Brent: 0:05

Welcome to the Traditional Ranch podcast. Attendance remains 100% Brent Halliburton, Mike Fouchet, Rick Pybas. You know, guys, we're actually getting so good at like, not going off script. Maybe one day we should go to, we should start doing the, like, let's just twitch it or something like that. Cause like I recognize there is a community of people that, that like that stuff, and it's a thing we should, uh, we should table for another day. But, but you know, I've thought about it from time to time that like I'm spending less and less time editing and, and more and more time just like saying, wow, pretty good. Uh, um, five star review updates. Leave a review. We will read it on the pod. We've not gotten a new five star review update since the one we got two weeks ago, but we love those five star review updates. And our sponsor is Dragon Shield. Dragon Shield sleeves. They are the goat. Mike is gonna find out in two weeks. Mike, how were your sleeves

Mike: 0:56

this week? My sleeves are fine. None of'em broke. Used Ultra Pros, they're all good, but I am excited to try the Dragons. So I actually had an opportunity, funny story. Um, I brought, I wasn't sure if I had brought in an extra pair of sleeves, uh, and it turned out I did. So I ended up using those. But while I was in this uncertain phase, one of the people that I was not kind of staying with, uh, on Friday night said that he had an extra pack of dragon shields and I can use him if he wanted. And I was like, nah, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait. This is a big moment. We're building up to this big moment. I can't, I can't spoil it yet.

Brent: 1:36

that's, that's the kind of content Creation mindset that we really value. Yeah, Living the dream. Living the dream. All right guys, let's, let's, uh, uh, dive into the event. I think we wanna start things off by hearing how, how Mike's tournament went, but before that, I think we have to all take a moment to acknowledge Jake Gearhart I recognize the entire internet is rising up to acknowledge Jake Gearhart. I mean, much like LeBron James being as good or better in the pros than people thought he would coming out of high school. Indeed, Jake Gearhardt is a legend because he talked an absolute ton of shit for like weeks and weeks and kind of delivered the goods.

Mike: 2:24

Yep, yep. Gotta give him mad props for that.

Brent: 2:28

It is. It is extremely rare, especially when you play a game with the high kind of high r g the Pokegear has, but a guy can talk so much shit and kind of deliver the

Brit: 2:37

goods. See, for me, like obviously shout outs and kudos to where they're due this weekend is a great performance. But for me, this is just like, Broken clock is wrong. there's just been too many of these moments, too many of these guys, guys, guys, we need to talk about exec in the next format moments. And just like, and then, you know, I think, I think that was like, guys, we need to talk about control going into brilliant stars like weeks before the set was out and just like more and more moments like that. But you, you know, you, you keep top eighting and then, you know, eventually the tides are turning. And I can't say this anymore, but, um, that was more or less my take. But yeah, it seemed like the, the art, Kuno jelly thing sort of. Pick, it was picking up momentum like, like all week. Like people other than I think this group had sort of picked up onto it, or at least like they heard the idea and like made it work. Like I remember Azul, Azul streamed the Palkia not, not really the same idea as either the the Intel art or the one also with Palkia, but it was going around and Alex Semanski had the paywall article about it too. So like, I think there were like independent people reaching similar conclusions. And I guess like props to like Mikey's predictions, I feel like. Articuno is like a strange card to really sort of like own in on is like, this is definitely gonna be good. And here we are, uh, after this last weekend and it just being like probably the biggest development of the Meta game, I would say. But certainly a card that I think like, you know, we've mentioned it, Mikey's mentioned it for the past couple weeks now, but a lot of players, this might have been the first weekend, like reading it, encountering it for the first time. And so like for one that's just some strong predictive power for Mikey. I don't think I really would've seen this card and been like, for sure this card's gonna be good. Like paralysis is always. If there's a good way to consistently paralyze, it's like almost certainly gonna be the most relevant special condition. It just like, and the way it like stops you from, from playing compared to any of the other ones. Like paralysis is just not, not just now, but historically, like always the most frustrating one to deal with. Uh, but yeah, I mean, that's definitely a card. I, I mean, I was just like, yeah, paralysis is good, but like why would you play this card? Was kind of like my take on art Kuno. But now I'm just like, I get it. I get it now. I see it. Mm-hmm. it's

Brent: 4:55

all about the jelly. It's all about the jelly. I saw the, the Bodhi Robinson one senior, he was playing three jellies. Yeah.

Mike: 5:03

Yeah. He played the, wait, I think, did he not play the same list as the people like the, the masters group, like Charlie Lock and them? I think he played the same thing. Right?

Brent: 5:15

Oh, I, I thought, I thought he played one Jelly.

Brit: 5:19

Charlie's group was just Inteleon Arto. Jake was Palkia Inteleon,

Mike: 5:24

I thought. Yeah, that is true. But Bodhi played. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bodhi played the, the not Palkia version. Right. And so he played Inteleon three art, three Jelly Radiant Alza, and that's what Charlie Loch Top be with. I think it's the same list. Oh, gotcha, gotcha,

Brent: 5:42

gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Right. This is, this is the, yeah. Uh, yeah, ar a big part and like obviously I think when we speak broadly, we wanna talk about the fact that like, uh, random decks ar didn't even win any of the regionals. It was all other crazier decks.

Mike: 6:04

Right? Yeah. So I guess like that is just like a lot of I guess. I guess

Brent: 6:08

Articuno Frost mouth won Brisbane, but like it was a totally different Arto. Mm-hmm.

Mike: 6:15

Yeah. I think it's worth, I think Jake's larger point of that, like Lu is very accountable, was proven true, more or less. Right. Right. And we'll see like what that means going forward. Yeah. But at,

Brent: 6:31

so to start though, let's dive into Mike. Mike was at, uh, uh, Toronto. You went 5 22, uh, lost the win end. Why don't you walk us through your adventures with the, with Zekrom Box, maybe how you, how you ended up on Zekrom Box, although I think you talked a lot about that on the pod over the last two weeks. And then, uh, how

Mike: 6:48

things went, Matt? So last week I wasn't, when we recorded last week, I was, okay. So two weeks ago, I really like Zoroark Box was testing it a decent amount. Last week when we recorded, I wasn't as hyped onto it because I thought that the loss box deck, um, that Azul and Grant played at Laic as well as the lost box deck, lost box deck, that one seniors would both be. Pretty popular going into this weekend because I thought that they both had strong Lugia matchups. But then I started playing around with those decks and neither of them actually were that strong into Lugia after we realized how Lugia should play against those decks. Um, and so Alex Shaman and, and that was a little bit vindicated, like Alex Semanski, uh, did play the Snorlax deck with some changes, but he said, uh, on his tweet after the event that he wished it had a better Lugia matchup. And the grant and Azul crew did play the same deck, but they made a very significant change in playing the Zekrom, which I think probably does swing the Lugia matchup into their favor as opposed to their list before. Um, so I was pretty. Initially if planes work, because I thought these lost box decks were great plays, but then by like Wednesday or Thursday of this past week, I was convinced that Lost Box was not a very good play because they really couldn't beat Lugia. Um, so with that in mind, I was kind of hoping that other people would also reach that conclusion, that Lost Box wasn't really that great into Lugia, which made me more comfortable in playing Zork. Does that make sense, kinda? Sure, sure. Um, so, uh, I was kind of like back on Zork. Um, and so that's kind of why I played it. I think it's not like really favored into Lugia players that know how to play the matchup, but, uh, against Lugia players that have, don't have any experience. The match up, it's really easy for them to make just one or two small mistakes and you to like just crush them. Uh, and that's more or less hap more or less what happened. Um, nobody that I played against played perfectly against me cuz they didn't know what a lot of them didn't know what all my cards did, you know? So is living the

Brent: 9:10

dream every time you played on a card and the other guy has to look at it, you're, you feel like this is probably gonna go okay, right?

Mike: 9:16

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, so I played the first round, I just played against a, uh, a dad that, it was his first regional. He had started playing like a year or two ago. He played Samoa VStar. So that wasn't very close. Even though I didn't have a way to like deal with Samara very well, like I didn't play any grass Pokegear in my deck. It didn't really matter cuz Samara's just not very good. Um, and then I played round five, I played against a lost box Ryku deck, which is probably the absolute worst. Lost box version that I could play against because Raku just threatened two shot, like knocking two things out all the time. Um, so I have to have Manaphy out, which is bad, and which means that Sableye can pretty easily, you know, K oh two things at some point. So I got smash game one, game two is actually really, really close. Um, but he still ended up winning. Um, so those are my two non Lugia matchups. And then the other seven rounds I played against Lugia, and so against Lugia, I went 4 1 2. Uh, the, so the two ties, one of the ties, uh, I needed one more Turn to Win game. And the dude was like right on the border of slow playing and not, and just like playing slow, if that makes sense. Um, like all the whole match, he was kind of playing slow. Um, so I did like, I did like mention to him one time like, Hey, do you think you could play a little bit faster? And he did like play a little faster, but it was a little unfortunate. I needed one more turn to win game three and didn't quite get there, so I was a little frustrated from that one. Um, the second, the second tie against Lugia, um, I lost, so the game three we only had a few minutes for, so that's whatever. Um, one of, one of the games I won and then the game that I lost, it was very unlikely to lose. I had slow bro in my prizes. Um, and it ended up being my last two prizes. If it was not in my last two prizes, I win the game a hundred percent. And then what also had to happen is I got down to a situation where I had six cards left in my deck. My last Serena was in my deck, and I had two chin Shinx. And if I draw the last Serena, I also win the game. And I with that, so I draw four outta six cards, don't see the Serena. And my slow bro is my last two prizes. So if either of those things don't happen, I win the game. So that's like, you know, an whatever, like one outta 36, um,

Brent: 12:00

Yeah, I know, I know you, you mentioned this part, you were like, incredibly unlucky. Incredibly unlucky, right?

Mike: 12:06

So, so if that, if that goes my way, then I win that match instead of tying. Um, so that was unfortunate. And then in the win and in, um, last round I played against Adam Kma, who is a, a really nice, uh, younger dude from Canada. Um, I think he just aged up this year. I think he's good player. Um, yeah, good player. Uh, he kind of made some rounds in the, the online, online tournaments and whatnot. Yeah. Uh, really nice dude. Um, Game one, I kind of smashed him. Game two, I just didn't really set up. He got Stalin out too quick and I couldn't respond. Uh, and then we played, we were able to finish all three games, um, pretty much. Uh, but in game three it came down to, I had about, I dunno, maybe like 24, 25 cards and deck somewhere around there with five energies left in my deck. And I needed to draw an energy to just like, keep up the tempo. Uh, and as long as I like hit it that turn and then hit an energy, the following turn, like I, I win the game. But if I hit the energy this turn, it's more likely that I hit the energy the following turn. Cuz I don't think he had more Mars left. And so I'd just be digging. So, so I have like 24, 25 cards in my deck. I Serena for five, full five. Don't hit it. Um, then I have uh, like 20 ish cards in deck with still five energy, two chinos with both of those um, Oranguru, see the top deck? Whiff, ordinary rod, something back in to shuffle my deck, scoop up net, use our oo again and whiff it again. So like I saw so many cards with five energies left in deck, uh, with an energy, and then that just put me a turn behind in the tempo. So again, that's probably about a 90%, um, chance. So, uh, if either of those, like 90% chances don't go, uh, like go my way, then I, then I make today too. So, uh, unlucky in both of those situations, but you know, quite lucky as well to hit seven Lugia. Right? Right. So not, not too, not too disappointed. Uh, if,

Brent: 14:14

if you had to do it all over again, would you, uh, change.

Mike: 14:19

No, I don't. I mean like maybe like knowing all

Brent: 14:22

of these random decks. Right, right. You'd be like, I guess I'd play Arto. Cause I guess Articuno is really good

Mike: 14:27

Yeah. Um, but like, but like with the, with the information that I had at the time, no. Uh, and I'm really, really quite happy with the list that we played. My buddy Sebastian, who I stayed with, and he's like an old, old player, Sebastian Crema. Uh, this is his, this was his first tournament in six years. And

Brent: 14:48

did he lose his win? And also I saw him on the standings and I was like, Sebastian Crema has a play in a long time, but he is really good.

Mike: 14:54

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he was six and two going into the last round. He lost to, I forget his first loss, but he lost to JW Creol with the Mew deck. Um, and Mew is a really good matchup, but, uh, I think like Sebastian was telling me like he got. Like he just dead drew one game and then the other game he got a double prize penalty. Cause he he same list viewer. Yeah, yeah. Uh, one, one card off. But yeah. Uh, so basically the same thing. And um, so he lost to jw, he lost to something else. And then the last round he gets paired against Caleb Geter with the lawsuit, uh, Kio Deck and sba. I told him, I was like, you should offer the id. Uh, and he offered it. But Caleb, I think he knew the matchup and so he was like, I'm gonna play. And then he got smashed. Like it's not, it's not close. Uh, similar to the Raku matchup, like with Greninja, they threatened too much. Um, with, so forcing you to have Manaphy out, the, the Radiant Charizard loss box matchup is much better. It's still unfavored, but it's like, it's actually, it's not that bad. It's like maybe 40, 60. Cuz we play two nets and we have cleaver. So, and we, this is actually probably a good segue into some of the changes. Uh, between our list and Benji's list. But so Cleaver is the best attacker versus loss box because it has 140 HP and so it can survive a Cramorant hit and can survive a stabilize. And so all you need to do is cleaver to like two for one, one time and you can win the price trade on top of that. Having to scoop up net allows you to not ever give up like a double prize disable cuz they have to like, they might put 70 on a Zoroark and then 50 on eing chino. And then if you scoop up net eing chino that turn, then they can't do a double prize the next turn. Um, so, so between the two nets and the cleaver, that loss back, that loss box matchup is not that bad. And Sebastian actually beat, uh, you know, a radiant Charizard loss box, uh, during Swiss Nice.

Brent: 17:07

Yeah, so, so I thought, I thought we should spend a few seconds grinding through your list for, for all of favorite listeners. So, and the thing I thought the way the context I thought we should throw in was Benji Fam played Zoroark Box in ninth in Stuttgart, and he put on his list. So I thought we could look at the delta between your list and Benji's mm-hmm. and you could tell us whether or not you look at Benji's list and say, oh, those are the changes that I needed to make day two. Now hearing you say all that, I think, I feel like, like one kind of context is, it seems like you put cards in to try to improve your lost box matchup. Yes. And Benjamin Yolo, let's, uh, uh, let's kill stuff. And, uh, did he, I don't think he, um, put his matchups in. So, uh, we can't say how many Lougie is, or how many lost boxes he hit, but it's probably safe to say he hit a lot of, uh, uh, Lucas

Mike: 18:05

or at least, or at least a lot of not lost boxes, cuz I don't think his list has any chance to beat Lost box with no cleaver and no scoop up net.

Brent: 18:13

Right, right, right. So let's, let's talk about, let's talk about your list versus his list. So you had, you played the Cleaver and the Oranguru, he only played kind of 10, one of stage ones. You just straight played the cleaver in the Oranguru.

Mike: 18:28

Yeah. Um, so I've already talked about Cleaver. I think cleaver is worth the inclusion unless you just wanna completely throw the lost box matchup, which, you know, for my matchups would've been totally fine. as it turns out, Right. But, but we also don't know that Cleaver is also just like, uh, not a bad attacker in general cuz he is beefy. It gives you a fighting attacker versus, uh, Stoutland perhaps maybe you don't have enough. Uh, usually you wanna go with the, the Apple special energy guy against Stoutland, but maybe it's prized and like if, if they go, if Lugia goes early, Stoutland against you and you don't respond immediately, just like in Lost box, you lose the game instantly. So making sure that you have at least one extra guy that can one shot the Stalin on like turn two, turn three I think is probably worth it. Um, and Cleaver does that very consistently. Um, cuz you could prize the Apple guy. Um, so I like Cleaver for a lot of reasons. Um, and I think Guru is like the biggest thing that Benji missed on. Like Guru is absolutely incredible. Um, Allows you to save resources throughout the game. You know, you play research and you play Serenas, so you, you get to put, uh, an energy on top of the deck. Uh, if you want a juniper, you get to save a, an ordinary rod. Sometimes, um, like the one of echoing horn that he has in the deck, it would allow him to save that. Uh, so that's like one huge use case. And the other huge use case is obviously protecting yourself against Marni. Uh, one of the only ways that this deck could, can lose to Lugia in some situations is if they marni you and you don't hit a supporter or an energy. And so, pretty much every turn against Lugia, I would always put a supporter back on top of my deck if I could. Uh, with the, the scoop up nets, although they were primarily there for loss box, I used them a lot to use double Oranguru in a, in a turn. So I might save a resource with Oranguru. Then I would research, but before I researched, maybe I had a scoop up net in my hand. I would scoop up Oo and then after the research I would then put a supporter on top of my deck to protect against Marni. So, um, scoop up net in some ways can be a consistency card like that as well. Um, guru is absolutely incredible. You, I, I think you have to play that in,

Brent: 20:55

but, but hearing, so I recognize one, one difference in strategy. There is like you were talking about how when you have to play it on the Manaphy, it's absolutely brutal for you. Like you have to go Manaphy and our anger, all of a sudden you're out of bench space. Right?

Mike: 21:07

That is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brent: 21:10

That's tough, tough, tough. Alright, so, uh, you played, uh, you did not play a boss and he played a boss.

Mike: 21:19

Mm-hmm. It is something that we had. In and out of the list. Uh, I think boss is good. I just boss is a great card. Everybody loves boss. Yeah. I just wasn't like getting enough use out of it to really justify it, but I, I, I think it is a good card to have the, I think the biggest reason is yours are so often draw cards that you sometimes kind of run out of gust effects in the late game because you're using your arenas for draws. So the boss makes sense in, in, in that way.

Brent: 21:51

Right. If you, if you had to do it all over again, would you find room for a boss? Uh,

Mike: 21:56

perhaps, but not necessarily. No. I didn't really miss it that much. Okay.

Brent: 22:03

That's, that's good. So you played plus one research, but minus one incense. Mm-hmm.

Mike: 22:11

Um, so I actually don't look at that change as much. So I had, I've always had three research, but I had one Marni for a long time. Uh, and so I just had like the four draw, four Serena and then four other draw supporters. Uh, and so I ended up dropping the fourth incense for the second Marni. So I got kind of the same thing, but either way. Yeah,

Brent: 22:37

like you both ended up at two Marnie. He had two research, you had a third, but he played for l of all four incidents. You, you played four l all three incidents, I thought. Yeah. That's, that's the consistency,

Mike: 22:49

right? Yeah. Yeah. Just a slightly different consistency thing. Um, I think I was, even during the tournament, even with nine draw supporters, like there was lots of times where I didn't have a draw supporter and I lost because of that. So I just wanted the, the, the ninth supporter actually went in at like 10:00 PM the night before, so that was one of the last changes. Uh, and I think it's good to have more draw

Brent: 23:13

supporters. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. You played, you played an extraordinary rod. He played a rescue

Mike: 23:20

carrier. I played around with, so I think I played around with rescue care a little bit. Uh, I much prefer ordinary rod because it, the targets are basically always Zoroark plus Zoroark. Um, but there's also times where you end up researching away Zurich in the early game. And so ordinary rod's just better in those situations. You're like, you're playing down your zarus immediately anyway. So I didn't really find it that useful to get back. Zarus, the only thing that makes more sense in Benji's list for to run Rescue Carrier is to reuse Jirachi plus the Gloo wood tangle. And since I didn't play Glenwood Tango, it really made no sense to play carrier in my opinion. Right. So, but he has a little bit more synergy with it. Gotcha.

Brent: 24:11

Gotcha. Um, alright. You play two scoop ups and a heavy ball. He goes Choice Belt echoing Horn. Second stadium.

Mike: 24:24

Yeah. So I, you know, I played around a lot with Glenwood Tangle. It's

24:28

cool.

Brent: 24:29

Yeah. And obviously he plays the Glenwood tangle cuz he's gonna attack with Jirachi. Yeah.

Mike: 24:33

Did you attack with Jirachi frequently? Um, I probably attacked with about 10 times throughout the tournament. Uh, and I hit double heads about what you would expect, like three ish, three. I think I hit it three times out of like, you know, 10 ish things, which is about right. Right. Um, I actually, but the two, I hit two of it in the same set so that was unfortunate for that opponent. Um, and like the other time that I hit it was like against a manife so it didn't even really matter. Um Right. But it was, it is mostly there to just kind of like threaten. And I and I didn't have anything else better to do in their early game.

Brent: 25:12

Right, right. Well that's, I assume if you're running Glenwood Tangle, then you're like, okay, we're definitely attacking with Jirachi. We we're gonna have fun. Right. If you don't play Glenwood Tangle, you're like, I'm attacking with Jirachi because I'm waiting to evolve.

Mike: 25:24

Zoroark works. Yeah, right. Exactly. Um, my issue with the Glenwood, my biggest issue with Glenwood Tangle is the matchups where you really need to attack with Jirachi is something like a D on VMax where you are attacking options or rather limited, and they're playing big parasol anyway. So like, are you really getting that much value out of Glenwood Tangle? I don't think so. Um, so that was kind of my reasoning. I was really skeptical of primordial alter that only went in a couple days before the event. I was really skeptical. It didn't seem very powerful, but the amount of cool plays you can make with it. Um, with Oranguru in particular is, I think it's worth, it was quite good. Um, and in general it's just like, it's pretty nice in a deck like this to either know your top deck is good or to just ditch something that you don't need. Cuz your, your whole deck is about playing the odds and thinning your deck and making sure that you hit stuff. Um, but so, like some cool plays you can make are, let's say your Jirachi triggers. What you really wanna do anytime your Jirachi triggers is ensure that you are getting a respond knockout to whatever they have. Yeah. Um, and often the hardest part of that is since you're, since you need your attacker in your discard. As opposed to just evolving into it. You need a, like, you need a way to get it into your discard while also playing a supporter and ensuring energy. And so you, a very common play is to Jirachi and search for something like the attacker plus ultra ball, plus energy, and then maybe already have a supporter in your hand. Or you know, you have, you have like one of those four

Brent: 27:17

get the supporter and then you just say, I'll draw into it.

Mike: 27:20

Right, right, right. And so you, like, you ultra ball away the attacker that you wanna use. You get the zork, you flip the Zoroark to the attacker, you attach and then you juniper. Um, but primordial altar gives you another way to do that by, you know, you take the altar, uh, and the attacker, you Oranguru the Pokegear back on top of your deck, then you use altar to, to discard and then you're good to go. You know, stuff like that. Um, so Altar was, Al pulled its weight. Um, but you know, I don't, I think the TLE is also cool.

Brent: 27:56

So, so if you had to do it again, would you go, uh, would you go in on the Glenwood tangle or, or did you feel like you had too much fun with

Mike: 28:03

the alter? No, I think Alt is good. I think Al's good. Um, the other change, oh yeah, he has the second choice Belt. I think Choice, honestly, like Choice Belt was the weakest card in the deck, the whole tournament for me. Um, that is like, you, you have to play one unfortunately, but like, it felt like the most Cuttable card. The reason you have to play one is, so let me talk about the Lugia match, um, a little bit. Uh, so the Lugia matchup is pretty interesting because with this list and Benji's. You have a way to respond to whatever situation they put you in in the early game. And what I mean by that is the best case scenario is they don't play Dunsparce or they don't bench dun spars. Then you just go ride to hit'em really hard. Uh, let's say they do play Dunsparce down, then you have Bahe. Bhe is like the, the, the card that Boltund me and Benji played that I think is the most unique that wasn't showing up in this before. But Behem allows you to kill their Dunsparce and then the next turn you can ride through their Lugia. But what if they go Dunsparce and Manaphy? Well then they've put two extra abilities on the field and they certainly have two Archeops plus their Lugia VStar. So that's five abilities on the field. So then you can use FLA plus Choice Belt to do 280 damage to KO the Lugia. So no matter what they do between no Dunsparce, Dunsparce, or Dunsparce and Manife, You have a way to deal with the, the initial Lugia very, um, efficiently. And so that's really honestly the only use case of Choice Belt. Um, most of the time Choice Belt is also useful against, um, m if they play Aura Choreo because you need it to get the one shot, but it's not as good in that matchup because the reason that it's so good against Lugia is Lugia almost always triggers your Radiant Jirachi. So you get to search for whatever of those, um, whatever route you need to deal with what they have, you can just find it right away. Um, and so, uh, and Mew, they play Path to the Peak, so they kill your Jirachi with Path to the Peak, and you don't, you don't get to search it out. So it's a little less useful there. Maybe that's why he played two though, um, is because he was more scared of. And he wanted to just draw into the Choice Belt more naturally. But other than that, you don't really need Choice Belt against almost any other matchup or any other scenario against Lugia or against you. So, um, I'm not a fan of the two Choice Belt that much. I played a lot with two, and I felt like I didn't get a whole lot of use out of it. Uh, and I didn't even feel like I got a whole lot of use out of the one,

Brent: 30:52

so. All right. The last, the last card that, that he you'd ran, uh, was the Echoing Horn.

Mike: 30:59

Yeah. So that is actually the one, uh, card difference that Sebastian did play. So Sebastian played the echoing Horn over. What did he play it over? Oh, he played it over the, uh, second Marni. That was my last change. I dropped Echoing Horn for the second Marni. So I wanted a little bit extra consistency cuz the night before we played a couple games and I kept drawing like dead hands, but I had echoing horn in my hand and so I wanted another supporter. But he played Echoing Horn. Uh, he said that it was like, okay on the day he said he did use it, but he doesn't think he ever used it in a spot where he definitely would've lost without it. It just kind of like made him win a turn earlier, And I think that was like my biggest issue with Warren is that there's not that many times where it straight up wins you a game you wouldn't have won anyway. Plus it's, you're not an Inteleon deck, you don't save the card very well and you don't find it when you need it very well. Um, But it's like most important against like match up something, uh, like Archist Aon, which the number one reason that we were gonna play it, um, because you can kill the initial rcs, you can usually deal with one Aon VMax between like, with hitting might a couple times, but then the second Aon is often too much. But with Echoing Horn, you can uh, you can win that match up better. Um, it's also good if you get like too far behind. It gives you an out, if you go down like three, six against um, like a V deck or, or Lugia, cuz then you can go like KO, Lugia, KO, another V and then uh, echoing Horn for the last two prizes. But I don't know, I didn't feel like it was worth the consistency hit, but I do think it is a pretty good card in the deck. So I, I don't fault Benji at all for, for playing.

Brent: 33:04

I like how we went through every card in Benji's list and Benji got ninth at a, like, pretty large and you had like the strength of the convictions of your list that you're like, no, I like all my

Mike: 33:14

cards better. That's good. Yeah, I do, I do. The only card that uh, I really do like from Benji's List is he has the fourth capture energy, which is, uh, something that I did really, really want. Um, I don't know what I would drop from my list for it. Um, maybe the heavy ball, I guess that kind of is like the most obvious cut for it. Um, the heavy ball was okay. It was that, and the choice belt were probably the weakest cards. Um, so maybe I would, I

Brent: 33:45

could understand how like you could play it without the heavy ball and say, well, it's best two outta three. Like if things go really off the rails, it's fine. Yeah. Two other games. But I can also see how you're, like, the heavy ball gives you protection against bad

Mike: 33:58

things happening. Right. Like if you prize two Zoroark, it's real, real hard. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you know, that only happens every once in a while. Exactly.

Brent: 34:08

Yeah. So you can be Benji and say, okay, let's go into game two. Yeah. Uh, 30 seconds into the game. Or you can say, you know, I'm gonna give myself a little protection against just having to straight scoop games. I should

Mike: 34:18

win. Right? Yeah. So fourth capture is like the number one thing that I like from Benji's List. Uh, for sure. Yeah. I, I thought it

Brent: 34:25

was interesting that he, he goes with the capture in the instance to give himself a little more consistency, finding Pokegear and you, you wanted a little more consistency. Consistency on the draw,

Mike: 34:34

right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. The, my thing was like, Jirachi is incredible against Lugia because they often cannot. Get around it in the early game because they need to prioritize their own setup, right? They need to, they need ta Marney, they need to research whatever, get the Arceus and the discard. So they're, they're almost always triggering the Jirachi. Um, so prioritizing it is really important in that matchup, but in most other matchups, it doesn't even trigger that often. Um, so like against Mew, they run Path to the Peak, they'll kill it and whatnot, um, against, uh, loss box. They just escape rope around it usually. Um, and I mean, those were, those were the, you know, primary metrics that I was thinking about going into it. Um, and even, even Lugia, Lugia has some really cool ways to get around Thera as well. Uh, the evil tall, if it, if they KO you with evil tall, it doesn't trigger it cuz it's only by damage. Um, and then, I know a lot, most of us don't play Crobat anymore, but if they use Crobat, it does 70 plus 80 into the poison and then it dies going back into their turn and it doesn't trigger So like that's really bad. Um, but I had some Lugia opponents realize that they could ca Jirachi with evil tall and it wouldn't trigger, and that was, um, not great for me So I do think like the extra capture is a little bit hedging and like plus capture minus supporter. If you think about that chain, I don't know if that's the one to one change, but if it is, um, it's a little bit risky in that sense because you're a little bit more reliant on Jirachi triggering, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Makes

Brent: 36:26

sense. Yeah. Um, any other stuff you should talk about in terms of your visit to uh, uh, the Great Northern whatever.

Mike: 36:34

Um, I, I tweeted this out, but I think it was really cool that there was a ton of older players that showed up to this event. Um, not the oldest player by any means, but Isaiah Williams showed up. Um, it was good to say hi to him. Uh, obviously my buddy Sebastian hasn't played in a while, and so that was exciting. Uh, I had some other Canadian friends that we hung out with a lot, um, that haven't played in a while. Gordon Coates is like an OG Canadian. Uh, he won Canadian nationals a bunch of times in the mid to late two thousands. Um, hung out with him a bunch. Uh, I ran into this, this the only other competitive player, like ever from Long Island, um, that I haven't seen in like eight or nine years. His name is Vik. Uh, so that was cool. Um, he ended up hanging out with me and Sebastian the rest of the weekend once we met up. Uh, and just. Even I played against two people that, like, one of them I kind of knew a little bit from Pennsylvania area, one of them was from Oregon, and they were like, yeah, I haven't played in 10 years, and this is my first or second event since then. And, uh, I don't know, it just seemed to be like, there was a lot of hype around, like, I don't know if it was just this event or maybe it was for the Canadian, for the older Canadians. It was like, since it was in Canada. Um, so that was, that was really cool. Uh, and, and I, some people mentioned to me that they listened to the podcast. That was cool. I got some people to, uh, add the podcasts on their, that hadn't, that didn't know that, uh, that I did it and that it existed. So hopefully get some new listeners. Uh, I got a commitment from Kirin that he was gonna leave us a review, so hopefully we'll get that, uh, in a, in a few weeks. All right. So, uh, yeah, it was cool. Uh, you know, obviously a little disappointing to not make day two, but I got to walk around Toronto on Sunday. I had never really been to Toronto, so we didn't check out a bunch of stuff cuz my flight was not super late in the afternoon. But we walked around Kensington Market, which was a cool little area and it was, it was a good time. Toronto was

Brent: 38:54

a fantastic city. Yeah.

Mike: 38:56

Fan. I'm happy. I'm happy that I made this last minute decision to go for sure. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Brent: 39:03

Uh, um, before we just grind through, like how all these tournaments went, uh, this week, Brit, anything to add to, uh, all, all this excitement?

Brit: 39:14

No, no real thoughts here. I feel like, uh, I would've played Zoroark, I think almost certainly going, I was between like lost box and Zoroark and it just felt like, I mean, for reasons that have been said this weekend, last week, it just seemed like a, a solid play. And I think clearly it's fine. Like Benji bubbled and could have won the whole tournament. Like, you know, especially with, um, all the other weird decks that we'll be getting to in a little while that saw success, um, in Australia and elsewhere, or I mean in North America as well. Some we were ducks and cut. But yeah, I mean, I definitely like, you know, I don't know what to think, I guess there's this sort of like, you know, this back and forth like Lu's broken and then just like, no, see, look at the results, it's fine. And I'm like, I'm not sure exactly where I fall currently on like, you know, the help of the current Meta game. And I like, at the very least, I, I find the people being like, sort of disappointing to this weekend's results and saying, see, no problem at all. Like, I think that's definitely a miss, like argumentatively speaking, like you can. You know, a plethora of results and that doesn't necessarily take away from Lugia being a problem. Um, but all that to say, again, I'm not sure where I land. I'll, I'll have to sort of parse it a little bit further. But, um, it's nice to see variety for sure. I think that sort of, regardless of where the game is in terms of mechanics and concepts and so on, like I think almost everyone agrees that a good format, a healthy format is one with variety. A lot of, a lot of decks, a handful of decks, all. Capable of being the right deck and not just like it's a bad deck, but it's the best play for this event. I mean more sort of like holistically in the sense that like they're all equally viable, not just like you get the hardest read in the world and you play nine Lugia and you win the tournament with what is otherwise a starter deck kind of thing. Um, yeah, I mean good, good results and more good success from, from players we like here on the podcast too, going forward. It was good. Lots of good names and stuff, seeing results this weekend.

Mike: 41:14

I do think that's like a bit of a good segue cuz the deck that Charlie Laier, who by the way love Charlie, obviously big friend of the pod, friend of the pod, um, the deck that he got top weight with and all of his buddies played that to me is, Kind of Brit what you just described, like it's like not a good deck in a vacuum at all. Like it's, you run, you run Articuno to beat Lugia, you run Ice Cube Wash Energy to Beat Lost Box. You run two drap ons to beat Mew. And like, I don't know if you can beat other decks besides those three. I'm sure you have like little game plans just because Inteleon is a good engine, but like it, it was built very specifically. This is my plan verse dec a, deck B and deck C. And like I, we'll figure it out against the rest

Brent: 42:06

Yeah, very Dr. Can Shades of like, uh, you know, I, I'm gonna win with gang gar because I'm just making incredible medicals here. Here we go.

Mike: 42:13

Yeah. Right, right, right, right, right.

Brent: 42:16

Um, so let's, let's start with Lugia for a second. So, so Team Bradner comes back with Lugia, but they add an Espeon vm. Any reaction to that? Is that the future of, uh, Lugia because we live in this brave new world of Arto? I guess

Mike: 42:36

it could be. Um, it'll be interesting. Espeon is interesting because it's, it counters a lot of Lugia counters. Like it counters all the paralyzed stuff, but it also counters control because it stops the evil tall discarding your energies. Um, it's a bit of a versatile thing. Obviously you can counter the counter because Path to the Peak is quite good against it. Um, you could run things that one shot Espeon or whatnot, um, to, I think it's quite clever, but I'm not a hundred percent sure one way or the other. Brit, did you

Brent: 43:13

have any reaction when you heard the Espeon VMax news?

Brit: 43:18

Not really like it, it seems. A fine logical inclusion that isn't like, Damning your consistency. Like it's, it's just two cards. Like, and like you, the way the deck is just automatically structured is like conducive to this, this, this sort of tech. Cause you've got, you're already playing for incense. You play for, you know, you play heavy capture energy. So like the, like the sort of the wheels are already, are already there, like on the deck to like make something like this work. So I, I don't know if. Like necessary going forward. But I, I guess just to probably reiterate some of what I said, it's, it's a very seamless inclusion that I think does fix some matchups for you. Like, and again, like, I don't know, like really, you know, it's not like they had to ruin the deck to, to fit this card or something like that. So like, the overall blow to consistency I think is very low. Yeah. Minor. So yeah, I definitely like, I think it will depend more on where you predict the Meta game, but like for something like this, I think it definitely seems like a good

Brent: 44:21

play. Um, and, and it also helps in the mirror because it stops ave. Right? Right. I mean, Seems like you get just a, a tremendous amount of utility. Good. Uh, good job reading every card in, uh, in, in standard to like find a good to put in. Right. like I recognize that's the job, right? You're like, okay, we gotta figure out an answer to cry destruction. And then you're like, oh, hey, this counter to cry. Destruction does like a whole bunch of stuff for us, right?

Mike: 44:51

Yeah. So it'll be interesting like to see if Lugia decks incorporated it or if they just assume that now that the existence of Espeon in Lugia decks is like enough to scare off some of these counters or not. The other thing is like, I don't think it's like really good in mirror, but it is kind of good in mirror at times because of the. Which I'm gonna make sure I get the right numbers. I know the idea,

Brent: 45:22

but 60 times the other energy on the board. Right, right,

Mike: 45:25

right, right, right. Yeah. So if they have, if they really go in with energy, um, like for example, well I guess they wouldn't load up an evil tall if you have Espeon. How, but I dunno, in theory, if they did then, then you could like boss around it and keep all those energy on the field and then start just killing stuff. right, right.

Brent: 45:48

Yeah, I, I, uh, I, I dug it. So, so Team Bradner comes back with, uh, adding weird, uh, mousa or a weird Espeon to try to deal with all, um, uh, Sander X, um, team Azul Grant. Caleb comes back with Zekrom in addition to cu.

Mike: 46:16

I think that, like I said earlier, my biggest issue with that deck is I didn't think it was actually that good against Lugia, but I think Zekrom probably does make the matchup quite good because regardless it's doing two 60 straight up. Um, and that sets up Sableye to knock it out later in the game. Um, and it's a one prizer, so that's good. But then it also paralyzes, which if they don't have an answer for paralyzing, like you just gain a free turn. Uh, and the best thing that they could have is probably Bird Keep. And we did see a bunch of people play a bird keep in their list. Um, but not a lot of people at the time are playing it. So, um, I think Zekrom makes a lot of sense and definitely makes that match up a lot.

Brent: 47:09

And then I guess the last of the big decks that people expected to see was, uh, uh, JW Creole and Andrew Mahan show up with Plain Judge in Mew. Yeah. And you were like, why would people want to judge, I guess to shuffle their whole deck instead of playing Marni?

Mike: 47:29

Yeah, I mean that is the reason, and, and it makes sense after I thought about it because the way to combat Marnie is Oranguru, and that's what I was doing all day. Right, right. Yeah. Everybody

Brent: 47:40

else is like every, and, and obviously all the, uh, uh, all these people are playing Oranguru now and they're, they put a supporter on the top of their deck and instead of Marnie, you judge'em and you hope to break.

Mike: 47:50

Right? Yep. Exactly. So I guess it makes, it makes sense. Um, sounds really frustrating to play against. It's just kinda like strong you, that just hopes you break

Brent: 48:05

You know, I mean, I guess once, once Mew players, once Mew players started saying, Hey, we're gonna play a lot of path, the next step is to start playing judges and Marty's, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, um, alright, so now let's talk about, let's talk about Ds that, that, uh, um, one did well, cause I obviously, the craziest part is I think coming out of L eic, everybody I think would've said, well, those two techs are, are the two best decks in the game. And none of those decks ended up winning, uh, any of the three big regionals that happened this weekend. Um, any particular order that you think we should talk about these guys in gas?

Mike: 48:46

Wait, what are the three decks? What are you talking about? So, so

Brent: 48:49

stuck

Mike: 48:50

one by Boltund. Okay. Yeah. Let's

Brent: 48:52

start. You know, on the one hand, obviously Liam did terrible with playing a VCA deck in, uh, Baltimore. The Meta has changed a bunch cuz there's like a whole new set and like more lightning weakness in the format. But I'm like v I, I don't get it.

Mike: 49:15

yeah, let look at this list. I haven't really, this is one of the few things that I haven't looked at very much. All right, so it's got tutu, Palkia, I mean, this is. This looks pretty similar to like Pre Silver Tempest.

Brit: 49:30

It's the same thing. Yeah, I think I mentioned the deck last week, but I don't, it won this week and it's top a like the last year. One, two. But yeah, I've, I've been playing the stack like since Milwaukee and like always just thought it was really bad And it is the same thing, it was literally like, it was after the first Australian tournament with Palkia where uh, Henry Brand makes top eight with Inteleon. But the rest of the story is like Christian, Natalie and others playing the like tutu Palkia four Mew Turbo version. And we just, Mason and I just like put Vic Boltund in that and it was like the first thing we tested and it just like was not good. It, I don't understand, but I would like, I would love to learn more like about the matchups and stuff, but it just like always felt like bad Palkia to me where you just like can occasionally choose some games but are overall just like worse. Um, but I mean, there's other, there's cool stuff in it, but yeah, just like, it's strange to me that this can work, but thick volt in general, like can't.

Mike: 50:29

Um, yeah. Yeah. I guess like he didn't play against that many lus to be honest. He did beat the ones that he or he tied one and beat the other two and didn't play any in top cut. Um, so like, I guess in theory you are good against Lugia because you force them to not get Archeops in the discard very efficiently. I guess that's the idea. Um, if they miss it like on their first turn, but if they get up their first turn then I think you just lose So I'm not too sure. I do kinda wanna play around with it though. Um, he really beat the crap outta Mew. It seems like he beat a lot of muse or I guess not a lot, but.

Brent: 51:18

Yeah, there was definitely more Mew success in in that tournament. I mean, he'd beat one in finals, he'd beat one around 11. He'd beat one around 12. He'd beat one around, oh, he'd Mew to V-Union around nine. Uh, um, and yeah, and then he lost to one in, uh, in day one. But yeah, like, seems like it's an okay up.

Mike: 51:39

Yeah. Which also is a little weird to me. Like, I don't know, I know Mew plays a lot of items, but all they gotta do is evolve and attach an energy and they're gonna start hitting you pretty hard and you're not doing very much damage. Yeah.

Brent: 51:53

Yeah. I mean, if you get the lock up quickly, then like their hand can get all cloggy and maybe they stall out, but Yeah. And they're playing fewer energy than they were like when Liam was playing VECA in Baltimore. But, It's still a little dicey, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that, that was definitely, I thought the wildest, uh, outcome, watching that win, uh, EU is

Mike: 52:15

crazy. Yeah. And not cuz like, like the other decks are weirder, but they make more sense to win, if that makes sense. Right.

Brent: 52:27

Uh, um, and then Sander loses in top eight playing Mewtwo. V-Union Gengar. Yeah. And like, and the reason he lost was he bumped into an item lock deck. Like he was, he was rolling through Swiss. Right,

Mike: 52:45

right. So like, I don't, I don't know, it seems cool, but like, I guess my question is what do you do if they KO the Gengar? And I'm sure obviously there's an answer to that question. But I just don't know what it is initially. Like, I guess like if, cuz like, okay, let, let me explain. So against Lugia, the whole idea is healing 200 is not enough because they can put a bunch of powerful energy and they can start doing two 80, at least 300. They can even do three 30 with the choice belt, right? Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you, they play, he plays V guard energy and big charm. Question mark. Where's the, what question? Where's I, I gotta look at the list again. Hold on.

Brent: 53:48

Yeah. He plays a, he plays a V, he plays two V guards.

Mike: 53:52

Okay. But does he play big charm? There's no big charm. Um, he

Brent: 53:58

does not play big

Mike: 54:00

charm. So how does this work? Cause Mewtwo has three 10 and you play V Guard. So that's like three 30 basically, right? Um, so Lugia can go for powerful energy plus choice belt and that one shot. You, am I missing something? So, I don't know, I, I actually don't know how you

Brent: 54:32

avoid that. I, I assume, I assume his plan is to just make sure he plays Flannery on them before they can do that,

Mike: 54:41

I guess. Um, okay, well let's assume that the Mewtwo survives. Let's just like work on that assumption. Like it can't be one shot. Um, so if it can't be one shot, the whole idea is you heal, they're doing some damage above 200. So your attack heals 200. You move the rest of the damage to your Kirlia, you use Radiant Serena to heal off the extra, and now you're healing up to, I dunno, two 60. Two 80 damage a turn. Um, which is cool in all, but what if they kill the Gengar so they can threaten you without putting any powerful energy in play? Just like, you know, uh, for Aurora energy, let's say on the Lugia you're doing two 20, which is more than 200. So you have to, um, get the Gengar out, and you get the Gengar out. Then they boss and kill the Gengar. And then you do 300 to the Lugia. I suppose that's kind of your response there. You haven't been damaged, so you just KO the Lugia. But then their second Lugia can put all the powerfuls on. The Gengar is dead. And then you start, Lugia starts doing two 80 and then that's too much. You can't heal all that off. You don't have the ginga. So I, I, my, I don't know if like people don't, uh, didn't, just didn't know how to play against it, or if I'm missing something, I feel like I must be missing something.

Brent: 56:19

Yeah. I, I, yeah, I, I assume that he's like, I have yellow horn and like, that's gonna cause chaos and like, they're not gonna save their four powerful energies cause they don't understand what I'm doing until it's too late or who knows?

Mike: 56:33

Yeah. Wait, does V Guard block 30 damage? Is that, is that, did I miss? I thought it was 20. It's 30. Oh, it's 30. Okay. Okay, okay. Okay. So that's what I'm missing. Great. Okay. So Lugia can do, um, three 30, but Mew two. V-Union has three 40 with the, um, with the V Guard energy essentially, but still, okay. So my point of KO and Gengar still stands. I'm not sure how you play around that situation. Um, because they don't have to commit any powerful energies to threaten you enough that forces you to get Gengar out. Like two 20 is enough in theory to threaten like 20 damage, building up, turn after turn up to turn. Right. And then event. And then, so you have to deal with, you have to deal, you have to get Gengar out. Then they boss killed the Gengar and then they go for power for energy. And now you're in a weird spot. Cause he, like, they, he plays the Eileen loop, but he doesn't really play recovery to like quickly get back Gengar. Um, so, uh, I'm curious like what that looks like, but I guess yeah, the horn is, is good, I suppose. Um, this deck doesn't really have that much disruption though. You know, like it has the one flannery, the one fan of waves, the one yell horn, and then everything else is this tank strategy. Um, right.

Brent: 58:07

Well, and and my impression is like the, the fan of waves is really like in a Mew matchup, you go Shadow out Calyrex fan of waves attack mm-hmm. and then you like, and, and as always, It's amazing that Sander can say, yeah, that's gonna be fine. That's gonna be more than another It's like, it's so brave.

Mike: 58:34

Yeah. Cause like what if they attach two energies Yeah. That's interesting. You're like, we have no,

Brent: 58:44

we have no strategy If they have two energies down. Yeah. But like, we could flannery one in the hand. We a fan of waves. We have Arceus Shadow two, win the game. Oh yeah. Yay. Like, it's just, it's just so brave.

Mike: 59:02

Which, uh, which Gardevoir is this, by the way? Maybe, maybe this has something to do with it. Um, this is,

Brent: 59:08

this is the Gardevoir that lets you, uh, energy accelerate, right?

Mike: 59:12

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, why is that relevant? Uh, I don't even know. You attack with Mewtwo faster. No, you still need. Oh, I don't know. I don't, I don't get it. And why do you,

Brent: 59:29

it's like a fancy Kirlia with some energy acceleration. Like you can say you don't need it, but like energy acceleration. Sure.

Mike: 59:40

very cool deck. Um, for sure. Sander has done it again. two times in two weeks.

Brent: 59:50

Uh, um do you think people will look at this deck and say, yeah, I should totally play this deck, even though there were a million Mewtwo unions running around?

Mike: 59:59

Wait, say that again?

Brent: 1:00:01

Uh, so I mean, I recognize there have been many Mewtwo, V-Union. Obviously we haven't talked about the biggest Mewtwo V-Union yet. Like, will people look at this list and say, this is the Mewtwo V-Union list. Um, pipes will be

Brit: 1:00:15

a lot more

Mike: 1:00:16

standard. Yeah, I think so too. And I mean,

Brit: 1:00:18

just I think just like off the cuff, glancing at both of them, I think that's like pretty. Like self-evident. But yeah, this, I think, I think this will get left as a Sander list of the week. I don't, I don't feel like many, many community members will think to themselves, Hey, I'd like to play Mewtwo this weekend and pick, pick this one. Versus, you know, pipes and pipes isn't really too different than kind of just the iterations that have been going on like since in AIC or what have you. It's like kinda the same, just the same story. Just certain cards have made their way in, certain cards have found their way out, but it's, it's kind of the same song and dance as the Sanders list when at debut over the summer.

Mike: 1:01:01

Yeah. The biggest difference is like, it runs for evil to, and that's the strategy against Lugia is you just go for evil to, you don't worry about the YouTube. Um, and that seems like a safer strategy, I suppose, than, than something like this Gengar deck.

Brent: 1:01:27

Um, so let's talk about, uh, uh, let's talk about Toronto. Congratulations, Piper Lapine. Yeah, as always, here at Trashalanche we're, we're happy to see, uh, women beat all the men.

Mike: 1:01:44

winning two regionals is in one season, is obviously an incredible feat, and to do it twice in the first half of the year is even more incredible. Like Piper and Tod are basically like tied for Player of the year right now, and like to be considered like obviously toward one in ic, which in, you know, is like a bigger, uh, a flashier event. But realistically, It's about the same level of difficulty as any of these regionals. Right? Right. So I feel like winning, you know, toward one regional, anyone that I see, Piper, one, two regionals, it's basically the same in my mind. Uh, so to be on the same level as toward as like Player of the Year is, uh, really impressive.

Brent: 1:02:38

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, uh, Piper absolutely killed it. And, and she brought a, like, relatively, uh, novel deck to do it. Like on the one hand, uh, a natural evolution from NAIC on the other hand, like other people were bringing it. Yeah. Props, props, props. So, so, so, uh, Mewtwo V-Union DLA comes in second, uh, Caleb with the Kay Zekrom, uh, comes in third Lugia Isaiah with, uh, Lugia in fifth at Jake Gearhart with Arto Grant. Manley with the Caleb list. Charlie Lock with Art qo. Uh, what do you guys take away from like Toronto finals?

Mike: 1:03:23

Well, so I think one thing was that even though the format, like a lot of people were coming at a, the format's not great, but there's still like a ton of really good players that did well at aac and this top eight also had eight very good players. And not only that, you had, uh, two repeat top Eternatus from last week in Grant and Kirin and uh, look even just a little bit down the line, UL top 16, both events. There's a lot of people that did well last week that did well this week too. Um, so I think that speaks to, it can't be that bad of a format if, uh, the good players are doing good two weeks in a row. Like there obviously is some level of luck to that and variance, but I don't know. That's pretty telling to me.

Brent: 1:04:14

Brett, anything that. All right guys, let's, let's wrap up this, uh, uh, around the world trip with, uh, Brisbane. Brisbane top four was absolutely bonkers. uh, uh, the top four decks were Zekrom Flay, veto Control, Articuno, frost Moth, and Durant Mill. And, and then the finals Articuno Beats. Uh, Zekrom. Flay.

Mike: 1:04:45

Yeah.

Brent: 1:04:46

So, I mean, I know we, we discussed earlier, uh, Zekrom is a good Luie account, and I, I assume, although I don't think, uh, um, lists and stuff are out yet, that, uh, Zekrom Flay just ran into an absolute pile of, uh, Lu and rolled them all and said, wow, this game's super easy.

Mike: 1:05:09

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the list, the lists are out on, uh oh. Are they? Yeah. Um, So the, the FLA list ran four, four flay, two Zekrom, two Reggie Lele, two Snorlax, and then it looks like they had a, a zep dose, a Raku, and a Meta jam. So the Zekrom MEChA combo is, it's cool. So you do two 60 and then Meta and then to another one. Yeah, that's, that is super cute. So that's cool. Um, I, I'm curious to see this Durant list. So the biggest question I had for Durant is how do you deal with Stoutland? Because I feel like all they gotta do is like get a Stoutland out and they'll take like four prizes very, very quickly. Um, so he did run two evil tall to help deal with that. So I guess the initial Stoutland does need. Three powerful energy to kill a Durant. So then you evil to the three powerful way and then they can't get a second double prize turn. So I guess that makes sense. It also runs four Yellow horn, um, Durant's, a scary deck for a lot of decks to deal with. Lost Box goes through its deck quite quickly, so that's kind of, uh, that's scary. Lugia gets confused with yell horn and doesn't play that many switching cards, so if they with too many attacks, they could just deck themselves that way. I don't know what this card is. There's a cash form in this list. I was just looking at the cast form and

Brent: 1:06:53

thinking he doesn't run eight stadiums. Like when do you think what I want do is hit for 80?

Mike: 1:07:00

Uh, I guess looking at it, it's just for the free retreat. Ah,

Brent: 1:07:05

yeah. It's, it's a switch back. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Mike: 1:07:08

I'm with you. I'm with you. Yeah, the Radiant s an interesting inclusion. Um, cuz he runs p so he is running like P radio VE engine. That's kind of cool. Yep. And Rose Towers as well. This seems cool. I'll I'll give this a try. I I always like the idea of Durant right,

Brent: 1:07:29

right. I mean everybody's like, uh, yeah I'll play a game with their aunt. Right. You might not play at a tournament and, and going and getting top four at a regional is a bold move. And, and like, I mean it, like certainly you have a great advantage against lost boxes cause they're churning through their deck. But does do Lugia decks really lose to this? I guess

Mike: 1:07:53

so. I dunno. So the, the guy that tweeted it out, he said this loses if your opponent goes second That's funny cuz you get one less attack, I suppose.

Brent: 1:08:10

He's playing four yellow horns, so he is like relying heavily on like squeezing out a couple of extra turns with the L horns. Yeah. Um, but that's fine. I think that's a fine

Mike: 1:08:22

thing to do. Yeah. So I think in general, the Australian event was probably, so it's like a combination of factors. One, it's a smaller event in general, a little bit less than 200 people. And all of the best players were like, were on Lugia. And I think all of the other players kind of knew that they would just stay playing Lugia. So they could really just go like hard counter Lugia. Uh, and, and this is the outcome, playing wacky decks that just beat the crap outta Lugia. This is what you get

Brent: 1:08:56

Right? Right. Like, yeah, I, I guess they felt fairly confident that like, Natalie's gonna show up playing Lugia. Historically, Natalie just plays the best deck right. Right. And then, and then runs around Australia, upskilling people and like, it's fine. Um, but yeah, here they show up playing Zekrom, fluffy toolbox and I guess that's, uh, that's bad. Absolutely. Wild. Yeah.

Mike: 1:09:25

Very funny.

Brent: 1:09:28

Um, do, do people, so I mean, I guess besides the fact that everyone's gonna pick up this Durant list and say, well I gotta like at least play a game cuz Durant, uh, do people take anything away from Brisbane or, uh, do we see like some regression to the

Mike: 1:09:44

mean? I don't know. Um, probably a little bit of both. I don't think Flay is good. I'm pretty confident Flay is not gonna be a mainstay. The Frost Mew maybe has a little bit more of a chance, but like all of like both of those decks get absolutely demolished by Lost Box. So I think that's the biggest thing. Right, right. Like, and, and, and I think we finally have some lost box lists that can go favorable against Lugia with the Zekrom in, in Azul and Grant Stack. So I don't think Lost Box is going away at this point. Yeah. Well, and and do you think

Brent: 1:10:41

like the Lugia list, I mean the same way that they added in the s beyond VMax, I mean, do they look at all of these things and they say we just have to have add, like, you know, one switch card or like some nonsense like that and it fixes all these problems?

Mike: 1:10:59

Yeah, I mean we saw, we saw a bunch of people play Bird Keep, like I said, so, uh, I don't think Bird Keep beats like the dedicated Arno Inteleon deck, but I think it does make a pretty big difference in these, you know, less dedicated ones like the Frost Mouth, Arno, the Zekrom, Flay, other things like that. So, and Bird Keep is just like not a bad card. You can search it with Lou Minion whenever you want. So I wouldn't be surprised if Bird keep use. If, if you don't wanna PlayOn, then you can play Bird Keep as a like a little soft counter. Right, right.

Brent: 1:11:36

Um, guys, we've been going for more than an hour. Uh, uh, I know, I know next week's gonna be a lot of talk about getting ready for Arlington. Any like, uh, high level comments or anything that we should wrap up before we, we call it a. Well,

Brit: 1:11:54

just would be curious to see how all of this, if, if at all, shakes up in the online scene. I think that will be one of our most telling pieces of data as to how we, you know, you as a player should think about shifting for the next Meta game. Um, for now it seems pretty open. Yeah, a lot like maybe lost box. Just see, sees more play in all of these sort of weird decks fall off immediately. But there's a lot of scenarios where maybe you could justify playing flay yourself in a couple of weeks, but I think we'll just need, need to wait and see what happens and go from there.

Mike: 1:12:27

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think it's gonna be a little risky to take an auto like you, if you're playing a, you know, a weird deck, you obviously have to beat Lugia. And I think this, going into this weekend, the question was like, can you take a loss, like an auto loss to loss box or Mew? And I think the answer is still like, Maybe, but I think it becomes less so than this past weekend. Uh, Mew did quite well overall. Uh, lost Box didn't do as well, but I think it, I think people have figured out Lost Box better now. Like the few that did do well are actually the

Brent: 1:13:08

four players that, that played. Same 60 for win an instant to Top

Mike: 1:13:12

eight Right, right, right. Exactly. Like the way to Playbox now I think it's clearer than ever to in this Meta game. Uh, so I wouldn't be surprised to see that version in particular. Uh, get kind of like take over the Meta share of Lost Box.

Brent: 1:13:36

Sounds good. Super, uh, fun. I, the Meta isn't a weird place, man. Like, this was definitely the kind of tournament that historically would cater to a, like, weird grant manly deck in that like, the Mewtwo was so defined going in, and I feel like Arlington is less like that, you know?

Mike: 1:13:55

Yeah, yeah. Arlington might just like, go back to like, just play a good deck, like play Mew

Brent: 1:14:01

Right, right. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Like, like you could put a couple of counters in for weird stuff, and you're probably okay, but like, you can't just build like most consistent Lugia. Maybe you have to do a couple of janky things, but like, that doesn't make it a bad play. All right, guys. I can't, we can't leak the sauce. We gotta save all that stuff for next week. Mm-hmm. take it easy.

Brit: 1:14:22

Right? Thank you. I'll see you next week.