Episode 2-26: The Supreme Court of Orlando Regionals

Yeah, I went to SeaWorld on Monday morning. Oh, wow. OK, so that was fun. Yeah, my friend, Miguel, you know, Miguel. Him and I, I guess he has season tickets to like Busch Gardens or whatever they call it. Yeah, it's Busch Gardens. Yeah, they're it's affiliated with Universal Universal SeaWorld. Yeah, I forgot the company. Yeah, they're all grouped together. But yeah, he has season tickets to that. So he gets free entry into SeaWorld with that and then gets like certain number of guest passes per quarter. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that was a perk. Yeah. So he took me. We had like VIP parking and faster entry. So we got in and out pretty quick, which was nice. Well, he still had to like wait to get into the park. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. I rode Mako, Manta and the Kraken. Nice. And so we got to ride three roller coasters. I rode Mako twice, and I'm glad I did. That one was my favorite one. I rode it all the way in the front. I'm just not I'm just not a roller coaster guy. Yeah, I don't know if it's like an inner ear, like equilibrium thing, like almost any roller coaster that I go on, I will get sick. Yeah, I will say I really appreciate it. Like Mako didn't put me upside down. The Kraken had like three loops and then like two or three corkscrews. And that was an old man. Like when I was like, oh, I know, like when I was a kid, I would have loved. I would have read it in all day and like, you know, twice and three times. But by that, like I read four roller coasters by the end of it. I'm like, I felt sick. Like I was getting to the point where I'm like, I'm just not cut out for this kind of stuff anymore. But the Mako, man, you like it goes like straight up and straight down. And it's like insanely fast. And it's a lot of fun. It just goes over like, I don't know, just the sensation of flying and like going super fast and up and down and all that was like a lot of fun. So it's one of those, the one where you stand up. I didn't read. I read Mako's seated. Yeah, it's wild. Basically, you start, you get seated like this and then you pull down the harness and put stuff over your legs and you get flipped back up and like. Oh, OK. All right. Yeah, that was crazy because there was a loop where we're going up and like the rails above you. And so you're like riding, hanging the whole time. And so instead of flipping like this, you go a foot forward, like a front and flip. And it just felt crazy in a fun way, I guess. So yeah, it was a lot. But that was I was like, that was like a one and done, like because the worst part was like you got done with your ride and it takes forever to get people in and out of the ride. OK, just because of the way it's designed, it's hard to like make sure everybody's situated and seated and buckstrapped in and all that. So you're just waiting there like hanging on your stomach after you've been flipped around and all this stuff. And you're just like, I'm just ready to get off at that point. I look, I looked it up. They do have one set that there is a standing coaster at SeaWorld. It's the pipeline surf coaster. Yeah, that one looked cool. I didn't get to ride that one, but that was cool because it goes forward and it goes up halfway up a hill and it comes back and it goes up. OK, and then goes shoots you forward and gets up over the hill. So I kind of like, I think I can handle that. Like, yeah. So like, I can do most of the Disney roller coasters, you know, like all the seven doors, mine cart, even the one that they have at Animal Kingdom where it's like Expedition Everest or something. It's just like, as long as you're not doing like loops, I think I'm good. Yeah, yeah. Tighter and speed hills like that's whatever. But yeah, that was crazy because like Sydney was like, you went to SeaWorld, that's crazy, like because it's just wild to like go for three hours and just leave. Instead of like because it was I think that's the way to go. If you're going to if you if you have the means of doing it, like if you have somebody that has a season pass and it's not like because it is crazy expensive to go to any theme park. Now, you know, it was like $140 for one day or something like that. Like just right. Crazy money. But, you know, if he's already paid for it and just has the tickets and it's like not much to just go for three hours in the morning when it's not stupid hot yet and the lines aren't crazy and there's not a million people there and then just leave by lunchtime. It's great. Oh, 100%. Thankfully, TSA wasn't as bad as Houston. So I got out of Orlando just fine. I mean, we had a weather delay. We got the rain was crazy this past weekend. I don't know if you got. I don't know. I just maybe I'm not used to Florida and it's always like it can be. It can be for sure. But it came down like super hard Sunday night and Monday afternoon. Like today has been even worse. Oh, really? Like like the rain, it hasn't even been the worst part. It's just been extremely windy today to the point where actually yesterday was really bad. Like, I don't know, it's borderline. I mean, not really hurricane force winds, but you're like, is this just a regular storm? Yeah, yeah, it was some intense stuff. Like we went to after the tournament was over Sunday. I went with Miguel and he's like, oh, there's a huge food truck like food truck world or something like that in Kissimmee. And it's a lot of like Puerto Rican, Dominican, just stuff I've never seen before. Like there's a, I guess, Puerto Rican, Chinese foods, a thing he was telling me about, which is cool. So, I mean, I didn't know any of this stuff. So I'm like, oh, OK. So I got Dominican food. But like as I as I put my order in, it started raining. And I go, I'm going to go sit at the table. You can go get your food and I'll just wait here for you when you get back. And then it just kept getting like more and more and more and more and more intense up to the point where I'm just like, is this normal? Like, should I be inside and sheltering in place or something like this is crazy. It felt like a waterfall just opened up. Yeah. And then it probably stopped five minutes later. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it actually went on for a little bit longer. Like it went on for like 30 or 40 minutes. So I will say it was it was a serious like storm front coming through. Yeah. Serious enough to like. Yeah. A lot of people were like the whole ground is flooded. And I was like, OK, this is crazy. And we are we got soaked. My shoes are wet the next morning. That wasn't fun. Yeah. Outside of all of that, there was a Pokemon tournament over the weekend, Aaron. There are a couple where a couple. Yeah. And so I definitely want to talk a little bit about my tournament run. My experience as a player, as opposed to a judge. We can we can touch on some of the controversies. I don't think we really are the podcast. You know, if you're coming here for gossip, you're going to probably be a little bit disappointed. But we'll definitely talk about kind of the role that judges play in tournaments and kind of, I guess, touch on what happened over the weekend with some of the penalties that were issued. And yeah, anything else you want to talk about? No, I think that that sounds great. Unfortunately, from talking to you before we really got going, it sounds like you still haven't played post rotation. But I know we have some time for you to get up to speed before the first major event happens in this format. So I guess you still have a little bit of a grace period by next week. You need to do your homework and figure it all out. Yes, sir. But other than that. Yeah, just like we've got there are there were a couple of other OP related announcements that actually just came out this afternoon. True. So maybe we can touch on those as well. So that'll be interesting to talk about, including one big one to top cut. And that'll affect local events as well. So we'll definitely talk about that. But yeah, let's get into it. So I played Frostlass Monkey Dory at Orlando Regionals. I finished my goal going into the weekend was to make date phase two. And I accomplished that goal. Thankfully, I did end phase one with a record of five, two and one. So I started the day off in a place that nobody really ever wants to start the day off with is around one loss. And it was against a good matchup for me. So that was kind of frustrating. I played against Amin Khan, who he was a super nice opponent. He was from Houston or not Houston. I forget where he played in Houston, but he was super nice guy. Oh, he's from northern Virginia. That's right, because we had that whole conversation. And he played Zoroark. He played pretty well, I'd say. But game one, I kind of did the thing that you're supposed to do against Zoroark and just set up for the Devo plays, the long play, made sure I got rid of all of his attackers at the same time. So I couldn't ever, you know, like once you can, you can just kind of keep them off the board at that point. And so I won game one, set up for game two. I didn't have a great start. I'm searching for like with an Arvin or something like that. I got my buddy Poffin and I started doing my price checking. I'm looking at all my Pokemon and three of all three of my frost last reprise. Or sorry, not frost last snow, even worse. So it got to the point where I'm just like, as soon as I as soon as I realized that, I just conceded. Like, I didn't want to play that game. Like, I know this is a good matchup. You know, this is going to be almost impossible to win without any frost last or mega frost last or anything else like that. Let me just go to a game three. Right. I like that. I like that a lot, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like I thought about it for just like a couple of seconds. And then I got to the point where I was like, you know, this is not how like if I if I can beat him game one like that, and if I set up like normal, I feel like I'm in a good spot to just win this game. So we set up for game three. I go second. You know, that way I have the advantage on having, you know, more stuff just get go get to get going against or work and I price check again. And this time it's not my Pokemon that are prized by my energy. I had prized four out of my eight energy. So I had and unfortunately, I didn't draw one of them in my first like prize that I got from I forget what I knocked out. But so I had five five price cards and four of those five price cards were energy and I attached the energy turn one and attached the energy turn two. And then I didn't attach or find another energy the rest of the game. So I had the Devo play lined up to win the game. I lily for six with like a 20 card deck. So not the best odds, but I try to like thin it out as much as best I could. And I just whiffed any any energy to use TMD vote to share just kind of win the game from there. And so I just gave him the win. I think I don't think I could have played to force a tie. He just had like game on board with one price card left or whatever. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm not going to, you know, he was sweating it. It was fun. We were we were both. He was a very cool guy about it, like everything. I think he was kind of like just expecting to lose by the board state alone. Like it seems so outrageous that I don't attach another energy the rest of the game. But unfortunately, that's what happened. So that was tough. Not a great way. You don't want to start your tournament run with a loss. But, you know, I also was like, well, you know, I'll just get all my bad luck out of the way. Like that was a fluky situation that shouldn't happen again. I think, you know, if it does, I just just not my day. But like that felt OK. Like I didn't feel like I played wrong. I didn't feel like I, you know, was was not ready for this tournament. I felt good about the matchup and I did what I was supposed to do. I just didn't draw. You know, I prized some stuff and didn't draw one of the two energy left in my deck. So that was that. The next round I played against Luke Tully, which was a player from Columbia, South Carolina, which was cool because I used to live in South Carolina and he knows some of the players that I know, including John Lucas, one of my best friends from judging. One of the judges, his wife, John's wife, Bo, walked by and like took a picture of us. I'm like, are you sending that to John? She's like, so he was a nice guy. We played the mirror match. The mirror is just kind of miserable. I'm not going to lie. You're really just early game, just seeing who can, I guess, break break item locks first. And I was able to do that to knock out his like one Badoo in play. But he went in with a frost mega frost last before I did. And once he did that, I'm like, OK, how big is your hand size? Nine cards. OK, cool. Just respond with my own mega frost last. I always had a snow right on the bench ready to evolve up. I try to just prevent him having that play to like like he can't obviously play countercatcher, but you never know if they play boss. There's no reason to put it in play. And so, you know, absolutely necessary. So I did make the mistake of a game one, not having a snow run to evolve up to. For some reason, I just I think I put another Badoo in play instead of leaving the bench and then a blank snow run. So like if he was able to like I took the knockout on his mega frost last if he was able to recover his mega frost last, which he did and find the luminous, he would just probably win the game because I wouldn't be able to knock it back out. So I almost threw that pretty bad, but he whiffed the luminous energy. So never punished. Got pretty lucky with that. And that felt kind of like I probably should have got punished for that. But hey, you know, I think we talked about it the last weekend where it's like, you know, not any player that has a good run will tell you they get lucky from time to time. So I got lucky in that situation in the game, too. He just didn't draw very well from what I remember. The next round I played against Alakazam. I think they were a relatively newer player. And I think people I don't know if you look at the I don't know if we have the matchup percentage or whatever, but I felt like it was a very good matchup. And I probably would be justified in saying that even with the battle cages. But I won that too. And then I played against a another good matchup in Dawn's yard, which that felt pretty free, like them not being able. He did prize Pidgeot first game and then prize Pidgey the second game. So that helped me a lot. You know, him not being able to search his deck at all. I think he ran a really just like one one one line or something like that. You know, Don's art had to make cuts somewhere to fit all the other things that you have to put in the deck to make it a functional deck. And because of that, you know, if one piece of that was prized under item lock, he's not able to set it up. So I definitely had that going for me. And I won that set too. And then, you know, keep my money man, I'm going. I got my redemption against another Zoroark the next round against Anthony Lopez, another great opponent. And I'm feeling pretty good at this point. You know, I beat him very soundly. I'm four and one. And I was saying to I think my opponent that round or some of my friends between rounds like, yeah, I'm probably going to get humbled pretty quick. I'm like, I'm doing really well. I'm feeling pretty confident. But I'm like, I know I'm going to have to like hit a bad matchup at some point after hitting like four rounds of good matchups. And I mean, I guess the mirror is not a good matchup, but you know what I mean? Like having good luck, doing well. And sure enough, I played against Murillo Mercan Dante. I'm probably butchering the name a little bit. But our reigning Santiago Chile, a regional champion who ran it back with Gardevoir one last time for this event and banked me to like he knew exactly how to play the matchup, knew to target my Frostlass with Screamtail and keep all my monkeys like he put all the bravery charms on the monkeys, did everything perfectly, and I had no chance of beating this guy. It felt pretty terrible, man. I don't run Tingle in my list. That's like if I had more time to test, I probably would have maybe put it in there. Especially if I had time to test more against Gardevoir, I probably would have felt like that was a necessary thing. I think that's something we've talked about a little bit is. to whether that was really included. And that was one of the reasons why you put thing Lou in there is for the guarding matchup. I mean, there's ways to beat Gardevoir, you know, you can try to starve them of the energies that they need to attack and starve them of like if they with finding their dark energies for a while, you can kind of hold them off. But once he got like darks on his monkeys and had the bravery charms on the monkeys, it became almost impossible for me to win. And he just kind of rolled me so that felt bad. I'm like, Oh, you know, I'm only one win away from losing this tournament. But it was also just like, Okay, you know, I know where I stand. Like, I know I'm not a top tier player. And so, you know, I took the loss and moved on to the next round. And thankfully, I don't know, I felt going up against my opponent for the round seven, if I don't know if he was a newer player, but he definitely hadn't really played against frost last month, he door he was playing Sarah ledge, he was just making some like, odd choices with a lot of stuff. Like he was able to attack and put damage on me, but would just pass. Even though he could, like, you know, put a lot of pressure on me by knocking stuff out, or I don't know, it just kind of weird stuff would keep lunar cycling when he had like a massive hand. And I'm like, dude, what are you even looking for at this point? You know, like, like, it just felt kind of weird. So I was just like anything almost decked himself out a couple like game one. And I think I to Odom, but it was just a weird set, to the point where I'm just like, I guess I this is a better matchup than I thought it was, because I did not think it was a very good matchup. Like the fact that, you know, they don't run a lot of stuff with abilities. If they play really well, they can limit their board to just stuff that's hard for me to knock out. And, you know, if they like, evolve up there, when I call not certain baby village. Yeah, if they've already started, it's like, yeah, if they kind of just stagger them out into play, and I don't make really good use of or something like that, it can be really hard for me to kind of keep them off the board or whatever. I don't know, I felt like it would have been a harder matchup. But like, I got through the first chart cadet, I think I counter captured something up, and he just never found the energy he needed to attack or something like that. Like I devote the first chart cadet. And then he just never, I don't even remember, I think I just I don't want him the whole game, and he wasn't able to do anything. And it was just like, Oh, this isn't that bad. So I don't know, I hadn't tested against it. But I was a lot better than I thought it was. Maybe it was just him being a newer player, not having a lot of experience into the matchup. I won that to know, and I had a little bit of time before the next round. I thought about it, you know, maybe I had too much time because I was pacing back and forth and saying, Oh, do I just ID don't just guarantee myself getting day two. And I see why paired against and it's crazier. And the guy I had to play against was Aaron Rucker, who I've been playing for a while. And back in 2016, him and I both played Metagross GX to Philadelphia regionals. And I think we actually had to play each other at that event. And so he was a super nice guy. He remembered. So it was really cool catching up with him. But he's like, Yeah, I'm here to win. I'm here to make money. And the best way to make money is to just try to win every round. And I'm like, Yeah, fair enough. You know, and I said to him, like, as we're setting up, like, I'm gonna offer the ID once and then you know, there's gonna be a lot of empty chairs around us whenever, whenever everybody else IDs and we're just sitting here playing and sure enough, you know, literally, like, this table ID, this table ID, this table ID, that table ID. So it was literally like four empty chairs all around us. And that's crazy. Because I thought that the overall sentiment now was play it out. Because we've had several events so far this year where x two one doesn't guarantee you cut? Yeah, I don't know exactly. I think a lot of players just want to have that, quote unquote, first limitless page. Or Yeah, you know, it's their first day to like making day to carry some cloud. And I think that's kind of my goal. Like that was my goal for the event. My goal for the event was to make day two. So I would have been happy with an ID, but we played it out. I want a super long game one. That was very, very close. I think he whiffed an attack early on church allowed me to just kind of have just one turn of advantage. And I think that was just enough. He played it really well. Like he didn't over bench. He didn't know vault. He literally just had a baby raging bullet was doing 130 to whatever I had an active the whole game, which I think props to him like was the way to play it because it's it's annoying for me to have to deal with something that can just do 130 that doesn't have an ability. And I don't it has a decent chunk of HP, I can't really just respond to it super well. I can't use mega frost fast because you can just, you know, respond with a raging bolt right back. So but I want to know I won, I won game one. And at that point, I think he was like, Okay, well, we can just ID and I'm like, if you want to ID and I'm like, Yeah, no, we're playing it out. But like, yeah, he's like, I get that. I get it. Yeah. So game two, he opens up really well. I'm going going second. I think he got the energy attachment down turn one if he didn't play, I think he might have played a crisp in turn one. So he just like, didn't get a knockout, but like basically everything. But and yeah, game two was not close. He it was close in the sense that it took him a long time to win. And we finished game two. And then as we finished game two, time was called. So they just finished as a natural tie as opposed to an ID, which is fine. So I did make date phase two, which was cool. And then lo and behold, my opponent for the first round of phase two was somebody I've known for a really, really long time in the community. Somebody I've considered a friend for a long time. It's very simple Eddie. So that was pretty wild. I saw who it was. And I just like laughed out loud. And I get to the table and like the vibes were amazing, dude. Like, I wish every round of my regionals was like me playing Ray, like we were cutting up the whole time. You know, he was telling me about his make a wish experience when he was a kid. And like, just like all this crazy, like lore I'm getting of just like Ray is a player and what he's doing now. Like he's opening stuff on are you selling stuff on whatnot? Yeah, doing that kind of life. He's he's living a good life as far as, you know, not really having a real job, but also like working really hard. And he does a good job of what he's doing. But it was just amazing vibes. And he played Zoroark. And I feel like he probably didn't have a lot of experience into that matchup. So to wonder a and he's like, I asked him, you know, do you have any dinner plans for the night? He's like, No, I'm like, Okay, cool. I think I'm gonna get dinner with you know, I stayed with Eric Nance, who's another longtime player. He's like, Oh, yeah, okay. And I'm like, Okay, so me, Eric and my friend Ben Haynes, you know, we looked around what was near us. And I'm like, Oh, there's a Pizza Hut that has beer. And it looked like, you know, like table service. And I'm like, let's go there. And it was like, literally, as we're walking over, we're like chanting Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut, it was just it was it was ridiculous and stupid. We're all fried our brains, my brain, Ray's brain is fried from playing all day. And Ben's and Eric, we're just, you know, kind of feeding into it. And it was a lot of fun, just chilling and eating pizza at like a random Pizza Hut in Orlando, with like all my Pokemon friends. I just had a great time with that. There are actual restaurants and actual food options in Orlando, by the way. And you chose to go to Pizza Hut. I did. And holy cow. I mean, that's crazy. You literally know, man, I know. It's like, if Sydney listens to this, she'll probably judge me hardcore. But I think she was happy for me in the sense that she's like, you know, you get to choose where you want to go. You made day two, you had like a good run. It was fun. So woke up for day two. And I don't know, at this point, it was like tough. Like, what do I want to do? What is my new goal? Like now I made phase two, like, where do I go from here? I had a pretty good record going into phase two, like I won the first round of phase two. Like, where do we go from here? And I'm like, well, if I go 10 wins, I'd be sick. And I'm like, it's probably not gonna happen. I'll probably get humbled pretty quick. You know, it's gonna be a lot, lot harder competition. You gotta say in that. I mean, you're right. I mean, but like, I also just don't like, it's so funny. Like, all the judges were all like, not all of the judges, but a lot of them were just like, Oh, you made phase two. That's so cool. Like, it's such a big accomplishment for a judge to make phase two. And I'm like, that's crazy. Like, it's, yeah, it is hard to make phase two of these tournaments. I'm not saying it's not but it's also just like, you know, I think a lot of judges are good players. But a lot of them don't don't apply themselves to the same kind of degree as they do when they're judging or like, or the same kind of degree that players have to put into to be to be able to perform at high levels, you have to play a lot. And most players, most judges just don't play that kind of poke like that amount of Pokemon anymore. If they've ever done that. And I'm not saying that is like a dig on judges. It's just like a, it's just a lot of Pokemon, man. Like, you just have to play so much Pokemon. Like, I, I played a lot. And I still didn't feel like I had played enough Pokemon, you know, going into this event. And it showed like the mashup, like I struggled with the most was like Gardevoir going into it, I had no real game plan against Gardevoir. And it bit me in the butt. And I and again, like, I thought I had a good game plan for for Dragon Pool around 10 shows up, I get, you know, Dragon Pool drew hot against me, and there's just nothing I can do against it. Like, it just felt like I had no real answer for it. So that was that was frustrating. But also just like, kind of, I don't know, like, I knew it was a close matchup. I knew that it would take me kind of cheesing Dragapult to win Dragapult. So I didn't feel too bad about it. But I was at a contention to really like have a insane deep run in phase two. At that point, you know, I'm not making top cut, but I can still compete for some share of the pricing, maybe not like a cash finish at that point, but like at least a healthy amount of packs, some CPS and bragging rights to come home with. So I kept playing it out. And the next round, I got paired against another Brazilian player and Marco Garcia, who fantastic guy, he came to my match a little late, he was dealing with a situation with a senior that had had, like a really just tough tournament experience. And he was like, they're consulting against senior. So I'm like, alright, this guy's gonna be awesome. And sure enough, he was like a super nice guy, we had a great match. All my opponents, honestly, I think like for some of this was like some of the best plus opponents I've ever had at a regionals. Like I just felt like everybody was there. Like even though they were all competing at a high level, we were all just there to have fun. And that felt really good. And Marco, you know, play tested with Marilia. And so he just bodied me as well. So definitely kind of a little bit low, like low at that point, I just texted my brother, I'm like, well, if they're cubing, maybe I can drop and go play cube. I was like, yeah, you can do that. And like, if you're not having fun, go ahead and do that. And I went over to the cubing area, and they'd already started cubing. And I'm like, Okay, well, I missed that. So I'll just keep playing like I haven't played in one of these in two years. I don't know when the next time I'll be able to play in a regional will be, let me just close it out, kind of play the day out. And I'm glad I did. Because the next round, I played into a matchup I wasn't very confident in. I played against Joltik box, he walked right into the trap of he took a ko on my buddy, I had two snow runs on the bench, I evolved up into the mega frostlass and just knocked out his iron hands. He had no immediate counter, he took another two prizes. And by the time he was able to like, knock it out with Pikachu, I had night stretcher and another luminous to go and get the knockout on the Pikachu with another frostlass to like ping the damage up and over the or like a monkey or whatever. So like game one, he's like, man, I walked right into that trap. I was like, Yeah, yeah, you did. But, you know, it's fine. Like, and I'm glad I, I kind of, I had put in mega frost last that week. And I'm so glad I did, Aaron, like, I know, I was like bashing it and saying, Oh, well, I don't like the fact that, you know, late game don't have as good an attacker, if your opponent keeps a low hand size, they're able to control like how much damage you do. And that's true. But early game, it feels really hard to like, you can't use blood moon, but you can use mega frost last. And I think in this metagame that we played, there were more like situations that come up where you need an early game, like against like the Joltik box or against potentially the mega box if they start with like a mega that you can knock out. Yeah, if they take early prizes and like go up to six or seven card hand, you can take a knockout on that Pokemon and take three prize cars and that that alone kind of earns it enough. And then they can't really respond, they have to like, kind of dig for hand disruption or something like that to limit their hand size. But if they haven't taken a prize cards, you know, I don't know, get some down to six. And that's sometimes fine, you just put a little more damage on them. And then you're knocking out whatever they have. So I beat that Joltik box, and I paired up against another Dragapult the next round, and it kind of had another hot start. He was saying, Oh, I haven't drawn this hot all tournament. And I'm like, great, just what I want to hear. So I lost that one, I think two or two one. But yeah, it was just not a close set. And then, you know, I'm like, well, at this point, I'm just gonna play it out. Like, you know, I'm gonna have fun. Yeah, play. Yeah, like, I think once I got over the hump of the third round and day, day two, I'm like, well, you know, I'm all downhill from here. I only have one more round to go. And I'm glad I stuck it out. I got to play against a fun matchup and festival lead. So like a very favorable matchup. But it felt kind of a weird favorable matchup where I went down to like my opponent having like two prize cards. And then I won the game like convincingly from there, if that makes sense. Like once I was able to, like knock him out of attackers, like Devo, all his attacker that play or like, just keep them off of the board, like with item lockings in play, like he's not able to recover the attackers, and it just becomes impossible for him to win from there. So it felt a lot closer than it ended up being. And I had a really like, I don't know, I definitely BM the little bit like I went for the complete board wipe for the last turn of the game for the last turn of the tournament, just because I'm like, I want to take it we went to time because I think he was a three game set. He won game two, and then I went to time. And I had the fun on the on the last turn of time and knock out one Pokemon and then Devo and knock out three other Pokemon for my for all four prize cards, and no Pokemon on his side. So that felt pretty fun. Like it was just wasn't necessary. No, but you know, when am I going to play this deck again? What am I going to play again? This was this was like a fun moment for me. But he's like, man, that was crazy. And it's like, yeah, it was a lot of fun. So I was I was I was happy with it. I got done playing in the tournament, you know, finished 200. So pretty like, as far as day two's go, it's kind of in the middle of a day to finish. I got nine pity packs, which is a crazy statement to me. Because just yeah, yeah. The sheer size of your size, like 291st, like like 10 years ago is like bottom of the of the tournament. Like out of 360 players, you're like very close. Yeah, bottom. Now it's like 2700 and something players played in this thing. So I finished in the top 10% almost, which is not even it's crazy. That's not even the top 10%. But pretty close to the top 10%. I'll count it as a rounding error based on resistance. So there you go. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. I don't get to play much especially not at the regional level anymore. I've really just focused on judging the last few years. And I really enjoy that. But I really relish and cherish like, when I get to do this, and I'm glad like I have a day to streak going now, Aaron, I day to the last event I played in, and a day to this event to two and oh, for my last two events on day two finishes, I'm just disregard the fact that it was almost two years apart. But you know, it is what it is like, I'm on a little hot streak, I guess, if you want to call it that, which is kind of crazy to say, but I was happy with it. You just have to wait two more years, right? Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. I don't know when the next time I'll get to play again. Like I'm gonna be at any I see, but I won't be as a player. So, you know, that'll probably be the next turn when I go to. And then beyond that, I don't have any plans. I'm not going to go to worlds this year. And I won't be in any more regionals this year. I'm just life plans. I am going on that cruise with my parents like two weeks in July. And so that'll take up a lot of my PTO. And also just some other stuff. The weekend of Indianapolis, I'm going to go see john Mulaney, like a comedian. Yeah, pretty. I'm pretty excited about that. That'll that's a that's a that's a like I bought those tickets before the regionals dates were announced. So I've had those for a while, if that tells you anything. But um, yeah, it was just good to play again, man. Orlando is a fun place to play. Like you, it felt like a family reunion, even more. So like, I saw so many players I hadn't seen in years like Harrison Levin was there. Mike cannabis was there. Like, I know these are all like people you played with and grew up with and all that kind of stuff. A couple players from like Georgia, South Carolina were there that I hadn't seen in a while. So that was really cool. You know, Xander Bennett, I got to play. I didn't play in his cube. But I spectated some of that. Well, Eric, my friend, I stayed with Eric Nance, who I've known for a really long time, and who was kind of like my mentor when I got into the game for a little bit on helped me like, push and get to my world's invite in 2015. So definitely somebody I've always looked up to in the game. And I've really appreciated his friendship over the years. And Kirsten, his partner, fiance, I think now she's really cool. I'm glad I got to stay with them. And then shout outs to James Gillespie as well. I met up with him a little bit on Sunday and played some retro games of 2010. And I think our son some lot. That was fun. Got to unwind a little bit before you know, top four and the finals, which I didn't get to watch, which was cool. I don't really get to watch the finals in the crowd very often, as a judge. So that was cool to, you know, sit there and take it all in. And it was a pretty eventful, top four and finals. You know, it was a good, good, good watching. You know, I was funny, I didn't watch the top four match on stream, I watched the feature table, which ended up being a fantastic match, honestly, which was kind of overshadowed by the other top four match, we'll say, right. So there were several things. I know that one of the perspectives that you get to uniquely bring to the show, john, is the fact that you do have such a presence and experience in the judging community. And that is something that has been kind of under fire, not your experience, in particular, but the judging community overall, after some different happenings this weekend in Orlando, one thing a lot of people that especially TCG players may not be aware of, but I saw immediately Saturday morning was either lorky or Lorcy, who's a, I guess, a pretty well known community ambassador player for the VGC community ended up dropping from the event because a judge ruled that he would would be forced to play with a team of five Pokemon rather than six, because RK nine had not properly saved his team sheet. And he had kind of made a passionate tweet at the time, I believe it's since been removed. But that was just kind of the harbinger for other things to come throughout the day. And so with that event ended up occurring, there was some drama with a stream match at round 13, between McConney Tran and Karis Jones, that resulted in a retroactive overturning of the live match result. That was what the you know, McConney was initially declared the winner of that game on stream. And then we come to find out in the middle of the next round that if you went and looked at, you know, pokey data or limitless labs, or what have you, that no, actually, they awarded Karis the win seemingly due to unsportsmanlike conduct. And I wanted to get your perspective on that, not on that situation in particular, but just to have a better understanding on what is considered unsportsmanlike conduct during a stream game. And also wanting to understand better, because there is some confusion behind this, because such a limited number of people do end up going on stream throughout the course of a tournament, because we do only stream, you know, a portion of the rounds of the given event. And then obviously, you can only stream so many people per round is true. Are the players given any sort of a pep talk? You know, do you lay out the ground rules for expected behavior? What is and is not acceptable? I know that there are separate kind of guidelines for streamed matches that's told that's outlined in the rules handbook. And I would expect that certain things are held to a higher standard, even to where penalties may potentially be escalated, de escalated, depending on, you know, you can de escalate some things, because you have the ability to rewind specific board states, depending on what didn't occur. And you also may have to escalate something, because it may be more severe, because it is so public facing, right? Right, exactly. I mean, that's pretty clear in the rulebook, the fact that these are publicly streamed matches that your code of conduct, the policy carries over from the rest of the tournament, like you can't wear anything profane or say anything profane or make any profane gestures. But it's obviously heightened when you have a lot more eyes on it. And yeah, I have had that conversation with players going on stage, like, hey, you've got more people watching this at home and all over the world, you're representing Pokemon, and like, you need to, you know, think about your actions before you do them, that kind of thing. I don't really want to comment on anything specific, as far as any of these penalties that we've seen over the weekend. Like, that's not my role. Like I was a player this weekend. I'm a professor, but I don't want to, you know, kind of tear anybody down to bring myself up, if that's a way to look at it. I don't know the full situation in breadth. Like I've had conversations with people that judge this event, but like, I don't know, I don't know what happened. I wasn't there. So I don't feel comfortable talking about any of those kind of things. For the most part, I know about as much as people that are watching at home, as far as exactly what happened in round 13 are stuff that we have to consider whenever players playing on stream. And one of those things is the headsets are in place, not just to allow players to communicate with one another, but they're also there to provide white noise and noise cancellation for any of the commentary that's going on, and any of the crowd noise or other factors that are, you know, like auditorily influencing the match, if there were to be heard. And if a player is to take off the headset before the match is concluded, that is a pretty big deal, and could just violate the match there. And then so I don't know exactly what penalty was given at round 13. For my Connie, I don't know if it was unsportsmanlike conduct or a procedural error. But I don't know exactly like what penalty was issued or anything like that. But yeah, it's it's a huge deal if a player takes off their headset beforehand, more so than I think, I don't know, like, there's a lot of speculation as to like what exactly happened. And I don't really want to feed into that. And I think it's it's terrible if some player is labeled one thing or another, especially when they don't, you know, we don't know the whole story. We don't know exactly what happened between all players involved, we can only just form opinions. And that's how rumors get started. That's how reputations get ruined, that kind of stuff. So let's let's like, I definitely don't want to feed into that. But it does look like, you know, there was a penalty assessed and ended up being a match loss. There's been some comparison drawn between how my Connie pulled the headset off, put it on the table. Initially, there was talk people saying he slammed it on the table. And honestly, this was one of the most polite removals of a headset that I've seen on stream. We've seen reference to Cal Connors when where he essentially lost his own Cali whites card off the table. We saw the reference to even a bonds regional win earlier this year, where he literally threw a headset across the table. And I think people have said, Oh, no, he's just too rough with the headset, and they're cracking down on that. And there's a chance that that is the case. I'm, I my opinion, that's not what it is. I think it is more so like you said, a procedural error where the game had not formally concluded. And therefore, you know, he's in violation of the fact that even if he didn't necessarily receive any coaching or encouragement directly, the opportunity to receive it was there. And even though by all accounts, I assume it was unintentional. And, you know, from my point of view, from listening to the commentary from the official casters, going back and watch it on a Zool stream, and just I my assumption is both players totally understood the game was over once he put the ultra ball on the table with the psychic energy. But because he hadn't fully completed the game actions, he essentially dropped the ball at the two yard line when he's going in for his touchdown. And not to make the stupid sports analogy that's kind of been all over the place. But if you don't finish the game, the game's not over. Yeah, there's a famous video where like Dustin Zimmerman wins the States on stream. And like, plays the handout super, super fast and then pops off like you know what I mean? Like he does all the actions he needs to do. Super fast, but he does them. And Dustin like then just goes and like, you know, has that kind of pop off like I want to stay championship like that kind of huge moment for him. Might have been a regionals I forget it's been a while but uh, just like the that. I love seeing that on stream. I love seeing like as a player and as a judge even I love seeing like somebody be very passionate about you know, them winning and like as long as it's respectful to their opponent as long as it's not like holding up and you know violating the tournament proceedings or anything like that like yeah like celebrate that moment man like that's amazing to see like we want to see that from players the passion all that kind of stuff but as long as it's like done in a way that respects their opponent and upholds tournament procedures like that's I think probably the two biggest things right but I don't know I don't really want yeah so this situation aside moving on from that there was another issue where the result of a match was overturned and it wasn't in the TCG community was in Pokemon go and that was the at the finals of the event where from my understanding at the time that I believe that they use their screen names for Pokemon go I think his name is Firestar and maybe some numbers after it I'm not totally positive had launched his final charge attack swiped all the things was going to knock him for sure was going to knock out his opponent's final Pokemon and I believe his Pokemon had actually like the text on the screen had already said x Pokemon used y attack and the HP was gone on the other Pokemon like the game was going to go to the next screen where it says Firestar won the battle or whatever it says in Pokemon go and he took off his headset maybe dropped it on the table a little rough stood up did like yeah I won the game and apparently no they decided it was overturned he was given a loss for that game and his opponent ended up winning the event and that one has really blown up to where it's gotten coverage from like hungry box who was like the king of video game pop offs who I just somehow learned this week lives in Orlando like invited Firestar over to his house like interviewed him I know moist critical picked it up and was did like did a video about it this week it's it's like it's really making the rounds to where like this is being blown up into probably a bigger deal than anybody would have expected it to be wow but that one makes less sense to me than the round 13 outcome because by all accounts that game was already over regardless of the fact that the game had not actually proceeded to the post game screen the attack has already been launched the Pokemon like neither player can influence how much damage it does to the other Pokemon at that point the game is over right so it that's what leads to the speculation of oh it's got to be the headsets it's all the headsets we're being super uber protective of the headsets now and you cannot injure the headsets in any capacity and it just it's a weird mixed signal and it's a it's a gray area that I had a proposal for this black hole of information that we get from the official Pokemon side of things or even the judge side of things because you know you guys as judges I don't know if I don't want to speak for you or any other judge for that matter but it seems like a lot of judges are uncomfortable potentially with commenting on a given situation because they either don't want to be interpreted incorrectly or they don't want to provide information that they may not actually be eligible to provide or they you know you don't want to cause speculation you don't want to stoke a fire more or less that's the biggest thing we end up in the situation like the problem is Pokemon doesn't tell anybody anything and it's just this this void of nothingness where nobody gets to learn what is or is not correct so my thought was we've seen proposals like this in the past I know magic has done this at some point in the past they've provided official rulings for you know there would be a post event document for major judging decisions whether it was a DQ or like a major penalty at like a later stage in the tournament and what I was wondering if it would be feasible would be something similar even if it was only for streamed matches so it would provide transparency for any rulings that were made on stream so people could understand what caused a given outcome it would provide hopefully a level of consistency throughout events as events progress because there has been a precedent set in a public forum so people do have understanding and it could also potentially be used as a reference material when trying to train judges on specific situations as well yeah I think it's tough like you have to balance we've talked about this before on this podcast you have to balance the privacy of the players with the optics of what's going on and make sure like nobody's really getting damaged whether that be the judges or the players or anything like that in the process and I think you're right like something needs to give in some sense we need to have trust from the players that the judges are implementing rules in the sense that the rulebook provides and using the guidelines that are laid out and you know sticking to those as guidelines and allowing like it all the penalties should make sense, right? Like when you're when you're watching it from home or like that, if it doesn't make sense, like, then it should be kind of clarified at some point, but you're not necessarily owed that entirely. Sometimes we don't like because there's a conversation going on at the table, there's, there's more factors in play than you can imagine, as a judge, whenever you're judging something, the stakes are really high at these events. And I don't think any judge ever makes these decisions lightly. But they do have to make these decisions. And they're not always popular. And that can be really tough to navigate. And I don't disagree with you. I think that more transparency and more clarity on what is going on whenever penalties are delivered, like, you know, now the NBA will give it like a debrief or like a like an implementation of like a penalty after review or something like that, you know, MLB is moved to now you can review balls and strikes and kind of challenge that and having more transparency, having more ability to hold our officials accountable, I think, in some sense, for their actions is good. That has been almost comical, by the way, if you've Yeah, oh, yeah, like baseball, like, it's been pretty wild to see like this. Yeah. Some some crazy scenarios where it's just like, so apparent. That is a is the opposite, whatever they called it, right? Like CB Buckner is probably not gonna have a job by the end of the season. No, the fact that we know his name and like, he's a household name at this point is crazy. But yeah, it's very comical. He's he's had a rough start to the season for sure. I don't know, man, it's tough. Part of me definitely wants that. But the other part of me really understands that at the end of the day, like judges are, are under a lot of different stressors and different factors that players don't necessarily know. And you don't know the whole scenario. Like we don't know what happens a lot of the time. In these situations, we hear one side of it, but we don't ever hear like the judges side of it. And that's, that's part of it. That's really tough. Well, that's, that's why I'm arguing that I think this is important, though. Because it provides it provides an avenue for that information to be provided in a more controlled manner, right? So it's not full, speculatory nonsense that leads into rabbit holes that leads into witch hunts and stupid crap that you don't need. Because unfortunately, like whether the judges potentially want to do it or not, when you end up as a stream judge, I think a lot of times you do become a sort of public figure in the sense that people will recognize you if you show up at a different event, or they show up an event that you're at. And they may not know your name, you know, obviously, most judges don't have their names featured to when they're but some number of players will be able to recognize you from the fact that you were in that position. Like I'm sure that have you ever had anybody come say anything to you specifically that you feel was influenced by the fact that you've been featured as a stream judge in the past only a locals I'd say like, you know, my locals recognize that I was so you judged the regionals this weekend, you know, how was that? You know, they pay attention. But like, I don't think like I've had, I've had more people recognize me for the podcast. And for like, it was fun. I had I had one person recognize me because they heard my voice. Like, do you have a podcast? I'm like, yeah, I guess I do. So that was really, it's like the first fan interaction I've had by doing the podcast. That was fun. Nice. But nice. Yeah. But no, I mean, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, then. No, I mean, but I think you're right. Like, I think the judges, at least on the stream judges are definitely under more scrutiny. And definitely, you know, I don't think that's unwarranted. Like you're, you're, you're a little bit more of a public figure. And the decisions you have to carry a lot of weight, especially at top cut levels and all that kind of stuff. But it's tough. And I don't think anybody ever deserves to be, you should never judge somebody for what they're doing, without the full breadth and depth of knowledge of what actually happened, players and judges included in that. But yeah, I mean, it's do I wish there was more transparency? Yes. But like, Pokemon's made it fairly clear that at this point, like, they're going to prioritize the privacy of players. But a Pokemon is protective of themselves as an IP, right? Yeah, like, that's, that's something that you're never going to be able to get away from, because Pikachu wants to be presented as Pikachu, not as Mickey Mouse, you know, very loose example. But you just want to make sure that a Pikachu always looks like a Pikachu is always received as a Pikachu. And you're not adulterating that in any way. And that can be very easy to do. But I think now the way that the especially the Pokemon Go situation is kind of almost spiraled out of control, it almost feels like something has to be done in regards to at least that situation, which then also somewhat sets the precedent for maybe we need more transparency in general. And I just think that that's a conversation that is hopefully being had by higher ups who actually can influence that. Yeah, I hope so too. I hope that we do get more transparency going forward. We'll see what happens. Like, you know, for me as a player, I definitely want to see that me as a judge. I know some of the set the factors that are kind of limiting that and I know that there's a lot of stuff that's going to go into that decision on whether they do decide to do that or not. So sure. Leave it at that, I think for now. Yeah. Otherwise, I'm just gonna keep saying the same thing over and over again. But yeah, before we get into some other changes that were just announced today, we have the long overdue return of Blaine's quiz show. And I just have some simple I'm going to forewarn you, john, none of these are TCG related. Oh, no, I'm gonna do you do currently have a lead. And let's just you know, let's not beat around the bush. Let's see if you can extend it because it's been so long since we've done a Blaine's quiz show, though. Let's remind everybody how to play. There are three multiple choice questions that I will be asking john each correct answer will award him with one point. He has one hint available that can be utilized at any time. During any of the questions. If he is able to answer all three questions without the use of said hint, then he will be awarded an additional point for the week. And yeah, I'm pretty sure you're up by like one or two. I'm really, really bad at tracking how many points we have. It's okay. Yeah. But that's kind of the course at this point. We'll leave it at that. But I'm sure y'all put it in there. Yeah. topic for this week. Just random just went through said I had a question pop into my head. And so this is a this is pretty interesting. And just kind of ran with that and kind of spiraled into some other questions that are tangentially related to that question. So without further ado, the first question I have for you, which of these Pokemon is not featured as an example of a Pokemon when Professor oak introduces the player to the world of Pokemon in the video games, and your choices are Nidorino, Pikachu, Wooper, and Nidorina. Okay, in like, Wooper is like the only one that's Gen Two, I think that's fair to say, but like the fact that it's Gen Two is almost like the red herring. Like I feel like maybe there's like, what is it called fire? Let red and leaf green or something like that, where he comes back and introduces you to the world of Pokemon and Wooper's in it now. So it's got to be I think, between Nidorino and Nidorina. I definitely think there is a Pikachu and like yellow version. He gives you Pikachu as an example. This is like straight 5050. I don't have a good guess. I think I'm just gonna guess Nidorina. And we'll just see if that's right. Okay, you are absolutely correct. So Nidorino was the featured Pokemon for red and blue. Pikachu, you correctly identified as being the Pokemon for yellow. And Wooper was actually the Pokemon in Pokemon crystal. Okay, I think gold and silver was Merrill if I remember correctly. I don't know. I had to it was actually much more difficult to find this information than I initially thought it was going to be when I thought of the question. Okay, but yeah. So one point for Jon so far, let's move on to question two. So now I want to know during the intro sequence of which generation of games is the player introduced to the world of Pokemon by a non professor character? And your choices are Gen five, Gen six, Gen seven and Gen eight. Oh, man, this is like the intro, I guess. Oh, boy, I have only really played sun and moon. So Gen six, I think I had x and y. That's six and seven. I played like the intro of I don't think I played black or sword and shield. So I don't know the answer off the top of my head. I don't really remember sun and moon or x and y. I'm gonna have to use a hint here. Let's just kind of give myself the best chance. Okay, the answer is an even number. Okay, so six or eight. And see eight is sun and moon, or sorry, six is sun and moon. No, seven is sun and moon for reference. Thank you. You saved me. So six would be a x and y. I had it flipped around. Okay, so Lumia City. I'm just gonna go put six in there. I think that's just me picking numbers at this point. Hopefully it works out. Okay, so six locked in six is unfortunately incorrect. The answer is generation eight. So Gen five, six and seven, you were introduced to the game by the professors of those respective regions. So we have Juniper sycamore and kukui. And Gen eight the intro is actually handled by Chairman Rose. He's doing some big presentation inside one of the stadiums. And one more question here, john, let's see if we can close it out with two points for you. What generation of Pokemon games is Pikachu not natively available to be caught in? Your choices are three, four, five, and six. I think this one I can say with some degree of confidence as a true Gen five enjoyer. They did the whole reset of the pokey decks, where basically was just all black and white Pokemon. So I'm just gonna lock in five. And, you know, ducklets, the better Pikachu, let's be honest, you know, no one's those two Pokemon are nothing alike. But with five five locked in, you are absolutely correct. I actually guess I guess I thought this one was going to be harder. And that's why I saved it for the end. But yeah, it might be for the less Gen five enjoyers. But uh, you know, I am the truly I have the playmat to prove it, you know, my professor playmat from Gen five, and there's no Pikachu on that matter. And I'll tell you that much. That's fair. Now, this is one that I stumbled across when I was like, I was looking up something about first partner Pokemon. I don't remember how that was related to one of the questions I was at that I wanted to ask. But I noticed that Pikachu was available or could be caught in like every literally every generation but five, you can catch Pikachu. And the only way to get a Pikachu in Gen five is through some like transfer thing that you can do in that game. I don't remember what it is. Yeah. So to correct for you, John. So I'm pretty sure you're up by either three or four. I don't know. We'll figure it out. It's kind of prices. Price is right. What am I thinking of? Whose line is it? Anyway, points, they don't really matter at the end of the day. I mean, that's that's rich coming from you in the in the in the loser's position at the moment, you know, so of course it'll matter to you. They matter to me. Somebody listening probably actually has a better idea of how many points we have than we do. And if you do know, please leave it in the comments below. Love that. But just to close things out. Yeah, I think this is this is another big shadow drop or not shadowed over the announced. But, you know, play Pokemon put out an announcement today. So this is news. We don't always cover news on this podcast, but it is fun when we do. There are some pretty big changes, I'd say, kind of middle of the year changes to organize play and to a couple of different aspects to the play Pokemon store handbook, the standard of conduct a little bit, and then the TCG handbook and the tournament rules handbook. I kind of wrote some notes just to like give the highlights of the penalty guidelines. Some of the aspects of that were changed. Shuffling and set up traditionally was two minutes. It is now three minutes. So you have an additional minute between games to shuffle your deck and then set up for the new game. You're doing a series. So just a little bit of a change there. And then other things that time time manipulation through legal actions is now under sportsmen like major game loss. So, oh, that is wording that I think has been long overdue. Now we have like a precedent or like a specific thing we can point to as judges and say, OK, even though the actions that you are performing are legal, they are in no way contributing to how you're you're not progressing your game state at all. And so that is now something we can stand on and say, you can give a game loss for that if some players. Now, this isn't just like play a Poffin, shuffle your deck, play a Poffin, shuffle your deck, play an ultra ball, discard two cards, shuffle your deck like that's not categorized under this, correct? I would say no. It's more along the lines of like if you're playing artisan every turn and searching your deck and then shuffling your deck and then passing and then the next turn playing artisan and searching your deck and failing artisan and passing. And then like you do that for three or four turns and you take the full like 30 seconds for your search every single time. OK, it is very clear that you have no target you want to get on your bench. And, you know, you're not progressing the game state by doing that. If you're playing ultra balls or playing Poffins, you're at least thinning your deck, right? Like you're doing something to alter. Well, I'm sorry if maybe I wasn't clear in my the example I initially provided. It was all of those were failed item cards. You were just playing the card, completing the full length search, shuffle your deck and then shuffle everything and then follow up, play another one, fail it, shuffle everything. But I would argue even in that you are doing something to progress the game state and that you are thinning your hand down. OK, fair enough cards out of your hand. Like this would be more along the lines of like I do a repeatable action that does nothing that, you know, just drags the game out essentially. And it's in such a context that, you know, you're trying to trying to achieve and you're trying to manipulate the time like you're seeing. Oh, I'm looking at the clock, gauging that there's 10 minutes left. And now I'm just trying to kill 10 minutes. And like it's evident that you're doing that. You know what I mean? Like if I were to ask you what you're doing as a player, you'd have to come up with some really lame excuse to like try to get out of it because it's pretty evident to your opponent. It's evident to yourself. It's evident to the judges, you know, that kind of stuff. It's not going to be shoot. I, you know, said I was not going to go back into my deck, but now I have to go back into my deck. And now that's a penalty. It's not going to be that. So like that, I think, is important to clarify. It is going to be more egregious than that. You know what I mean? At least it should be. You know, that should be the standard is you are seeking to manipulate the time. You're you're you're not working towards anything, but other than trying to prolong the game like you went along game one and now you're just trying to stall out until time is called. And you win the game, right? And this isn't including like stalling and decking your opponent out. This isn't including. You know, if you have somebody locked up in the active with like retreat lock or something like that, those are legitimate win conditions. It's more you're just playing like search. Like I said, searching an artisan every turn, taking the max amount of time and then just passing and like failing the artisan every time and for like multiple turns on it, that kind of thing. So other than that, there's also kind of an interesting one that doesn't come up often. but it was interesting that they included it. A player can now be disqualified for prize manipulation. Let me find out in Sports and Conduct one real quick. Give me two seconds. Okay, in Sports and Conduct, severe is a competitor enters a tournament as the sole competitor in their age division and drops from the tournament as soon as possible in a clear attempt to gain prizing. So, I mean, that's a cut and dry scenario, but now you have a leg to stand on as a tournament organizer or as a judge. When you see that happening, and it doesn't come up that often, thankfully, but if there's a situation- I didn't think that was a thing. I guess it's enough of a thing to where we need to have it in the rule book that you can't just enter a tournament, play zero games and drop as soon as it's clear like you're the only one in the division, even though you have to play the tournament to win the prize, I think. Well, and I guess I thought that that was already the case, right? I thought that if you dropped that you kind of forfeited your right to any level of prizing. If you drop from a tournament, now, if you drop from the tournament, you're still part of the tournament. Even at regionals, if you make phase two and you drop from phase two, if you finish in the top 512, you still get nine packs. So, you still get the CPs and the nine packs from that. So, you still get prizing. They're not gonna hold onto the prizing if you leave the tournament area and then say, oh, actually, I didn't pick up my prizing. Can you mail it to me? They're not gonna do that, but you can show up at any point after the tournament has concluded and pick up your prizing. But that was the most in the penalty guidelines. I think there's a couple other things talked about. Let's see, specifically in the change log. I think those are the main highlights. A lot of it's just wording stuff. One that I guess isn't particularly relatable to masters, but if there is a situation where a competitor requires a guardian and that guardian has been removed from the tournament floor, the competitor is not immediately disqualified unless the competitor has committed an infraction that requires disqualification. If no such infraction has occurred, the competitor is dropped from the tournament instead. So, I guess that helps with if there's a crazy scenario where somebody's guardian has to be removed from the tournament floor for their behavior, the player isn't as impacted as that. Obviously, they still need a guardian to attend an event, and that's reflected in this, that they are dropped from the tournament, but they are not disqualified. So, I'm glad that that wording got put in there is to show a clear line of what is gonna happen if somebody's parent has to be removed from the venue for whatever reason, but that's good to see. And there's a couple other things in here talking about the open deck list preview, just the procedural thing, like if you're not returning it in time, you can get a penalty for that, which I guess makes sense. You're just holding up the tournament. I think that's pretty much it for the penalty guidelines. There's some other stuff. Yeah, the other one was from the tournament rule handbook, and two main things from there, for me, as I was reading it, and the biggest one is we now have a new way that TopCut is gonna be going moving forward. Yes, so they have now stated that in single elimination TopCut matches, the higher seated player in the single elimination bracket has the choice of going first or second in game one of their match. This decision is made at the same point during setup that the coin flip would take place, which is crazy. I know this is the case in some other games. I don't remember specifically which ones. I believe Magic does it where you have the choice of if you have a higher seating, you get to choose whether you wanna go first or second. Right, and I know some players have kind of been lobbying for this to be the case in Pokemon as well, and while I do think that this will be massively important at regionals, I think there are fewer people who kind of ID their way into Cut, unless they are, I don't know, I guess maybe it does still happen every once in a while. You'll have a couple of people that ID their way into ASIM, but those people just kind of accept that they're getting into ASIM, and now if you are part of that asymmetrical process, you more than likely are going second throughout the entirety of Top Cut, which is kind of a crazy thing to see, or I guess you're at the mercy of your opponent. You don't get to decide. You have no influence over the outcome of whether you go first or second in Cut. It's entirely up to your opponent. The bigger thing, though, I think will be in the local scene when you have stores playing Top Cut for their League Cups where you would see people very frequently, five-round League Cup, somebody goes 3-0, and then they ID the last two rounds, and I think now you'll see much more commonly people playing it out to at least get to 3-1-1, let's say, or 3-0-2 is better than 3-1-1, but you'll see more 3-1-1 players, but you'll see more players at 3-1-1 making Cut because fewer people are IDing into Cut. It's interesting. I think the allure of making Cut may be stronger than the allure of getting what to choose whether they want to go first or second for a lot of players, but I definitely think it will make an impact, and it definitely adds another level of strategy and something to play for outside of just making Top Cut. Now you have seeding mattering, and I think that's a good change, like allowing the strength of how well you played in the regular Swiss rounds to then dictate an advantage if there is any to be gained. There usually is, of picking whether you want to go first or second. Allowing that to determine that is, I think, a really good change and healthy for the competitive game, for sure. Yeah. I think the frustrating thing, though, would be from the player perspective at a local level, you would very frequently see these League Cups where you have, what, six-plus people that are three, and then all of them just ID the last two rounds. So as soon as you lose a game, you just can't make Cut, and I have to imagine that this change, at least in part, was influenced by negative outcomes, like support tickets probably submitted to where, like, this system is terrible, you shouldn't allow intentional draws, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they said, well, no, we still like that because we want ties to be a part of our tournament system, and therefore, we're going to try to de-incentivize the intentional draws rather than removing them completely. Yeah. I think this is a good way about going about that. One other thing that I wanted to point out before we kind of wrap up here, there's now a section on feature matches. Yep. 5.1 points, or 5.3.1, I think, under stream matches. No, that's in, sorry, that's in the tournament one. This is the TCG-specific one, my bad. Okay, in the tournament one, it just talks about what are feature matches, and then also specifically says you can now record them as, you can't record stream matches, but you can record feature matches is what it says. So let's find a way. As a player? I don't think that'd make that distinction. Okay. Let me flick up the tournament rules handbook. Four point foot up. Stream matches, 4.5.1. Feature events. Feature matches showcase competitors in designated areas of the tournament zone. These matches and their designated areas are denoted by signage and TV screens displaying the match in progress to the audience. Like stream matches, competitors may be instructed to play a match in the feature match area. In some instances, these matches may also be streamed to a live larger audience or to online viewers, but this is not guaranteed for all featured matches. As outlined in section 2.3 of the standard of conduct, feature matches may be filmed by spectators, unlike other matches in the tournament zone. So you can film these and record these. So I think that's a cool thing. Hopefully, I don't know exactly how that's going to be taken moving forward, but that's important. Like I know when I judged the featured tables that the wording, like we were instructed, we were figuring it all out. I think this was something that had to be ironed out and it sounds like it has been. Now it's codified in the tournament handbook, which is pretty cool to see. Hopefully that allows more matches, more Pokemon out there in the world. Everybody wants to see more Pokemon, watch more Pokemon. So I think that's a good thing. As long as it's not disruptive to the players or as long as it upholds all the stuff we've been talking about all week or all podcasts long, more Pokemon's just more fun and good to see. For sure. I think my hope at the end of the day is still that we eventually end up in a system that's similar to what Japan has, where if you have these feature matches and they are recorded even as like B-roll essentially, or something that can be thrown up in place of some of the other segments, nothing against Skarzig doing drawing with random people outside of the tournament hall. But I think a lot of spectators would prefer to see more gameplay occurring. And if you could have that thrown up in the back, you could throw it to the commentators and say, hey, we finished this round early because, Iron Hands is rotated now, but whatever. They jolting charged into Ampuvery much two games in a row and we're done 10 minutes into the round. What are we gonna do for the next? Yeah. I'm sad that you chose Skarzig. Did you get that drawing segment to bring down? That's easily the best. No, Adam's great. Like I said, absolutely nothing against him, but I- I'm with you. Yeah, we definitely wanna see more Pokemon when we watch the streams for these events. For sure. And that's, I think, good for the game too. Like it allows the casual player to potentially have a better chance of getting on stream if they're doing well at an event. I think that's kind of cool too. Then the feature matches are a really cool, fun addition that have been coming into regionals now. They've been at ICs for a little bit, but this season we've seen them pop up more and more at regionals. I mean, yeah, it's just good to have more people to cheer on and it's cool. Juniors and seniors now get to be showcased a little bit more. Yeah. Throughout the day. And now their final matches are kind of broadcast to their friends and family at those, the featured tables, which is cool. So, good to see. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for getting through the episode with us and another long-winded one, as John and I are very commonly prone to doing, but we appreciate it. We appreciate you getting to the end with us. If you have any opinions about any of the changes or maybe you have some thoughts on kind of the transparency in judging decisions that I brought up earlier in the episode, let us know down in the comments below. We would love to hear from you. Maybe discuss it more on next week's episode. As John and I catch up, we do have a bit of a break from tournaments now. So we'll be kind of just doing our first impressions of post-rotation next week. John has had his chance to get his feet wet in that new format. Spoiler alert, John, there are not that many viable decks in the format. So good luck finding one you like. Unfortunate. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Hopefully things improve. I've still been having a fairly good time just in spite of that, but we will hear more about that next week. And we hope you guys will tune in and join us in the next edition of the Battle Frontier. Have a good week.