#291 Pitch Black Rogue Decks & Facial Recognition

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Learn more@americanexpress.com Business Platinum. Hello and welcome to the MetaPod podcast. Pokemon TCG podcast revolves around the evolving meta. I am Jake. I got my co host here with me as always, Sean. Sean, how are you doing this week? I'm great. I am feeling great. Is it still Zebra hot in the Netherlands? It cooled down significantly. It will be warm again for a few days. But honestly it was not anything like it was for that month or so despite it being obviously very bright. It's always very bright right now. But you know the sun is always shining in the Netherlands in the summer. It is. It's crazy. But no, I'm feeling good. It was riftbounds pre Rift weekend. So like pre release week. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And my first pre Rift I did open, you know, fancy over number KAISA card and I was like what's this little thing? For anyone who's like that's. For anyone who does not know. Yu-Gi-Oh For anyone who does not know Riftbound, he basically just opened up an S. Sar. Yu-Gi-Oh Or sir. Sir. No big deal. Sir. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh So pretty. Pretty solid hit out of a pre release. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh pretty. It was pretty cool. It's pretty cool. But Yu-Gi-Oh that was my weekend. How about you? I also did a pre release. I did a pre release for Union Arena. Oh. For anyone who does not know, I have a history with Union Arena. Broke the game when it first came out. Made the most disgusting deck that everybody hated. That's still meta relevant a year later. Is it been a. It's been over a year. Yu-Gi-Oh Since that. But they announced Chainsaw man. So Chainsaw man is out and I'm a huge fan of Chainsaw Man. I'VE been following the. The anime and manga since day one. And now. I mean, the series is over in the manga, but big fan. So I did that. That was fun. I'll do another one just because our local store has two of them. So I'll play in both of them kind of. Deal. But I got some secret news that I can't tell you guys yet because it would break the NDA that I have. But if you're going to Gen Con on Sunday. I will be at Gen Con on Sunday if you're there. It's crazy. I. So for the historians of the podcast. We started the podcast when I lived in Indianapolis many, many moons ago. But I never. I've never been to Gen Con, even though it's always been in Indianapolis. But you've been to gencon. I've been twice. Yu-Gi-Oh you've been to Jen and I've been Jake. You know what's crazy? I have been to gencon twice for Bandai events. And yet you have not been to Gen Con for a Bandai event thus far. It's. It's been a roller coaster because like, I was originally going to go to Gen Con this year because they have One Piece tournaments, a lot of One piece tournaments. But then I didn't get into like any of them. So then I was like, okay, I'm gonna cancel this trip. But then like last week I got this email that was like, hey, do you want to do the Zebra secret thing that you would get invited to at gencon? I was like, well, I guess I gotta re. Go to Gen Con. So that was. That was pretty crazy. Also, I promise we'll talk about Pokemon here in a second. Sean, how in tune are you with musicals? Well, I did go to NYU for theater. Oh, you did? I didn't know that. So I saw. I saw Hadestown theater this past weekend. Hadestown is so good. I saw it on Broadway with the original Broadway cast. Really? Absolutely. I don't. I don't know. The. The guy who plays, I guess Hades or whatever, like the. Oh, Hades. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh The original Broadway cast singer has the lowest voice I've ever heard. It's crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh I. I am not in tuned with musical. My girlfriend is. Is very much a musical person, but I am now by proxy. Like I. I tune into musicals, but I. It's based. So Hadestown, the. In the AMC or whatever, if you go patch auto it's about Orpheus and Eurydice, the story in Greek mythology about those two. Euripides. You're. You're I. I don't know how to say the name. Euripides. Yu-Gi-Oh sorry. But anyways, it's that story, but it's spun in a twist and flavor based on New Orleans culture anyways, and people if you know, you know, but it spun in a. A twist in flavor of New Orleans culture and music. And it was so good, actually. Like, I loved it. I love music. I love beeps and boops, you know, in music. And. And it was. It was a beautiful, beautiful performance. So if you want some culture, you want some, you know, some taste, it was awesome. If you get a chance to go see it, it was. It was cool. As someone that is not a Broadway or theater or, you know, show, like, stuff in tune to that, it was a 10 out of 10 experience. Did you see it live or was it like an AMC thing? The. It was an a. I think it's like only five days, so it's probably on the near end of the five days when this episode comes out, so hopefully you're able to see it. But it's a. It's a movie, but it's a. It's the recording of the Broadway musical. It's one of those Phantom Events, special movie things. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it was the original Broadway show. Happened in 2025. Why do we build the wall? Yu-Gi-Oh So good. That guy's voice was insane. It was wild. Yu-Gi-Oh But the. The. The Orpheus singing the la la la la has been stuck in my head for like the last 48 hours, if you know, you know. Anyways, but Pokemon TCG stuff that happened this week, especially Black or Pitch Black, is out and released out into the world. It's on Pokemon TCG Live. People are playing it. So we got some news, and we're going to showcase some more decks of Pokemon TCG Live now that tournaments have been happening. But, Sean, what's the first bit of news that we've got going on? Just a quick little bit of news here. We've got more minifigurine sort of collection stuff from. From China. We've featured these a few times as they've added more and more cards to the collection. More and more figures. But the Eeveelutions are making their way into the set. All of them are making their way in here. I'm gonna pull up on the screen sort of what the cards are, but, Yu-Gi-Oh you can get a box. You could pull one of the many evolutions with their corresponding card. The one thing, the one knock I'm gonna give for this collection, though, is that there is no Illustration Rare for this little set. Well, I think that just. Is it confirmed that there's no. I know there's. There's pictures and in showcase the regulars. But has it been confirmed that there's no chance? Because each of there's been two sets for anyone who does not know that have done this and I've actually bought one of these and I love it. Actually I one-of-one I one-of-one buy one from each set. It's. It's a really cool like little display thing. Highly recommended if you find it for a price. But each set had a 1 and 143 chance to get an Illustration Rare figure. According to Poke patch auto unclear if there's going to be one for the EEVEE set because the promotional images of the past ones featured the different versions that you could get but did not showcase in the promotional image the Illustration Rare version. So I don't. There is a chance that there's not one but it hasn't been confirmed yet. The reason I mentioned that though is I believe so there was a Machoke and a wailord where the illustration was before. There was not a non Illustration Rare version of Machoke or wailord. So. No, there was. There was. There was. You could get a non illustration version of those. Okay. I don't know. In set two. Set two was waylord looking on the set side of this box. I don't think wailord had an original or just like a basic version in set 2. Just looking at the side of this box, I don't know for sure but in the first set there was a Machoke, okay. That had a version but it was a different. It was a different card but it was a different figure as well. Right. Because the figure is based on the art of the card. So there was a Machoke but it's not the same figure Machoke, if that makes sense. So if that's the case, they're probably. Then my guess is that there probably will be some kind of Illustration Rare. It would be wild to me if it wasn't one of the EEVEE evolutions. I'm really curious because there's. All the evolutions are featured as basic versions. So I feel like it's gonna be eevee. If I had to take a guess, I feel like it would be Eevee that is the illustration version because you already have Espeon and Umbreon as part of the UPCs and stuff for the 30th anniversary and Whatnot. And it would just feel kind of weird to put Any of these others above. Right. As the evolution. So it makes sense if they just did. Eevee. Yu-Gi-Oh but. But that'll be pretty neat. So if you were excited about the previous collections, there's another one coming out and you have more to be excited about. Yu-Gi-Oh this is going to. Did it have a release date on it? No, no release date or further details have yet to be announced. Yu-Gi-Oh So at some point maybe your locals. I know a lot of local shops have started carrying certain smatterings of Chinese product. And I found that these little figure collections are part of that in a lot of local shops outside of China. So at some point you may run across it at one of your locals. Especially if your local shop traditionally has like Japanese or Chinese or Korean Pokemon products. If they hold those pretty consistently, then it's likely that they'll be able to get ones. But you know, if your local store only has English product ever, they never get other language cards. Then maybe not, but just go ahead and ask. It doesn't hurt to ask. You know, other little bit of news before we get into decks. And this one I think we can talk about for a minute. So Japan, the official Pokemon card stores in Japan are going to start a new program where they will require facial recognition for entry and TCG purchases. Details to this are still a little in the works, but basically, unless you are a preschooler, unless you are a very small child, you will have to consent to facial recognition when you do. So assuming you haven't been into the store before, you'll get an entry ticket and you can only get one ticket per day. So, you know, just more, more ways that Japanese stores are trying to combat scalping. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, because especially with promos and stuff. I mean we've, we've talked about how promos have been a mess. You know, I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast, but there was a. There was a one piece card, a promo card that got released in Shonen Jump. If you don't know what Shonen Jump is, it's like it's a magazine that comes out regularly. I think it's weekly. A weekly magazine that comes out that has latest chapters of manga series, things of that nature. They included a one piece promo card and they printed an extra 500000 copies of Shonen Jump that week because they knew the promo card was going to be a big hit and they wanted as many people as possible to get it. But there was a huge littering similar to the Burger Pikachu situation. A Huge literary or litter and waste problem of just people buying up the stock of this and then just throwing out the magazine. Which is kind of a shame because there was actually a long time series that had its final chapter in there and a lot of fans were like I Goldin get the final chapter to read because all the scalpers bought this card. But I, I think this is a really good step in the right direction in my opinion to try to prevent scalping and things like that. Because it's kind of hard to go around this. I think. Yu-Gi-Oh Personally it doesn't totally nullify it because. Well, as a. Let's just say I'm a scalper. As a scalper I can still do the facial recognition and get one, but it kind of just ensures or makes it a little bit harder for me to Uptown more copies of said thing. And facial recognition is not something new in card game spaces. Right now in Bandai for one piece specifically in Asia they have facial recognition and stuff per account to make it because they were having an. They were having a problem in one piece where people for tournaments would sign up with multiple accounts. So it be one person would sign up for a tournament with like three different accounts. And so to combat that now you have to have facial government ID registration onto your account I believe. So now it stops people from having multiple accounts sign up for tournaments. So not, not necessarily something that's surprising to me personally, but glad they're making it harder. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I will throw out. And also didn't they, didn't they just kind of do this for the, the championships in Pokemon? Well, they, for the championships of Pokemon they were doing. You have to have a government issued photo ID with like a Certified address in the country in order to register for the championships. Now that is different because you know, if I don't live in Japan, I can still go to the Pokemon center and buy something, you know, only once a day, but I can still do that. Whereas I can't compete in any of the Japanese championships theoretically because I one-of-one have a government issued id. So I, I'm going to throw out a potential negative to this which you know, I'm sure a lot of people have already commented on, which is I don't know if I love companies. Even if it is Pokemon. I know that Pokemon, of all the companies that would not want to do anything negative with the. Your face photos, with the data about your face. Yu-Gi-Oh it's still being stored for some undisclosed amount of time on a server and it is not impossible for that data to become compromised. And so it just kind of feels like, do we really need to go to all of this length from a privacy implication perspective just to limit people to one box a day or whatever? Like, Yu-Gi-Oh like, sure. This is maybe a little harder to circumvent because your face is your face is your face. But I feel like there's something in between, you know, email address and facial recognition that we could go and try. I mean, to be frank, I know they don't want everybody to have an app to do anything, but, like, if you tied it to your Pokemon trainer accounts right. Now, I know Japan doesn't have the same sort of training system. Japan has a whole different system. But in theory, they have a system. Right. Imagine if you had a system of some kind that you wanted to launch globally, and then you just did the facial recognition locally on device with things like face id. That's a way, like, Bandai is doing it. Like I just talked about, like, Bandai is doing it where your face is on your account. Well, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know how Bandai is doing it, but, like, face ID technology, the data about your face doesn't actually go to the company when you unlock an app or a thing on your phone. It's just verifying that that is, in fact, the account associated with this person. That's the person. And you get around a lot of the privacy implications if you do something like that. Um, and so all Pokemon has to do would be to say, oh, well, you know, you can only come into the store if you have an account, and that account is tied to your face ID on your phone. And I don't know. I. I'm just gonna throw out there, I don't love this. I. I don't think that this would actually fly in any other country. Like, I guarantee you, if they tried to do this in Europe, they would be hit with so many, like, data privacy laws that, like, it just. It Goldin happen in Europe, frankly. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, the Asia, like, Japan specifically, is, like, one of the only places that I've ever heard of stuff like this going on. So it's. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It doesn't make me feel great. I also wonder what it will be like because, like, you just get the facial recognition in a numbered ticket. It doesn't have to say that you need, like, a government id. So, like, people that fly in from, like, Australia or fly in from Europe or US for the releases of certain, you know, sets and stuff like that, they can still do this. Yu-Gi-Oh I think they want. They. They. That's designed for that. Right. Which is like, so long as you can prove that you as a person only went in once a day, that's fine. We don't really care where you come from. Because think about it like when you visit Japan, you know, I, I mean, I went to several Pokemon centers and I was so glad that I could go and then buy mostly plushies when I was there. And it would be very sad if I had to have a government ID for Japan to get in. Well, actually, starting in August, as reported by Pokebeach, Pokemon is saying that select TCG purchases at Pokemon centers do require a government issued photo ID starting in August. So specifically you went in at the right TCG purchases. But like, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it's not everything, but just some TCG purchases. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh But, Yu-Gi-Oh I, you know, I get it. It's a little extreme. I don't think that we're going to see this in Europe and probably not America just because I think there's other also just culturally, you know, in America right now, I think people are pretty fed up with all these face recognition things that are going on. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't think they're gonna try it there. But actually with Yu-Gi-Oh growing as much more, the last thing I want is my face being fed into an Yu-Gi-Oh program. But as a content creator, I think I'm already cooked. Yu-Gi-Oh So. But that's all the news that. I mean, that was kind of a big news story. But we do have five decks. I'm calling them all sort of rogue decks. One of them is not particularly like, unheard of, but it did one-of-one a pretty large online tournament. Still rogue. I mean, it's still rogue from the perspective of it's not really a deck you would have put in the top five or six decks. Right. So. But Jake. Yu-Gi-Oh Tell us, what, what, what deck are we starting off with? We are starting off with the Tournament of Doom. That happened. Azul actually ended up winning at Azul Garcia Grego Azul GG1 with Marnie's Grimmsnarl Frost last. It was a really interesting idea, Right. Because for most all of the deck, it is the same as normal. Right. Martini's Grimmsnarl being able to accelerate dark energies onto the field and then doing 180 for damage output with 30 spread somewhere else. Froslass continuously stacking damage counters and Monkey Dory moving around damage counters. Right. That's the same shtick that it has always been since the deck came out. The really interesting card That I think has been getting a lot more notoriety as we've had this card. A little bit more with Pitch Black's release is Gwyn. So, Gwyn, if you do not know a new card from Pitch Black discards up to two Pokemon that don't have a rule box from your hand to draw three cards for each card you discarded in this way. So it's a potential, like draw six supporter. I think it's actually really fun in a lot of decks, especially if you run a lot of non rule box Pokemon with the synergy of stuff like Night Stretcher, right? To be able to just get those guys right back. So it worked out really well for him. I have to watch this vod to see, you know, how it goes and things like that. Because he did go 130 in this tournament. He literally did not lose a game. And the Tournament of Doom is one of the bigger tournaments. So it's not like it's a. It's an easy tournament to one-of-one Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I'm looking at it now and I'm like, okay, well, in terms of using that, Gwyn, you do play a lot like you said of non rule box Pokemon. And I think you have plenty that you can throw away. Because you know what I've noticed with Grimmsnarl, Marty's Grimmsnarl is, is you often times find yourself with a pretty full lineup, right? You maybe have like two Grim Snarl ex lines in play, maybe two frost last lines in play. And that really only gives you space for like one monkey and maybe a bado that you threw down early or anol. So there's a lot more extra cards in here. You've got four monkeys in this list that, like, later in the game you're just like, I don't need this right now. I can just toss it. Draw six. It's pretty crazy. I mean, you only need one Buddoo typically in a game, and there's two in this list. So using that secret box is the A spec of this list as well. Which, you know, there's then Team Rockets Petrol that is in the deck on top of that, right? We've talked about the synergy of stuff like Team Rockets Petrol just binding your aspec and secret box. Especially because Spike month, Jim, such a good stadium in this deck. It makes sense why you would want to play it, right? You get a lot of value off of, you know, playing secret box within this deck, in my opinion. So really cool, in my opinion. Like Marty's Grim Snarl. Like you're saying Is not the deck that I would have thought would have one-of-one the tournament or even been in there in the top four. Right. Yu-Gi-Oh And the fact that it, you know, is weak to grass. Like, it's not like there aren't grass decks running around. B Drill is, you know, fairly popular. We talked about some other grass decks last week and so it's not unimaginable that you would hit a grass deck or two. So Yu-Gi-Oh pretty impressive. Pretty impressive here. But I wanted to call that one out. Not a deck that you would have expected to see take down a 500 person tournament that you would expect to see go 13 0. Obviously, if Azul is playing it, you know, I think that that helps the odds of any deck if you had a Zool piloting it. Yu-Gi-Oh but you know, but Jake, next up on this list though, I wanted to talk about a deck that got second in a tournament that had around like 200 people. And this deck is a deck that a friend of mine here actually has been trying to make work and it just was not happening. But is Mega Dragonite ex. So for those of you who don't know Mega Dragonite Ex, it was the very first Mega that was ever revealed. One of the two 370hp mega huge stage two has the ability Sky Transport. Once during your turn you may use this ability switch or active with one of your bench. So it's got a free switch as an ability once per turn. And then it's Attack, which is also no slouch for a Water Lightning Lightning ryuno glide for 330. And you discard two energy from the Pokemon. But 330 damage is knocking out. I. I am almost positive basically any other Pokemon that you're likely to encounter, with the exception of maybe Mega Drill. Yu-Gi-Oh I think Mega extra drills. A lot of these Evolution Megas have over 300, over 330 HP. But barring something like that, you're knocking basically anything else out. So pretty good attack. And I also just have to mention that the Dragonair is very strong in this deck. Once during your turn, if this Pokemon has any energy attached, you can use the ability to search your deck for an Evolution and put it into your hand. So it's like just get any Evolution out of your deck with this ability. So the ability kind of is its own engine. But the question, Jake, I have for you is what are you getting with this engine? What car? What other cards are we pairing with Mega Dragonite? So there is a 1:1, 1 mega electros ex line in here and I think primarily your evolution that you're trying to go for is the Electrike, right? Because it has that Dynamotor ability. Dynamotor, if you do not know, once during your turn, you put a basic lightning energy from your discard pile to one of your benched Pokemon. Does not have to be a lightning type or anything like that. Can be an evolution. Can be a basic. So this could be a really interesting way, especially with Mega Dragonite being able to take itself out of the Active as a free retreat. You pair that up with like a Mega Kangaskhan EX where you're drawing cards at the beginning of the game and Latias ex, right? To give it that free retreat. Now you have like a pivot Pokemon. You have any sort of basic Pokemon in the Active that you switch in with Mega Dragonite. Your electric now can now accelerate energies onto this guy. And then you can go in with a Mega Electros EX if you want to be able to use the attack, right? Because the. The split bomb spread of 60 damage to two of your opponent's Pokemon can be really cool, right? To be able to knock some things out a little bit one by one. And then a 190 attack as well to paralyze is not the worst thing in the world I've ever heard. So can give a little bit of flexibility. I kind of. I like the idea of this deck with the Evolutions and then going alongside the Dynamotor. You've also got a heavy count of Crispin in this deck because your Mega Dragon IDX is asking for different colors of energies. You could go in electric dynamoter onto the Mega Dragonite for one lightning energy. Then you can Crispin grab the water and lightning and there you got three energies attached to your dragonite to attack. Going from zero to a full attack, 330 damage. It's pretty. Pretty good combo. And I really like this because prior to this, I think a lot of people have been trying to run Mega Dragonite with something like Blaziken because like you said, it's Blaziken's got a very similar ability to just accelerate an energy from your discard onto it. But the electric is just a stage one. It's not a two prizer. So while you're using it to power up your Dragonite, it's not always going to be like a very clear target for your opponent to go after, right? This three prizer is really what you want. So I think especially with. Sorry, especially with Dragonite's attack of only needing to ditch 2 energy on the Pokemon for the 3 energy cost. You really don't, like, need an emphasis on Dynamoter. I feel like in this deck, like, it's just a good complement within the deck. Because once you get the Mega Dragonite going, if it doesn't get knocked out, right? Like, you can cycle this every turn without even needing Dynamoter. And I also want to point out that we do have Power Glass. Two copies of Power Glass, which is a tool. Very weird. If you've never heard of it, I don't blame you. It says at the end of your turn, after you attack. So after you've discarded those cards, if the Pokemon this card it's attached to is in the Active spot, you may attach a basic Energy card from your discard pile to it. So you discard two and then immediately get one back. Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's just. It's a deck that is really cool synergy with itself. And I talked about how Mega Dragonite can retreat your Dragonite into something like a Mega Kangaskani X. You know, draw some cards, get the free retreat with Latias ex. But Volcanian Ex is in this deck is also a basic Pokemon that synergizes so well with the Latias has the Scalding Steam ability. Once during your turn, if this Pokemon is in the Active spot, you can make your opponent's active Pokemon burned. So at first I was like, what is this card doing in this deck? But then thinking about how maybe you could go in with Volcanion instead of Mega Kangaskhan. Go ahead. Burn your opponent's active Pokemon and then free retreat it back into Dragonite. Now your Reuno Glide attack on Mega Dragonite is really doing like 350 damage. Right? Because you got to take burn damage in the checkup phase. So that's a really. Yu-Gi-Oh This deck is kind of funny. I like this. I also like the fact that situationally. Right. You might look at this deck and think yourself, how do you do against something like Crustle? Well, that Volcanian Ex, can it mess with Crustle? Yu-Gi-Oh well, Yu-Gi-Oh you burn it. Right. But you don't have any attacks with Volcanion to like, be able to do or anything like that. But I do think it's interesting if you burn the Crustle and you have a free pivot every single turn, so they can't really ever lock you in the Active. So you just sort of pivot around, keep it burned, and then you can finish it off with a dragonair that does 60 worst case scenario. So I just wanted to point that out because I do think that's another sort of slight bonus to Valkanian is that you get like a 20 damage or more maybe every time you burn. So Yu-Gi-Oh pretty. Pretty neat there. One other I'm wondering, does Crustle. Does the Crustle deck have an energy? What does Ms. Energy do? I think it effectively. Oh, it's only effective attacks. Yes, exactly. That's why I was like. I'm pretty sure it gets through that. It's not like a therapeutic energy or something where like it can't be affected by conditions. And the last card I wanted to mention, because I need to read it again too, is Lumiose City as a stadium. Once this stadium turn, that player may search their deck for a basic Pokemon and put it onto their bench. So. And then if you do, your turn ends. I think that that's interesting as a choice here. You know, I guess it's a way to get out something like a Shaman or a Latas or like some of the other cars that you maybe don't have an easy time finding in this version. So I. I kind of. Well, it can actually. It could actually just be something to like get a Mega Kangaskhan. Yu-Gi-Oh Onto the field or like Volcanion or something. Because you have like four poke pads in this deck. Maybe you don't want to utilize the Ultra Ball. And it also could just be a good stadium bump. Right. Like you. You bump the stadium that your opponent, you know, found. Like we just talked about secret box finding Spike with Jim in the Mar's Grim Snarl Matchup. You could just get around that. Things like that. Yu-Gi-Oh So I definitely think that this list is not like solved perfect, anything like that. I think it's a second place list in an online event. But pretty cool that it did pretty well. And I think a really good baseline. If you've been looking for a deck that runs Mega Dragonite that you maybe hope could be more viable, just, you know. Yu-Gi-Oh you just gotta hope. You just don't hit any Lily's clefairies, that's all. Yu-Gi-Oh knocking out your Dragonite in one shot without any trouble whatsoever. Yu-Gi-Oh but you know, such is the way of the world, but Yu-Gi-Oh Jake, what is the next deck on that sort of list of decks? We'll go into this two cannon deck. So Toucannon. I've been seeing some gameplay of and seeing some people play. If you do not know what Toucannon is, it is a stage 250 HP colorless Pokemon that has the ability aerial draw. Aerial draw? Once during your turn, use this ability draw a card. Pretty simple. Pretty nice to just have a draw support Pokemon on there. But for one energy you can do Feather Rondo 60 plus does 20 more damage for each bench Pokemon, both on you and your opponent's side. So what I've seen a lot of times with these two cannon lists, especially early, is running Area 0 under depths, right? Make sure Bench to be able to have eight Pokemon in there, right? Obviously can boost up your two cannons attack. And one of the things that I found very interesting with this list specifically is the use obviously with Area Zero under depths. But you need to run a Terra Pokemon, whether that is the Terapagos that we have in this deck, right? Which works very well with Unified beatdown, right? Adding more damage based on the Pokemon that you have, but also Cornerstone, Ogre, Pond Ex and then in combination with them, one of the cool synergies that you can utilize is actually Jewel Seeker Noctowl, which I haven't seen yet until this point. Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's. You're running so many colorless Pokemon, so all of a sudden you can use Fan Rotom, which has the ability of Fan call to. If it's your first turn, you can search your deck for three colorless Pokemon with 100 HP or less. Obviously the benefit there is depending on what you already have in hand, you can get some combination of your Picky Peck, Trumbeak, Hoot Hoot and Noctowl lines. And then like you said Noctowl once during your turn when you play it from your hand to evolve. If you have any Terror Pokemon in play, which you really want, so that you can play your Area 0, you search your deck for any two trainer cards, which you know, for a while this, this Noctowl was probably one of the best setup engines in the game when it was paired with things like Teal Mass, Gogapon or others. So, and I think this actually synergizes so well, right, because one of the high key supporters that you have in this deck is Dawn. And so dawn searches your deck for a Basic Pokemon Stage Pokemon and a Stage 2 to put in your hand, which you're running several stage one lines, you're running several stage two lines. If maybe, let's say you do not have a Terror Pokemon on field, but you have dawn in your hand, dawn does not have a restriction on whether or not it can grab a Rule Box Pokemon. So what you could do is in your line, you know, you can grab a basic Pokemon of Terapagos you can grab A stage Pokemon of Noctowl and then you can grab a stage Pokemon of 2 Cannon. If you already had a picky peck on field and a Hoot hoot because of, you know, like Fan Rotom or something like that, you can go ahead play the Terapagos down on the field. Go ahead evolve the Noctowl activating Jewel Seeker to find the rare candy to then evolve the two Cannon onto the field. So like, I really like Noctowl in this deck. I think the synergy is really solid and really cool and this could be a fun one to play. And also we don't have a lot of hand disruption in the game. Especially early, you know, special red card. You are not going to be using this early in the game if you don't take a Prizm because you're still setting up unfair stamp doesn't do anything. So unless your opponent is some for some reason playing an early judge after you use Fan Rotom, you're I think 90% of the time or more you're going to be totally safe with your Fan Rotoms right now. So also love to call out Here the cheeky 101 line of toga Kiss, specifically the one that has Wonder Kiss. When your opponent's active Pokemon is knocked out, you flip a coin. If heads, you take an extra Prizm card. So always love seeing that little line in there if you feel like you can high roll. So Yu-Gi-Oh and it just makes sense when you have Jewel Seeker and Dawn. Yu-Gi-Oh right. Like once again you're just really able to find these stage two combos that can work so well in the game. One of the other call outs that I want to do is Fighting Gong, especially because you have a one energy attack in the Feather Rondo. Fighting gone actually works really well to be able to find a basic fighting energy which can be your attachment for turn onto the Feather Rondo. But it could also find you your cornerstone, Ogre Pawn Ex. It's like another search for that basic Pokemon. Because Fighting Gong just looks for a basic fighting type Pokemon to be able to activate then your Jewel Seeker and those. This is. This is actually a really cool deck. I like this a lot. So Jake, I gotta ask, are you coming around to the two Cannon train? I. I'm really trying to because I'm going to compete in the Las Vegas Regional, especially if I get in through the signups on RK9. It is the Delta Rain format though, so I'm trying to stay a little bit, you know, calm on Colorless Pokemon are going to be hot. Think about it. You're going to get that new stadium that says the double stadium that says your colorless Pokemon give up one less Prizm which could be really cool, but also can be just bounced really easily. I think. I don't know how good it's. I think that I hot take. I know we'll go over it on the side list. I think the stadium's kind of mid. But anyways, like, I think that this deck is a really cool point to like. It's. It's probably fairly cheap to build for the most part. Right. Especially because a lot of these exs have been reprinted. Right. It's a lot of commons with your noctowls and your two cannons and stuff like that. And your aspect of choice as well is prime catcher in this deck, which is not necessarily the ASPEC that I would have thought, but it makes it really easy to be able to either trap stuff or be able to chase things. Ryan. Especially with feather Rondo, to be able to take some really key knockouts within games. So I think this is like. Yu-Gi-Oh I think this is really cool. Yu-Gi-Oh I. I agree. I saw this and it wasn't like first or second at a tournament. I think it was like maybe top 10 or something like that. But you know, still pretty good in a couple hundred person tournament. If you wanted to build this deck with zero cards. You have zero cards and you want to order everything on TCG player right now it would be 17.47 USD. Man, I which is awesome. I. I wish every card game that I wanted to Blue Ice that cheap. I mean, Pokemon what I mean, this is a much larger conversation that we one-of-one get too much into. But Pokemon, it's one of the cheapest card games that you can play. You say one up. I'm pretty sure Pokemon is the cheapest card game that you can play. I really don't know. In terms of its Prizm support equivalence. I. I'll say like the ratio between like cost to build a deck to potential prizes that you can get at like events and tournaments and things like that I think is one of the highest ratios. Yu-Gi-Oh Because I mean you could rock up with a 15, 20 deck and walk away if you're a GG or something and walk away with like five grand. That's crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh So. So really, really cool spots. One of the things that I will almost always love. Pokemon. We got two more cool decks for everybody here. Something that people should keep on their radar. This one is Something that I have not even since we did the set review. Jake, I don't think I've read this. What is this? This is. What is this? Erica's Victory Bell. So I have to pull this card up now to remind myself what I'm even looking at. Erica's Victory Blue Ice a stage two of the. Probably maybe the most forgotten of all the trainers, including Hops, because Topps Pokemon actually were halfway decent for a second. It has two attacks. I think the first one is probably the only relevant one for a grass and colorless Fleer garden Rondo. This attack does 40 damage for each of your Erica's Pokemon in play. So you basically, I think generally would cap out at 240 for two, which is not great. But you have things like Erica's Tangela. Once during your turn, you can search your deck for an Erica's Pokemon and put it into your hand. So you get a basic Pokemon there that can just search any of your others. You got Meganium, which is cool. And then you have Erica's Vile Plume, which actually might be. Is this. No, this is not the main attacker. Victory Blue Ice the. Victory Bell's the main attacker. This is a compliment Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh You can heal 30 from each of your Pokemon is the ability on this stage too. And then it's attack for, you know, two grass and a colorless bloom powder. Doing 160. And your opponent's active is now asleep and poisoned. So importantly here, if I'm adding, I'm doing all the math right in my brain right now. Basically, once you get a Meganium out, which is pretty easy with your stadium of forest vitality, the Victory Bell attack is really just one. One grass. It counts for two. And you're doing 240 for one. Yes. Actually, no, because one of your spots is Meganium. So you're doing. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh 200. You're doing on average, I would say 200 for one. Which. 200 for one with a brave bangle potentially. So maybe 230 for one, which is not terrible, actually. No, I mean it's pretty efficient. The hardest part is just going to be can you get everything online fast enough? Because there is no rare candies in this deck. Yu-Gi-Oh it is just a pure, you know, evolve everything. Which you don't really need rare candies if you have forced vitality. Right. I mean it's. It's basically your rare candy. But one of the cards that I think is really cool in this deck that we talked about earlier, there's Gwyn in this deck. Yu-Gi-Oh So you have how many Pokemon are in this deck? Let me do a quick count. 11. There's a lot. Plus 4. 19. 21. 22. Plus 3. There's 25 Pokemon in this deck. That is, that is a starter deck. That is a 2018 era, you know, League battle style deck. 25 Pokemon is absurd. That is, that is, that's silly. 24 of them can be used on Gwyn. Right. Because Gwen says you can't use rule box Pokemon. So Vile Plumie X isn't going to make the cut, but Bug Catching set along with seven energies. That's 32 targets within your deck. On Bug Catching Set. Looking at the top four, you're almost always going to hit something and you can discard those Pokemon to draw six. And then you can put them right back into your deck with sacred ash. Yu-Gi-Oh So then find them again off Erika's Tangela. This is like, you know, this is pretty interesting. Like, and if you're evolving, you're getting rid of a lot of the cards in your hand as you're evolving too. So Yu-Gi-Oh I would have to play the deck to know how it actually feels in the format. Because on, purely on paper, 200 for one energy on average is pretty decent on a single Prizm attacker. I, I just, I, Yu-Gi-Oh it's just, it's very linear though. That's the thing about this deck. Aside from the Vileplume being able to put something to sleep and poison it, you're basically doing the exact same thing every single turn, which is, I feel like 200 for one. I feel like the Vileplume is mostly to be able to help your weenies survive. Right. With like monkey dory manipulation, dragapult manipulation. I think that's kind of the big thing about this deck. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh It's just to be able to get that 30 spread killed off because unfortunately your Erica's Bellsprout is 60 hp, so it will die to a dragon pole right away. Insta. Insta kill. So you better kill. You better hope that you get your forest vitalities out to evolve them immediately or else you're getting eaten by Dragapult. But Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, it's Zebra cool. Yu-Gi-Oh I love Gwyn, by the way. Oh, I think Absolute staple. I think the more decks that we see of Gwyn, the more I like this card. We, we thought when we lost research, Jake, we thought to ourselves, like, Yu-Gi-Oh the best draw supporters. Lily's jokes on us. The best draw supporter was Gwyn the whole time. It's new. Yu-Gi-Oh But like, clearly Gwyn is the professor's research we never knew we needed. Yu-Gi-Oh Zebra fun. What is the very last of our like rogue sort of off the wall decks that we're talking about today are off the wall decks is Electric again. Right? Electric is once again been in here but Mega Manetric EX is making its way in there. Mega manectric Mega Man EX. SO 330 Lightning Type Stage Pokemon 2 Energy Attack Flash Ray for 120 damage to Lightning energy during your opponent's next turn. Prevent all damage done to this Pokemon by attacks from basic Pokemon. So we've talked about some basic Pokemon not only in this video but in the format itself. So that's a really nice way to be able to kind of stall out your opponent in a sense kind of lock them out of some things. But for three energy you can do righteous blasting for 200 plus. And if you discard all the energy from this Pokemon you could do 130 more damage to hit that 330 hp threshold which knocks out most a lot of things I think within this format. Yu-Gi-Oh it knocks out Dragapult which is. Yu-Gi-Oh Which is pretty good. Pretty good knock out of Dragapult. I, I, I like both of these attacks. You basically get a one hit KO on a lot of the things in the format and then you get a really cool wall effect for certain decks. I think the wall effect would be interesting against the Delmise deck. Yu-Gi-Oh Because basically you're forcing them to use the Macha Fo or the Banettes. So but I don't think too much in there outside of that. It's like that the occasional raging bolt. Yes into them but not a lot of I think the emphasis is more on the, the second attack, the righteous beating. And to pair with that we are playing three of the electrics that we talked about earlier with that Dynamotor ability to accelerate the energy back from your discard pile to to one of your bench Pokemon. So very much needed in this deck. You get two of those set up. You have a Mega Manectric on your bench and the Mega Manectric importantly zero retreat cost. So if you have two of them up, you can sort of just chain these back and forth assuming they're not getting knocked out, which is pretty, pretty cool. So and then you're pairing that with the Ionos Kilowattrol as a big draw engine. So I like this. Yu-Gi-Oh The ability is to discard a basic lightning from your from this Pokemon specifically. And if you do you can draw until you have six. So it's a nice Little, you know, every now and again draw engine. And this works really well with Dynamotor because Dynamotor, right, has to accelerate a lightning energy from the discard pile. So you can go ahead, do an attachment onto the kilowatt roll, or actually you can dynamoter onto the kilowatt roll if you really wanted to. Yu-Gi-Oh But it get an energy onto the Killer Watch rule, then you can go ahead trash that energy to be able to draw cards, and then Dynamoter can move that energy to essentially wherever you want. And there's no Gwen in this deck, unfortunately. But you do have Canari in there. Canari gives the ability to grab any four Lightning Pokemon to put into your hand, which I thought at first that Qunari only worked with Lightning type one-of-one Pokemon. Or. Actually, no, that wouldn't make sense because Qunari is not one-of-one But Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh but very nice that it works with any Lightning. Yu-Gi-Oh very cool that it works with any Lightning Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh So the setup of this deck, theoretically there's only two Canaries, because you really don't want to see more than probably one in a game. Because once you get set up, you're probably fine. But Yu-Gi-Oh getting your electric set up, getting your kilowatt rolls, and then getting your Mega man extra clients, that's really your key. Once you get those online, you're happy to just play boss or Lilies. And then beyond all that, the the A spec of choice in this one is yet again Prime Catcher. So a lot of these more rogue decks choosing to go for a strategy where they are very aggressive, trying to take two prizes a turn and one-of-one faster on that Prizm trade. And you also get to play the new Voltaic Energy. So it is that new special energy for Lightning attacks used by the Lightning Pokemon card is attached to do 20 more damage. So theoretically, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh your Magnum and Etra can hit big numbers, right with the. With the righteous Blasting attack. Curious that it plays Prime Catcher instead of like another aspec, because it feels like the setup. On the contrary to the two Cannon deck, it feels like this setup is a little bit more harder because I feel like you. You need to get the electrics online, right, to be able to do the different things. So kind of curious that it's running Prime Catcher, but maybe Prime Catcher is just really nice. Especially because there's an emphasis on Battle Cage within this deck, right? Battle Cage prevent all damage counters being placed on bench Pokemon by effects of attacks or abilities on the opposing Pokemon. It's really good into Dragapult, right? Really good into Dusk. Nor things of that nature. So just another way to try to prevent that. But Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, you got to get your. You got to get your watch rolls your Tynamos down on the field. Electrikes. But there's also a one of. I want to go over this Manetric real quick. There's a Pitch Black Manectric that got brought out within the latest set. I don't remember reading this card. It's 120 HP Lightning Type Stage Pokemon has two attacks as well. Flashing Barrier for two Lightning Energies for 50 damage during your opponent's next turn. Prevent all damage done to this Pokemon by attacks from Evolution Pokemon. So you can in some matchups. Right. Flash Ray prevents the attacks from basic Pokemon. You now have a way to be able to do Evolution Pokemon. So there are some matchups where you could just absolutely cheese them and just be like, I'm gonna have this Manetric at the top of the field. And you literally can't do anything about this. Yu-Gi-Oh Based on the attacks. And then for 3 energy Sonic Edge 110 isn't affected by any effects on your opponent's active Pokemon. This can be your Shred attack. Right. That you may need in some niche situations because you don't really have any other good attackers outside of this that are non rule boxes for like that Crustle Matchup or something like that. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, Crustle this. The Flashing barrier would stop the Crustle from dealing damage to the. Oh, actually. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh you're right. You know, it's kind of. It's. I think this is a really interesting archetype. I think that if you are a fan of Manectric, which I know a lot of people are fans of Manectric or fans of Lightning decks in general, and there haven't been really that many good options the last few months for Lightning. I think this is a really cool archetype to look at. And it will reward players who tweak decks like this to match whatever local meta that you're playing against. So maybe you consider a second copy of that Pitch Black Manectric. If your local meta is just rotten with things like Dragapult or, you know, if Marnie's Grim Snarl all of a sudden is very, very popular at your local after Azul, that little Manectric there is going to put in some work against that Marnie's Grim Snarl. Yu-Gi-Oh Not that you necessarily need it. The Mega Manetric will also just knock it out in one hit. But you know what I mean. You know what I mean. Yu-Gi-Oh It's like a really interesting spot with, with rogue decks, I think right now. Yu-Gi-Oh but those are pretty cool. I wanted to do this episode about like a bunch of different rogue decks, cuz, you know, we focus so much on like the tournament winning decks. But my question for you, Jake, is of all the rogue decks, I know you said you like Toucanon. Do you see any of the decks that we talked about today making a bit of a run at Worlds coming up in the next month? I would think Grim Snarl probably has the best one. And I'm not just saying it because Azul 1, it's an established archetype that people have been messing around with for a while, right. You kind of know a lot of the ratios and especially with the boost of Gwen. I'm really curious to see after Azul's one-of-one in the Tournament of Doom, how much more popular Grimmsnarl gets within there. Because I do think it's like a, it's a really big boost, right, to be able to get that extra draw in with when you have so many different Pokemon that you can utilize off of Gwen, how valuable that can be. And I'm, you know, I am also really curious about Toucanon and how well that could do because Worlds, our next event, still a month away. Exactly a month away. At the time of this episode releasing, we got a little bit to see how this format can evolve within the couple weeks and, and things of that nature. Yu-Gi-Oh I am excited because I think of all the formats, right, we have a whole new set coming out. Nobody can really play it in any big events. It is a small set, but there have been many times in history where someone brings a, an unknown archetype to Worlds. The ones that come to mind are like Mega Audino and, and Yu-Gi-Oh And things like that. And you know, I don't know if any of these decks are going to be that, but I will be very towards, towards Firebox decks right from 2019 playing a theme deck with like 25 fire energies. So, you know, this will be an interesting world where we might have a window where, yes, Dragapult is the most played deck. It probably will still be a top deck for a lot of these players, but you know, there's just enough time and space in between where somebody might crack something new. So. Yu-Gi-Oh And you know, I hope that, you know, there's a Mega Darkrai deck that comes out that, you know, can do pretty solid because it's Zebra underwhelming and it just kind of stinks when a poster child is not, like, relevant, you know, like, of a set. But we're living in the Dragon Ball world and it's doing a lot, so Dragapult is doing Dragapult things. All right, Jake, that's gonna do it. Sign us out. That's gonna be all for the Metapod podcast. Thank you so much for listening to the Pokemon TCG podcast. It revolves around the evolving meta. I'll tell you a little bit about my secret mission next week, so stay tuned for that, even though it. I. I can tell you that it has nothing to do with Pokemon, unfortunately. But anyways, it's going to be fun. See you guys later. And check us out next week.