#294 WORLDS of Doom & the Pokemon XP Schedule

Hello and welcome to the Metapod podcast, Pokemon TCG podcast that revolves around the evolving meta. My name is Jake. I am here as always with Sean Michael. Sean, how was your weekend? It was chill. It was good. I watched the entirety of the third season of House of the Dragon because I didn't do anything on Sunday and that was my day. And you. You watched it the whole day? How many episodes? It's eight episodes in a season and they're all an hour long. Holy moly. So, okay, I. Well, one, I've never seen House of Dragons or Game of. That's the Game of Thrones, right? It's the spin off. It's. It's. It's the lesser spin off. Okay, there's a. There's another spin off that is actually very good. But Yu-Gi-Oh I've not really seen any of those because that's just. Just not something that I've consumed. But the days of me binging are long, long gone. Like, I used to be able to watch anime seasons in a day, you know, that kind of thing. But if I watch anything longer than like an hour, like I. I can't watch a second episode at a single time. So kudos to you kid. Kids these days, man. Kids these days. You kids, you can't. I just like need to do something else, like afterwards. I get it. I. I also finished. I watched like eight or nine episodes of the third season of jjk and that show, like Attack on Titan is also, you know, kind of a dense show. Like you watch an episode or two and you're like, there's a lot here. And I think JJK is like, I'm. I'm probably going to anger some people. The animation is really good. I think the show itself and the writing is a little funky. I think it's a little ham fisted sometimes in like how they describe all their techniques and their domains. And I'm like calling game. The culling game arc, which is like the arc that you're talking about is there's a lot in the calling game arc with like the rules of the game and like how to get around the rules of the game. And then as you're talking about like the power and you know, who can do what. And then, you know, it makes each episode. I actually there's like, it's good because it's not like, you know, old school Naruto or Dragon Ball where you just feel like it takes 10 episodes for one thing to happen, which is good. Yu-Gi-Oh But you have the opposite problem where it's just like okay, I'm used to the old Shonen anime and all of a sudden I'm getting jam Beckett with a season's worth of material in one episode and I'm like my brain can't. You have to digest it very quickly. Right. You know. But Yu-Gi-Oh so take the, to pause. Maybe go to go to Wiki, you know JJK Wiki. Yu-Gi-Oh Just to get, get a breakdown real quick because there's sometimes too that like especially when they talk about the culling game rules. Yu-Gi-Oh I think at the very beginning like of that arc they have like a quick like half second image. Yu-Gi-Oh That's like it's all text and it is, it is for the purpose of. We cannot have this episode be too long. So you cannot read this whole thing. But if you would like to pause and all of this, go ahead and do it. But our characters will also like as time goes on, like talk th all those things verbally. But if you need a visual to read that is not subtitles. Like it's just so funny. I, I look, it is what it is and it's good for in its own ways. But I am still a proponent of old school film making and screenwriting and playwriting techniques which I, I did study a little bit in college, which is like, you know, don't. If you have to tell me the story, you're doing it wrong. And there's a lot of that where it's just, there's just a lot of exposition and this is anime to some degree, but I think some anime do it better than others. I actually, I personally, I think Free Ren does a really good job of giving you story but like not always saying everything out loud and I'm like that's. I like to interpret. Let me interpret. Let me work a little bit. So. Yu-Gi-Oh What Sean doesn't remember though is that the anime is targeted to 13 year old males who maybe do need that explanation, which is more so the, the root of the problem. Because Sean and I, I don't know if you guys have guessed it, are well over 13. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I am. I am 13 times three, Jake. one-of-one 13 times three. Yu-Gi-Oh we've got a, we've got Pokemon news and stuff to talk about or not a lot of like news per se, but some good conversations in the Pokemon space, including the Tournament of Doom, the Worlds of Doom that happened which was a thousand players. So that's going to be a tournament. It was a world preview that Doom Senior Doom put on. I know it's a, it's it was so much hard work and was such a good event. I haven't been able to patch auto because I was casting a regional of a different card game over the weekend. So I've been traveling and stuff like that. But I plan to patch auto in preparation for the World Championships because Sean will be joining me for a bit. I will be co streaming the World Championships to get practice on Pokemon commentary. So then Pokemon maybe can call me sometime about casting maybe for the Vegas Regionals. Wink wink. Because I am local. Wink wink. Anyways, Yu-Gi-Oh Sean would be here. He'll join me for a couple episodes and again I'll provide that information in discord and stuff when that time comes. But going into pretty much the only actual news that we got within this past week, the day and night Pikachu Ex special illustrations from the 30th celebration have been revealed. The 30th celebration anniversary set is going to be happening worldwide on September 16th. And we got the day and night versions of Pikachu Ex. Just like we had gotten them on Espeon and Umbreon as like promos and stuff like that. And the. They. They have this like day and night theme. So it. These are beautiful cards, man. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm like. Also, it seems like from the imagery the foiling on the sir is. Might also be a bit of that confetti style foiling. Yu-Gi-Oh a lot of like the, the sparkles. Yu-Gi-Oh Which I mean it'll be really nice if that's how it looks. But man, talk about. I think it will be hard for the market to decide if they want these Sirs or they want the Umbreon and Espeon sir is more. But you know, these look well, the Umbreon and the Umbreon and. Or the Umbreon and Espeon are part of the UPCs, right? They are. But the UPCs are also insanely expensive. So it's just kind of like it's, it's. The cost of the Sirs is probably going to be the same as if you had had to pull it from a pack just because the set is so expensive. But. But Yu-Gi-Oh the, the. The day One features an assortment of cool Pokemon. You got Espeon and Sylveon. You got Iggly Buff and you got Gimme Ghoul. And it's not, it's not Tandem. It's Mouse Hold. That's who it is. Yu-Gi-Oh Slow Poke in the foreground. And it's, it's obviously it's daytime. You got a lot of other Pokemon in There. I don't see a rowlet so big, big whiff there. But there is. What are they doing? Corner. A mew in the top right corner. I don't know if you see the mew, but Yu-Gi-Oh I did. Yu-Gi-Oh And then in the nighttime version, you got Hisuian Zorua, you've got Greninja. Umbreon is in. So this may be big money card. Umbreon and Pikachu, the Wild Whammy combo. You got the Midnight form, Lycanroc. Gengar's in there too. Very popular Pokemon. Also Hisuian Zorark. So you got not just Hisuian Zarua, but also Zorark. Cosmog is even, or Cosmoem. I believe the name is the middle evolution that is in there as well. Mewtwo and Jirachi over alongside Zapdos in the corner. And one thing that I really love about the day and nighttime Pokemon. So if you remember from the Umbreon and Espeon Exs, the UPC promos that we were just referencing, I like that in the day and nights, it's a different variety of Pokemon specifically. So you. I mean, you've got the Meowths in there, Alolan or the Galarian Meowth. Right. Which is not featured on the Umbreon. The, you know, Espeon has the Comfey and Kangaskhan, but Fuecoco Lapras execute is in the Pikachu. Like, I think this is a really good job. I like this theme of like, everybody together. And I like that they're featuring just so many Pokemon on these Special Illustration Rare on these cards. I think these are going to be, you know, as you're talking about, like, highly sought after. And it feels like the closer and closer that we get to the 16th. You know, if you've been following the Pokemon social medias, they've been revealing all the different Pikachus that are going to be in the set from the different illustrators. So it, I mean, it's just going to be such a good set, man. It. It's going to. Every day it's going to get harder and harder to get some of this. Yu-Gi-Oh I. I think the art for the Illustration Rare are going to be absolutely amazing. I'm so excited to see the Illustration Rare for the Jirachi exactly when that gets revealed, because I don't own any of the really fancy Jirachis, except for the one Deoxys Jirachi I pulled way back when. But I don't own the other full arts. And I'm like, man, maybe this is a good time to get my hands on a really pretty illustration or that when they come out. But I know as someone that collects Jirachi cards, it's gonna be. It's gonna be a pain for the wallet, unfortunately. But, but I mean, the good news with the Sirs, I think is the, the Chrome rares or whatever they're being called. I think I'm just going to be honest, Jake. Maybe the foiling on it will change my mind, but I think they kind of look booty cheeks compared to the Sirs. Well, see, I. I don't know because if you look at how the market is right now for the regular sets, the sir headliner of the set has like 9 times out of 10 been more expensive than the gold. Yu-Gi-Oh Version of the card. And I think that this is kind of gonna be the same way. Like I fully expect, you know, like, honestly, these Pikachu ones to be higher. It wouldn't surprise me, I guess, to. For it to be like higher than the. The Chrome rares that come out in the set. I don't know exactly like the, the Zebra Rarities or whatever, because I don't think we officially know what the Chrome Rares are. I think there was someone who supposedly opened a Chrome Rare mew or something like that. Whatever. I'll. I'll believe it when I see it, you know, out of an official thing. But Yu-Gi-Oh I think, I think that trend can just continue where the Sir. The big sir hits, like especially these Pikachu's are going to be like the top chase if you're going for monetary value. Yu-Gi-Oh well, we still haven't seen whatever the Sir Mu and Mewtwo from the set also are going to be. We have, huh? Yu-Gi-Oh we haven't seen it officially. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh we haven't seen them officially and so they will exist as well. So I think between the Pikachu that maybe Jirachi, those. I will probably be the. The Chase cards, those five. So. But that is really the only piece of proper news that we got. But Jake, there was a little bit of. I don't want to call it scandal, but it was definitely like some upset, some hurt feelings that people had this past week when the updates on the Pokemon xp, the World Big World Convention, the world's convention, when Pokemon finally like sent out, you know, who got in and who didn't to the interest list specifically. So if you don't remember, the interest list were like a variety of different events. That you could sign up for for XP to say, hey, I really want to do this meet and greet or I really want to do this artist signing or, or whatever. Usually like really high profile stuff. And I did. Do you know anybody that had a yes to the interest list? Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know a single person that got in from the interest list on any of them. Like I just saw a lot of people that got the hey, you weren't selected email, which is unfortunate, but I, I mean, I think makes sense. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean for context, the interest list and non interest list, you know, we took a look at the, the events because like we're like, okay, well if you didn't get into the interest list, what is there to do? There was a big like, you know, hubbub around like, well, is there even anything to do if I didn't get into the interests? Why did I pay a hundred dollars for a ticket or whatever? We looked at the interest list ones and they are really high profile things or things that require like physical material to be brought to a table. Like the claymation making thing. And I'm like, Yu-Gi-Oh you can't get a thousand people to like do a little clay sculpture of a Pokemon. That's going to be very limited. And then the other ones are like the meet and greets with people like Leonhardt or you know, maybe some of the signings from like the most popular artists. Yu-Gi-Oh they have a lot of artists signings that are going to be there or and they even have like demos. Because I think one thing that did boil my blood after not being selected to go to Worlds, pretty much Salow is going to be doing a, a session on drawing with Sal South. So that's another one of those like big ones that you're talking about like Yukimori's clay making situation where you can't have thousands of people, you know. And it's very. And a lot of these headliner events like Yukimori's Clay one is probably a headliner event. You know, you probably have thousands upon thousands of applicants and you're like, you're saying you can only hold 50, so you just weren't lucky. But if you didn't get into your interest list thing of choice, which is very likely, the question was what else is there to do at Worlds? And the answer is it seems like there's actually quite a bit to do at xp. There's a lot to do. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh we're not going to go through the whole list. You can, you know, you can go look at it in the, you know, registration area or all of that. It'll be in the. Maybe the link as well. We'll put that in there. But I think what you and I wanted to do, Jake, for just like a five to ten minute segment, because you and we've been to World several times now, both of us, so we've seen what Worlds usually has to offer and sometimes we've had opinions that are not always Zebra positive. But seeing this list now, what are the couple of events that you would either want to go to or would recommend that if people are going, they should try to get those them. The first thing that I would be trying to do is the pin rallies. So if you look on the different days of the daily schedule in Pokemon Worlds and xp, they have so many different pin rallies that are going on of so many different Pokemon. And it says on here that it's not utilizing an interest list, so it's first come, first serve. So that's one of the things that you can do if you got on the interest list or not. Obviously they have a set amount of pins for the specific Pokemon, right. So you gotta hope that they have some by the time that you do it. But a lot of these pin rallies are not that long. And so like, I mean, just with the variety that they have, you can like look on here, you can search, you know, pin Rally and you can filter and try to look for like, oh, there's a Jirachi pin Rally. I'm gonna be doing that first because Jirachi is one of my favorite Pokemon. You know, I absolutely love that. You know, you can. And there's so many different things like there. What did this say? Pokemon? Oh, I, I typed in Pin Rally and the Pokemon Squishmallows inflatable slide po popped up. You know, I don't know how that went, but crazy that they have an inflatable slide there too. Especially if you have young kids that could be really fun. Okay, so. But Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's a good recommendation is broadly speaking, the pin rallies are going to be like, you know, don't miss out on the pins that you really want. And if you really are interested, you could try to collect all 12. But I think that's a cool thing to do that like there's not gonna be. It's not an event that you have to necessarily go sit down for an hour to like listen to something. It's just you can kind of do it throughout the event. For me, I'm like looking at the other meet and Greets, because there are other like meet and greets with people. I believe that on the Friday and Saturday in terms of tcg, there is a meet and greet with Tricky Gym on Friday and Saturday and then on Saturday and Sunday there's a meet and greet with Azul. So neither of those are interest lists. So the Pokemon company has determined that, Yu-Gi-Oh yes, they're popular enough to be a meet and greet, but no, they are not so popular that we need to pre, preemptively cap the number of attendees. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh which is, which is fine. And again like if you watch any of their content, it's just like a really cool experience to meet them. I mean they're great people. Like I, I've known Azul for years. He's a good guy. Yu-Gi-Oh very awesome of him to have this mean, great experience. So Yu-Gi-Oh Is he playing in Worlds though? And if so, no, he did not qualify for Worlds. I don't think he, he's not necessarily. I mean he's definitely like similar to Andrew Mahone. You know, he's not like Zebra serious in qualifying for Worlds now like content has become like a much more focus. Yu-Gi-Oh Forum. One other event that I would also look at attending though, if you are going, which is probably a very small subset of people that are listening to this. But still, I want to give a shout out to the Pokemon company for this because they have a session called the Making of Full Art Illustration Cards, which I think is Zebra cool because it's like a look behind the scenes. You get to talk, hear from people at Creatures who talk about like the design, the printing, all of the, the bits and bobs that go into making what are like really gorgeous cards. So I think that one's a pretty neat one to shout out. I think that one's really cool too. Especially if you're ever curious about like why Pokemon cards a certain ways or you know, things of that nature, how they make decisions based on things. It's just like a really cool like Yu-Gi-Oh opening experience for those people that love, you know, the actual art of Pokemon cards specifically, especially with the craze of sirs in the last several years since the Dream League collection over in the late sun and Moon era that kind of started it all. But another one of the ones that I would recommend maybe trying to go to is the Lego Pokemon Experience. Oh, Lego Pokemon has officially started. Right. And they have that contest as well that happened where they said Rowlet was a stage one Pokemon, which I still have beef with. But because he is a basic. But it's really curious because this is not an interestless thing either. It does have limited capacities and it's a first come first serve basis. So maybe you want to try to get there earlier if not. But they talk about in here it says discover the interactive nature with LEGO Pokemon creatures powered by smart play in an immersive hands on experience. Rise to the challenge to master every aspect of being a LEGO Pokemon trainer to earn an exclusive souvenir. So you get an exclusive souvenir out of it if you're into it, which could be like really, really cool. But also I'm like really curious on an immersive hands on experience from smart play mastering being a LEGO Pokemon trainer. What, what does that entail? Is that like building a Lego? Is it like an instruction to building a LEGO thing or how familiar are you with lego's new smart play system? Zero. So LEGO has in the last year introduced a new kind of brick. And this brick has things I think think I'm pretty sure it has something like a gyroscope, an accelerometer and NFC in it. So. Or some sort of near field communication, whether that's maybe radio or Yu-Gi-Oh fi or something, but Bluetooth. But I'm pretty sure it's nfc. And the way that it works is you seat that smart brick basically inside of a larger build and they're doing them for like lots of different Pokemon and they were talking, you know, earlier this year when they, you know, introduce them and you can buy these already. You can actually fight with two LEGO Pokemon against each other and do moves and like, you know, you battle basically. Interesting. So this is in many ways sort of like a brand collaboration between LEGO and Pokemon which obviously like the main part is their sales at the LEGO store. But my guess is as part of that collaboration they're doing like a big event like this at Pokemon xp. So but the exclusive souvenir, I'm guessing that that is what they reference in the next line which is building your very own Pokemon trophy. Oh. Which I'm like that's pretty neat. A little like, you know the little worlds trophies they give away. Imagine a LEGO version of that that you can only get at Pokemon xp. That's pretty cool. Yu-Gi-Oh Like they, they've got so many cool things like I'm scrolling through here, like if you play the video games, right, they have different events for Pokemon home, right. The storage app for the Pokemon video games and transferring between like different games. Like they, they're giving away Greninja special. Greninja which is really cool as someone that likes to collect exclusive Pokemon, like, that could be a cool one to have like in the collection. You get medals through there. But also there is a Pop Yourself at Pokemon xp. It's a collaboration with like Funko Pops and it says that Pop Yourself activation specifically designed for Pokemon fans. Pokemon XP attendees will be able to create a custom Pop Yourself collectible featuring event exclusive apparel, buddies and packaging. So I know like Funko Pop collecting is a big deal as well. I'm not Zebra into it, but I do like to collect, you know, a Funko Pop every so often. And I see Sean as a Tony Chopper in the background, you know, the Funko Pop every week on the Metapod. And I think there's a couple more One Piece guys back there. But that's again, it's like an exclusive thing for Worlds, you know, that can just be a cool, fun thing to get. I don't know, like there's. And there's also like a pinball arcade you can play. I love pinball. Pinball is so fun. It works the gears in the brain. Like you play Pokemon pinball, like, I don't know, like over. If you're worried because you didn't get any of the interest list things on Pokemon Worlds and you're like, what the heck am I going to do? I think there's so much to do at Worlds this year and I'm very curious of how it's all going to play out. Yu-Gi-Oh it will be a little different than previous years, probably in a good way for most people because it isn't going to be so centered around the tournament. You know, like when we went last year, there was a whole hall that had nothing to do with the tournament. But still it felt like most of the space was still kind of like the tournament was still at the center of it. Yu-Gi-Oh But I think for this one it will be a lot less so that. Because, you know, it's in a bigger arena. You have all these spaces now where there's panelists and people talking and giving. You know, it's much more like a convention. So there's a ton of like art galleries. You know, whether that's like the, the Smeargle wall that I think they did last year. The Smeargle wall, where you could like put your own art up there and then just like art galleries in general are just like, oh, God, it's so cool to watch. There's also a retro game corner that they have to. Where, you know, if you've got like a Young kid or something like that. You can take them to play the Pokemon stadium on Nintendo 64. That's an experience. You'd be like, this is what our video games used to look like, the old Pokemon Snap. Or you know what you should do just if you're going bring your old Game Boy color and a, a copy of the Pokemon trading card game video, like card game for the Game Boy and try to get kids to play that. And they can see just how brutal base to Fossil was. Yu-Gi-Oh And we've showcased a little bit on the channel too of how brutal that can be. Definitely a different time in Pokemon. And I love the evolution, but it's cool to go back every so often. The one thing I did want to mention, I'm not seeing it pull up now, but it was pulling up before, which was. They have, when I sorted trading card games earlier, they, you know, they have some side events that you can play in which is pretty standard for worlds. They have like gym leader challenge and standard. But they also had a ditto draft and a sealed event for expanded. And I was like, so they're going to give people. And they said it was from the last like 10 years of Pokemon packs for expanded. So I'm like, what packs are people gonna get to open? Is it like a. Yu-Gi-Oh like in Magic they have a thing called Chaos Draft where you get, you know, a variety of packs that have nothing to do with each other block wise necessarily. And you know, for Magic, which is designed for draft, there's like a whole thing. But Pokemon, like imagine getting. I've never heard of an expanded draft or expanded sealed. I would imagine that it's probably like a pre release kit because that's typically how they do the like drafts. Well, no, it is, but this one they're saying that you're getting, they might get a kit but you also get like two, three or four packs or something like that that you just open. And the reason they did ditto Evolution is that you can evolve anything on anything else in theory. Well, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I wonder because it'd be kind of cool if you go to that and you get like, imagine handing out Evolutions packs for people. I mean you're gonna have. Oh man, I wonder, I wonder how. Because you could imagine that, you know, I, I am scalper Dan. I get into the expanded, I get XY Evolutions packs and then I don't open them, I run off, you know, I mean, what if they have a rule that is like the only rule is you have to open your packs Well, I, I mean, but I join and I say sure and then I get the packs and then I run, I bail. But you could imagine probably because a lot of this you have to enlist in. Mm. And so you could probably. I mean they could probably just figure out who you are and then just. They probably scared no more events. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh they probably have to give. Connect it to your pop ID or something. And so like if you did that, they probably would just blacklist you. Yu-Gi-Oh I just like, you try another one and you're like, no, I just saw that on the agenda though and I thought to myself, okay, but what do we really mean with expanded? Like, Yu-Gi-Oh how far back we going? If anybody tries it and gets in it, let us know how that goes. Like, are we going back to just Sword and Shield base or are you going to take me back to like sun and Moon or xy? I mean, imagine sitting down Jake, and they just hand you an evolving skies pack wild. Anyways. Yu-Gi-Oh pretty good. I think that would be. I, I like the idea. I don't. I mean if anybody would have product to do that with, it's the Pokemon company. So. Yu-Gi-Oh sure. Yu-Gi-Oh But overall pretty, pretty cool event. So I'm a little jealous after seeing this. For the people who are going, it does seem like it's much more interesting than Worlds of past years. I agree. I think this is going to be the most fun, most fun non competitor worlds. Yu-Gi-Oh And I know some people have also had concerns of like, oh, I'm playing at Worlds or like my son is playing at Worlds or daughter's playing at Worlds. And we want to do these things in my personal opinion, focus on competing first and then go ahead and you know, do some stuff afterwards. You know, like after you either drop from the event or you're done playing or, or what have you. Because I think, I think especially just like focusing on the main event is probably going to give you a lot more value. Right. Especially like if you can do well. Right. Think about like, you know, try not to focus on what's happening outside of the competition. Yu-Gi-Oh Speaking of the competition though, you want to jump into what I think is probably one of the larger online events I've ever seen in a long time. Yu-Gi-Oh Like, I don't know if post Covid. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know if the like original Limitless series was probably higher than this, but the World of doom in 2026, this is basically the Tournament of Doom's world Championships. To prep for the world Championships. Right. In Pokemon had a thousand People, Over a thousand people split between the two days. I believe in this that there was 909 players on day one, but some people had an auto qualification into day two of Worlds which then pushed it to over 1, 000. Yu-Gi-Oh Or something along the lines of that. I don't know, 100. But I plan on watching the vodka, you know, right after this podcast, you know, to get some insight on the format because it's really curious. Do you want to. Let's start out talking about like the meta shares. Yu-Gi-Oh I'll click on the meta for day one. Yu-Gi-Oh for day one. Looking at day one of the meta share 16 drag pull, not really going to surprise people. And that 16 is also not totally truthful because that was just regular drag pulled at 15.9%. But there was also. The second most populous deck was Dragapult Blaziken at 8.14%. So 26 plus 8 is 24 is 24. And then you had Dragapult Dusknoir at 5.28. So another 5% is 29 of the meta. Yu-Gi-Oh Dragon Ball. That's actually not as high as I thought. I. I don't know, almost 30 meta share for one sort of combined archetype. I guess it's less than what we were seeing at recent regionals which like, I think at one point it climbed up to like almost 50% of some variant 40. I remember posting this in Discord. I wish I. I wish I had it pulled up. But Yu-Gi-Oh it's been higher. Right. And we'll talk about the day 2 meta Share here in a second. But going over in this, the decks, not Dragapult that were Zebra popular in the tournament and Zoric, the most popular non dragapult deck. You had talked about that the other week of like a deck that you thought could do really well at the world championships. And we'll get into more predictions and breakdown of our thoughts and the decks themselves as we get closer next week. But 7.26 of players in day one brought ends Zoric and then Mega Excadrill, a deck that I was actually really curious about. Not 100 confident in, but very curious about 6.82% and one of your favorites right behind it. Rounding out the top five archetypes festival lead at 6.05%. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It's a pretty cool spread here once you get past the drag. The wall of Dragapult. Yu-Gi-Oh because I think Enzor was kind of a deck that like look, Enzor has an amazing ability and especially with the Zekrom that got introduced a couple of sets ago, I think it sort of pushed the deck over the edge, gave it like a. A better top end. Right. That was the problem before is that your top end was like, kind of mid. So it's. It's cool to see it doing well. It just gave it a little bit of variety. Right. And that extra variety is that push to give it much more options to be able to excel in this format or a lot of people being confident in it. And we'll talk about a And Zoroark deck that placed very high within the tournament later at the end of this. So one of the surprises is Alakazam to Dunsparce. I thought this would be a little bit higher because people have been hyping up that deck like crazy, man. I thought that it's really surprising to me that Mega Extra Drill is higher than. Than a lot of these other decks like Alakazam or Festival Lead Jake. I thought Extra Drill would be lower. Can I tell you why I think that it is not like, the bane of Alakazam's existence? I went into the. I clicked into the Alakazam and I went to its matchup spread. And granted, this is just one tournament, But Dragapult Dusk nor 22% one-of-one rate. Dragapult Blaziken, 20% one-of-one rate. Dragapult 16% one-of-one rate. And I just think, like, that's not saying that, like, a. A good pilot can't, you know, succeed with the deck. Clearly they can. Like, was it Piper or. That did really well? No, no. Who. Who was it that did really, really well with. On Extra Drill? No, no, Al. No, no. On Alakazam. No, I think Piper has done it on. Yu-Gi-Oh the person that. Anyways, somebody's done it with the Dedenne and everything. I can't. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I can't remember who either. But my point is, like, you know, a good pilot can do well, but if you think about the actual world championships, it's like, well, everyone there is going to be a good pilot of whatever deck they pick. So. So it's. And having played it, I just. The more Dragapult, the worse it is for Alakazam, even if you think you have the text. So I. I get it. Yu-Gi-Oh You just can't get going fast enough in a lot of situations. But pretty cool to see this. I think it gives, like, a very interesting insight onto this. And then going into day two's meta game, right? No surprises here. That Dragapult is the most dominant, sitting at I think about 40% or just shy at like 39 or something like that. There's obviously the point. Whatever percentages, basically 21% into 10% into 9% is sitting around 40%, 39 to 40% in total, which is more into what I was kind of thinking into the. The meta share for Dragapult. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It's kind of interesting. It's like you either play Dragapult or you beat Dragapult. And that's what we see here. I. I did a quick look at Dragapult, at least the first line, to see what its bad matchups were that actually had like, more than like two games. And the. The four decks that came back, or three decks specifically, that came back with like a losing matchup were Slow King and Zorark and Mega Excadrill. And I'm like, Yu-Gi-Oh it makes sense that those are the most played decks after all the Dragon Pults, because they're the decks that can beat Dragapult. And wouldn't you look at that after Dragapult in the Metashare Mega Extra Drill, the most popular non Dragapult deck sitting at 8% and then slow king 7.3%. So, I mean, right on the money, Sean. Yu-Gi-Oh So it's. I am. It's a Dragon Pole world and we're all living in it. I'm so tired. I'm so tired of Dragapult Yu-Gi-Oh just so done. I just wish there would be an. Pokemon never gonna do it, especially because it is way too late to announce it, in my opinion. But I. Pokemon has done this before where they've done like emergency bands or rotations or what have you. Yu-Gi-Oh In the past. And I, like, right before the world championships. And I just wish they would do it again. I. For Dragapult, there's never been a time that I've been playing where they've done an emergency ban and it wasn't related to a play style that they didn't like. Like, usually like all the bands from when we have been playing, Jake for Standard especially, have always been bands that involved alternate one-of-one conditions. That Pokemon does not want to promote that heavily. But banning Dragapult would just be like. It's just banning a deck that is very strong and thus really popular, especially in. In like a more competitive sense. Because it's like, okay, if the deck was Raging Bolt and everybody played it because Raising Bull's just really fun and it's pretty good, then fine. It's just like really fun. So that's but no, people are playing Dragapult not because it's the most fun deck in the world. I'm sure it is fun. But like, they're playing it because it's the best deck on paper. Yu-Gi-Oh And I can't blame anybody. As much as I hate Dragon Pole and hate playing against it and wish it would go away, I can't blame anybody for just playing the best deck. Right. Especially when there is so much on the line. Like I say this in any of the card games that I play in or talk about or whatever that, like, if you want to one-of-one a championship, why not play the best deck? That can be the best way to help you one-of-one that championship. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, whatever. Unless you are, you know, Ross Cawthon or Jason Kleczynski and you have found the perfect counter to that deck and every other deck and you've kept it secret, you know, but, you know, most people are not those people, so. But taking a look at the results from day two in the world of Doom, the deck that surprised a lot of people and something that I didn't expect to be the winner. Our believer, which we talked about at the very beginning of. Or was it. It wasn't the Pitch Black format. It was the Chaos Rising format. Right. It was a while back. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh We talked about this deck. Meganium, Teal Mask, Ogrepon, and our Believa. Right. As in archetype that did really well, but hadn't really done anything until now. We get into the Tournament of Doom and it's pretty much the same thing. There's not anything different. You think about it, the thing that it does well is it can evolve quickly, but can also attack very quickly with your Teal Mask Ogre ponds. Yu-Gi-Oh And you. If you go first, your goal is to get into our Believa turn two and just really punish Dragapult and other decks that need to evolve. Right. That have little stage ones or little basic Pokemon in the back, you just punish them really quickly because very few decks are playing Shaman. And then if you go second, you punish by quickly getting a teal mask over pawn online and then setting up your arboliva in the back. And it's just. It's. It's got a cool tech. Tech where it can play quickly going second. It can take advantage of going first or second. I think. So I think that's pretty neat. And then especially with Meganium as well. Right. Like evolving into Meganium very fast with force of vitality. That stadium, being able to cheat out evolutions as for grass Pokemon and get them out very quickly to help get your R believe out. You know, as a stage two Pokemon evolving from small of and Olive and Meganium. Meganium gets so much energy for stuff like Teal Mask Ogre Pond. Right. To be able to hit such high numbers of damage. Right. With that 30 times or I'm sorry, 30 plus 30 for each grass energy attached. If you're doubling that with Meganium and you Teal Mask Ogrepon a couple times, you can hit some pretty good numbers. 30 may not seem like a big increment when your Pokemon are 300 plus HP, but you know, you got 5 energies on Teal Mask Ogre Pawn is really 10 energies with Meganium and therefore you're hitting 330 or one shotting a drag a pool. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh It's. You can reach the numbers that you need to one shot when you need it and then you can do a lot of control of the board with the Arboliva. And it's. It's. I don't know. It's. It's strange to me that this deck seems to have gone away for a short time and then come back again in this tournament, at least for day two. Because it's not like it made up a large percentage of the meta share. It didn't, no. But it was a deck that just did really well. And it's interesting. I really want to watch the VOD against Mega Excadrill as well. Because Mega Excadrill is metal type, steel type. So usually Those decks have a 30 resistance to grass. Historically, I don't. I can't remember if Mega Extra Drill does, but I feel like the numbers you would need to hit are actually quite high. Then like you need to hit like 370 to one hit. But maybe the deck doesn't care. Maybe the deck just snipes all the drill burst and that's. That's all it's got to do. Right. And all the metangs as well. Like metangs and the Beldams and stuff like that. You can't get any of those online if you knock out those beldams and Matt Tangs. It's just so bad. But Yu-Gi-Oh you just have to manually attach with with Mega Extra Drill. But taking a look, I pulled up the like bracket to see what his matchups were inside. The top 32 cut dragapult top 32 top 16 dragapult. Blaziken beat that. Top 8 dragapult dusknor top 4 ended up playing Azul And Excadrill, as you were saying. And then in the finals ends Zorark. So definitely beating a lot of dragapults as you're talking about when it comes to it. And also just within the matchups as well. Played actually only one Dragapult in the beginning, I think got an automatic qualifier into day two. But at the start of the tournament, in that phase before Top Cut, only played one dragapult. But then. So you could think, oh, man, dodge Dragon Ball, maybe the Dragon Ball matchup's actually not that good. Beat the first three within Top Cut, which is the hardest Dragon Pults, you could say. Yu-Gi-Oh And then the free one-of-one against enzoroark because they're weak against grass. It's just like, oh, Yu-Gi-Oh take that free dub. Just absolutely crazy, you know, I mean, it's really interesting showcase of our believa and really makes you wonder how good this deck could be like in Worlds in a couple weeks. Yu-Gi-Oh it might be because there's not really anything out there other than Ethan's typhlosion, which, you know, I think did do pretty well at an online tournament elsewhere. But. Well, I think in this online tournament in day one, I think Ethan Cyplosian got like ninth or something like that. So. But like day one, the odds that you hit anything's typhlosion are generally pretty low at Worlds, my guess. So, like, you know, I think your. Your real negative is going to be if you hit a festival lead and they're able to get Shaman out. I do think that's a really awkward matchup because they're just trading, you know, single prizers the whole game, and then you're gonna have to give up some two prizers. Well, it's. I mean, it's just a crazy. Does Shaman stop our believa? Let me read the. I thought it was deal 20 damage to. Blah, blah, blah. Let me. I thought it was damage. Is it specifically dealing damage or placing damage counters? Choose one of your opponent's Pokemon six times. For each time you choose a Pokemon, do 20 damage to it. So if it's on the bench, stop it. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh So to your point, you know, you look, they have to have the Shaman. They have to find it early and they have to play it, you know, which in some decks, like Dragapult is really tough. Right? I think that's the thing. Like, how many Dragon Pults are you even playing Shaman? I mean, like, we'll go to the. To one of the lists here. Nope, there's a Dragapult List I'm looking at from day two. Like, I think you're most afraid of maybe, like, Dragon Ball Blaziken, because then Blaziken can become an attacker, but, like, you might just be okay with it. And then you're sniping all the torchics and stuff in the beginning of the game anyways, because they have to choose whether to, like, rare candy Dragapult or Blaziken. Yep. You know, like, in a turn, so. And like, oh, no, they hit me with one. You. Okay, fine. I'm gonna take two prizes every turn. And you're not GGs. Yu-Gi-Oh sure. It's crazy. So I. I don't know. I mean, I'd be curious to see, like, because obviously you'll have every content creator and their mother in these next few weeks, have a video about our Believa, how it one-of-one this tournament, playing some games with it, showcasing it. But I'm really curious to see, like, more on its matchup, specifically, like, Dragapult to see, like, was this, like, lightning in a bottle or, you know, just a incredible tournament run or is there. Is there really something there that can, like, posted within the top eight at Worlds this year. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, look, the deck did well in Japan. The deck did Yu-Gi-Oh Well, you know, in Chaos Rising, I believe maybe it was the Japan championship that our believable one and we talked about it on the podcast. Maybe it was that. So, like, the deck has proven itself to do well, especially in a meta that is dominated by Dragapult. And I have no reason to believe Worlds one-of-one be that kind of meta. So, Yu-Gi-Oh Now does a good player do a bunch of good players at Worlds, expect that, and then start taking Shaman and then the deck falls apart, maybe. So potentially, that's. That's. I think that's the awkward part. Arboliva. I do think that with. If. If your opponent finds a Shaman, I do think that it can be very awkward for the deck because all your opponent has to do then is just, you know, boss up your Meganiums. And if you can't get back into another Meganium after an unfair stamp boss from a Dragapult, then you're just cooked. You just are. Right. Like, so I'll be interested to see if people actually take it seriously who are playing Dragapult, because if any deck has the space for one Shaman, it's Dragapult. So I guess one other deck that I'd be interested to see how it fares going into Worlds, which we'll talk about next week, is Lily's clefairy. Only two people played it in day two and they didn't get further than a four, two and one. But we've also. There was a. I'm pretty sure there's a 15th, 15, five two, one. Oh, there's a five, two, one. Oh, where is that? It didn't show up in. Yu-Gi-Oh five two, one is a ogre pond box. Okay. Okay. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh there we go. Ogre pond box with four, four Lily's clefairies and Lily's Pearl. So I think that would be the other, to your point, just barely making top 16. Right. But you know, that's another one that I'm like keep my Yu-Gi-Oh on. But it does seem like the Meta is sort of revolving right now around either Dragapult or the three decks that we talked about earlier, which is Enzor Arc Mega Excadrill or maybe Slow King or Festival Lead, one of those two. So Yu-Gi-Oh interesting stuff here. Let's look at the end Zorark list though, because I mean that popular one that you. Yu-Gi-Oh Pack of alpacas piloted for a second place finish in this championship. And there's a couple of interesting things that are in here. Obviously with Enzoric, you have your variety of attackers, people going back to N Star, Ramaka and Darmanitan. Right. It's kind of been like an on and off, hot and cold kind of deal with the deck. So interesting to see that there. But the trainer cards, I think are the most interesting. There's a couple in here. We once again see Transformation Tomb in the list. A card that we kind of memed on because you have to play two at once and it's not anywhere near as good as puzzle of time. But once again, being in here, and maybe this is just a valid card to have. Transformation Tomb. If you do not know, you have to play two at once. There is no opportunity to play only one. Choose a basic Pokemon in your discard pile. Switch it with one of the basic Pokemon in play. Any attached cards, damage, counter, special condition turns and play and any other effects remain on the new Pokemon. So if you're not worried about using it right, it's a very easy trade option for Enzor's Trash 1 Draw 2 ability. But being able to utilize it can help get things out of the active that got stuck. Or maybe you do not want. If you can't move it with Petron or N's Castle could just be a nice switcheroo to get into a Pokemon that you evolve into later. If maybe you don't see your Endzeru at the beginning of the game or something like that. I don't know. Yu-Gi-Oh there's a couple different options for this, but it's one of the more interesting cards because this takes up four slots in your deck. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, you know, Enzor can draw through the deck, and I guess it must be worth it because you can turn. I think you prioritize the ends of Ruas early, but the fact that you can turn it into a Zekrom, a Darumaka, an Eval Tall, a Peturant, a Fizz in the late game, or a monkey dory from something like a Meowth, because I think that's typically going to be your target is you probably don't want Meowth or you probably don't want Tatsugiri. Right. And does it say to the bench? No, no, just any basic Pokemon. So the nice thing about that, too, is if your opponent is trying to do something like clutch to your active Pokemon, odds are they're not gonna do clutch on your Zoroark, because that's the one that can attack. Right. Like, so instead, they'll do it on one of your other Pokemon that they think is unlikely. You'll attack with. Well, this just kind of bails you out. You know, you just play this, turn it into anything else, and if you still need to retreat, you have Peturant, but otherwise you can turn it into an Enzorua that you have in your discard, and then, boom, you have an End Zor arc and you're. You're ready to rock and roll. So, Yu-Gi-Oh it's a nice little. It's a nice out for a lot of things. The card that I'm also Zebra intrigued by, which makes a lot of sense when you think about the numbers, is the Babiri Berry. I think this is one of the first Berries that we've really seen high coverage of in the format for a while. But Beery baby, if this Pokemon this card is attached to is damaged by an attack from any opponent's steel Pokemon or metal Pokemon, you take 60 less damage and discard this card. Attaching this onto end Zorark is 340 hp, effectively. Right. That they'll need to hit. And if you think about the metal Pokemon in the format, right. The one that we've been talking about, Mega Extra Drill Ex. What's the number that Mega extra drill hits? 300. Yu-Gi-Oh 330. So literally can make your end Zoric survive with 10 HP in that matchup specifically, and maybe a lot of times that one hit is all you need. Yu-Gi-Oh To be able to survive. Even though there's no Russia Ram in this deck. Right. With Reshiram is adds more damage based on the damage counters that you have, like on your. Your Pokemon. It's not a set number like Rampaging Thunder on End Zekrom. So really curious that they didn't have that in there. But maybe just the Reshiram is not necessarily needed. All you need is that one turn of something not getting knocked out to be able to, like, influence the Prizm trade enough. Well, in against Mega Drill, right. You just assume that whatever it hits, it's going to knock out. So you're like, okay, well, how do I make that not the case? Like, if I play ends Reshiram, it doesn't really matter if I'm getting one hit. Like, there's no damage counters to. To do anything with. But Yu-Gi-Oh it's a. That's a clever tech card that you don't like. I feel like we haven't seen a lot of individual typing or deck tech cards like this outside of attackers in recent years. And like Lily's Clefairy. Yu-Gi-Oh Like, which could be an attacker that you're talking about. Yu-Gi-Oh This feels like a cool tech card and kind of a callback to, like, different eras of Pokemon that we don't really have. Quite the same right now. Yu-Gi-Oh So it's. And I think that this is really enabled as well by Secret Box specifically. You know, Secret Box being the A spec of choice in this list. Not like an unfair stamp or a Prime catcher or anything like that. Being able to find that tool card when you needed exactly that Babiri Berry in certain matchups is actually really solid. Right. So, you know, you kind of think about, okay, what other decks would maybe play like the Babiri Berry to maybe think about Mega Extra Drill, because it is a legitimate deck in the format. You know, it especially like Dragapult. Right. Dragapult can get absolutely slammed by a Mega Extra Drill. But if you attach a Babiri Berry, now they can't one shot you. So it's like, oh, until people start attacking Tool Scrapper, which we'll get into in a second. But Azul was playing Tool Scrapper. But, you know, that's just one of those things that you kind of think about in like, okay, what do I think my opponent's going to do? How can I, like, deflect that? Or whatever could be an interesting option for some of these bigger decks. Jake, let's go over the Mega Excadril, the last of the big decks that we saw come out of this event. Give us a rundown. What. What are we. I think we talked about it recently. But what excites you about this deck? The Mega Extra Drill hits a very solid number, right? If you have five metal energies in or five energies I should say in total. It doesn't have to be metal energies. I guess for your two extras. If you have three metals and two extra energies, you could do 330 damage on your opponent's Pokemon. Which is so good in this format as you may know. Right? Can one hit Ko and Zoric if they don't have the babiri berry. Can one hit ko dragapult which is a big deal. And as a 340 hp Pokemon, especially as a stage one, he's a big beefy dude that you're have that you're going to have to try to get around. Right? And in some of those matchups where maybe you're facing against some small one prizers, right? You have a 90 HP attack that discards two cards from your opponent's deck. So that could be very solid. But to be able to get those energies for that premier Maximum Drilling attack, you. You've got Metal maker Matang. Being able to look through the top of your deck to find any number of basic energy cards within the top four to be able to attach onto your Pokemon if they're basic metal. So is a great way to be able to power that up. The supporter line is also really interesting in this deck that Aul went with in this tournament. And I'm sure he'll have a breakdown if he doesn't already on his channel about the deck. Why he did it. You know some of the premier options. But the supporters. You only have two kinds of supporters in this deck and none of them are named Lily's Clefairy dawn or Boss's Orders. Right? Your two kinds of supporters are Brock Scouting and Team Rockets Petrol. Which in my opinion is. Yu-Gi-Oh that's so wild of a lineup. Right? But Brock Scouting is able to find either two basic Pokemon or one Evolution Pokemon. To put them inside your hand is very nice to be able to get your board set up. Maybe go for some call for family to really build out the bench within turn one And Genesect Ex Metallic Signal is a great way to be able to find those metal Pokemon. But Team Rockets Petrol. You know, being able to find any trainer card within your deck is great to find your a spec of choice. A stadium like Gravity Mountain that you have. They expect also being heroes cape to make a big beefy dude or even certain tech cards like Energy Recycler, Tool Scrapper that we talked about makes this a really sick deck. I love Metal Maker decks and so Mega Extra Drill, the deck that I want to build personally, I want to call out one other Pokemon that I think is kind of neat. Mega Skarmory Ex as a one of the. It has metal. Metal and a colorless attack. Shuffle all energy attached from this Pokemon into your deck and this attack does 220 to one of your opponent's Pokemon. Pretty neat because it's probably not that difficult with Metal Maker to get two metal off of that off your metangs. Attach one from hand, it has free retreat. So it's a nice pivot as well. But like you just go in, you do 220, you take two prizes, you shuffle it back in and then you leave your opponent with two options. Either take out a single prizer like Matang or try to go through a beefy boy like mega excadrill with 340 hp. And like that's just not always the best option for most decks. So it's pretty, pretty neat. Yu-Gi-Oh Especially with the Mega Skarmory Ex being able to snipe on the bench, you know, that hits the Pheasantipities, that hits the meows, that hits maybe a damaged Pokemon that you utilized with like an Undermine or something. You can't actually hit Teal Mask. Never mind. No, you can't. You can't go. You can't hit the Terra Pokemon at least. But if it's in the Active, it can still hit. It just says 220 damage to one of your opponent's Pokemon. It could be the active Pokemon, it could be the bench Pokemon, one of the two. So there is like a lot of cool flexibility with this attacker as like a one of. You know, and it's probably more because it's a 260 hp3 prizer, it probably feels best when you utilize it. I'd have to again watch the vod. Oh, I mean, I'll watch Azul's VOD because he definitely streamed it. But I'll also watch the Tournament of Doom. But it probably feels really good to be mostly used to go for game, right? To try to chase one of those Meowths or Pheasantipities or something of the sort. Because when you get to the end stages of the game, your opponent has more than likely pulled out like a Meowth or Pheasant. Deputy to be able to get a specific supporter or draw extra cards. Because when you get to the late stages of the game where the resources are running dry, it's nice to have those Pokemon to get those extra resources. So pretty neat deck there. Shout out the two jumbo ice creams. Yu-Gi-Oh the. The two jumbos in the heroes cape saying it's gonna take you at least two, maybe three turns to knock out this Mega Excadrill. Yu-Gi-Oh but that's gonna do it for the decks this week. But Jake, we're gonna. I'll just sound off the. I'll. I'll just sound out the rest of the top eight real quick. Just so then people know there was also like first place with the Arboliva. Second place, End Zork, third place, Mega Extra Drill. Fourth place. So the highest placing Dragapult list was fourth, which I thought was really nice. All the dragapults, you know, falling within top four in there. Fifth place Dragapult, sixth place, Crustle. So Crustle still walking around in here. And I mean it's just one of those decks, you know that like for it or you're not taking for it, it's the best time to play it. Right. Because nobody's ready for it. And then seventh place is Mega Lucario and Hariyama. So Mega Lucario still having like good placements within these online tournaments and high skill events, which is really cool because I know a lot of people are big fans of Mega Lucario and that deck. And then rounding out the top eight is Dragapult Dusk Nor. And then there's a Zebra of decks within the top 32. Like there's an Alakazam Raging Bold Clefairy Box Slow King. Very much recommend going on the Play Limitless website. Check out these decks. So next week we will give you our predictions, our analysis, as good or incorrect as it may be for the World Championships. I'm excited, I'm excited to get back to competitive Pokemon in the next week and a half. Yu-Gi-Oh especially I. I'm just excited to watch Worlds as well. You know, you get the. Not only just like competitive Pokemon because we've had this break now of the summer where we really only have like events like the Tournament of Doom. Imagine if we didn't have a site like Play Limitless and these online events. Oh my God, this summer would be so boring for, for us personally. But to get to like the highest level of competition where everything's on the line, you know, and these players playing it out like even if it is just going to be Dragapold versus a bunch of other people playing the Pokemon trading card game. Like, I just excited to see, like, Zebra high level play, especially because there is complexity within Dragapold of, like, the damage, counter placements and things like that, and when to evolve, when to attach, when to use Crispin, you know, versus another supporter, things like that. So it's. I'm just excited for Worlds. Yu-Gi-Oh same, same. So that's going to be it for the Metapod podcast this week. Let us know your predictions heading into the World Championship. So maybe we can talk about that as well. Some people bringing up some good points or some fun ideas in the world. I'm Jake, that's Sean. We'll get you next week. As we inch closer and closer to the pinnacle of the season. Happy Nappy. Happy, happy, nasty.