#285 The New Umbreon Chase & NAIC Predictions

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I'm good. I'm just, you know, I. I was prepping the whole like last week for our new thing that we're doing in just like a couple of hours from the recording. But it'll be. Our stream will be done for this week, but I've been prepping for that and then I've also been prepping a lot for the Riftbound regional qualifier this weekend. Yeah, that's in Utrecht. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. What deck are you gonna play, Lee? Sin? I am playing Diana. Oh, Diana. Okay. Yeah, Big brain deck. But over in China over the weekend, the Chinese player revealed a. An infinite combo deck where you can win not on turn one, but you can win in one turn, go from zero to all of your points in one turn, go through your entire deck, get infinite energy, infinite power. Yeah. And so my friend came over and we made a little video highlighting his adjustments to that deck. Man, I'm so happy. Pokemon does not have crazy infinite combos like this because. Oh yeah, yeah, Pokemon. Pokemon doesn't have a infinite combo to win in one turn. Also doesn't have, you know, exodia. Play five cards and you just win the game. Or no, you know, like Goldie. Goldie, Roger. You block and you lose. You know, a lot of other card games have these like kind of auto win scenarios that can happen, but Pokemon not. I guess Pokemon's only thing is just like wiping out the whole board in one turn, which is not as easy as you think it is. Pokemon has had instant wins, if you remember on the unknowns. Unknown yeah, Unknown hand was one that was actually viable. People actually did win games with that. But yeah, it's, it's very, very uncommon for Pokemon to do an instant win. And I, you know, they're very old school. They like to keep the, the game and the wind conditions very like. Nah, you're gonna take three turns minimum. So. Yeah, we want you to play the game. That's right. Right. We don't want you to, to go too fast. I am still recovering from vacation over on the east coast. Took a trip to north wedding and Commodore with my girlfriend, you know, getting a little vacation in because she has a real job, unlike me. I just have a fun job. So it was much needed. But the time difference, I'm not used to Eastern time. And then when you get adjusted to that, you go back to west and it's, it's miserable, it's. It's tough. So waking up way too early and falling asleep way too early. But I'm ready for today. I know there's a lot of cool stuff that happened over the weekend, including special event Turin and then as Sean mentioned after this. So this will already be public on the live stream every Monday night. Oh, I guess North American time. Yeah. It's Tuesday morning for you right now? No. Or Tuesday morning. It's kind of. Or actually it's Monday night. It's Monday night. Europe Monday morning. You like noon? It'll be noon every Monday. I guess we could just say every Monday we're going to be streaming some retro format. We're doing a 30 year anniversary playing every single year of the world championships or what was equivalent to that. You know, the first couple years of the game there were no world championships. They were summer showdowns, they were called. And then in Covid they had the players Cup. So we're going to play in every single one of those formats. We're gonna see between Sean and I who is the better overall Pokemon player and where I am going to keep score. At least on who is winning. We're not trying to counter pick each other because we are very public with each other on what our deck lists are and stuff like that. Because Sean is doing a lot of, a lot of cool. We don't. Yeah. It's just no mirrors. Yeah. But I am gonna be. I have a variety of decks, at least for this first one I have a Venusaur deck. I have a typhlosion deck. Yes. And then I have. What's my third deck? It's like a psychic mewtwo clefairy clefable kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, it's got a. It's. I don't know. All I know is my typhlosion deck has 21 fire energies. And I'm like, what the heck is this deck? But anyways, that is. That is going to be on our YouTube channel exclusively. So make sure to go check out the YouTube channel if you're not there already. And there'll also be individual videos of the year that will be posted if you miss the live streams. But the live streams will be public vods for you to watch. But anyways, let's go into the actual news for the Metapod podcast that happened this week. The first one being that the 30th celebration boxes were revealed, and they feature Espeon EX, Umbreon EX, and Pikachu EX. This is a little product that's coming out, I believe, in Japan. Unsure if it'll come out within the US entirely, but we can expect a lot of these cards to come out in the US in some form or fashion. And the big headliners, as I mentioned, Pikachu Umbreon and espeon, there's actually two different Pikachu EXs in this future. What are they called? Future Futuristic Rares. Futuristic Rares. And like the. The monochrome style of them. Sean, there's two different versions of Pikachu. Do you want to go over these? Yeah, yeah, I'll go over them real quick. There is. I don't know how to describe the difference between them, because they're both just called Pikachu ex, but. But one of them, one is Light and one is Dark. Right? But they're not called Dark and Light Pikachu, but I think that's how everybody's gonna have to refer to them. But the Light Pikachu EX, they're both 190hp lightning types. They both have a single Energy and a triple Energy attack. The first one for a single colorless Pika Pika parade. Search your deck for as many basic Pokemon as you like. Put it on your bench and then shuffle. So this is basically precious Trolley as an attack, which is really. I know in certain decks, I think it's really, really strong. I would have loved to have seen this attack be one that you could do on your first turn. Going first, that's my only. That's like my only nod to the design team, as I was like, you want. If you really want people using this ex, this tiny ex 190 is so little, and it's going to give up two prizes, so. But then the second attack. Lightning. Lightning. Colorless. 200 damage. Discard all energy. I don't know. This is kind of a, a write off attack in my opinion. Like. Yeah, yeah. I mean this is, this is meant to be just like a card that is produced that is fun. It's going to look very generic. It's going to look. I'm sure the foiling will be crazy. But yeah, it's. I don't know. I wonder how these will actually go over. Like we've seen Jake, how the gold cards are not actually that popular and people really gravitate towards the scene that's depicted in illustration rares. And so I do wonder if this Pikachu is going to be seen as like a, you know, something to chase. I mean it will because stonks. But like if actual like long term collectors are going to be like deep in on these futuristic rares or not. I feel like it's interesting because they almost remind me of like Full Arts. Yeah, right. Where it's like a Pokemon and then a like colored style behind it. So it's like an upgrade to Full Art Ex's, I think. But overall like I'm not totally sold on it. I think I need to see it in person to be able to really like get the hype around like the futuristic stuff. Because there is as you're mentioning, a lot of potential for like some insane foiling, some insane, you know, design texturing you can even see on Poke beach with some of these cards. Like some of the potential texturing that can go on with the different energies that are flying out behind the Pikachu. Right. It's kind of interesting. What I'm also really curious about is the 30th anniversary logo is. I'm sure it's foil blue and yeah, green, blue and red. Which is kind of odd. I, I don't love it, but I'm guessing that it will look better as a physical print that it's just some sort of foiling effect that they're going to do. But yeah, I wonder if it'll denote these like futuristic rares. It does. That specific color pattern on that is for the futuristic rares. Everything else just has a yellow Pikachu. Because there's also, if you like look at and we'll get to the other Pikachu ex, I promise. Hold on a sec. But the, if you look at the Pikachu Ex, specifically one, it notes that it's a promo. So it's going to be at a promo at least in Japanese. But there's no identifier of what rarity it is, I think. Well, the promo has the rarity, the promo has mp. But the Mewtwo and the Mew were labeled as F A R, I believe futuristic art or something. Yeah. Kind of like the attack Pokemon had their own thing. I'm so. I'm so Boomer, you know, don't know any of this stuff anymore. But Pikachu Ex, the other one, the Dark Pikachu Ex is what we're going to call it. Not officially named Dark. It is a basic 190 HP Pokemon. Very much the same thing as the other Pikachu in that sense. Right. Even has one retreat cost and is fighting weak. Its first attack is one Lightning Energy. Shocking Fever. You may attach as many basic energy cards from your hand to your Pokemon in any way you like. I like this attack. Right. If you just have a bunch of energies. We have ways to get energies in the format. You know, that's a. That's a pretty interesting one to do. But it is a 190 HP2 prize Pokemon that's sitting in the Active that can get knocked out pretty easily. So I wish this was also kind of a first attack. I think that this is not terrible if you are running either Energy Search Pro. Yeah. So say you're running that with a bunch of energy or, you know, I'm trying to think of what else exists. Like there's the wailord that's coming out that has the new supporter that puts 4 energy on and ends your turn. If you had another way to consistently get a lot of energy out of your deck in one turn. I actually think that this attack, like it may be okay to give up two prizes if you set yourself up energy wise for the rest of the game. Like if that's what you can manage, then like maybe it's fine. Especially because we're in some sort of like terraformat still where you can have like multiple different energies that you need on a Pokemon. This can be a really easy way to be able to get just a ton of energies on it. Could also similar to. What was it? T. Tm. Tm. What was that? TM that attached energy. Turbo Energized. Yeah, Turbo energized. Just like with Mega Kangaskhan or Mega Absol or whatever. Some of those Pokemon that need a couple more energies to be able to get rocket and rolling. This could be a way to just get those energies in that acceleration and then has the same. Well, actually does not have the same attack. Lightning lightning colorless is thunder 200 damage does 30 to itself. So anyway, I think these are not that great. It's going to be nice, hopefully at least in Japanese, that they're promos. So maybe they won't be as expensive if you're a Japanese promo collector. But there are some other products that are in this. The Espeon ex and Umbreon EX 30 30th Celebration Premium Deck. Said this was posted a while ago, but now we have official images and things like that. We know what it's going to contain. Two 60 card decks with special illustration rares of Espeon ex or Umbreon EX. It's going to retail about $39 USD or 2,600 yen if you want to do that conversion for any other currency. And I think these cards are also like not that good in terms of a competitive sense. I don't exactly know what they do. Yeah, not, not really playable, but they're promos. So hopefully, you know, these won't be as expensive as you'd think with like the moon Bury on and the Sun Brion and all those. Well, in recent years, I mean, I'm sure this will be scalped all. Heck, I have to mention the, the Umbreon look, the, the espeon has an attack 30 for each Pokemon you have in play. For Psychic, Colorless, it's all right, but you're really capping out. Even with the stadium area zero, you're capping out at 270, which isn't bad for two. But I actually think the Umbreon EX is potentially playable. It does 100 damage. But if your opponent's active has any damage counters, it does 140 more. So you're looking at 240. We have plenty of ways to put damage counters. Mega Greninja, Monkey Dory, you know, whatever. There's a billion different ways. So 240 for two and needing that like they both are theoretically playable as like part of a bigger strategy. But what I like is that if you really like this art and these cards, these are most likely going to be in our set in English, meaning you're gonna have to pull them or buy them. So they're going to be very expensive. But if you just like the card and want the art, you can get it in Japanese. Because a $40 promo box, while it will be popular, probably means that the prices for these will be much lower than the English versions. Oh yeah, I'm sure they'll be much, much lower than the English version. They're very beautiful. Depictions. Right. The Espeon has so many great Pokemon on it. You know, Eevee, Merrell, Kingscot, Tropius, Victini is all in there. And then even in the, the Umbreon you got Eevee as well in there. But Hydragon, Azorark, Mercuro, toxtricity. Gotta zoom in, enhance to see some of these zero aura and it's like these celebrations in the sky. There's a 30. For anyone who is an audio only listener, the Espeon is a more bright picture. Right. It's during the day, there's balloons everywhere and there's like some clouds that make 30. And then for Umbreon it's like the nighttime, some fireworks going off and the fireworks have 30 on there. Oh, Mewtwo and Crelli is also in this picture as well for the Umbreon. I didn't see those at first, but very, very beautiful. And they're going to be very popular. I believe Mew may be in the one for the Espion. But yeah, I mean I, I, you know, it's great. I don't look too deeply. The artwork's cool, but I wouldn't, I don't look at it because of stonks. So many people have been like oh so and so's in the background of this image because it's gonna cost a gazillion dollars. In English. I already know it. The last thing I want to point out about these collections is the one with Pikachu is gonna be very expensive. The ones with Pikachu are going to be about $170 each for the box. And this is like the ultra premium collections. The one. I will point out though that the, the one with Pikachu you do get like a crazy acrylic case for your cards. You get really cool. What looks like like metallic damage dice similar to the ones that you get from TC Evolution. So that like aluminum or metal milled. And the poison and burn counters in this one are really cool looking. So they both, I thought they were both poison counters because they're both like purple cues on the, on the picture. But like outside of that, you know, you get a playmat. You get a playmat box to store your playmat, some sleeves, deck box, dice kit and like counter kit holder. And an overall just general box to hold all this stuff alongside the two promos. So the $171 USD approximately that this is going to cost 27,500 yen. If you want to do your own conversion. That's actually not a Bad price. I feel like for all that, I don't think it's a bad price. It's more expensive than I think I can remember a lot of Japanese products being. Yes. Yeah. This is definitely the higher end of Japanese products. Yeah. Like, in America and in. In the west, we have the ultra premium collections, and we've had those for, like, five years now. And maybe they've had stuff like this in Japan, and I'm not clued in, but I feel like this is a little more unusual for them at this price. Yeah, this feels much more special. Yeah. The futuristic box is going to release in Japan on September 16, the same day as the set releases. And then I think the celebration deck will also release on the same day. There's no date on Poke beach that I can find, but I assume it's probably very close, if not the same day. Outside of the 30th anniversary, we also do have the promo art that was revealed for the 2026 World Championships. Every year. They have done promo art for the last few years featuring Pikachu and other things. I think usually in the past has the promo art always featured the Pokemon that won the previous year's worlds. I don't know if it's exactly the Pokemon that won Worlds. Right. Because there's a couple different worlds winners, but I do know that they have, like, themes of Pokemon that were impactful within that year. Like, I know in 2024 it was the Mew, which I believe Mew, Vmax1 worlds in 2023, or at least was very, very impactful in 2023. This was 2025, it has the Iron Thorns which did Wooden Worlds. Right. The previous year. So I think it is actually. I think it is actually the winner of Masters for each year. So, yeah, pretty cool that Gardevoir is on it. So I'm sure the Pokemon company was very happy that it wasn't Iron Thorns or some other more obscure Pokemon, but. Oh, Jake, you have an update about worlds. Oh, yeah. So just before I get on to my podium, because, yes, this is going to be a podium episode day, at least for a brief second. These, remember, not only will be distributed at the World Championships, but more than likely coming in the Pokemon center in August. A lot of times, a lot of these promos, you know, or like, if you buy like $30 or something of Pokemon products, we'll give you this card in the mail, but also is typically available at Pokemon League, so you'll have plenty of chances if you are like me and you're not going to the World Championships this year. So I originally planned, because I live in Las Vegas, to go to the San Francisco World Championships. And I was very excited, got on the interest list, ride for the weekend was super hyped to go and. And I was super excited. This is probably a couple weeks ago now and I just never aired my thoughts on the podcast. A couple weeks ago I got an email that was like, hey, you've been selected to get tickets for the Pokemon World Championships. Make sure to grab these within 48 hours or else you will lose your spot. And so I was like, that's sick. That's so cool. Thank you so much. Pokemon company. So I try to get me and my girlfriend tickets because if you're, if you get selected, you can get one additional adult ticket. I believe it. Yeah, like a plus one. So yeah, a plus one. So obviously my girlfriend, my lovely partner, is a plus one. So we were gonna go together. She also likes Pokemon, collects Pokemon cards. But when I went on there within the 48 hour window, it was only like 12 hours later or something like that. 12 hours after I got the email, I went in to the thing and it said that the tickets that I could buy were all sold out. So I could not buy tickets. Missed the 48 hour window, obviously, because I can't buy any tickets now. I am not going to the World Championships. And I just have beef now with the Pokemon company of why was there not a reservation for me to be able to get tickets? When you said in your email that I had a 48 hour window to get tickets or else I would lose my spot, therefore giving me the implication that I have a spot reserved to where I could get World Championship tickets. So I am so mad at the Pokemon company right now because now I'm not going to Worlds, which I very much wanted to go to. I planned around, you know, in terms of other. Like, I'm pretty sure I missed out on another tournament sign up for one piece because I was like, I'm gonna go to Worlds that weekend and have some fun. So whatever Pokemon company, you know, maybe Jake, they should just, you know, reach out to us and bring us out as creators, you know, maybe. I mean, I know what's crazy. I don't know if you saw this on, I don't know how active you are on threads, if it got posted there. But no, none of the workers at Bulbapedia, I believe it was, got any creator passes for the World Championships. Did you know that? Did you see that? For this year or last year for this year. Oh, they've already done this year. Yeah, they've. They've done those. Bulbapedia, for anyone who does not know, is like my go to site for a lot of just like general Pokemon information, you know, like trying to figure out what, what Pokemon are on what route. You know, when I play the video games or the world championship decks. Right. They have an archive of every single world championship deck that Pokemon has printed. So for Bulbapedia, not for any of their people. They have a good team, good sized team for any of their people. For one of the best websites for distributing information, real information about Pokemon is asinine to me. It is absurd. Well, so I don't know what the Pokemon's company's been doing, but get your priorities in check, please. I mean, you don't even have to pay for them to go. Just a pass, right? Just like. Yeah, hey, we know that the work that you put in, in archiving xyz, not everybody can come, but here's two passes for the person who covers the TCG and the person who covers the vgc. It doesn't even. You could just be like one. Be like, here's one representative. Yeah. It's so insane to me. Yeah. But don't worry. Every influencer that you know under the sun that just has mentioned one time in an interview that they like Pokemon is going, yeah, you know, Jason Page will probably be there scamming kids out of. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I, I have not read up on that because I, I mean, I just got back from vacation and I wasn't really on, you know, the, the Internet while I was on vacation, but I. So Jason Page is the guy that made the original song in Pokemon. He sang the original theme song. He's been very much like on his Pokemon grind. And yeah, that's fine. You know, he. He did something that's very memorable for the community outside of it. He signs autographs now at Cons for, for however much, you know, he wants to charge, that's fine. Now I don't actually know. I say the word scam. I have no real skin in the game. I. If the kid really wanted a signed autograph and the kid was willing to trade whatever Gengar that a vendor had given to him or whatever, really ultimately, like, if the kid values the autograph on the, whatever card, that's really up to the kid. But I would hope that even if everything was on the up and up, from a their belief standpoint, I would hope that like Jason Page would be like, hey, the Optics of this, of me giving a kid some weird grading company promo card that I signed for a legitimate Pokemon card that may or may not be worth a hundred dollars. The optics of that are gonna look real weird, you know. Yeah, it's not necessarily that he did anything illegal or. No, whatever. He. It just. It's a story that I encourage you to read up on it yourself. But it's one of those things that just does not make you feel good reading it like you do. You don't read it and be like, Jason Page is a good person. You know, like it and all. Also, I have seen some people. I haven't. Again, I haven't read up on this. I need to read up more before I talk more and more about it. This is not really the first time that Jason Page has gotten a situation to where, you know, you have this feeling that he might be a scumbag, you know, in terms of trying to hold on to Pokemon as long as possible for relevancy for him. So. Yeah, anyways, I hate. I hate people, a lot of people, but not people who listen to the Metapod. I love you guys. Unless Jason pays the Metapod, at which point then I hate you. Come. Well, you can come on and explain yourself. So reach out. Hit us up in the Discord. I'd be down. I don't know about that. I don't know if I would be, to be honest, you know, I. This is a sacred place for me, Sean. You know, this is. This is the place where I can spend hour and not think about anything that's going on in the world. Because if you live in America, you know, Sean, if you. If you lived in America or currently live in America, I need this place to be sacred, you know, this is all I have left. Yeah, this is all I have left. Anyways, going on a much more higher note in terms of the Pokemon news. The Pritch Black pre release promos say that five times fast. Pitch black pre. Oh man, that's really hard. Pitch black pre release promo. Geez, that's very. That's a tongue twister. Yeah, that's awful. Let us know in the Discord or something if you were able to do it five times fast and be honest. But anyways, the English versions of those promos have been revealed in full. It is going to be Merinon, Slowbro, Delmise and Basiodon. So definitely an interesting lineup of Pokemon. I think Miraidon is obviously maybe the headliner of these, but they got a nice whole Slow Bro by Yuriko Akaze, which is a beautiful, beautiful illustration. But John, do you want to go over these pre release cards? Yeah. I mean real quick. The Miraidon is a basic. The main thing here is it has an ability that if its Pokemon is in the active spot and is knocked out by damage from an attack, move up to two lightning energy from this Pokemon to one of your bench. That seems like it could be very good in this format. Right. Like things are going to knock your Pokemon out if you can consistently have something powered up. I think the downside of this deck is probably going to be your output of damage like this.m on does 90. I don't know how that's going to go in a pre release format, but maybe it'll be fine. I think it could be nice in a pre release format just simply because you do get that energy that gets moved. Right. That's true. I think that can be very nice. Unfortunately, none of the Pokemon are weak to Lightning and your attack thunder with that 90 damage also does 30 to yourself. So your 120 HP quickly becomes 90. So in the mirror match, it's just actually quite interesting, I guess. Yeah. Weirdly, in the mirror match it's kind of like whoever attacks second, but it's also like if you attack first. Oh then they knock themselves out on the the attack back. Yeah. Unless you attacked into a non Miron Pokemon. So I guess it's like who attacks with Miron second? I. Yeah, it is. I wonder if in a pre release say you got this Miraidon and you. You. There might be a lot of sudden deaths in pre release with this Miraidon. Because if you knock out your opponent's Pokemon but also knock yourself out in the process, I would have to brush up on if that is sudden death or if the 30 damage to itself happens in like a slightly different order. I don't know. But what's also funny is that the ability on Marine on Photon Chord will not activate if you knock yourself out. So if you're in the mirror match, that's tough because it specifically says an attack from your opponent's Pokemon. So be careful with your photon cord. Yeah. This. This card is so funny. This. This is going to cause so many people in the pre release to not realize that and either A misplay their whole round or B get absolutely rule sharked into oblivion. Yeah. Make sure to read your cards but slow, bro. If you have no cards in your hand, you can use all out for one psychic energy and 50 plus damage. But if you have no cards in your hand, this attack does 160 more damage for this 130 HP stage one psychic Pokemon. That's awesome. That'll knock out pretty much anything. And you may actually be able to compete against like ex Pokemon depending on what ex Pokemon they are. Because 210 just from right there is pretty baller. And then if you maybe like get a damage modifier or something like that or I don't know, a monkey dory, I don't know. I doubt monkey dory would be in the kid. But no, like if you had any sort of damage modifiers or manipulators within this deck to be able to go over 210. Oh, that's pretty good. That's pretty solid. I just wonder how hard it is to get 0 cards in your hand. I think in pre release it's going to be real hard. I'm just going to go out there and say I think it's going to be quite difficult in a pre release. Well, it might be really Easy to get 0. It might be easy to get 0 cards in hand but it be really hard to follow up after having zero cards in hand. Right. Because if you take a knockout you get one prize and then you get a draw for turn. So you only have two cards in hand more than likely in your next turn. Which man one of the. It might be easy to go back to zero cards with only two cards in hand. But then you have to think about the idea of like I gotta continuously get slow bros out. I have to evolve my slow pokes. So that's a. That's an interesting one. Yeah. The third one, and I think the one that most people are going to be hoping to pull is delmise. So Delmize 140 HP psychic basic has the psychic attack, vengeful anger. 30 plus. If you have four more Pokemon that have hide and sneak ability in your discard pile, this attack does 140 more damage. So if you don't know Jake, I believe that hide and seek in Japanese, the original translation was meant was thought to be Ghost veil. So this deck though, this Delmise I think has been doing well in Japan. Oh. So okay. I do think that people may. Because you think 170 for one energy on a basic. It's really good. Like yeah, you're basically with any damage modifiers like Black belts training or Brave Bangle or whatever, you're two hit koing everything in the format. So I. This could genuinely be like a real deck. So I think that's the one. If you're going to this pre release and you're looking to take any of these cards into a more competitive setting. That's the kit you want to pull. It probably also comes with a bunch of different cards within the kit that help alongside it. I would imagine so. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. I did not realize that. But yeah. Delize. As long as you can get those four Pokemon in the discard pile. I don't know, you maybe need to hope that you get Ultra Balls. Yeah, something like that. Or because Professor's research is no longer in format. No. So how are you getting these in the discard pile is going to be the real question. But Bastiodon is the final one. And I actually kind of like this because this counters all the other pre release cards. This bastiodon is 160 hp. It is a stage two. So he is a beefy little guy evolving from the fossils. They love fossils in the last couple pre release kits, but has the ability Ancient Bull work. As long as this Pokemon is on your bench, prevent all damage done to each of your Pokemon by attacks from your opponent's Pokemon that have two or less energy attached. So they have to have three energies on them to be able to hit any of your Pokemon. And if you can recall, if you're a. If you're a memorable list, Memorable listener. I don't know. Long time anyways. Yeah. Long time Listener. In the last 30 minutes, you may realize that none of the other pre release cards, these attackers have an attack that costs three or more energies, right? One of them has two. Well, I guess one of them does. But the slow bro, it does have. I didn't mention this. It does have a three colorless attack called Zen Headbutt for 110. But I don't know. All else kind of cooler in that attack. But fact of the matter is I feel like the main attack on these Pokemon are not three or more energies necessary to attack. So Ancient Bulwark man, my. You might stick that guy in the active or well, not stick that guy in the Active. You have to. You have to have it on the bench. Maybe if you can have like some other attackers within the deck, you know that you pull some colorless Pokemon from the pre release. I'm actually hoping that this. Because it's gonna have the. I assume this kit is going to have the new stadium in it that lets you go find the fossils that you need. So if you are excited about this, and I believe like I don't know if it's Rampardos or there's like another fighting type, one that Got announced. If you're excited about these new fossil types though, this is the kit you want to pull because you'll get probably multiple copies of those stadiums that you need to build your new fossil decks. So pretty cool. I'm calling it right now. Calling it right now. Bastiodon is the best card in the pre release format or the best kit, I should say, in the pre release format. You heard it here first. But Pitch Black should release on July 17th with pre releases taking place from July 4th to July 12th. Also don't know as of right now when we're recording, there is no pitch Black on the Pokemon center as of yet. They haven't done like pitch black pre orders. And if you're looking to get some Pitch Black from the Pokemon center, we usually try to ping whenever the Pokemon center queue is up, which we might actually. I have not told you this, Sean. I just thought of it. We should make a role in the Discord specifically for the Pokemon center queue. To where so then I don't have to add everybody every time. For people who don't care about the Pokemon center queue. Yeah, it can just like, you know, Pokemon Center Q is up at Pokemon Center Q, people. Yeah, that's a good idea. Join the Discord. Join the Discord in the link in the description below or the show notes. I'm excited for Pitch Black. I'm. I'm ready for another little small set. Well, that they seem to all be little small sets. And speaking. I love it. Speaking of little small sets, we do have the results. Post our most recent little small set, Chaos Rising of Special Event Turin. The SPE that happened in Italy this last weekend. We didn't really do a preview for this event. We were talking about lots of other stuff last week, but we, we could not have predicted what happened here. No, we certainly could not have predicted who would have won. And I am actually a little surprised that there wasn't more representation of Chaos Rising cards specifically like main attackers or main supports outside of red card. Because I do think Dex probably played maybe a copy or two of the new red card. But Jake, looking at this limitless list, do you want to start just right at the top? Yeah. I will say before, I will say oh my gosh. Every week I'm realizing more and more how much we say that phrase. But the special event turn was actually over 2, 000 players. Huge in Masters, which yeah, I feel like. And I know we've had regionals and stuff that are bigger than that and things like that, but for a Special event. I feel like, is this the biggest special event of all time as of right now? Because this is like you said, this is huge. Yeah. Especially for a special event. Yeah, I mean a lot of the special events we've had in the past, oftentimes they're labeled as special events because they take place in regions that maybe don't have access to regionals. The ones that I can think of most commonly is like, I think Puerto Rico has had a special event for years and years, but usually there's only so many people that live and play the TCG or are willing to travel to Puerto Rico. So they're like usually like 5, 6, 7, 800 players. So a 2000 player spe is like yeah, I don't. I've never seen that and I. I might be very wrong, but I've never seen it. Would love to look through the spes at a different time because I only just noticed that count and I wish I looked before but I would love to see the numbers on like spes prior to this. But anyways, what won the event in such an astonishment to me is Hops Trevenin. I can't believe a hopstick won the spe. For all the smack that I've ever talked about the hop stick, it finally did the thing with Hops Trevenin. And if you're like me and you did not know what Hops Trevenin does and you had to look it up. Let me tell you about. It's 140 HP stage one psychic type Pokemon with two different attacks. One of them is Corner for a psychic in two colorless for 90 damage. During your opponent's next turn, the defending Pokemon can't retreat. But I think the premier attack on this card and the reason that this deck was so successful was horrifying revenge for one colorless energy. It does 30 plus damage. And if any of your opponent or if any of your hops Pokemon were knocked out by damage from an attack during your opponent's last turn, this attack does a hundred more damage sitting at 130 damage. But with Hop stack right, you have a couple different damage modifiers to get. I think about 90 because yeah, 90 extra damage onto your hops Pokemon which gives it a maximum output of 220 damage for one energy. Yeah, if those. For those of you who are interested and maybe don't remember when Journey Together came out, these Pokemon and cards hop snorlax adds 30 damage to hops Pokemon. They don't stack. So you just put one hop Snorlax there. Basically, the Hops choice band does two things actually, which is pretty crazy attacks used by the Pokemon. The Hops Pokemon it's attached to cost one colorless less. So it's effectively a counter gain that's always active and it adds 30 damage. And then finally the stadium Post Wick allows your Hops Pokemon to do 30 more damage to the Active. So it's. That's where you're getting the extra 90. The Choice Band means that your hops Trevenant theoretically doesn't even need to have an energy attached in order to attack you, just choice band. And that counts for the colorless. It also makes the Corner very easy to get online. Because if you attach a telepathic psychic, attach a Hops choice band on one turn, and then on the following turn attach another energy, all of a sudden you actually can attack with corner. Which does matter in a lot of matchups. Like if you trap maybe a Pheasantipity in the Active or just something that your opponent really doesn't want. Stick. Stick. Like sticking in the Active spot. That did come into play over the weekend. I just wanted to point that out as well as like the whole package here just performed really, really well this weekend. Yeah, very solid. Right? The dub wool being able to be essentially a gust effect with that defiant horn ability we've talked about in fighting decks like Makuita and stuff. Boss still in rotation for like three more years. The gusting effects are just generically good. And you've also got the Lily's Club Fairy in here for Lily's Clefairy to hit. Psychic type weakness on Dragon type Pokemon. Right. So it's just. I feel like Lily's Clefairy kind of puts this whole deck together because of that weakness. Yeah. I mean if you expect a lot of Dragapult to be in the format. Which you should. Yeah, which you should. Exactly. And the nice thing about this is because your main attackers in Phantump, Trevenant and Cramorant only need a colorless energy for their main attacks, you can prioritize missed energy in the Dragapult matchup. Also very strong. That means you don't necessarily always have to worry about putting down Battle Cage instead of Post Wick or any other way to get around all of the damage counter placement. And I do want to point out there's two other attacks in Pokemon. One is the obvious one, Hops Cramorant. Look, if you played during the pre release format for Journey together, you will not forget Hops Cramorant fickle spitting does 120 for a single colorless. If your opponent doesn't have exactly three or four prize cards remaining, the attack does nothing. So it's like an earlyish mid game attacker. But yeah, in pre release you start with four prizes. So yeah, but. So that's like one sort of mid game attacker that you can set up that doesn't need to evolve. But Jake, I also want to point out Hops Phantump as a very legitimate attacker. So on the surface it doesn't look like much, right? 70 HP basic psychic Pokemon, single colorless splashing dodge for 10. But if you think about all the damage modifiers we have Jake turn one. You can do a hundred damage for one colorless and you flip a coin. And if heads during your opponent's next turn, you prevent all damage and effects of attacks done to this Pokemon, which absolutely was showcased during the finals match. This took out like I think two Pokemon, you know, over two turns. So going second, it's crazy that of all the decks to have an amazing going second attacker, Hops Phantom might be the best going second attacker in the format. Like it's, it's insane. So especially if you're able to start rolling and get like some of these things off. And honestly like the 30 is not that hard to get. I think all these damage modifiers, right? Hop Snorlax is a basic Pokemon. So you have a ton of different stuff like Pokepad, you know, Ultra Ball Hops bag as well to be able to look for stuff you. You even have secret box in here, right? To find things in secret box can be able to find like Hops, choice band Post Wick, you know, stuff like that. And there's a huge emphasis on petrol within this deck. Right. And petrol can enable all of these things, right? You can find the only other damage modifier that you don't need. You could just straight up find secret box. Yeah. And then find like all three of the things to be able to get that damage modifier out. So it's really interesting to me how like one this deck is successful. You know, as much as I just laid an egg on the the Hops deck, you know, for the last several months since Journey Together released. But like Petrol kind of tying a lot of this together as like this such a good supporter, right? We've seen a supporter like Team Rockets Petrol. If you do not know, just search your deck for a trainer card, put it in your hand. Seems odd and like not that strong, but in the right setting can just enable so much. Right. We've had Skyla in the past, which is the same thing on this, just a different name of a supporter. And Skyla Skyler was really solid in black and white. I feel like when it first came out was not necessarily the strongest. And I believe Sword and Shield, when it was reprinted, I think it was sword and shield block. But now, like petrol, petrol is becoming more and more viable, you know, as the. As the time goes on, as we advance from Destin rivals. So I, I think that's really interesting. I think it has a lot to do with how important either stadiums are for certain decks or a couple of different ASPECs in particular. Secret box. I think if you are playing a secret box version of A deck, Petrol is a very legitimate supporter because, yeah, it's not going to draw you cards, but it will find you the two or three pieces that you absolutely need that turn with Secret box. I think once the A specs start rotating, I actually fully expect petrol's usability to fall off. I think if Skyla had existed in an A spec format, I actually think Skyla may have been better. So it's just. Yeah, it is interesting to note that like all you really need are one ofs that are just so strong that it makes a card like Petrol worth playing as your supporter. Also the fact that Arvin is gone because, yeah, Arvin could find you secret box too, but now, yeah, okay, this, you know, this is a poor man's Arvin. Let's be frank. I also want to give a quick shout out to two supporters that I actually don't know what they do that are in this list. There are three copies of these supporters. So taking a look at them. Rufian. Rufian. Discard a tool card and Special energy from one of your opponent's Pokemon. I guess that makes sense because Special energies have been running more and more within the format. So it's a nice easy way. And tool cards, we've talked about Tool Scrapper, how that can be in like certain decks. This is almost like Tool scrapper. It's a little bit different, but in the same vein, I guess you could say. Yeah, I mean, look, if you play Tool scrapper in this, in the next tournament and you hit a hops Trevenant, you're actually eating pretty good because this deck really relies on its tools. It does play four copies of that choice band. But the air balloon also very important because there's only one copy of Switch. And let's just say that that hop Snorlax is a. A chunky a chunky little guy. He is a beef dude that needs to move. But the other supporter in here, that when I read this, I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Could you see this more in different decks heading into the. Into the format. Hassle, Hassle from Twilight Masquerade. You can use this card only if any of your Pokemon were knocked out during your opponent's last turn. And if you use it, look at the top eight cards of your deck and put three of them in your hand. Then shuffle the other cards back into the deck. That's actually quite solid now that I read that out loud. It's not necessarily like a draw supporter, like Lily's determination. Right. That can just draw you like eight new fresh cards. But being able to look at that top eight, you know, it's. It's a little bit more than research in terms of trying to find stuff. And you have the freedom to grab any three cards that you want. It doesn't have to specifically be Pokemon, doesn't have to be trainers, doesn't have to be energy, just any three Pokemon in a one prize deck like this, where you kind of expect one of your Pokemon would get knocked out every single turn. That's pretty solid, actually. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, I, I like this card. As you said, in a single prize deck, I think things like, you know, Festival Lead, Alakazam, like weirdly, decks like that, maybe not Alakazam, but Festival Lead. I could see wanting to play this because a lot of the time with Festival League you have your. Your grookeys. They will go get you a lot of one ofs, but sometimes you need like four or five different cards. And a Lily's determination is not always the best because you may have five or six cards already in your hand. And so when you're shuffling, have cards that you really like. Yeah, if you're shuffling and then drawing back up, you might draw into the same cards you just shuffled back into your deck. And so in a world without Iono, where you can't guarantee that the cards you have in your hand don't end up back in your hand hassles, you know, it feels pretty good. I. I think it really is a primarily single prize deck card though, because as you said, like, you know, if you're playing something and it doesn't end up getting knocked out, this, this supporter is just not. Not it. So I could see like two. Two copies. Seems all right. Seems good. Before we go into the second place deck, I just want to give a quick shout out to Pokemon as a whole of how cheap it is. You know, playing a lot of other card games, you know, you, Sean, you're getting ready for Riftbound like and One Piece getting more and more popular and kind of more expensive. As a side component of that, just appreciating how easy like I have a. I have a friend who's getting into Pokemon now and it's just so nice to be able to like build so many different decks for honestly like a relatively cheap price. The three of the last four winners in the, I'll say Western, you know, standard format that we've had in the Pokemon Trading Card Game Special event Turn Indianapolis Regional and the melbourne regional. All three of those decks you can build from zero on TCG player right now for under $50 USD, which is awesome, right? Hops, Trevenant and Alakazam from the last two events, both under $40 USD. And then you know, the, the Melbourne, that's a dragapole list that you can build for under $50. So it's so sick right now in the game how cool and cheap like some of these decks can be. I mean all the top four or actually no, the top three decks. Top three decks you can build for under 50 right now on TCG Player from Ground Zero. But going into the second. Oh, sorry, I was gonna say like Secret box is the most expensive. And then four copies of Missed Energy. Crazy as it is the four copies. You remember when Capture Energy was the most expensive card in a deck a few years ago, Josh. Capture Energy. I haven't thought about that card in a while. That was a good card. Those are good times. But anyways, just interesting to see that the second most expensive card in a deck is basically an Energy. Yeah. And with the second place deck, the second place deck was Slow King. So Slow King has had a lot of noise as of late. Especially because some of the cards that have come out in Chaos Rising. We'll talk about those in a sec. But if you do not know what Slow King does. It's one of my favorites. Right now it's stage one 120 HP psychic type Pokemon with a psychic and colorless attack. It can do seek inspiration. So you discard the top card of your deck. And if that card is a Pokemon that doesn't have a rule box, choose one of its attacks and use it as this attack. So you're kind of abusing stuff like Cipher Maniac's code Breaking Academy at night to be able to manipulate what the top of your deck is exactly going to be Then you have a couple different Pokemon that you copy every single turn. The first one is Kyurem. Right. Because of Trifrost. Discard all energy from this Pokemon. It does 110 damage to three of your opponent's Pokemon. It's a great variety attack to be able to either take knockouts on some of these small Pokemon that are running around without Shaman or be able to set up damage for some bigger hits later in the game. But the new car that came out in Chaos Rising that has really accelerated this deck is Metagross. A couple copies of Metagross in this deck has an attack called metallic hammer. For 150 damage, you may discard three metal energy from this Pokemon and have this attack do 150 damage. 150 wording on this or what? I'm sorry. 150 more damage. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. 150 more damage with the 150 base damage equals 300. Now the curious thing about the wording specifically and how it's ruled on this right. Slow King does not run as a deck metal energies. But when you choose the card with and you choose Metallic Hammer, you can opt to discard metal energies from your Slow King, which results in zero. But you're still discarding technically metal energies. So you can use the attack for the extra damage to do. 300. Yeah. You can basically say I will choose to discard. And you have no metal to discard. And it's fine because the way that this card was meant to be used was as Metagross, which in order to use the attack, you have to have 3 metal energy on it. So it's not a requirement in order to get the bonus. It's like. It's like a weird wording ruling thing that that came out. But yeah, you don't have to discard anything. It's just Slow King copies the attack for 300. The end. And it's specifically because the Metallic Hammer wording does not say if you do. Yes, right, Exactly. It just says you can discard three metal energies. So you can choose to discard three metal energies. You just don't have any to discard. Yeah. It's so odd in a thing. But it accelerates this deck to actually be like relatively viable in my opinion. Right. Because you could do so much damage like 300 without any other modifiers. Knocks out so many different decks within the format. Trifrost helps against so many different of these one prizer decks that are running around and you have a couple other support Pokemon like Lily's clefairy crazy. The two top two decks were both psychic pokemon running Lily's clefairy broken card. But mega kangas is also in this deck. Right. Especially with that run errand. As we know, just draw two cards is so nice, Especially when you're able to retreat this guy out of the active with lat ex so easily. Right. And you've got other things like brave bengal in this, so you could do even more damage if you want. Just, wow. Broken card, broken deck. I mean, I think this deck is very strong. You know, the. The funny thing is Brennan said, you know, during the finals or before the finals to one of the casters, he was saying that, like, yeah, the deck's very good in the format, with the exception of hopps Trevenant. Yeah, it's like the second shaman comes down, Slow king is just knocking them out one at a time. There's not really much else it can do. And you're just like, you're gonna out, you know, pace me in this. This. This race. It's like, because the resources needed to do slow king's attacks are really awkward because you would need to get metagross back into your hand and back on the top of your deck every single turn if you want to be consistently doing enough damage to knock out the trevenant. So, you know, unfortunate for Brennan, but I. I do think that this deck will probably continue to be very strong as we move into naic. Yeah. Very solid. There's no. There's no boss in this list. Yeah. I mean, I know it's. I guess you don't need it. You're just like, I'll just kill whatever's in front of me. And if I need to kill. Yeah, yeah. I'll just use kirum. But if you put a shaman down, I literally can't do anything. Yeah. But other than that, we do still have a lot of dragapults in the top 16. You do still have, you know, raging bolt. We talked about this before. Being, like, a pretty good meta pick. Emma Hagen with a lily's clef fairy. Now I want to see. Yeah. Quad. Yeah, it's. It's just an ogre pond, like, clefairy box. No, it. Well, kind of, but not really. It's. It's a quad. Lily's clefairy with lily's pearl. So this was one of the counters that we talked about a few weeks ago of, like, I am expecting to see somebody pick up that Japanese list that was playing heavy clefairy. Rather than just pure ogre pond slot box. Because this does not have any teal masks for an ogre pond box, only the Wellspring. So, you know, it's. It's very Lily Slafari and Mega Kangaskhan forward. And then other than that, the only thing that I'm seeing deck wise from the new set is B drill at 58th. Yeah. From the new set at least. Yeah, yeah. Like we're not seeing a lot of it. Maybe in some of these decks that is not obvious. But Mega Greninja does not immediately seem to be that impactful in the format. Maybe the secret sauce, I think was the highest. Highest placing 78. Yeah. Maybe the secret sauce of Mega Greninja will come out at Naic, but they were. Whoever is. Whoever is cooking that one up did not feel comfortable, you know, letting the world know. But to be honest, look, all the pieces for Hopps Trevenant have existed. None of that deck is new at all. The Trevenant came out in Ascended Heroes. So that has been an option to people now for months and months. And for whatever reason, it just wasn't seeing play. Or maybe the format wasn't quite right. So like came out of nowhere for me. I'm just. Especially. Especially because in phase two of the format, 39.1% of the phase two format was Dragapult, the next highest, 6% and Hydrapple, which actually there's there's been a couple. If you look at this, there's a couple Hydrapples that are in like the top 32. I think there's four of them, if my memory is correct. Two of them in the top 16. None of them placing within top eight, unfortunately, Max Herzog getting ninth. But still like a really interesting showing. A lot more high grapple than I thought there'd be. So question for you. Jake Naic coming up this next weekend, what do you expect to see other than Dragapult? I fully expect to see a lot of Dragapult, but yeah, does Turin and the results shake things up in your mind? I kind of think that Slow King continues to be really, really good. Like, the more that I watch Slow King, the more that I'm really impressed with how easy it is to be able to balance like with Academy at 9 and things like that. Now that you have this 300 damage attacker, like, it gives your versatility so much more. Right. There used to be a couple other Pokemon that I think people would slide in to these decklists, but now you're really just copying Kyurem and Metagross and that's basically it, you know, Wanderers patch from Paldean Fates was it. We did p. PFL anyways. Wonders patch is just so nice to be able to constantly get those energies attached onto your dudes. And you know, you've also got that Mega Kings kind to be able to work a little bit if you want. Especially because Boomerang Energy is one of those cards that can constantly come back. Right. To be able to consistently have like energy attachments. So I feel like Slow King can be pretty good heading into naic. I'm also like super surprised that Alakazam, you know, has back to back really good weekends. Right from Indianapolis, you know, winning it to going into this weekend, you know, getting a top eight as well. Alakazam, although doesn't necessarily have like new things that it really likes to utilize now that we have this like, you know, different variant that works out pretty well with the handheld fan and things like that, the Dedenne, you know, give it a little bit of versatility. It's. It's starting to come up a little bit more. So I'm. I'm very excited about it. Heading into the next format or the next event in naic. Yeah. Weirdly, I think that despite Dragapult having gate kept single prize decks for a long time, there seem to be three single prize decks right now that are actually in a pretty good position because they've maybe changed a little bit, but the Trevenant, the Slow King and the Alakazam all being pretty good and you know, single prize decks historically, if it's a good time for a single prize deck, I think multi prize strategies, usually, you know, there's gonna be a lot of Dragapult. I think there's a reason why so many people continue to play it. But yeah, very interesting to see. And I think we're only gonna get more single prize deck support in Pitch Black. So, you know, I don't know if that's the direction the Pokemon company wanted to head design wise, but that's. That's where we are now. And I like it. I like it. Yeah. I mean Dragapult is the overall undisputed best deck. And I don't really think there's many things that actually have a winning matchup into Dragapult. All you can do for most decks, not all of them, I guess, but for, for the most part you can just have as close to a 50, 50 as you can. Yeah, right. To give yourself a chance. And I think that's the big thing. So Yeah, I don't, I don't see Dragon Ball going anywhere anytime soon, but I've been really surprised about these one prizers. Well, that is gonna do it. Just a reminder, we you'll be able to catch the live stream. I'll have the videos out for 1999 to 2001. There'll be three different videos at some point in the future, maybe this week, maybe next. But keep your eyes and ears peeled for that and if you are interested and want to catch us on a Monday night in the future, just hit us up on YouTube. Also, let us know if you've been either playing for a long time or you're a fan of retro formats, what some of your favorite decks have been in past years. You know, and honestly, like, I might not even stick to just world championships in these. There may be like a specific year where I go more in the NAIC format. Maybe I lose out like on a set, you know, that came out for the world championships. But it's just a really cool deck that I want to showcase because I do have some decks actually built. Yeah. From pre, like 2019 and stuff like that. And there's even some decks like I have 2010, like halfway done in terms of full cards. So I'm excited for this. I. I love playing retro formats. And the biggest thing is going to be about the rules. We're gonna have to make sure that we get the rules right because the Pokemon trading card game has changed the rules over the years. Yeah, a few times. So yeah, we'll probably make mistakes, but you know, we're doing our best and that's all right. Yeah, it's going to be fun and I hope you join us whether it's for the podcast or the retro series run rewinds of the world Championships. My name is Jake. Got Sean here, my co host here on another beautiful Metapod podcast episode where we revolve around the evolving meta. See you next week.