I'm scrolling through full group games. It's like thirty-five GLC posts.
Mike:Unsurprisingly. It seems like control is the best deck in that format.
Brit:Yeah. The color
Mike:Yeah. Yeah.
Brit:I've never thought about that. That's really funny.
Brent:Welcome to the Trashalanche spread Halliburton for the Pybas Mike Fouchet a hundred percent attendance. We're on Twitter at Mike Fouchet, I'd be Halliburton at his wise, we're sponsored by a channel fireball, which is just selling cards left and right. And given people, deck ideas left and right. And making videos left and right. I accidentally got sent a thing asking me to help edit one of Israel's top 10 videos in their like little workflow thing. So I got to see some of those outtakes and they're fantastic. No surprise.
Mike:nice.
Brent:But, but it impressed me how, how much editing the channel fireball people must do to help pull together the high-quality videos that they just do. And that's a sponsorship for the day. Five star review update, no new updates, guys. Leave a review and we will read it on the pod. Every other podcast in the world says when you leave a review on apple, it helps people find the pod. I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes me think that it probably helps people find the pod. We appreciate it. When people leave five star reviews as do all the other listeners, we have people should leave five star reviews. All right. That's all of the housekeeping for today. Guys. Let's talk about the full grip games. One K it was that there was an actual big one person tournament or in-person tournament with like real prize money. And I think the people that did well were like the people that people think would do well.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Okay. The Xulane ship we're in the finals and his little one. I mean, those are the two people that are going to put them on.
Mike:Deed JW Cree wall also no big name in there. Andrew dankest. I feel like I've seen his name at some top tables at regionals, other names, not too sure, but the other, like, besides the players, it was the Urshifu and Shadow Rider show
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:and out of eight of them or one of those two decks. Wow.
Brent:Although the eighth was a rapid strike Mallomar deck, perhaps to a Nick Mornay for making a rapid strike a Mallomar do what it though. That's a fun way to do things. Any reaction to like the lists that got played and all that stuff.
Brit:I did sort of notice there's a handful of like tech Pokemon or just like different, like little Pokemon, like JWS lists plays like the road on phone and Articuno V, which seems very interesting to me. And then there's just another glaring. There's a basic glary and Articuno that the shadow writers are playing here and there. And that's interesting to me, but not a whole lot of takeaways otherwise. I guess the only other thing, at least as an initial observation, is that the Shadow Rider list, do you seem a little more committed to Alcremie in post rotation than they are in the POG format? And I haven't quite parsed why that is. But not to say two to Alcremie is just as good in standard right now, I think, but that was just, again, something that I noticed.
Brent:Yeah, I you know, I thought the exact same thing, like one of the things that really jumped out to me was, I mean, I remember six weeks ago we were talking about how Alcremie was so good. Maybe we should take it from a one to a two, two, and here, you know, Andrew Jenkins gets third in full grip with a three line. Like he's like, we're definitely getting out multiple Alcremie. Is this a, this tournament?
Mike:Yeah, I think it's big. A big reason is the post rotation for a minute is so much more max heavy and you really need to take those big one shots. Like in regular standard, you can get away with just some tag teams, which don't have quite as much HP. And so it's not quite as, quite as good.
Brit:Yeah. The three to yearly makes sense to me, at least again, from how I'm understanding it currently to the, at least like the, a lot of what happens in the mirror, I think just depends on like Alcremie and whether or not you can use the opportunity to be Max's first attack and assess sort of gearing your deck. More towards that, it seems to make a lot of sense. And like, it could cause thinking about a matchup wise too, like, whereas where was this like almost heavier Alcremie focus gonna hurt you and like really just against the Zacian index that happened to exist or is it Zamazenta stuff, I guess, which we, as we just from the top eight alone, none of them nothing, none of that made it despite like Zacian, Inteleon being relatively popular in these post rotation events. And yeah, like, I don't know. Too much about these match-ups and plus rotation. I just really haven't played any at all, but. There isn't any matchup where this attack is bad. Like getting a lot of psychic Pokemon on your board and more energy on your board is like always really, really good. And then, you know, even to thinking about it a little further now, there's probably a little more dark. The dark stuff is maybe a little more focused and targeted for Shadow Rider decks and post rotation. Whereas in standard, there's just like, like the weevil deck, for instance, it's like a dark deck that I just like, don't think you can beat. It's like not worth like really trying to beat. Whereas the dark decks, at least from what I can tell, like, I don't know how much, like Umbrian shakes thing up there or anything like that, but they're just not in the same place, if that makes sense. Or at least at least the weevil deck is just like, sort of its own breed of opposition to shatter writers. And I guess just from what I can tell from the results from standard recently is the weevil box ever since. We got the trainer K two and bell about Sabrina that that deck is just sort of on another level or at least just a little bit better than it was before. And it was already clearly a tier one deck. And then the fact that finally moving away I would just think dark, like, it'll still beat you it's you're not like ready for it. And so that's why you need, you know, maybe these heavier lines, but I just, I don't know. I didn't really see any Eternatus lists. I wonder if anyone tried it. But yeah, it was sort of just kind of off the cuff impressions about the list.
Brent:Yeah. And I mean, I recognize the rapid striker Urshifu stuff like, Hey, if you're playing the Mumia as the counter, it's an interesting thing, but I just haven't tested like how that changed. Did the matchup.
Mike:No, the only other thing I'll note is Zul did play two of the Ray Han or Reihan card. And I'm interested to see, I mean, I know I kind of like both last week on the pod and I'm on Twitter. I kinda just did a little bit, so I am interested to see how that works, but have to note the rapid strike. The other rapid strike decks with Moltres did not play it. My now I guess that makes sense, right? Cause you're playing Moltres with energy switches. Yeah, we'll kind of have to see which of these rapid strike variants ends up being. More popular and ultimately better, or maybe they're the same. Maybe, maybe they're both equally good. And just kind of depends on the meta,
Brent:Yeah. So do you guys have an opinion on, on the like Moltres versus no Moltres in rapid strike?
Brit:just initially if Azula wins without it. Do you need it? Like, it just doesn't seem. That good. I guess, like, I don't know. And this was, you know, again, just sort of the case for the players cup and things to where Alex Szymanski is just doing it again, beating, beating the Shadow Rider decks, even with, you know, at least on paper, the weakness sounds like hard to deal with. So yeah, I mean, again, it was, it was a really good player. So, you know, perhaps it takes a lot of skill, a lot of mastery with the deck to be able to navigate the matchup well, but it just doesn't seem, you know, that doesn't seem that great to me, especially at least for me, a lot of. Shines about Moltres or at least what just seems like such a synergistic card is Veridian the Veridian forest. And with that rotating, I'm a little questionable about it. Like it's certainly much, much worse than these decks that are juggling different types of basic energies. And so that was just like such a wonderful card for that standard. Cause not only do you always have access to the basic energy of your choice, but you're also probably discarding darks with it at the same time. So it seems a little weaker, maybe not all that much, but certainly a little worse. But I'm not too sure. I just haven't, I haven't played at all with any tray stacks, so I've played against them plenty of times and like there's times when they do nothing. And there's times when they, they have three energy on the discard in the first turn and then there's powering up two at a time. And like those games are certainly harder.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting to me, like when I look at JWS list, it's like really tapped out compared to his rules and he's got the three Moltres runs, three Crow Brad's he runs the Articuno V that like lets him discard cards to draw cards, which is probably really neat, especially when you're trying to get dark energies on the discard early. Yeah. And then he's got the energy switches and the road Tom phone to like help make that whole package work. I just think I like Inteleon mean why would I do all that stuff? If I could just like quick shoot.
Brit:Right.
Mike:It does seem more fun. Like the Moltres that kind of just feels like, oh, take these two powerful cards and play with the same deck.
Brent:Right, Right. And you're like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess the question is, is the type coverage that good cause otherwise, Yeah, You're just taking like these two good cards and switching them together and saying you've got a deck, but I don't think, I mean, the keeps winning despite the number of people he runs into plant Shadow Rider. Calyrex I mean, when you meet ship running Shadow Rider, that's the real deal.
Mike:Yeah, I didn't, I watched like some of the earlier rounds, but I didn't get to watch the top cut. So I kind of want to go back and watch it just to see how his rule is piloting the matchup.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah.
Brit:I think too. And again, maybe just based on these results and I mean, time will tell, but I would think that like the mole trace isn't worth playing, unless you're like also trying to play Sylveon or something too. And that like maybe as is if you're, if you're strictly playing or if the question is strictly Urshifu Inteleon versus Urshifu Moltres race it seems to me like just Inteleon is strictly better, but when you're trying to do like a couple other things, like make use of Sylveon, like that would make more sense to me. And I think that's what the deck that Frank Pirsig played. And I believe he lost a women in the top eight. He played Urshifu Sylveon a Octillery I believe. And I'm sure, you know, it's not a completely rogue Zack. I'm sure there is sort of a handful of, of similar lists out there. But that's my like, take, I guess if, if that deck is fine, competitive enough, then maybe the question is like, is the better question is which of those two decks is better and we can leave. Urshifu Inteleon kind of out here in tier one or what have you.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:I think that that makes.
Mike:Cool. Yeah. I'm really excited to see how the post rotation format keeps evolving. I mean, there was an event last night where a sweet Coon Luda colo deck won the event. I mean, there was no top cut. It was just Swiss, but like did well. So it could be, I don't know. It'd be really interesting to see how the format evolves.
Brent:Yeah. So I have one more question. If you guys had a hot take on these Shadow Rider decks that are running the baby Gillary and Articuno, right? You, if you've mentioned, you can attach to psychic energies from your hand. I mean, on the one hand, but it's like a lot of energy acceleration on the other hand. I mean, I, you know, I haven't played that many post rotation games and maybe you just feel like you need that extra juice, but I always felt like I had no problems blowing all the energy I ever had in my hand on shadow writers.
Mike:I, I think if you're going to play it, so the seventh place list really on 15 psychic energies and two Aurora energies. So I think if you're gonna run Articuno, you need to play more energy. So something like that, all the other ones were playing like 12 or 13, which is what you would play anyway.
Brent:Right. Look, chip chip played the glaring Articuno. He played 12 psychics,
Mike:yeah. Right.
Brent:but he played for training courts. So he's got like a lot of energy recovery.
Mike:Yeah. I just feel like you're playing, you're playing like about that many energy even without Articuno. So I don't know how much use you're you're really going to get out of it without, without the extra energy.
Brent:yeah, Yeah. I mean, yeah, once again, I, you know, I should go back and watch some of these games to see. I mean, it's that, unless you get off that second, like Alcremie attack, you know, turn earlier. I mean, maybe that's all you need. You're like I have a plan. You know, to discard 600 years and they get 600 he's back on the board. The very next turn, thanks to the power of training court and ordinary rod, some nonsense like that. Right.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:I got it. Can we talk about Sanders lists for a second guys? did. you guys see his latest chin Chino control list that he posted like yesterday two days ago yesterday?
Brit:Yeah, I did. Let me jog my memory though. There was something in it that really stood out.
Brent:I mean, the thing that, the thing that I think it really made me realize that I, I assume everybody's going to be on this train. And second is like Zora, art's a crazy car.
Brit:okay.
Brent:He plays, he plays like three stage ones that are not. Like that he doesn't play a basic four, actually. I guess he played the EBG X. He has a way to evolve jolty on independence, Zuora works, but, like this idea for a, like, you know, these controlled decks where you try to have this core thing that you just do again and again, until the guy loses the idea of you benches or UWA, the next turn you evolve to Zoroark you swap it out for a different stage. One that's in your discard already. You discard those cards and then you like put the Zorro back on the bed. You get it back in your hand, you and you revenge the Zuora to do it again. The next turn is like exactly the kind of core loop that control players look for. I think.
Mike:So I did see this, but there, and lots of questions. So jolty on shuts off water, Pokemon abilities. That what it does. So I guess that's just for, to stop the pinging.
Brent:That's an Inteleon counter. Yeah.
Mike:Yeah. Okay.
Brent:it stops you just like it w you know, you can stop them from DEC searching. Like, if you have the loop up,
Mike:Hmm.
Brent:can give them a drizzle. It doesn't matter. You can give a lovable, it doesn't matter. Right?
Mike:How are we only playing one extra drill?
Brent:Yeah. So, I mean, I think his core loop is he gets a Zuora with down and he has a Zoroark in his hand and he's like, I'm going to evolve this to Zoroark and then evolve it into ex-con drill? and then revenge the Zuora. So it'll be fine.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, just the, how is my question for so many of these cards? It's just, there's just no search in this step, this list. I just don't know how he gets stabilized. Like, I mean, I know I've practiced a little bit the stacks and I've watched him stream plenty, but I just, it's just a mystery to me looking at it. There was just like so little search cards. So, so, so little search cards, all the supporters are so situational and like, Rarely, you know, it just plain good on their own. I just don't. I don't, I don't get how these things work so well. Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, he runs no, bro, no professors research, like there's no draw discard, right? He's like all in on, we're going to find Snorlax turn one. And we're going to get some like min chinos down, but like the machine chinos, it's kind of cute because he could evolve. The Zuora was to Zoroark to get more chinos out. Like, what I think is really adorable about the concept is once he has Zuora was down and, you know, works works. You, he can evolve into a Persian out of nowhere, he can evolve into a nice control. He can evolve into a chin Chino. Like he suddenly has a lot of choices on a turn where like, like historically, maybe you would like, Okay. we're going to target down the excavator real basic. So he can't like, do the execute drill thing next turn. And like, that's our strategy for getting this deck under control. Yeah. Right.
Mike:Mm.
Brent:And here he, like, if I just have enough, Zuora was down, they can't stop me from like having the choices to do my thing. And once he gets the XQ drill down, he can revenge to Zuora was, and they get either one could turn into an extra drill when I started. That was crazy, man.
Brit:Okay.
Mike:Yeah. So like one thing you just said, if you said, if you get an observer role as Dan, he only plays So like, I wonder if that's ever an issue, like probably like. think like three, zero, I mean like Sander, we've talked about this a little bit, but like Sandra obviously can squeeze every little spot out of his deck much better than we can. I think if I was playing this deck, I would definitely play I think to Zuora is probably fine, but three zero would be in there for sure.
Brent:Right. So, so I mean, I think what's neat about the Zoroark mechanic is when you evolve the Zoroark into a different stage one, you discard the Zuora and the Zoroark
Mike:Oh, do you? Oh, oh. Oh, I got to read this card
Brent:right. I'm I'm describing this. Right, right.
Mike:to the stage with Pokemon accepts or pile. If you do discard that. Oh yeah. Okay.
Brent:so he discards the Excon drill, evolves the Zorro to Zoroark discards, the Zuora and the Zoroark gets the XQ drill on the board. And then all he has to do is like, get the Zuora and the Zoroark back in his hand and revenge the Zuora. So he can have a a bench that's like X And if it turns out you can't kill the XQ drill, he can evolve the second Zuora to something else.
Mike:Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brent:He can turn it into a chin Chino and just keep the cycle going. But now he's got a Chino on the board. That was crazy, man.
Mike:okay. Yeah. I didn't realize that. Zoroark I thought it just went on top of the Zoroark, but I didn't realize it discarded both him and the zero as well.
Brent:Yeah. Like he's essentially like he's trying to build an engine where he streams like a prism star. Didos the whole game. Right. I love that man. Bring on filling your deck with random stage ones.
Brit:I'm confused. How so? Like I get the strategy so far, but then like the real ones get discarded. Right.
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:So how does, how does he, is he just putting them back with X quadrille and finding them eventually? Like, I that's that's, that's where I'm lost. Like, there's just
Mike:So you can do it that way. You can do it that way. And then you have the the rescue carrier thing that gets them back and
Brit:does, I saw that in the list, but I didn't, I don't know what it
Mike:it gets to two 90 HP Pokemon back to your hand from your discard.
Brit:Okay.
Brent:doesn't get the Zuora.
Brit:really good.
Brent:It doesn't get the Zuora works. It just gets the Zuora was, but all he cares about is revenging. Zora was
Brit:Right,
Mike:Right. And then and then Kiarra, the supporter is get to Pokemon and put them to your hand.
Brit:from the discard as
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can get there.
Brit:together.
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. So, so he's turning every Zorro into either like jolt, Dion or XQ drill or CIN Chino, like every turn until his board stabilizes.
Mike:Right?
Brent:That's crazy. I love it. I love it so much. I mean, you know, I mean, this is the innovative deck building. We love it for, but the idea that people are going to run Zoroark so they can run like random stage ones and not running the basics.
Mike:Yeah. And the implications of this and expanded are like way too much for my brain to comprehend right now.
Brent:Oh, it's going to be crazy and expanding.
Brit:He'll just do it for expanded too. I'm sure
Mike:Yeah.
Brit:that'll be like the deck better or something.
Brent:Yeah.
Mike:Because like you have compressor and expanded. So it's like super easy to get things in and this card and this card, like this might just have to be banned and expanded. Eventually we'll have to see how degenerate things get.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, using, using depressor to just throw away a giant pilot stage ones and then like get on an army Zoroark and get. them all on the board,
Mike:I don't know if you guys,
Brent:it would be.
Mike:I don't know if you guys, like, when I play in a format with the BS seeker and I play like a bunch of different supporters, all like take one of each of the supporters once they hit the discard and kind of like either like put them sideways on my discard pile or at the top or something like that, just back into the options. So I could see myself in with a deck like this, just like 10 different stage ones fanned out, like throughout the game, like, oh, which one do I want to use now?
Brent:Right. Well, and, and, you know, what's, I mean, one thing that would make a lot of sense to synergize with this is you can get a stage one out, you can get a vest, but went out and discard the basic,
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:right? Like that's just more Pokemon in the discard.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Brit:I might be good
Brent:That'd be good. Right.
Mike:yeah.
Brit:historically is that Zoroark, I mean, at least when it existed in standard, you could play like festival coins are together. The older one, the, that was the one that hadn't rushed in and, and such,
Brent:I mean, you don't need a whole lot of this specific kind of Zuora work. You could take the other Zoroark. Cause what do you care?
Mike:Yeah.
Brent:so easy to recycle.
Brit:Foul play for GX. It's just a zero box.
Brent:Yeah.
Brit:still play detto too, like.
Brent:like that idea that, you know, like. historically you'd run like 29, 30 Pokemon and investment deck, you know, you don't have any basics on the board. It's just like the stage ones and they're just doing their thing. That's crazy.
Mike:Okay.
Brent:People will be losing their minds, but I love the innovativeness. I love it. The, the like concept of that core loop, I think it, it I felt like a bunch of comments on that post that, you know, people realize, oh, you know, we should be abusing stage ones. Let's go find bad stage ones. And, and like put them into our deck, which is great. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Mike:Thank God. V maxes are not considered stage ones
Brent:Yeah,
Mike:that would be miserable.
Brent:absolutely. Absolutely. Let's talk about park guys. So pods coming up, people need strats. They listened to this podcast. We should give them, we should give them.
Mike:Yeah, let's do it. Brent, so you said you were going to play, but now you're not going to play. So what, in the few days that you were going to play, what were your what was your focus.
Brit:Mostly economical to start trying not to buy any of the new car apps. I don't know why, like for every set, since we've been in quarantine, since we've been podcasting, I just would always buy everything. Not to say, you know, of course, like I got burned. Like I'm not, not shocked at that. Of course, but this time I'm like stuff is just too expensive right away. It's just, I'm just like, no, I'll wait.
Brent:I bought a bunch of physical cards thinking they were about to publish a regional schedule and look where I am. I hear you.
Brit:I feel good about that. They announced that I was sort of, I know I even mentioned on the podcast that I, I should've snatched up all the golden trans aisles and stuff. I would have made bank. I didn't, but I was sort of lamenting to myself as like, oh, I should have brought in Urshifu is like a year ago. They're going to be so expensive when events start, but there there's a box for him now, so no worries. Everything cheap. That's that's what we try to do. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like silly Coon interested me because it's a new card. And it's cheap. So decent, I mean, it goes in things as well as it being its own deck. And I guess to talk a little bit about that too. So the kind of, at least the flavor of the day right now for sweet Coon is with the ludic colo. So the little colo is kind of interesting and people are just trying stage twos other than Inteleon. And what the Ludo colo does is when you evolve it, you, your damages, your basic Pokemon's attacks to a hundred more damage that turns. So you play nuts and things like that. And just try to. You're really fast and consistent and just try to be powerful. And don't like the citywide isn't around, or I don't know if it's around or non, so that would block you, but like you don't have the, a lot of the decks right now just probably are going to have to worry about both Zamazenta and a glacier. I'm not sure if anyone's quite found a good glacier on deck. I do. I have seen lists for it and it's typically just Inteleon I Strider, but with glycine instead, and that seems pretty good to me.
Brent:And I feel like every content creator has made a GLISI on Inteleon video, but every time I see them, I'm like, I'm not going to click on that link. Then we'll
Brit:Yeah, there was something from last week that I think it eventually devolved into a joke, but I, at first I just couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. Cause there was just like a tweet a day about like, actually this V VMX is really underrated and I'm just like, are you people serious? Are you people? Are you people sad or satirizing each other? And I think eventually that's what it was, but for a while I just couldn't tell and it was difficult. So again, the jury is still out. On Leafeon and Glacey on and even requires, I think I just really haven't seen anyone talking about that. I remember like going into the release of the set, like, I haven't really seen anyone talk about fluffy, but I remember seeing like a welder version of the deck that seemed interesting with just fall canyon and welder, just kind of a different direction rather than fluffy, but I just, I haven't seen anyone playing that or putting up any results. So maybe it's just bad, you know, like we've said before, it hasn't seemed to show up in Japan either. But I'm just not sure there. But yeah, there's, there's just, there's some other decks. Yeah. I know Mikey, Mikey has posts has talked a little bit, or at least in one of our group chats had a list for like Zacian Zamazenta Inteleon. Which seemed interesting. Frank per sec has mentioned, like we were talking a little bit this morning in a different group chat. Like, Hey, why not? What about like Zacian little Cola, is this, you know, can we, is this better or worse than Sui Kuhn? And I think, you know, I rationalized it into being, I think that the Sui Coon is probably better, but it would be close to be shared.
Brent:Why? Why do you think that? I think that's really interesting. I mean, obviously we've seen the, Zacian a deck, like put up results. I can kind of see where I like this thinking.
Brit:Yeah. So my, my, my logic is just, was that I think Zacian is stronger when you're drawing well, like when Zacian is hitting its beat. The better deck for sure. But Sui, Coon is just easier. So we Kuhn of course draws car. I mean, Zacian draws cards too, but suing Coon just like takes less energies. You know, these lists like capture energy and stuff too. And that's, that seems useful for your alluded colos and so forth, getting your low tats on the bench. And yeah, it was just this question of resources. I think, I just think like Sherwin Zacian, Intrepids the first turn into two energy. Like you're good to go. But I think like in, in games where you're not running really, really hot, but the Sui Kuhn deck is going to be more consistent and that's really all my argument was. And so the thing too, and just comparing lists, looking at Sukin lists, not a lot of switching cards and then Zacian needs switching cards generally. And so that's just like more space and gives you takes away from your text. So like a lot of, there's just a lot of consistency and the
Brent:the nice thing about Zacian Inteleon is, you know, if you need a card, you just get that card, right. You need a sauce or you need a switch. You just like, okay, this turn I'll grab that.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that Zacian needs three energy compared to two, I think is like a huge deal when you're spending so many resources getting out this stage two, that doesn't do anything for you.
Brit:Yeah. And so just even, you know, an experience playing Zacian decks, like ADP, some games where your first date Zacian goes down just a little bit too early, and like, you don't have the other one ready to go and you dig for it. And you with the games just over the time where it's silicone is just so somewhere minimal. And like I was trying to think about if the typing mattered at all, like the lightening weakness versus the psychic or fire weakness. And I don't think it really does. And the empty teeny stuff still may exist. And I guess if you're talking about Paul just mentioned welder decks, one last ride for Mewtwo welder. I'm sure people are gonna bring that out again. And I guess that was a deck to initially on my radar. It did well in Japan, just MuTu Aurora with Umbrian. I haven't tested it. Luke Marissa said it was a pile. And I said, that sounds about right. I'm just looking at the list. But yeah, that was really the main thing on my radar. I figured it would be pretty easy to pivot to ice rider or Shadow Rider if I had to. But, oh, and one of the interesting things too, about the deck, Mikey posted it's that it also played a meta Chan, which seemed really good to me. Like, and so maybe the, maybe that's, what's missing from like the sewer Coon list. Maybe they could play with like, well, I take that back. We're talking about Inteleon colo. But I liked that a lot in, in these, you know, it wasn't the water, you know, it wasn't Urshifu, but it was still playing meta Chamonix, just probably too good. Not to play for an, to anything that plays Inteleon I would think Yeah, those, those are my general thoughts. I was, if I had to guess, I bet I would've just played Shadow Rider. But I was, I was looking for something interesting within the collection of cards. I already have.
Brent:Mike, how about you?
Mike:So similarly as trying to think of stuff that. Is not super expensive as well. I did get like a hundred codes, but they went very, very quickly. I bought four and a three to Umbria online and a meta CHAM. And that's pretty much a hundred bucks right there.
Brent:Okay.
Mike:So I played around with the sweet Coon Inteleon like sweet Kuhn checkmate type of deck, which is similar to the Zacian Inteleon checkmate type of deck. They're okay. They're not that good. To be honest. So then I kind of was thinking like, all right, what what's out there that is just good that I'm comfortable with. Then LMZ just seemed solid. The only new card in it is the rough CU stadium. I don't remember what it's called cave, something cave, but it's the same thing as rep C is for metal and dragon Pokemon. And that card is pretty good. I played a smallest tournament last Saturday because I had some time and I won that with LMZ. And I tweaked it a little bit. I played it in the Sunday open as well, and I did really good in the first phase and then lost a couple in the second phase and dropped, but that feels really solid. It's the same old deck. It got a little bit better with the stadium, but like the main reason that it's better is because. More people are playing VMX decks. And so Zamazenta is just so good against those. So nothing like too crazy there. I, I had a little bit of the Urshifu Inteleon cause I liked the idea yeah. Of the buff with Netta CHAM. It just, I think I'm probably not playing it super great, but also it just feels like a draws. So awkwardly a lot of the time. So I'm not going to play that right now, but I'll come back to it once a rotation hits. What else? Oh, I do. I play, I've played a decent amount of that.
Brit:Yeah.
Mike:The Mewtwo Umbrian welder deck that Brent mentioned as well. I took the Japanese lace and tweaked it quite a bit. It's pretty fun deck. I think it's pretty solid. It has really good typing, you know, psychic and darker, really good types. And I think having the fire Pokemon in restroom, Charles ARD is also pretty good. Cause I think LucMetal will be somewhat popular in the event. So having that is good. So that's like all the playing that I've done, I'm really interested in. There is a dark MuTu deck, that one Zack massages event on Monday night, but it doesn't play Levi's so it's just like matrass MuTu and you know, the things from U2 to copy and energy switches. So that's really interesting to me. I don't know if you guys saw that, but that's cool.
Brent:This is the Nishikawa list.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
Brent:Yeah,
Brit:Yeah, I just, I mean, it, it won, of course. I just kind of, I don't know. I, I know I'm, I think bias, I just always liked the, we filed type cards. That's just a typically an archetype within the game that I enjoy playing. And it just doesn't seem like, obviously the commitment issues are different, but it's just so good. And like, it's not even like, you know, with weevil too, you have to play
Mike:Red and
Brit:blue and green, but that's just like so conducive or not blue and green, but red and blue. But that shit, like getting the energies with that, it was just always even better. Like what a great part of the the trainer
Mike:That's like exactly the reason I don't want to play. Levi's like, I don't want to play red and blue on my deck. I don't want to play the wee vile stuff, but I mean, like, you also have to play bad cards in this deck too. You have to play energy switch, which sucks. And I guess you're already running the tag call engine, because like you said, you have to play Sabrina Bryce in anyway. Like that card is just way too good in these type of decks. So yeah, maybe it's just worth it. I don't know.
Brit:Yeah.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, my, my reaction was eh, Yeah. the like these same bad cards you could just run. We have, and it gives you like a little more flexibility.
Mike:Yeah, it's probably true.
Brent:I mean, I like the best argument for not running weevil is that you don't want to be punished for needing the ability to get where you're going, but you're already running YouTube. Like you're embracing the path that people not be super prevalent.
Brit:Okay.
Mike:Right.
Brent:So what do you do? I just think the med is going to be like for the pug championship, I guess. Is it just going to be like all over the place?
Brit:I think so, like it's hard to know from my Twitter feed alone, but I get the impression, lots of people are going to play maybe not a lot, but a good handful of people. Like they don't necessarily want to win. They want to play their pet deck one more time. So I think there will be like a fair amount of meaning or however you want to put it. But otherwise I, I would wager that a lot of players are probably thinking similar to me in terms of dislike, really want to buy new cards. These Shadow Rider cards were so expensive. I might as well play it. So I, I would expect it to be a lot of Shadow Rider, an ice rider still.
Mike:Urshifu
Brit:Yeah. And Urshifu of course, especially to just looking at the results, like looking at tournament results, nothing new is doing overwhelmingly well yet. So I, I would think it would be sort of pretty similar to what we've been seeing a lot of, a lot of Shadow Rider and just,
Brent:Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I wondered was like, you were like, I don't think people want to fork out for the new cards. If you did want to fork out, like, what are you going to do? Run requires at the bed deck.
Mike:right,
Brit:right.
Brent:Like, well, what would you do if you weren't going to like, I mean, I, you know, I mean I'm Brianne V max, I think we all agree is a good card, but you know, it's magical partner has yet to be found.
Brit:Yeah. Like if you're was new card wise, like, I guess you're just really convinced in an UV deck, but yeah, otherwise I think in perhaps can. But yeah, I would, I would really think it's going to be a Shadow Rider show for the most part.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think you hit the nail on the head. It seems like when you look at results right now, said I want to play the new, new thing you would place no, the thing is weird, man.
Mike:Yeah, sure.
Brit:I don't, I just don't know. I mean, we're talking about it. Of course. I just don't know if it's proven enough yet. Like it's probably, it could very easily be bad. So it just seems so much worse than Inteleon like, I, I was looking up the lawn Bray the stage one before the podcast, but I was like, oh, it has an ability. It's just like, Inteleon, we've got tour. It was like, the stage one is really good. And the stage two is really good and that doesn't do anything. It's
Mike:It's like, if you get it off the top, you can
Brit:you taught decade. Yeah. But, but it doesn't have the decks on it all makes sense now. Cause I was just thinking about, you know, these compared to Zacian you have more room for like consistency cards, like Oranguru but that's, there's clearly some synergy there, I guess you can Oranguru it perhaps.
Mike:Yeah. I was going to say, do they run a anger? Let's
Brit:Yeah, they do. I believe
Mike:run our anger. Cool.
Brent:Does does the sweet can just lose to, Urshifu because they can just kill all your lawn Brays and then you lose.
Mike:Maybe, probably
Brit:they're not play music.
Brent:Oh, no.
Mike:like a double-edged sword now. Right. Because.
Brit:Yeah. Yeah. Yup, yup, yup. Yup. Yeah. I don't know.
Brent:Yeah. So, so why would rapid strike Urshifu food? Not just wind POG and like, that's the answer. I feel like I've been on rapid striker Urshifu for weeks now. And yet neither of you, Mike said, I don't like playing that deck and, and Brett, you were like, I'm gonna run Shadow Rider.
Brit:Yeah. I don't know why that's, I, I have I've had, have had Urshifu cards from the very beginning, but honestly I haven't put much time into it. And then I know the time I have put into it has been play testing, bad lists. So like I don't, yeah. I just, I just haven't played with it, but yeah, like I like the most Urshifu I've played is like, when I was messing around with. The Tapu Koko lists. I find interesting, but like I started off with this Japanese list and I think that second and chill or something, and it only played escape route. It like didn't play like switch and I just lost every game because I only had escape rope. So yeah, I've just, I've spent exactly zero time with a good Urshifu and telly on deck. But yeah, I don't, I don't know why, I guess that's the answer I was Shadow Rider is easier. I would play that and just maybe try to pick up the nuances of how to make sure I don't lose to Inteleon. But I dunno, like I get it with when they play Cobalion, but it seems a lot harder sometimes like with, without it like being able to set your perfect term, but I need, I need to go watch the finals. I'm sure. If I watched the finals of the full grip tournament, I'll have a much better idea of how either player is supposed to play. Cause in my head, I just sort of don't quite understand how, how it happens. So consistently
Brent:Like, I, I know previously I was saying, I, I felt like I didn't really understand how to use iron rule. Well, but I have to say, I see these lists now that run Cobalion and run meta CHAM. And I'm like, okay, I'm pretty sure. If I did that, that would work really well.
Mike:Yeah. The issue that I've found, cause I, I, the issue that I've found when I'm trying this, like Cobalion meta jam in these Inteleon decks is sometimes it's just really hard to get out the stupid Inteleon to make it worth it, to use Cobalion.
Brent:You, you, you actually run out of bench space because you're like, well, we gotta have these two Urshifu Foos and then we gotta, we gotta bench Cobalion and we want to vet your meta CHAM. We wanna set up and then you're like, oh, okay. I have room for two Inteleon.
Mike:Right, exactly. Yeah.
Brent:that, yeah, that, that, that seems a tricky, but, so, so what, what's the argument? I mean, is there any reason to think that Azula, won't win POG with
Mike:I mean, LMZ is like almost unwinnable matchup, I think for Urshifu it's really, really bad for them. So like that's one thing.
Brent:Right. So that, that, and so that's is that the TLDR of how you are having success with LMZ like what's, what's working, what's not working.
Mike:so the worst matchup. So the good thing about LMZ is it beats? Yeah. Beats rapid strike it, beats ice rider. It beats Rayquaza. It'd be just like be max decks in general. It's pretty good against the ADP deck. It's pretty good against the dark meta two deck,
Brent:Okay.
Mike:but it's really not that good again. Shadow Rider. It's okay. Gun Shadow Rider. Like if they don't play Path to the Peak, you can win, but it's still a little sketchy if they get a good whorehouse against you. But if they play path that beat, that it's really bad. Cause then they can just kill your Zamazenta at any point during the game. And then the other matchup that's actually pretty bad is paternity. Just assuming that they are running weevil, which seems to be the the common way to play Eternatus now. So they have, we have isle, they have Moltres, some of the lists even run the Umbrian dark ride tag team. So most of my losses were to some form of a Turnitin throughout my couple of tournament. What else did I lose too?
Brent:But in the Shadow Rider matchup, the Griselda just doesn't hit hard enough to swing that. Right.
Mike:no, no. But they have, the gang are Mimikyu, so getting army with you can hit you. So you have to, and like, that's the awkward thing about, LMZ like, you want to conserve your resources, but you just have to kind of throw them away. If you think you're going to get Poltergeist in a, which it's pretty awkward.
Brit:Okay.
Mike:yeah. So I'd say those are like Eternatus and Shadow Rider. I like the two big metrics that you really don't want to see. as, as LMZ, it's also just like, it's not the most fun deck to play in the world is like really slow. You just kind of like sit there and Intrepid stored half of your turn. So, I mean, like, I think it's fun, but I could see why people wouldn't think it's fun.
Brent:Is there a reason why LMZ is a terrible play besides it's not fun. Is it because half the meta is going to be Shadow Rider and Eternatus.
Brit:No, I mean, I would think of LMZ is probably a really good play. And I'm sure some people find it fun. I might even say that I do.
Brent:Huh.
Brit:but yeah, I guess it's just kind of polarizing and it does seem like a good play though. And like, I don't think it would be that bad against Kuhn, if you could just run fast. I think you could keep up potentially with relativities. I'd have to think I'd have to crunch some numbers. I mean, I, I don't, I don't imagine you're you live to lose Niccolo ever, but like there's not, they don't have to color every turn. And I imagine you're almost always safe in those circumstances and can heal and retreat and so on.
Mike:Yeah. Who can, it's like a threes options versus three squeakers and who is able to take the three knockouts first? Cause they're both like with the Lucario they're always going to be one shot in, in flashy and obviously always one shot in the new to the new to welder embryonic though is, is really sweet. I, if I had more time to test, I would almost certainly play that and I still might play it anyway. If I play Prague this weekend it's a pretty fun deck and be like the, a good way to send off welder. And yeah, I mean, it's just cool. It MuTu dextro is fun.
Brent:So at what is it just the standard like attacking package or are there other like crazy Pokemon thrown in? I haven't looked at this deck right.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, the list that I've been playing is really just rushes, ARD. The big chars are GX and Vileplume GX. I think those are the only three. I might have Vanguard maybe to use kind of an in and out. And then I ran a three three-two Umbrian the max line. Yeah. So it's actually less attackers than normal because you have to fit all of the Umbrian stuff. And like the Japanese list did not run Pokegear, but I was just never drawing welder. So I put in a bunch of Pokegear and that made the deck flow much more consistently.
Brent:Nice. I feel like a lot of people are talking about Leafeon VMX. Is that a real deck?
Mike:I think that card is so bad. I don't understand. Like it doesn't make any sense to me.
Brent:I feel like, I mean maybe as we were discussing earlier, this is just like, today's the day when all the content creators are like, I've made a Leafeon feedback stack, like, but like I keep seeing it on like my socials and then I go, like, did I miss something? I go look,
Mike:Nope. Yep. It's terrible. I mean like the basics ability is cool. Right? You get an extra grass energy, but like the VMX is not good.
Brent:Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's hard for me to imagine that how that goes,
Mike:did see there was an expanded event last night though. And. It won the event. There was a, there's some Pokemon Jaylee Pokemon that adds things to your opponent's retreat costs. And so you just get a bunch of those out plus gala mine, and then you're actually one chatting beam act. As you can put them up to six retreat costs and then you can one shot three prizes, then it would be good. If you could do that, it would be quite good. But you can't do that in standards.
Brent:right. Yeah. You know, I saw that too, and I wondered I was like, oh, that seems pretty good. And maybe it's unfair enough. Like if you're really forcing people to find switch effects. But I, I recognize an expanded, like it's gotta be really unfair. And Sandra is about to build some crazy thing. That's like all stage one.
Brit:Yeah. I mean, I saw the sub that expanded list with jealous scent and it's cool that I just like, it just can't be good. Like there's just too many good cards and expand it. Like I like, can you make like it's, it's almost like you know, Inteleon can, could, could you put Inteleon in every deck and would it be okay? Probably, but like, would it be like competitively? Okay. Probably not. And so then, like, when you, when you're making like an expanded version of a VMX deck, it's just like, okay, you've made it, you've made. A deck where your VMX is good, but it's not going to stack up well against the rest of expanded. Right? Like you've found the way to make Leafeon in this case, like affective with these extra retreats sort of additives, but like, can this compete against control? Can this compete against, I'm not even really sure what the meta game looks like and expanded anymore. I don't feel like I've seen results all that recently. But yeah, like
Brent:enough tournaments that are actually big to give you a sense of what's really going on.
Brit:it's just not broken enough and you know, that's just the easiest litmus test for expanded. It's just like, is this the most impressive thing on earth now build a different deck. Like there's just gotta be there's too many cards I think. And that's just one of these cases, like where is it's better? It's better to be sure. But I just can't imagine it's will hold up.
Brent:Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I've heard some people say that peek around is like a thing. People might play a pod. Is that just because people love peek around, but it's not actually good.
Mike:I think so kind of like what Brett was saying, like giving, given our favorite cards to send off. I did play against Pedro on PTCGO. He was trying like a Pikarom variant with flats. And that's kind of cool. The only other thing that even if you don't want to play philosophy, you, you do get a little bit of a boost with the stadium and then you can play the tag call engine and you can go Guzma Hala for air balloon and the speed lighting energy and the stadium. And then you get a turn one Bolton, right? Because you go air balloon on your active, you stadium for the Bolton, you play the energy on the Boltund. So you're like almost guaranteed like your, your odds of getting terminal. Boltund go way up if you play the tag call engine with this, which is cool, but I just don't think it's enough really again, Shadow Rider and Urshifu.
Brent:Yeah. it seems like, it seems like the lightning VMX support is just not quite there yet. So it's like a deck that hasn't gotten that much more powerful while all these like super crazy powerful decks were getting printed and a fighting type deck seems like the best I can form it,
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:guys. Anything else? That is other stuff that we should cover here?
Mike:I did want to just mention briefly as a follow-up to our discussion on formats last week, I
Brent:Oh, yeah, we got to talk about your tweet
Mike:Yeah. I put a tweet out the other day basically saying that the, the, the battle styles format. So I guess team up through battle styles was like essentially the best format that we've had in year and a half, which I, and I didn't really, I did like the format while we were playing it, but I didn't really think about it too much until I was reflecting on our discussion last week and what we kind of deemed as, like what, what we said made a good format and like reflected and especially out on what Stefan said about how you need a diversity of decks. That is not just a. Not just diverse in the quantity of decks, but diverse in the sense that the decks feel different to play. And I really do think we had that in that format. So we had like very aggressive decks in ADP and Eternatus we had kind of these, I would describe it. I would describe Pikarom as kind of like a tempo deck. You had Raul Rillaboom, which was like a stage two, but also kind of combo and kind of tempo in the same way as well. You had the Tempozard. But also, you know, it was called Tempozard, but it was honestly more of a combo deck in my opinion. Cause you use Blacephalon to like, you know, get so many energy. And so you felt very different from a lot of the other decks.
Brit:Yeah.
Mike:what else you had mad party? So we had a really good single prize deck. We had rapid strike, which was a spread deck. We had LMZ, which is somewhat of a grindy, slow deck. Control decks were viable, extra drill and Munchlax for both not too bad. So I don't know. I just think we had like a lot of a lot of pretty interesting, very decks and, and one of the things that plagued the format beforehand was crushing hammers and peek around was the only deck playing crushing hammers by like towards the end of that format and really most of that format. So that's kinda like the, where I'm coming from.
Brent:like it Britt. Any reaction?
Brit:No, I think that's absolutely right. And I think sort of the, the sort of opposing opinion are like only, or like just only grounded in like VMAX Babs. Like, like I don't, I don't, I don't think there's any like real content to an argument that I would disagree with that, but I think it would be rooted in like, you know, the design philosophy and things like that. And that's just like a separate issue. Right? Like we can, we can agree that. Problem. But like when we're talking to you, like, yeah, it was a card game. We got to play the cards we're dealt. And so that's just, you know, it's two different conversations. I think.
Brent:I, you know what the one thing I would add is I think I even enjoyed the next set, like when we added chilling rain, one of the things that I think surprised me, and it just goes to show that you, you made oppression call Mike is I feel like in most other formats printing a card, like Shadow Rider, calendar. It would have been just so overwhelmingly the like DEC cause like it's acceleration on a drawing engine. It's like Zuora work on steroids. That's ridiculous. Zoroark it's too good. And but, but I think. because Leon was so good and it fits so cleanly into rapid strike Urshifu and into ice rider, Calyrex like all of a sudden you had a bunch of other decks that had search capability. That was good enough to overcome just the raw card draw power of Shadow Rider. So the fact that you had so much raw draw, like all the other decks, like that's fine. Cause I just get the one card I need and it's fine.
Mike:Yeah, I just, I feel like chillin reign, it changed the format a lot and like some things for the better, like you said. But it, it got rid of a lot of those decks that I mentioned, right? Like Blount is not a deck mad party, not a deck row. Ed. Rillaboom not really a deck peaker. I'm not sure.
Brent:has got bigger and more pervasive, it kind of drove out some chunk of that stuff.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. So like, I feel like I just, I guess another way to put it is that battle styles was like, finally, finally, the point where, you know, V max has have been coming out for long enough that they were good enough to compete with tag teams, but they weren't like overpowering the tech teams. And when chilling rank came out, it tipped the other way. The matches were just so much more powerful than tag teams, that tag teams, obviously with some exception, but they became not really viable anymore. And so I really looking back on it, I really liked that balance.
Brent:Yeah, absolutely. I, I I think that's really a well articulated. You sound smart when you say that. Best pot ever. People, anything else that you guys have to get off your chest?
Brit:I do. I had a, I had a, a a, I needed to, I figured out my fifth person too late last week. And I, I w I wanted to write the wrong.
Brent:Yeah, bring it back. Bring it back
Brit:I think, I think so Def definitely for me. Yeah. So okay. I mentioned Collin sort of first, but then I would have never met Colin. If it wasn't for Michael Kendall who was sort of an old school player has played since base set and like it goes good at certain points in time. Like he top 16 nationals in 2007, I believe in qualified for world. Excuse me. But when I was first starting. The local league leader and stuff like that too. And, you know, we ended up going on lots and lots of trips and stuff together. And I just do think that you know, I think fondly about it too. I think my very first interaction with them is you just like ripped me off is that I, I went to this league of course, with my friends for the first time after sort of playing like modified starter decks with my friends, just a handful of time, it was like, oh, you know, I'm, you know, I want to make my right shoe. Leafeon deck my electric grass deck better. And he, I liked, and I traded away like my Oak season as well and stuff like that. Know, I don't even know what it does, but it's there that good artwork, like the majestic Dawn Leafeon, but yeah, just, just lots of, lots of fun memories and traveling there and still sort of collects and is in the game Pokemon go and things like that, but that was definitely would not, again, sort of like I framed it with Colin. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be here without Colin and I think that's equally true for Kendall. So I wanted, I wanted to fix that for sure. And he, he also too, like I've said a lot of, so much of Pokemon and I guess how I've lasted so many years is just the connections I made an E being the LaFond person also sort of helps me meet a lot of people as well. And the rest is hip spirit. So I just, I thought about that. I even, I think I put it in our group chat like shortly afterwards, like, oh no, I, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna redact that. I'll change it and get a better fifth option.
Brent:All right. We love everybody. Anything else?
Mike:I think this is good.
Brit:Okay.
Brent:Hey, it's time for the John Paul outro guys. I think that was a really good podcast. I could be wrong.