#286 Top NAIC Decks & Prize Pack Series #9

This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability. Various 18 plus. And we're live on match day as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it, it just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Hello and welcome to the MetaPod podcast. Pokemon TTG podcast revolves around the evolving meta. I'm Jake, I got my co host Sean here with me as always. Naic. The North American International Championships is done and finished now. We've got a couple months or it's really only like what, two months until Worlds. Was it mid August, so July? Yeah, like two months. Maybe just over two months. But we've got those two months now of just playing Chaos Rising, having some fun and some other things. But we did have the weekend with many, many other things. Sean, how are you doing? I'm good, I'm good. I. I played a bunch of Riftbound over the weekend. Not well, but I played it and I had fun. That's what matters. I. I cooked some infinite combo options with a friend of mine here net new infinite combos to the format. So that was pretty exciting. It's always fun in whatever card game you're playing, in my opinion, to just find like the wackiest combos, especially when nobody's ever thought of them before. I feel like. Yeah. What about you? I actually went to the Los Angeles One Piece Regional over the weekend. I did watch Naics, especially on Friday before we started traveling to Los Angeles. I watched about the first five or six rounds, I think it was of phase one and I ended up in the LA Regional. I started out 2 0, which was awesome. Definitely riding a high on crocodile for anyone who knows one piece. But then I went on a stinker, lost four straight, so crashed out. It was fun though. Yeah, well it wasn't necessarily a crash out. I just got back from a vacation so I did not expect to do like super well. I don't think I deserve to like top 64, top 32, any of that stuff, but I just had fun with a lot of friends. I got in off wait list at the last second. So it was cool to, like, be able to at least get to play and stuff like that. Well, those are two different card games, but we are talking about Pokemon. Pokemon. And there's a little bit of news, but primarily, like you were mentioning, there's NAIC to talk about. And it's interesting because, like, we can talk about what the meta looks like now, but this will. I'm sure it will be similar. I don't think that Pitch Black is going to have that much of an impact, but technically there will be another set between now and Worlds that will be legal for Worlds. So who knows, Maybe. Maybe all those Pitch Black cards will shake everything up. But it does seem like this is sort of a snapshot in time of this rather than a way to look forward. At Worlds, it'll be curious because, like, there's always, especially for the World championships, like, innovations that pop up and, you know, because people have, like a month and a half and we basically know the entire card pool, people that have qualified for Worlds and have known that they qualified for Worlds will start trading, trying to make something that people won't expect. Right. I mean, I don't know if we'll talk about his list specifically, but at NAIC this weekend, it was a perfect example of Henry Chow in Dragapult playing a one, one, one Alakazam line. Yeah. Which is like, whoa, that's kind of crazy. I guess if you're figuring, like, well, the Alakazam line will draw me cards and then secondarily, I theoretically can, like, attack with an Alakazam once during the game for one energy. So if you have like a bunch of crushing hammers coming your way, weirdly, Alakazam's not the worst idea in the world. It's definitely an interesting one and it worked out well for him, so. Well, again, we won't spend too much time on it before we go into the list. That did super well over the weekend later in this video. But I know there was a moment where he won the game because of Alec or Abra. That's the first basis. Being able to shuffle itself back in. Yeah, being able to shuffle itself back in and reset confusion right from, like a monkey dory mind bend Attack, which I thought was really unique and very, very cool. So there's just stuff like that that can constantly, like, come up and evolve within the format. And we had some cool decks pop up at naic, I think. But getting into the few pieces of news that we have, I think we can just jump right into it. We do have info on Prize Pack Series 9 and, you know, it'll be six cards, you know, reprints, all of them releasing on July 1st. But it's going to have Phantasmal Flames, Ascended Heroes and Perfect Order cards, all with the Play Pokemon stamp on them. Is there anything in this list that you in particular are looking forward to? I really love Meowthy X being in here. Even though Meowthy X is definitely calmed down in. In its price from where it was in the first couple weeks of Perfect Order coming out. It's just really nice to be able to have, you know, extra copies, you know, potentially from your play packs and things of that nature. You know, you'll also have some really cool Pokemon like Mega Star Me Ex is in here. Ethan's Typhlosion Psyduck is in here as well, even though Psyduck being reprinted is much, much cheaper now. And Zorark Ex is in here, which is really, really cool, I don't think. And oh, Pokepad is in here. Yeah, Pokepad also just really, really nice. Ton of just playable cards and things and a splash of some other guys in there as well in terms of cards, but I don't think there's any aspects in here anymore. I think they're done with ASPECs. Yeah, yeah, that. That makes sense. I think that since it's coming out in July and we know that ASPECs I think are. I could be wrong. I think they're all going to rotate at the next rotation. They figure, well, let's give people cards that are going to be playable for more than just, you know, six, seven months or something. So, yeah, it'll be fun. And remember that you can get your play prize packs over at your local shops. Right. Whether it's prizing for local leagues participation, I don't. There's no cups and challenges for the next two months, but because of the break window, that Pokemon I think is calling it. But it's going to be easy to get a lot of these and they're very fun. They're very cool. I like the reprints. Next little bit of news is they revealed some new Mega Force tins, some new tins that are going to feature a whole swath of Ex Pokemon. Jay, give us the rundown on the details for these tins. The tins coming out in summer 2026 are releasing on August 28th. They're going to feature alternate arts of Mega Dragon IDX, Mega Darkrai EX and Mega Zero Aura EX. And yes, I can confirm that these at least are different alternate arts, which is always nice, I think, if you do not remember, they come with four booster packs and they cost 21.99 each. These artworks as well. Pokey beach reported that they haven't been released in Japan yet. Yeah. So I don't know if these will actually be coming out in Japan. I assume they will in some form or fashion, but especially if you're a promo hunter and these are unique arts that you can go ahead and try to scour for at your local shops and stuff. The. Did you get any Clefable and Gengar tins that came out the other week? No, no, no. There. There is no product to be had anywhere in the world around me. No. But yeah, if you want these tins. Again, the release date for these tins, August 28th. And again showcasing Mega Dragonite, Mega Dark R and Mega Zero Aura in these four booster pack tins. No news on what those booster packs are as of yet. I would imagine it'll have like Chaos Rising, pitch black. Yeah. Probably Maybe a perfect order pack in there. Yeah. I think usually it's like. I feel like it's usually like 211 in terms of sets. Right. It's like 2 is the newest set and then 11 of like some recent older sets. Yeah. It could be too pitch black then, given the timeframe when it comes out. It's crazy because it will. I think it's gonna come out just like two or three weeks before all of the celebrations. 30th anniversary stuff. So, you know, this will be probably the last wave of new stuff that hits before the hype train really gets rolling. Yeah, I mean, I am. I am so excited for the 30th anniversary. Especially if you didn't hear on a podcast a couple weeks ago, we talked about the supposed new reveals of the cards that are going to be reprinted in the 30th anniversary. And with Sean and I doing our little retro series that we've been doing leading up to Worlds, it's. Man, I'm just so excited. Last little bit of news here. I'm pretty excited about this. In theory. I don't know if I'll go, but as part of North American International Championships this year, they usually try to announce big changes in the event lineup or whatever during set events. And they did that this year. They announced that NAIC will be moving in 2027 from New Orleans, which I think it's been in New Orleans the last three years. Correct. And it's going to be moving to Chicago. I would assume it's going to be probably at roughly the same time of year though. So June. It's going to be really cool to see it in Chicago, right? I mean, you talk about the different events that have been going on in Chicago, like the museum, right, that's going on in Chicago right now and plenty of other things alongside it that are happening. But one of the cool things I think to note about NAIC taking place in Chicago next year is that TPCI specifically cited that the move was done due to the growth of the popularity of like competitive Pokemon as a whole. So you can expect in later years, especially starting in 2027, that NAIC is going to be a bigger event. You know, more people allowed to get in, maybe more competitors, things of that nature in these tournaments. I also, I'm just gonna say this. I'm glad that it's in a more northerly state, mostly because New Orleans, it's lovely city, but even in June you wouldn't think it's like crazy hot. It is warm, it is humid. I remember being there a couple years back and just being like, man, the inside the venue is great, but oh boy, it is hot in New Orleans. I mean, it's definitely humid out in the Midwest too, but especially in Chicago, you know, you've got the Great Lakes over there. Not to dox exactly when the Metapod is recording, but about 1pm on Monday, it is 73 degrees Fahrenheit there, which is awesome. Pretty nice, pretty, pretty solid weather. You know, the lakefront always gives like kind of a cooler breeze to the city as a whole. So I think it'll be a pretty enjoyable situation. Obviously with big cities you got to be safe. You know, I've, I've heard mixed feelings of the move to Chicago, but I like the move, you know, moving it to a new place, a new experience and a city that hasn't really gotten like a ton of, of like regional event love. I feel like. No. Have we ever gotten a Chicago regional at least since you can remember? I, I might be Mr. I haven't remembered a regional since I've been playing. There might have been something in the past, but it is like a proper big city. Like, I know that like we had something in LA for Worlds and in San Francisco for Worlds, but outside of Worlds, like most events, I don't know, they don't take place in what I would consider to be like, don't take this the wrong way, like, like a tier, like top tier cities in terms of population and density. Like New Orleans is a city But New Orleans is not Chicago. Right. New Orleans is not New York or L A or Miami. So I, you know, it is definitely a big move. I'm sure the venue space is much more expensive for tpci, but clearly it is worth it to them, which I can appreciate and I think that, that maybe. I hope that that speaks towards them considering bigger cities with larger event spaces in the future that first parts of the country that don't get it. And I'm specifically talking about the East Coast. There has just been not enough east coast regionals the last few years. So. And I would be surprised if it isn't related to cost. And it's, it just reminds me how like in. Not to go back to one piece, but one piece keeps hosting regionals in Peoria, Illinois. Which, fine, it's a city. It's okay. It's. It's a city for sure. But like in order to get there, like if I wanted to go there, I need to either fly to Indianapolis and drive like two and a half to three hours or fly to Chicago and drive two and a half to three hours. So it's like it's so out of the way, you know, in a position. But I'm glad that it's going in there. That is all the news though that's fit to print as they say. So we can just jump straight into naic. I am going to just call myself out here. I did not get a chance to watch any naic. Frankly. I was very busy with the regional and the time difference just made it very difficult. But Jake, you did get to watch a little bit on Friday and obviously we have the results in front of us. Should we just start at. Well, do you know, I think I saw somebody post what the meta share was for Dragapult on day one. Wasn't it like 36%? I think I posted the meta share of Dragapult on day one. If you do not know. Dragapult was 35.7% of the phase one meta. 3700 players and 35% of them were Dragapult. If you took the other five decks in their top six graphic of the meta share it would not equal the percentage that Dragapult was. The next Highest deck was 6.9% in Teal Mask, Ogre Pond, Meganium. Then you got Alakazam to Dunsparce at 6.2% and Zorark at 5.6%, Slow King at 4.4%. That was my pick heading into the weekend. And then 4.4% in Raging Bolt, huh? Interesting. I mean, makes sense. These seem to be all, like. I think Slow King having the uptick that it did was. I don't know about surprising, but, like, that is new to this format than. From. Than what we've had in the past. But, yeah, everything else is relatively similar. Yeah. 30. Yeah. Especially with, you know, Alakazam and Slow King winning regionals in the weeks leading up to Naic. You know, it's nice to see them within that top four making a little bit of noise. But if you wanted to know about Phase two, Sean, I don't know if you saw this in the Discord, the official Metapod discord that you can join with the link in the show notes or the Description below. Phase two of NAIC had 48% of Dragapult. Oh, my gosh. I just. 48. I can't. It's just. I. Look, there's some really cool decks that aren't Dragapult, that can do well against Dragapult, but it feels right now like you're either playing Dragapult or you're playing what beats Dragapult. And. And whatever you are playing that supposedly beats Dragapult doesn't actually beat Dragon Ball. It's just a close 50. 50. Right. Which is just like, I. Look, I. I really hope Pitch Black gives us more options, but it just feels like the only options that are going to matter at the moment are, does Pitch Black offer us another deck that beats Dragapult? And until we have, like, a critical mass where, like, half of the Meta can beat Dragapult, Dragapult's going to continue to be 30, 35, 40%. And it's just. It's too much. It's too much. The good thing about Dragapult is that there are a couple different varieties that are in the format at least. Right. It's not just the same exact Dragapult build that is this 48 of phase two. You know, you have Dragapult Blaziken, you have Dragapult Dust, nor you have a more straight Dragapult. You even have, like, Dragapult and Zorark. I've seen people run things of that nature, so at least in my opinion, there's a little bit of variety, but it's not anywhere near like, Zorark GX in 20, 18, 19, that era where, like, a lot of the decks just felt different. Alongside Zorg, Zorark GX was more so the support Pokemon, whereas Dragapult is the Pokemon. Yeah. It feels, if you'll forgive the metaphor, like, everything's a hot dog. And it's just which one? What do you want on your hot dog? Do you want mustard? Do you want ketchup? Do you want relish? Do you want all three? And that's what Dragon Bolt is. It's just. It's the ultimate hot dog. Crustle did have a really good conversion into phase two. Right. Dragon Pole, or I'm sorry, Crustle. Not a part of those top six decks, but was the fourth most populous deck in phase two at 5.2% with that Heroes cape. So that's a counter to Dragapult. Yeah, yeah, it can be. Yeah. But I mean, we could talk about the deck that won, which is also a counter to Dragapult and a counter that we talked about several weeks ago because people in Japan sort of crack to this nut. But basically the James Kowalski won Naic with a quad Lily's Clefairy deck. Yeah, Lily's Clefairy box, I guess as you could call it. You know, you got your different components in here. Like Mega Kangaskhan. Exactly. A great starter to be able to draw extra cards, especially with Latiasi X to be able to retreat. It's very easy to utilize it. Wellspring Ogre Pond. To be able to trap things into the Active with Saab as you maybe build up your board or try to build up damage somewhere. And then different cards like Crispin for their variety of energies. Lily's Pearl to be able to make your Lily's Clefairy one less prize card in matchups like Dragapult is such a huge deal feel. Especially because Lily's Clefairy with Fairy Zone makes the Dragon Pokemon on your opponent's side weak to psychic. And then with the two energy attack of Full Moon, Rondo does 20 damage plus 20 more for each bench Pokemon on both you and your opponent's side. Yeah. So usually almost guaranteed you're going to be knocking out Dragapult with the Clefairy. I. There's two cards in here I do want to point out that were pretty interesting. The first mostly. Well, Dusk Ball is kind of wild, but. Well, do you want to know why Dusk Ball is in this list? Yes. Please tell me the reason. So Dusk Ball, if you do not know, there's a playset of Dusk Ball four. Four copies in here that says look at the bottom seven cards of your deck reveal a Pokemon you find there. Put it in your hand, shuffle the other cards back into your deck. Well, if you remember, Iono is not in format anymore. There's no Iono, there's no Marnie. There's really only special card. Yeah, yeah, right. They can grab your cards from the bottom of the deck. So a lot of people are asking why are you running Dusk Ball? His answer was because Great Ball is actually not in the standard format. Yeah, I guess you're looking at all of these and other than like maybe a Mega Signal for the Kangaskhan, Cyrano is the only way to like guaranteed get a bunch of Pokemon out. Otherwise you're using Ultra Balls and Dusk Balls to find your pieces. So yeah, fair, like, sure. One of the other cards that was used in here that I think has gotten a lot more attention in the last couple weeks and I've really liked it is Koridon Ex. Koridon ex is a 230 hp fighting type basic EX Pokemon that has two different attacks. The first one impact blows, two fighting energies and one regular normal energy 200 damage. During your next turn. Pokemon can use Impact Blow, yada yada yada. What? Whatever. The big selling point is the other attack. For one fighting and one colorless energy, it is 50 plus. If any of your Pokemon were knocked out by damage from an attack during your opponent's last turn, this attack does 120 more damage. So a 2 energy 270 damage is nice against anything like a Mega Kangaskhan that is opposed to fighting types. Yeah, right. Yeah. You're doing 170. So 340 with weakness. That's very good actually. That's very strong. Yeah. Very solid number. I'm going to try to guess the name of the attack. Ori Chalum fame. Let me know how much I botched that. I don't know man. That's f. That's a weird. That's a weird name. That is a very strange name. I did not. I did not hear it on the broadcast because Saturday and Sunday I was busy with the. With the One Piece event, so I didn't get a chance to tune in. And it's Monday morning here and I got back late last night, so I haven't even had time to watch the VOD at this point. But yeah, that's a. That's a name and a half. But pretty cool deck, you know, utilizing Cipher Maniacs and Crispin. I also wanted to point out this deck plays Prime Catcher. I think this might be the first list that plays Prime Catcher to win a major event in like a kind of a long time. I might be wrong. It's been a hot minute. Yeah, like the A Spec that we all thought, you know, hey, this card's gonna be the best aspec. No, you know, hands down, there's nothing they can print that'll actually be better than this long term. Actually ended up kind of being a mid a spec in this format, which is wild to think about. Well, I think it's crazy because like with the introductions of like finding item cards like Petrol Arvin, stuff like that, you know, cards like Secret Box got a lot of hype just simply because it was such a good setup card. Right. And so I think I would have thought that Precious Trolley would have been in this deck because Precious Trolley just so good at setting up your start, but maybe just trying to find an ASPEC that has a long term impact. Right. Precious Trolley is really only good on like turn one or turn two at the beginning stages of the game where Prime Catcher is live all the time. So I think just going with Prime Catcher, not a bad call out for this. And it paid off. That is the first place. This though James Kowalski's second place was a Dragapult Dusknor build. I'm opening up the list, Jake, to see if there's anything in particular that is that exciting. I mean it's a quad hammer build, so that's worth mentioning. I don't. I haven't been super close to the meta the last few weeks. I knew that some Dragon Pults were shifting to using more hammers, but I'm not sure if quad hammer is the standard yet. I would say that quad hammers has somewhat become the standard. Especially because it's so good in the mirror. Yeah, right. To be able to deter energies, get those away in the Dragon Ball matchups. But in this they're running a 2:2:1 line of dusknoir, so a pretty heavy emphasis Right. On that in the deck. Two cards that I think have been becoming more and more prevalent within the deck. One being Dawn. Right. I think dawn makes sense whether you're running Dragapult Dusknoir or Dragapult Blaziken or just Dragapult in general, because you can grab that basic Pokemon that Stage one Pokemon and a stage two Pokemon. Yeah. And then also playing the special red card. That's the, I believe only card from the new set that made it into this deck. And I think the only card from the new set that made it into either of the top two decks, if I'm remembering maybe telepathic psychic energy in the new deck. No, that was with Alakazam. Yeah. So I think I'm looking at it Right now. Yeah. Of the top two decks, just one card making it into the finals, which is a little. A little wild. But yeah. The only other card that I really want to call out within the second place dragapult list is Handheld Fan. Right. Especially with Alakazam. You know, we talked about Alakazam a couple weeks ago in that regional Win Win. Running Handheld Fan, this dragapult deck, taking its place right in that and running it as well, to be able to move an energy from your opponent's Active onto the bench. Especially because people are not running Tool Scrapper. People are not running like tool stops. So Handheld Fan could actually be really good. If you put a drag a pulled in the Active with a handheld fan and like Crushing Hammer, it's just another way to deter those energies. Yeah. Beyond that, it was Dragapult in third and then one of the new favorites, the new darlings of the format being Slow King in fourth place. I'm just checking to see is there anything particularly different from what we talked about last week. And I think. I don't believe the Zara aura was in the list from last week, if I remember correctly. So it is from Destin Rival. So it is not necessarily like a new card in Chaos Rising. But if you did not know Zeraora, basic lightning type Pokemon, has a three energy attack called Thunder Raid. If you discard all the energy from the Pokemon, this attack does 210 damage to one of your opponent's benched Pokemon Ex. That's crazy, because guess who has 210 hp exactly as a Pokemon. Exactly. Pheasantipity. Exactly. So you can knock out Pheasantipity, you can knock out Meowths. Right. There's a lot of. That's a pretty good number to be able to hit, especially when you're, you know, discarding the energy. And maybe you'll get knocked out. Because Slow King is only 120 hp. Right. I also want to point out it's particularly strong in theory if you're playing against some of the Mega decks. Because if you do a Kirim on one turn and then follow it up with a zero aura, then that's 320 damage, I believe. Yeah, 320 damage. So yeah, that 320 knocks out things like Mega Kangaskhan and Mega Absol. And you know, I think largely it's Mega Kangaskhan that most people are trying to hit. But as Mega Kangaskhan becomes more of a support Pokemon, less of a main attacker in a lot of decks, then I think that that also it's just going to be in the active drawing cards and then going to the bench. So pretty. Pretty nice combo there as well to pick up an extra prize. You remember a other Pokemon in this format that is exactly 320hp Dragapult. Exactly. I'm going to point out you cannot. You cannot hit Dragapult on the bench. Oh, you know what? Because it is a Terror One mechanic that we always forget about because that little line of text is so pointless. 90 of the time. Yeah, you know what, you're right. Anyways, that was just a trick question to see if you were paying attention to the podcast. But I know I really enjoyed the inclusion Chaos Rising did have. This is probably one of the more impactful cards in the decks and it's just Metagross. Right? Metagross having that. We talked about it the other week. The three metal energy. Four or three metal energy, one colorless energy metallic hammer for 150 plus. If you discard three metal energy from this Pokemon and you. You hold on Refresh, you may discard three Metal Energy from this Pokemon and have this attack do 150 more damage. You don't actually have to discard Metal energies to be able to get that extra damage. So Slow King can really just abuse a 300 damage beat stick. Yeah. Absolutely wild. I. I'm not entirely sure. Like, it's great against, you know, Mega Kangaskhan. I think having a giant attack in general is just really strong. But yeah, it's a. It's a cool deck. I think. I think the hardest thing is for this one, probably piloting it such that you always are having the right card on top with your academy at night and getting those attackers back into your hand. Because you only run. You run two copies of Kyurem, two copies of Metagross and one copy of the Zero Aura. So situationally speaking, you might be in spots where like if you don't find your academy at night or if two copies are in the trash and you don't have a night stretcher, you could be in a weird spot. So I do think this one is one of those where piloting takes. It goes into account for a lot of your success or not. And that's why I think also there's just a high emphasis on Cipher Maniacs Code breaking. Right. Even though Cipher Maniacs Code breaking has such good synergy with Pheasantipity with Mega Kangaskhan. Right. Being able to draw the exact cards that you need if you're a little bit unlucky and you can't find your academy at night? Well, Cipher Maniacs Code breaking can just stack one of the two cards on top of the deck and then there you go. Now Slow King's ability is active and ready to go. So you kind of have like eight copies of ways to abuse that. In a sense, those are your top four. Is there any deck outside the top four, Jake? Now that we've covered those off that you really want to like lean into or talk about, I don't think there's much that's net new. I wouldn't, I think, like to talk a. I think people would probably be interested in the seventh place deck. I think this is one of the first times that Rockets Mewtwo has made it within the top eight of a major championship. It might have done it once already, but you know, it doesn't happen very often, as you can say. But yeah, just with Rockets mewtwo, there's the same core package that it usually has that you would expect with the Team Rockets Articuno, Spadops and mewtwo, along with the Mimikyu as a kind of surprise attacker in here. Obviously Lily Fairy could be very good for Team Rockets mewtwo to be able to hit that extra damage on weakness and resistance to be able to knock out things like Dragapult well, and especially the Team Rockets Mimikyu with Clefairy. Oh, yeah, that's pretty good. Crazy. You basically get Mue X again for one energy attachment. Yeah. And you get to spread out six damage counters because Mew Team Rockets Mimikyu, if you do not know, has that Gemstone Mimicry attack that copies a opponent's Active Terror Pokemon's attack and uses it as your own. So one of the cards that I think in Chaos Rising that you can use within this deck that was utilized is Prism Tower. Prism Tower is an interesting card. Once during each player's turn, that player may discard two cards from their hand in order to draw one card. Yeah, I mean, I sure I. It has really good synergy with Spadops, Right. Being able to put your basic energies into the trash to be able to utilize on the charging up ability. So I think that's like primarily what it's used for. But it was definitely a car that. When I saw it in the list, I was like, wait a minute. Yeah, actually that's. That's a good call out because I think Prism Tower is also a kind of stadium. I don't play Honchkrow and Porygon, but feels like there would also be synergy theoretically with that or I might be wrong, but I feel like the upcoming set that has the hide and sneak ability package. I believe that in Pitch Black some of the attackers there care about the number of cards that have hide and sneak as an ability in the trash. So I think this is a good little window maybe into, if that's the case, into like the stadium you might choose for that package. Yeah, I mean if you. If you did not see. We'll talk about Pitch Black, you know, in the set review and things like that in a later episode. But basically there's Pokemon like Sinistra that in the set that if you have a certain amount of hide and seek ability Pokemon in the discard pile, you get to do a certain effect of some sort. And there's a variety of. Looks like a very cool deck I'm interested in. It could be like a little fun one prize deck. So I would say this is your little. Watch out right now if you want to pick up your copies of Prism Tower. I actually think seeing it in this deck and then having a thought, I think that that might be a good pickup for, you know, when we get to back to Worlds and. And onwards. It might become one of those weird stadiums that people play. There is a full art version from Chaos Rising and it is $3.46 on TCG Player USD. So pretty cheap. Might be a good pickup. Yeah, yeah. I do like the call out there of the Team Rockets Mewtwo as like a cool deck. I. You know, it's. I've always had my reservations about Team Rockets Mewtwo as its own deck, but I think as long as Dragapult is such a strong deck in the format and you have the options like Team Rockets Mimikyu and you can play just one clefairy on your bench and still have all of your Team Rockets mewtwos be active. Right. Be live. Because the ability of Team Rockets mewtwo basically gives you one bench spot. So yeah, it seems like it works. I think. Depends if Dragapult continues to be strong but pretty. Pretty neat. Yeah. And I mean other than that, you know, the meta is more or less the same. You know, a couple decks just splashing in here and there and Dragapult really running the tables, especially from like the 8 to 22 ish area. I think it's pretty heavy on Dragapult. Interestingly, the highest placing alakazam deck was Diego Casariga or Cassie Raga in 36th place. Which I say is interesting because it did so well a few regionals back and you know, it could just be bad luck. But I do think Slow King's rise probably has been to Alakazam's detriment a little bit. That would be my guess because it's two one prize decks sort of facing off and access. Having access to things like Kyurem, things like, you know, probably just Kirum primarily. I think that that has potentially a big impact on Alakazam. Yeah, it's just like how the format continues to evolve when other decks pop up and you know, people just generally learning how to play against the deck and, and strategies against it. I'm sure special red card has not really helped Alakazam. No, it probably hasn't. But like is it. It's run. It's like maybe a one of in Dragapult, which is a lot of the meta. Yeah, a one of in one deck. Yeah. But a one of special red card and then a one of. Yeah, the unfair stamp, you know, the more, the more of those hand resets that are around, the harder it could be. And especially if there's a hand reset that is now in a bunch of other decks, you know. Yeah, yeah, could be tough. But I guess going into this break now, this, this like multi month break, I don't know. Any, any thoughts on your mind as this season of Pokemon sort of wraps up? I think it was a fun season. I. Even though Dragapult has taken up like so much of the meta post rotation, I feel like we've had a pretty solid variety of winners. I haven't like run the whole sheet of, you know, actual decks that have won like these regionals and stuff like that. But you know, the last couple weeks we've talked about, you know, we talked about Slow King, we talked about Alakazam. You know, we've talked about this clefairy box deck. There's. There's still a good variety even though Dragapult is taking up so much of the meta that, you know, these other decks still can be successful. So it's not like, it's not like a doomsday like play Dragon pulled or die. But it's. I wouldn't say it's my favorite time ever in the Pokemon TCG history, but it's not too bad. Yeah, I, I think that the combination between the timing of rotation and the introduction or transition, if you will, from Pokemon into these small Japanese style sets, I think it's ultimately, it's a rough window as the format transitions to be closer to what you see in Japan, you know, and I, you know, I Think we're gonna be in a little bit of, a little bit of pain because of that until the next rotation. And then I fully expect with the next rotation though, the card pool, you know, I haven't done the math, but I bet the card pool is going to be much smaller this time next year. But if it's much smaller, but the power level of any given card is not that much bigger than, not much higher than everything else. Like Dragapult, I think, is just as an individual card. I think Dragapult is just on a different tier and. But maybe with the way that they're designing all of these smaller sets, they're trying to be more mindful of creating that, like, top tier individual archetype. So I don't know, that's sort of my thoughts. I think the smaller sets ultimately have been a detriment in this transition window. It's been, I, I, yeah, I get. Might be strong. You get. No, I mean, you get fewer options to combat Dragapult. Right. Like, you think about, okay, yeah, what came out in Chaos Rising, what came out in Ascended Heroes, what can you, you look back at every set and you're like, well, what really came out that people are using on the daily? And the answer is like, typically there's like three cards. There may be like two cards that are staples, and then one deck uses one card. It feels like it's been a minute. I'm just like, looking at this lineup now, and it feels like it's been a minute since we received a true archetype that can actually hang with the meta. Now that I can agree with. So. And I think ultimately that's what is going to be long, like needed, and what people are longing for is just something really new and unique. And, you know, maybe that'll come with Pitch Black, maybe that'll come with celebrations or the set that we get after that. Like, you never know. So, I mean, I did have some friends Day two with Mega Greninja, but I mean, a day two is great. And if you celebrate a day too, that's a major accomplishment that, you know, is, is, should be celebrated. But in terms of like, top eight, top 16, top 32, it's. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it just doesn't feel like there's any crazy things come up or like, new decks to really, like, hook in on that really shape things up. I think that it's funny. Do you remember, like, maybe three or four years ago we talked so much about how they would print a card and in the very next set, they would print a whole archetype to counter that. Yes, the. The Sword and Shield era with. With Dragapult or not. Yeah, Dragapult. And then you had Eternatus, and then you had Urshifu, and then you had Lugia. And now, like, at that point, we were like, hey, Pokemon, stop printing a hard counter to the best deck in format. One set later. And now I'm feeling like, be careful what you wish for. They did. They stopped doing that, you know, several years later. But, like, we're in that exact world where every new set comes out and it just feels like, at least in the current meta, it's not able to really hang. And so now that it just feels. Yeah, it's just interesting. I figured I'd point that out. The grass is always greeny greener on the other side. Right. So that's how it is. But I think that's going to do it for. For this week. I think a slightly shorter episode, but we will be streaming on Monday nights. We'll be streaming right after this. Again, some old formats with even more degenerate cards than the one that we talked about today. I know we have. I. We've got 2002 to 2004 this week, so I'm pretty excited about it. I feel like I got some cool decks. Nice. Nice. And I'm up 20221, by the way. I'm up 2:1 on killing it. I just want to put that on the record. Two one. Last week was absolutely crazy. Go check out that VOD if you haven't, because I definitely don't think I should be 2:1. All right. But that's how it is sometimes, you know, in card games. Thank you so much for listening to the Metapod podcast. Welcome on TCG podcast that revolves around the evolution evolving meta. I'm Jake, that's Sean. And we'll see you next week with more Pokemon stuff.