2-12: The most skill-based format EVER?

Hello, and welcome back to the Battle Frontier podcast. We aim to help you level up in your journey as a competitive Pokemon TCG player. I'm Aaron Curry here with me as always, McCullough's John Orgel, and we're going to just give our takes on things ahead of LAIC this week. Uh, and not going to beat around the bush. There's an interesting take, John and I kind of both share the same sentiment and we'll jump into it pretty quickly after we catch up with what we both did this past week. So why don't we get right into that? John, how'd you do last this past weekend? I know that you said you were going to go to a league challenge during the last week. How'd that go? I went to a league challenge on Wednesday last week. I did pretty bad. It was only a three round league challenge and I went one and two. So not that great. Round one, I hit Gardevoir. Um, they, I think we had a decent game. I can't remember all the details of it exactly at this point. Um, but yeah, I lost that. Round two, I played against another Gardevoir, but it was a newer player. Beat him. And then round three, I lost to Tarabox cause they got like the turn two Ogre Pond playoff followed by the turn three Ogre Pond playoff to just kind of clear my whole board out. So that was that. Um, so not nothing too great. Uh, hopefully playing in a cup this Saturday and I still got to figure out if I'm going to stick with Dragapolter. Try something out that, uh, try something else out. Um, but we'll see. I'm going to do some testing on TCG live and see how that goes. Uh, then yeah, the rest of the weekend I did a lot of yard work Saturday. Uh, Sunday I just watched a bunch of football, which was nice. Um, it's good seeing the Bills win against the Buccaneers after losing so poorly against Miami the week before. Um, so, you know, took their revenge out on another Florida team, which was nice. Um, other than that, yeah, we had a ditto draft on Monday with some, uh, building battle kits that were left over from the pre-release. So that was fun. Um, I pulled a SIR low punny, make a low punny, so that was kind of cool. Yeah. Um, played that in the deck and I went two and one, so that was fun. Um, yeah, it was a good time and, uh, ready to get back to it. You know, I'm kind of having a little FOMO seeing some people would get posted and all the pictures of them traveling to Brazil. So I'm a little bummed that I'm not going to be down there this weekend, but I'll be cheering everybody on and very excited for that. Um, but yeah, that was, that was my weekend. How about you, Aaron? How was your weekend? Uh, it was pretty good. Pretty good. Uh, nothing crazy like during the week, but then, um, Saturday evening, I also went to a league challenge and ended up playing Flareon box. I actually took three decks with me because I'm basically over this format. At this point, I'm like so burnt out on it that I'm ready to just move on to the Phantasmal Flames format, which I've been just playing a ton of, but I took Flareon, Grimmsnarl and Zurark with me and just set all three deck boxes on the counter and had the guy at the shop pick which deck I was going to play for the event. Um, he ended up picking Flareon and boy, was that a miserable experience. I did not open a Rotom any of my games or a way to get Rotom any of my games. I prized a piece of my Pidgeot line in all three games, but I still managed to go 3-0 and win the event. So that was, that was interesting. The, um, the highlight of it was round two. I played against Alakazam to Dunsparce and took five prizes with Cruel Arrow with Fezendipity, which, um, you know, his start was, his start was worse than mine, which was just insane. Like, I think he ended up using Lily three times before he was able to actually find a Poffin to get more than one Abra out at a time. And at that point had used his Enriching Energy like three times as well. And it was just not, was not going well for him. It was terrible. Nothing, nothing credibly, nothing was prized as far as Pokemon search. He just was not drawing the cards. But I guess that's just what that deck does. Sometimes I've literally never played a game with it. Hmm. Yeah. Then it seems like a fun deck, but also probably infuriating when you don't hit the pieces. Oh, right. Absolutely. I don't know. But then on Sunday, um, there was a, like a street fair downtown and that was Gilmore girls themed and that's a nineties show for nineties and two thousands show for any of you young people who may not know. No Gilmore girls, not golden girls. Oh, I mean, I can see golden girls makes more sense to me in Florida. Well, I dunno, I guess we live in a small enough town that people are like, Oh, this resembles the town from this, this show. And, but it was interesting. Like local coffee shop did like a flight of lattes that were all kind of themed around different characters from the show. And that was the thing that made my wife really want to go down there. She was like, Oh, these look really good. Let's go. And so it was kind of like almost like a tiny craft fair sort of deal. That's cool. And you know, that was a pretty good time. Went and saw a movie. Um, on, on Sunday and yeah, just back to the grind, you know, government's back. Oh, we saw, um, now you see me now you don't. Okay. The newest one on the, yeah. My, my son absolutely loves that movie franchise and, you know, spoilers for anybody who hasn't seen it, which is probably a lot of people because it just came out this past weekend, but they set it up to make another one, which should surprise probably nobody at this point. Wow. Because Hollywood has, Hollywood has absolutely run out of ideas and they will milk any franchise dry if possible. Especially when you have, you know, actors that can bring people into the, the boss office box office, like, you know, Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson, like people actually Eisenberg. Exactly. And people want to go see these people in movies. So it's not entirely surprising, but at some point you got to let it die. I felt the same way. We saw the new Tron movie recently when it was in theaters and I don't know how that movie got greenlit, man. Yeah. I mean, who's the actor that's in that? That Jared Leto. He's not my favorite. Yeah. He's not, he's one of those things where I'm confused. So almost every movie he's in gets a negative overall review rating and somehow he continues to get hired as an actor when he had a fully successful music career prior to that. Yeah. So like how I just, I don't get it. Uh, who knows? I don't get it. I don't get it. We're not in Hollywood. We're here for Pokemon, right? Neither here nor there. So, yeah. Um, but did also actually take the time and watch some of the Vegas regional, but before we get into those Vegas results, um, saw some interesting stuff for LAIC that coming up this week. So we've had at events previously, those kind of off stream stream tables or off stream feature match tables. They're actually going to be streaming those games in addition to the main stage for TCG. I don't know if they're doing it for video game. I didn't look enough into it to see if they're also doing that, but they won't have commentary, but just having more content to view is really cool. And maybe there's a chance that on the main feed, if a game finishes up really quickly, they would be able to swap over to it, which is something I know I've been wanting them to do for a long time. And they've had it in Japan in the past too. So, or just maybe even just having that footage in the background that they could pop it up if there's a significant delay between rounds and be like, Hey, we've got another game from round three. Let's go check out what this high profile player was doing. And, you know, just giving you a better viewer experience. So that that's really cool too. Yeah. Like so much of the originals watching experiences downtime between rounds. And so like, it'd be cool to have, even if you don't, if it's not live, if it's just queued up from the other stream, that'd be cool. Or you could do like a highlight reel. I mean, that would be a lot to put on like a highlight, the replay guy that already does a lot to like have to edit something on the fly. I mean, not that they couldn't do it. They could hire another person for that if they needed to. But for ICs, especially, you know, like the production value goes up a lot higher. So I could see something like that. Well, but yeah, it'll be exciting to see. I don't know. Did you watch much of the stream this past weekend? A little bit. I didn't watch too much live. I kind of watched some of it pretty like after the fact. Okay. Did you see that they, they added a new, not, it's not a casting role, but a new like staff role on the stream where chip was like the analyst, the full-time analyst and had his own booth and everything to review like key moments in the game and whatnot, instead of just having the current casters review those moments post game. And he was also able to, when they were like judge calls, he would jump in and like give the relevant information for whatever ruling it was or what the outcome of a specific judge call was. And it seemed pretty cool. It seemed pretty successful. So looking forward to see that more in the future too. Yeah, that worked. I think it worked really well. Um, chips also the perfect person for that role. Like he does a really good job of explaining stuff, uh, at a level that like a casual viewer can understand. Sure. Like, yeah, like he does it with, he's able to adapt on the fly and like interpret data and explain it very well. So like, he's a very good role for that. So that was cool to see. Um, yeah, it's just good to see kind of stuff like that work towards, uh, making the game more accessible for more people, making it more exciting to watch. Um, you know, I know you're interested in casting in the future, so I'm sure you're excited, especially like to see where that goes in the next few months. Even years to see like, if it gets all that stuff, um, you know, we're verging into e-sports, we're not quite at the level of, you know, League of Legends or Dota or anything like that. But, uh, we're trying our own little way of, you know, the few thousand we get. And I, um, I really appreciate it. Like it makes me watching at home, like feel more part of it for sure. Absolutely. And it just, yeah, like you said, it's kind of the, the e-sports aspect of it, right, where having that analyst makes it feel like you, like you watch a lot of football or any other sporting event and you'll have the people who are going over, like, why is this relevant to whatever happened rather than, and you get like the John Madden effect really, rather than just dealing with the people that are doing it in the moment, you also get the, Oh, well, we'll draw all your X's and O's and like draw the arrows. Like, this is why this happened. This was a very important moment. This was like the pivotal turn in the game and being able to call that up. And having somebody being able to explain it a bit more in depth really just kind of is going. Sorry, I have to pause for a second. Julia texted me and said, Gilmour girls is not from the nineties. Golden girls was, that's why I thought you said golden girls. Goodness. Well, okay. I doubt, I doubt anyone in our audience is going to flame me for that, but well, my wife, my wife listens randomly. My brother. Oh goodness. Where was I at? But yeah, just having more like the more e-sports aspect makes they feel more legitimate at the end of the day and makes it feel like we aren't just kind of doing the silly thing to have more advertising. And, you know, as somebody, like you mentioned, who wants to do that casting at some point, if I ever had the opportunity to do it. It just makes it kind of even, it almost makes it feel like a loftier goal to try to achieve because it does, it's becoming more and more high profile and you're getting more and more eyes on it and it's all relative, right? Like it is still for how popular Pokemon is the TCG and the viewing experience of the TCG, the competitive side of it is still really niche compared to everything else that the franchise deals with, but being a part of that subsect as it does try to grow and establish itself and maybe break beyond those walls would be a really cool thing and they're just really setting themselves up for success, I think. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. Um, we also had another innovation at this regionals. We had the first ever all online pairing reporting. I believe, uh, for this event, at least it started that way. They, uh, they definitely have implemented that. Like I said, when I was in Milwaukee, they did it for day two, um, for that regionals. Um, this time they tried to do everybody reporting all matches online. And there were some hiccups with that from what I heard. Uh, do you know more about it, Aaron? I don't, I just know it sounded like it was a disaster. The first round was, I think had like a 40 minute overtime, if not longer. And there were just constant complaints of people either forgetting to submit matches. I mean, like I said, I don't have all the information, but just one, one way or another matches weren't getting reported properly. And I guess the procedure for that is supposed to be that those players get a double game loss. But maybe they were trying to be a bit more lenient on that, given that it was the first foray into establishing this process at a larger scale. For sure. Yeah. From the group chats that I was a part of, I asked people that were there about it. And they said that for whatever reason, when you went and reported the match, it didn't like click over and verify that this player won for whatever reason. Um, so I guess there was a couple of people that thought they had submitted it, but didn't submit it and so they had to like, get through all that. Um, you know, I think it's okay to chalk this up to growing pains to a new system being implemented at this scale. We've had it going on for a minute with online pairings for like the day two, like I talked about and for the league cups at regionals. Um, but this is the first time that we've had something like this at this scale. Yeah. Where you have close to 3000 or I think over 3000, I don't remember exactly the number for Vegas, but it was a really big number. Yeah. Just under just number 20, 2900. Yeah. So I think that's the largest regionals we've ever had. Uh, if it's not, it's pretty close to it. Um, and yeah, I just, it's a huge undertaking. So props for, I mean, props to RK9 for trying that. Um, and I'm excited to see that product get better in the future. I know it will. I mean, there's some really good people working on that. Right. Um, then they're really responsive and to that feedback and to that criticism. Um, so I know that they're going to try extra hard, uh, moving forward and I'm excited to see where it goes. Um, but yeah, I think, I don't know of any other news, uh, coming from the regionals as far as outside of the regionals that we don't really speculate too, too much, so I don't really know a whole lot about all of that, but, uh, we did may have some predictions going into the regionals and I want to retouch on those. Sure. Um, so I'll read them out real quick and we won't really go into too much details about it. I'm just going to list it out and then we'll go right into tournament results and all that stuff. So I had six predictions and I'm just gonna read them out. How many Poltnor will make cut? Both of us said two there was two so that was Great success for the both of us How high will Golden ago place Aaron you said top eight? I said top four There was one goal to go in top eight So you win that one what variant of Gardevoir does the best this one was a little harder to pin down you said a hybrid Slash new variant sure and I said jelly. I would kind of say both right on this one you Get points like the the the very that one did have jealous in it But it also had three rare candy and it was like kind of aggressive So, I don't know. Yeah I mean I'll give this to you like the way that I had envisioned it still was like a list that even though it had jealous and would also involve drift loon and And kind of like a thinner jelly line I think I do think the list that they ended up going with is Interesting and like almost to what I was trying to like describe but not quite there Sure. Okay. We asked how high will Sarah ledge place? Aaron you said top 64. I was way too bullish and said asymmetrical top cut. The correct answer was top 64 I think you said 37th place. Exactly. I don't I don't think did not case. No, it was 44th Yeah, not too far off The next one was what dark deck does the best in the weekend Aaron you said grim snarl and I said and Zorak I soundly won that you were you were close. Yeah. Yeah, very very close Almost pulled off the miracle, but we'll get into that and then the last one was who will do the best for Las Vegas You said Owen Del guard and I said grant Mary manly Owen finished in top 128 at 105th and grant I think finished in top 64 So I won that one so very close for the both of us, but I think I edged you out three to two with the Tie on the pole door to win predictions for this week. So that's that and yeah, we'll get right into The results for this weekend Yeah, here we go And so What shouldn't be a huge surprise to anybody toward managed to win a regional this year Taking it down with none other than his mega absol box But we did have like you mentioned Liam Halliburton in second place also with his kind of trademark deck at this point Zorak He's been playing the deck for quite a while Then following it up. It's like realistically the story of this tournament. This is one of these most stacked or star-studded top eights That we've had in Probably years like we've got toward rec love Liam Halliburton Henry Chow Ryuki Okada a bonnet Nick Moffitt Salma kukadapu and then Hockenberg who I don't Think had any real finishes to speak of prior to this weekend, but you know top eight not too bad And we did once again, we continued the trend of a full top 16 But no bubble this time. Thankfully. Yeah, Robin Schultz was 17th place, but he didn't bubble out but the the story of this event for me is Everyone played their favorite deck from this format Nobody looked like they were really trying to do anything crazy or outside the box or not trying to target specific matchups They said I like this deck they practice with that deck. They did well, and so it's no surprise to me that towards playing absol It's no surprise that Liam's playing Zorak. It's no surprise surprise that Henry and a bond are playing Gardevoir Nick Moffitt, I think may have played a different deck previously But that doesn't wouldn't fully surprise me to see him play Goldengo either and that Continues if you go down into the top 16 as well Bodhi Robinson's have been playing Goldengo since worlds Fernando Cifuentes has been playing a dark deck. I know I think he had historically been more of a Zorak Enjoyer, but mega absol box has some of similar tendencies. So that doesn't really surprise me either Yeah But yeah, it's just like this is the format in a nutshell and I think this is one of the reasons that I was kind of Burnt out in a way was like even though I enjoy playing grim startled nothing really like stuck out to me is like I have to continue to play this deck because every deck has kind of established itself as being able to be successful and It's just a matter of it's a very skill expressive format I guess is the right way to go about saying that and that if you take your deck and you pilot it to its utmost Degree, you're going to be more successful than someone who's playing it specifically for the purpose of oh, I know Goldengo is gonna be super popular So, let me go target that and that's why we don't see something like Sarah ledge continue Be like it continues to not be successful Despite the fact that Goldengo is one of the most popular decks in the room at every single tournament Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that sticks out to me looking at these is just the number of either regional finalists. Yeah, or Regional winners that made this top cut you mean Tord was a finalist Liam one Henry was a finalist or if not finalist heavily influenced many finalists Ryuki won one a bond one one and then yeah, you just saw him. I think was a finalist last year If not one one, he's he's been in the conversation. I can't exactly pin him down But yeah, just the level of repeat Even in this season, even though we're not even all the way halfway through the year. We're coming up on the first international championships We're seeing a lot of repeat offenders or repeat winners would probably be the better way to phrase that So that's really cool. I think touches on your point of skill expression being at all-time high For people that are putting in the time and dedication and thought and effort into their season And that's really cool to see I Mean if you watch the top cut matches, it's some of the best Pokemon we've seen in a long time like some of the best game like even the commentators were glowing about it like going into top 8 and top top 4 in the finals like You know We had one of the probably one of the best matchups in the mirror match between Ryuki and Tord Featured on stream and I'm glad that they featured that I think the other one probably would have been an interesting one with Henry and Liam that's still a good matchup with Gardevoir and Jellicent and Zoroark so I would have loved to see both those matches truthfully It's a bit of a bummer that we didn't have like the European model where they show both thought for matches But the Tord Ryuki matchup just so great man like in The finals which was shaping up to be like, you know one-sided I think people were very just convinced that Yeah, it was like just gonna go towards way because you're in the cornerstone ogre pawn And Liam didn't have an answer for it at least readily available You know, yeah answer like a mega mega have soul or okie-dokie ex But Liam put up a huge fight man. He Found a way like he's like he if we look at his list, we can pull it up real quick He ran one copy of blood moon or Saluna and I'm like, well that has an ability, right? Well, he also ran two copies of team Rockets watchtower Is it two or one? No, just one just one team Rockets watchtower. Just one Yeah, which was relevant because I think one game it was prized So he put up a huge effort Game one came down to Him just needing to find energy to attack with the blood moon or Saluna into the ogre pawn to clear it To then be able to kind of sweep the game from there and he had two dark energy prized and wasn't able to find those in time and then lost to Just not being able to attack with a blood moon. So lost a long game one game two he pulled out miraculously finding all the pieces to be able to attack with a blood moon and I own doing towards a late so where you can find a counter stadium to bump the watchtower and Was able to set it up to you know use the Petra rent to swap out Attackers and this is just yeah, this was just it was really good gameplay on display Lots of cool just interactions going on and this list itself was a very interesting list. I'd say Very different than how we've seen and Zorak shape up It's kind of harkens back to like the original way people played and Zorak with absolutely thick Darmanitan lines and running the black belts training and the ends ends Castle and the power glass and all these all these trainers and no Sarah seen in a while and no sir And yep, no Serrano, so it's a little bit slower It does have 1tm evo to potentially get stuff out that way I'm not running a evil tall even so no cards except for lilies That were part of the mega evolution format. So lilies is the only addition using lilies over the Professor research or anything like that. Sure. I'm three boss one counter catcher So you can be a little bit more aggressive and I don't know. I think this is just an interesting build I Think it just shows how dialed in he is with this list and with this deck in particular That he's able to make such a strong pivot away from what because he played this Like a very different list than this to his win earlier this year, right? Exactly. Yep Yeah No Darmanitan at the time has recognized gold Angus come back into the picture that matchup is pretty atrocious without Darmanitan And even then it's not Darmanitan doesn't fix the matchup immediately, but it makes it playable Right, right and you know finding a way finding a way to get through it Yeah, so definitely cool list yep the rest kind of I'd say I Don't think there's a huge amount of innovation toward goes back to cornerstone After a lot of people have moved away from cornerstone on this list Henry and Kind of crafted up a new guard of oralist as they've done for the last few regionals this one focusing a little too ralse you serve to Ralse Yeah, that's crazy So it's a very like hourglass line to one to guard of or and Then to one jealous and and then yeah Just the only other attackers you have besides guard of or the jealous and Clefairy and the scream tail and I guess view as well we shouldn't and monkey door you can attack with too, but So no drift loom. No mega Guardi. None of that a Very like I'd say consistency focus list with foreign for ion of four lilies secret box and tech Stadium of the mysterious garden to help draw some more cards running a Devo to help Just kind of deal with Some of the stage twos and stage one decks of the format that wouldn't pose a problem. So yeah, I think Again talking about players that are dialed in with their lists with their decks with their archetypes Knowing how to like kind of flex it and fix it into the metagame and the perceived like what am I gonna face against? How do I ensure that I'm ready for those matchups? What can I put in my deck that allows me to just do the best I can possibly do for this tournament Like what am I what are my priorities of this list? Do I need to get fast guard? Yeah. Okay. Yes Let me get the rare candies in here. Let me get the secret box in here You know, let me run that kind of stuff And I can cut you know, like second Arvin or second Turo rather And stuff like that So well And we've seen a trend where a lot of people felt the need to go back to thicker Gardevoir lines like more curly adding TM evo back in because they were afraid of dragapult and instead Henry and a bond pivot Say dragapult is gonna be down or we don't think it's going to do very well or we think we can beat it anyway and Just went straight in again with like the more turbo oriented as far as like how you're gonna get your guard of war into play Strategy and it worked out pretty well for them. There was one Weird circumstance. I don't know if you watched top eight of Tord versus a bond Yeah, I did and this this it confused me I didn't know this was a thing we could do where a bond made a gameplay error in game one and Then it eventually led to him getting a double prize penalty in game three. Yeah, and Let me pull up kind of rules and resources while we're talking real quick, and I'm gonna yeah go for it a section Yes, please. Please teach me because I did not know you could like Retroactively apply penalties to current or from previous games to current games and I mean at that point Effectively a double prize penalty in game three when it's already like a relatively close matchup. Anyway, that's basically a game loss Yeah, it definitely felt bad. Like I'm not gonna say I'm not gonna sit here and say oh the judges Were perfect. I mean, I think any judge would say that that situation wasn't the bet like it should have been caught earlier Let's say that for what it is. Sure, and it's unfortunate that I wasn't caught earlier But like I think the judges were forced to do something unfortunately We're forced to like make a decision and there is Let's see streamed matches page 22 of the tournament handbook Let's pull it up You want to go ahead and share that Yeah Rules and fractions and streamed matches Our rules and fractions committed during stream matches that are not immediately addressed may be identified and penalized upon subsequent reviewing a match footage Additionally certain kinds of penalties, especially those related to unacceptable behavior Yeah, so this kind of is the workaround where Normally, you're not able to address penalties After the fact like normally, you would not But Again, you're not able to Address those penalties But like if my if I got called over during game three of a match and the both players said, oh, we made a huge mistake game one. He did this action where he couldn't do this action. But we're now in game three. It's like, well, OK. Like, I can't prove that I can't prove it. It's hearsay. You know, there's no boards that I can point to. There's no real way I can fix the scenario. So just keep playing. Unfortunately, like it's just the point at which I can't do anything. But because we have hard evidence in video form of the penalties occurring, we can look at those. And so, yep, he definitely in this case, a bond drew an extra card off of the use of the stadium when he had six when he had only five second Pokemon to play. He drew a sixth card. So it is drawing an extra card, which is a DPC. So at that point, we have to issue a penalty. And if it's not addressed immediately, it may be identified and penalized upon subsequent review of the match footage. So we have seen issues where the penalty is. Yeah, we're basically. We are able to identify the penalty and then we do get the penalty. You can't go back into the match and fix it retroactively. So we have to apply it to the match that's currently going on. In this case, it was a game three. So that was just not ideal, if I'd say. But it's kind of like darned if you do darn if you don't like there's no perfect solution, I'd say. Right. I mean, like by the same token, like if a bond goes on and wins that game and then they discover afterwards and they say, like, what are you going to do? If Tord discovers that down the line says, oh, this happened, this shouldn't have happened, this negatively impacted me. What are you going to do about it? So, you know, I mean, it is the way the rules are written and they're being applied appropriately. It just really feels bad if you're a bond, right? Yeah, it it does. I'm not going to sit here, but like if we're really being honest, like it should if it was caught in game one and fixed, a bond loses that match and then loses the one second round to Tord. So like, well, it's weird because if it changes the whole thing, game two is totally different because a bond gets to choose who goes first. And so we basically have a fictitious game, too, that shouldn't have happened that ended up in the game three scenario that we were in. So it's like a whole separate timeline, effectively, if the penalty gets caught at the appropriate time or if the gameplay error gets caught at the appropriate time. And we'll basically never know what the outcome of that match was. But eventually it led to Tord winning the game and effectively led to him winning the tournament as a whole. And what would have otherwise? I don't know, a bomb would have had to win another absol game to make it to the finals. Yeah. And then we might have just seen a Pittsburgh repeat where Liam walks away with another W over a bond. And because I think that that matchup would have been a fair bit easier for him. It's considerably easier for him compared to the one that he ended up losing to in the finals. Oh, for sure. Yeah, we talked a little bit about that, but that was it was just a brutal, like hard, hard fought, but like ultimately really uphill battle for him. It was a really cool thing, too, though. Like, I would definitely encourage if you did not watch any of the games or only have the limited time to watch a couple of games from this past tournament, I would want a million percent, say, watch the finals, because even though it's kind of boring from Tord's side, because he's just doing the whole cornerstone game plan. You get to see Liam sit there and go through the process of establishing what he needs to to be able to win what looks to be a totally unwinnable scenario. And you also I would also say watch top four, like John said, that the Ryuki versus Tord game is also exceptional. But even like a sim was good to Liam versus I forget who exactly. I think that was kind of one sided now that I think about that. Maybe that wasn't a good one. It was Liam versus a guardi, so it wasn't. I think you just want to watch Zorak play more. Honestly, I, I love watching high level Zorak players. And so like we were talking before the start of the podcast that. Zorak's one of those decks right now that if you're really good with it, you can do well, but if you're really bad with it, like the level, like the drop off is huge. We were looking beforehand at the statistics and like Zorak had like a 30 something win percentage day one. But on day two, it had one of the highest win percentages. So like it just shows you like incapable hands. It is a it is a very strong deck, but it is one of those like. Like just confounding, frustrating, like very difficult decks to play right now. And there's a lot of those decks, I'd say, but Zorak definitely ranks as one of the higher, harder skilled level decks to play because you're not, you know, your game plan isn't blow stuff up. It is very like Chinese finger trap. Like the harder your opponent punches into you, the harder you punch back. And that kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. But I think that that's pretty much everything that I wanted to talk about from Vegas, did you have any last closing thoughts on it before we jump over to Blaine's quiz show? No, I mean, it was it was a good tournament. It's cool to see that Pokemon's trying new locations out with Vegas. I'm excited to go maybe there next year and hopefully we'll have some more cool locations like that. Stuff that's easier to travel to than some of the stuff we've had in the past with, you know. Some of the more Midwest or I don't know, it's interesting, like the like Knoxville, Tennessee's like it's a cool city, but like just hard to get to. Or like Daytona Beach. Oh, that's probably not too bad, honestly, because there's a lot of budget airlines that fly to Florida for relatively right. And theoretically, like it's not that far from Orlando and or it's not that far from Jacksonville now, but it's just I say that as yeah, I say that as a native Floridian, but it's not and it's not really dissimilar from the people that flew to Chicago that to then drive to Milwaukee, right? Yeah, but it's not like I mean, that at least you can take the Amtrak up fairly easily, like if you're coming from Europe and you don't really know how to drive or like don't have a car like that, could be a real challenge in Florida. We we absolutely do not have public transit. Well, I shouldn't say that they're working on it. We have that. There is a train that there's a train that runs from the Orlando airport out to the port here at Port Canaveral and then also has a line that goes all the way down to Miami. Oh, nice. Is it what is it, the sun line or something that I think it's called the bright line and they're still working on it. They're trying to expand it. They want it to be able to go like from Orlando. I think it's supposed to go all the way from like coast to coast, like Tampa over to Kennedy Space Center, supposed to split in Orlando to be able to go down to Miami and up to Jacksonville. So we're trying. We're trying. Yeah, it's hard in Florida. Yeah. Public transit and any other any any southern states like a uphill battle, for sure. For real. Absolutely. Yeah, things are things are so spread out compared to like all of the metropolitan or not even the metropolitan areas, but just the northeast is so condensed compared to the northeast. It's not even funny. It's it's it's pretty nice, like for that aspect, at least when you can take like the Amtrak all the way from D.C. to Boston with not really any issues other than I mean, it's shared with like freight trains, so it's not ideal. Like it can't go to a top speed of what it could go to. And you have to like kind of wait for free train sometimes. So not the best system, not anything close to Europe or anything like that. But, you know, it's better than. Yeah, like trying to go to like New Orleans from where you live by train. Yeah, it'd be almost impossible. Yeah. So one million percent. But that's enough for the transit talk. I think we can go ahead and jump over different parts. Well, do you have a bunch of train questions in Blaine's quiz show? Oh, I wish. Now I don't have any train questions, but I did want to do a different theme. So let me pull that up. Just to go over again how to play players, but given three multiple choice questions, if a player is stumped, they are allowed to ask for one hint at any time. But if a player answers all three questions without the use of a hint, a bonus point will be awarded. And I didn't do a train theme, but I did a Vegas gambling theme. So let's go gambling for this week's Blaine's quiz show. All right. You ready, Aaron? I have no idea what this implies, so I'll say yes. Fair enough. First question, how many cards do you draw if you flip heads when playing the item gambler? Is it four, five, six or eight cards? So luckily for me, John, I played a lot of the Game Boy Color Pokemon card game where Gambler was a favorite card of mine. This card is from the fossil expansion for anybody who's never heard of it. And when you flip heads on this card, you draw eight cards. Yeah. I had to give you a nice tee ball, you know, put it right on the tee so you could smash it and feel good. Eight cards, indeed. Good job, Aaron. All right. Next one. Due to gambling laws, many countries cannot host regionals and must host events with no cash prizes called special events. What city held the largest by TCG Masters special event in the 2024 2025 season? Was it Barcelona, Bologna, Utrecht or Buenos Aires? This. I don't pay attention to attendance numbers, man, this is going to be hard. Oh, goodness. So I think. They all capped, I'm pretty sure. But I want to say. That the European ones had smaller caps. But maybe that's wrong. Like Buenos Aires, I believe only had. I want to see 300 something people last year. But I'm also just guessing because I really have no idea. So that's why I don't think a hint would help me either. So I'm going to do my like a little shot in the dark here. I hope that it works and save my hand for the third question. I felt really confident after that first one. You you you set me up for failure really hard. I'm going to I'm going to go. Oh, goodness. Let's go to. Let's go Utrecht. OK. It is Utrecht. You are correct. Yeah. That had over 1000. Let me pull it up real quick. Wow. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Looking at special events last year. Oh, give me one sec. I just had it pulled up and I reset the page. Special. All right. We had 1241 for May 20, May 17th, 2025, Bologna had one thousand two hundred and thirty nine. Oh, so two less than Utrecht. So very, very close numbers wise. And then Barcelona had eight hundred and seventeen and Buenos Aires had two hundred and seventy five. Two hundred and seventy five. OK, so it was around 300. The other events are just way larger than I thought they were. Yeah, they're basically at the size of a European regionals. So you got that one, right? Congrats to everyone. Got a chance to go perfect this. Let's go for four, man. Let's go. All right. With the mega evolutions block, the new rarity mega hyper rares were introduced. These gold cards will appear in approximately one in every how many packs is a hundred and nine, five hundred and twelve, one thousand two hundred and sixty or two thousand and forty eight. So is this question asking how what is the likelihood of getting a specific one or the likelihood of getting one in general, the likelihood of getting one in general? OK. I know it's way more than one in 109, because I want to say the number is like one in multiple cases. So it's got to it's got to be higher than one hundred nine. How many boxes is five hundred twelve packs? Is that even is that divisible by thirty six? B is not and either twelve sixties, I'm going to go with twelve sixty that was still divisible by six. Oh, man, you're too good at this, Aaron. You go perfect for the week. Holy cow. Twelve sixty is correct. I should have picked numbers to do by thirty six, but I, you know, I didn't. So there you go. Wow. That that is the confidence booster in the springboard that I needed. There you go. Almost almost catch up to you. I think our our scores after that would be eleven to thirteen. Yeah. If I remember correctly. So only trailing by two after what previously felt like an insurmountable lead on your part. So, man, I'm coming for I'm coming for blood, John. Well, don't don't don't come from my blood. But yeah, it was a I, I try to give you the easy one. The first one. And then, yeah, I guess I didn't make them hard enough or you're just too good at this game. So congrats, Aaron. I fully, fully guessed on the special of the S.P.E. attendance of S.P.E. was a tough one because they were like, yeah, you saw two or three like players off of each other. So very close. And I, I remember I saw something like I think TCG player put out the estimated poll rates on Phantasmal Flames. It was on Pokey Beach. That's where I was. It mentioned from. Oh, OK. Yeah, I and I think that I I didn't go on Pokey Beach today, though. I swear I saw a figure somewhere. And I guess I must have seen the number 1260. So I had some sort of like imprinting or suggestive behavior that led me to that number. But really, it is the only one that it is divisible by like a multiple of six. So, yeah, well, you're just too good at that stuff. Now, math. Yeah, math. I I'm not bad at math, but like I'm not also the best. So. I don't know. Next time I'll think through it a little bit more and give you more of a challenge, but good job, Aaron. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'll try to regain my lead next week with what I'm sure is going to be- You already have a lead. I need you to- Well- I'm going to try to stump you. Re-extend my lead. That's what I meant to say. Oh, okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Then the last thing to talk about is kind of the big news for the week, right? We've got LAIC coming up is the culmination of the mega evolution format. Everything's been leading up to this, more or less, and we haven't done a tier list in a while. The way that we're going to approach this one is different from how I think most people traditionally achieve and cultivate their tier lists and the way that we've also done it historically, and we're going to rank these by the likelihood of top players to bring this to an event, more or less, and we say percentage-wise. Spoiler alert, there is no S tier. There's not like, this is the deck that all of the top players are going to bring. There are going to be a smattering of decks in the A tier that are very likely to be brought, if not guaranteed to be brought by the top players. B tier decks are decks that top players could bring, but are less likely to based on what we've seen throughout this format. C tier decks are very unlikely to be brought by top players, and D tier decks are not decks that top tier players will be playing. But kind of a caveat, an asterisk, if you will, to all of this, and the thing that we talked about when we looked at the Vegas results was, if you've been playing a deck this entire format and you're going to LAIC, don't listen to what John and I say. Play the same deck. I would say at this point, do not switch off of whatever you've been playing, unless it is Raging Bolt, don't play that deck. But everything else, like even Sarah Ledge, which we're not going to rate very highly, if you've been playing it the entire format, please continue to play that deck. It is the deck you likely know the best at this point, and will also give you the best results. Yeah, I think it's an important concept so often in Pokemon, but especially right now, there doesn't seem to be like a consensus number one deck or an anti-meta deck. I mean, I guess Mega Absolbox kind of fits that anti-meta mold, but I think that would be the one deck, like if you weren't confident with something, that would be maybe something you'd want to try. But ultimately, that's going to be a very hard deck to pilot too. We saw a lot of top players play it this past weekend. I think that would probably be the deck, if I wasn't sure what to play, maybe leaning towards that. But I think even that still is going to, you're going to have to play a lot of games with it and have to feel really comfortable with it, because there's a lot of weird scenarios that come up and a lot of weird, like, okay, what, that's like fencing, like, when do I attack? When do I just clutch? When do I just pass with a Mega and the Active and Penny and set up my board with like an attachment of energy or something like that? And being able to do like, hand read your opponent is also really important with the deck. Like, when do I need to Claw of Darkness? Or with some of the builds, like what we saw from Ryuki, both with his win over in Brisbane and what he brought to Vegas this past week with the Zorosik and the Eerie, like, when do I play these supporter cards? Like, what is the, like, what's the trigger turn? And sometimes the Absol informs when you play those supporter cards, and other times they inform when it is the correct turn for you to Claw of Darkness, depending on what your opponent, either what you see off the Eerie or what they choose to discard with Zorosik, and it's also kind of matchup dependent. That's a, I would be hard pressed to tell somebody to pivot to Mega Absol or to N'Zurark. I think that both of them, like we've mentioned in the past, they're relatively difficult decks to play compared to some of the other ones on this list. They're also ones that I think people are less likely to have experience with, but like, we've seen them very heavily represented by the top players. It's no surprise, I think, to anybody here, good players are going to be playing these decks at this event. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think both of them will, yeah, see a good showing at LAIC. They don't have quite the surprise factor that they might have had earlier in the format, but they definitely still have strength. They still have just hard decks, they're just hard decks to play against. They're big walls, they're, you know, N'Zurark, 280 is not a huge number, but if you're playing certain decks, it's hard to reach that number and they can just kind of set up a board state to where it's almost impossible for you to like, really feel that you're in the lead. And they have the consistency to execute on their game plan every time with the trade ability and then Mega Absol box. If you had a hard time getting over Zoroark, well, you're going to have an even harder time getting over these Megas now, and they're going to run Lively Stadium and Bravery Charm to make their Megas even bigger. And yeah, they're just abusing Monkey Dory, setting it up to where if you hit into my Mega Absol, well then I just move 60 damage back over to your side of the board and knock out whatever's in the active. And if you don't have an answer to deal with that, or if you do, you know, then I can kind of pivot and reestablish and then eventually Iona you late to a small hand size and prevent you from executing on your game plan. If it's like a golden go, I can just kind of pick off, pick apart your hand, get rid of your, you know, superior energy retrievals and stuff like that to kind of limit what you can do and then just sweep from there. So both are very skill intensive, but both are very, like, I think high skill, but high skill expression comes along with that, I'd say. And they're flexible. Like, we've seen variations in how these lists, like you mentioned Liam's list being totally different in Vegas than it was back in Pittsburgh. It's the same format, but he's bringing a totally different build of the deck. Will he transition it to a further different build? I don't know. That's tough to say, but it's possible. Like we've seen Liam's list, Piper's list, Cal Connor's list, and now Liam's list again, that are all reasonably different from each other. But just the power of trade in tandem with just Gardevoir being a popular and strong deck makes the deck very formidable into many, many matchups. And if you really wanted to tech for some of these other ones, like Goldengo, we've seen people play things like Toad Scroll in the past that could theoretically slot back in, but that seems unlikely unless, you know, you expect it to be worlds levels of Goldengo again. But we do have probably a pretty good-sized contingent of European players coming over, and you know, we have players like Daniel Magda, who are likely to be in attendance assuming he made it through the lottery system. And I wouldn't be surprised to see players like that bringing that Goldengo out either. Yeah, it's another deck that, and you know, it was I think one of the highest, if not the highest in the meta share for Las Vegas, so I expect it to pop right back up into that place. And it is deceptively challenging to play and play well, especially this variant where you're really more of a resource. Like you don't have the energy surge pro to just power out all your energy. You have to find ways to get your energy effectively while also conserving resources for a late game and setting up your board to where you don't get, you know, clutched or something like that. I think it's deceptively hard to play this deck, but it's easy to pick up but harder to play once you get to the higher levels, higher tables, harder matchups, that kind of stuff. Fully agree. Now, these three decks all kind of share something in common. I think that they're all relatively weak into the more aggressive decks in the format. Now, Goldengo obviously leans aggressive of the three, but the Seraledge and Raging Bolts of the world, like something of that caliber, are actually pretty good into both Zoroark and Mega Absolbox. Goldengo, maybe specifically for Seraledge, but we're not going to see anybody that you would realistically consider to be a top tier player bringing these decks to this event. Again, like we said at the top, if you've been playing either of these for a while, except maybe Raging Bolt, please keep playing the same deck, but just know that the deeper you go into the event, I think the less likely you are to run into one of these decks. Yeah, we talked about our predictions where Seraledge's highest placement for Vegas was top 64. Yep. It's one of those decks that can do well, especially when you hit the right matchups, but as the tournament goes on, you're going to hit more experienced players and more capable opponents, and they're going to find those lines that really just take advantage of the weaknesses of your deck. They're going to find ways to just make your deck not function well. I think that it is really hard as a Seraledge player to really just feel like you have an advantage going into those tougher matchups, like some of the decks that we'll talk about in just a minute. But yeah, it's not a bad deck by any stretch. It still has a lot of raw power and strength, but it definitely can struggle when your opponent doesn't follow a traditional linear game plan like you're trying to do every time. Exactly. That's the thing that a lot of these other decks have, the ones that are more likely to be played by these players, is that they have options, and Seraledge in particular just doesn't have options. Like, yes, theoretically you can attack with Cosmic Beam now, which you couldn't do before, but that's not going to get the job done in most scenarios. No, it can really only do so much. Yeah, yeah. Again, to no surprise of anybody, I think both variants of Gardevoir—whoop, get back up there—are very likely to see play by top players. Like, almost certainly, especially, again, if we have the Henry Chao contingent going. Although I did see Isaiah Bradner was planning to attend the event, but now will not be because I guess he got a concussion, and so he's unfit to travel. So that's one less Gardevoir than what would have been at the event, but I still expect a sizable number of strong players to be playing Gardevoir when all the chips hit the table. Yeah, for sure. Definitely still a strong deck. Doesn't really lose much. Can be teched for what you expect to face. You can choose between the two builds there. I think I would probably give the edge to a build that runs Jellicent. Just having that item lock ability, though you might not always need it, can really just win you some matchups, especially against Goldengo. You can really just control the tempo and go from there. Yeah, I think it's a very skill-expressive, strong deck. I mean, we don't really type up Gardevoir anymore than we've talked about it for the last two years, so it's coming up on three years now. Yeah, it's still the strong deck it was. We are definitely awaiting the rotation of the card. I think that the next batch of decks is going to be what would be in what is listed here as the B tier, but still could be played by top players and probably will be, but to a lesser degree, I think. And it gets weird trying to talk about this in this way. When you look at the limitless percentages or the percentages that they show on the stream graphics and you say, oh, there's 13% Goldengo at this event, but realistically, what percentage of those players are in this echelon that we're trying to consider? It's almost like how, I guess, theoretically, how likely are these decks to make top 16 if we assume that all of the players that make top 16 are able to play these decks to the optimal level and they're being as expressive of their skill as possible? What decks are those players, one, likely to choose, and then therefore, because the top players are playing those decks, they're more likely to make cut. And I think that the next two are potentially possible. We saw Grant Manley playing Charizard Pidgeot. Azul has been on record saying that he would have played Charizard to Vegas if he had gone. He's been a big proponent of Charizard throughout this format, but it just feels like it's kind of down a tier unless you're Jackson Ford or Grant Manley. I don't know if anybody else is really bringing this deck to the event. Yeah, I think it's still strong, obviously. Charizard, just such a big wall. It has really good matchups into some of the decks we were talking about with Gardevoir and Zoroark can be pretty good. It can be challenging, too, I guess. But the Golden Goat is a good one if you run the Chi-Yu, which you should be at this point, obviously. And Mega Absol, I feel like that's a really tough one. Yeah, that one would be tough. You know, Mega Absol doesn't care about your huge Charizard as much as some other decks do if you can just move six damage over it. I mean, you do run the Mist, so that helps. So there's some counterplay with the Enhanced Hammer and the Mega Absol, but, you know, that's just kind of like you got to find it and all that stuff. I think the Cornerstone is just a big problem, though. True, yep. Yeah, Charizard doesn't really possess an easy answer for Cornerstone at the moment. We might see Mega Charizard XCX in the near future, but that's not our format going into LAIC, so we don't have to worry about that right now. Yeah, I think B tier makes sense. And I don't know. I feel like putting in Grimmsnarl, I know that's your pet deck, but I think putting that in B tier makes a lot of sense, too. Maybe C tier. Yeah, I think if you're talking about top player representation... Yeah. As much as I think this deck deserves to be represented better, it's not likely to be played by top players at this point. The only people we continue to see playing it, I know Arthur Tressler made top four in Gdansk a couple weeks or a little while ago, and also had played it at Worlds, I believe, or NAIC sometime last year. And I don't know, man. Nobody wants to pick the deck up anymore. Well, I think one thing holding it back is that Mega Absol box matchup. Looking at the tournament results, the metagame share, I was looking at Grimmsnarl's meta percentages for matchup percentages, rather. and going into mega absol box it is has a 28% win percentage so is that pretty aggregate for the whole event or is that day two that is day two okay I mean you get the whole again again again I think that the ABS all players that made day two are likely I don't know maybe I mean theoretically the Grimmsnarl players that made it you are also the better guys sorry that wasn't that wasn't day two I made a mistake day two it is 33% it's still not great but the and maybe I I know we were talking about this matchup earlier I'm not super fresh on it recently and presumably the ABS all players have gotten better at playing the matchup yeah maybe it's just that maybe it is just unfavorable at this point and that could be something like if you're trying to win an event you know you're gonna have to play against a Ryuki or a toward at some point playing ABS all and I guess that makes Grimmsnarl not the right call yeah so that I think that's my thought holding it back would be that matchup I think another deck that gets held back by that matchup is what you were just about to mention is it's such a weird one for me I've been playing it I think it beats here I don't think you can put it seats here I think it's no it's far as we're yeah I mean we had to make top eight like it's exactly played a lot even if it's a sunk out the cost fallacy if players recognize that this isn't like the best deck for this format it's still like if we're gonna say that you should be playing the deck that you have the most reps with you should probably be playing dragapult dust north that's what you've been playing for the last year and a half you know it's still solid like even if it doesn't have some of the best matchups you know people aren't really respecting it they're not putting ducks in their deck with Psyduck they're not hard countering it with other stuff like that I mean that's the main hard counter I could think of but like but we saw like the guard of the guard of our lists that were successful last weekend still aren't respecting dragapult so I mean I don't know how well it positioned it is going into this metagame but I think it's definitely up there for me I think I would probably put it up yeah I don't want to swap it with and Zorak a tear to be tear but I know you probably won't let me get away with that I disagree purely because I know like you have players I'm assuming Liam's going but if Liam or Piper Chow's of an interesting one because I know he's played Zorak in the past but he'll he also just played Gardevoir this past weekend but both Fernandez brothers have been playing and Zorak for a while yeah and so I'm saying it just in terms of top player representation it may be dragapult does deserve to be up a tier but I also feel like it's fallen down a peg and we have seen some of the players who were playing it previously pivot away from the deck that's fair so going back into the combination of dragapult we have the deck I convinced Aaron to put onto the steer list last minute dragapult Charizard I think this is kind of my rogue pick for the weekend if I had to pick a deck it's been doing really well in seniors with Nathan ostracats getting first in the seniors division and Omar I think I don't know if you played the same 60 but a relatively similar 60 cards this I know Aaron doesn't like this deck at all but I think it's still a strong deck it has some answers for some of the questions that are being posed by some of these decks has doesn't have Pidgeot for Charizard but you have recon directive you know you run the the cool I think I like the stage ones a lot so I think that's cool you can play like a one prize board and choose when to be attacking and stuff like that I like it a lot but I know that Aaron's not a huge fan so I'll let him kind of rebuttal yeah I I mean I want to put this thing in D tier but I sure and that's again mostly because I think I don't think anybody's gonna play it anymore like I mentioned when we you first convinced me to put this on here the players that were playing it like when row and seven I played it in a I see last year last season you know all of them have moved off of it the deck has lost its luster so to speak and yes obviously Charizard and Dragapult are powerful cards in their own right but I think that both like this archetype exists as a weaker version in my mind of both of the decks that we currently have in the B tier and again if we're looking at it from the perspective of representation this is likely a D tier deck but I also think that it will I don't know it's more powerful than both than either of the decks here maybe it still belongs down here but just so I don't make John cry I'm gonna put it in here okay all right and rounding it out we have a couple kind of odd ducks if you will yep I don't think any of these decks like we had pretty strong showings from all these decks with flare and octal getting second recently from sorry what's her name Emma Hagen Emma Hagen yep we had Tara box do relatively well in the last few months as well and then Joltik box made top eight this past weekend so I don't think we'll see a lot of representation from these I would probably lump these into I think Joltik I'd probably put in C tier and then all of them in C tier or what are you thinking yeah I know I can I can agree with that I think like we've seen kind of some diehard players like like Alex Schmansky's been playing yes that's what I was trying to think of he and he's been playing it since worlds hasn't put the deck down yet now granted that's a very small contingent but you know Alex is a it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect him to do well this tournament right and again that goes into player skill expression rather than necessarily archetype expression like the big thing at the end of the day every single card or every single archetype in these top three tiers maybe with the exception of Joltik box and draggable Charizard but I am biased are powerful in their own right and we've one of the things we mentioned when we brought the idea of booting like building this from the perspective of how likely are these deck to be played rather than just saying this is a good pick for this event because this matchup in this matchup when you look at if every deck is a comfort pick for whatever player is bringing it and any deck in the top three tiers could win the event mm-hmm and you know that does include Flareon I had a relatively sour experience with the deck this past weekend but I mean actually probably this is a D tier deck in terms of representation I don't know anyone who's playing it besides Emma and that might be enough to bump it down Europeans like me he's played it recently I believe he played Flareon though I thought he was playing Tarabox maybe it was Tarabox with Pidgeot I'm misremembering let me look at the Meadows for Flareon Noctowl it's always been a low play rate deck. Nathan Doyle's been pretty popular I guess very yeah not a huge contingent for sure. No no it's always been I'd argue it's probably been sub 1% at every event that it's been played at now granted it's been outperforming that play rate by a pretty large margin I'd say like most of the people who are playing the deck are doing pretty well with it but I don't know man I just would it's it doesn't have the representation I do think it is this is the one weird kind of exception for both Tarabox and Flareon Noctowl just the Noctowl decks here I think are better positioned than these two decks and are more likely to see play I do not think any top players will be bringing either of the decks we have in D tier there will be some number of top players that will bring these two decks but they are not going to be highly played by any means it's almost it almost makes you want to actually have a tier below like have these decks be the D tier and these decks are just like the F tier nobody's gonna play this and not be not D tier in terms of power level but D tier in terms of representation right yeah because again like this it's kind of a weird way to describe this like if I was to assign meta percentage of top players playing these decks all of these decks would be over 10% these decks are probably gonna be in like the 5 to 8 percent range these decks are I don't know somewhere between 1 and 4 or 1 in 5 and these decks are 0 did Ian Rob get Nicky played like he's playing at the tournament for LA I see no for Vegas he played in Vegas yeah I don't see him in the results page here it's weird I know he was on stream I'm pretty sure he played jelly Garty I don't remember how he did but I know he was on stream at some point he's not pulling up when I search it hopefully hopefully no yeah I don't see his name but I just be that he made day two right yeah that I honestly couldn't tell you he might not have let me if you expand beyond day two yeah it might be the part where you might not have made day two yeah he did not if he went five three happens a lot of players like but yeah I think that that they are there any of these that you feel need to be moved by any means as far as like a tear goes I think I'd probably move ends or work down to beat here I do think there will be a lot of top players playing it but I don't think it will be like the first pick for a lot of top players like the other four other four decks listed there okay I think B tier it's a high B tier but like I think that unless you're like you know if we're gonna say that only a few players can play it then I don't think that really fits into a tear as well no that's fair that's fair yeah I'm not saying it's not a good deck but yeah only Liam's really had those Liam and Piper have had those like fantastic finishes and I guess cow at one point so we have seen it do well with top players but I don't think top players will want to pick it up and play it this weekend well I could be wrong you know we'll see yeah well I think I agree that like we're not gonna see met droves of people go and pick up Xur arc but the ones who have been loyal to it will probably continue to play it I think at the end of the day yeah I'm pretty happy with how this looks and I don't really have any final thoughts like they the thing we said at the top of the tier list stick with your comfort pick do not pivot and just good luck before we sign off yeah we normally pick I just want to do not a whole slew of predictions but I want to pick two players this time since it's such a big deal tournament we'll do two players we think we'll do well at LA I see so how about we pick one player from North America and one player from the rest of the world okay make sense I don't know who else going this is a tough one yeah okay I've avoided picking him all season he hasn't won anything yet but that just means he's due at this point I'm gonna go with Henry Chow okay I will hmm who's going that is a good question for North America I'm going to some name that I really think I've picked recently I'm gonna give a shout out to summit kooka Dapu okay I think he's done really well in the last few months like last season was his breakout season you just got top eight I think assuming he's going this is the hardest part right like you don't write all the players going yeah but I'll give it to him just on the hopes that he's going fair enough how about let's have you take your first crack at the rest of the world pick though so for outside of North America I'm gonna pick a name that should be all too familiar for all all of us and especially for Brazilians and Gabriel Fernandez he had quite the season last year probably the best ever for a senior and he's had really good success at the regionals level in the first few of this season and I'm gonna take him to protect his home turf to make Brazil you know like his home like you can't come into LA I see and expect to go not not have to go through so I'm gonna pick him I'm gonna pick a different hometown hero from Brazil and go with William as a Vado okay hasn't I don't think that he's done too terribly well I do believe he made cut in Belo Horizonte or was very close to it but fell I believe in asymmetrical or maybe he only made top 32 I honestly at the top my head can't remember but he's a good player and you know for the longest I'm here Brazil on his back in terms of Masters results, so I wouldn't be surprised to see him turn up and do it again. That's fair. There was also a special event in... Oh, you're right. I don't think... It was, it was. It was a Brazilian, yeah, but we don't have the results from that, so... I know, it was streamed. I know, I think Azul was like doing a watch party thing for it, and it's, I believe the finals was Dragapult Mirror again, but I do not know for sure who was playing. Fair enough. So if we find that out, we'll talk about it next time, but yeah, I'm excited to see it all unfold. I'm excited about it, to talk about it with you next week. Good luck to all those traveling. Hopefully you'll have safe travels flying to South America. I definitely recommend Guarana, the soda from the Guarana fruit. It's one of my favorites. I love the Guarana Zero. They have that in Brazil. That's like, I don't know, my guilty pleasure if I'm drinking soda down there. That's what I'll drink. But yeah, I love Brazil. I think it'll be a little bit warmer down there. It's like their spring now, so that'll be nice. Yeah, let me see the weather in Sao Paulo. Just have it on my phone real quick. Well, while Jon looks the weather up, if you do want to get plugged in with the show more, you can follow us on socials. We'll have links to all of those in the description below this episode. If you're following us on a podcasting platform, be sure to also go check the channel out over on YouTube, and maybe drop a subscription, link the show to somebody else, help us grow that content base. And if you are watching over on YouTube, do the opposite. Head over to Spotify, follow the show, or on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the feed. Again, leave a rating, a review, maybe comment on it. Helps other people find the show, increases the viewer base, and just allows us to continue to do what we're doing here, talking about Pokemon and having fun doing it. So before we say goodbye, Jon's going to tell us about how the weather will be for you heading down to Brazil this week. Yeah, so you have a lot to look forward to at least Thursday and Friday. Thursday the highest 75, and Friday it will be a sunny with a high of 85 degrees. So you'll have a nice spring, late spring day to look forward to in Brazil. So enjoy yourself, you know, eat local food, be adventurous. You don't get to go to another country every day, so enjoy it. Make sure that you're representing your country, wherever you're coming from, with grace and respect and all that. Be safe. Yeah, be safe. Travel in a group. Don't go with people you don't know, I guess. Don't go in the dark alley. Yeah, yeah, just be smart. It's kind of standard traveling fare, but especially when you go into a country where you have to do things like, if you're not from South America or you're not from Brazil, and you have to get like changes to your cell phone, like eSIMs and whatnot, just, you know, protect yourself as much as you have to. Yeah, Ubers are relatively cheap too, and they're pretty secure down there, as long as you're verifying, you know, your driver and all that. So I'd recommend just taking an Uber, then walking. Sao Paulo is definitely not like a huge walking city, at least I don't know. Not the area where I was staying at as a staff member last year, so Ubers are fine. But yeah, that's all I got, and I'll hopefully hear from you guys soon in the comments, and hopefully hear some feedback that we're doing well, or that we're something we can improve on. So yeah, thank you. Yep, yep. Like John said, thank you. Thank you to everybody for listening, and we will come at you next week with these LAIC results, and maybe our first thoughts on the Phantasmal Flames format on the next episode of the Battle Frontier. See ya!