8-39. Rayquaza Hat

And we're live on Matchday as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi, too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Matchdays deserve Pepsi. So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60% off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and free people. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrival 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. How's it hanging, everybody? Welcome back to Tag Team Pokemon Trading Card Games premier podcasting trio. My name is Riley Hobert, joined as always by my good, good emoting friends, J.W. kiriwa and Mr. Andrew Mahone. Folks, we have an awesome lineup today with the reveals of the 30th anniversary products, the reveals of the Storm Emeralda set in Japan, and of course, the Indonesia Master Ball League, the first major tournament in our world championship format. I know, I'm excited. But, boys, how are you doing today? Is it Andrew or me? It was you. Yeah, it was me. Oh, it was me today. Yeah. Pretty good. You know, just loving life, enjoying my time aboard Starship Earth, and Couldn't be happier. Let's go. Yep, yep. Andrew, how about yourself? I know you had a big tournament this weekend. Yeah, yeah, we had a nice 2004 event. We had 28 players in attendance at Fulker Games. It was won by Sam with his. With his Gardevoir Gorbus deck. Very cool deck. That is really. It's. It's kind of a deck that is picked up more steam after the fact, like, it wasn't a big hit back in 2004, but now that people have revisited the format, they've figured out that, like, Gardevoir with Gorebys is kind of like the best or one of the best decks in the format. So that was really fun. I also got to experience some pretty intense Gramp culture on. On Sunday as I was invited by my dad to go to a game Guess who concert in. In Cuyahoga Falls. The. Guess who. They are a Canadian rock band famous for singles. Such as. What? They're. They're. They're famous. No, no, no. There's the. Let's go. What's the. What's the American Girl one? It's. It's not the. Hold on. Oh, wow. I don't think I've ever Seen Andrew. So it's like you're a fan of this band. Name one. Oh, it's American Woman. Yeah. American Woman. That's right. Oh, I know. America. American Woman. Yeah. While the lead singer, pushing 90. So you got Bachmann and the other guy, he's got like a mustache. David Bachman and then the other guy. I don't know, man. Listen, this is the first time I ever listened to him in my life. But I know, I know, I know. The single American Woman, right? That's like the one. So anyways, I, like, I went to. I went to the concert with my dad and with his friend from childhood and with Natalie. And Natalie's dad. Right. And like Natalie's dad and my dad, like, super into this. Right? Because these are like rock. Like famous rock band from, like when they were growing up, the 60s. Yeah. But, like, the guys are like 78 years old and they're out there, like. I mean, they were cooking, dude. Like, they. It was a great show. Like, I had a ton of fun, actually, but, you know, I didn't know a lot of the songs. I actually new. They did a couple of Dave Bachman overdrive songs. There's the one Taking Care of Business. Taking Care of Business every Day. Yeah, they did that one. You know, those are pretty big, like, really big rock songs. So, like, that was. That was cool. And then the opening act for the Guess who was. Was Don Felder, who was like one of the Eagles, I guess. And. And he did like Hotel California. He did Life in the Fast Lane. He did like a bunch of, like, you know. You know, so it was just him. And he's got like his own little band now that he's like, kind of touring with or whatever. But that was pretty cool. That dude was also very old and also very much still rocking out. So, like, it was crazy getting to see all these like 70, 80 year olds out there just like rocking out on stage. It was actually was really inspiring because anytime I start to feel old, I'm like, wow. Like, those guys are like, that's old. Definitively. And they're still rocking out. Objectively. Still rocking out. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, man. And then there was like this point. There was this point where, like, you know, Don Felder is like, all right. You know, He's. He's like 78 years old. I think he's like. Yeah, something like that. And he's like, got this like, leopard print shirt on and it's like a deep V, you know, and he's like playing all these, like, classic American rock songs that he had like a hand in creating right, as a member of like the Eagles. And he's like, all right, this next one's off my new album. Holy smokes. He's like, yeah, this one goes out to, this one goes out to my girlfriend. You're going to see her in the video playing behind me. And, and like Natalie and I are cracking up because, like, it's like this 30 year old woman on the screen. Awesome. Good. For sure. Like horses like, you know, galloping across like a meadow and there's like this, you know, really pretty 30 year old woman on the, on the jumbotron behind him. He just wants everybody to know he's out there getting it, you know, I think that was pretty, it was pretty beast mode, honestly. But it was also kind of funny just to be one of the youngest people in the, in the crowd by like a large margin. It's like the opposite of a Pokemon event, literally. Yes, that was, it was nice, you know, it was nice to feel so young. Does it, does it make you reflect a little bit on your own profession? And you know, you say like, well, when I'm 78, I'm gonna still be making YouTube content and streaming. It made me, it made me want to do what I love doing and not feel any type of way about it, you know. So like, it did, it did make me reflect in that way. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna rock out my own way, do my own thing, you know, have fun doing it, you know, you know, enjoy every day. Because like, these guys are clearly out there still having fun and, you know, putting on meaningful shows for people who are, you know, who are, who are fans of them and connecting with fans too. And they talked a lot about like, kind of the connection that they have with people through performing and doing music over the years and the connections that they've made with, you know, people that they're still out there performing with. They what? Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman. They've. They know each other for like 60 years or something. Like they've been performing together for like over 60 years, which was like blew my mind. So, yeah, it was, it was cool to witness. It was cool to see the art of like classic rock is kind of like, it's a dying art, obviously, right? It's like a, it's like a, a past era. So to get to like go experience some of that before, it's like gone from the earth, right? Like performers who like lived and helped create what we now know as classic rock. Getting to like, see some of that before it's like gone was really cool and not something that I had ever really gotten to experience before in my life. So that was. That was neat and very eye opening. So. So yeah. The Guess who. American Woman. There we go. That's the song. Yep. That's the song I knew by them before going to the show. Nice. Nice. Sounds good. Rally Any. Somehow did not know it after going to the show. You ever just get put on the spot? I mean, come on. No, I get it, man. It's like all you want for dinner. It's like, I don't know what food is like. I've never heard of food before. You could have told us to restart the episode, dude. I just. Now you're gonna be embarrassed like that. That's gonna be on the Internet forever. You can cut it. I mean, I could. Yeah, you could cut it to like, spare me. I think. I think Riley and I both agree. We won't. I feel like. Let me know in the. Let me know in the comments. Let me know in the comments if you think I should cut the. Cut that segment. I. That's just genuine life, right? If JW cuts anything from the first couple of minutes, it's probably gonna be himself just sitting around, not starting. True. Yeah. I'll probably shorten that for sure. Make myself look better. But things are good on my end. Yeah, I. We just saw the second to last show in our Broadway season tickets in Madison. It was called Water for Elephants. It's about. It's not about. It's not about, like Africa with giraffes and elephants stuff, which is kind of what I thought it would be about. It was, in fact about the circus and a circus elephant kind of. But it was really good. I actually really enjoyed. Was like, it was a Broadway show, but a lot of the cast were like gymnasts and acrobats and doing crazy stuff on stage, which is pretty cool. And maybe grapple with my own mortality a bit as I saw them plummeting to the ground doing these stunts. But they all made it through and presumably they keep doing that every show. And then we saw another show. There's a place by us kind of called the American Players Theater. It's like an outdoor theater with a dedicated troupe that they do shows every year. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere. You have to get off the highway and then drive for a subsequent half hour to get there. And it's super cool. Really fun. The cast has a lot of fun with it. And we saw a show called Uncle Vanya, which is a Chekhov special, if you've heard of Chekhov. Or his gun. Chekhov's gun. Same guy. And it was super good. That was really interesting and kind of thought provoking too. And I always enjoy going out there. We have another show coming up there on Friday, actually, or maybe Saturday, One of those two. That's been good. And for those of you following my. My landscaping journey, I've continued to polish up my yard. I did a lot of weeding and stuff, so. True homeowner stuff, you know. And I think I may have convinced my lovely wife to be Jill that we need an even bigger TV than the one that we have right now. Let's go, dude. Let's go. What are we talking? What are we. Are we getting into the 60? I have 65 inch right now. Gotta be a 70 going to the 77 inch. Yeah, let's go. Yeah. And it's got. And for me now, now that I'm taking it serious, it's gotta be the oled panels as well. Like the real nice. The real stuff. So nice. I've already kind of pre picked it out. It's one of the few, like, luxuries that is on my radar right now for the home. The couple others are bidets with heated seats and heated water. So when it's cold outside and you're coming into the master bathroom, you know, you can sit on a plush heated seat. The robo vacuum with the mop. So that way it can clean up everything with the cats, the tv. And there's like one other, I think, but, you know, Love sack. Love sack. We have the love sa. We have. We have the. Not the same one as you do. That's right. No, I know. Yeah. Sectional. Sectional. Well, we actually decided against the sectional. We have a different sectional couch coming, which is very beautiful. That we thought was a little bit comfier. Let's see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now the tv. Every time I. Every time I go to Costco and I see like the big, like wall sized OLED TVs, I'm like, man, yeah, man. Oh, man. That's how they get you, bro. They just walk into the Costco. I mean, in a lot of stores, they, like hide the TVs like in the back. You have to like, go all the way in the back. Costco. You walk in, they hit the first thing. Opposite strategy. Yeah, there they are. God, they are gorgeous. Well, I wanted an OLED TV years ago, and I got the 65 inch one I got it in 2020, but they were a little too expensive at the time, and now they've become more affordable over the years. And I'm also just more willing to spend money on a TV now. So the circumstances around the TV buying have changed. And the 77 would be perfect for this basement space. It fits perfectly in the spot I've allocated for it. Where's your sack? The sack is kind of right above me, actually. Right now it's in the, like, a living family room space on the first floor. Nice. And it's really cute in there. That's actually like, the one room I think is, like, basically done. Ready? It's nice to have that right when you're moving, like your little sanctuary amongst the kids. Well, it sucks, dude. They, like, you buy the furniture, at least the furniture places we went to, and it's like, yeah, he'll enjoy this in six to eight weeks. You know, like, okay. Crazy. Do you know who he is? Do you know who you're speaking to right now? Exactly, exactly, exactly. Of tag team Pokemon podcast fame. Like, are you joking me right now? Do you need me to get my agent on the phone? So we're still a few weeks out from. From the sectional, but we have another couch. It's down here, but the one in the den will be. So, yeah, homeowner stuff. Homeowner stuff. I'm wired on the Internet now, so I'm not gonna cut out. Nice. And let me. This is a hate message to Spectrum. Screw you, Spectrum. Everywhere I move and get your service. You suck. And your customer service is terrible. That's what I have to say about that. Okay. Heck yeah, dude. Also, they call themselves fiber powered Internet, but it's still just cable Internet. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't make any sense. The only reason I got Spectrum in this house was because it was the only thing offered. But then ATT laid down fiber, like, five days later, so just switch. I did. I did already. He's fiverr'd up now, dude. Yeah, I'm fibered up. Nice. Congrats. Very fibrous. Anyway, we don't have to keep talking about me, but let's dive into the 30th anniversary. What do we say? Let's get into it. I think I have some thoughts here on the design, but they've revealed the full product lineup for the 30th anniversary, which is being called the 30th celebration. The logo, as you can see, I think it looks relatively clean, but I think they kind of jumped the shark a bit. On this pack design, not my favorite, they had a, a nice like kind of, you know, gold and white color wave that they've used for, you know, the etb for instance. This looks very clean. Did not translate that onto the packs, unfortunately. I mean this looks like an ultra pro play mat, bro. You're two faced. You're. You're saying that you like the Mewtwo and MEW cards, but you don't like this pack art. I do like the other products we saw. Yeah. Two face, bro. No, no, you're. This pack are bad. The Mewtwo and, and Pikachu and Mew Good. Yeah, those are. The chrome guys are all insane. I don't know if you compare. Look, there's the two different packs there on this image you're showing us right here. Yes. You've got like the gold and white one and you've got the one with the, with the 3D guys behind it. All in all, I really like the 30th celebration logo. I think the logo looks great. I feel like it kind of borrowed the look and style from the Japanese logo for the 25th anniversary, which I was a really big fan of. Kind of like the block numbers in a simplistic design. What I really don't like is the, is the Pikachu head with the 30 on the cheeks. So like as little of that as I get to see, I'm, I'm a fan. I also, I don't really know about like the, the kind of like black and white, you know, pencil line sketch motif that they're kind of using over and over again. Like you can see in the golden white pack there. They also have it on the Elite Trainer box. I feel like they kind of did that for the 20th anniversary actually like in Generations packaging that I saw. So it looks like they're bringing that back. Well, isn't it the same like celebration was like, doesn't that remain all kind of like in that vein? Yeah. Did they do that for the 25th anniversary to like the, the. No. No. I think so, right? Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. So anyways, I'm not like a huge fan of that. To me it's like it just looks a little kind of plain. But you know, whatever, man. Their 30th anniversary celebration packs, dude. Like, you know, if you're keeping it sealed, that Elite Trainer box is going to look real swifty on the, on the shelf. You're not going to have to worry about that. It's going to look nice. It's gold, it's got a 30 on it. You know exactly what you're looking at. And as far as the cards inside, they're going to look dope. And there's going to be a base set Charizard reprint in there and also some Chrome, Pikachu, Mewtwos, and Muse. So I think it's cool. It's a success. So it's fine, I guess. What's the difference between the packs? So my understanding is that the classic collection pack is going to have the 30. 30 cards that they've selected, you know, that we've seen that are reprints. And then you're so wise. The other packs are going to be the main set, but they're only doing one. They're only doing one reprint pack. So, like, you're. These are going to be extremely limited from a player perspective. Doesn't that kind of reduce. This is what Japan did Now in the US and internationally, we did not do this for the 25th anniversary. We had the reprints and the main set cards were all combined into one. Right. But in Japan, they had, yeah, special box promo packs. They had, like. It was a box. Yeah, they had the literal. The box. Right. And the box came with, like, the regular set cards. And then each box came with, like, well, like one pack that was like a reprint. Right. And you, like, open the pack and it had a single card in it. And I think right there, you see it says one additional game card, does it not? It says three. Three additional. Yeah, no, no. On the other one. Is this A3 there? Is it three? Yeah. So the white one right here. Right here it's three. All right, so you get three in there. But in the Japanese ones, I think it was just one. In the Japanese ones, you, like, open the pack and it had one. One thing in it. So, yeah, that's. That's pretty crazy. So, yeah, these are going to be rare. I think that they're kind of taking. They're. They're kind of combining the strategy a little bit more from, like, what Japan did for the 25th anniversary and what they did. And it looks like they are kind of keeping those. Those cards separate now, which I think is fine. It's interesting. This Summer prime video takes you back before Legally Blonde, before law school, and into the world of Elle woods in high school. Set in 1995, this Gemini vegetarian knows exactly who she is until her family moves from Bel Air to Seattle. Packed with iconic fashion, 90s nostalgia, and a throwback soundtrack, Elle proves one law school was hard. High school was harder. From the world Of Legally Blonde. Watch Elle, a new original series only on Prime Video. Watch now. If we knew more about our sleep, what would we do differently? Would we go to bed at a consistent time or take steps to reduce interruptions to our sleep? With sleepscore, Apple Watch measures your bedtime consistency, interruptions, and sleep duration. Then every morning, it combines these factors into an easy to understand score from 1 to 100. So you'll know how to take the quality of your sleep from okay to very high. Know your sleep score with Apple Watch. IPhone 11 or later required. I don't know if you guys noticed the promo. I was a big hater of the pros. Don't know. You just don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. So I have been informed. I've been learned. Yeah. Do you think this sucks or do you think this is great? Is it the 30th Pokemon in the Pokedex? Okay, you're. You're a way smarter guy than I was because I. How did your head not instantly go there? I don't know, because they've been doing horrible promos recently. Like, who cares about Tyrant? Who cares about, I don't know, Pecorite? Like, I'm trying to think of all the other Fennekins. Well, you're just like, looking at Nidorita and your first question that you ask yourself is like, okay, why Nidorina? And you're like, well, it's Gen 1 first. Oh. Because you're like, it's probably about. It's probably about the 30th Pokemon, isn't it? That's that literal. The next. I can't believe. I can't believe you got there. Yeah, I can't believe you got there so quickly because I instantaneously. I did not get there. Yeah. At all. Also, look at the. I know. There's lots of 30s on the card. They have the bite for 30. The. The 30. Oh, that's funny. I didn't even see all that. But. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's probably 30 Nidorinas in the freaking card. Look at that thing. There are. Yeah, I suspect there are. Yeah. Okay, cool. So is it cool? I don't know. Is it cool, Nidorina? Well, I don't know. Who's number 40? That's cool. I don't know. Who's number 40? Let's see what's coming up. Yes. Screw the 38. Wait, that's actually kind of. Oh, Clefairy is 35th. Yeah, that merch has already been printed, bro. So I Just googled the word 40th. Yeah, that's gonna be helpful. The 40th Pokemon is wiggly tough, which is kind of fun, too. I like the pink. Okay. All right, let's go to 50. What's 50? This could be make or break for the entire franchise. It's not Pikachu. Pokemon. Diglett. What? Diglett's a banger. Diglett is one of the best of all times. Not for the 50. Dude. The 50 is gonna have to be out. Yeah, no, no. What if they reveal what's under the dirt for the. All right. Big. That's big. That could be big. Man. People go nuts. That's crazy. So we got some more promos. We got the Bird Trio. Yeah. I mean, kind of interesting. They have some energy excel abilities, but probably not playable. This Alolan Exeggutor is. I mean, this is a favorite Pokemon of mine. Just generally, you can get this boy up to 500 hp. If you got six or more grass energy attached, you get plus 250. That puts you at 400. And then you put a heroes cape. That's a 500 hp stage one. DLC heads. DLC heads. Oh, they're. They're dialed in for sure. Yeah, if Hex Maniac wasn't already mandatory. Here you go. Yeah. And then a Lucario, which, again, pretty forgettable. Attack. I don't really see a use for this, but. Yeah. I don't know. What do we think? We got some. We got some new products, some new cards. I don't think there's anything too interesting there, but. Oh, there is some art that's kind of unique. We got our promo tins, and I was told that the unknowns on these tins spell out anniversary. How about that? So E, S, A. And then they ran out of. They didn't want to. They ran out of tin, so they needed to do roi. They couldn't have just done the ends together? That's what I was saying, dude. That's what I was saying. That seems like a strange creative direction. Maybe they, like. They approved all the art one at a time. And then they got. Yeah, they got to the end and they're like, oh, shoot, we misspelled. How do you think they chose some of these guys? Like, what. What is Illumise doing up there? Ill. Amise is the 300th Pokemon. Is it? No, I have no idea. What if it is? That would be. No. No, it can't be. Why not? I don't know. It can't be. That's not the right it's in Hoenn. And that's where the 300 Pokemon is. It's 314. I was close. What is the 300? Honestly, Ill. Amisia is like the one like really odd one out. I feel like the other one's pretty. No, no. You think Scrafty is. Is in, dude, you think Scratch the scrafty. Mewtwo. I love Scraggy. Scraggy's or Scraggy, whatever his name is. See, I don't even know his. Scraggy's iconic. Yeah, for sure. Scraggy is not iconic. What is iconic about Scraggy? Scraggy is iconic. He's got pants. What? Scragg for sure. Oh, Scraggy is not iconic. I literally, I still have that freaking scrat that I got from like back in the day at like the black and white. Still have championship or regional championship events. Yeah, I still have it. Dude, that thing is indestructible. Man. I can't believe it. I think. Yeah, man, I can't believe it. We got some, some other decks here. We got the Victini deck, the Zorora deck. Why are you saying it like that? And then of course, I mean we got the Chromium stuff. It looks so good. Dude, please, please. It looks so good. If you hate this stuff, just sell it to me, please. Digging. I'm on my knees. Okay, we did get a somewhat. We got a somewhat competitive ditto here. The combo is like a turn one, two energy attacker, like a dragapult or something. Flip a coin. If head search your deck for a Pokemon and switch it with this Pokemon. So notably Pokemon and switch it with this Pokemon and then any attached cards, damage, counter special conditions, turns and play, etc, any effect on that Pokemon remains. And then if you search this Pokemon shuffle shuffle it back into your deck. So you know, there's a thought here. Like you could go Crispin, get the two energies attached. That's currently the only way to get two energies attached, you know, without some kind of energy accelerator. And then flip the coin, get heads and then just like spawn in a dragapult or. I think that's the most obvious application in current format. But obviously plenty of Pokemon to choose from there. I think it's like way crazier in gym leader challenge. Cuz like you can double turbo it or whatever. Yeah, like turn one go. You can like go turn one Guzmahala and if you have the pivot, you know, you could even get yourself the little tool card that lets you trick coin or the new ribbon or whatever. Our design. You could also do. Yeah. The stadium. Yep, yep, yep. So, like, I mean, you could get, like, the turn one, and then. And then you have the victini. Who's that? Can reflip the coin. Well, not on. Not in colorless glc, but. Yeah. So that's. That's fun and standard. I, like, don't imagine it being, like, a valid strategy. Wait, no, no, no. Hold on. No, you could. Hold on. You have will, right? Don't you have will in glc? Yeah, but you're not gonna have the turn one. Will do. But you. That's a guarantee. No, no, you could do. You could do, like, random receiver and only have will in your deck as your only supporter, and then guarantee. So you'd have two hours. No, you could also play, like, poke gear. The poke here is not finding your one up will. So sick. X transceiver. X transceiver. Yeah. You'd have more than. More than two outs. Crammatic. Yep. Grandmatic. Boom. I see. That's basically if you're flipping coins anyway. Keep thinking. Just keep thinking. Yeah. So, okay, maybe this card is broken with will and glc. Let me know. Let me know. GLC hits. Let me know. All right. This is kind of a sick mewtwo. Honestly, this should have been the promo over Nidorina. Am I right, boys? This would have been a much better. I think it's cool that they're leaning into the number. I don't know. Yeah, I'm also. I'm with Riley on this one. They just can't do it too much because, again, 50. The 50th anniversary is looming. 50th anniversary is a lifetime away, mind you. 20 years. Sheesh. A lifetime. Be here like that. Exactly. I'm saying we got a nice mu. These are nice. I do like these. These are good cards. Good job. Good job. Kona, Natanda. All right, is that everything we have from the 30th anniversary set? Any closing thoughts? I think so, but we got another set to look at, right? We got storm and rail. Flip and do. We Flip and do. Yeah. This was. Is interesting. You want to break down this new archetype? We've got the Mega Rayquaza reveal. Andrew, we were very off, unfortunately, on the Delta. The Delta hot take. We got trolled, bro. Delta take was just pure unfettered ass. I'm sorry. The Delta take was bad. Like, why would they do Delta Pokemon immediately after Tera's? That's. We explored that question in our. In our discussion. We did. Where did you Land on that. You know, listen, it was a content discussion, okay? There was. There was points to talk about. That's right. This was. You know, hindsight is 20 20, okay? It was really easy to look back and say, wow, you. You idiots were wrong. Now that we are wrong. Okay, but back then, we could have been right. That is true. I would have stood my dang ground. I would have stood my ground. Well, then you gotta show up, Riley. Okay? It's as simple. Okay, okay. That was. That's not on me. We rescheduled and that threw things out of whack. Well, that's. That's okay. I'm just saying. I'm just saying if you're gonna try to, you know, you can't, like, insulate yourself from the bad takes if you're not even there, right? You can't protect. Okay, now they're our bad takes. When anyone misses, you know, you get locked in with the take. Surely I could be at least a little insulated for the bad take. Like, it's one thing if I could criticize it or not. Oh, man. Well, regardless, Mega Rayquaza is in fact colorless. Not even dragon type, folks. I wasn't even right with saying it was dragon, dude. Just horrendous. I feel like they. They messed with the colors. I don't understand. I don't understand why. So I think the part they showed in that trailer is that little blue section right between his little jaws. See how it's like, blue and that little piece right here? Yeah. Like, extrapolated the color from that little section. Just to mess with people. Probably. Yeah, it's possible. I mean, why are we seeing a colorless requirement? Because I feel like with the dragons, I mean, this is a dragon. Obviously it's depicted as color. Like, why is it fire lightning? What's the thought there? Equates has always been fire lightning. No, not the gx. Well, maybe. Here's another question. Well, the gx. Yes. Was or no? It was grass. Grass lightning. It was grass lightning because it was the. But I feel like fire lightning is kind of Rayquaza's bit. It's been doing fire lightning forever. The question I have, though is, are they doing dragons right now or are dragons out? What was the last dragon? So I have this theory, and when this one turns out to be correct, okay, y' all are gonna have to say, sorry, but I have this theory that they really messed up by bringing dragons back with no weakness. Terrible design choice for. From the Pokemon company to do that and has created problems such that we see currently with Dragon Ball DX and the need for a Lily's Clefairy EX to be in format. You cannot just always perpetually have a Lily's Clefairy EX equivalent to answer any decent dragon that comes out to help balance the format. So they're going to have to put dragons away again for a little while and eventually bring them back with the freaking weakness again because they have to fix what the. What they did. So maybe dragons are taking a little bit of a break for the back half of the Scarlet and Violet Mega Block or whatever. And maybe they'll. They'll come back with a new weakness. Well, they actually. They have printed dragons, though, now I'm looking. Besides the Zach, they got Mega Dragonite and Mega Dragalogy. Yeah. Yeah. They're gonna have to. They're gonna have to take a break, though. So my prediction is that they're gonna take a break and that this colorless Rayquaza is like, showing like, hey, we could still do colorless dragons. Isn't this cool? You know, because the answer to that question is, yes, it is cool. And I think that this card is really sweet. It reminds me of the Mega Rayquaza EX from Roaring Skies. And I think that, you know, that that's super sweet. Also reminds me of like the very old Rayquaza EX that was played in the Blaziken decks early on, 2004 format, which also took fire and lightning energy and like, you know, you discarded them, did more damage. There's also the Rayquaza EX from Dragons Exalted that was played with electric, you know, which is weirdly legal in current standard in 2026, you know, we're talking about Ray Eels was a deck back in, like 2012, and you could hypothetically play Ray Eels in 2026 as well, which is pretty funny, huh? Well, let's. Let's talk about this card, okay, before we get too far into it. Mega Rayquaza ex. 280hp colorless typing, of course, is a mega. So it's giving up three prizes when you knock it out. Champions Roar is the ability. Play this Pokemon from your hand into your bench. You may use this ability. Look at the top four of your deck and attach a basic energy you find there. Shuffle the remaining and put them at the bottom of the deck. So a energy accelerator ability. And then we have the storm emeralda attack. 50 times the number of fire and lightning energy attached to all of your Pokemon in play. So it's definitely giving, you know, that Rayquaza GX vibe of trying to spawn a bunch of energy into play and hit for big damage. Yeah. Of course Rayquaza is not alone in its efforts. We also have such cards as the Mega Rayquaza cap which is goofy awesome. So this is. I think this is an interesting take on a tool card though. I think it is cool that Pokemon is trying to do something different with tools. So the Mega requisite cap has an attack on it for one colorless energy called Delta Gift. And for each of your Pokemon that has a Mega Rayquaza cap attached to it, you can accelerate basic energy from your deck onto those Pokemon. So you get a bunch of caps in play and then all your fanboys get to share in the love. It doesn't even necessarily explicitly tied to Mega Rayquaza. Like you could use it as an acceleration out in other decks as well. Notably is kind of like a new age TM Turbo Energized type of thing. But the as opposed to TM Turbo Energized which is extremely deck efficient. Like you need to invest much more heavily into this to actually see the benefits of it, which I think is probably fair. So that's kind of like the two piece combo to you get the Champions Roar to accelerate energy. You get Mega equates a cap to accelerate energy. And there's a couple other like surrounding cards for Mega Ray got Adventuring Lantern which is just a Prof. Letter, but specifically for Fire and Lightning in combo you have to get the two different colors. But I think the card that we could talk about the stadium in a second. But the card that I think is the most exciting of this batch is actually the Talonflame ex. Yes. So Talonflame Ex. To me it kind of vaguely reminds me of the Talonflame from back in the day that people would play in Greninja that could like spawn itself into play going first or like on your first turn, but it's a little bit different. So if you have a Colas Mega Evolution EX in play, you can play Talonflame onto your bench directly. So of course having been printed alongside Rayquaza, you can play it with Rayquaza. I actually think the more viable option though is going to be Mega Kangaskhan as like a two piece consistency combo. Because Talonflame has the Claw hunt attack for 150, does 150 for two and it search your deck for up to two cards and put them in your hand. So like very reminiscent this card of the old Talonflame in my opinion. I think it's just A cool combo. You know, you get to draw cards, you accelerate quickly. Talonflame has for your treat only gives up two prizes as opposed to like three on a mega. Like, that's pretty cool. Like 280 on a pseudo basic is very impressive. The stat line on this is pretty cool. And this will just add a lot of consistency to decks. You know, if you're playing like an evolving deck, for example, you can use Kang to draw cards. Get into a Talonflame, search out your pieces, and there's not a lot of disruption in the format. So it lets you build up like, pretty cool combos. So that's my take. I think the Talonflame is the most interesting card by far of the new reveals. Yeah. Yeah. I think the problem is that you need to use, you know, Crispin or the, you know, the Triple xl, right, to be able to attack with that. So I think that's like kind of the limiter here on the Claw Hunt. But I agree with you overall, Riley. It's like, got good stats. The ability is very, like. It's a very reasonable, reasonable ability to. To be able to use in the early game. And the free retreat is awesome too. Right? So you just get that boy out of the active when it's done its job. Really. Combos well after you, you know, if you have to discard that triple energy after using the Claw Hunt. So I think it's a nice card. People talk about using Hilda. You know, you got a Kanga Hilda for the energy. And to me, that seems a little cheesy, but maybe. Especially if you're already an evolving deck. I could see maybe going that Hilda route. Heavy Hilda line. And you play Kangs to set up. Like, maybe there's something there. But. Yeah, I mean, are you sure it's gonna be something like this? Almost reads more like a control idea to me. Just like claw hide, put two cards in hand, you know, you start the Mega Kangaskan. I don't know. Do you think that we'll get a, like a Dragon Mega Rayquaza that also kind of like mirrors the colorless one like we did with roaring skies? Will they go that deep? Will they also give some sort of, like, dragon archetype here or. Or is it just gonna be the colorless? Is. Is this the one we're getting in the set, you think? I suspect this is the one. I don't know. I mean, it's not like they need another chase. I mean, that's gonna be. That's gonna be. I know, right? With all the with all the fix ins that they do with secret rares these days. Dude, I am buying a gold Mega Rayquaza. I told Ann already. I'm like, set it aside if it's a thousand dollars, set it aside if it's $2,000. Like we're buying this card. I must have it. I must have it. In any case, what do you think of their Mega Rayquaza? Like what, what are we thinking here? We got the Mega Rayquaza cap, we got the Mega Rayquaza ex, we got the Legendary Summit. When knocked out by damage from an opponent's attack, both players, colorless Pokemon give up one less prize. So you have a, like a dual stadium here that's intended to combo with the Rayquaza implications here. You cannot just breeze past the freaking. Dropping the summit as a footnote is kind of hilarious. This card stinks. Okay, the card does stink. I would agree. But it's interesting, right? You got like a Pokemon legend in stadium form. And I think that is an interesting now new angle that the card game has available to it. You know, it's like setting the precedent that this card can exist. Like that's to have both pieces, it's like an Exodia stadium. You have to have both pieces in hand in order to play it. But when you play the stadium, I mean the effect on the stadium is absolutely nuts. It's like black, part black market Prism Star in that your colorless Pokemon give up one fewer prize card when they get knocked out. Obviously like a very high power level card. However, it's two pieces to a single stadium that could get countered by a single stadium from your opponent very easily. So definitely feels Wombo Combo to me. Yeah, it's interesting because it's Wombo combo for a defensive stadium. The tag team has stayed true in their take that defensive stadiums are not very good. And generally speaking, that has held up over the years. You know you want to stop. Jones won a regional with them, dude. But also that was with a very heavy count of a. Yes, extremely like targeted stadium allotment. And I think the one of the main weaknesses, besides just the fact you do have to combo it of the Legendary Stadium, is that you can't like keep putting them into play. You know, you. You're literally capped out at two usages of the Legendary stadium because they take two deck slots each. So to get your four deck slots worth, you only get two uses of the stadium. So like I think it's implicitly as a defensive stadium even worse than maybe the average because most Decks are playing like one to two stadium bumps. Like they're just gonna bump you out and. And then you're. You play these cards for nothing. Yeah, or something like. It looks so sick though. It is swag. It is swag for sure to play that. And I bet it looks so beast. I bet super rare is gonna be even better. Maybe they won't make a super rare. There's not gonna be a secret rare of this, dude. Yeah, why not? It's like you're saying that there's going to be a secret rare of the Legends piece. Yeah, dude, why not? That is the secret rare. All right, so what do we think of the Rayquaza deck? What are we thinking here? What do we think? Thoughts? Anyone have thoughts? I feel like they keep doing this thing with the megas where it feels like they're designed to thrive in a world where big megas like swing into each other, but that's just not the world that we live in. And so I don't really see it like being maximally successful, I guess. You know, if. What's the point of swinging for 600 damage into a badoo, you know, when Dragapult is going to hit you for 200 plus 60 next turn and then wipe your whole board on the following turn. And also you're giving up three prizes. Like I don't really see that working out right now. Maybe I'm wrong. This is the type of card that will would do very well in a mega centric metagame, you know, where just being able to one hit ko an opposing mega and take three prizes is a. Is a high value like option. But that's just not where the game is right now. And so I, I don't really see it as being a primo deck. Andrew, your thoughts? Yeah, I think that the. I think that the card pretty much exactly what Riley said. It smacks for really good numbers. You know, you get the energy on it. It could snowball, but gives up three prizes. 280 hit points isn't that much. I mean Nzork just like hits that, you know, I mean there's like a lot of decks that can manage a 280 hit point threat because the format is calibrated to deal with 280 hit point threats. Right. So to me, I'm not seeing enough of an upside to want to put a three prize Pokemon, you know, in harm's way consistently. There you have it, folks. We also have the MC's hype draw two cards. If your opponent has three or fewer prize cards remaining, draw two more, and then Zinnia's Trust. Switch your Active Pokemon with one of your bench Pokemon. If you do move an energy from your previous Active to your new Active. So a little bit of support there, but not particularly noteworthy. Interesting stuff. I don't know. Mega Rayquaza. Mega Rayquaza. I. I think more of a collector at this. More of a collector card at this point than a playable card, but time will tell. I mean, I'm. I'm honestly with you, Riley, and just being way more excited about the Talonflame. I think that'll be a stronger one overall. All right, let's hit the mailbag, fellas. How's it sound? Sounds good. It's going to be a lot of, unfortunately, Andrew, us having to make, you know, make terms with our takes from last week, but. Well, let's just. Let's just. Let's just say, like. Okay, well, you know, we're not interested in discussing the fact that we were wrong. You know, we're actually going to. Just going to focus on football this week and not talk about, you know, any of this fake news media stuff, so. Dude. Yeah. Have you. Have you seen. Have you guys been watching the World Cup? We're focused on football. All right. No extracurriculars, just football. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's like affecting my. But no. Yeah, the World cup. Dude, the World cup is affecting my daily life, bro. It's like. It's in New Jersey. You guys know this, right? Germany's washed, man. Horrible, horrible stuff. Yeah, that was a really sad game. I, like, always, like seeing the overdogs win, like I'm hoping for, you know, France, Argentina, Overdox. Yeah. I like a good overdog story. So. Okay, so am I. Is anyone else like this. Sorry to go on this tangent. Is anyone else like this where they really enjoy a blowout? I think it maybe depends on the context. I think blowout games are some of the most interesting games to watch where it's like, I disagree. One team just, like, pummeling another team and you could just like, see the other team be like. Like, we're done. Like, we're done. But then it just keeps, you know? No, keeps coming. Feel that way at all. I like to see a good competition between two. No, no. Like the domination. The domination. Like, oh, my gosh, just destroy. Like. Like make them give up all hope. Anyone else like that? Just. Just me. This says something about you. Be a great Cleveland Browns fan. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah. So we had some comments here. Belza says, unfortunately, I think this is a callback to Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire remakes. Rayquaza was featured in the Delta episode. Riley, do you have any idea what this person is talking about? I mean they basically just. Well, what's the Delta episode? What's the Delta episode? Nobody knows what that means. It GG Harsha Rayquaza is part of the Delta episode. Delta episode. It was a Mega Ruby Alpha Sapphire and he had the Delta episode. Okay. Like it was just the. The post game was called the Delta episode. I don't know why they titled it but. But they did. We should never even. We should never even dip our toes into like Pokemon lore ever again. Because I got like, I got a Jesse Parker text like as soon as the episode went live. He's like, you're a moron. Rayquaza is the Delta Pokemon of the sky, you freaking idiot. Like, I cannot believe you guys waffled about that for so freaking long. Yeah, I mean it wasn't that long. It was only like 15 to 20 minutes. It does have like a Delta sort of motif in its design. I mean you got the, the triangle with its jaw thing going on. It's kind of got like a very angular. I just want to dream about Delta Species Pokemon. Okay. Pokemon should never, out of respect, they should never name a set Delta anything ever again. Out of respect. Right? Okay. Yeah, yeah. If they, if they didn't want to get my hopes up, they shouldn't have named it Delta Rain. Okay. Out of respect. Out of respect, they should not have done that. Exactly. They showed no respect. Exactly. We talked about the world's invite last year. Gilderon Blood Tide. Insane name for sure. If we are looking to make worlds more exclusive, Pokemon would have to go and do what magic the Gathering did back in the early tens for the pro tour and make it about 16 to 24 players. Maybe ours would be a bit bigger. But if you don't like that Bubblers got into worlds, we need to make a system that is. That is the auto invites only are the invites to worlds. What do you guys think of something like that where it was a very limited world championships as like, you know the one invite only tournament where it was, you know. Yeah, maybe the top four of the ICs and all regional winners. At Olli. We've got wellness down to a science from PMS to pregnancy to menopause. Our women's wellness line offers science backed support for every stage. No judgment, no shame, none of the stigma. Just supplements designed to meet you wherever you're at Ollie. Choose science over shame. Find support at a retailer near you or on ollie.com that's o l l y.com this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability various 18/. I think be cool. I, I guess I feel like I almost don't care. Like the, I feel like the, the process of qualifying for Worlds is over romanticized. Like just the act of qualifying is like this worthy thing and of itself and it's cool and it's an achievement and you should be proud of it if you, if you did it. But like if Worlds is more or less difficult to qualify for, it doesn't like increase or decrease your value as a player. Like however that shakes out for your, your world's invite, you know. So in that way I think like it'd be kind of cool to have like this is literally the best of the best. Like the people who put up this season and won their dang tournaments. I just don't think that's what Pokemon's even going for. Like, I think they're just looking for a more rate, controlled event that has high caliber players in it, which is fine. And I think generally that's what the audience wants right now. So I don't see them pivoting either. Like the main reason for the shift, as far as I care, is logistics more than anything. I don't think there's much else to it. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, Rally. I think that, I think that Pokemon's goal is to create spectacle out of the World Championships. And I think that if you were to ask, well, what's the ideal number of players to create the ideal spectacle for a weekend long event and I would say probably about 100 to 200. Like, you know, somewhere in there you want to have like a beefy enough tournament to be able to like create the spectacle. I don't think like 30 players is doing it. So. Yeah, that, that's my take anyway. Yeah, I mean I think if you're going for like or this, the spectacle angle, I do agree with you, but I think it would just look different with fewer players. Right. Like there'd be a lot more Opportunity to do like very like much heavy handed storylines and highlighting players over the course of the event. If it was just a small handful, which would I think be interesting and be a cool viewer experience as well. But I think they like having like a big multi day event, you know, you know, with a day one and a day two and following that journey. Like I think that's ultimately what they want. So. Yeah, I mean because if you had like 30 players, I guess like say Worlds was 32 players like total, then you could do like everybody could get like an America's Got Talent, like you know, style. Yeah, exactly. Like preview video. Much more story where they like. Yeah. Have like the music and your parents there or whatever, you know. Yeah. Instead of just it being like towards highlight reel being showed like you know, a hundred times a stream, you know, you could show like everybody's. I feel like towards isn't even the one that they show the most. I'm trying to remember the one that was really. I mean, Liam, they definitely show towards the most. But I do agree. Yeah, it does feel like every time I tune in I'm getting a Tord. It's the Tord show, dude. It's the Tord. It's the Tord show. The Tord episode. Yeah, yeah, we're getting the TORD highlight reel every hour on the. On the hour. That's funny. Well if, yeah, if we didn't want the Tord episode every, every hour, we should, you know, be better, I guess. You should get, you should get better at the game, Andrew. And then, and then we could all be, you know, the Andrew Mahone episode. I actually had one filmed of me back in the day, one of those things last year. I want to say 2022, 2023. 2022. They just never produced it. We're not putting this one on the air. They literally, they literally filmed it. Yep. They have all the footage. Yes. Just. Yeah, yeah. Release the files. Release the files. Indeed. We got some results out of the Indonesia Master Ball League. This is the first tournament in the world's format with Pitch Black. The winner, you may be surprised, was Festival Lead. We got good old Festival Lead winning the event. I always knew it. I always knew. Festival Lead. How would it take. Yep, exactly. And then we got whatever this card is. Boost your. The Gladian Supporter. The new Gladian supporter. Plus 80 if it's the last card in your hand. If you're attacking with a non rule box Pokemon. So you could potentially, if you're attacking with a, you know, a Diplin buff by 160. And allegedly the winning player beat three dragapults. And cut. So the question is now, I suppose. Holy cow. Is dragapult on fraud watch. Are we just in. In the Festival League era? Do we need an emergency ban before Worlds? Because festival lead beats the crap out of the deck that I'm thinking about playing. Maybe. Maybe Rest top eight. We had a dragapult blaziken. Another festival lead. Festival lead is actually pretty common among the top finishers. I think there were four in the top 16. Joey Amelio here or Dragapult Dusknoir, roughly. Rico Dragapult blaziken. So still sizable amount of blazike in here. Marty's Grimmsnarl. We got Alakazam. And another dragapult to round out top eight. Are you surprised by the festival lead? Yes. Here it is at 16th. There's one at 10th. I mean, it's. There's one at 18. A lot of them. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's popular. I am surprised. I am surprised because I feel like Festival lead is just a deck where you can kind of just go bosses orders on a thwacky unfair stamp and then kind of like have your way with them. Right. Like, there's just. There's just. To me, it's like you just boss up a thwacky at any point and the deck just stops working, which is. Well, what is. What is bossing a thwacky mean? Like, you're just saying boss it up and knock it out. Because I. No, that. No, no. Just get as much time. Yeah, yeah. I start item locking or whatever. You just get as much time as you need to, like, you know, get back in the game. Assemble like a perfect board to handle what they're doing or whatever. I mean, I'm always talking about this from a dragapult perspective because to me, that's like kind of the linchpin matchup. Like if. If Festival lead beats dragapult, then it's an S tier play for the world Championships, right? Because you're gonna like, just wash all those, like, ex toolbox decks, like the kinds that James used to win the North American International Championships. You're just gonna beat those and then you'll also beat the dragapult decks, and then you're gonna just probably win the event. But if your dragapult matchup is unserious, then like, like I have experienced it to be in the past, then it's not a. It's not a serious play. So it really comes down to whether or not the Dragon Ball matchup is serious. And this is the same kind of thing that we had going on with like the honchkrow decks. Right. Like people would say like, oh, honchkrow can be dragapult. Like, I mean, but does it be dragapult like consistently? Like, does it really? Like, no. Right. Are we coping? So I, I am interested to test this. I'll have this deck built and we plan it on stream for sure. Because I'm. I'm curious to get to the bottom of this and figure it out for myself too. I mean the Gladian is a big change. You know, if we're going to go down the route of analyzing festival lead, 80 damage is pretty significant. Obviously being able to one shot dragapult without a tool and slash supporter. You need to have tool plus supporter before to one shot dragapult which is just so much to put together. And now you can just hit the supporter button and get that. Plus, if I'm reading the Gladion right, it also works against non rulebox. Non rule box. Yes, that's the big guy. So like in other like non rule boxy matchups, you know, oftentimes the Diplin would trade relatively evenly against them, you know, because they'd have like 130, 140 hit points. Now you can just blast right through two of them in one turn, which is just like how do you ever come back from that as a single prize deck in a, in a like single prize quote unquote mirror matchup? So that's pretty impressive to me. I didn't really just see the potential of that card, especially if you're like, you can even use it with the Sea King. Right. And, and just draw a bunch of cards back up, which is crazy as well. Yeah, yeah. It makes. It makes Sea King a much more viable attacker. Right. You have the you brave bangle it, get it to 90 damage into a and against the drag you can one shot a dragapult with bangle gladian Sea King. Right, Right. So you're doing 170 times two and drawing back up in that process. So I don't know. It's pretty impressive actually when you actually think about it. Gladion is one of those cars. When I first read it, I'm like, that's a contender for sure for one of the worst ones I've ever seen. But in this context it makes a lot of sense. And you also have the boom boom groove of course to refill after you go down to low. It is kind of interesting. Of course, I Haven't pressure tested it. You got the Rapsca as a soft answer. I like the Forest of Vitality. If you're gonna bother playing the Ravska as an option as well, you can secret box and get that stuff into play quickly and then start festival grounds ing on future turns. So that's kind of cool, not leaving the Rellor in play to just get killed instantly. I don't know. I think there's some smart deck building and thoughtful deck building going on here that led to it being successful. Does that mean it's going to win the world Championship next? I don't know. Probably not. But I mean, what's the counter, right? Like if we're saying, okay, you now get a supporter that can help you in multiple ways, like one shot, a dragapult, which you otherwise had a fairly difficult time doing, you now are, you know, like we're saying, like, you know, trading much more favorably potentially into the single prize decks that have, you know, more than what, 120 hp, right. If you're, if you're kind of going one to one diplin to a single prizer, that's, that's not so great. But if you can knock out multiple single prizers, it's probably pretty good. The counter is still Dragon Ball, bro. The counter is still Dragapult, bro. I'm not convinced. I'm not, I feel like Dragapult Dustnar in particular is probably, yes, like one of the worst, especially Dragon Dust nor. Yes, there's no duck in this list. Yes. Yeah, but what if they put. Yeah, it's not like you're, you're muddying the deck up with even more. There's a shame. You just say, just take the shaman out, put the duck in boom, perfect deck. I, I, I don't believe in it. I think that the deck is in an inconsistent pile. Personally, I don't think the Gladian really solves it because you have to like be at the point with the deck where you're cooking already. Then Gladion puts you over the edge, right? But you still have to get to that point where you're like where you are, you know, full throttle against dragapults and then Gladion will carry you through the mid game, you know. But I, I still think that like getting your thwackies bossed and getting unfair stamped and all that stuff just really hurts. Early item lock, if you just like don't open a buddy buddy Poffin and you get item lock, it's just, oh, you just lost. You just freaking lost. Like that's just what it is. Right. And that's like every deck that plays well. Yeah. But Dragapult has the high end of being Dragapult at the end of the day, so, like. Sure. I don't know. It's like I. I feel like Riley and I are a little bit more high on this possibility. Right. Of the Ascension of Festival. That's okay. And then. And then Andrew's just like, unserious deck. Unserious tournament. Yes. I didn't say on serious tournament. I said unserious deck though, for sure. Yeah. I don't know, it seems to me like I could see this being like the premier single prize option now. The single prize decks, of course, have historically struggled against Dragon Pole even when they have maybe panned themselves as having a favorable matchup. Like, even all these psychic single prize decks are putting up like 50 50s at best, you know, So I think that's going to be the hardest matchup. But if you can bring that up to like relatively. Even if Gladion gets you there like, that at least puts you in contention. Right. You know, if you're flipping coins against your dragonfold opponents and steamrolling everything else, it's not the worst setup for a tournament. That's probably a good place to be overall. And then you have such hard counters. Right. You get the Raps cup at the right time. I would agree. You know, you're probably looking at pretty abysmal matchup into dusknoir variants, but I don't even. I feel like Dustin or variants, obviously that's like the third hotter now. They're hotter now. I was gonna say they're probably the third most played Dragon Ball variant. I felt like coming off Naic, like people gotta be eyeing it up a little more. Seriously, I feel like Dustin was written off a little bit in the early stage. Admittedly, I was Dustin our writer offer as well in the early stages of this format, but I think the power ceiling that it offers you is still quite impressive. Yeah, it helps out in a number of matchups for sure. So REST just lets you be tricky in a way that the straightforward builds don't. Yep, yep. Rest of the standings here. I mean, still. Tano Dragapult, Marnie's Grimstar. We don't have a list for that yet, but. Alakazam2 cannon. Yeah, I was gonna get there, man. Yeah, that. That's interesting. Here, let's take a look. Dude, Miss me? With Marty's grim snarl. I do not care. No, Marty Scrimsnarl is probably good because you got the Gwyn supporter. You can get rid of stuff. You don't need to draw a bunch of cards. I think it's probably definitely not good. I think it's probably incredible. No, incredible. It's definitely terrible. What are you talking about? Imagine you could get a dragapult up, but it's like a little bit worse. But you don't have the crispr. It's a little bit worse. And also you don't have a draw engine. Yeah. And it has. Right, it doesn't have a draw. You don't have like the best part of the deck and do significantly less damage. No, it's not significant. It's like 20 less damage to the active and then 30 less damage on the bench. And it has to be targeted damage that gets blocked By Shaman. By Shaman. But it's like basically the same. Okay. And you also have a weakness and it's to grass and. Yeah. And grass is not a great typing. That weakness too. But you know, whatever. Just don't hit high grapple. Nobody's playing high travel anymore. That deck sucks. Anyway. Toucanon. Oh yeah. A canon. What do we want to look at about this deck? The fact that there's a bird in there. Sure. Anyways, I just want to gaze upon it. I don't think it's. Well, I mean it's more than just the bird. Right. It's an attacker for Alakazam. So this is like a. Like a mid game. You know, they stamp you and knock out your Alakazam. You're like, okay, well I can still put on significant pressure. If not a one shot, I can at least get a, you know, a two hit KO off on an Ex or Omega. I think that's, you know, underrated. Right. If you're just looking at it off rip. Being able to hit for meaningful damage after a stamp or a cirrhosic like you make the deck a bit more hand disruption proof. I think that's a big deal. Yeah. I mean arguably just having more drawn horses on your bench would make you even more hand disruption proof. But yes, I feel like it does make your cards more live throughout the game, you know, and then those lates being able to like stack up the dawns even further and get the two canon line in addition to Alakazam is pretty nice. Yeah. I mean you could probably one shot a fez in a lot of games with it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I don't think it's like fundamentally changes much about Alakazam. It seems basically it's just doing Alakazam things still. Yep. But it's too canon. Yeah. Important to note though, just because it is a, a top eight. Another top eight finish for Alakazam. That's true. Some people maybe you got to keep track of those. I, I prefer really to just talk about football. This, this episode. We did have a Ghost Veil in the top 32. I think that's the, that's one of the, you know, the new archetypes from Pitch Black. We'll also look at the mega Excadrill deck here. Ghost Veil. You know, I, I, I don't really get it like this. I'm looking at this list and you know, congrats on the finish. But yeah, just like, I can't really take it that seriously with the Blender. I do like the lucky helmets. I think that's kind of cute. But this just like cannot be the right way to do it in my. You always know that someone's like Heavy Prism Tower. You always know a deck is unoptimized when the brilliant blender is still in the list. Dang. Remember Guardi, you know, post rotation Guardi, when everyone was trying I. From day one of rotation, I was team Secret Box. You could find. I think I even said it the, the full grip tournament like commentary that I thought it could had potential. Yeah. Yeah. This is just a tough sell. I don't think Brilliant Blender is on anyone's radar for this deck. Probably should just be Secret Box. And like the thing is, you're playing so many other ways to discard, right? Like you got the Ultra Balls, you got the Prism Towers. There's not even like you got the Gwen, it's petrol. You got the Gwen, right? Yeah. You just gotta, you gotta draw this thing. That's like the worst. Like it's, it just becomes less and less useful the later on in the game that it goes versus a card like Reset Stamp or a card like Secret Box, which are like generally just good cards at any point in the game. This is a hard thing with the Ghost failures too. And then it's not like you get an award or something for discarding more of them. Right. It's not nightmarked, man. Yep. You know, I mean, you got the spirit team, I guess, but like, are you really doing the spirit team? Come on. They are. They're playing. Or for Polcha got a guys line. So yes, they, they are intent on hitting this. Hitting the Tomb for game. That's not happening. That's not happening. Maybe it is happening. Maybe, maybe. I don't understand Not. Not in serious land. It's not. Yeah, no, I'm not a. I'm not a big believer in this. I don't think I'm a big believer in the archetype as a whole. Really. Because proved it fraudulent. I just haven't been impressed every time I've seen it played it did pretty decent in Japan. Did that. Did it not got second place. Yeah. But we've been grinding that list and I wasn't happy with that. Maybe you should try this list. Yeah, maybe the blender just takes over the edge turned on by this list either. I mean, I do like the lucky helmets. I do think that's cute. I think that's a good card right now, especially for a single prize deck. But yeah, I don't know this. Yeah, I tend to agree. This is not the kind of deck I'd gravitate toward now. Speaking of decks, I'd gravitate toward the freaking Excadrill dude. Mega Excadrill putting up a result. Have you guys played this much? Andrew? I played it one best of three against Jesse and he played his freaking mega Venusaur mega, you know, Meganium deck against me and just walloped me with like one it one hit. Excuse me. My voice is like. I got allergies. I'm like losing my voice tonight. But yeah, the Mega Excadrill deck just got wallops by Mega Meganium. And that was tough because you're capped at 3:30 so you like can't one hit Ko the Meganium or the dinosaur. And he was just one hit Ko my dudes. Even with the grass resistance, it was really painful. Why did you play that matchup? Well, because I felt like that he wouldn't stunt on me like that and that maybe my grass resistance would do something. And the answer was it absolutely did not. No. Dang. But like the deck's set up. I mean I was punching with Mega excadrill, like turn two, doing 90, discarding two things and then like turn three, threatening 330. So like that, that reality exists, you know. The question is, is that reality? Is that like good enough? Right, right. Putting a, a three prize Pokemon active and like doing a mild, mildly disruptive first attack and like a very costly one hit KO attack. Is that like a tournament winner? I saw Josh Fring played this, this metal deck to Naic, right? And he played on stream. It was one of the featured rounds. There's not Mega Excadrill, but it was like the pre Mega X good drill variant where you've got like the. The heat trans and you've got the metagross in there and yada, yada. Right. The deck didn't set up consistently against. It just didn't set up consistently. Right. So my concern would be that the. The precious trolley for petrol kind of thing is just not very serious as far as like a deep tournament contender. Obviously Josh is like a very good player. Ended up dropping from Naic playing a deck that was kind of like this. And you know, I think if you go, you know, if you open the turn, one trolley every game, like, sure. But even like Goldengo decks eventually moved away from that, like, kind of trolley build because of how streaky it can be. So I. I think this kind of suffers from the same thing. Right. Like, if you get the early trolley. Cool. You get the genesect. The whole deck sets itself up, but you don't really have the draw power to turn through the deck. I mean, dude, this deck literally doesn't even play freaking lilies, man. Like, there's literally no lilies in this deck. Your best draw card is freaking judge, dude. And there's two of them. It's like that kind of deck you're just like not doing. God forbid you get a small hand, you're never drawing out of it. Yeah, there's not even a fez in here, bro. Like, you can't. You cannot get hand disrupted. You just gotta. Every top deck has got to be lit. I mean, you play off the board pretty well, right? Like, that's the counter argument. You get a genesect and you get a field full of one prizers and then you search. Yeah, but you still like, need to do stuff. What are you trying to do? Yeah, I'm trying to. Metal maker. Exactly. You're right, dude. You're right. I need to like, I'm trying to medal make her two to four times in a turn, boss. On the correct turn, I need to like, maybe play a red card here or there. Maybe need to hit my energy recycler on the key turn. The other cards are filler. The other cards are like, I didn't have anything else I could have played. I agree. Actually, you should get drunk. The red card needs to go. Arguably, the puffin probably needs to go. And there needs to be more poke gears so you can get the petrol and get that trolley up. Yes, yes. Four pokegear, all trolley, no breaks. Like, come on, you're. You're telling me that red cards for serious in this deck? Nah. Like, you, the trolley or the poke gear could be a boss out too if you think about it. So. Or a judge out, dare I say for draw. Okay, well maybe we can cut one boss and one judge and then go up to four poke gear. This deck wants a four boss, bro. Like, like all you want to see is boss and petrol. I don't know, we'll have to get our fact checkers on that. Yeah, I mean it's a pretty low tier deck in in Japan from a lot of the tier lists that I've seen. But it's on the tier list right. And that's the interesting thing is like it has a presence and there is always going to be this kind of lottery aspect to discarding two from your opponent's deck. Now is there enough to kind of back that up? Remains to be seen but this is, you know, and in a Dragon Ball meta, not much to say there but it, it is a a deck that is on the. If we're trying to discard too, maybe we should go back to to Old Faithful, the Hydragon Ex dude. Nah man. I mean listen, Dialga v Star. Now that was a card worth accelerating 5 energy to mega excadrill is not dang. Heard it here. Yep, heard it here first. All right, well I think that has just about covered it. We will have more analysis on next week's episode. If you want to get more plugged into Tag team and head on over to x.com@real John Walter for myself and at Smiles with Riles for Riley and if he even has it enabled at enjoyfriend for Andrew. Thank you all so much for listening and for your continued support and we'll catch you all next time. Uncovered windows can make your home feel up to 20 degrees hotter. 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