2-11: ARE OPEN DECKLISTS THE FUTURE?

Hello, and welcome back to the Battle Frontier podcast, where we aim to help you level up in your journey as a competitive Pokemon TCG player. I'm Aaron Curry. This is my second time doing this intro. And I'm here as always with my co host, Jon Orgel. And this week, we're going to be bringing you some information about some rules updates to the tournament handbook and how we think those things could impact events moving forward when they do end up arising. It's kind of a weird circumstance. It's for anyone who's not in the know, it's the open deck list thing. So we're going to spend a good bit of time talking about that. Hoping to keep this episode under two hours, which we have been unsuccessful in doing the past two weeks. So thank you for everyone who has listened and tuned in, we really appreciate it. After that discussion, though, we'll jump into Blaine's quiz show and close things out with just some quick predictions on Vegas, we're going to try to avoid doing a huge deep dive on the meta, given that one, we've been in this format for quite a while. And two, we expect to do something very similar to that next week heading into LAIC. So without further ado, before we jump into our discussion of open deck list and how that looks in the Pokemon TCG. What'd you get up to last week, Jon? What'd I do last week? I just did like stuff around the house too much. Sydney had a long week. She works at a food bank, and they've had a really tough time of it lately. So we just had a nice weekend where Saturday we just, you know, went out into Charlottesville, which is kind of like an hour west and just looked at fall leaves and hung out at a cidery and played some board games and just chilled out. Just kind of got away from it a little bit. And then Sunday, I just came back and did some trying to do some yard work. The weather was a little warmer than fall had been for the last few weeks. So I was able to get some yard work done, like, just get stuff ready for winter. And yeah, it's now it's cold. So that was a good timing. I had today off. That was nice. Yeah, for Veterans Day. Thank you, veterans for serving our country. Obligatory, but also necessary. And yeah, it's a nice chill day. Kind of, I don't know, just didn't do a lot. I got lunch, like brought brought got lunch from Sydney's favorite place and brought it to her at work. So that was kind of nice. We had a little lunch together. And then yeah, just came home and cleaned up the house a little bit. And then just, I don't know, read a book and watch YouTube videos. Hey, not too much. Freaking PDCG live was down for maintenance. Today of all days to right, right. Yeah, I was off today. And I'm like, Oh, I get to play live finally. Like, and that wasn't meant to be. So is what it is. But yeah, it was nice little weekend and hoping to play in a league challenge tomorrow. Okay, what are you gonna bring? That's, that's the question. I have Zoroark and Dragapult built. I've been trying to get better with Zoroark, but it hasn't been very successful. So I'll probably, probably pivot back to Dragapult Dusknoir at this point. I mean, it's old reliable at this point for me. Yeah, it still works. And we'll talk about some of the metagame going into Las Vegas this weekend. But yeah, for me, it's been like the deck I've been playing the most for the last six months. So I don't know, it's hard to pivot away from that. And I played like Golden Go, but I loaned that deck out to Omar, the junior I've helped out a lot. He, for whatever reason, like, wanted to switch to Golden Go last minute. I don't even think he ended up playing it. But he needed the deck. And so I'm like, Alright, you can take mine. And I haven't got it back quite yet. So we'll have him. Hopefully I get it back from him relatively soon. I don't, I don't plan on like, I don't, I don't play enough to really need it, but it would still be nice to have, you know. But, um, it's all right. But anyway, um, yeah, that's about it. How are you? How have you been? I haven't really seen you since last episode. I mean, Yeah, I've been busy, man. Got a lot going on. Spent most of the day today. I also was fortunate enough to have the day off of work and spent the day moving a bunch of stuff around the house, trying to clear things out, moving Brody from one of the bedrooms into a bigger bedroom, trying to give him some more space as he's getting older. And just trying to move other things around as well, just to, you know, make space for, you know, life. And outside of that, uh, again, baseball, I think I mentioned in one of the previous episodes, we had three back-to-back-to-back tournament weekends, and this was our last one. And the kids came out blazing on Saturday. I think across both games, gave up eight runs and scored 32. Dang. It was crazy. And then unfortunately, on Sunday, we played against another team from the same city. So my son's team is based out of Oviedo and kind of a, I guess you could say a rival team that we played against. And just one thing kind of led to another thing started to snowball a little bit and it went negative for him. And then our second game just got totally rained out. So we never got to finish. Dang. And, but with that rain, uh, came some very unexpected colder weather. Like I saw a thing this morning from the weather channel that the last time it was this cold, this early in November was in like 1993 for Florida. So, you know, we were down in the, I think our night temps are currently in like the forties. Wow. Almost like freezing for you guys. Yeah. I know. I know. It's really, really weird, but it's going to climb back up for the, you know, the rest of the week. I think we're going to be back up there. And then I know later this week, uh, we're going to go with my sister-in-law and her family to, um, Mickey's magical Christmas or whatever it's called over at Disney. So that's going to be a good time. I know my wife's wanted to go for quite a while. So looking forward to that. It's going to be a pretty good week. Nice, man. That sounds cool. Yeah. Still doing a little bit of Pokemon here and there. Trying, trying, but like you said that we were talking a little bit before we started recording officially about how the format is starting to feel a little bit stale. And I'm sure a lot of other people are experiencing that as well. And especially if you're not directly preparing for a tournament, it really digs into your drive to want to get on and play the same decks against the same decks with very little variability in people's deck lists. But still trying to find, you know, the desire to do so deep down wherever it's hidden. Yeah. I mean, it's okay if you're not preparing for an event, I feel like that's okay to have that lull to take that time off. Um, the downside is then you, when you get back to it, it is a little bit harder to get back up to speed. Um, it's like, you know, when you, when you don't work out for a little bit, you have to like, kind of the first time you work out, it's going to be brutal. And yeah, I can see that. Like, I feel that when I, when I play a new deck, uh, currently, like I've been playing the last, like, that's kind of why I'm pivoting back to a deck. I know, because like, it's been so hard to learn a new deck. Um, and I just haven't really had the time to just sit down and grind games or the want to, to be honest with you. Like, I don't, like, I'm not preparing for regionals. So it's, it's really difficult for me to like, want to dedicate four or five hours out of my day to like, just putting the reps in and writing notes down and like getting really into the nitty gritty. Um, and I don't really just play live for fun like that. Like I have a hard time just sitting down and just like, Oh, I'm going to unwind and play some Pokemon on my computer. It just doesn't seem to happen. So, um, I really, I like playing, but playing on, I like playing in person more than I like playing online. I think that's the sentiment we both share. Um, Oh, okay. My bad. I don't know. Like, I mean, I think that I enjoy Pokemon in either capacity. I think if I'm, if I'm going to play with someone that I know, I would rather play in person if at all possible, but I don't really have a strong aversion to just playing games on TCG live, especially if I want to play, you know, a specific deck, especially if like, I've never bothered to buy Sarah ledges. So if I've really got an itch to play Sarah ledge, I could go and just do it on live without having to worry about the cards. And it wouldn't be that big of a deal. And especially, I think the reason that I've almost become more accustomed to playing on live is that I just don't necessarily have the time to always go find someone in person or go somewhere to play against someone in person. And so it's just become more of a necessity to be okay with life. Rather than was curious, when was the last time you like, made an appointment and like, went to somebody's house or went to a league? Oh, geez, somebody specifically? I'm getting honestly, the last time that not even it was probably NAIC that Santiago and I like made plans met up and went over somewhere in the Albedo area. Actually, I think it was that versus games where I've done some casting for their league cups. We met up there. And played games, just grinding, like Grimmsaul versus Evie box, Grimmsaul versus Gardevoir, Evie box versus Gardevoir, you know, etc. And the other than that, it's been playing TCG live. And that's just been like my primary means of testing because I don't have the free time necessarily to be able to dedicate to it. And so it's kind of again, born out of necessity. This is the method that has borne, you know, the strongest fruit for me so far. Yeah, I get that. And I feel like I get that because like, playing online, you do have the ability to just play somebody at your level or somebody that's been playing the deck that they're playing a lot more consistently than you know, especially when you get to higher levels up on that ladder. You do get quality testing in and you do have a better use of your time. So I can see that. I do think there's pros and cons like, Oh, absolutely. 100% like not being able to rewind your game state is a huge deal. It's really annoying, especially when you miss click or whatever. But then the, you know, side benefit is you don't have to worry about it. It's much easier to just, you know, rage quit your TCG live game and boot up another one, then having to go through and reshuffle every single like everything back together for your other game. Like you said, pros and cons for both of them. But, you know, can't fault anybody for doing either of them. But I think, you know, it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it That's enough, you know, jabbering on we can go ahead and jump into the first topic of discussion that we had here. And that would be this change to the tournament handbook, and specifically an update to this section regarding open deck lists at events. And so for anyone who doesn't know, open deck lists essentially means that both players are aware of the contents of their opponent's deck prior to playing the game, completely aware you know, all 60 cards in your opponent's deck. And so the update here has specifically stated that during asymmetrical top cut, Masters Division players will have time to review their opponent's deck list, known as a deck list preview period, while setting up at the beginning of their match. And then they go on to define deck list preview, saying competitors will be provided a printed copy of their own deck list. This list includes all the cards present in their deck, the list must be provided to the competitor's opponent at the start of the match. Deck list should be exchanged and reviewed while players randomize their decks for the first match of the game. This preview and all actions taken to set up for the first game must be completed within the two minutes outlined for the start of game section 7.4.5 in the TCG Tournament Handbook. You may not take notes while reviewing your opponent's deck list. If a competitor does not understand or recognize a card in their opponent's deck list, they should call the judge immediately for assistance. Deck list must be returned to the deck's owner and put away before either player draws their opening hand. They can only be reviewed at the start of the match and must remain put away until the match concludes and the match slip is completed. I think there's a few interesting takeaways from this. If you've ever played a limitless TCG online event, most of them are open deck list and you are also free to reference your opponent's deck list at any time throughout the course of your games, whether it's a best of one or best of three. Whereas here, you only get to look at it one time during that two minute setup period. Yeah, what is the policy for team sheets with VG? I think it's the same. I'm fairly certain it's exactly the same. I'm going to just pull it up while we're talking real quick. Yeah, sure. Go for it. That is what it reminded me of, though, when it said, hey, you get a two minute setup period. During the two minute setup period, you get to look at it. I'm like, oh, I'm pretty sure they just copied and pasted this over from the video game. But the inability to take notes during the deck list review is pretty interesting to me. You know, I wouldn't at all be surprised. A lot of strong players will find the important takeaways from their opponent's deck list and will probably just write those things down at the start of their first turn. You know, something like how many, you know, boss or countercatcher or do they play something like Iron Bundle? Do they play Jamming Tower? How many copies of Bravery Charmer in the Gardevoir deck? How many Rare Candy? How many Curlia? Do they play TM Evo? And something that you may... I mean, the TM Evo thing's probably not that big of a deal. It's probably not important enough to write down and more so it would be things that you would potentially forget as you approach the mid or end of your first game and would want to remind yourself of as that series is ongoing. Any luck finding the VG stuff yet? I'm trying to, yeah. Let me just control F, open. Or team preview, I think is what they call it. So, but, okay. So while no pre-written or print aids, including type charts are permitted in the play space, competitors may take notes at any time during their matches, including during team preview. Oh, interesting. But must begin each round with a blank sheet. So they can take notes. So yeah, I think you do... Team preview is 90 seconds. So, well, okay. For context, team preview, I think, is different than what we're calling decklist preview in TCG. So team preview is something built into the video game where you can see the list of your opponent's six Pokemon. And that's where you're just, you're Okay, so team preview, I think, is different than what we're calling decklist preview in TCG. So team preview is something built into the video game where you can see the list of your opponent's six Pokemon. And that's where you're just, you're Like, because they have teams of six, they select four to send out, and that's gonna be a little bit different here. It's not like you, you know, if we had sideboards or you're playing a multi-deck format, right? And instead here, you're just viewing the contents of your opponent's list. And my assumption is that the review being part of game setup is the big driving factor for why they don't want note-taking, because they want to ensure that it adheres to that two-minute requirement. Otherwise, you could certainly see players taking significantly longer than that. Yeah, I don't hate it. I think it's a good compromise on, you know, when we get to these levels of bigger and bigger tournaments and it's a name player. One thing we've seen argued is that, hey, you know, if I'm on stream early in the tournament, I lose that surprise factor to the point where now my opponents know what I'm playing and know exactly how, like, my counts of stuff and all that stuff. It's interesting, because it's like, it's like, it definitely, I think it's a good thing, but it's also just kind of, I don't know. I think if I'm playing the game, like, how much do I want it to be, like, limitless? I think it's okay to, like, just say, okay, I can remember, can I take notes immediately after looking at the sheets? I probably could, right? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. As soon as you're, as soon as you're first or first, or- Sorry, I guess I didn't quite catch what you were talking about. Like, while, like, you know, say you and I sit down for a game. We look at each other's deck lists. You go first. On your first turn, I can, I'm just going to immediately start writing notes down. If I have anything that I found, you know, exceptionally noteworthy from your deck list, it's immediately going to go onto whatever I have for the rest of the series. But to that extent, like, it's a little confusing to me. Why, why can't they just keep the sheet there as a reference for the entire game? Yeah, like, why is there an extra level of difficulty kind of involved with it? Right. I don't really know. Like, it doesn't seem like, what are we doing? Like, are we trying to, we're trying to make it to where we can have it more focused on just being able to play with full deck list knowledge? Why make this like a mini game where you now have to, like, see how much of your opponent's deck list you can memorize, like, all of their counts. Like, oh, were they running three or four countercatcher, two or three countercatcher? Right. You know, three boss, two boss, like, that kind of stuff. Like, it's, I don't know, man. It's, just give, give me your, give me your opponent's team. Like, just have my list. You can, yeah, whatever. If we're going to do that, just, here's my list. I can read your list. Like, that's fine. Yeah. I don't know. And you just, you just hold onto it. And when we're done with the game, you give it back. Yeah. I mean, if I'm, if you're playing in this format, do you think, like, if your opponent asks you point blank, like, you know, how, I don't remember exactly how many, I mean, I don't think you give it to them, obviously. I think you, if they don't remember it, then it's like, that's another aspect of it. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely under no obligation to provide that information, but. You can't lie to them, but you can just, yeah, not say how many of each card you have. Yeah, you just tell them, I don't have to tell you that. Like, I mean, that's, by the same token, if you're playing with, you know, a closed deck list, which is what every single tournament has been up to now, outside of, like you mentioned, the edge cases of, you know, insert player, you know, Tord, as an example, goes on stream. Someone sits down and scrubs the VOD to try to determine 56 or 60 of his cards. You know, now, theoretically, he's at a disadvantage for everyone who plays against him the rest of the day, assuming that they have access to that information. And that's where I think they specifically have decided that ASIM is the level where they want to apply this. I guess another interesting talking point about it would be, would it be worth implementing this for everyone in day two? Yeah, I think it would be good on one level. Yeah, I mean, like, that makes sense to me. Like, if it's a name player that you're worried about, that their list gets leaked, I could see the advantage. The only thing would be like, yeah, phase two's starting on day one now, so do we, like, violate tournament integrity by not providing that before the start of phase two in that first round? You know, is that, like, an actual issue? But I don't think it, I don't know. The issue is if I'm a name player and I'm playing, like, a really cool deck and everybody wants to see what it is and I get featured on stream round four or whatever, and then everybody just scrubs the bot, like you said, and figures out 58 of the 60 cards and then, like, knows my list day two. I don't know. I think this is a good compromise. I'm happy with going into top cut because otherwise, like, then you have to really slow the tournament down. You're asking an extra, I mean, the players wouldn't be able to print out the lists. I think that the organizers would have to do it for them, realistically speaking. Just with Arcanine, like, I guess you could ask players to print out lists, but, like, if you're traveling or, I don't know, I wouldn't expect that. I would, and then now day two is 500 players, or not 500, but, like, over 250. That's a lot of lists, and then, I mean, VG does it, so it's not unheard of. Yeah, and that's where, that's my hangup for why can't this be expanded further. Obviously, video game tournaments do have lower attendance than card game tournaments, at least at present, but they're still able to manage it with hundreds, if not thousands of players. I think they also do it for all of their age divisions as well. Oh, okay. So, you know, specifically, like, this is only for masters and only for ASIM and onward. So, why would you... Actually, the way it's written, it also potentially could be interpreted as only applying to the ASIM round of Top Cut, which I think would be a little ridiculous. It's got to go beyond that. I would imagine it's ASIM and beyond, but, yeah. Who knows? I kind of like it, though. I'm a fan of this. Like, this allows, in theory, players to have their match outcome not determined by how well somebody can scrub a VOD and learn somebody's list before facing them. I mean, and people have been doing this forever, right? Even, like... Well, even with outside of stream games. Just regular old scouting, right? Yeah, exactly. Or, yeah, you just... Before NAIC Finals or World's Finals, people would scout the lists out and help the players prepare that way and get reps in that way. I mean, that's pretty not uncommon. And stuff leaks out. I mean, that's part of the game, too. So, I think this is a good middle ground. Like, you still want closed deck lists for the majority of the tournament. And then, by the end of it, when you've had maybe half of the top eight already featured on stream, then it's really helpful to kind of even the playing field up a little bit. Sure. So, I'm a fan of it. Yeah, I can agree with that. And I get the logistical point that you brought up earlier. I still think I would like to see this expanded at some point to include all of Phase 2. Now, you did bring up a really good point. Like, when do you apply this? Because Phase 2 starts on Day 1 currently, in, I think, all circumstances so far. I don't know if any of them have been full Phase 2 on Day 2, if I remember correctly. I think everything's been eight rounds. Nine rounds Day 1. Eight or nine rounds Day 1, whatever the cutoff would be. Insert Phase 1 plus one round has been played on Day 1 every single event. So, that does make it a little bit like kind of a sticky situation that might be a little bit difficult to navigate. But any way you implement this, there is going to be some level of growing pains. And, you know, why not just rip the band-aid off, is my thought on it. If you don't want to fully apply it to every single player for the entirety of the event, I think cutting it down to the significantly smaller percentage that makes it into Phase 2 is totally acceptable. But we're not there. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Did you touch on the fact that you would have advanced notice before you start the tournament? True. Yep. I think I kind of glossed over that. That's fine, yeah. So, one factor that we didn't quite talk about was they're not going to spring this on you after the tournament has started and say, oh, by the way, everybody, here's your opponent's decklist. You'll know during registration before the tournament starts, before like when you sign up, it will make notice of the fact that this is a open decklist for asymmetrical top cut tournament. And I don't expect this to be at anything less than, like I said, yeah, regionals and above. So, you can implement this for like local stuff, but like League Cups and League Challenges won't have this. League Cups definitely won't. I mean, they don't have ASIM already, so. Yeah. Yeah. Don't have to worry about that. But what if? Yeah, that would be fun. I mean, in some ways, I think, I don't know. Do you as a player, Aaron, enjoy like open decklist tournaments more than closed decklist tournaments? Or is it really a big factor at all? Like, is this something that you think about much? Or is it just like, well, I like playing Pokemon. I don't really care how I play it. Yeah, I'm definitely in like the latter camp based on like all the options that you gave. Like, I can see merits for both. And I think one of the points that people have brought up is, I'm trying to remember it correctly right now. It's that open decklist favors players and closed decklist favors deck builders, or I believe it's something along those lines. And that's where, you know, the idea of having a secret or a rogue deck is more advantageous. You know, you can take Towards Absolboxes like a prime example of this. If it's a fully open decklist, yes, people still may not have a fully, like a great, perfect game plan to play into the deck, but they will know what cards they're attempting to play around if they're able to look at the list ahead of time. And maybe that's not the best example because Tor did do some amount of metafy classes and, you know, the list was available if people will be able to go beyond the paywall. And I think, interestingly, we've also seen this trend the past couple of events started with Emma Hagen prior to Gdansk. And now several European players heading into Vegas this week have already posted the decklist that they have submitted or are planning to submit for the event. And they're just like, hey, I'm playing this. And I don't know if that's because this announcement was made, so people are just trying to get ready for that being an eventuality, or maybe they just have, a lot of players have recognized there's thousands of players at this event. It's very unlikely that specific players knowing your exact decklist makes that big of a difference in your overall tournament run because you are unlikely to play against the people that would take the time to look at it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's like, if I'm reading towards decklist and I have 90 seconds while I'm shuffling to read this thing and I'm like trying to just, what the heck does, then I have to call a judge over to like, ask what does Absol make Absol do? You know, and then yeah, like, and that's part of it. I mean, that's, it's cool. Like, if I'm a control player, I think I love it. Oh, absolutely. Because control thrives off of knowing exactly how many of each count like your opponent has. Like, I know how many switch outs you have, how many turros, how many bosses and like countercatchers and all the gust outs and all the possible things I can try to play around and run you out of. I think that's huge, so. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And actually, I think that that's a great point. Like you might see more control decks be prevalent at events that are open deck list. But I don't know, I'm interested in seeing how this continues to develop. And if at any point of the season, will they actually implement this? Because we haven't seen it yet and you know, we're coming up, Toronto registration happens tomorrow. Maybe they'll make mention of it on that page. But every event prior to Toronto so far has not had any mention of this being a part of the event. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a, will definitely be interesting to see. So. Yeah. All right, so I'm just going back to VG real quick. Okay. The part that it talks about, once both competitors are connected via union circle and I've selected preparations complete, they should then exchange team lists. Team lists can be reviewed and referenced at any point throughout the match. So you can look at it. So they just get to hold on at the hold on. They just get to hold on to it. Either competitor does not understand their opponent's team list at this time, they should inform a judge immediately. So yeah, VG just, I think, plays with their opponent's team list the whole time, which I think, I like that. Like, yeah, like, you know, I remember it didn't always, it wasn't always that way in VG. Like at one point it was closed team list and you didn't have that knowledge. So it'd be fun to see, like, I'd like to hear like a VG player's perspective on whether they like open team lists or closed team lists more. I get the impression that most of them probably like playing open team lists because it encourages like strategy at a higher level rather than just like surprise factor and cheese. Like, but. I think one of the other big pushes was related to like terror types and making sure people weren't trying to switch their terror types between games. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not gonna try to make any bold sweeping claims about it, but let us know what you think about open deck lists and how, you know, what phase of the tournament do you think they should be applied in in the comments of this episode? Yeah. We can go ahead and jump over now to Blaine's quiz show. Yeah, so Blaine's quiz show. This week, apologies again. I believe I have forgotten the scores. I think that it's eight to 12, maybe seven to 12. I'm not entirely positive. I know John has 12. I don't recall my point total. I just know I'm behind. But if you are- I think it's only four. I'll give you, yeah, eight to 12, but- I'll have to go back and look it up. We'll pop it up in a minute. Exactly. But if you haven't followed the show previously, it's a weekly quiz segment we do. John and I take turns asking each other a series of three multiple choice questions. Each correct answer will award the answerer with one point. If John is able to answer all four of these questions without the one hint that he has available to him, then he will earn an additional bonus point for the week for a maximum of four points available. And John is trying to increase his lead this week in the topic of Canto starters. So it could be anything, right? It's a pretty broad topic, but we can go ahead and jump into the first question. I just want to know, what is the name of Venusaur and Snivy GX's GX attack? And is it Solar Tornado GX, Solar Plant GX, Solar Beam GX, or Solar Smash GX? I don't think it's Solar Beam or Solar Plant, just because Solar Plant doesn't sound like an attack name. Solar Beam's almost like too obvious. Like, that wouldn't be a GX attack. I don't know. I didn't play the video games for this era, so I don't know, like, all the GX moves. I'm going to go with Solar Tornado just as a guess, and probably get it wrong, but that's my answer. Yeah, it was, in fact, Solar Plant GX. I included a couple of these here. Like, you caught the obvious red herring with Solar Beam. I had Solar Tornado specifically because I remember Snivy learning Leaf Tornado, if I remember correctly. And Solar Smash sounds like a GX attack to me. It wouldn't surprise me if something had it, but I was definitely surprised that this was Solar Plant. And I actually thought that you were going to slam dunk this one because you were a sun and moon guy. No, yeah, I booted the game up on the 3DS and played through, like, two hours of it, and then I just put it down and never picked it back up. Fair enough. So, yeah. Yep, that was a tough one, because, yeah, Solar Plant does not sound like a very- No, it sounds awful. It's not a good attack name, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. But anyway, we'll move on to a non-Venusaur question. I want to know, excluding base set, what is the most expensive English language Blastoise card? So I'm taking a page out of your book here, John. Yeah, yeah. And these are prices current as of today. You know, Veteran's Day, November 11th, 2025. And your choices are Blastoise and Piplup GX Alt-Art. I believe that's from Cosmic Eclipse. Forgot to include the set name there. We got Blastoise number four from Expedition. First edition, Dark Blastoise number three from Team Rocket, or Blastoise EX XY Promo number 122. That's definitely not the promo. I can say that with confidence. My gut reaction is like Blastoise Piplup, just because I know that that card's very expensive. Cosmic Eclipse is just an insane, like if you go back and try to buy cards from it now, it's so expensive. I don't know enough to know about like Expedition. Is that an e-reader set? I think it is. It is. Yeah, and that's pretty expensive. It's not like Blastoise EX from that era, or Blastoise, like if it was, I mean Dark, I think, because it's not like a Blastoise Star, or Blastoise EX, or anything like that, and it's just a regular holo rare. I'm gonna go with Blastoise and Piplup Alt-Art, just because I know that card's expensive. I don't know what the other ones are, but I'm gonna lock that one in. Okay, these are actually the four most expensive Blastoise cards following base set Shadowless Blastoise, but it is not Blastoise and Piplup GX Alt-Art. It is actually the holo Blastoise from Expedition. Yeah. I can't give you a reason for that. It's an interesting artwork. It's like a, you know, quote unquote realistic looking Blastoise. Yeah, EX, like e-readers were famously short printed. Sure, sure. And they're very, very just scarce, and especially to find like one in good condition now, because people didn't take care of their cards as well 20 years ago, or even longer than that now. I think, yeah, was it Expedition's like 04 or 05, or? Actually, it's probably 2003. Oh yeah, so over 20 years at this point. Yeah. So yeah, just for something that survived, you know, the lull and now come out near mint is pretty rare. I feel like for this and just the burning scarcity, that makes sense. I think that was like my second choice. Well, I was a little surprised that the Dark Blastoise was not higher than that, given that it's even older, right? Yeah, it's interesting. Like just from my knowledge of WotC stuff, they printed to death the first like base set Jungle Fossil Gym Heroes. I think that first edition Dark Blastoise is what? Gym Heroes? Team Rocket. No, it's Team Rocket. Team Rocket. Team Rocket is a little less, but it's still more than I think Expedition, if I had to say like how much was printed. Okay, well, fair enough. The boom kind of falls after like 2000, 2001, 2002. Okay. Reset my knowledge. I could be completely wrong. If I am wrong, please correct me in the chat. I don't, I help out at a card shop. I don't actually like, I don't deal with a lot of older vintage stuff. So that's like my weakness. So, you know, that's that. I finally exploited the weakness on Jonai. He is 0 for 2 so far this week. Let's see if he can earn himself a point with a more modern question for Trialzard. I wanna know if there were no deck list restrictions, how many different times could I write Charazard DX on my current standard format deck list? And your choices are 9, 10, 13, and 14. Huh, okay. Why would it be? Oh, okay, I see what you're saying. So you're saying how many different variants of Charazard DX are in? Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, more or less. I don't know. I just thought this was an interesting way to phrase the question. All right, so you have, from the newest expansion, are you counting Phantasmal Flames? No, because that is not Charazard DX. That is Mega Charazard DX. Okay, thank you for clarifying. Okay, I mean, this card is tough because there's like a promo. There's, Paldean Fates has one, just like the secret. And then the SIR from that set. Obsidian Flames has the base one, the full art golden one. And then the SIR from that set. I'm at the seven. There's another promo. There's the one from 151, the IR from that. I'm gonna use my hand just to kind of whittle it down a little bit. Okay, the number is larger than 10. Okay, yeah. This is tough. Yeah, I think, and they had the Ultra Premium collection with a couple of Charazards in that. I'm not missing anything. I'm gonna go with 13. I think that's probably where I'm at. Okay, 13 locked in as your answer. You are correct. I finally got one. There are nine versions of the Dark Type Terra Charizard from Obsidian Flames. Like you mentioned, there are four printings in the original Obsidian Flames set. There are two different promos. And then there is a reprint and an additional illustration rare in Paldean Fates. I don't remember off the top of my head what the ninth one is. And then there are four different artworks, four different printings of the 151 Charizard because it has three in the main set. And that one also has a promo. So very good, John. One point for you. You will move yourself up to a cool 13, just like, hey, it's almost- Oh, there we go. Just like Charizard. Just like Charizard, you were at 13 in the current standard format. Thank you for playing, John. And I think that brings us into just kind of the last segment that we had for the week, which was just another series of predictions for what we envision happening in Vegas. And like I said at the top, we're not gonna do a huge deep dive on like how the meta has been shifting and what we expect to see. And I think one of the reasons for that is, like I mentioned, we've got LAIC coming up where we'll want to look at things a bit more in depth, but we also, a lot of the meta shifts that we've seen in the past couple of weeks have been based on events in Europe, right? And I don't know how much those results are really gonna translate over into Vegas. Yeah. I mean, we can pull some stuff from Europe and from Limitless, like online tournaments, I'd say. The main thing I think is the resurgence of Dragapult Dusknoir in the last few tournaments. It seems to be a little bit, I don't know. It's interesting, right? Like this is kind of the cycle we've been going through for the last few months. We saw like Dragapult Dusknoir do well before this format. And then the beginning of the format, it kind of died out as Jellicent, Gardevoir rose up and the Absolbox had a real answer for it with not being able to like do much with hard counters being played for the duck, like the duck was being played in a higher number. And then once Dragapult Dusknoir fell off out of all that, like after Milwaukee, we didn't really see any of, I think, I don't think anybody made cut. I might be mistaken, but it didn't do well. Even if one made cut, it was really not well positioned. And then, you know, Ian Robb had the tweet, this is the best format for Dragapult Dusknoir. And sure enough, like that weekend in Europe, it had a real resurgence and that kind of carried into the next week. And the question is, is that still hold true for the North American cycle? Like is, are we on the back downswing now? Are people gonna start picking up decks that hard counter Dragapult Dusknoir and play the side duck and have real answers for that? And I'm convinced, I think they will. Like, I think, you know, we've had Dragapult Dusknoir fans eat for a little bit. And I think now it's just gonna get a little bit harder for them to really find success and find purchase again. You know, it's still a good deck. Like if you've been playing it, like if you've got that sunk cost fallacy, you know, I'd probably ride that out until it doesn't really work anymore. At least, you know, you could still make top cut, but maybe not win, it would be more challenging to win. So, but I mean, even if you are not well positioned, you still have a really powerful deck. You still really have the tournament results now to back that up and the confidence to take that deck and say, all right, I can outplay my opponent a lot of the time. Like I can, you know, but do cheese early into Dusknoir and Phantom Dive KOs and really just have all the answers for everything and not really be affected by all the cornerstones and all that kind of stuff that collaterals and just deals with other decks. You're just like, I don't really care about that. So still a good deck, but I don't think it will be as well positioned as it was in Europe for the last two regionals. But I'm interested to see what you think about it. Yeah, Dragapult, I don't know, man. I've just never been the biggest fan of the deck. Obviously, Phantom Dive is or has been and continues to be one of, if not the best single attacks available in the format. But the fact that Dragapult has always had to play a fair game in terms of energy attachments and has attempted to, you know, circumvent that fairness by playing unfair mechanics in the form of Badoo and Dusknoir, but you just don't have any room to really fit anything else into your deck to tech for matchups that may otherwise be poor for you. And you're just hoping that kind of the raw power of the cards that you're playing is enough to carry you over the finish line. And I'm gonna say that I think Dragapult does worse in NA than it does over in Europe, specifically because I think we'll have more Guard of War, maybe not more as a raw number, but a larger percentage of quality players playing the deck. You know, people that truly understand the deck inside and out. Obviously, you know, Henry Chow, Iban Ahmed, maybe Isaiah Bradner shows up. Ian Robb, I think, tweeted Guard of War EX this week. And so if he's going to Vegas, there's a decent chance that he's playing that. You know, we've got a lot of strong Canadian players that are very much so Guard of War players at this point, you know, Rowan Stabenow, I know Kieran Farah has been playing it off and on as well as Anil. I can't remember Anil's last name off the top of my head, but you know, just a lot of strong players from all over NA really have enjoyed Guard of War extensively. And that's not to speak ill of anybody over in Europe, but I do think that the North American... guard of our heads are the best guard of our heads in the world. That's fair to say. So just to make a prediction real quick, how many Poltnors will make top cut? I'm predicting two. I don't think it'll be quite the numbers you saw in Europe, but I still think it's a powerful deck. Where do you think you land, Aaron? So is that for Acem or top eight? Yeah, Acem. Um, I can still see two in there. I mean, I do think it's going to be played in relatively high numbers. I do think that in some degree, the European results will influence the decision of a lot of players to maybe be more confident in playing the deck. Because I know it was definitely down in Milwaukee, right? Like it was, I think, Milwaukee and even heading into Lille, the deck had dropped pretty significantly back from where it used to be an over 10% deck. It had dropped to I think, seven, maybe 8%. And I wouldn't be surprised to see it back up at that 10% mark. And so I think that that just gives you enough quantity to get it into the line of getting two of them into the top. I don't know, let's say 13 Acem players. Yeah. All right. Touching on Guardia, I mean, you said that a lot of top players will go back to it. Just question is, what variant of Guardia do you think is going to be more popular? Do you think it'll be the jelly Guardia variant or kind of the more attacker, like the less disruption item lock focus more attacker focused with Screamtail? And I guess jelly Guardia and Screamtail, but you know what I mean, right? Like the, the Driftbloom and maybe possibly Mega Guardia variant over Jellicent. Um, I'm gonna, this is this, I'm gonna give you a non answer here. And I'm gonna say, I think that we'll see a deck list that actually is somewhere in the middle. And so we've seen decks come out, like, not necessarily hybrid Gardevoir builds, but ones that are tech to beat metagames, where you've got things like the Turbo Energize, or the Enamorous, or just these cards that you wouldn't necessarily think should be included in the deck, making their way in there through the extensive testing of the Gardevoir crowd. And I think that right now, Driftbloom is very well positioned for the deck. But I also think that Jellicent is very well positioned for the deck. So while it is difficult to accommodate both of those concepts, it is possible. And I think that if somebody is able to navigate things well, that we could see that be very successful. Gotcha. So continuing in with decks that have done well in the last few weeks, in Europe, we really saw a resurgence of Golden Go. I know that that's not your favorite deck. But it has it got first and second, I believe, in Gdansk, right? Second was Flareon. Oh, that's true. But it got first and it did really well. Yeah, it did really well. And I'm interested to see if you think that'll continue for Vegas. You know, do you think people will high roll and try to strike it rich? Make it rain, if you will, with the String Cheese Man? Or my prediction, I guess my question is, how high do you think Golden Go will go for this Vegas regional? I think we'll see one in top eight. I do like, again, a lot of people, a lot of Pokemon players are very much so results-oriented. And seeing Golden Go continue to do well, you have a good base list to go off of with what Daniel Magda played. And I believe Daniel Magda, Christian Fontenot, their lists are a couple of cards different. And we've also seen another list that was posted by, oh, my gosh, who is it? Some another high level player from Europe posted a list that they said they were planning to bring to Vegas this week. And you know, it's a pretty solved deck, right? You can't do a ton to play with it. The one nice thing people have discovered to make a mawile is a cornerstone answer. And I think that that helps the deck out a lot with matchups that were otherwise largely unfavorable. It's got a very good megabox matchup, especially now that it has a cornerstone answer. If you're playing, you know, two copies of Turo or a Turo and a Pal Pad, in conjunction with just the ability to one-hit KO these mega Pokemon, that matchup looks great. Gardevoir gets a little bit iffy depending on what variant they're running. And Dragapult obviously has the potential to run you off the board now that a lot of these Golden Go decks aren't playing picnic basket outside of Daniel Magda's list. So depending on what matchups you want to tech for, you may or may not be as successful. You do have the benefit of that Lunarock package now to kind of try to run people off the table with a single prize boar state while also providing yourself with that additional consistency. I'm still not a fan of the deck though. So I do think I do think that we'll see one in top eight, but I think it'll fall down there. That's fair. I think I'll do one better and do top four. I mean, we have a lot of top players playing it like if it was less top players playing it. I think you know Daniel Magda saying is Daniel Magda going? That I don't know. I guess it'll be interesting to see how many Europeans come over. I know we're having a large contingent from like all over the world for this one, right? Especially it's really depend on like what top level players play. And I think we'll see some Europeans come over and play Golden Go. Yeah, speaking speaking on that, I that I feel like in this format, especially as it's gone on and dragged on longer and longer, I think that rather than a specific deck being super well positioned in an event, it is more so become extremely evident that the amount of preparation that people are putting in and this is has been the case largely for many, many, many formats, but it becomes more evident in these extended ones, where it doesn't matter what deck you put in the hands of Henry Chow, if he's played 300 games with it, he's probably going to be better than Joe Schmoe that just picked it up yesterday. And for sure, you know, when you take that to the nth degree with something like Gardevoir that he's literally played since last year, it shouldn't surprise anybody that he continues to make these deep runs and is able to go all the way with the deck. And when the deck hasn't had to shift too much throughout the course of this format. We see players who are on these decks that they played for a long time like Henry with Gardevoir or Emma Hagen with the flurry on deck, and they're able to kind of get the most out of the deck, even though the deck hasn't changed very much. It's not like they're doing something crazy innovative. Now, granted, Emma did have jet energy and her flurry on deck, that's a little different from what people were doing at the time. But I don't know, it just doesn't seem like people are doing anything crazy with their deck lists. And rather, it's just the top player factor is being shown kind of in full force throughout this format so far. Yeah, I really think that's a fair thing to say. We've seen just players playing whatever they're comfortable with and doing well. And I think that's, that's exciting in its own way. You know, it might be harder. It's harder for a player to like, just pick up a deck and say, Oh, I'm gonna do well with this because it's toward deck and people aren't ready for it. And like that might work for once in a while. But yeah, I think that that really shows a good meta game in some ways is that you can't just cheese wounds because people aren't prepared at this point. Um, I don't know, unless you're playing crystal, right? Yeah, obviously, if you have a deck that people just don't have answers for, sure. It's a little different. But you know, that's okay. Like, I don't know. That's kind of is what it is. Like if you lose to it, like, you know, the worst is the worst feeling is like if you lose your winning day to or to money or something like that, because you go up against crystal and you just don't have an answer. Like that's, yes. No, that is awful. That's when those meta decisions really like feel bad. So that's tough. So I've got I've got a prediction question for you. We saw at the beginning of this format, Sarah ledge had risen up and was one of the most prominent decks in Milwaukee in the entire field. And unfortunately, kind of had flopped from there and has steadily declined in play rate since then. But we do have a number of players that are still you know, showing that they think that the deck is largely playable or maybe is a even a good choice like we saw as recently as I think it was over the weekend as all played Sarah ledge in I was either a late night or tournament a doom or one of the big online limitless events and took the whole thing down. And so I want to know. So, okay, I want to know what, how deep do you think Sarah ledge is capable of going in this event? I'm not a believer on the deck. I know that it is a strong deck. And I mean, if you give it to a good player, and that's just the question, though, is like, what good player is going to play it like is is we're going to pick it up and play it now that he did well with it, then I could see it getting into like, top four even, you know, and I know Ross Cawthon will play it if he's there. Sure. I think I think I'll pick a sim I'll pick it to make top cut. That's kind of where I'm at with it. It's not a bad deck, but I don't see it. steamrolling the competition. I think one will sneak into a sim though. So I think that's, I mean, that's a fairly fair assessment. Like, yeah, it kind of goes back to the, is it the deck? Or is it the player? And Sarah ledge gives you less room to be the player, I think. And that's one of the kind of shortcomings of it. But some of that potential is there. I know I watched a couple of the games that from his old tournament run and just doing things that I don't see a lot of, you know, ladder Sarah ledge players doing like promoting a soul rock or a lunatone instead of your next chart cadet to allow yourself to get an additional energy into your discard pile. These aren't, you know, mind blowing plays, but they are little incremental advances in your game plan that the average player may overlook. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's fair. Yeah, I mean, that's the cool thing. Like, you can play a less skill intensive deck, but play it to a level that elevates that deck to an even higher level. I mean, Kayla Rogers and one with raging bull like you've had back when that was in a skill intensive deck, we've had players like Dinka Zools, the Pikachu, like the flying Pikachu VMAX, flying Pikachu VMAX, you're not going to tell me that that's very skill intensive, but he's playing it to a high enough level to where you can really showcase the strengths of the deck showcase and then showcase the his ability as a player. So answering your prediction, I said asymmetrical cut. Where did you say? I'm gonna give you top 128. Okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's wrong. That's wrong. Top 64. Okay, okay. Top 64% on cash. No, no, no cash for them. Somebody like if I really had to like bullseye it, I'm going to say like 37th place is will be the highest Sarah. I'm gonna write that in brackets. It'd be funny if you get it just just just win the predictions on the spot if I get the right number. For sure. I think you know, we joke that as well can take anything and do well. But I think he's really had an affinity for Sarah ledge. And I think him doing well. It is interesting people will just pick it up and play it and it's one of those decks that you can play it on I wouldn't percentage of you hit enough golden go if you hit you know if you hit what you need at the right time it's a relatively easy straightforward deck compared to some of the other ones we've seen so I could see like if we just get a huge meta percentage of Sarah ledge for Vegas, it could just sneak in have it one of one of them will have a deep run. Yeah, the biggest advantage of the deck in my opinion is that it is the deck that best utilizes lunatone and Sol rock. I think that it 100% utilizes it better than either mega Lucario or golden go. Yeah, I agree. It definitely it definitely is the case like yeah, just the feel like the Sol rock lunatone just feels weird and golden go because you really it doesn't fit the strategy of my mind like the you want to have a lot of energy in hand and discarding energy doesn't really fit with that like you want to obviously you want to build your hand up but most of the time you just want to have playable cards you can either discard or for like discard with SEO superior energy retrievals to get energies back. You really just want to be doing that like that's what you want to be doing. You don't really want to be discarding energies and so like Sarah ledge you want to be discarding energies it fits in that strategy it slots in perfectly for that and then it just it does cover like one of the weaknesses of Sarah ledges. You just don't have a good non ex attacker. There's no good non the Xero ledges right now. And so like, that just solves that. So yeah, I think those are the main let's look back at the meta percentages for limitless. So Sarah ledges kind of climbed up a little bit there, but they're all pretty straightforward. Like nothing's over 8% right now. Okay. Dragon pull dust nor is that right at 8% then the next one is Gardevoir at 6.7 and that is Gardevoir not grouped with jealous and so if it was Gardevoir with groups with jealous and I can I don't know if I don't think I can group them and I can't have no Gardevoir with jealous and would be over 10% so take that for what you will. And then you have Sarah ledge then Grimmsnarl frost last which is interesting that that's so high. Do you think that's like an online events? Yeah. Do you think that'll be represented well in Vegas? Like I don't I actually think it's going to be off the metagraphic. I still think that it's a better play than people give it credit for. But it's again, something where and this this brings me back to the top players choosing to play decks. I think the fact that we don't have a ton of top player representation for Grimmsnarl is one of the reasons that it's not been able to make as many deep runs. We obviously saw one make top four last week in Gdansk or two weeks ago now. And also another one in a sim for that same event. The only reason that they both didn't go further was they had to play each other in ASIM. Um, but we've also seen the rise of a non-Grimmsnarl Froslass Monkey Dory deck. You know, Ola Blitzl had a list that I think he won his own online tournament with during this format. And I wouldn't be fully surprised to see a few people pick that up, but it's probably going to be such a low percentage that it won't necessarily be able to make the deep run that it needs to. It's just, they're, they've both of the Froslass decks in my mind feel like they're in kind of a weird spot where representation is the thing that's holding them back more than their true viability in the format. But if people aren't choosing to play the deck that has to be due in some part to its overall level of viability, I suppose. Yeah, it's interesting. Like, I don't think it's, I mean, looking at the limitless data, if you look at the win percentage, it actually has a higher win percentage than Gardevoir, Ceruled Edge, Dragapult, Dusknoir, Charm, like it has a 53 win percentage and you have to go down to Golden Ago Lunatone to see that again. Okay. So I think that's pretty interesting. It's pretty high considering like, and we have enough sample size now, I think, to make that an accurate prediction. Like, you know, with 1,000, close to 1,800 games played with it, it has a pretty high win percentage. Let's see. You know, this is online results, so take that for what you will. Like, I think, but like, it does okay. It has three first places at tournaments of 200 or more people. So, I don't know. It's not bad. It's, it is interesting to see, like, you know, I think it's under, like, relative to the strength of the deck, I think it's underperforming because I think it's a lot stronger than, I mean, maybe I'm biased now after listening to you bang the drum for this deck week after week, but I don't think that that's, I think like we've seen like in EU and when a, when a player like Mike Ellis or like, I forget his name, makes top four with the deck, we're just not seeing people pick it up and like, be excited by that. I think you have to be like a loyalist from day one with this deck. It's like very unforgiving, very, like, if you aren't placing damages correctly and just, you can get punished very easily with it. I feel like compared to like, like if you're, if you're, if you're attacking too early or if you're putting the wrong damage on the wrong thing and then now, now my Devo play doesn't work because, you know, they healed off this with that or something like that, but like, you know, people are cutting, like, I don't think maybe, I don't know, from my perspective, people aren't really respecting it as a deck still. Um, it does get collateral by if, if we, if people think Pultenor is going to be really popular and the damage spread, people like start teching in picnic basket and stuff like that. Um, it could be affected by that, but I think this could be the weekend for that. Like if, yeah, you know, if Gardevoir is really popular, I think you're in a really good position with a deck, right? Fully agree, fully agree, but I've been, I've been saying it for weeks, man. And like you said, so we did see a top 16 plus a top four for the deck. Maybe that will entice some people to pick it up, but I'm not going to hold my breath on it. I think it'll still probably be, you know, 6%, maybe 6.5, but I do think, I guess my question, if we're going to do, we're going to see, I'm going to put one, I'm going to put one in top four again. I would, I would love to see it win the event, but I don't, I don't think it's going to happen. My prediction question is what dark deck does the best on the weekend? Oh, Grimmsnarl, a hundred percent. So over Mega Absol Box, Charizard, Pidgeot, and, um, what's the other one? And Zoroark, you're going to pick Grimmsnarl. Zoroark's an interesting one. Yeah. Yeah. I had forgotten about it and now it's like, we've got Liam might be going to the event. Piper might be going to the event. There's a few other people. I think Cal Connor was playing Zoroark last week and Gdansk and made Ace him for last tournament. No, I'm going to stick, I'm going to stick to my guns. I'm going to say Grimmsnarl. Yeah. I, I respect it. I'm willing to be wrong on this one. I'm, I'm going to probably pick whatever you, uh, are afraid of there and pick I just think it's a really good deck. I mean, Charizard makes a lot of sense to, um, if I just don't, I don't, I'm not a huge believer in Charizard, but I like in Zoroark, you know, I, I, I'm not either. I mean, we did see Charizard, Windmill Walkie. Yep. Is there enough there for it to continue to do that? Maybe, but I don't know. It's Charizard. It's a good deck. It's, I don't know. It's Charizard itself is actually in a pretty interesting position in my mind because you don't have the best cornerstone answer in the world, but the decks that were initially playing cornerstone are now highly incentivized not to play it because most of the decks that they were winning matchups against with that card now have answers for it. So Charizard gets to kind of skate around that. But the big advantage for Charizard was the decline of Dragapult. And now that Dragapult's back, is Charizard just going to fall back by the wayside like it had previously? And my answer to that is yes. That's why I don't see Charizard going super deep this weekend. Maybe, maybe we'll have one that makes a good run, which is exactly how Jackson did it to begin with. So, you know, it could happen again, just dodge Dragapult all day and make it really deep into the event. But I do think that card, that deck is being hated on pretty heavily with Dragapult. I think the Absolvox is being hated on pretty heavily with Goldango. You could argue Grimmsnarl is being hated on with Goldango, but I think to a lesser degree than the Absolvox is. And Zoroark is also being hated on pretty heavily by Goldango. Not the best matchup for you in the world. You can try to do some stuff kind of like what Piper did with the Darmanitan in the deck again. Not sure how effective that truly is in the long run, if your opponent is able to kind of play around it and just keep the Darumakas off the board. But I don't know. I'm probably just trying to talk myself in circles to arrive at the fact that I think Grimmsnarl is the best position to play. I think Zoroark probably edges it just a little bit. I think they're both really good. But yeah, I think just the high level of players playing Zoroark, there seems to be a lot of players that are doing really well that are kind of, that's their deck for this format. And I respect that. And I think I'd go with that because of that. But getting into high level players, I guess to round it all out, I mean, we could keep going. There's a couple other decks we didn't talk about. Yeah, but we'll save them for next week. Yeah, yeah. We'll do a full recap getting ready for LAIC. Maybe do a tier list going into LAIC. We haven't done one of those in a while. But speaking of top players, my favorite prediction, what top player do you pick will do the best? Like, let's pick one player, like pick your horse, I guess. Maybe not. That's probably not the best way to phrase that. But pick your player you think will do the best for Las Vegas. If, you know, we got a gamble, I need you to come up with your wager here. Okay, I picked a bond last time. So I'm going to pick somebody different, even though I do expect a bond to do well. There's another player who was doing really well last year. And I don't know why I'm not just picking someone like Henry or Liam or Jackson. It's more fun when you don't, right? I'm going to go with Owen Dalgard. Okay, okay. I like that. I like that. He's pretty good. Yeah. Um, I think I'm going to go with kind of an East Coast player as well. You know, I guess with the theme of luck, this player historically has been the least lucky player. And I think going to Vegas, his luck finally changes. You know, it took Pokemon moving to the Sin City, the gambling capital of the world, for Grant Manley to do the best he's ever done at a regionals. And I think, if not take it down, make it really far this weekend. So I'm going to give Grant the nod. He's going to come up with some fun stuff. Now that the format's established, he'll have a spicy pick for this weekend. So that's my, you know, he'll spin the roulette wheel and finally have it go his way for once. Well, it'll be interesting to see. You know, if you are listening to the episode prior to this weekend, let us know who you think is going to win the event down in the comments of the episode below. I do. I think I finally got word back from Spotify that that one episode, I want to say it was episode eight of season two, that had been taken down for the intro music, for whatever reason, is finally back on Spotify. So for anyone who was partially through that, you can go back and listen to it now. Or you can always go find the show over on YouTube. Battle Frontier Podcast is the YouTube channel name. If you want to connect more with John and I, you can find us on socials. Or you can follow the show on socials as well. It is at BFTCGpod over on X. And I am at underscore Aaron underscore Curry. You can find John over on Blue Sky at johnorgel.bsky.social. And we will be back next week with some more information about the metagame, including the results of this Las Vegas regional, and how we think the overall package of all of the events that we've experienced in the mega evolution format will influence the results of the Latin American International Championship down in Brazil. Very excited for that. So stay tuned.