Episode 2-2: IT'S THE MEGA SEASON

Hello, and welcome back to the Battle Frontier podcast, where we aim to help you level up in your journey as a competitive Pokemon TCG player. I'm Aaron Curry. Here with me as always is my co-host, Jon Orgel. Unfortunately, wasn't able to put together that bonus episode quite yet. It is still planned to be put together, so may be released at some point within the next couple of weeks. And just if you're on the lookout for it, it's going to be a discussion of how to prepare for locals as opposed to preparing for a major event and why there are potentially differences in doing so. But, you know, stay tuned for that at a later date. But today we're going to talk about some of the details that we got involving LAIC, hot off the presses today. And we're going to do our kind of cliff notes version of a set review for the upcoming Mega Evolution set, which has pre-releases starting this weekend. And just wanted to also make mention of the updated Players' Rules Handbook heading into regional season starting this weekend as well. But before we get into all of the details for today, I want to catch up with you, Jon. You've been gone for a week, man. So first, I want to know, how was your vacation? It was great. Yeah, we went to Montreal. Check that. I got the Expos hat on today. So my hair's all messy, I got a haircut and I like tried something new. So now I'm parting it this way instead of the way I've always parted it. So now I have to like mentally adjust, you know, first world problems. But Montreal was fun. It's really interesting because it's like such a French city. Like French is spoken before English in the city. And that took some adjustment because I was like, oh, it'll be like, you know, they just speak French as a, I don't know, nod to their history or something like that. But like, you know, if it's like a like the New Orleans Cajun, that kind of French. But it's no, it's French first, like everything is in French. So I was like, okay, you know, it's getting some used to that. But it was a lot of fun. There was a just a lot of good restaurants, some cool bars, a lot of cool historic, like buildings and neighborhoods and shopping and just, you know, it was a really cool city to visit. And we had like a nice hotel room and a nice high rise hotel. And so that was kind of nice to just come back to that at night and see the city, like start to turn the lights on and have a nice view in the morning when you wake up and have coffee or whatever. Yeah. So it's very relaxing, very nice to have a non Pokemon centered vacation. As much as I love Pokemon, it is fun to like, not be Pokemon John as they call me at my league for a weekend or a week long week. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. I did have to go right back to playing Pokemon because I am an addict. I played in a league challenge on we got back Saturday. I played in a league challenge on Sunday, just a three round league challenge. And I did get first in that. I played Golden Go. I played a myriad of other decks. I played against, I think it was Raging Bolt, but it was like a newer player. The first round I played against Dragapult in the second round. And then I played against a Roaring Moon deck the third round. And I would have tied with that Roaring Moon deck, even though like I won the game from the jump, like they never got a set up, never got anything going. And I was able to like execute on my end. But the game slowed down a little bit. Like, I think I was agonizing a little bit too long about stuff. And my opponent wasn't, you know, using like we were both being pretty slow. And time was called and I was turned zero. And it's like, shoot, if I just like finish that turn, I would have been able to finish it. So this was with, because we started September. This is with a plus one turn rules, right? Yep. So before you get in bed, before you get there, I want to know if this had been a plus three turns game. Would you have been able to finish? For sure. Yeah, there were, because I had one prize left. My opponent had three prizes left. They had, they had just Iona'd me to like one card. Yeah. And I had stacked the deck using cypher maniac. But I misplayed it by just putting like I put for whatever reason. I don't think I played the energy surge pro. Or if I played it, like I didn't get a really good value out of it. Or I can't remember exactly what happened. But I ended up putting like a superior energy retrieval. And then something else I think was just a basic energy or LaVinci or something like that on top of my deck. Okay. And I'm like, shoot, I could have just put like two SCRs or something like that, like something that was more effective. And so I ended up like, I wouldn't have had enough to get the KO on whatever was in there active. So that was frustrating. So my opponent, though, realized the situation, realized that there's no way that they win this game. Yeah. Even if like they tie. It's like he said to me, essentially, like, I don't want to have I don't want to tie this game. I think you you would win this game like if we kept playing. So I'm going to give you the win. So shout outs to I think his name was Dave. I'm really bad with names. So I apologize. But he's a super nice guy. It was just he said as much that he was just like a pokey dad there with his kid. So that was kind of cool. And it would have been his first challenge win. So I'm like, kind of grief in that. But so we did get the win. And it would have been if we both tied, he would have got first. Oh, really? And I would have got second. So it was just like, well, you know, I hate I hate to be like the Grinch on that. But like, it's also just like, well, you know, he's not wrong. Like if it were the old time rules, I would have won. But because it was the new time rules, it would have ended in a tie. So we're in. I was we're in 2025 now, man. Yeah, yeah. You got to play faster, right? A hundred percent. And that might just be like, I'm not too experienced with playing Golden Goat in person. And I hadn't been playing Pokemon, you know, all that much the last couple of weeks. So I was a little slower. I'm not trying to say like, you know, oh, my opponent was terrible or anything like that. It was just probably, you know, he's not super fast either. And so 30 minutes was plenty of time to finish that game. We were just playing too slow. Okay. So I think like I put that in the chat in one of my groups, like a friend group. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I love the new time rules. And everybody else is like, oh, my local players love them. And oh, everybody's giving me positive feedback so far. And I'm just like, okay, we'll see how that goes. And it'll be interesting to see, like, how it is in best of one versus best of three. And I don't know. I think there'll be some people that will probably be disappointed because they would have won a game if it was plus three. But who's to say, like, would they? You know, that's just that's a I hate to say, like, maybe that's a new skill you have to learn. That's something like you now have to practice and anticipate going into these tournaments. You know, we ramble a little bit too much about that. But everything's been good. Otherwise, you know, I will be going to Pittsburgh in two weeks as a judge. So I'm excited about that and just looking forward to starting the new season, man. So how about you? Lots of baseball and dad duties and such. Yeah. Just general life stuff. We did have not this past weekend. The weekend before we had our first baseball tournament went pretty good for the kids. Like they all of our kids actually pitched pretty well. Most of them hit pretty well and went two and two to come in third place. We went like one in one during our seating thing, won our first bracket game and then lost in like the semifinals. So it wasn't terrible for a first outing for a team that's got a bunch of kids that haven't played with us before. So, you know, looking forward to the season, it seems like it's going to be a good time. Unfortunately, I have had to deal with Florida like late summer, like pre-fall rain the past couple of weeks. So a lot of practices and stuff getting rained out. But we'll have to see. We've got another tournament coming up this weekend. And then I, unfortunately, will not be in Pittsburgh because it is the weekend of my son's birthday. So we will not be doing that. Happy birthday to him. Stick it out at home and deal with family time instead. Couldn't convince him to play Pokemon for his birthday. Nah. It was funny. He was actually talking to me about it earlier today. But I don't remember what the full context was, but eventually the conversation led to me asking him, you know what? Oh, he had asked me, like, how many times China has won worlds? Because that was like one of his big takeaways from watching things in the arena was that. And just randomly decided to ask me that on the way to school this morning. And I said, you know, why are you asking me this right now? Like, of all times. He's like, I don't know. I just wanted to know. I was like, are you interested in, like, learning more about the game and potentially learning how to play? He said, no, not really. I'm like, okay. Well, whatever. We'll move on. So, still have not made any progress on that. Yeah, it is what it is. Like, different kids. I'm going to support his interests. It would be nice if he did this as well. But it is what it is. You know, outside of that, I've actually been playing a lot more Pocket. Gotten back into that. And back up into Ultra 3. Like, almost Ultra 4. And still, those, like, Windstreak things are really treating me well. It helped that the new, like, Suicune Entei Raikou expansion dropped. And I actually opened a lot of the, like, better cards from that set really quickly. Which, that was the thing. The last set. The Ho-Oh Lugia one. Like, I didn't open anything. So, I had, like, no desire to even attempt to play games. And that's, I guess, the burden of being a free-to-play player in that type of competitive environment. And outside of that, I haven't been playing a ton of physical TCG. Or, like, TCG Live. It's mostly been Pocket. And then, I started playing Hollow Knight for the first time. Because Silksong came out last week. And that game looks. Silksong looks really cool. And apparently, from my understanding, it's actually similar, but also very different from Hollow Knight. And I don't know how I haven't played Hollow Knight before now. Because I absolutely love, like, the Metroid game series. And Hollow Knight is right up that alley. And so, that's been a lot of fun. And it has definitely kept me up later than I should be staying up multiple nights the past couple of weeks. Nice. Yeah, it looks like a fun game. I haven't dipped my toes in those waters. But I'm sure at some point, I'll pull the Switch out and play it or something like that. It's cheap, too. It's only, like, $15, $20. Yeah, that's, like, the development team for Hollow Knight is, like, three people. And it's, like, so crazy to, like, learn that. And they're, like, purposely keeping prices low. And, yeah, it's great. And they released a bunch of DLC. It was all free. They just poured it over. Unheard of in today's age. Patched it all to the game. So, that's, like, my update from the gaming world. But we've had other updates in the gaming world in the realm of Pokémon. And we've seen a lot of these, like, kind of varied Internet campaigns associated with the releases of new Mega Evolutions in Pokémon. And I wanted to get your opinion, John, on what you think of these new Megas that we've seen so far. So, we obviously got the reveal of Mega Dragonite, which had a bit of a mixed reception. Then we saw the, like, pseudo-horror, like, found footage thing for Mega Victory Bell. And then the theoretically, quote-unquote, full-length wrestling match for the reveal of Mega Hawlucha. And just now, I think tomorrow, we're queued up to see what looks to be Mega Malamar as well. As it has taken over the Pokémon company, including all of their social media accounts. And everyone's best friend is Malamar right now. So, what do you think of some of these new Megas, man? I mean, I like the marketing stuff, for sure. It's always fun, like, just when Pokémon becomes bigger than just the games and stuff. Like, it's fun to have, kind of, Pokémon be self-aware and kind of break the third wall in a lot of ways. And incorporate, like, the Malamar thing, where it's like, oh yeah, it's Malamar. Like, when they had the Bidoof Day, it feels like that. Very tongue-in-cheek, like, we know this is a joke. But it's also just like, yes, we're very serious about Malamar being the best Pokémon. And Malamar is like a weird one to get a Mega, but it's also like, okay, that's kind of cool. I think, like, I have a take on the Malamar thing, specifically. Sure. I don't know, what does Hawlucha look like? I didn't really see that one. He looks, do you know who Rey Mysterio is? Yeah. He looks like Rey Mysterio. Oh, so he's got, like, a different colored mask or something, like a bigger cape or something. Hold on, let me find it real quick. He's got a full, like... Yeah, I did see that Pokémon is doing, like, the collaboration with the Mexican Wrestling League. Yes. Like, the Luchador Wrestling League. I'm like, that's pretty sick. There was a staff call, I think, for professors to go and help with that. Really? It's like, well, if I spoke Spanish, maybe I could get away with it, but it would probably be difficult otherwise. Let's see. But yeah. So, this is Mega Hawlucha. Oh, that's pretty sick, honestly. Yeah. I mean, it's not, like, graphically, it's not that different. It's got, like, the boots are a little bit higher. Yeah. The cape's a little bit more pronounced, I guess. And, like, the feathers are bigger, and it's got the gold on the... Yeah. And then, yeah, like, the eyes are whited up. Yeah, he just picked up his, like... That's a good look. ...full Luchador mask to go on top of his already kind of predisposed, like, skin-based one, I guess, or feather-based one. Yeah. But that one's pretty cool. I think that my favorite is still Mega Victory Bell so far, because I think it's so goofy. It's very endearing in the goofy department. I like the found footage video. That was kind of funny. Right. It was just like, what are we... You know, we were expecting, like, something like... I don't even think it was going to be... Like, I don't know what I was expecting, what Pokemon it was going to be, but it definitely wasn't victory. No. Like, it was like, oh, this will be a... a ghost type or something like that. And it's just like, poison or poison type. And yeah, it's victory bell and it's like, Okay, I guess it but it's it's like, I remember when Oh, what was it? Let's chalk came out and it was like that kind of thing where it's just like randomly like people started loving it. Because it's weird. And what was it? There's other ones like that where it's just like Gumi, I think had the same kind of thing where that came out and people just love it because it's weird and different. I kind of like that Pokemon like leans into the fact that like, you know, just because a Pokemon is weird and different doesn't mean it doesn't deserve our love. Or if anything, it deserves more of our love. You know, I'm still holding out hope for mega ducklet. But I don't expect that to happen. Unlikely, man. Unlike, I mean, if ducklet didn't have an evolution, and it shouldn't doesn't look anything like ducklet. I'm here to just say like, that's by design. I'm sure you're aware. I mean, it but like swans are supposed to look better than the duck than the ugly duckling is then evolves into the swan. And they messed it up like ducklet looks perfect. And then swan, it looks terrible. So that you know, that that that all that all just falls apart when you just take any actual fair enough thought process and apply it. No, I don't know. Duckley got an IR. So that's the most most level probably ever get the ducklet. But whatever. I think there's a lot of cool stuff in Gen five, though, like Gen five, like the character design is pretty cool. So it's kind of cool to see some of these Pokemon get reinvented. Yeah. And that like, yeah, like Malamar mega Malamar will be pretty cool. I'm sure. Well, and that's so that's what I wanted to touch on before we move off of this. My assumption is like the way that they're gonna flip this all around is like, everyone's been like freaking out. Oh, my. Oh, yeah, exactly. My friend Malamar blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And my assumption is that he's like hypnotizing everybody. And that's going to be like the takeaway from it all is that it's just been like this mass hypnosis thing. And somehow I don't know what that's going to play. So there's been a very like, I actually don't know what Malamar normally looks like off the top of my head. But there's been like a squid. Well, right. But I'm trying to think of like the color scheme of it. And it's a lot of like purple and yellow, right? Or like black and yellow. And then it's got Yeah. There's been a big rainbow motif in that throughout this whole like, social media campaign on it. And so I don't I'm assuming that that's going to be incorporated somehow. Or maybe I'm totally overthinking this. And I have no idea what it's gonna look like. Yeah, it could be like a cuttlefish where it has like the rainbow on the sides. And that like that mesmerizes the praise of cuttlefish sometimes. And I'm gonna always pull that some animal always pulls from the cat dude. Pokemon pulls from the like the whole mega Venus Omega Victory Bell having like, there's like a gourd that they used for sure drinking out of that. Yeah, it's, it's funny because like the pitcher plan and then now it's a bigger than a pitcher is this drinking gourd or something like that. Yeah. So it's like they always pull from lore. They always do a good job of incorporating like actual real world stuff into these silly made up characters that we all love. But yeah, I could see that like definitely looks like you could have that kind of like cuttlefish rainbow on the like, because the cuttlefish like have a kind of sleek body like Malamar does on the like squid like body. Okay, it's cuttlefish are related to squid. And then they have, we're just gonna guess we're gonna just talk about Hey, go on the on the fins on the outside of it. They sometimes have like luminescent strips that will change colors to like, mesmerize prayer, like be distracting. So interesting. Yeah, it's a Yeah, you know, it's gonna be pretty cool. I'm looking at like, I'm looking at reuniclus right now. And I'm like, that'd be cool to see as a mega, you know, like some of these like stage twos that don't get a lot of love would be cool. Like a conch hold there would be cool. Well, we'll have to see what to see. What's your what's your Gen five book mind you want to see as a mega? chandelier? Hands down? Oh, it would be it would be either be chandelier or Excel gore. But then the problem is like if they did Excel gore, they would also have to do Escavalier. And I just don't believe that. Yeah. So chandelier. Maybe, like chandeliers are pretty popular Pokemon, too. So I wouldn't be surprised to see that. But I think that they'll probably keep up this kind of streak, like every two every week, or every two weeks, we'll probably get another one up until that game comes out. I think it comes out in like a month, or like a month and a half. So yeah, it's coming up real quick. Like, it's in October. I know that before you know, crazy. Yeah, another thing that'll be exciting for you know, it is la I see. And we got some just real quick to just to pop it up on the screen. We got information on registration today. So things will go live as you can see here, September 23, in the evening, so 7pm BRT, which is 6pm Eastern Time, or 3pm Pacific Time. And then if you miss wave one, wave two is the following morning 9am BRT or 8am Eastern Time, 5am Pacific Time. So if you're on the West Coast, try to do wave one, if at all possible. I don't think I don't think you want to do wave two. And wave two honestly strikes me more as being for Europe. Like if they were trying to design things that way, rather than just trying to fit everybody in I think it'll be interesting to see what the cap is for this. I was also pleasantly surprised because I've never actually bothered to look at the prices for la I see previously, like 300 real is really reasonable considering how much like a regional is like 75 bucks. This is like $55. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean, I know that some players, because what happened originally was they announced it was like 350 real for regionals this year. And like, there was a huge pushback from the Brazilian community on that. Because like, just the it's it's it's affordable for us as us, but not necessarily affordable for people living in Brazil. Yeah. So I you know, it's, it's like privilege to say, yeah, that's affordable for us. And it is. I'm not saying that. But yeah, it is definitely a nice change of pace after we've been paying now $70 for every regional you have to pay. So yeah, that's, that's kind of nice. And then let me click around here on the website real quick. They also revealed what the competitor kit looks like. Maybe it's in here. Unfortunately, it's not so it looks like the theme as not should be a surprise to nobody. They showed it in the kind of the promo video for the season, but the theme will be mega evolutions. And a competitor into that's where I am right now. So starting off with la I see you can see we've got a nice mega Venusaur theme going on here. Presumably, you know, we have mega Venusaur in the mega evolution set. So not super surprised to see it here. My guess is that you I see is then going to be mega Charizard because by then we'll have the mega phantasm set. And then presumably the third mega evolution sets going to have blastoids in it and we'll have blastoids roll around right in time for NAIC. So I think this appeals to me a lot more than the ogre pawn stuff did. And maybe that just makes me like a big boomer for wanting these liking the gen one Pokemon more than I like. Oh, you're truly on. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't know. I think it's it's exciting to have this out there. And I think for me personally, it's exciting because this is probably the first event that I'm actually going to attempt to register for for the season. And so definitely looking forward to that. Hopefully I'll get it. I still haven't heard about anything far as me judging. So I'll let you guys know when I do. But they did the whole staff call already, right? Like, did you already apply to judge for some? Huh? Did you already apply to staff? I did apply. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And if they've given out I think some letters of acceptance to like the leadership positions, but I think they stopped the fill out. And then I think my Brazilian friend that I've like who had on the we had on the podcast Mateus he'll be I think he received a staff call. So like maybe they've done the Brazilian judges and then they're still working through the rest of it. So still holding out hope but you know, I'll be cool either way. I got to do a crazy amount last year. So I mean, like, it's all it's all gravy at this point. Like, would I love to go to Brazil? Yes. But like, I'm not gonna, you know, my PTO got kind of shredded the last two months, which is I'm not complaining about but it's just like the reality of it. So would you sign up to play if you didn't get a staff call? No, not at this point. Okay, that just doesn't make sense for me to try to go for that. Especially like, it's pretty expensive to go down to Brazil. It's not like crazy, but it's not. Yeah, it would be cheap. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's like 3400. I think maybe more. I haven't really looked at it to be honest. But like, that wasn't my intent was like, if I get accepted to staff, I'll go but like, if I go, like, I don't think I'll register to play. Okay. Fair enough. But yeah, I'm excited to see like, more as we get closer to it and see kind of we have a new organizer for the event instead of we have we have what is it called off the top of my head? I don't know. I'm gonna look stupid. I don't remember. But yeah, so it'll be interesting to see how they execute it. Whether they're changing anything up, whether Pokemon gives more support now that somebody new because they haven't had a Pokemon Center at LA I see ever. So that'll be interesting to see if they try to do that. They haven't really done the whole crazy, like fan experience stuff that they've had at any I see in LA and you I see. So I mean, they do some of it, but they don't have like, the museum or but yeah, so that'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. In addition to all the LAC information, with the start of the new season, we had some changes to the professor program, but we've also had an update to the tournament rule handbook. And then Pokemon has kind of spaced it out a little bit. So it used to be just like one document covered all the games. Now if you go to in the rules and resources page, as of September 1, we had the tournament rule handbook kind of in one section, but now there's a Pokemon TCG rules and resources in addition to the rules and resources for all. So this is specific to the TCG. So there's the Pokemon TCG rulebook, which was there. But then there's also the Pokemon TCG tournament handbook. So in an effort to, I guess, make it easier to find the information you're trying to find, they've spaced it out a little bit, because now they have one for Go. They have one for Unite, and they have one for VG as well. So that'll be good. And they go into more in-depth stuff about each game and each that. And then there's an overarching, in addition to not just having a tournament rule, like they had the tournament rules handbook, but they also have, interestingly, the penalty guidelines as a separate document. Because that used to just be thrown into the tournament rules handbook. So this is something that if you guys plan on playing in a regionals level event or higher, please, please, please read through the, if you're playing TCG, the tournament rules handbook, the penalty guidelines, and then the TCG tournament rules, tournament handbook. Those will help you so much as far as figuring out what your judges that are running the event, what they're going off of, and what's expected of you as a player, and what is expected of you when you do like a gentleman's agreement or something like that, or at end-of-round stuff, or on stream, if you go up on stream, like what's expected you in those scenarios. It's all laid out there. Pokemon's done a really good job of, especially with the new documents, of being very in-depth with all of it, like going through all of this. I went through and started looking through it today. I didn't realize, honestly, that they had separated it all out until I tried judging. Well, I didn't try judging. I was judging my league challenge yesterday, and I was trying to find the penalty guidelines in the tournament rules handbook, and I didn't realize, oh, Pokemon's put them in a separate document. So now, yeah, I mean, that was an error on my part. So now I'm reading through all of the different documents. And there's some stuff that's been codified that hasn't been in there in the past. Specifically, we've got the 16-minute time extension thing. Yeah, that one, thank you. And then, yeah, just some other stuff in there. But like I said, there's not a huge amount of new information, but there's enough to where it would be really helpful if you're a returning player or somebody that's going to play at Pittsburgh to just go ahead and read through those documents. There's so many players that assume that they know what the rules are, and then so many arguments, or not arguments, but discussions happen when you get to the table, and the players both assume one thing, and then you pull out the rulebook and read it to them, and they're like, oh, OK, that's not what at all I was assuming. It'll be interesting to see what guidance we get, if any, about slow play or any of that stuff in the lead up to Pittsburgh. I haven't gotten much guidance yet, but I'm sure it will be a talking point in the lead up with leadership. There is noticeably not that one thing that's omitted is, I think, in tournament rule handbooks in the past, there has been a section that says something along the lines of, it's OK to adjust your pace of play and then speed it back up. That's not in there anymore. So there's nothing in there about taking longer for your first initial deck search. So It'll be interesting. I don't know exactly the route that we're going to try to go as judges. And also, it's such a bugaboo to tackle slow-play issues because it ties you up at a table for at least five minutes or so when you're watching a table. And it's important, for sure. But it's very hard to train judges on. You have to have a really good understanding of not just the tournament guidelines and say, OK, it's 15 seconds after they do a shuffle. Sure. But if they take 30 seconds but then do three actions back-to-back-to-back, I think that's still in the handbook, is that please understand that these are just guidelines and that it's, what does it say? Let me read it so I don't just self-incriminate. But let's see. There's still some level of subjectivity to it, right? Exactly. That's where we're getting after. So it just says, these are guidelines only and should be considered within the context of normal gameplay. So if you've been playing the game for any period of time, if a game grinds to a halt, that's something we definitely need to address. But yeah, there are times where there's a give and take. It's more like chess, where you're making one move and then making a bunch of moves after that. So that can happen. So it'll be interesting to see how we tackle all of this as judges and if there's any changes to all of that. I don't know how much I'm able to talk about when it comes to behind-the-scenes stuff with all that. But I feel like transparency. And one section that I did start writing down was just that, as a judge, you should be able to basically explain your rulings and explain the guiding principles and thought processes behind those rulings whenever you're making those rulings. And I think that's in the handbook now. And that's something I'm like, oh, that's really cool to see. As a judge, that really emphasizes that whenever I'm making calls and saying, I need to be able to defend this to the most stickler of a player, the player that's going to say, oh, actually, this is in the ruling. And most players are pretty forgiving, but the ones that will really try to push you on something. I get it. We're not playing for scraps anymore. We're playing for real dollar value. So we need to make sure that we're not just basing our conclusions on something that is contrived, but has a basis and all that stuff. But anyways, I could talk way too long about tournament rule handbooks and all that stuff. I think you guys will probably tune out at some point. But just to reiterate, go ahead and read through all that. And then if you have any questions or are confused about anything, feel free to reach out to me. I'm always available to talk about rulings. I always love hearing people's questions and thoughts and feedback and all that stuff, because it makes me a better judge whenever people are asking those kind of questions, and it makes for a better community. So it'd be cool to see. Awesome. Well, hey, I think we've had a good halfway point in the episode. Why don't we take a break and head into Blaine's quiz show for the week? Sounds great, Aaron. So those of you that might be newer or missed last week's episode, let's see. We'll get you plugged into Blaine's quiz show here. All right, so if you guys aren't familiar, Blaine's quiz show is a little quiz show we do every week. I'm Aaron, I'm gonna give you three multiple choice questions. If you are truly stumped on any of those questions, you will have one hint you can use at any time. If you are able to answer all three questions without the use of the hint, though, you will receive a bonus point. So you'll get one point for each question you answer correctly, and then an additional point if you don't use your hint. Are you ready? I am ready. And just a quick update as we head into question one. John did take down all three of my prepared questions for him on our last episode. So he started off season two of the show up three to zero currently, and we'll have to see, can I surpass him with a perfect score? All right, good luck. Today's topic is Ash, the champion. So Ash has had quite the storied career as a Pokemon trainer, and I'm gonna ask you some questions about that, especially his championship fights. So which of the following Pokemon are not on Ash's team that he uses to defeat Drake to become the Orange Island's champion? So this is after, I don't know how familiar you are with the anime, but it's after the first season. Yeah, yeah, it's between like Red and Blue and between like, between Red and Blue and Gold and Silver basically, or between Kanto and Johto. You got it. So is it Tauros, Lapras, Bulbasaur, or Snorlax? Which of the following is not on his team? Okay, so I know Lapras is because he was always riding Lapras around between all the islands. So that's a given. I'm pretty sure Tauros is as well. So I'm stuck now between Bulbasaur and Snorlax. I think the Orange Islands are where he picked up Snorlax, but I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly or not. I think like during this whole series, he like swaps his Pokemon around a couple of times. I really don't want to use the hint. I really want to go for four. Which was not on his team. So his team for sure would be Pikachu. So we've got Pikachu, Charizard, Tauros, Lapras. But what would the other two be? Okay, I'm going to, or was Tauros on Drake's team? Oh gosh, now I'm stuck. Okay, I'm gonna go with Bulbasaur. I'm gonna go with Bulbasaur because I think he got the Snorlax in the Orange Islands. All right, Aaron. He did get a Snorlax in the Orange Islands. Unfortunately, you were so close. He traded that Snorlax in to Professor Roke to get Tauros for this fight specifically. So it was Snorlax that he did not have on his team. Well, shucks. Okay, okay, we're gonna rally back. We're gonna rally back. So close. Yeah, all right, all right. Question number two. Ash defeats what trainer to become champion? I misspelled champion, just disregard of Alola. Was it the Masked Royale, Gladeon, Nanu, or Acerola? I don't know the answer to this one. I know it's not Nanu or Acerola, but I don't know which of the other two it is. I know he, I think he fights both of them, but I have no idea if he beat either of them. Or is Ash the champion of Alola? Is that like a fact? He is the champion of Alola. I thought his whole thing where he beat Leon was like the first time he won anything. Oh gosh. It was the first time he became the world champion. Okay. I think it was like, he's like the best trainer in the world. Like that was the end of the 25 year arc of all that. Gotcha. Okay. We will go with, I'm going to go with Masked Royale. Oh, you're so close once again, but incorrect. It is Gladeon. He plays, he faces the Masked Royale after facing Gladeon in an exhibition match after winning the champion title. I'm not, I'm not starting on five, man. It's all right, man. You got one more question. You still have your hand. So let's get to that one. You can salvage it. All right. Which Pokemon was not on Ash's team when he won the tournament to become the world champion in Pokemon Ultimate Journeys? Was it Sirfetch'd, Gengar, Charizard, or Lucario? It's Charizard. Final answer? Yeah. All right. You are correct. It's Charizard. We won't slow roll that one. That was the most modern one, 2022, I think. So yeah, he had a weird team looking back at it. But yeah, Charizard, weirdly enough, was not on there after being kind of the pseudo face of the franchise after Pikachu and being such an important part in Ash's journey. But yeah, he used a lot of his newer Pokemon for this one. I mean, Leon had a Charizard. They couldn't both have a Charizard. Yeah. You never know. It's because they had the whole thing where like Leon's got like the Gigantamax Charizard. So Ash had what? Gigantamax Pikachu, or no, Gigantamax Gengar. Or I guess they both could. Oh, you're right. But then he had like, because this was the thing where he had like, he had like Mega Pokemon and a Z-Move and a Gigantamax there, right? So he had like Mega Lucario and Gigantamax Gengar and like the Super Pikachu Z-Move. And, you know, somehow beat the guy that only had one of those gimmicks. Shocker. Yeah. I mean, I'm not here to dispute his title, but yep. So you did not become the champion of trivia this week. I did not. I did horrible. Only getting one of three. You know, it's okay. It's a process. The season is long. This is just the second step on the journey. And I'm sure you'll have plenty of chances to smack me into, you know, humility in the weeks to come, but yep. I think the worst part of that was that I should have gotten that first question correct because I still have, so I read to my son pretty much every night or have it sort of just like be a mix of one of us is reading. But he, at one point we went through all of the OG like nineties Pokemon books, which are just written versions of the episodes. So I've read through the entire Orange Islands arc. That's extra embarrassing though. I really should have gotten that question correct. No, I made it a little trickier. So the card shop I was working at today, they had the Orange Island series, especially like the last one where he beats, what's his name? Drake. Okay. And so like that was, it was fresh in my memory, you know, not fresh in yours. It's not fair. But I'm sure you'll find some devious questions for me to answer next week. And I can only hope that I can keep my lead up as we continue Blaine's quiz show, so. Yeah, we'll see. So final scores heading out of Blaine's quiz show this week are three points for John and one for Aaron. And we are gonna go ahead and close out the back half of the episode with just a quick overview of the upcoming mega evolution expansion for which pre-releases are starting this upcoming weekend. So just to get this out of the way, we do obviously have a couple of regionals happening this weekend. John and I agreed before the show started that we don't feel like the meta has changed super significantly from worlds to now. There've been a couple of kind of iterations on decks like some Dragapult lists or other decks opting to include the Toadstool line to counter at Goldengo. I think we'll have to see kind of what rises to the top in both of these regions as far as what is, you know, the most effective. But the online scene has trended toward Dragapult continuing to be successful, Goldengo continuing to be successful, Gardevoir continuing to be successful, and just a smattering of other decks being also kind of up in the mix, including Grimmsnarl, Raging Bolt, Joltik Box. We haven't really seen a pickup of Zurark, so maybe it won't kind of perform the same way that it did at worlds now that the cat is out of the bag, but I wouldn't necessarily say the rest of the meta has shaken up all too significantly, but I would love to be proven wrong this weekend. Yeah, I do want to make some predictions real quick. Oh, go for it. Yeah, go for it. So one I have is a region outside, so these will all be true or false. I think that'll just be nice, quick and easy. A region outside the reporting region will win both tournaments, true or false. So there's more regions competing, but there's less players competing, but we have North American players definitely have plenty going to Mexico, and then in EU, we've had, you know, even Japanese players come over and win. So do you think, Aaron, we will have two outside the regional players? No, that's a- Outside the region. That's a big false. Like, I do think a North American player, whether it's US or Canada, will win Mexico, but I think a European's gonna win Frankfurt for sure. Gotcha. All right, I'll pick true just to be contrarian. All right, second question. The winning list will have Badu, true or false? For- Of either tournament. Of either, just one of the tournaments will be. So do I think, basically the question is, do I think Dragapult will win one of the regionals? I'm gonna go with false. I think that we'll see a good amount of Dragapult in cut, but ultimately you'll see the win come down to Goldengo or Gardevoir or, I still have faith in Grimmshire. I know a lot of other people don't, but I still think that it's up there, and I think that it also has a good Dragapult matchup. Sure, okay. Sure, and then the last one, Gardevoir will win one of the third tournaments this weekend. True. Okay. Hard, fast, true. Somebody- Oh, and for the last one, I picked true for the Badu will be in one of the winning lists. And then I, you said true for that. I'll pick false just to be contrarian. John, we're allowed to agree on something. No, couldn't be me. But there you have it. So one of us is going to be woefully correct, and the other one will be woefully incorrect as we arrive into next week. Or mixed bag. That's also possible. I guess that's true. It is true, you're right. That is possible to kind of be a mixed bag, you're right. But you probably will win them all. We'll see, we'll see. We'll have to see for sure. But yeah, I think, was that your last prediction there? Yep, just wanted to do three real quick, and we'll see how it shakes out next week. Let us know your thoughts down in the comments for the episode below. But now we can go ahead and jump into the Mega Evolution Expansion. So obviously this is comprised of the Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia expansions, along with a couple of reprints, much to the chagrin of certain individuals like myself. But the first card is a brand new card, and that is Acerola's Mischief, which you can also find on Amazon. only play if your opponent has two or fewer prize cards remaining, you choose one of your Pokemon and play and during your opponent's next turn prevent all damage from and effects of attacks done to that Pokemon by attacks from your opponent's Pokemon EX. So kind of like the similar category of card is Briar only instead of letting you win the game from that position, it prevents you from losing the game in that position. And that type of reactivity typically makes cards worse on average. And I think the fact that this only protects one specific Pokemon means that you'd have to have a really a deck that is kind of built around this being your endgame play. And that can be possible, but I think that it becomes really difficult when you have kind of tangential ways or like ways to kind of circumvent this like dust noir, like monkey Dory, or just attacking with a non EX Pokemon in a lot of cases as well. But I, it's hard for me to say this card is bad. I just think that it's really niche in its application. Yeah, I think I'm there with you on that. It's not bad, but it's definitely like it's cool game design. I'd say, yeah. Historically, defensive cards are less powerful than offensive cards, allowing your opponent to be able to have a way to play around this doesn't seem very good. So I would probably side with you on that saying it's probably it's cool, but it's not good. You know, another card that is not cool, but is good is bosses orders bosses order probably getting reprinted. Interestingly, we don't have new artwork yet. Maybe we will get it once legends Arceus comes out and we get something from some new character from that game. Since it's already been reprinted with an updated regulation mark, they might as well give us new artwork for it. Nope. Next. Next thing is dangerous ruins. Whenever either player puts a non dark basic Pokemon onto their bench put to damage counters on it. So like gave job bog, except also works with things like buddy, buddy, puffin and nest ball, which is something that has kind of been a weakness of those cards in the past was that they had to be played from your hand specifically. Now this just makes monkey Dory really, really, really good. Yeah, there's definitely some situations where you want to damage your own Pokemon and this does a really good job of that. So yeah, it'll be good in like DLC. I think there's like a dragon deck that uses grandpa to attack if you have one that's on a bench that's damaged, it does extra damage for like, to energy. There's like a decent amount. So this will probably go into that deck for sure. But yeah, so the next one's just a reprint energy switch. This is kind of like a base set. It's not kind of like a base set. It is a base set. Yeah, it's a new block. We're starting a new set of sets essentially. So we're going to see a lot of cards that get reprinted every time they do that. And some aren't like we don't have did we get professors research still? I can't remember. So that's a new one. We're not getting not a new one. But that's something that I don't think strongly admitted. Yeah, I don't think that that's been reprinted yet. We're fighting gongs pretty cool. I haven't really looked at all of these to be honest with you. Super recently. I remember like reading them when they got announced in Japan, but I haven't looked at them since then. So this is search deck for a basic fighting Pokemon or a basic fighting energy card, reveal it and put it into your hand, then shuffle your deck. So similar to team magma ball for all those true GLC heads out there. Except that it expands out to all fighting Pokemon, not just magma Pokemon, but it still has the basic fighting energy effect. So that's kind of cool. Good for fighting decks. It'll be interesting to see if it sees a much play. Very like situational but like we've seen like, you know, what was the card? mysterious treasure and then the fog crystal psychic one fog crystal. Thank you. Yeah, that was played a lot. But it's like he had a lot more going for it. And well, that's why crystal got out any psychic Pokemon. So this is kind of limited on basics, but it doesn't have the disadvantage that can sometimes be an advantage of discarding effect. So we'll see. I do think that it's just a good card, though. I mean, you essentially get to replace all of your nest balls with fighting gongs, and they get the added benefit of being either a nest ball or an energy search for the entire game, which is pretty good. Just, you know, versatile cards are obviously stronger than limited ones. Iron Defender is not worth talking about. It's just reduces damage and your metal Pokemon like john mentioned earlier, reactive cards are generally pretty bad. I guess worth noting that this is a blanket effect on all of your Pokemon. So it's not necessarily something that your opponent can remove. So it's better. It's kind of better than something like full metal lab, but not super great. card that is super great is Lily's determination. So shuffle your hand and your deck, then draw six cards. If you have exactly six price cards remaining, draw eight instead. So a lot of our decks that like to come from behind like Gardevoir, like Dragapult, like Grimmsnarl, basically stage two decks just love this card. And a lot of them unless they are actively looking for a means to discard cards from their hand like Gardevoir, you're going to swap all of your copies of research for copies of Lily's determination and just play from that board state of being able to draw a I mean, draw eight is such a big number. Oh, yeah. I mean, we had that back with like, what was the guy if you used your GX attack, you could draw it. I think it was like, nah, kukui isn't kukui. It was this sun and moon guy. Cobb, Cobb. No, that's out of my depth, man. I don't know. You're good. But we haven't really seen draw eight shuffle dry before. This is definitely the best variant we've ever seen of that. And then usually there's like a bigger downside like shuffle, draw five and then shuffle dry. And this is just shuffle draw six and like youngsters shuffle draw five. Like there's no reason for this card to be this good. Like it should probably be closer to youngster if we're being honest. But hey, you know, like, this is pretty broken. Like, hey, it's a better shuffle draw than I own. Oh, I mean, that's not shuffle draw, but you get what I'm saying. So yeah, it definitely will see play like this will probably be the most played card from the set, if I'm honest. Just because especially at the beginning of this format. When we, we haven't really had a huge depth of shuffle and draw supporters or just draw supporters. We've had like research and I don't know, but I don't know is okay. Like it's a really good disruption supporter. It's an okay draw supporter, right? You know, especially late game, it just doesn't do much. This will allow you if you're a combo deck or a stage two deck will allow you to get all your pieces you need a lot more effectively. And yeah, it'll be interesting to see how how big of an impact that makes on consistency of decks. And if like stage two decks become more consistent because of it. And I have to say that they probably will. And I do think that non stage two decks will still play this card. Because like you said, shuffle draw six is not bad. By any means. I mean, that is an Iona when you're I mean, like you said, it's not really a shuffle draw because those cards are going away guaranteed. But you're still the people played Cynthia back when it was legal. And that was just a straight shuffle draw six. So this is being Cynthia with an upside, undoubtedly will be a four of and many, many decks for the entire length of its legality. Lieutenant surge is super skippable, but it's a funny meme card. It is a funny meme card. And then they reprinted Forest of Giant Plants. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty crazy that this card came out. It doesn't seem like it was as crazily positioned as Forest of Giant Plants as we don't have a vile bloom or decidueye that we have to worry about as much tree. Yeah, gosh, that was if you're really if you want us old heads to ever go down our road, we can talk about shifter. So we'll do that on the time capsule. Yeah, we'll do that one week. But yeah, for lush forest just to read the text, each player's grass Pokemon can evolve into another grass Pokemon during the turn they are played. And those Pokemon can't evolve during their first turn. So it does kind of fix one of the glaring issues that Forest of Giants plants had was that you could burn through your deck and evolve up into like a really disruptive stage two Pokemon before your opponent got a turn. This kind of counters that, but it's still really a broken really, really maybe not broken was the right word, but like a really good solid, cool effect of a stadium to see. Absolutely. I mean, do you look at card like Forest of Giant Plants or Broken Time Space? The thing that's a little disappointing is that it is specifically limited to grass Pokemon. But I think that it is neat and potentially makes a lot of grass Pokemon worth taking a second look at for sure. Especially things that have like coming into play abilities. Like if something has like there's a there is a vile plume that had the gloom and vile plume have abilities that when you evolve them, you look at the top x I don't remember what the number is cards of your deck, and you get to accelerate energies into play from your deck based on when you evolve them. So something like that is potentially playable if you have something that goes that you can utilize with that energy acceleration engine. Is it the best thing in the world? Probably not. But it's something that you can look at and test out. Next up, we basically got the Terra orb but for mega Pokemon. So search your deck mega signal searches your deck for a mega evolution Pokemon EX reveal it put into your hand shuffle your deck decent probably a one of and if your deck plays mega evolutions, for sure. Mysterious garden another stadium. What's doing each player's turn that player might discard an energy card from your hand in order to draw cards until they have as many cards as they have psychic Pokemon on play. So I think this card was like seen as something really broken and good for Garde. I mean, discarding psychic makes sense. It's good to have that ability and it's not a bad stadium. I could see this being included in Garde but I don't think it's as broken as people might have thought it was at the start of like this. Because your hand size is usually you know, I wouldn't say like, you run ultra balls and ways to thin out your hand, but it's okay. And like I've heard some Garde players say like, this is okay. Like it doesn't. I don't know. I will probably test it and see how it feels. But I'm not like floored by it. I think as much as some other players might be, I don't know how you feel about it. It wouldn't surprise me to see it as a one of but I think a lot of times the stadium slot in Gardevoir is saved for artisan just because the deck wants to set up. And while this potentially helps you set up, you have to be able to find your basics first still, whereas if you have the artisan artisan in play, you're getting your basics out. So it's kind of like it's a weird balance of things, but I wouldn't be totally surprised to see it as a one of I think that thing that would make more sense was if we had an aggressive psychic deck, it would almost certainly play this card. Sure. Just to prevent itself from being ionode low and not having a way to recover. I mean, it's a great card. Like if you get six Pokemon in play, you can just discard and draw up to six for the effect of a stadium every turn like that's pretty good. That's really good. That's absolutely so it'll see play and might not be in Garde but it'll see play on. Yeah, go ahead. I'm gonna skip Pokemon Center lady, which is a print of a promo card from Japan. It's a reprint of a sword and shield card. Criminal that it's not Nurse Joy. Nurse Joy doesn't exist in Paldea, man. I know, but we did get Premier Power Pro, which is like what? The Electro Power or the what was the fusion strike tablet? Is that what it's called? Yeah, something like that, like that, whatever. So during your turn, the attacks used by your fighting Pokemon do 30 more damage to your opponent's active Pokemon. The cards that people are talking about with this are notably the Megalucario EX from this set or Cynthia's Garchomp EX as well. So being able to utilize something like that and get around having to not include as many copies of Roserade in your deck while still being able to hit even higher damage thresholds with an item card, not terrible. Cards like this are typically pretty good, like Electro Power was always really good. The fusion tablet was obviously a four of in Mew VMAX decks throughout the entirety of that deck's existence. At some point, there will probably be a if there is a good fighting deck, it's probably because of this card. So I would go ahead and grab four copies of it as soon as the set drops. Yeah, we got a reprint of Rare Candy. So that's fine. We got Repel, which I think had been printed in an older set. No, this is not. This is a new one. No, it's OK. Sun and Moon. The fact that I don't know that tells you how bad this card is. The effect is switch out your opponents active with one active Pokemon to the bench. So like a one sided escape rope, which is a reference that some of our listeners might not even get, which is crazy. But yeah, just like a worse Pokemon catcher, essentially. It's an iron bundle on an item card. There you go. Iron bundle is probably better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The next thing would be Surfing Beach. Once during each player's turn, that player may switch their active water Pokemon with one of their bench water Pokemon. This is a nice out for Palafin, not needing to play Pachirant anymore, necessarily. Still probably doesn't make Palafin good, unfortunately, but it's an option. And it may be it's a piece of the puzzle that it didn't have previously. I think that it's neat. At the very least. Yeah, it's a cool mechanic. I don't know if there's anything else that really utilizes it well, though. Nothing comes to mind for me. Palafin was like the first and only thing, pretty much. Next one is Suspicious Clock. It says devolve one of your it's just an item card. It says devolve one of your psychic Pokemon by returning any number of evolution cards on it to your hand. So you can go from a stage to all the way back to the basic of that psychic Pokemon. So, yeah, it's the evolution. We've seen some cards like the evolution spray. This is a little bit more powerful, but it is limited to psychic Pokemon. There are some psychic Pokemon that like we, I think, hinted at have effects that are triggered whenever you evolve. And we'll cover some of the Pokemon in this set. Um, but yeah, that's it seems pretty good. Uh, there's nothing that like screams out to me like this card makes this combo inevitably broken in my mind. Um, but it is, it is a cool card and we'll see if it really comes into the forefront at any point in the meta. Sure. Sure. A couple more reprints. We got switch and ultra ball. And then the last trainer card for the set is Wally's compassion, uh, heal all damage from one of your mega evolution Pokemon EX. If you healed any damage in this way, put all energy attached to that Pokemon into your hand. Uh, this is specifically built to work with the first mega evolution that we're going to talk about, which is mega Venusaur. Although it also could theoretically work with any like low energy mega evolution EX something like the mega guard of war, which attacks for one, um, not terrible. Like these, especially the stage two megas have a ton of HP. And in some circumstances, this could be considered very comparable to something like Turo for those Pokemon. Um, but it doesn't have the switching effect that you, or the utility. It's just some, again, if you've got a dedicated mega evolution, like tank type deck, which is what mega Venusaur is designed to be, this works with it, but is it the best? Probably not. Yeah. We saw some there, like we saw Cheryl, I believe when we had the V maxes not too long ago, and that saw some playing in like some decks. Um, so this kind of feels like that. Um, I could see it, you know, if there's a tank deck or something like that, we haven't really had one of those recently, but with the advent of 380 HP Pokemon in play, um, this could get some play in that regard, but yeah, definitely it's okay. And now we're turning all the way to the top. We're going to just quickly run through the Pokemon because unfortunately, most of the Pokemon in the set are not very good. Uh, first thing up is the mega Venusaur line. So Bulbasaur notably has a corner type attack. Also notably cannot buddy Poffin for it, which is pretty bad. But if you do get your Bulbasaur into play with that lush forest, you can go Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, and straight into mega Venusaur EX with a massive 380 HP and the solar transfer ability that reads as often as you like during your turn, you may use this ability, move a basic grass energy from one of your Pokemon to another of your Pokemon. So just energy transfer and for four grass jungle dump for 240 damage and heal 30 from this Pokemon. And this card in a lot of ways to me reads like a Pokemon pocket card. And because of that breeding, like a Pokemon pocket card in the physical TCG makes me feel like this card is bad, but it's, it's, it is really big though. Yeah, definitely like the attacking and damage is kind of lackluster in this day and age, like two forties a lot, but it doesn't really one shot much as far as what's meta relevant at the moment. Um, like raging bolt, sure. All the basics EXs, but when you get into like stage twos and all that, um, but yeah, there's definitely some synergy like we talked about with, uh, the Wally. Um, we've just looked at, um, and yeah, you can think that you can max push in it after you've been hit up just takes a lot of, we'll see some stuff that will help with some of the energy costs, but like, it's, it's hard to get stage twos in play and it's hard to get that many energies on them. Um, you know, it's got a four retreat cost. So if you want to like preserve one on the bench, it gets kind of hard to do that. I guess we have the big air balloon if you're going crazy with some ideas, but I don't know. It's, it's, it's good, you know, but is it great? Is it meta relevant? Probably not. The only way I could see the scene play is you get your mega Venusaur, you evolve it all the way up through the line, and then you use relic camp to copy bind down. And that's your main strategy is basically corner locking with a 400 HP Pokemon and hoping that that's enough to outlast your opponent. Like a four counter catcher, Lily's determination, never planned to actually take a prize card, play Wally's to heal the thing after it gets hit. And that seems like a lot of work to maybe win the game. Yeah. I think there might be a strategy further down the road when we get more grass megas. Oh, yeah. Like, be able to use this as a support Pokemon the way we use like Hydreigon or Arumatis as an energy trans partner. And this is just like something that's massive that can sit on your bench. Like, yeah, you don't have to worry about it getting knocked out. If it gets brought up and hit, you can kind of retreat it or switch it back to the active. In theory, if there's a way to like, you know, facilitate that. I mean, the main reason why Darkrai Hydreigon worked is because Darkrai was so good. And then, yeah, you were able to abuse another broken card in Max Potion that should have never got printed. So we're not quite at that stage. But hey, like, yeah, energy trans are cool. Like we've seen, you know, Kling Klang even. I'm sorry, I didn't shout that out to begin with. But yeah, it's okay. Kind of providing that support role I just talked about with the ability of wild growth is Meganium stage two with 168 points. Non-EX Pokemon has the ability wild growth. Each basic grass energy attached to your Pokemon provides two grass energy. You can apply more than one wild growth ability at a time. And then the attacks, whatever, for two grass, two colorless, you're doing 140. It's a pretty good attack, or pretty good ability rather. 160 is not a lot of HP anymore, but it's enough. And yeah, it's a relevant ability. We've seen it in GLC. We've seen it somewhat in like previous iterations of decks, but not recently. So in the standard format, at least. So I don't know. I don't think I'm playing this if I'm playing Venusaur, to be honest with you. Just getting two stage two set up seems like a lot of hassle. For sure. I don't know if this card has a place in standard unfortunately. But again, because Lush Forest exists, this is always going to be something you need to keep in mind while it is standard legal. In case something comes up that just needs like two energy to get going, and you could do that with a single attachment, it's worth looking into. Shuckle. Meta relevant Shuckle. Well, it pairs up with that Venusaur. Once during your turn, if this Pokemon has any grass energy attached, you can heal 30 from one of your Pokemon. So you move an energy from Venusaur to Shuckle, heal 30, move it back to Venusaur, and you keep going on your merry way. And so it stops kind of chip damage strategies, kind of mitigates like Monkey Dory, like slowly pinging down your board a little bit. But again, like this card is only decent if Venusaur is good. And I really struggle to see Venusaur being truly good at the end of the day. I think that closes us out for grass Pokemon. And unfortunately for Mega Camerupt, Fire doesn't look super great either. The only like Fire Pokemon that's maybe worth talking about is Cinderace. Yep. Cinderace, stage two, with the ability Explosiveness. I'm sure that'll be a different one in English. If this Pokemon is in your hand, when you are setting up to play, you may put it down as your active Pokemon. So kind of a throwback to Talonflame from, what was that, Flashfire? No, that was Steam Siege. Steam Siege, thank you. That was somewhat played. This has the attack Flare Turbo for one fight, sorry, one colorless. Search your deck for up to three basic energy cards and attach them to your bench Pokemon any way you like, then shuffle your deck. And it does 50 damage. Yeah, 30. Is that 30 or 50? It's 50, I'm sorry. Oh, you're good. So 50 damage. So truthfully, the fact that it's colorless, and it just says basic energy, it doesn't limit it to Fire. We could see a world where like, you know, if a fighting deck or a deck that doesn't usually have energy acceleration needs ways to do that. And you don't run a lot of basic Pokemon, and you run four copies of this, you know, it's not that bad. Like, it's pretty good. Do I think that this will replace anything? No, probably not. But it's a cool card. You know, I like the ability. I think hopefully, you know, we'll see it played at some point. Yeah, I'm right there with you. It's neat. But it's definitely weaker than Talonflame. It's also I think that there was a Luxray that came out at some point in the past, like three, four years, somewhere at the end of the Sword and Shield block that did something similar. I think that one was if you drew it as the card for turn, you could put it in play. No, it definitely had. There was one. I just don't remember what the attack did. And so I think that Talonflame was the first iteration of a card like that. And it was probably also the best one because it's attack with just search your deck for two cards. And since then, they've been they toyed around with the idea, but have made sure never to come close to that level of power again, because that was just really good and honestly, probably a little bit underutilized at the time that it was legal. For sure. As we head into Water Pokemon, Kyogre got another good GLC card. In my opinion, I don't really play a ton of GLC, but this seems like it would be decent in GLC. Except there are other good Kyogres in GLC that might still be better, unfortunately. I don't know. Something to consider. Unfortunately for myself and other Mega Abomasnow fans, Mega Abomasnow is a bad card. So skipping right past it. Next notable thing would be that we have a 70 HP Magnemite. So if you don't want to play Maridon in your Lightning deck for some reason, you can Buddy Poffin for Magnemite. Or just being able to tandem unit out a Magnemite that is harder to KO with Phantom Dive is noteworthy. You know, forcing the Hawlucha Ping or the Dusclops Pop is better than what you've had to work with previously. And then next up would be this guy. I have one somewhat relevant Mega Evolution Pokemon in Mega Manectric EX. It's a Stage 1. It has two attacks. It has 330 HP. So a decent chunk for what we've seen so far. But this has two attacks. The first one for two Lightning is Flash Ray. Does 120 damage during your opponent's next turn. Prevent all damage done to this Pokemon by attacks from basic Pokemon. And then the second attack for three Lightning, it's Riot Blaster. Yeah, that's not going to help me. Does 200 damage. Plus, if you discard all energy attached to it, it does an additional... Wow, thanks, Aaron. 120. Yeah, 130 damage. You know, at one point in time, if other Mega Pokemon didn't exist, and this was the only Mega Pokemon in play, in the meta rather, this would be broken. Like, for sure. 330. Yeah, like you would see this being played a lot more. That being said, the first attack's got some utility. It's pretty niche. The fact that it just kind of has a blanket effect. It doesn't say your opponent's active basic Pokemon. It's just all basic Pokemon. So that's nice. There's some decks where that just wins you the game. But it's not super relevant in the meta right now. The second attack is just empirically good. Especially with Electric in the format. Exactly. You have ways to recover the energy and re-accelerate it. And this has free retreat, so you can bounce between two of these things. So at one point in time, this would be considered a Mega deck. We had Raikou. This reminds me of that, where you had the same kind of principle going on. Raikou EX back in 2013, 2012, maybe. Where you'd cycle through... Raikou had free retreat, I think, at that point. You were able to cycle through different attackers. But this is similar, where it discards the energy after you attack with a pretty big upside. But I don't see this getting a huge amount of play. We've seen 330 seems like a lot. If we had Electro Power, maybe that would be enough. But it's just kind of short now. Which is crazy to say, truthfully. But there's just some EXs or some Megas that are just going to have more HP, and that just isn't enough anymore. Yeah. Well, not only do some Megas have more HP that you can't knock out with Riot Blaster, you have things like, conveniently, 330 is the number that you can hit with a Dusknoir Pop plus a Phantom Dive. Gardevoir can also relatively easily hit 330, because they've already had to aim for that number for Charizard EX since it's been printed. And this card gives up three prizes, unfortunately. So that's just the thing that's going to be holding it back. We'll have to see. I think that this card will still potentially be worsened, like you said, because it struggles into other evolved Mega Pokemon. But still worth potentially looking out for in the future at some point. Because like you said, that Flash Ray has a potential, like if we're in a big basic format, all of a sudden this card is ridiculous, right? So worth keeping an eye on. Free Retreat's really good. 330 is still high. It's not unbeatable, but it is a pretty big number. Like Charizard's been holding that crown for a while, so putting it on a Stage 1, that card still is worth giving a look to at some point. Yeah, it could be played. You know, we'll see. Next up would be something that pairs with that Psychic Stopwatch or Psychic Clock that John mentioned previously, the Alakazam line from the set. So both Kadabra and Alakazam have Psychic Draw. And Kadabra is when you play this Pokemon from your hand to evolve one of your Pokemon, you may draw two cards. Same thing when you evolve into it from your hand you may draw three cards So this is something where you can draw two one turn next turn you draw three then you play the psychic stopwatch thing Reset back to Abra get those cards back in your hand And so this is kind of your draw engine is this alakazam line in tandem with that Devolution card At some point this was seeing play in Japan. I'm to be honest with you. I don't know what they were playing it with but just generically Flat draw three is not terrible I I Struggle to say that this is better than to done sparse But I guess maybe there's a world where it is because alakazam does have a serviceable attack Which is hand power for one psychic you just put two damage counters on your opponents active for each card in your hand So just in combination of a bunch of add cadavers going off a bunch of alakazam is going off You'll amass a relatively large hand size at which point you place a bunch of damage counters on your opponent's active and KO it hopefully But you know when you have to have 16 cards in your hand to KO a dragapult It like this obviously is not a main attacker for your deck And I'm not sure what would desperately need this much raw draw built into their deck as a support system Yeah, it seems like kind of a fun deck fodder, but it's cool I can see like the attacks not bad like if we ever get a Pokemon that Similar to we've had in the past like a melodic that has hand lock or hand block or something like that where it prevents your opponent from being able to disrupt your hand This gets a lot stronger. It's so like a fish in one prize attacker So easily recoverable low maintenance one retreat. It's got all the things you want in a one prize deck attacker So could be good down the road, but yeah, we'll just have to see sure New Ralts, which just is better than any other Ralts right now with collectability for one colorless It says draw card has 70 HP one or treat and then for one psychic does 10, so that's pretty good And then yeah, we have a new curly at a pair with it as well It has a hundred hit points, which will just be the best curly of for now and then the The attacks not the worst attack it's for one psychic it does It says search your deck for three Pokemon or up to three Pokemon put them in your hand and the shelf your deck So, you know decent set of attack You know could see some play. So I definitely think people move towards those And then yeah, you want to talk about mega Gardevoir? Well before we move off curly, I think surely is ridiculous. So somebody who's been a fan of the Eevee box the colorful friends attack on that Eevee is Nuts in as far as like the amount of pressure it puts on your opponent without actually actively progressing anything on board just being able to go grab in that deck as for instance, you go grab like a backup Eevee a flurry on and a Pheasant deputy or pheasant deputy flurry on knock towel, you know something like that to where your next turn is going to be good Now with this deck if you have like a curly and that you're using call sign with and you have a Ralts on your bench you go grab like guard of war pheasant deputy and monkey Dory or guard of war pheasant deputy and you know mega Gardevoir and you just kind of are amassing a Like a counter strategy assuming that something happens on your opponent's turn that knocks your guys out and if they don't then you just get a guard of war and play for free and That's one of the things that that can sometimes struggle with is just getting Gardevoir into play So now that you have a means of pretty easily doing that by just pushing a curly up and using a one energy attack Seems pretty good. Also conveniently has a one psychic attack that one shots all of the baby Pokemon So that's potentially relevant But the big big star of the show for the set is the mega Gardevoir that it evolves into that has two single psychic energy attacks First one is overflowing wishes that for each of your bench Pokemon search your deck for a basic psychic energy and attach it to that Pokemon then shuffle your deck and mega Symphonia does 50 damage for each psychic energy attached to all of your Pokemon This card does a lot of damage Yeah, yeah, it's pretty scary Then it ramps really fast And you know not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but when it rotate like one rotation does occur. It's still a good card With the first attack being able to set up a lot of stuff for you Yeah, you know, it's the first attack ramps into the second attack really effectively Yeah, so I expect this car late and the fact that it's you know, you can run the wall these we talked about earlier If you spread your psychic out Effectively, you know the fact that it does 50 for each attached to all your Pokemon instead of this Pokemon. You don't need the energy All on your mega Garde you can spread it out really effectively and Yeah, just kind of tank and heal and all that kind of stuff It's gonna be kind of scary man that Garde is already One of the most annoying and scariest decks to deal with It's not going anywhere and it just got a new tool It's got a couple new tools to be honest from this set. So game developers seem to Really love Gardevoir. They love Gardevoir. They don't seem to they it's it's a really good card Don't seem to that it's it's you can't deny it at this point Like basically since you started playing this game Gardevoir has been top tier pokemon and it continues to be that way So yeah, I think I think all hail Gardevoir if you go look it up Gardevoir Of all the pokemon that have had cards printed Gardevoir has not only one of the highest number of cards printed It also has the highest number of playable cards that have been printed And so this card also just a quick shout out Pretty difficult for dragapult to knock out because it's got 360 hp requires two pops plus a phantom dive. Yeah, and it Relatively easily one shots the dragapult back Especially if you do keep Clefairy in the deck then you only need four energy in play over just one or three energy with a monkey dory moving two counters over one shots a dragapult so I You know all hail the purple overlords, right? Yeah I mean, it's good thing your grim snarl hits. Yeah, great grim snarl one shots this guy. So we may be back in business As long as I don't have a way to buff your hp or something. Yeah, we may be back Yeah The rest of these cards, let's see Next up would be the fighting section and we do have a couple of cards we're talking about here Hariyama is a little neat, but it's basically like cliff notes has is the hops double effect and for three fighting You can do 210 and do 72 itself So theoretically what you could do is fighting gong makahita into play you can hilda for hariyama and reversal energy if you're behind Do the heave ho catcher ability so evolve into hariyama gust up The support ex on your opponent's bench and then attach to reversal use wild press take two prizes It feels like a gimmick more than anything But it is a gimmick that is potentially viable like there's I I can see that being applied in certain situations But there are other fighting cards that are much more worth talking about. So why don't we jump into lunatone and salt rock? Yep, so this is a cool combo Um lunatone 110 hp. It's a decent amount still has a one retreat cost, which is nice It has a really good ability. It says it's lunar cycle Once during your turn if you have soul rock in play You may discard a basic fighting energy card from your hand in order to use this ability draw three cards You can't use more than one lunar cycle ability each turn um, so just When we've seen radiant greninja have this ability draw two for discarding one energy This is a little more handicapped. You have to discard a basic fighting you have to have the soul rock in play But you get to the upside of drawing one extra card So yeah, pretty strong and then soul rock just to read it real quick. Um same set, uh 110 h points one retreat. It has just one an attack Um for one fighting it does 70 damage If you don't have a lunatone on your bench this attack does nothing and it's not affected by weakness or resistance. So You know pretty relevant. Um you're able to clean up pretty much every since because buddy poffin's so popular able to clean up a lot of the Setup decks, uh basic pokemon that are played right now. Um, and so it's a decent attacker Uh, you know the one two combo with this, uh, or just the combo of the two Um seems pretty good like, you know we'll get into some other stuff in a second, um, but It's a good draw engine and fighting hasn't really had a good draw engine ever. Um So that's kind of nice sure Yeah, so i'm sure going back to glc if you want I know ian one of our uh friends, um Has been trying to make a fighting glc deck work forever. I'm sure he's very excited to see this combo going forward Oh, absolutely. Um, so that'll be fun. Uh, but yeah, it'll be interesting to see you know What how much if at all this is played in standard, but it's good good to keep in mind Yeah, I mean so not only dedicated fighting decks, but you could I could see the same play in raging bolt pretty easily Sure, like if you have the bench space if you ran like an area zero what you already do you either play area zero? Maybe you move away from the owls and get into this as your engine instead and try to make it like speed things up again And the soul rock still kind of fulfills the same purpose as what the fan wrote him was doing Just the one energy 70 damage attack. Now. You don't have to have a stadium in play You just have to have the lunatone in play that you want anyway to draw more cards You go a little heavier on your fighting energy, maybe Just to make sure that you can lunar cycle as often as possible. And I think that there's some potential there I don't know. It seems it seems decent at least One of the other headliner cards for the set would be mega lucario ex Oh actually also notably soul rock if you were playing in a dedicated fighting deck You probably have that fighting power drink to do plus 30 so you can potentially hit up to one. Um, 190 Which is kind of crazy to say but you could do 160 for three of them to one shot a squawk ability So squawk abilities, um on watch so rock's coming for him Yeah But mega lucario way to look at it Mega lucario stage one mega ex 340 hp So notably not able to be chaos just by a dust nor plus phantom dive But has two attacks for one fighting energy or a jab does 130 damage and you can attach up to three Basic fighting energy from your discard pile to your bench pokemon in any way you like and then for two fighting mega brave Does 270 and during your next turn this pokemon cannot use mega brave? So or a jab pretty good attack fighting like you said notably has lacked draw has also typically lacked energy acceleration or good energy acceleration This seems like pretty good energy acceleration, you know, it's a serviceable attack to go or a jab into mega brave One or two hit ko is pretty much everything in the game The big detraction for this card is that it's weak to psychic and that's just not a good weakness to have right now No You you want usually your energy acceleration to not be on a three prize pokemon Yeah, if you're honest with yourself sure a lot of times. Yeah like that. Uh What was it called the rabbit guy, um Cinderace. Yeah, the cinderace we saw earlier that being a one price pokemon that does the same effect Uh doesn't obviously obviously doesn't do as much damage Uh, but that would probably be like what you want to accelerate with primarily This seems like it has synergy but like being able to reaccelerate the two fighting energy you could run, you know Power glass or something like that to really do that But the fact that you can't use it again the next turn it has a two-ish recost It can get kind of awkward to like pivot between two of these or something like that um, you can use the first attack, but Realistically, like what are you really doing with that? Like 130 is just not enough to really threaten too much on your opponent's side of stuff So it's kind of it's disappointing man. Like I love lucario. The art looks pretty cool. Um But I don't really see this getting a whole lot of play Uh, no, that's fair. That's fair, especially like with the the numbers are awkward They're the ones that almost require you to use that like fighting drink to kind of bump them up to serviceable numbers And then like you said the retreat cost is again awkward I mean you do have air balloon But the big thing the nail in the coffin is going to be the psychic weakness on a three prizer It's just kind of a death sentence until scarlet. Yeah, it rotates Even then, you know, who knows the psychic perennially is one of the best types in the game, right? So I wanted to make a pit stop here on evil tall really quick Just notably it has a corner type attack for a dark does 20 damage during your next turn defending pokemon can't retreat And this card has free retreat so everybody loves to shove maractus into their grim snarl deck against the better judgment of Other players. I just do not like that card in the deck at all I like this card in the deck. It doesn't have an ability has free retreat like this This this card is disgusting In my mind and will see play undoubtedly also even outside of grim snarl. It's just good again like a control type deck A free like a pivoting like pivot cards are always good and a pivot card that can also retreat lock. Your opponent is also good Yeah, if it was colorless i'd say probably a little bit more it being a dark energy to use clutch is unfortunate But yeah, it's still pretty good I mean you still have like Prism and luminous that you can use to fulfill that so right control can still use it Yeah, or you like a lot of times you want dark anyway Because you probably play a monkey dory in your deck true if if you are a standard deck that is not raging bolt You're probably playing a way to Enable a monkey dory so you could also theoretically enable evil tall Um, and we're getting close to the end here almost there almost there One of the last couple things we've got mega mawile ex Yep, it's a basic. Um with 270 hit points uh Mega, it has two attacks, uh for two metal greedily devour This attack does 80 damage for each price card you have taken So if you've taken four price cards, you're doing 320 right So that's pretty good. I mean that's And before Megas came out, that was pretty much knocking out everything in format. And then for two metal and a colorless, Big Bite does 260 damage if opponent's active already has damage counters on it. Before this attack does damage, this attack does 30 damage instead. So I mean, honestly, pretty good attacks in a vacuum, they're really good. But like in the context of other Pokemon existing, the numbers aren't numbering quite how much you'd want them to be. It's just kind of comes up a little short. Yeah, I don't know. There's kind of some synergy with you being able to use the second attack and then move into the first attack. But just again, is this really what you want to like, put down as a three prize liability at this point, and then pray that your opponent can't really deal with it? It's not super great. Yeah, 270 is not a super great number. But I think that the offensive numbers of this card are really good. The problem is the archetype or the deck that it really reinforces is just like a tier four deck right now. And that's like Poison Archelodon. So that deck often like obviously had a damage cap of what, 290? If you had Perilous Jungle in play and had a binding Mochi on your Archelodon, now theoretically you can hit 330 with Big Bite with a binding Mochi if you poison your Mega Mawile. But again, three prizer, not super great. But Archelodon is a deck that wants to be aggressive. And if you're able to go like, knock out something for two, knock out something for two, and then greedily devour for 320, close the game out, like, maybe that's good enough. If you go like Archelodon into Archelodon into like a one prize board into a Mega Mawile, now you don't care that it's a three prizer because your opponent's at one anyway. You just kind of close the game out from there. And maybe there's a world where that kind of puts that deck back on the map. But probably not because Archelodon has just been on a steady decline since its release in Surging Sparks. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. Yeah, it'd be tough. But still cool card. We'll see if it gets any play. And looking at the next card, I guess I just read that last one, so you go ahead and read this one. Yeah, I'm going to skip over the Tinkertuff, even though I think that it has a niche control potential. Gotcha. We're running a little long, so I don't want to stop on it too bad. Mega Latias, in my opinion, is a bad card, but I think people will see, will try to play it. Probably the best card in the set is Mega Kangaskhan EX, a 300 HP basic with the ability Run Errand. Once during your turn if this Pokemon is in the active spot, you may use this ability. Draw two cards. You cannot use more than one Run Errand ability each turn. And then the attack is three colorless for Rapid Fire Combo, 200 damage, and you flip a coin until you get tails. For each heads, the attack does 50 more damage. The attack's not super relevant. You were in here just for the draw ability. So Mega Kangaskhan in a big basic deck where you're likely to have Latias EX on your bench already, is a free, when your Pokemon dies, promote this, draw two cards. So now when you have Mega Kangaskhan and Mew and Pheasandipity on your board, your opponent Ionos you to one, and then you suddenly turn around, draw for turn, play a card, use Restart to draw up to three, then Run Errand to draw two more, then flip the script to draw three more, and now their Iono is definitely alive because you've just drawn like eight cards. Yeah, and this one bucks the trend of a lot of the other Mega, the basic Megas. This has 300 hit points, so it's a really hard number to knock out. You know, not impossible, but much more challenging than what we saw with Mega all while. So yeah, it will see play. I mean, like kind of the scenario you described seems really good. Just being able to draw cards is always like the name of the game of Pokemon, so yeah. It also gets a little bit of like niche support from that like colorless big basics archetype that was introduced with Tarapagos in the form of like the Bouffalants can boost this from being 300 HP to like 360. And then you could Bravery Charm, and suddenly you have a 410 HP, 410 matter, 350 HP Pokemon that takes minus 60 on every attack. Like that's in the realm where you actually consider starting to attack with Kangaskhan potentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Could be good. And I think that's it, John. We did it. Alright, yeah, yeah, definitely not the most meta impactful set we've ever covered on this podcast. No. But, you know, there's some stuff in there, especially like this border we talked about. And then just some cool stuff. We'll see how it all shakes out in the next few months. You know, have fun going to pre releases. I'm running mine next Monday, and I expect to be a pretty big turnout. I mean, Pokemon has been pretty crazy lately everywhere, so I'm sure we'll have a huge turnout for that. But it'll be fun. Are you planning on going to any pre-releases, Aaron? I might be going to one on Sunday. I like the pre-release format. I think that it's a good environment to just kind of meet up and hang out with people and getting to do Pokemon in a more casual setting that's not just like playing against, you know, Jim Bob's random like bad standard deck. I would rather play against Jim Bob's random bad like building battle deck. I don't know. I like I like draft. I really wish there was a way to make this more draftable. Yeah. You know, I'll settle for pre-release as close as we'll get in the right in the Pokemon supported formats. So like they have a I don't know, when they release when they release a cube box like that. Yeah. Until then, you know, we'll and if they do, we'll cover it here. Thank you guys so much for listening, everybody. Sorry for the continuity. I know it's been kind of choppy the last few months, but we're hoping to be back on the train back on the wagon, if you will, and get more stuff into you as we start ramping up for the season. Next week, we'll be talking about our expected meta predictions for Pittsburgh. Looking forward to the next regional circuit series that we get coming up on. And I am excited for the new season, so I'm hopeful that you listeners are, too. Please let us know if there's anything you want us to cover or any questions you have for us to answer. We always appreciate feedback. You can find us on socials. The titles for both of those will be in the description as well as the social channels for the show. If you ever wanted to reach out to us on a, I guess, theoretically more official thing, The email address for the show is also available. It's just battlefrontierpod at gmail.com. And we hope to hear from all of you soon, and you will hear from us soon as well when we come back next week with another episode of the Battle Frontier.