8-37. The NAIC Recap Episode

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My name is Riley Holbert, joined as always by my good, good friends Mr. J. Crewal and Mr. Andrew Mahone. Folks, we have a fun episode for you today with NAIC in the rearview mirror. We're going to start by talking about worlds up in San Francisco and of course JW's hunt for that ever elusive invite. And then we'll round off by talking about the many developments from the North American International Championship that happened just this past weekend in New Orleans. But before we do that, folks, how are we doing today? Are you doing pretty good, Riley? Sweating. Sweating the bubble. Sweating the world's bubble right now. Yeah. For those that are paying attention, watching the leaderboard. I am. On your behalf. On my behalf, exactly. Well, I don't know, I feel like it's kind of interesting. You know, people have many people who are keeping. Yeah, probably about the, the half dozen people that like listen to this podcast specifically or follow me on X that are interested in this kind of stuff. The, the naic, you know, finishes are in the top. You know, excluding the auto invites top 135 is at 720 and I am at 720 points. But there is some unfavorable language or murky language I would say surrounding how they are going to decide the cutoff. Like is it going to be a true hard 135 cutoff with play points being the deciding factor on who gets in or who gets left out? Or is it going to be a favorable bubble that includes all players with the lowest point CP point threshold? That is what we're waiting to hear from at least that's what I'm waiting to hear from. I don't know if anybody else is, but. Well, there's, there's presumably the other couple, the other four. So there's four of us. There's four of us on the play Pokemon leaderboard. So this is, let's see, it extends down I think 14 or 16 places, maybe from top 35. So Michelle, I believe is safely in, no matter how this shakes out. But Jerry. Poor Jerry. Poor RJ, poor Jeremy. Geez, just a lot of J's in here. And poor John Crewall, aka myself. All at that 720 point threshold. Wasn't. Wasn't 720 the bubble last year? No, 700 was 700. Okay. Yep. So it was close. Yeah, it was increased. But then you also have increased point totals from regionals and ICs this year. Oh, it's just funny how they were. Yeah, yeah. So. Well, there's two schools of thought. One school might say this is only a handful of people. Just let them in. Other folks, as I was kindly letting JW know earlier today, would make the point that, you know, JW 29 play point. It just doesn't really feel like you're invested in the hobby. Like. Yeah, I just, I just don't know if you have a seat at the table with players who played 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 times as much as. You know. That's right. I just don't know if you belong in that crowd. What's interesting is that, you know, the way that they say that they would break the ties with play points is that like the more play points is better. But what's funny is that less play points is actually. Well, no, no, no. So, so, so here's the thing though. Here's the thing. Here's the thing, Andrew. They don't say. The language is not clear on how they use play points. Okay. They just say. They just say. They just say they may. And it's may. It's not they will. It's like TPCI may use play points to. As a tiebreaker. That's what they say. So they don't say how they will use them, which again is like probably cope, obviously. However, I think the intention is that. However, let's look at how they are organized right here in front of you. Why don't we. Let's take a look. They have the highest play point at the top of the 7 20s and they have you the lowest play point at the bottom. They, they. I think that's by design. I think that's intentional. Definitely seems intentional. Okay. Like a Z to a sort table. What? Like you're chilling. So actually, I think if they had real courage, I found a new third Avenue to this situation is that they don't let any of the 720 in because they couldn't definitively prove themselves as being in the top 135. So none of them deserve it. So that's my new take on the matter. Well, I think, yeah, I think for me, it's like there's. There's an argument. I don't know that it's necessarily a strong argument, but there's a. There's an argument that, you know, I. I am, you know, because they build themselves. The world championship bills itself as being the best of the best. And I think I make a very strong case with the fewest amount of play points. Like, my play point to CP ratio is among the best. You know, just hands down. Now that gets a little bit. It gets a little bit murky because, you know, certainly there were players that played for fun. You know, imagine just like going to, like, go to their league and then get punished for it. Yeah, right. It's terrible. Iron Man's got three kids. There's no fun playing. Happening is all right, that's fine. It's also not fair to punish people for, like, going to league or whatever. Well, so that's the campaign that I would run. Right, Andrew? And that's kind of the rallying cry is like, you know, if. If I do get excluded and I don't have a definitive proof either way because they haven't sent out official invites yet. But if, If I am excluded. Right. If I'm on the bubble and they don't extend the invite, I just, you know, I say, oh, okay. You know, it's really interesting. Like, play Pokemon doesn't care about people that, you know, are in different seasons of life. They really have no regard for people with children. They, you know, and in fact. And again, I would make the argument, and I can see, like the Dextero headline now is one of the world's best players not invited to the tournament, you know, to their world championship. Okay, well, the Dextero headlines didn't really get them to budge on another arguably more noteworthy incident within the last three months. So I don't know if the DEXTERA headlines actually. Can we scroll up on this leaderboard? Can we look at slot 24? Slot 24. A play point to CP comparison here? Slot 24. Oh, are you talking about Ross? Yeah, yeah, 20 I know. He's. He's insane. He's goaded for sure. There's definitely, like, highlights here, right? Ross is also insane. Hales is crazy. Yeah. I mean, that's not just. I'm not to say, like, I am the. The best ratio. I'm just saying it's. It's like pretty good, right? It's. It's like middle of the pack or higher. Above average. I. I don't know, man. From hearing you talk, it sounded like you were saying you were the best, bro. No, no, I. I was best. I think if you want a dexterity, you got to be the best. Yeah, no, no, best of the best. Best of the best. Right now you're like. You're like barely the 150th or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, okay, okay. Hey, hey, listen, listen, listen. Every. Oh, here's the other thing, though. Everybody loves an underdog story, and I think that this is fitting right for that. So you're certainly an underdog here when it comes to the world championships. I don't know, a bigger underdog. That's what I'm saying, dude. That's what I'm saying. So. Yeah, never placed at one, you know. No, I placed just poorly. Look, looking to get your. You came really close by the word place. Well, decidueye year, dude. Yeah, The London that will. That was your year. That will haunt me. I lost to the second place Japanese player and off. Off, like, multiple fly coin flips. Meanwhile, I'm dying of COVID by the way, in the hotel room. You and many other attendees, I'm sure. Oh, man, that was. That was the worst experience, I think, of my life being in London. Like, I was in a foreign country with the worst Covid ever. I was. So maybe not the worst. That's clear. That's clearly hyperbolic. But, like, I was completely bedridden, like, for a week in the hotel room reading Chainsaw man on my phone because I had nothing else to do. Yep. And JW and like, Dankus would bring me doordash. Yeah. In the. In the. In the. In the. No air conditioning. Fox Connaught Hotel. Our room wasn't as bad because it was bigger. And so, like, I didn't really get that bothered by the lack of ac. But the. But, man, that was just. That was awful. That was so bad. I really thought I was going to bite the dust on the way back home. Well, enough. Enough about you, Riley. Let's bring it back to me. Right? Okay, I agree, I agree. Last year. Last year There was a pretty big push. The language was also like fairly ambiguous and they tightened it up slightly. But it is still somewhat ambiguous in regards to the playpoint CP cut off. So do I have your support, your pledge in submitting a support ticket like they did last year to rally to get the bubbles in to Worlds? Do I have your support? Sure. Here's the thing. I already submitted one saying that I think if you don't have enough play points, you don't deserve it because you're not engaged enough with the hobby. Right. I'm also going to say, like, okay, last year was their first time doing this and the concept of the bubble didn't really seem like it had been considered by them. So obviously what. There was Austin Charles, who's was like a bubble guy. Right, Right. He ended up getting bubbled in after some campaigning. What you are asking for is a repeat scenario where you are Austin Charles this year. Yeah. And people rally behind you to campaign to get you in. That's what I think. That's reasonable though. There's press. But what I'm trying to say is that surely Pokemon has some sort of idea of how they're going to do it this year. Internally it's not. Well, internally it's not. It's not defined. No, but internally, surely they are. They are like, this is how we're doing it this year. Right. Because of the fact that it was ambiguous last year, they didn't define it any further written, which is so Pokemon. So of course they didn't. But like, you have to imagine that internally they're like, ah, here we go again. Obviously there were going to be bubbles. You know, what's the number? The question is going to be what's the number? And then I suspect they just bring everybody with the number because that's what they did last year. Well, the number seven. I mean the number is 720. Like that's not, that's not debatable. I mean, I agree. I think the, the most logical course of action, which is not necessarily the precedent that Pokemon was on average. But the most logical course of action is just do what they did last year and bring everybody along. Well, okay, Think of, think of all the good press that. The good press. Yeah. Not that they need us. Not that they need it, but just think of all the good. Okay, maybe impressions that they will get. They don't care. I'm just saying, nobody, nobody in the entire world besides the people on the bubble, no, no care about the bubble. All the soccer council, all the sock Accounts, care. Sock accounts. Can we get some comments if you care or not, the sock accounts? And also, if it was a human other than jw, would you care? Do you care about the other couple people? Can we get that clarified in the replies, please? That's funny. Well, dude, I'm. I'm feeling fired up, man. After watching Naic, you know, I had a pretty decent run at Indy. Fires lit. I had a pretty decent run at Indy. I'm kind of, like, itching for them to announce where the regionals are going to be this upcoming year. And not that I'm going to like, have a season like my 2023 season, where I just, like, kind of fly and go to everything. I think that that level of attendance is not something that I'll do again in the near future, but I could imagine myself. I could imagine myself, like, going to all the regionals that are within driving distance for me. And if I just. I hear within driving distance, like, different folks will make different arguments for, what, six to eight hours? Six to eight hours longer than that. It's not a driving distance. Yeah, but what's. So what's going to. What's going to. What's that like? Like from last year, it'd be Toronto, Indy, Milwaukee. Milwaukee's eight hours. Milwaukee is like, Right. Kissing up on eight to ten hours. Milwaukee. I'd do Milwaukee. I would. Okay, so it's not six to eight hours. It's more like. Well, Milwaukee, I think is closer to 8 to 10 hours, 8 and a half from Akron, I think. Yeah, yeah, I would do Milwaukee. Milwaukee, to me is like, close enough that. That one's like, just adjust your Midwestern, homie. It's easy. Just adjust. It's as far as I went there last year. Okay, just seven to nine hours. Why doesn't it, man, seven to nine, Whatever driving distance. That's what I'm saying. That's what Riley is saying, is that driving distance is variable, depending on who you ask. Yes. But for me, I'm not a crazy person. Okay, okay. But here's the. Would you drive nine hours to Peoria? Maybe you would. I don't know. Peoria is pretty stinky like Peoria. So I'm interested in where they're going to announce the regionals. I imagine, like, if they do Pittsburgh again, I'll do that. If they do Toronto again, I'll do that. You know, if they do Milwaukee again, I'll probably do that. And I'm imagining that I'll probably end up with, like, maybe four regionals. That Like I kind of want to go to throughout the year and three ICs, let's go. And then like, I don't know for me, if I going to four regionals, I could put an invite together. Like, to me it's like, okay, as an adult, as a father, as like whatever, you know, I can afford to go to four regionals a year that are driving distance from me. Like, well then I'm only getting the invite if I get it off that. So like, to me it's not like, oh well, I need to get an invite every year. It's like, oh well, if I'm goated enough to get it off of these events, then I'm going. Right? Yeah. So to me that's like an every year type of challenge that I can do. I've already qualified for six worlds. I've done the no life or grind. I've like, I've done all that, right. And that's not sustainable for me as I like grow into adulthood. But what is would be like, you know, giving a handful of regionals my best shot every year and just seeing how I do and trying to get myself into like top, top shape to compete at those every year, right? Like actually go to my locals, actually do like the, you know, do the groundwork and not just show up to regionals washed as hell and expecting to like do well. I'm not, I'm not going to be doing that because that's just like a waste of time and money, to be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the cheat code would be to go to an sp, right? No, dude, I'm not doing that crap. No, I know, I'm just saying, right? It's like if you're like, you know, if it did mean something to you because I think that there is a, a large subset of the population, the player population that's like, yeah, I really need this invite. I think the best way to do it would just be to go to like all the spy your way to an invite. Of course you can. But known that you as a content creator, you know, that might be, might be worth it for you. We've always done that. No, no, dude, if I'm going to get my invite, like, yes, I'm a content creator, but I'm also a father, which is more important. I'm also a husband, which is more important. You know, I'm also taking care of a home. I'm also juggling other responsibilities and guess what, like getting a worlds invite doesn't take care of any of those like Not a single one winning worlds though. But the thing is, if I look at, if I look at my future and I'm like, okay, well I've, you know, I've been competing in Pokemon card since 2011. 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Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc. And I could be, I could very well be. But it has to be a livable, like, sustainable, you know, cyclical kind of like thing that I have. Right. I just don't think like, like you're talking about going to four events and then, you know, cobbling a world's invite. It's like, I don't think adding a fifth of it is he say. I feel like he's not saying he's necessarily like, no, no, no, he gets it. Yeah. If he gets then that, that happens, you know. Right. Like that Tom's four two or whatever. Then if I get it, you know, any year out after going to like four or if I'm like close one year, I mean, like I might go to NAIC in Chicago next year. That sounds exciting. It's in your driving distance, dude. That's what I'm saying. It's in my driving distance. So, like we're probably going to go next year, you know, so it's closer than Milwaukee. For what it's worth. It's for sure. Right. Well, it checks the box. Right. I feel like for me, I mean, I've been saying the same thing for a couple years now. I'll go to the events that interest me and the formats that interest Me, I'm not going to force the issue and try and force a Worlds invite if I'm not having fun playing the. Well, and that's kind of a hard thing, I think too, if you go to events sporadically. To your point, Riley, is that, you know, you register like two months out for an event and you don't know if you necessarily will enjoy the format. You know, with. You can usually tell the trajectory of the game, though. Just like I knew this format was going to be dog water. Yeah, yeah, I mean, fair enough, but. But you see my point, right, is like, you're not necessarily going to know that you enjoy the format, you know, before you have to start registering for. For the events. I feel like for me, it's like, I think the tough thing for me for Worlds is with the new system, it's harder to get away with the no locals grind, which I really liked my last couple of Worlds invite. Skipping out on grinding my locals altogether and just cobbling it together with regionals. And you're just like so heavily incentivized to go to locals with the leaderboard system, which is by, like, all measures for the health of the game, probably a good thing, but I feel like that's the real time suck for me. Going to a couple regionals over the course of the year. Going to a couple ICs, just a handful of days from home. But if you're driving all over the state to go to different locals, and granted, Madison has a more fleshed out cup and challenge scene than it did a couple of years ago, so you don't have to drive as far for me at least anymore. But like, there's plenty of people who live in little deserts and have to drive super far. And that's a whole day, that's a full day commitment to go to like a league challenge or something. And right, you go to, you know, a dozen of those, like, that's more time spent on that than regionals, you know, that's a. That's another good point. I live. I live in a local's oasis. You do? Yeah. I mean, Ohio is always a. Ohio is a locals oasis, dude. You could go to two cups every single weekend if you want to. Well, yeah, it's accurate. Ohio in general has always been like locals paradise. Yes. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. Akron, I just pop over to one. Just insane. I don't even have to go that far. Just between Akron and Cleveland. Notice all three of them are huge. Like they all have so much Pokemon. It's Crazy Madison has grown a lot, to be honest. When I first moved here, there was like one regularly hosting league. Now there's like three or four. So it's much better. But it's not nearly at the scale of like, we get people from Pittsburgh all the time driving over to our locals because they just don't have them over there. And like on random weekends like we do. Yeah. I mean, back in like 2019, when I first moved here, I would drive to like the Chicago Cups and stuff, you know, that was just like what you would do. Yeah, yeah. And I'd probably get one of those Chicago noobs. Play points are just like, what a terrible system. Maybe good for the travel awards. Maybe good for the travel awards. I think that there's a use case there, but, you know. Yeah. Imagine all those people, people that aren't, you know, that don't have locals. Jw, I'm sure you got your invite, bro. You could be an insecure. I'm sure you got it, though. You are. We also spent 20 minutes. The last person who gets their invite. You will be the last person invited. But it's the least qualified person in the world, dare I say. It seems to be that you got there just barely, it would seem. Hey, hey, listen, listen. Whether or not I get there, you know. Did you ever watch AlphaGo? Do you ever watch that documentary? No. AlphaGo. Okay. Is that the one about the Go player? Like, yeah, it's about the Go player and he plays again. They devised the like, like, you know, they made a supercomputer to learn chess. Okay. And like, chess is a very not formulaic game, but obviously, like, all the pieces, you know, move, there's less combinations than a game like Go. So they think, okay, chess is like a solvable game by a computer because they created an intellig engine to beat some of the grandmasters. So then they, you know, the team created a supercomputer for Go, right, To play Go. And that has a lot more variables because you can play, you know, in a lot more places. And it just is. There's a lot of thought that Go is a much more like emotional game because of that. Right. You can see different lines and like you. There are just so many lines that you can play with certain play styles in a way that you necessarily can't. You can't necessarily do with chess. Anyway. The whole point of the, you know, the supercomputer and then what kind of. What they got to at the end, and their main point of this was that it wasn't that the computer was making moves to try to win by the most amount of points. It was trying to make moves to win, period. Right. So it'd make like all these weird moves but it wasn't making the move for a margin of, you know, 100 points. It was making the move for a margin of at some points, one point. And so it's not about being at the top. It's about just getting into the race. That's all I'm trying to say. So you would say you, you exerted the perfect amount of efforts, the ideal amount of efforts to get a world championship. I mean, listen, listen, I'd love to play more and that is why I'm campaigning to be invited to the world championships. Well, to me I don't think there's a campaign. It's either you got it or he didn't. I mean they campaigned last year. I don't know, like there's precedent for this. If I don't get it, I campaign. So what you're really saying is that Ross should have stopped 600 points ago. Listen, I would have loved, I would have loved to go. I would have loved to go. I would have loved to go, you know, to more events. But it just wasn't, wasn't what happened. So anyway, let's talk. We briefly hit on this. NAIC is moving. I think that New Orleans was a just a premier destination for the, you know, the North American International Championships. But they announced at NAIC this year that we are moving to Chicago. I don't know if you guys saw the interview with the event organizer but he was talking about, Mr. Brown was basically talking about, you know, they're going to have more space. It's, they're trying to grow the competition and also the, the fan elements. It was really interesting some of the points that he was bringing up. But Chicago is, you know, when you compare it to New Orleans has, you know, 10 times the amount of international direct flights. Yeah, I mean it's like not, you know, it's just a mass scale of Chicago to New Orleans, massive convention center. So anyway, just curious your guys thoughts. I think Chicago is a great move. I think it's an obvious choice to be honest. I think it's a superior choice for the long haul of the game. The accessibility of Chicago for travel just completely mogs on New Orleans. It's not even remotely close. You can get a direct flight from anywhere in the great United States basically to Chicago no problem. I could take the train there. Yeah, you can get there. Dang near anywhere. You can drive there. You could drive six to eight hours. I could drive six to eight hours. It's like one of the biggest metropolitan hubs in the entire United States as well. The location of the actual convention center is very nice. It's in one of the best areas to be in in Chicago. They got. The museum is right there, the aquarium is right there. This is like fun stuff to do. Sadly, the tie in museum thing with Pokemon is ending like right before NAIC would be happening next year. Because that would have been a cool thing to do. Yeah, it just feels like such an obvious choice. It's like so infinite accommodations. It's also like more seasonably favorable, I guess. Like it's not going to be peak heat and swamp. Like no offense to New Orleans. It's just like, it's tough, it's humid, it's hot. It's brutal to be outside in the peak. In the peak of summer, Chicago will just have a much more temperate, temperate atmosphere. Yeah. But I think that's the least important part. It's just a way bigger city, way more accessible, especially for an international championship. That seems really important to me. Yeah, I'm really excited about Chicago. I think having it in the Midwest is awesome. It's just great for accessibility. I will always look back fondly at the two years that I attended NAIC in New Orleans. Not going to lie. I mean like I did two years, but then like the third year I was like, this year just doesn't really make sense logistically. I mean it's too much of a trip right for us. But I did do it two years, but like doing the same city a third year in a row, I was like, you know, it's an expensive trip. It just, you know, doesn't work with my schedule this year. It's not, not really going to be something that I invest in. But you know, mixing it up is great, you know, gives people who are a little bit closer to Chicago obviously is like a feel good. You got worlds on like the west coast. So like that's a feel good for everybody on the west coast. Have an NAIC in the Midwest. I mean I like, I like moving it around, you know, with a country as big as the United States or I guess as a continent as big as North America. Right. Because they're billing at the North American International Championship. So the continent as big as North America. Uh huh. You know, you could have it in a number of places. Obviously we just came out of having it in the south, so I definitely appreciate having It a little bit further. Yeah. But there's a talking point there. Like, do you ever see naic, like going to Canada or Mexico? Because I actually, I don't personally, no. Well, Mexico City would be interesting. I would love to see it in Mexico City. I mean, that is, I mean I would love to go there. I don't ever see them. North American city. Right. I don't see them ever putting it in a location that requires US people to have passports. That's why I don't think it'll ever leave. I love Canada and I love, I love the idea of visiting Mexico, though I've never been. I would love to visit those, I would love to visit those countries and I would love an excuse to do so. But I just don't see them doing it because of logistics. The fact that, the fact that TPCI is headquartered in the United States, the logistics of putting things across borders, I just, I just don't see them doing it logistically. I mean if they had NAIC in, you know, somewhere like let's say Detroit for instance, you could stay in Canada and then go across the bridge. That would be so inconvenient to the ic. You know, there's ways around it. Right. They could, they could, yeah. Or have Buffalo, El Paso. They're moving it to Chicago for scale. You're talking about Buffalo, dude. Buffalo is sick. Yeah. Buffalo is sick of it. Let's be real. They call it the Cleveland of the east anyway. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Chicago, yeah. Chris Brown, didn't. You know, it seemed like when they, with the interview that I read, it didn't seem like they were moving it from Chicago for a while. So to your point, Andrew, of like liking to move around, I don't think they can get much bigger and we've already shown with the demand over the last few years that like we're going to be at, you know, we'll hit capacity here, it seems like. So I think Chicago is just like the platonic idea and I'm biased granted. Like Chicago is like the big city close to me. But I think Chicago is like the platonic ideal. It's got a major international airport, it's got animated like and obviously it services so many domestic flights. It's kind of central ish within the US So you're not having people do coast to coast travel, which would be the problem with a New York or an la, which should be probably the other frontrunners I guess for cities operating at that scale. And I feel like it has such a, I Mean, I love Chicago. It has such a great big city atmosphere without being New York City levels, if that makes sense. Um, so I don't know. I feel like Chicago is, like, a great location for it, and I think it would make sense as a stable home for any ic. I agree. I mean, I wouldn't be mad if they just keep it there because of the logistical, like, upsides that you have to it. And, you know, I don't think it has to be, like, I don't think. And it's literally, like, it's the best real estate in the city. Like, the area where the convention center is going to be. It's so nice. I don't know. I am looking forward to no longer seeing Pokemon players post themselves playing Pokemon cards on Bourbon Street. I think that that's extremely cringe. Like, you know, to be honest, you guys see the strength of the just trying to farm social media. Is it a hot take to say that the fondness for New Orleans is tied incredibly closely to Bourbon Street? Like, that's not a hot take, is it? No. Well, I mean, it's a unique experience, and I think for a lot of, you know, masters players in that kind of, you know, college range, that's a big draw. I have certainly outgrown. I was never in this to start, but I have certainly outgrown, like, posting that on my social media at the very least. You know, like, fine, you want to go hang out with your friends and get sloshed on Bourbon street, but it just reads trashy to me. It does. It's fine to be trashy when you're, like, 21 or whatever, but I feel like I'm outgrowing social media. Oh, my gosh, please. Dude, seriously. Dude, seriously. I'll believe it when I see it. I'll believe it. Well, all the social media apps are off my phone, including Facebook. I tried to open Facebook to go to Marketplace the other day. I literally. I tried to open Facebook to go to Marketplace yesterday, and it, like, confronted me with, like, a giant full screen, like, reel. Like, that was the first thing that showed you when you. When you boot up Facebook is like, a giant full screen reel. And I deleted the app instantly because, like, they're trying to be like, TikTok. Like, they just want you. Like, they just want to, like, immerse you in the context. I'm like, this is garbage, dude. Get it out of here. I mean, you probably could have just closed it and got in the Marketplace, but no, no, no. I mean, I did. I went to Marketplace and then I was so sour about the fact that they tried to bombard me with, like, a TikTok reel or, like, video or whatever that I deleted the app afterwards. I was like, you know what? Marketplace isn't worth this crap. So, like, I deleted it. I just. Yeah, I'm done now. I'm actually done on my phone. On my phone, on my phone because I have to be able to post for my job. So, like, I, you know, I, like, have to. It sucks, bro. If I wasn't a content creator, I would just actually be done. But, like, you understand, like, there is this give, take, like the. I want to be done with it, but, you know. Yeah, I know the job beckons me. It beckons you. It does. I. You know, somewhat related. One thing I really like about the YouTube app is you can make it so you can't scroll through shorts. There's a setting that you can do to hide them from your front page and make it so if you try to scroll, it's like you've hit your scroll. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think they have child locks like that on most social media platforms now. Yeah, it's not even in, like, the child, like, parental settings. I don't think it's, like, in some, like, content sharing or something. Setting it. And you can set your limit to zero. So if you try and scroll at all, it's like. No. Yeah, that's because there should be these kinds of things. Because, like, scrolling on algorithms is like hitting cigarettes, bro. Well, that's why I have the time limits on everything. And I have the. I don't have a time limit on YouTube, but then I have the scroll limit at zero on YouTube. One of the best tweets I ever saw was that they said that Twitter is like cigarettes for the eyes. It is. It is. You gotta be on Facebook Marketplace, though. There's so much fire on there. I know. Well, I can get it on my desktop. I saw a Tiffany style, like, glass lampshade, but it was Taco Bell on Facebook Marketplace. I mean, come on, you're not gonna find that stuff. Yeah, you can't miss that. Well, now my Facebook Marketplace feed is filled with rocks now because I'm looking at trying to pick up some large boulders and rocks for landscaping in my front yard. So now it's just like, Rock City, bro. Everybody who's selling rocks, they're all my market speed. That's kind of fire, though. It is. It's all landscaping stuff, which is, like, very landscaping. Rocks are. They're expensive. They are Expensive. I know, I know. It's like. It's just a rock. You just found it in the ground somewhere. Well, I don't know. Are you doing. Are you doing kind of the natural rocks? Are you doing, like, a retaining wall type deal? I'm looking for natural rocks probably. I'm not going to build a retaining wall or anything. Okay. Yeah, because I'm looking into a retaining wall. We got a quote. Oh, well, those are quite expensive. Dude, it was like 13,000. I'm like, for. For bricks and labor. I might even drive to Columbus myself, getting my chimney mixed up. Insane. Insane. Like, it's crazy. It's crazy. All right, did you guys see the new merch? Before we get into the mailbag and hit the IC results, did you guys see some of the new. Yeah, man. I'm getting a freaking PXP Rayquaza is what I saw. Yep. Yep. Okay, so there are some promo cards associated with Worlds, just like they did last year. They are handing out a winner stamped Pikachu for, you know, presumably winning, like, a local tournament during a specific time frame in. In late August. And then for all attendees of the world championships, you will get a allegedly holographic PXP stamped Rayquaza. Well, it says. It says, let's see. Every badged attendee will receive a Rayquaza with a special PXB stamp. It appears to be foiled. And then obviously this scan is, like, very much not foil. Looks good, though. I don't know. Andrew, what are you thinking? How. What's. What's the price? What's the price? That's a beautiful. That is a beautiful Rayquaza card. I actually have been a big fan of this. This artwork, like, the whole time, because I play this card in Gym Leader Challenge. Add that PXP stamp on there, Dude. I mean, how many badged attendees are there going to be at the Pokemon XP events? Thousands. I mean, like, yeah, probably thousands. Less than 10, right? Less than 10,000, probably. I imagine. I don't. I don't know. I mean. But less than 20, for sure. So there's. There's going to be a limited supply of these. That's what I'm trying to say is like, you know, so, yeah, I'm going to take mine, I'm going to grade them and probably throw them in the closet, wait 20 years and see what happens. Attaboy. They also got the Paradise Resort art that was revealed has the. The Hill of San Francisco houses. I suppose I'm not super inspired by this one, but the Hill of San Francisco. Well, like, you know, the hills. The hills. The hills. But it shows. Is like infamous. It shows one hill. So. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to say that, you know. Anyway, it shows a hill of San Francisco. Yeah. You got the full house. The full house. House is right there. I don't know. I don't know. It feels like. I feel like the trolleys are a little bit more interesting than the hills in any case. Oh, they got all sorts of different merch. They do. So we got. This is the competitor kit for those that will compete. Be competing. We have the bag with the pin display, which is cool. The champion Pikachu hats. You know, dice box or, sorry, deck box. What is this? I forget. Lunchbox. I guess the mat. Didn't they miss the mark on like or miss the timing on a Leon cape being the world championship? Pikachu, like, Leon's not even in the most recent game anymore. You know what I'm saying? You're saying Pikachu shouldn't have. Well, how are they going to depict the champion? To me, it feels like Pokemon is at the point now where they have done so many world championships and they've gotten so good at it that things are more or less just plug and play now. Things are like less inspired or unique as they used to be. And now things are just like, you know. Well, yeah, here's your. Here's your slop, dude. And. And you know, it's nice looking slop. It certainly is fine. But like, I mean, there's. There's nothing here that I think is terribly exciting, dude. I. Champion stuff. I think the champions, dude, I think it looks so gaudy. The hoodie is, like, not cool. I actually think the hoodie is like the most tasteful part of it. I think the other pieces are the worst. It's hoodie and Playmat. The hoodie should be a freaking letterman jacket, first of all. I don't know, I could see it either. The letterman jacket is cool, but I feel like a hoodie is just like a more accessible, like, thing to wear. Yeah, but like, dude, hoodies, they like, I still have my letterman jacket from high school. It holds up. You know what I mean? I mean, but like, hoodies don't. Do I wear it? No, but I did. I wore it a ton. And it's still in good shape, you know, because letterman jackets last forever. They just do, you know. But hoodies, like, notoriously do not. Well, is it. It's like, is it a cloth hoodie or is it some kind of like. Kind of. It almost kind of looks like a. Like a windbreaker. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe get our material engineers on this one. Yeah. Are you saying it might be a jacket? This might actually. Yeah. What if it was, like, a windbreaker sitch? Yeah. Would it be cool? This kind of looks. This looks like cloth. I actually feel like a windbreaker would be so fire. Like, I love my windbreaker. The one I got from a Germany. It holds up so well. I've had it for years. I wear it all. Should I open it? Riley, I know you're talking about the one from Japan, right? No, I have my. I wear my one from Japan. No, I know. That's what I'm saying. You like it, right? Because I have it sealed. That wasn't what I was referencing. That's not a windbreaker. But I. That one is good. Nice. It holds up. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm, like, looking at this champion bag with, like, those pleather sleeve. The pleather, like, you know, golden straps, and it's just. Oh, that's not real leather. It's not inspiring me, dude. It's just. It's gonna get dirty. It's just a trophy piece. Like, it's not an. Actually a utility bag. I don't know. To me, I. I guess, right? This is all extra. They don't have to do any of this stuff, right? They didn't used to. I mean, I guess they did. You know, back in the early days, they used to give champions. They used to give Top four, like, customized letterman jackets. That's what they used to do, like, 2004 to 2010 or so. Which, to me, was much more tasteful. Like, everybody who, like Top four's worlds gets, like, a custom letterman jacket with, like, their name on it, right? That, to me, is, like, really special and cool. Like, you get your name embroidered with, like, the Pokemon logo, and it's got, like, the huge world's logo, like, embroidered on the back of a letterman. Like, it's a letterman jacket, right? I mean, like, that, to me, is, like, a really special item. This stuff, to me just feels more corporate and generic, less personalized, you know? So to me, it's like, okay, as someone who, like, is familiar with the history of the game, I'm like, yeah, they used to do stuff that was, like, way cooler and more personalized. And this stuff is, like, kind of chinsy and, like, you know, and to me, is not that special. Cheap. It's cheap. You're a hater. You're a hater for Sure. I feel like the world champion already gets enough out of winning, and they should be investing more into bringing people like JW to the World Championship. That's right. That's right. Instead of making this crap. I know. X the champion gear and just invite four more players from North America. Exactly. They. They should go back to doing the letterman jackets. That's what they should. They should just go back to doing letterman jackets. Those are extremely cool. If you roll up to an event wearing, like, your personalized letterman jacket from, like, top foreign worlds, like, that's just so much sw. Swag. Like, I don't know. I mean, you could just. You could just. You could just personalize this. You could just personalize it. Like, what? What? Really? They should do it. Personalizing costs hundreds of dollars. They should do it for you. You're gonna get it. You don't have a couple hundred bucks after. Well, it's part of what makes it so special is that Pokemon did it for you. You're not like. And they saved you. They saved you a couple hundred dollars, as they should. All right, well, I think that that will do it for our. For our world segment. Let's get into the mailbag, shall we, fellas? We had some. Some comments about the. The lawn mowing of the last episode, Andrew. I had a lawnmower put in my hands. Carrot stick says at 12. And I mowed almost every week since. Made some good money. Made some good walking around money as a teen, though. Riley, you said you never had chores. I have any chores. Did you ever. Did you ever have a job, like, in high school? Not in high school. I did in college. Andrew, do you have a job? High school? Oh, yeah. Not like. Well, I landscaped in the summers. My neighbor owned a landscaping business, and I, like, worked under the table for him, making nine bucks an hour. And then I also had a job as a janitor. My. In high school. I. I knew you were a janitor at some point, but. Yeah, yeah, that job actually lasted a little while because the way that the janitorial work worked. You know, the way that it worked is that I had. I had other friends whose family owned a janitorial company. And, like, they were. You're a Nepo janitor? Yeah. Yeah. So it was. It was like, basically like. It's like gig work. Almost like, you know, okay, well, there's this bank that we clean, right? We need someone to clean it, like, every week. So it's like, okay, well, how many different jobs do I have? Like, okay, well, once a week, you know, Depending on how busy I was or away at college or whatever, it's like, okay, for the summer, I'm gonna do like a bank and a school every week, right? So it's like, you know, I could pick up as much as I wanted. It was 10 bucks an hour, right? And it was like the perfect job, really, because, like, as many gigs as I wanted, I could take. So, like, that was an extremely flexible job that I kept from, like my junior year of high school all the way up through college. And actually, like, when I graduated college, they offered me a manager position and were like, you know, if you want to work on, like, your art, you could like, be an upper level manager with a janitorial company and like, you know, make your money doing that and, you know, do your art on the side to help support your art on the side because keep, you know, I graduated with an art degree, you know, not a lot of, you know, great opportunities there. So this was a valid opportunity for me, but I did deny it. I did deny. Yes. So let it be known this comment was about me and congratulating me. So thank you. Carrot sticks. That's right, Andrew, you got to get some clover seed down with the grass. Alex says way cheaper than a $50 bag and very good for the soil. Think of the bees. We've got plenty of clover. Dude. Dude. Oh, my gosh. Like my. My yard is like weed and clover galore, dude. It is not like fresh turf. It is like the most random garbage you've ever seen out there. Clover's. It is all natural. It is all natural. Trust me. The dandelions, all that. All natural out there, for sure. All Daily says all the background Pokemon were chosen for the Espeon and Umbreon cards because the promos come with theme decks and the background Pokemon are the Pokemon that come in the deck. I don't know if you remember, we were hating on that while I was hating on the Umbreon and Espreon promos, but there is a tie in. So. Okay, maybe that makes them cooler. All right, maybe I'll buy a few then, if that's the case. Anyway, fellas, if you're listening and you want to get in on our mailbag segment, please leave a comment over on YouTube or on Spotify. We read these every single week. While you're over there, please make sure to engage with the podcast, like the YouTube video. Subscribe to the channel, follow the Spotify account. All of this engagement really helps the podcast to grow. Let's talk about the IC we had A very interesting, a lot of storylines coming out of the ic. A very interesting finals between James Kowalski known as all out Blitzel and Neddy Kosik in a like Big Basics vs. Dragapult Duskmore Final. If you'll recall from last week, the three of us were pretty big into, you know, dragapult and specifically Dragapult Dusknoir. Feel like we nailed it on that one. And then, you know, I was kind of talking about, hey, maybe a, maybe a basic deck would be something to, to invest some time into heading into New Orleans. And you know, lo and behold, those were the two decks that were standing on Championship Sunday. How did you enjoy, you know, any coverage that you watched, guys from naic and what did you think of the results? This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now@palmolive.com this episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips. That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online@statefarm.com like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Alright, first thing, Andrew was part of the coverage. He was restreaming that whole dang thing. Yes, true. That was sick. I really enjoyed like I always enjoy being a spectator for the really big tournaments. I think they do a great job like putting on a show and making it fun to watch. I also really enjoyed seeing James all out Blitzel get the big dub. I feel like he has definitely put in the work to like build up his repertoire and make a name for himself as a player, like starting kind of focused online and progressively doing better and better at these major events. And I feel like that's also kind of been the story for the Clefairy deck is he played it Indy and then Emma played it in Turin and then he brought it here and just progressively better results with the deck. So it was really cool and fun to watch. I just really enjoyed the story there. I had a great time. Andrea, I'm curious for your thoughts as well from the restreaming for hours on end perspective. Yeah, I think I restreamed like maybe 18 hours of the event this weekend. And that's not even all of it. They're like huge events. But I called it quits each day. I mean like day one, I called it quits after 10 hours. Day two, called it quits after like eight or so to like go get dinner with my family and stuff. You know, I could have gone longer, but at a certain point you feel like, like, okay, you know, am I just going to be live all weekend? You know, I need to like, take care of myself a little bit, right? Yeah. But yeah, it was fun. I've never restreamed a tournament before. I'd always had kind of like reservations about it. Like just go like watch the official broadcast or like, you know, I don't want to like, you know, I don't want to like take away from that at all. But the more I've been thinking about it, it's just, it's more like a watch party with my community, which is fun, right? And Pokemon has made it clear that they welcome, that they welcome content creators restreaming their work, which is cool from them, right? So they've made it clear that they welcome that and encourage it. So it's like, okay, well, sure, if you guys like it. If my community likes it, then cool. It was, it was, I mean, incredibly produced. I think that there's so much about the production of these events that just feels like top level, top notch, you know, top of the genre, like as good as it gets, right? Like when they cut to like when they cut to like a game win and the game win animation like flashes across like the counter that sits in front of the players and then also the backs like screen like that game win and match win like animation looks absolutely phenomenal. I mean, incredible, right? I mean it just looks so good from a production standpoint. I'm like constantly blown away by that. And then my one big thing is that I do wish that there was more face cam access during the production. I wish I could feel more connected to the players at the table while they were playing. They have taken all that screen real estate and, and they've kind of bogged it down with like their new fangled kind of like animation video game style sideboards that are like meant to try and break the Pokemon TCG down into like a video game. I'm not the biggest Fan of that. I understand very much why they are doing it. They are just kind of like throwing money at the Pokemon trading card game, trying to make it as much of an esports spectator friendly esport as they can. I get that right. Because the biggest problem with the Pokemon TCG is that nobody knows how to play. People don't necessarily know the complex in and outs of the video game. But like you watch video game, character make attack, you make, you watch video game, you know, character make attack and like, you know, guy dies. You get it, right? Like you get it. So like I think that their thought is that if they just like video gamify the Pokemon tcg it makes it more viewer friendly even if people don't necessarily know what's going on. But I did feel like I was missing the players faces and expressions a lot. There were a lot of like, there were a lot of things happening at the table and I was like, man, I wish I could see like facial reactions during these key moments. Now obviously like the camera work, oh my God. Is incredible. Like cutting to like hand can like the, when they cut to hand cams and stuff, like when players are drawing key cards, like those are really expertly done. I mean it's just like phenomenal from a viewing experience being able to like cut in on players hands and see those just at a whim. Yeah. So like all that, all that was fantastic. Being able to like kind of chime in with the commentary throughout the weekend was like very fun as well. The way that I did the watch party is that I was like toggling the, the audio from like the official production on and off. So like I could let the commentators speak for a while and if I wanted to like chime in for a while I could do that. But if I wanted to like sit back and watch for a little bit, I could like cue the commentators back on. And that felt like a very good flow and seemed to be something that people really liked from a viewing perspective. People seemed to like really kind of like that style of watch party that I wasn't just trying to like commentate, you know, 10 hours straight myself, but that I was like kind of like mixing in the official commentary. And I also had like the official commentary coming in on my headphones so like I could always respond to like what they were saying, you know, and, and while I was talking I could still hear what they were saying. So like I could like you know, cut back in if I needed to or whatever. So that was like all very fun. And, and yeah, I was encouraged. The, you know, community seemed to like it. I enjoyed it. I had fun. It didn't seem like I was live for 10 hours. When I was live for 10 hours. It kind of like blew by pretty easily. The side stream stuff that they do, like when rounds end quick or whatever, that's like kind of cool. But they're for like, they're not in like present tense, right? The rounds that had like been pre recorded and they like pop it up to like shit, just show off an extra game just to like have something on stream. I didn't find myself like wanting to watch those. I don't, I don't know, something about them not being live or like I could just like pop on to. I could like pop on a limitless labs and see the results of that match already, right? Like and see how that went and. And it always felt like a little less exciting. The board was a little more claustrophobic. I just, I don't. I don't know. So I didn't buy into the side streams as much though. I'm. I'm excited that they're like experimenting with getting more content on. Obviously you don't want to like just put a be right back screen on and they did that very min. Minimally, which is incredibly impressive from a production standpoint. They did make it very watchable, I think. So, yeah, it was cool. I'll probably do it again sometime. The side stream problem seems like very difficult to fully solve because if you have a live table running in real time, I mean that game could end just as fast or you get plopped in and it's so difficult to recontextualize what's already happened. So I kind of empathize with the logistical choice to use prerecorded gameplay instead for the side stream because then you have much more control over the situation. You can plop them in at a logical point in the game or you can at least make sure it's a game worth watching as well. So yeah, I don't know. It feels difficult to solve. I think the effort is certainly worthwhile. Like, I hate it when they just put on the same like three video loops in the regionals for like 40 minutes and you gotta watch those. Cue the hor. Cue the tord hype reel. Dude, just cue the tort. Yeah, just send it. Let's get. You know they got like four of them that they do. Yeah, the tord, the Liam, the Henry, the animation of like Sprigatito and Fuecoco and Quaxly like Playing and stuff like, you know. Yeah. What did you think, gw? Yeah, it was good. Yeah, I did. I did watch a bit of your production, Andrew. It was nice. I feel like you are a great voice. You'd be a great commentator, Andrew, if ever. I appreciate that. If ever offered the opportunity. Well, thank you. It's very sweet of you to say. Yeah, yes, yes, I think that, that, yes. That you would be great. It was very enjoyable to listen to you stream. What are you saying? I'm not saying. I had some people. I had some people pop in, in the chat and say thank you for saving us from the official broadcast. No, that is not. There were some people popped into this that. Hey, listen, JW is not making any. Okay. I am just saying if there were to be a change, I would welcome it. I did really love. I mean, it's. It's great to listen to Puka and Chip. I think, you know, they are just. Oh yeah. I think everybody has commentators that they like connect with and ones that they don't connect with as much. For me, for me, they were great. They were a highlight for sure. So watching them on Championship Sunday, right, Breaking down the final match, even though it was kind of a stinker that game three, it was just fun to. To listen to. But yeah, overall great tournament. I mean, we had James coming out on top. Crazy 16, one and one, like you said. Riley bringing this deck along to Indy and then now to Naic. This is a relatively underplayed deck, this Lily's Clefairy deck. And looking down here at the overall meta and I mean, yeah, this is like less play than Mega Greninja. Less play than play than Lucario, you know. Yeah, less play than Lucario. Right. Like here we are, Lilies clefair. There are 42 players and by and large, I mean, did okay. But we're kind of looking at, you know, first place finisher here and then a lot of finishes outside of, you know, outside of the cash and certainly a lot of people that didn't make it into the phase two. If we go to James's record, I mean, he just thrashed. It's pretty easy to see with this matchup spread. You know how he got as far as he did. The deck is geared toward Dragon Pulse. Yeah. Yeah, geared toward beating the Dragon Pulse. Right. And played against like what? His whole top cut was Dragon Ball, which is crazy. And didn't play like any single prize decks. Oh, he did play across. Yeah, he played Rahul which, which was his loss. But like didn't play. Didn't play a statistically high number of single prize decks, which would have disqualified him from top eight. Right. Like, which would have. I mean, that's. And there was actually a decent probability that he was going to hit Crustle. Crustle. Like, he could have hit Crustle. Crustle. Crustle. Like, yes. Like, he could have hit it three rounds early. Day two. Yeah, Crustle is everywhere. I do feel that at the same time, Dragapult was such an obscene portion of the meta game that you can understand making calls like that. I mean, it's 50% of day two for crime. It was 50% of the day two metagame, roughly. You know, like Dragon Ball is just. If we look at every freaking wear. So it makes sense to play a deck that's kind of geared to Dragon Ball. 48.15%. I mean, this certainly, to me, crazy feels better than the. Like, even when Lugia was big, I don't remember it being this big. Even when Garbodor was big, I don't remember it being quite this big. Maybe it was. But the. The point stands. You know, 50% of a meta in day two being a single deck or. Or a single, you know, archetype with some, you know, minor adjustments, is a very centralized metagame, and James was able to take advantage. Now, if we look at the Lily's Clefairy deck, I mean, yeah, we're max consistency here, right? Four Meowth, four Kangaskhan for Clefairy. That's the core. You got four Crispin. That's kind of the game plan, right? You're able to weave in some other things. You got to have some Terror Pokemons. You have the Wellspring Mask that maybe gives you a chance into the single prize decks. You. You got Koridon for the mirror. Those are your Terror Pokemon that you can make use of to. To activate the Area Zero. You got a high count of Latias. You want to be seeing those off of the Dusk ball, Right. So being able to pivot is obviously very important with the deck play. A lot of Latias there. Couple of Fez comes up big. I mean, we saw it in the game three in the finals, where. And game two actually as well, where he was using Fez to snipe down the Dracloaks as they came online and just really disrupt any Dragapult deck that didn't play Shaman, which I think amongst the top players, they didn't really respect. You know, things like Slow King, right. That would have kind of a board Wipe potential, but in this case, working out really well with the pheasantipity. So any thoughts on the list before we. We go into some other things? No. Yeah, this list is. This list is super slick. I mean, relying on those dust balls. Just one copy of Serrano. One of the things that I really. One of the things that I really didn't like about the popular Raging Bolt lists is that it felt like they were so dependent on getting that early Serrano in order to, like, start operating. And the game pretty much always had to start with a Serrano. And if it didn't, you were just kind of like not doing what you needed to be doing. But this list can very much operate without playing Serrano. And that's because of the four Dust ball. You're playing the four Ultra ball, four Dust ball. You're just kind of like turboing the Pokemon out of the deck. And obviously the four dust ball works because you've simplified the cast. You don't have like all these different one of Pokemon that you need to get. You're just playing high counts of like all the good ones you want to play. Right. You got four Kangaskhan to try and open it. You've got four Clefairy because you want to just find it as soon as possible. 3 Latius, just like in obscenely high counts of your main guys, which makes Dustball a viable option to go find them early. And I really enjoyed that about this, this particular list. I also want to call out jw, if you would be so kind as to head over to my Twitter account. Oh, my goodness. Yes. I don't feel comfortable putting that on the screen. Your predictions are actually quite good. Your deleted Twitter account. Do it, dude. Okay, let me do it. Enjoy. My predictions were fire, dude. Okay, let me see, let me see. Okay. Day one predictions, they were very good. Thank you. Well, the Jesse. The Jesse. Jesse was. You can't hit them all. Okay. Can't hit them all. But I did have top eight. There were four Dragapult and top eight. I called two Polt nor two pole hammers. I think there was. I mean, a Pult Nor was in the finals. I think two were pulled hammers and there was a pulp Blaziken, I think. Yep. Right. I think that's so, like pretty close there. I called a slow king in top eight. There was. I called a Hydra in top eight. One lost in Asim to winning in which was. Which was tough or I think like winning into Asym. Like there. There were some close Hydrapples but none quite made it. Sure. And then I called slot box to make top eight. Was there a single Shaman? I called slop box to win. Yeah. Winning deck. Slop was a Friday, though. This is not slop. It is slop. This is not slop. I would. I would argue. What is this? In my opinion, this is just like a clefairy. Well, when I said slop, I definitely. I definitely meant to include this Slop umbrella. Yeah. When I think of slop, I think of teal mask, ogre pond and energy switches. Slop is to me, Kangaskhan and Latius. This is so much less sloppy. Look how much. Look how clean this is. Well, it's the least sloppy slop deck, which is why it won. To me. If you ask me, Raging Bolt. If you ask me, Raging Bolt qualifies as slop box. But, like, that's my take. Yeah, but that's got teal mask stuff in it. Well, I think slot box is like all. All the Kangaskhan big basic decks to me are slot box. I just feel like what made this deck actually work is the ways that it's different and like not playing the teal masks and playing like such a dungeon. I called it, bro. Sure, I'll give it to you. I'm not taking it. I think you're. I think your predictions and you did have. Does JW keep the invite at 720 points? Hopefully that prediction holds up as well. Let's freaking go. So let's go. Yep. Yep. Pretty interesting. Did. Did you check the two shaman that I felt like was a card that really was not played? I don't think there's a single one of that. Let's not audit that. I made it through most of the top eight and I didn't see a single one. Let's not audit. Let's not audit that one. Let's take a peek at. Let's take a peek at Netty Stick. So here's one. I mean, wait, so John played one pretty. So there's one in top eight. Okay, let's take a look at Nettie's deck. We were all pretty big on Dragon Ball Dusknor for this event, and there are some really interesting things about this list. Justin Neudorf played kind of. I would say kind of the. The. A similar build. Right. We were all really confused. Like, oh, my goodness, he's playing Dusk Nor and Crushing Hammer and he has, you know, all these other tech cards. But, you know, I like how this is kind of becoming the standard for Dragon Ball Dusknoir. With the hammers netting increased that to four. And then also including a handheld fan, which I thought was very interesting as well. Another way for you know, swinging the mirror, right, to be able to. To. To put some pressure on against opposing dragapults. Just a good card. I mean it's not a lot of tools. Total disruption. That's a couple things. Couple things that I noticed about Nettie's list at Indy. I only played two dragapult and I only played two boss. And it's like this to me was really cool to see because I felt like I was being a little bit like a little bit greedy going for those cuts, right? Like and I caught a lot of flack for those people saying like oh well to Tuple is like untenable, you can't do it. Or two bosses untenable, you can't do it. And I didn't feel that way. I felt convicted. I was like, you can actually operate with two pole. And if you look historically like Peek Rom decks only played two picorom. Like a lot of decks where you like have your main attacker, you only play in two of them. Especially if it's just like a big guy, right? That you can, you can recover if you need to. And especially in Pultener because you are expediting the pace of the game. You actually are like you are shortening the game. So even more reasonable in Pult Noir. Yeah. I think the argument is like if you're under idle lock, you're not finding your dragon pultas as frequently. So you know, I think. I think that's maybe the argument there. And then also in. In the mirror you want to find your bosses, right? So but I mean it makes sense right in you are expediting second place. He did it. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I'm not saying there's just different schools. Good enough. Yeah, it's good enough. And that was my thought. It was like I was. I thought I really felt like it was good enough. Like it. It is in like in an ideal world, sure you want three of each. But like I did feel like that those were concessions that could still be like a tournament, you know, a really high performing tournament. Tournament strategy. And it was cool to see those counts work there. I really like Neddy's list. I don't like the handheld fan. I would. I don't think that I would ever accommodate for that spot like personally. But I do love the four crushing hammer. I think that that's great. And yeah, I mean overall like very solid list. I Like the way it's constructed, the three crisp into dawn. There's a lot of things that I like about it. Very cool. So congrats to Nettie on a fantastic finish. We got Justin Neudorf with a Pult Hammers list. Pretty standard. Ross Cawthon top four at the IC was Slow King. I don't know, Riley, if you caught some of Ross's games over the weekend, but man, they were exciting. They were very exciting. Yeah, the, the situations he was getting into and out of were insane. Absolutely insane. Yeah. So, yeah, what I mean, the Slow King deck is so ferocious. It's just what you would see with, with the games that Ross is struggling. It's just the classic problems that the deck has, right. In terms of like early consistency and getting fully set up. Yep, yep, exactly. What were your impressions after watching Ross play at this, at this event? Andrew? Like, does it make you like Slow Kingdom? Because that was also what Jesse played, right? Does it make you like sloking more? Does it make you like sloking less? No movement. So I predicted that a Slow King would top eight. So clearly, you know, I've talked a lot of trash on Slow King a lot, but I did still predict that one would top eight. And that's because I do understand the high power level and like the high ability of the, of the deck. Right. Like the, the deck can do things that other single prize decks can't do. And I did think that not enough people would be playing Shaman or like, you know, really care about the turn to Triforce. Like, I didn't think enough Dragapult list would be playing Rare candy or Shaman. Right. And I feel like it's one or the other. Like you're either playing Rare Candy to like really help or you're playing Shaman to like help, you know, but none of them were really doing that. So like, anytime Ross could just get like a turn two trifrost, he was like winning against Dragapult. That's like, that's like 50% of the field. Not even a turn two. Sometimes turn three if you're going first, like you get a turn three trifrost. Like you're chilling. Like, that's crazy. But I think as we saw with who did he lose to? Nettie. As we saw with his games against Nettie. Like just with like the hammers and like just a little bit of item lock disruption didn't matter. Like the deck is still just gonna lose, right? Just with like some hammer flips and a little bit of item lock and then like you're just like, getting absolutely waxed by Dragapult. So to me, like. And that's exactly how I would have drawn it up. Like, Dragapult's the better deck, like Slow King. It does not actually hold up to a very good Dragon Ball deck, in my opinion. But, like, I don't know. I mean, you could certainly say that. I mean, look at Ross's record against these Dragon Balls. I mean, was it. I didn't actually see the. The conclusion of the series versus Nettie, but didn't Ross have a game? Someone was tweeting earlier about a game that Ross could have won if he like, sniped the fez twice instead of targeting the single prizers or something. You know what I'm talking about? Was that his top four match? Do you guys remember? I don't remember when I was a top four match or was that. But I remember seeing the. Seeing the discussion because I think that if that was his top four match, I mean, we'd be maybe talking about a different story. Like, if Ross makes it to the finals, I feel like he's pretty favored against the. The Blitzel deck. So I don't know. Like, I think it holds up fine to scrutiny from Dragapult. I don't know. It's really. It's really interesting. Maybe. I mean, maybe it's just like Ross stiff, right? Like, like we look at Slow King in the matchups because I think there's. The data here is kind of favoring you, Andrew. If you just look at it on the whole, right, it's like not very favorable into Dragon Ball, you know, pretty even into the Dragon Ball dust. Nor, you know, you're not really winning outright many of these matchups. Even into basic box or clefairy, you have a losing record or average record. I. I guess looking at this purely doesn't inspire confidence, but. Yeah, it's certainly. But Slow King also has so much like list variants and stuff. Like, Slow King has so much list variance in terms of the. The engine and the attackers. Like, I don't know. I don't think that's something you can judge in like, aggregate stats. Well, Ross was not playing the Smoochum, right? He was not. That was a very interesting exclusion from Ross. The Smoochum allows you to. I think it. I think it a little bit. Well, that's. Yeah, that's definitely, you know, against Hammers, if you have to manually power up a Slow King, I suppose you have the wondrous patch. But if you have to, you know, Kind of. Especially we saw Nettie item lock while hammering, and it was just like, Nettie had all the time in the world to set up. Right. I mean, because, like, you hit a hammer, you item lock, it's like, I know you cannot. You cannot do anything. Yes. Right? And just having that much control over the game proved to be pretty. Pretty tough for Ross to overcome. I was incredibly impressed with Ross's run. I was cheering for him the whole way. Like, I mean, obviously, you want to see someone like Ross win with a deck like this. It's just such a cool thing when I'm being a hater on this deck. I'm being a hater on this deck and that, like, I would never want to play it personally for a tournament because I. I can't help but just like, focus in on its. On its flaws. But, like, from a viewer and a fan. Yeah, I want to see Slow king win. Sure. You know, like, heck, yeah. That'd be freaking sick. But, like, as a competitive player myself, like, nine touching that deck, dude, like, no shot. Well, it's just doing a lot of things to, like, maybe win. There's so many moving parts compared to a deck, like dragapult or you have to jump through a lot of basic box. Yeah. And you're playing a lot of bad cards in your deck. That's, like, my biggest beef is that you're playing, like, bad cards. Cards you have to draw in a very specific order is also something that I struggle with. You play a lot of backgrounds, like Metagross, Kirum Academy at night. Like, just a lot of bad guard. You got a lot of bad cards in your deck that are just like, only good in certain situations. Yep. Very true. Very true. So. So we had Ross. We had Rahul. Another. Another deep run with Crustal. Crazy. I was. I was lamenting the Bianca's bro chat, the Bianca YouTube chat. I was telling them, I know I got Bianca, dude. I know I got Bianca at Indies at Indy. But I was telling. I was telling Chat that they need to do a better job respecting Crustle because I'm not gonna respect Crossle. But enough of you need to get mad. Enough. Yes, we need. We need, like, the. The 4:3. You know, the 4:3:1ers to be mad at Crustle. Right. And we need all the. All the four 3 1ers, you know, three. Three 2ers to, like, really double down on their hay for Crustal. And hopefully the Crustle players catch a few of those in those early rounds and get bodied. So what we need to do is we need to start talking about us podcasters, us content creators. We need to start talking about how important it is tech for Russell. We can't reveal our hand. Yes. We can't reveal our hands that we don't ever plan on teching for Crustle. We can't reveal that. We need to just start talking about how important it is to tech for Crustle and that obviously all the coolest kids and all the best Pokemon players will always tech for Crustle because you always have to be prepared. That's right. You never know when it comes. Because you never know when you'll face one. Yes. That's right. Yes. Yeah. Unbelievable here. Undefeated until losing to a single price deck. You know, I'm surprised he beat a slow king along the way. Crazy. Crazy. I was saying that Mewtwo is spied up, so it has an out versus Crustle. I think they played it out and just legitimately tied. Oh, really? Okay. I didn't see that because I remember that match result came in super late in the round. Hmm. Interesting. Trolling through Limitless. I don't know how that. Yeah, maybe I'd have to go back and watch the vod. I'm not sure how that ends in a tie, but I don't know enough about the Crustle Team Rockets Mewtwo matchup. So the Rockets Mewtwo can KO or the, you know, the spy Dops can KO a Crustle, but the Crustle with a spike energy also like kos it right back, you know, So I think it just gets weird, right? Yeah. Okay, I guess that makes sense. And then the Crustle heals. So, like, if you don't have enough Pokemon in play, I guess you're not attacking unless you can knock out. But then you can't. One hit KO at the cave buffs, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they have the hero's cape, so it just gets. It just gets weird. Take out multiple spiders. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. And then, yeah, rest of the rest of the top. Pretty interesting. We did see Tord get Asam with a tome Zorark. This is an interesting archetype. I think he played it along with Henry Brand and maybe one other player. But playing the transformation tome new card where you can play two of them together and then basically spawn in or replace a basic Pokemon on your side of the field. So the application in Zork obviously is to. There's a couple applications to remove kind of one of those early starter Pokemon, Tatsu, Giri or Badoo that you maybe don't want to have on the field in the late stages of the game and also to spawn in a. An ends Darumaka out of nowhere, evolve it into the Darmanitan, assuming that the other basic has been in play for a turn and just basically get a surprise Darmanitan. So your opponent is expecting not to, you know, have the snipe of the end starmanitan. And then all of a sudden it comes into play all at once. So, you know, those to me seem like the two, you know, obvious happens new puzzles there. So very interesting new puzzle. What's the. What's the ruffian doing here? You don't know about ruffian, bro? That's for crustal, is it? Well, you discard a tool and you discard a special energy. So I. I gotta pretty much both on the crustle. Yeah. I gotta imagine it's like you're discarding the hero's cape. Right. Because that's gotta be. You know, you set up like an end star manitan and then you're like. Maybe backdrafting is what I backdraft, though. Because they play like one energy. No, because you're discarding one, so you're doing. Okay. Well, but it's for basic energy. No, you shred. You shred, bro. You could shred, I guess. Yeah, you could shred. And then you're discarding with a ruffian. You're discarding one with a ruffian. Yeah. You're shredding your dormant. It seems very, I think toward. Look at. Towards matches. Look at his matches. Hey. B2. 3. B3 Crustle, bro. He's the crust. Holy. I'm. I told you, bro. Yeah. I guess you probably just shred. Yeah. While you're shredding and using monkey. Yes. And being Torch. And then once you knock out one crustle, then you could back. But it doesn't. It doesn't. One shot you. Right. They're just doing 120, which is 240. So they're not even one shotting you if they were one shot a monkey. Yeah, but they're like, you can pivot and you're pivoting between all of your zoroarks. Right. So like, you know, you're pivoting between all your zorgs. So like, they're gonna have to boss in order to take one out. That's true. And then once you knock out a crossover attachment, pace is super slow. Yeah. Yes. Once you knock out a crustle and then you are using. Wait a second, Wait a second. And Then. Oh, you're shredding with mochi. Well, I knew I wasn't crazy because you could go Darmanitan. Assuming, right. You take like the knockout, you could go Darmanitan binding mochi with. With the. Oh, I guess you can't. Tell me. Tell me right now how you're poisoning that Darmanitan. J. I know. You're right. No, but you could. You could shred the mochi. Shred. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that does like what it does. 110 Shred. Was that crime? Is not it either. No. Shred with the mochi. No, you're using Zork with the mochi and you're shredding for 110 with monkey. That's 140. And the ruffian discards the cape and. And a growing. A grower energy. So that's pretty good. Don't call it a grower energy. I did. I did call it a grower energy. Yeah. Okay. All right. I. I haven't thought about Zorark in. In a while, but that seems like a free. Well, this was like the big secret deck for this tournament, wasn't it? The. The tone Zor. Yeah, it did really well on the stats. Liam was playing it too. Yeah, Liam was the other one. Yeah. And liam was top 16, I believe. Yeah. Liam had a. Yeah. 14th there. Were they on the same list? No, but purloin, dude, there's a whole scrupy in there. Yeah, let's take a look. Let's take a look. So Skorupy, 2 for 20 and Poison. And then we have the Rapion. Yeah. 100 damage. This Pokemon also does 70 to itself. Earnestly is killing me. Paralyzed and poisoned. I. I don't understand. The drapion. It's auto paralysis. And then you monkey the. The damage off. You can do it like three times. We know how good auto paralysis is, man. I mean, Jake, your heart played auto paralysis. Yeah. Search your deck for up to three dark Pokemon. Reveal them and put them into your hand that says search your deck for threes. Orc. Is that that like, can't. Two air balloons. It literally. There's two air balloon in a secret box. Yeah, dude. The purrloin to me is like a little like. I'd be curious how you've got. That's true. The tomes make it better. The tomes make the random crap work a little better. For sure. You just go get it. You can go get it under item lock. You can like go get broken. None of us saw the vision on tome. I Can't believe it, Thomas. Broken. Yeah. Puzzle 2.3 monkey. I mean, the big difference here also is three monkey, right? So like Liam from watching Liam's games, like, Liam would just create these boards where he would like tome out a monkey and just like all of a sudden have three monkeys out like playing Zorark, which is like obscene. I did find myself constantly asking myself like, are they actually gonna have like an ends pokemon in play to attack? Like no. The end is just a way to get the PP up down. Dude. You pp up onto some random crap and tometo you're scorupy so you can be a trapion. Let's go. Right? Uh huh. There were definitely the highest number of of end zork boards without like an ends attacker in play that I've ever seen in my life this weekend. That's crazy. You'll have to watch some matches here. This. This definitely seems above my pay grade to figure out all the lines. Too many lines, too many possibilities. Yeah. Put the fragment Infinite paralysis is so broken when decks are not playing Switch. So you could certainly just bail yourself out a lot of the games by just locking a dragon ball there. Did you see Ian Robb's list that was playing the straight beyond in slow K? Oh, that's. No, he didn't do that well on day two. But he had a timed YouTube video that he recorded last week that released on Sunday. It's like when I'm in the finals. You can watch this video and it'll explain my deck. Then he went nine and five, by the way. Okay, okay. Interesting, interesting. He's playing the Zorark with the foul play and the trudeau. This is all the one ups is crazy. He was cooking monkey in here. Holy smokes. Yeah, you got Crispin, dude. Anything else from NAIC that you want to call out? I mean, it was great to see. You know, a lot of the top players do well, right? We didn't really have any kind of underdogs unless you count, you know, James's run, which was fantastic. Any other call outs from what you saw at NAIC? 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It's still Dragonfelts world and we're still just living in Dragonfall's world, you know, doesn't just cuz it doesn't win every tournament doesn't mean it's not the complete meta defining force of this metagame. Right. That's I think the real lesson of all this. Do you ever, do you ever see that shifting? No, honestly. Do you ever see that with the current like game design, power level, direction? I would kind of be surprised if they release something that truly butts heads with it before rotation. But maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, I kind of expect this to be the year of Dragapult. I mean even with Dragapult losing this tournament it what? Dragapult still had like the best conversion rate, the best win percentage in day two. The stats of Dragapult as well. Right. It's 50% of the field and also has the best stats. Right. So when you're that highly represented, not only do you have a lot of like subpar players piloting you, but also you're playing mirrors all the time which just implicitly like brings your win rate down. It's just unbelievable. Unbelievable numbers being put up by Dragon Ball right now. Yep, yep. The goat. May it supplant Gardevoir as being the goat. I mean this is, this is pretty dominant I'd say. Andrew, any kind of final thoughts Here on what you saw in New Orleans, Dragapult may not have won. I think it's possible at any given point to counter, like whatever you think the popular Dragon Ball builds will have, right? Because Dragapult cannot, at any given point in time have absolutely everything. It can't play everything. It's a 60 card deck. Right. So I think that there's a lot of dragapult deck space that is being taken up for accounting for the mirror. Right. Like a lot of the ways that the lists are being built are being built to accommodate for the pulp mirror, which does kind of crack the door open for strategies to take advantage of the ways that lists are being built. But I think it's possible to be, you know, it's possible to build dragapult lists that would, you know, go toe to toe with or be like, you know, a clefairy box deck or things like that. I think that there are, there are, you know, changes that can be made. The question is if those changes are going to come at the cost of Dragon Ball players finally conceding that they can't do things like play Hammer or, you know, something like that. Right. Where maybe there has to be this kind of like vast understanding amongst Dragon Ball players eventually that like, okay, well, we can't do like all of this deck space for the mirror like we have been. You know, we're actually going to have to start respecting like some other things, you know, if we want to win the event. Yeah, well said, well said. It'll be interesting to see how the meta shifts over the next couple of months. Next big event is the World Championships. Do we get a new set? We get a new set before Worlds. A new main set? Yeah, we get a new main set. Goes live. Yeah, yeah. Full grip games 6k double header happening July 18th and 19th. Pitch black, baby. Let's go. You've got no championship point events to attend. You might as well fly out to beautiful Akron, Ohio and participate for a chance to win a piece of the prize pool. $6,000 up for grabs. Standard event happening on July 18, and a gym leader challenge event happening on July 19. And if you top eight the standard event, you get a free invite to the $5,000 invitational happening in August, the weekend before Worlds. So pretty cool stuff. Sounds like you don't want to miss it. That's what I'm saying. With that, that'll close us out for this episode. You want to get more plugged into Tag Team, you can find us over at x.com@real John Walter for myself at Smiles with Riles for Riley and at Enjoy Friend for Andrew at Tag Team Pokemon for the Podcast. Well, thank you so much for listening and your continued support and we'll catch you next time. Peace. Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors, and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington Eduardo. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington. Edu Sci. Refresh the rooms you love for spring with Pura. Our collection of floral, citrus and fresh scents brings a light, airy feel to every space, like opening the windows on the first warm day of the season. 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