#288 The Pitch Black Set Review!!

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Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc. Hello and welcome to the MetaPod podcast, Pokemon TCG podcast that revolves around the evolving meta. My name is Jake, or Atrocious you may call me as always. I've got Sean or Gyro Sean over here on my side. How are you doing today? I'm good. I'm good. It's beating the heat. It was. I'm sure everyone has heard and seen all about the Heat Dome in Europe and everything, and it was crazy. It wasn't as bad here as it was in France, but it was still very, very bad. Like, yeah, I, I have beat the heat, though. We are back down to the 70s or I don't know what that is in Celsius. Apologies to every European viewer. One day I'll get there, but it's. It's nice temperatures again and I hope it stays that way. It's brutal. I hope so, too, because I know, I know what it's like in the heat here in Vegas. And you know, when you're stuck in it, it's. It's miserable. Thankfully, AC is. And also the housing, like, it's, it's really interesting. Like, thinking of the housing structure. Yeah. Like what houses are made of because, like, Vegas, if you ever visit Vegas, the houses are very different, I assume, like, Arizona is like a lot of plaster and other things. Yeah. Like, it's, it's buildings built to keep out heat. So it's like, it's really interesting because talking to you last week when we did Our retro Pokemon stuff we played. What was it? 2002. 2004. Yeah. Yeah. Jake went up to a 4:2 lead all time and it. And it was strenuous. 4:2. I. I feel like every single win that I've gotten has been to the brink and bone of gets of the decks so far they've been very, very close games. I'm still deciding to be frank exactly what I want to do about videos. If I want to edit them as individual years or what. Because I, I'm. I'm still thinking it through. So no. No concrete plans right now to. We're no rush. I. We. You know, I. I might even ask you Jake, like do we want to just do a single video that's like a review of the Wizards of the coast era? Because I think that would be my. That could be interesting. But I feel like. Interesting. I feel like our sample size is a little too small though like of games, you know, because we played. We played best of threes of every year and you know, if we like tried out like way more decks and played a little bit more than. Yeah, I. I would say or maybe like if we had matches to watch. But there's a few things that I think I know for certain though, which is weirdly like Pokemon search in that era was just like far less than it is today. It was non existent outside of like Pokemon Breeder. Right, right. Pokemon Trader. Yeah. It was just like what. It feels so opposite the way that Pokemon works today. Like you had cards at the beginning of the game like computer search, which are crazy. But then I just want to go find a basic or I want to go find an evolution and it's just like ah. There's not really a lot of. That just feels like a. It feels like a different game. I would argue that it feels like a different game in a way that is worse than the game today. The game today is I think far better. Yeah, I. It's. The thing about the retro series has really made me appreciate like where we are now in the game and how it's built, how it's structured, how cards are designed. Even if I am so against this trackable meta that we're sitting in for the last six months. And you know, it just irks me to think more about Dragapult, but it in my opinion is better than what it once was. Oh, Jake, before we go into the set review because that's what we're doing, one quick question. Did you manage to get in on any of the Bandai Card Fest Flame Flame. No, I did not. I didn't either. I did not. For anyone who is curious of what we're referencing in one piece, Europe and North America release this brand new, like, event that they're trying out, and it's happening at like the national championships of the different regions. And so Utrecht, I believe, was Europe, right. Capacity, capacity of 4,000 people. In North America, capacity of 5,000 people. Now, I know it was a mess in Utrecht. I don't know the exact timing on how fast things sold out. But in North America, the signups were gone in less than a minute. 5,000 slots filled in under a minute. So I, the only reason I bring that up is like, I have so much more appreciation for the way that the Pokemon scene is right now. Because I, I, I will say I think that the majority of the signups for Dallas and Utrecht are not necessarily players. I think they are people. No, because for those of you who don't know, the, the sign up is tied to an opportunity to purchase product as well, which this product you could probably flip for like four times rent. Yeah. Before you even leave the venue. So because of the insanity of promotional product basically, or, or product in general for one piece, and they're tying it to entry to a competition all of a sudden, it's not just how many people want to compete in this event, it's how many people think that they can make a profit off of buying this ticket. And it is, I think it is. I understand that they kind of want to figure out a way to limit scalping, but I think that it had the opposite effect, is it turned everyone who was a scalper now into a competitor with huge air quotes. And I'm like, ugh. I have so much appreciation for Pokemon, which only has 2,3000 slots for regionals. And yes, they do fill up, but it's nothing like what's going on in one piece. And like, oh my gosh, Pokemon is like this bastion of hope right now, comparatively. Now, if only the Meta was just more favorable or I should say something that I would much more enjoy. But either way, that's all I'll talk about one piece. Because especially with the Flame Flame Prune, how some things are going, I could talk about, I could talk about it forever. I actually literally just got back from evo. Sean, have you ever heard of evo? I mean, I know of it, right? It's like a video gaming convention thing, right? It's like the fighting game, like world Championships, basically. It is the, it is the super bowl of fighting games. You Know, like, Street Fighter, Tekken, things of that nature. I literally. I literally just got back. I haven't even taken off my badge yet. I rushed in to do this podcast episode to talk about pitch black for you guys, and I promise we'll get to the set review here in a second. It's a small set, 84 cards, but I don't have a background in fighting games. I literally just found out, like, what Tekken was. Watched it for the first time this weekend. Street Fighter, watched it for the first time this weekend, and it was honestly some of the most fun that I've ever been at at a tournament, like, convention. Like, think about how if you went to the world championships and you were lucky enough to go to, like, the. The arena, like, for worlds, it felt like that. Like, I went to the arena at Evo for the. The top cut of Street Fighter, which is the pinnacle game of the. The EVO championships. It was so electric. It was so much fun, like, all the different games. I'm terrible at video games, and that was proven this weekend when I did a demo for. For a TCG card that I wanted it. I. It was. But it was so much fun and the people were so cool. And, you know, it's. It's got me in an itch now of, like, downloading one of the fighting games and just, like, playing, you know, just casually, like, jumping on hop, hop on the sticks, as they say. But card games will definitely always have my heart. But I just want to give a quick shout out to that if you've ever got the chance to go to Evo, even if you have some. I mean, it's not. It's very easy to understand, like, fighting games because, like, easy to understand what's happening on screen to a degree, yes. But it's incredibly difficult to understand the complexities of, like, what they're actually doing, like, blocking combos. Like, like. And this is a whole other conversation that we can talk about sometime. But, like, card games are very hard to understand at a very basic level. But, like, in fighting games, I can understand where the HP goes down and hits zero and says ko, you know, like. But it's very hard to understand why people are taking cards out of a area of six on the side of their board when a card leaves the field of play, right? It's. It's not as intuitive. So if you ever have the opportunity to go to, like, an Evo or some sort of big fighting game championship, like, CEO, it's happening later this year in Florida. I. I highly encourage you get to the chance to do it. But Pitch Black is the topic of the podcast today. I'm not going to stall any longer. You know, it's like 11 o' clock my time at night. I'm gonna go to bed soon. Pitch Black is releasing on July 17th and it's got 84 total cards in the set. It's another like somewhat mini set which is very exciting to a lot of people and there's some cool cards in here. Pre releases should be happening starting this weekend because of the July 17th release day. So if you got any July 4th plans, or if you don't have any July 4th plans, maybe try to make it out to a pre release or two. Yeah, but we can jump right into it. We got, like you said, tiny set. We'll start with the Grass Pokemon. I. I really think you just jump to Lurantis. Yeah, I think you're right. So I'll just jump to Lurantis. Lurantis EX. Stage 1. 260 HP grass type. Got two attacks. First, lively cutter for a single grass energy does 60 damage. Plus if this Pokemon is healed. If this Pokemon healed during this turn, it does 200 more. Kind of a weird attack. Like healing is not a huge effect in Pokemon. Usually I think people are going for one hit. Kos Dragapult maybe is the exception to that. But you know, if you had a way to consistently put a damage and then heal it to do 260 for one, that would be pretty crazy. But one of the things that's worth noting on this healing, for anyone that doesn't know, is a specific action that specifically removes damage from the field of play, essentially is the best way to put it. Something like Monkey Dory, right. Which moves three damage counters from your side to the opponent's side is not considered healing to my understanding. So it's. It's something like you're gonna have to use like a. A Nurse Joy or a Screen Cone Potion. I don't know if it's informant, but if that was informal like that would be something that you could do. But yeah, I, I think it's not very great. And the second attack, Leaf Guard for 140 for 1 grass 2 colorless. During your opponent's next turn, this Pokemon takes 50 less damage from attacks. Makes it effectively a 310 HP grass type Pokemon. But kind of to your point, like 310 is not like the craziest thing in the world. And honestly, 140 output is actually not that. No, you're not too hit Koing anything Like a Dragapult, even with that. So it's. I. This feels like a. You know, the cards that they get from. What do they call. Not Champions League, but, you know, the. The starter decks. Yeah, this feels like a start deck card. I don't think it is, but just weak overall. So I think we can move on to the. The actual grass cards. The two that are gonna make any waves, and that is Poltergeist and Sinistra. Jake, what are the. What are the abilities? I think the ability is really what both of these all revolve around. There's a. Several Pokemon that have this specific ability, hide and seek, so make sure to keep that in mind. Sneak. Oh, hide and sneak. I'm sorry, it. Oh, man. I can't read hide and sneak as the ability. This Pokemon can't be affected by attack or can't be affected by effects of attacks or abilities from your opponent's Pokemon. So I believe this is something that gets covered with Dragapult, right? Yep. Yeah. And especially like with abilities. Right. I don't think even. Yeah, like, Monkey Dory can't do this. I don't think Dusk nor can do this either, right? Nope. Yeah. So it's like a. It's like a full protection on this Pokemon. But Sinister has a one colorless energy attack called Matcha Spin. If you have six or more Pokemon in your discard pile with the hide and sneak ability, place four damage counters on each of your opponent's Pokemon. So you're going to see this trend of the different hide and sneak Pokemon. They all have various things that can happen or like, things that are unlocked based on the amount of hide and sneak Pokemon that are around. Right. Whether they're in your trash or. I think it's just your trash or discard pile, I think it's all. Yeah, it all revolves around discard pile of this ability type. And then as we go through the set, you'll sort of see all the ones that you have as options. I. I think it's really interesting that they gave this effectively the. The Rabska ability on all of these Pokemon because I think they've realized at the point that they were making this, they were like, man, Dragapult is really a problem for these, like, low to the ground Pokemon. Monkey Dory is really a problem. And the deck is just not gonna be viable if your whole bench just gets wiped before you can do anything. So it seems. I mean, you don't have like a white flag. Yeah. Like, you don't have to. You don't have to run Rabska, you don't have to run Shaman, you don't have to run Psyduck. So like, you can just take all those cards out of your deck if you're trying to play the Hide and sneak. I am so excited to see the mirror match one day of these decks because. Oh yeah, if you tried to matcha spin, you wouldn't be able to put any damage counters on any of the Pokemon. Yeah. Because they all have the ability that can't be affected by the attacks effect of putting four damage counters on all the Pokemon. That's something to think about. Yeah. There are other attacks, I think for hide and seek, which we'll get to, but it's just. I think it's funny. I think that would be a hilarious little mirror. But that. Let's jump on the train of these. Of these kind of Pokemon that all go together with abilities, things of that nature. I'm going to talk about Sizzlepede real quick. Yeah. I don't think Sizzlepede or Centis Scorch is really all that good, but the three colorless energy attack called Bug Panic makes me giggle every time I think about it. Sizzle Pete is a 80 HP fire type basic Pokemon. Reveal the bottom seven cards of your deck. This attack does 50 damage times the number of Pokemon that have the attack Bug Panic. Then shuffle those Pokemon back into your deck and discard all other revealed cards. If you're curious, Centiscorch does not have the Bug Panic attack. So you're. Are there any other cards that have Bug Panic? I am. I'm gonna be listening in towards the set review as we do it, but I am not sure. In the Pokemon trading card game. Yeah, I will. I also have to mention that like 3 colorless for 50, you might think to yourself, oh, we have that triple colorless, you know, card that does. And that only works, I'm pretty sure on Evolution Pokemon. So Sizzlepede can't even use that energy to get this attack off. I have quickly looked up on Bulbapedia the attack Bug Panic and cards containing Bug Panic. Sizzle Pete is the only Pokemon. So you're Max that has. Yeah. So maybe in the future, maybe when we get like Delta Rain and stuff like that, we'll get some Bug Panic. But poor Sizzle Peed. I think that if you ever want to play this, I don't know if there's a better. There probably is a better mill basic, but a mill basic for one Fire Discard the top card. You sometimes Will find that that is all you need to end up winning games. If you can trap something in the active that has like two or three retreat and you've run your opponent out of resources, you just throw a Sizzle Pete down and end the game that way after like 10 turns. I'll mention that, you know, because just. Cause I don't know if there's any other. Yeah. Any other Pokemon in this fire section that are even worth mentioning. You could maybe talk about Armor Rouge for a small second. Because of Armor Rouge Ex stacks, right. As a one prize option for one fire energy, potentially. I'm not going to sit here and say that it's an incredible option, but it could be something that you think about to like maybe finish off an attack or something of the sort. It's just 140 HP stage one fire type Pokemon. A one energy attack called Flame Legion. This attack does 40 more damage for each of your bench Pokemon that has a Fire energy attached with a 40 attack base. So it's a maximum output of 240 damage. Right. With five bench Pokemon that have a fire energy attached. And they don't have to be fire Pokemon. So if you could just get the fire energy attached and a couple different places, it might be like a good cleanup. One prizer. Jake, I am going to actually shout out a card that we will not talk. Well, we can briefly mention it today that was revealed Mega Rayquaza ex. I actually think that this is a legitimate single prize attacker in a Mega Rayquaza deck. So if you don't know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna scroll right up there and talk about it. Jake. Oh yeah, I'm reading it right now. So Mega Rayquaza has an ability. This is not in pitch black, but I do want to point it out because I think if you want to grab copies of Armor Rouge now for four months from now, it has the ability. When you play the Mega Rayquaza, you look at the top four and attach any number of basic energy you find there to this Pokemon. I attach a basic. No, it's just a basic energy. Yeah, you only do one. But like odds are you're playing a lot of basic energy and if you skew more towards fire. The point is the Mega Rayquaza needs fire and lightning in order to do the attack. And it wants a bunch of fire and lightning on all of your Pokemon. So there is like a very clear synergy between Mega Rayquaza, which is colorless but wants the same attack and Armor Rouge and people are even Talking about playing this with something like the Terapagos and the glass trumpet, you could play the stadium that makes your bench up to eight. So actually you would be maxing out at 360 damage. So there is something I think for like this card maybe on somebody's radar in five months time. It is a stage one. So maybe that will be the thing that makes it not playable. But I don't know. It's interesting. You also could utilize Crispin pretty well in that deck. I feel like. Yeah. As a. Because the attack is fire, lightning and colorless. So I mean if you get the ability, get a fire energy or a lightning energy or whatever energy, just go ahead, use Crispin and you have three energies on the single turn with the attachment. Sounds pretty solid. Anyways, moving on to the water Pokemon. We got Whale Lord Ex. Now this guy is beefy. 380 HP Pokemon. I think it's the biggest Pokemon that we have in the game as a like non V union or whatever. I actually this is bigger. I think this is bigger than the V. This is the biggest. I think it's tied for Mega Venusaur and another mega at 380. Yeah. Big dude. Big dude. This guy only worth two prizes though when he gets knocked out. But even though he's 380 hp he is a 3 energy. 3 water energy surf for 120 damage and 5 water energy falling down for 270 damage. The Pokemon is now asleep. He's not very good. Well yeah, 380hp is crazy. Like if you this when this was announced and then there's a supporter that we're going to get to that is kind of like well you know, Kiawe for water. Look, if you can get this boy powered up and keep him healthy every turn like that's not nothing but it's a. That's a tall order. Yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely not the strongest. No, I would say. What else is there? I mean there's a Relicanth that I think is worth mentioning. It has a single colorless energy attack Fossil beat down. It does 30 more damage for each of your bench Pokemon with Antique in its name. So plays really really well with all of the Fossil cards. So if you want maybe an early game attacker, you're setting up a Fossil deck. You're pulling out all of these fossils with the new stadium that we'll get to that have Antique in its name. I actually think this Relicanth is very strong. If you want to play a Fossil deck as a turn one going second attacker. Because you know it is that you get four out. So it is 160 max. Assuming that you get five fossils out on the field and no other non fossil Pokemon for one colorless energy, it's not that bad. Pretty as a turn one going second. There's a lot of things that 160 damage is going to knock out, you know. So you also are forced to play five fossils out on the field though. That's going to be your hard part. Right. The stadium is okay, but the, the all the other fossils that you're going to need to hit that. But even still say you get two fossils out, that's 70 damage. I don't know if you've noticed Jake, but most basic Pokemon that evolve are now 70 HP. Yeah, I mean 70 is just a good number to hit number. I think if you want to play a fossil deck, this is a solid maybe one or two of as your first attacker because otherwise you're not really doing anything on turn one. So going into Primarina now 150 HP. Stage two water Pokemon has the ability Max Melody. You may use this ability once during your turn when you play this card from your hand to evolve one of your Pokemon. Heal all damage from one of your Pokemon. So I think this is what you would pair if you want to play waylord. Yes. Yeah. But it's. It's so odd to me because like you need to put it back into the hand so then you can keep evolving. And you could do that with Aqua Return for a water and colorless for 120 damage. Return this Pokemon and all cards attached to it to your hand. But that just feels like so much work every single turn. Because Bax Caliber is not in format anymore. Yeah, yeah. It's. I think that they've designed this like because the wailord only does 270 so you're not one shotting things. But I think the idea is you hit with wailord. I'm just imagining the design team you hit with wailord. You play something like a switch or a surfer or whatever. You go into the Primarina and I believe you can use the A Spec for the two energy. Right. Because this is a stage two, the Primarina. Oh, you can use like Rose's encouragement, right? Well, no, but you could use the A Spec if you want. So say you. Oh, the Neo Upper. Yes, yes. That was the name. The Neo. Yeah, yeah. Because you return it all cards attached, the Neo Upper goes back to your hand. So you evolve, heal your Waylord and then put it back in your hand. Do the 120. Hopefully finish off whatever the Wailer didn't kill. I think that that kind of. If you really want to play a whale or deck, that might be a cool way to. To think about a lot of rare candies. Well, you know, once you get one up, if you have the stage one already in the back, it's fine. You just. You just have a stage one every turn and you just do it every other turn. Right? It's fine. It's fine. All right, let's move on. That's all the water Pokemon going into the Electric Pokemon. I don't know if the Manectric. I'm like quickly browsing it. Manectric has a two energy attack that prevents all damage done to this Pokemon by attacks by your opponent's evolution Pokemon. So if you've got enough time to get this guy out and really hit on the dragapults, you better hope that they don't have Dusk, nor you better use your psyduck to be able to prevent those guys from doing that thing. But yeah, that's pretty much it. I. I think if. No, it's not that great. Yeah. I think if there was ever like a future deck where like maybe it gets slotted in as like a tech maybe. But Vikavolt is also an interesting one. It has a. Well, that is a one energy attack that I don't think really matters. But the 2 Energy Lightning Attack Giga railgun does 260 damage. But if it doesn't have any Voltaic lightning energy attached, it does nothing. Voltaic Lightning is a new special energy that we will also get to. But I believe Voltaic lightning does. Adds 20 damage. Yeah, actually. Wow. 280 HP on this Vikavolt. 280. 280 damage? Yeah. So that's for a single prizer. That's actually quite a lot. Yeah. So maybe I could also see a world that this Vikavolt, if you really built the whole deck around it could be pretty wild and maybe an expanded. It's also pretty good because you have those other Charger bugs that I think can come out more easily. They can become energies. Right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So also Grubbin is searchable off of the bug catching set. Fun facts because he is a grass little bug guy compared to Charger Bug and Vikavolt. This is interesting. I think the Giga Railgun, there might be some validity. I don't know if 280 matters. That's. That's always the question with these. Is 280 damage enough to matter anymore. Just put some Dust nors in your deck. You'll be all right. Yeah, yeah. Give us a rundown on the first Mega that we're going to talk about though. Jake. Mega Zero Aura EX is a basic Lightning Pokemon. 270 HP has two attacks. The first one is Thunder Fist for one Lightning Energy. 60 times the number of electric energy attached to this Pokemon. So you get this guy beefed up, you actually have maximum damage of infinity. Right. If you can get a lot of Lightning Energy onto this Pokemon. And 3 lightning energy is zepto turn for 150 damage. Switch this Pokemon with one of your benched Pokemon. I feel like the whole point of this card is to just use the first attack. I don't think the second attack is really that great, especially with boss's orders running around in format. Maybe you can get some stall tactics going. If there's a good, like pivot Pokemon or good like wall Pokemon out there, then this combo could be pretty good. But there's no doll stall, there's no hoopa walls, stuff like that. I mean. I mean, there's a little bit of walls. There's Crustle. Yeah, I mean, switching to Crustle this with Crustle. So you're playing what, tons of switch cards in your deck. Maybe that's the option you have to. I think the other way that you could, if you really wanted to use that second attack is if you played it with a Lily's Pearl style deck where you throw something in the Active that you don't care if it dies. Because in theory, your opponent's not going to take any prizes for a few turns.150 for a hit and run is, I think, a pretty decent amount of damage. Most hit and runs that we've seen in the past don't output that much damage. Because Pokemon, I think, realizes that forcing your opponent to use Boss more than two times in a game is a quite hefty thing. But the first attack though, do you remember Zero or Ex Jake, the ability one, the gx. Yeah, yeah. GX the one. Wasn't it like when it landed when it hit? No, no. It gave Pokemon that had Lightning energy on it free retreat. Oh, there was a different one then. Maybe it was Tap something. One of the Tapu Koko maybe. Yeah, there was a Tapu Coco that had. There was something that had an ability that when you put it down, you could move it to the Active and give it all of the lightning energy. Yeah, that was Tapu Coco gx. I Want that ability on this Mega. That's what I think this is missing is because that. Yeah, Pika Ram was really, really good. And one of the reasons it was really, really good because Tapu Coco could do things like that. And I. I think if they'd given the Megaer aura that ability because 60 damage times the amount of energy attached is like cool. But it's not on the whole field. It's not the right you V anymore. This has to be on this specific Pokemon. And I don't think there's enough ways to get the energy. Like what are you gonna do, run four E switches just for this? That just feels so. You need to run Dynamotor. The Dynamotor is one energy for each ability use and yeah, but If I got two guys on there, that's 120 free damage, I guess. But it's a 270hp3 Prizer. That just feels like. I feel like I want a quick way to close out the game with this boy. But yeah, you need. You need like way more energy acceleration. But yeah, yeah, I think zero is really interesting. If Lightning gets like any more acceleration. I'm wondering how good Canary is. What. What did Canary do again? I can't remember. Canary from Ascended Heroes. This. Search your deck for four Lightning Pokemon. Reveal them. Put them in your hand. Oh, nah, nah. It's just my ride on. Good setup though. Good setup. Anyways, I'm going to talk about the Slowpoke and Slow Bro combo real quick. Slowpoke has a one psychic energy attack called Unlimited Disposal. You may discard as many cards from your hand as you'd like. Crazy. You may think that's really weird, but then when you read slowbro for 130hp psychic type stage one, he has the one psychic energy all out attack for 50 plus. If you have no cards in your hand, zero, zilch, nada. This attack does 160 more damage for 210. Pretty good. Pretty good. I think that's a really good way to set it up. Yeah. You just got to make sure that you know that you're going to draw a card for turn. You're going to have to evolve into Slow Burrow and attach an energy. So you just have to manage how many exactly you discard. So like keeping an Ultra Ball in hand or whatever to get rid of whatever card you might want. I feel like decks like this like Gran Bull used to be, I think Granville was like you had to have the same amount of cards in your hand as your opponent. Something like, something along those lines. I. But I feel like these decks have some sort of balance when they have, like, Pokemon that can be consistent draw supporters to be able to find, like, certain pieces. You know, you could even, like, Cypher's Maniac in certain situations to manipulate exactly what you're going to draw into to make sure you can not only set up the rest of your board, but also, you know, be able to get zero cards at the end of every single turn. Because I feel like getting zero cards in the hand at the end of every single turn is actually pretty difficult right now. Yeah. But I know there are. I. I can't remember what the card is. If it's Tarragon or something like that. There's a card in format right now that's like, ditch your hand for, like, there's a certain supporter. I can't remember. It's a supporter that says if you play this, you can only play this card if you discard all other cards in your hand and then do. Yeah. Go search for, like. I think it's Larry Skill, actually. Oh, yeah. Larry Skill. You're right. Yeah. So, like, that's another way to do it. If you play. I think if you want to play Slowbro, you also play Larry Skill. So which. Which actually, interestingly reminds me, I do think the Slowpoke and Larry Skill would be theoretically good in a Hide and Sneak deck, because you want those Hide and Sneak cards in the discard pile. And so, yes, we have Ultra Ball, but we don't have Professor's research anymore. So your only other options are going to be things like Aus Skill, maybe Carmine, and then things like Ultra Ball. So, like, you are more limited in how you can get your hand into the discard. So maybe Slowpoke finds its way into some of those decks, too. As a thought, Shupid and Benette are two hide and sneak Pokemon. Banette, though, has a one psychic energy attack called Puppet Pole for 80 damage. Search your deck for any card, put it in your hand, then shuffle your deck. I like Matcha Spin a little bit better than this. Yeah, just a. Just a little bit. So far, at this point, all we really need are. What is it? 6. 6 Hide and sneak Pokemon in the discard pile to be able to get some sort of extra effect off. So, I mean, especially because now there are 12 Pokemon that we've talked about so far that have the Hide and Sneak ability, you could actually probably, like, cut Shuppet. So you never start with Shuppet. Yeah. And then just run, like, four Banettes. Four Sinishas for Poltergeist. And then maybe some of the other ones as of right now. But just to manipulate you know what, your starter is going to be more likely every single game. I, as of right now, would not put Shuff it in the deck. Yeah, you don't really like the Banette 80 in search for anything. Like, it just feels very weak. I agree. Yeah. If it was on a basic Pokemon like Shuppet, that I would probably put it in the deck like. But I don't know. I think it will only ever matter if the format really wants psychic weakness. And yes, Dragapult can be made weak to psychic with Elise Clefairy, but the style of this deck, I think really does not want you to play a Lily's clefairy. To do 160 just feels really bad. No. Yeah. If this deck plays Lily's Clefairy, it's because it's swinging with Lily's Clefairy for the knockout. Like, it's not just doing 160 on a dragapult. So moving on though. Ah, here we have the Spiritomb. Though this might be the reason to run more of those hide and sneak cards, even if they're not good. Spiritomb does not have the ability hide and sneak 60 HP basic, but for one psychic energy, it has soul end. If you have 13 or more Pokemon in your discard pile with the Hide it and Sneak ability, choose two of your opponent's Pokemon and quadruple the number of damage counters on each of them. I don't know the last time we saw the word. If we've ever seen the word quadruple on a Pokemon card, we've seen triple. Hold on. I. I mean, not just triple acceleration, but like, there have been like, I think like super effective glasses that had you do triple damage instead of double for weakness. But quadruple is a weird one. I'm trying to find out if there's ever been a card with the keyword quadruple. And it's really hard because, like, quad has been a key word in the Pokemon trading card game. The Pokemon TCG has also done quadruple play with the ogre pawns. Yeah. As like different things. I think it was like an article that they wrote, like showcasing different decks. But yes, Soul End with the Spiritomb. As of right now, I think there's only four Pokemon with the hide and sneak ability. I did peek at the rest of the set and I don't see more Pokemon with the Hide and sneak abilities. So it's impossible to get 13 in the discard pile. No, there's five right now. You can have four of each. That's 16. Oh, 16. God, I know how to do math. Anyways, okay, so now Banette is back into the Or. Shuppet's back in the list. Right. You literally have to run him or else you can't do the combo anymore. Yeah. So it's. It's established damage with Matcha Gacha. Maybe run stuff like Dust Norris and stuff to be able to like, add a little bit more damage. Because quadrupling four from the matcha spin is only 16 in total that you can get on a single Pokemon. You can board wipe a lot of small Pokemon, but you get any two prizer in there, and Soul End is not going to really do anything. I mean, if you consider it, though, like, you do say you do two of the Macha Falls. You would have to. Yeah, yeah. And then you have eight damage counters on everything. You pick two of them and you go up to 320 damage on that Pokemon. Now, that's not gonna always knock out everything. I think what you really want is to find, you know, some Megas and then do a little extra somehow. I think you probably run the stadiums though, that like, do damage as you play Pokemon from your hand, because, yes, all of your Pokemon cannot be affected by abilities or effects of attacks. So you don't have to worry about Dragapult or any of those, like little damage manipulators. That's only from opponent's Pokemon, though, so the stage would still put damage on you. Yeah. Oh, you're saying is in like. Okay, yeah, yeah, never mind. I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah. So, like, the only thing you actually would have to worry about is like a spread attack proper, like a Shaman. Like a thing that you would want Shaman for. So. But I. I think this is really cool. I. I've always liked, like decks that have Spiritomb as finishers or whatever have always been kind of fun decks, and I think this is another example of that. So. And for those interested, you have to run Enhance Hammer. You have to. You have to run Enhance Hammer in this deck. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Missed. You have to run four destroys this deck. You have to run four of them, actually. What's the card that puts the trainers from your discard pile back into your hand? Is that a Banette? Yes, there is a Banette, but I pretty sure it was a Lawson Banette. Well, well, no, no, there's a. But there was a card that was played in Alakazam recently Are you? No, that was Dedenne. Oh, it's Dene. Okay, so play Dene as well in this deck because if you hit a quad missed energy deck, you do get absolutely destroyed by it. So play. Play one copy of Den Dene so you can go grab those enhanced hammers back. Anyways, if you want to see a different psychic deck, Mega Chandler EX350 HP Psychic type Pokemon has the ability Cursed Flame. Your opponent's active Pokemon retreat cost is one normal energy or normal energy. Oh my gosh. Colorless energy more. That's kind of interesting because switch cards are not super relevant in the format right now. So if you can try to get some annoying stuff. EX is still free retreat though on basics, right? Yes. Unfortunately, if your opponent's Pokemon is a basic and they have Latios in their deck, Latias doesn't reduce the retreat cost. It says it has no retreat cost. So. And that actually makes it worse for you because Phantom Maze, the attack on Mega Chandelier EX for two Psychic does 130 damage base, but 50 more for each colorless energy in your opponent's active Pokemon's retreat costs. So if they have no retreat cost, you're just doing 130 damage. Yeah, it's. That's. That's kind of rough. I think if we. That's really rough, we would have to get something in the format that turned off abilities of basic Pokemon, which. Yeah, because if it was just abilities then your ability would also be turned off. Right. But otherwise outside of Latias, which also only affects basics. So like, you know, if you're playing against a largely evolution based meta, this Mega Chandelier does stack as far as it's currently translated. So if you had two or three of these Mega Chandeliers out, you're increasing that. Not only are you increasing their tree cost by quite a bit, you're also increasing your damage output. So it's that. That can get kind of spicy. Speaking of increasing damage output, Delmise 140hp Pokemon has the single psychic energy attack called Vengeful Anchor. 30 damage base. But if you have four or more Poke four or more Pokemon in your discard pile with hide and sneak ability, this attack does 140 more damage. That's 170 damage for one energy. And all you need is four Pokemon in the discard pile with Hide and Sneak. Same or less than actually the Poltergeist or Sinister. I think that this, from what I've seen in a couple of early Japanese lists, like a month or two ago. I think Vengeful Anchor this Dhelmize was the primary attacker in a lot of matchups and you didn't even bother trying to get to the Spiritomb. I don't think because 170 on a single prizer for one energy is just strong enough that you can chew through your opponents two prize Pokemons before they can usually beat you. And also this Delma is 140hp, meaning against certain decks like Slow King or like we saw like what was it Slow King versus in the finals recently. I can't remember it off the top of my head, but that amount of HP is just very annoying because they're forced to constantly use things like the. The metagross and just doing that every single time is just really frustrating. So you know, I think if you want to run a hide and sneak deck, this is probably going to end up being in a more competitive sense, your main attacker. You can also slide in Lily's Clefairy for 340 damage on Dragonfall. And this. This is why it's like this. The this makes the Banette and the Shuppet line even worse because you have a better psychic attacker. If you really want to take out, you really just only need like four and you need a free retreater and that's it. And Pulch guys has free retreat. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's good stuff. So. And can't be touched by anything really. So he's just a 30 HP Pokemon sitting there. I think going into the last couple of psychic. I think psychic Pokemon seem to be thus far some of the better Pokemon that we've seen. I think the Marshadow is interesting. If you want to run Mega Chandelure 30 damage times the number of, you know, retreat costs in your opponent's Pokemon. So this basic Pokemon get a few Mega chandeliers out and this guy can do 150 or more damage. Theoretically. And then real quick, the Annihilape with durable body. If this Pokemon would be knocked out by damage from an attack, you flip a coin. If heads its remaining HP is 10 instead. The problem is damage from an opponent's attack. Yeah, yeah. This is. It has focus band as a. As an ability. But if your opponent just 150 is kind of weird. Like it's hard to do 150. By not damage Monkey Dory Dust nor Goodbye Annihilate. Sure. But you're trading a one for one prize. That's quite bad. Okay. But you also lost your board in a stage two. That's true It's a stage two. Also it's a coin flip. So you just like, you can just flip tails and it dies. Yeah. You just flip tails. Yeah. You just lose. Jake, do you want to talk about the first of the probably interesting fossils? I don't know if good but interesting Craniodos or I'm sorry, not Cranios. That's the stage one. Rampardos EX is a 330 HP fighting type Pokemon that evolves from fossils, has the ability destructive Headbutt. Once during your turn, as this Pokemon is in the active spot, you may flip a coin. And if heads discard one energy from your opponent's active Pokemon. If you love being annoying and you love flipping coins, go ahead, play Rampardos. Because that is a pretty solid ability because half the time you'll hit heads. You've got a built in crushing hammer on this rampardos. But for two fighting energy rampaging hammer. For 150 damage during your next turn, attacks used by this Pokemon deal 150 more damage to your opponent's active Pokemon. I kind of wish this said rampaging hammer did 150 more damage because then you could like chain these. But if this Pokemon gets knocked out, you reset the 150. Yeah. Also if it gets moved to the bench, you reset 150. No, I don't think so. Yes. Cuz it's attacks used by this Pokemon though. Yes. But the way that the Pokemon the rules work is if things get. You know how it says this Pokemon can't attack next turn, but if you retreat to the bench and come back, it can attack again. Oh, you know what, you're right. You're right, you're right. So it's. It's a little sad. If you get bossed, you also lose the effect. Also the destructive Headbutt. I wish it was discard one energy from one of your opponent's Pokemon, but it has to be your opponent's active. Oh yeah. Which is like it's. Never mind. This. This card is way worse. I wish they like, they really. I. I understand the Pokemon company doesn't want control to be like the best deck. I get it. But they really hamstrung this thing because it is not a great Pokemon otherwise. And so yeah, I. I think it's a fun deck. I think you bring this to locals and you probably can steal some wins and frustrate some people. But outside of that, I think that's where the viability of this ends. The poster child of the set in Mega Darkrai EX 280 HP Basic Pokemon worth three prizes as a Mega has two different attacks. The first one for two Dark Energy Dusk grade 110 plus. If your bench Pokemon has any damage counters on them, this attack does 110 more damage. So again, pretty easy to get damage counter. I feel like it's pretty easy to get damage counters on your Pokemon, sure. But 220 for two on a three prizer. It feels bad. It kind of feels like the worst startup. I mean yeah, it's. It's not an attack that you would use like late in the game I feel like every single time. But. But at the beginning stages it's. It's probably pretty solid setup to like. And it's also nice for 220 to get rid of something like a Meowth or a Pheasantipity. It does kill like lots of your basic. It kills a fez. Yeah, like. Like basic ex's. It'll. It'll take. But I think the second attack is really what you're here for. Second attack for three Dark Energy is called Abyss Eye. If your opponent's active Pokemon is affected by any status condition, it is knocked out. No matter the hp, no matter the stage, no matter whatever it is knocked out. I mean there's a reason right there to play the A Spec that confuses your opponent's Pokemon. Right? Yeah, the Hypnotic. The. Well, it's not Hypnotic Laser. What's it called? I can't remember. But there. There is one. I think now there's a newer one. Yeah, there is a. There is a new one and it has seen some play. Dangerous Laser is the official name. In case you are not aware, your opponent's active Pokemon is now burned and confused. So if you have a bunch of ways in this deck to be able to get stuff status conditions on your opponent's Pokemon in any sort of way, that just makes Darkrai that much better. Because if your opponent is a Petron deck, they just won't use Petron. I think you probably like seeing the 3 dark energy attack cost. There is. I believe it's. Is it a dark type toxicity that pulls Dark Energy from your deck, does damage to the Pokemon it attaches to maybe or it to itself. Yes, something like that. So I. I think that's probably what it's intended to be paired with because we don't have Dark Patch anymore. I don't believe. And so. And it's not like something where you can crisp in this. It's three of the exact same energy. So it's a Little awkward. But I think you probably run it with that toxtricity that can accelerate from the deck. And I think, you know, I. I don't know if it's a great deck. 280 HP on a mega is not very high. It's not. It's not very high. I mean, Mega King is gone. This is very similar to like Mega Absol. Right. Because mega absol was 270is. I think I know mega king Scon's like 330 or it's 300. Yeah. The mega kangas or 300. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, like, I think once you hit 300, then all of a sudden you're in like, maybe it survives territory, but 280, there's just so many things that have been designed to hit in that range recently. Especially in grass. Yeah, you have grass. So like a grass weakness is very hard right now. Yeah. So it's. I think it'll be again. This is, I think right now a good card in a fun deck. But I don't know if this is its own whole thing yet. Speaking of fun decks, do you remember Slow Bro saying, if you had no cards in your hand, you got to do a bunch of extra damage? Thievul says for 100 HP on that dark type Pokemon. Stage one, if you have two colorless energy, you can Skill Thief. If you have no cards in your hand, choose one of your opponent's Pokemon's attacks and use it as this attack. I love this. You don't have to choose your opponent's active Pokemon either. You can choose any of your opponent's Pokemon in play. Yep. So there is no escaping the Skill Thief. I. I love cards like this. I think it's so fun to build around. Like, if you just said, I'm gonna commit entirely to Skill Thief and Slowbro, that's my whole deck. I think you're gonna have everybody smiling at locals. You're definitely going to hit a matchup or two where like your opponent's attack requires something very specific, like, I don't know, the delize that needs to have four hide and sneaks in the discard. And I don't think that you would be able to do anything, so. Or just like you maybe like in the Slow Poke or Slow King matchup, you just have to mill the top part of your top. Yeah. You gotta have to have a hope and a prayer that you've got a Pokemon in your hand when they leave academy at night out on the field that you can, you know, do something. Yeah. I Wonder what the loop would look like. Say you Skill Thief into a Skill Thief. Jake. What happens then? Do you just keep flipping cards off the top of your deck with the slow bro? Actually, I don't know. You. You might actually. That's kind of. I mean it's not in. You only have four of these in the deck, but that'd be kind of funny. Yeah, that would be interesting. But we have another ex Pokemon here. That's probably bad. We have more Pico EX180HP basic dark type. First attack wheel. Draw for a single Dark. Shuffle your hand, then draw six. Pretty. It's. It's a. It's an attack. Just play Lily's determination instead. Yeah. Then for two Dark Hunger Bomber. 40 plus does 40 more damage for each damage counter on this Pokemon. I don't think this Pokemon will probably. I mean, I guess with the toxtricities. Right. If you had What? That's the point. Yeah. If you use two toxicities, it's. What is it? Two damage counters per. I believe so. But I can't remember if the damage counters go on the toxicity or onto the Pokemon you're attaching to. But let's say it's the Pokemon you're attaching to. That would be four. So you would do one 60. 200 for two. So bad. Yeah, it's put. It's putting two damage counters on that Pokemon. Oh. So maybe you need the stadium that puts another two on there. So then you're doing. But doesn't that only work for non Dark type Pokemon? The stadium. Yeah, maybe. I can't. There's other stadiums that do damage if you attach energy a certain way. So. Oh yeah. Like Calamitous. I don't know what's always in format, but like. I don't know. This is a meme. It's whatever. I don't think you're gonna play this. It's a bulk card. Shocking in an 84 card set. Yeah. What's the next card on your list? Any. Anything else in the dark. Are we moving on? I'm moving on to the Seal types. Bastiodon Stage 2 Fossil Pokemon. 160 HP metal type. Has the ability Ancient Bulwark. While this Pokemon is on your bench, prevent all damage done to your Pokemon by attacks from your opponent's Pokemon that have two or fewer energy attached. So against Dragapult, you force them to have a third energy on their Pokemon to be able to. I mean hit you. In general. This is preventing all damage done by attacks. So you would stop the 200 you can't really stop the 6. No, but I mean damage, counter, spread, but you stop the 200. I. I don't love how this ability only works if it's on your bench, because if your opponent bosses this up, then the ability stops working. So you need. I think if you're gonna run this, you probably want two of these on the field. Because once you have two on the field, there's. There's no way around it. Right. So I think that the designers originally intended this to go with that, what rampardos that we saw earlier to discard from the active. But I. I think you just play this with crushing hammers and enhanced hammers and you know, and then find a different attacker to have in the active. Get two of these down and. And call it a day, basically. That's my guess. Yeah. Yeah. It will definitely catch some decks off guard. That's just the truth. Right. Like you'll. You'll have decks that can't plan around this. That if you can knock out their attacker a couple turns in a row, they just don't have a way to get three energy every turn. So. Yeah. Worth exploring. I am curious about this next Pokemon. Which one? The Mega Excadrill. Yes. So this Mega extra drill is a steel type or metal type? 340hp stage one. It's got two attacks. For two metal you undermine for 90 and you discard the top two cards of your opponent's deck. Pretty. Pretty good. A mill and 90 damage. 90 is not great, but it's not nothing. And then for three metal you do maximum drilling 200 plus. If this Pokemon has at least two extra energy attached, this attack does 130 more. So 330 for five. Reminder that we still have Matang metal maker in format. Once during your turn, look at the top four cards of your deck. Any metal energies you find in there, attach them to your Pokemon in any way you'd like. So we do have Metang. We also have the. Our Chaladon. Right. That attaches metal. Yeah. So actually, do we still have our Challengon? Our challenge on Ex. I. Maybe we don't. I feel like we do. I actually don't remember. It's been so long since I've seen that guy. He is H Block. He is still here. So there's a few different ways, I think, to start powering this up. And also the two extra energy attack attached do not have to be metal energy. So you could play this with that triple energy, I believe. I don't think it has to be or does the triple have to be a No, I think it's fine. I could be wrong, but I think you could play it with a different energy accelerator once you have the three metal on to do the 3:30 ignition energy. Yes, yes. It is just three colorless energy. Cool. So. So I think that you probably play it with that. That way you don't have to like get 5 metal energy, which seems kind of a lot and it discards itself at the end. But you're doing 330 so you're probably only attacking hopefully three times with this attack to win the game. Yeah, I mean you're doing. If you're using the ignition energy, you're trying to hit the specific number that you need. But yeah, I think what's also really interesting is the, the number outputs on this card because it is 20330 specifically. I mean you're one short of a feasantipity. And then I'm sure there are Pokemon running around with 340. Yeah. And above that you're just barely whiffing. But you one hit KO Dragonfall. I think the stage one and stage two megas you're gonna whiff on those are I think usually 340 and above. But yeah, if you're playing against primarily a two prize meta, which is like, you know, a decent amount of it right now. Pretty strong. Pretty strong. I don't know if there's a way to increase the damage output aside from playing like you could play maximum belt in this deck to give it 50 more damage. And so now you're doing 380 which knocks out anything. So that's a thought. And also 340 is real beefy. Like we just talked about how 340 is out of range of its normal attack. So it's out of range of itself basically. And also metal Pokemon tend to have certain effects somewhere in the format that lessen damage onto themselves. So I don't know if it off the top of my head, but I could see a world where 340 is really like 380. And also you would also consider running, I think jumbo ice creams with this because it requires you to have three energy attached to use it. And this, the second attack always has three Energy. So another card where I think this Mega Excadrill could actually see play Fire Pokemon are not particularly relevant right now, especially ones that can deal this amount of damage. So I, you know, worth exploring. This is definitely something to keep on your radar if you're a fan of metal type Pokemon. If you're a fan of GLC though, Sil Valley is gonna be a nice one, I think. Has the call a Buddy ability. 140 HP Stage 1 type Pokemon. Once during your turn you may use this ability. If you have no cards in your hand, search your deck for a supporter card, reveal it, put it in your hand. So this is the engine in Slowbro. Yeah. And what was the other Pokemon as a dark type Thievul to where you, why are they all stage ones where you constantly get cards to be able to do things? Yeah, yeah, but I mean like, okay, so now let's say you use the Slowbro. You probably hopefully take a prize. So now you have one card in your hand, so you can't necessarily even use this ability. I, I, maybe this is good. I don't know. This seems not good, Sean, I can tell you that right now. Is it fun though? If we, if we existed in a format, Jake, where we had primarily Chen Pow, where you like load or Goldengo where you load your hand up with energy and then discard it all. I think this is maybe good in that maybe. But otherwise I think it's a little rough stretch. I do want to mention this Toucanon. I don't think it's like great, but it does have just as a stage 2A straight up once during your turn you can draw a card and if you get multiple of these out, like that's, that's just draw a card for free is always kind of decent. It's like almost what Pidgeotto used to be back in like 2019. Yeah. Ish. Gosh. What was the air mail? Yeah, yeah. It was basically draw a card. Dracloaks. Basically draw a card and then the first. Now it's a stage two and then the only attack for a single call is 60 plus. There's 20 more for each bench Pokemon in play. Yours and your opponent. Quite good. It's an extra 200 damage. 260 max. 260 for one energy is quite good. Yeah, I mean it's, it's solid if they can stay alive and you can get them out fast enough. And Jake, I want to mention to you another card that's coming out in Delta Rain. That stadium or that two stadiums. When knocked out by damage from an opponent's attack, both players colorless Pokemon give up one less prize card. So look, this Tooth 2 Cannon 0 prize cards you have to have. So for anyone who does not know, maybe they're audio only listeners of the podcast they have introduced In Delta Rain, a two card stage. Think of like the old legend cards and they've put it on a stadium. Now in Legendary Summit, do you have to have both cards in your hand play? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. So you play both cards at once as a single stadium. But the effect is crazy because you. You basically just get, you know, one less prize card given up. And it's meant to be played obviously with Mega Rayquaza. But I think you know what's really cool though. Yeah, it'll be really cool to get this combo often to get this stadium out on the field. And then I'm like, oh man. One less prize card my opponent can take with these Pokemon and then they play their own stadium. Yeah, I mean that's. And the two part stadium that I had to search for, which is typically not very searchable within deck stadiums are the hardest cards I think in the Pokemon trading card game for the most part to find. Yeah. Most often the hardest thing to find. I. I think the stage is like. Or this stadium's kind of buns. I think it depends. I think if you play the Toucanon deck and I know I'm really going out on a limb for this deck you're hyping up this Toucanon. I But I think that there's something there. I genuinely do 260 damage max output for one colorless energy on a card that draws you cards. It's a really good glc. I think maybe it might be good. But like you play four Legendary Summits, right? So you get two of them. You get two plays of this. You also play Neutralization Zone, Jake, because you're playing a single prize deck. So you basically have three of these effects in a single deck. Yes. I. In order to get two of the three stadiums out, I need to somehow have two cards in my hand for the price of one that my opponent is just going to bounce out. You're probably right. Wax stadium. You're probably right. But 1. A boy can dream, Jake. A boy can dream. Stadium search has to exist for this car to be good. And even at that point I think it's bad because then your opponent more than likely has Stadium search, which then makes your stadium infinitely worse. Yo. Expanded stadium Nav is going to go so hard, Jake. Wild. Anyways, I'm going on to the trainer cards in that's Pitch Black Dark Bell. If you're a fan of Mega Darkrai. Right. And you want to play that and you're wondering how you're going to get status conditions on your opponent's Pokemon. Dark Bell is an item card that says both active Pokemon, except any Dark Pokemon are now confused. So there's a way great single item card. You don't need to play the A Spec. Pretty good. Pretty good. I think you still would want to play the A Specific. Yeah. Maybe Prop. There's a likelihood. Right. Because then you have five instances of being able to affect the Pokemon, whereas with only the Dark Bell, it's four. Yeah. So speaking of the new fossils, we have two new Antique Skull Fossil and Antique Armor Fossil. And there's six GP Pokemon. They can't be affected by special conditions. You can discard them from play. But they both have their own, like, fun abilities. If this Pokemon is in the active spot, this is the Skull and takes damage from an attack. You put three damage counters on the attacking Pokemon. Interesting. And then armor protection one for the Armor Fossil. While this Pokemon is in the access spot, all of your Pokemon take 10 less damage from attacks. You know, they're interesting. I think I like how they've given these Fossils mildly useful abilities for the turn. That they are just fossils. Like. Yeah, it's something they're. They're clearly trying to make fossil types a little more playable. You know, whether or not that's the case, who knows? But like, they're trying. They're trying out different things because fossils are typically just there, you know, for the most part in the Pokemon trading card game as of late. But Heroic Bomb is another tool card going on. If this Pokemon, if the Pokemon this card is attached to is not a Mega Pokemon ex and takes 240 or more damage from your opponent's active Mega Pokemon EX plays 12 damage counters on the attacking Pokemon, then discard this card. There's like five different conditions that you have to fulfill on this card. Yeah. You not only have to not be a Mega, but have to hope that your opponent's attacking with a Mega and to also take 240 or more damage at a single point. This is. If ever the Pokemon card game Jake wanted sideboard cards, this would be it. If your opponent forgets how to read, this card is really good. Yeah, yeah. Or is only attacking with Megas. I. I think that, look, there are like some Mega Pokemon that are pretty good. I think 240 or more damage is annoying because, like Mega Kangaskhan, the base is 220. So it just feels so bad to be like they hit tails and now your heroic bomb does nothing. And I think the craziest part about this, though, is that this is not. Actually. This is probably really good in Dragon Ball. What the heck? Because you're not a Mega. These Megas try to one shot. You. You just attach it and do two. Oh, my God. I hate this game. Well, look, if Dragapult's playing this, then they're not playing jamming towers, and that's fine with me. Sure. Yes. So. But look, the easiest way to kill the Dragon Pult is just Liz Clifairy anyways. And the heroic bomb does nothing. It's fine. Yeah, there you go. Next tool that we have is a Backtrack badge. Once during your turn, after you flip any coins for an attack of the colorless Pokemon, this card is attached to also like four conditions. You may ignore all results of those coin flips and begin flipping those coins again. So importantly, you would have to flip all of the coins related to an attack first, and then you can choose to reflip all of them. Not one, not, you know, any number. It's specifically all or nothing reflip. So the Pokemon in this set, we. There is. There are two Pokemon that flip coins. We did not talk about either of. Or there's three Pokemon that flip coins. We did not talk about either of them. Piggy Pack does double stab 10 times the amount of each heads on two coin flips. Trumbique does fly for 30 damage during your opponent's next turn. Prevent all damage and effects of attacks done to this Pokemon. If the tails the stack fails and then bomb Bird. Year two Colorless Delivery Challenge. Flip two heads at both our heads. Search your deck for one Pokemon, put it on your bench, then shuffle your deck. This Spoberdier sucks. I think, like, you have to hit two heads. I think Mega Kangaskhan, you have to hit two heads as your attack to get one basic Pokemon out onto the field. No, not a basic absurd. Nope. Or just one Pokemon. So I guess, like, if you wanted to get like a stage two. Yeah. I mean, I think there are better ways to probably do that. If you really want to cheat out stage twos, there are like Tatsu. I'd rather exist. Yeah, I'd rather play like Tatsugiri Ex or the. The one. The one guy. The poison dark guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or no. Grimsley. Grimsley. Grimsley. You can only get. Yeah, yeah. It's like, I'd still rather just play that. I think the backtrack badge is 100% mega kangaskhan. Throw that bad boy on there and start. Start rolling coins. Start flipping coins. Yeah. We found our energy acceleration for Wailord. Ex in Misty's energy, the supporter card, search your deck for up to four basic water energy and attach them to one of your Pokemon, shuffle your deck and then your turn ends. Yep. I mean, look, I think that we mentioned Kiaweh before. Kiawe was literally the same effect, basically the only. And you did fire energy for those interested. The difference though was Kiawe existed in a format where you could play a supporter going first on turn one. Misty's, you can only do it going second. And I think Misty's is terrible. Any turn other than first. The first turn. So you are sitting here like, what are you gonna run for Misty's energy for Call Bell, maybe in this deck, like Tatsugiri. Like, basically just run as much as you can to find this turn one going second. And I think you only. And it only goes to one of your Pokemon. So all of a sudden that one Pokemon becomes the biggest target in the world for your opponent to boss. And unfortunately, you can't evolve into wailord and play Misty's Energy in the same turn. I'm pretty sure there's no way to do that. Yeah. So. Well, I mean, if you had Ultra Ball, you could find Waylord. And then how do you just hope that you have Misty in hand? But now how do you evolve the Waylord? Or are you talking about your first turn? Right, going second. So you play. Yeah, my bad, my bad, my bad. But you play the Misties onto like, you know, the. What's waylord's prevalence? I'm losing my mind. Yeah, you play the Misties onto a Whalemer. They boss the Whalemer. And then you just cry. You're like, whole game is over. Like, yeah, I. I want it to be better. I think if they had made a way to get Waylord out in one turn, like a cool item card that had a specific condition. But otherwise I think it's pretty rough. It's pretty rough right now. Yeah, but it's. Well, it's still really rough for Slowbro. Gladion's Decisive Battle says you may only play this card if it is the only card in your hand. So the Wombo combo that you do is you have silvally on the field. Because you have no cards in hand. You use the Call a buddy ability to then play Gladion's Decisive Battle. And then during this turn, attacks used by your Pokemon that do not have a rule box deal 80 more damage to your opponent's active Pokemon. And because Gladion was the only card in your hand, now all out does 290 damage for one energy on Slowbro. There you go. That's the Wombo combo. Yeah, I. I think I might be losing it. Is there maybe this is in the old format stuff we were playing. Is there any Pokemon that has an ability that lets you discard more cards than you draw? Like trade is the opposite. Discard one, draw two. Yes. They're. They're. Well, there's a. There's a stadium. Isn't it Luminous? Oh, right. Luminous. The. Yeah, Luminous. Luminous City or something. It's like discard two, draw one. I think that because I. I think you have to play hard. And I'm like, oh man, it could be really good. Even index that aren't slow, bro. Because it does 80 more damage to your opponent's active. And it's only if you don't have a rule box. That's fine. The problem I think a lot of decks have faced is most of the damage modifier supporters specify that your opponent's Pokemon has to be a rule box or has to be an ex. Right. So for things like Festival Lead, you couldn't deal more damage to non ex Pokemon. But this does not have that stipulation. So Festival Eat in theory would do 80 more damage to whatever is in the Active twice. Yes. Now, if it's not a. But if you do like say you're doing 100, right, and your opponent has maybe a Del Misa, which is 140. That's really awkward if you're not playing. Yeah, it's just a really awkward number to hit for something like Festival Lead. But if you can somehow Gladion's decisive battle. I don't know, wording wise, it says 80 more damage to your opponents Active. Does that mean the current active or does it mean whatever the active Pokemon is at the time that you attack? That's the ruling I would want because. Because then you're doing 180. 180. And that's the only way. I. I just want to mention that because it is interesting. Yeah, that's curious. But also it has to be the only card in your hand. Actually that's actually. Is that easy with Grookies. You need to have like three grookies on the field. It's. It's easy once you have a few grookies out. Usually you're not playing Draw supporters. The problem that you can sometimes run into is like, because you don't have to always play everything in your hand, you can just go search. Your hand kind of fills up with chaff with like stuff you don't want. But if you decide to run Ultra Balls instead maybe to like thin the hand out a little bit. There's a world. There's a world in which I could see. That's why I like the Lumiose. I'm like, that's interesting because then if you can discard some of those cards you don't want draw and then whatever. There's no way you play that in the Festival League probably. No, you actually. You're 100, right? There is no way you play play that. Never mind. You have to play Festival Lead and that's the only stadium that you can play in that deck. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But anyways, I wanted to point it out. I do think that there may come a time where not just festivally but other decks that 80 extra damage is like really relevant and it. If there's a way that you could more consistently pull that off. I could see it seeing more play. But yeah, it's just the. The only card in your hand when you play it is so sad. But anyways, Russ sitting can grunt is also a little sad. You may only play this card if one of your Pokemon was knocked out during your opponent's last turn. And this can be in any form or fashion. This can be a Dusknoir. This could be dragapult manipulation. This can be Monkey Dory. Right. Any Pokemon and if they were knocked down on the opponents last turn, discarding an energy off of one of your opponent's Pokemon. That's it. Moving on. Yeah, this is a control card. Full stop. Yeah, kind of sucks. Gwyn, Another supporter which is moving on. Discard up to two parking Pokemon from your hand excluding any rule box Pokemon draw three cards for each Pokemon discarded this way. This is amazing. In Hide and Sneak just. Yeah. Absolutely incredible. You discard two cards that you want to discard and draw six. That's great. That's amazing. He's an automatic four of in that deck. This is an automatic four of in a couple different decks. I feel like especially one prize types of decks because you could just filter out some one price Pokemon and draw six. Like there's no. There's no hand limit, right? You. You don't draw until you have eight. So you can like really stack up the hand with Gwen like this. I mean this. This supporter is very specific and what it wants to be in. But it's very good in the things that it wants to be and it's very strong. I think this is also in theory this is just really good index that maybe play A whole wide range of Pokemon that are matchup specific that you maybe don't need. Like if you're playing Shaman, if you're playing Psyduck, if you're playing like a few other. Maybe a few Meowths that you don't always need all of them. Well, Meowth has a rule box. Oh, right, right. Yeah, that's a fair point. But if you're playing lots of other bench sitting non rule box Pokemon, there's not a lot that we've seen that is primarily mostly a raw draw six that's. That's pretty wild. And this can be even used in stuff like Dragapult to where like if you don't need another monkey Dory, you don't need like a Dreepy or something of the sort. Maybe Dusk all even you could just use this and draw six cards. Now that's maybe not the best example because you want to use other things because your ability on Draclo is so good. But I hope you get my point there of like even stage twos of rule box Pokemon and stuff like that. You've got little babies in non rule box Pokemon in. In those kinds of decks that you probably don't need at a certain point in the game. I'm so glad that I don't. Don't really dip into expanded right now because I feel like Reggie Drago v Star. Absolutely. Well, a lot of. Oh no, like a lot of Reggie Dragon. Never mind. Yeah, it's excluding rule box. So they. They thought about this. Well, I mean, you can get the baby Dragonite. There's a Kyurem. Kyurem. That's the Pokemon I was thinking of. You can get the non Roblox Kirum that does the 110 everywhere. Yeah, and stuff like that. The Necrosma too. Get the baby Necrozma in there. But anyways, let's move on. We have the gym that I mentioned. Fossil excavation site once during each player's turn. How generous. That player may search their deck for up to two trainer cards with antique in their name. Which for those of you who are curious antique are almost, I think almost exclusively the fossils right now. But it does, I'm pretty sure. Is it all the fossils that have been coming out in the last couple sets? I want to say yes, these, I think that they have switched over to like from the unidentified nomenclature to antique. But yeah, but you basically get to search two of the more recent fossil cards in their name and put them onto your bench and shuffle. And importantly, this doesn't do something like end your turn. I think there was like old Fossil Stadium decks. Pretty sure the last Fossil Stadium ended your turn. Yeah. Pokemon Research Lab, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So this doesn't do that. There's no punishment. I think if ever Fossil decks were going to be have more potential to be played in the format, this stadium is giving them that chance. So the question really is, are they good enough to play full stop, even if you can get them out consistently? But it's cool. It's a great stadium for that. Great stadium. We have two Special Energy. I'll go over the first one. Then Jake, you can finish us off. Voltaic Lightning. We did mention this because it was relevant for the Vikavolt. But as long as this card is attached to a Pokemon that provides one Lightning Energy, the attacks of the Lightning Pokemon this card is attached to, you do 20 more damage. So pretty cool effect here to your opponent's Active Pokemon. So. Yeah. To your opponent's active. Yes. So you can't do. If there was a bench sniping attack, it won't do 20 more to that, but 20 more to the Active. And it fulfills your Lightning Energy requirement, which is pretty common in Lightning Pokemon. I like that. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, this is a pretty solid card, right. More damage output can be bad, especially on some of these special energies. So, yeah, if Lightning Decks are relevant, I'd imagine that they'd want to play this card. Yeah. Yeah. Jake, what is the last Special Energy that we have to talk about? You probably could have guessed that it is a Dark Type Energy. It is Shot Shadowy Darkness Energy. As long as this card is attached to a Pokemon, it provides one Dark Energy and prevent all damage done to your opponent's attacks to the bench Dark Pokemon this card is attached to. So it's a nice little protection effect onto your Bench Dark Pokemon. Especially if you're setting up some guys on the bench. And if you start out with Mega Darkrai Ex on your bench, maybe you got Buddy in the Active doing some itchy pollen to stall out. Try to buy you a little bit of time as you're attaching all these energies onto your Darkrai. You can start out with this and spread things. Yeah, this is definitely an interesting card. It's a weird one. This one for me is like, I would have to really look at, like, what Dark Type Pokemon I am playing that would be hurt by damage. Bench damage, attacks. It's not the worst, but I do worry, like, the more and more people start playing Enhanced Hammers for various matchups, the more and more you become, you know, susceptible to one of your energy just getting tossed away. So that's why for this one I'm a little bit more like hesitant. Whereas the, the other one, you probably attach it, you're attacking with the thing you're attaching it with, immediately attaching it to. So you assume that the thing's probably getting knocked out. But yeah, just wanted to mention that. And then that's. That's it. That's as far as we know the set. There might be a couple of unreleased promos that sneak their way into our set that I don't know about yet. But yeah, think the set's okay, but I think we're just living in drag Pulse world as of right now. I, I maybe. I think the best archetype from the set is definitely the hide and sneak archetype for now. I think it's got a really nice set of cards. The Dize is very strong. It gives you a clear attacker in the dragapult matchup too. You can throw that Lily's cliff fairy down and you have a pretty beefy like 140 for a single prizer. Basic is pretty good. And one that's outputting so much damage is also just really nice. Like 170 is a really good number. I do think there's a few supporters, like the maybe not supporters. I think the Gwyn is just going to be very strong in certain decks. I think there's a couple of support Pokemon in here that also could see some play. Most everything else feels pretty niche. But I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep saying it. I do think that there may be a world in which that two cannon is a viable strategy at some point. 260 for one is just really good. It's just a lot of damage. So. But Jake, I know it is late there for you, so I think it is. I gotta be up early. It's fair that we wrap this thing up. So if you want to sign us out, we will. Thank you so much for listening to the Metapod podcast. Pokemon TCG podcast revolves around the evolving meta. I will not be doing. We won't be doing the retro night. I think on the normal night. No, that we've been doing it. It'll probably, I mean. Well, actually I'm going to LA for the Dodgers game this week too, so it'd be hard to reschedule. But I gotta go to bed. It is 12:30am at night for me and I gotta be up and at the venue for evo at like 7am So I am going to be running low sleep heading into the morning. But thank you so much for listening watching whatever you do and we'll see you the next time that we revolve around the evolving Meta. 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