2-25: SVI-on's Final Stand

Yeah, cool, sounds good. So let me go ahead and pull this guy's comment up, because I know that it was the first thing we're going to talk about here. We've got to log into Spotify. Fine. There we go. Comments. So comment comes from user named Boogo, at least I think that's how you pronounce it, says the Crustle take strikes me as slightly scrubby. And so for anyone who either didn't listen to last week's episode, or maybe forgot it already, I made several comments or took the stance last week that I felt that Crustle was essentially not a Pokemon deck, or that you weren't trying to win the game when you sat down to play Crustle, and you were instead list checking your opponent and hoping that they would essentially just lose the game. And so before I, I don't know, not necessarily re explain my stance, but kind of attempt to potentially provide further context, maybe defend myself essentially against this comment, john, I wanted to figure out, did you think last week was I way off base? Like is Crustle way more skill intensive or more of a Pokemon deck that maybe I gave it credit for? Or are you on Team Aaron? And you think that Crustle players are, you know, people, people call Joltik box and Raging Bolt players like crayon eaters, and they're sitting over here, not doing anything, they're just going to go visit the coloring table when they go to the regional are the Crustle players really that far elevated from that other group of players? Or are they kind of in the same category? I don't know how you can play Crustle and then like, truly defend it from a skill expression standpoint. Like, do I think it takes no skill to play the deck? No, I don't think so. But I also think like, most of your wins are literally your opponent doesn't have an answer. Like sure, there are things they can do. And there are ways you can play Crustle to where you can like maneuver it and engineer it all that kind of stuff. But like overall, it is kind of a list check deck, you're doing the same kind of strategy and a lot of your matchups, it doesn't really change up too much from matchup to matchup. And if your opponent has that answer, then yeah, you're just kind of stuck for the most part. So I think I'm a little closer to your side, you know, but to the defense of Crustle, we did see it perform fairly well this past weekend getting third place in Sevilla. And if you look at the metagame percentage, as far as the conversion percentage for any deck that was played over, like if there's 22 copies of it or more, essentially, or like 10 copies of it or more, it had the highest conversion from day one to day two at 40.9%. So which is crazy, like Grimmsnarl is 32.6, that's fourth, or that's second to Crustle. That's like the next one down. That's a pretty, pretty steep drop from one to the other. Now granted, this is a special event. I mean, but like, let's go back to Houston. We can look at the metagame percentage for that, for Crustle, conversion rate-wise. And for decks that have over 20%, or this time in Houston, there was 60 players on it, it had the 38% conversion rate, and sorry, it had a 38.3% conversion rate. The next one, again, is Grimmsnarl Frostlass at 34.9. So I think I will side with you on this idea that it doesn't take a lot to like really pilot a deck decently well. It really just reminds me of like a Quad Sigilyph or something like that, where you're just checking to see if your opponent has a way to beat it. And if yes, you know, then you go to lunch early. If no, then I don't know, they punch a hole through a wall. You might still go to lunch early, right? Yeah, right. And I even said last week, I do think that Crustle or Quad Insert Pokemon, like wall strategy decks, are a totally fine and viable tournament strategy. I just don't think that they are necessarily the intended type of deck that card designers are looking to put into the game. You know, like the set that Crustle came out with, it came out with Yanmega, that seemed kind of like that was the cookie cutter intended pairing for the deck was, I'm going to push up my Yanma, or Yanmega rather, get the extra energy out of the deck, shoot them back to my Crustle, and that gives me my backup attacker and or an alternative option when we're playing a game. And obviously, players can take creative liberties when you get a set of cards, you can build whatever deck you want with whatever cards you want to. And the kind of the skill of Crustle, the skill that I will attribute to the deck is fully in the deck building of it. And that's where we've seen things like, you know, initially the deck played Monkey Dory as well. Now those are gone. They're fully just on the quad wall strategy, and we're playing like the jumbo ice cream was a big boon for the deck, you have the spiky energy for countering Badoos and or other potential attackers like Charmeleons and Charizard matchups. But at the end of the day, you're not really outplaying your opponent once you actually sit down at the table. So you're is it again, fully viable tournament strategy, still not what I would personally consider a Pokemon deck and you fully whatever listener Bugo or anyone else is fully within their rights to disagree with my opinion. It is an opinion. Everybody gets one. And I don't think that it necessarily is good or bad either way for, you know, I don't understand why me thinking that Crustle decks aren't Pokemon decks would be considered like a scrub take. You know, I guess only recognizing the validity of it to play within a tournament while still simultaneously saying like, what if I was going to sit down and play? I'm trying to think of a Crustle type archetype in a different card game and trying to figure out if I mean, because it's not really control, right? No, it's not the same thing. Like if I took Pidgeot, or if I was going to play like, I don't know, I haven't played a ton of magic. But I know that blue is typically like the control color. And if I was going to play like a mono blue deck and just try to counter everything that my opponent is doing, I would attribute that more to something like Pidgeot control than something like Crustle. Crustle is just like, I don't really have a good comparison for other card games. And maybe that just goes into I haven't played other card games enough to really expand into it properly. But I just think that like Crustle is well positioned right now because people aren't respecting it. Like the conversion percentages that you mentioned are admittedly super impressive. You know, typically we say if something's got over, I think like 18% it's doing well. And when you have something, you know, 60 copies of a deck in a tournament is nothing to sneeze at. And to still have a 30 some odd conversion percentage is amazing. You know, the one in Sevilla is a little bit different. Like once you get down to like 2025, you know, obviously, every single member that does convert is worth more percentage points. And therefore, the number isn't quite as impressive, even though it is still relatively large. But I don't know. I just thought that Bugo came at me a little hard there in that comment. And I wanted to make sure maybe defend myself a little, make sure that I wasn't necessarily misunderstood. You know, like that'd be like, because I think I'm with you, like to say it's a scrub take implies that like, maybe, okay, you lost to it at one point, and like, you're just mad that you lost like that, right? And like that, the scrub take is like, get good, like, just find a way to beat it. If you're sad, if you're mad about losing to it, then tech forward or beat it, you know, don't complain about it. So I guess that would be like the way that they were approaching it. But I don't know. Yeah, I mean, and that's, that's kind of, I think it's an interesting format. Like, it's so late now to where like, if this because the decks become popular, because people are kind of setting their ways, and already looking forward to the next format, like no one's teching for something at this point in the format, like no one's like, read like analyzing their Oh, I have a bad crystal matchup. Let me fix that. Right there. At this point. They're just like, well, what it is, I'll just lose. And then yeah, if I lose, I lose, you know, I just wasn't. So I think crustal is eating good because of that, you know, for sure that people aren't really putting any effort into countering anything in the meta game, like we've seen frost last monkey Dory and grim snarl kind of have that same benefit, I'd say. And I mean, I plan on taking full advantage of that this weekend. So you know, I think the interesting thing to me is that crustal didn't really gain anything from ascended heroes, right? So what suddenly makes it so much better position? I mean, I guess you could say that guard of art being on the downtrend is probably the real kind of onus for why people would feel more comfortable doing it. But yeah, that's probably just the answer, isn't it? Yeah, probably that charizard falling off a little bit, like with like, they had the GU at one point. So they had a way to counter. No, no, that's like the best counter like, I don't, I don't think I'm sure crustals like, okay, cool. You can knock out one crustal. Good job. Exactly. Thank you. Back out. And then, but yeah, I don't really know. I just kind of figured it out that it's just a strong counter to everything in the that's popular in the metagame right now. I really don't know the exact answer as to like, why? Why now? And why crustal? You know, there's other decks that kind of have that same kind of thing, I guess, where we've seen them come on go like that was a festival lead also, I guess, had a resurgence over the weekend. Well, that one's more explainable. I think that's okay. That's fair. Like, honestly, so of has probably like the bigger thing and like, we talked about a couple of results here. So we'll just go ahead and pop up the severe results, just kind of grain of salt, etc. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Smaller event, you did. And when, how many people were added just for, you know, still 1300 people. So you know, about the size of, like a west coast regional, like three years ago, like right directly pre-COVID or post-COVID two, three years ago, maybe like a, like a, like a Vancouver regional 2019 or 2022. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, still respectable number of people, but it's not one of these 2000, 3000, you know, 3500. I think currently Orlando's got something like 3500 people signed up for it. All age divisions, but still a lot of people. But we do see some interesting decks in top four here. Obviously, you know, it wouldn't be an EU event if Goldengo didn't make a deep run. So we've got a Goldengo in top four, another one from Christian Fontenot in top eight. But the big standouts here are the fact that Festival Lead made finals and that Crustle managed to make top four. And I don't think Crustle was really going to eat well, regardless of which matchup it had in top four, given that we had, you know, either Festival Lead or Gardevoir. I mean, maybe like, I guess if they had matched into Daniel here with the Goldengo deck, then it would have been fine, because I believe that that Christian actually did play against the Crustle player. Yeah. Christian played against Oscar Rivas here with the Crustle deck in top eight. That was his ultimate downfall. Did Christian not play Make-A-Low-Punny? No, he did. Oh, he did. Maybe he just brought it up before it evolved. Right. Well, it's either you just fully target the, like you said, target the Bonaire, or if you've got the luxurious cape on your Crustle and you get enough ice creams involved there, a couple with like Poké Vital A, I think that like, there's enough of a workaround there that eventually, you know, you can kill my first three Crustles, but can you kill the fourth one? And that's where... Dude, this list is so... There's not even like TM Turbo Energize. You're literally manually attaching. I mean, I guess you have the reversal energy to like, spray one out if you're behind, but man, that's just crazy to me. No, you're just trying to go the distance. This is like, yeah, this is like, I have a Crustle and we're, yeah, you're, yeah, this is, I don't know, it's not horrendous, but it's not enjoyable to look at, if I have to say. Right. And you're just kind of, again, at the mercy, like there's no draw engine with the deck, so you're at the mercy of your top decks and hoping that your opponent either doesn't have an answer or it's an answer that's difficult to piece together or, you know, whatever the case may be. And admittedly, in a tournament setting, most people don't want to tech for Crustle because it has been a relatively low meta percentage deck. In Houston, it was up a little bit, like not significantly, but it was a higher level. And I guess maybe after this result, being in the mix as well, it has the merit to say that it should retain that percentage. I was under the impression that after Houston, people might respect it a bit more. We'd either see more Gardevoir play or people would start teching for it more and it would get kind of tamped back down appropriately. Oscar proved maybe that's not the case. People may need to be on the lookout for it when they get to Orlando. Well, I mean, just to play the counterpart of it, Oscar did well at third, but the next best place in Crustle is at 70th. Okay. No, that's fair. Oh, actually. So that's a comparison we can look at real quick. Let's see what the matchup difference is. We did have a large Day 2 conversion, but I would think that like players in Day 2 maybe have a better way, like have more, oh wow, he just didn't lose a game Day Phase 2. Okay. But you get Zoroark, doesn't have a great answer. Tank Kangaskhan, like what are they going to do, set up a bunch of Monkey Dories and hope you can't chase them down? Charizard is not super great anymore. Whole matchup can go either way. So I would say, I would argue Oscar got relatively favorable matchups up through until he got to cut. I know like if you look at the matchup data, Grimmsnarl is actually relatively unfavored just because with Pokipad, you can kind of play Froslass Monkey Dory into Crustle and that's where they kind of falter. You can just run a Froslass deck and then kind of bat bullet damage that way. But then ultimately playing against Ethan Wilde's festival lead deck, like no shot, you're never winning that matchup. It's just like impossible. But what I was curious about is with that next best place in Crustle, nope, there we go. Like with that next best place in Crustle here, what did, I'm not going to pretend that I know how to pronounce this name, but how did Vigo do? We see Lowpunny Dusknoir. I could see that being a relatively bad matchup. Yeah. Ho-Oh Armourouge for sure would be a bad matchup. Oh gosh. Yeah, I don't know how you beat that. Another straight Mega Lowpunny deck. Yeah. So those are pretty rough. And a Gardevoir. So just like you hit the matchup roulette button on your Crustle deck and you hit some pretty unfortunate ones and you don't make cut. Like you go 8-3-2 and you tie against Dragapult because that's definitely 100% possible. I think that's definitely like what you can expect if you play this kind of deck. Yeah. So don't really want to talk all about Crustle. There's some other stuff going on that we're pretty interested in. We had... a Festival lead deck pop-up played by Ethan wild who has been on kind of a rogue deck Enjoyer like he's played. I think it was he the raging not raging bolt the iron or now What is it called the fire guy? I Need a bit of that the fire paradox guy paradox fire You're thinking of oh my gosh, what does it call it's the intake thing? What is it? Yeah, you got me stuck I cannot remember what the heck it's called, right? Oh We're gonna look so dumb walking wake raging bolt and iron flint No, but in any case you're thinking of somebody else. Yeah for what it's worth. There is there is a different British player What I'm gonna have to google this right now the paradox and today gouging fire. That's the guy. Okay, great Never would have gotten there. Yeah Did this season do really well for himself? He won Birmingham regionals, but he was playing Poltnor So not a deck by any means. No, you're right. I misspoke. I was misremembering So yeah, definitely a huge departure for Ethan, but kind of cool I mean, honestly if he's got at least one of regionals already He's just kind of like playing what he wants to play and very cool to see see this deck do well I mean we saw Andrew Kennett take it to day two in Houston and have a nice pretty deep run with that He you know I think lost two of his last three to miss out on cut but before that was doing really well and Really just cool to see like somebody believe in that kind of a deck and go and play it and do do decently with it I don't know. Did you watch any of the games? I don't know if how much of the regional you watched but I watched like just a little bit of the finals I didn't get to see festival. He didn't really perform to its fullest potential especially playing against Gardevoir where it's just really tough to prevent them from taking a Multi-prize turn at some point because your basics have such low HP totals Yeah, we talked you talked about blessed with the matchups dragapult, but it's zero dragapult and only played against two guardies One in round two his only loss Before the finals was to Ted Tobin the person he also lost to in the finals So he lost a Ted Tobin in round 11 and then lost in the finals in this tournament That just kind of and then yeah the rest of it. I mean very impressive. I mean golden go Yeah, and that nothing here that I think would be a super challenging thing. Like the Zoroark seemed like a free free dub So I think the frost last decks have the potential to be difficult to do it I mean, I guess sure I guess stagger your guys a little bit and Prevent that damage spread from really accumulating beat a frost last monkey Dorian around three, which is interesting, right? And then also beating to like grim snarl is I don't know like I know I played against Jared Grimes at NAIC last year And he was playing festival lead now notably festival. He'd got a big boon with pokey pad So I'm sure it is significantly better than it was back in the NAIC format Grim snarl also has pokey pad. So it's kind of a wash Maybe it also has seeking now and I don't think it had it back then But you like if you just avoid putting grim snarl down until you like really need to I figured if you're bossing up or counter Catchering thwackies and kind of spreading damage and KO in the actual festival lead Pokemon While you're bumping stadiums to prevent them from being able to actually double attack Like it just seems like it would be a little bit more difficult But you know, maybe I'm wrong or maybe all of these frost last decks drew horrendously and that's what propelled Ethan into the stratosphere that he was able to reach the other interesting thing that I saw here was he actually managed to or She got paired up with Oscar in Swiss as well That's crazy handed Oscar to loss on his Crustle deck in day one and then also met him again in the semi-finals I don't know. How do you beat how do you be frost last monkey Dory like thinking about that? But I mean, I guess if you go fast and you get all you need like you have I don't know I feel like you just if I'm the frost last my guitar player I just kind of catch your your flacky and then I don't know you and then what do you do the rest of the game? Exactly. That's what I mean that that's my first thought I mean, would you see like a balloon obviously and then we have two copies of Kieran and there's a jet energy So you've got some switching out But even still it still feels bad, I don't know right Yes, he's manually retreat, you know, maybe the debt I have not admittedly did not play this deck at all sure pokey pad came out Maybe it really is just that much more consistent than something like frost last monkey Dory and you can get enough cards set up to where you have multiple wacky's in play on turn two prior to Badoo going into effect or even with the Badoo in play if you can get things set up in such a way that you can Boss the frost lasts a couple of times Maybe that's enough to really just kind of get you over the line if you've got like I don't know I would think that you would need something it's weird because like you can't play battle cage I mean we do see a picnic basket. Maybe that's enough of a deterrent as well You know that coupled with staggering when you're putting these evolutions into play It's just really it feels really awkward because you have to kind of evolve your app lens Almost as soon as possible because they do only have 40 HP, but then Diplin is also pretty fragile So if double frost lasts as ever online, I just feel like your Lord is going to yeah Yeah, it's gonna disintegrate pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know man. I'm gonna I'm surprised that That had that I mean, maybe he just got lucky in those matchups and like they didn't draw well But like maybe it's I mean, I don't know. We'll have to see it's easy Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what he said about it Like if he has a strategy for something like that, but I don't see it maybe Kevin Clemente, I'll come out of retirement and we'll get a lake of rage episode this week that has a guest We need somebody somebody get Kevin on the line and make it happen. Yeah, maybe we'll reach out If you scroll down just a little bit the blood moon or Saloon a deck. Yeah Sebastian. That was pretty cool. Very interesting running That was the terrible cried on yep. Yes, that's just like a big Kangaskhan answer, you know Thank you. It's the revenge attack a lot of Tarot box decks are playing it now to like so if something gets ko'd you Attach a switch to it and it one hit chaos Kangaskhan. I think it does like 160 for the revenge effect One said I'm so 170 so like ko is anything fighting week I feel like in a lot of circumstances blood moon or Saloon is already doing that I guess it's a cornerstone answer as well because it doesn't have an ability so you can move some damage over to the cornerstone and Then ko it but yeah, that's an interesting deck I think this is something where like you've got a lot of what who Tim this is a Tim Danklin Tim Danklin came up with the original concept. I'd say This is kind of a variation Running Ting Lu and the cried on but yeah, 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 Yeah, like the calamitous snowy mountain and vengeful punch was definitely Tim Tim Danklin's kind of I think brainchild originally That's very cool. Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting that this decks stuck around and Done as well as it has think it's like blood moon or saloon It just is a good attacker like the fighting like the baby one Yeah, it just does a lot of damage for not a lot of like maintenance And I think it'll be cool to like this deck doesn't lose a lot going forward as far as I can tell pretty sure it Loses this card But there's other ways to damage You've got risky ruins, I guess it's not as good but it does work But definitely like if you look at post rotation stuff I we're gonna save most of that talk for next week because John has not played any post rotation yet true But I don't know what I'm talking about Lunatone Solrock is still definitely good like fighting gong is obviously really good and we saw a night stretcher Like you do have a lot of the cards here. Do not rotate I mean debate the only real losses are earthen vessel is a pretty big one and superior energy retrieval is not super great as a Loss either but pretty much the rest of the ventral punch also goes away But I think you can kind of live without that I mean if you really absolutely needed to you could play something like I think we have rocky helmet still or something similar There's like this spiky helmet or something I think that damages is too damn it puts two damage counters on right whenever that's what I Figured we had some sort of reflective damage. Yeah, but yeah interesting deck. We'll have to see maybe maybe it'll continue to stick around Maybe somebody will go on a deep run with it in Orlando But the deep deepest run of this event was from Ted Tobin with the guard of war deck Nothing really outlandish in here Like we don't even see the spectre come into play and you know town store in the deck Just a lot of we're back to to TM evo I'm kind of really respecting the dragapult. But other than that, it's just standard Garty like right? I mean, there's no drift loon, but we have the mega diancy. We have the scream tail. We have the bravery charms. It's guard of war Yeah deck. Yeah, it doesn't I don't see anything that sticks out to me as absurd or crazy Two charms is a little bit like that's I guess normal, but you know, some lists weren't running any bravery charm So sure like seems a little bit more but it doesn't really kick like oh my gosh Rick's and that's fine We're at end stage Garty like it's all the same. Yeah, I've seen a lot of discourse this week Again, it comes up all the time There's online discourse about which card game is the most difficult or how difficult different card games are and people talking about Gardevoir is this massively huge brain to deck that only the most skill intensive pilots were able to pilot or they the people who were the most brilliant Pokemon players were able to excel more with this deck than the average every man player would be able to and I Think that that's blowing a little bit of extra smoke up Gardevoir Maybe a little extra smoke up the guard of our players Like pumping them up a bit higher and necessarily they need to obviously Henry Chow is extremely good as a player I don't necessarily think that he is that much better at Gardevoir then well, maybe that's not true I do think he is actually probably better than better at Gardevoir than your average player But that's a pretty easy statement to make but I also think that he would succeed regardless of what deck he was playing So at the same time We've seen multiple different players Be able to succeed with Gardevoir because the deck just has so much raw power and I think that there will be kind of this power vacuum when it rotates Yeah, the death of the Gardevoir is Long overdue at this point. But yeah, I mean, I don't think it's particularly like yeah It doesn't take a lot of skill to pilot really really well Yeah, does that mean that if you're a top Gardevoir you're better than everybody else? No, like that's that's a silly thing to think like I don't know Pokemon wants to be gatekeep you sometimes with like the top decks like the mega absolute box deck People are like oh that that deck you if you if you need to want if you want to play that next week at regionals It's too late. You've missed that boat and like I guess like there's aspects of it that are probably less intuitive I don't know Like it doesn't strike me as like like it's an impossible wall to climb over if you're getting into the game There's a lot of like I don't know if how you feel about it But like if you watch like a new player get into the game they stink for like a year or two even before they even get to the point where like they have the the Processes built in to see the lines to victory and have all the skills that they need to win a tournament I kind of stuff like it takes a while for them like when their first League Cup for the most part, you know And if they're coming over from a different card game those skills translate pretty well Depending on some aspects of it. Like I've known magic players to come into Pokemon and do okay I don't think they're like blowing anybody out of the water, but they're they're solid and I've seen like, you know Hearthstone players do really well. I've seen like I don't know The two I can think of on my head, but usually like yeah I don't think it's all silent off. Like there's a lot of stuff that transfers over from other card games and What we don't need to have it be a contest at the end of the day They can all be like uniquely challenging I know frosted caribou put out a video recently comparing like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon Okay, that was pretty cool. Like she did a whole deep dive into not just like their stereotypes, but also like the actual lore and stories of What organized play looks like for each and what what the competitive game looks like and all that kind of stuff So that was cool. I'd recommend it It's like a what was our for what was the conclusion? Yeah, I don't got time for I don't know give me the cliff notes She interviewed a lot of people I think she painted Yu-Gi-Oh as like the game itself is good But Konami just doesn't want to support it on a competitive level and Pokemon is kind of like the game is Good and Pokemon supports it But she's brought up other aspects of the ways like that The TCG has struggled where you know Other games have been better like the digital client being one where live is just not a good client Remains not a good client. Like I was trying to test today the format for Orlando and I was like Testing with Eric Nance who said hi, by the way Because he's playing in Orlando. Okay, and so he was like I want to test this deck out that I don't really have any games against anybody online Like he's been playing a little bit online on the trainer trials aspect of it. So that's at least an option Yeah, I'm like, yeah I also sure will add you will do a friend a friend request match and the only Format you can play when you send a friend request match is standard. Why why does that why is that? Why why can't we just do an expanded game between two friends? I mean I can give you a reason for that Okay I think that that's because at least Western Pokemon is essentially done with expanded and therefore like doesn't want to acknowledge it Now obviously there was the article they put out last year with Stefan Ivanoff talking about the expanded format Sure, but you know, when's the last time we had an actual expanded event? That's that's okay but like what happens if I want to play against my friend playing GLC or like playing straight up anything other than Stay trainer play trainer trials and hope that you queue into them. That's such a bad solution. I'm not saying it's a good yeah Like you could you could probably do something even if you didn't want to have fully available unlimited or expanded or whatever, you know Mm-hmm. We do have the card pool to support those. Well partially support those formats You have like why can't you do a friend battle with trainer trials as the format, right? I think that should be an option a hundred percent. Yeah, just just have a little drop-down that says select what format you want to play Right just provide the format you already support like it doesn't make so like yeah She picked that apart with live and then like looked at how you night gets no support from organized play I Don't know. I haven't watched her video. So I don't know her full take on it I don't I don't know enough about you night to have an opinion on that or like I don't know how well researched it was But from my understanding like unite Scott it has a competitive circuit and it is laid out and structured as like an eSports circuit So it doesn't have necessarily, you know weekly local events that players or teams can go participate in but there They've got it structured more look similarly to like League of Legends LCS format where you have teams from each region that are kind of in the competitive circuit and then maybe once or twice a year there are promotion games available for other teams that they'll participate in this kind of play in thing and get the Opportunity to earn a spot in that professional circuit going into the next year or next season Yeah, like again, I don't know a whole lot but like I'm sure there's more to it But she brought up how pockets kind of just falling off really hard Kind of hard argue with that. I mean I still like open packs, but like the competitive game itself, you know, it's kind of dead Yeah, like the online tournament scenes gone No, it just a hundred percent disappeared like that was being fully pushed by like Ursa day and Yeah, another person and that the one guy like disappeared Ursa day shifted to a riftbound Mm-hmm to where she was actually like on an official cast for them One of their big like regional events. So, you know good for bad for pocket. They yeah pocket burned some bridges It sounds like like when they did like the twitch streams like they did a whole You know, like if like yeah, they did like seven promoters for that Okay, instead of opening it up to whoever like it's not that hard to do twitch drops, you know Yeah Yeah Why limit it to seven and then all seven of them were English-speaking casters like they had no pull into other markets like you know Brazil or Europe or even Japan, but I'm sure that's crazy. I don't know how big twitches in Japan, but yeah, that's true But still not, you know It's just like they've kind of fumbled the bag with some of the stuff and I'm not I'm not saying that I would have done A better job or I know what poke money's and doesn't need because I don't I don't really get I'm not into that aspect of it, but like It's tough. Like I don't know. It's there's the games growing a lot in the last few years It's at a point where everybody knows what Pokemon is We've had like multiple booms through, you know The release of pocket and I think it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next six months I'm with Pokemon whether it'll keep being boom I mean, I imagine when the anniversary set comes out, that'll be another boom right now It's a little bit of a little with the perfect order the set hasn't been selling quite like they thought it might be or it just It just doesn't have as many desirable cards like right The fact that Meowth is like the poster child in a lot of ways and Zygarde and Zygarde I mean, we've seen Zygarde sets sit on shelves since they printed Zygarde sets Zygarde was one of the premier Pokemon in the 30th anniversary commercial during the Super Bowl John do that's such a plant like you can't tell me that that guy before before he agreed to Film it like his favorite Pokemon was like, all right. Yeah, he's huge We need somebody to plug like a poke like the legendary from Zia What what's the legendary again? Zygarde fine. Just put it out there complete form. Yes complete form, please Yeah, I don't know man. I it is interesting I noticed I wanted to target this weekend and I had to actually go to Walmart on a separate occasion after the set had released and saw cards on the shelves in both stores when From the best of my knowledge like we've had people camping out at both of these stores like taking product off the shelf immediately as soon as it gets stocked and Yeah, because this doesn't have the big chase card doesn't have Gengar doesn't have Dragonite doesn't have Pikachu doesn't have Charizard It gets the luxury. It doesn't have Mewtwo You know, it has the luxury being able to sit on the shelf and I don't know we'll have to see I'm assuming from a competitive Perspective I think that that's cool because I think that it makes the game more accessible When people can find product on store shelves and they aren't having to do things on a secondary market It's made the price of pokey pad crash. So that's nice. Yeah for sure that me out this kind of sitting up there It's kind of like the pheasant dip in this price range right now like eight ten bucks But you know, it'll come down at some point at the end of the day It'll probably end up being like a four to five dollar card. It'll get released in like a trainer tool kit sometime You know, but bite the bullet by your two to four me outs and you'll play it the entire time that it's legal So yeah, do not worry about that. It'll be good for three years That's one of those things that'll just there's like unless they print a card with the same text that does something better That has you know, there's no better attack or more HP but it'll be interesting to see if they do more like what is the Ability text where it's hints at that you could run other Pokemon with the same kind of oh, yeah Like last ditch in Last ditch X and it says you can only use one last ditch ability per turn So that does imply that there would be other last ditch abilities But we've also had a p-dub in format for three years that implied that there could be an in pheasant ex and that hasn't played Out yet. So yeah, I said the last ditch thing is probably far more likely to happen than in pheasant ex because I'd say so You know, it's in pheasant like what's good? What's it gonna do? But that's enough kind of beating around the bush I do think we obviously have Orlando coming up this week. You're gonna be in attendance playing for in your first Over a year. Oh my gosh Yeah, I'm sure the rest off hard. So I haven't played in a I see or regionals since NAIC in 2024 so it's almost two years now that it's been since I've played in a dead event I made day two at NAIC that year I played I guess it ended up just being the Tord deck. Like I saw a deck on limitless that looked really cool It was the lost zone Dragapult deck that I guess Tord had put out in his mattify group or whatever you want to call it And it was doing well on limitless and I'm like that looks fun I'll try that out and I'm like this is fun You get to do both recon directive flower selecting and you say belie and use dragapult like that seems pretty sick And so that was a fun deck it wasn't actually all that good competitively if I'm honest, you know, I cheesed a lot of wins with unfair stamp and say belie and Countercatcher like I just kind of ran through players after they took four prizes You just okay unfair stamp and then yeah kind of just pick their board apart with say belie and then dragapult It wasn't you know, the best deck ever but it was fun and I did okay date one I only had one loss and it was to Michael Bramwatt playing a Pidgeot Charizard deck that was just a better deck and a better person piloting It's not all that mad about it And then day two like my deck got exposed for what it was or it was just like, okay This is this isn't a top tier deck, but it was fun. But yeah since then I've been judging non-stop I Just it's tough to like make the time to test that it takes a lot to prepare for stuff as a judge But even more so as a player The amount of games you have to play in order to get your minds in the spot where like you're able to really like feel Confident going into a tournament for me at least is like way higher than the amount of interactions I need to have as a judge or whatever to like feel confident as a judge going into the tournament And I'm at the point now where I'm feeling pretty good about my deck I'm leaning. Well, I don't think I'm leaning at this point I am gonna play frost last monkey Dory unless a meteor like of a different deck hits me the night before or something like that But my list is I can share with it. I guess since our viewer base is so dedicated. They'll appreciate this I guess but uh See if I can I mean that's the wave now, right like full transparency post your list online before the event Yeah, that'd be fun to talk about. Let me pull it up Nobody has to go limitless check you John though. Your list will be fully publicly available on the Internet more One or two cards, but like the majority of it. No. No, you you have to commit to this Have to like as we're recording I said, right it too, right? But I will say I think that you choosing to play a spread deck, you know It sounds like it's kind of right up your alley It's considering the last deck that you played at a major event was also a very spread oriented Countercounter your guy place a bunch of damage counters on your bench I almost would say talking about that like lost zone drag up hold you almost have too many choices when you're doing that we're doing flower selecting and recon directive and Cholrus and you're trying to figure out all these different things and at the end of the day Realizing that you've got a bunch of extra like bloat carts in your deck when you could be playing iron hands instead Yeah Yeah, something like that. So yeah, I'll go over it real quick. So let me just share my screen Okay, so that's pretty much it so I Kind of looked at a couple different lists, but this one is primarily like the seniors first place list from Houston, I think I'm not mistaken with a couple modifications. I like blood moon Ursula more than I like the mega frost laughs It's probably wrong. Like I'm not even gonna pretend like it's the right choice I just I don't know like the the idea that my opponent can play around my ability to close out a game Just doesn't really sit well with me Like I like being able to just guarantee that I have a knockout at the end of the game and like a lot of times I want to I don't know and then attack with blood moon. So like that is kind of why I've stayed on that I'm not running tingloo And that's like one card that I keep going back and forth about the I guess spread 30 and discard a stadium tingloo I think my rationale has been that the games where I Have the thought in my head like tingloo would be good here I end up winning like I don't think that I lose those games enough to where I need to put tingloo in You know It's more like a win more card than an actual like shift a bad matchup into a good matchup if that makes sense So that's kind of my rationale with it. I Also haven't tested a huge amount against like Garty I have played the games against it I think the item lock carries that matchup for the most part But it can get scary if they get like a bunch of psychic in the discard pile turn one That just becomes like really really difficult to deal with if they go right, you know Earthen vessel secret box discard three psychic and it's like, okay, so that's tough Shamans an auto include I think and you know Even if it doesn't come up as all that much the match like this card does swing matchups, you know Like oh, yeah, it's yeah the ends or arc that's playing the Darmanitan Like you lose if you don't run it that kind of stuff pseudo-voodoo. I don't know man, like It's another card where like it's bought me a couple turns throughout me playing this deck to where I'm like, okay You know I needed to like I have a stabilization turn or just to build up a damage turn and you can just get away with like Pseudo-voodoo bring up a monkey Dory even if they can attack into pseudo-voodoo It's means that they're not attacking with something else, you know I've found out that the more I play this deck the more I just want to item lock with Badoo It really just feels like 99% of the time. That's the correct thing to do and then you're only really I'm Deviating from that when stuff goes wrong or you need to close the game out essentially like the Devo the blood moon Those are just there for like the last time you're attacking Essentially you still want to Devo because I guess certain decks like the dragapult deck you want to Devo maybe multiple times and You do need to have access to it. So like if I have to get rid of one or It's prized that feels really bad because there's just matchups that if I don't have access to Devo I've just lose that matchup. You know what I mean? I'm like like golden go like if I can't Devo the golden go I definitely just lose that and that one you might want to actually Devo a couple times So and then the two countercatchers, I've seen lists that run just the one I think two is pretty necessary Like if you want to get any value out of pseudo-voodoo I think you probably need to run two I've switched off from earthen vessel to energy switch and off of ultra ball into a nest ball because I'm not running anything. That is I don't need a mess. I don't need an ultra ball I don't really want to thin out stuff. I don't want to discard resources earthen vessel There were times where I'm like man It'd be nice to have earthen vessel here because there's times like I run three dark energy instead of just two That you can just pile two dark in your hand and then you know Arvin for earthen vessel and then the next turn you attach it one dark the next turn you attach that the other dark and then You play a different supporter. That feels pretty nice mm-hmm, and then I have cut an Arvin added a third bravery charm and Cut Hilda and added professors research I just wanted more draw like Hilda was good But it's less good if you're not running the mega frost laughs and you don't really need a lot of search of evolution Pokemon like the only one you're running is the frost laughs get the energy is nice Like there's times where it's nice to be able to like secret box for Hilda and then Hilda and get the like prism energy You need to use sudo wudo. So that was nice, but I'm just like well, you know, so be it Like I'll just have to dig and find sudo wudo if I have to go that route so I Then I think research just has better utility as a draw supporter like you just want to see more cards sometimes So that was my thought but uh, I'm interested to see like I know you've tested a lot with frost laughs decks You know not necessarily this variant But I know you've talked with hunter Butler and have had kind of conversations about his build and where he's gone with it I mean, I'm you can pick it apart and call me stupid for not ring tingle or something like that I definitely want to hear what you have to say about it Well the tingle in particular like you mentioned that you hadn't played much against Garty And I think that that's one of the matchups where it pulls the most weight Like it's kind of the reason that you're able to win that game more often You know If you there's a couple of other cards like a we've seen the LGM Could also be a pretty big one in that matchup in particular being able to move the darks off of one of their monkey Dories and then you pile a bunch of damage onto a different one another thing that I don't know. No, it doesn't work We only play three dark. I was thinking like could you? play a TM turbo energize in here. There was something that I had never tried. Yeah, that would be cool. Would it actually be function? They probably not. One card that I wanted to ask you about because we talked about potentially including it. And then I think we had a little bit of a discussion after the show last week about why people were cutting it. And I wasn't sure if you'd actually tried it at all. Was the frillish just because you set up a frillish with a charm is pretty strong. Yeah, I I think it's good. I hadn't really tested with it. I have a friend in Richmond who is on this deck who's also playing in Orlando. That is all on frillish. He loves frillish. He also runs like Iron Bundle. Hmm. Which I think is interesting. And I think it makes more sense if you run frillish. But I also I don't know, like it's good in the mirror. It's really good against gold and go because they don't have a way to clear it. But those two alone, like I think more often than not, I just want to be using Badoo. Mm hmm. Frillish takes up a monkey attachment. Yes, it can get stuck. Like if I'm playing in the mirror, I don't know. Like there's times where frillish has the three retreat cost. And even if you're item locking and that's what you want to be doing, if like they have an LGM and they move the energy off of it, then it feels really bad if they, you know, it's stuck in the active. One card I've thought about putting in here is like an enhanced hammer. But I also think that's just like a win more cards. Like there's really not a lot of scenarios that I've come up with that. I'm like, oh, if I had an enhanced hammer, I just won this game. Yeah. But I mean, in a similar vein, like Sander Wojcik's been playing monkey Dorifrost last for a while, even before Pokipap is legal. And he's actually been a proponent of playing crushing hammer in the day. And just similar thing, like you'd get rid of the neo upper or the luminous energy against Dragapult. But you also then all have the potential to get rid of a dark energy in the Gardevoir matchup. And that's where it really kind of diversifies itself, pulls its weight a bit more than maybe the enhanced hammer would. I just I think the big thing that you might miss is the Ting Lu. But it's all you know, it's a mileage may vary card because it depends on how many Gardevoir do you hit. And it also has some some merit attacking with it into Goldango because you Ting Lu two times in that matchup and your Devo is live to just win you the game. Yeah. And that's valid. I think the biggest problem I had was the games that I am not item locking feel really, really bad. Like even if I'm like, OK, Ting Lu and they're like, cool, Arvin for like now I have items. So now I can play my picking basket and just negate your whole turn. Or like now I can just get back all my stuff. I needed that. You've been slowly whittling away resource wise to this point. You know, I put it in and played against Garde and like use Ting Lu to try to build up like some damage. And they're like, OK, cool. Now I have full access and can just discard six psychic energy this turn. And like now I can't win. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's not bad. I'm not saying that, but it definitely felt like the games where it felt like, oh, that's a cool tech in like you do it. I don't know. Maybe I just don't have enough sample size with Ting Lu and against Garde to like really have a conclusive opinion. But the couple of games I played with it were just maybe I misplayed like because it's hard to like judge when to use Ting Lu, when to deviate from your like buddy strategy. You know, if you Iona them and Ting Lu, like that's better value. But then you also have a small hand size and then it's hard to get back into the stadiums to like actually get decent value out of Ting Lu and just hitting for 30 over and over again. And that's that's terrible. That's not into something that has fighting resistance. Like that feels miserable. So that's tough to like. That's where you also like I've seen lists that do play Ting Lu. They play four stadiums a lot of times. Sure. The other kind of potential use case for Ting Lu, like battle cage has seen a little bit of a resurgence in this format. So being able to discard battle cage off of a pokey pad versus just having to raw find a stadium. There's potential merit to that as well. Is that a good enough reason to include another bad starter? Maybe, maybe not. It just kind of depends on what you want to tech for, I guess, at the end of the day, right? Yeah, I'm going to. I think at this point, I've put enough energy into like not running Ting Lu that I'm probably just going to send it without it. I just hope for the best. Like, I'm sure we'll see. It'll be interesting next Tuesday or whenever we record. Hopefully it'll be next Tuesday. But it'll be interesting to see like my final impressions of it. It's like, oh, yeah, I lost this matchup because I didn't run Ting Lu because they got their battle cage to stick and then I couldn't do anything for the rest of the game. But even then, like, I don't know, I'm not really that worried about battle cage like there's only a couple of decks that are running it. And it's usually they're like Alakazam. And like, I mean, I'm not going to sweat about Alakazam. Sure. Or they run like one battle cage and I can usually deal with one battle cage. You know what I mean? So it's not it's not enough to go. I think the only other semi popular deck that's been including it has been Charizard. And I also wouldn't I also wouldn't really be worried about Charizard. No, I'm not worried about Charizard with this deck. Not to be. It's there are times where they can maneuver it, but it's not too bad. And Golden Goal, like to say you need Ting Lu for Golden Goal. I just put two Frost Slash in play if I can. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you just run through them like no need. Need is not the right word. I think that it just makes it easier. And to your credit, like you said, in that matchup, it feels like a win. It feels like a win more card. I think that the one the one where it definitely feels strong is or can feel strong is Gardevoir. And then it also like the reason you include it is for Gardevoir in the reason that you feel OK, including it is because it is also decent into Dragapult Goldango. I mean, Zorak and I guess theoretically like Alakazam and other like niche decks as well. It's basically any stage two deck, really any evolving deck. Ting Lu is actually pretty good. Like it's a strong attack as far as like spreading 30 is not nothing. No, I mean, it's it's pretty strong. And like the secondary effect of discarding stadium, like you said, does have utility. But yeah, we'll see. So I'm sending this list pretty much more or less like three cards different. And then I might make some tweaks tonight or whatever. I don't know. I still have I'm playing in a league challenge tomorrow with the deck. And so like that'll help kind of give me some thoughts and opinions going into this. And then, yeah, I'm probably just going to have to like send it like Thursday and Friday. I don't think I want to play much Pokemon. If I'm honest, like I've played enough. I need to take some time to like, you know, hang out with my wife and travel to Florida. And I think I get into like Florida around like 11 so that I don't want to spend time testing that late at night. No, absolutely not. That's not worth your time. You go to bed. Yeah, for sure. You know, we'll hope for the best. And I'm hoping at least to make day two. That's kind of my goal. You know, do I want to have a deeper run? Of course. But I think day two is kind of realistic. Like that's that's not. And if I if I get into the point where I'm, you know, on the winning and I think that's pretty good. But I want to see a top 32 out of you this week. OK, yes, sir. That's that's how to represent the podcast. Yeah, I honestly put a lot of pressure on myself, even though I don't play all that much to do all these events when I do play. OK. And I'm like, you know, all right. This is like me getting ready because like I love playing. I love I love playing at these events. There's nothing like it. Like I'm not an athletic kid. I've always been kind of chunky and asthmatic. So like this is as close as I'll ever get to like competing at a high level in sports or something like that. And I love that stuff, man. I'm a very like I don't try to be a mean competitive player. I want to play because I love I just love the game. I think, yeah, I've always since I've started playing, it just really always wanted to be the best player I could be. Not that the best player ever, but the best player I know I can be. I think that's that's that's the challenge I set for myself is like if I have this amount of free time and I feel like I can get to this level, I want to get to this level. The chips fall where they lay. As long as I feel good about how I played, I think that's always how I approach events. But I think that's usually generally healthy, you know? Oh, yeah. I mean, you figure you even look at people who are winning tournament runs and if the best players when they have their tournament runs can still tell you that during that run, they made mistakes. And sometimes you get bailed out by your deck. Sometimes you get bailed out by your opponent's deck failing or just being a favorable matchup, sometimes like being a good medical. Maybe you are playing crystal this weekend. You know, if you hit the favorable matchups, good for you. Like that, that luck is always definitely part of a success in a tournament run, regardless of how far you go. And as much as people do get salty about, oh, I only lost because I paired against this deck three times, that happens like that's that's part of it. So being as prepared as you can is definitely important. But I would say, don't put too much pressure on yourself. You know, go in, do what you can, control what you can. And, you know, be what is that thing? I think it's from like a control the things you can to be willing to accept the things you cannot or something like that. Yeah, sure. I don't know. It's a good mindset. I mean, yeah, I think that it's. I hope to. Yeah, at the end of the day, I won't be really sad if I scrub out, you know, I'll still have like lots of other opportunities to play Pokemon that weekend and hang out with people I don't really get to see and cube and do stuff other than just playing the main event. Like, I won't be sad for long. I'll be a little bit disappointed that I didn't do better, but I'll recover. You know, and I mean, I don't know. I'm not I'm not really planning on doing much in Orlando, if I'm honest. I'm probably just going to be like full Pokemon degenerate. So we'll see where that goes. But yeah, that's that's that's that's that's that's what makes me happy. I'm not going to apologize for it. So I'll have a lot of fun cubing and hopefully hanging out with people I don't see every week, you know. Sure. Hopefully. I don't know. I know you're doing stuff and something Saturday. How's your weekend look like? Do you think you're going to be able to get over to Orlando at any point? I don't know. I mean, I did. I ended up like refunding my registration, so I don't even have a badge currently. So I like we like you said, I've got plans like most of the day Saturday for myself and then, you know, watching or watching my own child Saturday evening while my wife and son go out because they have plans. And then I think we've got some like family Easter stuff for Sunday like this. That makes sense. Rather unfortunate time to have a regional schedule, but it happens. It is what it is. And then, yeah, I don't know. It's still a little unfortunate or like a little bitter not being able to play this weekend. I think that, you know, I really enjoyed the format. I think that there was a lot of potential for like we've seen these sub top tier archetypes be successful. And I think that there is room for that to continue to be the trend this weekend. So with that being said, I want to close things out with a few questions for you. John, you've still been preparing in this format. I would like to know what do you think will be the highest placing non first page metagraphic deck? So basically what is going to be the high? You could say what is the best our highest placing best of the rest deck? So we'll exclude Dragapult, Gardevoir, Goldengo, Zoraar, Grimmsnarl. And what would a sixth deck be? I'd have to go back and look at a metagraphic for this. Yeah, I'm looking at I'm trying to pull up a metagraphic for what they use for the stream. Give me one sec. Let's see for Houston. OK, top six decks in Houston were still Dragapult, Zoraar, Goldengo, Gardevoir, Grimmsnarl and Charizard. And then when we got to phase two, Crustle got included. Well, instead of Charizard, but I would say from phase. So we'll go off of that phase one thing. Charizard is still included. Well, I'm going to be biased and just pick my deck for... You're going to pick... Hey! Frostlouse, Muffidore. I mean, it's dead. It got second. Alex Smansky got second. And I mean, it was on the outside looking in in Seville. Like, you know, there was one, I think, was it, let's say, like right outside. It was in the top 16. Yeah. You know, one champion so good. Definitely a good pick. Definitely a solid choice. I didn't really have an answer prepared for this one, so I'm just going to not pick the same deck you did. And I'll say Festival Lead. OK. Well, we'll see that up there again. I don't think that anything like Raging Bolt, Sarah Ledge, Joltec Box, like none of that stuff is going to do well. Nobody's going to play my silly Yanmega deck, so it won't be up there. Unfortunately. Yeah. That is what it is. So we've got you down for Frostlouse, Muffidore and myself for Festival Lead for highest placing non first page metagraphic deck. Next would be what do you think the highest place in Crustle will be this weekend? To loop it all back to the beginning of the show. It's really tough to say. I don't think it'll have quite the generational run that it had the special event over the weekend. OK. I'm going to just say top 64. I don't think it's bad, but I think that's probably about as high as it gets. Like, I think people know how to deal with it or will have an idea of how to deal with it at this point. And if they don't, do you think people will be respecting it then? Like, is that kind of the stance you're taking? I at least have somewhat of a game plan going against it. Like, even if they don't really make drastic changes to their deck, I would say that the vast majority of top players will have an idea of how to deal with Crustle or like, you know, maybe one or two cards if they can't fit it in there. Like if it's Golden Go, you're running Megalopony. If it's Grimmsnarl, maybe adding a bravery charm for like that doesn't really change anything. Like maybe adding a second Badoo or something like that to like help that match up. I don't know. Make it more like a Froslass Monkey Dory deck or something like that. OK, I don't know. I don't know what you do exactly, but I think. At this point, like it's it's interesting, like I say all that, and then I can see also a world where people just don't respect it and it just pops off and hits good matchups and hits three Zoroarks in a row and does really well. I don't know. I'll probably eat these words or something like that. But top 64 for now is where I think that's the level of respect I give it. Yeah, I still, again, don't think that it's a super great Pokemon deck. But I do think that, you know, we've seen the last two tournaments. People haven't been fully respectful of it. So I do think we will see one get some money and we'll see a top 32 out of somebody. But then they'll hit John and he will push them. He'll push them out of the way with his Froslass Monkey Dory deck, or maybe they'll run into Drew Cannett playing festival lead. And, you know, I'll get all of my predictions will come true all at once. Then the last thing that I was going to ask would be, do you think? So we've seen Mega Absolvox win an event in this format. We've seen Goldango win an event in this format. We've seen Gardevoir win an event in this format. that. And I think the other one, San Juan was won by Sarah Ledge. Not really super relevant for this. But between Gardevoir and actually, I'm going to change the question I was gonna ask you. What do you think will be the highest placing deck that is rotating this year? So that gives you Goldengo, Charizard, Gardevoir. We can lump Joltik box into that because they're losing Moridon and Iron Hands. That's a tough one. I think between me, it's between Goldengo and Gardevoir for me. I don't think Charizard's in a really good spot right now, just with how much grass and like, yeah, just Triangle Pulse around. And I think it'll probably be Gardevoir if I had to guess between those two. Not that I don't think, like, I think Goldengo's not in the worst spot right now. People are still not respecting it. But it's just a little too, like, I like the list that, what's the agency list that... Oh, Josh Frank? Yeah, that you have the Iona, you have the secret box to be able to find that. So I like that aspect of it a little bit where you're able to like, okay, I know this hurts me, but I also need some way of disrupting their hands. They can't just sit on whatever they win the game with. I think I could see, like, it's really close between those two decks, but I'll just give the edge to Gardevoir. I think there's just a more loyal fan base. And like you said earlier in the podcast, those are the biggest brain players are the ones that have played Gardevoir, right, Aaron? That's the public opinion, right? And I'd be hard-pressed to argue with that. I do think, like you said, the general Goldengo list, like the agency that people have attempted to get themselves outside of Josh Frank's list has been the kind of surge of popularity, legacy energy in the deck to offset the price trade. I don't think that's enough to really push the deck over the line. I think we'll maybe see one Goldengo in ASIM this weekend, but I do think we'll see at least one Gardevoir make its way into top cut proper, whether it's Henry Chaoban or maybe somebody even different remains to be seen. But I do think that we'll have at least one of them in top eight. I don't know if I really see Garde winning this event. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you which deck I really think is going to take the whole event down. But I do think that of those rotating decks, Joltik box is typically not played by a high enough caliber of player, not to disparage people that do play Joltik, but typically, like it's a relatively straightforward deck. People do have game plans into it. People know how to play around it. It's a deck that ends up faltering unless you draw your, you know, if you can save your Prime Catcher or you draw boss slash Arvin off of the Iona to two, that's inevitably going to hit you. And you just end up crumbling as a result of that. Charizard, like you said, is really relatively poorly positioned. We've got a lot of grass decks that have popped up. The Zoroark matchup got worse. The Froslass decks are way up and also performing very well, which you just do very poorly into. And Dragapult got Pokiped, which just makes that matchup even worse. So Charizard definitely not going to be the winner there. So again, same logical trail that you kind of went down. We've got Goldingo and Gardevoir, and I'd be hard pressed to not give it to Gardevoir here. So boring, but I'm going to agree with you on that. Fair enough. But I mean, that'll be interesting to see exactly what happens. Like I would never predicted what happened in Seville. So it'll be really interesting to see if people come out with, hey, I've got my world's invite. I've already won originals. Let's just play something wacky and crazy for the last one of the year for the last tournament for rotation. So that'd be fun to see if we get some cool wacky decks that nobody was expecting. And I'm excited to kind of play in it and have boots on the ground reporting for y'all next week and hopefully talk about a decent tournament run. I'm not going to bore you with sour grapes if it goes bad, but I'll definitely try to, you know, talk a little bit about my experience and how it is playing versus judging and all that kind of stuff. So hopefully y'all enjoy that. I mean, yeah, thanks for listening. Perfect. Thank you all very much. As John said, we appreciate everybody that listens to the episode, even you Bugo. So hit us up. If you have more comments, hit us up in the comment section of Spotify, or hopefully I can actually get this week's episode up on YouTube and not have any video issues this time. But you can find us over there as well. Or you can follow us on socials. All of the links to those will be in the description of the episode below. And John and I will see you guys next time we are able to record and see you on the battle frontier. Have a good week.