#297 How to Start Your Journey to Become a World Champion

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I, I, I, I feel like we have to do something special, but I have no, no ideas. I am head is empty. I just spent like the last week on the side of a mountain with like no service or anything like that. It was very nice. It was very peaceful, you know, especially with, you know, being online so much nowadays. But it's a little crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh 300 episodes coming up is going to be a big one for us. Even if we, I don't know. Yu-Gi-Oh if we have anything crazy planned or will do anything crazy, but at least, you know, it'll be a nice congratulations. Maybe I'll get a confetti cannon. Do it on the podcast. Yu-Gi-Oh Pat on the back because we've just, we've just been doing this since the dawn of time, it seems. But we are your two typical hosts. My name is Yu-Gi-Oh got Sean here to me, to my side and we're post World Championships now at this point, within 2026. 2026 World Championships happen. I promise I'll get my commentary videos up soon. I haven't, I haven't done any yet because like we, we had in the last week, like we had a, we had a funeral that we had to go to and then we had to go to a wedding. So it was a crazy celebration of life in the last week, but it did not leave me a lot of time for work to be able to get those done. So my goal is to get those. Starting uploading this week especially because this week is a little bit more lax for me in terms of I'm not going anywhere travel wise. So that'll be nice. But Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh no, no, this week I'm not going anywhere. Next week I am going somewhere and I'll be, I'll be busy as Zebra full of days, but I'll be able to get some metapods stuff in. Yu-Gi-Oh well, well, you know, you said it was a post worlds world that we're living in, but you could also think about it, Jake, as a pre2027 worlds. Well, Yu-Gi-Oh it's pre2,7. It's pre2027 worlds podcast. You heard it here first because we are now into the 2026 and 2027 championship season, I believe. I can't remember Cups and challenges have already started this weekend, but I know that there are definitely some that I've seen. Yu-Gi-Oh I was gonna say, I think the weekend after Worlds is when stuff can start again. So championship points are already being compiled for the new season, things of that nature. And especially after the World Championships, there's always a influx of new players that come in. Right. There's people that are like, oh, I saw the stream, or you know, I play some VGC and I was watching that and I heard them talk about TCG a little bit or something of the sort. So this episode today is going to be focused around starting the Pokemon Trading Card Game. But also maybe if you're a long time competitor or something of the sort, this is also going to be like new goals, things of that nature. We're going to talk a couple things about just competitive Pokemon in general. Yu-Gi-Oh In a more casual sense in the competitive Pokemon world. Not saying like, you know, here's the best deck, go play Dragon Pole, you know, and one-of-one every single challenge. More of the logistical things, or maybe some of the. That's your journey. Okay. You need to start playing Dragonfall. That's the start. Journey is your journey is to one-of-one Dragon Ball. This is a. That's a nightmare journey. I think if you were to be like, hey, new player, welcome to the world of Pokemon. 40 of the meta is Dragapult. Enjoy. I don't know if that would be very. Oh, God. We do have a one little news story before we get into all of that, which I'll jump into now, which is we did get the swag registration dates, all that good stuff for laic. The Latin America International Championship, which will be taking place in Sao Paulo, Brazil. So the dates of the tournament are, I believe, November is when it's happening. Yu-Gi-Oh November 20th through the 22nd. There you go. But the registration dates are going to be September 22nd and September 23rd. So basically two months beforehand, you can find out if you're. You're. You got a ticket to go and you can book all your flights and everything. Yu-Gi-Oh Especially because we saw the theme of last year's set of championships to be the Kanto starters. Right. And their stage two evolutions. The Latin America Championships is kicking it off a little bit different. Has a theme revolving around Salamence. Yu-Gi-Oh a little bit different. It's very different. Now, if you have seen, I think some of the leaks. I think it's for 30th. Or maybe it's for. I think it's for 30th. There's a Salamence Ex, Jake. And we'll talk about it when we talk about the set. But I think I saw the SAR for Salamence ex. Do you know what one of its attacks is? What was the Roaring Moon Ex's attack. That's what I want to say. Oh, no, no, it's. No. Okay. Is one colorless, I believe. And it says, put three Dragon Pokemon. I can't remember if it was from your trash or your deck or your hand, but put three Dragon Pokemon onto your bench. They can be evolutions, they could be stage twos. It doesn't matter. Interesting. So we used to have to gamble with, like, what was it? Tatsugiri. Yep. Ex, the Terror Pokemon. But now we can just, like, guarantee it. Huh. Now, granted, this is on a stage two itself, so, you know, you do have to get it online. But I guess that's why they're choosing Salamence. But usually, like you said, they have A theme for all of the internationals that sort of carry over now. Sometimes that theme is just related to whatever set is the most recent set that has come out, which at the time of this will be, I guess, 30th anniversary, I think. Yu-Gi-Oh maybe Delta Rain technically has come out by the 22nd or so of November, but it one-of-one Dragon Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, kind of. Or Dragon esque Pokemon with stuff like Mega Rayquaza. Yu-Gi-Oh true. But they could have Beckett Rayquaza for this. They could have Beckett Mega. Like that would have been. But you know. Anyways, I'll be interested to see if this is like a set based theming again or if this is like what other Pokemon are from the Salamence era that like. I don't know the eras. Zebra I think you just do pseudo legendary Pokemon, right? The Dragon Pokemon. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Every single set. You could do something of the sword. Like we could see a Hydragon in the future. We could see Como, right? I think Como is a popular Dragon Pokemon that the Pokemon company at least thinks about. I think there's. There's more pseudo or more popular pseudo Dragon Pokemon, like Dragonite. But Jake, crazy question for you. This is probably unrelated, but what is the Chinese year? Is it the year of the blank for 2027? Not 2026. It. I want to say it was like year of the Rad. Year of the. The Year of the Goat. I'm sorry, that's what it is now. But what is 2027? No, no, no, 27 is year of the Fire Goat. Wait, that's. Wasn't it this according to Smithsonian. Edu. Okay, fair enough. I was like. My brain was like, maybe it's Year of the Dragon. Because that would kind of be interesting if Pokemon did a whole suite of Dragon Pokemon. This year is Year of the Horse. Oh, so this was the year of the Fire Horse. Right. Because there was a whole meme going around at the beginning of the year with like somebody's name, who their name meant Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy means Fire Horse. There was something with. I don't. I could be. I feel crazy, but I feel like there was pictures of Draco Malfoy and it was. Or somebody. And then it was like Fire Horse. But I'm losing my mind now. Either way, gonna be curious to see. And one of the things that I also want to call out with the LAIC participation and also Prizm reveal is the card, the promo card that you get in the championships. It is going to be a stamped version of Pokepad. So Pokepad, very popular card. Right. We've talked about it many times. If you've listened the last 10 weeks, 20 weeks of the podcast how cool Pokepad is especially for non rule box Pokemon. It did maybe it did make me think about you remember the days where we used to get like alternate art stamped cards. I know it's like, you know, we've already got some good stuff like why are you hoping for more? But you know like the ultra ball, the Nest ball, Cherish ball, like Yu-Gi-Oh those were some cool arts. Now that said 30th anniversary will have a cool alternate art of some of these staples. True. So that's where all the money for art went was the 30th anniversary. But it will be cool because usually the foiling on, sometimes the foiling on stamped cards it's either like a reverse foil but sometimes they'll do different Topps of foiling. So it could could be another way that they judge it up a bit. Also in terms of the prizing as well, Top A gets a playmat of a different design of Salamence with the evolution line on it as well. And then the champion gets like a, a nighttime version of Salamence. It's instead of these kind of brighter colors, is all dark in black and like a dark hues of blue in the background but then outlined in some brighter colors like the orange and stuff like that. That's the design of the rest of Laic, the things of that nature. So pretty cool stuff in terms of there. It's going to be in Salo, Brazil in again November 20th through the 22nd. So viva la Brazil. You know we, we love Brazil here but Yu-Gi-Oh that's all the news that really like was interesting to talk about today. Yu-Gi-Oh it's pretty slow. It's a slow week. It's just after Worlds last week was a big week. So Yu-Gi-Oh you know, can't complain too much. But we still do not have the full set list for 30th anniversary and likely, you know, this is, we're, we're experiencing it like the Japanese have for years, which is it's global simultaneous release. So usually you don't know the set until right before it releases. So that will hopefully be. I mean I say hopefully next week the set will be releasing at some point in the middle of next week. So whether or not we have it for the pod next week is separate. Oh, the set really? Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it does. Really. For some reason I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh in November. Oh, 30th is next week. Oh, gosh. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, things are. Things are coming fast. Yu-Gi-Oh When it comes to all this stuff. But regardless, Sean, as we talked about, we were going to do a little bit of new idea in terms of new season, new goals. Right. For the Pokemon Trading Card Game, and also some tips, tricks, and things that we've learned over the. The last eight. How long have I been playing? Nine. Eight. Nine years. Somewhere around there. Yu-Gi-Oh A long time. As some people would just say, we're. We're unk at this point. Yep. So the. The Ultimate Unk podcast is here to tell you if you're starting your Pokemon journey. For those of you who. Who you know are brand new or relatively new, or maybe you are primarily a collector and you are, you know, tangentially interested in playing the game, we'll start with learning the tcg. So, in terms of learning any card game, really, there's a whole wide range of resources that are typically available to you. But I think for me, even though I don't regularly play TCG Live, I do think that it is a very good tool to learn the basics at your own pace. That would be my, like, very first thing is like, hey, before you go out and buy a bunch of cards, it's free to download. They give you like, a deck or two for free, basically. And they have. Does the TCG Live app today have all the tutorial modes still? Yu-Gi-Oh Okay, it does. That would make sense. I know the old version also had that, but ptcgo. Ptcgo has resurfaced as a conversation point over online. But anyways, I 100 agree with you with TCG Live. Although I am a generational hater of Pokemon, TCG Live and what it took from us, I will admit that, especially if you want to get into the game and you want to start to learn how to play the game, it's a fantastic tool. Right. Not only, as Sean said, does it give you free stuff, it also gives you a lot of the credits that you need to be able to build cards, get decks and stuff. And it's completely, completely free if you want. You know, I personally play the game for free. I have never once put a single cent into the game. And I've been actually playing it a lot more on my phone since the world Championships. Just to be able to at least play a little bit. Yu-Gi-Oh at least play a little bit. And, man, Pokeball Rank is. Is hard, especially when all your opponents are like, all. I keep pairing into Ultra Ball and Master Ball people in Pokeball League and I'm like, this should feel illegal. This should be illegal. Maybe that's because they know how good I am. But anyways, okay, going back off the tangent, Pokemon TCG Live is great also because a lot of things are automated for you at the start, especially if you're learning how to play the game. You know, it'll tell you whether or not you can evolve this Pokemon. It can tell you, you know, how many energies you can attach from hand and things of that nature. So it's definitely a guide to help you get started. But I also recommend just going to your local league, right? Go to your local league, ask somebody, hey, can you teach me how to play? Or whatever? Especially if you have enough cards to be able to build a deck of your own, whether that's just opening packs over the years or things of that nature, I'm sure at your local leagues, there are plenty of nice people. Yu-Gi-Oh And if you don't know where to find your local league for whatever reason, there's both online ways to do it, but also the. The Play Pokemon app. I don't. I don't want to necessarily just show my phone, but, like, there's an app. You can look it up, Play Pokemon. Inside that app, you'll be able to, like, create an account. I think if you create an account through either the web portal or the app, you can get assigned a player id. A pop id, Correct. And you will need that. So, like, either keep your login information or take a screenshot of that number, because you'll need that for competing in events, for telling tournament organizers, basically, hey, I'm in the system. Here's my info. But they have an event locator in there where you can, like, give it your zip code, give it a radius, and it will find, hopefully, you know, a league or something nearby and tell you when they play. So either through the app or if you have a local card store that you buy packs from, from time to time, usually they'll also have some sort of a local league play. So, Yu-Gi-Oh that's. That's the best way to sort of find it. And like Jake was saying, getting into actual paper gameplay, so many people at leagues, especially if you, like, let owners know or let people in the league know, like, a day or two in advance, they'll bring an extra deck for you. Like, almost every single card game I've ever played, there are people at local leagues who are just that kind of person. And they'll bring two or three decks to every single local. And if a new person rocks up and is like, hey, I'm new. I don't really have a deck. There's almost always one person there that helps, from my experience. I don't know about you, Jake. Yu-Gi-Oh And I mean, especially what you should bring into places as well. If you've got your own deck, make sure that it's sleeved up. If you buy just a box of dragon shield sleeves. Right. A box of just regular matte dragon shield sleeves, that's probably one of the most common kinds of sleeves that you'll find, especially at local card stores. Sleeve up 60 cards. Go ahead, put it in whether that's the box that came with the sleeves. Right. Because I believe 60 sleeved cards can fit in that box. It's kind of a makeshift deck box. Or if you have a deck box from, like, products that you've opened, things of that nature or anything of the sort, make sure to go ahead, put it securely in there as well. Yu-Gi-Oh Make sure also that when you go that you have dice. One of the big things about the Pokemon trading card game, especially if you watch the stream, is there's a lot of dice that you can utilize in the game, and that is to note the amount of damage. If you've ever opened up an Elite Trainer Box in the Pokemon training card game, those give you dice that are great to be able to utilize for the game, to be able to track the amount of damage that you have on a Pokemon and things of the sort. So make sure to go get those as well. Last piece of advice, get a Play Mat. You can rock it without one. You can. But, Yu-Gi-Oh his Playmas just feels so much nicer to play on as a surface. So big recommendation. I would say, like, fancy, but Yu-Gi-Oh a Playmat, it could be one of the ones that you open in like a ultra. Do the UPCs have one? Sometimes. Sometimes they don't, but there's a lot of Pokemon. More. There's a variety of products that have Playmats in them. Yu-Gi-Oh there's a variety of those that have it there. Some of your shops may even sell play mats that you can just go ahead and buy one. I would say it's probably one of the things that you're not required to have in the game. But as Sean's saying, it is much more comfortable, you know, especially with table. And it's. It's a nice way to kind of style out, you know, your board and your game. So it gives a little bit of flavor to your personality, things like that. Find one of those. You can also use Just any computer mat. A lot of computer mats will just work too. They might be a little bit big, but they're. They'll fit just fine in most all situations. So those are a couple things that I, I think you should bring for sure. So that's sort of like the very basics. Let's just assume that you, you know, now have a deck. You have a deck box. And the next one we sort of covered a little bit, which is like finding your local community. Like literally, technically, how do you do it? We have the app, you have the online portal. But. Oh yes, Jake, you could also, if you want. I know that especially if you come from the collection side. Right. You might be in like a Facebook group or something of Pokemon. Feel free to maybe ask around in there or something. Hey, is there a competitive side to the group? You know, is there a Discord server? A lot of. At least in Las Vegas personally, and, and even in other places like Lexington. Shout Out, Lexington, Kentucky, you know, different places that I've lived in now have Discord servers of. Okay, here's the city and here's the community within that city and even some people outside of it, you know, that come visit maybe a lot or something of the sort, you know, and from there you can see people posting their local league nights or tickets for cups and challenges or you know, maybe if specifically a store has a Learn to play event. Yu-Gi-Oh you know, that is much more friendly, casual oriented type of deal. I know there's one store out here in Las Vegas that holds how to play events all the time over there, People's card shop. So there's a lot of great places that you can do for that. In terms of finding your local community though, outside of the Discord stuff, there's more of a. This is a personal opinion time, not just like what actually exists. I think part of the journey of really learning and enjoying Pokemon is not just finding a group of people that you play with, but finding either within that group or if you have a couple of local card shops, finding the group of people that matches your vibe. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm sure you've experienced this a lot too, Jake, where like sometimes you'll go to a store and there's not necessarily anything wrong with the store, but you just don't click for whatever reason with like the variety of locals that are there or, you know, I don't know, just for me, I'll give my personal experience. I am. I like being a little competitive, but I'm also a big goober when it comes to TCGs and so I like to go to a store that isn't. My stores are always ones that are not overly competitive, not overly sweaty, you know, where I can bring my whack deck and I can still kind of compete. And I'm not just. I'm not playing against all dragapult. That's me. That's my personal vibe. But I don't know what's your experience has been like this. I feel like with my experience, it's just trial and error. Right. Especially if you're older, you know, maybe you're like us, you know, you, you're a little bit older, you're out of college, things of that nature. You've probably gone through your life and you know, what kind of people you like hanging out with, you know, you know, what kind of personalities that you jive with. But I would say that don't be afraid to go into new places, right. And ex. And make new experiences, things like that. The hardest thing in any card game, in any card game that I've ever played, the hardest thing about any of them is to start. Yu-Gi-Oh right. It is very intimidating to walk into a new place. Maybe you don't know much about how to play the trading card game. And that could be very intimidating walking into a place where maybe those people have been playing for five, six, you know, years or something of the sort. So the best thing that you can do is just start, just take that one foot, go forward with it, and I promise it'll. It'll be worth. Especially when you find the right place that you are the right place that is for you specifically. No, it's a. I was just thinking back to like the first time I went to play Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh In. I was in New York. I was in Brooklyn. And after I got to know the people there, you know, like, I realized like, oh, okay, cool. Everybody's pretty chill. But you're right. When you first walk in, you have your deck. You have no idea really. You know, you're not going to one-of-one probably, but you have no idea if you're like good, bad, if everybody else here is really good or bad. And usually shops have like their locals, their regulars that have like, you know, little clicks. Not in a bad way, just the people who like, gravitate towards each other. And Yu-Gi-Oh it is really weird because you walk in, you have your play mat in your deck box and you just kind of go sit down by yourself and wait for the tournament to start and wait to get paired. But. And this would be my advice to anybody out There who already has that community. Maybe not. The new player is. Whenever you see the new player, you know, when you sit down across them, whether or not they're good, bad, or whatever, like, try to, as best you can, welcome them in. Because any new player at a shop is always going to be a little like, out of. Out of, you know, their normal comfort zone. And if you are trying to grow a local scene, that also is. Some of the best advice I can give is like, every new person who comes in might become a regular. They're like, they're auditioning you sort of as if, like, hey, do I want to come to this local shop every week and dedicate every Thursday night or whatever of my time to this? And so if you're trying to grow a local community, being very welcoming and friendly and you know that's gonna go so far in doing that. I've been a part of like three or four different stores now, and I know you have two Jake, where the store is maybe new or new to a specific card game. And you're like, how am I gonna get 20 people to come to my shop every week? So I don't know. It's. It's fun. It's a lot of fun. But it does take work. And especially like with you. Talk about first experiences. I remember my first experience of competitive Pokemon was Naic. Went over to Naic in Columbus, ended up saw. I saw somebody with a Pokemon Indianapolis T shirt. And I was living in Indianapolis at the time. So I went up to him and I was like, hey, where do you guys play Pokemon? I want to play Pokemon too. And so then he told me the places and stuff. Shout out Ben, one of my good friends for a long time, especially in the Pokemon scene. And so went down there, had had a terrible deck. Awful deck. It was so bad. It was. It was the worst. Okay, wait, what was your first deck? I want to know what was your first deck? The first deck that I played, the first deck that I took to an in person. I had been playing Pokemon Tcgo casually for a little bit heading into it, but I believe it was like a Muk Muck tag team deck. Oh. Because I pulled. I pulled the rainbow Muk Muk and unbroken bonds. I mean, you can get those for like 75 a box at the time, which is crazy. So I. I had some. I had some Muck Muck tag team deck that I was playing. And it was awful. It was terrible. But continuing on, you know, Ben actually gave let me borrow baby blouse. So I ended up for the local. I played Baby Blounds. I played against Round one, played against this guy, Zebra nice, very casual. He definitely knew what he was doing. I did not know what I was doing in there. And so I asked him, hey man, I'm. I'm very new. Can you. Do you know anything about this deck? Like, can you show me? And so he's like, Yu-Gi-Oh I'll show you the ropes real quick on this deck. Because I believe like on tcgo I would just play like expanded. I think I just played expanded for like the first year or something that I was playing. Yu-Gi-Oh because I. Because I had like these older cards on there. And so anyways, but I learned. He taught me like the simple things, how to play that deck, you know. And I ended up in the six rounds that we had because I think it was actually like a challenge or something like that. In the, in the six rounds after round one, taking the hard L, I went four and one the rest of the way. So it was all because he gave me the advice of like, okay, this is what your deck is trying to do. And then come to find out that that person was Michael Pramalot, the guy who at the time had one-of-one the most regional championships in Masters of any player in the Pokemon trading card game and still technically holds that title because he's tied right now for the most ever. And we saw him during the world championships as like the mainstream judge, stuff like that. So it's, it's really just crazy like what happens when you just go, right, you just go and you put yourself out there. So again, going back to that, that is just putting yourself out there. That is honestly a legendary first locals experience to be like, I know I had a one on one coaching session with Michael Pramwat. So just get yourself a, you know, however many time regional champion winner to sit across from you from your first game. They'll explain the deck to you and you know, after. That's crazy because it was crazy because at the time, right, he did not. And this is just a testament to who Michael Paramount is, but I think this is most Pokemon players. You know, he didn't say that he was high and mighty. He didn't announce himself as Michael Premawad, the all time regional winning champion, you know, most winningest player, you know, in regionals of all time, anything like that. He just explained to me my deck, said he was excited for me to get into the game. This is really cool. I hope I had a lot of fun. And Yu-Gi-Oh it was just that. And then I found out later because I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh that guy over there taught me like, I was talking to Ben afterwards, I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh that player over there taught me how to play. And he's like, he's like one of the best players in the world, by the way. I was like, oh, that's crazy. Dang. Dang. No wonder I did so well after that. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Well, I mean, it just goes to show you have to, you know, you have to meet people and then you can be good. Yu-Gi-Oh And that's one of the things, I think, going into a higher conversation in terms of the competitive play. Right. Because if you've been playing for a bit, you know, that might. A lot of the conversation so far may not have applied to you as much. But I think one of the biggest things that you can do with building off of that, finding the community is, is an emphasis really on finding the community to get a lot of improvements, find people to play with. Right. It's a great example. Michael Paramo. I used to be on the team Dead Draw Gaming ddg. Way back when it was, it was a little bit different than what it is now. But back, back in like 2018-2020, DDG was like the Pokemon team was the set of people, is the only Pokemon team really. And it had the top players in the world in it. And in that group was a bunch of other high level players. And they would, you know, be very dominant at the regional season, you know, qualify for worlds every single year, very easily, try to compete for travel, stipends, things of that nature. But on a smaller scale. Trying to find people that you enjoy playing with is great because, you know, you play more games with them. Whether that's on Pokemon, tcg, live and friendly matches, whether it's discord, webcam games that you play, or maybe just consistent people that you go to locals with, you know, and meet at locals and play some extra games before the tournament or after the tournament or in between rounds, things of that nature. If you want to go from, you know, the beginning to a next level player, you know, finding a solid group is a step. And, you know, I wouldn't go in being like, oh, I'm gonna go to this local and I'm gonna find my testing group, you know, that's gonna one-of-one the next regional. You know, just again, it's very similar to what we talked about with finding a local scene that you connect with, you know, find people, take your time finding people, and just kind of let it naturally happen, in a sense. Yu-Gi-Oh And frankly, what I've typically found is that if you go to like challenges and locals and then eventually cups and you play a lot and you practice a lot, and if you're generally performing pretty well, like getting top four in your challenges or making top cut at your cups, if you're consistent in that the players who are on that same wavelength of like consistently competing at a higher level, they tend to also gravitate towards each other a little bit. Yu-Gi-Oh That's not to say that people don't hang out with other people, but it's like, I think people who are really more into the competitive scene and are thinking about the game more deeply and at a higher level. When you're in those environments, you can have conversations with other people who are also as into the game as you are, that you don't necessarily have the capacity to have with other people. Right. Like somebody who's just going to the locals or and shows up to a cup because it was just their locals and it happens to be a cup that day is not going to have as much of a strong opinion typically on the intricacies of the Dragapult mirror match as a player who is in the top cut with you. Right. So that's another way, like, if you just play consistently, you will see a lot of the same faces at that. At those top tables more often. And then that's another way to like decide, hey, if I vibe with them, this is a great person to like bounce ideas off of, get some testing in with maybe. And then I think from there, like we were saying, you have challenges and cups at the local level and then the next step really above that is regionals. And you know, it's sometimes difficult to get into regionals nowadays from a registration perspective, but I think it all gets easier the more friends that you have that are also planning to go to these regionals with you. Yu-Gi-Oh And especially, like, I know that links for registration get shared in stuff like the local Discord servers, you know, things of that nature, group chats as well, stuff like that. Especially if you want to jump into a regional, make sure that you follow the specific accounts and things like that as well that typically post about them. Right. The Pokemon TCG has accounts that talk about registration now. They've talked about registering for events much more than they have in years past, which has been really cool to see the Pokemon TCG and Play Pokemon accounts, both having those. But also follow Gaming gen. Right. Gaming gen is the tournament organizer for the Pokemon Championships, especially here in North America as well. So especially with Like Baltimore Regionals the other day, Baltimore regional signups happened and they had extra spots that if you knew from their post, they had extra spots at a certain time that released if you missed the first wave, things of that nature. So make sure to go follow those accounts too. Like for me personally, I have a goal of signing up for the Las Vegas regional. Right. Because no matter what, I want to be at the Las Vegas regional playing. So I follow Gaming gen. I follow RK9 labs as well. Make sure, if you want to make sure to try to get a ticket, you need an RK9 account account. And so go to RK9Labs.com I think the link is right there. Just type in RK9Labs on Google and you'll find it. And with that you go ahead, you connect your Pokemon account and you can connect like your Google account as well. It's very easy to make an account on RK9 and then registrations will most often happen on that website. And the tournament will also be run through that website as well for the most part for bigger scale events. So make sure to go do Those gaming gen RK9 labs play Pokemon, Pokemon, TCG are probably the four accounts. If you're like me and you're on Twitter or X or X formerly known as Twitter, that is what the. Those are the four that I think that you should make sure to follow. And I have notifications on for not all of them. I do for gaming gen and RK9 because they typically only post things that are very important. But that's another great way to make sure that you don't miss it. Yu-Gi-Oh And I think another thing that you do and we've talked about before, which is like plan out your regionals ahead of time. They release the schedule pretty far in advance now. Like they might be like a regional here and there that gets announced later, but most of the schedule is already announced. So go on to Pokemon website. If you just Google like regional championship schedule, Pokemon tcg, it'll send you there. And the other thing, if you really want to start competing at that higher level, try to set yourself reasonable goals, which is, Yu-Gi-Oh look, if you're like, I, I want to make worlds, I have, you know, whatever, like, fine. But that goal requires a certain amount of effort to make it reasonable. You can't be like, I'm going to go, how are you going to qualify? I'm just going to top four and ic. That sounds crazy. Like that's not a reasonable way to qualify. But I think for a lot of people. If this is your first time really trying to compete at a high level, set yourself smaller milestones, one-of-one a cup, one-of-one a challenge. Right. Like that's a very reasonable thing. You have a lot of chances to do that throughout a year. And then at a regional level, I think a really good early goal is just make day two. Yu-Gi-Oh Like, I mean, I think great goal, not only make day two, but play all the first day rounds A don't Tribute. And this is, this is something that I think a lot of people will note, especially if you're a newer player talking to a long time player and you want to get into these regionals and stuff. A nine round, day one. Is it eight or nine? It was eight. It might be eight now. I can't remember. It was eight for worlds. I think it might be nine for like regionals that are much larger in scale. But anyways, nine or so rounds of best of three at a championship is way longer and way more difficult than a local cup or challenge. Yu-Gi-Oh Right. So make sure, you know, especially if you're going in for the first time and maybe you're a little bit newer. Yu-Gi-Oh I would say a fair go. I mean any goal is good. And that's one thing that I do want to say. If your goal is to one-of-one one game out of eight or nine rounds, that's a great goal. That's what you want to do. I think if you're looking to have a starting goal, maybe you don't know exactly what goal it should be. Goal should be to finish out that championship, get that experience of what a long day of competitive Blue Ice like, because that is a skill in itself. Right. Someone like Azul Garcia Grego or Grant Manley or Andrew Mahone, they have done so many of these championships at that level that that is nothing to them. Right. That is just a regular day at work. Whereas for Sean and I, you know, it's a little bit more taxing. Even though we played card games for a long time, you know, we've played in a fair amount of major events ourselves, you know, that's a little bit more taxing. And so then think about how maybe taxing could be to someone who's starting out, maybe going to their first major championship for any card game. Yu-Gi-Oh So make sure that you. And we've talked about it on the podcast of what you should have and stuff like that. But food, water, sleep, you know, all those things. Go to the bathroom, whatever is good. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh But especially go to the bathroom whenever you get a Chance. Yu-Gi-Oh Especially in between rounds. But Yu-Gi-Oh so there's a, there's a big step getting into those. So I just want to emphasize on that that, you know, having a goal of making day two is very solid and very good. And you know, it's a huge step for a lot of people. But honestly, just playing out all nine rounds is an achievement in itself for me personally. And that's, I think that's probably the extent in terms of like really leveling up your competitive game. Every person's goals are going to be different. So I think the last one more. Yes. Yu-Gi-Oh One more thing that I want to say about leveling up your competitive game. 99.9 of players cannot just go into a tournament with no practice and be successful. There is that point. 1%. So although I said that I'm a generational hater of Pokemon TCG Live, think about at the World Championships during the interviews, Henry Chow, Andrew Hedrick, huge proponents of playing on Pokemon TCG Live. They have played hundreds of, hundreds of, hundreds of hundreds of games on Pokemon Live heading into the World Championships. And so I think, especially if you want to play a player, just playing at Locals is not going to be enough. Right. And I think there's a really interesting conversation that's happening right now in the one piece community that I think is very prevalent in any card game that I think is valuable. And it's, it's talking about the quality of your time in terms of practicing. So when you go to a local, you are there, let's say for four hours, right? Four hours. It's a five round tournament, maybe five, six round tournament. Local, big local. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh You played maybe five or six rounds of locals in four hours. And in that. Right. That's five or six games, not counting any games that you played before or after or anything like that. Think about how much time you could do in live playing those games. Now you do need to make sure that you get a high ELO right into the like the master ball rank. That's a really good goal if you want to try to get into a good ELO for competitiveness. But there's, there's something about the management of time and the quality of time to where going to locals is good and, and fine, especially for players. But you'll talk about a lot of pro players that are like, I was playing on the high, high ranks of simulator. You know, I, I played, I spent hundreds of hours preparing on the simulator specifically. So I think, you know, if you want to take that step up, but Maybe. Maybe you're a little bit afraid of going to locals, or maybe you don't really want to compete in a regional championship as of yet. Play live. Play live. Get to master ball rank. Try to get as high elo as you can on master ball rank, because the higher that you get, the higher quality opponents that you are. Yu-Gi-Oh especially if you can reach master ball Rank, you'll have a much higher set of quality of games. I joked about how in Matt, I'm in Pokeball right now, right. My games are not very high quality. It's. They're. They're not great. I think I. I posted a picture the other day where my opponent had a Latias ex into the active with a lily's pearl attached to it and a one fighting, one water and one psychic energy, which is not the correct energy that you need for the attack. So like I. I'm in a terrible place place right now on. On live. But when I get out of that, though, when I get out of that and I get to the like, maybe like high ultra ball, master ball rank, the games will be much more higher quality and it'll be a much better use of my time. So. And also I know that if you reach master ball rank, like every expansion and every set, reset rank on ladder, things like that, it'll reset you to a rank that is much easier to get back to master ball. So that is something that I really want to emphasize on, especially because we had players like in Henry Chow and the world champion himself, Andrew Hedrick, kind of. And even one of the. The juniors, the junior shouted out live. You remember that? No. Did you all. Oh, no, no, no. It was the game. I didn't see all the. The. It was. It was so funny because. So. Oh, the Japanese final shouted out. Yu-Gi-Oh the Japanese junior shouted out playing with his friends on live, which if you do not know in Japan, there's not really a way to play live unless you have a vpn. And so the translator was just like, thank you so much to all my friends for playing with me. And he had no mention of live. They were like. They were like, pull or get the. Pull the kid off stage. Yu-Gi-Oh come on, let's go. It was really funny. But anyways, you know, there were multiple people in world championship finals and at top cuts of the world championship shouting out live. And I think it's something that as much as I personally dog on live for being a program that I hate, you need it to be a better player. Yu-Gi-Oh 100%. No. You're right. There is. There's a big. There's a lot to be said of just getting reps in with whatever deck you want to bring. It's just the more hands that you see, the more situations you'll be put in and, and so you'll, you'll have more experience of when you go to that big tournament of being like, oh, I've seen this before. I know what to do. So the last little one here is like a bit of a left turn, which is, I think, probably closer to how I personally interact with a lot of my card games now, which is I like playing at a competitive ish level sometimes, but like I said earlier, I'm a bit of a TCG goober. I like to, you know, build weird decks. I like to experiment. And so another path that one could take either in parallel or separately from a highly competitive path is just like getting into things like deck building. I think especially Pokemon. If I think about all the other games that I have played, and I know for you as well, I think Pokemon is a very rewarding game for a deck. But builder, like, if that's something that really you enjoy and you enjoy coming up with new interesting combinations and cards, like Pokemon doesn't have any restrictions on which Topps of cards you can put in a deck. Unlike, you know, one piece is limited by color. You know, same thing with Riftbound. Certain other games or, or, or decks have, like, they're designed in such a way that you can't just throw random things together because, oh, this needs to reference that or whatever. But I typically find that for Pokemon, unless you're playing Mew vmax, it's a very flexible system. Like, I don't think any of the designers even of the game ever really sat back and thought, you know, this Dragapult Ex card we're making, it's going to go really well with Dudun Sparce, it's going to go really well with Dusk Noir, it's going to go really well with Monkey Dory. I think. Yu-Gi-Oh that whole combination of cards, it's gonna go great with Blaziken. I'm sorry, in what universe did Blaziken and Dragonbolt Ex ever enter the testing room together? Never. Never. I. I do think there is something about card games with deck building. And so try your hand again. Live. Such a good way to practice deck building. Right? Because you can basically for free. You don't have to actually own the cards. Figure out that in terms of deck building, but do not be afraid to net deck. You know, Pokemon did supply a code after the world championships. Oh, my gosh. Where is it? I think it was Play Pokemon. They supplied a code for the world championships that if you want to go play Pokemon TCG Live right now, but maybe you're new into Pokemon TCG Live, you can type in the code CHAMPBUILD26 to get Andrew Hedrick's exact deck list. Or actually, I think it gives you all three of the decks that one-of-one the Pokemon World Championships in the different divisions. So there's already great decks to start out with. But just because you get that deck, when you net deck, it's not about the deck itself. It's about the pilot piloting that deck. Right. The deck will certainly get you in a situation to have a good start. Right. But to be able to actually be a good player, it's not about the 60 cards most of the time. It's about the. The level of the player piloting that 60 cards to be able to maximize the potential of those 60 cards to be able to be somewhere like the world Championships, you know, Andrew Hedrick, as we talked about the other week, knew his 60 cards in and out and realized that there was a one-of-one condition that all he had to do was ram. Yu-Gi-Oh Which is crazy. I mean. Yu-Gi-Oh But outside of net decking the best decks, though, I think for me, the. The thing that I was mentioning was not worrying about playing the best deck. Like, if you're coming at it from the perspective of, like, okay, I got into the game, but I don't really care as much about playing the best deck. I don't really care much necessarily about, like, winning a cup, but I really enjoy, you know, participating in Pokemon and, you know, whether it's on live or with friends. I was saying that I think that coming up with your own ideas, good, bad, whatever, to me, that's always also a really fun avenue to explore with this game. Yu-Gi-Oh And I don't know, I've made lots of weird decks. I. I don't know if you remember, Jay, I had a window of time where, like, when I still made YouTube videos with Pokemon, I was the budget guy on Channel Fireball for Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh Little Dark Fury is great inspiration for this, honestly. Yu-Gi-Oh Any Sean was, like, hand in hand with Little Dark Fury, and Sean had a phase two where he had a promotion or a YouTube series about trying to beat the best deck at the time, Eternatus Vmax. And he was like, what awful deck can I build just to beat Eternatus? I mean, Jake, we did a whole video where we played Only Sabrina's suggestions with each other. Do you remember? Or we like the first person to one-of-one a game with Sabrina's suggestion. Me, you and Shay. Yu-Gi-Oh Over on, on the casting for Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh on the. Yu-Gi-Oh Only playing Sabrina's suggestion. So that was our only supporter and we had to one-of-one a game just with. So I, I don't know. For me, I like, I like a weird deck. I think Pokemon is a very rewarding game for that because there's so many different potential attackers that you know are not going to one-of-one a world championship. But like, if you show up to your locals with something that nobody is expecting, a. Everybody across from you will be so happy to see it. They'll be like, this is crazy. This is weird. I love it. And you probably will one-of-one some games because they're like, I have no idea how to beat this. This is like, what. What am I looking at? So, Yu-Gi-Oh that's sort of the other path I would, I would recommend to people who are in it for, for not necessarily only winning, but like also just, just being a. It's very creative path, I think. And it's all, it's all what am I trying to. It's all about having fun. Right. So no matter what, if you're trying to play for the first time, trying to go to regionals, have fun. Right. And it's, it's cheesy. It's. You know, you, you may have rolled your eyes at me saying this, but I truly think, like, playing games, having fun is a huge element in the game. The people that are the most successful, I feel like in card games in general are people that have fun playing the game. Right. And get the most enjoyment out of playing the game. Because I have been in situations and in card games where the game is not fun. Right. And you do not do well. But I've had times when the game is really fun and I actually do pretty well because I have a lot of fun playing. Whether it's a specific deck or a format or with a group of people, there's no one way to have fun. But if you're having fun, that's, that's what you need to do. Yu-Gi-Oh This is how you're choosing to spend three hours of a random weeknight. I hope you're having fun. Please have fun. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh That is the highest level overview from, from me. Jake, is there anything else you would want to tell either new or returning or players who are looking to, I don't know, change up their, their approach, don't play. Psyduck. Don't play Psyduck so that I can play Dusk Noir with Alakazam. Yu-Gi-Oh Alakazam, Alec. So then I can continue playing Mateus's list of Alec. But no, in all seriousness, welcome to the 2026, 2027 championship season. I'm excited for this season of Pokemon and especially with regionals starting up next weekend. Not this upcoming weekend of this podcast episode, but next weekend we have not only Baltimore championships, we have championships league in Yokohama, which will be really cool. And then like the week after that is Brisbane. The week after that is Brazil. And it's just, especially if you want to get into competitive Pokemon, make sure you go check out the official live streams and things like that. Watch the different championships because just like worlds, if you watch like the official casters or maybe you tuned in to me talking, you know, there's a lot of great insight that you can get from these championship streams and stuff like that to showcase off. That's honestly great piece of advice. Just watch the streams too. Watch the regional streams. It's always, it's always so good. Watch them. Try to learn. Yu-Gi-Oh Well, I think that wraps it up for this week. Hopefully my fingers are crossed that next week we will have the set list for the 30th anniversary. I would imagine, because if it releases next week, people are gonna get their products and then open it. And then as soon as, you know, more product gets open, whether it's stores selling singles or, you know, giving people pre orders or things like that or even Whatnot, streamers continuing to open the product that they've had for like four weeks, it feels like, you know, we'll. We'll probably have the full set list next week. Jake, sign us off. Thank you so much for listening to the MetaPod podcast. Pokemon TCG podcast revolves around the evolving meta. My name is Jake. I got Sean over to my side and we'll see you next week for next episode. And next week we'll. We might actually talk about what decks we think will be good for both.