Episode 2-23: POKEMON DAY and SUNSETTING in SEATTLE

How's your Ascended Heroes testing been going, if any? I haven't really been able to test all that much, last week was, what did I do? I played with a junior that I'm testing with, played some Guardia against them, and then I just don't play live that much, I guess, I don't know, it's tough, like I was going out of town, so I'm like, let me just spend an evening with Sydney, as much as I can, and then, yeah, but now I'm back on it, I asked Bram what I should play, and he gave me a Dawn's Ard list, with Xi'an Pao, to clear the stadium. Okay, see? See? A stadium! Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he runs around the Wellspring mask, with one water on his list, so, I'm trying to be fun with it. Yeah, yeah, it looked cool, I was like, oh, that's fun. Some spicy stuff, you know, so. Just gonna be tough, I've seen a lot of Zoroark. Yeah, now it's got a target on its back, so we'll see how. That too, but I've just seen, I've seen a lot of Zoroark on ladder, and it's Charizard matchup has gotten better, because of Zekrom. Still a lot of Absol, Dragon Pulch, gets better, early, I guess, so it's not bad, but like then, yeah, if they get to the point where they just got a really nice board set up, not a lot you can do. No. And Zoroark actually has the ability to kind of like, be the aggressor now, which is something that it didn't have in the past, like you had to play the waiting game, for the most part, and now I can't, I have so many, so many games that I've played, where people go turn to 250. And just like, blow something up, or they like, Badoo, until they can boss up the ideal thing to knock out, and then they hit that for 250, or they, you know, like I played a little bit of Grimmsnarl today, and they'll boss up, like. Yeah, we can, we can talk a little bit. A Snorunt, and like, KO Double Snorunt, or KO like, Snorunt Frostlass, or KO Monkey Dory Frostlass, like, you know, just taking two awkward prizes, to the point that I was wondering whether or not I thought Grimmsnarl actually needed to play Shaymin again, in this format. I was trying to do something cute, with, because I wanted to play Mega Frostlass in the deck, and the unfortunate thing about that card, like, it's a powerful card, but the unfortunate thing is that people can kind of play around the attack, if they know you have it. So they're like, oh cool, I'll just play my hand down, and it's pretty useless, and then you get things where you can Iono, to kind of force their hand size back up, depending on how many prize cards they've already taken, and then I also, because I wanted to put a second Rare Candy in the list, because that was kind of another thing where the deck seems like everyone's been slimming it down to one, you know, myself included, but the deck kind of falters, in the sense that if that first Grimmsnarl goes down, and you don't have a Morgrem on your bench, you know, you're just kind of SOL, or like you, they KO your Morgrem, and then you get an Impidimp down, and then they KO the Grimmsnarl, so you have no shot of having a Morgrem in play, you're just kind of done, because you never get another one out. So, for the justification of having a second candy, and I also wanted to include a 101 Dusknoir, which served like, three purposes, so one, because you play Pokipad now, you can find it much more easily. You have the ability, with a Dusknoir pop, plus Grimmsnarl attack, plus Frostlass, like pings between, you know, coming into your turn, going out of your turn, lets you get up to 330 on Charizard, lets you do, you know, assuming that the Dragapult has been pinged when it was a Dracloak, you can get up to 320, because you just do 310 raw, it lets you, like with a Monkey Dory, KO a Bravery-Charmed Absol, or Kangaskhan, potentially, and just kind of hitting these breakpoints that you hadn't hit before, but that was like, I played a few games with it, and it's just too clunky to really work, like you can't reliably get the Duskull set up in a space where it's going to be useful, without kind of compromising your bench, and not really having it tailored to what you need at the earlier points in the game. It's kind of like something where, oh, if I had a sixth bench slot, this would be really good, but, I don't know, it just doesn't really work. The candy's been really nice, though. Second candy's been really helpful, and a lot of people just don't seem to be prepared for it in the deck anymore, they're like, oh, cool, I got rid of your one Grimmsnarl, now I'm in the clear, and you go, ha-ha, look at this. That's how I feel like when I play against a Pol'dnor, that like, runs two candy or something, and it's like, oh, you get through the first Pol'd, and you're like, okay, cool, and they all have a Street Peace down, and you're like, I got a turn, I can breathe, then they have Red Candy, Knockout, whatever's in your active, and you're like, well, damn, that feels bad. That's what I'm saying, that's what got me, that's what got me into playing that deck in the, like, Ascended Heroes stuff, was the fact that candy makes, you know, the explosiveness of it, like, if you don't have it, it's funny, though, because, you know, like, back when you first started playing, or like, the history of, like, my history in the game with rare candy-based decks, every single one of them, you just always played four, like, no matter what, and it helped that when the card first came out, it was like, it kind of had a pseudo Broken Time Space slash Forest of Giant Plants effect, where you could have evolved things that were in the game before that, too. Well, no, Breeder couldn't do that, like, that's what made Rare Candy so crazy, was like, on turn one going first, you could Rare Candy something to evolve it. And you could attack back then, right? That's gross, right? Like, there were times, like, 2005, 2006, well, there's, yeah, Takeout, or if you go back even further than that, like, Blastoise EX from FireRed, LeafGreen, so, like, LBS, if you opened with the right hand, you could Rare Candy Blastoise, rain dance a bunch of energies down, and just knock out a basic on turn one with a Blastoise, and it's not something that came up super often, but when it did, your opponent was like, are you freaking kidding me, man? Yeah, right. It's like a hard way to donk, but yeah, when it came up, just like, what do I even do, man? To the point where, you know, they finally said, yeah, this might be a little bit too good. Yeah. Justify. Black and white, Harkold SoulSilver, wouldn't Arata do it, or black and white? That's a good question. Harkold SoulSilver. That's a good question, I'd have to go back and look. Let's see what Bulbapedia has to say about this. Functional Arata on Rare Candy. Yeah, so, it was black and white. In black and white, an Arata was issued for this card, which means it can't evolve a basic Pokemon into a stage one or evolve a Pokemon during the player's first turn or the turn the Pokemon was put into play. And that's pretty fair. Like, can you imagine somebody being able to go like, drop a Charmander Rare Candy Charizard right now? Oh my gosh. No, yeah, that would suck. Or like, yeah, Rare Candy, like. Rare Candy Dusknoir. Out of just. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm not even worried about the Gardevoir. Like, the explosive abilities are the ones that are like, these things scare me, whether it's a Grimmsnarl or a Dusknoir or like, even Rocket's Crobat could potentially be really toxic if you could do something like that. Arboliva. Which is not a sentence like anyone would say. I mean, Arboliva still has Forest of Giant Plants, so like all the Grass guys are kind of just in their own category. Yeah, it's Forest of Giant Plants, turn one. So there's that. Oh, sure, sure. But I have to imagine if like, in this hypothetical world, if I can Rare Candy on turn one, I can drop Forest of Giant Plants. It's probably the same thing. It's, yeah, what was it? The old one. Yeah, Broken Timespace. No, the one that. There was like, the first time they did the. Yeah, it was Broken Timespace. It was Broken Timespace implied. No, no, no, no, no. But like, they reprinted it with when Shiftry got banned. Oh, Forest of Giant Plants. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So this week we've got Seattle results, which don't really want to spend a ton of time on this tournament. Like, it's pretty interesting. It was cool to see True and Tran come out, and I believe I saw talk that this was like his first or second regional tournament, and winning, winning an event before his brother could, despite his brother's numerous top cut appearances. That's crazy. Oh my gosh. Yeah. This is the second one on Limitless. Yeah. I've been in Vegas and got a top 32, so that's pretty sick. Killing it. Killing it. Something in the blood in that family, apparently. It was really nice, like, in the heartwarming, kind of familial sense of Pokemon, to see his brother run on stage and give him a hug after he won the event. Yeah, I walked by the crowd, and like, I saw him, or it was like, it wasn't on stage, but it was over in the, you know, how they set the tables up for top cut, and like, his brother and all his friends were like, watching, and then when he won the game, I think it was top eight, I was watching, I walked by, and they all like, you know, gathered around him even there. So like, I think it was just a great run for him, like, it's his first deep run, right? And like, for him to win his first tournament, where he makes top cut like that, it's like, pretty amazing. Yeah. Like, brothers in Pokemon is a good kind of story, too, you know? Oh, sure. Like, the Sable House brothers, I mean, you go back further, like, the Nance brothers, the Saccoums. Yeah, and then more recently, you have a good amount, like, with the Schmanskys, with, um, who else? Now the Trans. Uh-huh. Yeah, now the Trans. So there's, like... There was another... I'm not like, we were that competitive, or whatever, but, you know. There's another recent pair, oh, the, um, oh, goodness, one of them made cut this weekend, the Ginsberg brothers. Yeah, Nathan and, yeah. So, they're out there, and it's pretty neat, like, I mean, honestly, I think a lot of times it helps, because you kind of, especially when you're close enough in age, you have the in-built kind of testing partner, especially when you were younger kids. In juniors, you had Kenji and Annabelle, oh, no. Yep. Yep, 100%. And they have the advantage, not only do they have testing partners built in at home, but they also have the benefit of having coaching available now, too, so, like, nigh-unstoppable forces of nature. It's unreal, yeah. The pathways that kids have now, like, the, yeah, but anyways, let's get recording, let's get going. I thought we already were. Oh, you didn't even notice. I hit record 15 minutes ago, man. Yeah, yeah, so, this is, I forget you slide it in like that, like, just forget about it, like, just click it. I mean, I forget, like, at some point I'll chop it off at the beginning. Nah, that's good, that's good. I normally find a spot where we're talking, where I'm like, this is a good place to start the show, and just kind of green light it from there. But, yeah, so, we had, like, brief Seattle talk there, top 12 cut, good, like, mix of decks, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. I think it was just, I think the rise up like absol being on an almost 8% deck now compared to earlier in the format where it was like 2%. And I think the rise in presence of things like Absol, or in Zorark, both, they both jumped up at this event. And I think both of those are just in this format in particular is terrible matchups for Dragapult, if they're played well. So, I mean, it doesn't really surprise me to see Dragapult not succeed in overly large numbers, like we obviously Andrew Hendrick. Big Dragapult stand, did make cut, had some pretty unfortunate luck in his Ace Him round on stream where he ended up losing to Mason Lovato with his Joltik box deck. Andrew just kind of drew past for most of game one to the point where he had Badood a Joltik twice and then Hawlucha KO'd it on the bench to be able to evolve or get a supporter off of his prize card. Coincidentally got an Iona off his prize card to Iona Mason down to like, I think four and got his, I don't know, it was really wonky, like tried to make a comeback in that game. Didn't succeed. One game two, and then game three, Mason just kind of ran him over again. And you know, Joltik doing Joltik things. Like if your opponent Bricks wants good for you, and then if you get the opportunity to choose to go second in one of the other games and get off a turn one Jolting charge, you're probably in a really good position to be really aggressive, especially in this, against a stage two evolving deck that to the best of my knowledge, like Andrew, I don't think subscribes to the theory of running Rare Candy and Dragapult and yeah, confirmed. So you know, not surprising that a deck that doesn't have Rare Candy to get the stage two or get things out of range of Ampu very much very quickly, it's going to be pretty easy to just go knockout, knockout, knockout with iron hands and you know, give that guy his last hurrah before he, you know, sunsets in the upcoming rotation. Does he? Well, I think he loses. He may not. He doesn't disappear. Oh, yeah. I mean, oh, no, he does. He does. He's he's g he's g. So that menace is finally gone. For some reason. I thought even if it was H like Maridon rotating, I thought it was kind of a big enough. But yeah, he's right. He's gone. Okay. Fair enough. We get to keep like iron crown and iron valiant. No, not for you. I mean, no, I'm just like, what are we doing if you're if you're not playing with iron hands? If you're like, yeah, like what? What are the future Pokemon you really want to play with? Yeah, right. No, exactly. Like, like raging bolts sticking around is kind of an anomaly, I feel like, because, yeah, we lose Sata, we lose well, that's pretty much the main thing, right? But yeah. Now, one thing I noticed. And I'm going to give a shout out to Dean Nizam. Krustle had a 50% conversion rate, and there were some Krustles not too far outside of the top. Yeah, they mentioned it on the stream a couple of times. Yeah, which was kind of surprising. We haven't seen that come around. There was a Slowking deck on stream, and then it got destroyed. But it went against Dragapult and did that. And then, yeah, I don't know. Cool to see some end of format wackiness. People aren't just slaves to the same four decks. I mean, like you said at the top, we're getting a lot of variety now, which is fun. Yeah, and even when you look at that, so as those numbers for Goldango and Dragapult drop from that over 15% number down closer to 10, that percentage has to go somewhere. So things kind of leveled out a little bit as the format kind of drew to a close. And we get to just mildly evolve the format. Like, there are some new tools. Obviously, Pokepad's a big deal. Zekrom's a pretty big deal. But the new format, more or less, you're going to have the same players. Like, the way that they interact with each other changes a little bit. But there aren't any really truly new decks, like the big new cards from this expansion are what? Mega Dragonite? Not really going to do too much, maybe. I've seen talk of people replacing, like, taking Emma Huggins' Flareon deck, and you take the Pidgeot out, and you put Flareon in instead. Or not Flareon, gosh. Dragonite in instead, because it also serves as a way to one-hit KO things because it does 330, which is not terrible. But, I mean, like, I guess maybe that's, like, a niche application for that card. Yeah, I don't see that really changing the deck. Like, Pidgeot's pretty good in that deck, right? Like, it's... Is that really doing a huge? It is, for sure. So, yeah, it's just kind of a... I don't know. Like, is that really an improvement, or is it just, like, a lateral move? But... Yeah, I don't know. Oh, boy, I'm looking at some of the Limitless tournaments, and it doesn't look like there's anything new coming up. Like, maybe Rocket's Spinoffs get some play. I mean, obviously people are going to try the Hansh Crow deck. Like, you're still running into that. I'm still running into that all the time. I have seen a fair few people... The weird thing... So, TCG Live's in a really weird spot right now, and it will be less so now that Phantasmal Flames is finally over, because there were still people that were attempting to somehow ladder into games in that format. So they were clearly running, like, quote-unquote suboptimal lists when you consider that Ascended Heroes is available. And on top of that, I also have seen a fair number of people that I've queued into that are running post-rotation builds of decks. So, like, they're running Petrel in decks that realistically, by all means, should be running Arvin. Decks that shouldn't have Unfair Stamp as their A-spec are running Unfair Stamp. And it depends on what time of day I'm playing at. Like, if I'm playing early in the morning, or if, like, I'm up with the baby at, like, 3 a.m. or whatever and I'm playing, I'll hit players that you can tell have a screen name that indicates that they're a Japanese player. Like, typically, a lot of them just literally have their name as their screen name, and it sounds like a Japanese name. And... They're playing post-rotation? 100%. Every single one of them. That makes sense, right? Because, like, that's just, they're trying to get testing in for a tournament or try a new deck out in their format. You know, we just haven't caught up with them. But it's really crazy that Japan just doesn't have the ability to do that. So they have to, like, use... Not find one. Yeah, it would be nice if they had their own server, right? Like, or something like that. Or something. Like, I'm surprised he picked... But I guess that it's the culture thing over there, right? Like, they've got enough local card shops, easy enough, like, good enough public transportation, it's easy enough to get around to find a card shop that most people can realistically go out and find somewhere to play cards when they wanna play cards without having to just do it on the internet. I mean, yeah, I guess. But there's a reason why there's Japanese players playing on PDC. Oh, 100%. 100%. Like, and you're gonna get better testing there than even your local card store, even if you're in Japan, I imagine, so. For the most part, I would assume. How was your week? I don't think I even asked you that yet. Just baby stuff, man. Tiring. Baby's doing well, though. Took her to the pediatrician, and she's gaining weight in an appropriate way, and everybody's looking healthy. My wife and I are still relatively sleep-deprived. We're trying to figure out a better kind of overnight system and we think we may have something nailed down. It's so funny because we have the age gap that we do with our kids that it's like, I don't even remember having to do some of this stuff when we had our son. And I'm like, were we really, were we this bad off sleep-wise when he was born? Or is this a new thing? Like, are these new age kids just built different and this is what's happening? Or were we just as bad off then and we just don't remember because the trauma's blocked? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, humans have an amazing capacity to just forget trauma and move on, for sure. It's so funny to call you raising your child and having to be awake at odd hours and whatnot trauma. You don't frame it that way, but it is traumatic in its own way. It is not an optimal state to be in existence. No one wants to be up at three in the morning and take care of a child. But a child needs you. You know, it's not able to take care of itself. So it's not, yeah, it's just part of being that age and living, but that's- But other than that, she's been great, though. She's getting to a point where she is like, you know, every day kind of more aware of what's going on around her. And it's just gonna be really special to see all that develop. And then with my son, just more baseball, all baseball all the time, literally like three days a week and still, you know, making sure that we have time for that. And then on top of that, just playing a lot of Pokemon, really trying to figure out what I wanna play for Orlando. And then between a few things, yeah, between a few things, haven't really settled on anything concrete yet. I'm curious, finish your Sardaria and I'll ask you a question at the end. Sure, sure. I was gonna say, it'll be really interesting to see what happens in Puerto Rico this weekend, just to see what people's kind of initial takes are on it and how seriously or how well prepared people will be for this SPE on the opening weekend. And then we have Houston to follow up and then just kind of the data from both of those to feed into, well, what do I wanna do for Orlando? Right, yeah. So my question, cause I'm getting back into testing for the first time and like, I haven't played since NAIC 2024. So to me, as somebody that's coming back into the game, I mean, I keep up with the game when I play. It's not like I'm not competing or not thinking about the game at all, but how do you get ready for regionals? Like after, you know, like with a limited amount of time as a dad and are you just playing on your phone a lot? Like playing- 100%. How do you get games to keep playing on your phone? 100%. That's fair. It's not ideal. It's absolutely not ideal. And it's something that I've had to adjust to and become, like make myself available to the idea that this is how I have to do it. Like this is the methodology that works for me. And, but it's not ideal. And I think that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make myself available to the idea that this is how I have to do it. This is the methodology that works for me. And, but still like the whole thing that I always circle back to, like I've had people ask me before, like how do you, you know, what do I want to do if I want to play better, want to get better? It's like play with intention is kind of the big thing. You know, make sure that you think through, you're not just blindly playing on autopilot just to play games. You're doing something and you're making a decision, you know, intentionally to see, hey, this is my expected outcome. It's kind of like the whole, you know, scientific research process. I'm going to do this thing with this expected outcome. Did I achieve that outcome? Oh, and you find out yes, no, check, like, and you figure out where along the way and you iterate on these things. Because at the end of the day, Pokemon is literally a giant super branching flow chart. And you have to, the best players get to a point where they've memorized these paths of all of these outcomes for all of these matchups for their given deck. Or they've gotten far enough down the flow chart that they can then examine kind of the branches from a given end point where they've stopped potentially and will be able to adapt on the fly and they have enough experience in game to be able to do that. So it's really just, you know, being intentional is really big. If you make a change in your deck, like if you're iterating on a deck list, stick with it for a minimum of probably 10 games and make sure that the change that you've made, either has like, just give it a fair shake, whether, and you can determine, is it impactful? Was it, or if it was not impactful or was negatively impactful, was it negatively impactful because of its own sake? Or was it a consequence of, you know, other circumstances that would, so you can't necessarily say, oh, well, I, you know, took Badoo out of my deck and now suddenly I've lost every game. Well, it's like, okay, well, have you, how many times have you gone first versus second? I mean, that's probably a bad example. Causation's not causation, yeah. Exactly, exactly. But really it's just, it's volume of games and how much of your attention span you can dedicate to it overall. Yeah. Do you take notes at all when you're taking? Absolutely not. Yeah, see that's- But that, again, that's a me thing. Like if that's something that works for you or whoever is trying to do this, like if you want to take notes, I know a lot of people do spreadsheets and that's something where it, maybe that would work better for me, but because most of my gameplay does happen on a mobile device, like I just don't have the luxury of being able to do that. Like I play it on an iPhone for the most part, like 90% of my Pokemon play is done on my iPhone, which speaks either to, I wouldn't say it's necessarily, it's probably a combination of poor phone habits and the fact that I just don't have the time to sit down at my desk and get on my computer to play TCG live and I don't have time necessarily to go to a card store to do it. So it's like finding the time where I can and it's like just a game here or there. Like games are typically quick enough that if once you've gotten the basics down of whatever deck you're trying to play, you can play through your first turn relatively quickly and then you just become a victim. The biggest burden is how long your opponent's turn takes. And there are some people that play abysmally slow on TCG live and I just, I don't get it whatsoever. Yeah, I'll try to like time you out and it's like, oh my gosh. Or something like I've. Yeah, or just take forever. That was also really bad when Phantasmal Flames was so legal. There were people that were mad that you were playing Ascended Heroes cards and so they would try to, yeah. Emote you or whatever. Yes, 100%. I have had multiple people over the past week like full emote spam, take the maximum amount of time per action possible and I'm just like. Oh my God. Okay, well, I'll just go do the dishes while you're doing this and I'll have my phone nearby enough that whenever you're done throwing your tantrum, I can continue my gameplay. Yeah. Or I mean, if that's not worth your time, if you don't have the patience to be as stubborn as I was, you can absolutely just concede and go play another game, but who cares? Yeah, like I think I have a hard time sometimes when I play on live where I am results oriented more than process and like knowledge oriented, which is just self-defeating where I'm like, oh, I'm doing really good with this deck and then I lose one game and it's like, well, I don't really wanna play live anymore. That's tough for me. And I need to get over that, I think on some level because like, yeah, I need to get more and excited to learn a deck just for the sake of learning a deck and trying out new cards in that deck just to like see if they actually make a difference in swing matchups and do what they're supposed to do rather than like win games. Like win games, sure. Like that's the end goal of every person that plays Pokemon but I think the more important thing when you're testing is to like gain knowledge, to like have, to bank those things, like you said, to make, to fill out your flow chart, to make those branching decision trees and like fill that up with in-game experience with putting yourself in weird situations and like how to play out of them. Like all that stuff's way more valuable than like winning and- Right, oh, for sure. And you get to build like the mental muscle memory essentially so that when you do, and there's definitely a disconnect between playing on live and playing in paper to the point where like when you're physically handling the cards, like your brain processes the information differently. So ideally, if you can play in paper, it will be more time consuming but it is definitely better for you, 100% full stop. I think that playing in paper is better than playing on live. Playing on live is just kind of a substitute for doing it. And it's a little bit, it's more time efficient slightly but like there's obvious downsides. Like there's bugs in the client sometimes. You can't rewind plays. It's harder to play with someone you know. I think one of the ideal things, one thing I had done prepping for NAIC last year as an example was I did a lot more webcam games playing with people that I knew. And that was, I found that to be very helpful but it was at the time in my life, like I had the luxury of having enough time available that I could sit down at like once a week and for like two hours at a time and do that. But the approach that I did not, I've not, wow. I've not always been this way in terms of how I'm attempting to approach the game and look at it. It used to just be, oh, this deck, cool. This deck beats this deck. And I want to like make sure that I win this matchup, this matchup, this matchup, and this on paper does that but I don't care about card counts. And like, we just kind of wing it more or less. And now that doesn't work anymore. Like it would work back in the day because lists weren't refined. That was definitely a philosophy shift over time. Like there used to be like the broken deck list was just like four of us. And like you didn't really sweat like tech cards. Well, not even that. But you would end up with a position like deck list that just most people's deck list sucked like full stop. People's decks, even at worlds early on in the game's lifespan, people's deck lists were not good. And that was because people didn't necessarily know how to build a good deck in those formats. And that's why when you look at these retro formats people have iterated on and improved upon these deck lists to the point where those formats don't even look the same anymore. You know, there's tech card inclusions and people responded to those tech card inclusions and how that kind of has elevated and evolved those formats over time. And now all of that, like that crucible of evolution of a format happens in a real time while the format is still legal and standard. And that's because we have way more major events. There's online events that happen. And TCG Live is a thing to where people can see, oh, this thing exists. Now, let me you know include this in my deck and do XYZ instead And just like brute force like monkeys like infinite monkeys and with typewriters will like exactly Right up right a master work you get enough players playing different decks and one of them does really well with a specific type You know, obviously like some players have better deck builders like torrents gonna cook a deck better than anybody else pretty much but in like a Henry Chow is gonna master a guardian list, but like You can really just kind of hit on something and have some success and it kind of spreads like wildfire if you're I mean, it doesn't take long. All the lists are pretty much public. So That's different than when we started because definitely a good list was like highly guarded and you know Only share it like if you shared a list like if you played a deck like if you borrowed a Friend gave you his list and he said you can't share this with anybody and you shared it Like you're dead to that Friendship friendship. I was it was over. Yeah Yeah for sure or you had you had essentially like the beginnings of metafy where if somebody would post a pokey gym that they had a deck list and you had people that would PayPal you the 20 bucks or whatever for you to DM them the deck list no guide whatsoever Literally just a list of 60 cards, but it happened and there were people that won tournaments from that. Sure I mean, there's some validity like I mean snake snake oil salesman. There's not all of them are good deck lists but There's definitely like top players that were able to you know Innovate like I think about Ross Coffin and all that like kind of some of the earlier innovators But we're getting kind of sidetracked. I think a little bit talking about random stuff Um, I just wanted to talk real quick while we're talking about what? Happened I was in Seattle judging and I did Judge juniors TCG for the first time. I've never done that before. Okay, it was a floor judge With a good team. We had like a lot of judges that I've known really well You know, I think we looked around and like Michael Pramal was our age Jay Bo young Bo young Wow That's really embarrassing Yeah, Bo yum. I'm like dude. I'm I know her last name. This is no bother me. I don't get it, right? I think it's yum Sorry, I don't know who you're talking about. I know you don't because nobody knows any of the judges No, no, no, no, she's she's worth shouting out like she was my head judge for this event. She's a rock star she Well, I'm not gonna share everything because I don't know I haven't got a permission to share everything But like she's had a rough week going into this week Weekend and like for her to pull through and like perform really really well as a judge was like amazing to watch And to be part of that team where you know You have like some really good AHA's and then all the floor judges like a lot of those those judges have been a chase and even leads or like head judges to work with all them like it was a crazy tournament like I Had been told like, you know going into that weekend I was like asking people like what's juniors like, you know is what should I know going into it? and I got some good advice like some people told me oh you need to get down on their level to deliver your penalties because if you're standing over them and like kind of talking down they kind of just get quiet and don't really like respond or Like process what you're saying to them. They're just kind of like, you know wide-eyed and like about to cry So you have to kind of get down on their level and kind of talk a little bit slower and you know More their speed and help them understand what you're saying and make sure they're understand what you're saying Not use open not use like leading questions or questions that end in yes or no It's like you need to ask open-ended questions and you know to make sure that they understand like have them repeat it back All that kind of stuff and it just takes more time to do judge calls Which you know is fine normally, but like the problem with juniors is it's it's an it's The you know, how masters will most of the time Fix stuff on their own like if somebody makes a mistake in a game and Most of the time like if I forget to attach like we saw it in on the stream I was watching the Seattle stream. We saw it on the stream where One of the players forgot to attach an energy to Golden Goat before announcing his attack and I think it's funny as Liam Liam just allowed him to take it back and Attached the energy. He did it again later and got a little price card penalty, but that's because he looked at his price cards, but Wait, I told someone twice in this one game. Not even the same set Game one he ended up winning the set which was crazy. But Yeah, you kind of had that edge where you know, Liam just didn't draw well golden go just runs you over But yeah, it's game one. He did it twice But the first time Liam let it take it back and there wasn't a penalty and a lot of times like masters know the rules well enough to be able to fix it or Have been just kind of I don't know a lot of time and I'm not saying that It's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing Have been just kind of I don't know a lot of time and i'm not saying that i'm not saying that you should do this as a player like if you Are not sure and even if you are sure it's it's good to just get a judge involved a lot of the times because It provides a level of accountability And consistency for everybody throughout the tournament like if you're fixing stuff on your own I know what happens i'm not like oblivious to that fact But you're you're you're kind of impacting your own tournament run by doing I don't know I mean i'm curious Do you feel like if you made a misplay? Or if your opponent makes a misplay against you and asks, can I take that back? Do you get the judge involved ever or do you just let him take it back most of the time? like No, I feel like I feel like every time that i've ever had that type of interaction happen whether i've performed the misplay or my Opponent it's always been something we kind of decide without I mean it depends on how severe it is, I guess Yeah, but if it's if it's a simple I don't know Like oh, I didn't mean to you know bench that can I pick it back up and it's like somebody like the opponent could fall right yes or no and whoever, you know if you mistakenly bench something and you didn't intend to Like you think about it for a second you didn't intend to and your opponent doesn't let you take it back Like you're gonna be like sour grapes about it, but is what it is. You just move on um something more like the whole Like i'll an example from worlds I guess was um I had a game I was playing against grant shen and he used coin bonus for the bench called dingo and drew two cards and I was I noticed and I said, hey, did you just draw two cards from that and he like I was actually going to call a judge about it because it is Like that is a rather egregious player, but he immediately was just like, okay, cool. I'll scoop It like we were at a point when we were at a point in the game where if if Like he wasn't able to do something like that turn. I was going to win on the next turn but just like you said a lot of players will self-police to the to the effect that They would rather not have the judge involved because a lot of people do it They just don't want something, you know, they don't want the record In case they do make another mistake later in the tournament They don't want to have like an escalation of penalties that can negatively impact them throughout their tournament, right? Is really what it boils down to is my assumption. So that's masters So sure juniors is the opposite of that where okay any time literally if you get called for a judge on everything I get called on I get called for everything like literally like can I can I you know, I had Just just the craziest like the most nothing burgers and then you get the like, you know so you go over to the table and you're not expecting much and you just get like Um, I drew seven I drew I put out seven prize cards and it's like okay, okay weird, but we can fix that and then there's other times where it's just like um, the game state's so broken that neither one of us can play and now it's a double game loss and it's like Okay, that's like that happens. Yeah It happens a lot or frequently like I gave out it. I gave out my first double game loss I think in a game three scenario, so I had a like round one both players lost round one um, so that Oh, I wouldn't even realize that that's the ultimate kind of result of that out like that's the outcome of that They don't play like a tiebreak game for game three. No, no, wow that's so interesting if it was akin to like I somebody I think that somebody played a um unfair stamp when They didn't take a knockout was taken. Yeah, or something akin to that like I don't know like played an unfair stamp with badu Like had been done and she followed something along that line. I forget it was I could look back at my notes, but it's not really that relevant but just that happened and then it was just it sucks like kids that age just Take it personally Um, and don't know how to take stuff in stride Well, no, I mean you figured like brain development and whatnot Like I was I was a I was terrible when I was that age playing pokemon I distinctly remember like I think I was Nine or ten in a card shop and like just lost a game and like I my head hit the table and I started crying Yeah, yeah the last round of some event or something and I was like, so I had to give out percent I had to give out two game losses in our last round of phase one on day on like round eight And that was tough and I even gave like a double prize card penalty and I saw that player like phase two and i'm like You know, it's just I don't know it It's uh it's a tough one, um, so that was part of it like you know, it's like going back to like every Every call you you get like Six hands up at the same time in your area. Gotcha, and you have to like deal with one individually and you can't be too fast because They're not going to tell you the whole story every time you ask them like you have to really investigate and like figure out Like they'll tell you a story you just have to like then decipher whether that's what actually happened or that's how they're presenting it to you Because they're not like perfect at Explaining the scenario sure or they don't really understand what's going on It's the full extent of like how how that breaks the game state. They'll just say like oh I did this It's like okay, you know, then you investigate. Did you play an iona? Did you? Um, if you did that then what card did you do? Like if you played buddy buddy poffin like why did you put a card? From your hand back into your deck after you buddy buddy poffin like that happened like they shuffled in a card after they played And then some like I spent the whole time trying to make it like trying to like Rewind a dpc to the point where we could go back to playing and then the last piece I uncovered was like Oh, you shuffled the card in after you played a buddy buddy poffin and now your deck's bay-bay's poffin. Yeah now you Now you have an illegal deck and we can't recover the card Holy cow game loss just like So that that was like the chaos of juniors and then on top of that in round three The fire alarm goes off 30 minutes or 20 minutes into the round Just without any context the alarm goes off and we're just As judges I don't know what's going on right, we're just so But the kids are so well trained, you know, shout outs to the american public school system They stop they scoop up their games and start walking towards like they start walking like moving towards the exit like they're they're they're gonna they're gonna get out of there and so somebody comes over the loudspeakers um and says You know, this is not an emergency scenario, please do not evacuate Uh, we are investigating what's happening um What happened? I don't know like that. I never got clarity as to what actually happened My guess would be it was a false alarm like either something, you know Like a sensor went off or somebody pulled the fire stop like fire alarm who knows but it was a false alarm thankfully um, but Just the chaos of that moment, dude. I can't like it was right before lunch break um, it's So I was like I wasn't fully tired yet. Like I was tired, but I was like more like looking forward to lunch kind of tired um and I just remember like I just kept repeating like hey like everybody, you know, please please remain calm We'll give you as much information as we can when we know what we what's going on They're gonna and I kept I think I said like they're gonna make an announcement over the loudspeaker because I knew like at least I knew that that would happen That somebody would come on to the loudspeaker and say what was going on Um, if we needed to evacuate we would find out relatively quickly. So that did happen relatively quickly within like a minute or two um, and then After that it was just like okay now like so we gathered together as a group really quick because it went on for 10 minutes Like the alarm stayed on for 10 minutes. Holy cow, and you know, some players were still trying to play and we're asking do we keep playing or like Should and we didn't have any guidance for them. Like we don't have a plan in place like truthfully that's definitely something we're gonna have to visit as judges to like have a better idea of You know what to do in that kind of a scenario because we didn't really have anything in place. Um and so After talking about it. We're like, all right, everybody just pause your match and if you scooped just stay at your table We're gonna wait for this to go over And you know once the alarms go off we'll resume play Um, and so we stopped everything paused what we could the players that had scooped their matches um We told to reset up And they got a 10 minute time extension Um added to their so they they had to like replay their game um, you know, but we didn't penalize them for scooping because It's an emergency scenario. Like we're not gonna penalize you for valuing your life and the other chaotic part was like the parents. Um And I don't blame a parent at all for like if it's an emergency scenario, we're getting my kid We're getting out of there. Like yeah, if the building's on fire like You know f pokemon like we're gonna we're gonna go evacuate this building and you know we'll buy we'll buy you a new deck like it'll be okay so then so but the parents started rush they rushed into their kids and so now that all the parents are in the play area and the parents are asking me like what's going on and wanting answers and so that was challenging to say the least um and so we ended up you know at the end of the day like we added 10 more minutes to the tournament but everything is as much as it could you know went smoothly uh from there uh i will say after lunch there were so many kids i needed to use the bathroom like almost all my calls for the first like 20 minutes were just like i need to use the bathroom i need to use the bathroom like so that was something new to me um and you know it's the same as masters where if you have to go you have to go so we'll pause the match for you um which is little known fact if you have to use the bathroom so bad and they're like the parents just went up or something like that just go to your table first and then once the round starts you can call a judge over to pause your match if like that's like the better strat than being late for your match being late for your match is like so much worse than calling a judge over and just having them sit by your table or like standing in your general area to make sure your opponent's not doing anything while you're at the bathroom or whatever but um so all that to say like juniors i had a great time um i also got to do uh judge the tcg cup on sunday and i got to watch a really good finals between uh a zoroark deck and a dragonpole charizard deck um i think the zoroark was sebastian laschmidt um and the pultzard was wyatt somebody else i'm trying to remember his name he was a senior that aged up last year or this year um relatively new but uh just a really good set like sebastian like made a pretty crucial mistake game one where he drew four cards off of unfair stamp and like just gave the win away that kind of so just he got a dpc like i was not able to stop it in time like i stopped it as he was drawing his fourth card you know i'm just like did you so that was tough um but game two he opened really poorly he had a badu in the active and a fezzendipity on the bench and three bosses orders and a bunch of energy um and so he spent the first three turns manually powering up fezzendipity and bossing up something just like bossing up different things on um wyatt's board just to buy turns and kind of stall out and prevent the the donks and the ko's or whatever um and he did just enough he took two knockouts with cruel arrow he and then he was able to set up like multiple ko's with darmanitan um to where he never went down like he never went past um three prize cards until like he won the game and so that prevented wyatt who ran acerola's um what is it called acerola's uh mischief yeah he ran acerola's mischief and pulled czar to where he could never be at two prizes or less than two prizes and you know that that's one way to get around that zorro arc infinite like damage like you know 20 times the amount of damage on you so now that you can sure so that was that was just amazing to watch like what a comeback to like start so poorly and still claw your way in there and it made like it made me like really like i like zorro arc i just don't feel like i'm that smart or like i'm not at that level with that deck um so that was really fun to watch that finals um just a really good set um and yeah it was like just a really good funny like seattle's a cool city i hadn't been there in a long time and the weather was relatively nice um it was like 50s and somewhat sunny which was uncommon for seattle this time of year um sure but it was really nice just to walk around and walked around like pike's market um a good bit um and we went to like a bar korean barbecue one night um with some friends from richmond i flew out there with me and then we went to like a really nice um bar slash arcade where they have like a really nice selection of pinball machines and the guy one of the guys i went to uh or guys i went with that night um locally he owns um a card shop slash arcade in richmond called dawn star his name is dakota really nice guy so he was telling me all about like the lore of all the arcade machines and you know all the all the backstory and then like would show me the games he's really like excited to see you there and stuff like that so that was kind of cool to have um for sure just a really good one of the um is he going to get one of those fancy pokemon pinball machines yes he is he's he said he's going to get that this the stern uh pokemon pinball machine so i'm very excited like i'm not i'm not good at pinball i'm i'm actually terrible but i will just like delight in watching somebody that's talented play that like watching pinball is mesmerizing when somebody's when somebody good is playing you know so very cool um just a great great weekend and i'm looking forward i'll be in houston in a couple weeks and then yeah orlando with you um but yeah just uh i i'm glad i got to do juniors and i would i would do it again i wouldn't want to do it for every tournament it really it's just it's taxing like it it physically is taxing like more than masters masters is kind of slow in comparison like you get maybe one or two judge calls most rounds um and they're a little more complex like at least most of the times like if somebody feels like they need to call over a judge and masters it's gotten to a point where it's pretty bad and so you're doing a little bit more like fixing scenarios somewhat like but seniors gets messy too i'm not our juniors gets messy too and i guess they all get messy but they're all they're all they're all without you know they're all great they're all with their own challenges um and juniors was a lot of fun and i would definitely want to you know contribute where i can and that'd be part of it too awesome well sounds like you had a great time i think uh the other big thing from last week was obviously pokemon day but before we get into that news um we do have a blaine's quiz show this week to see if john can create a point gap between he and i and so obviously we took last week off of blaine's quiz show because i had not taken the time to prepare it but for those of us that where are we at there we go those of us potentially if you're listening that have not tuned into blaine's quiz show before john and i take turns asking each other a series of three multiple choice questions each correct answer will award the answerer with one point one hint is available to john this week that he can utilize on any of the three questions however if he is able to answer all three correctly without utilizing that hint he will earn himself an additional bonus point and as i said just a minute ago we are currently tied up at 17 points apiece and so we will see if john can pull ahead in the category of special pokemon and so it's pretty pretty vague topic but i think you'll see what i mean once we get into the questions okay and so first question here just what are the odds of catching a shiny pokemon in a modern aka 3d mainline pokemon video game and your odd your choices are one in 8192 one in 4096 one in 2048 or one in 1024 oh man i don't i don't do much shiny hunting um i know it's like super popular like they've done side events or yeah like competitions at um i think at worlds and naic where they do shiny hunting competitively um but i couldn't tell you man i i don't play enough uh i'm gonna use my 50 like i'll use a hint here if you uh feel like i'll just go ahead and rip that out okay the answer to this question has a nine in it okay so it's either you know 8892 or 4096 i'm gonna lean towards 4096 8192 feels a little high and i think maybe in like the back recesses of mind i've read 4096 somewhere so i'll just guess that one one in 400 4900 4096 and you would be absolutely correct john however that is only the case in these modern games if you go back to games that are pre-generation 6 so when it was still 2d you know top-down pokemon the odds the full odds shinies in those games were actually one in 8192 and there are there are ways in all of the games to improve them like there's the shiny charm and now i think you can like make sandwiches and scarlet and violet that let you do it and if the pokemon is part of an outbreak it's a further improved like it gets to the point where your odds of getting a shiny are actually really really really good if you've set yourself up for it correctly so shiny hunting has become infinitely easier than it used to be it's not all just soft resetting and hoping that you land things on the right seed in your rng for the game anymore yeah still remember seeing that with like uh legendaries back in the day where like people tried to shiny legendaries and it just took them like literally like 8 000 tries well it's either that or like there was a thing with oh my goodness which one was it was either black and white or diamond pearl to where you could like set your ds clock to be at a certain time and there was a website that could tell you that you wanted to be at like this date this time this minute and then this many seconds in is when you hit start on the game and that will like guarantee that the pokemon is shiny that and it has this nature and these are the ivs that it has and there were like essentially legal ways of getting like perfect shiny legendary pokemon that's insane but how do you i guess you just like reverse engineer it yeah more or less it had to be just be like data mining and just figuring there's no way that like you just do that by brute force or trial of course not of course yeah but yeah so one point for you so far so you're currently up 18 to 17 next question which special pokemon mechanic has had the highest number of cards in the pokemon tcg your choices are crystal pokemon shining pokemon pokemon star or radiant pokemon shining pokemon you're not talking about baby shinies and all that kind of stuff like the no i'm talking about pokemon whose name are shiny insert pokemon yes okay okay um so i'm unfortunately the only one that i'm really somewhat familiar with is radiant pokemon um i know of shining pokemon and pokemon star i don't know much at all about crystal but i don't remember a lot of crystal when i like crystal charizard like that was a huge one like crystal lugia and then but i felt like that was just like one set um so i'm gonna like rule that one out mentally pokemon star was around for a minute i don't think shining was super big either like i'm trying to think like that's watsi mechanic as well maybe a little bit after watsi but like uh i don't think there was a huge amount of shining i don't think it's either pokemon start or radiant pokemon i want to i'm leaning towards pokemon star because i think that crossed more than one set and radiant was literally maybe two sets like darkness ablaze there was a decent amount of radiant pokemon but there was probably i think more pokemon star like i remember there just being a lot of them over the course of like like when i got like right before i got into it with like before i got into it like a black boat like when uh harcourt silver like the early rotation like i got in right after that early rotation but before that rotation there was a lot of pokemon star in play i'm thinking that was the probably the most out of all of these so i'm going to lock in pokemon star okay pokemon star is your selection and you are correct i was actually i was really hoping that the shining one would trip you up because they while that was initially a wizard's mechanic they did bring it back okay when tbci had it like there was the shining lugia that got played with malamar okay yeah yeah yeah yeah okay but they also had the um like all of the mythical pokemon like genesex celebi jirachi like all of them have shining pokemon now and like i was hoping that that would trip you up enough that maybe it would suck you in yeah the crystal pokemon like you identified correctly really small subset like existed for two sets at the during the e-reader era um and then pokemon started like i i knew there were a lot of them until i went back to make this question i didn't realize just how many there were yeah yeah it's been a long time like almost the entire initial ex era well starting with i think team rocket returns was the first set that had them and there were star there were two or three of them in every single set from that to the end of the ex block and now they're unobtainium now they're like insanely expensive like all of these are obvious except for radiant but yeah yeah so two for two so far points on the day and last question aside from charizard because he gets included in everything which pokemon has had the most special printings and by special we're including the four categories from the last question so shining crystal star and radiant your choices are stelix celebi lugia or kabutops oh man i mean so just looking back at the last one so you repeat the question again just like what's considered special again so if we go back and we'll just look at the last one so you have crystal shining pokemon star and radiant pokemon so so all of these pokemon have been included in at least one of these subcategories but which of these four has been included in the most i don't think there's a radiant kabutops um there might be a shining one i don't there's a crystal one i think and celebi there's a radiant celebi there might be a celebi star i don't know if there's a maybe shining celebi i don't know if there's a crystal shell but i think lugia has had I wonder if they had a Lugia star. Oh, man. Lugia is like what my gut is. But also, I feel like you're evil enough to wear it. Like, I see a little smirk in your eye. You're evil enough to wear it. It's like Kabutops or like Steelix or something, man. Oh, man. I wish I had my hint for this one. This is tough. And Steelix, did it? I mean, it had a lot. There was like dark and light, or like, oh, my gosh. This is just agonizing. I'm going to lock in Celebi. I want to say Lugia, but I don't know if that's the right answer. Maybe I'm just faking myself out. But yeah, we'll just do Celebi. I think they've had a lot of printings for Celebi and a lot of special ones of that. So we'll just do Celebi. OK, well, you talked a lot around a lot of the Pokemon on this list, mostly the Celebi and the Lugia, which would have been the hint for what it's worth. It would have gotten you down to those two. And it was, in fact, so. Oh, my gosh. So Kabutops did have a crystal printing. It also had a shining printing, but was neither a radiant nor a star. There was no Lugia star. There was a crystal Lugia and a shining Lugia, but it was never a radiant or star Pokemon. Celebi was actually included in all of these mechanics, except for crystal. Right. So we did have a Celebi star. There was a shining Celebi, and there was a radiant Celebi. And then Steelix, there was a radiant Pokemon and a shining Pokemon, but not for the other mechanics. Yeah, the crystal one was the one that was kind of the monkey wrench and was hoping that you might, I don't know, think enough on it. I almost picked Lugia. It was close. I was so close. But yeah, you went three for three this week. So even utilizing your hint, you got three questions right this week, John. So you have up to 20 points to close out the week. So way to go. And we'll see how I can perform next time to see if I can keep up with you as we move forward in the next edition of Blaine's Quiz Show. Thank you, Aaron. That was very rousing, very emotionally stirring. And I hope our listeners got a lot out of that, as much as I did, living the bygone eras of some really pretty cards. I think Crystal's probably one of the coolest looking card sets, like the whole, like the jumbo box toppers that are see-through or whatever from that era, probably some of the coolest cards ever printed in my mind. It reminds me a lot of the Stellar Terra Pokemon that they came out with, where like, even though they are all colorless on the Crystal Pokemon, but they have the same kind of mechanic where the energy types on them are like their typical type in the card game at the time, plus two additional ones. So you get to see like three different energy symbols on the card. And they pop out because it's a colorless card template. So it really just like, but they had some really weird choices. Like there's a Golem that's a Crystal Pokemon, which is just kind of odd to me. But then you did, like you had, of course, you had Charizard, and then you had like Lugia, Ho-Oh. Oh goodness, what was that? A Crobat had one, but I think Crobat deserves one. Crobat's pretty cool. The Golem was the one that stood out to me. I was like, why is this here? Was it just like, well, Golem was a Johto like add-on, right? Like similar to Crobat. No, Golem's from Gen 1. Golem is from Gen 1. Yeah, Brock had a Geodude. Yeah, Geodude, Graveler, so Golem was already in. OK. I guess I chose what I was going to do. You just snapped. You didn't pull out your link cable on the playground, John. No, I didn't really explore that evolution line all the way, I guess. That's fair. No, I really love, I mean, Pokemon loves to repeat a gimmick, but I love some of them a lot more than I love the other ones. Like, I don't love the gold cards. Like, we talked about that. But yeah, like the crystal ones, like the coal, like Terra. I like the look of the full art Terras a lot. Like, you know, a lot of those look good, like full art. I do like the gold Charizard Terra. Like, that looks genuinely pretty good. The one that's not, like, the one that still has color and stuff, I have one of those. And then, yeah, just the, like, a lot of the Terra artwork is really nice. Like, all the stuff from Charismatic Evolutions, obviously, you know, there's a reason why people love it so much. And it's so sought after. But even, like, the lower, like, the Terrapagos from that set, and, like, just the regular Eevees and stuff, like, they still look really good, so. Absolutely. Pokemon makes some cool stuff, man. And speaking of, yeah, there you go. Transition. They have announcements of some cool stuff Pokemon making and some not so cool stuff. Like, Cafe Remix still exists for some reason. So, like, with the Pokemon Presents, they opened up with a lot of the mobile game stuff, as they usually do. Pokemon Sleep still exists. They're adding Mew to it. They put Red in. They added a bunch of guys to Pokemon Unite. Yeah, you were excited about that. Well, you didn't get the MOBA. I did not. I did not get my freaking auto chess, man. That that grinds my gears. I don't care about the new Pokemon. I wanted auto chess or auto battle or whatever you want to call it. It's not here. And that's very disappointing. There's another Go Tour Pokemon TCG Pocket set, but that like they had already announced that this was the first new thing. This was actually kind of neat. I haven't looked at this, so I like I have no idea how much it costs, but it's a little like basically music box with. Swappable cartridges with the Game Boy soundtrack for the the original red and blue games. And my understanding is they said that they went through and made sure that the sound like the tone of the sound is identical to what would come out of a Game Boy in the 90s. So you can get the ultimate nostalgia hit. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Yeah, people are people are going to buy this up. And, you know, it's it's funny to me. Like, I remember like when the what was the Nintendo classic, the little Nintendo console came out and sure, like we got a lot of that. This reminds me of that where we're just kind of feeding into that and just repackaging old material. But like it is just that it's aesthetically pleasing and it is it's a cool thing to pull out to discussion. Like, I don't know if you're a Pokemon nerd, it's it's it's like, and especially if you are a gen one fan like this is pretty cool. So yeah, my only thing is like, I hope this comes with a storage case of some sort, because this looks like a lot of cartridges. I'm sure you could. Yeah, like it should. Or if it doesn't, you can probably find something. Right. Next nostalgia hit is Gale of Darkness coming to Nintendo GameCube for Switch Online, which is pretty cool. I've heard mixed reviews about this game. I like it a lot. I because I knew it was coming to Switch Online, I actually ended up like bundling it together and took that Coliseum and some other stuff. And that's why I now have a switch to was like meeting some dude off Facebook Marketplace and like swapping retro video game stuff with him to get the new console. Oh, so nice. So. But now I can still play the game again. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. Better graphics, I'm sure. Like, no, I'm sure I think it's literally in my understanding for all of these Nintendo Switch Online things, it's 100% just an emulator. OK, at least at least the load times are better. Maybe we'll see. Yeah. We got the re-release of FireRed and LeafGreen. And have you ever played these ones, Sean? To be honest with you, I had a life. There was a period of my life where I literally just didn't play Pokemon. Basically, I did Gen one. And then I think the next Pokemon game I played was Sun and Moon. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, I got back into the card game, but I didn't even own a DS. Like I didn't have a 3DS until I got second place at a nationals tournament where first place got a 3DS and I got like booster packs, which probably now are worth like five times what a 3DS is. So think back on. But I traded like the booster packs and some cash on top to the guy that won for that 3DS to. Gotcha. Because he already had one or like he I don't know. He didn't want it bad enough to where I wanted it. So I still have that 3DS funnily enough. It's. Right here. So a little premier ball tag and everything. It doesn't look anything special. It's just a, you know, basic. I'm sure it's a plain one. Yeah, I know. I like the color of this. The year that the 3DS came out, they had a it was the year of the emergency rotation. So the heart, gold, silver, silver year. I won the 3DS tournament at nationals. Nice. With like semi-serious mega or something. So like that was the only reason I had a 3DS. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So FireRedlyFree coming out. No, that would have been DS. There's no way that was 3DS. Oh, you're right. No, you're right. That would have been regular DS. Yeah, yeah. So still. OK, fine. That was the only reason I had a DS at the time. Yeah, but I had a DS, but I just never had Pokemon games, I think. Gotcha. But we got FireRedlyFree coming back. Like I think the big weird thing is that they're 20 bucks, which seems like a lot to me for a game that's this old. Now, granted, the like if you bought the actual hard cartridge version of this game, they're like at least 100 bucks, I believe. They might actually be more. So like for the availability perspective, that's pretty cool. But this game is really old. Like this game is more than 20 years old. Why are we paying $20 for it? I don't know. I mean, in this day and age, like emulators exist, you can probably jailbreak a switch and play it on there. I'm not saying you should, but or like, oh, you figured there's so many Pokemon ROM hacks. I FireRed and LeafGreen undoubtedly are available online. Like the one kind of, I guess, draw for this is that they've announced that it's going to have Pokemon home functionality. So if that's a reason, yeah. Like if that's something that appeals to you as a player, like you want a Pokemon that comes from Kanto and you want to transfer it up into your new games, or maybe there's a move that it only learns in this game that you want to then transfer up into something later down the line. How does that work with like older generation stuff where if it's a fairy type or like, you know, learns? I don't know. Like, how does that work? Like, you know, like a fairy, like that's normal type. Like in this game, it's a normal. Yeah, it's a normal type in the original game. And then when you put it in Pokemon home, it'll be the modern type. OK, so just that's all retrofits it. OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like you can't you can't have a weird typed Clefairy or Jigglypuff or whatever, just because it came from FireRed, LeafGreen. Next thing was an announcement like Chris Brown came on. And showed the world's artwork for this year, which this was anticlimactic. I mean, the artwork's cool. Like, I like the space theme. That's pretty sick. But like, I was kind of bummed out that there wasn't any more information other than like registrations going live soon or something like that. Yeah, we'll get to that point in just a second. But like this. I'm trying to figure out why this is the theming overall, honestly. And it is kind of confusing, huh? There's a lot going on here, too. So normally in the world's artwork, you kind of get the like, if you look at last year's artwork or the Hawaii artwork as an example, like you got to see the Riolu with the goggles that was diving and you could kind of pick out like the merch Pokemon from the artwork. And this one, I'm having a harder time doing that. Like one of them, I think this Kirlia right here, like with the briefcase and whatnot, that looks like it might be a plushie. Yeah, just just because it is kind of a stylized Kirlia. But otherwise, I don't know what else would be a. Oh, wait a minute. What is this guy on top of the Hydreigon? Something where that's a. Oh, it's a Pommy. That's probably a plushie, too. That seems like a plushie Pokemon. Or we're just going to get two different Pikachu's because a lot of space Pikachu and like champion Pikachu, because I'm assuming this whole side of the artwork is supposed to be like Pokemon champions themed. Right. What I don't get is there's no pole like this, the street car, but it looks like a Rayquaza. Like, right. It's just the and there's like the Golden Gate Bridge in the background of San Francisco. And then you have all these weird planets. But like, yeah, the rest of it, other than like those two touch points just feels very almost out of place for us, because it's not like it's Houston or something like Space City, you know, like San Francisco, I guess, is a tech capital. I'm like, I don't think SpaceX is headquartered there or like space. They pulled all their stuff out of California. Yeah, right. So I don't know where you're getting the space theme from, other than just like, oh, we really haven't had a space theme in a long time. Let's yeah, let's rehash a theme. So I don't know. It looks cool. I mean, it looks like I like the Hydreigon. That's pretty cool. Like that's one of my favorite Pokemon from Gen five. And you get a lot of Gen five love here. I like that. Like you get the Tornadus and that's about it. So I will say there is there is a like for reference, there is a NASA center in San Francisco. OK. You know what? I feel like that's not a huge like. It's not. It's not like a big draw to the city. It's not something that a ton of people are aware of, because I think everyone I've heard talk about this so far. Nobody has made mention of it whatsoever. It does exist. It is. Yeah. You only know that because you work at NASA. Not the point. Not the point. But we do have different planets. Like I like this one. I like the new one a lot, just because the planet is like a camera up. Yeah. But the rest of them, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's exciting. Yeah, it's you know, are you are you are you planning on going to worlds this year? Probably not. Probably not. I mean, there's depending on how things line up and how much flights are. I know initially we were planning to have a Masters Cup event at worlds. So assuming that that is still happening and I can swing things, I will be present for that. But I can't guarantee that I'll be present for everything. And which is awkward, because like you mentioned before, they did also announce that we have Pokemon XP finally got its registration thing announced to where they also said now it's a lottery system, which I don't know if we were aware of before. I think that they kind of had made it seem like it was going to be a first come, first serve. You know, get your that's why they had the kind of early bird registration thing that they mentioned initially. And like, get your tickets now. And now they're like, hey, we I don't know if they dropped the ball or maybe this stuff just wasn't ready or now that's like sign up for the interest list. And it's going to be more akin to kind of the spectator pass registration that they've had in the past or like when they had special events at Hawaii and Yokohama. There was a separate lottery system where you had to sign up if you wanted to participate. participate in those things. And it looks like that's what they're doing just to even get a pass to go to worlds this year as a spectator. So, that's happening in early April, right? I think there's the deadline to sign up for the list is like April 4th or 5th. And that's when they'll also be doing the drawing for getting a pass. Yep, yep. So if you wanna get your chance at going into worlds, definitely try to get that in there. It's, I mean, even though we're kind of pooh-poohing a little bit the theme or whatever, like if you've never been to worlds or have any, like, especially with Pokemon XP being a thing, like if you are at all, if you're listening to this podcast, you care about Pokemon. And there's definitely, I mean, me and Aaron have been to worlds even as spectators. I have been in worlds a couple of times as a spectator and once as a competitor and now once as a judge. It is definitely something I would recommend everybody does as like a bucket list item, at least. Definitely make your way out there if you can, even if you get only like a one day. It's just such an amazing experience. Sure. It's gotten a little bit more crowded and I'm sure it will be now more than ever, especially the Pokemon Center kind of feels, I don't know, kind of feels a little less exciting. It's more just scalpers trying to extract as much value from something as possible, which is lame. Although they've tentatively fixed that this year because my understanding is the only way to get a pass into the Pokemon Center is if you also have a Pokemon XP pass. So that's good. So that'll limit theoretically scalping to an extent, some degree, or maybe the scalping will just shift hands and it'll be players doing the scalping instead, which is what worlds used to be before there was much more public involvement. Before we had a store. Especially like post COVID, worlds has become like a spectacle event and more so just kind of a Pokemon convention rather than just being focused on the competitive events that are happening there. And like John said, even if you can only get a one day pass, it's definitely something that's worth doing at least once. And if you can only get a one day pass, my advice would be to go on Sunday. Like go on Sunday, pay for the arena pass, go into the Chase Center, see whatever they set up for the finals. That's gonna be amazing for sure. Stay there for as long as you can. Like that was the highlight of worlds last year for me was going in and seeing the stage that they had set up on Sunday. That was amazing. Yeah, I got everything. I'm not gonna say I was unfortunate because I was still fortunate to work the event, but because I was doing side events all day, I didn't get to go into the venue, but like just seeing it on the TV alone, like with the orchestra and the light up floor and the whole just, it was like the freaking Olympics, man. It was insane. Like the amount of like planning and just, it felt like Pokemon has arrived, you know, like that kind of just like we've reached a point now where it's a cultural event, which is crazy. Like I could see a world where it's like televised on ESPN or like on like a national TV at some point if it gets like, I don't know. Yeah, if it gets big enough, like they- It's at the Chase Center. Like, you know, it's not like, you know, they have plenty of sporting events all over the world. So like, yeah, I could see a world where Pokemon markets it enough to where- So if they could put Cornhole on ESPN, I think that Pokemon could end up there too. I mean, they used to be like, the first world championships was on GameSpot and like, there was like G4 back in the day where- Not the first world championship. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. The first televised, like the first recorded one was on GameSpot, like the first broadcasted one. Not the first one, it was 2011. 2010, it was 2010. 2010, sorry. No, sorry, no, no, no, no, no, you're right. It was 2012 and it was the year, the funny thing was they got people that had knew nothing about the Pokemon card game to cast that event. And one of the guys casting continued to announce Darkrai's attack as Darkspear for the entire cast despite being corrected multiple times. Nightspear, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that was fun. That was, that's a different we've arrived moment. Like, just like, just to show like, yeah. Nowadays, like Pokemon trains all its casters to how to pronounce Rayquaza and all that kind of stuff. You have to say things, you have to like, everything gets buttoned up for that. Yeah. Like, what's another, like, I always thought it was Reuniclus, but have since learned from Chip that it, no, it's Reuniclus. Which I'm like, that does not roll off the tongue. That sounds terrible. And I do not want to hear that anymore. So hopefully one of those does not become legal anytime or not legal, but playable anytime soon. I wonder if there's anybody at like the Pokemon card design team that's like, they want to make sure that only the easy to pronounce Pokemon are playable. Maybe, yeah. That's why I think about marketing probably gets to say so. It's like, that's why Gardevoir and Gengar are always good. Yeah. Or at least semi-playable. That's why we don't have Conkeldurr and all that being taught to you. Sure. I don't know. Next up, they did a little blurb for the, like an addition to the Legends ZA DLC, and we got to see Mega Garchomp Z. I know nothing about this Pokemon. I have not seen it yet. It's got, it looks kind of like the baby of Mega Garchomp and Mega Aerodactyl. Yeah, a little bit. Just like all the spikes and everything. Mega Salamence, a little bit with the wings. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like the, just not homunculus isn't the word I'm looking for. Yeah. Amalgamation. The Chimera, that's what it is. Like the Chimera Pokemon, which I don't know. Pretty neat though. So at some point I'll get to that. This was a little bit more interesting, and it comes at an interesting time. I know a lot of people are excited about this. A lot of people are really excited about this game just because it's kind of, initially I thought that it was Pokemon meets Animal Crossing. Instead, what I've heard from like people that play these types of games, because I've never been an Animal Crossing person, but I've heard that it's more akin to a game called Viva Pinata, which is also something that I've never played. So I don't really fully understand the reference or comparison. But from what I've seen now, this game's like reviews have been going out for this game, and it is the highest rated Pokemon video game ever. That's awesome. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that might make me get a Switch 2. I might pick it up. And. Yeah. Other reasons we'll see later, like this is the big Pokemon game for this year. Right, which is crazy, but like. They're not releasing anything else later in the year. So if you want this, like get a Switch 2 at some point this year and sink some hours into Pokeopia. And they made it look almost like Minecraft at points where you're like doing. Sure. Like open world exploration and building, and you can like make a server, or like make a village, like an island together with other people, and like make giant, like they showed like a giant ditto statue or something like that. Right. Where it was interactive, and you could change aspects of it and all that kind of stuff and play with a partner at the whole. It was like really cool, man. Like, I don't know, like. I never knew I needed this, but now I feel like I definitely need it. Well, people like cozy games as a whole. Oh, I loved Animal Crossing, and it got me through the pandemic. And like, yeah, stuff like this, where you're just, you know, you're not really. There's less of a like stakes, like stakes aren't high, but like you can sink endless hours into this stuff and just share open world explore is really cool. And there's the chef, Greed, and it's pretty sick. Yeah. There was the boom box wrote them for me, too. That's cool. So I'm sure I wonder if they'll actually come to, or there was a special Tangrowth, too. They said it was like Professor Tangrowth. Yeah. So I wonder, like, are those going to become cards at some point? Yeah. I hope so. It'd be great. I would love to get a Pocopia set with like the artwork and everything, like the weirdo looking human ditto. Yeah. See? Okay. Now we might be onto something. Yeah. And speaking of card games, they did announce we are in fact going to get a 30th anniversary set. And they shared a bunch of like, well, here, we'll just play this trailer real quick. Hopefully we don't get like DMCA for it or whatever. But they go through and they show a bunch of old kind of marquee cards. We get the base set Pikachu. We get base set Charizard again, for some reason. And that's where we see, what do we get, I think? Oh yeah. Crystal Lugia, Palkia level X, Uxie from Legends Awakened. We get a Legend card. Oh, I was so hyped when I saw this. Oh my gosh. And Genesect. Yeah. Solgaleo GX. Which was cool. It was Chinese, too. Did you notice that? Yeah. That was the other thing I didn't, like we didn't mention earlier. The Charizard, the base set Charizard that they had was German, too. And the kind of big announcement for like, this is Japanese, right? Or that might be Korean. It's kind of hard to tell with this resolution. Yeah. No, this one's Korean for sure. So like a Korean Zacian. I'm actually not sure what language this Pikachu Zekrom tag team is. Maybe. So just all these different languages for cards, cards from all different eras. And then we get the announcement of whatever the heck this is with the Mew or Mewtwo. With these like. Metal and dragon and then. Like metallic with all the energy symbols going on behind them. And the big announcement that this set will be released this year, simultaneously worldwide. Which is pretty cool. Like that's something we haven't gotten before. And I would really hope that it indicates that we might be on track to simultaneous worldwide releases for everything in the future. I don't buy it. I want to, I really do Aaron. But I was talking about my brother. Where I'm just like, okay, so we're just gonna have a four month period in Japan where like nothing gets released. Like that's not happening. Well, they don't even have to do that though. They would just. As much as it would suck, they would either have to accelerate our release schedule or we would have to get these weird amalgamation sets where we have like extra cards shoved into sets for a short amount of time until we catch up. Or they could. Like China has. Or they could. Hold on, hold on a second. They don't even have to just have four months where nothing comes out in Japan. They just have to slowly release things a little bit slower for some short amount of time. And so they slow down the release cadence in Japan until everyone else catches up. Not just like a giant four month gap, but instead of having something that comes out every month, if something comes out, they wait eight weeks instead of six weeks. And then they do that again for a number of sets. And eventually we get to a point where everybody's releasing everything at the same time. And then everyone's happy. Maybe, maybe. No, I'm just looking at. Okay, yeah. So that set will be specifically. We know that much. But other than that, we don't know anything. Other than that, it's probably not gonna happen. We're gonna, I'm gonna keep asking for it, but it probably won't happen. We got a weird. I don't know how I felt about this Pokemon champions trailer. Like the, the people. Yeah. Like this wrestler, this guy in particular, like that was screaming at the little girl across the stadium from him. That was just odd. It was a little, like a little campy, like a little like professional wrestling and. Right. A little like smile at the camera that I'm having a great time. It's like that kind of corny, like, but you know, the product itself looked good. It looked fine. Broken, like the fact that I was watching because I started watching it on Twitch and then it crashed on Twitch. So I moved over to Wolf Glick's co-stream of it. And he was, I was cool hearing him like talk about it. Cause he's like, oh, you know, he broke it down. I'm like, okay. So they're basically like having all the same mechanics from all the generations. It's like a mashup of literally like Z moves, Gigantamax, Terra Pokemon, like everything's gonna be in this at the same time. So it was just gonna blow, you know? And I was asking like judges that judge VG, what is this gonna look like when you guys have to judge it? And they're like, we don't know. Like. Well, they'll probably have those, like they have the rotating regulations where they kind of have like a ban list for Pokemon. They'll probably have different things where different mechanics are legal at whatever time too, right? Yeah, there'll be a format. And like, you know, you can only play with certain like legendary or certain moves. But like, I think, and it's coming out originally, it'll only be on Switch and Switch 2. Yes. Yeah, in March. And then eventually it comes to, it says April right here. And then it'll come to mobile sometime later. Yep. So that's exciting. Are you planning on playing any champions? I mean, are you gonna? Yeah, I mean, I'll download it. It's free. I'll give it a fair shake. And the fact that if it's easier, I think that the video game is interesting to where I've done some like rental team VGC stuff every once in a while, like when a new game comes out or a new regulation starts. And I'm like, cool, I can go try this out before everyone's kind of optimized everything. And I'm just out of my depth because I have no idea what any of these guys do and how they match up into each other and what's going on. And if that's something that I could potentially just do on offhand, just every once in a while without having to go catch the Pokemon and whatnot. Sure, yeah, why not? Yeah, I mean, I'm interested to see like the, like team development mechanic. If it's like you, how do you raise your team? How do you make sure, like, is it just like kind of like a customizable car in a video game or something like a racing video game where you're just able to just bolt on whatever and change the stats as is, or do you have to like, I don't know, grind and spend a lot of hours to do it? That'd be interesting to see. Like, or even worse would be like a freaking gotcha system where you have to spend money to like- No, if it's a gotcha game, I'm not playing it. Like a freaking NBA 2K where you have to like open packs to get certain players and get like specific players to buy that, like that would suck. Hopefully it's not that, that would really just kill the competitive, like all the, I don't know. I mean, you could transfer stuff from Pokemon Home, so it wouldn't be the end of the world. But yeah, I don't know, we're speculating a lot. Sure, and then the last big announcement was Gen 10. So we got Pokemon Wins and Waves and I'll be honest with you, I think the environments in this game look really good. Oh, it's beautiful. It's like- Especially when you compare it to Scarlet and Violet, right? Yeah. And it's just like night and day better. Yeah, it's it looks like a PC game. Like it looks like maybe like a PC game five years ago, truthfully. But still, like compared to like what we've been expecting with Scarlet and Violet, like the the water looks real and actually appealing to look at. But then like the Pokemon and people still look like Pokemon and people. They're not like hyper realistic. Like we're not getting Detective Pikachu type graphics for the Pokemon. Oh, my God. It's like they still look like they have the kind of Pokemon stylization, the cartooniness to them. They and I think that it looks pretty good. Like the people still think they still look like Pokemon people to me. You know, they don't look like, you know, we dropped Ryan Reynolds into the game and put a hat on him. I started watching type of Pikachu on the plane back from Seattle, and I literally got through 15 minutes of it. And I'm like, I don't think I can watch Ryan Reynolds anymore. Like I just got tired of it, man. There's one. There's one scene in that movie that I absolutely love, and it's when they're interrogating the Mr. Mime. Mm hmm. I don't remember at what point it is in the movie, but it is so funny to me. And yeah, I don't know if I wasn't like I ended up watching something else, but like that was it was OK. It was just like a I don't know, man, I can't do Ryan Reynolds for like an hour. Like that's just where I'm at. That's just me. That's a me problem. No, that's fair. That's fair. And so we saw the people, you know, we got the new Pokemon as well. My I'll be honest with you, my gut reaction when these three first popped up on screen was because I saw this guy in particular first, and I know you have some fondness for him and we'll talk about him in a second. But I've looked at I looked at this Pokemon and I said, that's not a Pokemon. Was my first reaction to him. And so just looking at the three of them, we have Brout, the Bean Chick Pokemon, aka Mr. Angry Bird. Oh, yes. Pombon, the puppy Pokemon, which is undoubtedly the best one, and no one can convince me otherwise. And Gekko, the water gecko Pokemon. And there's been some kind of interesting talk for these one. One, this is an angry bird. A lot of people kind of share the sentiment. It's mostly like he's got the head. He's got the same kind of hair tuft as the red angry bird, too. And then a lot of people were mad that we got another like water lizard when we just got Sobble, like not that long ago. Ingrid, I like with. Right. But what are you really going to do, right? Like you need an aquatic Pokemon. Yeah. How many eventually? And it's a gecko versus a lizard versus a new versus. Right. Like it was a gecko versus a chameleon versus a frog. Like these are all amphibious creatures. They're different things. And they just happen to be somewhat related to each other. Like we've had fire dogs before. Like Growlithe exists. Now there's a giant time gap between Gen one and now, but. We also have Houndoom, but there's been a couple of fire dogs, but there's not. There's never been a Pomeranian. So here we go. And I'm not sure. Do you know what bird Brout is supposed to be? It's just chick. So I'm thinking like either you think it's a chicken? At least originally, it's got black feet. So that reminds me like a crow. OK. I don't know, man. It's it's perfect the way it is. That's that's all I'm going to say. I've also seen the theory about what the final evolutions for these guys are going to look like in terms of. So the region, it seems to be based on like Polynesia or like Southeast Asian islands. And I know I saw Wancho posted on Twitter that that was kind of the sentiment he had as well. And he like loved that the representation was coming to the region for Pokemon and hoped that it would really do it justice. And that's really cool. Like if you've got a thing based on like your home region of the world, you obviously you would hope that they do it justice, but that the final evolutions for all these Pokemon will be based on traditional Japanese art forms into where Brout is supposed to represent Sumo. Oh, that'd be sick. And they think that he's going to, you know, have like a Sumo diaper basically on whatever it looks like. This little kind of color tuft on Pombon signifies that he's going to be representing calligraphy. So we'll have like a painter dog, which unfortunately probably means that it'll stand up on two legs, which is very disappointing to me because. I don't know, it would be really cool if it's just a big dog. And then Gekko is a geisha, and that kind of goes along with like the eye thing and like the makeup motif that it has going on. Yeah, so it's a Pokemon, the only new Pokemon we got besides I don't know if these things are new Pokemon. They're really weird. They're just like Pikachu went out on vacation and got a brand new look. This is some Pikachu. So I think I don't think it's a new Pokemon. Maybe. Well, we got Mr. Windy Chew and Miss Wavy Chew. It's like a definitely a plushy, you know, sales tactic. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's funny. I don't know. This game looks beautiful. It looks like it'll be a blast. But yeah, hopefully. You know, it. And if you did buy a switch to if you didn't buy it for Pokopia, you're going to buy it for this. Well, you got like a year and a half at this point because it doesn't come out until 2027, so that's one thing. Right. That is true. They did say not till 2027. They didn't say we don't know when, though. So it's like it could be January. But I feel like that would be really weird for them to release it right after Christmas. When's Pokopia come out? Like pretty soon, right? Because I like this week. I think a pretty sure it comes out on Friday. Wow. So I mean, I can see a world where, you know, they do it pretty, pretty early. Like usually mainline games come out for like Christmas, like in November. Right. Exactly. So that'll be interesting to see if it if it does that or if they change it up. Goodness, like to announce. So if you think about Zia, like where they announced it one Pokemon day and then they didn't really show anything until the next Pokemon day. This one feels like a little different to me because they already have 30 showing essentially gameplay where like you have the actual map of the region. You have the Pokemon models in the the character models in engine in the game that and you can see like the environments and the buildings and whatnot, and they're already showing that in a trailer. So I feel like it's more likely to be earlier in the year. But I just don't know when that would fall. Right. It's like I don't I don't see a world. Part of me wants to say, what if they just release this in time for Pokemon Day next year or like right around Pokemon Day next year? Just sometime early in there, like it's maybe a late winter, early spring sort of deal, or maybe in the summer. Like that could be a really good summer game to like kids get out of school. Yeah. Pick up a copy. Jam it all summer. Yeah, I don't know if I mean, I don't know enough about marketing to know like when the optimal time to release a mainline game is versus like, you know, when is it done? Like, do you hold on to it for another like four or five months just because you can get more money? I don't think anymore. I think Pokemon is big enough to where people will just buy it. You know, like every time a new Pokemon games come out, it's like the highest selling Pokemon game ever. You know, basically it's for mainline stuff. But I so I don't think you really need to like buy into the, you know, we need to release it for this Christmas season because like it's it's probably fine to, you know, like people are going to buy the console specifically to play this. And if they have a console, they will buy this game. So but I'm excited. You know, every time we get a new generation, it infuses the TCG with new mechanics and new new players and new people getting into just Pokemon for the first time. So that's really exciting. You know, people beginning their new Pokemon journey. And I'm glad that we get to help them along on that journey. And I'm looking forward to many more memories made with all those new, you know, Brout fans, Brout, Brout believers, Brout bros, if you will. I'm trying to, you know, carve out their their love for that bean chick Pokemon. So but yeah, so that was Pokemon Day. We didn't really talk about what to expect or what we expect to going to Puerto Rico this weekend. Truthfully, because I I'm still personally trying to figure things out in this format where not much has changed. But at the same time, enough has that I think that there will be a shakeup. But I'm not positive on where I expect that shakeup to happen. And realistically, I don't think that we have enough online enough online data to really form that conclusion either. And we don't have any Japanese data to go off of. Like they may have had some city league tournaments, but those are very questionable results at best. And so we'll just have to see like this will be the real first. Kind of foray into the format for a lot of players. And I'm curious to see how it evolved over its fairly short tenure as a standard format. Yeah, it'll be interesting. I mean, I think the main takeaway is Pokepad. It makes existing decks like Dragon Ball Dusknoir just that much better. And then also gives new legs to some older concepts that had some trouble with searching like Marnie's Grimmsnarl and with Charizard decks. Like you like the whole Tarabox deck gets a buff because now you don't have to play an ultra ball to get your Noctowl. You can play a Pokepad and combo that much better. And, you know, so you just it's such a broken card. Like the fact that you don't have to discard anything to get any Pokemon that's not a Roblox Pokemon, like great card. So I think that's my main takeaway from my testing so far is just like how much more consistent this format feels compared even to Pokemon tournaments without Pokepad. Like, weirdly enough, like it just makes decks that you play more games like you're able to play a full game as opposed to bricking. Like when you have more outs to the Pokemon, you need to get out and to play and all that kind of stuff. It just makes makes decks better. But I don't know. Any main takeaways before we get off for the night? Any anything, any insights into the new format that you've been sensing or seeing in your testing? No, I just like Zoroark is on the rise, which I think will and has tools now to combat Absol. So I think Absol will take a hit here. I also think Gardevoir will take a hit as a result. And I think that Goldengo will lose some win percentage into the deck. So Zoroark seems like a really big winner in my mind from this. And I know a lot of other people felt that way, too. That's why a lot of people were planning to play it to EUIC when they initially thought Ascended Heroes was going to be legal. But we'll have to see if that holds up and if that holds true. And John and I will be back hopefully next week to cover those results as we head into Houston very shortly after. 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