, ever used those attacks. I really want to do, wanted to swap them out just for more consistency stuff, I think. But.

Mike:

reasonable. And the, the, the hard thing about them is that there are evolutions, right? So the only way you find them is cherish Paul. So even in some of the scenarios where you're like, okay, I could really use Incineroar as a tack right now. You're like, well, I don't even have it.

Brent:

Yeah. And you don't prioritize that until later, because like it's attack is like the attack after you. Vileplume right. So, so like you've been using all your resources to like set up the other combos that you need to win the game. And then when the time comes where you might like get value out of Incineroar you already have other attacks you could potentially use. And like, you know, is it worth like, pushing so hard to try to get that thing off? I totally hear you Brit. I think, I assume like, eh, like they dropped in the Incineroar cause they were like, well, Vileplume works like X and Incineroar works like, you know, the inverse of X and therefore, like, it's always good if you have both of those. But, but you know, I suspect in practice, I could see how you could easily realize you just don't get that much value. Right.

Brit:

it's just really hard because like we were saying too, you're not, you're not, you're not drawing very aggressively as a deck. You're kind of making the most out of your first 15 cards or so like, that's the whole deck. And so like, you just don't have the ability to dig and search and discard all the, all these cards. And so it's like really difficult for you to dislike. You just have to just get lucky and like have the cherish ball, like, just add them as fodder for your Guzma Hala on your first turn. Like as generally the only time I ever get stuff in the discard quickly. Because obviously you'd get the other two, both off tag call, which is really good that it's just so hard to get the other ones. And then often you might, again, very, very little drawn in the deck. So you may be just getting it to DNA the times you see the cherished ball too. And two there's like, I dunno, maybe in different parts of the format, there's more merit to Incineroar when you're like getting a more mileage out of the crushing punch out of its first attack. Yeah, I just don't know. The metagame just doesn't really seem to necessarily revolve around that big rage GX attack. Whereas before, like maybe when Incineroar was there not Incineroar, but Centiskorch was more on the medic game and didn't necessarily have to have the one shot in the MuTu. It was just, it seemed really like a lot better in that matchup. I mean, I guess it's relevant in rapid strike and things like that too, but that's, I guess the biggest problem is just getting it in the discard.

Mike:

I think the main metric that I would be concerned about with that Incineroar has Pika because Pika doesn't. You know, they have to, to shout almost all the time. So, but I would, I would be totally fine. Getting rid of the Dragonite, I feel like the Dragonite is pretty bad as well. I, I also think anytime that you're able to pair up the Dragonite, if you know, most of the time, if you use tropical RegX cause you'll, it's almost the equivalent amount of energy you're going to win that game anyway. Even if maybe you don't take the Kao on the guy that you would have with Dragonite, but just shuffling all their energy back in their deck is usually like, you'll probably just win that game anyway.

Brit:

Yeah. that seems to ride like the, the games where you were like, you have the dragon Knight attack for some reason, but you don't have tropical hour. Like something a little strange happened in that game. DD missed a manual attachment. In addition to your your devil. I don't, I don't even know what it's called jungle beat or something like that, that Rillaboom attack ability.

Brent:

so is there is if you were going to cut the Dragonite, is there a card that you look at and you say that's the 61st card?

Brit:

I mean, the lists to Fonz list only plays like three Marnie. I would maybe that would just maybe be the immediate inclusion for me to go to play a fourth Marnie too. Because I would want just a general consistency card, but there's no, there's no one copy, no one option in particular that the list like screams to me. Cause you play, you play for tag call, like no matter what, and that's sort of non-negotiable and then the rest of the list, same. So more or less be in the same spot you play three or four Marnie, three boss. And then a couple of the other tag supporters, I guess, just to maybe talk a little bit about the difference in lists to Stefan plays the Cynthia and Kaitlin which not, which at least in my field list I've tried, this was the first one I've played with that card? And it's good, but again, it's kind of a tempo card. You have to find it at the right time. You have to have the supporters in the discard at the right time. But of course. It's really, it's a good card to search for off the, the tag call a lot of the time too.

Brent:

Yeah, I was going to say what I mean when you talk about not drawing a lot of cards and playing. Slow calculated game, Cynthia, Kaitlin.

Mike:

yeah, the I think Stefan's lesson only runs three cherish ball. So maybe you could run the fourth cherish ball instead of the dragon Knight. It's a little, it feels a little bad because you're dropping a card that benefits from playing the fourth cherish ball, but it's still. It's still like, it's still good for cherish. Bob makes a lot of sense to me.

Brent:

it. It's interesting that you didn't increase any of the two accounts, but maybe the moral story is like, yeah. Either increase them all or don't bother with any of them. Like you guys both opted for like, give me more search as opposed to like, give me more like consistent avoiding prizes or like struggling to find

Brit:

I mean, maybe that's the right. answer because at a certain point, like like the capture energy and like a card I've mentioned before in, in like a third group, like, they're basically the same card. So like maybe something like that would be logical because, well, also too, like. You know, you don't necessarily like adding an extra capture energy doesn't necessarily solve anything. Cause it's really not very good outside of the first turn. And then like adding just purely adding evolution cards. Isn't really good because, you know, they, they go together at a certain point. So like obviously, like, I think 3, 2, 2 has some is probably the only option, I think too, you certainly don't have room for 3, 3, 3, or anything like that. And again, like, it wouldn't be makes sense. I don't think there had been any logic to playing 3, 3, 2 or anything. But maybe I would, I could see the, the third group being better than the third capture energy. And so like maybe that would be something to try because I think too, like, like Mikey said, you're cutting a card that wouldn't be good with the cherish ball. So it would maybe make sense to. Sort of keep being consistent in that line of thought and make the change sort of be worse for cherish ball all around. So like a card like that, if that makes sense.

Brent:

right, right. Although I feel all the previous comments. I mean, I recognize church ball helps you find them, you too fast or helps you find the Vileplume faster. Like all, all these things seem super reasonable. Incidentally, I, we, we mentioned Andrews Andrew Humboldt asking for the hound men, but we didn't get to mention it yet. A nice tweet shouting at the pod, in our discussion of the Larry anthis Vileplume Vileplume line. There we go. That was you know we remember six prizes. That was the thing. All right, let's talk about you guys want to talk about list some more, or you want to talk about player stuff for, in the crazy

Mike:

well, let's just touch on peek around quickly. Cause it, cause you have it on here. Yeah, I posted the list that I think I'm going to end up playing. Hold on one second. Sorry. Yeah, so I posted the list that I think I'll end up playing for players cup. I did cut the fourth research and it feels pretty dirty, but

Brent:

yeah, that that's just like I mean, a young Mikey would have said it's an abomination.

Mike:

So I had for research, I had for research and. Only to cherish balls. And I think I've been convinced inst to play three cherish bowl over the, over the fourth research. So in a lot of ways they're similar, right. Similar consistency cards. But the thing that really got me thinking is I played for boss now and I fit in the team yogurt back in. And so you just can't, you don't want to have too many supporters in your deck. Right? Like we were playing 11 before for research for Marnie three boss and the yell grant. So we were playing 12. So I stay at 12 by, by going to only three research and

Brent:

right. You know what? I really want to turn

Mike:

Right, right. And so, and by bumping up the bumping up the chairs buck out still keeps the consistency, gives us more outs to MuTu in the matchup. Super important to find YouTube as quickly as possible. And. There's just so many, there's just so many. Match-ups where you don't really want to be playing research. You want to be playing either boss or Marnie, almost every turn. And so Kadina research seems okay then. And, you know, cherish ball finds you Dedenne to find one of those supporters as well.

Brent:

right. So I feel like people have come full circle and now everybody's playing three speed lightenings instead of four.

Mike:

Huh? Yeah, the, I mean like the fourth is a luxury and I tried it for a long time. It was super nice to have, but like ultimately when you're getting ready for a tournament, especially a best of three tournament, you look for those luxury cuts. In order to fit things like the, like the L ground, like the fourth bus, like the, the big charm that I think are more impactful in more match-ups rather than just general consistency. And you can afford to do that a little bit more in a invested three, I think.

Brent:

so I feel like most of the other lists I've seen, they're cutting that fourth speed lightning for a second big charm. But the list that you posted was not second big Trump,

Mike:

yeah, I've tried second big. Yeah, I've tried second big trauma a lot of times over the past few months, and it's just big terms. Great. But it's very, like the only reason you're playing too is so you can find it easier. The second one is almost never impactful. But big terms are playable card, like at any time. So you see, you see your whole deck pretty quickly in peak around, I would say. And so like odds are within the first couple of turns that you need the big charm or you're, you know, you know, you're going to want a big charm on a Pokemon in two or three turns. The odds of you seen it within those two or three turns is pretty high in my opinion. So I think it's fine. Okay. The only other thing, like I'm deaf, like a lot of lists still play like a stealthy hood and I'm just definitely not doing that. I don't want to play cards that are only good for one matchup, actually. Brent, you would appreciate this. I made this a little Excel sheet just to like help me visualize. I was trying to choose the last, I think I had space for like fourth boss team. Y'all grown big charm, second chaotic swell. And I could fit three out of four, but not all four. And so I made a matchup chart and assigned values for each of these cards for each matchup. So either gave it like a zero, a one half or a one. Right. So one being like very impactful half being like, it has some uses, but it's not like super game changer. And then zero basically, meaning like. Little to no impact in the matchup. And I just did that for like the 10 most popular decks. And

Brent:

and then did you weigh those decks as a percentage of the Metta?

Mike:

go that deep, but I did think about it. I did think about it, but I didn't go that deep. I kind of just tried to do that estimation in my head.

Brent:

Right? Right. You were like, these are the metrics that are more important to have these 10 decks

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah. Cause I really wanted to fit the second cat swell for the Rillaboom matchup because they all play the wondrous lab now. And that can be really annoying, but ultimately second swell was a least impactful or, you know, not as impactful as the other card overall.

Brent:

good times.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

so as long as we're talking about lists, you want to talk about earth foods and Chino for a second. I just take it some notes on, on how Petro Torres. I think that he'd just won a tournament.

Mike:

Oh, he's doing good.

Brent:

no, I think he just he just played at the boost Capella tournament and he played a list of was two cards off of the list that toward played a player's cup three. He added a Sheryl and a Hilberry and Mimikyu, and he cut the karate belt and capture energy. Any hot takes on that? I, I feel like we've talked about heel barrier Mimikyu a little bit last week. And is that like, does that, does that really help the Rillaboom up? Does that like, like what role does the heel barrier Mimikyu have and will, do you think we'll be seeing that from lots of Europeans, if that's the deck that federal is playing this week?

Brit:

it could, I mean, I, I think that's a relevant card. Like I think last week, as we said, they was more so for LMZ, but I think it would definitely be irrelevant mismatch, even just kind of interesting too, that the. The trend sort of, I mean, people have been playing it. Stefan has been playing it for a really long time, but just in my own group chats, talking with other people, it seems like more people sort of, kind of out of nowhere, kind of considering it for their players cup choice. So it's a fairly legitimate, legitimate deck, maybe more so right now than ever before. And if that's the case, I really do think like the rapids straight match-up is really easy for Rillaboom. And again, I'm not sure how the LMZ are really affected by those these cards, but I understand on paper how they would be. So I think it could clearly make a difference. Like it just depends. Like I think if, if you get your Mimikyu at the right time and have the other Mimikyu, like yeah, that that's like a super control of the game, I would think that that's the thing I think is that they kind of have to work together. The healing one, isn't going to do all the work on its own. Isn't going to win you any match. It's just purely on its own. I would think

Mike:

Yeah. And that's like a lot of bench space, right? You want, you want both mimic use, you want to ginger Chino or two, and then you need your ears, your foo. And so it's just, yeah, I'm sure that can be complex to navigate.

Brent:

Yeah, I, I was I was surprised to see the karate belt and capture. And if you get cut, because it seems like all that stuff seems like it improves the consistency of like executing your thing. And I felt like every time I messed around with the Chino bill, that thought TechSpace as a problem

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

or, yeah, just a bench space. The problem, sorry.

Mike:

I mean both. Right. But yeah, cutting karate belt in particular is a pretty scary for me. I was watching Pedro play, I don't know, maybe a week and a half ago. And he was playing some game where if he had karate belt in the deck, he could win the game, but he didn't. And so he lost.

Brent:

All right, guys, let's talk about a players cup for it's this weekend, Mike is moving and then playing. Are there other, besides, besides rapid striker, Shifu and peek around and Rillaboom, are there other decks that you guys think people will be playing that we should talk about?

Mike:

I don't want to go like in depth into any decks in particular, but I mean, I think, I think really any of the top decks are pretty fine to play. I think LMZ is good. I think Tempozard good. I think Victini is actually okay. But I would prefer to play Tempozard I think ADP and Eternatus kind of like both just do their thing if you don't want to think too much, just playing is fine. I just think control is probably like unplayable because of the, the time rules.

Brent:

Yeah. I feel like the meadow much like players cup three, maybe like, obviously my cruciate should play, pick around. If you're born to play the grommet, you play big round, but like any deck could win, Tempozard could win and Rillaboom Goodwin, like ADP could win and we'd be like, yeah, I guess that's just how it goes. Right. Yeah, let's talk about the crazy double game loss rules. Have you been thinking about what you'll do differently in rounds as a result of the most crazy rulings ever.

Mike:

Well, so luckily, you know, if I play peek around and hopefully none of my games really get into this situation, I do think the vast majority of games will not go to time. I don't think it's that difficult for most match-ups to finish three games in 50 minutes online, at least where in person it might be different. So I think 90% of games won't be affected at all. But I think, you know, if I'm starting to get game three with like, you know, 10, maybe even 15 minutes left, I mean, I'll say something to my opponent and be like, you know, if we go to time, we shouldn't, we shouldn't double game loss, so let's figure it out.

Brent:

do you think people who will there be instances of people who think they have unfavorable, match-ups going into like a game three and they would rather double game loss than just take the L.

Mike:

it's a good question. The only I'm sure, like at least one person will do that.

Brent:

Like, like I know there's going to be some salt. I'm just wondering how much

Mike:

only situation that I could ever see myself doing that is if like I was playing against a deck that was very. Like if I was playing against a control deck or something like that, I could maybe see myself doing that just because like you're knowingly playing a deck that is not going to finish games.

Brent:

right, right. You're you're expecting me to stoop to you because you hear your board state at the end of 50 minutes, because you know, we won't be able to finish.

Mike:

right. Yeah, exactly.

Brent:

the fact that you have that expectation means I'm going to make you take this double game loss.

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's kind of, yeah, that's kind of it. Because you're like, you're, you're like just banking on people having Goodwill for you. And I don't know if that, I don't know if that's fair to the other opponents. Like, you know, I wouldn't expect if I was going to a real tournament. I wouldn't expect that. And I don't think it's like, I dunno, I would just feel terrible. It's a V it's a very, it elicits a lot of mixed emotions in me. I don't know what I would do in the moment, but I, I wouldn't feel bad. Taking a double game loss against someone that like went into a tournament with that mindset.

Brit:

I think how, how Mikey put it in his tweet, you know, control is a, isn't a real choice unless you're Sander still. I think that's true. I would think like, you know, people are probably going to be salty no matter what I would, I would, I would guess. You know, most of it's just a joke that. People are gonna like, want to go down with the ship, feel like I I'll take control out with me. We'll get a double game loss or I'll, I'll be the one who gets us decidua out of, out of the, the pairing pool to, to make sure a real deck or something, you know, certainly someone's going to have that line of thought. But hopefully like, it's, I just don't get it from a, just like, I dunno, or toward tournament organizer perspective. Like it's just such a, just sort of affluent indecision in general. Like, why not? It's just a very easy, like, I dunno, similarly, like all those, all those years, years, and years where there was just like, not a good way to decide like game threes, the really, really awkward game theories. Like just to me, it seems like the easy solution is just right there. Like what prizes count at a certain point, something like that. And like, you could do the same thing here. I don't know. Yeah. I definitely think that like, less about control because I think regardless of what the time rules are control is always going to have to consider them in a sort of particular way, but most other decks never are. And so. I think it's fair, roughly, I guess fair. Maybe isn't the Right, word, but just it's a bullet. You have to buy it as a control player. So it's, I guess just nothing new, but like LMZ is such a, you know, one of the best texts in the format. And I do think it does suffer in these rules, in its ability to finish three games. It's like really hard. LMZ plays a really, really long games. Like mostly just cause I think your math, like isn't very good again against the VMX stacks. Like when you have to use Amazon to that's maybe three attacks even with Zacian it's two or three sometimes. And I think in like when you're having to chase down. Your last prize with boss and things like that, like gains go really, really long, almost all that like LMZ games I play like against Eternatus like, even when they're playing the Phoebe's they're down to, they still take me like a solid 20 minutes, even if it's like an auto winner in theory, it's a really good match up. So I would pay that like a, really, a very legitimate deck choice that isn't controlled, that doesn't really have a real opportunity to do well. Like that's, doesn't seem great to me. But that's really all I've seen. I just, like, I don't think that teeny is good enough to be, to be a real contender. Like Rillaboom maybe is maybe ADP just takes it with these new rules. You know, actually that joked about in the sense that people are going to play ADP, just because it finishes games faster, but I doubt it really affects people's DEC choices. Like I think that people, if we're going to play at EAP, if we're going to play it regardless I just can't imagine there's very many people who audible to ADP it's sort of is like a real moment of reluctance. It seems for a lot of the top players, they don't ever really seem to want to enter it and tournaments like as a whole doesn't play at terribly often that I can think of. Yeah,

Brent:

Yeah, so, I mean, I think one of the funny things about this is like, there's lots of times where people like, like you start up a game three with a couple of minutes left. Like it's not necessarily clear, like who's winning on the board and, and people just like, or, or you have, you pull out a win in game one or game two in an unfavorable matchup. And you're like, I'm going to take a tie at a normal tournament. And like, you feel pretty good about it. And here, I think there's almost this, like, there's this implied expectation that, that absent more knowledge you're going to be expected to scoop.

Mike:

Yeah. I mean, I think so. Right,

Brent:

right. Like, like how many times are people gonna say, like, I just can't agree to scoop or, or like, we can't figure out who should scoop the who, like, like Mike is supremely competent and Pikarom, ah, I could imagine a world where you play a rabbit's Stryker, Shifu deck, and he takes a game off you. And then you guys get like five minutes in and you're tied at four prizes each. And he is like, absolutely convinced he's going to win because he's like, I'm playing a fighting deck

Mike:

right.

Brent:

and you're like, I'm absolutely

Mike:

steam?

Brent:

Marty. You're three times.

Mike:

right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I don't think, I think match-ups like those, it will be very, very rare to get into these situations. I think it's pretty easy to finish three games, but you're right. I mean, like if people play slow for some reason,

Brent:

Yeah. Like, like people there used to be an incentive to play slow in a lot of matchups at a certain point, right? Like it's unfavorable and you go to game three and you're like, you want to play it out to a tie? Like, I guess you took away that instead of, except if the guy reaches like a terminal moment where he realizes he's going to lose, like Vinnie has a choice, he can either also make you lose or just take the out.

Mike:

Yeah, Yeah.

Brent:

That's a weird thing. It's I, I don't love putting pressure on people to be their best selves at that moment when they realize they're about that, they're going to take it now.

Mike:

Yeah, well, and yeah, and I guess that's like, even if I was like heavily, even if I loved control, I could never get myself to play it for an event like this, because I wouldn't want to make people put in those situations, like if I don't have to.

Brent:

right, right. Yeah. Trusting people to be their best selves seems hard.

Mike:

yeah. it, well, and it's a little selfish too, right? To play, like playing a deck, knowing that you're going to expect other people to do that. So it's just like inherently a little selfish. In my opinion, like Britt said, I feel like LMZ is the only like major deck that suffers from this. I think like good LucMetal players will be able to play quick enough and they'll increase their pace of play so that they don't get put into these situations that often. But I would expect it to be a little bit less played than it otherwise would have been.

Brent:

so I think the other thing to talk about that's relevant to this is I think Mikey, it was your tweet. How important is. like, scooping game one or game two, if you don't like how it's going

Mike:

Yeah, I mean, it's, again, I think it'll depend on the matchup and how much time is elapsing and whatnot. It might be relevant. I mean, I'm sure it will be relevant, but probably not as relevant, not nearly as relevant as in-person events like scooping, I think is a real skill in, in person regionals. Cause taking a tie kind of sucks, but it here, here it'll be like play a little bit of a part, but probably not as much.

Brent:

Yeah. Do you think we'll hear stories about top players, like had to stay, they didn't set up in game one on scoop for, you know, two minutes in and just like, say let's go to the next game. Yeah.

Mike:

I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Brent:

Yeah. Do you guys have any great scooping stories? I mean, when you talk about scooping as a skill in a big tournaments,

Mike:

Well, not a scooping one, but you're tying thing did remind me the regional that I got second at with a cell gore what buffet I played against Aaron Tarbell at some point. And he was playing Trevenant and I matched up really, really, bad for a cell gore. Really terrible.

Brent:

Spread spreading 30 is a horrible thing Yeah.

Mike:

yeah, so I I won game one. Well, I, I offered to

Brent:

If that doesn't help you, which

Mike:

right, right,

Brent:

right. Doesn't want if it doesn't do anything.

Mike:

Yep. So before that, before the match, I was like, do you want ID? He was like, no, I was like I was like reasonable. And then I won game one and then I asked him again, do you want to ID now? Like I had one game one, and then I

Brent:

This is the classic. This is the

Mike:

Yeah. And he said, yes. And I was like, great.

Brent:

Yeah. That's that's a great move. Right?

Mike:

I was like, I like the odds of me losing two games in a row are still pretty high.

Brent:

right. Right. You were, you were still happy to mark it up as a time, move on with your life. Cause like, even though you want it to not make you think, wow, this matchup is not nearly as bad as I thought it was. You were like, it's still pretty bad.

Mike:

Yeah, exactly right. You got any good scooping or time stories?

Brit:

I'm trying to remember exactly what happened. I sort of have, I guess it was relatively famous or what have you, as it was, it was in the finals of one of the state championships that I won. I like scoop and about I scooped game one and about three seconds or something like that. I like, I, I like opened Geraci and I, I think I, I forget even. So I won, I won that states with the executor deck. I guess Ross's deck that was just adapted over a couple over the course of a format or two.

Brent:

the executor lock deck?

Brit:

Yeah, Yeah, but just blockade,

Brent:

was a big

Brit:

blockade, lasers, and Genesek. I think I like opened and Geraci and prize Verzion or something like that. I don't remember. People thought it was funny or something like, I just, like, I scoop game one and like, just like about two seconds or something, or you could fucking maybe find it on YouTube. And then I ended up, I ended up winning the rest of the series and like relatively quickly, but I I'm pretty sure I like opened Geraci X and like prized which was unnecessary part of the matchup. I think

Mike:

that's funny and executor. It takes a decent amount of time to win games sometimes. So yeah, it makes sense. Yeah.

Brent:

I mean, I think to your point that like knowing at the scoop is an important skill. I think it just underscores how it is a skill in that, like so many juniors and seniors are terrible at it. I mean, I do not think I could count all the games where Liam played a control deck at a regional and the kid just let Liam sit there for like 45 minutes. And, and like, like the kid didn't concede and Liam kept like putting like one card back into his deck for him or something. And it was like, okay. And the kid was like, okay, I'll draw that card. It's a bad card. I'm stunned. And, and Leah was like, okay, I'll, I'll do it again. And he literally would sit there, like, I mean, I always thought the amazing thing about Liam at was that he has a tolerance for playing a control deck at a regional, like, I mean, we all know the problem. I mean, exactly problem we're talking about here. The problem is playing a troll deck at a regional is you're going to play with no breaks for the entire tournament. Right.

Mike:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brent:

Like, you're never going to wrap up around in 20 minutes. You're going the whole time. But like so many juniors that were happy to let him get the lockup 25 minutes in, and then they would just sit there for 20 minutes wondering what was going on. And like, they would even know they've lost, but not realize I should scoop and see if I can win a different game. I

Mike:

right. It just never crossed their mind.

Brent:

Like it just didn't cross their mind. That scooping was a choice That they could make. They'd never done that before. Right. And Liam was like, if you're not going to school, I'm not going to tell you the scope. We're going to sit here for 45 minutes. Cause I was going to sit here for 45 minutes either way.

Brit:

that just reminds me of when I was in like middle. I could just, I guess I played like elementary through High school really, but like chess club. And I remember at tournaments, we would have the clocks of course, that you you'd have to hit when your turn was up. And I remember this was in middle school. I think it was like at a state, the state championship. I think I remember ply playing someone and they would forget to hit it. And I wouldn't say anything. I would just, I would just, just, just go back and just sit for them and wait for them to catch it and just let, let let as much time go as I possible.

Brent:

You're like, you think I'm thinking about my move, but really I'm thinking about what, when you're going to realize

Brit:

I'm getting it though. The sh the blitz time, when you have to make your decision really, really quickly,

Brent:

Right.

Brit:

It was always one of those things where I like, felt a little, like morally conflicted about it in the moment. Like, I just don't know if I can really do this. Like I can never, I can never bring myself to actually slow play. Like for instance, like I'm tempted to often, but I just like can't ever do it. I'll just, I'll just deck myself. like I'd rather just play the, play the Juniper and sign the match, slip and get up. Then just like sit there for another 20 minutes And, just like hope to maybe cheat or whatever It took to get the win or to get the tie,

Brent:

yeah. That that's conversely in, in the, juniors, I mean, there was like one tournament where I think Lynn was playing stable garb and like all of his Swiss rounds, he was done in like 30 minutes because kids would just deck themselves relentlessly. And I was like, Howard, how are you too? Whoa. And you're back with like 15 minutes for the round ends. Like you're playing Sable garb. Like what happened? He was like, I don't know, kids Sycamore at every turn. Okay,

Mike:

She feels good.

Brent:

exactly. He was looking for something that's good times. Anything else that you're thinking about in terms of players got for Mike?

Mike:

not really a bunch of I dunno if it'll be eight or nine rounds, right. So sixties or seventies, a bunch of them are gonna miss. So that really sucks. So you kinda just can't really lose, I'd say you all the, you can't lose two and your first, like four around probably you could probably only lose one in your first four. Otherwise your, your resistance will just be too loud probably.

Brent:

Yeah. Symmetric cuts people.

Mike:

And yep. it wouldn't, and it would actually be really sweet to have an asymmetric cut for something like this. right. Because that would reward the, you know, the one person that goes undefeated And, the couple people that go X and one. Almost all of them probably would get buys if they took all X twos or better in the first round of the double elimination tournament. So,

Brent:

and like, and I mean, it, at most, it adds an hour of time, right? Like

Mike:

Right. I've noticed. Yeah.

Brent:

why not? Add the hour of time to like decrease the salt and increase the equity of the tournament. It seems so good. It's symmetric cuts. They're great. I think every time we've tried them, everyone says we love them. It's symmetric cuts. All right, guys, should we talk about chilling rain for a few minutes?

Mike:

Yeah, Let's not do a deep dive because we've already been going for a while, but maybe just a couple hot takes or things.

Brent:

Yeah. So I don't know if you guys had hot takes or if you guys wanted me to do so. I, I tried to go through the set list and design a lightning round of questions for you.

Mike:

Okay. Yeah, let's do that.

Brent:

right. So the third card in the set is Beedrill stage two for one grass, persistent sting. If your opponent's active Pokemon has any special energy attached to it, it is knocked out. Will that find a place and expand it?

Mike:

No, but it? could be good and standard actually. I think that's kind of like, it could actually be okay and standard and

Brent:

It's just hard for me to imagine any like stage two, non like GX V max, like something with a hundred and something hip points actually setting up consistently.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brent:

In standard. Alright. So cast form decks. Their ability is if you have eight or more stadium cards in your discard pile, you can ignore the energy and the attack costs of cast form Pokemon's attacks. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of different cast forms and they have a whole bunch of wonky attacks. Will that be a real deck or will it be a meme?

Brit:

It will be worse than a meme? I would say.

Mike:

Yeah, way worse than the meat.

Brent:

I mean, there will definitely be people that show up at my local leagues and stuff with like cast form decks and they're like, I'm running 16 stadiums. Let's go.

Brit:

like the, the ROTEM cards that were in rising rivals, I think like, it was just like, like they're not good enough to be like, it's not good enough to be its own archetype, but it like, it's at least sort of nominally the case that it is like, it's just like Sherry, you could build this deck of you on it too, but it's just like, it's like an incomplete idea or something, you know, like the mechanics are there, but where are you to have the perfect cast form list? That's just like, it would barely compete with the starter to, or something, things like that. I did want to say about this beach girl. I think that, I think it could be good and expand it like potentially it just strikes me as a card. That's good. And like, The MuTu or Mar shadow, like the mark shadow can use it, like with the Shivan gel, like that decks just really kind of gimmicky in general. I could see it finding a place in there. And if there's, I mean, I guess it just depends on like where the tag teams are, where the special energies are and expanded. I think that could be okay. Like, it'd be good in the mute to mirror or something like that.

Brent:

I mean, there's, there's a lot of special energy out there and like Kayling anything is pretty good. like for one grass, that's pretty good, attack. It's a good attack. But I feel like we've seen all these stage two kind of Mimi attacks that never quite work out the way you think they will. Right? Like you have to have something for things like peek around. Let's say, well, I'll only play basic energy then. And like, at that point you're like, oh, I'm building two different debts. This is horrible. So I feel like expanded is the only way you could find a place for it because you'd have to have some tricky thing to get it out because it'd be like a one of card or some contents, I don't know. All right. So ice rider Calyrex max is obviously like a new archetype that they just give us. Right. You know, it, it has two attacks. The second attack is a really good one. For two waters, you can discard up the two energy cards from the spoken mine. If you do, the attack does 120 more damage for each energy card discarded in this way. So two 50 for two waters is really good. Will this be more popular with frost or frost lists or something else for us less is the new stage one that says when you play this card from your hand to evolve the Pokemon, you can search your discard pile for a water and energy and attach it to one of your Pokemon.

Mike:

Mm. I would think probably neither of these, if it's, if it's like really good. I've seen some lists with gin, Chino, that seems okay. But I think mostly you're just going to play that supporter though on that Melody. I think it's called you attach a water from your discard and then drop three, so,

Brent:

say, apparently I didn't read the whole set because I have no idea what you're talking about. There you go.

Mike:

Yeah. So I think my, my, my guess is that you just would play it straight or shouldn't, you know, it seems pretty good though, too. Yeah, I don't know. My guess is you had played straight. You can't like I guess you can't like completely rely on the supporter. So I could see playing Like maybe a, a thin line of the frost last, like a Tutu line. The frost last seems better than cross them off to me, but I could be wrong.

Brent:

All right, next question is, will people figure out, so there's this new Gardevoir and the Gardevoir seems pretty good. Honestly, it's a stage 240 hip points. Its ability is once during your turn, you may look at the top two cards of your deck, choose any number of basic energy you find there and attach them to your Pokemon in any way you like put the other cards into your hand. I read that and I thought that seems really good.

Mike:

it is really

Brent:

Like draw two. And if any of them are energies, attach them to Pokemon. Will will people build real decks around that? Or will it turn out that well, that's a really good ability. It's not good enough.

Mike:

well, so other things to think like the Kirlia is has the water duplicates TAC, which is awesome and galley is pretty good as well. Glade. Does. Two color lists 60 for each of your opponents, V's in play and it's fighting. So you're, you're hitting like two of the best types, right? Fighting and psychic are both pretty well. They are for this metagame it could change, right? Like your psychics really get against the MuTu and the earth Fu and then a fighting, obviously get against bigger. I'm going to turn a test. I have to imagine that those two types will be still strong. Maybe not quite as strong, but still strong. Do you have good typing? And yeah, that. ability sick and you have water duplicates. I'd be surprised if it wasn't a decent deck. I haven't really seen people talk about or make lists, but I'd be surprised if it's not at least like a tier two tier

Brit:

yeah. Throughout my thought. I think it'll be fine. Probably not competitive, but it'll certainly be worth trying better than like Whimsicott roughly about that tier. I would think.

Brent:

darn it all. Although I guess webs, the Cod is like, you know, the most popular of the decks that people never play. Right. I dig it. Alright. Is there a place in the metaphor, the news that those beat its basic 200 point fighting Pokemon its ability is for each Pokemon beat, your opponent has in play tax cost one last for a fighting and three colorless. It does one 70 and discards a special energy from your opponent's Pokemon.

Mike:

Yeah, I think the scar is great. I don't really know how it'll get played. My first instinct is to maybe you'll have to convert peek around, back into like a lightning me two deck, and then this fits really super well in that. Cause it plays a roar as anyway. But yeah, I think discard is really good.

Brent:

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I, I guess I could see it being like a one-up in like an Orisha food deck where you say I am running fighting's if they do bench, you know, if I, if I bumped into a turn of this and I just want to like bench it, I don't know. Does it improve the matchup or is it just another card? I don't know. Like, it doesn't seem that amazing. And the last question I had was the it's a stage one. And my question is, is this a viable wall? Its ability as spiteful lithograph. If this Pokemon is in the active spot, it's damaged by an attack from your opponents. VMX. Put damaged cameras on the attacking Pokemon equal to the damage to this Pokemon. Brit, I know you played a lot of Crobat DMX recently, when you here, I can wall with something that does damage. EO has kind of mirror like ability. Would you play that or is that terrible?

Brit:

Both I don't know.

Brent:

That is the correct answer. It

Brit:

Yeah, I can see where it would have merit and the, the switcheroo kind of act like Crobat VMX. But like, I don't think that there's that certain, like non-competitive because of their pivot options, like Altaria is really good, you know

Brent:

right, right. If they have a V max, you can just wall with Altaria and they can't kill it. Right.

Brit:

and knock out I'll Terry is right now. Not very many of them usually. But you know, nonetheless, Crobat, VMX not all that good of a deck. So that's essentially my answer is that like sure. it. could be an improvement, but it's just, I don't think gonna solve any of the underlying issues for the, those decks Right. now.

Brent:

That's that's all the questions I had. Any other hot takes on the chilling rain set guys.

Brit:

Yeah, I think some of these, some of the supporters, I think. Maybe are worth looking at a little closer than the one, the one I really wanted to look at, I just closed this out of the scans, regrettably, but it was Avery I think was really interesting to me. I'm not sure what you would want to play it with, but I don't know. Just, I think we've said it on here before, like the more options you have, the better the formats tend to be. And while none of these supporters seem super duper great. Just like off the cuff, I'm hoping that something will be good from them. Let's see.

Brent:

yeah, I had the same reaction, like a, you know, a deck that like a peek around that or something that says, like, I have a hard time with a Trinidad or something like that. Like, there's probably lots of situations where you say this is okay. Right.

Brit:

oh yeah. Avery has kind of of these giant stump parallel city, these effects are always suited widow or like always good. And Avery's is one of the only cards in standard that has the ability to do that. Draw three, then your opponent and discard their bench until they have three. Like, I don't know,

Brent:

Now the, the set I will recognize I think what's interesting about this card is I feel like the other mechanics we've seen for this you were always able to use the supporter gust effect to like stick something in the active right before you did it. Right? Like if you're like, I want to make sure they don't have to start the day, day. It'd be like, boss, the day-to-day and now discard from your bench. And as a supporter, like, unless you're throwing Pokemon catchers at the guy, like you don't really have that same opportunity. So it's like, maybe it's not as like awesome as pseudo Ludo, which was an all-time favorite card for me.

Mike:

Yeah, I was, I was actually thinking the other day about this format would be really interesting with like a pseudo Ludo or parallel city type of effect. I'm not sure if it would be better or worse, but it would definitely be interesting. in terms of chilling rain, I think we should definitely go more in depth in the next few episodes, but like with battle styles, remember I had those three hot takes. I think two of them, two out of three ended up being correct. I'm gonna, I'm gonna post these on Twitter, but I'll, I'll say I'm here first. So first one path to the peak. I think it's super overrated powerplant. Wasn't that good? When it first got released? I don't think this will be, I don't, I think it'll be played, but people are saying it's going to be like the best card in the set. I think it's super overrated. Conversely, I think Inteleon might be the best card in the set. Or at least the most played card. I think a lot of decks can play some type of Inteleon online. like, we've seen in the sword and shield format. And play like one or two of each Inteleon and I think that could be really good. So I'm really excited to play with that card. That's the card I'm most excited about for sure. And number three, I still think peek around will be a tier one deck. Those are my hat. Those are my hat takes.

Brent:

It sounds to me like I have to say it sounds to me like the second take is wrong. How long do we wait? Is it just for this. Like format and when the next set drops it.

Mike:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brent:

I just can't see Inteleon being like that big Curry rope pre like sword and shield rotation that good. I don't know.

Mike:

I don't know. either, but that's why it's a hot take.

Brent:

Right. Victory guys. Take it

Brit:

perfect timing.

Mike:

All right. See you soon.

Brent:

week. Clear cup for excitement.