8-36. Single Prize, Multiple Wins

So good, so good, so good. New markdowns up to 70% off are at Nordstrom rack stores now. Stock up and save big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories and more must haves for summer. Join the nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. This episode is brought to you by Prime. What if you had one more chance with the one that got away? Sam, you came home. Based on the best selling novel from Carly Fortune. Every year after follows childhood friends Sam and Percy as they reunite in the dreamy, nostalgic lakeside town of Barry's Bay. Love can be hard to find. So if you're lucky enough to find that person, never let go. A second chance at first love every year after. Streaming June 10th only on Prime Foreign. How's it hanging, everybody? Welcome back to Tag Team Pokemon Trading card Games Premiere podcasting trio. My name is Riley Hulbert, joined as always by my Good, good friends Mr. J.W. crewall and Mr. Andrew Mahone. And folks, we have a fun episode in store for you today. We're going to talk about some new cards. 30th anniversary, going to talk about the Champions League in Hide and Sneak, formerly known as Ghost Veil. Doing well over there. Then we'll hit the mailbag before wrapping it up by talking about the Turin special event and the impacts it'll have heading into the North American International Championship. That all said, how are we doing, boys? Hey, I'm doing pretty good, Riley. It's good to have you back. Thank you. Yeah, it was insanely busy for like a couple weeks, but now it's chill again and I don't anticipate any outages in the future. No more houses being bought in the near future. No more projects to. Yeah, man, it's been a busy year. We're planning a wedding. We bought a house. Like, work's been real busy. It's been tough, but in a way that's fulfilling and rewarding. So true. That's right. That's beast, dude. That's beast. Tell us about. Tell us about some fulfilling things that you've done. Specifically. Specifically moments that you felt fulfilled in the last couple weeks as you've been doing all this work. So, I mean, we closed on our house a couple weeks ago and I've been moving in and that's been great. I would say for the most part, we are fully moved in. There's like, you know, the. The rogue box. That's unpacked or whatever. But we're moved in, and we do need more furniture as well. But that is logically the case when you're upsizing from an apartment. And for the video viewers, you can see my Pikachu wall has been restored in perhaps more glory than it was back in the old days as well. I was gonna ask. Certainly, that felt fulfilling, right? That was fulfilling. It's always really fun to put them up when I go somewhere. From the college house to the first Madison apartment to the second apartment to here. That's one of the best parts of unpacking is the Pikachu wall. So that was fun. Professionally. I've been involved with some really cool new stuff that we're doing in my division and have been leading the charge on that, which has been really interesting, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job with it, if I do say so myself. We made a lot of progress on wedding planning stuff, and we sent out our invites and everything, which was great. And I also got to see family recently for a somber occasion. But that was also nice in its own way to spend time with my loved ones and. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just feeling like life is good, man. I got to go to IKEA the other week, which is not in Madison, it's in Milwaukee. But my credit card has a benefit where you can reserve these certain tables at certain restaurants, and they pay for it up to a certain amount or whatever. So we got to do that while we were in Milwaukee. It's just been good, man. We've been hosting on the Good Life, and I mowed my first lawn. That was never a chore I had my whole life. Really? I never had to do that. Yeah. I'm serious. No way. That's crazy. Yeah. So I've done that twice now. And dare I say, that was, like, my core choreography. And we had. My parents were more of the mind that, like, they actually didn't give me many chores, but I kind of respect it because they're like, your whole life, you're gonna be working and stuff, so we can afford for you guys not to have chores, and we'll, like, take care of that stuff or hire people. So just live your kid lives, you know? So that's kind of nice. I don't know. And I do feel like I have plenty of time to work now that I'm on adult. Yeah. Mowing the lawn was certainly, like, one of the core chores. Yeah. Yeah. Yo. Yeah. It was like mowing the lawn, taking out the kitty. Litter, Doing the trash that was mowing the lawn. My core thing was completing the Pokedex. You know, I had big responsibilities on my different lives. We all lead different lives. It's amazing. Yeah, we all do. Amazing. How are you guys, dude? I mean, I'm feeling fulfilled today because I. I did landscaping in my. There we go. So it's been. It's just been a huge project. I mean, like, and quite a slog, to be honest, because of the amount of stuff that kind of needed redone and reworked in the lawn. And just since it is something that kind of requires, like, a gargantuan amount of time and effort, I've kind of just been, like, chipping away at it for years now. Yeah, I mean, like, one of the biggest things is that there were these, like, flower beds in my front lawn that were. They had like, these big, ugly bushes in them that I didn't like and were, like, you know, kind of gross. And then they also were, like, surrounded by railroad ties. Now, if you don't know anything about railroad ties, like, railroad ties are like a. They're literally like the wood. Giant wood, like, blocks that go underneath railroads. You know, like, if you. You see the ones that go, like, horizontal with, you know, with the tracks, those things, they get used for landscaping sometimes, though, they really ought not to be, because they're toxic. The. The stuff that they coat them with are toxic. Like, actually, you know, is, like. Is, like, cancerous. It's not the railroad. Railroad ties, meaning, like, the wood. You're talking about wood. The wood. The stuff they coat it with. The stuff they coat it with, the stuff that they typically had, historically had coated it with is toxic, and it, like, decomposes into your lawn, and then, like, well, and then eventually, you know, the ties, like, break down. So, you know, our whole house, there's railroad ties all over the place. Because it's just. That was, like, the style and the thing they did back when the house was built, but they're all, like, rotted out now. Like, in the last, like, five years since we bought the house to, like, now they've been, like, rotting out. So I've just, like. I basically have had to, like, Tara. I tore all the bushes in. Like, the. The front flower bed. Tore them all out. Yeah, and, like, I ripped out all the. We got all the railroad ties ripped out and, like, hauled away, and you actually have to have, like, a special company come and, like, haul them away, because, like, you can't just take them to any. Any old dumpster because they're Toxic. So, like, like, someone. Yeah, you have to have, like, someone who knows how to dispose of them. Come and dispose of them because, like, they're toxic. Right. So finally got the railroad ties away, and now I'm dealing with all the just haggard flower bed that used to be. And I'm having to level my lawn because of the way that the dirt was. And I'm having to. And it's just. It's just like the worst dirt ever, too. It's just, like, filled with boulders and rocks. It's extremely rocky, rocky dirt. So, like, I've had to, you know, kind of like filter all the rocks out, weed it. I just planted grass seed today. You know, it's like a huge thing. So you're done with garden beds? It's just back to grass. Oh, I'm. Yeah, I'm killing all the garden. All the. All the flower beds. You're missing out, bro. You're missing out, dude. I'm anti grass. Like, I'm. Grass is fine. But I want as much, like, plant life as possible. I hear you. I hear you. Okay. But there were two flower beds in front of my house, and one of them was absolutely atrocious. It's so atrocious. Well, the one with all the railroad ties and all that. So it was so atrocious that I had to just like, I'm going back to grass, and then we'll figure out what to go. Once we're at, like, base zero again, then I'll decide where to go from there. Sure. But I do think that there's going to be, like, a certain amount of, like, kind of like a rock, like, kind of thing going on. Like, I think I'm going to have to do, like, a little bit of a rock bed because there's, like a very big slant. So, like, I'm going to, like, there's very steep slant. Maybe a waterfall, a water feature, a water koi pond, maybe Koi pond would be a lot to put in the front lawn. But what I'm saying is there's two flower beds. The one that's closest to my house, I'm keeping, like, between my front steps and the house. There's a flower bed there, which I'm going to keep. And I'm going to. And I'm going to do. And it's going to look nice. But then there was a flower bed. So if you could imagine stairs going up in front of my house. There's a flower bed in front of the stairs and a flower bed behind the stairs. The one in front of the stairs was ugly and filled with bushes that were gross and railroad ties and all this crap that I had to rip out. But the one behind looks very nice and I'm going to keep that one because it looks great. Can you send me pictures? I want to see what it looks like now. Oh, yeah, I'll send you pics, bro. Well, now I've. We planted the grass seed, which by the way, just way more expensive than you would think. Grass seed. Like, you're. It is. I learned that the other day. You're like, how expensive could like a bag of grass seed be? And they're like, how about $50? But it's also like, it covers like thousands of square feet. They're like, how about literally $50? I'm like, it's grass, bro. It's freaking grass. Like, it's literally like, like, like probably like 10% of our planet is grass. OK. Like way more actually. But I don't know what percentage, what percentage statisticians. Can we get a. Can we check on that one? What percentage of land is made up of? No, no, no, no. The planet. Which is why it had to be 10%. That's why. I guess 10% because the ocean is like maybe 60 or like more. Right. Well, what's the land mass? What's the land mass? Total. It's okay. Actually, you're kind of like in the ballpark. It's like 6 to 12% of total planetary surface is grass. I would have guessed it was less, to be honest. God, I'm a freaking beast. I'm just saying for like my. For my quick maths. That was a crazy guess for sure. Yeah, I thought for sure we had you cooked on that one, but yeah, absolutely did not. No, I was like right in there. When did they do estimate in school? Your sixth grade teacher would have been loving that for sure. How about you, jw? You've had plenty going on. Yeah, man, kids are great. We had a new one. We added a new kid for those that didn't listen. Last week we added a new kid. So that's been fun. She's been great. Poops a lot. Like way too much. Speaking of how expensive grass is, I mean, diapers, man, and then you gotta replace them like every 20 minutes. Like, she's pooping a lot. Like, I'm not. She is like a lot, a lot. Like, I'm proud. I'm a proud dad, certainly. That's why I'm bringing it up. But it is like a little excessive so she can slow down. Hopefully as she gets older, because it's just not sustainable. Anyway, it's been a lot of fun. We've gone to the beach a couple times. Not with the baby, but with my older kids. Grandpa and grandma were in town last week. Yeah, just been, Just been nice. We're heading down to Baltimore this week to visit up with more family. It's actually my brother in law's graduation from medical school, so he is renting a box at the, at the Orioles game. And we're gonna go, you know, party for, for the afternoon at, at the Baltimore Orioles, you know, midday baseball game. So be a lot of fun. Did you go into Camden Yards? Dude, we're going to Camden Yards. One of the. Heck yeah. Greatest ballparks in America. Love it. Yep. So it's gonna be my first time actually. So. Looking forward to it. I'm pretty sure. I don't know if it. I don't know if it's the baseball stadium. I think it is. It's either baseball or football, but there's like a statue outside one of them that is. That is not correct. I'm pretty sure it's the Babe Ruth statue outside of Kingdom Yards. And I think he was a lefty, but they have him with a righty glove. I think a little bit of lore, a little bit of Baltimore lore there. You can look out for it. Very cool. Very cool. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yep. Well, you know me, big, huge baseball head. Well, when you see the statue, you'll be like, ah, yeah. Andrew told me about that. Andrew told me that. There it is. So very good. Well, fellas, should we dive in? I think so. All right, let's get to it. I say let's do it. Enough about us. Let's get into it. We got some new cards. We talked a bit on the podcast last week about the 30th anniversary, 30th celebration and the 30 reprint cards that they, that they revealed for the occasion. Now we're getting some more details on the products and a few. A few new cards. So this is the collector box. The collector. Let's see, 30th celebration collect futuristic box. It's. It's their, you know, standard box with some promos and Playmat and some dice and sleeves and etc. Etc. This kind of looks nice, actually. I think the quality of this deck box looks a little bit higher than what we're used to seeing, but all themed in this futuristic style that they've been showing off. Yeah, that. I don't know what those are. Card holders. I suppose that looks kind of slick, but they revealed a couple new promos. Obviously the Pikachu, which we'll circle back to, but then also the Umbreon and Espeon. Yeah, I want to get your guys takes. What do you think of the new futuristic style? Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka Ms. CollegePC. Where is Daredevil? I'm right here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I feel liberated. We're gonna take this city back in an all new season. Now streaming only on Disney plus. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again now streaming only on Disney. The futuristic style for me, what it's gunning for feels like early 2000s, late 90s futurism almost. Which I guess is kind of a callback to the era in which Pokemon was created, which is kind of fun. I gotta say though, I don't really like the looks of any of this stuff, like the cards or the products. I think they're. I don't know, they're. It's interesting. I do appreciate that they're doing something interesting and new with the cards, but I don't know if I like how they look in front of me. I think the products do look horrible, I gotta admit. And I think. I think the cards are great. I think these are awesome. So what I look, I think Pikachu's. I will say the Pikachu's look a lot better in my opinion than the Mewtwo. I really think the Mewtwo and Mew look quite bad, personally. Well, what I look for in a card to like add to my collection is it has to be like a popular character. Right? So we're talking Pikachu, Mewtwo, Mew, Charizard, you know, any of the starter Pokemon of the Gen1, Umbreon, Espeon, you know, that kind of thing. Gengar, dude. Gengar, of course. Right? So like it's got to be a popular Pokemon for me to like go out and buy it, you know, and then it has to be unique. And this certainly is kind of hitting both of those. Yeah, yeah, Literally both boxes, dude. Well, I want people. Well, I want people to underrate this and like, say it's trash and they don't like it. Like, I. This is one of the cards that I'm looking at and like, I just, I want to own as many of these as I possibly can. Yeah, yeah. It's extremely unique. Yes, it is unique. It's something that really drives collectability is when something is so different and unique. To me, they remind me a lot of the Pokemon break, which I know people joke and laugh because I bring up Pokemon breaks more than probably most people ever on, you know, Pokemon TCG content sphere. However, the. The Pokemon breaks actually were these like, really gaudy, kind of like ugly gold, you know, 3D. 3, 3D ified, like Pokemon. Right. And I actually thought they looked so dope. And so to me, these are kind of like a very similar, like chromatic, you know, 3D Ified kind of gaudy. I mean, they're certainly gaudy. They're gaudy. They're kind of funky looking. Right. But I love them and appreciate them as that because they are so different. Right. And at this point, when you've been doing 30 years of cards and designs, I think that just doing something novel and different is really cool. And so forever we're going to look at the 30th anniversary cards and be like, oh, yeah, that's the crazy thing they did for the 30th anniversary. Yeah, 100%. In the same way that I look back at like the old ugly kind of like CG artworks of, you know, the, the old, like ugly kind of like GameCube art, like 3D kind of polygon art. Like I look back on those super fondly because I'm like, oh, well, those are just like. That's kind of the thing they were doing at that time. And, and they're so different. They don't do them like that anymore. Right. So I, I don't think that this will be like a popular thing that they do for a very long time. I think this will be kind of like they did these like funky 3D kind of like, what's the artist? Have you ever seen, like, the artist? I think it's Kuntz, right? Does the air balloons. Is it Koontz Koons, right? Yes, it's Koons. Jeff Koons. Yeah. Have you guys ever seen any of Jeff Koons art? Are you talking about the line art? You're saying he does the dots and the. No, no, no. Jeff Koons does like the big chromatic kind of like the big balloon dogs. Balloon dogs? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. He's like an extremely, extremely. Yes. It's kind of giving me Jeff Koons, right, Which is, you know, he's extremely successful, popular modern artist, right. Sells his little balloon dogs for, you know, millions of dollars or whatever. It's. But it's kind of reminded me of that and to me that's kind of cool. Yeah, I mean, I guess my take is I do think they're really unique and there's an element of coolness to them that comes with that. I think they'll also probably be remembered fondly. I also do strongly think the Pikachus look better than the Mewtwo and views. There's not. I don't know, it's just not for me. It's not a card I would actively seek out if I had it. I'd be like, oh, that's pick it up, bro. Pick it up. I'm telling you, pick it up. It's not one. Well, it's not one I would actively seek out because I truly desire to have it. Which is maybe different than like a pick it up mentality or from little, little different than a pick it up mentality. I think also now that I'm looking at it and you have like a light in the dark and Espeon umbreon, it almost makes me wonder if they like decided we got to figure out a way to make Espeon umbreon happen. And like, I think these are color schemes, actually. I think these are horrible. These cards look terrible, in my opinion. Like, it's just like they're. Well, they're just Espeon umbreon bait, dude. I don't know. Yeah, like these look like fan made cards. The coolest thing is this is the 30 fireworks in the background. That's the coolest thing about them. And when the coolest thing about the card is not the Pokemon themselves, like, it's not great. It's tough. These are the eevee on the balcony. That's something. These are. What I, what I really don't like is like, I don't like. I really don't like the 30th anniversary stamp. And I really didn't like it for the 25th anniversary. That's the same wand that they've been using for years. It just looks so Disney to me. It looks like kind of cheesy. Like Disney, like a Mickey Mouse head or something. But I'm not kind of what they're going for. I think that that is what the Pikachu head is, the Mickey Mouse head. Like, literally. I know they're trying to, like, take over the Mickey Mouse head and say, no, it's the Pikachu head. But in which, like, fair. But I really preferred the 25th anniversary stamps from the Japanese celebration set, which were different. And now the Japanese cards are getting printed with the English logo. So, like, they've. They've won over the Japanese market, and the Japanese market is assimilating with TPCI's logo, which is blowing my mind because, like, usually Japan and the Asian markets are like, we're very much going to do our own thing, whatever, you know? But now the Japanese cards, as you see right here, is having the same logo. So they've abandoned that little. Like, they had the 25 and, like, the nice little square around it. It didn't have a Pikachu on it at all. It just looked really. I thought they looked really slick last time around, but no, now everybody's going to have the same. The same gaudy freaking stamp on all their cards. I don't know if. I mean, the stamp is particularly gaudy with these, like, futuristic cards. No, I think it looks better here. It's not yellow. Yeah. I don't know if I would call it, like, gaudier than, like, any other stamp, personally, but it just isn't. Like, to me, it's at least it's not very visually distinct from any of the specific anniversaries. So, like, at a glance, you could visually blend the anniversaries together, which, to me, makes it feel weaker than, like, just a pure number, for example, which is kind of what the Japanese stamps have been for, like, two decades prior to this. Like, if you look at this at a glance, right, you're looking at maybe not this specific card because it's the gaudy futuristic one, but if you look at an arbitrary 30th anniversary set card and an arbitrary 20th anniversary set card, are you really going to tell those stamps apart? Like, at a quick glance? You got to inspect it almost. And I don't like that part of it. I think we talked about this before as well. But I think a stamp is also extremely stupid on the five interval years where they try to, like, pigeonhole the five into being a cheek on the Pikachu. Like, that's stupid, too. Like, on the 35th anniversary, that's gonna look stupid. Oh, it's gonna look bad when it gets to the 40th anniversary. Yeah, the 45th. Yeah. Yeah. The 45th will probably be the worst logo, but got quite a while until that happened. So. Yeah, nothing really to note, I would say, from a competitive perspective. But I will call out the attacks here on the Pikachu. They are different, so that is kind of interesting, I suppose. On the Light Pikachu Ex. Pika. Pika Parade. Search your deck for as many basic Pokemon as you like and put them onto your bench. Then it has Thunderbolt for lightning. Lightning. Colorless 200 damage. Discard all energy attached to this Pokemon. Dark Pikachu Ex. Shocking Fever. You may attach as many basic Energy cards from your hand to your Pokemon in any way you like. Candidate for, you know, the. The Energy Pro A Spec and then Thunder. Same attack. Damage 200 damage. This Pokemon does 30 damage to itself. The Espeon and Umbreon. Espeon Ex. The sunshine beat. 30 damage. This attack does 30 damage times the number of Pokemon you have in play. And then the Umbreon Ex for a Dark and a colorless lunatic claw. 100 plus damage. If your opponent's active Pokemon has any damage counters on it, this attack does 140 more damage. I don't know. Whatever. It's fine. I think they're good. Pick these up. Don't pick up. I don't think the Espeon and Umbreon are really worth it. But the futuristic cards I'm going for, for sure. The Sp Chuds and Umbre Bros are gonna be foaming the Rabbit, actually. Yeah, actually, they're Rabbit, so just. Actually, you should pick up the Umbreon That. That Umbreon. Don't even act like that Umbreon isn't going to be a thousand dollars. Yeah, because, like, I actually resent you sl that this is anything other than cash. Do not even act like every single new art rare Umbreon that comes out is. Is Baseline thousand dollars. Just baseline. It's a promo, though. Baseline, dude. Promo? Really? Yes. It's in the box? Yes. What do you mean it's going to be a box? Yes, dude, it has promo. It had promo on the bottom here. All right, well, look at that. Look at that promo card you pull from pack, then. Yeah, yeah, it'll still be. Not. Dude, it'll still. I don't know, man. Like, I don't think it'll be a thousand dollars off rip, but it'll. It'll age well, just because it's. God, it looks so bad. Maybe I'm I feel like I'm crazy. I think these look so horrible. It doesn't matter how they look. It looks. Yeah. Quit accident. Look. That matters. They got these two idiot Chunguses on them. They're. They're worth a grand. It just is what it is. Yeah. And then they're. And then they're really, like, trying to milk it here by putting in all the hidden. Yeah, you know, screw it. Tropius in the background. Yeah, this is fire. Well, now all the generate me have to get it. Claw. Generate me five random Pokemon to put in the background of this card. All the Cherubi collectors need this card now. Exactly. It's crazy. Have Victini up there. Come on. I know you do. They also revealed a new card for the world championships. This is the Pikachu fighting against Gardevoir. They've been doing something really fun with these world championship release cards with showing Pikachu, you know, highlighting Pikachu facing off against the big bad of the deck that most recently won world. So they. They first introduced this last year with Iron Thorns. Now we have Gardevoir. So, you know, this is again, another card that I think you can get for going to league. And I think this was the one that they had the winter stamp on. Right. For that. For that interval. Interval between Naic and Worlds. But anyway, this is another fun card for this fun players and collectors. Pikachu looks really devious there. Yeah, his face is extremely, extremely devious. Oh, for sure. Let's see what else is on the agenda. Oh, yes, the Champions League. Dude, Azul was doing a stream of the Champions League. I didn't get a chance to really watch too much of it. But the finals was slop box against the Hide and Sneak deck. That's what they are calling this. It was originally translated as Ghost veil. Now we know it as hide and sneak. They've revealed the true English translations for some of the set. Yeah, I don't know, Andrew. When we were talking about this deck a couple weeks ago, we were not very high on it from the spread perspective. Right. We didn't think the Synastra bayonet combo would be all that good. We did kind of leave the door open to say, hey, there might be something here with the delmise. Right. Being able to do 170 for one is pretty strong. Of course, you got to get enough of those hide and sneak cards in the discard pile. But looking at this list, Andrew, what is your immediate reaction? I mean, to me, it. It is. Yeah. It's a single prize or the compunch for 1 170. Right. I mean, to me, this. The spread stuff didn't really seem like it was. It was fantastic. But as a medical into a format filled with dragapults playing a single prize attacker that can just punch for 170 and hit for psychic weakness, which means that you can hit for dragon weakness. With Lily's Clefairy, it just seems like a deck that very easily uses Lily's Clefairy. So just seems to me like a solid single prize deck. And to be honest, we've just been seeing a lot of that in the metagame across the board lately. Right? I mean, because at the turn special event, you had Hopps Trevenant win. That's right. Now, if you were to ask me do I think that Hops Trevenant is a good deck, I would say no. But like, this deck here, it is just a Pokemon that can hit for a single prize. Pokemon that can hit for psychic weakness. So with Lily's Clefairy, you are going to trade favorably with Dragapult. That almost to me is like this. They're like the same thing, right? Hops Trevenant is like a stage one version of this. Like, instead of having to get four of your hide and sneak Pokemon in the discard pile, you have to evolve into a Hops Trevenant that's like the hoop you have to jump through. Both of them have a little bit of a hoop and they're hitting for psychic weakness. With Lily's Clefairy, you have the new telepathic psychic energy to make the deck more consistent than it would have otherwise been. Okay. Same kind of brand of thing. We had Alakazam, you know, win the Indianapolis Regional championships. Another single prize deck that found a way to trade favorably with dragapults. You have the new Slow King deck with the metagross right from Chaos Rising is proving to be a top threat, which is, again, a single price Pokemon that can utilize Lily's Clefairy. So to me, it's like, it's just in that kind of same category of decks that we're seeing, you know, in our current format is Pokemon Healing. Alakazam, Crustal Hide and Sneak. Slowking Hopps Trevenant. Are we back? Yeah, I think. I think, like, the game designers are having to work overtime to try and print cards that can, like, beat Dragapult. But it is still kind of this, like, really cringy kind of showdown between Dragapult and Dex built specifically to beat it. So like, it's not. It's not like awesome because if you're playing Dragon Ball, which is like the best card pool, you're playing the best card pool and then you're like up again. Every single matchup is like, well, here's like, you know, creatures Japan's like latest effort to try try few. We've. We've seen this story before though, right? Like we. Mew is probably our most recent example of this phenomenon of sure, like trying repeatedly to beat the Vmax down through progressively escalating counter cards. And it feels like Dragapult's kind of in the same boat. Like they had Battle Cage and Lily's Clefairy. And our printing all these psychic Pokemon and psychic support, like with the telepathic psychic and the dhelmise doing exactly 170 which doubles with clefairy so cleanly to three. It's just like, yeah, the hand is being played very obviously in that way. So it almost like, I don't think Pokemon would be a better game with bans. But I also wonder, like, if cards are so centralizing that they try and like design the game into a corner, like, would it just be better if they banned cards at that point, you know? But that's neither here nor there. And we'll talk about Turn in a moment. I feel like the other sell of the Delmis, which maybe you all talked about this last week as compared to some of these other psychic decks, is obviously it hits consistently for 170. That's fine on a single prizer. It can in theory do that as early as turn one as well be a really aggressive single price strategy. Maybe not terribly likely to happen, but it is an option that a lot of decks don't even have is to start swinging right away. Even then, swinging on turn two for 170 with a psychic deck is probably better than most single price decks at least are doing in the format right now. So I think it does have that like, element of aggression as well. Notably, it's not even just that the spread of the deck wasn't emphasized. It basically wasn't even a part of the deck. You know, like you have the Sinisha in there. But it almost feels like, yeah, we'll play one of these because we're playing the Poltergeist anyway to discard them. So like, might as well play one sinister in case it ever comes up. I mean, you could just play like if you're looking for more hide and sneakers, you could just play the stage ones so that you don't risk starting the 30 hp basic. Yeah, to me it looks like, I don't know like the, the bandit's probably like a fine option to have. I feel like you'd probably rather have the bandit option than not. And similarly like maybe the sinishat is like a fine enough option but I'm kind of with you. Like maybe you just play like 4 sinisha no poltchageist even like I don't know what situations the matcha spin is really coming up especially because you only playing a 2:1 line. So like realistically are you chaining that? No. Like, and when does the four damage counters come up? I guess for like ladias and stuff? Maybe 170 into 40. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I don't know. I think there's you know, certainly a bit more to explore on this. But you know the, the, the point is clear that the, the core of the deck works. I know Andrew, you know, you maybe don't think like okay, it's a tournament in Japan. This is a fake result. I was kind of waiting for you to say I've never, I've never said that. Yeah, yeah, but, but yeah, interesting stuff. I'm saying there's a tier list of relevancy. Okay. You know like but Japanese tournament and like, you know, I'm just saying there's, it's like not all tournaments are, are created equal. Tournaments I attend. Tournaments I attend. Right. Special events or tournaments I do well at are higher than that. Okay, special events, you know, but special. Are you saying all special events and regionals are the same caliber of event? Is that what you're saying? I mean they kind of are now but one doesn't give any money and the other special event turn had 2000 players. I know it did. Well yeah, it did. Is a lot for a special event, admittedly a lot. There's still no money there. It had more players than Indianapolis. It did. I know, I know. Well, all. And Alakazam won Indianapolis. All tournaments have more players than the world championships. But that doesn't mean that, you know, those tournaments are more prestigious. Probably harder to win though. Anyway, let's get into the mailbag folks. Let's do that. Dank. 16 says if we're going to address Alakazam not being fraudulent, can we also acknowledge it that JW favored the a spec scoop up Cyclone which did not live up to the hype and failed to make a top cut in any perfect order major. And I'll say I, I will own that. I will own that. Yes, I did like, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I feel like my take though about Stamp wasn't terrible of like people should consider other A specs because both of the decks in the finals were not playing Stamp. Al Kazam wasn't playing Stamp. Well, that's, that's 100. True. Because if you look at the majors, right, so Scuba Cyclone hasn't won, but you have enriching energy. Heroes, Cape Stamp and Secret Box have all won in perfect order. Yeah. So somehow you picked the one viable. I know. That could not succeed. Hey, hey. It's gotten. The level of precision to make that shot is crazy. No, no, it's because people haven't. Haven't tested enough at the Scuba cycle. You're like, you're like Miles Morales in the Spider man movie where it's like the only way you could have gotten every question wrong is to know what the answers. That's you right now with Scoop up Cyclone. That's me right now. So true. So true. There was a question here. Let's see. The people are really excited about Tropical Bead tree print. Sorry. Andrew had a. Oh, Andrew, this is calling out. I don't quite remember this, but maybe Riley, you can remind me. Andrew also said Monkey Dory was one of the worst cards ever printed. That sounds plausible to me. Oh yeah. I was super low on Monkey Dory. I was like, what are you going to do? Attach a dark to it? Like crazy. That was. I was like, you're going to waste a valuable energy attachment on this thing? And the answer was yes. Okay. Yeah. That was the best card ever. I mean my rhetoric was like, dude, it's not worth the energy attachment. I was wrong. I was just wrong. I was reading. I was reading this comment and I was. And you know, just with the 30th anniversary, I'm like, probably at the 35th anniversary, monkey Dory is going to get a stamped card. It better like it's got it. Like at some point for one of these, one of these anniversary years, like we're going to have Monkey Dory as a stamped card as a course. Yeah, yeah, of course. Because it's like been the format defining card as like Radiant Greninja kind of was before it. In a way. I felt like Radiant Greninja is one of those cards. But think about playing this card. Hold on. I want to actually ponder that for a moment. Because the way they're doing these is they're basically doing it by like major set blocks. Right. And so Monkey Door is going to be fighting for A slot with Fezendipity. That's tough. That's tough. Peasantipodes. I mean it's funny because like peasant, if it is just Oricorio gx. I know, but I was an Orcario believer back in the day. Me too. For sure. I mean, yeah. Cards. Cards also. That card gave up half your prizes though to the best deck in the form. Little. Little did. I actually did some diving into expanded format for the the Pride charity stream that I did this past Friday. Gwen and I played some expanded format. No, you actually play Oricore Ogx in Reggie Drago because you play mysterious treasure which can fetch it. So like you actually play Oricorio GX over feasibility because your mysterious treasure can search it out. Interesting. Can you play both? You could play both, right? Of course. You could play both. Of course. So let's draw six on a knockout. You could flip that. You could flip this. Whatever. Wait, no, no, wait. That's actually kind of cracked. Well, that's what I was asking. Listen, it's Stefan Ivan we're talking about just playing or Coryo. I'm saying why stop? Stefan Ivanov is the expanded English speaking expanded guru. Yes. He actually started his own website. Dowsingmachine.com is pretty interesting. If anyone has their curiosity piqued by expanded format, that website is a great resource and Stefan is like actually upkeeping it. So it's pretty cool. Just launched it. Okay, Very good. People saying a.m. charles, those chrome Mewtwo and Mew cards look awful. Let's go. The new rarity is disgusting. I don't know, I just can't agree less. Yeah, dude, I. I feel like the MEW and the Mewtwo especially are so beautiful. Beautiful sword. Beautiful. Beautiful. So beautiful. Trade them. Trade them or sell them to me. Please trade them. Maybe they look better in real life with like hollow texture and stuff. But the scans look really bad. We were talking about the size or last week, Andrew, and we forgot about the Gardevoir Ex. The Delta Species Gardevoir. We were saying that there were like no mid era Ex is printed in the 25th anniversary gardevoir. I forgot about that one. I think it's pretty forgettable. It is. So anyway, gotta keep us honest. Appreciate it, dear. I love our true. I love our truth seeking fact checkers. You love it. I do too. Boys. Honest. That's right. Keep these boys honest. That's right. That post was fact checked by real American patriots. That's for sure. All right, well, let's get into it. This was a fascinating tournament. Turin Special event turn Italy. 2000 players at this event and huge. I mean, let's, let's just like, let's just rip the band aid right off. Jose Lopez winning with Hopps Trevenant. I, I, I don't even think, I don't think I've, I've thought about Hopps Trevenant since maybe we looked at the card reveals. Like, I, I just, this was not even a card that I have considered at all for any reason. I've never seen it on the lab. It just reads bad. I haven't seen it on the ladder. I haven't seen it in like a joke post on Twitter. Hops Trevenant has not crossed my mind until this event. And Jose Lopez taking it down to remind you. Hops Trevenant, if you don't remember horrifying revenge 30 damage. If any of your hops Pokemon were knocked out by damage from an attack during your opponent's last turn, this attack does 100 more damage. You're doing a base of 130. You can obviously increase that with Snorlax Postwick and the tool the hops choice band. So you get plus 90 and then you can play down a clefairy. You can one shot a dragapult with the Hopps trapnet. And that is, I mean, that's, that's the game plan. Let's take a look. They ended up beating. I would say, like, you know, if you had asked me what is Hops Trevenant good into? I'd say probably dragapult and then one prize decks. And that's certainly where they excelled. Right? So wins against dragapult. Here's a one prize deck a win. One prize deck a win tied into a Zorark beat a Mega Lucario. Okay. I guess that just gets collateraled by anything that can beat Dragapult. Another Dragon ball. This is the worst deck ever. It's the worst deck ever. Win against Rockets Hotchkrow. Win against Typhlosion. Win against Slow King. So, like, we're looking at one prize decks comprising, I don't know, 70% of Jose's run. People got to stop. They're horrible. One prize decks or Dragapult? Yeah, they're so bad. I mean, I get it. And people are going to be like, well, Andrew, didn't you understand that like the finals of Indianapolis and also the finals return were both world prize decks like, okay, God, but they're so bad. Well, I mean, if you. I actually think that like Rockets Honchkrow is bad. Like, that's what I'm saying. Like nobody should be playing Rocket Honchkrow. Okay man, you're just subtweeting Jesse there for one. No, I'm. That deck is just. It's just not good. Who is talking about Honchkrow? These people here. Jesse Parker. Well, these people here who. Who played against Jose, those people were also thinking about Ragatonskro and trying to do well with it. Okay. Yeah, it's round three and round nine. Okay, dude. Okay. I mean round nine. That person feel like Sloking is kind of a threat. I don't know. I think sloking kind of Loki nasty for sure. I. I feel like I could be on board with the Hopster revenue being a little bit fraudulent. But Slow King seems kind of scary. The Zam deck seemed super real. I mean the thing is you just have to be able to put up with Dragapult and I feel like the decks. There's a lot of one prize decks that cope their Dragonfall matchup such as Honchkrow. Which make them frauds in my opinion. Correct. Yes. But decks like Slowking and Hopps like actually have a pretty solid game plan into the matchup which makes them slightly less frauds. Although I will say if you just look at like the metagame on Limitless Labs, I mean straight Dragonfold still had like the best conversion rate of any reasonably played deck. You know, I don't. People's takeaways from these last couple events shouldn't be like Dragapult Loki fell off like Unk is cooked. Like no. Dragonfall is still the best deck by a lot. But that's why these decks are able to succeed at all. You know, it's because Dragapult's so good that you can even play Hopps Trevenant in the first place. You know what you really shouldn't do though is you shouldn't be rolling up with Festival Lead. You shouldn't be rolling up with what's his name, Typhlosion or Hanchkuro. Like those are just like peak broads in my opinion. So I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Crustle also low key, a peak fraud. But mostly because it's so insanely checked by every non check of all deck. Oh. I mean like Crustle is always ever going to be just a meta call for a specific weekend. And like almost as soon as people show up with it, it's not a good time to show up with it. But I feel like. I feel like now people are Too woke to other single prize decks. Like regardless of whether Crustle was in the finals, like single prize decks are just too hot right now. So it's kind of fake anyway. So. Yeah, I don't know. Like to me, like the Meta at Turin is just a really strong response to Dragapult even though it didn't make the finals. Like there's three in top eight, there's another four in top 16 doing the best. Okay, what do we think about that? Why. Why are there two pulled chickens in top eight? Where I think. Well, I did nothing in India. I actually think that the big card is the Rare Candy. So like to get out from underneath, you know, Slow King. Right. I mean not. Not that Slow King is like a. Was a major threat here. But you know, certainly you're playing in the top tables, you're likely bound to see one. So I think Rare Candy is actually an underrated card right now for the Dragon Pulse. Well, they also have the. The Chiu which discards the stadiums too. Sure. And then. Right. And then I was going to say the attackers, like there seemed to be a. Well, that's what I was gonna say. There seemed to be a fair amount of grass in. In turn. So yeah, I think that the fire. Well, even just having the off type attacker. Right. Like I think. I think what Dragonhole Blaziken brings to the table right now is it's a little more resilient to Crushing Hammer, which is a thing. But also you have the Rare Candy Blaziken attacking option which is great against grass for one. But also like any of these decks that are trying to like one shot you through weakness, it gives you an alternative attacking option that the other Dragapult variants do not currently play outside of maybe Moltres, but Moltres is literally useless against single prize decks. So to me that's one of the sells of the Blaziken is like a Hopps deck for example, doesn't deal well with the Blaziken and we even saw that on stream too. Like the game that. That the Blaziken got online in the semifinals was pretty handily won and the games where it wasn't able to get online quickly enough, the Dragonfall player lost. So I do think that the Rare Candies are also a big deal into the single. Into all single prize decks. I would say like every single single prize matchup is like improved by Rare Candies. In the Dragon Ball deck because you can just start going on turn two. You are much snappier if your opponent Is like catching you lacking, you know, and knocks out your only pulled and you only have a dreepy on the bench or something. I mean like there's just stuff that you can do that you just wouldn't otherwise be able to do your opponent. I mean the single prize decks I very largely depend on Dragon Ball decks being slow, like not attacking till turn three. They depend on that. Right? Because they're single price decks. They're kind of like setting up in those initial turns. Even if under item lock, like fine, you're still just like kind of developing your hand, developing your board. They found ways to do that even under item lock. But being able to just pounce on your opponent on like turn two with a rare candy I think makes a big difference. And notably against the slow king decks, like even if you're not playing Shaymin, if you can pop a turn two pull into play, it's not going to get hit by Kyurem. So like that it does give you some bench protection as well because the Dragapult, they all have the Terra thing so they can't even get hit on the bench. It's good for that. Facts. Any other kind of takeaways from the high placing decks here in Turin? I mean the other takeaway I guess is that the meta isn't like substantively transformed with Red card. We didn't see Zam have a follow up success, but actually we did. It got top eight. So like Zam even still able to persevere, but otherwise it's not really changing the makeup of the tournament overall. It's just another card being included in the format. That's right. Yeah. I do think the fact it exists will empower people to play other aspecs more. So Scoop up Cyclone is back on the table. Baby is back on the table. I can see it now. Yep, that's right. That's right. If you were going to Naic, what would you play? Riley? I right now would be considering like a Dragonfall dusknoir type of deck. I think that has like the bag of tricks to eke out against single prize nonsense. So that would probably be a front runner for me. I'm also just like inclined to say that Dragapult's just the best deck in the same way that Gardevoir was the last deck, last pre rotation and that that's where it's worth like really seriously investing time into if you want to have the highest average chance of winning a tournament. Is that kind of where you are at, Andrew? I mean, yeah, I think Polt Nor is to me it's, it's the dragapult deck. You get to play with the best card pool in the game while giving yourself the most amount of routes against the decks that are specifically trying to hit you out. I think that if you're going in with just like pull hammers, to me that just seems like you are, you are playing the most predictable dragapult deck if you're playing pulled hammers. Like every single person who is testing for dragapult, they're probably predicting that like the typical pole is not going to start attacking until turn three. They are not playing rare candies and they are playing like this, right? So, so to me there, I don't, I don't like that. I don't like playing that version that everybody is going to be like, oh well, I know exact, I know like 59 of your cards, you know, and I've tested against it multiple times. Like, I don't, I don't like that. So to me, Pultener has the ability to be more explosive, less predictable. Have those plays into anything that your opponent is playing. You could probably dismantle it with Dusknoir. So that, that's what I really like about that version of the deck. So that would still be the version that I'm looking to play. I would be seriously considering a attack for maybe one of like pick, pick your poison as far as like which, which little guy deck you want to try and like specifically hate on. Is it going to be slow? Are you going to put a shaman in for sloking? Or are you going to play a third stadium to try and like deal with like the Alakazam quad stadium thing? Or are you going to play like Rockets Towers to try and stop dudunsparce a little bit more or whatever. Yeah, that, that would be the kind of like the, those would be the questions I'd be asking myself heading into this. I would probably pick a specific deck that I was most worried about and like give my deck a little extra hate towards that and then send it. What about you, jw? I mean the deck that I've been playing the most recently has been Dragon Ball Dust Nor. So I do feel like it would have the, the strength to beat the, the single prize decks. I do like that you can, you know, do like a double rare candy turn on turn two and just completely obliterate a board, especially of the single prizers. I think that's very valuable and I think that, you know, like Andrew was saying, that's not something that these Single prize decks are necessarily expecting or capable of dealing with. But I think that, you know, if, if I were to be going to nac, I might also explore like a big basic deck. I did see that Emma Hagen got top eight with a, you know, a slot box variety, a clefairy box deck. But you had kind of up and down the field, like, you know, Raging Bolt. And fourth, you had the Ogre Pond Clefairy here in the top 32. I mean, you have some of these big basic decks and, and that's something that I have just not explored enough of. If we take a look at her list, you know, kind of going in a, in a different direction. Instead of playing the teal mask ogre pond, really relying on the wondrous patch and clefairy with some Lily's pearls to get going. I think this might be something that I would look into. Just a very, like, simple, low to the ground, no frills, big basic deck where you're going to get into the game every single game. I think that would be something that, that I'd look into. You know, heading, heading forward, right. Either for this event or for worlds. I know you do get, like, you get a little bit collateraled by the single prize decks in a sense, right? Like you have the Slow King that can hit 300, take out a Mega Kangaskhan. There's really no way around that. They can, you know, do something like a double, double kyurem play to like knock out Meowths and Clefairies at once, right? Take a 4 prize or potentially a 6 prize turn. So. So that is a struggle for sure. But just being able to play something where it's like, okay, I have my energy attachment, I crisp in and I'm like ready to go. And I'm not dealing with, you know, having to set up a stage one or a stage two. I'm just ready to go kind of out of the gate. I think that's, that's pretty strong right now. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started@redfin.com, own the dream. Yeah, interestingly, Emma did beat two slow Kings in her run. I don't know how those games went realistically. It feels like just an auto loss just looking at the list. But I'm gonna say it, dude. I think the slow king deck sucks. I'm just gonna say. I don't know, dude. I don't know. I'm. I'm gonna say it like Brett Brennan. Brennan was undefeated until finals. I'm put. I'm putting my. I'm putting my stake in the grass. I'm saying the slow king deck is bad. So you think slow Brennan, Slow king Brennan, fantastic player. Brennan cameraman, very good player. Slow king not a good deck. I think this is more of a testament to the skill of Brennan cameraman than it is to how good slow king is. Are you willing to like, make a bet for Naic? Okay, yeah. I don't know. What do you think? Top eight? I don't know. Slow King asymm. No, to me it's top eight or bust. How about. Okay, how about this? How about $5 slow king Ace him. What will lower the stakes a little bit so that you don't have to, like, feel bad when you lose? $5. $5? Yeah. Yeah. Because. Because I think $50, like for you in $20 in your stage of. In top A. $20? No. Slow King. No, I mean, I. I'd take $20. Slow King and asim. I think what. That's where we're. That's. I'm like, willing. I'm willing to accept a slow kick in top 16. I will be sorely disappointed if there's a slow king in top eight. Slow king's kind of like a matchup check. It could. If it hits the right matchup, it just wins. Yeah, well, and it gets a lot. Right. People might be asking like, why is slow king good now? Why is slow king good now? Right? It's because of metagross. Well, yeah, the metagross. Right. I don't want to say it's the missing piece, but you didn't have much beyond the kyurem before, right? So certainly kirum is like the core strategy. You're trying to cut the snake off at the head by just kyureming the dragapults, or should I say dreepies and dracloaks before they evolve into dragapult. But now you have a bit more of a mid and late game option in the metagross. Doing 300 damage for, you know, the two energy that you have on the slowking and being able to do that turn after turn. So that's a big deal. You pair it with some kind of, you know, bangle or the. Whatever that stadium is that lowers the hp. You can't really. Gravity Mountain. No, I can't do Gravity Mountain because then you have your. Yeah, yeah. Because you're hunch it's mostly like brave Bangle or you hit for weakness or it just has 300 hp and it gets knocked out. Sure. You know, like I being able to one hit KO like a Mega Kang that's just sitting in front of you confidently is really nice. And that feels really swingy. And it's just a solid attack. You know it's going to remove any non evolving 2 prizer from play, which is really nice as well. You have the weakness option with Clefairy if you really need it. But realistically you don't even need it that often. You know, Brave Bangle is enough. You're kyuruming as well. Yeah, it's just a reasonable strong strategy. I think the hardest part of this deck in my opinion is just getting set up. And that's why I like the inclusion of something like the Mega Kang. And Renan played the Mega Kang and the other slowking that was kind of trouncing about the top tables off at the very end. But Valerio also playing the two Mega Kang. So it feels like that's kind of the innovation is people being willing to play that like gigantic three prize liability in the front as opposed to leaning hard into single prize stuff. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because. Because yeah. You wipe their board. Exactly. If. If you're against Dragapult and you can knock out the three dreepy turn two like you don't care how many liabilities you have on the bench. Exactly. So cool. Yeah. I mean really. No Greninja, I think that was a card. Oh come on. Do you think that changes at all between now and any ica? Why would that change? You think there's a brew? No, the deck is not good. Dude. Where's the bedrill drill? Neither is Beedrill. Like Hydrapal is just better than Beedrill and Dragapult is better than Greninja. Have you read Frogadier? It doesn't do. It doesn't do recon directive, you know. Doesn't even do water duplicates, does it? Doesn't even do water duplicates, man. And that's really the big diff for me. And it's why I keep that. That is why I think that Dragapults is just the best card pool to be building a Deck with is because of Recon directive, because of the. The strength of the Phantom dive attack and because of Recon directive. I mean, those are the two things, right? So, like, other stage two Pokemon don't have the Recon directive diff. So they're just not worth playing. I mean, pretty much. I like how on Limitless, the win percent of every deck that's not Dragapult and slowking is just atrocious. Go Lilisco. Flurry with the highest win percentage played by two people. Hops Trevenant. Hops Trevenant with the second. I mean, that's. That's something, bro. Nine players. Let's see. Well, the thing with the Hops Trevenant is you can also cheese you. You got a cheese factor built in with the Phantom. True, true. The Phantom is, you know, you're swinging for, like, KO on, evolving basics and also flipping for invincibility. That's pretty cringe. Day two, highest win percentage, the second highest Lucario. Okay, but look at the conversion rate for you. Fast judgment. Let's see, let's see. Let's see. Scrolling down. Scrolling down. You're queuing up to Naic with Mega Lucario. You're a true psycho. You're a true psycho. Like, you're after seeing a double psychic deck in the. Like, you're sick in the head if you. If you're queuing up with Mega Lucario for Naic, you are sick in the head. Like, literally just pick up a different deck. I cannot name. I cannot name a good matchup for Lucario. You are sick in the head if you're giving that up. They called us crazy for saying Lucario was fraudulent at the start of rotation. Mind you, I call it crazy. They did call us crazy, and I was sounding the alarms from day one, dude. Yeah, if you were sounding the alarms, I was calling full on nuclear lockdown. Oh, man. It's true. It's true. I know, dude. That's crazy. All right, well, any other. Any other final thoughts on what you saw from Turn? And more importantly, I think, like, how that will parlay into Naic? Yeah, I mean, to me, it's like, it's Dragapult versus the single prize haters. They're just going to tussle and see who wins it all. I am mildly intrigued by the basic box decks. So, like, the Ogre Pond style and also this, like, Clefairy style. I. I feel like they are hurt by how prominent in the spotlight things like Slow King and. And Trevenant are, though. So I Although, who knows? Is Trevenant realistically going to show up again? Well, I, like, yeah, do that. I was going to ask that as you're saying that, like, do we think that Hops Trevenin is going to make up a sizable percentage of the NIC meta? I. I don't really see that happening, basically. Do you think this is a fraudulent win? Is that what you're saying? No, I just don't think he crushed it. But no, no, yeah, no, it was. And it was cool. It was a fun story. They did a good job on the broadcast, kind of highlighting him. Yeah, yeah, I agree. It was cool. But, like, could it. Could it have a repeat showing? Will people see or even like, one level deeper? Will people even react to it? You know, like, would people even care and decide to play it even if it is really good? Right. I mean, I think most people have their, like, their final couple decks that they've been prepping for NASC locked at this point. And I. I don't foresee people being like, Hops Trevenant. Like, I don't really. So we got the trav2p coming. I don't think so. But trav2 people. What are the weaknesses, though? Like, what are we realistically, what are we worried about with Hopps? Trev, that's kind of what I'm pondering right now. Right. Is like, you beat the one. What actually are you afraid of? You beat the counters and then you beat the big bad Dragapult. I actually don't feel like the Dragon pole is as confident of a win as you'd maybe hope, given the strategy of the deck. But I do feel like kind of slam dunk on a bunch of other single prize nonsense. So, like, all the haters get slam dunked by Trev. Yeah. And then Dragapult's like, close enough to justify playing it. I mean, you probably should beat. I think we're looking at some of the data here. There were multiple hops players. But if you look at Filter on. Yeah. If you look. If you look at Jose's run. Oh, geez. Oh, oh for three. And literally saying dude, like, oh, bro. Yeah. So that's. That's kind of what I'm saying too. It's like, I feel like it has a passable dragonfold matchup and you only need one modifier. Right. To KO With Horrifying Revenge. The problem fundamentally with Horrifying Revenge is it can be played around by a deck like Dragon Ball. Right? Yeah. They can do funny things to you too. If I knock out The Lily's clefairy I don't procure thing, dude. Oh, yeah, okay, sure, dude. That's. That was the. I read the hops. I read the Hops Trevenant card, and I was like, dude, how do you lose to this? Like, literally, if I just boss up and knock out your clefairy for two prizes, you can't return KO on me, dude. And then, like, it's just that you can do lots of funny stuff against it. Like, you can. You can monkey dory the Trevenant, you know, and just not take a knockout and start spreading damage that way. You know, you could do funny stuff that maybe people weren't also fully considering at the time of. Of playing it, but now that the deck's more on the radar. So I don't think Trevenant's like, oh, my gosh, like, you just crushed dragapult. I think you actually do crush a lot of the other stuff, and then it's just like, oh, yeah, you know, we can hit for weakness. Hopefully this is good enough. You know, there's no psyduck in the deck either, right? I mean, because. And even if you were playing a psyduck, like, if I boss and knock out the psyduck, you're not revenging me, right? Like, so, man, it does just seem like you have so much control over a deck like this that. That would. That immediately turns me off from wanting to play a deck like Hops Trevenant is how much, like, if I'm up against a good opponent, they can just finesse me, right? Like, they start messing with me, right? It just. It screams to me, like, that kind of deck, like, if you just mess with it too much, it should just collapse. You think people will play Shaman? You think people will play Shaman in their list this week, kind of switching to the other one. Yeah. I feel like. I don't know. I feel like the era of teching is over. I feel like people don't tech anymore. Just play this. The straightforward list. I do feel like teching is on a. Is not as in vogue as it has been in the past, but everything comes back around, you know, bell bottoms, mullets. Okay? They all come back. Teching will come back too. And honestly, I think. I wonder if it's not a bad tech for this. Well, I wonder if. I wonder if the better tech is just rare candy, rare candies, and dust Norris. I mean, to me, I. I would. I would run that match up, and I'd be like, yeah, I think tax. I Think just the rare candies of the dust stories probably just get you there, right? In theory, I wouldn't really call that a tech anymore. That's just a different deck. But I feel like it wouldn't be unreasonable. And even just a more straightforward like hammer pull to have a candy or two in there, if you really wanted to fit one, you could do something like that too. Just have that little bit of surprise factor, a little bit of edge. Sure, sure. Totally good. So cut the moltres. Screw them. Oh, the moltres does not need to be played for naic. I know like grass people are gonna be like. But like if you still have mole trays in your deck heading into naic, get throw it. I think that card is away. I think that card is so useless. So useless. Do not play that card to naic. It is not going to be a high enough percentage of your games. It's just not like it is the single prize. It is like single prize Armageddon at naic. Okay, Please prepare your decks for the single prize. Armageddon. Do not have freaking moltres in there. Okay? Like put that spot into something to help you beat these single prize decks. Please respect them, Respect them, okay? Or they will just show up again and freaking win like they have the last two major events. Okay? Yep. Absolutely. All right. Well that does it. You heard it here. We would all recommend playing Dragapult Dust normally like a basic pack deck. But in any case, if you're scoreboard watching at home, I, you know, just for the world's invite, 720. That's the amount of points that I have, I have calculated it. There were a couple of Americans at Turin that, that you know, got, got enough points. I mean they were, they were probably going to pass me in AIC anyway. But I think it's about 25 players need to jump that 720 point threshold for it to be higher to bump me out. Right? So this is my plea. This is my plea. If you're at NAIC and your opponent says like can you scoop to me because I'm going for my world's invite, that should them because report them first of all, call a judge over. They will be disqualified. Right then and there. I was gonna say try to get them, try to get them DQ'd. First of all, try to get them DQ'd. If you can't get them DQ, that should just motivate you to play harder, right? And beat them fair and square. Right? Or take a tie. Yeah, or take a tie. Like that's fine, you know. Oh, six to one prizes. Oh, sorry, man. That's, you know, just ended in a tie. Just the one tie time. We can endorse an ID into whatever you can do to, like, ruin their day. Like, their dreams have to be crushed for my dream to be realized, you know? And your dream is the more important of the two? I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it would just implied is all it is more important. I'm with JW on this one. His dreams are more important. It would be nice to have a vacation. Yeah, it would be nice to have a Cali vacation, you know, in August. I've kind of been dealing with a lot right now, as you guys all know, so be a really nice gift from the community if we could just keep, you know, less than 25 players from passing the 720 point threshold. Okay. That's all I'm asking. I don't. I don't feel like it's a lot. I don't feel like it's a lot, but we'll see. It'll be a fun weekend regardless. So if you're going to naic, none of us are. So you will have no opportunity to meet the three of us. So sorry about that. But if you want to get more involved with the podcast, you can find us over on X at Real John Walter for myself, at Smiles with Riles for Riley, and at Andrew. Wait at Enjoy Friend for Andrew Mahone. Let's go. We got it right on the second try. So that's gonna do it, I guess. Like and subscribe, etc. Please help the metrics. Please help the metrics. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll catch you next time. And please, please boost the numbers for us. Okay? All right, peace.