Episode 2-18: TORONTO RESULTS and PACE of PLAY THOUGHTS

week on the battle frontier stream judging pace of play and how those two topics interrelate blaine's quiz show covering the prediction results from toronto regionals the overall results from toronto regionals and how those results will impact upcoming tournaments this weekend but yeah like i was saying um i totally for whatever reason thought pop was going to rotate this upcoming rotation and we had somebody in the bag a little bit well yeah like we talked about pokey pad and then i also was on this totally separate train of thought somebody put out a tier list today or like a projected tier list for like post rotation decks just based off of because i guess the whole mega zygarde set has not been spoiled and japan when that releases like this week japan is already going to hit rotation which is ridiculous like they're going to have rotation before we even have ascended heroes cards but just i for whatever reason assumed poffins gone half of these decks that run you know duskull or you know just 70 hp basics in general take a huge hit and are significantly worse but i have to hold a big a pretty big l on that um we also have to hold the l on the pokey pad thing since there's a good chance that we're gonna get it because our whole argument that reg j marks meant that they're not in ascended heroes holds zero water when mega charizard y ex is already confirmed so that's fine we uh we might have got a little ahead of ourselves there but um you know that's kind of the frustration when we don't know exactly what is coming out in a set you know less than a month out from when it's released like two weeks right we get it in not this friday but next friday i think it starts i think so but that's the crazy thing is i'm still not sure if the set's going to be legal for euic like theoretically it is but you know we've had they had the whole mega evolution debacle earlier this year in europe where that sets legality got pushed back in europe specifically and the fact that because it's a special set they're releasing all the products in waves and whatnot so there's not even etbs or booster bundles when the set first drops so you just have to hope that whatever store you frequent got a huge allotment of blister packs that's not gonna happen yeah like the booster bundles is it is it what what is what i don't even know how the product schedule release schedule off the top of my head uh i don't either i just know that i know for a fact etbs are not out yet yeah regardless it'll make it more difficult to get the the cards you need to you know if pokey pad is in a set you need four of them and it might be a challenge to get all four of them in time for you i see um let's see but hopefully i'm looking at okay i'm looking at coasties collectibles.com and they're showing the full release schedule for ascended heroes they have wave one which releases on january 30th are the larry's yep larry's komala and erica's tangala collection or the ghastly and charmander tech sticker collections and i assume that each of those comes with like three booster packs maybe two or three booster packs something like that right and then almost a full month later february 20th is when etbs and mini tins finally get released and then we get old dude you get poster collections and a deluxe pin collection on march 20th and then finally april 24th booster bundles will hit shelves literally three months after the set has been released you can finally buy a booster bundle for this set and this is just on top of the fact that i mean maybe all the people have moved to one piece and you won't have to worry about it but just theoretically you still have people scalping product at the same time and for the most part like competitive players haven't really cared about that like your your singles for your bulk cards or your like non-full art pokemon are still available pretty widely on ebay tcg player and whatnot right side up was annoying to get at one point yes yes um but yeah most of the time thankfully like all the staples are like trainers there's no like ex pokemon that we've needed to get on release day but yeah it's just challenging right now if you're a competitive player and you're trying to get all the cards you need to go to euic like and you know like people will find a way to get them like if you like people will play all if a card is good people will play it you know what i mean like it's not like that'll be a truly limiting factor but it'll just make it very annoying sure yeah well i mean you figure like this isn't anything new back when pokemon wasn't as like hugely printed in mass quantities granted we had a much smaller player base but you would go to the national championships at columbus ohio which only had 400 players total for the tournament but you were paying like 60 bucks for luxury level jl level x or like 40 to 60 dollars for yan mega prime the day before the tournament and there weren't tons of vendors available so it's just people like trying to find other people in the tournament hall and hoping that somebody has the card for them and like i know there was somebody i think it was the morning of the tournament somebody paid like 200 each for yan mega primes for their deck holy cow and and i mean the card was good and i did and did end up winning that tournament but you know that's the like whole supply and demand i don't know man yeah i went through that with some other stuff back i mean we're gonna just go old man mode and just talk about i remember when mu2 came out mu2 ex the next destiny's one yeah yeah that card caused like that kind of same response where people were like oh for sure this card and then we had the same thing with um i remember there was a time before we got i think it was dragons exalted we got dragon vault and there was a rayquaza that was a secret rare that was in dragon oh yeah yeah you had to like pull it as a seat because it was a playable card so you had to like pull it as a secret rare and this was back in the era where you know nowadays it's probably the same as like the gold rarity in the the newest mega sets um like that's how often you hit it it's like a a case hit or whatever you want to call it like one in every 200 packs or something or not 200 packs 200 how many how often is the gold one i forget i don't know man but it's pretty rare it's like it's pretty rare yeah yeah and it was so it was like a it was like a 180 dollar card or something like that and it was like the optimal thing to play in mega raids so you could donk your opponent's tinamos and for one energy like i think it did 40 damage or something but that's exactly what it was for and i'll like be the first to say it wasn't that good no it didn't it didn't make mega ray or it didn't make like the it didn't make the deck all that much better to be honest it was just uh oh okay i guess it goes from being like a b tier to a b plus like it definitely didn't make it a competitive deck like dark cry was still the best deck right that was the dumb thing was like it was just electric players trying to optimize to beat other electric players more so than combating anything else and it like yeah it wasn't it even then the circumstances where it was good were much rarer than you would like to admit right you know and and thankfully like we're not quite in that situation where it's not an ex pokemon it's a pal pad like right about pokey pad so it should be just an uncommon card um so it shouldn't be too hard to get a hold of that stuff but you know fingers crossed hopefully you guys can get your hands on some product next week when it comes out um we'll probably do a full set review next week or in the week after um when we have a whole idea of what we are getting we can talk about the impact it'll make on the metagame for uic for all that kind of stuff i'm looking forward to some new uh new metagame shifts a little bit i mean they're gonna be bigger than i initially they're gonna be bigger than i initially thought they were yeah admittedly i had um my friend hunter messaged me back when i said this new set doesn't change anything like we get pokey pad and that makes like frost last monkey dory better but what else and then he's lists off like five cards i'm like okay okay you're right yeah but it's not they're not new archetypes and i think that's the thing that makes it sure feel boring is it's just not getting any day right you're bolstering existing decks which i guess is fine as long as it slightly shifts the balance and shakes things up a little bit and that's important and i hope that that actually accomplishes what it's intending to do it's going to be difficult to see i don't think japan's really had a ton of tournaments they've had some city leagues here and there but i don't even think they had a champions league in this format or maybe they did but if they did it was like within the first week of release so nobody had really gotten into anything as far as figuring out what was and wasn't good but yeah so we tried out something a little bit different at the beginning of this episode um you'll have heard instead of me rambling live on the show we'll have a little pre-recorded thing about the topics we plan to discuss and then just john and i bantering at the beginning of the episode and let us know what you think about it in the comments if it's something you're interested in hopefully it makes it a little bit less rigid or less formulaic and just more fun at the beginning of the show and something that other people can engage with or give input on but that being said with that list of topics that we had laid out to beginning john's going to give us kind of his perspective in judging um which he obviously was doing there in toronto if you tuned into the stream you would have seen him at the table multiple times over the weekend and how he feels you know one of the big topics of discussion was pace of play and how it is or isn't being enforced and the consistency or lack of consistency and how it varies between the stream table and the floor tables and i did see some discussion online where some people felt like pace of play was being monitored more closely kind of overall throughout the event and then obviously there was a pretty impactful pace of play result in a stream game but john as somebody who's been a stream judge i think that you have the unique perspective and the unique ability to shed some light on what you guys are looking for when you're at that table versus and how that may or may not be different versus when you're kind of roaming the floor and looking at a wide swath of tables instead right yeah first off before we really dive in um i just want to state the fact that i'm not commenting on a specific match i'm more going to talk about kind of the philosophy and the procedures i go through as i stream judge and what i'm looking for and that kind of stuff i'm not going to you know speak to a certain match that i have or haven't judged it's it's not it doesn't pay dividends to name names or like because all those situations are are specific like i won't ever judge another match uniquely like the one i judged on stream that day you know that'll just be kind of a time capsule within itself and the rulings or whatever that comes out of the match are part of that like you have everything in context like when you're a judge um nothing that there are some cut and dry penalties but slow play is by far the most nuanced and difficult to navigate as a judge because it's not like i mean all right let me just start from the top i guess sure yeah um so when i'm watching a match on stream or when i'm on the floor even um i'm looking at how much each player is getting to play the game um the whole philosophy behind pace of play is i'm gonna read just from the rule book just so we have a starting point from which to work from um this is from the pokemon penalty guidelines um 5.7 section 5.7 pace of play the header the opening paragraph is competitors should take care to play in a manner that keeps the game pace lively regardless of the complexity of the situation pace of play infractions occur when a competitor's actions or lack thereof affect the game pace to an extent that puts their opponent at a disadvantage in addition to the recommended penalty a judge may issue a time extension to offset this disadvantage and then pokemon has set forth below the below guidelines by which to assess whether a game action is completed in a reasonable time and this just lists different things like shuffle and setup takes two minutes mid game shuffling and deck searching should take 15 seconds performing the actions of a card or attack should take 15 seconds considering the game position before playing a card should take no more than 10 seconds and then starting the turn after opponent's end of turn announcement should take five seconds so and it also says these are guidelines only and should be considered within the context of normal gameplay so to unpack all that um the philosophy behind pokemon's rules is as a judge you're trying to make sure that both players have every have the same ability to play the game you don't want one player to you know like in football if you want to look at it like an analogy um one thing one thing football teams will do is try to have control of the ball for a longer period of time that allows them to control the game um and if one one team has the ball for 60 or 70 of the snaps or the time that's allowed in the game you know they're usually able to dictate what's going on in the football game same thing similar in pokemon where if one player is able to slow the game down and control like if you know most of the time it's slow play is interesting because it's not always beneficial for the person that is slow playing but sometimes most of the time if you're able to control the game you're you're having more say and how the game's going to go right um so that's that's what i'm looking at is when i'm when i'm table judging and when i'm on the floor i'm looking to see is one player taking up more time than the other or inversely is one player rushing and you know making a lot of game actions that is pressuring their opponent into brushing and messing up on their own. You know, like, what does that look like? So it can work both ways, I guess. And when I'm stream judging, you know, often we have a timer right there on our little tablet and we look at that and I can kind of monitor, you know, how long each game action takes. And there was some, I think, discussion as to Pokemon players are allowed two minutes for an initial deck search. That's not codified anywhere. Like that's, it's tough because that's how we, I mean, as a player, I get it. Like you want, you're in theory, like it's more like a, how do I say this? It's not put in writing anywhere, but it is like kind of an understanding between judges and players is that, or players and other players is that, hey, you know, I'm gonna do a little bit longer on this action to kind of get a feel for what cards are not in my deck, but they're in my prizes. That way in the subsequent turns, I can focus on just playing the game faster. And I think that's kind of the trade-off, the whole, we allow it because in theory it allows for, you know, faster play down the road. So, and that kind of goes back to the ending statement after reading all the pace of play guidelines. These are guidelines only and should be considered within the context of normal gameplay. So that sentence does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to slow play. You know, it's often explained to judges, like if a player takes 25 seconds to do a game action and then does three game actions within five seconds, like that's a balance. Like the cumulative total is less than 15 seconds per game action or less than 10 seconds per game action. So you're not just looking at like one thing, you're looking at the pattern of behavior is a way to say it. And so when you're stream judging, like that's where you start, you're monitoring the situation. And if you feel like one player is getting an advantage over the other, then that's where you're kind of stepping in. One thing I noticed in the discussion around pace of play is intent. Pace of play is different than stalling, is different than intentionally doing this. What I'm monitoring is not whether the player is doing this on purpose, right? I'm looking at whether the player is, whether this is happening or not. Like even if the player didn't mean to take more time or is not doing it on purpose, is just a slower player than their opponent. I mean, the thing is it's still creating an advantageous situation for them. It's still allowing them to have more control over the game and take up more of the clock. And that has to be offset. Like that's why we have penalties and rules and stuff. A penalty is assessed because we want to offset advantage. That's kind of the philosophy behind all that. So whenever we say, okay, one player is getting more time than the other, we have to offset that. We'll give a warning to start, and then it goes from there. And really the chain of escalation is you get one warning and you get one, and then it goes straight into double price card penalties. And that is, that's outlined. Like if you look at, again, in the rule guidelines, sorry if I'm just reading from a rules book for this, but I feel like it's important because that's where my head's at when I'm doing this stuff. It's, so you get the one for a minor, it's a warning. You get, you know, the one warning and you get it written down and edited into the Arcanine system. And then a severe pace of play error is a double price card penalty. May be assessed when there is sustained or repeated ill effect on pace of one or more subsequent games. So it can include the following, competitor displays a habitual slowness in choosing targets for receiving or resolving effects or damage. Or the other example is a competitor exhibits poor pace of play that does not improve following a prior penalty. So I think both of those are important to factor into the decisions that are being made as a judge is you're not just looking at, like I'm looking at, does it improve if I give a warning, right? Like that's one factor. Is the pace of play now livening up? Like does the player respond to the penalty given? And that's a factor whenever you're making like the assessment of whether this is gonna warrant another penalty or not. So there's just a lot of thoughts that go into it. I always hate giving penalties as a player because I'm aware of the impact that they have on the game, right? None of these penalties give me joy as a player, but I am self-aware that my role as a judge is to ensure that both players have the ability to play the game fairly and have that the tools I have to do that are penalties. So that's the way I look at it as a judge. But yeah, I don't want games to come down to stuff like double price card penalties for slow play. But if a player is, basically repeating a infraction or not infraction, but if a slow play is currying, if one player is taking up significantly more time than another player over the course of a match, we have to do something about it. We have to offset that advantage being gained and that's done through penalties. I guess that's where I'm coming. That's the conclusion I'm coming to. Sure. So I've got two questions then. Sure. So the first one, you mentioned a time split and just for the sake of example here, you mentioned specifically 60-40. Obviously it can vary in range. It could be larger, it could be shorter. Sure. So then if you have decks, two decks, as an example, one player is playing Dragapult and one player is playing Cerulege. Cerulege is a deck which has significantly fewer game actions over the course of its turn over the course of the game for the most part. Whereas Dragapult has something where if you have up to three or four Dracloaks out, you're using a recon directive three or four times. That is a decision where every single time you are allotted roughly 10 to 15 seconds to choose the target of your recon directive, which card you want to keep, which card you want to put on the bottom of your deck. That means over the course of the game, naturally the Dragapult player in theory would utilize more of the clock. Is that... So I guess it doesn't really say in the pace of play guidelines that we should focus on both players having an equal amount of time. So I think realistically the focus is on keeping the game pace lively regardless of complexity of the situation. And then you don't want to have one player put their opponent in a disadvantageous game state because of how much time they're taking. Sure. So I think that's... A lot of times I feel like that when people are doing it intentionally, it's very noticeable. And I think that a lot of it has become... People have gotten comfortable, I would say, in playing more methodically, particularly on stream. And granted, there are a lot of factors that go into those stream games. You have the white noise, the extra pressure of being recorded, and whether you're... Where you're put on display at an event, you're put on display on the internet, you like have the... Even if you're not actively thinking about it in the back of your head, you want to keep the micro awareness that other people are monitoring what you're doing. So you want to try to play to your best ability to make sure that people don't think you're a bad player or that you aren't making mistakes or you don't do something that makes somebody think you're cheating. And that can lead to somebody being more careful, which potentially makes them take longer to complete a game action than they would if they were at a normal table. Do you feel like you, as a stream judge, just as... Not harsh, but are you watching them with the same rigor at a stream table that you would at a regular table? Or is it more severe in one of those scenarios? I mean, yeah. So all those things you bring up are really valid points. And it is a high... It's a pressure cooker situation. It does take... You know, when you're on stream and you have all those variables flying at you, there's a lot more going on. Sure. Unfortunately, there's some talk about the stream etiquette and the guidelines. There's a talk of how you present yourself and all that kind of stuff. We have a conversation with the players before we start outlining what's expected of them. And part of that conversation, we talk about how they present themselves, how their board state looks, using ability markers, being clear on what they're saying, and all that kind of stuff. And then part of that conversation is just pace of play, like talking about that. I think I'm a little more lenient when I'm on stream, which maybe doesn't always look the case, but it still is a factor. You're also establishing precedent in some ways. And I am very... When people are like, well, I like that. Maybe I don't like that, but I can understand why a judge feels the need to enforce pace of play on stream. I just wish it was more consistent across the board. Well, I hear that, and I am hopeful that we, as a judge community, can do a better job of kind of outlaying what our expectations are. That's kind of why I'm having this conversation with you, Aaron, is to go through my thought process and what I'm looking at, and the guidelines, specifically those seconds and stuff like that, looking at what does the rule book say? That's the stuff I'm focused on when I'm looking at all that stuff. And I would say, yeah, you're under more scrutiny when you're on stream. I don't know. I think if you're on the floor playing, it's very hard to enforce pace of play. If you're on the floor, if there's like 2,000 players- Yeah, there's not enough judges. No, there's no way. The only way that you would be able to notice it is you are walking up and down, somebody calls you over and asks, hey, can you watch my match? Or you, as a judge, see something truly egregious, or you kind of look for body language when you're on the floor. If one player is just looking exasperated or has their head in their hands or something like that, I mean, that's a little comical because I don't feel like a lot of players do that, but I mean, yeah, it's something we're aware of, but it's a lot harder to enforce on the floor. And yeah, you're just under more scrutiny on stream. It's tough, man. Well, that doesn't just go for players, though. I feel like that goes for you guys at the table as well because you'll get comments like, well, I can't believe the judges missed this, or, well, why are they applying, like you mentioned, why are they applying this penalty here, but I don't get it at my game out at table 367, or whatever the case is. I don't have all the answers. Sure. I'm only one judge. Right. And I'm trying to just be the best judge I can be in that regard. I care about a lot of the stuff I've talked about with fairness of making sure players feel like they're able to play the game, and that factor and then tournament integrity are the two things that motivate me when I'm a judge. And I mean, my job is complete most of the time on stream is if nobody notices me. Like that's when I feel like I've, when nobody notices me and when nothing has happened that isn't the two players playing a game of Pokemon, and allowing that to be what defines the outcome of the match. Like that's a job well done. But sometimes we have to interact with what's going on in front of us. And we have to speak up and say, hey, this is not going the way it should be going. We need to correct, kind of steer the course back towards both players being able to allow that skill expression to come forth. Right. So that's where it's at. And yeah, it's tough when it's such a visible arena and people are gonna like dissect and look at stuff. And I do it too. Like whenever I play on stream as a player in the past, or if like I'm just playing individually, I think about through my past actions and notice misplays. And I think judges see the same stuff whenever they stream judge too. Like we'll miss stuff from time to time. We'll miss a shuffle that didn't occur after an ultra ball, or like, I think there's been times where I've missed like an extra card being drawn after like at the end of a game when a player is playing really fast and you have a hard time counting across the table from you. And when there's just throwing cards back into their hand, like stuff happens and judges aren't perfect. You don't wanna yell at them to stop and be like, hey, hold on, let me count the cards you have. Especially at the end phase of it. Like you're conscious of that, that you don't wanna stop the clock and just how many cards, like you can do that, but it's almost like a, you have to weigh the pros and cons of that. Cause now you're stopping their train of thought and then it can be really hard for them to start back up. And yeah, you don't wanna have a huge impact on the game, but like you wanna make sure the game is fair. And so this is a challenging thing, man. And I'm not saying this is like a boo-hoo, stream judging is hard. I sign up for it, man. I get it. You know, I wear the judge shirt and I wear it proudly and it's not because like I want clout or something like that. It's because I care about like the tournament stuff. Like I care about, tournament integrity, like in my applications to judge stuff, it's always just like the reason I judge is to ensure that players have the ability to showcase their talent and to let that be the guiding kind of the thing that shows forth when we have these Pokemon tournaments, first and foremost. So I hope that's what people see out of my judging abilities. And if not, I'm open to having a conversation. If you guys ever want to talk to me about judging, I'm down to talk. I love talking about it. I can't talk about specific games or anything like that. But if you have hypotheticals or, I mean, as long as it's not a directed, pointed hypothetical that is thinly veiled, I'll probably answer it. But I love talking philosophy. And I'm getting to do that later this month at the Sycamore Symposium. I'm looking forward to that. So I'll be talking more. And it's a good kind of crossover. I'm talking about judging with a player's perspective, which I think is huge on stream judging, but also when you're on a floor judge or even just as an organizer, you're looking at what your players need from you. And you're assessing that. And you're working as a judge towards that goal. So yeah. Before we get off this topic, I've got two more questions for you. And one of them you may or may not be able to answer. And the other one's an opinion thing you may or may not have an opinion on. But first one, I assume you guys kind of have a judge's powwow or a judge's meeting before every event, right? Did you guys talk pointedly about pace of play in a manner differently than what you've heard previously? Was there an added kind of not pressure, but emphasis on pace of play at this tournament in particular? I don't think that there was a lot more discussion. It seems that it comes up pretty much every regionals before we start the regionals. We do talk about that being a factor. I wouldn't say it was significantly more than others in the past. I think it's probably about the normal. I think there was discussion. Us judges were just as curious as all the players about the guidelines being updated with the initial deck search or first turn search guideline being added. And we were hopeful that it would get added before Toronto. And so that was frustrating to me. Not frustrating is probably the wrong word, but it was like, OK, well, now we have less tools in our bag to allow us to have an idea of what's the proper pace of play. Because first, I mean, judges I think would say, we'll say first turn deck searches are kind of getting out of hand. I don't think anybody's going to bat an eye at that statement. It's a fact. So yeah, we were hopeful that we would have more tools to help correct that. Lacking that, we only have our guiding. We do talk about what does that look like, what will pace of play look like, and stuff like that. I'll have newer judges ask me, how are we enforcing pace of play? When I'm an AHJ, I definitely get that question a lot of, what is enforcing pace of play? And it's tough on the floor. It's a very different answer than on the stream. But yeah, we do talk about stuff constantly. And it's not just pace of play. It's all the other factors of it. But yeah, that definitely is something we talk about, for sure. OK. And the second one, I know this has been a thing in the past. And I can't remember exactly when they went away. But do you think there's ever a world where single prize penalties come back? And do you think they would be a potential effective solution to kind of the pain point where sometimes you get a penalty, and it doesn't really feel like it merits two prize cards worth of loss. But there's also a point where there are several game scenarios where a single prize card literally doesn't matter. So it would effectively just be giving them a second warning. But do you think that that's something that could potentially make its way back into the game? And if so, do you think it would actually have any effect, either positive or negative? You know, I hear that. And it is a thought. It's not one I've really thought through significantly. Sure. When I started playing, that was a thing. But you also drew the card. So it created a whole different scenario. Right. Because now you can play an N or something like that, or play a twins, or play a card that allowed you to have that comeback mechanic because of that penalty. And that was its own thing, where you had players angling for that. And sure, like that, thankfully, we don't have that issue. I don't know. I think it's a good question. Like, maybe we do revisit the chain of escalation for some of these things. Like, maybe a player is given two warnings for slow play. But like, it's tough. Like, I think that might be a thought. Like, I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it. And I guess I'm not ready to come down one side or the other. That's totally fine. Totally fine. But yeah, it's definitely something we could think about as judges and as players and have that kind of conversation as to, would that, like, it'd be fun to do a tournament where we trial run that or something like that. Maybe not something like a CP event, but like an informal event, like a Professor Cup, or for the players, like a pre-release format or something like that, where there's not anything seriously serious on the line, but we're trying stuff out. And that's kind of one thing, I guess, I like about Pokemon is the rules do change. And we don't always get what we want, but we kind of get closer to it over time. Like, I've seen, like, we've moved away from single game Swiss to best two out of three at regionals. We moved from, you know, we just talked about the, you draw your prize card as a penalty, as opposed to now you have a marker placed saying you need to take two less prize cards. I think that's an improvement. Like we've seen incremental improvement over time. And yeah, I'm hopeful that we'll get to a point where we are able to take all things into consideration and make the game more fun and make it more like fair and a reflection of what players are capable of. Like, that's always the end game, right? So that's my hope. I really thought you were going to tell me a minute ago that we don't get what we want, but we get what we need. Yeah, I was getting that. And I'm like, well, that sounds kind of authoritarian. And I don't think that's quite. I just thought you were quoting song lyrics, man. Yeah, maybe. But the speaking of trying new, speaking of trying new things before I was about to segue into Blaine's quick show, but I totally forgot. Now, I did also read that this may have actually happened previously this season. But to the best of my knowledge, that's not true. Where players starting an asymmetrical cut at this event were given access to their opponent's deck list. Yeah, I got to do the first one on stream. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was a top top cut. So correct me if I'm wrong. Players were given a two minute period where they were able to view their opponent's deck list, but were unable to write anything down prior to playing the match. And we definitely saw that have an impact, a noticeable impact, including multiple social media posts from Pokemon regarding a series of plays that happened in that first stream match between Karis Jones and Justin Templer. That was actually the second. Oh, was it the second one? Yeah. OK. But that one was definitely an open deck list factor for sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, Karis, just knowing what his deck list was like, was able to just commit to a buddy player that was highly risky if you didn't know the contents. So, yeah, it was a it was I liked it. It was like a little weird, to be honest. You know, the rule is so just to kind of update people. It was read to me really quickly and explained to me at the event because it was all everybody was doing it for the first time. So we kind of just had to go over it as a judge team before we started on it. But players were given their opponent's deck list and their deck at the same time, and they were told to start shuffling. And then during while that during their shuffle, they were given two minutes to shuffle and they could look at their opponent's deck list. Can't take notes. And I'm sorry if I'm just repeating what you just said. But yeah, it was it was like we had it as a timer and then I counted down 90 seconds, 60 seconds, 30 seconds. And like, OK, players, that's that's the end of that. I need your opponent's deck list back. And then they were allowed to they flip before they did any of that. So they knew whether they're going first or second. OK, before they decided or before we gave them the decks and deck lists and then they were allowed to set up and then everything else was kind of normal from there. But yeah, it was I mean, I think it was fun. Like two minutes seems like a good amount of time because there is definitely like most players are like, OK, I've seen enough. Like I know I know what I need to know, like by a minute 30. And they're like, yeah, I'm good. But two minutes is good. I think it's a good amount. So like if English is in your first language, it was cool. They had the way they had it. They had their like the whole. I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying this, but yeah, it's fine. I think it's it's it's on the stream. You can look at it. They had like the rule listed in English and then they had a picture list like a picture of the deck list. And then the next page was the deck list in English. And then I think they did Spanish, Japanese and maybe one other language. But I just looked at the English list in the picture. I think I have to imagine for this event in Portuguese. But what I was thinking was that it was just every language that was relevant for the players in cut at this event. And I imagine it would be the case for every event moving forward where this is implemented. Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming that it continues to be implemented. Yeah, that's the nice thing about having deck lists on Arcanine. You can easily translate stuff. And that was good for me as a judge, too. Like there were some players from Europe that came over like Miroslav. I judged one of his matches as well. And his deck list had some cards in Polish, I think, or Czech Czech. Sorry, not Polish. And so I'm like, what the oh, it like lists it to the right of what it is. And some of the Canadian players had French cards in their lists. So that was good to have is like a reference to like, OK, just so I know what, you know, like when I'm looking at a deck list, you can pretty much. You know, a Dragon Ball list is a Dragon Ball list is a Dragon Ball list, right? Like Golden Go and Gardevoir. They're all pretty much the same. Gardevoir has some variations within those three. I think that's probably and like Golden Go has some variations. But at this point, it's like, yeah, not a whole lot. So you if you see one at a deck list, you've seen most of them. But but the trainer section would look weird when you're looking at it in a different language. Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, it was good to have like a Arkansas grade system, you know, props to all the people that work over there. They really have innovated a lot for our community. So that's been pretty cool. And yeah, this was this was a success. I think I don't know. I haven't really had a chance to look at the feedback. Have you seen a lot of people talking about it? Not really, but I like it's been brought up. I don't think that anybody I haven't seen anything negative. Right. But you also have to consider the fact that it only affected a very small, very, very small subset of players. I also know that juniors and seniors did not get their abundance deck list before. OK, top cut. So interesting. I think that was more to do with the fact that they weren't going to be on stream. And so there was no advantage to offset that kind of goes back to that thought. Sure. Like, you know, we're giving opponents deck lists before top cut matches to offset that advantage that somebody might be able to get by scouting a list out earlier in the stream. And then, you know, by finals, they have the list and their opponent might not. So with juniors and seniors, that just doesn't happen because we don't really stream their games that might change. You know, if we get a secondary feature table on stream or something like that, that's like juniors or seniors, they might start doing that. But for this tournament, they did not give juniors and seniors their opponents deck lists before top cut. OK, I mean, I would say from my perspective, I feel like it was overall successful and you showed that there can be some skillful play that is introduced by the introduction of this mechanic in the game. And it's something that players would just need to adapt to. The same thing as, you know, basically any other rules change that happens. So we'll have to see if they continue to do it moving forward. But it would be a little weird to me for it to be a one off thing, unless there was overwhelming negative feedback, which, like I said, to the best of my knowledge, I have not seen that. But I think that we've done enough of our kind of philosophical and systems discussion here. Let's before we get into the Toronto results, though, let's take a quick pit stop over in Blaine's quiz show. I know I think we had the point values wrong, or I went back and looked them up on a previous episode. And you were acting last week like I was like way ahead of you. But to the best of my knowledge, I'm only ahead of you by like two points right now. No way. I don't buy that. So I think you're like, I don't know. I may have to go re retabulate it. But if you look at last week, I'll take the two. And I give you where I like plot numbers above our heads. I think I was up by I might be up by four now. I think that's what it was. But anyway, that being said, this week is my turn to ask John questions. And for anyone who hasn't listened before how to play Blaine's quiz show, I will be asking John a series of three multiple choice questions. Each correct answer will award him with one point. He has one hint available this week that it can be utilized at any time on any of the three individual questions. However, if he chooses not to utilize that hint and answers all three questions successfully, then he will earn a bonus point for the week. So that being said, this week's topic, John, is Toronto stats. And some of these are not necessarily stats in the traditional sense. I'll give you kind of that forewarning. But that being said, you were in Toronto. So do you think you're ready for this? Is this about the city or is about Pokemon? It is about Pokemon. These. They're all Pokemon related questions. You were at the you were at the event. I think you can answer these. Oh, man, it's so funny. Like when you judge these events, you're very myopic. You're focused on what your area is. And like, not really like I watched some of the stream today and I was like, Oh man. Oh yeah, this was cool. This catcher is good. Oh, you know, all this kind of stuff. So it's funny like you're there, but you're not fully engaged as you might be, even if you're watching the stream. But yeah, I guess I guess I'm ready. Sure. Go for it. First question. How many total people played Henry Chow's Gardevoir list? Your choices are 15, 16, 17 or 18. You know, I have no clue, man. I mean, those are all big numbers, but not that surprising. He's got like I was talking with somebody that was like telling me like, yeah, Henry has like 250 active people in his discord and like 500. Or something like that. Like it's it's crazy numbers, man. I'm pretty sure that people have to pay to be a part of his discord. Yeah, yeah, they do. Wow. So yeah, it's but he provides like a service and he does. Oh, right. Right. Like he is kind of like the foremost Gardevoir player. And to my understanding, this list was publicly available on his discord prior to this event. Yeah, I'm just going to use my hand here. I don't think I'm going to smash it. I'll just need some help. OK, the answer to this question is an odd number. OK, so it's either 15 or 17. You know, I think a lot of people locked in on the Henry's list like this is a stale metagame, so I'm going to go with 17. Just on the side of exuberance. Walk it in. Oh, you would be absolutely correct. The answer is 17. Henry Chow and 16 other people piloted his deck list. Now, granted, this is based off of me going to limitless, clicking Henry's deck list and reading down. So this actually might be inaccurate. It might only be for day two, unless limitless also includes people that are not from day two. But in either case, John, you got this one, right? Yeah, I think limitless labs includes everybody. But you can't see the thing where they're the related deck list. It gets really hard to just be day two. But still, 17 people with the same deck list in day two. Let's move on to question two. I want to know which of these decks had the highest average number of copies of Team Rocket's Watchtower in it. Your choices are Enzor Arc, Goldengo, Dragapult Charizard or Mega Absolbox. Hmm, I don't think it was Goldengo. I think that only ran one usually. And Mega Absolbox. You run Kangaskhan, so I don't think you really want to shut that up because that's like your main draw for that deck. So going with Enzor Arc or Dragapult Charizard. Dragapult Charizard, I think it usually runs one copy, maybe two. But Enzor Arc definitely runs two copies a lot of the time. Maybe, maybe one, but I'm going to go with Enzor Arc. I think that you want to have an answer for like stuff. And I think Enzor Arc benefits a lot from having that Watchtower in it more than Dragapult Charizard even. Okay, Enzor Arc locked in? Yep. You are absolutely correct. It is Enzor Arc with the average number of copies of 1.94. Yeah. Dragapult Charizard was up there. It was like, I think 1.46 or something like that, like average a little bit under one and a half per deck. Goldengo is actually way down. Almost nobody played Watchtower on their Goldengo list this weekend. They think that the average was like less than 10%. Wow. Or less than 0.1 copies per deck. Mega Absolbox is actually up there a lot higher. I think that the people were playing tech copies to try to shore up their Charizard matchup a little bit. But yeah, I know that the highest placing Mega Absolbox definitely had at least one copy of it in there. But way to go, John. I know I kind of this might have been a gimme. I know I talk significantly about how Enzor Arc was playing a lot of Watchtowers last week, but. Yeah, so far, if we were two for two, some of my locals on Enzor Arc and they were just telling me like, Yeah, you need two copies of it in the deck. And so we were talking about that. So that helps a little bit. OK, OK. Shout out locals. John is now two for two this week, heading into question three and your final question for the week. What deck with over 10 players had the lowest day to win rate in Toronto? Your choices are Enzor Arc, Goldango, Sarah Ledge or Jelly Garde? Oh, man, I know Golden Go did not make it like you had the one on top eight, and then I think the next one after that was like 56 or something. And it was like by far the most decks in day two. So I'm pretty sure it's Golden Go here. I mean, Sarah Ledge. I, I know Ross played it and I know that. They might have been, you know, it's not like a lot made it to day two, so I don't even know if we had 10 players playing Sarah Ledge, to be honest. Now, I'll tell you, every single deck that I have listed here had at least 10 players in day two. So sure, cleared that bar. But I'm going to say Golden Go. I think it fought pretty hard on day two. I'll just lock that in. OK, and again, you were right. So three for three. Goldango came in with a 43.03% win rate in day two. Barely edging out Gardevoir as the worst of these four decks, with Gardevoir, Jellicent at 43.31%. So then remaining with Enzor Arc and Sarah Ledge, John, which one do you think had the best win rate of these four decks? Probably Sarah Ledge. If Golden Go did that bad, Sarah Ledge. It was indeed Sarah Ledge. Not by much, though. 46.67%. Yeah, one of the one of the one of the players that I used to play with back in the day, Canaan Millard, former like member of Team Ducklet Dynasty from your played Sarah Ledge, and he sent me like the the what is it called? The the list where you show you like what match have you played each? Yeah, yeah. Training court, I think. Like J.W. and Jared Grimes, his app. Yeah, that sounds right. And he day one, he had a Alakazam deck and like round eight or nine or something like that, like super late into the tournament, so that was tragic. But day two, he played against four Sarah Ledge decks as a Golden Go player. And it was just like, how does that even happen, man? How does that even happen? There were only 10 of them in day two. Found them. He found. That's crazy. It's so rough. I was like, Oh my gosh, you just weren't. That was just not your day. Like that's that's miserable. So, wow. Shout outs, Canaan. He's a cool dude. But yeah, he had a rough day to, you know, Sarah Ledge. I mean, feasted on Golden Goes, I guess. And that's about it. Like, I don't think. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem like it's. I mean, it did. It did better than Golden Go, I guess, in day two, but not by much. Yeah, it's other manageable. Yeah. Overall, 81.5% win rate against Golden Go in day two. Supposedly only played against it nine times. So four of those were Canaan. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But anyway. Closing out Blaine's quiz show. John, you got three points this week. Let's go. It's got to be a nice confidence boost. I don't know. We'll check. Well, I'll I'll figure it out. I'm assuming that you are right, right behind me right now in point total. And we will come back next week with John asking me some questions instead. So thank you for playing, John. Let's stop sharing this. And we will have we will head over to look at some overall Toronto results here. So, yeah, prior to this event happening, obviously, there was some pretty bad weather with a lot of people saying that they were having significant delays, some people experiencing fully canceled flights, especially people from like Europe were reasonably kind of barred from entering, mostly for things out of everybody's control, just bad weather in Toronto, but still managed to have almost 2300 players at this event, which I would say is pretty good. Interesting stat that I saw was that there were actually more American than Canadian players here this weekend. Well, that's crazy. I just realized we were about to start talking about results. We need to talk about our predictions first, though. Oh, so true. All right. Yeah, I got them right here. So we had four predictions. The first one was I'll go in backwards order, I guess, but well, it doesn't matter, I guess, where are we going? But I said pick a player to win. Azul GG was your pick and Riley McKay was my pick. Azul finished right at 100th place and Riley finished at 28th. So a much better finish for Riley here. Riley was in it pretty late, too, I think. See if I can find his name. Yep. Like he probably still playing KSI's Gardevoir, a Gardevoir by KSI's. But yeah, he had a really good day one finishing X11 going into phase two and then had two losses on the day. But and then, yeah, I don't know quite what happened with Azul's run. But yeah, not not quite there. But yeah, it was quite an international mix of players for sure, which leads to how many Canadians we thought would make top cut. I said three optimistically. And Aaron was correct in saying that only one Canadian would make it into top cut. And yeah, we had quite an American dominance. We had a top 12 ASAM and it looks like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven Americans, one Canadian, one UK British. I guess that's the correct terminology. In Katy, Montgomery, Brent Tonneson from Australia, Andres Estafano. Yeah, guys are the looping idea. I can't. I'm going to get flamed for that. You can just say Andres in the future, man. That's I will not fault you. Yeah, I also want to say I also want to say is is Brent technically from Australia anymore? Like, yeah, is he not? Does he not just get a flag that says he's from the world? Yeah. At this point, the U.N. flag, you're probably. I think, yeah, he might as well. But there was some Canadians peaking right in the top right outside the top cut, but we don't count those, unfortunately for me. Well, yeah, some Canadians lost their win and then I was a little bit bummed about, but Aaron won that one. The next question was, what was the highest placing mega Pokemon? Aaron, you said Mega Lopunny. And I said Mega Kangaskhan. Mega Lopunny's highest placement was 18th coming from Liam Halliburton's and Zoroark list. OK, and Mega Kangaskhan wins this prediction with a second place appearance in Andres Raging Bolt list. I mean, I would argue we both lost because Diancy placed higher. Well, sure. I guess that's one way to look. But between the between the two of them, yes, absolutely. I think the number two is smaller than the number 18 last time I checked. That's true. That is true. Giovanni, yes, did play a mega Pokemon in his Gardevoir list and Mega Diancy. So the correct answer would have been Mega Diancy. But between the two answers that we provided, I'll let the viewers decide, you know, and I think they would probably come down on the second place. But so we're I'm in the lead, but I think that got pretty upended after that. We I guess how many copies of Watchtower, the kind of tech, the new tech card coming into this tournament that people started playing would make it into TopCut. And I look through all the lists. Actually, I just clicked on the card in Limitless to see how many were in Toronto were peered in the top eight. There's only one and one copy, and that was that it was in Giovanni's deck. Yeah, that's right. He ran the so, you know, good, good placement for it, but only the one and all of TopCut. So, yeah, that was neither one of us came close. Aaron, you guessed three and I guessed four. So if we're going to follow the math from the previous question, I guess you win this one and that forces us to have a tiebreaker, which we don't have. So we are tied. We should have maybe came up with one more prediction, but that's a problem for this week. Maybe we'll come up with three or five and go from there. OK, sounds good. Yeah. But yeah, so since you already kind of ran down the nationalities here, we did get to see our top 12 players and we did ultimately end up seeing Giovanni Sasso break out of Brazil, where he had a pretty breakout season around this time last year as well. And, you know, Tarapagos player no more bringing out the jelly Garty of all things and showing that despite its overall poor win rate, this deck still has some legs. People were kind of discounting, not disrespecting, but definitely discounting mega Diancy's validity as an inclusion kind of in the weeks preceding this event. And yet Giovanni just came in here with what looks to me to be a pretty not fully standard, but just a jelly Garty list. It still has that super slim guard of our line, the two one two, which is really surprising when when we do go back and look, we had five drag up holds in top. guy and dragapult seemed to kind of it heard everybody was talking smack about it leading up to the event and it decided to show that it was a real deck still and showed up showed out did extremely well in this event and yet at the end of the day the guard of our deck that's still playing the slim guard of our line took everything down and no tm eva no tm eva yeah definitely more of a high risk high reward guardi um but you know that's kind of the decisions you make as a tournament goes on as you as you play in these things you know trying to trying to figure out what gives you the best chance to win and jvani just said well i'm going to run a lot of good attackers and focus on jealousy and a little bit more instead of kind of cheesing with just a frillish and a hero's cape or a giant luxurious cape rather um but yeah i think this isn't too big of a departure from any like there's a lot of other lists that are in met that ran mega dancy and sure all these other factors um yeah i think there was two main philosophies for guardi for this tournament there's like the henry chow camp where it was just a one frillish and then a thicker evolution line with tm evo and then you know this is kind of i guess what people have been playing before henry chow's list um more similar to some stuff we've seen in this format before this tournament um so yeah i don't think there's anything that's too revolutionary maybe the watchtower kind of sticks out like not a lot of guarded x played watchtower this tournament um right so that was kind of interesting and i think it's kind of a weird inclusion in guard of war in particular where you aren't necessarily drawing as many cards as something like goldango or zorark and your only means of searching out the watchtower is the secret box which you have no means of searching out outside of the singleton copy of arvin that you also have no means of searching out so i'm like so the matchup where this is particularly impactful being like the shutting off the pidgeot against charizard or shutting off the knock towels against the terror box matchup so they can't use water ogre pawn against you as consistently yeah i just feel like you're gonna have a hard time finding it exactly when you need it and who's to say you wouldn't have to potentially be forced to discard it for one reason or another earlier in the game just to kind of get yourself on the board yeah i would love to hear giovanni's viewpoint on it um and i i agree like you only run two cards that can search it out in the arvin and the secret box and basically arvin for secret box is kind of the right things um yeah it's tough i don't i don't i don't pretend like i know how to play guardi at this point like i i see the deck and i'm like yep that exists and that's that's the extent of it i've i've watched enough of it to probably know how to play it if i had to but yeah for the most part um i'm not gonna pretend like i know what exactly situation in which how you get it out and it's a route maybe like a late game card where you can iono stick them with the watchtower where they can't like find any like pidgeot and knock towel can't find out to get a counter catcher to get around a dancy or something like that um i think dancy also helps like like the bravery charm is good for um like charizard too i think that would be brave bravery charm dancy is a nightmare for a lot of decks yeah and i guess thinking about it more maybe the watchtower isn't about having it exactly when you need it but just about kind of it's a pain in the butt for any of the decks that it impacts to deal with whenever you use it in conjunction with iono and put them down to four or fewer cards and it shuts down a lot of cards they're pretty unlikely to draw the out to get out of it otherwise yeah so um yeah i like this list a lot i'm i'm still gonna have a hard time trying to ever convince myself to play gardevoir but um giovanni it's really cool to see you know like a young young guy get a name for himself um this was his first north american regional too um so very cool to see a player come from a different region and kind of clean up um somewhere else and yeah he seems like a really nice guy um so it's cool to see him succeed um for sure um so in addition to a player from brazil we had another player from chile who played a very interesting kind of almost a rogue deck at this point the fact that uh i don't think anybody's woke up the morning of the tournament besides maybe andres and said oh yeah raging bolt's gonna be in the finals of this regional like nobody was thinking that except for maybe andres um but yeah this is such an interesting list i mean raging bolt has gone through a lot of different iterations um again the noctowl engine more recently and then in the last few months we've seen the inclusion of cards like sandy shocks omega kangaskhan with a new set included um and then um giovanni i don't know if there's been a whole lot of wellspring mask in this format but i honestly haven't been keeping up with uh raging bolt lists if i'm honest yeah i couldn't tell you if this is like a common thing for raging boat lists but it seems like a good inclusion when you have a lot of stage two setup decks like in gardevoir and you can even get it against uh golden go early like being able to disrupt their board get rid of gimme ghouls or something like that um feels really nice like you can be more aggressive and take prices that way um aaron brought up an interesting point before we started that this runs more crispin than sada which is an interesting list and i think that makes a lot of sense when you want to focus on early aggression as opposed to kind of okoing stuff with raging bolt you're more focused on building up the baby raging bolt building up the wellspring mask kind of using those to attack early game and then late game you're pivoting using the sandy shocks to restore energy you can even use the glass trumpet in this deck to like get energy that way um you're not entirely relying upon what you draw facade you can run other um cards and like yeah then you have the mega kangaskhan you can pivot into the active to get additional draw so like you're not just using mu you have some other draw here which i think actually helps the deck out a lot because the deck is very dependent upon the knocktowel engine to get all the little pieces you need but like if you're able to just draw more cards you just need less combo pieces to pull off the ko's that you need to to take the knockouts um and a very interesting list here um it's only like only runs the one boss and the one prime catcher i thought that was cool um just saying like well i'm gonna have reach with nobody's running shaman so i don't really have to worry about bench my naked people running bench protection or anything like that so the baby raging bolt is very very effective at this moment um and you can play with that in mind so yeah i don't know what are your thoughts aaron well i know you had mentioned previously you weren't sure if wellspring mask was common in raging bolt and i wouldn't necessarily say it was common but it has seen play here and there before i think that sandy shocks is the thing that stands out to me like obviously when it was printed it was kind of the quote-unquote intended pairing with raging bolt but that deck proved immediately that it was terrible and sandy shock got put in everybody's binder and nobody has touched it since then until this weekend it saw a lot of play but not only in this raging bolt deck but also as a tech card and a lot of mega absol decks as a means of one hit ko'ing either opposing mega kangaskans or um mega low punnies and being able to just one shot those pokemon with relative ease because you in this instance you use magnetic absorption use either a sada or a crispin to get your other fighting energy onto it and then just attach and you blow up anything that's weak to fighting essentially while like you mentioned also serving as kind of like a vacuum of sorts or a means of recycling those energies so you can use a bellowing thunder at some point and i know like john mentioned i've i had mentioned the um kind of inverted sada crispin count from what we had seen previously before we started recording the other thing that i kind of noted with this is that the structure of this deck now compared to like old raging bolt lists that were just like three big bolts and one baby raging bolt and like three ogre pawns three teal mask ogre pawns i should say and things like squawk ability and whatnot that were just turbo i'm gonna bellowing thunder as soon as quick as soon as possible this looks literally just like a tarot box shell that has adapted an ancient pokemon package into it and i think that that's a pretty neat way to kind of approach things i don't know if i would necessarily say that this is overall better than just playing regular tarot box but i do think some of the tools that you have access to like baby raging bolt has proven time and time again it's a very very strong card and big raging bolt in some ways serves the same role as what a pikachu would in a tarot box shell so maybe you could make the argument that this is literally just as good as plain old tarot box overall and then it's literally just got kind of the same shortcomings where you're still dependent on the knock towel engine and you're still bad against gardevoir as most tarot box decks are unless you're able to really just get off the ground with torrential pump i think the prime catcher being in here is kind of interesting in that i've seen when i've seen wellspring mask ogre pawn included in this deck in the past i've also seen them shift the a-spec to being um sparkling crystal and then because you can always knock towel for it anyway and that being the way that you're going to kind of close out those more setup oriented decks that you're weak into but the instead with sparkling crystal the giovanni opted to include the vitality band which i think is particularly interesting when you consider that it's really like the impact of it is against goldengo in particular where you can touch a pump and ko a soul rock and a lunatone or whichever rock they have active plus a gimme ghoul on the bench on the same turn and maintain your 2-2-2 prize map while also putting your opponent in a position where they have to respond with a two prizer essentially yeah yeah so kind of a late game intervention late format intervention innovation it's not intervention sorry um and yeah very cool like refreshing take on a list maybe i don't know exactly if i'd call it like a new new deck list or anything like that but it definitely is like a mashup of two decks and the terror box and the raging bolt sure but very cool still bad still wouldn't play it yeah it's it's no shade to andres no shade to andres whatsoever but yeah it definitely feels like high rolly like kind of raging bull does but a little bit more agency um you can do more things you can there's no comeback mechanic there's no hand disruption card so like if you're like aaron and playing grim snarl for the last three months you know not having iono in the deck feels pretty bad um listen i haven't played a grim snarl game since this format started wow which as you can see from this list may need to change soon yeah but before we get further down uh we're not going to pull up the deck list and look at them because they're unfortunately the dragapult list from caris jack and literally all five of the ones in top cut there's nothing truly astoundingly different about any of them uh like caris had a moltres inclusion um i can't remember who it is somebody played three badoo on the day and just the counts it's still dragapult you still got the same stadium like jamming tower still in there you're still playing neo upper luminous and some basic energies monkey dory is out of the picture i don't think anybody included monkey dory this week so we saw everybody shift to two psychic two fire two luminous and a neo upper and just called it a i'll just show real quick yeah so we do have caris's list like nothing crazy caris opted to play a dawn and a hilda instead of two hilda let's not lose our minds over that yeah it's still dragapult at the end of the day yeah not not anything too wild i mean i thought i made a comment like not having a tool that you can one shot golden go with but i think that's okay like you can you you can soften it up with dust clops or clean it up with a dragapult later like the golden go so like you can fix your math effectively with using mulchers that's not bad yeah and doing you can do that while you maintain a one prize board so your opponent doesn't have the ability to jump too far ahead and the goldengo player never really wants to go to odd prizes especially if you just did 220 to their goldengo so if they don't have turro available and that goldengo tries to run away you solve the ability to take like a three price term with your dragapult later down the line and that's what really kind of puts paints them into a corner potentially speaking of golden go we only had the one in top cut and is justin templars list um his list i think was a little interesting uh kind of departure i mean we still have mega maw this felt like an older version of this list right it doesn't run mega low pony it uh it doesn't run any watchtower it runs the two artisan it runs vitality band premium power pro over the cramorant um and then i'd say the main innovation over a lot of the golden go lists is running seeker box um i guess that's not truly an innovation it's it's come up quite a quite a bit but uh yeah i think that that card lines up a lot of plays for you allows you to have a lot more agency like game um you don't have any hand disruption but you can just like get everything that you need um and the cypher maniacs this is a cool card i like this card a lot um i think it's underrated in golden go like it just allows you to have a lot of like play with it like you can kind of draw out of a bad hand or whatever with it so i don't know sure i definitely want to retry that i want to try this list out again i like mega maw while it's nice having only the one slot can committed to uh Cornerstone counter. I do think make a lot of money's better and it just depends on them the meta game like if you don't expect a lot of hard counters to this deck You can get away with make them all while just fine for the most part Yeah, and I think that the other interesting card here is the bravery charm. Oh sure serves as My assumption my understanding is that it's primarily a mirror tech just giving yourself a hundred sixty HP soul rock that your opponent has to deal With and try to force the issue of making them to utilize a two prizer at some point throughout a game Otherwise the other notable thing is that Justin didn't play any answer to Badu in the form of no La Vincia No, Lana's aid and that ultimately I think is what did him in in this event where he had to overextend in a game against Karis on stream and She was able to respond by saying itchy pollen until Justin decked out. Yeah That's a win con Especially I thought it was pretty interesting though that he just sat there and let it happen instead of just scooping once he knew what? Was happening like did he? Yeah, did he really think she was ever gonna not say itchy pollen? I don't know. Maybe he was just playing to take more time off the clock essentially because okay faster deck. Sure And when if it goes to time, I don't know I actually haven't watched the top but I haven't watched the past top eight yet So our top past ace in top eight, I guess yeah, and I'm pretty sure that was game one of their series as well. Mm-hmm, so Yeah, so maybe you're just looking for a list knowledge. Maybe she'll reveal more information or something like that. He just saw her list Oh, well, there's open deck lists, right? Like this I guess I default to Talking points. Sorry. Yeah. No, you're fine. It's just Haven't had to consider prior to this weekend. Oh, you're right. So I guess I don't know you're right Like what it what is she truly trying to get out of it other than her with he? Yeah, what would just to be trying to gain out? Maybe just burning it would have to be burning time, but I'd have to go back and look at the clock I don't remember what it was that when this was all occurring. Sure Yeah, and that's that's pretty much it other than I don't know a little guy named Grimmsnarl showed up randomly Yep I'm surprised. I'm totally and utterly surprised and if you look at the overall matchup data here It's pretty far down. I don't know about it. I Think it's top 128. There might have been. Wow. Yeah. No, there's one. Yeah, right Rajiv you're saying Yeah And there's a couple more right below that as well I mean It's about the same as Goldengo like you've got Justin up there and then the next highest Goldengo was like 83rd yeah, and realistically like the difference between the 11 2 and 1 that Jordan and Louise had to get in and The next person down is probably one game at this point or Maybe like one loss and a tie and that tie is removed. So it's like effectively four match points separating them It's not that big but if you do pull up one of these lists if you don't mind John Jordan and Louise's lists aren't Drastically different from each other just to give us a look at what a quote-unquote modern Grimmsnarl list would look like we've got the shift to not shift but kind of sticking at the one rare candy and just Overall, this looks like it has less of a focus on Grimmsnarl You've got one rare candy, but still only two more Grimm to kind of compensate We're playing three spike muth to get that into play more consistently is also just being a good Stadium that literally only benefits your archetype your deck other decks The only utility they have is to shuffle their deck if you I own no cards that they want to the bottom of their deck and then the other big change here is the 3-3 frost last line that kind of opens up an alternative mode with this deck where you can play Just basically a frostless monkey Dory game plan Going into most of the game until you decide to put your Grimmsnarl online. Whereas previously people tried to get away with you know myself included obviously tried to get away with 2-2 because that felt like the bare minimum to where you could be successful throughout a game, but I imagine that there are scenarios where You more frequently in the current format want to have to frost less on the table than you have Previously because there are fewer knock towel decks and when things are fully kind of centralized around gold and go If you just plop two or three frost lasts into play and tick up a bunch of damage counters on your opponent's board You don't really care that so rocks hitting your guy for 70 if it's not taking ko's So the gold angoes then come down you spreading damage to all the gimme ghouls you devo them And you try to make that matchup winnable a lot of gold ango decks this weekend. Also, we're cutting picnic basket. I Do think and we'll talk about this in a little bit when we talk about the upcoming tournaments That's probably gonna get reversed not due to Grimmsnarl, but do more so to the increased presence and success of dragapult But unfortunately, that means Grimmsnarl will probably get collateral as well But more or less the rest of these look like pretty standard counts. I'm still not the biggest fan of blood moon in this deck Looking at that thing like you have no way to move that if you start you have no way to move it Outside of air balloon. You don't have a way to pick it up. Unfortunately I think one of the other interesting exclusion here is actually evil tall from mega evolution But you know when you are fitting in the extra one run frost last the extra stadium card You just don't necessarily have space to fit all these tech cards and like that's gonna be a good card to moving forward like people Aren't respecting stall anymore You know not as much no So I think maybe you can get away with it. Like maybe you can move to like with a stall strategy or stick in the active strategy We'll see Yeah, we'll have to see Louise's list was pretty pretty similar to this I think they might have been one card off of each other. So not really worth Like diving into it too deeply. Yeah, there's no tatsugiri in here. I don't remember what the inclusion the extra inclusion was Nothing else really super notable to talk about from this event we had Liam Halliburton took his you know, we're talking about discord list from Henry Chow Liam had his Zoroark list on discord well ahead of this event managed to take that to top 32 We did have a tank Kangaskhan sneak its way into top 32 as well From Samuel Schmitt. Yeah To Moltres, that's interesting and a brave angle there you run in the Boofer this I'll admit. I don't know what that card does It's from obsidian flames It's damage rush for to call this foot until you get tails and does 30 more damage for each heads and then It has 120 plus Effective 20 more. So 140 plus effective 60 more from the other book. So it's a 200 HP One prizer that can what is that for? I don't know. I think the fun and if the fun thing with Bouffalant is you only need one of the curly wall one. Yeah, you don't So you can just run it and like maybe it just gets in there once in a while and starts You know just you don't have to attack with Kangaskhan every time so I guess that it helps against 50 50 is not great. But if you run monkeys, you can get some math going for you. Hold on go back What is the attack cost on the curly wall bouffalant? Is three three Okay I Don't know about that one that seems a little out there for me, but yeah, but you run you run to Crispin in this list You do so you can power it up. But yeah, I hear you. It is a little I Mean the cool thing would be like you could you could do a one prize board where you don't have to have Kangaskhan of play necessarily You can't tell me that your best attacker in that scenario though is bouffalant There's gotta be something else and I do like yes Mountains too. I miss that. That's what I was gonna bring up. I like that a lot. I like that over I know traditionally I believe what I've seen has been training court Just trying to get your Kangaskhan as tanky as possible. But realistically Lively say I'm sorry training course one that makes stage ones do more damage my bad But realistically when you have curly wall active in a bravery drama on your Kangaskhan people aren't one-hit KO in that guy anyway So what is the extra 30 HP like that? You don't get a break point out of that It doesn't Costco Dingo an extra energy it I mean theoretically it does cost raging bolt an extra energy. I think Yeah, they would have to pay one additional energy to KO you but you typically don't care about that And then you jumbo ice cream everything off anyway, so I Interesting list I I Think the buffer bouffalant is an interesting choice. I don't think that it adds anything to the deck like it Okay. No, I'm wrong. It does have more HP. I think that's actually pretty notable like more base HP Yeah, so yeah, I mean slightly more difficult to KO So interesting like I guess you're really relying on brushes trolley. Yeah, but um No, I Want to play this list now, like I'm looking at it like I don't know like this is my smooth brain You know just jamming games on TCG live. This is my go-to lately. So I'll try it out and report back at some point cool I think that's More or less it. I don't know if there's any other lists that Really took the world by storm we had Jesse Parker just miss out on cut with yes, his mag iron hands, there's a His Moriarty on deck of now like he's a one-trick pony, but he does the trick very well So he just missed out on top cut I believe Yeah lost his winning in on stream We had Ross coffin a name of old Playing his own several edge deck the kind of deck he's been playing for a while And on only the way that he could play it like for sure he's He's committed to that at this point. I think he just hasn't really been able to Cook and test as much as he has in the past, but sure. Yeah, and then I saw one Pidgeot control on The winning in two or pretty close to it Wanted to look at that real quick like this guy, but This is a Pidgeot control lots of one-offs like two pages of it, of course This feels super desperate to me like I I can't There was a format where Pidgeot control was good. I think we are well beyond that at this point I'm not I feel I feel like the majority of Standard decks Especially the upper echelon which unfortunately you will run into a majority of the time Can play around this? pretty reasonably and come out on top and it doesn't help that you also get collateraled by the random people that do choose to include watchtower on their deck and You don't have great answers to it. No Like you're literally playing one stadium so if they do play to watchtower you just lose the game Yeah, well you can you can blustery wind to clear it I guess But that's not ideal No, yeah, I'm not saying it's good it's just fun to look at that's where I was going with it sure Yeah, last thing before we move on if you want to go ahead and look at Marcos if when this is deck There is 65th place just as an example of what I had mentioned with the mega absol box earlier Where he was playing the sandy shocks Also, coincidentally instead played evil tall and Ethan sudo wudo. So you had an option to indefinitely trap a monkey dory because you could miss energy sudo wudo and then use your own monkey dory to move all of the damage off onto your opponent's board or Utilize evil tall as a separate trapper on other Pokemon So really just kind of adding to the toolbox that this deck has available Well also then, you know again We've got lively stadiums out of the deck town store finds all the tools for us as an extra Arvin out Essentially just highlighting the importance of TM turbo energized And then playing watchtower. So theoretically you could pull a Liam Halliburton and put five energies on your blood moon or Saluna or you also Realistically are just shutting off the knock towels in those pesky knock towel matchups because those are very difficult for this deck You know Pikachu is a giant pain in the butt for this deck to get through Yeah, that's cool to see some innovation on this list. It definitely hasn't it's falling off pretty hard Yes, or one Vegas Yeah, I think it was a sub 2% deck at this event Maybe that was the other interesting thing like looking at the meta graphic for this event Like you had especially when you get into day two like Goldango was like 20% Charizard, I think it was like 17% Dragapult is like 14% That there's some weird it's different here than the stream graphic because I my gut is that on stream they combined to the Charizards But they didn't combine the Gardevoir's so jelly Garde and Regular Garde took up two different things, but this highlights it really well Like you look at those top four decks all of them are over 17 and a half percent Mm-hmm. So when you put all that together, that's 70% over 70% of the room Was just those four decks. This is day two, but yeah, it's definitely it's not that far off on day one, too, right? Yeah, literally like yeah the next and Zoroark's 4.2 so the 421 15 14 14 So that's what you said 70% Yeah, it was about 70 This is a little bit less but even so like like 60 yeah 65% though That's a big chunk of the room so you just assume Significantly more than half the time that you sit down at a table. It's one of these four decks Right and that tells you like there's no Hard counter to all three all four of those at the same time, right? You just kind of have to choose which one you're gonna try to pick on as the day goes on So, I think that does it for Toronto unless you have anything else No, I think that was that's it. I think we pretty well exhausted it What would be left is that we've actually got three events coming up this weekend as well So they decided to take all of December's events and shove them into the first two weeks of events that they were doing in January So this past week and we had Toronto this weekend. We've got our first European event over in Birmingham in the UK we have a regional down in Merida and And then additionally we have a special event over in Australia in Auckland or no, New Zealand, sorry in Auckland which Did New Zealand even have an event last year? No, I think this is the first time they've had an event in a while So that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a huge community Compared to the US or you know Europe, but it definitely is deserving of its own regional circuit return regional event Yeah, so you special events are a good way to get that in there I have to imagine a lot of the Australian players will be heading there one notable exception is Brent Tonneson which is why I continue to question his nationality, but He has already been cited down in Mexico and we'll be attending the Merida regional this weekend Significantly I mean, although you know We've had a couple of Arctic thing Arctic like wind gusts come through where we've had It has been below freezing multiple times in fact had to go out and cover up some plants in the yard that are you know, tropical flora that are not accustomed to these God awful temperatures. Yeah, and I've learned however many times I've complained about living in Florida. I Understand now now granted if I had moved obviously my wardrobe would have adapted to wherever I'm living and I would have more applicable clothing But like this hoodie doesn't do anything when it's truly cold outside Like you you need an actual jacket now, thankfully from going to Toronto last year I do have an actual jacket and it has served me very well a few days over the past couple of weeks Yeah, it's gonna get pretty gnarly the next couple days. I know we're gonna get hit real hard in Virginia This weekend with up to two feet of snow predicted So yeah, and then followed by I think the high on Monday after Sunday is like 23 degrees So we're gonna have a rough couple days coming up so yep be safe if you're listening Take preparations Hopefully, you know, you can stay warm stay out of it But we're ever here to talk about the weather like old people. Let's get into some predictions there Sure, sure. So looking at this event like well before we get into predictions just like general trends Like what we saw this weekend Dragapult showed up. Nobody really expected it to I mean, obviously the players who played it expected it to but the big story was Goldengo was gonna be super popular How are people gonna counter that and it looks like a lot of the goldengo players this past weekend weren't respecting dragapult or more so looking to be guard of our beat Charizard and beat the random decks in the room more or less and just be consistent do their thing and come out on top and Overall I would say it was not successful in doing so like Justin obviously made top eight but the next highest place in goldengo was in like 84th or 83rd place and there were a handful of them down or in that general region like the 80 to between 80 and 100 but On the whole goldengo had a really rough day, too And I would say that's due in large part due to the success of dragapult and not really Respecting it being prepared for it. So do we think this upcoming weekend is goldengo gonna shift its focus and Respect that matchup and said are they going to go back to including the picnic basket? Are we gonna see people include at one point? there was a list that I saw that played monkey Dory and picnic basket while still playing lunatone and saw rock and Also, I think that there was another There's another tech card as well, I believe Maybe maybe But just are you gonna are we gonna see like a full-blown 180 like dragapult is enemy number one for goldengo moving forward I definitely think you need picnic basket Um, I mean the cards just a good card and a lot of matchups are good against card of war good against You know the random grim snarl if you see that good against like Just it saves you in frost last monkey Dory math. So that that's valid But it's just a good card. It's good inclusion. It's pretty easy to include And yeah, I think that's that's like a good pivot I Think yeah, if you do the picnic basket that should just give you Shouldn't win the matchup, but it should shore it up a little bit for you. I'm sure like it's favored You're able to like get the early aggression going. I think you can Kind of push it from there, but what about but do respect do you think that needs to be included? It's a good question Hmm Probably a little bit but I mean the bigger Like Yeah, I don't know. I think If I'm playing golden go, I'm not switching back to LaVentia and Lana's aid I don't think okay that point like I'm not terrified of a do I think you can still like we've seen good players Play around but do and find ways to like manage their energies and resources effectively It's tough, but you can do it without having to like you've run the to air balloon You can attack with soul rock you can you know, get your mega powered up somehow and use that as an attacker So you're not relying upon discarding energy from hand I Think that's pretty good. You can also run the watchtower to like counteract one moon or so Luna So like that might be worth looking into To see like you don't run hand disruption. So who knows how effective it is truly, but sure just food for thought maybe I don't know I don't know if I I Think it's kind of a fluke that we had like the eight or however many dragon balls and top cut Okay, I'm not a firm believer that that'll be able to replicate all of that success. It's a good deck you know, I played it for a long time and I still think it's good, but it's it's When it draws hot like when you're when you're you're able to get your drag cloaks out online You're doing three a turn. You're like seeing everything you need the deck feels amazing, but so many games are just like slogs were here Or you don't open Poffin or you don't know the supporter You don't see an energy for four turns or you don't see a drag cloak like it feels pretty rough So, I don't know. I think it'll come back down to earth a little bit. I'm right there with you, man If I'm golden go, I'm not sweating it like overly I'm definitely putting in picnic basket, but I'm not like changing out my whole list just because of the rise of it for one tournament Okay. No, that's fair The other notable thing was that I think a lot of people that Charizard was obviously in there in that top four part of That 65% chunk and yet it was kind of nowhere to be seen at the top top end of the standings Yeah Like what can what could Charizard really do to adjust to find itself in a better place in the metagame or is this again? Dragapult had a good weekend. So that inherently means Charizard has a bad weekend. I think We didn't see a lot of watchtower in our top cut But I think it was played pretty heavily at the tournament and I got kind of beat down by that Charizard did okay, so you can maybe look back into I Think Azul played like a slower pull not necessarily terrored hold like he played it with Pidgeot and team You go and stuff like that. So maybe like a version with that and she you and all that kind of stuff Would it be worth looking into? The the terror box list it's more consistent than the other Charizard lists But it is definitely like vulnerable right now if your opponent knows how to play against it and this point they should The the fact that you just don't have a lot like you don't have room for all the counters that you have in Charizard Usually like you don't have counter catcher. You don't have Chiyu you don't have Like vitality band or whatever no vitality man Defiance band you don't have ways to like modify your damage really You have the briar and that's about it. Like that's the only cool trick you can pull out a lot of times I guess you have dust snore and stuff that helps with your math a lot. But So I think maybe going back to a list where you're you're able to include some of those tech cards Might be worth looking into Again, I don't really play too much Charizard. So I don't know like What Jackson Ford or somebody like that would be like if he's going to turn with this weekend what he'd be like looking into so It's uh, yeah, I don't know. I Think whatever it is. We are likely to see or even show up in Birmingham with it and he'll probably be up there flipping coins of mezzo goza and Doing well at the end of the day regardless of what's going on over there Um But I do think I think that we'll see kind of a bounce back from Goldango is my expectation I think Gardevoir will actually do worse Well, depending on which event you're at because Gardevoir has historically not done super well in Europe Dragapult has historically been more popular in Europe because we've seen people like Alberta County Oh My gosh, I'm blanking on the other player that I was thinking of Who did the Alberta played somebody in a dragapult mirror in the finals at some point within the past year The top of my head I can't remember no No, I can't remember who it is. We but Historically dragapult has been very popular in Europe and has also been fairly successful over there as well So I do think dragapult will continue to be highly played regardless of the fact that Gardevoir is good into it and the Goldango players have the option to kind of Tech back for it I still think we'll see a lot of dragapult over there I think Gardevoir will be down in numbers over there dragapult and Goldango will kind of compensate for that and I think that we'll see as an overall result of that Goldango will bounce back and will probably in my opinion end up winning Birmingham but then down in Merida where we'll see a lot of the US based players as well as Marty like Latam players That decide to make the trip over. We'll see an uptick in Gardevoir potentially as Well as continue to see you know presence of the other top four decks But I think that we'll see a big push in success of Gardevoir in that event as well And then New Zealand is kind of anybody's ballgame. I mean at the end of the day, it's probably gonna be someone between in the camp of kaiwan kebab a Natalie Malar Could be yeah, exactly. Well, I don't know if there's no cash involved. I don't know if they'll show Okay, that's fair that's fair and they could they could make a stop any of the Japanese players that were present at Toronto could maybe stop in Auckland on their way back home. Mm-hmm So that's an option. You're right but I think those would be if I was gonna line up the three events my picks would be Goldango wins Birmingham Gardevoir wins Merida. Yeah, this can just be a prediction pick a deck to win the three events and whoever gets best two out Of three I guess but I'm gonna say Gardevoir for Bert or no Goldango for Birmingham Gardevoir for Merida and Auckland whatever Tim Danklin place So which I think he just I saw a thing where he was like promoting Crystal based merch where it had like crystals had Tim Danklin mustaches on them Oh, that's amazing. So I don't know if he's playing crustle right now or if he's just he's probably the best like Click baity like Content creator for Pokemon TCG at the moment. I mean clip. I mean click baity in the best way like Like I think he actually does a pretty good job producing his video. It's like that. He does a good job Reasonably high quality. I don't know if he does them all himself or if he's got a team working with him But I feel like they look very good for especially if they're only a one-man job Yeah, but now to actually pick an archetype. I'll go with Absol box, okay, we'll win Auckland And that's probably a throw considering it's a very very low play rate deck. Yeah, I think for Birmingham Dependent towards going or not because I think he does well With absolute box at the moment. I don't know if he's moved off of that at this point Did you see what he submitted for Toronto? No It was litter it was basically like that toward binder pile that he played that he actually played in an event last year But no, it was literally like one chart 1 1 1 Charizard 1 1 1 Pidgeot 1 1 Zoroark 1 1 1 dragapult And it was a joke like he knew he wasn't going so he just submitted a bunch of nonsense But his whole deck was singleton except for his energies where he had like duplicates of like luminous and jet and something else I think He would have probably still done way better than me at a turn Yeah, you know I think Torrid always has like a Advantage and whatever tournament he's going to um, I Think I'll win out of the big four. I'd probably say I'm most comfortable picking dragapult for Birmingham Okay, I Said it would fall down a little bit But I just think in numbering quantity, I think the quality is still there like there's still a lot of good players in Europe That are dedicated to playing dragapult and can take advantage of it And you know Seeing his little rants about how Europeans allowed to drag a pole to win would be kind of funny For Merida, I'm gonna have to go with Cardi too. I know that that's not always fun to not be contrarian But you know Guardi seems to do really well down there And I think Henry Chow and his contingent will do well down there for sure And then for New Zealand I'm leaning towards like a Japanese player And they've been kind of on the toward list a lot At least they were before. I don't know if that's still the case That's kind of like I'm sure that's why you made your prediction there At least a factor into it. I think I'm gonna take Guardi again, though I think Natalie Miller and her group if they go they're usually on Guardi at this point Okay, so I'll just do Guardi again I think all the top players are kind of settling on Guardi for the last few ones and Should be told it's still pretty good like Yeah It's not a bad day. Just just one rate like Sure. Yeah, it's not bad. Okay. So as a another prediction for this weekend We saw raging bolt take second place in this event in Toronto What there's three tournaments happening. What will be the highest placement bracket for raging bolt this weekend? I Mean it's it's it's gonna see more play than it did in Toronto because there are people that love ranging bolt and like love to see it do well like a lot of people that Probably played golden go and had a bad experience or like one We're looking for an excuse to play ranging bolt again one last time before Does it lose a lot of cards in rotation? I don't even know I think I think it does doesn't raging. I think raging bolt itself rotate. Yeah, so I guess But I don't think like I could be wrong about that I don't think a lot of top players will play raging bolt. Sure I think it's probably like a top 64 would be like a pretty good finish for the deck So I'm gonna say top 64. So notably I was wrong raging bolt does not rotate but Sada does yeah Now I don't think that that's the end of the world for the deck. You said top 64 That was kind of exactly what I was thinking, honestly So I'll just be a jerk and I'll go one step further and say it's not gonna it's gonna make top 128 That's probably because I sir. I certainly don't think it's gonna do better than 64 I definitely would not have predicted it to make cut now for how much John and I rant and it's more so me about how Bad, I think raging bolt is Obviously the cards are strong Or they wouldn't see play. They would never have been successful to begin with I just don't think that the deck itself is overall well positioned and Given that it is kind of a tarot box shell if I was going to play a tarot box deck. I think that I would play Flareon probably more so than I would play what we've seen is like just the generic full toolbox tarot box or the raging bolt ancient style tarot box deck Yeah, but and so to where I just think that it's the one it doesn't really have any inherent advantages in Any of these other matchups compared to what these other two can do like where regular tarot box can hit water ogre pawn more consistently Turn after turn after turn and the flurry on deck is just a really good against gold. Ango is kind of its big claim to Fame is it's really good against gold. Ango. It's reasonably good against dragapult They're all bad against guard of war so that you don't really need to worry about that And then I think the charizard one is also the best one or not charizard The flare and one is also the best one against charizard as well So, you know, that's what I would pick if I was gonna play a tarot box deck that's why I feel like raging bolt is just always kind of a step behind because it's Not only do I not think the tarot box decks are particularly well positioned Just because they have all of these their regular inherent flaws on top of watchtower actually seeing play finally But raging bolt is also a step behind the other ones in my opinion as well Yeah, you will see you know, it's always fun to make prediction because You always get crazy stuff at the end of the day to that always just throws it all away so I guess One last prediction. I want to make is just our classic pick a player to win the event. Um, I Think we'll do Kind of how we did for the each regional. Are you comfortable doing one for each regional for this one as well? Sure. I'm sure All right, I'll start then I guess with Birmingham I'm I'll do Thanks to fauna I've been off do for a one in a while like No, I guess I'm been like super dominant this season but Maybe no. Okay. I know I'm gonna go with Yes, I saw him playing and Toronto and he was he had a pretty deep run. I'm gonna go with What's his name she just had it on top I had Check player Miloslav Miloslav This led me was led me. Thank you. Yeah, no probably that for Birmingham So pretty sure you said dragapult was gonna win and Miloslav's been playing goldango So I'm gonna notably go I picked I picked goldango to win this event And I'm going to go with a player that I know has been playing goldango recently and will more than likely be in Attendance because he is from the UK. I'm gonna go with Drew Stevenson. Okay Had his two unfortunate bubbles Earlier this year and then kind of came back and made cut came back with a vengeance Doing pretty well with goldango in tow and I think he will continue to do so and Then I'll bounce and go first on this one for Merida I'm gonna pick Brent Tonneson. I know Brent's down there. He's been playing Gardevoir He's done well with the deck so will not be at all surprised to see him in cut again with it. Mm-hmm I Think I'll do a little zag and I'll do here and Farah I know he's Usually goes to the Mexican ones. He's been playing goldango. He did pretty well Points, I think he was on stream if I'm not mistaken, I believe Yeah, he had to play against Rowan Stabenow at one point. Yeah So that was that was tough I think he's gonna kind of bounce back and have a good weekend this weekend if I had to guess so And then that leaves us with Auckland So as you correctly deduced my pick of mega absol box was assuming that I thought a Japanese player would do really well at the event So I'm fingers crossed Hoping that some of these players are actually gonna stop there on their way back to Japan and I'm gonna go with Daichi Shimada Yeah, I choose a good pig I think I'm gonna go somebody that's from Australia Oh, let's just do the classic Henry brand pull You know, he's had some good success this year. I think he's He could still be he could still be touring Europe for all you know, though No, don't let me dissuade you I just don't I just don't know if Henry's actually in In Australia While John's looking that up, I'm gonna take this time to say thank you to everybody who's gotten through this episode It's a rather lengthy one because we did spend a good chunk of time on that judging discussion at the top of the show But I think that it was beneficial and I hope that everyone was able to enjoy it and if you had any insight or Maybe questions for John that he could address on a future episode Please leave those down in the comments below and we'd be more than happy to bring them up As long as they're appropriate, of course If You do want to interact more with John or I or the show you can follow all of us on socials link to those will Be in the description of the show for both Twitter and blue sky as appropriate And if you are on YouTube watching the show, please drop a subscription Share the show with your friends help get it out there And if you are on Spotify and you are not following the show, please do so we appreciate it And it helps other people find the show So now that I've done the socials plug Johnny, where is Henry at in the world, where is Henry brand He's not posting on Twitter all that much. He posted last 14th of January. It's like he's in a European location still But you know, maybe he's going home. It could be travel weather. Yeah wanting some summer weather Instead of the cold of the year right now, so We'll see and we'll talk all about it next week. Thank you guys for listening appreciate it. Yep We will see you guys next time on the battle frontier. Have a good week