0:05

Welcome to the Trash Latch podcast.

0:08

It's the only podcast about the Pokemon

0:10

Trading Card Game. It's

0:13

Caden. It's Mike. It's me. The

0:15

3 of us here making it happen.

0:17

When there's 3 of us here, we say attendance

0:20

remains 100 percent. That's

0:22

all it takes to win. Dragon

0:25

Shield sponsors us. They sent us a bunch

0:27

of sleeves. That's really good. We

0:29

always appreciate sleeves because people always

0:31

need new sleeves. Uh, you know,

0:33

you're gonna get dinged for marked cards far

0:35

more from having old sleeves than

0:37

from putting new dragon shield sleeves on your cards.

0:40

New dragon shield sleeves feel the best

0:42

when you're shuffling them. Guys,

0:46

let's jump right in, because there's, uh, there's a bunch

0:48

of kind of, like, breaking news

0:50

ish stuff as we gear up. But before

0:52

that, we have a review.

0:56

Oh, baby.

0:57

Uh, the moment you've all been waiting for.

0:59

5 stars from he jobbed 2 3

1:02

4 6 5 3. He writes

1:04

selfish review, and this is a great 1.

1:07

Thank you all for a fun pod each and every week.

1:09

I look forward to it since I drive hours a

1:11

day for my job each day. Great

1:13

and diverse group of degenerate funny TCG

1:15

players. Obviously, when he says degenerate,

1:18

he's talking about Liam. Selfish

1:20

part, gentlemen, I went to Portland,

1:22

first regional ever, played Sawyer

1:25

in round 1, Lowell, with

1:27

Charizard, and played very well, but only

1:29

hit 1 good matchup, Mew,

1:31

the entire day. I am

1:33

really struggling to decide what to take and start practicing

1:36

for Vancouver. I used to play Gardevoir,

1:38

but never felt like I was a great pilot of it.

1:40

What would your recommendations be to play

1:43

at Vancouver? I'm down to grind

1:45

out the right deck. PS,

1:48

I kinda wanna take moon, but I think there

1:50

will be a lot of spirit to him. And

1:52

it's the same amount of spirit to him is what he wrote. But

1:55

I hear

1:56

I I mean, I don't I don't think he's wrong about that.

1:59

Um, I think I mean,

2:01

you've you've come to the right place. This is the

2:03

this is this is what we're here to discuss. So

2:06

Yeah. I I think I think we should jump right into

2:08

topic number 1, which is that Mike went to

2:10

an extraordinary amount of trouble to break

2:12

down every matchup in the galaxy

2:15

from this format, and and the

2:17

answer must be hiding in there.

2:20

Yeah. So if you haven't seen that, go

2:22

go go take a look at that. It's, uh,

2:25

the matches from all

2:28

day 2 and a little bit more.

2:30

So anytime a player

2:32

2 players that both made day 2

2:35

played, that is part of

2:37

the the dataset. So all of day 2 plus

2:40

if 2 d day 2 players may also

2:42

played, uh, on

2:43

day 2 Caliber Games.

2:45

Yeah. Exactly. So, I mean,

2:47

it's still not perfect. Uh, there's still

2:49

a pretty big divide, I think, between, like,

2:52

the top 1 percent of players

2:54

and, uh, the general day 2

2:56

player. But it's probably the

2:59

best, like, middle ground

3:01

that we can get by having like, you

3:03

know, if we only include, like, the top 1 percent

3:05

of players, the sample size is gonna be incredibly

3:07

low. Um, but, uh,

3:10

uh, even if we we don't have the

3:12

the decks for every single person in

3:14

the tournament, so we can't even do the whole tournament.

3:16

But even if we did, this is probably better

3:18

than that. And

3:23

it's pretty interesting to to see

3:25

it all out. Some,

3:29

like, interesting little tidbits from

3:31

it. Uh, I think lost

3:33

box Charizard has a

3:35

very bad matchup

3:37

spread overall. Um, and

3:40

I think when you see

3:42

players that do really well with it, like,

3:45

uh, Alex Shmansky, uh, cameraman,

3:48

they're very, very good. Um, and so they're

3:50

kinda carrying, uh, despite a

3:52

despite a bad matchup spread overall. It also

3:54

ties, uh, maybe the most of any

3:56

deck in the format. Arceus

4:00

has an insane matchup spread. Uh,

4:03

now this is a little bit dicey

4:05

to parse because Arceus

4:07

decks are very

4:10

varied. Um, the most populous

4:13

Arceus deck, uh, in my in

4:16

in my set and that made day 2 is the Regigigas

4:18

deck, but, uh, in order to include

4:20

Arceus at all and have enough data,

4:23

like, I kind of looped

4:25

everything together. So that's everything from Arceus

4:27

Rayquaza to Arceus Serperior, uh,

4:31

and and everything in

4:33

And that was still the smallest, uh,

4:35

group of games played of any deck that you posted.

4:37

Right?

4:38

Right. Exactly. So smaller

4:41

sample size, but but, like,

4:43

the matchups are really good. I was surprised

4:45

to see those numbers. So that might be something

4:47

to look into. It's not like a super hard

4:50

deck to play. And

4:54

so

4:55

mean, I think the Arceus

4:57

is, I think, just universally

5:00

1 of the best decks to play if you're just

5:02

shooting to get day 2. But

5:06

I I think so I

5:09

I think Arceus is basic, kind of always

5:11

at least pretty good.

5:13

Yeah. Gardevoir

5:16

has

5:17

will say

5:18

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it.

5:20

thing that I got from this, which, you know, this

5:22

is this

5:24

might just be a kind of naive

5:26

old school belief that I've held for a while

5:29

that this matchup spread disproves. But I have

5:31

kind of always thought of most

5:34

matchups in Pokemon as

5:37

being actually pretty, like,

5:39

pretty close. Like, I thought of very few

5:41

matchups as being properly, like,

5:43

60 40 or there even 70

5:46

30. I

5:48

always thought when people claim that matchups were

5:50

that weighted, typically,

5:52

it's just like, it doesn't

5:55

actually end up playing out that way, um, just

5:57

because of variance in the game. But

6:00

the amount of, like, very,

6:02

very heavily favored matchups on

6:05

this matchup spread was quite shocking

6:07

to me and has has

6:09

made me reevaluate whether or not,

6:11

um, you know, matchups

6:14

in Pokemon really are as kind of even

6:17

like, generally even as I thought

6:19

they were.

6:21

That's interesting. I mean, maybe

6:26

maybe a function of that is the

6:29

wide variety of decks. And when you have

6:31

a wide variety of decks, there's gonna

6:33

be some subset of those that have

6:35

the more polarizing matchups. So

6:37

something like things like Snorlax, Inteleon,

6:40

Urshifu, um, do have

6:42

those extremely polarizing matchups. But

6:44

then you have, uh, uh, stuff like

6:46

Gardevoir, Giratina. Most

6:49

of the most of their matchups are, you

6:51

know, relatively close

6:53

to 50 percent. Um, so

6:56

I think maybe it's just a function of the number

6:58

of decks that we have.

7:01

This might be the case. Yeah.

7:02

Yeah. Um,

7:05

you know, the the, uh, I I recognize

7:07

you're gonna give some, like, meaningful comments.

7:09

The the 2 things that jumped out to

7:11

me that were, like, the apropos

7:13

of nothing, uh, I found them hilarious, uh,

7:16

comments was Snorlax,

7:18

incredibly polarizing deck because

7:20

it had both the absolute

7:23

best win rate on the entire board.

7:26

It has a hundred percent matchup

7:28

against Atelier and Urshifu. It

7:30

never loses. does

7:32

not matter what you do. You will beat Atelier

7:35

and Urshifu. You could be the worst player on

7:37

earth. You will not lose to Atelier

7:39

Nershifu. There's just no way on earth

7:41

you could possibly lose that matchup, which is

7:43

crazy. And

7:46

then the flip side, excluding,

7:49

uh, a couple of instances, I think, of small

7:51

sample size, your Giratina matchup

7:53

is horrendous.

7:55

Yep.

7:56

Like, it's like the worst matchup

7:58

you could possibly play, except being

8:00

the Italian Energifu player playing into Snorlax.

8:04

Like

8:04

And the the funny thing about that 1

8:06

in particular is how many games

8:08

there

8:09

Yeah. Yeah. That's their Like there was 1 other that

8:11

was, like, 2 0. But it yeah. It was, like, 2

8:13

0. Who cares? Here, it's, like, a

8:16

hundred games played, and you're just losing

8:18

all of them.

8:19

Yeah. Um, even

8:21

the Intellian like, the Intellian Urshifu is,

8:24

uh, you know, 20 games

8:26

against Norlax. So decent

8:28

size, but not crazy. Yeah. But the Giratina

8:30

1 being, like, a hundred games is is really funny.

8:33

The Charizard 1 as well is about a hundred

8:35

games, and it's 90 percent win

8:37

rate for Snorlax. Like, that's

8:39

so

8:40

There's there's a couple of matchups that are, like,

8:42

polarized that I recognize. Like, I mean, in Pokemon,

8:44

we describe like, there's so much randomness. We

8:46

think of 70 30 as being, like,

8:49

a mortal lock. And

8:51

there's a ton of Snorlax matchups that

8:53

it's like, there's nothing you can

8:55

do to lose this even if you want to lose.

8:59

It is it is literally impossible to throw.

9:03

Yeah. So,

9:06

uh, like, Gardevoir is probably,

9:08

like, the most even deck

9:10

in the format with its matchup spread.

9:13

Um, it's only, like, pretty

9:15

negative matchups are Snorlax and Inteleon

9:18

Urshifu. And I'm a little surprised that the Inteleon

9:20

Urshifu is as bad as it

9:22

says on the chart,

9:27

But because I think that matchup is quite winnable.

9:29

That obviously, Mike's like, well, you know, they

9:31

don't set up against me.

9:34

But I think, like, Rory Moon is,

9:36

like, a pretty solid deck if that's kinda

9:38

where your head is is at.

9:41

Like, its matchups are fine.

9:44

Uh, you have some pretty good ones, some

9:47

not very good ones, and and a lot in between.

9:50

Uh, it's a very powerful deck. I

9:53

mean, Ross likes it. I

9:55

I I trust Ross a lot. Uh, you

9:57

could just play his list. His his his

9:59

60 now. Um, I saw Rahul

10:02

Rahul posted the other day that it is

10:04

now the second most used

10:07

list on limitless. I think it's something

10:09

like, 19 entries, uh,

10:12

only only behind Reagan's single

10:14

strike Lugia from, uh, the end of

10:16

last year. So

10:18

that's pretty cool. So you can just take

10:20

it will always work.

10:23

You could just play that. Uh, if you wanna

10:25

update that a little bit, something

10:27

you could do perhaps is

10:29

play a little bit more disruption. Uh, 1 of

10:31

my other friends, Ray, won a cup recently

10:34

with more disruption in the deck, so,

10:36

uh, more judges to

10:38

kinda slow down some of your bad matchups like

10:40

Gardevoir. Um,

10:42

so I think Roar Moon

10:44

is is still in a solid spot. I don't

10:47

think Spiritomb will be crazy,

10:50

crazy popular. I think it'll be probably about

10:52

as much as it has been, uh,

10:54

just because Mew has done really

10:56

poorly recently. And, yes, Spiritomb

10:58

is very good against Mew, but playing

11:01

Spiritomb only for 1 matchup feels

11:04

not that great. Um,

11:07

so we'll see.

11:09

So couple more questions about this.

11:11

1, I I mean, I see I saw you

11:13

calculated the share percentage. Did you

11:15

try to build a model of, like,

11:18

going into this meta going into,

11:20

like, these the share distribution, what the best

11:22

deck is?

11:24

That's a really easy calculation. I've done

11:26

it. Yeah. It's just the matrix multiplication.

11:29

Um, I've done it. Like,

11:31

I I could do it, um, but I

11:35

didn't because

11:37

It's kinda

11:38

I feel like this the this, like, MetaShare,

11:40

it changes throughout every tournament. Right? So

11:43

so what what's probably more useful is

11:45

if someone has a theoretical

11:48

prediction of what the meta will be for the next

11:51

tournament, and then I would just do it for

11:53

for that.

11:54

Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, doing this calculation

11:57

is kinda dumb. So, yeah, so my next question

11:59

was gonna be, did you did

12:01

you at all spend any time trying to think

12:03

about, like, whether or not some of these

12:05

degraded or got better over time?

12:07

Like, as people text for Roaring Moon, did it

12:09

go down, or has Roaring Moon just taken

12:13

over the format? It's just gone its matchups have gotten better and better as people play the Ross list.

12:15

Like,

12:16

Yeah. That's a good question. Um, and

12:18

that's kinda what Henry

12:22

Brand asked. And so I responded with,

12:24

like, just a couple little charts

12:27

that showed, uh, like, Giratina

12:29

and Roaring Moon's win

12:32

percentage and and Meta Share over

12:35

time. Um, and, honestly,

12:37

there wasn't as much correlation as,

12:41

uh, as you might expect. And

12:45

the the issue I I only

12:47

did that with overall win rate. The issue

12:50

with doing it with a broken

12:52

down matchup win rate is that

12:54

the data there's just any

12:56

individual tournament just doesn't have enough data

12:58

to really work off of. Um,

13:01

like, you're gonna see so many matchups that are

13:03

like, 0, 1 0 1. Great.

13:05

Right. Right. Yeah. yeah. That's the problem is that,

13:07

obviously, the the more you parse it, the

13:10

sparser your data gets.

13:12

Right. Exactly. So I don't know how

13:14

useful that would be on a, uh, like, that granular

13:16

of a level, but, uh, uh,

13:19

I think the overall win rate is is

13:22

I could look into that more for sure. The

13:24

other thing that I wanted to mention

13:27

is the way that I'm calculating

13:29

win rate, and I'm not sure if this is correct,

13:32

is just wins over wins

13:35

plus losses, not wins over

13:37

total games. So ties are

13:39

not really counted in the calculation

13:41

for win rate. So probably

13:43

the best in my in

13:45

my head, like, actually, the best

13:47

number to show

13:50

on these charts might be expected

13:53

match points or expected

13:55

Yeah. that's what I was gonna say.

13:57

Yes.

13:58

Although the the problem with that is

14:00

that most people like,

14:03

I think at a glance, like, it takes it's

14:05

a little harder to interpret what that means,

14:07

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right.

14:10

which is why I think if I were including average

14:12

match points, I would do that in addition to win

14:14

rate as you keep it for now as

14:16

you have it now. Um, I

14:18

agree with the decision not to incorporate ties

14:20

into the total

14:22

Yeah. Because that's also very unintuitive.

14:24

Right? Like, if, uh, if you have, like, a

14:26

matchup that goes 1 1 and 1, and

14:29

you say the matchup win percentage is

14:31

1 out of 3, like, that doesn't

14:33

work. Right? You could do,

14:34

not right. Yeah.

14:36

right, you could do, I guess,

14:38

like, wins and half

14:40

the ties. So, like, 1 1 1 would be

14:42

a 50 50, which does make sense

14:44

You you just go to expected match points at that

14:46

point. And and, like and and

14:48

you could fix the, um, difficulty

14:51

interpreting the data by just color coding expected

14:53

match points just like you do here. Right?

14:55

Right. Right. Right.

14:56

from from 3 to negative

14:58

3. And, you know, then

15:00

you'd be like, bam. Now you got something.

15:03

Oh, would you do it Would you you Would you incorporate

15:06

negatives with losses or

15:08

just

15:09

don't oh 0, yeah. I guess it'd just be 0.

15:11

you'd leave it at

15:12

so from 0 to

15:13

yeah. It would just be 0?

15:14

a 0 to 3. Yeah. That

15:17

would be

15:18

Yeah. You just that's a very that's an easy

15:20

calculation.

15:21

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

15:23

So so, uh, alright. Last

15:25

last question I have. When when I look at the,

15:27

uh, data that you gave Henry Brand,

15:30

uh, I think the 1 thing that jumped out to me when

15:32

I looked at it was I mean, it seemed like guaranteed

15:34

a win percentage just going up and up.

15:37

Apologies.

15:39

Yes ish. Right? Like, uh,

15:41

you had the 1 anomalous spike

15:45

in Brisbane, but that's you

15:47

can see that those numbers of its win

15:49

loss ties are incredibly small compared

15:51

to every other tournament. Right? So that's kinda just

15:54

like super small sample size. You're

15:56

either gonna have a it's likely to have,

15:58

like, a spike 1 way or

16:00

the other. So if you kind of ignore that 1,

16:03

uh, then yeah. Generally, um,

16:05

from from Gdansk up

16:08

through, uh, Melbourne,

16:11

it's almost all

16:13

Yeah.

16:14

the the trend is up. Uh, it doesn't always

16:16

go up, but the trend is

16:17

you'd be like it it

16:19

kinda it gets better over time.

16:22

And I guess what I wondered was,

16:24

like, a, when

16:27

I look at the matchup chart, I'm

16:29

like, I mean, guillotine is underwhelming

16:32

on the matchup chart. And it made me

16:34

wonder, uh, how'd guillotine get

16:36

so good? And,

16:40

I mean, maybe the moral of the story is, like,

16:42

I mean, it it's not like the I mean, the

16:44

win rate I don't know. The win rate's,

16:46

like, 55,

16:48

60 percent ish in the last 2 tournaments.

16:51

But, you know, like, you that that data doesn't

16:53

really I feel like you look at this chart

16:55

and that data doesn't come out, which

16:59

I guess I mean, maybe the moral story is,

17:01

like, it's a meta share distribution problem

17:06

or

17:06

Well, I mean

17:07

change something about the list and fix their issues.

17:11

Well, so I think it's a I think it's a couple of

17:13

things. Right? Like, um,

17:15

this Giratina's matchups

17:18

are fairly close to 50 50

17:21

across the board. It has a lot that are, like,

17:23

just under 50, and then it has

17:25

a handful that are, like, in the high

17:28

thirties. But then you have that 1

17:30

Snorlax matchup that's 90 percent

17:33

that is actually, like, just

17:35

as many games as, uh,

17:37

like, probably 2 of the

17:39

35 percenters. Right?

17:41

So that those almost, like, cancel

17:44

each other out in in in some sense when you're

17:46

thinking about the overall win rate.

17:48

I mean, crazily, it appears that Snorlax

17:51

played Tina box, like,

17:53

so much more than every other deck.

17:57

Uh, what how'd that happen to those poor bastards?

18:00

Right.

18:00

I mean, you also you can't you can't forget

18:02

with Tina about just the

18:04

massive, like, the massive matchup

18:07

against Charizard, um,

18:08

Yeah.

18:09

with, like, 2 with what? what

18:12

Like, close to

18:14

3? Like, 250

18:16

over 250 matches with

18:18

a 60 percent win rate? Like, that's that's

18:20

that's a big

18:22

Yeah. So That's like Yeah. That that's true.

18:24

That's really pulling it up. That's that's double

18:26

or triple the amount of games in a lot of

18:28

these other cells.

18:30

Yeah. There's

18:31

So I think I think it has to do with the MetaShare.

18:34

I think it has to do with the MetaShare thing, primarily.

18:36

Yeah.

18:37

So I I think the thing that jumped out to me

18:39

is, like, uh, I mean, that

18:41

that data, it seems like Tina's

18:43

on the rise. And Liam

18:45

played Tina at a couple of challenges this

18:47

past weekend. He got got pretty good results. My

18:51

suggestion to, uh, hijab

18:55

2 3 4

18:58

6 5 3 is

19:00

lost Tina. Unless you unless you

19:02

really like playing Gardevoir, but I recognize Gardevoir, hard

19:04

to pilot. We talk about how hard it is to pilot all the

19:06

time.

19:09

Giratina is a little bit easier, I think,

19:11

than Gardevoir. Not like not

19:13

like a lot easier, but, uh,

19:16

uh, it's harder than a lot of the other decks, but probably

19:18

easier than carnivore. That's kinda how I'd

19:20

sum it up.

19:20

Yeah. Yeah. But you could

19:22

you could also yeah. As you said, if you're in

19:24

the mood to grind, you could take the Isaiah

19:27

Bradner class. Like, there's always things you

19:29

could do to get super good at

19:30

true.

19:31

And all I'm saying, if you really feel

19:33

like doing something out there,

19:36

Pao.

19:37

pao Chen pao, I can guarantee

19:39

you, you will have a good. time.

19:41

We we really, really missed you on

19:43

the last pod because last pod, we were like I

19:45

was like, this is gonna be the Chen Pao pod. Where is

19:47

Caden? Let's go.

19:50

Hey. I'm I'm glad it I'm glad it did well.

19:52

I'm glad it did well. The deck's good. I

19:56

the deck is really, really good. It's it's

19:58

very matcha it's very meta dependent

20:00

in its current state, but it is

20:02

a strong deck without

20:05

a doubt.

20:07

Did you watch the the finals?

20:09

I did not get the chance to, unfortunately. But

20:12

I heard I heard it was a little it

20:15

was a little crazy.

20:16

Yeah. You should go back and watch it at some point. Because it's

20:18

a fun matchup like Goldengo versus

20:21

Chi Impau. And both players played pretty

20:23

well, but, uh, both made, like,

20:25

a couple small mistakes that, like, you're like,

20:27

no. No. No. No. Don't do that. And

20:31

I'm sure I'm sure you would have definitely catch the

20:33

moments, uh, especially from the Chiempo

20:36

side.

20:36

Yeah. So so, Mike, what would what would your suggested

20:39

deck be? He's got a 1

20:41

regional. He

20:43

played Charizard. He played Gardevoir

20:45

prior to that, but thought it was hard.

20:50

My suggestion would probably be Roaring Moon.

20:53

I mean, he seems or they

20:55

seem that, like, they've been

20:58

playing a bit of roaring moon, uh,

21:00

and I think roaring moon's a really good deck. It's

21:02

not super punishing if you

21:04

make a couple small mistakes, and

21:06

it's, uh, it's pretty good. And

21:08

you're gonna finish games, which is a big, uh, which

21:10

is a big thing, especially if you're newer. Um,

21:12

you're. It can be really

21:14

hard to play some of these slower decks when

21:16

you're newer to the just the structure

21:19

of best of 3 50 minutes.

21:21

Knowing when to scoop is not necessarily, uh,

21:23

you know, unless you feel like you've really practiced

21:25

that, uh, particularly with Gardevoir, you you

21:27

might have a bad time.

21:29

Yeah. Charizard

21:32

is not even like a super fast deck

21:34

either. Uh, you can see that it has

21:36

quite a lot of ties. Like, the Charizard Mirror

21:39

is it

21:41

ties almost as much as the game's

21:43

actually finished, um, based on the

21:45

data.

21:45

Yeah. Yeah. Alright.

21:49

Um, guys, let's talk about PTCG Live

21:51

for a second, and then we can talk about these, uh, Japanese

21:53

tournaments. Uh,

21:55

Mike, tell us what happened with PTCG live because

21:57

you actually saw the announcements, and I just

21:59

saw people complaining about the announcements.

22:02

Yeah. So the

22:05

main update that is now it's

22:07

already out on PTCGL

22:09

right now is they've introduced

22:12

a battle log, which is something

22:14

that PTCGO had. And

22:17

it was very annoying to play on live without

22:19

it because if you, you know, you do your

22:21

turn and then you go microwave

22:24

your dinner and then you come back, you wanna kinda

22:26

see what your opponent did on their turn.

22:29

Uh, and you were not able to do that. But

22:31

now you can. Now you can scroll up. Um,

22:33

this 1 looks honestly even

22:35

better than the I haven't played

22:37

a game yet, but it looks better than t c g o.

22:39

Uh, it has pictures, which

22:41

is which is nice. Um,

22:44

I'm not sure. I

22:46

did see 1 comment that says it

22:48

doesn't differentiate between, uh,

22:51

the same Pokemon out doing,

22:54

you know, different things. Um, so that might

22:56

be something to improve on.

22:58

It does say in their in their little update

23:00

that this is just like version 1

23:03

or phase 1 of the battle log. So

23:05

they are presumably going

23:07

to make improvements and updates to it,

23:09

but I think this is, uh, very much

23:11

a step in the right direction.

23:14

I am super excited about this, but it's

23:16

such a tiny step. I can't believe,

23:19

uh, you like,

23:22

you know, uh, um, as as

23:24

a software guy, I'm a big fan of, like,

23:26

trying to do stuff incrementally. And

23:28

the crazy thing to me about the battle log

23:31

is, like, there's 2 steps in producing a battle

23:33

log. 1 is actually manufacturing

23:35

the battle log, and the second step is displaying

23:37

the battle log. And, like,

23:40

I understand how displaying the battle log is

23:42

hard. And, you know, when you look at, like,

23:45

their kind of marketing of the battle log, 1 of

23:47

the big perks is, like, they show you the picture of the card.

23:49

Like, they do all these, like, cutesy little things.

23:52

But I always complained

23:55

that what the problem with the battle log in

23:57

PTC Geo and the problem with this battle log

23:59

is, like, what Hearthstone does

24:02

is it's writing the battle

24:04

log to a file in real time

24:06

that you can read and interact with.

24:11

And when you do that, that's that's how

24:13

you get, like, the plugins and,

24:17

like, the overlays and all

24:19

this other stuff that is, like, game aware

24:21

of things that are going on. And,

24:24

you know, they're feeding you, like, suggested lists and,

24:26

like, all this, like, metadata about, like,

24:28

what cards that they've played, things like that.

24:31

It is crazy. Like, that

24:33

should be an easy thing for them to do, because all you

24:35

gotta do is write the log to a file, write the

24:37

log to a file, write the log to a file. And you don't

24:39

have to worry about displaying the log.

24:41

And it gives you if they had just published

24:44

that, they could have worked out some of the issues

24:46

of like, know, you don't say which card

24:48

energy gets attached to. Like, you don't indicate

24:50

which Pokemon on the bench. Like, you're

24:52

referring to if they have, you know, 5 rolls set

24:54

up Like, that's

24:57

so easy to fix. You know? And

24:59

I assume, frankly, that underlying all this

25:01

thing, it's it is super easy for them to fix. Like,

25:03

they could just fix it. But, like, the

25:06

writing to a file thing is the thing that

25:08

unlocks the developer community to engage

25:10

around the product. Why not do

25:13

that? It's so easy.

25:16

Yeah. I mean, I I there are definitely, you

25:18

know, design considerations.

25:20

like, I know. there's not universal

25:22

support for the kind of

25:24

amount of API support that Hearthstone

25:26

has and the kind of gross

25:29

amount of data that exists for

25:31

Hearthstone decks and matches that? causes

25:34

you know? And this is Hearthstone's

25:37

very different. It's an online only game, But you know,

25:39

it causes metas in Hearthstone to,

25:42

like, develop and flesh out very

25:44

rapidly in a way that

25:46

a lot of people complain, like, chokes out

25:48

the ability for people to just creatively

25:50

deck build or, mess around because everyone's just

25:52

kinda playing a meta deck. Um,

25:55

similar thing happened with Legends of

25:57

Runeterra. and in general,

25:59

there are ramifications to allowing

26:01

kind of very robust API

26:03

support that I don't know.

26:05

whether it's not something that they really

26:08

whether it's something that, you know, the PTCG

26:10

Labs developers don't really care don't care about

26:12

or whether they're actively against. I

26:15

I think I think it's not it's not quite as

26:17

clear as just a universally, it

26:20

would be great if there was absolute

26:22

API support.

26:23

I mean, the the, like, the, like, we're

26:26

gonna have secret information, and that's gonna make

26:28

the game better is, like, not

26:30

a

26:30

It's not about secret information. It's

26:33

it's not about it's not about secret information,

26:35

It's it's similar, and it's

26:37

just it has impacts

26:39

on the game And, you know,

26:42

it's up to the developers whether or

26:44

not those impacts are positive

26:46

to them or not

26:50

That's a interesting perspective. I

26:52

think you're giving them a lot of credit, uh,

26:56

for them to think about think about

26:58

their impact on the meta game.

27:00

Uh, but that is a interesting

27:02

point of view.

27:04

For the record, I'm thinking about the I'm thinking about I'm

27:06

not talking about the competitive meta I'm talking about

27:09

the PDCG live meta.

27:12

Yeah. I don't think it would have the

27:15

same impact as something like Hearthstone or

27:17

Winter, primarily because, as you said, those are,

27:19

like, digital only games. Um, and

27:21

they have, uh, a

27:23

pretty big emphasis on the

27:27

just the ladder itself, um, as

27:29

opposed to tournaments.

27:32

Um, and so you even saw in Hearthstone, uh,

27:36

like, the best decks for a ladder

27:38

were often not the best.

27:41

They might be the best same best decks, but the list would

27:43

change pretty significantly, uh, in tournament

27:45

play versus ladder play.

27:47

Uh, this is also true

27:49

for Runeterra.

27:50

Um, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

27:52

ter I mean, uh, their turn their

27:54

tournament format was quite different. That kinda

27:56

mandated it. But, also, tournament

27:58

decks were just quite different.

27:59

Yeah. Um,

28:03

the other thing that was in this post,

28:05

it's a much smaller, but

28:07

worth mentioning, is the

28:10

team I'm just gonna I'm just kinda

28:12

gonna read this straight from the the blog post.

28:15

Last year, the team closely monitored the

28:17

analytics of the ranked game mode and noticed

28:19

that most players hit a challenging hurdle

28:21

in their progression. Higher tiers

28:23

required excessive time commitment to reach,

28:25

and the percentage of players able to progress

28:28

past the great league indicated

28:30

a significant imbalance in the progression

28:32

system. We understand this imbalance

28:34

hinders your ability to advance and

28:36

diminishes the rewards and satisfaction that

28:39

should accompany your efforts. And

28:41

then they go on to say that, uh,

28:43

they're going to update

28:45

some stuff, no specific things, um,

28:48

but it's something that they are working on.

28:51

I think this is good that they're,

28:53

uh, working on updating it, but, like,

28:55

they're were I feel like they're,

28:57

like, updating and working on, like, a pretty

29:00

bad, uh, base.

29:03

What do you

29:03

Yeah.

29:06

Like, this isn't a ranked ladder

29:08

that this isn't the ranked ladder that we wanted.

29:10

Like, we wanted to be Like, oh, you know, I'm

29:12

a hundred and twentieth in, uh,

29:14

North America. And then I play against

29:16

Caden, who's a thousandth

29:18

in North America, and he beats me. So he

29:20

gains 200 ranks, and I lose 50

29:22

ranks. But if Caden was rank

29:25

a hundred and 31 and we played, like, I

29:27

would go up, you know,

29:29

whatever, 5 ranks, and he would go down 5 ranks.

29:32

So where it's, like, very clear

29:35

where you are, I guess, in in

29:37

the ladder. And, uh, uh,

29:40

and you gain and lose rating

29:42

or ranks based on

29:44

who you're playing against. And that's obvious. Like, right

29:46

now, it's just plus 20, minus 20,

29:48

plus 20, minus 10, depending on where you

29:50

are. Uh, it's

29:53

Yeah. I mean, I I think that

29:55

it has kind of 2 problems that

29:58

most other online card games have

30:00

kind of solved at this point. Um,

30:02

and so it's kind of unfortunate that PDCG

30:04

Live hasn't. And the 2 problems are, 1,

30:07

I think it takes too

30:09

long. It takes just too many raw

30:11

games. Even if you're winning

30:13

every single game, it takes too long

30:15

to climb to the top rank.

30:17

Yeah.

30:18

because, you know, in something something

30:20

like Legends of Runeterra, it takes probably

30:25

around 50 no. More like

30:27

like 20, games to get from the bottom

30:29

rank to the top rank. Mhmm. It's maybe

30:31

more like 40 games

30:33

if you to go from the bottom rank to the top

30:35

masters if you win every game.

30:38

Mhmm.

30:38

I don't know exactly what it is for live, but

30:41

at least in my experience, it I'm

30:43

pretty sure it ends up being quite a bit longer

30:45

than that.

30:46

Oh, yeah. Like, way, way. To get to, like, Arceus

30:48

tier, that's, like, 2000 ranking.

30:51

So, like, if you start at 0,

30:53

that means you have to win what?

30:57

2

30:58

200?

30:59

to a hundred games

31:00

a hundred games. Yeah. And I think

31:02

that's I think that's too much to reach a top rank,

31:05

um, if you're winning every game. I think that,

31:07

honestly, the plus and

31:10

minus of flat amount of rank is

31:12

okay at the bottom ranks. However, I

31:14

love what, honestly, most online card games

31:16

have adapted to, which is as

31:18

soon as you reach that top rank,

31:20

you pivot into kind of

31:22

more of an Elo system, where

31:25

from That point on, You're gaining losing

31:27

rank based on the opponents you're playing against.

31:30

And you have an online

31:32

you have an online leaderboard where

31:35

you can see based on that Elo ranking.

31:37

Um, but

31:39

I think that, yeah,

31:41

I think that the way they have it right

31:43

now is just too grindy and bad

31:45

And doesn't actually test skill or,

31:48

like, measure you up against people. so

31:51

Yeah.

31:52

I don't like how the announcement's so wishy washy.

31:54

Like, I mean, I I don't think this stuff's like,

31:56

this stuff is a rocket science. You know?

31:59

Like, changing the ranking system? I mean,

32:01

what once again, there's I I think of all these

32:03

engineering things as, like, there's, like, behind

32:05

the scenes code, and then there's display code. And I

32:07

know, like, display code is so hard.

32:09

But, like, changing people's ranks,

32:13

like, you could just change it. You know? Like,

32:17

Yep. I agree.

32:19

that does not seem like rocket science to me.

32:21

Uh, like, the this, like,

32:23

we're gonna think about it. We're investigating the

32:26

problem, but, like, we're not actually doing

32:28

anything or trying anything. Like yeah.

32:31

I mean, you could you could

32:33

say, hey. Between EUIC and NAIC. Like,

32:35

that's a whole season. We're gonna, like, test something.

32:38

Sure. Like, I don't know. It doesn't seem it

32:40

doesn't seem, uh, man,

32:44

on the 1 hand, I yeah. I I hear you.

32:46

Like, I don't know if that's the big

32:48

problem PTCGL has. Like,

32:51

you know, I I I'm Sure. they're extremely engineering

32:54

constrained, because otherwise, the application would be better.

32:56

You know, is that the thing to work on? I don't know.

32:59

I don't know.

33:00

I mean, the other thing to, like, consistently

33:04

remind ourselves is that in

33:06

addition to all of these features and and what

33:08

not, they do have to be coding the new

33:10

cards as, like, you

33:13

know, as they come out 4

33:15

and and as I've always said, the problem with

33:17

coding the cards is the cards are

33:19

designed for these, like, cardboardy effects.

33:21

Like, they don't take into account digital considerations.

33:24

Like Hearthstone, if they're like,

33:26

this card's hard to code, they're like, okay. Screw it. Push

33:28

that to the next set or, like, we won't even do it.

33:30

You know? Like, the Hearthstone

33:32

people don't care because they have a digital only

33:36

thing and, like, they built the whole thing for this. But Pokemon I mean, I remember

33:38

when, like, when they first introduced

33:41

Skyfield or something, and they were like, okay. Now the board

33:43

has to have 8 Pokemon on it. Like, I'm

33:45

sure the the developers of PTCGO were

33:47

like, hold up. It

33:50

just doesn't do that. Like, we built the whole thing

33:52

to not do that.

33:54

Yep.

33:55

you know, you know, they also Pokemon loves

33:57

they don't do it too often. Thank god. But

34:00

Pokemon does print out their, like, kind

34:02

of for fun jokey

34:04

cards that, you know, all some of them,

34:07

p t c g live has already just said, no.

34:09

We're not

34:10

Yeah.

34:11

Like like,

34:13

The Blaine's

34:14

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I I there's a Pokebot in

34:16

my hand. You have to guess how tall it is. Nope.

34:18

Nope. There's none of that. Just don't do

34:20

that. Ain't gonna have it.

34:23

Yeah. Go to you know, play rock, paper, scissors.

34:25

Nope. We're not playing rock, paper, scissors. It's

34:27

impossible.

34:27

Didn't they did actually add rock, paper,

34:29

scissors to PPC Geo.

34:32

Yeah.

34:32

Oh, they did?

34:34

They did. I they did. I remember I remember

34:36

when I was, You know, when I was a kid

34:38

back and playing

34:41

the Zatu. I played the Zatu just

34:43

to see how it worked. And it just

34:45

it pops up a little a little input

34:47

box for both players that's like rock,

34:49

paper, scissors. and you click 1. And that's

34:52

like someone wins.

34:53

Insane. But, yeah, like,

34:55

I I I appreciate Mike's comment a lot.

34:57

My working assumption is 80 percent of

34:59

those developers are spending, like, all

35:02

their time just coding new cards because

35:04

that's the grind. Right?

35:06

Mhmm.

35:07

Like, you got you you you have a day.

35:09

You've gotta have those cards working. And,

35:11

like, I think we all know, it's, uh, uh, it

35:13

can be problematic. But, uh,

35:16

that is the most visible thing people complain

35:18

about is they're like, I said, just

35:20

dropped in. This card doesn't work. How can this

35:22

be? Sucks.

35:26

Absolutely sucks. And

35:29

then and then, like, when people find that bug,

35:31

like, the engineering team has to drop everything

35:33

to fix that 1 stupid card with,

35:36

like, that 1 stupid game interaction. You

35:38

know? Ugh. It's absolutely brutal. Alright.

35:40

Let's talk about, uh, let's

35:43

talk about Japan because EUIC is

35:46

around the corner.

35:48

Yeah. So there was the

35:50

first and maybe the

35:53

only question mark big

35:55

event in in Japan in

35:57

the new format that will happen before

36:00

we get the cards in at

36:02

the end of March before EIC. Before

36:06

I keep going, Kaiden, Brent, are you

36:08

guys planning on going to EIC?

36:10

Liam and I are

36:11

I am unable to go.

36:13

Okay. Okay.

36:14

I cannot go. Uh, I have school.

36:16

So

36:17

Yep. I feel that Okay. So you

36:19

guys are planning on going. So registration is coming up.

36:23

Alright. Is, uh,

36:25

Walker planning on going too or just you and

36:26

Just just, uh, me And Liam.

36:29

Okay. Cool. So anyway, so this

36:31

tournament happened this past weekend. Uh,

36:33

2600 players. And

36:37

we have the top 16

36:39

results right now. Presumably, I

36:41

think I might have seen a meta share

36:43

pie chart somewhere, but I

36:45

couldn't find it before we started. Um,

36:48

but so the top 16 had

36:50

3 Arceus decks, 3 Charizards,

36:53

3 Snorlax stall

36:56

decks,

36:57

know, I love it.

36:59

2 Lossone decks, 1

37:01

Lugia, 1 Giratina Lossone,

37:04

1 Great Tusk Mill,

37:06

1 Ancient Box, and 1

37:08

Future Box. So

37:11

pretty interesting results overall

37:13

going into the event. Charizard was

37:15

expected to be by far the most popular

37:18

deck. Chi and Pao and Goldengo

37:20

were also, like, pretty up there,

37:22

and neither of those

37:25

made, uh, the top 16. I

37:27

think that might be at least partially

37:29

a function of their best of 1 Swiss

37:31

and Chiempo in particular, I think really

37:33

benefits from best of 3, uh,

37:36

with its kind of clunkiness and

37:38

rocky starts. Um,

37:41

uh, but I think for me, we

37:43

could kind of start off the biggest surprise for me is

37:45

seeing basically 4

37:48

stall slash mill decks in

37:51

Japan's format. So, like, like, 3 Snorlax

37:53

dolls and a and a Great Tusk Mill. Now

37:55

the Great Tusk Mill is a little bit more active

37:57

in its in its wind condition, so that makes a

37:59

little bit more sense. But Snorlax is,

38:02

uh, still a slow deck. Um,

38:04

and then I also should say just real quick,

38:06

uh, players were actually able to switch decks from day

38:08

1 to day 2. So there was 9 rounds day 1,

38:10

and then I believe 5

38:13

rounds day 2, and then cut to top

38:15

16, but they were able to switch after the

38:17

first 9 rounds. So, uh,

38:20

we

38:20

Knowing Japan's format then

38:22

I'd I would guess very

38:25

few of those stalled decks were in day

38:28

1.

38:29

Right. That would that would also be my,

38:31

uh, assumption as well, but impossible

38:33

to know for sure.

38:34

I I was unaware of that. That

38:36

is crazy. Uh, yeah. I feel

38:38

like they tried that in

38:39

okay. I I gotta ask a question.

38:41

it.

38:43

I have to ask a question. So this

38:46

great, um, this great task mail deck,

38:48

I'm I'm looking through the list Right. now. I

38:50

have no idea how this deck wins.

38:53

How how are you milling in time?

38:57

So great test mills 4,

38:59

right, for its attack?

39:01

Yeah.

39:03

When you play a supporter. When you play the correct

39:05

supporter. Yeah. So that

39:08

was kind of my thought too when I first

39:10

saw Great Tux. Like, if

39:12

you just kinda do the math. Right? Uh,

39:15

they they draw 7. They have 6 prizes.

39:17

They drop returns. That's 14 to

39:19

start the game. So they're down

39:21

to, uh, what, 46

39:23

cards. If you mill 7

39:26

times, let's say, that's 28.

39:28

So there's still, like, a pretty big differential there

39:30

that you have to make up by

39:33

them, like, drawing cards and going through their

39:35

deck or attacking more than

39:37

7 times. And feel like attacking

39:39

more than 7 times, I

39:43

guess it happens more often than we think because,

39:45

uh, I mean, they have a lot of disruption

39:47

cards or they don't have that many disruption

39:49

cards, but they have the counter catchers. But

39:52

I think maybe the big thing is the, uh,

39:54

is the tools. It's the bravery charms

39:56

and the booster capsules and the hero's cape

39:59

making Great Tusk a pretty chunky

40:02

boy and, uh, making it hard

40:04

to just, like, 1 shot consistently

40:07

without using your resources,

40:11

I guess.

40:14

I guess. I mean, I I presume also a lot

40:16

of this is you know, the

40:18

mill is putting a lot of pressure on your opponents.

40:21

And so I would guess that,

40:23

you know, oftentimes, you know, you countercatcher

40:26

something up and then either start

40:28

milling or, like, throw a Mimikyu active.

40:30

And then you're forcing them to dig to try

40:32

to find resources in order

40:34

to answer to it but that

40:36

forces them to nil car like, dig

40:38

through their deck more. I don't know. It just,

40:40

feels but there's,

40:44

And and there's also gonna be turns where you, like, with

40:46

the ancient supporter. Right? And then

40:49

you're like, oh, dang.

40:53

But then, like, they play Iono or,

40:55

like, they play Super Rod, and then

40:57

they, like, I I

40:59

don't know. I do not

41:02

think we will see I do not

41:04

think we will see great Tusk Mill come

41:06

EUIC.

41:08

We'll see. Could be that

41:10

could be the case. Um, so

41:12

talking about

41:13

know, I I wonder how much I wonder how

41:15

much Great Tusk Mill, like, how

41:17

how many times the Mimikyu was really, really

41:19

good. Like

41:22

I mean, it's very good against Charizard.

41:24

That's for sure.

41:26

I just wonder how like, if

41:29

you feel like you understand the other guy's deck,

41:31

at a certain point, if you've discarded a couple of

41:33

switch effects or something, you could be,

41:35

like, counter catcher, and then

41:37

the game's just over. You know? Like

41:41

Mhmm.

41:42

I I think the is probably pretty good.

41:44

the 1 comfy, I'm a little more iffy of,

41:47

but

41:50

But I but I guess my working assumption is the

41:52

miracle of Counter Catcher is being in

41:54

format is all you're doing at some

41:56

level. Like, he's so chunky, and

42:00

the Mimikyu is so good. It's it's

42:02

just running them out of switch effects, and then they lose.

42:04

Right? Like, you don't actually have to completely

42:06

mail them out. You just have to get their

42:09

ability to leave the active.

42:10

Yeah.

42:12

Right.

42:13

I will say another big 1 that stood out

42:15

to me was, you know, you mentioned it,

42:17

the Arceus the dominance of Arceus decks.

42:20

And I didn't quite realize,

42:23

but, like, Arceus actually

42:25

gets a lot from the

42:28

set. It's a surprising amount. Um,

42:31

you know, I I was looking at the

42:33

some of the lost, you know, lists, and

42:35

I was you know, maximum belt

42:38

is actually, like, quite good. for RCS.

42:42

Max especially Arcatina.

42:45

Like, having having your RCS

42:47

able to swing for, um,

42:50

2 30 instead of 1

42:52

80 on turn 2 is

42:54

massive. Um, being

42:56

able to take the take that first KO

42:58

with or rather not being able

43:01

to take that first k KO with your RC

43:03

stack was 1 of the biggest things that, like,

43:05

set Arceus back, um,

43:08

and made you really feel Like, you were playing

43:10

behind a lot with Arcadia. And now

43:12

You just have an answer. On top of that, you know, both of

43:14

the Arcinalists ran the Iron Leads,

43:16

which gives such a strong answer to

43:18

Zard.

43:19

Yep.

43:21

I like, man,

43:23

it looks good. It looks good.

43:27

The lists are extreme like,

43:30

I don't know. The lists are, like,

43:32

kinda different. Like, they have obviously, they have the

43:34

same core, but there's

43:37

some, like, weird inclusions in both.

43:39

And it'll be interesting to see what

43:41

translates here. Like, 1 of

43:43

the lists has 2 grabbers.

43:47

Okay. And the other

43:49

list, the weird thing is 2 technical,

43:52

uh, machine devolution.

43:55

Like, presumably, those

43:57

are for the charizard matchup.

43:59

Why are

44:00

no like,

44:02

you have iron leaves and

44:04

Giratina with maximum belt to, like,

44:06

be able to

44:08

take 2 1 shots at

44:10

some point throughout the game? I feel like you probably

44:13

don't need 2 technical

44:15

I don't I

44:18

don't know. I don't

44:19

And the grab the grabbers make even lessons.

44:21

Like, what are you grabbing? I

44:25

don't know what that's for. And

44:27

then both list played some

44:30

amount of eerie. 1 played 1.

44:32

The other played 2. Uh,

44:35

not really sure what those are for, but

44:37

Erie seems like it's in a lot of

44:39

lists overall,

44:42

I think the card seems fine. I

44:44

feel like if I'm playing lost Tina, though, I

44:46

wanna maximize my consistency. Like,

44:49

I don't know I I

44:51

don't know why I would ever run an Erie

44:53

over another count of Judge or Aiono.

44:57

Yeah.

44:58

But, I mean, I will say, you know, the

45:00

biggest thing that This deck loses for

45:02

sure is path.

45:05

Sure.

45:06

Like, this sec not having path is is

45:08

a big difference. Um, I

45:11

have you know, we'll see how the meta stabilizes and

45:13

whether it ends up really mattering, but

45:15

the judge path potential of

45:18

Arcitina was 1 of the things that made

45:20

it so strong. But

45:23

I will say, I think maximum belt maximum

45:27

belt gives This decks a

45:29

a huge power boost.

45:31

Yeah. That makes total sense.

45:34

But some decks are so good, they could just play Master

45:36

Ball a series back.

45:39

We'll get we'll we'll get there. We'll get there. The

45:41

other Arceus deck is Arceus Alolan

45:44

Vulpix. And this is funny because, uh, just

45:46

like the day or 2 before this event,

45:48

1 of my friends messaged me saying, like,

45:50

oh, Vulpix seems really good. Like, you you

45:52

wall Charizard. You wall Chi and Pao.

45:55

And then we, like, talked about a little bit more, and I

45:57

was like, I don't know, man. Like

45:59

like, we do lose escape rope in the format,

46:01

um, which makes getting around vulpix

46:03

more annoying, but we gained prime catcher. So

46:06

you can pretty easily go, like, prime catcher boss

46:08

on it. Uh, Chi and Pao can just, like,

46:10

hit you with iron hands. Not that big of a

46:12

deal. Um, but despite

46:14

all that, it did get second.

46:17

Um, the list is, again, it's

46:19

an Arceus deck, but some interesting inclusions.

46:21

Uh, it has couple copies of

46:23

medical energy. I think I have this

46:25

card, but I don't know what it does. Uh, what

46:27

do you do? Heal

46:29

Heel 31 attached.

46:31

Oh, Heal 30.

46:32

I don't know I don't know why I

46:34

don't get it.

46:36

um, maybe, like, if your opponent

46:38

has, like, a really bad counter to vulpix,

46:41

you can just heal the damage away.

46:43

But,

46:43

You're healing sick. I I it feels

46:46

feels if new. I would just you have the 2 turo.

46:48

That's definitely more than enough.

46:50

I love the mist energy, though. Mist energy

46:53

is is an amazing ad

46:55

for this deck. Um, being able

46:57

to prevent being able

46:59

to prevent like, that was 1 of the easy

47:02

ways that a lot of decks got around Alolan

47:04

Vulpix, um,

47:06

Mhmm.

47:07

was by using effects rather

47:09

than just rather than just damage. And

47:11

so having an energy card that just gets to

47:13

negate all that is

47:15

Yeah. That totally makes sense.

47:17

phenomenal.

47:18

Uh, and, like, the the double turo

47:20

plus Sharon, like, if your

47:22

opponent actually has no answer to Vulpix,

47:24

you can just scoop other all your other

47:26

stuff off the board, And then just have the

47:28

lone Vulpix, which is pretty sick.

47:33

Plays a lot of energy.

47:34

Yep. I would just cut the 2 medical

47:37

immediately if I was

47:39

That's 16 energy. Like, why do you need

47:41

16 energy? The arctina list played,

47:44

like, 13 or something like

47:45

Yeah.

47:46

Yeah. 13 and 14.

47:49

Yeah. Def uh, definitely see, like, multiple

47:51

examples of wonky deck building.

47:53

yeah. Going back to the Snorlax

47:56

decks real quick, 2 of them were, like, pretty

47:58

similar to what we've been seeing here just

48:00

with updated stuff. Like,

48:04

uh, they play multiple copies of

48:06

Eerie. That makes sense. Plays the hero's

48:08

cape as its a spec also makes

48:10

sense. Uh, but then 1 of the

48:12

lists was pretty, again,

48:15

pretty wild. It played a 1 1

48:17

Noivern EX, uh,

48:20

which, uh, like, the only way

48:22

you're powering that up is with your

48:24

4 colorless energy to to

48:27

to go with it, and you get to use

48:29

the first attack, which does 70 damage

48:31

for 2 colorless and, uh,

48:33

walls damage from basic Pokemon

48:36

the next turn. So there must

48:38

be a specific match up that this is for,

48:40

but I have no idea what it is.

48:43

could, like I mean, I assume it makes

48:45

you if you can get it if you can

48:47

get it set up, if you can start

48:50

swinging with it which is. a big if,

48:53

um, I mean, I assume it auto

48:56

it auto wins you future and

48:58

ancient box

49:00

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

49:01

know, looking at the top 16 list, those are

49:03

the only 2 that it matters against. But,

49:06

also, like, Roaring

49:07

box counter also because he's running the

49:12

you're just Tina.

49:13

popped Yeah. Yeah. Well, just just, like, straight

49:15

lost box. Like, lost box Charizard. Like

49:18

like, that those are examples of decks that have a lot

49:20

of switch effects that historically, Snorlax is a bad

49:22

matchup into.

49:24

No. That that's true. it also it also

49:26

wins you. I mean, the the top

49:29

loss loss zone deck, um,

49:32

ran an iron bundle.

49:33

Yeah.

49:34

So they have an out, but

49:37

Mhmm.

49:37

that up there. They pop up missed energy on, and

49:39

then they say, okay. We're high up. We're gonna see

49:41

if this goes the distance.

49:44

Yeah. Yeah.

49:46

I

49:46

of that lost box

49:48

I assume it's a lost box stack primarily.

49:52

Yeah. Speaking of the lost box deck,

49:55

uh, I like this list.

49:57

This lost box list looks this was

50:00

this list looks pretty clean comparatively

50:03

to some of the, uh, the other Japanese

50:06

lists. Like, there's nothing in here that's super

50:08

crazy. It's a lot of consistency, a

50:10

lot of good attacking options between

50:13

Raikou, Iron Hands, uh, the

50:15

moon. The

50:17

bundle is pretty cool.

50:18

you're talking about the list?

50:21

yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

50:22

place list.

50:24

Um, yep. You get you got the buddy poffins

50:26

in there. You got 4 nest balls. Uh,

50:28

you only have the oh, no. No. Okay. So 4

50:30

switch cart and 3 switch. So we've replaced rope

50:33

with just regular switch, uh, but you also

50:35

got the the new board, which is

50:37

good for comfy. Uh,

50:40

I don't know. This list looks pretty good. If I was gonna

50:42

if I was gonna mess around with the lost box, I would totally

50:45

start here. This list makes a lot of sense.

50:50

I fully agree.

50:52

Yeah. Let's

50:55

talk about the winner, Lugia. I

50:59

mentioned on the podcast a couple weeks

51:01

ago when we talked about the the

51:03

new cards that I thought Cincinno seemed

51:06

fake. And, uh, here

51:09

we are. Cincinno Lugia taking

51:11

it down.

51:14

Yeah. I mean, of course, I think I mean, missed

51:16

energy, huge addition for for

51:18

Lugia. Um, I

51:22

mean, missed energy is just any

51:24

anytime Lugia gets to see a new

51:26

a special energy that has a large

51:28

positive benefit that you can throw

51:30

on anything, it's it's a

51:33

glorious day for them.

51:37

Yeah. I think

51:38

Yeah. Cincino seems good. You

51:40

know, that's the 1 of the biggest things that

51:42

Lou that at least

51:44

single strike Lugia was really

51:46

missing was, you know, a solid

51:49

single prize attacker. That

51:52

was 1 of the things that made, like, the

51:54

old rainbow, um,

51:56

old rainbow Lugia so oppressive

51:59

was the fact that it had such strong single

52:01

prize attackers. And I do not think

52:03

Chinchino is anywhere near as strong as

52:06

as that that version of

52:08

Lugia. But I

52:11

do think it is it's

52:13

a single pricer that can 1 that can

52:15

genuinely 1 shot stuff.

52:18

Yeah. I think 1 thing that I underestimated

52:21

was the combination

52:24

of 4 JET energy and

52:26

Mincino being

52:29

like you basically like, you have

52:31

4 Lugia v, and this

52:33

only plays 3 Mincino, but I might even

52:35

advocate for 4 Mincino, uh,

52:38

where, like, even

52:40

if you start 1 of your

52:42

Snorlax or Lumineon well, so you have you

52:44

have a lot of good starters. And then even

52:46

if you don't start 1 of your good starters, you have

52:48

jet energy. And so you can read the wind,

52:50

or you can use call for family, like

52:53

going, uh, turn 1 or turn

52:55

2, which is like a really solid

52:57

setup attack. And it seems like this format

53:00

is a bit slower, uh,

53:02

than what we have right now. And so

53:04

just having, like, a really solid

53:06

setup attack for a deck like Lugia that

53:09

is a bit inconsistent just by

53:11

its nature, just

53:13

gives it a lot more stability going

53:16

into the, uh, you know, turn 2, turn

53:18

3. And then you're able to more consistently

53:21

set up your stuff from there.

53:23

Um, so I think that is

53:26

probably actually pretty pretty good because of

53:28

that.

53:30

I mean, I I I'm not sure

53:32

it's completely the right thing to do. But the thing that

53:34

you really gotta admire about the winning list

53:37

versus, I think, I feel like kind of all of

53:39

the other lists is, it's just pure

53:41

consistency. Like, he

53:43

literally is running nothing

53:45

but draw supporters and ball cards.

53:48

Right.

53:50

This is very this is very true.

53:52

And and in that way, it's like, I rec like,

53:55

you know, there there was the was it the

53:57

future, uh, uh, list that I looked at? And

53:59

I was like, how does this guy ever draw? Like,

54:01

not draw dead. He's running, like, 16

54:03

energy and, like, 11

54:07

draw supporters, and that's his whole,

54:09

like, engine. He must

54:11

just be dying all the time. Whereas

54:13

this thing, like, he he must

54:15

look at his hand and it's, like,

54:20

know, uh, it's Serena's or

54:22

jacks or research

54:25

and a bunch of ball cards, and,

54:28

like, he must hit double

54:30

arc. He ups turn 1 all the time.

54:33

Yep. Uh, another thing that

54:35

I didn't really realize you

54:38

reminded me, is that you don't have to run path

54:40

counters. You don't have to run the crappy Mesagosa

54:42

stadium anymore. So you just

54:44

like, he he ran a couple collapse, which

54:47

seems fine. I don't even know if you need the collapse,

54:49

to be honest. Um, but,

54:51

uh, it seems fine.

54:54

Yeah. No

54:55

that just frees up a lot of

54:56

biggest buff. Biggest buff to

54:58

this deck

54:59

I mean, he's probably using collapse. He like, he

55:01

probably collapses the and the

55:03

off the game, uh, off the board halfway through. And

55:06

he's like, now it's just archaeops and chinchinos and

55:08

Snorlaxes. Good luck.

55:10

Yep.

55:11

Like, that's wild.

55:14

Yeah. This list is very

55:16

nice, uh, and I think it'll

55:19

be interesting now to see how the

55:21

discourse, uh, develops from

55:23

here because I think everybody is

55:25

kinda looking at this list, and they're like, oh,

55:28

yeah. This is really good.

55:30

Although, I feel like you'd cut the master ball without

55:32

a second thought. I

55:34

I appreciate the purestness of it, but,

55:36

like, you know, you don't gotta do that.

55:39

Sure. Where

55:42

does the format go from here? Um,

55:45

let's talk about that future deck real quick, uh,

55:47

and then we should probably start wrapping up soon.

55:49

But, uh, yeah, the future

55:51

the future box deck, I

55:55

don't know. This is also, like, kinda just

55:59

straight. Very straightforward.

56:02

Lot of 4 ups. The

56:05

4 counter catcher is really funny to me in

56:07

a in a iron hands deck. Like,

56:10

the goal is just to take 2 prizes

56:12

every turn, but I guess the thought is

56:14

you go into Maraidon. They

56:16

take 1 prize, then Iron Hands takes

56:18

2 prizes, and they kill Iron Hands. You have counter

56:21

catcher. You just keep counter capturing

56:23

things to stay ahead in the price

56:25

trade.

56:28

Yep.

56:31

Yeah. Well, and and he's not running,

56:33

um, uh, bosses. So

56:37

yeah.

56:39

because he wants to play Arvin turn 1,

56:42

get the, uh, the techno radar, get

56:44

the future tool, get

56:47

your get your guys going, and then

56:49

from there on, just wants to research every

56:51

turn or I don't know every turn.

56:56

Seems okay. I

56:59

wish we had the, uh, the list for the ancient

57:02

box deck. Uh, I

57:04

heard that it's, like, kind of similar

57:06

to what we've been seeing, the karidon, the roaring

57:08

moon, but it played 1

57:11

great tusk as well. So that

57:14

if you're kinda like going

57:16

back and forth and your opponent's using a lot of resources

57:18

to trade with your single prizes, then you can come

57:20

in with the great tusk at the end of the game

57:22

and just mill them. Gives yourself a

57:25

a secondary win condition. And, I mean, it's

57:27

an ancient card that just fuels your

57:29

roaring moon anyway, so I feel like it makes sense.

57:33

Yeah.

57:34

Might as well.

57:36

Yeah. I don't know. The thing that thing that bothered me about

57:38

this this future list is, like,

57:40

he runs the 4 Arvins. He runs the

57:42

4 Research. He runs 3

57:45

Iono, and then he runs the Morty's

57:47

conviction. Like, that's

57:49

the draw engine.

57:51

That's the whole drawing engine. Yep.

57:53

I mean, I you know, I'm sure

57:56

I used to know the math off the top of my head,

57:58

but, like, you could just draw dead with this deck

58:00

a lot.

58:03

This is how, uh, decks

58:05

were built at different points in the game,

58:07

though. Like, uh, like, a lot of people

58:09

have compared future to plasma. You

58:12

look at plasma lists from, like, 20 13,

58:14

20 14. This is exactly what they

58:16

looked like. No onboard draw, just

58:19

12 ish, 12, 13, 14

58:21

that's yeah. Like, I I always felt like we were

58:23

committed to, like, I don't know. I felt like we were

58:25

always committed to, like, 13 to 15

58:27

supporters because 12 is, like,

58:30

supporters. Just a little on the low

58:32

on the low side?

58:35

That seems reasonable.

58:36

know if I I'm sure if I research

58:38

hypergeometric distribution in Pokemon, I'll

58:41

I'll find the 6 prizes article

58:43

that I wrote back in the day where

58:46

I printed the stupid chart. Let's

58:49

see. 12 is, like, 80 percent

58:51

of the time you're gonna get a supporter

58:53

in your first aid cards.

58:55

Okay. Yeah.

58:59

I just looked up, uh, Simon

59:01

Rhodes' plasma

59:03

list that he got second with in 20 13.

59:06

He played 4 Juniper, 4 n,

59:08

4 Chloris, 3 Skyla. So

59:11

12 real supporter cards and

59:13

then 15, like,

59:17

kinda supporter cards.

59:18

Yeah. But the I mean, the trick is Arvin doesn't

59:21

actually help you. Like, Arvin's

59:24

gonna

59:24

Arvin is basically

59:25

fast as you. Like, yeah. Well,

59:27

it it it's not even Skyler, though, because, like, you could

59:29

you could always Skyler for research, like,

59:32

depending on how how upset you were.

59:36

But Arvin gets you more stuff though than Skyla

59:38

does. So I feel like it kinda, like, evens

59:40

out

59:40

Yeah. It's it's it's okay. It's

59:42

okay. But,

59:45

like, like, if you start

59:47

Arvin and, like, 6 energies,

59:49

you're like,

59:51

Yeah. This might be like

59:53

I don't know if there's a third straw

59:56

supporter that you could play even. Like, what do

59:58

we even have? Judge? For

1:00:00

research, for Iona, for Judge?

1:00:02

Yeah. It's a it's a fair it's a fair

1:00:04

point.

1:00:06

Yeah.

1:00:07

But, uh, I

1:00:09

thought I thought the lists did not seem

1:00:11

like the kind of list I would wanna play because I feel

1:00:13

like there'd just be I mean, you

1:00:16

know, it's best to 1. I mean, maybe you're like, hey. If

1:00:18

we if we weren't playing on a high rolling, it

1:00:20

was never gonna happen anyway.

1:00:22

Caden, it's good to have you back.

1:00:25

Happy to be back.

1:00:27

Who knows when we'll when we'll have you again?

1:00:30

Good.

1:00:31

But

1:00:32

Next week will be a little tough. We'll

1:00:33

Exam exam's right around the corner. But, uh,

1:00:36

as Liam always says, you have to make

1:00:38

time for what's important, Caden. Here

1:00:40

we are, guys.

1:00:42

this is true. This is true. Alright.

1:00:45

Alright. The John Pauls are outro. We'll

1:00:47

be back next week with what? What are

1:00:49

we back next week with? Is there a tournament?

1:00:51

don't know. We'll figure it out.

1:00:53

Oh,

1:00:53

time as we barrel towards Vancouver

1:00:56

in a UIC.

1:00:57

The money match results. The the

1:01:00

money match results.

1:01:01

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is good stuff. Alright. We'll

1:01:03

be back next week. The John Pauls are outro.